quête:trail

Following releases on E-Beamz, Natural Sciences, and Who’s Susan, the German-based DJ Swagger returns to Nerang after appearing on the label’s ‘Freaky Friends Volume 1’ compilation earlier this year, bringing yet another bout of high quality, high energy output to the table.

2023 Repress

For over 25 years, KOMPAKT strives to bring Techno, House and everything in-between to the dance floors of generations that come from (or live) in the past, present, and future. Today, we proudly present an anthem that truly speaks to us in the spirit of what lead us to create our SPEICHER series.

ANNA returns for her third round on SPEICHER following an incredible year of non-stop touring the globe, remixing JON HOPKINS and contributing to a recent AFTERLIFE compilation. KITTIN (formerly known as MISS KITTIN) needs no introduction - she is nothing short of a trailblazer in dance music history by contributing countless times through her voice, music and DJing.

Together they are FOREVER RAVERS - dispatching a message of everlasting unity for the dance floor community. ANNA brings her most voracious production skills to date interwound with KITTIN sounding at her best in an explosive consequence that we can only describe as being a must-hear Techno hymn.

ANNA takes the original past the stratosphere with her RAVING IN SPACE MIX. Not to be misinterpreted as a dub version, ANNA keeps the potency of the original but expands the core instrumental elements that moves from suspension to release in a decisively throttling means.

Repress

Sam Binga returns to drop his debut EP for Critical Music. Inviting back the infamous Redders for vocal duties, picking up where his trail blazing single AYO and the much loved 'Lef Dem' from Critical's 'Underground Sonics' LP left off. A deft combination of low slung beats and bass with a nod to the jungle tradition.

Australian label Nightime Drama, run by Peter Fincher (aka Vibrio) and Shaun Franklin (aka Trebek) now serves up its second standout release of 2016. This four track affair comes hot on the heels of the last by Yoshihiro Arikawa, and is a second release on the label by Aussie live act, DJ and producer Trinity, with Steven Tang and Italian based Andee on the remix. Trinity has also released on OOC, Coincidence and Android Muziq and regularly performs all round Europe. His sound deep and cosmic, heady and hypnotic, as the fresh tracks here prove. Cascade Drive is seven minutes of direct and elastic house with spacey pads and driving drums carrying you through the cosmos. From the Earthmothern label and one half of RK's, Andee strips it back to a slick rubber kick drum then layers in a forceful acid line and icy hi hats to really get you under its spell. The longform groove is physical and cerebral in equal measure. The next original is Expansion, and again finds Trinity serving up a hi tech and soul infused deep techno sound that is lithe and liquid, smeared with great pads and truly timeless. Emphasis boss Steven Tang is the perfect man to remix given his style, and his version flips the cut into a more heavyweight and banging techno effort, but one that is just as littered with sci fi sounds, spaceship trails and intergalactic energies.

Hit the North is a DJs’ movement
Not a label. Not a revival. A discipline.

Over the years, the collective travelled across multiple states in the US and parts of the UK, digging deep into private collections, basements, garages, storage rooms and forgotten boxes.

They weren’t looking for classics.
They weren’t looking for hits.
They were looking for attempts.

Artists chasing something bigger than themselves.
Trying to sound like Motown.
Trying to sound like Detroit.
Trying to sound like the records that saved them.

Many of them dreamed — at best — of becoming a one hit wonder.
Most never got that far.

Some never crossed a state line.
Some never crossed the street at the end of their block.
Some never played outside their hometown.
Some never played at all.

What they left behind were fragments.

Raw versions.
Unfinished recordings.
Alternate takes.
Rejected mixes.
Test pressings.
Acetates passed quietly from hand to hand.

Sometimes with real credits.
Sometimes with fake ones.
Sometimes with handwritten labels leading nowhere.
Titles that didn’t match the music.
Stories that changed every time you asked.

Often, the trail simply disappeared.

What remained was intention.

Energy.
Urgency.
Hope pressed into sound.

So the collective worked on it.

They edited certain parts.
Extended others.
Cut what didn’t serve the floor.

Not to modernise.
Not to rewrite history.
But to unlock the power that was already there.

The result sounds like Northern Soul pushed to its breaking point.
Fast. Physical. Emotional.
Built for movement.

Some circulated privately.
Others were never pressed at all.

Recorded in personal studios, borrowed studios, friends’ rooms, temporary spaces.
Always outside the system.

This is not nostalgia.
This is unfinished business.

2026 REPRESS

Pure, Distilled Dub. Upholding Jamaica's Legacy As Well As Germany's Unequivocally Influential Dub Techno Spirit, Moonshine Recordings Proudly Welcomes Their Next Addition To The Roster. On The Controls For The 9th Full-length Album Release, A True-to-the-roots, All-analogue Musician: Another Channel. Having Put Himself On The Map With Releases On Soukah's Blacksoil Records, Bristol's Transient Audio As Well As On Australian Imprint Modern Hypnosis, It's Now Time For The Album Release, We've All Been Waiting For. No Computer Involved As Impeccable Arrangements And Analogue Reverberations Unfold. Live And Direct In The Original Dub Mixing Fashion, The Augsburg-based Artist Uniquely Transports The Sonic Characteristics Of Rhythm & Sound Into The Present Time.

Subtle Vinyl Crackles Gently Introducing Meditative Beats, 'run Dub' Sets The Pace. Keen Listeners Find Themselves Embedded In Lively Echoes And Reverbs, Left To Bask In Smooth, Sonic Contemplation. Engineered To Soothe The Soul, Timeless Foundation Sound. Intensified Groove Meets Low-frequency Pressure In 'amir Dub' Among Haunting Melodica Fragments. '(yes!) Badness' Unsheathes Its Off-kilter Swing, Vocal And Foley Samples Musing In The Distance - Further Showcasing Another Channel's Technical Prowess. Heavy Chord Stabs And Delicate Overdrive Counterpoint The Immense Scope Of Conjured Space In 'ael Na Dub', Concluding A Beautiful A-side.

Lush Chords Lure Us To The Flip-side - 'solid' Kicks Off With A Staccato Bass-line In The Midst Of Lavish White Noise Surges And Minimal Drums. Rooted In Endless Feedback Trails, Steadily Kept In Check. Previously Teased, The Mighty 'ethiopian Dub' Steps Through In Full Glory, Carried By Militant Drum Motion And Forceful Low-end. On A More Spacious Excursion, 'uranus' Takes A Brightly Lit Stroll Through The Analogue Dub Universe, Led On By Another Channel's Signature Groove Propulsion. Pointing Back Towards A-side, Prolific Dub Proponent Babe Roots Presents His Musical Qualities In A Monumental Remix Of 'run'.

Ezra Collective’s Chapter 7, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, captured the restless energy of a young band finding its voice - spiritually curious, rhythmically fearless, committed to community as compass. Built on grooves made for sweat-slicked basements and late-night communion, its seven movements reveal a blueprint forming: jazz as a living expression of where you come from and who you stand with.

The forthcoming Chapter 7 (10th Anniversary Edition) reissue revisits that formative statement from a band that would soon become trailblazers as both the first British jazz act to win the Mercury Prize, and then a BRIT Award. Remastered for vinyl and expanded with new incarnations - live cuts from NPR's Tiny Desk and the band’s landmark Royal Albert Hall performance - the reissue presents Chapter 7 not simply as an early document, but a living manifesto: rhythm as ritual, youth culture as sanctuary, and jazz as an open invitation.

Pressed on black vinyl, housed in a single sleeve jacket with printed inner sleeve, featuring credits and a message from the band.






k B3. Chapter 7 Live at NPR's Tiny Desk
m B4. I Have a God (Feat. Zara McFarlane) Live at the Royal Albert Hall






[k] B3. Chapter 7 [Live at NPR's Tiny Desk]
[m] B4. I Have a God (Feat. Zara McFarlane) [Live at the Royal Albert Hall]






[k] B3. Chapter 7 [Live at NPR's Tiny Desk]
[m] B4. I Have a God (Feat. Zara McFarlane) [Live at the Royal Albert Hall]






[f] B3 | Chapter 7 [Live at NPR's Tiny Desk]
[g] B4 | I Have a God (Feat. Zara McFarlane) [Live at the Royal Albert Hall]






[f] B3 | Chapter 7 [Live at NPR's Tiny Desk]
[g] B4 | I Have a God (Feat. Zara McFarlane) [Live at the Royal Albert Hall]

“Released on Joe Boyd’s Hannibal label here was a band rooted in Thompson/Swarbrick Fairport but also a snatch of the Velvet Underground and a sprig of The Byrds. The Eighteenth Day Of May evoked a legendary era, and now they are a justifiably legendary band too.” – KLOF Mag

Beginning life as a trio in London, 2003, the original line-up consisted of Allison Brice (vocals, flute), Richard Olson (acoustic guitar) and Ben Phillipson (guitar, mandolin) before expanding the following year to include the rhythm section of Mark Nicholas (bass) and Karl Sabino (drums, autoharp) and finally Alison Cotton (viola).
This being the mid zeros, the independent music scene in the UK was reluctant to embrace a sun-dazed folk band but this, their sole album, has gradually feathered a bed of affection amongst international folk fans. Twenty years on, the album is now rightfully seen as a trailblazer for the myriad alternative/psych folk bands that emerged in its wake.
Andy Childs who signed the band originally takes up the story. “I first heard their music on a cover mounted CD with the much missed Comes With A Smile magazine and as far as I could tell no-one was making music like this anymore, certainly not with such panache and confidence. To my jaded ears it all sounded so uninhibited - old weird folk songs, Americana, original psych-folk, minimalist drones. Great melodies and all six of them could sing! A joyous, unfettered sound that could in one moment conjure up flashes of The Byrds and then effortlessly the spirit of Velvet Underground would drift through. They even covered a Spacemen 3 song. I loved the fact that they had the aplomb to tackle traditional folk songs like Lady Margaret and Flowers In The Forest and not be afraid to stamp their own identity on them.
Signing them to the Hannibal label was straightforward. If anything the album somehow sounds fresh and undated, even better than it did in the day when perhaps eclecticism was out of synch with the times; its subtleties have become more apparent.”
“Their rendition of Lady Margaret builds to a headswirling crescendo that challenges anyone who claims Shirley Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie or Trees have recorded the definitive version and the hallucinatory The Waterman’s Song To His Daughter raises an already brilliant album to an unholy level” - IT’S PSYCHEDELIC, BABY Magazine

STINGRAY returns three years after Fortress Britain. Back with a new line up and an ever more savage sound, massive sounding on a 5 track 12” EP.
ENEMY is London on a plate. Stench-tinged hardcore punk born of the ever reaching infinity of Britain’s complex and confusing capital. Nihilistic acid burns in the style of NEUROOT, DEATH SIDE and DOOM, under a few minutes per piece, peppered with prosciutto-dipped VAN HALEN style solos Ala later WRETCHED or SHOTGUN SOLUTION. Vocal visitations by Ciara Savage bring frightening melodic elements into the occasional foray into truly irresistible mosh, not far from the barbed wire trailblazing of GASTUNK, SOD, and SACRILEGE before flying back into fast paced passages of “Scandinavian Jawbreaker” worthy velocity.
Recorded at Fuzzbrain by Jonah Falco. Mixed and mastered by Chris Corry at the Paincave. Draped in a Tin Savage sleeve, and released on the ever eternal home of musical suffering, La Vida Es Un Mus Discos.

Australian composer-performers Judith Hamann and James Rushford have worked together in countless projects for two decades, perhaps most notably in Golden Fur, their trio with Sam Dunscombe. Black Truffle is pleased to announce Midmeste, their first work as a duo. Its title is Middle English for ‘the middlemost point’, alluding to how the piece builds on the points of overlap between the highly personalised musical languages Hamann and Rushford have developed in recent years. Performed on cello and a variety of pipe organs, Midmeste is a spacious, sometimes unsettling exploration of their shared interest in alternative tunings, psychoacoustic phenomena, the physical properties of their instruments, and the usually peripheral sounds generated by the performing body.

Beginning with a sequence of austerely vibrato-less harmonics from Hamann's cello, trailed by Rushford's whistling portative organ tones, the music soon expands into a slow-moving melodic wander, pausing at times to linger over an uncomfortable harmony or particularly resonant cello tone. Hamann and Rushford have long histories of engagement with pre-Classical European musical traditions, having in past projects performed and radically extended the work of Solage, Louis Couperin, Johann Conrad Beissell and other composers. Here they use a 15th century song by John Dunstaple, ‘O rosa bella’, which returns throughout the piece, distorted, aerated and splayed into new forms.

Developed while the two shared residencies at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in 2020 and La Becque on Lake Geneva in 2023, Midmeste integrates recordings made (at at the invitation of the Biennale Son) on the organ of the Basilica St Valere in Sion, Switzerland—the world’s oldest playable organ, built in the early 15th century. Played by both Rushford and Hamann, the instrument’s idiosyncratic features, including bellows pumped manually using massive wooden beams, are integrated into the music through amplification. Creaks and thumps locate the music physically both in the performers’ bodies and the specific site of its making. Moving through a series of distinct episodes across its forty-minute span, Midmeste makes space for near-silent duets of high harmonics and hissing air, moments where twittering high tones and rumbling sub-bass could be electronic, and static fields that unexpectedly blossom into almost Romantic harmonies.

Listeners familiar with Hamann and Rushford’s work will find many familiar features here: the stunningly rich cello tones, their patient sustain allowing heightened awareness of the inner life of sound and its interactions with the environment; the care with which acoustic space is activated, becoming at times a third instrumental voice; the attention to fragile, unstable sonorities that sometimes have a comic edge. A major work from two key figures in contemporary experimental music, Midmeste synthesises rigorous exploration of fundamental questions of sound and performance with an unapologetic embrace of beauty.

Nach einer dreijährigen Pause kehrt der schwedische Singer-Songwriter Thomas Jonsson mit ,Give Up Together" zurück, seinem sechsten Album als I'm Kingfisher. Nach dem 2023 erschienenen, hochgelobten Album ,Glue", das größtenteils gemeinsam mit Jazzmusikern arrangiert wurde, hat sich Jonsson dieses Mal für einen etwas anderen, härteren Sound entschieden - mit einer brillanten Sammlung von Americana-Songs, die von ruhigen Drums, markanten E-Gitarren und satten Streichern umhüllt sind, während sie gelegentlich zu reduzierten Folksongs dekonstruiert werden. Als eines der bestgehüteten Geheimnisse Schwedens und als einer der besten Songwriter der nordischen Folk-Welle hat Jonsson still und leise ein mehr als beeindruckendes Repertoire aufgebaut, während er die Bühne mit Kevin Morby, Courtney Marie Andrews, The Weather Station und Damien Jurado teilte, und ist nun endlich bereit, neben seinen berühmteren Zeitgenossen ins Rampenlicht zu treten.

Today, Oakland-raised and Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ivy Knight announces her debut album Iron Mountain, set for release on 15 May via Scenic Route.

Ivy Knight’s songs reflect a city dreamer creating a new world to sink into: across Iron Mountain, she conjures imagery of barren Southwest American landscapes as she recounts memories that feel beamed from generations past, channeling folk melodies and old trail ballads of the late 50s and early 60s.

Much of her work has been created both within, and in reference to the Hudson Valley, where she met frequent collaborator Deer park (fakemink, Ecco2k, evilgiane) who produced, engineered and performs on Iron Mountain.

Her latest single ‘Red Rock’ follows last month’s single ‘Headlamp’, and her recent collaboration with Deer park, ‘Black Cat’, which received support from BBC 6 Music, Crack Magazine, The Face, The FADER, Pigeons & Planes, NME, The Line of Best Fit, Clash, So Young + more.

"Water Ritual" is the second jam we did during a five-hour session in Joshua Tree on April 20th, 2024, at Gatos Trail Studios. I had just picked up a new pedal called "The Fable," and it's all over this track. It's a delay with all kinds of crazy repeat options. When we mixed it, I wanted portions of the song to have a '70s dub reggae feel. So Dan at Gatos hooked up his Echoplex to the board and nailed that sound. Jamming with the dudes from Yawning Man is always a blast, and I'm stoked they invited me. Thanks, Gary, Bill, and Mario! Bob Balch

Green vinyl, limited to 300 copies. "Water Ritual" is the second jam we did during a five-hour session in Joshua Tree on April 20th, 2024, at Gatos Trail Studios. I had just picked up a new pedal called "The Fable," and it's all over this track. It's a delay with all kinds of crazy repeat options. When we mixed it, I wanted portions of the song to have a '70s dub reggae feel. So Dan at Gatos hooked up his Echoplex to the board and nailed that sound. Jamming with the dudes from Yawning Man is always a blast, and I'm stoked they invited me. Thanks, Gary, Bill, and Mario! Bob Balch

Blending Afro-Uruguayan traditions with rock, soul, jazz, and funk, Ruben Rada has shaped the music scenes of Uruguay and Argentina from the 1960s to the present. Alongside Eduardo Mateo, he pioneered candombe-beat during his time with the legendary band El Kinto. In the early 1970s, he fused Afrobeat with rock in the trailblazing group Totem and later helped define the distinctive jazz fusion sound of Opa-collaborating with the Fattoruso brothers and Airto Moreira during his years in the United States. In the 1980s, Rada settled in Buenos Aires and assembled a powerhouse band featuring top talent from both Uruguay and Argentina. Together, they created a series of unforgettable albums that fused candombe with jazz and rock-marking one of the most celebrated periods of his career. Adar Nebur, originally released in 1984, captures Rada and his band at their peak. Backed by a stunning horn section, they blend Latin rhythms with jazz, soul, and the new wave sounds of the '80s. Now, more than forty years later, this hidden gem is being released internationally for the first time.

Mannequin Records presents Electronic Corporation 1998–2006, a compilation bringing together rare and long unavailable recordings by the German electronic projects H.E.I.M. Elektronik and MAS 2008.

Active around the turn of the millennium, both projects share the involvement of producer Ive Müller while developing distinct collaborations and approaches to electronic music. H.E.I.M. Elektronik was founded in 1996 by Holger Erlenwein and Ive Müller (after the two artists split in 1999, Müller continued using the name), while MAS 2008 is the project of Ive Müller together with René Kirchner. Though separate entities, the two projects explored a similar sonic territory: stripped-down electro, minimal electronics and machine-driven body music shaped by analog hardware and a raw DIY production ethos.

The roots of Müller’s work go back to the final years of the DDR. As a teenager he worked as a licensed DJ — officially known as a “Schallplattenunterhalter” — operating a travelling disco across Saxony. With limited access to official Western releases, music circulated through cassette recordings taped from West German radio stations such as RIAS Berlin, NDR2 and Bayern3. Together with friends he travelled between youth clubs and discos around Leipzig with a “rolling discotheque”: a Russian Wolga pulling a trailer loaded with Electro-Voice sound systems sourced through the black market.

At the turn of the 2000s this background in underground electronic culture resurfaced in a series of recordings rooted in electro, EBM and minimal machine music. The tracks collected on Electronic Corporation 2000–2002 capture this moment: cold sequences, driving rhythms and stark synthetic textures produced with a direct and uncompromising approach.

Compiled and remastered by Rude 66 from the original sources, Electronic Corporation 2000–2002 documents a small but fascinating chapter of German underground electronics from the early digital era.

Wieder da in neuer Vinylfarbe: Violet Cloudburst Acid King ist zurück, eine der ersten Bands des Stoner/Doom-Genres und Schöpfer einiger der monolithischsten Riffs und schwersten Klänge, die es je gab! Acid King sind Königinnen des Stoner Doom und Beyond Vision ist ihr erstes neues Album seit Middle Of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere von 2015. Aufgenommen mit dem langjährigen Produzenten Billy Anderson (The Melvins, Sleep, Neurosis), fließen die Songs des Albums ineinander, ohne Anfang oder Ende, angetrieben von einem wogenden, lysergischen Puls, der den gewundenen Pfad der interplanetarischen Existenz nachzeichnet und den Hörer dorthin bringt, wohin er gehen möchte. Beyond Vision" begann als Experiment und wurde zum Weg in eine silberne Zukunft, welche nicht mehr nur doomladen sondern auch psychedelic ist. Es markiert den Beginn einer neuen Ära für die Band, welche einst die Vorlage für donnernden, swingenden Doom geschaffen hat, als sie ihren Status mit bahnbrechenden Alben wie Zoroaster und Busse Woods zementierten. Digipack noch erhältlich! "Judging by the sound of expansive lead single 'Beyond Vision,' fans are in for a helluva trip with this collection... taps into the hazy, muffled churn that Acid King helped pioneer, but there's an added dose of trippiness in the way the specter-like vocals float in the mix, and the dual guitar/bass solo that closes out the tune 'Beyond Vision' is more bluesy than bashing." _ Revolver Mag, 2023