Wo endet The Skull und wo beginnt Legions of Doom? Die Antwort könnte "genau hier" sein. Willkommen bei 'The Skull 3'. Der Tod des Sängers Eric Wagner (The Skull, Ex-Trouble, Blackfinger usw.) im Jahr 2021 überschattete das Debüt von Legions Of Doom, da The Skull-Gitarrist Lothar Keller und Bassist Ron Holzner (ebenfalls Ex-Trouble) Song-Material bearbeiteten, das auf dem dritten Album dieser Band zu finden gewesen wäre. Mit Wagners Beteiligung an der Komposition und dem Segen der Familie des Sängers bewegen sich Legions Of Doom weiter in Richtung Supergroup-Territorium, indem sie Drummer Henry Vasquez (Saint Vitus, Blood Of The Sun) und Sänger Karl Agell (u.a. Corrosion Of Conformity aus der 'Blind'-Ära) sowie Scott Reagers (ursprünglicher Frontmann von Saint Vitus) in die Gruppe aufnahmen. Wagners Geist ist Teil dieser Platte, ganz zu schweigen von seinem Gesang auf 'Heaven' - aber Legions of Doom sind mehr als eine Hommage. Am Ende wird die Platte ebenso sehr zu einem Debüt, wie sie es je als drittes Album für The Skull hätte sein können, und die Persönlichkeit von Legions Of Doom wird sofort durch die Gesangseinlagen von Reagers und Agell unterstrichen. Ja, es ist klassischer Doom von Veteranen, die diese Musikform mitgeprägt haben. Translucent Green Haze Vinyl-LP mit Foldout-Cover und bedrucktem Inner Sleeve; Jewel-Case-CD mit 12-seitigem Booklet.
Pale Desert is the first release of the Australian born, Berlin based producer Ryen March. The name resonates not only the dry outback of his hometown, but it also mirrors the soundscape of the tracks - being completely raw and sweaty at the same time. The five track strong EP has it's core in the techno swamp but with the aesthetics of punk and EBM.
We're happy to have found a new friend from down under and beyond excited to be releasing March's first EP!
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull original motion picture soundtrack, now available on bronze colour vinyl, featuring music composed and conducted by John Williams.
RAWAX is proud to present Ron Maney aka DJ Skull on his own CHIWAX series called The DJ Skull Saga. This platform will present Ron's classic releases from the past and his present works. We're starting the series with the 1993 classic "Stomping Grounds" which came originaly out on the dutch Djax Up label. All tracks are remastered!
out of Stock
Last delivered 12 months ago available to reorder, subject to availability
Plastic Crimewave Syndicate returns with one collective foot in overdriven space-biker scuzz rock, but the other bigfoot kicking upward into new galaxies of synth punk, no-prog, and freek funk. Yes, dare we say it, the new PCWS LP, Tales From the Golden Skull, GROOVES--but from the perspective of the Japan n' Kraut/Eurorock undergrounds, coated in some nasty Windy City grime. Aided by the Chicago Cosmonaut Couriers Crew, ala famed renaissance man Mac Blackout (synths/horns/electronics), Przemyslaw Krys Drazek (trumpet) of longtime zone-jammers Drazek Fuscaldo/Mako Sica, Will MacLean on Moog keytar (!-- of local Silver vocoder-ed Apples lovin' treasures Protovulcan), plus the oldest-school synthlord Bil Vermette, who's been modulating since the 70s. We'll call Tales From the Golden Skull a near-concept lp (aren't they always?) that looks back at fallen friends and collaborators, and then into the unwritten golden future (as PCW himself hit the golden 50). The sonic journey dips into dark textural valleys, and chugging riffs rising to thee fiery heavens, as the thundering-but-subtle rhythm section of Jose "Beast but Best" Bernal and Rob "Dead Feathers" Rodak know when to crash and when to burn (one). Sir PCW lays down his trademark big muff-blastage and echo-cries, to channel the despair and feral bark of the mighty Vega/Hammill/Iggy/Dickie P/Haino/Mojo-Risin/Mizutani, but also knows when to shut up for some layered instrumental Embryo/Harvester/Fausty trance rock and dabbed/dubbed out "not-quite-shoegazin" calmness in the eye of the Ur-storm. This might be the most expansive, detailed yet furious PCWS LP yet, recorded at Rec Room studios with Eric Block, who has done all from a band with Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley to recorded Rhys Chatham 100+-peeps guitar orchestras. So strap the headphones on and absorb the tales of this spaced ritual-rock opus. Artwork - Steve Krakow
Ron Maney also known as DJ Skull lived in the Southside of Chicago (IL, USA). His musical career started during the summer of 1986, while recovering from a broken bone. During the following years he homed his craft, DJing first at basement parties, building his reputation to go on to larger events such as, loft and hotel parties, and eventually the infamous Music Box and Power Plant clubs. At the age of fifteen Ron shopped his first demo at Trax Records.
There he first met Chicago's legendary DJ Ron Hardy, working as A&R for Trax Records. Two years, and a new alias later (DJ Skull) later while at the Power Plant, Chicago's own Steve Poindexter heard a DJ playing one of Rons tracks, and met Ron. Steve was now A&R at Saber Records and invited Ron to release some tracks. So in October of 1991 DJ Skull's first record "N.R.G. Music" was released.
In 1993, he released the EP "The Stomping Grounds" on Djax-Up-Beats, which was more noted than the first one. Over the years that followed DJ Skull released lots of EP's on several labels. He has become well-respected producer and DJ in the Techno industry.
out of Stock
Last delivered 22 months ago available to reorder, subject to availability
Communique Records USA sub label, SOUNDS. brings another classic release back on vinyl.
This time it's the collab between DJ Skull and Label owner DJ ESP aka Woody McBride from 1996!!!
out of Stock
Last delivered 21 months ago available to reorder, subject to availability
Originally released in 2000 on Smalltown Supersound, Kim Hiorthøy’s first record Hei captures an artist who had made very little music before – yet it seemingly was the starting point of a musical career that would stay away from easy categorisation. Now, Hei (2026 Remaster) returns on blickwinkel, released digitally and on vinyl on 30 October 2026, as part of an ongoing series revisiting and reissuing Hiorthøy’s work.
Made in Copenhagen with little equipment — an Akai MPC2000, a stereo microphone and a DAT machine — Hei was assembled from samples, sequences and rhythms, with no outboard mixing or processing. Without really knowing what he was doing, the music was created intuitively while drawing inspiration from instrumental hip-hop he was listening to, the techno and drum & bass he admired but did not yet know how to make, and a broader fascination with music that felt personal, homemade and slightly uncertain of its own identity. Hei sits somewhere between those impulses. It is beat-driven without belonging entirely to beat music, experimental without announcing itself as such, but unmistakably coming from a playful series of events and decisions.
In that regard, the title of the closing track might be a fitting description of the album itself and, in hindsight, also of how we can look at Hiorthøy’s subsequent work. Taken from a story by Tove Jansson, the title evokes a state of openness and curiosity, a state where thoughts and impressions are simply given the space to unfold:
“He didn't care to get up, all day he let new images and ideas come and go as they pleased, now and then slept a little and woke up again and had no idea who he was. It was a peaceful and very exciting day.”
There is something of Hei in that state of mind: a willingness to follow an idea without knowing exactly where it might lead, a willingness to follow guts and the heart rather than ratio. Perhaps that is also what makes Hei still feel relevant today. As Hiorthøy puts it when reflecting on the music he made then and the music he makes now: “If I compare the music on Hei to music I’m making now, the general sentiment or smell or air or tree or pull of what I’m looking for and listening after when I work is, I think, for better or worse, more or less the same.”
All music by Kim Hiortøy
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Portraits by Kim Hiorthøy
Design by Jelle Martens
Cameron Winter kündigt sein erstes Live-Album "Live at Carnegie Hall" an. Das Album dokumentiert Winters historischen Auftritt im Dezember 2025, bei dem er als einer der jüngsten Solokünstler überhaupt als Headliner im Hauptsaal der legendären Konzerthalle auftrat. Ganz allein, über sein Klavier gebeugt und mit dem Rücken zu einem ehrfürchtigen, ausverkauften Publikum, interpretierte der Frontmann der Band "Geese" Songs aus seinem gefeierten Debütalbum "Heavy Metal" neu. Ein Album, das von GQ in ihrem ausführlichen Bericht über diesen Abend in der Carnegie Hall als "eine der kühnsten und selbstbewusstesten Singer-Songwriter-Platten dieses Jahrhunderts bisher, ein Fiebertraum voller Gefühle von jemandem, der die Regeln gut genug verstand, um zu wissen, dass sie ihm kaum etwas bedeuteten" beschrieben wurde.
Auf dieser berühmten Bühne präsentierte er zudem drei bisher unveröffentlichte Kompositionen, von denen jede einen Einblick in seinen Fundus an Material bot. Die gesamte Darbietung war von einem unbestreitbaren Gefühl der Einmaligkeit geprägt, das die Bedeutung des Augenblicks einfing: Zeuge zu sein, wie ein Künstler, wie er nur einmal in einer Generation vorkommt, die Bühne eines der ehrwürdigsten Veranstaltungsorte der amerikanischen Musikszene beherrscht.
Long before streaming services, podcasts, or even the compact disc, there was Tellus—a radically ambitious publication that imagined recorded sound as an exhibition space. Founded in 1983 in downtown New York, Tellus transformed the humble audio cassette into a magazine, commissioning and publishing new works by musicians, composers, visual artists, poets, writers, choreographers, and performers who were reshaping the boundaries of contemporary art. Each issue invited listeners into a world where no wave, industrial music, spoken word, Fluxus performance, electroacoustic composition, downtown pop, conceptual art, and avant-garde experimentation could coexist on equal footing. More than forty years later, Earth Libraries proudly presents TELLUS: The Audio Cassette Magazine Anthology Vol. 1, the first comprehensive anthology devoted to the groundbreaking publication. The story of Tellus begins, fittingly, at the Rum Runner Bar on Canal Street. There, in 1983, visual artist Joseph Nechvatal, curator Claudia Gould, and composer Carol Parkinson conceived an entirely new kind of publication. Portable cassette players were transforming how people experienced music, and the trio saw an opportunity to use the cassette itself as a curatorial medium—one capable of circulating work that traditional record labels, galleries, and magazines simply couldn't accommodate. Early recordings by Sonic Youth and Liquid Liquid sit alongside works by James Tenney, George Brecht, Takehisa Kosugi, Carol Parkinson, Y Pants, Live Skull, Shelley Hirsch, Lenny Pickett, Paul Dresher, Gregory Whitehead, and dozens of other artists whose work helped define one of the most fertile creative communities of the era. For Earth Libraries, restoring Tellus represents a continuation of the label's commitment to preserving overlooked musical histories. Working from the original cassette masters, every recording on TELLUS: The Audio Cassette Magazine Anthology Vol. 1 has been carefully restored and newly mast
Kid Katana Records teamed up again with KOEI TECMO GAMES and Team NINJA, to bring you the NINJA GAIDEN 2 Black OST on vinyl for the first time.
This physical edition is a 2LP designed in close relationship with the game's creative team:
2-colored vinyl with a unique “corona” effect that is reminiscent of “Sumi (black ink)”: handmade vinyl effect melting white and black colors to shape a unique vinyl color on each product, evoking Ryu Hayabusa style.
Handpicked curation of the game music, mastered for this specific vinyl edition
A Gatefold created for this specific vinyl
Kid Katana Record produced this album with supervision from Koei Tecmo Sound, who composed the original game music.
Very rare and sought after! 'Melon Ball' is a mixture between the most beautiful sound-layers you can imagine and a light acid-line in the background.
Alltogether makes this track so wonderful and moving. You could enjoy it in the club as well as on the beach during the sunset!
A track for a affair of the heart!
Big Tip !!!
At the cusp of a new millennium, British electronic music was rapidly changing. Jungle and garage had broken into the mainstream, but were running out of creative gas – what fresh movement would next captivate the underground? On the outer edges of London, a small group of bass lovers had the answer. Through a new strain of subloaded beats that stripped jungle, rave, techno and garage for parts, this scene returned to the dub roots, prizing the fundamentals of soundsystem culture: bass, space and togetherness. They called it dubstep.
In Aftershock: The Seismic Impact of Dubstep, seasoned music writer Lauren Martin charts the origins of one of the 21st century’s most innovative music genres in an oral history format. Through the testimonies of its architects and an immersive array of photography, flyers and unseen scene history, Aftershock chronicles the rise of artists like Skream, Mala, Coki, Loefah, Horsepower Productions and Rusko, as well as labels and parties such as Hyperdub, Tempa, DMZ, FWD>> and Skull Disco.
Together, this movement shook the British underground, exploded onto the internet and, within a decade, had rocked global music at unprecedented scale. Through first-hand storytelling, Aftershock is a testament to how the imagination and persistence of a few can transform culture.
Quotes
“Written via interviews with 28 leading scene figures from London and beyond, Lauren Martin’s oral history of dubstep is a landmark document of British club culture. This heavy, asymmetric music, informed by Jamaican soundsystem culture, garage, grime, breaks and more, could only have mutated in the UK, and Martin’s cast of characters take you back to the Croydon record shops, Shoreditch clubs and online forums where it came together. Amid funny tales of infighting and the inside stories of classic tracks, the artists’ pluck and passion are what shine through brightest, and make this such an inspirational read.” – Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Editor at Guardian Music
Double vinyl reissue of Skullflower’s epochal “IIRD GATEKEEPER” album - the first time that this album has been available on vinyl for 30 years. In addition to the original LP this definitive and expanded edition includes extra and unreleased tracks taken from the recording sessions. For the first time all the tracks recorded by the band during this period can be heard together giving fans unprecedented access to material previously only available in the bands’ archives. Recorded in London in 1991 and released in 1992 on Justin “Godflesh” Broadrick’s HeadDirt label in 1992, IIRD GATEKEEPER established a worldwide reputation and following for Skullflower and convinced many who heard it that they had encountered nothing less than the best band on the planet. Arriving at the height of the “grunge” and the expansion of underground guitar “rock” into corporate America, IIRD GATEKEEPER had its roots deep in the UK noise and power-electronics scene. Guitarist Matthew Bower and bassist Anthony Di Franco were both graduates of the Broken Flag school of British noise making with their respective projects PURE, TOTAL and JFK. IIRD GATEKEEPER was Skullflower’s third album and was the first of the band’s albums to feature a consistent line-up throughout its production: Matthew Bower (guitar), Anthony Di Franco on (bass) and Stuart Dennison (drums). Recorded and mixed in four sessions between January and June 1991the tracks on this edition of IIRD GATEKEEPER shows the band’s new line up developing their sound, warping and evolving in real time. As such this edition of IIRD GATEKEEPER provides a unique document of the band in a state of transition, with the chemistry of the individual playing combusting in the studio to create a wave of astonishing creativity. IIRD GATEKEEPER is perhaps the definitive British underground rock album of the 1990’s – unique and never equalled. With this new edition Dirter Promotions allows Skullflower fans old and new to listen to this classic album as it was intended: spark up, crank it up and prepare to have your ears and mind blown
With the launch of Flirt, Alarico distills the essence of his current techno vision while sketching its next phase.
This is techno stripped to its most instinctive form: rolling basslines, teasing vocals and seductive rhythms with hints towards deeper and more melodic realms.
Skull Snaps 1973 album on GSF is iconic because of the huge number of times tracks on it have been sampled by the Hip-Hop community.
The album, produced by genius George Kerr, and featuring the talented Ervan Walters and Sam Culley, was released with a flourish and in a classic gatefold sleeve but GSF floundered and the album flopped. It’s discovery by Rap music makers has been well documented but before that happened it was discovered by UK Soul detectives in the 70s.
As the Northern Soul scene shapeshifted on from 60’s Motown sound alikes into contemporary black music a whole new music rosta took over the dancefloors. And just as Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson’s “The Bottle” got its debut British spins in the North, so did a whole slew of other acts - includung the Skull Snaps.
“My Hang Up Is You” became a single from the album and an underground anthem. One venue that became synonymous with the track was the Ritz in Manchester where the legendary Soul and Jazz -Funk All-Dayers helped shape UK dance music culture. Paul Mooney has created two 2026 remixes - one vocal and one instrumental - that pay homage to that 1970s golden era when Soul and Disco gelled into an unstoppable force. Fittingly both remixes have been dedicated to those Ritz All-Dayers.
Originally released only on CD in 1995 and long out of print, Scraping Tokyo ’95 captures the raw, visceral energy of Belgian industrial legend Dive during a powerful live performance in Tokyo. This intense set features a selection of classic Dive tracks alongside three cover versions by Joy Division, Suicide and The Klinik—all reimagined in Dive’s signature minimalist and abrasive style.
Available for the first time on vinyl, this limited edition of 350 copies is pressed on white vinyl and comes packaged with an insert featuring archival photos and Japanese-style OBI strip.
The Godfather of Hardcore, Marc Acardipane, needs no introduction. His outstanding releases over the past 30 years speak for themselves. He has been instrumental in helping to electronic music history, with countless well-known productions which have been unsurpassed by any other artist of this calibre.
His timeless masterpieces have been and always will be heard at hardcore raves spanning the circumference of the Planet. With 9 Is A Classic, Slaves To The Rave, Pitch-Hiker, Stereo Murder and We Have Arrived, just to name a few, he clearly proves who's the boss. "The Most Famous Unknown" is a well compiled collection of Marc's music, which showcases a mere portion of what he has composed and produced since the early nineties!
The vinyl and digital selection of "The Most Famous Unknown" features remixes by Body Sushi a.k.a. VTSS & Randomer, Dasha Rush, Gabber Eleganza feat. Delirio, Jasss, Kilbourne, Minimum Syndicat, Nina Kraviz, Perc, Solid Blake, Stranger, Umwelt and VTSS, which all deliver excellent interpretations of tracks they have chosen to revamp.
All original tracks have been re-mastered to the highest possible standard of quality.
Meet Camy Huot: a French performance artist, music producer, and DJ currently based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Known for driving the pulse of the underground scene via her events, radio shows and DJ sets at live shows & festivals (e.g. Best Kept Secret, Gothic Pogo and Grauzone)
The night stretches elastic, twisted. You’re a hostage to the rhythm, riding the edge of something primal and broken. Neon shadows flinch and fold into your peripheral vision. A voice, your own maybe, says you don’t have to worry about it. The night insists. The echoes pile up in your skull, turning themselves inside out. –It’s boring here, and I don’t wanna go home–
For her debut EP “Echoes in my Room”, Camy Huot set out to write about what she knows, channeling a primal collection of fucked up thoughts through an invigorating, brutally honest clash of feverish noise, cavernous textures and arpeggiated beats.
In October 1987, four months after the release of their critically acclaimed Sister LP, Sonic Youth showcased their latest work in a blistering set at Cabaret Metro, Chicago. The concert was introduced by Big Black's Steve Albini (who at the time was banned from the venue) and subsequently released as a semi-official bootleg under the title Hold That Tiger on writer/provocateur Byron Coley's impishly Geffen-baiting label Goofin' (years later the band would use this nom de guerre for their own imprint).
Hold That Tiger's sterling reputation among the Sonic Youth faithful is well deserved. In fact, it isn't a stretch to suggest that the album is to the first handful of SY releases what It's Alive is to the first three Ramones LPs – a feral and liberatory public snapshot of a band's blossoming imperial phase. Indeed, HTT is the sound of a group at the peak of their powers, presenting new songs alongside a handful of older ones with the kind of wild, cathartic enthusiasm common to rock 'n' roll's most revered live albums.
Taking nothing away from Sister – inarguably one of indie rock's first true masterpieces – it is reasonable that many fans prefer the live versions heard on Hold That Tiger to their studio counterparts. On HTT, Sonic Youth is a spiky, pummeling and confident force, alternately mammoth and meditative. Sister and its predecessor EVOL notably added an airy, dreamlike reverie to the band's turbulent doom-lurch, a stylistic evolution that seems to crystallize on HTT. Throughout, Kim Gordon's sinewy, sumptuous bass and Steve Shelley's propulsive, tom-heavy percussion provide the bedrock groove for Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo's ferocious barrages of noise-guitar crunch.
By 1987, the band was confidently articulating their dual lexicon of punk-noir dissonance and supernal, psychedelic sonic calligraphy – bending their jagged, streetwise gnarl into balloon animals of dazzling and beautiful songs. This collision of splendor and chaos would become a hallmark of the group's singular alchemy as well as provide a blueprint for the post-SST American underground they would help invent and ultimately nurture.
Hold That Tiger's encore – four songs by the band's beloved Ramones, which Thurston would later astutely compare to "the perfect pudding after a hearty meal" – serves as a reminder that, like any true punks, Sonic Youth never could resist a good, rousing anthem to send the kids home with their ears ringing, their hearts hot-wired.
This first-time reissue with speed-corrected master comes in a gatefold tip-on jacket. Mastered by Bob Weston from the original tapes. Recorded by Aadam Jacobs. Audio repair/editing by Aaron Mullan.
New Order are delighted to announce the release of the definitive edition of their 1985 studio album Low-Life. The collection includes an LP (180g), x2CDs, x2DVDs, a book and features unreleased rare material across the different formats and new sleeve designs.
CD 2 contains previously unreleased mixes and alternative versions, including Love Vigilantes and Sub-Culture instrumentals, Sooner Than You Think Full Length Unedited. The two DVDs include an unreleased performance from The Manhattan Club, Belgium and rarely seen footage from Rotterdam Arena (Netherlands), International Centre (Toronto, Canada) and a BBC filmed Whistle Test at The Hacienda, 1985.
The 180g vinyl LP will be wrapped in its original ‘heavyweight tracing paper’, designed by Peter Saville. In addition the CD will also be wrapped in the same way for the first time ever. Also included in the set is a beautifully presented hardback book featuring rare photos and a new interview with all band members.
Marketing to promote the release include:
• National press and radio promo campaign – reviews, features, and interviews TBC.
• Organic and promoted content from the New Order official socials and Warner Music owned socials.
• Promotion of singles pre-release with BBC 6 Music support.
• Far-reaching online advertising campaign.
LP 180g Vinyl
Side one
1. Love Vigilantes
2. The Perfect Kiss
3. This Time of Night
4. Sunrise
Side two
1. Elegia
2. Sooner Than You Think
3. Sub-Culture
4. Face Up CD1
1. Love Vigilantes
2. The Perfect Kiss
3. This Time Of Night
4. Sunrise
5. Elegia
6. Sooner Than You Think
7. Sub-Culture
8. Face Up
CD2: Extras
1. Love Vigilantes - TV Pitch Instrumental Edit (mono)
2. The Perfect Kiss - Writing Session Recording
3. Untitled no. 1 - Writing Session Recording
4. Sunrise - Instrumental Rough Mix **
5. Elegia - Full Length Version *
6. Sooner Than You Think – Album Session Unedited Version
7. Sub-Culture - Album Session Early Instrumental Version
8. Face Up - Writing Session Recording
9. Let's Go – Album Session Instrumental
10. Untitled no. 2 - Writing Session Recording
11. Sunrise - Writing Session Recording
12. Love Vigilantes - Writing Session Recording
13. Sooner Than You Think - Writing Session Recording
14. Skullcrusher – Demo
All tracks previously unreleased except * and ** (previously unreleased on CD and Digital)
DVD1
Live in Tokyo
The Koseinenkin Hall, Tokyo, Japan 1985
1. Confusion
2. Love Vigilantes
3. We All Stand
4. As It Is When It Was
5. Sub-Culture
6. Face Up
7. Sunrise
8. This Time Of Night
9. Blue Monday
Live in Rotterdam
The Rotterdam Arena, Netherlands 1985
10. As It Is When It Was
11. Everything's Gone Green*
12. Sub-Culture*
13. Ceremony*
14. Let's Go*
15. This Time Of Night*
16. The Village
17. The Perfect Kiss*
18. Age Of Consent*
19. Sunrise
20. Temptation*
21. Face Up*
Live in Manchester
Whistle Test, The Hacienda 1985
22. As It Is When It Was
23. Sunrise
24. Face Up - Restored version using available footage from The Hacienda Dec ‘85 and July ‘85.
DVD2
Live in Leuven
The Manhattan Club, Leuven, Belgium 1985
1. Let's Go*
2. The Perfect Kiss*
3. Age Of Consent*
4. State Of The Nation*
5. As It Is When It Was*
6. The Village*
7. Sub-Culture*
8. Atmosphere*
9. Blue Monday*
Bonus Tracks
10. Thieves Like Us*
11. Temptation*
12. Confusion - Restored version from damaged tape with mixing desk audio.*
Live in Toronto
Filmed by Paul Boyd
The International Centre, Toronto, Canada 1985
13. Elegia*
14. Sub-Culture*
15. The Village*
16. Sunrise*
17. We All Stand
18. As It Is When It Was*
19. Love Vigilantes*
20. 586*
21. Age Of Consent
22. Temptation
23. Ceremony*
24. The Perfect Kiss*
The Perfect Film
Rehearsal Room, Cheetham Hill, Manchester 1985
Born out of a summer (and time) most sadly lost forever - this new release on Souvenirs From Imaginary Cities will break your skull open most tenderly, so it's fine particles of audio-dust can mingle with the last rays of sunshine and the bitter storm of this autumn. Track after track, this LP draws you in with a natural flow and a deep-felt pulse - reminiscent of classic slices of raw and sample- based ambient like Susumu Yakota's 'Sakura' and 'Everyone Alive Wants Answers' by Colleen. These tunes are heartfelt and channelling tons of real emotions and other melancholia.
It's a very personal and unique blend of almost nineties chill out zoning with a dubby undertone, rich textured loops, mixing a whole range of crazy acoustic and electronic flavours - stuff that shouldn't work together but are dancing all the way to heaven anyways - with slow burning dusty slabs of melody and yes those deep choral pads ( some Rachmaninov vesper magic in the air ), everything rough around the edges and low slung but so damn precise. A subtle mélange between abstract and more concrete sonic territories, but delivered in an upfront, improvised manner with great intuition and a quite ruff but poetic touch.
Name of this piece of swampy, chopped up but most nicely selected ambient work is La Ho, by Purpurny Dyadya aka Purple Uncle aka Sergey Demitriev, originally residing in St-Petersburg but living now for obvious reasons in Armenia. Sergey has been busy on labels like Echotourist, Hair Del, Nazlo and most recently with fellow traveler Nikita Chepurnoi as Amkarahoi on Patience/Impatience. Using a bunch of old tapes from his childhood times, filled with all kinds of sonic memories and Russian underground hip-hop as sample ground, he loaded up his MPC with magic dust and jammed out the basis of this LP during a summer fest near St-Petersburg before current hell broke loose.
It's the kind of a record that needs some time to really let loose his inherent power, give it some air, let it hop along a bit and those sounds will bloom wide open.
We’re teaming up with ELUCID and Fat Possum for a limited edition of 300 copies of a Rush Hour black ice coloured edition.
E L U C I D, one half of the illustrious duo Armand Hammer, is here with the full-length follow-up to 'I Told Bessie'. Further experiments in the sonic, expanding on the 'live' side of music paired with the embracing of chaos. Something you haven't heard, or not so for a very long time. E L U C I D is here to reveal the bleakness of reality.
''There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.''
James Baldwin
A raw, crackling urgency runs through rapper-producer ELUCID’s new album REVELATOR like an underground power line. There is no space here for sepia-toned reminiscences or indulgent self-mythologizing. Intellectual rabbit holes have been filled in with concrete and rebar ; there is nowhere to hide and no off ramp from the audio Autobahn that ELUCID has fashioned—a renegade Robert Moses with gold fronts, bulldozing the homes of the powerful and the complicit. REVELATOR brims with the energy of now, with a refusal to look away. Carpe diem in a murder one mask.
Born in Jamaica, Queens, ELUCID has been on the cutting edge of New York’s underground scene since the mid-2000s. From the beginning, he has defied both convention and expectation. He ran with Okayplayer darlings Tanya Morgan, but his own music eschewed their throwback charm for glitchy noise experiments and bass-swamped culture jamming. His 2016 debut studio project Save Yourself (re-released in a deluxe edition last year) announced him in earnest. But in recent years, his Armand Hammer releases with partner-in-crime billy woods have received significant attention and acclaim. Serving as a followup to his last solo album—2022’s comparatively balmy I Told Bessie—ELUCID hoped to “re-distinguish” himself with REVELATOR, setting himself apart amidst the increasing attention around the music he and his friends are making together.
For ELUCID, this meant setting bold new challenges for himself. One of these was diving further into live instrumentation than ever before—”getting my Quincy Jones on,” as he puts it. The testing ground for this approach was Armand Hammer’s most recent project, 2023’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips’ Möbius strip soundscapes, warmed with instrumental flourishes and skin-shedding beat progressions. With REVELATOR, though, ELUCID strove to create an atmosphere of chaos, embracing experimental electronics and atonal sample bursts. He worked on much of the album with co-producer Jon Nellen, who comes from a background in avant-garde and Indian classical music. “I wanted to get as freaky as I could at this moment. I wanted people to hear things, maybe for the first time, or in a way they haven’t for a long while,” the rapper explains.
ELUCID arrived at the studio with a collection of noise sources: non-referential samples, glitches and noises. Together he, Nellen, and others created forms out of them and, as ELUCID recalls, “just started playing drums with it.” Their fried, distorted sound was directly inspired by Miles Davis at his most uncompromising—specifically, the tone-clustering funk track “Rated X” from his 1974 double LP Get Up With It. At times, the pairing of rap with avant-fusion sounds also brings Emergency! from The Tony Williams Lifetime to mind, perhaps in an alternate timeline where the late drummer was listening to Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted.
“The World is Dog,” REVELATOR’s lead single, functions as the album’s aesthetic thesis statement. Like the Davis track, the textures are punishing, the tonality is in free-fall, and the driving breakbeat of a groove cuts in and out unceremoniously. Avant-jazz bassist Luke Stewart, who appears throughout the record, holds the whole thing together just long enough for ELUCID to tightwalk over the beat. This tension is exactly where REVELATOR sets itself apart; in a time of drumless loops, and safe soul samples, this is a high-wire act with no safety net. Similarly, the song announces the themes of the album within just a few phrases, evoking the way societies accept and adjust to new levels of debasement and brutality while suffocating under the weight of history: “Can’t clock the kill, all a mystery/Forced past will eating everyone eventually/The world is dog.”
Many of the songs on REVELATOR grapple obliquely with dissolution and disenfranchisement in America and across the world—the grim realities of our domestic sociopolitical climate and our involvement in foreign conflicts. “Much of my artistic and political sensibility comes from the Black arts movement here in New York,” ELUCID explains. “Recognizing the interconnected global struggles against oppression, artists and thinkers created works and actions in solidarity with freedom movements in South Africa and Palestine.” ELUCID cites intellectuals like Amiri Baraka, Kwame Nkrumah, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni among his heroes. (One track on the album is specifically inspired by Lorde’s work, “SKP,” citing the scholar’s paper “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power.”) Songs like REVELATOR’s insistent closer “ZIGZAGZIG,” find ELUCID applying up-to-the-minute messaging, making explicit reference to the conflict in Gaza: “Feed a war machine…from river to sea, in lieu of peace.”
Despite ELUCID’s preference for cacophonous system overload here, the rapper also provides moments of respite. Recorded at The Alchemist’s Los Angeles studio, the laid-back, wheezing “INSTANT TRANSFER” is a collaboration with billy woods, which crystallizes their shared sense of creative determination. “With much momentum behind us and even more on the horizon, I knew a purpose, and that every step was ordered to that purpose,” ELUCID said of the experience. Meanwhile, the jittery “HUSHPUPPIES” is a playful anomaly on the track list, providing a snapshot of ELUCID watching his grandparents in the kitchen while preparing for Friday night fish fry dinners.
“Love still rules over on this side,” ELUCID says. ”I’m raising a family. We are making meaning and finding joy in the midst of all the fucked up-ness of everything around us because the alternative is cowardice and slow death. We remain rooted. We celebrate our people and our wins. Struggle is necessary.”
“IKEBANA” is one of ELUCID’s strongest statements of purpose on the record, blending the record’s heaviest themes with its most hopeful sentiments. supported by a shoutalong refrain and an urgent prog-funk groove. Breaking away from images of dissolution and crumbling societal systems that populate REVELATOR, ELUCID notes that the only way to navigate life’s bleakest landscapes is to cling to love and believe in those around you—to look forward toward something better that may or may not be possible. For the rapper, one of the album’s most trenchant lines comes during a centerpiece of a beat drop: “Being alive/I must look up.”
“The lyric ‘being alive I must look up’ is important especially in the context of this album. Much of the album imagery is harsh and reflects the actual doom some of us experience. But still I/we exist,” ELUCID explains.
Every artist is, in one way or another, the product of their time, bound by life’s leaden gravity to operate within the space of that which is already known. But there are some who are able to shake free of these ties, to shape the culture as it unfolds, to make the present their own.
Revelation, as a concept, points to the scales falling from people’s eyes—something that has been hiding in plain sight becoming clear. “The revelator relates to things that have been talked about, things that have been forecasted,” ELUCID adds. “And now they’re really here, and everyone sees it. And there’s no escaping.” REVELATOR plays out with the unmitigated power of those storms, laying waste to any genre conventions in pursuit of a certain physicality. Here, ELUCID develops a wholly distinctive musical language to explore our fractured modernity.
REVELATOR's packaging was designed by longtime Armand Hammer / Backwoodz art director, Alexander Richter.
Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist surprised both the music and media landscapes at large with the initial August release VOIR DIRE, which arrived with the exciting lead single, "Sentry" ft. MIKE. As the anticipation for the album in its entirety continued to grow, the second DSP-accessible track, "The Caliphate" materialized alongside the release of its visual, featuring Vince Staples. Today marks the official release of the entire album in its original form and sequence — with two previously unreleased tracks including "Heatcheck," and "Mancala," the latter of which features Vince Staples for his second appearance on the album.
Supporting the album’s release, the duo is trekking an 11-stop tour spanning the month of November featuring Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist performing together with support slots from MIKE & Black Noi$e.
The Alchemist initially hinted that they put out a secret album on YouTube under a fake name but four years went by without any fans discovering it. Fast forward to this summer, a new series of clues led fans on a scavenger hunt that unearthed VOIR DIRE, the long-rumored and highly-anticipated album from Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist.
The flesh withers to the pulses of thunderous cave reverberations, while the spirit is united with the psalms of the Glorious Dead, the Ancient Entities that have conquered Death and become Life, dominant, absolute and victorious. This Work consists of a ritual deriving from the darkest corners of the Mind, the deathlike spheres of the Netherworld and the truest essence of the Afterlife, to become a homage to the Force of Life Eternal.
Guided by Her Luminous rays, it is dictated to be experienced solely in chamber-like conditions, below the waxing Moon, accompanied with Myrrh and lunarian incenses and agharbattis, to be properly roamed within its uncharted corridors. Listen, experience and conquer, setting aside the mundane aspects of realities, explore the unmapped pathways, with every preconception burnt to the altars of this Magnum Opus.
SHIBALBA's music is saturated with the mysticism of the East. It's richly detailed and multidimensional, while layered with chanting and broadly defined elements of traditional ritual and shamanic music. Apart from contemporary synths and guitar drones, the band makes use of bones and skulls as percussion instruments, Tibetan Horns, Tibetan Singing Bowls, bone & horne trumpets, Darbuka's (goblet drums) as well as ceremonial bells and gongs, to name a few. The Spirits behind the Shamanic Halls of Shibalba are V.P. Adept & Aldra-Al-Melekh.
CD edition of 300 copies in 6 panel Digisleeve, Matt Lamination. 7 Tracks. Running Time: 43:04
Vinyl LP edition of 300 copies in 3mm sleeve with printed innesleeve, Matt Lamination. 7 Tracks. Running Time: 43:04
The album follows her two previous collections released by French-Canadian shadow ambient imprint Cyclic Law. Betti's output has been strongly shaped by the juxtapositional nature of the island she calls home. A beautiful Mediterranean island that is also home to a petroleum refinery's and its significantly haunting presence. There is conflict in that ideal, and Betti's music has always displayed a sense of beauty, yet with ominous undertones.
With Before the Last Light is Blown, Betti focused on the transience of life as a means of inspira- tion. It is human nature to move forward, consume, and always reach the next goal and to never give much thought to the briefness of our time here. The impermanence of life may seem like a dark topic, but to the contrary, pausing to think of such brevity could allow us to see the beauty we are missing in our endless need to fulfill and consume.
Betti takes us to a dark place only to show us the beauty within, a vital constant in her output as shedir.
Audio Reflex, aka Anderson, is back, with his final four tracker on Telomere Plastic!
This beautiful EP is another blend of mid tempo and deep electronics. Funky baselines and beats throughout will give you the chance to get moody and groovy deep in the middle of your sets!
Very limited black copies as always with a few colored copies available via the Wex bandcamp, be quick!
Psycho 2000 - A dark but funky theme that begins with an occulting Italian echo-oscillator drone that is soon followed by pulsating bass and breakbeat drums, leads to tremolo guitars, an ostinato on electric mandolas, strings climbing eloquent ladders, otherworldly electronics, and a cinematic finale.
An evocation of a parade of wooden nutcracker soldiers elaborately dressed in gold-trimmed black uniforms down a wide avenue decorated with mardi gras beads and animal skulls upon golden cobblestones toward a tornado spiralling out purple-hued glissandos and curlicues of elephant smoke.
White Spiritual - Head nod action, the twinkling of a late 60’s Vox Continental II with sickly transistors, the noodling matrix of an intergalactic telephone exchange carried on a bed of bouncy bass with a firm backbeat.
The Johnny Guitar Watson-esque bite and sting of a ‘67 Teisco guitar preludes slabs of unison dark brown moog and organ giving way to the dance of fingers over the black naturals and white sharps of the Continental II.
Featuring music from a lost tape of devotional keyboard jams, field recordings of migrating birds, mysterious bells, meditative noise and crooked new beat/EBM, made god-knows-when and subsequently discovered in a Thessaloniki charity shop years later. It now somehow finds its way to vinyl, newly mastered by Rashad Becker, and sounding like a lost Hype Williams x Muslimgauze madness.
Originally discovered in a musty charity shop by Live Adult Entertainment, and issued in minuscule numbers on CD in ’21, Christian Love Forum’s raverential debut ‘Naked Light’ documents the fraternal post-church jams of siblings, Scott, Kiro and N•X, plus their mate Steve, who would regularly channel the light and pain of Sunday mass sermons into their ecclesiastic crud.
As previously heard on their blink ’n miss ‘Unconditional Love’ tape, the trio express their higher purpose thru ribboning microtonal keyboard jams that sound like Gurdjieff with a Casio and a knackered drum machine after too much sacramental wine. They hit the strangest, most affective seam of religious cinematic epic soundtracks, gnarled noise and clandestine Belgian new beat that seriously pushes our buttons, sounding quite unlike anything in the contemporary sphere, but eerily also echoing sentiments explored on record by James Leyland Kirby or Bryn Jones.
Now reshuffled and clad in custom artwork, ‘Naked Light’ is unveiled to believers and skeptics as a definitive article of faith. The lord works in mysterious ways within, manifest in stages of sun-bleached post-church field recordings, whirligig melodies, blown-out bouzouki and choral tape howls and a Béla Tarr soundtrack-like campanology on the A-side, before letting their passions flow in ‘Wicked City (Parts I-IV)’; a spellbinding side-long collage of slurred synths, neo-noir hardbeat rhythms and speaking-in-tongues vox recalling V/Vm’s new beat apocrypha as much as bits from Hype Williams’ hypnagogic ‘One Nation’, thee dustiest gooches of Dirk Desaever’s archive, or even aspects of Rat Heart at his cruddiest.
‘Naked Light’ rarely fails to induce uncontrolled eye movement in susceptible skulls, destined to become an occult hit with lapsed churchgoers, new beat fiends and anyone missing the enigma and ineffable flavour of ‘00s underground noise tapes in this auspicious year of AD2023.
