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Take a much-loved UK soul gem, Loose Ends classic from ‘85 ‘Hangin’ On A String’ and hand it to the godfather of house, Frankie Knuckles to work his unquestionable magic and there was no doubt the result would be a slice of house music heaven. South Street Records unlock the vaults once again, reissuing this melding of transatlantic minds presenting a triple threat that sees both Frankie’s 1992 Club Mix and the elusive Classic Club Reprise sit alongside the Loose Ends Original 12 Inch Mix, on either side of a 12 inch.

Taking the best of London’s soul and coupling it with the heart of Chicago, the master Frankie Knuckles purrs this one out across the highways with a slung-back house interpretation of ‘Hangin’ On A String’. A bumping beat, punchy bass line and effortless percussive touches give the perfect platform for Loose End’s vocal dynamics to provide a power, emotion and sincerity often lacking in modern dance music.

Flip it over to find the Classic Club Reprise - straight up sunset business with Frankie side-lining the vocals to let the instrumentation sing with added trademark flourishes in true spiritual style. Finally, the Original 12 Inch Mix gets a well-deserved inclusion which, back in 1985 was a true game changer bridging a multiplicity of scenes in the UK with its use of drum machines and synthesizers whilst maintaining that pure soul vibe. A track that topped the US Billboard R&B chart, making Loose Ends the first ever British band to do so, it’s a UK soul classic drenched in drum machine hits, soaring synths and crunchy guitar licks that’s infused with an ‘80s electro style and a quintessentially London flavour.

UK collective We Are FTR launch their vinyl only imprint with an impressive debut outing from label head T. Fitzgerald. "A Formal Introduction" presents three cuts of immersive, hypnotic and transcendent minimal house well suited for both the club and home listening. "Present Now" kicks things off with the most energetic track of the EP featuring a powerful, groovy low end and encapsulating vocal. On the flip, broken beats sit underneath layers of rich pads in "Transcendence", while "Helles" delivers a heavily syncopated drum workout.

Stain (1993) is the third album by Living Colour, released after previous albums Vivid MOVLP596 and Time’s Up MOVLP553. The album features a much heavier and aggressive Living Colour, containing elements of thrash metal and industrial music. Produced by Ron “Bad Brains” St. Germain, Living Colour’s Stain showcases the band’s darker side even more, as samples were now added to the sonic mix. Living Colour’s pessimistic viewpoint can be found in tracks such as “Go Away,” “Ignorance Is Bliss,” and “Never Satisfied,” while “Postman” pulls no punches in its depiction of a deranged killer. The explosive “Ausländer” is one of the album’s best tracks, as is the melodic rocker “Leave It Alone” and the superb ballad “Nothingness”. Stain is available as a limited edition on translucent red vinyl. Only 1000, individually numbered copies are available. The package includes an insert with pictures and credits.

Danish indie rock duo The Raveonettes first met in Copenhagen in
2001, after which they quickly began recording their first EP Whip It On. Their first full album Chain Gang of Love followed in 2003, and it quickly gained recognition as lead single “That Great Love Sound” was featured on the soundtrack of FIFA 2004. Upon release, Pitchfork complimented the album for its high-quality production, tightly controlled melodies and called the album a glorious buzz. Mixing raw garage rock with catchy, sweet lyrics, Chain Gang of Love demonstrates The Raveonettes’ knack for crafting compelling songs.

Chain Gang of Love is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on translucent red vinyl.

These newly remastered editions of Bill Fox’s second album are the first since its 1998 release, including the first-ever vinyl pressing. Listeners will hear a wider soundstage, more detail, and improved listenability. Recorded on 4-track cassette, the fidelity belies the sophistication and nuance of the songwriting, This adept remaster by John Golden Sr helps bring definition to the intimate, at-home feel of the album. It sparkles.Very similar in feel and quality to Fox’s debut album, much of Transit Byzantium draws from the same group of recordings. It has the same feel of musical inevitability, that the songs exist beyond time itself, their eventual manifestation guaranteed by Apollo. He could’ve given them to the Everly Brothers, or the Byrds, or the Who, but instead they were channeled through an everyman from Cleveland with an aversion to the limelight. And while a traditional folk influence colors several songs, even those possess the indelible stamp of Fox’s charismatic voice and personality. Although nearly entirely acoustic and with minimal percussion, these eighteen songs cycle through a remarkable variety of textures and moods.While much has quite rightly been written about the god-tier songwriting here (“Song of a Drunken Nightingale,” “My Baby Crying,” “I’ll Give It Away” for starters), it should also be noted that this is a guitar player’s record, though more in terms of conception than flash. Lines of harmony and counterpoint wander between parts, sublime in their invention though sometimes crudely documented.

NEP was a loose multimedia collective formed in 1982 Zagreb, ex-Yugoslavia. The founder Dejan Krsic collaborated with various artists in a quest of re-thinking the stale concepts of art history, position of the author and the barriers between pop and elitist high culture. Heavily influenced by Walter Benjamin and Andy Warhol in theory and Brian Eno and Kraftwerk in music, Krsic created NEP as an umbrella term (meaning Nova Evropa or New Europe) of diverse rule-breaking activities, covering graphic design, music, photography, video, news-media and theoretical work. Musically NEP focused on experiments in ambient and tape-music, self-released and hard to find compilation tapes like "The Cassette Played Poptones" (1988). Deeply immersed in pop-culture, politics and art theory Krsic's search for perfect pop music with cutting critical edge peaked in 1989, the year 'Decadance' track was conceived in studio. Fox & His Friends published the single in 2017 with Snuffo Remix on B-side. It received rave reviews in music press like MixMag and DJ Mag and it is still played on dance-floors around the world. But the story around the NEP is musically (as well as artistically) much wider: for the first time Fox & His Friends team compiles best cuts from unreleased and rare NEP tapes, covering the period from 1985 to 1989 on POP NOT POP abum. Dejan Krsic is now famous graphic designer and art historian in Croatia. Other collaborators include Laibach and Borghesia photographer Jane Stravs, artist and TV director Gordana Brzovic, Jovan Culibrk, now Bishop at The Serbian Orthodox Church and Anja Rupel, singer of cult Yugoslavian synth-pop group Videosex as well as the other members of Videosex, Iztok Turk and Janez Krizaj who produced some of the tracks. Other collaborators were talented producers Robert Logozar and Davor Daga Devcic, singers Linda Cooper, Natalija, Alexx Kovacs... The list of collaborations is long. Some of the memorable moments on POP NOT POP album are early demo version of Decadance 'How Do I Dance To This Music?' with blue movies samples and drum machine experiments like early Cabaret Voltaire, then Krsic's reinterpretation of legendary Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express anthem as 'Transcendance', or 'Radical Chic', where Dejan himself and Anja Rupel from Videosex make lovely couple of dandy-esque fashionistas, singing chart-friendly radio synthpop tune that contrasts the A-side (The 'NOT POP' side) - full of experiments, dark wave and industrial nods to Test Department and Cabs. B-side is 'THE POP' side that will surprise most of the NEP followers from their early experimental cassette days. Sunny, danceable, joyfull pop that reveals the many faces of NEP. As Kraftwerk today is more of a concept than a band, NEP does the same by re-writing its products (musical, graphical, theoretical, activist) and constantly puts them in permanent state of change or re-mix. In the future, only NEP logo will be enough to consider something an art piece, and NEP will be everybody who wants to, as their Art Manifest claims. Until that day comes, 'POP NOT POP' is a document of how the vivid and creative were art-scenes in socialist Yugoslavia. Some of the graphic work, cut-ups from theory and Manifesto are also included on this LP, designed by Dejan Krsic aka NEP himself. This release is made from the original master tapes and published for the first time on vinyl.

LTD. TRANSPARENT RED VINYL

On Palberta5000, Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg, and Nina Ryser max out traditional pop forms_blowing the genre out into lush, kinetic extensions_to create their own hardcore style of popular music. Together these 16 adventurous, hyper-melodic tracks represent the band's most accessible album by far_one that is bursting at the seams with vocal hooks and exuberant playing. Palberta5000 was recorded with Matt Lambozza (PALM, Shimmer), whose Peekskill, New York, studio is located in the original home and family lamp-store of Paul Reuben (Pee Wee Herman). Lambozza's recording and mix capture the band's rollicking instrumentation and vocal precision with greater clarity than anyone has before. Tracks like the emotionally chaotic "Before I Got Here," which charges hard before turning on a dime into a hypnotic krout-surf outro, convey the panicked feeling of falling in love, while Palberta's ear for pop music makes itself apprent on heart-melting harmonies like those fround on "Corner Store." Adding variation to Palberta5000's well thought-out song cycle are lavish downtempo jams ilke the slow waltz that is "The Way That You Do," and the enchanting "Red Antz." Taken together, these songs create a full album experience, and one that is sure to excite the band's devoted following while welcoming new fans along for the ride.

Kiwi Jr. is a phenomenal "rock" and/or "punk" and/or "indie-rock" (whichever you like more) band from Canada, made up of Jeremy Gaudet (mic, guitar), Brohan Moore (drums), Mike Walker (bass), and Brian Murphy (guitar). Cooler Returns is their second album, and their first for Sub Pop. Despite being a snapshot of the pandemic-infused beginnings of this decade, Cooler Returns is truly a whole lot of fun. RIYL indie-pop from down under, things that are smart/exuberant/catchy all at once. Buildings burning in every direction; macabre unknowns in your friendly neighbor's basement; undecided voters sharpening their pencils: under pressure we could call Kiwi Jr.'s Cooler Returns "timely." But what year is it, again? On Cooler Returns, Kiwi Jr. cycle through the recent zigs & looming zags of the new decade, squinting anew at New Year's parties forgotten and under-investigated small town diner fires, piecing together low-stakes conspiracy theories on what's coming down the pike in 2021. Put together like a thousand-piece puzzle, assembled in flow state through the first dull stretch of quarantine, sanitized singer shuffling to sanitized studio by streetcar, masked like it's the kind of work where getting recognized means getting killed, Cooler Returns materializes as a sprawling survey from the first few bites of the terrible twenties, an investigative exposé of recent history buried under the headlines & ancient kings buried under parking lots. Not so long since their debut Football Money in archaeological time, unending gray eons later in the dog years of quaran-time, spiritually antipodean Canadians Kiwi Jr return to disseminate this year's annual report to the shareholders, burying the incriminating numbers in the endless appendices of a longform narrative record, a 3,000 word tract for stakeholders to pore over. These stories - memories of Augusts past, unrepressed & transcribed fast - go down easier thanks to meaningful changes enacted in 2019's KiwiCares Pledge: delivering on a promise to transition from Crunchy to Smooth by 2021, the caveman chug of Football Money has been steamed & pressed with the purifying air of a saloon piano - operated with bow-tie untied - and a spring green side-salad of tentatively up-tempo organ taps & freshly fluted harmonica. A chronically detuned spin of the dial through swivel-chair distractions & WFH daydreams, an immersive ctrl-tab deluge cycling through popular listicle distractions like the unentombing of Richard III, or the deja vu destruction of the Glasgow School of Art, Kiwi Jr. sing this song to an indoor audience, crisscrossing canceled, every other prestige distraction source wrung dry, only songwriting remaining to deliver engrossing tales to the populace, just how I imagine it worked in the old days. Fixing loose ingredients into a sturdy whip, Kiwi Jr. beam in live from the 9-5, striding into 2021 with a mastered brainwave that comes equally from the back room of the record store as the penalty box. And how do we, left holding this box of deliberate entanglements, sign off to those as yet uninitiated, undecided, uncertain, unseen, absent return coordinates - Best Wishes, Warm Regards, Good Luck? Cooler Returns, Cooler Returns, C o o l e r R e t u r n s ! Cooler Returns was produced by Kiwi Jr., mixed and engineered by Graham Walsh (METZ, Bully) in Toronto, and mastered by Phillip Shaw Bova at Bova Labs in Ottawa, Ontario.

LTD. LOSER EDITION

Kiwi Jr. is a phenomenal "rock" and/or "punk" and/or "indie-rock" (whichever you like more) band from Canada, made up of Jeremy Gaudet (mic, guitar), Brohan Moore (drums), Mike Walker (bass), and Brian Murphy (guitar). Cooler Returns is their second album, and their first for Sub Pop. Despite being a snapshot of the pandemic-infused beginnings of this decade, Cooler Returns is truly a whole lot of fun. RIYL indie-pop from down under, things that are smart/exuberant/catchy all at once. Buildings burning in every direction; macabre unknowns in your friendly neighbor's basement; undecided voters sharpening their pencils: under pressure we could call Kiwi Jr.'s Cooler Returns "timely." But what year is it, again? On Cooler Returns, Kiwi Jr. cycle through the recent zigs & looming zags of the new decade, squinting anew at New Year's parties forgotten and under-investigated small town diner fires, piecing together low-stakes conspiracy theories on what's coming down the pike in 2021. Put together like a thousand-piece puzzle, assembled in flow state through the first dull stretch of quarantine, sanitized singer shuffling to sanitized studio by streetcar, masked like it's the kind of work where getting recognized means getting killed, Cooler Returns materializes as a sprawling survey from the first few bites of the terrible twenties, an investigative exposé of recent history buried under the headlines & ancient kings buried under parking lots. Not so long since their debut Football Money in archaeological time, unending gray eons later in the dog years of quaran-time, spiritually antipodean Canadians Kiwi Jr return to disseminate this year's annual report to the shareholders, burying the incriminating numbers in the endless appendices of a longform narrative record, a 3,000 word tract for stakeholders to pore over. These stories - memories of Augusts past, unrepressed & transcribed fast - go down easier thanks to meaningful changes enacted in 2019's KiwiCares Pledge: delivering on a promise to transition from Crunchy to Smooth by 2021, the caveman chug of Football Money has been steamed & pressed with the purifying air of a saloon piano - operated with bow-tie untied - and a spring green side-salad of tentatively up-tempo organ taps & freshly fluted harmonica. A chronically detuned spin of the dial through swivel-chair distractions & WFH daydreams, an immersive ctrl-tab deluge cycling through popular listicle distractions like the unentombing of Richard III, or the deja vu destruction of the Glasgow School of Art, Kiwi Jr. sing this song to an indoor audience, crisscrossing canceled, every other prestige distraction source wrung dry, only songwriting remaining to deliver engrossing tales to the populace, just how I imagine it worked in the old days. Fixing loose ingredients into a sturdy whip, Kiwi Jr. beam in live from the 9-5, striding into 2021 with a mastered brainwave that comes equally from the back room of the record store as the penalty box. And how do we, left holding this box of deliberate entanglements, sign off to those as yet uninitiated, undecided, uncertain, unseen, absent return coordinates - Best Wishes, Warm Regards, Good Luck? Cooler Returns, Cooler Returns, C o o l e r R e t u r n s ! Cooler Returns was produced by Kiwi Jr., mixed and engineered by Graham Walsh (METZ, Bully) in Toronto, and mastered by Phillip Shaw Bova at Bova Labs in Ottawa, Ontario.

Under the impression of the racially motivated murders on 19 February 2020 in Hanau, her hometown, the visual artist and musician Michaela Meise recorded the piece "Cemalim" by the Turk Erkin Koray in German translation. The production of the song was supported by the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn and the NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, both of which have included the work in their exhibition programmes this year.

Erkin Koray is a representative of the psychedelic Anadolu-Rock and published "Cemalim" as an arrangement in 1973. The original composer, Rafik Başaran, came from the Cappadocian town of Ürgüp, which is also mentioned in the song. "Cemalim" means, translated into German, "My darling Cemal", and is a lament for the dead. Meise wrote the German text based on the translation by Fatih Alasalvaroglu, who also comes from Hanau.

Besides the mourning of nine young people, solidarity with the relatives and friends of the murder victims is urgently needed. They have organised themselves in the "Initiative 19 February Hanau" - on their website you can find information about what support they would like to receive.

Most of the concert programme of the last two years included anti-fascist songs and was a reaction to the increasing right-wing populism. Folk songs, hits and chansons of the 1960s, published in July 2018 on the album "Ich bin Griechin" (Martin Hossbach), dealt with the experience of the Second World War, told of the longing to leave home or the experiences of a seasonal worker. The songs were composed by the anti-fascist Mikis Theodorakis, the musician Barbara, who survived the Shoah with her family in the underground, and George Moustaki and Alexandra, who crossed both national borders.

Unter dem Eindruck der rassistisch motivierten Morde am 19. Februar 2020 in Hanau, ihrer Heimatstadt, hat die bildende Künstlerin und Musikerin Michaela Meise das Stück »Cemalim« des Türken Erkin Koray in deutscher Übersetzung eingespielt. Die Produktion des Liedes wurde von der Städtischen Galerie Nordhorn und dem NS-Dokumentationszentrum München unterstützt, die beide das Werk in ihre diesjährigen Ausstellungsprogramme aufgenommen haben.

Erkin Koray ist ein Vertreter des psychedelischen Anadolu-Rock und veröffentlichte »Cemalim« im Jahr 1973 als Bearbeitung. Der ursprüngliche Komponist, Rafik Başaran, stammte aus der kappadokischen Stadt Ürgüp, von der auch im Lied die Rede ist. »Cemalim« bedeutet, ins Deutsche übersetzt, »Mein Liebling Cemal«, und ist eine Totenklage. Meise schrieb den deutschen Text auf Grundlage der Übersetzung von Fatih Alasalvaroglu, der ebenfalls aus Hanau kommt.

Neben der Trauer um neun junge Menschen ist Solidarität mit den Angehörigen und Freunden der Mordopfer dringend notwendig. Sie haben sich in der »Initiative 19. Februar Hanau« organisiert – auf ihrer Website finden sich Informationen, welche Unterstützung sie sich wünschen.

Meises Konzertprogramm der letzten zwei Jahre umfasste anti-faschistische Lieder und reagierte somit auf den zunehmenden Rechtspopulismus. Volkslieder, Schlager und Chansons der 1960er Jahre, erschienen im Juli 2018 auf dem Album »Ich bin Griechin« (Martin Hossbach), verarbeiteten die Erfahrung des Zweiten Weltkrieges, erzählten von der Sehnsucht, die Heimat zu verlassen oder den Erfahrungen eines Saisonarbeiters. Die Lieder stammten vom Antifaschisten Mikis Theodorakis, der Musikerin Barbara, welche die Shoah mit ihrer Familie im Untergrund überlebte, sowie von George Moustaki und Alexandra, die beide nationale Grenzen überschritten.
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Terry Gross is an engrossing trio composed of guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am), bassist Donny Newenhouse, and drummer Phil Becker. The trio are also connected as owners and engineers at Bay Area recording spot El Studio, where they began improvising together as a way to test the boundaries and gear of the studio. Their loose, organic chemistry burgeoned into a deep camaraderie and a sound both expansive and exacting. The three experienced musicians crafted their first fulllength album through the pure joy of playing together with no expectations. With the tapes rolling on their rehearsals, the band captures the exuberance of live performance and elevates those recordings through a deft use of the studio as their collective instrument. On their debut LP Soft Opening, Terry Gross channels their cosmic powers and considerable chops into a gleefully mesmerizing odyssey fit for an arena. Soft Opening took shape over the course of 2016-2019, with Terry Gross writing and refining their songs. "Space Voyage Mission" and "Worm Gear" parallel one another as sinuous jams that pulse with adamantine fervor. Each mountainous epic churns spellbinding repetition and simplicity into dizzying gallops that take hairpin turns into sinewy riffing and elysian vocal melodies. Phil Manley's guitar takes on a constellation of tones across "Space Voyage Mission" with drifting delays soaring over the Newenhouse and Becker's driving rhythm section which all succumb to frothing overdrives that spin the song into entirely new pastures. The hypnotic throb of "Worm Gear" grows all the more enchanting as Newenhouse and Becker add subtle shifts to the single-chord barrage. "Specificity (Or What Have You)" contrasts these two in its more traditionally pop-oriented structure while retaining its predecessors wide-eyed energy and delves further into the album's lightheartedyet-earnest take on sci-fi tropes from space and time travel to the singularity. As Terry Gross, Phil Manley, Donny Newenhouse, and Phil Becker are sonic scientists traversing the borderlands of rock. Soft Opening captures the simple joy of a no-holds-barred trio in stunning detail, transporting the listener into the splendor and freedom of rock.

This limited edition vinyl release is a double disc pressing on 180g
heavyweight, translucent ORANGE vinyl. The beautiful record sleeve is a gatefold design to fit both LPs.
This vinyl is a limited release to 1000 pressings; each vinyl is hand numbered.
Kate Rusby’s album, Hand Me Down, started life a few years ago whilst she was rehearsing for the Jo Whiley Show on BBC Radio 2. Jo asks her live music guests to perform songs of their own plus any cover version of their choice, Kate’s choice at that time was Oasis’ “Don’t Go Away”; on her second visit to the show she chose by ‘Friday I’m in Love’ by The Cure.
“As a folk singer, it’s what I do, re-interpret existing songs, but usually the songs are much, much older. After playing a version of Oasis’ ‘Don’t Go Away’ on the BBC Radio 2 Jo Whiley show, about 5 years ago, it dawned on me that not just the very old songs are handed down through the generations, but also favourite songs of any age, of any generation.
Songs are precious for many different reasons. With ‘Don’t Go Away’ proving so popular on the last album and hearing the reaction when we performed it on tour, I decided, “Right, that’s it! I am doing a whole album of covers.”
It was always the plan to make this album this year, lock-down just made it more intimate. We have laughed and we have cried, we have danced and we have sung. All of that is here, engrained in every track.”

Switch is the tenth studio album by Dutch rock band Golden Earring, released in 1975 as the follow-up of the band’s international breakthrough album Moontan. Switch actually marked a switch for Golden Earring, as it was more influenced by funk and prog than any of the band’s previous or subsequent releases. Lead single “Kill Me (Ce Soir)” perfectly demonstrates how Golden Earring experimented with a new sound. This reissue comes with a 4 page insert. Switch is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on transparent blue vinyl.

Music For Nations release - the Norwegian music constellation Wardruna are renowned for their innovative and genrecreating renditions of older Nordic traditions. Composer Einar Selvik initiated the group in the early 2000s. Since the debut album in 2009, Wardruna have had vast worldwide success, transcending music genres, cultures and languages. The group has previously charted in both Germany and the UK and topped the North American Billboard World music chart for several consecutive weeks. The group's massive musical contributions to History Channel's TV series 'Vikings' has exposed their music to a broad audience worldwide.

Recorded and produced sometime, somewhere between the back streets of Hackney, Margate and Sydney, this release brings together 4 deep and diverse tracks from UK producer Mike Misiu (previously seen on Razor n Tape and Pleasure Unit among others). It also marks the maiden musical voyage of his new label Heads High.

Opening track 'Darkness Falls' floats a dramatic filtered string section over a driving dub-disco-house beat, spacey synth plucks and euphoric swells.

Track 2 'Cascade' builds on a tumbling synth bass and moody chord stabs with jazzy rhodes, strings and filtered vocals to create an infectious shuffling deep House groove.

On the B side 'For Your Love' is a bubbling psychedelic cauldron of hypnotic synths, piano lines and soulful vocal echoes which come together as a driving electro-discoid-funk jam.

Closing out the E.P. is 'Bala' is an uplifting percussive number with a vibe that transports you to an Afro-cosmic dancefloor beyond the stars.

William Basinski's reputation as the foremost producer of profound meditations on death and decay has long been established, but on his new album, Lamentations, he transforms operatic tragedy into abyssal beauty. More than any other work since The Disintegration Loops, there is an ominous grief throughout the album, and that sense of loss lingers like an emotional vapor. Captured and constructed from tape loops and studies from Basinski's archives - dating back to 1979 - Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighs meticulously crafted into songs. They are shaped by the inevitable passage of time and the indisputable collapsing of space - and their collective resonance is infinite and eternal.

white vinyls

5 years after his last studio album, Wax Tailor is back with "The Shadow Of Their Suns" a darkly elegant "sound feature" accompanied by a new and prestigious cast.

Behind this allegorical title hides a long period of brainstorm. The luxury of time in a world where everything goes fast. Time to observe the light from the shadow, the "whirlwind of life", its excesses, its drifts and its symbolic violence. Time to think and translate into music as a privileged witness of our society.

Among the guests of this new album, the rock legend Mark Lanegan & his unique voice, Del the Funky Homosapien (Gorillaz, Hieroglyphics), D Smoke (Winner Netflix Rythm + Flow, the new west coast scene sensation), the late Gil Scott Heron, Rosemary Standley (Moriarty), Mr LIF (Thievery Corporation, Def Jux), Yugen Blakrok (noticed alongside Kendrick Lamar & Vince Staples on the Black Panther album), Adeline (Brooklyn’s Best Kept secret soul singer), Boog Brown (Detroit femcee).

Growing up in deindustrialized Providence, Rhode Island of the 1970s and 1980s provided NYC-based composer and interdisciplinary artist Gavilán Rayna Russom access to derelict subterranean spaces including the mile-long East Side Rail Tunnel. The tunnel's reverberant darkness would produce distinctive sensory effects and host Russom's formative experiences of interpersonal connectedness, liminality, transgender identity, anti-capitalist desire and state repression.

Secret Passage – an absorbing, memoiristic work by Russom, whose synthesis-based practice fuses information and expression into organic wholes – draws on memories of "unsupervised autonomous zones where I tasted the possibilities of a world without surveillance," as she writes in the liner notes. Inspired by "this beautifully neglected place," the music resounds with ghostlike echoes and raw pulsations.

Russom utilizes synthesizers, field recordings and voice to illustrate hallucinatory revelations of the city's lightless undercarriage. Each track of Secret Passage, originally released as a limited cassette on Voluminous Arts, is dedicated to a friend – entwining personal liberation with collective discovery. The East Side Rail Tunnel has been inaccessible since the 1990s, the result of urban development and gentrification.

Founded in 1996 by the German-Nigerian lead singer Ade Bantu, his brother Abiodun Odukoya and Patrice, BANTU have been one of the West African acts transforming the legacy of King Sunny Adé and Fela Kuti into the soundtrack of the continent. The group is distinguished by the fact that while created and fronted by vocalist Ade Bantu, it is unmistakably a collective, collaborative effort. When you have a band this strong, this tight where everyone gets to shine, magic happens. And once again with this new album, the 13-piece ensemble is pushing the boundaries of funkiness and political prowess for contemporary music, in Africa or globally.

From their first release, “No Vernacular in 1996 to the present, BANTU has scored a series of hits across Europe and Africa garnering major awards. Indeed, the list of artists who've collaborated with BANTU is a testament to the power, originality and talent of the band: an international cornucopia including UB40, Tony Allen, Orlando Julius, Brothers Keepers (which they created), Gentleman, Ebenezer Obey and Burna Boy just to name a few. These collaborations helped the band earn several major Continental awards, including the Kora Awards (the Pan African equivalent of the Grammys) for “Best Group West Africa” and “Best Group Africa”.

Their latest release Everybody Get Agenda is nothing short of a musical sensation - Afrobeat, Funk and Soul seamlessly flow into one another as they merge with Jazz, Highlife, Hiphop and Yoruba music. The lyrics address issues around corruption, injustice, migration, xenophobia and urban alienation while a guest appearance by Seun Kuti on “Yeye Theory” rounds up this solid long player. There is no doubt that with Everybody Get Agenda BANTU has not just charted new musical territory but reached it and planted the flag.