quête:third ear

Bringing together the elder statesman of the Zulu guitar Madala Kunene and internationally acclaimed Sibusile Xaba, kwaNTU pulls two generations of South African guitar mastery into a single point of focus. Under-represented on recordings outside of South Africa, Madala Kunene (b. 1951), the ‘King of the Zulu Guitar’, is revered as the greatest living master of the Zulu guitar tradition. Sibusile Xaba, whose collaboration with Mushroom Hour Half Hour reaches back to his first recording in 2017 (Open Letter To Adoniah/Unlearning), has garnered international acclaim for his unique voice and virtuoso guitar stylings, which bring together multiple South African guitar lineages in an original, spiritualised fusion. Collaborating with Mushroom Hour and New Soil for kwaNTU, the two players come together to weave a filigree sonic fabric which reaches down to the heartwood of Zulu guitar music but moves resolutely outward, building on the past to create a deeply rooted statement about present conditions and future travels. kwaNTU – which can be roughly translated ‘the place of the life-spirit’ – is also conclave of teacher and student, as Xaba has been taught by Kunene for the last decade. Meditative, rich and sonically sui generis, kwaNTU finds these two musicians linking up within the inimitable space of sound and spirit that they share through Kunene’s teaching.

The great masters of South African music have not all had equal exposure. For many years the generation of musicians who were exiled during apartheid took centre stage, as the regime made it very difficult for those at home to be heard. More recently, a new cohort of important voices, especially in jazz, has broken through to international consciousness. But for the generation of musicians in between – those who shone like beacons in the most difficult final years of apartheid and immediately afterward – international recognition has been slow in coming.

Madala Kunene, ‘the King of the Zulu Guitar’, is among this number. A revered figure for current generations of South African musicians, Kunene began his recording career in 1990, at the bitter end of apartheid, with a now classic self-titled LP for David Marks’ storied Third Ear imprint. Born in 1951 in Cato Manor, near Durban, he had determined to be a musician from early childhood, and by the time he first entered a recording studio he had already had a long career as a popular performer. His virtuoso absorption and transformation of the venerable Zulu maskanda guitar tradition and his richly spiritualised approach to music immediately marked him out as someone special, and in the years that followed, Kunene cemented his position as one of South Africa’s musical elders. He is without doubt the grand master of the Zulu guitar tradition, but his sound and sensibility ranges far beyond it into varied sonic terrain, and he has collaborated with a wide range of musicians both at home and abroad. Now in his mid-seventies, he remains a shining light for those that are making music in contemporary South Africa.

‘He is really an amazing person,’ says the guitarist Sibusile Xaba, who has been mentored by Kunene for over a decade, and now invites a collaboration with him on kwaNTU. ‘As a mentor, he's really powerful in showing us the way. For us to have this opportunity to make music together and have a project together is really a blessing to me.’

Xaba himself grew up in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, where his mother had been in a band and his father sang in a church choir, and from early childhood Xaba played homemade tin guitars. He only later realised that music was his calling. ‘I just loved music. I was fortunate. My parents loved music. And when it was time for me to leave home and go to study outside Newcastle, I knew that music was what I wanted to do. There was no second option. It was just music.’ Moving to Pretoria to study music formally, Xaba committed himself to his craft, developing a unique style that draws on both US jazz masters such as Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall, and the rich and varied heritage of the South African guitar, from inspirational jazz players such as Allen Kwela and Enoch Mthalane, to the music of the Malombo groups and Dr. Philip Tabane (Xaba has previously collaborated with Dr. Tabane’s late son, Thabang), and the Zulu guitar tradition embodied by Kunene.

‘I was really in love with the jazz guitar, I really admired it, and I was digging a lot in that direction,’ says Xaba, recalling his first encounter with Kunene’s music, over a decade ago. ‘And then one day on my timeline, Kunene popped up, and I was like – “What's this sound?” I was so connected to it. It really touched me deep. I started checking out his records, and then I found out he's from the same region as I am, which is Zululand.’ After Kunene played a show at the Afrikan Freedom Station in Johannesburg, Xaba make contact with him, and visited him at home in Durban. They struck up a friendship, and Xaba became the elder’s student, as Kunene began to pass on his knowledge and his inimitable way of playing.

kwaNTU is a tribute to this relationship and the deep learning that has defined it. The album was recorded in Zululand in the town of Utrecht, at a cultural centre called Kwantu Village, which gives its name to the album. ‘It's such a broad word,’ Xaba says, ‘but the elders teach us that Ntu is basically an energy, almost chi, an energy, a force that all living beings have within them. It's a living energy, so kwaNTU is like, almost the place of this energy.’ The two men sequestered themselves for five days of jamming, improvising and planning, and then the session was recorded in one take over a single night, with Gontse Makhene joining on percussion and backing vocals and Fakazile on vocals. Other voices and overdubs were later added in the studio in Johannesburg.

The result is a rich and meditative recording that finds two generations in a deeply engaged dialogue. Teaching and passing on his knowledge, the elder Kunene has brought Xaba into a space of sound and knowledge that they now share; Xaba’s own practice of deep communion with nature and his dedication to his musical craft make him the perfect interlocutor for Kunene. The result is an album that foregrounds the two musicians engaged at the highest levels of responsive listening, sympathetic unity, and collaborative concentration. Bringing an elder statesman of South African music to an international listening audience for the first time in decades by pairing him with one of South Africa’s most important new voices, kwaNTU is a meeting of generations and a powerful demonstration of musical lineage and continuity.

‘Before music, there is sound,’ Xaba observes, speaking of Kunene’s unique approach to music. ‘And sound is like a common compartment…it's not restricted to particular people or particular geographic places, you know what I mean? It's sound. Everybody can hear it. So when he constructs that sound into music, I think everybody resonates with the energy behind his construction of sound into song. Here at home, we really love him for preserving our history through the guitar, through his stories as well the music, the songs that he writes. We really, really admire him.’

With their musical roots deeply immersed in the fertile soil of Afro-American music, the Buttshakers have found a new direction for their nostalgia-heavy soul music. With Lessons In Love, their third album on Underdog Records, their early heartaches and furies have faded in favor of a more composed harmony – a sound enveloped in love and soaked in the blues. Guided by their singer Ciara Thompson, the Buttshakers have taken a more intimate path, whose compass, in the chaos of emotions and the modern world, points only in one direction: the light.



Seen from the sky, the view appears limitless. Accentuated by the sun, the ochre and sandy hues of the open road only reinforce this feeling of immensity. The sky stretches and the green stands out in striking contrast. In lighter tones, a road is drawn -- without bends or contours. This is the worn and weary road of soul music, which The Buttshakers explore on each album in new and unique ways. Soul music – a rare place to find a French band.

Vast, the musical direction could have taken them to lighter pastures. Yet the Buttshakers chose to evolve in a different way; to take a heavier load. Two paths – one sparked by social unrest, the other purely sentimental, Lessons In Love explores the deep roots of soul music, in the steps of Curtis Mayfield or Al Green. It is here that the heart and mind cross paths, merge, and become one. A weary road -- that brings together the agitation of a world where good intentions never rise above the level of digital outrage, and a faith in love which, however it manifests and expresses itself, remains the only truth that never loses its power.



Less rage and more compassion, it is through the haunting words and now tempered inflection of Ciara Thompson's voice, which opens to distinct emotions and perspectives, that the listener is guided. With its gaze fixed on the horizon, the acoustic guitar of Gotta Believe invites us on an intimate stroll through the open plains, while Dream On carries us away with a clavinet riff and a possessed saxophone; reconnecting the electric heat and neurosis of a city full of dreams. The senses are moved by the conjuring potion of the guitar which distills throughout Troubled Waters; the body is brought back into a visceral dance by the keys and brass section that are put to the test by Sure As Sin and its irrepressible rhythm. Passing through clouds of dust and sand has left a bluesy imprint on their groove: the miles travelled became hundreds, then thousands.



All of this leaves the listener bewitched by the halo of resilience that now surrounds Ciara's performance, as the ten tracks let the light fade. But certainly not hope in a better day. Like the sunflower that always lifts its head towards the sun’s rays, the Buttshakers continue to resource their sounds in the deep roots of soul music. Into the rich layers of African-American music of the 60s and 70s, The Buttshakers capture the spirit as much as the musical aesthetics of the epoch. A sound that reaches into the meanderings of the soul, bringing light to dark places and hope for all. A sound for the most parched of hearts, living in a damaged world, Lessons In Love confirms that even the tiniest beam of light can illuminate one’s path.

Among the true Keiji Haino devotees, Nijiumu’s Era of Sad Wings (released on P.S.F. in 1993) has always held a special place in the pantheon. Operating for only a few years in the early 90s and apparently only performing a handful of shows, Nijiumu operated at the opposite end of the dynamic spectrum to Haino’s famed power trio Fushitsusha, dwelling in a hushed, meditative realm of mysterious droning sonorities and free-floating melodies that occasionally erupts into violence. Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new double-LP edition of a lesser-known 1994 Nijiumu recording, When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that void, I bring comrade “prayers”, then, turning to face the outside, together we explode. Here, Nijiumu is the trio of Haino, Tetuzi Akiyama and the obscure Takashi Matsuoka, the three performing on a wide variety of string, wind and percussion instruments, as well as electric guitar and bass, and Haino’s unmistakeable voice.

Like on the early solo Haino album that shares the group’s name (released on P.S.F. in 1993), the instrumentation swims in reverb (the use of which Akiyama recalls as ‘a kind of point of the band’), often obscuring the instrumental sources. On the short opening piece, a distant reed instrument arcs long buzzing melodies over a bed of cymbals and gongs, like a psychedelic take on Tibetan music. The epic second part, occupying almost 50 minutes, begins as a splayed, near-formless cloud of electric guitar and bass, shadowed by bowed and plucked strings, the three elements working through twisting atonal shapes. At various points in the recording, we hear what seems to be the sounds of musicians moving between instruments, their shuffling and bumps fitting seamlessly into this radically open music. Eventually, what sounds like electric guitar moves closer to the foreground, fixing on a repeated melodic cell around which hover mysterious clouds of long tones and a sporadic shaker. At the half-hour mark, the music begins to build to a violently emotive climax, Haino’s impassioned vocal cries punctuating a lumbering, bass-heavy murk, contrasted at points by what sounds like a tin whistle. Suddenly, the volume drops to a near-whisper, opening the way for the stunning final moments, which touch on the slow-motion balladry of Haino’s classic Affection, here given an eccentric twist by an occasional woodblock hit. The third piece opens with a hazy trio of rumbling bass, bowed strings and abstracted slide guitar, the latter calling to mind some of Akiyama’s later solo work. Eventually joined by Haino’s voice, its fragile, haunted tone might remind the listener of the man in black’s documented love of the madrigals of the murderous Count Gesualdo, before the recording abruptly breaks off mid-note. In this new edition, the Nijiumu trio recording is supplemented by a piece recorded solo by Haino in 1973, a bracing electronic blowout stretching almost half an hour. Using a homemade electronics setup to unleash a barrage of crunching distortion and shuddering harmonic fuzz, it takes its place in the canon of extreme live electronics next to Robert Ashley’s Wolfman and Walter Marchetti’s Osmanthus fragrans, looking forward to extreme noise years before Merzbow. Taken as a whole, these four sides of music are a stunning document of some of the lesser-known waystations of Haino’s singular creative path.

London-based DJ duo, producers, and curators Earthly Measures announce their debut EP FROM EARTH, out October 3rd via Oath. The six-track release is a statement of rhythm, collaboration, and borderless sound.
Leading is the single 'QUE?' (feat. OKRAA), a fusion of Afro-Latin percussion, live textures, and UK breakbeat energy, anchored by a looping Fela Kuti sample.
Across FROM EARTH, Earthly Measures move through deep grooves, organic instrumentation, and global club culture. 'THIRD TRY' with DJ Raff blends warped synths, heavy bass, and Latin rhythms. 'EARTH GROOVE' with Balam hums with ancestral echoes and future-facing energy.
The EP also includes three remixes: Olsvanger's dubbed-out QUE?, Sun Sone's bright THIRD TRY, and Jinje's euphoric EARTH GROOVE.
With FROM EARTH, Earthly Measures step into the spotlight, weaving global rhythms into a cohesive release - a reflection of connection, community, and sound rooted in nature.

Acclaimed British artist Leon Vynehall presents is highly anticipated third album, In Daytona Yellow, via Ooze INC. Marking the next stage in the Ivor Novello-nominated producer and DJ’s evolving sound, In Daytona Yellow showcases Vynehall’s experimentations with fringe electronics, pop, and R&B, and his growing confidence through collaboration and live vocals. Across 10 hypnotically off-kilter tracks, we hear Vynehall at his most deft and diaristic.

Over the past 13 years, Vynehall has built a formidable reputation through his genre-defying artistry. From his early days as a leftfield house producer releasing on labels like Aus Music, Running Back, 3024, and Rush Hour, to his critically acclaimed debut album Nothing Is Still (2018) and the boundary-pushing Rare, Forever (2021), he has continually redefined his creative limits. While Rare, Forever was a bold step away from dance music—melding post-punk textures with experimental electronics—In Daytona Yellow pushes these experiments into a more traditional songwriting framework, inspired by both contemporary and 80s avant-pop.

In Daytona Yellow is set to be a career-defining release, cementing Leon Vynehall as one of electronic music’s most innovative and thought-provoking artists, part of a vanguard expanding the ambition of electronic music.

Exit were a five-piece ensemble of journeymen musicians from the lone star state of Texas who came together in the early 1980’s to record a handful of popular local 45’s including two Football-mania songs. The groups line-up consisted of lead guitarist and vocalist Clennis High, rhythm guitarist Lonnie Jones, his brother Johnny K. Jones the groups keyboardist, bassist Frank Houston Jr and George Oliver on Drums.

Clennis High, a promising Football player with a flair for playing the guitar began his early musical career while attending Wheatley High school. Aged 17, Clennis played on several Crazy Cajun, Huey P Meaux’s recording sessions for Eugene Gamble and Barbara Lynn. Further recording sessions on Roy Head followed before he accepted an invitation by his neighborhood friend Willie Parnell to play alongside a group of fellow students in a band called ‘The Drells’. ‘The Drells’ had been founded by Archie Bell in 1966 pulling together neighborhood friends James Wise, base singer Cornelius Fuller, Billy Butler, Willie Parnell joined later by Archie’s brother Lee Bell. Clennis would play with ‘Archie & The Drells’ through their time on Skipper Lee Frazier’s Ovide label often accompanied by the ‘Texas Southern University Toronadoes’ where they scored a hit with the dance instruction song “Tighten Up” which on the strength of Atlantic Records picked the group up. Clennis played on all 3 of the Drells studio albums “Tighten Up”, “I Can’t Stop Dancing” and There’s Gonna Be A Showdown” under Gamble and Huff’s tutelage before quitting to return home to complete his degree. He continued to play with several local Houston bands including the Cold Four who recorded the sort after “Love And Care/Low Riden” (Drells).

Clennis later formed ‘The Reality Band’ with his friend Jerald Grey which introduced him to George Oliver and Frank Houston Jr. Occasionally ‘The Reality Band’ played with other groups, one group in particular (which Jerald previously knew) being an outfit from Conroe, Texas called the ’58 Engineers.

‘The 58 Engineers’ were founded by Johnny and Lonnie Jones, taking their name from the Army unit Johnny served with during his time in the service. By 1973 having grown to 8 members the group entered the studio to record the highly collectable and popular funk outing “The Funky Fly (Part1 & 2)” on their own Bryant Records label (Bryant being the Jones brother’s mother’s maiden name).

As members of the ‘58 Engineers’ moved on, the Jones brothers found themselves working more and more with the ‘Reality Band’ so when Jerald Grey too later moved on the remaining ‘Reality Band’ members Clennis, George and Frank having grown fond of the two “Country Brothers from Conroe” as they affectionally called the Jones’s made the decision to continue working with them, which led to the foundation of the group, Exit.

During 1980 the recently formed Exit recorded the first of their two Football -mania songs but it is from the groups 1981 release “Success/One More Hour” (Dat-Tex 105) that Soul Junction have taken the splendid ballad “One More Hour” to pair with the flipside of the groups third release “The Little Green Monster” (Dal-Tex 106) which is now highly regarded and sort after by sweet soul/lowrider connoisseurs alike. Both of these songs have been put back-to-back to feature on Soul Junction’s forthcoming September 45 release.

The session that Clarence Daniel featured Obie (Young) Jessie on as the vocalist, consisted of three marvelous jazz/soul tracks. Two sides sold very poorly on release on the Modern subsidiary Affiliated in 1966. However, early in the next millennium, ‘Hard Working Girl’ was picked up and played by retro DJs to great acclaim. The demand for the few, scarce existing copies, rocketed the price, thereby leading to Kent re-releasing it.

The third recorded track at the session, was equally excellent, so we have taken the opportunity to release ‘Got A Good Thing Going On’ on vinyl as a Kent Select 45 for its many fans. With ‘Hard Working Girl’ now deleted and still needed by more recent converts, it makes for a great new release.

This exciting 45, features two previously unheard 60s, New York soul, dance tracks.

Big Apple session singer and occasional composer, Doris Willingham, first had a rare release on the Hi- Monty label in 1966 and then in 1968 cut four sides for drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. All were produced by Richard Tee and co-written with Doris. They were licensed to Ed Kassner who launched his Jay Boy label with ‘You Can’t Do That’ in both the UK and the USA. A change of strategy caused the US label to be discontinued after two releases and the UK then switched primarily to home-produced recordings. The two best Willingham sides lay dormant at President’s tape library until Ace released the killer ballad ‘Too Much To Bear’ in 2005. The fourth track is this superb dance number featuring the great Purdie band, no doubt featuring his usual bassist Jimmy Tyrell, who arranged the Hi-Monty 45.

The Taylor Brothers ‘Holding On’ is a much grittier affair, produced by Maxine Brown’s husband at the time, Mal Williams. The duo were Bennie “Earl” Bunn and Sam “The Man” Taylor and they wrote this, the third track recorded at the session that produced the ‘People In Love’ single on Joy. Sam had been a major mover in NYC black music circles since the 50s with his own bands and had fingers in many pies. The duo gave a performance worthy of some of the great 60s male soul couplings.

After careful consideration, Black Angus Records has changed its name to BKA Records – short for ""Beats Kickin' Again."" The label relaunches with an EP that fully reflects its roots: four impactful tracks by Italian artists who are now well established in the international house music scene. The first track comes from DJ Soch, founder of the label. It's marked by a powerful beat, driving bassline, and a flowing synth solo that builds tension and energy, aiming straight for the dancefloor. Next is Issam Dahmani, a young DJ and producer, now also a partner in the label, with a warm, full-bodied track that in some sections recalls the sonic approach of Kerri Chandler. A track that's hard not to play. The third cut is by Manuold, a seasoned producer from Palermo, who delivers a sound inspired by early '90s New York house, dreamy and atmospheric, with a strong groove throughout. Closing the EP is Nicholas (of Aura Safari) with a classic flavored production pulled from his archive: gospel touches, piano house elements, and swinging rhythms come together in a track that perfectly embodies the essence of house music.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking back on her career in the early 90s, Stevie Nicks described the first track of Rock a Little as “the most exciting song that I had ever heard.” This coming from a superstar who was already closely affiliated with several bajillion-selling Fleetwood Mac albums — to say nothing of her own benchmark solo debut. Her remarks attest to the enthusiasm and effort she invested in her third record, a 1985 work that quickly furthered Nicks’ profile and cemented itself as a piece of 80s pop lore.

Mastered at MoFi’s California studio, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, strictly limited to 4,000 numbered copies, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 45RPM 2LP set presents Rock a Little in audiophile sound for its 40th anniversary. Helmed by a cadre of producers and engineers, and recorded for a reported one million dollars, the platinum-certified album teems with a head-spinning array of colors, tones, dreamscapes, and accents. This reference-grade reissue marks the first time they are all brought to light and conveyed with proper balance, dimensionality, and positioning.

Though Rock a Little doubtlessly has period characteristics of a mid-80s LP, Nicks and company spare no expense when it comes to distinguishing the music with expansive sonics distinguished with lush melodies, high-tech percussion, echoing vocals, sampled keyboards, and layers of sophisticated accents. The degrees of spaciousness, headroom, and dynamics are nothing less than inspiring, while the newly enhanced detail, texture, and clarity make the songs sing like never before. As for Nicks’ voice? Wait ’til you experience the transparency and depth.

Those advantages extend, of course, to the aforementioned “I Can’t Wait,” a statement-making opener shot through with modulating synthesizers, splashy drums, metallic guitars, and serious drama. Holed up in a massive studio, Nicks required just one take to nail her part, which she called “magic and simply not able to beat.” The singer-songwriter also distilled the reverberating emotional essence of the Top 20 tune, stating “when I hear it on the radio, this incredible feeling comes over me, like something really incredible is about to happen.”

The same can be said for nearly all of Rock a Little. Crafted by the likes of Songwriters Hall of Fame multi-instrumentalist/producer Rick Nowels, Heartbreakers organist Benmont Tench, bassist Bob Glaub, jack-of-all-trades Greg Phillinganes, and session-pro guitarists Waddy Watchel, Les Dudek, and Danny Kortchmar — along with another two dozen or so participants — the record spills with diverse ideas, shapes, and moods. Everything is in the right place, as evidenced by the swirling glide and sensual undertow of the slightly funky title track to the snapping rhythmic pace and big hooks of “Imperial Hotel,” one of Nicks’ standout moments.

“What was it she wanted?” Nicks queries on “No Spoken Word,” continuing a theme of contemplation that runs through the narratives. Nicks never lands on a definite answer, but hearing her explore loneliness, love, and the secrets we keep to ourselves proves continuously rewarding. Take her passionate performance on a cover of Chas Sanford’s “Talk to Me,” a Top 5 smash furthered by tasteful saxophone lines and understated folk elements. Immersive yourself in the grand sonic corridors of “If I Were You,” laden with Nicks’ signature mysticism.

Moreover, surrender to the gravitas of the closing “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You,” a piano ballad composed about the death of Joe Walsh’s three-year-old daughter. As Nicks asserts earlier on the album, she sings for things money can’t buy.

So, rock a little, yes, but dare to feel even more.

For its third release, Tremendo Recordings brings together long-sought-after tracks by Corrie, one of UK tech house’s pioneers, drawn from his early releases on Wiggle and Bosh. Increasingly hard to find in their original form, these records return as a tribute.

Taken from releases between 2003 and 2005, this selection captures a side of Corrie that feels immediately recognisable: bold, playful and unmistakably his own.

Saint Seiya returns with a 7th vinyl, once again featuring the legendary composer of the series: Seiji Yokoyama



Synopsis: The god of the seas, Poseidon, threatens to submerge the Earth beneath the waves. To counter this threat, Saori Kido, the reincarnation of Athena, travels to Poseidon's underwater sanctuary, where she is imprisoned within the central pillar, absorbing the waters to delay the flood. The Bronze Saints, led by Seiya, dive into the undersea realm to rescue Athena. They must face Poseidon's Generals, each guarding a pillar that supports the oceans. Through intense battles, they uncover that Kanon, the twin brother of Gemini Saga, is secretly manipulating Poseidon from the shadows.

This vinyl adapts the third arc of the series, the Poseidon Arc.


Seiji Yokoyama continues to captivate us with the sound of the mandolin, while the Mediterranean accents of this OST give it a distinctive and highly recognizable character that perfectly matches the third season of Saint Seiya.

SHDW's Mutual Rytm imprint is back with its third release of 2024, marking a full label debut from Sonic Propaganda with their 'Native' EP.

Sonic Propaganda comes from the collaborative minds of Earwax and Rosati, a pair who favour dark and intense techno sounds and take inspiration from Jeff Mills and Robert Hood. In the studio, they blend analog and digital technologies into smoky warehouse atmospheres and immersive journeys that connect with listeners on an emotive level, and this full EP lands following their contribution to the third instalment of the Mutual Rytm's Federation Of Rytm compilation series in February.

The powerful 'Native' opens up at high speed with tightly coiled drum loops that never let up. Sleek metal percussive sounds peel off the grooves and lock listeners into a perfect state of hypnosis. 'Soul Pressure' is just as absorbing, with a tense bassline keeping you on edge as the train-like drums march under incendiary hi-hat ringlets. There is plenty of perfect machine funk to 'Terminal', which has more rusty synth textures and chopped-up vocal fragments humanising the turbulent grooves. 'Basic Path' brings an extra skip to the kicks as they enter, scuffed up and flowing just above the groove, while vocal pulses and twitchy synth modulations bring the detail. 'Body Empire' closes the vinyl package with a deeper vibe and pensive synths that add warmth and soul to the brilliantly mechanical grooves, while digital bonus 'Acid Riot' closes with squelching acid lines amongst a swell of analog crunch and laser-sharp percussion.

Blue Vinyl

Seba smashes his way into 2022 with the much anticipated release of his third studio album, "Ingaro".

Prepare yourself for ten brand new tracks of Seba. Secret Operations presents the first LP in almost ten years, from a producer who believes albums are not to be taken lightly.

"Ingaro" takes it's name from the small island outside of Stockholm, which Seba has called home for the last 20 years and is also where he spent his formative years.

The new LP takes the listener on a soaring journey through the entire Seba sound. Whether it's the dark and insistent forces of "Horse Power", which grow and fold in on themselves throughout the track, or the blooming euphoric roller "Public Beauty". A fresh collection of tracks which contain the unmistakeable Seba DNA, which has helped cement the name Seba firmly into the world of drum and bass.

Any album is not complete without some guests joining along the way and Seba has also enlisted some helpers on the journey and the LP includes collaborations with Collette Warren, Björn Berglund, Samuel Lancine and Blackeye.

For many, Seba is a name they are very familiar with. From his early releases on Good Looking right through to the present day Seba has made a name for himself for his exciting and varied production.

His music draws influence from far and wide across the musical spectrum and his work alongside the legendary Paradox and vocalist Robert Manos have gone down in Drum and Bass history.

Not just famed for his work in the studio, Seba's sets have gained a reputation for their energy and emotion. One of the scene's unique veterans. Seba's work is inspiring producers and fans more than ever. An album which sets the bar high for 2022!

The duo of DJ producers DJ Marrrtin and Deheb reunite after a five-year hiatus, during which they each pursued solo
projects. Deheb released the LP Jazz Mirrors, while Marrrtin put out a Disco Funk EP titled Aktshun, a hip-hop album La
Pie Bavarde in collaboration with Dayton, Ohio rapper Tino, and his third solo project Cyclothymix.
They return with a new 11-track album steeped in Jazz-Funk flavor, blending heavy breakbeats—recalling their earlier
albums that have been featured at major international breakdance events—with nods to their shared influences: Jazz, Latin
Funk, Hip Hop, Psychedelic Groove, Library Music, and Blaxploitation soundtracks. The record plays like an imaginary film
score, a sonic illustration of a relentless chase scene—picture The J.B.'s jamming with Piero Piccioni, accompanied by
Mongo Santamaria.

The album features a lineup of international collaborators, including:
Saucy Lady (USA) on Tambourine,
Felix (Fusik, USA) on Payback Run,
Roma Scotch (True Flavas Band, Russia),
Leo Debroise (Namas Trio, France),
Medline (My Bags, France),
Louise Chavanon, an incredible 18-year-old flutist from France,
and Antoine Laloux (The Selenites Band).
This album further develops the duo’s signature sound—a perfect blend of powerful grooves and deeply soulful musicality.

500 Copies , Covers hand made screenprinted and Hand Numbered
400 white with Black ink
100 with various colours

lim. 2xLP colored yellow and oxblood vinyl with Poster, Sticker & Mp3 Download!

We are back with another chapter in our ongoing series of unearthing smooth vibes from all over the world, this time we go back to the FUTURE for you with: THE SUNSET MANIFESTO Volume 2. After a five year break mainly concentrating on the late 70s/early 80s Westcoast Soul/Yacht/AOR sound, we finally dive deep into the modern world of our beloved sister-label Too Slow To Disco NEO (for the third time after 2018s TSTD NEO - En France and 2020s The Sunset Manifesto excursions). But of course it wasn't a real 5 year break since the first Sunset Manifesto compilation, as in the meantime we also released a few digital TSTD Neo singles, and - more importantly - our "Too Slow To Disco NEO - FM" playlist on spotify (handcurated by Dj Supermarkt every week and now hosting more than 1500 tracks of mellow, modern sunshine vibes) was growing steadily and becoming a new, important fixpoint in the TSTD musical universe. TSTD NEO is the outlet Dj Supermarkt is using to unearth modern laidback, smooth, sunny slow disco vibes with a soulful Westcoast/Balearic touch. For him TSTD always has been about a laidback vibe/feeling, not a certain time period in musical history. And that sunny Westcoast vibe we dug out on those traditional TSTD compilations has become a huge influence to so many modern artists. So it makes sense that we present the cream of new slo/mo NuDisco/Sunset Disco/Daytime Disco acts in the TSTD format, a luxurious compilation, with artists from all across the globe: Not only from the two homelands of that modern slow disco sound, Los Angeles/California and France, but also from Beijing, Montreal, Mexico, London, New York, Stockholm, Rotterdam… the moon, you name it! This music is more a state of mind, a feeling, then a geographical thing. We are happy and really excited to annouce the following passengers are on board with exclusive tracks: Poolside, Woolfy, Prep & Eddie Chacon, Turbotito, Young Gun Silver Fox, Lovetempo, Kimchii, Goodvibes Sound a.m.m.

AN ATLAS OF LOSS

Do minerals dream of becoming semiconductors? Do they yearn to carry charges, amplify, switch, and convert energy into emotions comprehensible to humans? And what if, from the darkness of the underground, they had been listening to us sing in caves before the emergence of the first flute? Could they have guided us, through the course of history, to find them, extract them, and create new sounds through sinusoidal waves, to form valves and bend circuits?

If so, minerals would transition from what philosopher Eugene Thacker defines as the ‘planet’—that virginal and unreachable realm for humans that we study through geology, paleontology, and environmental sciences—to the ‘world,’ the space we inhabit, interpret, and synthesise in our daily lives. Sadly, we only remember the world when it erupts violently, through climate catastrophes or when a new virus emerges. Sometimes a tsunami collides with a nuclear plant, or viruses are cultivated as biological weapons in high-security laboratories, provoking a deep biological anxiety, hard to quell, which we all feel beneath our skin.

There exists a third realm, disconnected from both the world and the planet: the ‘earth’, an immense, dense rock floating in space alongside other planets, situated in the cosmological dimension. Relating to the earth is so complex that we only do so through theoretical speculations of a scientific nature or through science fiction, interweaving until one becomes the prophecy of the other, in an infinite, pendular dance. Beyond the darkness of space and Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, the fantasy of human extinction is the most recurrent: to reach a collapse so devastating that we do not survive it, even though the earth does, without us.

In a world where we quantify everything through body sensors, financial algorithms, nanometre-scale robots, and surveillance drones—a world in which everything that can be domesticated and controlled can also be commodified—a superior artificial intelligence would survive the collapse of the species (some speculate it might even cause it) and learn from our mistakes, thanks to our obsessive gathering of data.

Long after our voices fade, minerals will persist in the darkness of screens, in the silicon of chips, and in their pure form, still unexploited underground. Over the millennia, this intelligence might piece together fragments of our reasoning, as if an alien civilization finally connected with one of our spacecrafts loaded with messages cast into the void. It would sort through endless streams of data, unable to grasp the depths of emotion behind what it quantified, recreating simulations of our past, stripped of the nuance that once defined us and conducting experiments in sandboxes.

Some remnants of our existence—faint echoes of forgotten beauty—would be pieced together in an atlas of loss, buried beneath layers of numbers, decayed bots, and corroded hard drives. What will follow? Perhaps bison will once again roam—trotting to the strange pulse of techno, their ancient forms framed by the ruins of our cities.

Buildings will crumble, slowly dissolving under the soft touch of ambient music, and a thousand flowers will bloom with that ancient music created through electrical signals and computation. 7 songs for a future both improbable and inevitable—a final message from a world lost to itself, from planet Earth to planet Earth.

Alfons Pich, 2025

Mr Bongo proudly presents the third album by Melbourne/Naarm multi-instrumentalist, Don Glori, entitled ‘Paper Can’t Wrap Fire’. A kaleidoscopic genre-surfing odyssey that brings together the worlds of jazz, soul and funk. Feeling both contemporary and classic, familiar yet novel, it’s an assured third release that sees an artist in full flight, showcasing their creative prowess and the uniqueness of their musical voice.

Steering in a new direction, Don Glori (aka Gordon Li) has delved headfirst into his songwriting with ‘Paper Can’t Wrap Fire’. Deftly showcasing his talents as a writer and bandleader, he brings with him a whole host of friends from the creative crossroads that is Naarm. It’s an album enriched with more soul, R&B, and funk-oriented songs than his previous jazz-rooted productions, yet there’s still plenty of jazz material for those familiar fans of Don's earlier works.

The album’s title is an old Chinese proverb, roughly translated as 'you can’t deny the truth'. This underlying thread is woven between the songs. “A lot of them are in some way about truth-seeking, observations and the masks you put on to deal with life (hence the cover art)”, Don mentions. Take, for instance, the sensational soul single 'Brown Eyes' featuring silky lead vocals by ML Hall. A dissection of the minority experience, and the power and comfort in building those communities. Elsewhere, 'Disaster' is a satirical take on the structures serving everyone but the artists, and 'Flicker' tackles notations of truth and clarity after introspection.

To marry that meaning with the level of musicianship on these tracks is what really stands out. Don has set out his stall here as an artist who can write songs that hit home in the heart, as much as they do in the head. It’s a journey infused with a glistening jazz finesse, layered with nourishing vocal harmonies and powered by an instantly relatable human soul.

Recorded over two hot summer days in Rolling Stock Studios in Collingwood, Naarm, the lineup of musicians is built up of Don's friends and family. Featuring the backbone team of Tim Cox, Al Kennedy, Joel Trigg, Robyn Cummins and Lachlan Thompson, who were part of Don's touring band before he relocated to London, and a stunning selection of vocalists in the form of ML Hall, Ruby Dargaville, Isadora Lauritz, and Bianca Kyriacou. Also gracing the album are trumpeter extraordinaire Audrey Powne, saxophonist Joshua Moshe, and Alcides Neto who sprinkles some Brazilian magic into the record.

Taking influence from artists including Azymuth, SAULT, Jordan Rakei and Lynda Dawn, as well as from London musical beacons such as NTS and Total Refreshment Centre, Don has run with this, leaned in and come out with a record truly unique to himself and his distinctive core, with no mask necessary.