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Rusti Steel & The Star Tones are back with a fantastic new album!

May 2026 marks the arrival of TYGAPAW (aka Dion McKenzie)’s first full-length album on Tresor Records, entitled Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide. An acronym of its creator’s name, TYGAPAW’s third studio album is a deeply personal collection of music building worlds where Black queer and trans siblings can thrive, while unifying dancefloors worldwide. A proposition that collective wisdom liberates us from the matrix of domination we live within. The album unfolds as the latest chapter in TYGAPAW’s ongoing techno opera opus, continuing to center the voices of Black women, which surface as layered incantations rather than lyrics - powerful, haunting, sensual, activating.
With the process of creating the album starting in 2023, as TYGAPAW (Dion McKenzie) was in the first year of their transition, the music reflects the intensity of that period, where they were experiencing deplatforming as a response to the shift in their physical appearance: Tracks like ‘M32 Riddim’ and ‘Helicopter hovers over my Crown Heights Apartment’ feature high-paced rhythms intersecting with intense siren-like synths to form demanding compositions echoing a heightened sense of alert. Yet throughout the album, relief comes in the form of TYGAPAW’s vocal features, co-conspirators, and chosen family, whose voices are treated with reverb and echo, a sonic fingerprint that leads back to the pioneers in the legendary studios of TYGAPAW’s native land, Jamaica, an important reminder that the past will always inform the future. It is an album for dancers first and foremost, where joy, defiance, and integration with the natural body coexist, and every drop feels less like a climax than a transformation. Expect a bass that permeates your soul and melodic synthesized sequenced phrases echoing the dancehall eras of TYGAPAW’s youth, reshaped into hypnotic melodies that glow over industrial kicks designed to command attention, reasserting Jamaica's pioneering yet often overlooked contribution to electronic music.
In the opening track, ‘Can I Live’, Precious Okoyomon’s words feel like the beginning of a ritual; setting the intentions for the rest of the proceedings. As McKenzie puts it, their “work is about regeneration, resetting, getting integrated into nature, and about rebirth. That’s the tone I wanted to set at the outset of the album.” Ms Carrie Stacks continues this thread of support in ‘Don’t Panic’ with heavily processed vocals on top of a beat that takes inspiration from another important ingredient in the antidote to the oppression of isolation: Ballroom culture. “ I feel like I found my queerness in Ballroom, that’s why this track is very important to me.”
Echoes of NYC Black queer nightlife scene also permeate in the energetic drums of ‘Exorcise the Language of Domination’, in which Julianna Huxtable’s spoken performance complements the various movements and tones of the music. “My producer brain thought this was the one that Juliana’s vocals would be best suited for. I hinted: ‘what do you think of this one?’ She just went into her notes and picked some passages to go with the first section of the track. From there, it was a year-long process of development. It required time and space for this thing to evolve, but I think it’s one of the most powerful tracks on the album.” London’s SUUTOO contributes the album’s only musical collaboration on ‘B2B’, a track that emerged from sessions in McKenzie’s New York studio where the real objective was to connect and have fun; a time out from the demands of life outside.
The album closes out with a double hit of emotion in the form of ‘Effects of Resistance and Black Trans Masculine Experience’. The former features South African scholar Khanyisile Mbongwa drawing connections that exist between Africa and the Black diaspora, whilst looking to the future and calling for a shared sense of community.
The latter piece, an instrumental version of the piece which featured on the IMMIGRANT E.P. of 2025 is a gentle and deeply affecting end to the record, a place of peace and acceptance. This end-of-cycle tone is mirrored in the sleeve photography, which also ties back to IMMIGRANT by finally revealing what was hidden: a portrait of the artist fully self-actualized; a step towards true inner liberation. TYGAPAW is sonically defiant across this album; bass frequencies feel tactile — less heard than inhabited — infectious lead synth melodies remain with you long after the track ends. An overall sound that leaves asserting an urgent need for connection. From Detroit to New York to Berlin to Jamaica, despite geographic distance, this album reminds us that we remain in solidarity, recognising that meaningful world-building requires collective input and action, both personal and communal, if we are to move toward liberation.

Fiat Lux return with Desire & Belief, their third album of new material this millennium, following their acclaimed comeback LPs Saved Symmetry and Twisted Culture. The trio—Steve Wright, Will Howard, and David P Crickmore—combine modern production with vintage synths and instruments rooted in their Polydor-era beginnings to craft ten tracks that span cinematic atmospheres, synth-pop anthems, and moody electronica. Tracks like "Clear Sky " and "Turn Me Around" offer hook-laden synth-pop, while "Summer Solstice " and "Am I Dreaming " delve into ambient and darker tones. Desire & Belief is a natural progression for Fiat Lux—retaining the spirit of their 1980s Northern roots in synth, goth, and indie, yet confidently stepping into new sonic territory for long-time fans and new listeners alike. RIYL: Blancmange, OMD, Scary Thieves, Tears For Fears

There is an abruptness to waking up to the sight of the other person’s back, a quiet violence hidden in the impression of intimacy, that’s leaving an aftertaste of emptiness. The feeling of losing oneself completely in a love that is given but never returned. Or the slower, less immediate one - the gradual disintegration of a world into which so much was once invested.

Love, Diskito is like a worn out overdubbed cassette found in a drawer, with its underlying tracks flickering between contrasting emotional states. Written, produced and mixed by GbClifford, the release follows up on the elusive, multifaceted output of the Prague-based experimental artist, who dresses fleeting glimpses of youthful yearning, sentiment and fragility in the blunt apparel of distortion and immediacy.

Drawing from their idiosyncratic, collage-like approach to music production, GbClifford condenses on Love, Diskito a varied palette of field recordings, samples, distorted instruments and ambient sounds. They resemble doodles in the corner of a school notebook, tightly overlapping with the evocative, minimalistic artwork by Czech artist Kateřina Šípová.

The guidance of GbClifford’s personless, at times highly decomposed vocals modulates the emotional urgency of the recording and reflects on the past. “I’m so close to relapsing, I’m here for you, closer than ever,” echoes in the elusive track So Only Yours, carrying the undercurrents of surrendering to the sole necessity of caring, even at the cost of individual ache. While the album does not forgo its earthbound, bare setting, there is something deeply pastoral and sky-gazing in the layered, multi-pitched vocals, horn-like tones and sense of space that Love, Diskito evokes.

Time To Get On Board A New Black Universal Express.

With each new recording Anthony Joseph presents an imaginative, personal vision of contemporary black culture, and The Ark is yet another compelling album by the award-winning Trinidadian poet and musician. This second part of a sequence of two albums launched with last year’s Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back, finds Joseph giving full vent to his desire to explore many thought-provoking themes. However, there is a specific thread running through the glorious offering of sounds.

”I was especially interested in the idea of using Afrofuturism as a means of using the future in order to correct the wrongs of the past,” explains Joseph. “And so a lot of lyrics reimage or imagine an alternate black history. At the same time there are elements of autobiography.” The aforesaid cultural phenomenon, a view of the black experience through the prism of science fiction and ancient Egypt and Africa, as mapped out by visionaries from music and literature such as Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic and Octavia E. Butler, has previously inspired Joseph. His 2006 novel The African Origins Of UFOs was a multi-hued work, and the new music shows how Joseph

has, much like all significant artists, gone on to broaden his conceptual palette, creating beguiling new stories and images set to startling rhythms and tones. Tracks such as ‘James’, with its taut, crisp bass and dubbed-up brass, and ‘Transposition Of Space (Glissant)’, a potent evocation of the influential Martiniquan theorist set in a haze of jazz guitar and ambient synthesizers, are marvels of text-sound painting.

As for ‘Baron Samedi’, shaped by a languid, almost wounded guitar line and slow rise of horns that frame Joseph’s journey to the ‘mountain of fire, almost touching the sky’ it is an epic blend of commanding vocal delivery and dramatic sonic tapestry.

Joseph led the Spasm band in the early 2000s and recorded well-received albums such as Bird Head Son and Time, in which songs were largely based on spirituals or chants enhanced by improvisation. But his musical curiosity has naturally led to collaborations, and the new work is produced by Dave Okumu, the prodigiously talented guitarist-vocalist-composer known as the leader of Mercury Music Prize-nominated The Invisible, and who was also a member of the seminal band Jade Fox.

Having first performed together at a show curated by influential saxophonist-flautist Shabaka Hutchings at the storied Total Refreshment Centre In London during lockdown, Joseph and Okumu struck up a rapport that further developed when the former guested on he latter’s album. With the connection made Joseph knew Okumu was the ideal producer for this latest project, which has a freewheeling, almost black psychedelic thing. After sifting through demos and loops the guitarist made on pro-tools the poet started to live with the music. Many months later words began to take shape. Joseph then went into the studio with Okumu’s band and set about creating a magnum opus. Boasting a stellar cast such as vocalist Eska Mtungwazi, trumpeter Byron Wallen and keyboardist Nick Ramm, The Ark is a highly intricate musical mosaic framed by simmering funk grooves, wily jazz improvisation and haunting dub effects. Through the use of many genres the music has simply become its own genre.

The Ark can be perceived as a vessel or means of transport to new worlds, along the lines of Sun Ra’s Ark or Funkadelic’s Mothership, and the material it contains is a unique blend of who Anthony Joseph is and how he sees the world and society in these stimulating, challenging times. “It balances the personal with the universal in a much more vulnerable, accessible way than on previous albums,” Joseph explains.

“It has become less about a personal experience and more about a collective, communal experience in which the artist is conduit, messenger, urban griot.”

- 2026 repress -

SHDW & Obscure Shape launch new label Mutual Rytm with powerful eight-track V/A "Federation Of Rytm I", featuring VIL & Cravo, Lars Huismann, Grindvik and more.

Favourites for many within today's modern techno landscape, Stuttgart-based pairing Marco Blasi and Luigi Urban, aka SHDW & Obscure Shape, continue to grow their profile and position as artists leading the current new wave of techno. Having launched their first label From Another Mind in 2014, releasing material from themselves alongside remixes from the likes of Rodhad, James Ruskin and Dax J, early December welcomes the arrival of a new project and a second imprint to the fold, Mutual Rytm.

Showcasing a new dimension of techno and electronic music, celebrating originality and innovation by combining timeless cuts from the past with cutting edge sounds of the present and the future, the label will serve as a breeding ground for new artists alongside established talent and legends from the scene. Opening the imprint in style, the label bosses head up the first-ever release and the first V/A "Federation Of Rytm I" as they welcome a selection of new and established talent.

"Since the beginning of the global pandemic, we have been diving deep into the roots of our music and working on the aesthetics of our sound. That's when we realized that now is the right time to start a new project which differs from FAM, in both musical and artistic direction. The project will showcase a new dimension that aims to channel the authentic perspectives of both established and up-and-coming talents. With our new label, we want to give all artists the opportunity of musical freedom and expression of their versatility as producers. It is an honour to accompany the young artists on their careers, to see them grow and to help them in their development as musicians." - SHDW & Obscure Shape

The duos rolling opener "Conquest Of Paradise" quickly sets the tone and builds to reveal a classy and slick offering, combining rich stabs with tough drums and sharp hats, while Invexis keeps the tempo high as he weaves escalating synths and pacy kicks across "Elektronenwind". VIL & Cravo combine on the jacking and lively "Apolonia Loop", as eerie synths work amongst warped vocals across a tweaked out peak-time effort, before Alarico keeps the energy levels up throughout the relentless funk of "I'm Into You".

The second half of the package sees Lars Huismann enter the fray with the no-nonsense, snaking grooves of "Hyper Dub", with Nicolas Vogler's "Sauva Bite" fusing hypnotic tones with straight regimented claps for an intense yet playful ride through sounds and sonics. "Your Dry Lips" switches up the aesthetic as Grindvik journeys down a wormhole of metallic percussion and warping low-ends, before closing the show with authority via Stigmata's grinding and menacing offering "Gestas".

The master of ambient soundscapes, intertwining authentic old school breakbeats with his inimitable style returns with a fresh album of choice cuts for the Spatial crew. A1 - Form of Defraction Opening the LP in his gloriously unique style, Aural Imbalance sets the tone with a powerfully ambient intro of padwork and delicately filtered breaks before dense, analogue old school breakbeats roar to life sending the track skyward. The sublime 808 bassline simmers beneath an ever-evolving soundscape of twinkling melodies and strings, the very essence of serenity captured in just under 7 minutes of audio bliss. A2 - Discreet Function Enveloping the listener with a warm blanket of silky ambience, Discreet Function soon jolts to life with a crunchy breakbeat that counteracts yet compliments the pads and myriad of delicious micro melodies so well, you wonder how it’s possible to take such extremes and mix them down so expertly that our ears accept it as one. After a relatively brief breakdown the track rolls out before the breaks are snatched away at the death - capping off a quite unique composition. B1 - Softlight Light cymbals and delicate textures introduce us to Softlight, a track which sees Aural Imbalance guiding the listener through the clouds to a haven of gentle serenity where your troubles simply fade away, punctuated by a stunningly programmed and memorable Hot Pants break pattern, timid classic basslines and an overall plethora of sun-baked energy - perfect for the headphones and the record box - as always. B2 - Airwave Immensely old school vibes are immediately present in Airwave, with analogue breaks and succinct female vocal samples that mingle with echoing melodies and synthwork to create a beautifully flowing and unique slice of atmospheric gold. Additional breaks are fused into the mix as the track progresses, elevating the piece to the heights we have come to expect from Aural Imbalance, yet never cease to amaze. C1 - Speed of Light Gentle cymbals and filtered breaks open Speed of Light, before a crisp barrage of amen goodness descends and dominates proceedings - just as a good amen should! Programmed to perfection with an immensely danceable rolling pattern, the amens lead us through a sea of washing synths and delicate melodies, intertwining and frolicking in the mix, completing a charming and memorable piece. C2 - Fading Star Playful strings and a luscious 808 bassline play with sumptuous padwork in the intro to Fading Star, a track which sees Aural Imbalance capture the essence of 90’s jungle and it’s symbiotic relationship with atmospheric drum & bass perfectly. Developing throughout with an array of unassuming effects and a quietly moving vibe, Fading Star is the perfect addition to sets spanning the entire history of this music. D1 - Drifting Under Bright Skies Aural Imbalance resurrects the excellent break last featured on Spatial in his sublime track Surface Area, this time chopped and sliced to a different vibe, with kickdrums at the forefront and that fantastically crunchy snare deployed more sparingly. Shimmering padwork and light melodies dance across the mix throughout to leave us with a refreshingly unique and memorable track you won’t be able to get enough of. D2 - Violet Completing this fine LP of old school ambient breakbeat mastery, Aural Imbalance deploys Violet to see us out - a climactic-feeling romp that opens with quiet intent before launching the listener through cheery melodic tones and bustling soundscapes, sprinkled liberally with airy pads and fluttering micro melodies that zip and whoosh around thick analogue breakbeats. A fitting end to a thoroughly enjoyable album. Words by Chris Hayes (Spatial / Red Mist) credits

Kercha’s debut album ‘Open The Door’ arrives this April via DNO Records. The Black Sea artist’s mystical, disorienting style has set the tone for the label since he dropped the inaugural release six years ago. Now, across 16 tracks — including collabs with Mystic State, Congi, NST, Khromi and Finnoh — his smoky sampledelic dubstep is tighter, heavier, and more curious than ever, with a new sense of danger and bubbling rage that feels fit for our chaotic times.

Themes of movement and change course through the LP. On the opening gambit ‘A Path Into The Unknown’, twinkling arpeggios emerge from the gloom like stars lighting the way. Tracks like the eponymous ‘Open The Door’ and ‘Mind Extraction’ deliver that classic Kercha sound, where left-field samples dart in at right angles. ‘Dangerous Road’ weaves between the call and response action of grotty stabs and devilish subs. ‘Take A Break’, featuring Mystic State, goes on the attack with searing acid. ‘Can’t Wait For Today’, though lethargic in its pace, sees San Francisco-based rapper Finnoh deliver stream-of-consciousness bars that skewer our present and nudge us to revolution.

Work took place over the course of several years, during which Kercha relocated with his family from Russia to Georgia, where he now resides in the capital, Tbilisi. “Sometimes I wrote music while travelling on a bus, sometimes late at night while my family was asleep, sometimes just sitting on the grass in a park, and of course in my home studio as well,” he says. “By the time the album was finished, it included music from different periods, and it may vary in sound and concept.”

Any major upheaval in life will result in moments of hardship, but also hope. Both can be found throughout ‘Open The Door’. There’s times when the darkness threatens to envelope everything: during the cold, crackling ‘Disclosed’ and the eerie, dystopian ‘Infection Of Lies’; on ‘Trigger Activation’, with its grunting lows and broken glass hook, and ‘Ballistics’, where a wall of sub-bass is pierced by shrapnel stabs.

The balancing light comes on ‘4 AM’, featuring Nottingham duo Congi, when clashing swords and cinematic strings, meet a soft Rhodes piano — the juxtaposition between heavy low-end and floaty keys and vox reflecting those moments of transcendence often found in the early hours. From the injection of garage energy on ‘Bubs’, with Edinburgh’s Khromi. And on with ‘My Feeling’, featuring South Russian vocalist NST, which closes the album on a deep but expansive note, bookending the experience with more starlight synth tones.

“It’s a reflection of my life journey and the changes connected with emigration and overcoming various difficulties,” explains Kercha. “This period means a lot to me, which is why the album includes tracks from the time of preparing to leave up to adapting to a new country.”

Still, he wants listeners to be able to derive their own understanding. “I think the essence lies in the ability to contemplate, not in any predetermined meaning,” he says. “I can only say one thing: thank you for appreciating what I do and for your support. I hope it inspires you to make the same firm decisions to change for the better as it did for me.”

Out via 4 x 12” vinyl, ‘Open The Door’ is a captivating artistic statement, showcasing the journey of an artist with a truly original signature sound — a rarity that should be treasured and celebrated.

Rhythms of postmodern realism at the very bottom of the DNO.

Baby T is a space away from her work as B.Traits in which Brianna Price can lean more into the junglist, drum ‘n’ bass and hardcore sounds which she loves so dearly. With BSHEE02, the second drop on Price’s own Banshee label, Baby T delivers a darkside masterclass of an EP. This record is a quartet of system blowers which doesn’t let up for a single second from start to finish.

Opener ‘Times Up’ is urgent from the off - the initial strains of this joint find sirens wailing in the monitors over a twitchy kick/drum/hats combo. From here on it’s distilled raver perfection, the drums taking us on a wild Wipeout-style ride as the subbiest of bass skulks at the bottom of the mix. Imagine a more technoid take on the classic breakbeat freerides of Skanna and you’re not far off the ‘Times Up’ sound.

A remix of ‘Times Up’ from man like Aloka leans with devilish glee into the murky underworld that lurks beneath Baby T’s original. Aloka’s version is extremely eerie in a manner which makes you think of the darkest corners of a DMZ party. When things really kick into gear, driven by an irresistible kick dembow, the effect is hypnotic - think the dubwise junglism of the UVB-76 cohort.

BSHEE02’s B-side kicks off with ‘Coercive Control’. This is a cut which delivers on its title in spades, putting the listener in a trance with an interplay of low-slung bass, whirligig synth tones and more of those perfectly executed broken beats. The acid starts to kick in around the minute mark, and it turns out to herald a total earworm of a lead melody.

There’s plenty of dimly-lit malevolence to BHSEE02 closer ‘Dense Dickwood’s grinding atmospherics and gurgling bass throbs. However, Baby T opting for a half-time drum break here gives the cut a vibe not dissimilar to the weightiest jams of classic Massive Attack - that is, until an absolutely remorseless switch-up occurs halfway through, delivering volley after volley of intense drum hits.

Baby T is a space away from her work as B.Traits in which Brianna Price can lean more into the junglist, drum ‘n’ bass and hardcore sounds which she loves so dearly. With BSHEE02, the second drop on Price’s own Banshee label, Baby T delivers a darkside masterclass of an EP. This record is a quartet of system blowers which doesn’t let up for a single second from start to finish.

Opener ‘Times Up’ is urgent from the off - the initial strains of this joint find sirens wailing in the monitors over a twitchy kick/drum/hats combo. From here on it’s distilled raver perfection, the drums taking us on a wild Wipeout-style ride as the subbiest of bass skulks at the bottom of the mix. Imagine a more technoid take on the classic breakbeat freerides of Skanna and you’re not far off the ‘Times Up’ sound.

A remix of ‘Times Up’ from man like Aloka leans with devilish glee into the murky underworld that lurks beneath Baby T’s original. Aloka’s version is extremely eerie in a manner which makes you think of the darkest corners of a DMZ party. When things really kick into gear, driven by an irresistible kick dembow, the effect is hypnotic - think the dubwise junglism of the UVB-76 cohort.

BSHEE02’s B-side kicks off with ‘Coercive Control’. This is a cut which delivers on its title in spades, putting the listener in a trance with an interplay of low-slung bass, whirligig synth tones and more of those perfectly executed broken beats. The acid starts to kick in around the minute mark, and it turns out to herald a total earworm of a lead melody.

There’s plenty of dimly-lit malevolence to BHSEE02 closer ‘Dense Dickwood’s grinding atmospherics and gurgling bass throbs. However, Baby T opting for a half-time drum break here gives the cut a vibe not dissimilar to the weightiest jams of classic Massive Attack - that is, until an absolutely remorseless switch-up occurs halfway through, delivering volley after volley of intense drum hits.

"Nusa" is the last part of a trilogy started in 2020 with Masao Yamamoto and Akira Uchida. A project that began with light (“Sasanami”, 2020), moved through darkness (“Kurayami”, 2023), and returned to the ambivalence of the two (“Nusa”, 2026), which ultimately sustain and complement one another in all their variations and complementarities. Both in terms of tones and in the humanity that runs through us in these times of such stark contrast.

For this last part of the trilogy, Masao Yamamoto and Akira Uchida travelled to the island of Hokkaido at the beginning of 2026 to supplement the project with photographs and audio recordings of the ice and the surrounding landscapes.

Graduated in saxophone from Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, Akira Uchida explores sound through tuning, medieval music, and acoustics, supporting jazz pianists as a piano tuner. After training under instrument maker Masahiro Adachi, he became an independent clavichord builder. In 2020, he created an instrument for Ryuichi Sakamoto. In 2021, he crafted one using reclaimed wood from Kiyomizu-dera Temple (FEEL KIYOMIZUDERA). His work focuses on making, tuning, and performing instruments.

Future Tones is back... this time with Fdez, label co founder. Four dancefloor killer tracks, and starts with Dr Blowfin, Dark and driving techno house tool. Rolling sub-heavy bassline, tight percussive groove and raw analog synth stabs.

The A2 is for Techcontrol, Stripped and hypnotic. Minimal drum programming layered with evolving analog textures and shadowy vocal fragments.

The other side starts with Sarcofago, Heavy low-end pressure with a punchy groove. Italo-tinged atmospheres and dusty analog sequences create a moody peak-time cut with steady progression.

And B2 is for Zigurat, Killer closer. Deep pulsating bass, restrained percussion and haunting vocal elements floating over warm analog pads. Perfect for late-night transitions and controlled energy shifts.

Returning with his first artist album in 13 years, revered techno innovator Mike Parker continues to shape out his explorations around 170 with his latest work for Samurai Music, Echo Disintegrator. Transcending genre lines with his unmistakable sonic stamp, the seasoned US producer crafts an extended trip through his exacting, lithe frequencies and brutalist rhythms. As evidenced on recent EPs Envenomations and Sabre-Tooth, Parker can comfortably slip into a hard-stepping D&B structure and make it his own. 'Earth Energy Imbalance' leaps forth with precision and purpose, wrapping atonal synth shapes around the stark beat in staggering high definition. 'Positronic Tentacles' finds a similar rolling momentum, even threading ruthlessly trimmed vocal snatches into the lyrical pulse of the lead tones. 'Radiative Force' teases its own mutant funk out of the envelopes shaping the molten sonics coursing through the middle of the frequency range. Elsewhere, Parker explores a variety of accented grooves around typical D&B tempos, remaining reliably broken while dipping into half-time space on 'Lunar Nocturne' and finding a low-slung swagger in the carefully deployed pressure of 'Ghost Rain' and 'Echo Disintegrator'. 'Beat Activator' pivots on a dense bed of bass with a crooked, off-beat slant before 'Dragon Bravo' casts a similarly dembow-informed beat into a dense tapestry of cyclical machine shrieks and snarls. There is a ruthless consistency to Parker's approach across Echo Disintegrator, riding the loops without flinching and forcing the focus deep into the minutae of every sonic element. Both brilliantly functional and profoundly subtle, there's a visceral, physical quality to the sound design that makes it a listening experience like no other.

Silicon Scally and Fleck E.S.C. need no introduction at this stage. Both artists are veterans not just of Sheffield's Central Processing Unit label but of modern electro as a whole, with the pair having decades of skin in the game at this point. Their new release, a four-track EP entitledSlipwhere Silicon Scally handles the first half and Fleck E.S.C. the second, carries itself with the adventurous confidence of a record made by masters of their craft.

Slipopener 'Phased Array' is exactly the kind of top quality machine-funk tackle you'd expect from this meeting of minds. The beat programming is deliciously tactile from the off, hissing and clanking like machinery in an old Detroit factory. The feel of 'Phased Array' is altered, though, when the chords come in, a series of alternating floating sounds which give the track an altogether eerier feel. When all of this is coupled with the otherworldly synth blurts that periodically force their way to the front of the track, the overall effect is a piece of real depth assembled by an expert practitioner.

'Phased Array' is followed up by 'Stax', another brilliantly propulsive number. Here we find the drum beat - one which is a little reminiscent of that Kraftwerk tune about the numbers, no less - once more offset by some decidedly more shadowy synth work, all while arpeggiated keyboard licks work against an intricate web of basslines, chords and unidentifiable flying synth tones.

Fleck E.S.C. opens theSlipB-side with 'Good Ride', a number where the nudge-wink title is borne out by a track built around looped snippets of sighing vocals. That said, with a bassline that sounds like a blurting old landline telephone, a ghoulish synth lead and all manner of motion-sick breakdowns, the 'ride' in question could just as well be aWipeout-style whizz through hyperspace as anything more suggestive. 'Good Ride' also sets itself apart from the other joints here by showing off a swaying halftime breakdown.

'Intox Remedy',Slip's closer, wraps the EP in a manner which continues some of the trends of the record's earlier tracks - richly tuneful chords, precision-engineered broken beat drum programming and a wide palette of delightfully unusual synth tones are all present and correct. However, there is also something about the chords here which pares back the eeriness of previous joints for a bit more of a wide-eyed, stargazing feel, and as such 'Intox Remedy' sees the record out by placing the listener firmly back in the cosmos.

Tough enough for the dancefloor and intricate enough for home listening, theSlipEP is a fabulous collaboration from two of the most respected voices in the electro game.

Mike Gordon's debut album as Mk.gee, "Two Star & the Dream Police," is a groundbreaking fusion of pop, rock, and soul. Hailing from New Jersey, the 26-year-old musician redefines familiar genres with his unique approach to sound, incorporating unconventional tones, tempos, and textures. His distorted guitar riffs and soulful vocals, reminiscent of Prince, cut through murky, experimental mixes, creating a captivating sonic landscape that refuses to conform to traditional boundaries.

Despite his experimental tendencies, Gordon demonstrates a mastery of melody, crafting intricate and engaging pop songs from seemingly chaotic compositions. "Two Star" is both innovative and accessible, offering a fresh take on contemporary music while retaining a timeless quality.

While Gordon has been releasing EPs and mixtapes since 2017, it was his collaboration with Dijon on the latter's debut album, "Absolutely," that introduced him to a wider audience in 2021. Their dynamic live performances, characterized by Gordon's frenetic guitar playing and Dijon's charismatic stage presence, exemplify the creative synergy between the two artists. Dijon credits Gordon with pushing him to new creative heights, infusing his music with a newfound rhythm and freedom. "Absolutely" marked a significant evolution for Dijon's sound, with Gordon's influence recognized as invaluable to the project's success.

The latest in Field Records' run of essential vinyl pressings revisits Stephen Hitchell's 2009 masterpiece under his Variant alias, The Setting Sun. As part of Echospace and also celebrated for his productions as Intrusion and Soultek, Hitchell is considered a leading light in dub techno, with the versatility in his sound to range from rhythmic, physical pulses to purely tonal, abyssal drone. His work as Variant, which debuted with The Setting Sun, capitalises on this scope to deliver a compelling ambient-with-teeth set richly deserving of a proper vinyl pressing.

The Setting Sun first emerged on Echospace as a download-only release. Hitchell was at pains to map out the tools that went into the sound on the album — field recordings of storms in Berlin, Germany and train rides in Narita, Japan, outboard synths and samplers. Crucially, he declared no computers were used, and it shows. When The Setting Sun was recorded, in-the-box production was largely dominating electronic music and the technology had yet to replicate the warmth and character of analogue equipment. Hitchell's looming chords come baked with harmonic overtones, surface noise becomes another essential layer and fragments of distortion add to the narrative of these glacial, monumental pieces.

Hitchell threads his dub techno tendencies in subtle ways, from the kick pattering underneath 'As Time Stood Still' to the quintessential metallic delay ripples that define 'A Silent Storm'. 'Someplace Else' has a defined, albeit delicate, rhythm section guiding its lighter shades of pads and chords. However, drums are never a dominant aspect of the music, simply another layer in an intentionally coagulated whole. At times, flickering tones hint at space where percussion once stood, since muted to leave the wet signal setting a new course for the sound, somewhere far beyond drum duties. The hushed ceremony of tracks like 'Adrift' are the perfect scenario in which to absorb these microfibres of detail, where the genius of Hitchell can truly be savoured.

In line with the limitations of record pressing and Hitchell's proclivity for long-form tracks, 'The Setting Sun' is reserved for the digital edition of this reissue. It's a logical move, as the sound palette widens to encompass tangible, organic instrumentation evolving over the best part of half an hour. The presence of piano keys feels stark in the Variant sound world, but Hitchell ably folds these coded elements into his process bathed in the same curious luminosity that lingers around all his work. Evolving at a painstaking pace, the plaintive humanity in the cascading keys and plucked guitar strings renders one of the most personal expressions in Hitchell's considerable canon — a unique piece that holds its own space comfortably, while also adding to the overall weight of The Setting Sun as a profound benchmark in a stellar discography.

Dewa Alit, master of radical Balinese gamelan, returns to Black Truffle with Baur Bentur. Genetic (2020, BT063) introduced international listeners to the magical sound-world of Alit’s Gamelan Salukat, who perform on instruments tuned to a unique scale derived from modified versions of two traditional Balinese scales. The two pieces heard on Chasing the Phantom (2022, BT093) further demonstrated his radical fusion of tradition and experimentation, with passages where unorthodox techniques make the acoustic ensemble resemble glitching electronics. Baur Bentur now highlights another aspect of Alit’s work, presenting pieces composed in 2024 and 2025 where Gamelan Salukat performs alongside virtuoso pianist Sri Hanuraga. Alit’s music is grounded in deep reflection on the tradition of Balinese gamelan and its place in the contemporary world. His title, ‘Baur Bentur’, which translates as ‘mixing and smashing’, points to his embrace of the intercultural mixture of Eastern and Western elements in the search for innovation. Against the calcification of Balinese music into tourist entertainment, Alit poses his searching, experimental work, which celebrates the communal values and performance practices of traditional gamelan while pushing into startling new directions.

‘Sukat Tacara’ is a study in layered tempos, meters, and polyrhythms, a constantly shifting dialogue between piano and the instruments of Gamelan Salukat. It begins close to a traditional concerto, pairing a brisk sequence of melodic variations from the piano with a spare but propulsive accompaniment of drums and hanging metallophone tones, punctuated by low gong strikes. The piano builds in volume and density across a rapid succession of fragments, at points recalling George Antheil’s ticking wind-up machinery, though Hanuraga’s jazz background shines through in the fluidity with which he navigates the complexities of the score, where chromatic movement co-exists with bluesy phrases. An abrupt change in the piano to patterns of dense clusters introduces a new episode, during which the metallic instruments of the gamelan enter the foreground. The piece dazzles with its inventive rhythms and dynamics, building to a stunning passage featuring the signature heavy muting technique of the Gamelan Salukat metallophones in kinetic patterns that would be at home on a Príncipe release.

The title piece begins at high intensity and rarely lets up, working through bracing unison ensemble melodies and punctuation points where piano and gamelan together seem to become a single, thudding drum. For much of the piece the piano is tightly integrated into the ensemble, the harmonic extensions of the melodic line subsumed into a moving cloud of complex overtones generated by the gamelan instruments. Wildly kinetic on the rhythmic level, the piece swarms with microscopic movements of beating patterns generated by the ‘blend and crush’ of three simultaneous tuning systems: the equal temperament of the piano and the saih cenik (small scale) and saih gede (big scale) used by the gamelan instruments. Accompanied by the composer’s thoughtful liner notes and images of the musicians, Baur Bentur is a stunning next step in Alit’s radical combination of tradition and innovation.

'We Fell In Turn' is the solo debut from Brooklyn-based trombonist, composer, and quartet leader Kalia Vandever. Vandever, who plays with Harry Styles and Japanese Breakfast, “sculpts her trombone’s golden tones into dazzling compositions” (Pitchfork), writing music that tends to “dip you into a feeling or a pattern or a breathing speed, and keep you there” (The New York Times). In 2022, Vandever released Regrowth, an album that “features the ecstatic, brilliant melodies that have become Vandever’s signature sound” (Bandcamp). This spring, Vandever brings contemplative reflection to We Fell in Turn, a brave and understated work from an ascending voice in American jazz.

Recorded over three days in upstate New York, 'We Fell In Turn' is improvisational — a stark palate of solo trombone, voice, effects, and little more. “My solo process has always been heavily rooted in improvisation,” says Vandever. “I wanted the process to feel similar to the way I perform. Lee Meadvin, who engineered and produced the album, had a heavy hand in the creative process as well. He would dictate prompts before I started improvising and those pieces ended up shaping a lot of the imagery that comes up throughout the record.”

Connecting the dots between Jeff Parker’s 'Forfolks', and early releases from Grouper, 'We Fell In Turn' is a study of space and patience, embracing vulnerability in its sparse adornment. At times, the album is reminiscent of Patrick Shiroishi’s 'Hidemi', both in its familial inspiration and solo instrument study, while sharing the ineffable feel of William Basinski’s 'The Disintegration Loops' — the traces of her trombone folding in on themselves in an organic loop. Emotionally generous throughout, Vandever acts as a torchbearer for jazz’s historical yearning for connection.

On 'We Fell in Turn' Vandever draws inspiration from childhood memories — events that shaped her approach to love, community, and partnership, and her maternal homeland of Hawaii. “We were exploring childhood memories, earliest experiences with disappointment and pain, and my Hawaiian roots,” says Vandever. “We Fell In Turn came after I titled the track "We Wept In Turn". Both come from the intangible feeling of waking up from vivid dreams, particularly the experience of falling right before waking up or waking up in tears.”

Through this exploration into her heritage, Vandever also found guidance. “In Hawaiian mythology, ‘aumākua are known as ancestral spiritual guides that manifest in different forms, whether physical or intangible,” says Vandever. “My ‘aumākua visits me in my dreams, usually with a reassuring hug or a reminder of my past. Memories and early experiences seem to escape me, but find their way back in dreams.” And now they’ve found their way into 'We Fell in Turn', Kalia Vandever’s stunning solo debut.

There’s a special kind of feeling when everything falls into place - when the drums bounce easy, the bassline rolls steady, and a bright guitar line cuts through the warmth of tape. That feeling became the heart of the FULLNESS, from Marcus I meets aDUBta. The sound of FULLNESS is built on simple, living elements: real drums, deep bass, a warm sound, and melodies that leave space to breathe. It moves between Early Reggae, Rocksteady, and Roots - sometimes straight and solid, sometimes stretching out into Dub and Echo. With its voice, from singer and lyricist Marcus I, FULLNESS carries the message about gratitude, love, freedom, and the small moments of everyday life. While Marcus’s singing style nods to the great singers, he stays grounded in his own experience, which perfectly complements aDUBta’s production, giving him space to shine. This LP is a complete, warm, balanced, and uplifting experience from start to finish.

FULLNESS grew from a steady musical exchange between Marcus I and aDUBta - two people on different sides of the Alps (Marcus I in France and aDUBta in Germany), finding a shared rhythm. What began in early 2022 with a few Riddims sent back and forth soon turned into a regular flow of songs. Every week brought new ideas, new words, and new melodies. When they finally met in person at aDUBta’s Attic Roots Studio in Bavaria, Germany, it all fell naturally into place. Most of the instruments were played by aDUBta, and the whole LP was mixed live on his Tascam 388, keeping that raw, handmade feel. With several friends helping bring even more color into the music, aDUBta brought in Viti Sanchez to lend his expressive saxophone and horn lines, Michael Salvermoser with his warm trombone tones, and members of the Black Oak Roots Allstars - King HuHa and Jannis Klenke on bass and guitars, along with Morry 'Da Baron' (Dub Inc.) on bass. FULLNESS means the fullness of music, of life, of friendship, of gratitude. It’s what happens when music becomes more than a project - when it turns into a shared space where things just flow.

One of the UK’s rising talents in recent times, J6 continues his upward trajectory with an enormous four-tracker on underground fan favourites, Locked In Dam. The party starting crew go hand in hand with the refined J6 ethos, as he delivers a dynamite selection of tracks for your record bag. His familiar low end driven sound, combined with tinges of acid and futuristic textures moving between house and modern electro, shapes the ‘Devil Baby’ EP into a cohesive and powerful statement.

The title track is built upon powerful drums and squelchy, spaced-out tones, combined with trippy vocal stabs from Martina, who features on the record. This is prime J6 territory and not to be underestimated. Next up, ‘Biohazard’ introduces mysterious synths that create a transcending atmosphere, shifting the dance floor into the next gear with further twisted acid movements. On the flip side, the Manchester based beatmaker teams up with Ben Gough for ‘Time Capsule’, delivering pacey energy that never lets up, driven by nostalgic tech house drums and icy hi-hats. Rounding off the EP, ‘Emergence’ simmers with an emotive dark energy throughout; if we weren’t dancing with the devil before, we certainly are now.

A certain tip for the tastemakers amongst us, these are four dynamic dance floor cuts to be shared deep within the dark realms of the night.

“We know what jazz is when we hear standards or music that is close to the same source, to a recognized pattern. But what is jazz? Here, a starting point. "Blow" showcases an accumulated CITIZEN:KANE techno vocabulary but it quickly tones down the sensation by introducing frequent breaks in the rhythm, as in "Peiote". But even there we are able to "feel" techno by recalling Wolfgang Voigt's M:I:5 and its parallel yet contrasting rhythmic grids. Elsewhere, manifestations of opposite forces: the beat keeps a body firm on the floor, eminently physical but not commanding; and melodies, cosmic threads, suggest ascension as well as a drive towards the within, creating space for feelings and/or rationalization. "The Fence" or "Montreal" stand as good examples. One less evident aspect of beauty in this record is the apparent coldness of the music, almost rigid and devoid of passion, and thus we declare it more true. As the mind performs a synthesis of what was learned after a class, last track "Family" (expressively) gathers impressions of what went before, adding poetry to the moment. "Blow" may be a reference to the most familiar instruments used in jazz but it can also figuratively mean an explosion, an aesthetic liberation, even with (our) knowledge that for now, and theoretically, the artist chose to concentrate on this thing called jazz.”

Bristol innovator Addison Groove has long been reshaping footwork and bass music, but now steps into an entirely new world as Astel. Shards is an album in which he explores ambient frontiers with a sense of space, emotion and hints of nostalgia on Biofield Records, a new label from Darwin designed for deeper listening. There is a weightlessness to the music, with 'Cosmic Affinity' casting you adrift in the deep unknown with smeared pads and gentle flutters of hope way off in the distance. 'Starlight Shards' is all shifting tones and feathery lines, while 'Astral Radiance' has a sandy texture as well as long, sweeping synth arcs. It's an escapist world that provides plenty of prompts for your own endlessly deep reflection.

Cindytalk has remained a majestic proposition over the decades, one marked by a continued process of disintegration and regeneration. Change has been a constant for Cindytalk, as has been the presence of the Scottish musician Cinder, who has fronted the project since the early '80s. The first Cindytalk albums embraced a dark theatricality of post-punk dissonance and abject rock deconstruction that coupled industrial dirges with Cinder's beatific vocals, these same vocals that were once plied to the earliest This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins recordings,forever binding Cinder to the 4AD lore. But even on those albums, Camouflage Heart and In This World, Cinder was pushing the band to embrace the studio as a tool for further abstraction of sodden drones, cobwebbed dark elegance, and decayed textures.

By the early aughts, Cinder had reimagined Cindytalk through the granular processes of digitalia with a handful of equally celebrated works of glitch-born expressionism for Editions Mego. Cinder explains that "those elements were growing roots under our sound and had started to organically change the shape of what we were doing. The fucked-up rock music was in retreat and the electro-acoustic abstractions were becoming apparent. Fast forward to the early part of the 21st Century and my first laptop. It seemed natural where I needed to begin that part of my new sonic journey. To further explore those and new territories. Sunset and Forever is intrinsically connected to what came before."

Sunset and Forever is a labyrinthine opus, one that returns to the themes of the sacred and profane that have rippled through all of Cindytalk's recordings, albeit in various guises. The opening track "Embers of Last Leaves" is a haunted piece of undulated, cyclical tones that entwine into a sorrowful chorale with Cinder's own voice. Thumps of electronic drum kicks and bass drops dot the apocalyptic menace of "Tower of the Sun" but serve not as a rhythmic grid, but as painterly noises that further disrupt and disturb the machined dissonance. A cinematic radioluminescence blooms from the tempered electronics within "For Those Eyes, Shadows Of Flowers." The finale "I See Her in Everywhere" bookends the opening number with a seemingly human chorus build from electronic tones cast in cathedral reverence. Sounds throughout may appear adjacent to those of Fennesz, Holly Herndon, or even Lovesliescrushing from time to time, but Sunset and Forever remains purely Cindytalk.

Cover designed by Chris Bigg, known for his iconic design work for 4AD. Mastered by James Plotkin.

The union of Antwerp synthesist David Edren and Tokyo minimalist Hiroki Takahashi is a fit so natural as to feel preordained. Both traffic in subtle shades of contemplative electronics, marked by patience, space, and poetic restraint. And both have rich histories of curation and collaboration – Edren in the duo Spirit & Form alongside Bent Von Bent, and Takahashi as proprietor of the Kankyō record shop, as well as one fourth of cosmic ambient quartet UNKNOWN ME. Mutual fans of one another’s work, they began sharing stems in the latter half of 2020, which slowly blossomed into a collection of multi-hued compositions inspired by notions of connectivity and impermanence, translated for east and west: Flow | 流れ.

Opener “Dusk Decorum | 黄昏 礼節” maps the mood of what’s to come, elegantly pirouetting and percolating through an expanding vista of looming stars and half-light horizons. Takahashi describes Edren’s arrangements as evoking “a strange feel, something we haven't heard much of before.” The sensation is one of “in-betweenness,” a restless current whispering beneath the beauty, like seasons seen in time-lapse footage: flickering but infinite, transience turned permanent. Takahashi’s signature sculpture garden tones plot spiral patterns over which Edren cascades dazzling pointillist synthesizer coloration. The pieces veer between delicate and dilated, micro and macro, their aperture forever softly in flux.

From the oscillating orchestral lullaby of “Stalactime | 鍾乳石時計” to the sweeping, sparkling dream sequence closer, “Shift Register | シフトレジスタ,” the album achieves the elusive goal of being more than the sum of its parts. This is music of rare air, elevated and amorphous, shimmering just out of reach. Though Edren and Takahashi have yet to cohabitate the same room in person (a fact that should be rectified soon by an astute festival booker), their palettes and poise are perfectly paired, twin fragilities woven into seven radiant and regenerative vibrational states. The cover design of a beatific, beaded leaf rippling on the surface of a hidden pond aptly captures the record’s muted majesty. Takahashi’s quiet pride is justified: “We are very happy with this time-consuming and carefully crafted work.”

The mysterious artist behind the alias Your Ex returns after a self-released EP in 2025 and a deep house killer 7-inch on Scruniversal Records in 2023. Now joining Vibes And Pepper Records, Your Ex opens 2026 with a five-track EP that channels a European twist on Chicago deep house—warm basslines, soulful chords, and hypnotic percussion layered with emotional depth and a timeless groove. Drawing inspiration from Jazz, Funk, Fusion, Library Music, Dub, and “out there” Electronic sounds, Your Exalso draws deeply from the foundational vibrations of Chicago and Detroit. These influences flow through every track—lush harmonies, intricate rhythms, and raw analog textures that bridge eras and styles. Staying true to an elusive identity, Your Ex lets the music speak: smoky late-night grooves, dusty hardware tones, and an undeniable sense of movement that nods to the roots while pushing forward. With Vibes And Pepper, the artist continues to blur the line between mystery and motion—a perfect start to the new year for those who still believe in the deep.

Beautiful soulful album by George Smallwood - including original material from home sessions prior to George's 1980 self- released LP. The rest, a sampling from the Smallwood mind's library of classic song writers. Huge tip!
"Recorded Live in Hyattsville, MD 1975-2015. George really had no interest in releasing this record. 'Seeing Is believing, they don't need records, trust me I did that, today they getting it live.' So this record is that, live tapes from the house, recorded on a government issued cassette recorder from National Library Service for the Blind. George calls these his practice tapes for songwriting, and performance warm-up, and never beyond his ears were they intended to travel. 'You just got to see me live if you want to really see me.. so when we get there just plug me in, and point me at that crowd' Last time I saw George they had him wired to the club system. He unplugs his Yamaha keyboard, licks the tip of the power cord and taps a beat on it, finally plugging in, synth lights up, tones all at zero, beats at zero. Then he builds from there, counting blind through a preset one hunderd factory tones and rhythm patterns. 'I gotta start off at zero, and go from there.' After the Marshmellow Band disperesed, he got this Yamaha keyboard, same one he's been playing since 1990, endless scrolling over the same presets, trying to make them fit, tempo down, tapping while telling the story and asking if that feels right to you. 'This always gonna be different live.'
Andrew Morgan (Peoples Potential Unlimited)

SPTLP007 - ASC - Vanishing Point LP

Evolving further with each release, ASC delivers his latest monumental album on Spatial, a varied and memorable journey through stunningly realised fusion of modern and classic atmospheric breakbeats.

A1 - Mystic Street

Setting a murky tone with light cymbals and synthwork flecking the intro, Mystic Street calmly purrs and growls towards a drop of analogue kicks and a sparse, menacing drum pattern to kick off this incredible album. Enveloped by a dense cloud of darkly atmospherics, the track coils with tension, each element rippling through the mix like distant memories as the suitably enigmatic bassline rumbles beneath.

A2 - Convergence

Straight into the beats with a DJ-friendly two step intro, ASC utilises sparse, sci-fi hits and persistent danceable breakbeats with a melodic bassline. As the atmosphere builds, percussive tones punctuate the swirling pads, creating a luscious sense of forward motion with echoing samples and effects combining in the mix to create a dreamlike soundscape perfect for the dancefloor and headphones alike.

B1 - Invisible Borders

No ASC album would be complete without an amen workout, and we certainly have that here as Invisible Borders rushes into view with simmering intent, melodic samples tore from battlegrounds of yesteryear providing a truly epic atmosphere, rippling breakbeat trickery teasing the listener before crushing full contact amens arrive with panache and veracity - twisted across yearning bass with an unflinching fighting spirit.

B2 - Celestial Bodies

Up next a moment of calm as we soak up the charms of the dreamlike Celestial Bodies, a soothing journey of beats, breaks and atmosphere from Spatial's label head. Melodic notes ripple across the mix with old school breaks filtering to and fro, conjuring images of a cosmic journey unfolding, where old school breakbeat rhythms pulse like distant constellations, echoes shimmering in the vast expanse of ASC's versatility.

C1 - Losing Track Of Time

Into an absolute stunner next as ASC unleashes a modern classic which has a wonderfully instant familiarity to it - like it was lifted directly from the golden era of atmospheric drum & bass. The old school breaks have a distinctive feel while a variety of pads teaming with life swirl around above. A myriad of spirited melodies develop and maintain your attention with classic 808 basslines to complete this remarkable composition.

C2 - Slipstream

Switching up the vibe in style, ASC delivers an intense, cosmic intro to Slipstream which builds gradually with whooshing effects and long female vocals before a crisp, crunchy slice of Hot Pants breakbeat heaven tears through the mix, chock-full of excitable edits portrayed in a brilliant clarity. Warm sub bass punctuates the track while a reverberating earworm melody slowly etches itself into your mind.

D1 - Paradigm Shift

A good old fashioned roller up next as Paradigm Shift sees ASC blend a superb 2-step rhythm with a sumptuous smooth bassline - guaranteed to move the dancefloor. Atmospherics take no back seat either as elegant synthwork swirls and washes across the soundscape with subtly used vocal samples adding texture and warmth to an impressively layered mix that maintains its pace right through to an echoing conclusion.

D2 - Transmitter

Sending us back to interstellar space for an inspired mission through vast unexplored star systems, Transmitter sees ASC create a stunningly evocative, ethereal collage of atmospherics with sonar-like beeps punctuating and persisting throughout. Driving the track along are the superbly programmed drums, filtered and layered with twisted, distorted vocal samples to complete this exhilarating album in pure Spatial style.

Figure is celebrating its 150th release with a loaded triple vinyl compilation, showcasing artists both old and new to the label – a testament to what the Figure sound is today. The cover art has been commissioned from Berlin-based graffiti artist Erik Winkler, whose spray-painted work is adorning the thick triple-pocket sleeve housing three colored records.

The compilation features some important recent additions to our growing roster: both Jancen and Arthur Robert deliver their unique take on tunneling techno, be it searing or psychedelic. And Brazilian shape-shifter Vinicius Honorio carves out his own gliding bass frequencies while A-STS relies classic drum machine bleep hypnosis.

Label head Len Faki’s own energetic appearance echoes his versatile style found on his recent album release. The all-out production featuring strings and quirky synths sits in contrast with Jeroen Search & Decoder - a pairing of veterans, whose minimal hardware sound slowly builds over trippy acid loops. The flipside belongs to a younger generation of producers, namely IGLO turning out a superb techno roller teeming with life and lush with details. The duo of Munich brothers Glaskin already remixed Faki for his Fusion album, their first original release on Figure comes a skillful blend of distorted stabs and deep grooves.

Equally refined but with a harder edge to it, Scheermann practices a dark, minimalist approach where each element gets time to shine for maximum effect. His bleak track is aptly paired with a rare solo release of Obscure Shape whose fractures of a dreamy, twinkly melody make for one of the most emotional moments of the compilation. The final side holds Roman Poncet’s seasoned understanding of groove, balancing perfectly the dubby stabs and vocal chops for a dazzlingly perfect loop. The final tones to this milestone release come courtesy of another of Figure’s bright new voices: Arkan manages to conjure up a powerful sense of progression, where colourful synths converge in harmonies over an effortlessly bouncing beat.

It is a rare moment for an independent label to make to number 150. But to keep finding new talent who help re-shape the signature sound while expanding the family roster, that’s a true blessing. This package shows how Figure is growing and adapting as a label, staying relevant as one of the leading voices in modern techno.

Berlin-based Amy Dabbs makes a long-awaited return to Shall Not Fade with Green Room EP - four uptempo club heaters spanning UKG, high-energy house, and breaks.

The EP’s title pays homage to Renate’s Green Room, the floor within the renowned Berlin club where Dabbs has held her residency since early 2023. Each track was both written for and road-tested at her monthly Dabbs Traxx events in this space, where she’s cultivated a tight-knit community of UKG lovers in the heart of Berlin.

“When I started writing this EP, my goal was to create music that would fit perfectly into my nights in the Green Room, bringing in the London sounds I grew up on, across all the genres I usually play at Renate. This EP is a tribute to everything Renate has given me: opportunity, community, and a platform for my authentic UK sound.”

Opening track Take Me High launches straight into peak-time territory, with old-school-inspired rave stabs, staccato vocal flicks, and deep, subby basslines. Over You turns the heat up even further - a track built from choppy vocals and UKG basslines before melting into a warm chord progression; a perfect example of Dabbs’ ability to fuse high-energy rhythms with spine-tingling emotion.

On the flip side, Style & Pattern, featuring the signature tones of London’s Alfie Fraser, is a pure UKG cut - underpinned by lush pads and arpeggiators, topped with Alfie’s unmistakable live vocals to create an uplifting dancefloor heater dripping with London swagger. Closing the EP, The Way delivers a tear-jerking breakbeat finale, layering syncopated percussion, emotive vocals, and an old-school piano breakdown; it’s a sublime end-of-the-night moment and a fitting closing track for an EP which honours one of Berlin’s most beloved clubs.

Making this album was an absolute joy. We used Rothko’s artwork as a major influence. His use of colour fields, blending, mood and scale really helped us build an album of tracks that could stand on their own and also work together as a coherent whole across all the tones we had been working with. It was also a chance to fall back in love with our 909, 808 and 707.

While working on music for several other projects, the “Rothko” project got renamed Loud Ambient because it did not really sit right with the My Brutal Life series. We often talked about what people make of The Black Dog and whether they think we only make ambient music. We do not. Over the last year or so, one of us would be working on something and someone else would say, “That is a Loud Ambient track.” The name stuck. We liked the funny side of it.

With Loud Ambient, everything just fell into place creatively. Surprisingly for us, the tracklisting never changed, just small tweaks here and there. That rarely happens. It marks a first for us as a band. All the stars aligned and the confidence in this album is the strongest we have ever had.

Loud Ambient was made to dance to, something we have not done in a while. We welcome the return to the dancefloor with both hands. Will you join us?

Multi-faceted musician and co-founder of the Hungry Music label, Worakls, has unveiled the full tracklist for his stunning production 'Orchestra', an ambitious project filled with 10 brand-new productions, including recent single 'Cloches.'

Allowing his musical film influences to fully express themselves by incorporating them into his music, 'Orchestra' combines the grandiose feeling of album opener 'Nikki' with the melodic rhythms of 'By The Brook', and wistful yet percussive tones of tracks like 'Detached Motion.' Packed with cinematic elements throughout, Worakls explains his creative process, stating:

'Along the years, I have become more sensible to the emotions of film music, and I wanted to lead my universe into that direction. My aim is to mix in the emotions of this music with the freedom and energy of electronic music.'

With the original music composed to be specifically played with an orchestra, the album is accompanied by a tour of the most prestigious venues in Europe where Worakls will be accompanied by an orchestra formed of 20 musicians. Having recently kickstarted the schedule in Paris, the tour will take in a further 9 sold-out dates across France and Belgium throughout February, March, and April.

Spending the last ten years travelling the globe's most prestigious concert halls and festivals, Worakls' journey into composition started at the age of 3, learning the piano amidst his family of musicians. However, it was the 2015 launch of his 'Hungry Band' group alongside fellow frenchman N'to and Joachim Pastor which earned the French producer widespread acclaim. Proving his skills in composing film scores as well as electronic and orchestral productions, Worakls recently scooped the 'Best Original Soundtrack' prize at the Deauville Green Awards for Ushuaia and InFocus. The accolade was awarded to Worakls for his work on 'Une Oasis d'Espoir' alongside Nicholas Van Ingen & Jean Baptiste-Puchain.

More than a first album, more than a show, 'Orchestra' is the culmination of an inimitable artist whose inspirations touch all generations of music lover. After more than a decade of waiting, 'Orchestra' marks the first solo album from Worakls, and is set for a physical release in Spring 2019.

Singaporean label Darker Than Wax brings us to Texas with a fresh 12” from Houston-born producer Oye Manny. Following his release on Salon Recordings, Oye Manny has carved out a lane defined by deep rhythms, Latin roots, and pure authenticity, an ethos he continues to distill into sound on his new record Living Water. Drawing on his Colombian roots and keenly focused on what makes dancers move, Manny puts percussion at the forefront on Living Water – from the chord driven house stompers ‘Malta Sip’ and ‘Palmira’ on the A side, to the darker club tones of ‘Visaje’ and the slick musicality of ‘Youthful Expression ‘ on the flip, drums play a starring role. Completing the package is a remix from Singapore-based producer and Darker Than Wax core member Dexter Colt, providing a deeper, Chicago-inspired take on ‘Malta Sip’.

Following the release of his fifth studio album ‘Magickal’ at the start of the year, Damian Lazarus now opens a new chapter in the project’s evolution with ‘Magickal Remixed (Part I)’, this first instalment of the two-part series features bold reimagining’s from Harry Romero, Jonathan Kaspar, THEMBA and Mëstiza, offering four fresh takes on standout cuts from the acclaimed long-player.

The package opens with Harry Romero’s ‘Raw Dog’ remix of ‘R U Dreaming?’, originally a deeply introspective cut featuring Canadian maestro Mathew Jonson. Here, the New York favourite dials up the low-end pressure and rhythmic weight, bringing raw tribal energy and heavyweight swing to the original’s dreamlike tones. Jonathan Kaspar’s ‘Sunrise Remix’ of ‘Falling Down’, Lazarus’ collaboration with TEED and A-Trak, comes next. Channelling radiant euphoria through rising pads and sweeping melodic phrasing, it leans into the emotional intensity of the original while transforming it into a full-blown moment of sunrise transcendence.

On the B Side THEMBA delivers striking remix of Damian Lazarus and Jem Cooke’s ‘Searchin’.
THEMBA’s remix builds on that foundation and takes it into expansive, Afro-infused club territory, layering hypnotic percussion, deep rolling grooves, and subtle atmospheric shifts that heighten the emotion and push the track into new late-night spaces. Closing out the release, Spanish duo Mëstiza return to reinterpret their collaboration with the Crosstown head honcho, ‘La Hija De Juan Simón’. Expanding on the track’s flamenco-inspired roots, they layer hand-played percussion, haunting vocal flourishes, and dense atmospheres into a hypnotic, slow-burning groove, bridging folklore and futurism in their unmistakable style.

DVS NME is a Colorado-based Electro producer and DJ originally from Southern California. Active since 1999, he crafts stark, machine-driven music rooted in analog hardware and recorded live in single takes. Influenced by Drexciya, AUX88, and Anthony Rother, his sound blends dystopian textures with precise rhythm programming. He’s released music on respected underground labels like Solar One Music, Transient Force, and Ukonx Recordings, and now Future Tones Rcoeds. A key advocate for the genre, he also curates the long-running Dark Science Electro podcast, supporting global Electro since 2010.

1. Beam
A slow-burning opener built around a TR-606 groove, chopped vocal fragments, and delicate string flourishes. At 116 BPM, it's the most restrained cut on the EP—staccato and skeletal, but quietly emotional.

2. Carveout
Driven by a classic four-on-the-floor pulse, "Carveout" rides a surging bassline and tightly layered synths. Functional on the surface, but subtle shifts in tone give it depth beneath the structure.

3. Debt Trap
The most club-oriented track on the record. With a jerky low-end and nimble 606 programming, "Debt Trap" combines dancefloor impact with off-kilter synth work that refuses to settle.

4. Ratchet Effect
A standout cut that channels DVS NME's signature sound—sharp, modular arpeggios, machine-funk rhythms, and intricate modulation. At once clinical and soulful, it’s the EP’s most complex and defining moment.

5. Land Reform
TB-303 acid lines coil around melodic string pads and skittering hi-hats in this mid-tempo closer. "Land Reform" balances raw rhythmic motion with introspective synth textures, ending the record on a reflective note.

Kerrie is back on James Ruskin's Blueprint for her third EP. The "Act Of Resistance" EP showcases Kerrie's refined approach to techno, blending moody industrial tones with dub overtones and intricate sound design. Kerrie's in-depth knowledge and unwavering dedication to music shines through her notable back catalogue and bolshy, unforgiving DJ and Live sets. Honing her craft for over a decade, Kerrie achieved a milestone at the start of 2024 when Tresor announced her as a resident DJ.



Irish-born, Manchester-based Kerrie is a multidisciplinary artist and DJ. Having garnered a rich musical education through working at and holding a DJ residency for one of the UK's most respected record shops, Eastern Bloc, Kerrie's in-depth knowledge and unwavering dedication to music shines through her notable back catalogue and bolshy, unforgiving DJ and Live sets. Honing her craft for over a decade, Kerrie achieved a milestone at the start of 2024 when Tresor announced her as a resident DJ.

Following well-received releases on labels such as Don't Be Afraid, Cultivated Electronics, I Love Acid and Symbolism, Kerrie launched her imprint Dark Machine Funk DMF in 2020, and also debuted on Blueprint Records with her "Raw Regimen" EP.Truly welcomed to the Blueprint family, Kerrie delivered her second EP "Transient Belief" in 2023 and joined the crew at label showcases around the globe.

Since 2023 she has been fully committed to the studio and accommodating her increasingly busy tour schedule, forging a long-lasting path fuelled by drive, passion, authenticity and a community-first way of thinking.

She's now back on James Ruskin's label for her third Blueprint outing. The "Act Of Resistance" EP showcases Kerrie's refined approach to techno, blending moody industrial tones with dub overtones and intricate sound design.

Archeo Recordings is a record label. Old, lost, obscure and forgotten gems and a boundless focus on the new Balearic scene for a wider audience of collectors, DJs and music lovers. All releases are limited edition. This release is a Limited Edition EP (250 on black vinyl). New life and an expanded treatment of Quiroga's epic Electronic/Future Jazz/House Snaporaz (Really Swing 2020), from none other than L.U.C.A. (AR029). Archeo delights us with this luscious and limited release featuring Quiroga's sleek jazz-house UFO "Snaporaz". This edition includes an exclusive extended version, a brand-new cut from the Neapolitan groover, and a completely cosmic overhaul from the mighty L.U.C.A. Operating at the nexus of future jazz, beatific electronics and deft house, Quiroga (Walter Del Vecchio to his nearest and dearest) has carved his own irresistible niche over the past two decades, gracing countless labels with nuanced body movers and forging his impressive Really Swing imprint, the original home to this melodic masterpiece. Tucked away on Del Vecchio's 2020 EP "Chords and Desire", the sunny and sultry Snaporaz fell foul of our communal pandemic preoccupation, missing out on the widespread acclaim, appreciation and ass-shaking it so richly deserves. Archeo steps in as patron, giving this Rhodes-led jazz-house heater the full 12" treatment it was born for. On the A1, Quiroga's extends the ecstasy of "Snaporaz", stretching its original elements into a loosely grooving, dopamine-deep delight. Sunkissed keys and tender pads ride the rhythm of a bubbling bassline while the sophisticated percussion snaps, crackles and pops in the background - the perfect environment for the P&P leadline to flourish. If that wasn't enough to have you slipping straight into your party pumps, Walter makes the most of the extra runtime with a HOT hand drum freakout down the final stretch, adding the most enticing icing to an already heady cake. A comparative cooldown follows in A2 offering "Escorpião", a fusion-tinged flirtation for aperitivo everywhere. Cutting back on the kick to save space for the swing, Quiroga leads us through a sublime sequence of hooks, riffs and solos, without ever overwhelming the ears but keeping the groove alive. It's a dizzying delight from start to finish and features one of the finest keytar and cowbell interplays you're likely to hear. The B-side belongs to the frankly legendary Francesco de Bellis, a house, disco, Italo and electro hero, appearing here under his deliciously downbeat alias L.U.C.A. Imbuing Quiroga's original with the atmospheric stylings of his Edizioni Mondo oeuvre, the Roman producer delivers a radical rework, slowing the tempo by 20 bpm and translating those jazzy tones into a drifting new age dancer for the cosmic crowd. Zero gravity rhythms meet mystical melodies uptown as the house hippies get down. Lest we overlook the batshit brilliance of the drum programming, L.U.C.A. caps it off with a bonus beats version sure to delight DJs and dancers alike in its otherworldly oddness.

Exploring the water engineering relationship between Japan and the Netherlands across a trilogy of experimental releases, the third and final part of Field Records' Waterworks series is courtesy of Yui Onodera. Pairing delicate synthesis and instrumentation with field recordings and negative space, the accomplished artist and sound architect examines the impact of water engineering on Japan's Kiso Three Rivers.

The location refers to the confluence of the Kiso, Nagara and Ibi rivers on the Nōbi plain in Gifu prefecture. In the late 19th century, Japanese authorities collaborated with Dutch engineer Johannes de Rijke to separate the three rivers at the lower part of the Kiso delta. These extensive improvements, which were finalized in 1912, successfully shielded the city of Nagoya from regular flooding.

Onodera's minimalist palette and detailed approach to spatial sound design balances microscopic field recordings and tonally-rich traditional instruments, which he applies with stark focus to the subject of the Kiso Three Rivers across eight extended pieces of music arranged into two distinct parts. The A side's shorter tracks are delicately sculpted miniatures interweaving chiming bell tones, treated guitar impressions and hushed pads. The B side's two longer suites are more overtly minimal in nature, emphasising sampled water sources accented with patient brush strokes of synthesis.

This project is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tokyo, Japan.

Art Of Tones returns to GAMM after the success of his '3 Woman EP' with the '3 Men EP', an record where the male vocals come into focus.

We're starting off with 'International Truth', a huge soulful and uplifting disco/soul jam with big vocals and a large dose of feel-good vibes...a proper peak-time tune!

The B-side offers a rework of a rare and much sought after afro-disco cut and an amazing rework of one of those Stevie Wonder under-the-radar tracks that most of us probably have overlooked.

Slow-moving finger-picked ambient folk straddling the synthetic and organic divide – that is “The Ending Was A Typical Part”, the first album by the Zurich-based duo Gūsū. It combines the tradition of playing the guzheng with electronic instruments, allowing different yet harmonious worlds to collide.

The collaboration between Xueyan Chen and Nicolas Balmer alias Gūsū was born out of their shared musical explorations in 2022 and has evolved into a dialogue of sound. Chen’s guzheng, an instrument deeply linked to Chinese history, resonates with improvised and self-composed melodies, freeing its pentatonic scale from its traditional bounds. Her playing is underscored with the cryptic hum of Balmer’s modular synthesizers, the deep bass and layered textures that combine the organic with the electronic. Together they create a sonorous exploration of identity, displacement and unity.

Xueyan Chen has been playing the Guzheng since her early childhood. With her moving to Zurich, Switzerland she started reimagining its historical identity through improvisation and self-composed melodies. With this approach, Chen emancipates the instrument from its classical heritage, weaving a contemporary and deeply personal narrative. Nicolas Balmer meanwhile brings a contrasting yet complementary dimension with modular synthesizers, bass guitar, and electronic textures. His layered soundscapes amplify and distort the Guzheng’s pentatonic timbres, enveloping them in mysterious tones and expansive harmonics.

Embrace the golden tranquility of summer with Childhood Memories! Let yourself be enchanted by a compilation where each note softly whispers warmth, inviting the essence of summer to dance freely. Envision yourself nestled in a cozy treehouse, surrounded by lush greenery, basking in the warm sunlight as guitar melodies fill the air. Whether you're lost in a captivating book or sharing laughter with cherished friends, allow these laid-back tunes to become the soundtrack to your summer bliss.

The album’s title deftly gestures to the sheer vastness of astronomical dimensions, while simultaneously capturing the musical breadth within, where the eight planets are imagined as the eight notes of an octave. The work draws inspiration not only from earlier compositions —most notably Gustav Holst’s The Planets—but also from the rich astronomical and cultural contexts surrounding these celestial bodies. Here, the focus transcends direct citation of melodic motifs, instead embracing an intriguing conceptual approach on a meta level, unfolding in a series of vividly contrasting soundscapes. These contrasts shape a sweeping sonic journey, one that fully embraces the album format with both arms, inviting the listener to venture into realms both strange and wondrous, feeling the immensity of the interstellar space that lies between them. Contrast, after all, is the brushstroke that enriches our world.

Embarking on an auditory voyage, "Astral Guide" establishes the sonic framework that propels us into the boundless expanses of the cosmos. Its ethereal tones evoke the vastness of space, crafting a mood ripe for exploration within the realms of sci-fi. The subsequent tracks unfold like constellations, weaving a rich tapestry of sound that seamlessly marries cinematic soundscapes with pulsating, club-oriented rhythms. This album invites listeners to traverse its immersive landscapes, whether nestled in the comfort of home or dancing under the starlit sky, each note a guide through the transcendent experience of a nocturnal journey.

"Solar Flares" draws its inspiration from the awe-inspiring expanse of solar phenomena, capturing the majestic power of the sun as it reaches into the cosmos. This track resonates with the idea that energy, while vital, can also be a force of destruction when unleashed with overwhelming intensity. The composition beautifully mirrors the sun’s duality, where brilliance and devastation coexist, inviting listeners to reflect on the delicate balance between creation and annihilation. Through its rich textures and dynamic shifts, "Solar Flares" serves as both a homage to the celestial and a poignant reminder of nature's formidable power.

"Mercury – The Winged Messenger" embodies a meticulously crafted soundscape where artistry meets astronomy. The tempo of 173.6 BPM, derived from precise astronomical data, propels the composition into a vibrant realm that resonates with cosmic energy. Synthwave sound design intertwines seamlessly with the fluid rhythms of Drum’n’Bass, imbuing the piece with an uplifting dynamism that evokes the ethereal grace of Mercury itself. In this sonic exploration, listeners are invited to ascend on wings of sound, navigating the celestial tapestry of the universe with each invigorating beat.

"Venus, The Bringer of Peace" strikes a decidedly cozy note, presenting a poignant contrast to the more tempestuous themes often found in cosmic narratives. This composition evokes a nostalgic vision of an optimistic era, one in which humanity transcended borders and embraced the infinite possibilities of space exploration, where no destination felt too distant. The dense, languid atmosphere envelops the listener, creating a tangible sense of serenity that unfolds gradually, allowing for a meditative journey through sound. Each note serves as an invitation to linger in this tranquil embrace, reflecting on the harmonious potential of our collective aspirations and the beauty of connection in a vast universe.

The central theme of „Gaia, The Bringer of Life“ —originally not part of the planetary cycle— is the profound enabler of life on Earth. The arrangement delicately mirrors the slow, tentative unfolding of this potential, marked by an initially sparse orchestration that gradually builds in momentum. This progression crescendos, embodying the explosive dynamism of the Cambrian burst of life, ultimately culminating in a euphoric fanfare—a triumphant, celebratory flourish echoing life’s victorious emergence.

"Blue Moon" unfolds as a contemplative reverie on the tranquil clarity of a night sky, now seldom glimpsed in its natural purity, unclouded by the relentless haze of urban light. The listener is drawn into the vast embrace of the star-strewn firmament, a journey that sways between euphoric awe at nature’s sublime beauty and a profound melancholy for its fragile and imperiled state. Musically, this duality finds expression in the delicate interplay of modal mixtures, while an ever-shifting triplet groove, poised at the intersection of Outrun and melodic house, lends a pulse that is both nostalgic and forward-looking—echoing the beauty and transience of a world on the brink.

Rather than replicating the original composition of „Mars, The Bringer of War“, this interpretation seeks to evoke its profound, foreboding atmosphere. Cyberpunk emerges here as an ideal genre, channeling the dark, relentless march synonymous with Mars, the ancient god of war. The piece reverberates with intensity, as distorted vocalizations rise, embodying the anguish and visceral torment that shadow war’s violent crescendo. This auditory descent into conflict captures the relentless pulse of warfare, where sound itself becomes an embodiment of suffering and fury.

Majestically, "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" emerges on the celestial stage, sweeping away the somber tones with its radiant vigor. Drawing inspiration from the triumphant strains of the original, and borrowing a melodic motif in the refrain, the piece expresses joy and buoyancy through a shift to a major key and the lilting sway of a danceable 12/8 meter. Spirited and exuberant, it leaps boldly from major to minor and back again, playfully shifting time signatures to capture a mood of unbridled festivity and jollity.

Here, a more conciliatory concept is chosen than in the original inspiration. „Saturn“ aligns with the number six, being the sixth planet from the Sun and bearing the iconic hexagonal pattern at its northern pole. What, then, could be more fitting than to render this piece in a 6/8 time signature? The arrangement unfolds with a multifaceted richness, mirroring the countless stones and ice fragments that form the foundations of Saturn’s majestic rings.

„Uranus“ adopts the theme of a light-footed, dancing instrumentation, giving the impression of perpetual motion, never quite settling. This musical choice harmonizes with the planet’s own orbit, as it spins with breathtaking velocity, teetering and swaying, seemingly unable to attain rest or stability.

The chill and vastness of the cosmos find expression in „Neptune, The Mystic“. At its core, an electronic soundscape envelops a classical arrangement, its unreachability intensified by an ethereal, otherworldly choir. Hovering at the outermost boundaries of the solar system, where warmth is but a distant memory, the composition lingers in a slow, contemplative tempo, evoking a realm where space for speculation stretches wide and silence reigns supreme.

Though Pluto may have lost its planetary status, and its companion Charon never achieved one, this shift in classification subtly aligns with the cosmic scale invoked here—one that mirrors the musical tradition of an eight-note sequence. Fittingly, the album closes with „Kuiper Belt“, a composition emblematic of the turbulence and vitality of countless smaller

celestial bodies that, though diminutive, find their rightful place within the vast architecture of the solar system.

They say nature is the greatest composer, shaping the universe with a symphony of chaos and order, beauty and danger. It is this duality that fuels the artistic vision of Edictum—a producer who, armed with a doctorate in chemistry, delves as deeply into the mysteries of molecules as he does into the depths of sound. In the tension between the vastness of the cosmos and the microscopic processes that dictate life’s rhythm, Edictum creates sonic landscapes that dissolve the boundaries between science and art.

His music is a story of contrasts—a sonic tale where the raw forces of nature clash with the intricate structures of human culture. Opposites intertwine to form a harmonious whole: the primal rhythms of the earth meet the celestial melodies of the cosmos, the rigid laws of physics blend with the boundless freedom of art. Edictum explores these polarities with meticulous devotion, each composition an expedition into uncharted soundscapes—a quest to give voice to the unfathomable.

With over 20 years immersed in the realms of electronic music, Edictum has honed a keen sense for rhythm and movement. His driving beats compel both body and mind into a hypnotic flow. Yet beyond the pulse of dance lies a complex framework of conceptual thought. Today, his creative focus revolves around holistic album projects—self-contained worlds with overarching narratives that embrace contrast and complexity. Each track stands alone as a fragment of the whole, but together, they weave a cohesive tapestry, much like the chapters of a novel that guide the listener on an emotional and sonic journey.

Edictum’s distinctive musical signature has earned him international recognition. With over 150 releases, many on prestigious platforms like the iconic *NewRetroWave* label, and collaborations with artists such as Jan Johnston, Azumi Inoue, Powernerd, and Turbo Knight, he has solidified his place in the global electronic music scene. His latest work, *A Cosmic Scale*, marks his seventh vinyl album and is released under his own label, *Echoes of Expanse*. The label’s name is no coincidence—it captures the essence of his art: echoes of infinity, the vibrations of the universe distilled into a singular sonic experience that carries the listener ever further into the boundless expanse of sound and space.

THE VINYLBOX COLLECTION IS BACK REDISCOVER ALL THE BEST SONGS FROM THE CULT MOVIES OF QUENTIN TARENTINO. STARRING : JOETEX, ISAAC HAYES, DICK DALE, ELVIN BISHOP, JOHNNY CASH, AL GREEN, RICKY NELSON, LINK WRAY, ...

The history of electronic music has been defined by a handful of key synth manufacturers. Iconic brands, like Roland, Yamaha, Sequential Circuits and others, have pushed boundaries and blazed trails. But what gives each synthesizer its own unique sound? What makes one synthesizer sound distinctly different from another? And, what would happen if you only used one synthesizer to create a track? The major players of electronics are the building blocks for this music machine homage.

Rack Sessions takes one synth and gives it the spotlight, the instrument is the star. The style pursued corresponds to the unique sound of the chosen piece of equipment. Looming silver screen grandeur for “The D (Roland D-550)”, stargazing elegance with “Bell Hope (Yamaha TX81Z) or gentle rolling nostalgia for “MiR (Korg M1R)”, each work is the product of the tool selected. Beats take a backseat on the flip. Open highways and burgeoning dawns are conjured in “802 Nights (Yamaha TX802)” as the listener is transported to the expertly crafted tones of the 1980s. Koolhaas chooses his elements with subtlety, adding colour to his palette to create deeply evocative works. Attack ships cruise in the spatial “SOB (Oberheim Matrix-6)” before the stalker hunts the sodden streets of “MC202’s Act Like They Don’t Know (Roland MC-202)”.

The result is an album that is utterly distinctive. An immersive audio journey that guides the listener deep into the sounds of these very special synthsizers and the broad influences of this new talent.

Back In Stock!

Throughout the past decade Paris-based producer, DJ and label owner Dj Steaw has gained widespread recognition as a bastion of raw, authentic music in the contemporary scene.

His material has found its way onto the likes of PIV Records, Hot Haus, Meta and of course his own Rutilance, Steaward and House Puff imprints.

Here we see him joining Kerri Chandler’s Kaoz Theory with his latest release and the title-track ‘Colour Of Mind’ opens the package with shuffled, dynamic drums and hypnotic vocal chants alongside bumpy stabled bass, squelchy acid licks and airy dubbed out chords.

‘Dance To The Rhythm’ follows next, stripping things back to low slung drums, echoing stab sequences, subby swells and breathy vocal cuts.

‘I Can’t Feel It’ follows on the flip-side next, heading back to a more classic house aesthetic with a gritty bass hook, organ lines and ethereal textures running atop crunchy drums.

‘Star Ready’ finally concludes the EP on a deeper tip, bringing circling synth swells, elongated bass tones and skippy percussion into the limelight.





Upfront DJ Support:

Kerri Chandler
Dennis Quin
Chris Stussy
Fabe
Cinthie
Franck Roger
Ben Rau
Jimpster
Ruff Stuff
Julietta
Chrissy
Demuir

After a stream of constant quality, locked in records returns once again this time with uk based Jack keo who finally unleashes ‘Bigger’ ep. After videos circulating of raresh and Ricardo hammering most of the ep in one of there legendary b2b sets at fabrics birthday and other big names spinning it throughout the summer of 24’ it’s been highly anticipated by those in the know.

The record starts with the stunningly crafted ‘bigger’ with a lovely mix of subtle electronics and warm pads. A2 ‘ode to e’ is a breaks piece of dreamy tones and vocal patterns. On the heavy and darker b side the naughty bass of ‘quartet’ heads b1. Built for an attack on the floor with its vocoder driven rhythm. For the b2, One of raresh’s weapons of 2024 ‘bra sett’ its ever changing and switching layers is an energy boost to any dance floor!

As the tenth candle flickers atop the torta alla panna, Archeo Recordings play the Uno reverse card, breaking with tradition to give us a gift in celebration of its birthday: the first in a series of exquisite EPs on which the label's favourite contemporaries pay homage to past masters. Each re-polished gem is plucked either directly from the beatific back catalogue of the fine Florentine label or is at least Archeo-adjacent, perhaps a sign of future wonders to come. Like a musical version of Janus, who can be found at the heart of Bertoldo di Giovanni's frieze in the Medici villa, Archeo Recordings will continue to look forwards and backwards to provide sublime sounds for us all.
Pepe Maina officially joined the Archeo family in 2019 with the much-needed reissue of his 1979 masterpiece Scerizza (AR015), but his astounding music has been a constant companion to label head Manu for much longer. An inter-dimensional, multi-instrumental maverick, Maina weaves the frayed edges of prog rock, new age, organic jazz and global minimalism into a shimmering tapestry all of his own. The results are spread across fifty years and almost as many albums, largely self-released and always absolutely untarnished by commercial concerns.
Based in a small village in the hills of Brianza, just north of Milan, Maina translates the beauty of his surroundings into transformative tone poems, and the folkloric fusion of "The Infinite", originally released on his 2014 CD Tales From The Hill, is the perfect example of his practice. It opens with a recitation of Giacomo Leopardi's 1825s poem "L'Infinito" by famed Italian actor Vittorio Gassman. A leading figure in the romantic movement, Leopardi explores the idea of time and space within the natural world, and the peace that comes with an appreciation of the immensity of eternity. Manu, longtime digger and now a burgeoning producer, expands upon the original with tribal percussion, chirping electronics and a spheric bassline, folding Maina's elegant strings and gossamer pads into a new arrangement suited for a slow dance under the stars.
Unless you had a well-trained ear tuned to Italy's avant-jazz scene, chances are your first encounter with innovative flautist Roberto Aglieri came via the 2017 Archeo reissue of hisalmost untraceable LP Ragapadani (AR011). It's a true testament to Manu's digging credentials that he snatched this masterpiece out of the esoteric atmosphere and brought it attention it so richly deserved. A delicate union of digital synthesis and versatile flute - be it soft and silvery or
brilliant and clear - the 1987 album was a shapeshifting masterpiece, replaying scenes from Virgil, Verdi, Visconti and Pasolini with a neon glow. Quintessentially Italian, but uncanny and previously unimagined - Penthouse and Portico perhaps. Powered by a percolating prototechno sequence, cascading keys, hallucinogenic vocal snippets and a variety of tonal timbres from Roberto's reed, "Danza N. 1" long deserved the praise reserved for Jean-Luc Ponty's pinnacle, so many thanks to Manu for our collective introduction. The tall task of reinterpreting this particular paragon falls to Perugian polymath Daniele Tomassini AKA Feel Fly, whose peerless skills as both producer and musician have delighted DJs and dancers alike. Hot on the heels of his diverse and definitive remixes of Tony Esposito for AR027, Daniele delivers a radical rework of "Danza N. 1" perfect for both day rave sunshine and full moon party alike. Enhanced by snapping breaks and a rattling kick, the bassline gurgle emerges as a progressive powerhouse, laying the foundation for the trilling flute and circular keys to cast a psychedelic spell. As the slow-Goa revival picks up pace, this one is way ahead of the pack.
Archeo take us all the way back to the start of its story here - well almost. Though it bore the stamp AR001 (2015), this Radio Band reissue actually hit shelves months after Tony Esposito's "Je-Na' / Pagaia"; a false start perhaps but a true classic all the same. Radio Band were a group of DJs from Florence who all sailed the airways of Radio Fantasy in 1984 and whose one and only release was this super groovy slice of Italo-boogie. Following the example of Milanese DJs Band of Jocks but far surpassing their formulaic funk fizzle, Radio Band employed an intergalactic bassline, cosmic keys and that undeniably Italian style of rapping to deliver a sophisticated party-starter which even found its way to disco deity Ron Hardy. Back to the here and now, and if you've found yourself pumping an ecstatic fist to a supercharged Italian epic of late, chances are its from the mind of the mysterious Radiomarc. Operating on the ascendent Popcorn Groove imprint, this shadowy figure steers his country's lost classics into peaktime territories, finding a sweet spot between late Italo-disco, early Italo-house and contemporary cool. Pushing the tempo with a club-ready 4/4, setting the sequencer to stun and supplementing the original melodies with a series of synth riffs, the mystery producer send this one into orbit. Radio Band - Radio Rap - Radiomarc, the circle is complete.
Few have done more to develop cross-cultural musical exchange than Futuro Antico. A collaborative venture from musician, archeologist and ethnomusicologist Walter Maioli, keyboardist and tonal theoretician Riccardo Sinigaglia and multi-disciplinary artist and composer Gabin Dabiré, Futuro Antico formed in Milan in 1979, combining ancient international folkloric traditions with otherworldly electronics. The result is an arresting melange of Mediterranean, African and Asian instrumentation, mimicked by esoteric synth tones and hypnotic minimalism, which the group perfected on their acclaimed 1990 LP Dai Primitivi All'Elettronica. The meditative and transportive "Pan Tuning" belongs to their largely overlooked 2005 CD only release Intonazioni Archetipe, and has been amongst Manu's most loved tracks from the first moment he heard it. Who else is better placed to reshape this evocative opus into an immersive, transcendental dance floor journey than label favourites Mushrooms Project? The duo sows the original elements into a sprawling fifteen minute fusion of séance and science, at times propulsive with a ritualist rhythm of tuned percussion and crunching drum machine at others drifting off into ethereal ambience. Mushrooms Project continue to push the boundaries of the Afro-cosmic style, and this remix marks a new zenith.

This Summer The Florentian Cabaret showcases his sound once more as he explores new creative avenues with the launch of his own eponymous label. The label will give the thriving Italian talent a chance to showcase the full spectrum of his sound with no boundaries, sharing all of his refined tastes, and influences he has absorbed over the years. The “Space. Time. Gravity.” EP features four classy cuts, timeless trips inside the mind of The Florentian Cabaret.

Playful drum patterns lead the way in the title track, conversing in harmony with the nostalgic 80s synths, teasing you down an animated path of disco leaning house energy. Emotional textures crafted for the dance floor moments. “Stairs On Mars” is built upon an underground energy of time gone by, slick hi-hats drive the track in combination with a raw and rugged bass, nodding towards the heydays of rave. Distinct and progressive peak time movements steering the release into an alternative direction.
“Rocket’90 leads you down a pacey path of low end paradise, in combination with spaced infused acid tones. A transition track for when you want to switch things up, and steer the dance floor to new heights. Hypnotic as it moves, progressing into classy peak time action as the atmosphere continues to simmer. Next up we have the aptly named “Stars”, as this pulsating and driven track will take you exactly there. Nostalgic drums maintain a steady and transcending groove, conversing with the mechanical pads and synths which spiral around the heart of the track. Constructed for the rave, and the tastemakers of modern dance music!

Dalmata Daniels third LP comes from Rapha, marking his return to the label after contributing to its split and compilation series. Known for bold acid treatments and dark, futuristic tones, Rapha takes his craft to new heights on Midnight Dancer, which also features remixes by CT Kidobo and PRZ. The album opens with I Win U Win, pulling listeners into an adventure of pulsing basslines and cosmic, minimal electro. CT Kidobos remix then twists it into a darker, seductive French-inspired club sound. The third track, ...And Them, continues the journey of the opener with mechanical beats and textured soundscapes, while Alien Dance highlights Raphas signature sharp, distinct style leaving a strong mark on the deep electro club scene.

On the flip side, Midnight Dancer plunges into a hypnotic realm of haunting echoes and distorted rhythms, with heavy basslines reverberating through the darkest corners of the mind. PRZs remix of the title track retains the original groove but adds a cleaner, equally impulsive electro edge perfect for the club. The albums final tracks, Lost Start and Galactico, round off the journey with shimmering electro patterns and eerie, alien soundscapes, leaving an unforgettable impression.

In Midnight Dancer, Rapha showcases his ability to blend industrial grit with cosmic melodies, delivering hard-hitting electro suited for both club play and immersive listening at home or on a night ride. Be warned DDLP03 is limited to 150 copies, housed in a Studio Jetski designed jacket with a digital download card and shrink wrap.

180G BLACK VINYL

Since Outlaws in 2020, Ludivine Issambourg's flute has not cooled down. How could it have, when with that album of Hubert Laws covers, it had reached incandescence? Still panting, burning despite the lid of its case left wide open, it awaited the opportunity to continue the adventures that Master Laws himself had praised.

A continuation? Above The Laws isn't quite that.

Although his name still appears, Hubert L. is no longer the sole guide in exploring the vast galaxies of jazz-funk. Through covers but especially as an enhancer of her own compositions, Ludivine has invoked the spirit and intangible presence of Jeremy Steig, Ronald Sneijder, and Bobby Humphrey—the legends of the flute.

Guided by an unescapable groove, with a musical dial set to the late 70s and early 80s, Ludivine has enlisted the help of a brass section this time, a true propulsion engine for funk that can also shift to a soulful breath if the moment calls for it. Supporting the keyboards, there's a Moog laying down its rich layers or twisting tones.

The flutes are used like levers to stabilize the flight or, conversely, to make it soar even faster through the measures. The alto version, which Ludivine had previously used sparingly, adds the necessary velvety note when it’s time to embark on smoother destinations. Speeding up the tempo to make passengers rise from their seats as if danger were imminent; calming the atmosphere to put them in a reassuring cocoon where they can let their thoughts and spirits wander, the improvisations find their place in the compositions observed from the porthole. Detached from gravity, yet still very much in tune with the vibe of cities marked as hot spots on the current jazz scene radar, it's the scent of these streets that permeates some tracks of Above The Laws.

Directed from the control tower by Eric Legnini, Chassol, Alex Finkin, and Michaël Lecoq, Above The Laws benefits from a few stops along the way where precious connections are established. Nils Landgren and his trombone in the colors of the Swedish flag, Laurent De Wilde for a chase between flute and Fender Rhodes, Céline Bonacina’s saxophone for an Afrobeat detour.

But it's at the edge of a journey where organic intensity has continued to assert itself without losing power that Ludivine connected with Brian Jackson for a cover of "Angel Dust," a track from the era when he and his partner Gil Scott-Heron were creating soul masterpieces. One of them featured a flutist by the name of Hubert Laws.

The starting point of Ludivine's latest jazz-funk explorations also becomes the endpoint. Elevated by the ten tracks of Above The Laws, Ludivine Issambourg closes a loop where she has placed her flute and its flourishes in an undeniably leading role. Opening the doors to ambitious orchestrations, unexplored horizons, she weaves into her compositions the experiences, places, and encounters that have shaped her.

Soela is the DJ and production alias of Elina Shorokhova, a Russia-born Berlin-based experienced pianist and vocalist who has made a hugely impactful transition into electronic music. Having released material on such labels as Kompakt, Dial, Shall Not Fade, Lost Palms, E-Beamz, Red Ember Records, Sushitech, and others, Soela joins the ranks of Scissor & Thread for this exquisite album - Dark Portrait.
The album opens in a typically understated manner with Unsuitable - a melancholic trip-hop adjacent track that sets the tone for the next 8 pieces. As Soela explains, “I was dealing with some very complex feelings, so I came up with this album, which helped me not to despair, to work on myself, to grow internally, and to start listening to myself. It helped me to keep sane when my country invaded Ukraine with a full scale war. It absolutely broke my heart, and music was one of my main salvations.”
This complex mix of emotions plays out across the album with tracks that utilize her beautiful musicality (Through the Windows feat. Francis Harris and Philipp Priebe, Drowning feat. Module One) and ear for details with skittering beats, ambient soundscapes (Spirits, Lost In The Fog) and lose-yourself dancefloor moments such as the collaboration with Lawrence on February Is Not Going To Be Forever. The title track Dark Portrait combines dubby elements with affecting pads and melodic touches, while the lead single Even If I Ask You Stay delves into multiple feelings around escaping toxic situations, and battling depression. It features a powerful vocal from Soela supported by a deeply affecting arrangement. The closing track The Darkest Hour Before Sunrise brings a sense of hope and light, balancing subdued keys and strings with ethereal tones and atmospheres

Introducing the inaugural release from "Vorm", "Vorm Series: One," a compelling compilation showcasing five tracks from a lineup of esteemed and emerging producers. This release marks the beginning for the young record label "Vorm", setting a high standard with its diverse and dynamic sounds.

From the producer and "Newrhythmic Records" founder, "Joton", comes "Neon Dystopia." This opener track of the release plunges into a hard hitting soundscape, blending pulsating basslines with highly pitched atmo surfaces. "Mineral" by Kon Janson dives into a mineral-rich sonic experience, where intricate rhythms meet hypnotic textures. This subterranean grooves is exactly the addition that the A-side needs and rounds off the whole thing as powerfully as possible.

"Ricardo Garduno" delivers "They're Between Us." This starter track on the B-side is a dark, spacious force of cavernous beats and atmospheres, perfect for those moments of peak-time intensity. Founder "Maasym" presents "Raeder," a sophisticated blend of a industrial trippy synth line and highly dense effective elements.

The track evolves with mechanical precision, emphasizing and focusing on the minimalist effects, percussions and drums. Closing out the release is Berlin-based rising producer & live artist "Peryl" with "Melting Room." This track is a melting pot of raw-high energy and experimental tones, pushing boundaries with its innovative, detailed sound design.

Number six-up for our Prozpektiva series and for this record we are proud to present a future star, an electronic music producer from Montevideo, Uruguay, Pi. With single track contributions so far on labels such as Holístico Records, White Scar and Lutzifer this is Pi's first full original release - with her trademark oscillations through techno, breakbeat, and electro with melodic tones the future definitely looks bright.

Shipwrec have delved into the underbelly of electronics for their latest discovery. Fake Youth Cult is the brand new project of Richard van Kruysdijk, an artist who has been integral to the Dutch music scene. Following releases on Delsin, as well as founding his own Music for Speakers label, this latest undertaking explores the darker hues of Kruysdijk's audio creations. Across six tracks, a realm of shadows and steel is constructed. From the murky tones of "Visitor" to the industrial and blackened "Scorched", a towering sound of punishing percussion looms over the listener. Techno is central message. Despite this, the piercing coldness of electro rises in the incising and stark "Messing." The influence of punk comes to the fore in racing rhythms and lean strings that make up "Smear." BPMs drop in the slow burning EBM stained "Management." The machines take control for the finale. A relentless kick is the motor that drives this seven minute juggernaut to the close. Broad and brutish brilliance from a prodigious talent.

Überkeine sets the tone of his own record label with four esoteric tracks, designed for the club. An obvious intention to establish a radical style with conceptualized sonorities, is revealed throughout the Ep. The sound materials are elaborate, and go straight to the point. Obsessing over the flow of creativity offered by his modular synthesizer, he delivers a very dense techno and already affirms a well-marked identity. Powerful and textured kicks, intricate synthetic sounds contained in an arrangement reduced to the essential. The tracks come to life as the forthright reflection of the thoughts of the producer. Guillotine Whistle instantly plunges into the unbridled world of the Ep. An ominous atmosphere hovers over our heads as it reveals organic and disconcerting tones. A gentle brutality emanates from this whistling guillotine that awaits to cut you up in two. Leading the way towards Drifting Data, a track inspired directly from Jungle Patterns. Überkeine is humbly trying to render DnB to a techno format. The dense, saturated Bassline sustains the idea of breaking the dancefloor in pieces. A hard hitting, broken beat environment accompanied by heavily filtered synthetic chaos. Third track’s the charm, the B side starts with Mirror Moist. A drop-down, wet and straightforward techno track with a carnal Bassline. As sensual as it gets, this track conveys a kinky loop urging intimacy and blasting heat throughout the club. Last but not least, Shaney’s remix of Mirror Moist. Picking up core elements of the original vibe and translating it into the off-beat techno nightmare it deserved to be. Full-on obscure dancefloor piece of equipment.

Mit "New Blue Sun" veröffentlicht André 3000 ein unerwartetes, rein instrumentales Album, auf dem Andre Flöte spielt und von anderen talentierten Musikern begleitet wird. Auf dem von Andre 3000 und dem Multiinstrumentalisten Carlos Niño koproduzierten Album "New Blue Sun" spielen Nate Mercereau, Surya Botofasina, Deantoni Parks, Diego Gaeta, Matthewdavid, V.C.R., Diego Gaeta, Jesse Peterson und Mia Doi Todd.

Diese limitierte 3-LP-Vinylauflage ist auf 180 g schweres schwarzes Vinyl gepresst und verfügt über ein ausklappbares Poster, bedruckte Innenhüllen und eine Notiz des Künstlers.

“Pulses and Resonances” is Rene Lorenzo’s debut album on Subtempo. This album represents a culmination of more than 20 years of electronic music exposure as a DJ and a clear point of view. We can hear influences of broken beat, techno, drum & bass, all through the unique lens that Rene brings to the table, deeply steeped in ambient, deep techno and downtempo. Even though this isn’t a dance record, it’s filled with energy and drive. It is an out-of-the-ordinary album, with intricate shifts and turns with well-crafted kick drums, round bass lines and enveloping subs. A record filled with warm sounds, head-nodding rhythms, and rich textured spaces. It’s all woven into an easy-listening experience, without demanding the listener’s full attention, but creating a landscape that is unique and varied throughout. We can hear references to artists like Boards of Canada, Jan Jenilek, Synkro and the like.

“In this record, every track has a different pulse or rhythm, and I use different resonators in the sound design process to achieve these tones. I started by leaving the space open with the ambient pads and hardly any rhythm, and I’d let myself be carried away by my sense of rhythm slowly building the compositions. I am obsessive with audio processing and I almost never leave a sound in its initial form. I like to add some subtle effect that sounds like something different and give new sounds to the elements I use.”

“Pulses and Resonances” is out via Subtempo on vinyl and digital on February 2nd.

SY Rockers is the new project from Ryan Aitchison aka Mella Dee and KALLIDA Festival bossman Reuben G. Their story goes all the way back to 2009, when Reuben invited Ryan to be a resident for his party LSS at Hi-Fi Club in Leeds.

The pair went on to bond over their shared love of bass-led music in the UK underground, a sound that was especially important to their native South Yorkshire. Fourteen years on, Ryan and Reuben revisit those early inspirations as SY Rockers. Their debut EP is a slickly produced expression of bleep, UK techno, bassline and dub, redrawing lines between the sound legacies of cities like Sheffield, Bradford and Leeds across three tracks.

True to those roots, the result is a hypnotic blend of raw drums and subsonic impact. ‘Windy Dub’ introduces the record with a hazy, heads-down bass, occasionally shivering into a cavernous space echo before it locks back into a haunting synth hook. ‘Modem’ does what it says on the tin: gameboy tones bounce around a warm sub, calling back the ‘less is more’ aesthetic of the original bleep era. Finally, ‘Rhythm Resonate’ zooms in on where it all started—the drum machine. 909s, lasers and a touch of perc combine to create the ultimate techno tool.

What you do is a fundamental question. But it's how you do something that ultimately determines the effect." — Julian Sartorius

With 'RLLRLRLLRRLRLRLRLLRLRLR', Swiss drummer and sound artist Julian Sartorius presents his third album in three years. Together with 'Ensemble This | Ensemble That' Sartorius has created a mesmerizing 39-minute percussion album that conclusively expands his artistic output. For the first time, an ensemble plays an idea conceived by Sartorius, while he assumes the role of an interactive conductor, manipulating the sounds made.

Sartorius is known for his fluid and versatile solo performances in which he continually modulates the sound of his instruments, adding objects and progressively unfolding his sound world. The idea of expanding this practice was already gestating when the 'Ensemble This | Ensemble That' invited him for a collaboration. Together with the drummers and percussionists Brian Archinal, Victor Barceló, Miguel Angel Garcia Martin and Bastian Pfefferli the concept was further explored, elaborated upon in detail, and finally realized.
'RLLRLRLLRRLRLRLRLLRLRLR' is both title and score for the ensemble's four percussionists. The pattern, consisting of 23 individual beats, is played continuously by the ensemble while Sartorius gradually makes alterations to the instruments played. The result is a piece that has a sustained rhythmic flow yet is perpetually changing. Sartorius' interventions and the precise musicality of the ensemble allows the listener to discover an expansive array of moods and intensities.

The album is structurally recursive but develops an almost mystical magnetism through an odyssey of diverse musical landscapes. Sartorius explains: "It amazes me deeply how much the sentiment can change based on a musical mood - this sense of curiosity is made audible with this album." The album recording itself is designed as an endless loop: at the end of the recording, the ensemble's sound has returned to its starting point, thereby completing an endless, self-contained cycle, with no beginning or end. In this way, Sartorius also echoes his 2021 album 'Locked Grooves'.

Julian Sartorius' precise and multi-layered rhythmical patterns are keen excursions into the hidden tones of found objects and prepared instruments, bridging the gap between organic timbres and the vocabulary of (experimental) electronic music. He has released numerous solo albums, creates audiovisual art works, collaborates with musicians, writers, and artists, and performs live in intimate venues and on festival stages.

Ensemble This | Ensemble That (ET|ET) have established themselves not only as interpreters of contemporary music, but also as collaborators to a wide range of artists including projects like Zimoun, Myriam Bleu, Strotter Inst., Lê Quan Ninh, Marko Ciciliani, Jürg Frey, and Michael Maierhof, amongst others.

Following up last year’s Acrobatic Thoughts album, Panoram delves even deeper into his own musical universe with Keep Looking Where The Light Comes From. We find the producer in confident form, exploring the fuzzy fringes of beauty and chaos. The result is an album that sounds even more like himself and yet surprising at each turn.


Opening track Feathers sounds like only Panoram can, buzzy arpeggiated distortion takes flight somewhere in the direction of a distant multiverse where Animal Collective and Boards of Canada soundtracked Koyaanisqatsi. But the psychedelic drift is all Panoram’s own, conjuring a stark sense of the uncanny with the repeated phrases. The digital guitar and vocal loops of I Can Only Repeat Your Love are practically on the brink of collapsing in on themselves, to the point where the structure begins to shift like a collapsing monument. Flat Stones nods towards ASMR, as flute and woodwind tones caress the ears and a whispered voice teases out an altered state.


It’s this dreamlike mood that pervades the whole album, a maximal effect that’s wrung from minimalist compositions. The Wide House picks up the baton from Laurie Anderson to trip gently through different states of awareness, while the piano patterns of Blank Sheep float through the synth ambience like ideas entering an empty dream. There Is A Hole Here is another mutant loop that unravels as it proceeds - the rhythms turn into a pulse, and despite what the lyrics say, it does indeed mess around with your brain.


Panoram balances dance tropes, classical composition, ambient drones and a washed out, fuzzy twist on avant garde pop, and manages to transform it all into a uniform whole that fits all those puzzle pieces together. Yet such is the assuredness of Panoram’s production that it sounds effortless. At this point, the music is more like a midwife, manifesting your future self‘s enlightened consciousness with surreal effect.

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A year after his debut, Raleigh's Echo Brown, returns to The North Quarter for his sophomore EP “Midnight Static”; a 5-track tour-de-force showcasing his maturity as an artist. Echo Brown balances his signature hazy, lo-fi chords and clinical drum programming with weighty bass tones, as Midnight Static moves between lighter and darker moods with elegant ease. Guest appearances are handled by rising Manchester star K S R and The North Quarter boss Lenzman. Echo Brown's talent and growth is on full display on “Midnight Static” and it's become clear that he's an artist with an exciting new voice that needs to be heard.

a a1. Motions ft K S R

Talla 2XLC is always at the top of beatport sales trance charts with his inventive originals and mouthwatering reworks. His next release Welcome To The Future on That’s Trance is an excellent update of the Schiller’s side project Nova released in 1999. Get ready for a magnificent uplifting euphoric trancer with infectious main melody to blow your mind and uplift your senses. Welcome To The Future employs psy trance sharp basslines, punchy booming kicks and classic trance percussion to create its intense drive while on top piano chords, gated trancy voices and nice synthy hooks are added to create a starling infectious result.

The breakdown is a magnificent cinematic journey with warm strings, airy pads, spacey sound effects and beautiful spoken female vocals describing a better future without the ugly side of our society. The finest highlight of the track is the incredible euphoric synthy riff that has the darkness and melodramatic tones that we all adore in our trance. When the beat strikes back this unforgettable melody is supported from additional melodic layers, piano chords and energetic acid over tones to toughen the proceedings. It’s one of those tracks that will easily crawl under your skin and become part of your trance DNA recalling the great epic Frankfurt trance sound with its industrial and high tech feel to it.

Welcome To The Future is Talla’s outstanding track out now on his own imprint That’s Trance.

More than a decade after the release of ´Land Lines', the mythical Humboldt County, California based duo of Brian Pyle and Merrick McKinlay reappears seemingly out of nowhere with 'Atheistsaregods'. With past releases on such cult-like labels as Root Strata, Weird Forest, Blackest Rainbow or Digitalis, Starving Weirdos were an indelible part of a sprawling and loose network of artists in Northern America whose DIY work ethic and extreme activity revolved around shoestring-budget constant touring, numerous limited editions on CDR, tape and vinyl and a relentless drive to push the boundaries of genre.

Out of that cauldron, Starving Weirdos stood out as one of the most persistent and visionary acts, developing a mind altering body of work that went from warm soundscapes through droney digressions, freeform improvisation and raucous noise summoned from a myriad of instrumentation and low budget processing - vocals, keyboards, violin, flute, percussion and an assortment of less identifiable sound sources. 10 years on their legacy remains a timeless and wildly under-appreciated one, but hopefully this new album will shine a light on their idiosyncratic approach. As time itself was never a constraint. This is music suspended outside of it.

Right from the start with the echoing percussion, dissonant keys and processed vocals of 'Haiku Nagasaki', 'Atheistsaregods' draws a continuous flux of psychedelic elevation that goes from the gloomy electronic motifs not unlike the early Cluster vibes of 'Invocation' into the dank percussive maze of the appropriately titled 'Barulho do Samba'. The self titled track induces a sense of post-apocalyptic vertigo via hallucinatory scraps of voice, suspended synth tones and reverberating field recordings, connecting into the droney mystics of 'Dudukahar (Reed Prayer)'. Coming full circle, 'For Vinny' brings back the echoing percussion amidst hypnotic cello lines until it drifts off into the unknown. With the same palpable sense of urgency, Starving Weirdos feel as vital as ever. And even if we didn't realize it we were in need of them. Welcome back.

Force Placement's AEROBICIDE EP is a killer workout of afterhours acid and galaxian breakbeat.

Four hypnotic bangers from Los Angeles with remix support from DJ Manny, D.I.E., and Martyn Bootyspoon

Los Angeles – Following releases on 100% Silk, Clave House, BANK NYC and Lost Soul Enterprises, FORCE PLACEMENT arrives on EVAR Records with four tracks of naughty squelching acid and breakbeat techno hypnotically calling you to the afterhours, backed by a trio of remixes from Martyn Bootyspoon, Detroit In Effect, and DJ Manny, representing North American excellence in techno, electro, and footwork, respectively.

A longtime friend of the EVAR crew from renegade breakcore parties in Santa Barbara to underground experimental electronics happenings in Los Angeles, Into the Woods and The Black Lodge resident Jason "Force Placement" James taps into his love of weird trippy atmospherics, rhythmic complexity and DIY punk/noise aesthetics to create this quartet of mystic, mysterious bangers, crafted with the MPC1000, Elektron's Octatrack sampler, the Korg minilogue, and Ableton.

The AEROBICIDE EP begins its killer workout with "Yeeks," a cabalistic ass-mover driven by a haunted female vocal sample floating atop locomotive bass and shakers – a factory's worth of industrial sounds and eerie accents move in and out of the mix, adding intrigue and interest.

Moving to the main room of the rave, "Balloon Animal" shoots you through an inflatable tube of squelchy acid techno as knives cut the air around you, while "Upsetter" adds a shuffling breakbeat rave bounce into the acid mix. "Quartered" chops it up with Clone-style dark analog electro that gets increasingly deconstructed by dirty, stretched percussion and rivulets of synth reverb raining down the walls.

Rounding out this occult aerobics class, some of North America's most compelling forces in dance music are called in for remix duty. Unsung electro hero Detroit In Effect aka D.I.E. – the man behind such classics as "RU Married" and "Get Up" – leans deep into the classic Motor City palette, pairing lush, spacey pads with that hard-swung Detroit bounce to create a mellow groover that will keep you going all night. Montreal's world-class party starter M. Bootyspoon recalls Substance Abuse-era Hawtin and mid-'90s Midwest techno on his "Balloon Animals" remix, with nasty claps and concentric loops of hard acid bleeps and squelches. And who better to tackle "Upsetter" than Southside Chicago's footwork futurist DJ Manny? The Teklife king eschews the romantic R&B tones of his recent Planet Mu album for a tough-as-nails rework that ups the tension and the tempo to create an otherworldly saga for the dance circle.

One of the world’s premier house DJs, Junior Sanchez re-imagines one of his early classics, releasing ‘Be With U 2.0 (feat. Dajae)’ via Club Sweat.

As a passionate advocate of preserving the spirit of house music Junior Sanchez mixes ingredients of the 1999 original, situating the warm buoyant bass underneath Dajae’s fervent and impassioned vocals, while implementing spirited sax tones for a soul-fulfilling affair.

An iconic anthem that has lit up dancefloors for over two decades, is served dance music justice with its rebirth. Junior Sanchez bestows the ‘Be With U’ gift upon a new generation, coupled with remixes from Yolanda Be Cool and Dance System.


Supports from: Claptone, Anna Lunoe, Tommie Sunshine, Sacha Robotti, David Penn, Riva Starr, Kryder, Shiba San, HeavyFeet, Kevin McKay, Jamie Jones, Pat Lok, Heldeep Radio - The Noise House, Vanilla Ace, Moon Boots, Norman Doray, Nick Catchdubs, severino panzetta, Don Diablo, Charles J, and Patric la Funk, TOCADISCO, Chris Lake, Paco Osuna, Dennis Cruz, Bingo Players, Mendo, Riva Starr, Don Diablo, Joachim Garraud, and Roger Sanchez

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A MAJOR EXPLORATION OF TOKYO'S CUTTING EDGE 80S SOUND THROUGH THE MUSIC OF CULT JAPANESE LABEL NIPPON COLUMBIA AND ITS BETTER DAYS IMPRINT, SELECTED BY BRITISH RADIO PRESENTER AND DJ NICK LUSCOMBE.

‘Tokyo Dreaming’ is a superb selection picked from the highly collectible Nippon Columbia label and its Better Days sub-label. For the occasion, we’ve teamed up with journalist and Japanese music expert Nick Luscombe who was granted rare access to the much-guarded Nippon Columbia's vaults for a masterful selection encapsulating the fascinating sound of Tokyo in the late 70s and 80s. The selection mixes electro, synth-pop, funk and ambient and features such artists as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mariah, Shigeo Sekito, Juicy Fruits, Hitomi "Penny" Tohyama and Yumi Murata. The tracklist includes many sought-after rarities and hidden gems which have never been released outside of Japan and the set has been newly remastered by Nippon Columbia. The album has been designed by famed London-based designer Optigram and is annotated by Nick.

Nippon Columbia, one of Japan's oldest music labels is also one of its most collectible thanks to its sub-label Better Days which, in the late 70s, became a hotbed for Tokyo's new generation of pop artists eager to experiment with ambient, electro and funk. Armed with a string of new Japanese-made synthesizers and drum machines that would soon take the world by storm, they made cutting-edge music, which has since become highly sought-after by a new generation of Japanese music lovers. Nick Luscombe, who has long been a leading advocate of Japanese music from this era, has handpicked a selection of some of the sharpest music released on these labels at the time.
According to Nick, “Tokyo Dreaming is a look back to an incredible era of Japanese music, that still sounds and feels like the future. It was a moment when brand-new music tech from Japan helped forge new ideas and experiments that permeated pop, soul and jazz and helped create new forms of music including electro and techno. The perfect meeting point that would help create a new soundtrack for modern living.“
?The selection starts with "The End of Asia" by Ryuichi Sakamoto from his 1978 ground-breaking debut "Thousand Knives Of" (reissued last year by Wewantsounds). The track became a staple of Sakamoto's and YMO's live shows and was even re-recorded by the group for their 1980 album 'X Multiplies'. The track is followed by Mariah's cult Armenian folk flavoured synth pop classic "Shinzo No Tobira" (1983), which first spread outside of Japan when the Scottish DJ duo Optimo started playing the track regularly at their shows.
?Chika Asamoto's "Self Control" (1988) and Jun Fukamachi's "Treasure Hunter" (1985) are perfect songs in the synth-pop canon, while Yumi Murata's rendition of Akiko Yano's "Watashi No Bus" and Hitomi "Penny" Tohyama's "Rainy Driver" both from 1981, move closer towards the slicker, funkier sound of City Pop.
?'Tokyo Dreaming' superbly showcases the breadth of 80s Japanese music and the way electro pop was a playing ground for musicians to experiment with many styles, as showcased by Akira Sakata's dub-enfused "Room" from 1980, Kazumi Watanabe's discoid "Tokyo Joe" (1980) and Juicy Fruits' "kawai" robotic Techno pop song "Jenie Gets Angry".
?The selection flows effortlessly between many shades of synth and ends with two cult classics in the form of Yasuaki Shimizu's "Semi Tori No Hi" and Shigeo Sekito's ambient-jazz masterpiece "The Word II" from his highly sought-after album "Kareinaru Electone (The Word) Vol.2" which, although recorded in 1975, perfectly announces the synth revolution to come. Tokyo Dreaming showcases the groundbreaking sounds of a city turned giant sonic lab which was restlessly inventing the music of the future.
Nick Luscombe is a highly respected and in-demand music influencer who discovers great music from all over the world and shares it internationally through his many radio shows and DJ sets. He has been in charge of music selection for various radio programs since 1999, and from 2010 - 2019, was the DJ for the popular BBC Radio music program "Late Junction”. He has also curated and presented music shows for Monocle and British Airways radio stations. He has worked as both Chief Music Editor at iTunes and Director of Music at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and is the founder of MSCTY.

Following the release of a number of EPs on Swiss, German, British and Australian labels, Trinidad will release their debut album ‘Palm Trees & Thirty Degrees’ on October 16th 2020.

The album draws on the Swiss-based trio’s experience of sustaining the energy of festival and club shows, while also providing the perfect background to a relaxed summer evening with friends.


The project provides an opportunity for the trio to indulge in a range of musical influences, blending together a mix of synthesizers with the haunting tones of a church organ, the warmth of a string quartet and regality of an opera singer. The album grew organically, with inspiration taking hold beyond the confines of the studio: the bonus track recorded with a Jamaican reggae singer in the back of a VW bus in Greece. Soundscapes from Colombia to India were captured and embedded.

With "Palm Trees & Thirty Degrees" Trinidad guide listeners on a journey to a tropical paradise; to a wonderful, perhaps peculiar place of confidence, created and shaped by the mental theatre of the moment.

The soft kiss of a warm breeze hits you as you adjust to your new surroundings ("Desembarco"); leaving the static chatter of your thoughts behind in the "Lobby" (feat. MonoAbe) of your mind; you allow yourself to imagine what the evening holds in store (“Kopfkino”); But first, there’s a drink in the “Sunset Bar”, a refreshing cocktail "Luciola" that serves as a gateway for you to plunge into the night. A night of unlimited possibilities, the first instances a blur ("Sagrada"), as time starts to lose its meaning ("Tempus Fugit"); everything spins, everything is possible, everything is ("Elevate"). Suddenly, hours (or is it days?) have passed – it doesn’t matter; what matters is the first sign of dawn, the unmistakable warmth dissolving the darkness (“Alma”); the beat slows, and you feel the "Libération" of the new day; looking around you see the moments you’ve shared etched on the faces of your friends ("Fleeting" feat. Julia Portmann); It is not goodbye, it is only "Au Revoir".

The album was produced by Trinidad in their own studios in Bern and Zurich. It features collaborations with a number of artists: Cornelia Aeschbacher Firmin (Hang), MonoAbe (Mallets & Percussion), Jack Williams (text of "Fleeting"), Julia Portmann (vocals), Zenyth (vocals) and Michael Meier (electric bass). The songs were mixed by Marcel Schneider, mastered by Benjamin Fay. Raïssa Lara Lütolf was responsible for the graphic design.

2025 Repress

On his fourth album proper, Now Here No Where, Danish producer Kölsch (aka Rune Reilly Kölsch) is charting new terrain. Fans of his ‘years trilogy’ – 1977, 1983 and 1989, released on Kompakt over the past decade – were privy to a kind of sonic diary, an autobiography, tracking the artist’s early years through three albums of superior, meticulously rendered techno. Calling in collaborators where needed – most notably, the strings of Gregor Schwellenbach – there was still something deeply personal going down, not quite hermetic, but internally focused; the albums proved not only Kölsch’s mastery of his chosen form, but also his capacity to make techno personal, individual, and to trace histories of the self through music. But on Now Here No Where, Kölsch finds his feet firmly planted in the present. Reflecting on his new album, he notes, “It is fascinating to write about memories and feelings that have had years to manifest and develop, but how would I approach current emotions?” It’s a good question: our past coheres through the narratives we build around memories, but the moment we’re in, the newness of the now-ness, is harder to navigate; this story is as yet untold. For Kölsch, this makes Nowhere Now Here “an album about life in the year 2020. A time defined by confusion, misinformation and environmental challenges. It is an emotional interpretation of personal and mental challenges, observations and personal growth.” Kölsch does this with music that effortlessly balances emotional heft with the dancefloor’s brimming desires. It’s a space that Kölsch has navigated for a while now – one of techno’s breakthrough acts, an in-demand DJ across the globe and a prolific and restlessly creative producer, he’s also Kompakt’s biggest-selling act – but Now Here No Where ratchets up the lushness, making for a delirious drift across twelve tracks that are at once perfectly poised and deeply trippy. “Great Escape” is an elegant swoon, an opener that pivots on a sigh and a prayer; then “Shoulder Of Giants” bustles into view, subliminal clatter and an aching violin line giving way to a riff that glows with fluorescence and iridescence. “Remind You” combines an odd ECM jazziness with notes from a twenty-first century torch song; “Sleeper Must Awaken” mines huge buzzing synths and lets them float, in and out of sync, with reduced, ticking beats; “Traumfabrik” (dream factory – there’s a giveaway) is oddly lush, the tones malleable and plastic, morphing across a glitching undertow. There are sad, emotional washes of strings throughout the penultimate “While Waiting For Something To Care About”, while “Romtech User Manual”’s patterns twist and shape in the light. Throughout, Kölsch never keeps his eye off the dancefloor, and you can tell this is his still his home. “The amount of energy and joy I experience every time I perform, has a profound effect on me. It has inspired me so much of late and has become an integral part of my musicality.” “The way we join in expressing our hope for the future every weekend has given me so much,” Kölsch concludes. The club as a temporary autonomous zone, as a space both of freedom and of politics; somehow, that’s all here, Now Here No Where. “Most of all, it is an album about hope.”

Auf seinem vierten Album “Now Here No Where” betritt der dänische Produzent Kölsch (alias Rune Reilly Kölsch) neues Terrain. Seine Trilogie mit den Jahreszahlen 1977, 1983 und 1989, die in den letzten zehn Jahren bei Kompakt erschienen war, hatte seine Fans durch eine Art akustisches Tagebuch, eine Autobiografie geführt, die die frühen Jahre des Künstlers über die Länge von drei großartig produzierten Techno-Alben nachgezeichnet hatte. Wo es nötig war, wurden Kollaborateure hinzugezogen - allen voran für die Streicher, arrangiert von Gregor Schwellenbach -, dennoch zeichnete die Musik immer auch etwas zutiefst Persönliches aus, etwas nicht Hermetisches, auf eine bestimmte Art immer auch nach Innen fokussiert. Die Alben bewiesen nicht nur, wie sehr Kölsch die von ihm gewählte äußere Form beherrscht, sondern auch seine Fähigkeit, Techno zu etwas Persönlichem und Individuellem zu machen und der eigene Geschichte durch Musik näher zu kommen.

Auf “Now Here No Where” steht Kölsch nun mit beiden Beinen fest auf dem Boden der Gegenwart. Mit Blick auf sein neues Album stellt er fest: "Es ist faszinierend, über Erinnerungen und Gefühle zu schreiben, die Zeit hatten, sich zu manifestieren und zu entwickeln, aber wie nähere ich mich meinen aktuellen Emotionen?”. Eine gute Frage: Unsere Vergangenheit wird im Innersten zusammengehalten durch Geschichten, die aus Erinnerungen entstehen, aber der Moment, in dem wir uns befinden, die Neuheit des Neuen, ist schwieriger zu beschreiben; die Geschichte ist noch nicht erzählt. Für Kölsch ist “No Here Now Where” daher "ein Album über das Leben im Jahr 2020. Eine Zeit, die von Verwirrung, Desinformation und ökologischen Herausforderungen geprägt ist. Es geht dabei um die emotionale Interpretation von persönlichen und mentalen Herausforderungen, von Beobachtungen und der eigenen, individuellen Weiterentwicklung".

Kölsch tut dies mit Musik, die mühelos kleine Gefühlsausbrüche mit den großen Sehnsüchten der Tanzfläche in Einklang bringt. Es ist dieser Zwischenraum, in dem sich Kölsch schon seit einiger Zeit bewegt, als weltweit gefragter und gefeierter Live Act, DJ und so unermüdlicher wie kreativer Produzent (nicht umsonst ist Kölsch der “biggest-selling-artist” bei Kompakt), doch “Now Here No Where” treibt all das noch weiter auf die Spitze: ein enormer Sog entsteht, der uns über zwölf Tracks hinweg gefangen hält wie ein perfekt ausbalancierter Trip. Der Opener "Great Escape" ist pure Eleganz, ein Track, der irgendwo zwischen Seufzer und Gebet hin und her schwankt; dann drängt "Shoulder Of Giants" ins Blickfeld, ein unterschwelliges Geklapper, eine wehende Geige, schließlich ein schillernder Riff, der in der Dunkelheit zu leuchten und zu glühen scheint.

"Remind You" kombiniert seltsamen ECM-Jazz mit einem sentimentalen Liebeslied des 21. Jahrhunderts; "Sleeper Must Awaken" schürft im Bergwerk riesiger Synthesizer, mal im Takt, mal aus dem Takt ticken die minimalen Beats; "Traumfabrik" ist ungewöhnlich “lush”, die einzelnen Töne, geschmeidig und modelliert, zerfließen in einem glitzernden Abgrund. Das vorletzte Stück "While Waiting For Something To Care About" wird von traurigen, emotionalen Strings untermalt, während sich die Strukturen von "Romtech User Manual" im Licht drehen und immer wieder neu formieren. Die ganze Zeit über behält Kölsch die Tanzfläche im Auge, und man merkt ihm an, dass sie immer noch sein Zuhause ist: "Die Menge an Energie und Freude, die ich bei jedem Auftritt erlebe, hat eine tiefe Wirkung auf mich. Sie hat mich gerade in letzter Zeit stark inspiriert und ist zu einem integralen Bestandteil meiner Musik geworden.”

"Die Art und Weise, wie wir an jedem Wochenende gemeinsam unsere Hoffnung auf eine bessere Zukunft zum Ausdruck bringen, hat mir viel gegeben", so Kölsch abschließend. Die Vision des Clubs als eine temporäre autonome Zone, als ein Raum von großer Freiheit aber auch von politischen Ideen, das ist irgendwie alles hier drin, Now Here No Where. "Es ist vor allem ein Album über Hoffnung."

Sublunar, the record label founded by Sciahri and Dagdrom closes his 2018 with a brand new EP from the Swiss based artist Nh. After his debut EP "Nihil", Nh is back on Sublunar with 5 new tracks of psychedelic, sinister and mind-bending techno.

The record starts with 'Outre', with his buzzing textures and tense, bleeping melodies while the tick kick drum hammer intensifies his presence. 'Spirales' is journey through a deconstructed blackhole, with the impressive and reverberating drums dominated by a sense of disorientation. Last track on the A-side is Vague, where the listener is put into an tight spiral of paranoid thoughts while the energy slowly grows as different tones come and go. The B-side opens with 'Non', deep hypnotics are paired with a dense, powerful and pounding kick drum. Portrait closes the EP, a foggy and heavy atmosphere that reach his climax before collapsing into a blissful ambience.

Remastered for 2025

Drumcode has become a label synonymous with some of the most-cutting edge and forward-thinking techno over the last 20 years. Their artists include both emerging and established names, and one of those well recognised is Enrico Sangiuliano. Now announcing the very first concept album of his career.

iomorph is born. A very special concept album designed to take the listener on a journey of evolution. A musical adaptation describing how biological and technological advances over numerous generations of time have all started from the same first step in our own biological journey.

Divided into 4 parts, Organisms opens with atmospheric tones, gradually blending complex textures and timbres to begin the evolutional process. The beginning of this section combines full sounding arrangements before stripping it all back to basics. From here it dissolves into the atmosphere. Organisms then progresses into a break-beat influenced, down tempo track using synths to add complexity to the straight, broken rhythms.

Galactic, futuristic elements are found in both tracks in Cosmic Forces. Upbeat, groovy, electronic synths resonate, before 'Hidden T' brings the tension to get things pumped up with stratospheric swirls and twirls to lay down one of the most mind meltingly deep drops.

Metamorphosis is mysterious, its opening beat is a deep and piercing tone that sends the listener into a sensory awareness of their surroundings before breaking into a fully charged, techno track, with Enrico's trademark sounds and textures.

All evolution has an ending.

Two Probabilities shows the positive, starting out evocative and emotional, with a gentle harmony, gazing towards a 'New Dawn'. On the other side of the spectrum lies the negative. This is influenced with a rhythm that articulates the beat of death, mathematical, cold and metallic in texture, it shows the unsustainability of its nature, with a hectic, anxious break beat influenced ending.

Black Truffle is pleased to make Oren Ambarchi's Grapes from The Estate available once more on vinyl. Originally released on CD on Touch in 2004 and reissued on Southern Lord as a limited double LP in 2006 during Ambarchi's tenure as a member of Sunn O))), Grapes from the Estate was a landmark release for Ambarchi, seeing him expand his sonic palette beyond the clipped, bass-heavy electric guitar tones he was known for at that point. Incorporating subtle layers of strings, keyboards, percussion over a bedrock of his signature guitar tones, in retrospect this album can be seen as the beginning of a broadening and evolution in Ambarchi's work that would lead to his acclaimed, densely layered epics for Editions Mego, Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016). Beginning with the shuddering pure tones of opener 'Corkscrew', which looks back to previous guitar-only releases such as Suspension (2001), the album's next two pieces show a progressive broadening of the instrumental palette and a corresponding move away from textural abstraction and sustained tones towards more traditional notions of musicality. This reached its high point on the album's third piece, the fifteen-minute long 'Remedios The Beauty', where guitars, both acoustic and electric, strings, piano, and bells build from a murmur to an interlockinging web of repeating melodic patterns over gently swinging brushed snare and cymbals. The epic closer, 'Stars Aligned, Webs Spun', returns us to a space populated only by the electric guitar, but unlike everything Ambarchi had produced up until this point in his career, the piece has a liquid, psychedelic edge that looks forward to the shimmering harmonics of his more recent work. As Brendan Walls wrote at the time of the original release, this is 'another outpouring of personal, intimate and enduring music from Oren Ambarchi'. Presented in a stunning gatefold sleeve featuring the original artwork and design by Jon Wozencroft. Redesigned by Stephen O'Malley Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin.

2026 Repress

Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany, Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson’s instantly recognisable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom, oppression and its opposing force, a love unbound.
After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her music into new territory. The resulting work, Un American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was among the very first to be declared an “enemy of the state” by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfils.
Along with the novel use of colour and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music and Vogue-era Madonna. Here the lyrics are direct quotes from the McCarthy-era, anti-Communist pamphlet 100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A. The Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.
While Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-bestthought basis there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout. Excalibur feels like the Molly of old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the vaseline of fuzz and hope, Red Telephone is wide-eyed, slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to the heavens with each evolving wave. Glistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks. Perhaps the album’s standout, however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffuse with empathy, solidarity and, in referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of fighting oppression with full hearts of hope.

p:m is delighted to welcome Kumarachi to the fold - a Nottingham-based artist with a deep catalogue steadily built over the past 11+ years. For the label’s first 10” vinyl cut, Kumarachi teams up with his old friend, the wonderful Liam Bailey, for some rudeboy pressure on the a side, while flying solo for the b.

Tracklist:
A. On Sight: snappy snares, snarling bass, and shifting percussion meet the dulcet tones of Liam Bailey, who turns in a different kind of original dancehall style vocal that gets people skanking and swaying.

B. Cast No Shadow: a heavy-hitting track of pummelling breaks and beats, heavy bass, dub fx, and synth stabs, reminiscent of Star Wars’ X-wings in space.

In Kumarachi’s own words: “On Sight was just a loop when I sent it to Liam, then arranged and built around his vocals. I played it to a couple of people for feedback and to test out, it luckily found its way to DJ Flight via Sweetpea, so a big thanks to her too. Both myself and Liam felt play:musik is the perfect label for On Sight, with what Flight stands for musically and culturally, there’s a definite alignment within the lyrical content aswell. It’s a perfect fit. Cast No Shadow was written later and specifically for this release to contrast and complement the flip. It actually came together quite quickly - referencing classic combinations, whilst hopefully sounding fresh for 2026.”

Mr Bongo proudly presents, ‘AFIM’, the second solo album by one of Brazil’s most exciting new talents, Zé Ibarra. You may be familiar with the hypnotic, entrancing tones of Ibarra’s vocals through his work with the Latin Grammy award-winning, four-piece, Bala Desejo and the band Dônica. He has also toured with the musical titan, Milton Nascimento, performing guitar and vocals, which is quite the honour and a testament to Ibarra's craft. As a solo artist, he has performed headline solo shows in Japan, Portugal and the US, as well as recently completing a support tour with the great, Seu Jorge.

‘AFIM’ is comprised of eight tracks, featuring Zé’s own compositions as well as cover versions of tracks by contemporaries and friends, Sophia Chablau, Tom Veloso, and Dora Morelenbaum. It combines elements of MPB, jazz, pop and progressive rock in a bold, authoritative style. The album represents the intersection between different facets of the artist, from the stripped-down, intimate, guitar singer-songwriter, to dense arrangements with sweeping strings sections. Writing this album allowed Ibarra "to explore sides of myself that had not yet been organized in an album: a certain darkness, a more cinematic musicality, a desire for new soundscapes.

The album features the single, 'Transe', a song with an instantly comforting tone reminiscent of classic Brazilian songs of the past (think Caetano Veloso). It is built on a rhythmic guitar that supports dynamic sound layers, opening space for Ibarra's intense interpretation. Cinematic atmospheres that lend an air of mystery come courtesy of string arrangements by Jaques Morelenbaum.

His unique cover version of Sophia Chablau's 'Segredo' is equally compelling, taking Sophia's punky-indie original in a different direction and making it feel like his own. 'Essa Confusão', a song celebrating the intensity of love and co-written by Dora Morelenbaum, is steered into epic, 70's AOR, singer-songwriter territory with wind arrangements by Ibarra, Jorge Continentino and strings by Jaques Morelenbaum.

The album is the result of the collaboration of experienced musicians and long-time partners of Ibarra. Fellow Bala Desejo and Dônica member Lucas Nunes co-produced the album. The core band featured on the record consists of Lucas Nunes on organs, Alberto Continentino on bass, Daniel Conceição and Thomas Harres on drums and percussion, Rodrigo Pacato on additional percussion, Chico Lira on Fender Rhodes and Guilherme Lírio on guitar.

The overall feel of the record is archetypically quintessential without slipping into retro mode. It is a stunning album from one of the finest musicians of his generation. A true star of Brazil’s blooming contemporary scene.

With Variations for Light Waves, Swedish composer Linnéa Talp deepens the focus and intensity that shaped her 2022 debut Arch of Motion. Once again, the breath and hum of the pipe organ form the album’s core, but here she pushes further into deep listening and sonic nuance. Across seven pieces, she lingers on the instrument’s most resonant points, allowing its character to reveal itself slowly and patiently.
Talp’s path to this work has unfolded with similar steadiness. After first emerging with her project Deerest, she shifted toward improvisation and minimal composition, guided by an increasing sensitivity to sound and perception. Careful listening is now central to her practice, informing both her methods and her musical language.
The album was recorded over four years on pipe organs across Sweden, including a small funeral-chapel instrument in Lötsjökapellet—an environment Talp describes as an exceptional space for listening. Several pieces feature Christer Bothén (contrabass clarinet) and Mats Äleklint (trombone), whose playing blends seamlessly into her aerated organ tones. The improvisation “Air On Both Sides,” recorded in 2022 with Bothén, became the project’s starting point, an immersive bath in glowing harmonics. At times she interweaves Buchla recordings, setting electronic breath against acoustic resonance.
Talp’s fascination with quietness and delicacy is balanced by an interest in sonic brittleness. The closing title track gradually dismantles a downward chord progression, drifting into gentle collapse, while the brief opener pushes the organ’s pipes into gasping strain. These moments create a music open to chance, instability, and transformation.
Threads running through the album include an interest in chords, subtle improvisation, light, and memories of coastal landscapes. Talp also connects the work to the “thick white fog” surrounding her daughter’s birth. The result is music that envelopes like mist yet continually reveals new shapes—a world o

Returning with his first artist album in 13 years, revered techno innovator Mike Parker continues to shape out his explorations around 170 with his latest work for Samurai Music, Echo Disintegrator. Transcending genre lines with his unmistakable sonic stamp, the seasoned US producer crafts an extended trip through his exacting, lithe frequencies and brutalist rhythms. As evidenced on recent EPs Envenomations and Sabre-Tooth, Parker can comfortably slip into a hard-stepping D&B structure and make it his own. 'Earth Energy Imbalance' leaps forth with precision and purpose, wrapping atonal synth shapes around the stark beat in staggering high definition. 'Positronic Tentacles' finds a similar rolling momentum, even threading ruthlessly trimmed vocal snatches into the lyrical pulse of the lead tones. 'Radiative Force' teases its own mutant funk out of the envelopes shaping the molten sonics coursing through the middle of the frequency range. Elsewhere, Parker explores a variety of accented grooves around typical D&B tempos, remaining reliably broken while dipping into half-time space on 'Lunar Nocturne' and finding a low-slung swagger in the carefully deployed pressure of 'Ghost Rain' and 'Echo Disintegrator'. 'Beat Activator' pivots on a dense bed of bass with a crooked, off-beat slant before 'Dragon Bravo' casts a similarly dembow-informed beat into a dense tapestry of cyclical machine shrieks and snarls. There is a ruthless consistency to Parker's approach across Echo Disintegrator, riding the loops without flinching and forcing the focus deep into the minutae of every sonic element. Both brilliantly functional and profoundly subtle, there's a visceral, physical quality to the sound design that makes it a listening experience like no other.

Getting back to simple things, Homemade EP is an allegory of a DIY mentality in an era filled with complexity and uncertainty.

The A-side leans into early-2000s electro and house, with tight drums and functional grooves.
"Rue des Loubards" (A1) kicks off as a groovy cut, filled with mysterious chords and sensual French vocals, layered with tight, driving drums. "Dreams" (A2) follows as an electro piece with aggressive synth riffs and cinematic vocals.

The B-side drifts toward a late-80s palette, with warmer tones and nostalgic feelings. "Godspeed" (B1) cleverly mixes Italo and new beat elements for a chiaroscuro effect. "Antwerp" (B2) closes the EP with a true journey, starting with trancey textures and skillfully drifting toward a synthpop conclusion.

Detroit original, Terrence Dixon, returns to Tresor Records to kick off 2026 with ‘When Stars Remember’. Despite his thirty-year career, Terrence has always managed to keep a lower profile than his peers; he has given few interviews, preferring instead to speak through his music, with cryptic song titles hinting at the thoughts swirling around their creation.
However, ‘When Stars Remember’ finds him stepping forward. “I wanted to get closer to the dancefloor. I consciously made this one feel louder…made with Tresor specifically in mind.” And the EP does just that: whilst many of the hall marks of a Terrence Dixon production are present, the drums are more forward; the synth arpeggios so bold that ‘monumental’ seems a better descriptor than ‘minimal’.
“I put three or four sounds together on the same track, layering to make something bigger”, he says of opening track ‘Mono Collapse’, though the statement could apply to any of the music appearing on the release as all four pieces fold in sonics to create something hypnotic; more than the individual parts: “If you stick with the same layered tones, and repeat it over, after a while your brain changes it on its own; you hear a lot of things: things that you didn’t notice at first, things that maybe aren’t even there.”
The absence of things is another main theme of the EP, especially what Dixon sees as ‘The Forgotten’, a group of fundamental principles like common sense, trust, loyalty, honesty and respect that are missing from modern life. “This world is different…the love is gone. But I love everybody, man. I think, secretly, everybody love everybody, but they just don’t know it.”

Peach Discs' first release of 2026 comes from fast-rising star of the Manchester scene PACH. (pronounced "pack"). Five slippery rollers built for dark rooms, wafty terraces and the most locked-in of afters.

"The Wake-Up Call" EP represents the full spectrum of the PACH. sound, one rooted in the minimal tunes coming out of Romania but with a cheeky playfulness that can only come from a life spent in the trenches of UK club culture. The A1 "Keep It Bubblin’" is a prime example, as Todd Edwards-style vocal chops flirt back and forth with dub-inspired feedback lines, or "5am Wake-Up Call's" skipping, UKG-adjascent hats. Things get a little rowdier with "Complex Waveform's" scuzzy bassline that wouldn't sound out of place coming from the Clone Records ecosystem. Here it's bolted to a chassis of tough, techy drums and trippy vox that tickle at your peripheries. Flip to the B-side for something a little deeper – the dubbed-out percussion and disembodied voices of "Not That Kinda Party" contrasting with the moody, low-key synthetic tones of "Book The Dungeon", both sharing a mutual concept of smartly stripped-back, hypnotic jams that focus on heads-down grooves and rolling energy.

Soft Echoes presents the first physical edition of ‘In a Few Places Along the River’ by Abul Mogard as a limited run of 500 vinyl copies. Originally released digitally in 2022, the album now appears in its intended form, marking the label’s second release.

Three long pieces, composed between 2019 and 2022, emerged from Mogard’s meticulous experimentation with analogue and digital instruments. Slowly evolving harmonic fields of layered drones and spectral textures drift across the record. They are enhanced by reverb from Scotland’s Inchindown oil tanks, which hold the longest reverberation of any man-made structure, giving the music a haunting resonance and a sense of suspended space.

‘Against a White Cloud’ and ‘In True Contemplation’ open the album with their nocturnal tones that gradually intensify into dense, immersive waves of sound. Side B is devoted to the 21-minute elegiacal piece ‘Along the River’, which flows between weight and silence, unfolding with reflective depth and moments of subtle transcendence. As one listener observed, “His music doesn't break the wilful suspension of disbelief: you stay in its trance.”

“Recording for this album began in 2019, when I was still living in London,” Mogard explains. “The first version of ‘Along the River’ was created at my studio near Brick Lane. It started with experimenting around a chord progression inspired by a classical piece I had once been recommended, though, strangely enough, I no longer recall what it was. Early in 2022, I revealed the identity behind Abul Mogard and wanted to mark this new period, so I decided to release it quickly, by myself, as digital-only.”

After returning to Rome, Mogard created the other two pieces, working with new digital instruments alongside his modular synthesiser, and integrated recordings from the London sessions. The music reveals a patient attention to texture and space, defining his usual restraint. Mogard adds, “I was trying to explore very subtle changes in the spectral characteristics of the music using extremely slow, intertwined tones.”

Described by critics as one of Mogard’s most melancholic and absorbing releases, the album maintains an austere beauty and contemplative weight, leaving a lingering impression that lasts far beyond the final note.

The music has extended beyond the album itself, with tracks appearing in films and contemporary artworks. Most notably, Swedish artist Peder Bjurman’s ‘Slow Walker’ audiovisual installation and French filmmaker Fleuryfontaine’s politically charged animated film ‘Soixante-sept millisecondes’.

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri and cut to vinyl by Lupo, the record emphasises the clarity and depth of Mogard’s frequencies, with each layer precisely balanced. The cover artwork and design are by Marja de Sanctis, who has collaborated with Abul since his first cassette release in 2012.