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BEAR's sound is a calculated collision of technical precision and unfiltered aggression _ a modern strain of European metal that balances math-inflected complexity with visceral, live-wire intensity. At the core of their identity a combination of brains and brute force. With Anhedonia, Belgian heavyweights BEAR deliver five songs of pure adrenaline and unfiltered heaviness that capture a band confronting the strange emotional vacuum that can follow trauma. Anhedonia is both a battle cry and a confession; a visceral document of resilience carved from years marked by illness, loss, uncertainty, and hard-won perseverance. Musically, Anhedonia represents a sharpened evolution of BEAR's already formidable sound. Known for their intricate rhythms, punishing riffs, and explosive intensity, the band made a conscious decision this time to strip away excess and focus on the core of each song. There is no wasted movement on this EP. Every riff lands with purpose. Every rhythmic shift feels earned. The band trimmed the fat without sacrificing identity, creating space for dynamics and melody to cut deeper than ever before. "The songs are somewhat stripped back, allowing more space for Maarten's vocals to really shine this time around. I feel like we really hit a great balance of maintaining our signature complex sound while also allowing for more experimentation and melody." (James Falck) Anhedonia acknowledges numbness without glorifying it. It confronts pain without being consumed by it. And in doing so, it transforms heaviness into something connective. BEAR have always been a band driven by conviction, and here they stand at their most authentic, vulnerable and ferocious. Together, BEAR create music that feels alive _ tense, volatile, and emotionally charged _ where technicality enhances impact, and heaviness carries genuine vulnerability beneath its surface. FOR FANS OF The Dillinger Escape Plan * Every Time I Die * Botch * Converge * Norma Jean * Coalesce * Herod

Double vinyl reissue of Skullflower’s epochal “IIRD GATEKEEPER” album - the first time that this album has been available on vinyl for 30 years. In addition to the original LP this definitive and expanded edition includes extra and unreleased tracks taken from the recording sessions. For the first time all the tracks recorded by the band during this period can be heard together giving fans unprecedented access to material previously only available in the bands’ archives. Recorded in London in 1991 and released in 1992 on Justin “Godflesh” Broadrick’s HeadDirt label in 1992, IIRD GATEKEEPER established a worldwide reputation and following for Skullflower and convinced many who heard it that they had encountered nothing less than the best band on the planet. Arriving at the height of the “grunge” and the expansion of underground guitar “rock” into corporate America, IIRD GATEKEEPER had its roots deep in the UK noise and power-electronics scene. Guitarist Matthew Bower and bassist Anthony Di Franco were both graduates of the Broken Flag school of British noise making with their respective projects PURE, TOTAL and JFK. IIRD GATEKEEPER was Skullflower’s third album and was the first of the band’s albums to feature a consistent line-up throughout its production: Matthew Bower (guitar), Anthony Di Franco on (bass) and Stuart Dennison (drums). Recorded and mixed in four sessions between January and June 1991the tracks on this edition of IIRD GATEKEEPER shows the band’s new line up developing their sound, warping and evolving in real time. As such this edition of IIRD GATEKEEPER provides a unique document of the band in a state of transition, with the chemistry of the individual playing combusting in the studio to create a wave of astonishing creativity. IIRD GATEKEEPER is perhaps the definitive British underground rock album of the 1990’s – unique and never equalled. With this new edition Dirter Promotions allows Skullflower fans old and new to listen to this classic album as it was intended: spark up, crank it up and prepare to have your ears and mind blown

The album is a powerful reaffirmation of human creativity: "My music has always been about connection, bringing enduring old stories into conversation with contemporary life," Portman says. "This album is a collective, entirely human-made effort, and it's richer because of it." Renowned for her luminous songwriting and distinctive voice in contemporary folk, Portman steps into bold new territory with an album that charts a heroine's midlife journey through dark woods in search of wonder. Drawing on ballads and folktales, Dominion of Spells explores themes of burnout, misogyny, motherhood, miscarriage and personal transformation, weaving lived experience with mythic imagery and traditional folk narratives. The title track, Dominion of Spells , reclaims a 17th- century phrase once used to diagnose women as "disordered", drawing on the myth of the wandering womb and the long history of medical misogyny. Portman transforms these ideas into a vision of a freer, fairer realm where women's bodies are understood rather than feared. The first single, Turn Again , is a tender meditation on parenthood, inspired by her young son's imaginative shapeshifting games and echoing the Tam Lin ballad, where steadfast love breaks a powerful spell. Elsewhere, the album explores women's right to move safely after dark, genderswapped retellings of heroic quests, miscarriage, phone addiction and the restorative power of creative practice.

A transcendental journey through the shadows of consciousness - remastered and expanded for the deepest listening experience yet With Metamorphyses , Swedish dark ambient pioneer Peter Andersson (RAISON D'ETRE) invites us into a labyrinth of sound and soul, where drone, ritualism, and neoclassical minimalism converge into something vast, immersive, and transformative. Originally released in the mid-2000s, this defining work now returns in a gloriously expanded edition - and for the first time ever, pressed onto double vinyl.

This 2025 edition, meticulously remastered to K14- level standards by Andersson himself, features not only the core studio album (Disc I, recorded winter 2005-2006), but also two full discs of evocative live performances from across Europe, including Gent, Sofia, Salzburg, Alkmaar, Budapest, and a stunning set recorded in the Sophienkirche of Wuppertal during the Phobos II Dark Ambient Festival (2010) - a performance that plays like a liturgy for forgotten gods. The sound is monumental yet subtle: subterranean drones coil beneath spectral chants, decaying harmonics ripple through ancient cathedrals of reverb, and slowshifting textures create a space where the listener floats between the sacred and the surreal. There are echoes here of Lustmord's somber gravity, Thomas Koner 's icy isolationism, and the ritualistic depth of Inade or Desiderii Marginis, but it's RAISON D'ETRE's singular spiritual voice that rises from the abyss. The artwork by Kati Astraeir perfectly captures the album's meditative darkness - fluid forms, organic decay, and transcendent abstraction - while the layout, also designed by Andersson, reinforces the ritualistic purity of the listening experience.

A transcendental journey through the shadows of consciousness - remastered and expanded for the deepest listening experience yet With Metamorphyses , Swedish dark ambient pioneer Peter Andersson (RAISON D'ETRE) invites us into a labyrinth of sound and soul, where drone, ritualism, and neoclassical minimalism converge into something vast, immersive, and transformative. Originally released in the mid-2000s, this defining work now returns in a gloriously expanded edition - and for the first time ever, pressed onto double vinyl.

This 2025 edition, meticulously remastered to K14- level standards by Andersson himself, features not only the core studio album (Disc I, recorded winter 2005-2006), but also two full discs of evocative live performances from across Europe, including Gent, Sofia, Salzburg, Alkmaar, Budapest, and a stunning set recorded in the Sophienkirche of Wuppertal during the Phobos II Dark Ambient Festival (2010) - a performance that plays like a liturgy for forgotten gods. The sound is monumental yet subtle: subterranean drones coil beneath spectral chants, decaying harmonics ripple through ancient cathedrals of reverb, and slowshifting textures create a space where the listener floats between the sacred and the surreal. There are echoes here of Lustmord's somber gravity, Thomas Koner 's icy isolationism, and the ritualistic depth of Inade or Desiderii Marginis, but it's RAISON D'ETRE's singular spiritual voice that rises from the abyss. The artwork by Kati Astraeir perfectly captures the album's meditative darkness - fluid forms, organic decay, and transcendent abstraction - while the layout, also designed by Andersson, reinforces the ritualistic purity of the listening experience.

With a breathtaking pair of intimately interrelated new albums, he applies that bold passion to an uncharacteristically pared-down setting, then transforms those stunning sounds via a startling process of sonic reinvention. ResoNation Trio convenes a new chordless trio with master improvisers Scott Colley on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The album's contemplative explorations feel like a departure from the raucous spirit that characterizes so much of the trumpeter's work, yet the trio discovers such an audacious beauty and celebratory gusto in these sparse environments that the music feels uniquely Bernstein's. It is also a rarity in his oeuvre for featuring Bernstein - whose mastery of the little- used slide trumpet has become so central to his sonic identity - exclusively playing valve trumpet and flugelhorn. In parallel with this captivating trio excursion, Bernstein handed the recordings over to his longtime collaborator, the pioneering producer Scotty Hard, to reimagine the album through his own iconoclastic lens. The result is the uncategorizable Ultra Resonance, which finds Hard breaking down the ResoNation Trio session into its constituent parts and redeploying them as the elements of a wholly original, mutant creation. The project will be released on June 5, 2026 via Royal Potato Family as a double vinyl or CD package containing both albums, and separately on digital streaming platforms.

Thirteen years later, building on everything they had learned about capturing the purest sound, Guttenberg returned to produce The Ultimate Demonstration Disc Volume 2. Designed to bridge the gap between technical terminology and the listening experience, this collection serves as a practical guide to the audiophile lexicon. On each track, Guttenberg "spells out" exactly what to listen for, providing clear musical examples of concepts like "transparency" and "soundstage depth." By using a custombuilt recording chain and avoiding dynamic range compressors, equalizers, or overdubbing, the album captures a "live" session exactly as the microphones heard it - resulting in a sound so neutral and natural that it can be used to reveal the subtle differences between high-end speakers, electronics, and cables.

There are two versions of this album:

1. numbered 100 copies of limited black 180g vinyl made in collaboration with U JAZZ ME Records

2. transparent orange 180g vinyl

LINER NOTES:

" When AJ Lee stepped back into the ring in September 2025 - after a ten-year break - she introduced herself to a new generation of fans with the words: 'If you haven't heard of me, I am your favorite wrestler’s favorite wrestler.' That is exactly what came to my mind as a lead for this blurb when Pokusa asked me to write it. Because that’s what they are: your favorite indie darlings' favorite indie darlings (even though no one uses that term anymore, let alone identifies as such). They are your favorite cool jazzcats’ favorite jazzcats. And they are probably your favorite young jazz act - if you don’t usually (or ever) listen to jazz.

This, I always thought, is their greatest strength. Half the battle (in my eyes) is recording a sick jazz album - one that a jazz magazine would fawn over. The real win is getting someone wearing a heavy metal T-shirt into it; someone who’s never listened to jazz and has never stepped foot in a place like Pardon, To Tu, but heard Pokusa and decided to change that. I am such a person. I didn't learn about jazz because of them, but they’re definitely the reason I started rating it.
Głowy (Heads) is, in a way, a classic album. If someone played it for me and - relying on my lack of knowledge and gullibility - tried to convince me that it was recorded in the Polish Radio Studios in 1975, at Akwarium Club in Warsaw in 1985, at Club Rura in 1989, somewhere in Tri-City in '94, or at Mózg in Bydgoszcz, I would probably believe it. Its 'classicness' goes hand in hand with its timelessness. I could write about how the album fits into the catalogs of Lado ABC, GOWI, or Biodro Records. I could dig for connections to Yass, Tzadik, or a number of other things.
But what Teo, Natan, and Tymek create here is as important in its experience as it is in its music. For me - an artist active in a similar time - each Pokusa album, including this newest release, is a record of a period of time and the experiences hidden between the notes. The Indian spices in food served before a show in Mózg. A headache from all the cigarettes smoked listening to tapes in Eufemia. Marveling at the graffiti over the sink in Młodsza Siostra. The narrow steps at Chłodna 25. The wider but slippery steps to Pogłos. The quirky and uncomfortable steps in Ziemia. The mosquitoes at Ladomek. The dilemma of whether to wear a nice polo instead of a T-shirt to SPATiF. The wonder of turning off Monciak into Dwie Zmiany. Why is a club like this on such a strip? Why is Pokusa playing here? And why do they sound so good?
On one hand, you can find journalists writing that Pokusa grew out of the classic free jazz of the 1960s; some might mention Albert Ayler. On the other hand, there’s Unsound Festival and young critics writing about 'post-jazz.' All of them are correct. This is universalism. This is that timelessness. Whether you pick up this album the day it comes out or in the year 2046, it will be good. In twenty years, people will still reach for it. Of that, I am certain."
Michał Turowski

There are two versions of this album:

1. numbered 100 copies of limited black 180g vinyl made in collaboration with U JAZZ ME Records

2. transparent orange 180g vinyl

LINER NOTES:

" When AJ Lee stepped back into the ring in September 2025 - after a ten-year break - she introduced herself to a new generation of fans with the words: 'If you haven't heard of me, I am your favorite wrestler’s favorite wrestler.' That is exactly what came to my mind as a lead for this blurb when Pokusa asked me to write it. Because that’s what they are: your favorite indie darlings' favorite indie darlings (even though no one uses that term anymore, let alone identifies as such). They are your favorite cool jazzcats’ favorite jazzcats. And they are probably your favorite young jazz act - if you don’t usually (or ever) listen to jazz.

This, I always thought, is their greatest strength. Half the battle (in my eyes) is recording a sick jazz album - one that a jazz magazine would fawn over. The real win is getting someone wearing a heavy metal T-shirt into it; someone who’s never listened to jazz and has never stepped foot in a place like Pardon, To Tu, but heard Pokusa and decided to change that. I am such a person. I didn't learn about jazz because of them, but they’re definitely the reason I started rating it.
Głowy (Heads) is, in a way, a classic album. If someone played it for me and - relying on my lack of knowledge and gullibility - tried to convince me that it was recorded in the Polish Radio Studios in 1975, at Akwarium Club in Warsaw in 1985, at Club Rura in 1989, somewhere in Tri-City in '94, or at Mózg in Bydgoszcz, I would probably believe it. Its 'classicness' goes hand in hand with its timelessness. I could write about how the album fits into the catalogs of Lado ABC, GOWI, or Biodro Records. I could dig for connections to Yass, Tzadik, or a number of other things.
But what Teo, Natan, and Tymek create here is as important in its experience as it is in its music. For me - an artist active in a similar time - each Pokusa album, including this newest release, is a record of a period of time and the experiences hidden between the notes. The Indian spices in food served before a show in Mózg. A headache from all the cigarettes smoked listening to tapes in Eufemia. Marveling at the graffiti over the sink in Młodsza Siostra. The narrow steps at Chłodna 25. The wider but slippery steps to Pogłos. The quirky and uncomfortable steps in Ziemia. The mosquitoes at Ladomek. The dilemma of whether to wear a nice polo instead of a T-shirt to SPATiF. The wonder of turning off Monciak into Dwie Zmiany. Why is a club like this on such a strip? Why is Pokusa playing here? And why do they sound so good?
On one hand, you can find journalists writing that Pokusa grew out of the classic free jazz of the 1960s; some might mention Albert Ayler. On the other hand, there’s Unsound Festival and young critics writing about 'post-jazz.' All of them are correct. This is universalism. This is that timelessness. Whether you pick up this album the day it comes out or in the year 2046, it will be good. In twenty years, people will still reach for it. Of that, I am certain."
Michał Turowski

Summer is around the corner and what a perfect timing to introduce you to Admo’s latest musical project - Charlottenzbeul Science Club. After three years since his last solo EP, many live acts around the globe and releases on Limousine Dream, Haws and Ordinateuf, the mad bassist is back at it again with his first release on his new label - Two-Headed Fish Records - which he co-runs with his wife. Definitely an EP that stays in the family.

It’s another four-tracker - you know the kind of vinyl that keeps on giving. A celebration of his time in the vibrant German capital, Berlin (West is the best). A1 opens the ball : bassy, catchy and this infectious chromatic melodic line. The recipe for a summer hit. Now onto A2 (and we’re not talking about his German language skills here): a regular laidback approach where acid sounds mesh together with this high-energy baseline. A classic in the making. If you’ve seen him live, you must’ve recognised B1 as it used to be his closing. A dreamy touch, where storytelling is the key word. You will have your head bopping from the first minute - mellow moment guaranteed. And B2 wraps it up - it takes you by the hand, you hop onto the next U-bahn and straight to the dance floor. The analogic bass keeps on bringing the track higher, progressively transforming into this groover that gets your feet stomping. It’s a proper farewell and a perfect conclusion to this beautifully crafted record.

Alex Webster / Founding Member & Bassist: "With 'Vile', the big story was that it was our first album with George Fisher," he says. "That was the big thing, really — how was the album going to do? And, how are people going to like George and the band, and everything else? That was the story of that album — making the transition from Chris Barnes to George. It ended up charting on the Billboard Top 200. That was our first appearance on that chart. So, we were very happy about that as you might imagine. It was a big deal for a death metal band. we were excited and eager to see how people would react to George, and it was overwhelmingly positive."

Focus 21 is back with a second sizzling disco drop, this time in the form of 'Boogie Magic Vol 1', which has its feet firmly rooted in the 80s and the iconic machine sounds of that era. All four cuts are super tight and super funky from Gateway Jones, starting with 'Transmission', which is turbocharged with razzle-dazzle. 'Contact Zone' is slightly deeper and more sensuous with its playful synths and wriggling baseline. 'Non - Physical Boogie' is a taught stepper with loose claps and funky licks, then 'Midnight Call' closes with more of the same - feel good, uplifting but classy and sophisticated disco-boogie brilliance. A vital EP full of craft.

From a spontaneous moment in a hotel room in Kuruman to a fully realised body of work, Ngiyasaba is a testament to organic creativity, brotherhood and the power of music to move without limits.
What started as a late-night moment with Sanele Phakathi who was too scared to sleep in Kuruman — turned into something none of us could have planned. In that space, music took over. Ideas flowed freely and the energy grew so strong it literally reached next door… waking up the legendary Vinny Da Vinci, who walked in and said he wanted to be part of it. From that moment, everything changed.
Ngiyasaba (translated as “I’m scared”) is more than just an EP – it captures a feeling. That “wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” It’s the sound of pure collaboration, where instinct leads and the music follows.
From that room in Kuruman… to now being in your hands.

Spiritual World presents: Ashleigh Ball — Center of the Universe, a transcendental flute journey from the singer and flutist of Teal. Center of the Universe is a 32-minute improvisational odyssey recorded inside the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO), a National Historic Site on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia Canada..

Inspired by the pioneering work of Paul Horn and his Inside series, the recording channels a similar spirit of reverent exploration within a space rich in history and resonance. Completed in 1918, the observatory is home to the Plaskett Telescope - once among the largest and most powerful in the world - playing a key role in mapping the Milky Way.

Following months of coordination, three hours of private access were granted on the morning of August 25, 2025. Beneath the observatory’s towering telescope, Ball performed a wordless meditation, moving between alto flute and soprano concert flute, allowing each note to merge with the chamber’s vast natural reverb. Tones bloom, linger, and return, carried along the massive curved steel walls.

Captured using a minimalist recording approach, Center of the Universe preserves the purity of the moment—its warmth, stillness, and the architecture’s subtle mechanical resonance. Here, the observatory itself becomes an instrument, shaping the sound into something elemental, timeless, and deeply human. Center of the Universe will be released as a limited-edition vinyl LP (300 copies) with a printed insert on May 15, 2026, via Rubadub, Forced Exposure, and HiFi in Sheep’s Clothing.

Death Cab for Cutie is one of the definitive indie-rock bands of the century. After twenty-odd years in the major label system, the band returned to their indie roots and signed with ANTI- Records and they"re back with a brand-new eleventh album titled, I Built You A Tower out June 5th. I Built You A Tower is the sound of loss, compartmentalization, and then grief bursting out from the seams. It"s also the sound of the growth that comes after falling apart, of acknowledging pain without letting it destroy you. "I see the tower existing on your emotional horizon," Ben Gibbard states. "You don"t always have to look at what"s inside it, but it"s a reminder that it happened. You know it"s there. You have to face it." The band is set to hit the road in the US this summer, kicking off on July 10 and includes a two-night run at The Greek in Los Angeles. This comes on the heels of a historic, sold-out global tour marking the 20th anniversary of the album Transatlanticism, and the release of their universally acclaimed, 2022"s Asphalt Meadow.

Magic Tuber Stringband act in communion with the natural world around them. Highly skilled players and writers, the trio are leaders within the burgeoning Avant-Folk world. Growing up in Appalachia studying the folk traditions of the region in tandem scientific and observational work in nature, their music appears to weave in and out of the fabric of the landscape. The ensemble continues to stretch the parameters of acoustic instrumental expression with masterful flourishes of dense, textural arrangements, subtle minimalist gestures and deft improvisation. Heavy Water addresses the impact of nuclear production on the environment and the communities within, a musical evocation of destruction and resilience, an embrace of dissonance and tension within moments of transcendence.

Sometimes the title of an album tells you everything you need to know. Laurence Pike’s Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet is like that: The music within represents a search for freedom, potentiality—liberatory strategies that transcend the ego and the solitary, atomized figure.

But in this case, the album title is also a red herring, because there is no jazz quintet here—just Pike, his drums, and his machines, not so much an ersatz ensemble as a purely notional one, a thought experiment equipped with drumsticks, circuitry, and the desire to go beyond hardwired limits.

And the results, strictly speaking, aren’t really jazz, though they incorporate the vocabulary of jazz, along with that of ambient, electronica, and post-rock. They are some other thing, cognizant of genre but never beholden to it. Again, we’re talking about a search for freedom here.

The Sydney-based musician has a long history of coloring outside the lines, not just in his solo recordings—including four albums for the Leaf label between 2018 and 2024—but also in the trio Pivot (later PVT); Szun Waves (alongside saxophonist Jack Wyllie and Border Community’s Luke Abbott); Triosk, which recorded an album with Jan Jelinek in 2003; and even post-punk titans Liars, whom he joined in late 2018.

Of his first album for Balmat, Pike says, “My loose concept was: What does music sound like when the expectations of late capitalism are removed from it? How might a jazz musician from an idealised culture of the future, or even another world, utilise musical language when the conventions of style and marketing are no longer a factor in music making?”

That inquiry, he says, connects to his “guiding principle: that the purpose of music is to access something bigger than the individual, and reveal a sense of possibility and freedom in the world to the listener. To create an understanding that the future can be something other than what we imagined or expect, even unconsciously.”

Heady ideas, but plug into his stream-of-metaconsciousness flow and you may start to intuit what motivates him. There is a deeply lyrical expression in these pieces—in the ruminative piano of opener “Guardians of Memory,” for example—but also a sense of exploded perspective, of ideas approached from more angles than any one mind could dream up. Of a collectivized consciousness, of mycelial networks branching across tone and rhythm and timbre, of ideas articulated in distributed fashion, nodal points dancing across drum heads.

Pike’s imaginary quintet is hardly without precedent; it’s a continuation of concepts floated across Jan Jelinek’s Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, Burnt Friedman’s many guises, and much of the recombinant improv of the International Anthem roster, not to mention the far corners of ECM’s catalog in the late 1970s and 1980s, which Pike says have been integral to his development since he was a teenager. Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet is a point in a continuum, a voice in a conversation, a question with no obvious answer: How can the search for otherness in music manifest something true about ourselves?

For the next installment in the Voyager Recordings series, we have rising Belgian star Carmelo Ponente taking control. Carmelo delivers a solid album of 7 tracks of layered sci fi sounds, with punch, in order for the dancefloor.

Carmelo has most recently released on Loopania Records with Oliver Rosemann, released on Illegal Alien, Solitar, Newrythmic, TMM and Subsist to name but a few labels that has showcased his layered sounds. Carmelo is very modular focused, and you can hear this in his signature sound.

Artist Background:Chiminyo is a decorated drummer and producer at the center of the London scene, performing with heavyweights like Maisha and Cykada. A winner of theJazz FM Digital Awardand named ‘One to watch’ inThe Guardianin 2025, his work has been championed byGilles Peterson,BBC 1Xtra, andJazz FM. Chiminyo is a residency holder at Ronnie Scott’s, where he hosts the "Late Late Electronic" nights, and has collaborated with Mercury-nominated artists including Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings.