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Belched from Hell’s depths into the rustic charms of the Witch County, Suffolk thirty long and disturbing years ago, CRADLE OF FILTH are undisputed giants of the heavy metal realm. Imperious purveyors of a perennially unique strain of dark, dastardly and wilfully extreme metal, with deep roots in the worlds of gothic horror and occult curiosity, the band led by Dani Filth has weathered three decades of tumult and trial, earning a formidable reputation as both a singular creative force and one of the most riotously entertaining live bands the metal world has ever produced.
From primitive early works like 1992 debut »The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh« to more expansive and theatrical classics like ‘Cruelty And The Beast’ and ‘Midian’, CRADLE OF FILTH defied trends and constructed their own idiosyncratic world of foul grandeur, becoming one of the UK’s most notable metal bands in the process. Since then, they have traversed the world countless times, hoovering up plaudits and praise from an ever-expanding international fan base. Resolutely prolific, the band’s catalogue has grown in depth and stature all the while, irrespective of line-up changes or the whims of the faithful.
In more recent times, CRADLE OF FILTH have hit an unmistakable hot streak of creativity and urgency. As a new line-up coalesced around the creation of 2015’s »Hammer Of The Witches«, fresh impetus propelled the band to new heights, as the revitalised crew became more in demand around the world than ever before. 2017’s ‘Cryptoriana - The Seductiveness Of Decay’ repeated the trick with even more explosive flamboyance. Until a global pandemic brought the music industry to a jarring halt, CRADLE OF FILTH were almost permanently on the road and absolutely fucking flying. As a result, it should surprise no one that the band’s brand new album, ‘Existence Is Futile’, is yet another monumental and electrifying journey through the dark.
Buoyed by these recent triumphs, CRADLE OF FILTH recorded »Existence Is Futile« during 2020, piecing the record together in isolation, at Grindstone Studios in Suffolk with studio guru Scott Atkins (Devilment/Benediction/Vader). Although instantly recognisable as the work of these veteran blackhearts, the thirteenth CRADLE OF FILTH album is a wholly different beast from its immediate predecessors. Pitch-black, perverse and at times absurdly brutal and extreme, it hangs together with mesmerising fluidity. It is also absolutely rammed with giant, rousing melodies and moments of jaw-dropping invention. No one could mistake the venomously catchy likes of ‘How Many Tears To Nurture A Rose?’ or monstrous ballad ‘Discourse Between A Man And His Soul’ for anything other than CRADLE OF FILTH, of course, but ‘Existence Is Futile’ confirms that the band’s exploratory instincts remain as sharp as ever.
Underpinned by its huge and disarmingly organic production, »Existence Is Futile« is plainly the darkest and most unsettling album CRADLE OF FILTH have made in a while. Eschewing the band’s trademark twisted storytelling in favour of horrified glimpses into the mortal void and ruminations on the inevitable destruction of life on Earth, its poignancy and relevance to the cluster of nightmares facing humanity in 2021 is impossible to ignore, even if Dani Filth insists, not unreasonably, that he didn’t anticipate a global pandemic when the news songs were being written.
With the best possible timing, CRADLE OF FILTH were already due to make a new album during those long, lonely months of lockdown in 2020. Having grabbed the opportunity with both hands, Dani avows that unavoidable isolation from the rest of the world was the best possible incentive to get the job done, while also adding plenty of eerie atmosphere to the whole experience.
Sonically speaking, ‘Existence Is Futile’ is easily the most powerful and dramatic record CRADLE OF FILTH have ever made: it’s the sound of band’s enviable onstage chemistry spilling over into the studio, propelling each member of the band to new levels of intensity. Combined with the expected labyrinthine arrangements and moments of spellbinding bombast, ‘Existence Is Futile’ may be the most vivid representation of the CRADLE OF FILTH experience yet.
Also, diehard fans will be thrilled to learn that horror icon Doug 'Pinhead' Bradley makes a welcome return to the CRADLE fold, lending his dulcet tones to the epic ‘Suffer Our Dominion’, and to one of the forthcoming new record’s bonus tracks, as Dani explains.
“There are also two bonus tracks in addition to the album, one of which is the culmination to the ‘Her Ghost In The Fog’ trilogy, which began on »Midian«.
For this we had little hesitation in enlisting our friend and actor Doug Bradley to reprise his narrative role. Doug lives in Pittsburgh, which he refers to ‘The Pit’, thus we directed his narrative over Skype from his local studio. He adopts this almost David Attenborough-ish role on ‘Suffer Our Dominion’, which is possibly the most politically astute song we’ve written of late. As a band we usually shy from branching into politics, but it’s something that needed spouting. The fact we’re fucking our ecology up and desperately need to address the situation pronto…”
So, if we’re all going to perish in the fire of our own stupidity, we might as well have a suitably deranged and destructive soundtrack to do it by.
A bewitching, fearless nosedive into the abyss, the band's thirteenth studio album confirms the ferocious efficacy of CRADLE OF FILTH in 2021. Bold, brave, wildly imaginative and heavy as hell, the band’s latest runaway train-ride through the flames is the perfect album for these most imperfect of times. As Dani concludes, “Be like the virus! Mutate and survive!”

Belched from Hell’s depths into the rustic charms of the Witch County, Suffolk thirty long and disturbing years ago, CRADLE OF FILTH are undisputed giants of the heavy metal realm. Imperious purveyors of a perennially unique strain of dark, dastardly and wilfully extreme metal, with deep roots in the worlds of gothic horror and occult curiosity, the band led by Dani Filth has weathered three decades of tumult and trial, earning a formidable reputation as both a singular creative force and one of the most riotously entertaining live bands the metal world has ever produced.
From primitive early works like 1992 debut »The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh« to more expansive and theatrical classics like ‘Cruelty And The Beast’ and ‘Midian’, CRADLE OF FILTH defied trends and constructed their own idiosyncratic world of foul grandeur, becoming one of the UK’s most notable metal bands in the process. Since then, they have traversed the world countless times, hoovering up plaudits and praise from an ever-expanding international fan base. Resolutely prolific, the band’s catalogue has grown in depth and stature all the while, irrespective of line-up changes or the whims of the faithful.
In more recent times, CRADLE OF FILTH have hit an unmistakable hot streak of creativity and urgency. As a new line-up coalesced around the creation of 2015’s »Hammer Of The Witches«, fresh impetus propelled the band to new heights, as the revitalised crew became more in demand around the world than ever before. 2017’s ‘Cryptoriana - The Seductiveness Of Decay’ repeated the trick with even more explosive flamboyance. Until a global pandemic brought the music industry to a jarring halt, CRADLE OF FILTH were almost permanently on the road and absolutely fucking flying. As a result, it should surprise no one that the band’s brand new album, ‘Existence Is Futile’, is yet another monumental and electrifying journey through the dark.
Buoyed by these recent triumphs, CRADLE OF FILTH recorded »Existence Is Futile« during 2020, piecing the record together in isolation, at Grindstone Studios in Suffolk with studio guru Scott Atkins (Devilment/Benediction/Vader). Although instantly recognisable as the work of these veteran blackhearts, the thirteenth CRADLE OF FILTH album is a wholly different beast from its immediate predecessors. Pitch-black, perverse and at times absurdly brutal and extreme, it hangs together with mesmerising fluidity. It is also absolutely rammed with giant, rousing melodies and moments of jaw-dropping invention. No one could mistake the venomously catchy likes of ‘How Many Tears To Nurture A Rose?’ or monstrous ballad ‘Discourse Between A Man And His Soul’ for anything other than CRADLE OF FILTH, of course, but ‘Existence Is Futile’ confirms that the band’s exploratory instincts remain as sharp as ever.
Underpinned by its huge and disarmingly organic production, »Existence Is Futile« is plainly the darkest and most unsettling album CRADLE OF FILTH have made in a while. Eschewing the band’s trademark twisted storytelling in favour of horrified glimpses into the mortal void and ruminations on the inevitable destruction of life on Earth, its poignancy and relevance to the cluster of nightmares facing humanity in 2021 is impossible to ignore, even if Dani Filth insists, not unreasonably, that he didn’t anticipate a global pandemic when the news songs were being written.
With the best possible timing, CRADLE OF FILTH were already due to make a new album during those long, lonely months of lockdown in 2020. Having grabbed the opportunity with both hands, Dani avows that unavoidable isolation from the rest of the world was the best possible incentive to get the job done, while also adding plenty of eerie atmosphere to the whole experience.
Sonically speaking, ‘Existence Is Futile’ is easily the most powerful and dramatic record CRADLE OF FILTH have ever made: it’s the sound of band’s enviable onstage chemistry spilling over into the studio, propelling each member of the band to new levels of intensity. Combined with the expected labyrinthine arrangements and moments of spellbinding bombast, ‘Existence Is Futile’ may be the most vivid representation of the CRADLE OF FILTH experience yet.
Also, diehard fans will be thrilled to learn that horror icon Doug 'Pinhead' Bradley makes a welcome return to the CRADLE fold, lending his dulcet tones to the epic ‘Suffer Our Dominion’, and to one of the forthcoming new record’s bonus tracks, as Dani explains.
“There are also two bonus tracks in addition to the album, one of which is the culmination to the ‘Her Ghost In The Fog’ trilogy, which began on »Midian«.
For this we had little hesitation in enlisting our friend and actor Doug Bradley to reprise his narrative role. Doug lives in Pittsburgh, which he refers to ‘The Pit’, thus we directed his narrative over Skype from his local studio. He adopts this almost David Attenborough-ish role on ‘Suffer Our Dominion’, which is possibly the most politically astute song we’ve written of late. As a band we usually shy from branching into politics, but it’s something that needed spouting. The fact we’re fucking our ecology up and desperately need to address the situation pronto…”
So, if we’re all going to perish in the fire of our own stupidity, we might as well have a suitably deranged and destructive soundtrack to do it by.
A bewitching, fearless nosedive into the abyss, the band's thirteenth studio album confirms the ferocious efficacy of CRADLE OF FILTH in 2021. Bold, brave, wildly imaginative and heavy as hell, the band’s latest runaway train-ride through the flames is the perfect album for these most imperfect of times. As Dani concludes, “Be like the virus! Mutate and survive!”

Raven returns to Rekids with ‘Mania’ this September.

Born in Canada and now based in Berlin, having spent time in Los Angeles, Chicago, Barcelona, Toronto, and Mexico City and more in between, Raven is a singular artist distilling influences ranging from Techno, Electro, R&B and more into her own genre-spanning, vocal-driven productions. Following her debut EP ‘Flames’ on Rekids in 2020, which picked up support from the likes of Joy Orbison, Deetron, and many more, as well as an appearance on Amelie Lens’ Exhale imprint earlier this year, Berlin-based DJ/producer Raven returns to Radio Slave’s imprint once again with the fierce ‘Mania’ 12”.

With ‘Flames’ featuring five original tracks, Raven narrows her focus on ‘Mania’, turning in two killer techno cuts backed with alternative mixes of each. Leading the A side is ‘Nobody’, a hypnotic late-night affair peppered with emotive vocal hooks and trippy synth leads, followed by the ‘Sudden Urges’ mix, which sees the track stripped of its pulsing 4/4 and replaced with haunting atmospherics, breakbeats, and additional synth work.

On the flip, ‘Cold Sweat’ returns to the club with a dose of speaker-rattling kicks, mind-bending leads, and siren-esque effects before the ‘Comedown Mix’ brings a subtler approach, with electro-flecked drum patterns, dense ambience, and spacious reverberations rounding out a standout second release from Raven for Matt Edwards’ Rekids.

Greetings Earth-o-nauts.

The worm has (re) turned! And this time the Regal Worm (Jarrod Gosling of I Monster, Cobalt Chapel) is tackling The Hideous Goblink.
An album painstakingly created by one solitary man ensconced in his darkened, tiny sky parlour of awe, wonder, and heaps of dusty old gear.

Regal Worm’s mission is putting a ‘ggressive’ back into progressive. Getting grubby with the ghosts of the old gods.
The Hideous Goblink reveals a distinct sense of urgency, expressing abstract musings on the shadow cast by our colonial history, nationalism,
terrifying overlords, and what the future might hold for the ever shrinking third tone from the sun.

The fourth Regal Worm offering draws on a number of fresh musical influences; be it space rock, cosmic funk, sludge, fusion, choirs, electronics or pop.

Inner City’s sojourn at Network resulted in a series of classic recordings.

As well as perfectly crafted vocal tracks including “Your Love”, “Share My Life” and “Do Me RIght” it meant that Kevin Saunderson could also return to his Techno roots with underground Inner City tracks.

None more so than the wonderful “Ahnonghay” which perfectly joined the dots between electronica and the brutal urgency of Kevin’s Reese persona which helped shape the early Detroit Techno landscape.

This 12 contains the Saunderson original plus wonderfully contrasting remixes from Detroit’s Carl Craig and the UK’s Dave Clarke which were equally acclaimed when released on Network’s six6 label.

Another reissued gem from Network.

No less than 12 months later arrives ‘Deep Blue View’ – not so much of a follow-up, as a mini-flipside moving the Jazz from AM to PM, between city and sea.
“I originally had AM Jazz down as walking around some New York backstreet at 4am, smoking in a fedora, looking for crimes to solve but it now ends as night begins,” reveals Al, of his latest tale’s gradual evolution. “Deep Blue View is the night-time album now… like losing yourself deeper in the fog, or disappearing in the sea… would someone, or some 'thing' come to save you or would they , or it , come along for the ride?”
Usually by now, Daveyhulme’s own could-be John Barry would have left distractions of success for suburban side-projects and writing with his fellow Mancunian musicians, but AM Jazz left unfinished business - and, with 50 or so session recordings leaving a litter of sonic debris strewn about the cutting room floor, one major clean-up. Deep Blue View is 6 brand new tracks crafted from its reconstructed and revived remnants, unfurling like Sinatra’s Wee Small Hours to reinforce the strangely beautiful atmosphere of Al’s now revered repertoire. “I had the urge to create something new and started playing around with different EPs and pseudonyms but when I sequenced these tracks, I was really happy how smoothly they flowed; it just needed an opener. I quickly wrote ‘Deep Blue View’ and it fell into place. It’s great, so I carried on, knowing it was time to save the best stuff for myself,” Al grins.
Just as AM Jazz was created in the spirit of his earlier working style on debut album Tower of Love, Deep Blue View fuses Al’s love of finding the ‘right’ in the odd, weird, back-to-front and everything in between, with the hi-fi meets lo-fi sounds of his crate-digging curiosity and empathy for TV themes and movie soundtracks. Guided by melody, his home-based sorcery of working with analog, tape and field recordings opposed to the lure of studio mechanics allowed his inner subconscious to tap at the door and reveal itself in new musical forms. “In the studio it’s tempting to turn everything up loud but I’ve got bad tinnitus and don’t want to write anything else in a Beatles style. I have done all that now… at home I have a computer, a microphone and just go crazy and lose myself staring at the screen. Then suddenly loads of music is written.”
Setting his inner autopilot to flight mode, ‘Peppergone’ adds to the tracks’ nocturnal narrative and appears reborn after a last-minute culling from AM Jazz’s initial tracklist. Like a beautifully romantic ode to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, it is a fitting tribute to dearly departed best friend 'Batfinks', written in the middle of a tough night. “I have no idea why or how the song came about because I was so upset to do anything, let alone record any music. But there you go. Somehow I did and it’s a really special thing. I know he would have dug me using his chords; growing up we’d both try to create the perfect chord sequence. This is his idea of that. I hope he doesn’t think it’s shit,” Al jests.
Also revived from AM Jazz’s archive is the simmering groove of ‘Night Talk Late Street’ and instrumental ‘Star Six Seven’, whilst ‘Have Another Cigar’ weaves its own semi-autobiographical fairy-tale with lyrics written and sung by long-time pal and former housemate Aidan Smith. Transformed from backing track into a cool morsel of story pop, it recalls the drunken joy of when the pair would make recordings together between singing the Everly Brothers at full volume. “I’m sure it’s about not wanting the musical party to stop and having to get on with real life,” Al says.
‘String Beat’ meanwhile, soars like a beautiful Bond theme with the shimmer of Lee Hazlewood holidaying in Palm Springs, alongside perhaps, the waltzing string-like synthonies of some long-lost rhythm and blues orchestra of Davyhulme (whose real-life origins reside with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra), introduced to him by Super Furry Animals’ Cian Ciaran. “I’ve never created anything this moody before and have always threatened to do something John Barry-esque with some slightly dark and spooky musical changes.”

"Future indie classics that reek of modern New York City Charm” – DIY Magazine
"Captures honest-to-god truths in a new light’ – The Line of Best Fit
“A nostalgia-tinged hit, filled with jangly guitars and contagious melodies” – Wonderland
‘WANDERKID’ is the sophomore album from New York’s next lo-fi legend, JW Francis, and will be released whilst its creator is in the middle of trekking 2000 miles along the Appalachian Trail in the US. The follow up to JW’s critically acclaimed debut album ‘We Share A Similar Joy’, ‘WANDERKID’ will be released on 3rd September by Sunday Best Recordings. “WANDERKID is an album about escape. It’s supposed to be a gut punch of a record about an anti-hero named WANDERKID who wants to get OUT: out of his living situation, out of his head, out of his life. This album is like looking out the car window with an urgent desire to be on the other side. It was finished during the most recent global pandemic, so hopefully folks find it relatable.”
JW is fast making a name for himself as one of the most exciting new artists around. Born in Oklahoma, JW landed in New York City at 19 to study Economics at Columbia University, but not before making stops, stays and stints in Vermont, aged 12 and Paris, aged 13. Whilst at Columbia, the troubadour started music blog Rare Candy and founded student-run recording studio CU Records. Musically, JW takes his lead from the greats of the Downtown scene - Patti Smith, The Velvet Underground, Television, Talking Heads, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs - and is fast emerging at the forefront of the next generation.

Lost Tapes is a monthly release of rare B-sides, exclusives - & even some previously unreleased tracks. Now the first 10 tracks from the series are released on limited heavyweight + numbered vinyl, CD and cassette for the first time. Röyksopp on the Lost Tapes series: Upon renovating our arctic chateau here in the desolate north, we came across an old sea chest containing an abundance of rare B-sides, exclusives - & even some previously unreleased tracks. We thought the only right thing would be to make these «hard-to-find» tracks available for those of you who prefer to stream music. So therefore we’ve created a playlist called ‘Lost Tapes’. The Playlist will be updated as we go, make sure you subscribe. All obscure tracks will eventually see the light of day.

Events currently taking place throughout the world only serve to stoke a fire under the likes of Pillow Queens, who find themselves continually inspired by a Dublin that is no stranger to fighting social injustice. Street artists, fashion designers, musicians, film makers and more comprise a scene which routinely champions queerness and marginalized groups, and engages with and activates young people in response to the likes of the city’s ongoing housing and mental health crises. Pillow Queens’ songs of togetherness and unity ring out louder than ever before.

In their short lifespan as a band they've released two demo EPs, performed on a successful string of UK & Irish dates & festival appearances, had playlisting from BBC 6 Music, and found themselves opening for the likes of American Football and Pussy Riot, as well as stadium performances opening for IDLES and Future Islands.

With all this under their belt, the band began working with Mercury Prize nominated producer Tommy McLaughlin for their single 'Gay Girls' – which received a nomination for the RTE Choice Music Prize song of the year, as well as International pickup from NPR’s World Cafe and KEXP. The song also found its way into the heart of actor Cillian Murphy and his BBC6 mixtape show.

2019 saw Pillow Queens venture into mainland Europe, as they lit up the Eurosonic festival and completed a string of tour dates opening for Soak. The tour was a messy and joyous affair captured beautifully in the DIY video for the bands summer single 'HowDoILook'.

In Waiting is Pillow Queens’ debut album, the result of four years of brotherly love in a sisterly unit from Ireland’s most urgent, yearning, rock band. Crafted from our lives, and honed in a studio in rural Donegal in the northwest of Ireland, this is a record by queens in waiting and kings in the making. It’s an album about love; self-love, queer love, the anxiety-inducing fault lines of romantic love, and the love for a city and a country that simultaneously has your back and is on your back.

Wunderhorse announces a debut single, Teal. It is streaming now via Yala! Records.

Wunderhorse is the alias of British musician Jacob Slater. Jacob fronted The Dead Pretties, a London band who arrived in a haze of hedonism and hype, bowing out before the dust had time to settle. Blink and you’d have missed them.

This new project arrives no less frenetically. Teal is a feral, romantic, visceral, chaotic and enchanting cacophony of sound that contradicts itself with each sleight of hand and change of chord. A rare, raw and assured talent, Teal is an urgent fever-dream of a number, tumbling downhill with the brakes off. Belligerent and unblinking. Arthouse indie-rock, but without the connotations. It’s one of those.

If this all sounds exciting that’s because it is. Teal is one of those tunes that has a rare ability to define the very moment in which its heard and forever associate itself with the memories long after. Time-stamped yet timeless. If there’s any justice, it’ll soon be played out live in sticky basement rooms up and down the country, limbs everywhere, sweat dripping from the walls. An absolute mess, but what a beautiful one.

There will be more from Wunderhorse, but for now this is Teal. Play it again, but play it louder.

New York electronic experimentalist Nicky Mao's 4th full-length, Silvercoat the throng, emerged against the backdrop of lockdown, compelled by an intuitive directive: “resist the urge to fill the space.” Compositionally this translated as a simmering, shadowy energy, veiled but variable, traced in a composite of strings, synthetics, rhythm, and voice. The title alludes to a poetic notion of “possibility, rescued from darkness,” which aptly evokes the shape-shifting, devotional feel of these ambitious and elegant sound designs, crafted in defiance of impermanence, driven by the pursuit of becoming “more and more articulated, differentiated.”

Collaborations with travis from ONO, Speaker Music, and Muqata'a further expand the album's lyrical, liminal palette, meshing elements of experimental techno, spoken word, neo-classical, and industrial noise into a fluid, encrypted dialect all its own. Mao speaks of creative strategies of solidification and reification, encounter and transformation, pure being and punctuation – a multitude

of sparks, fuses, and forking paths leading across fresh thresholds and twilit terrain. Taken as a whole, Silvercoat captures Hiro Kone at the peak of their powers, alchemizing disruption and decomposition into regenerative interior worlds: “Within the darkness and absence is an opportunity for discovery.”

The Altered Hours have just announced details of their second full length album ‘Convertible’. The Irish group have just signed with Pizza Pizza Records and the 8 track album is set for release in May 2021. Following on from some successful headline tours across Europe supporting their debut album & some blistering EP’s along the way, the group found themselves looking for the next step in their ever- evolving journey. Having previously recorded in Anton Newcombe’s Berlin studio for their debut singles & ending up in the infamous Funkhaus studios to lay down what would become their debut album ‘In Heat Not Sorry ’, the band decided once again to



change the approach & take their new songs back to the privacy of their own studio space on the outskirts of Cork City. The new LP ‘Convertible’ is the result of countless late night/early morning sessions that took place over the past 2 years. Choosing to self produce and engineer this record was a conscious choice as the band felt an urge to take what they had learned on the road & in various studios previously, and condense all of this energy back into the boiling pot of their own rehearsal space.

The group have been a part of some exciting movements since the beginning and their path has been an organic one. They quickly became known in their hometown for taking over an ex-government building in the heart of Cork city, turning into a studio and creating a hub for the scene that surrounded them. The years that follow shine a light on the relentless energy of this group and unwavering love for playing shows anywhere & everywhere. Having been invited to perform at Liverpool Psych Fest numerous times, supporting the Brian Jonestown Massacre, selling out venues, churches & clubs, playing rip-roaring DIY shows in friends’ basements, getting joined by members of Spacemen 3 on stage and more recently, being invited by fellow Irish rockers Fontaines D.C to join them on their 2019 European tour playing sold out shows in venues like The Bataclan, Paris & Paradiso, Amsterdam. It’s been a wild ride for The Altered Hours so far & their music keeps evolving & growing as the experiences build. This is a group with the spirit of music deeply ingrained in them and a passion for making rock music something that you can believe in.

Their second full length album ‘Convertible’ is a window into the band’s idiosyncratic tendencies, a closer look into how their writing & sound continuously moves forwards while somehow remaining rooted in their own unique world all at once. The Altered Hours seem born to be an underground affair, something that they wear with pride and this album is a wonderful culmination of their DIY upbringing, their unfiltered rock ‘n’ roll spirit along with a confident stride into personal songwriting.

The Men’s hugely influential album Leave Home came out during an exciting time in New York City. DIY lofts and shitty bars littered downtown Manhattan and North Brooklyn. The Acheron had just opened its doors. Kill Your Idols had broken up. Toxic State Records was just getting started with Crazy Spirit, Dawn of Humans, Hank Wood and Perdition EP’s. The city was alive with punk and noise and filth. And right at that time, The Men were the show to be at.

Every gig was dripping with sweat. Hallways and sidewalks were packed between sets. Chaos reigned in the pit. The Men hit like a bag of hard cement, a hardcore band with a familiar sound but with an aura of absolute chaos and intensity, like everything was on the brink of going off the rails at every moment of their set, a downhill freight train with no brakes. During these shows one’s focus could shoot back and forth between the intimidatingly angry-eyed, bald-headed Chris Hansell (who went on to front Warthog) and the long haired hippie punks Mark Perro, Nick Chiericozzi and Rich Samis, that made up the surrounding band.

Just one of the many juxtapositions the band embraced. If The Men were a chapter in Michael Azzerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, the early EP’s and cassettes would obviously be Minor Threat and Black Flag, while Leave Home would likely be… Sonic Youth. It was just before they made the full jump into each record being a smorgasbord of underground genres, from dream pop to folk;

before they had tracks called “Country Song,” for example. But it was a preview of what was to come. Leave Home was a pivot from pure hardcore punk (some might even call it mysterious guy hardcore), as the band got lost in the groove in a way one couldn’t on a straight up punk record. That groove was so strong on “If You Leave…,” “(),” and “Bataille,” while they spaced out on “Shitting With The Shaw,” and stayed as aggro as ever on “LADOCH.” But of course, Leave Home had a re-recording of their hardest track to date, “Think,” making it clear that they were still the moshers we all had come to know and love. If The Men raised their flag as an important New York punk band with Immaculada, they started waving it in the freakiest way with Leave Home.There is no doubt that Leave Home was one of the most influential records of the last decade.

You can hear their mark everywhere from Ty Segal and The Oh Sees to Milk Music and Hank Wood. Few bands have traversed as many genres as The Men and even fewer have done it so well. It is a testament to the band’s undying authenticity and adventurism that the record sounds as timeless and urgent now as it did when it blew the doors of New York punk off its hinges ten years ago, leaving a giant hole for bands of all kinds to come racing through.

The anticipation is there in Elizabeth Stokes’ solo guitar riff under the opening lines of “I’m Not Getting Excited”: a frenetic, driving force daring a packed Auckland Town Hall to do exactly the opposite of what the track title suggests.

As the opener of The Beths’ Auckland, New Zealand, 2020 expands to include the full band, the crowd screeches and bellows. It’s a collective exhalation, in one of the few countries where live music is still possible.

The album title, and film of the same name, deliberately include the date and location, lead guitarist Jonathan Pearce says. “That’s the sensational part of what we actually did.” In a mid-pandemic world, playing to a heaving, enraptured home crowd feels miraculous.

In March 2020, everything seemed on track for another huge year for The Beths. Home after an 18-month northern hemisphere tour, they had just finished recording sophomore album Jump Rope Gazers and were primed for more extensive touring. But within days, New Zealand’s lockdown split the band between three separate houses. All touring was cancelled.

“It was existentially bad,” Stokes says. As well as worrying about economic survival, they lost something crucial to the band’s identity: live performance. “It's a huge part of how we see ourselves... What does it mean, if we can't play live?”

The band found an outlet through live-streaming, returning to the do-it-yourself mentality of their early days to connect with a global audience. The album and film have their genesis in that urge to share the now-rare experience of a live show, as widely as possible.

The fuzzy-round-the-edges live-streams pointed the way aesthetically. Native birds, wonkily crafted by the band from tissue paper and wire, festoon the venue’s cavernous ceiling while house plants soften and disguise the imposing pipes of an organ. The presence of the film crew isn’t disguised: much of the camerawork is handheld; full of fast zooms and pans.

With much of the material still fresh, the band was less focused on re-invention than playing “a good, fast rock show”, Pearce says. The tempo is up on crowd favourites “Whatever” and “Future Me Hates Me” (released as a live single on its third anniversary) as both band and audience feed off the mutual energy in the room.

Certain songs have taken on special resonance post-Covid. Pearce has found “Out Of Sight”, a tender rumination on long-distance relationships, hits particularly hard with live audiences.

Album closer “River Run” visibly brings Stokes to tears as a mix of achievement and relief kicks in. “You can finally relax at that point … You play the last note, breathe out a sigh and look up - and you’re in a giant room full of people happy and smiling.”

The edition that marks the start of the brand-new Comets Coming could not be more suitable: it is that Rodrigo Brandão, like his grandfather Herman Poole Blount, dust of stars that the world knows as Sun Ra, may have his feet on the Earth, but he has definitely a sidereal head.

Brandão arrived recently to Portugal, but already left a strong mark in the most adventurous Lisbon scene, having performed several concerts in which his language has been wrapped in the exploratory sounds of musicians such as Rodrigo Amado, João Valinho, and Hernâni Faustino. The agitator, poet and spoken word artist, brought a vast experience that over the years saw him collaborate with artists as distinct as the members of Metá Metá or Prince Paul (that one!) on BROOKZILL!.

This work, however, came in his luggage, across the ocean, on the rediscovery trip that brought him from Brazil to Lisbon. OUTROS ESPAÇO was recorded in São Paulo in late 2019 with a luxury crew: Tulipa Ruiz and Juçara Marçal added to the microphone, Thiago França played flute and alto & tenor saxophones, Guilherme Granado dealt with the synthesizers and effects, Marcos Gerez measured the overall pulse with his electric bass, Thomas Rohrer played soprano and 'rabeca' (fiddle), and Paulo Santos dealt with the percussion. In addition to the base band, OUTROS ESPAÇO also features some members of Sun Ra Arkestra's current incarnation. Respectively: Danny Thompson (RIP) on baritone and bongo, Elson Nascimento on 'surdo' (tom drum), Knoel Scott on tenor and soprano, with the giant Marshall Allen in a prominent role leading the collective towards the unknown, while playing the alto sax and synthesizer.

In OUTROS ESPAÇO, Brandão reaches for words from different origins, from contrasting times and cultures, all with magnetic resonance imaging: what is not from his furrow comes to him from Candomblé (“Quando Os Orixás Desfilam Sobre A Cracolândia”), from his readings of Sun Ra (“Eu Sou 1 Instrumento” is an adaptation of the poem I Am An Instrument), or from the school's playgrounds (“Jamais Nos Esqueceremos”). And in these words there are teeth and nails ingrained in injustice (“Quantos Coltrane...?, “Todo o Dia Tem +”) and kaleidoscopic delusions that result from the speed of light (“Sol da Meia Noite”).

The crew that travels through these OUTROS ESPAÇO (PT for "Other Spaces") has freedom as the main fuel, jazz as a measure of their reach, and all swings in the world as maps, so they can lose themselves at the end of the cosmos. There is urgency and reflection, craziness and precision, surprise and well-known ancestral raw material, that makes us vibrate inwardly with the same trembling as the comets that are coming.

The visionary and veteran Scotty Hard was responsible for making everything sound like the music of the spheres, dealing with the mixing from his INGUASONIC SOUND studio in Brooklyn, NY.

And lastly, in January, Rob Mazurek, another frequent ally of Brandão, another notorious space traveler, offered a poem that frames this project. Among other things, he writes:

Make this place sing

Make this place thunder

Make this place shake

It couldn't be in any other way.

Skuggministeriet “Caged” is the first reference of Scandinavian artist Celldöd under this new pseudonym which shows a sweeter and more melodious side of him. Four astounding tracks swinging between the roughness and urgency of 80’s low-fi electro and the freshness and emotivity of the pioneers of the beginning of the 80’s. Limited edition of 300 copies.

THE NIGHT FLIGHT ORCHESTRA is back! The band that formed as an idea of friends from several well known rock/metal bands (SOILWORK, ARCH ENEMY, MEAN STREAK) back almost a decade ago and has been dropping jaws ever since. With 5 albums already under their belt, 2 nominations for the Swedish Grammies, countless live shows and praises from fans and media alike, TNFO have steadily upped their game when it comes to paying tribute to a decade that influences all sorts of people and even industries to this day - the 80s. With hits like ‘Domino’, ‘Lovers In The Rain’, ‘West Ruth Ave’, ‘Divinyls’ or ‘This Time’, the band manages to maintain a variety of vibes and emotions within every album. From hard rockers, poppy digressions to progressive epics, disco-esque songs and almost cheesy yet loveable ballads.

Enter 2020, TNFO had just released their recent record, ‘Aeromantic’, and kicked off their European tour in support of it, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Björn Strid, the AOR dictator helming this exceptional collective called NFO, recalls “We made it one week into the tour after some absolutely amazing shows and then it all went south and we had to go home. Just about everyone on the tour got sick when they came home, with varied conditions.”
The band didn’t step back and accept the situation but decided to do what they do best instead: “It was pretty clear after some months into the Covid madness, that it was here to stay and that we weren’t gonna be able to tour for quite some time. So we made the best out of it. The remedy was simply to hit the studio again as soon as everybody was well again. It ended up being an incredibly creative 1,5 years and so many amazing songs came out of it.”

That being said, the second part of the ‘Aeromantic’ saga really captures what this band is all about: being in motion and romanticizing traveling, sometimes even with a broken heart - accompanied by the good things in life. Namely with songs like ‘White Jeans’, yet another jaw dropping classic rock gem about hot young love, cramped with nostalgia, or ‘Change’, which encompasses all the vibes you know from your favorite decade: Urgency, emotion, warmth and excitement. But also groovy danceable songs like ‘Chardonnay Nights’, a groovy, dreamy, yet uplifting homage to parties and hot love, or ‘Burn For Me’, a true feel good anthem for the summer - driving people to dance in the streets, all worries aside, to a brighter future.

On the other hand there are tracks like the almost progressive ‘Amber Through A Window’. A little throwback (at least titular) to the NFO’s epic 2017 album ‘Amber Galactic’: “Amber is with us wherever we go and I think she’ll keep coming back. She’s our mascot of escapism. The song was very interesting to compose. It takes you on quite a journey with key changes and goes from minor to major when you least expect it and throws you between different set of emotions. At the same time it feels pretty direct and operates like a mini epos. Really happy with how it turned out“, cites Strid.

Besides all this, the band has also stepped up their game when it comes to music videos for their timeless anthems. “White Jeans” for instance features Swedish TV personality Fredrik Lexfors and is a sweet little homage to the LGBTQIA+ community. “Fredrik is a good friend of mine and has loads of experience in the musical/theatre world and is super creative. He created this character called ”Kantorn” (The Cantor) some years ago and became a hit on YouTube. He has a very twisted and unique way of singing and acting, which is very funny. He was a part of Sweden’s Got Talent TV Show and went really far and became a crowd favorite. Fredrik has a lot of friends in the LGBTQIA+ community and I also have quite a few. We saw it as a joyful tribute and we’ve only gotten really good response. It’s of course also humorous but has a very nice balance and a very positive message.”

The bold and jovial video for “Burn For Me” on the other hand maybe among the biggest and best productions, the NFO ever recorded for the depths of the internet: “I’ve had this idea to film a ”Dancing in the Streets” video, where curious people come out of the woodworks and join the party in the streets. It’s a very classic 80’s scenario and very common in videos back then. Sort of the video to IRENE CARA’s ”Fame”. You don’t see it very often these days. We felt that it was needed and after “Burn For Me” was done I immediately envisoned it being the perfect ”post corona dancing celebration in the streets-song”.”

Those two videos are by far not everything the band will have to offer visually, but we won’t tell any more just for now. To be continued…

With all that new greatness up their sleeves, NFO are ready to take the world by storm – again! Even though coming up with a setlist for their scheduled tour starting in September may prove to become problematic according to the AOR Dictator: “Making a setlist might end up being a nightmare haha… I would be up for doing only songs off »Aeromantic I« and »Aeromantic II« since that’s really where we’re at right now, but I think most of our the Midnight Flyers would like to hear some old stuff, too. Maybe we could get away with it as long as we play “West Ruth Ave” as the ending song and create the good old conga train?”

Brian Leeds a.k.a. Huerco S' West Mineral label present a groggy Midwestern ambient doozy with Chat, the first collaborative release by Pontiac Streator and Ulla Straus
Pontiac Streator previously appeared as a guest on the first West Mineral LTD release, Pendant's Make Me Know You Sweet, while Ulla Straus is perhaps best known for her part on the cultishly adored bblisss compilation tape which introduced Huerco S.'s Pendant alias to the world at large.
Their first album together is a bedroom-crafted confection where drowsy blues and raga smudge with lounging exotica themes in a blunted style to properly heavy-lidded effect.
Chat was recorded on July 5th in Pilsen, Chicago on Ulla's bed after a long week spent dancing with friends, staying up all night typing in chatrooms, and hate-watching Fox news. The results channel that experience into four lop-sided creations that feel satisfyingly burned out and immersive, like the murmur of zonked chat between close friends.
In four parts; Chat One thru Chat Four, the record unfurls with a muggy mid-fi tension between its illusive fidelities, kindling a smoky atmosphere that colours listening spaces with seductive smells
and a muggy, keening tension that recalls the minutes before sundown
This balmy feel of the surreal comes out in a sylvan patina of sweetened cicadas and curling pads urged along by a stream of wooden drums, variously recalling Spencer Clark on some kind of
Aguirre soundtrack mission in the tropics, a heatsick Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement piece, or, in the dream-pop drift of the last part, like Leven Signs smudged by Muslimgauze.
Coolly serving to expand West Mineral LTD's remit after that spellbinding Pendant album and a 12" of ectoplasmic dubs from uon, the flux of arid/fluid textures and para-dimensional fidelities in
Chat feels somehow calming yet fraught with a somnambulant appeal that's dangerously easy to

Emerging from the Toronto warehouse scene, Tush is a rising electronic music act powered by Kamilah Apong and Jamie Kidd. Taking inspiration from electro funk, early disco, post-punk and '90s house; their debut album 'Fantast' embodies the rawness, vulnerability, and intimacy of the dancefloor.

'Fantast' kicks off with the slow burning 'Wavy Baby', an invitation to get close, get intimate and submit to the groove: "Vulnerability is the key to us getting to that next step of intimacy". Up next is lead single 'Chrysalis', a high octane ride through a technicolour fantasy world of heady synths and driving rhythms that propel Kamilah's voice into an erotic stratosphere.

'Don't Be Afraid' is about having the courage to love defiantly, urgently, and with intention. Driven by Jamie's infectious bass lines and FX blasts, it smoothly transforms into an uplifting gospel-infused track.

Two high points of the album, 'Jessica F***' and 'Marathons', highlight Tush doing what they do best. These tracks are the sound of the warehouse scene that birthed the project in the first place and the late night jam sessions that were full of possibility pre-pandemic. Here, Tush really stretch their improvisational muscles - the interplay of raw soulful vocals, hypnotic basslines, synth pads, and heavy disco rhythms is at the core of what makes them so invigorating.

'Fantast' closes with the uplifting sunrise energy of 'My Joy', the light at the end of the tunnel. "This song is enchanted by the backing vocals of my friends and chosen family, who are my cornerstones to working through the wonderful mess that I am". Kamilah adds "The track gives me this feeling that - no matter how hard the world tries to beat it out of me - I can and I have had to work hard to cultivate my own happiness in my own sacred spaces - one of those being Tush. Ultimately, this is all I really need".

Runnner's Always Repeating yearns for a sense of place. The project of the now LA-based songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Noah Weinman, Runnner's poignant reflections on the isolation and anxiety caused by a sense of rootlessness radiate with wit and charm. Self-produced and recorded wherever he called home at the time, Always Repeating documents this cycle of looking back and moving forward, of alienation changing to reconciliation. For Weinman, Runnner is primarily a solo endeavor with an ever - expanding musical community of musicians collaborating on his albums and shows, which at times have been known to feature up to a 7-piece live band (he also has a burgeoning career as a producer, notably working on Skullcrusher's critically-acclaimed debut EP for Secretly Canadian). Weinman completed Always Repeating last fall in Western Massachusetts and Woodstock using a mobile studio set-up. He played the majority of the instruments himself, including guitar, bass, trumpet, banjo, piano and synth. The goal was to create the perfect balance of intimate and melancholy songwriting through the lens of hi-fi/lo-fi dynamics, inspired by his favorite artists like Bon Iver, the Microphones, and Julien Baker. The 10-track collection is composed of five re-recorded versions of songs that appeared on Runnner's 2017 debut, Awash, and 2020's One of One EP. Although the songs were written over the course of three years, all find Weinman grappling with the same thing: feelings of uncertainty about his life. Always Repeating ultimately tells the start of Weinman's journey as Runnner, and his cyclical feelings of being connected and then disconnected from the world over and over again.

The debut album from The Story So Far. These 11 songs do burst with the cathartic desperation of the former and the boundless urgency of the latter. Rough but catchy, raw but well-recorded, songs such as “High Regard” and the terse, broken-hearted indictment of “Mt. Diablo” threaten to burst with youthful, angst-ridden aggression. While these are powerful, punchy anthems, there are subtleties and nuances in the arrangements that elevate the likes of “Quicksand” and “Daughters” to be more than just another batch of angry songs sung by frustrated young men. Under Soil and Dirt 10 Year Anniversary Picture Disc - Limited to 5000 - Die Cut Gatefold Jacket - Screenprinted Slipmat

For his first release with Artificial Dance, Black Merlin aka George Thompson takes a departure from the hard-wearing techno and intricate field recording work that he has come to be known for. Scape One is a fifteen-minute psychedelic diversion recorded in one continuous live session. While the track’s sonic characteristics may echo dance music from the turn of the millennium, its pulsating rhythm is more suggestive of the slowly evolving landscapes seen outside of a train window as opposed to raves from the late ‘90s.

Appearing on the B-side is Gordon Pohl’s remix of Scape One. Like its source material, this track is long and subtle in the way it develops over time, but Pohl dissects the most salient elements of the original to construct a new rhythmic urgency. The high frequency accent that guides the remix does so at a speed that recalls the rotations of Brion Gysin’s stroboscopic Dream Machine, which taps into your brain’s alpha waves, aiding drug-free hallucinations.

Pohl and Thompson are frequent collaborators and release music together as Karamika. While Scape One is not a collaboration in the strict sense, there is plenty of crossover in the working methodology of the two musicians, especially when it comes to constructing uncomplicated arrangements.

The repetitive nature of their respective tracks locks the listener into a contradictory sensation of travelling whilst staying seemingly motionless. This sensation is not altogether uncommon, but in this instance it’s not quotidian either. The result is a record that unravels slowly, leaving space for the listener to home in on all the available information and, in the process, discover elements that can be just as unnerving as they are satisfying.

With or without a drink in hand, moderate temperature, no need to jump into the wet. One night AT the pool, not inside. Palm trees or succulents - not far from here, the vegetation has adapted to the situation. A soft rustling: Possibly crickets, probably also the wind. No traffic and certainly no civilization, which right now would probably only disturb with its long agenda of responsibilities. HYPNOSIS AND MUD - Healing hypnosis, healing mud. The half-frustrating, half-liberating feeling of saturated soil between the toes. A state of inner peace. Instead of a voice, you hear primitivist percussive explorations. A groping and grasping of the bare feet, with delicate toes. Abstraction is followed by the concrete: a walk through the ORCHIDEENGARTEN RUSE, an orchid garden close to the Bulgarian town and not far from the Romanian border. Digitally, but not unreal. Perhaps even better than reality - anyone can do that. The (unofficial) soundtrack to this would not only make the Canadian composer Mort Garson happy. A lady‘s shoe kindly looks at us. If you turn around, you arrive on the other side: A LINE HAS TWO SIDES. Conundrum-like images, dissolved one-dimensionality. Candid narrative ambiance. A clarinet calls to duty. Civilization and traffic after all? SUNBEAMS ON YOUR CAR. Urgency, a clamor of voices - both in their best form. Yet again – the clarinet, the blunt reality: ONE NIGHT AT THE POOL. We are still standing here, we probably never left. A three-part journey – with delicate transitions. Three destinations: Now forever united. Dissonant and yet pensive. In the far distance the advertisement for the collected works of Meredith Monk. Hair erect, the little skin nerves contract, goosebumps - at last!

The Disco Express rolls into town once again with this four track EP of disco and house delights.

First stop, 'Sugar Rush', a buoyant, synth track tipping its hat to 90’s house identities. Featuring powerful diva vocals, rolling drums and a fun bouncing bass line, Sugar Rush is exactly what it says on the tin, a sudden rush of energy full of drive and sweetness.

Next up, 'Marble City' is a thumping house track packed with catchy guitars, grooving live bass and gorgeous synth hooks. Altogether they create a ready made, dance floor banger, full of urgency and enthusiasm.

On the B side, featuring the stunning vocals of Venessa Jackson and 'Special K' on guitar, 'Blue Diamond' is a concoction of disco, house and gospel; an original dance music experience, made with gusto.

Neatly tying together the Iridescence EP is 'Kobala'. A breakbeat number full of chilled percussive grooves, a jaw-dropping sub bass and spine tingling strings.

Repress !

Where We're Calling From
The Liminal Zone: Reflections on Duval Timothy’s Sen Am
Lamin Fofana

Sen Am is an enduring and tender album, rich and beguiling and generous in a quiet way. Over the last few years, I find myself returning to it, listening and absorbing, reflecting on the voices and working through the multiple layers of feelings and themes it announces with confidence and equanimity. Notions of care and contradiction, expressions of joy and desire and the underlying feeling of unease and turmoil; there is an urgent appeal to the listener for generosity, to strengthen our capacity to hear multiple voices simultaneously, to exist in multiple places at once.

Duval Timothy’s music was dropped into our world from another realm sometime in the spring of 2017. We received the call and we answered it. The rhythm and spirit was transmitted via London’s NTS Radio on the Do!! You!!! Breakfast Show with Charlie Bones and a short while later we were listening to the first vinyl edition of Sen Am in our living room in Berlin. The record got a lot of plays (at home and at some shows, before and after performances). It was like sunlight filtering through a cracked window and remaining there for a moment, dancing. Blue music emanating from a liminal zone, an in-between space, somewhere on the outskirts of Freetown, or rural Sierra Leone, or the outer edges of South London, or Bath, UK, or some undisclosed orbit, unfixed location. The music is soaked in diasporic experiences. It refuses to settle but still invites us to enter and stay awhile in that zone, where multiple forms exist (all) together with jazz, hip-hop, various strands of expressive electronics and experimental music all breathing together and moving around. It is a portal to a place of possibilities, a space for building and repairing possible and lost connections. But life in that liminal zone is precarious; it is life under duress; under pressure – not merely the pressure to produce a presentable, categorizable, and salable body of work, but the pressure that compels us to experiment and create new concepts and things that will help us imagine a different existence, a way out of the turbulence.

Freetown is a marvellous and sometimes sad place. It is one of those unmistakable locations inscribed diasporic memory; a place that touches you, a place that holds you and demands you bear witness: witness to pain, poverty, joy and desire. You remember the voices and the eyes of people even in momentary encounters. In Sen Am, you hear not only Duval’s recollections and sounds of Freetown, you hear family and friendship, people coming together and forming bonds, creating surrogate families. Forging community wherever you go is a practice, and community is at the core of this music. It’s in all the voices, from Emmerson and 6pac to Aminata and Aruna. It opens up a space for Black voices, for Sierra Leonean voices, and those voices extend through the succeeding projects, the 2 Sim EP and the album Help, and all that radiates from Duval’s Carrying Colour imprint.

Thank you for the invitation to write about the album Sen Am, on the occasion of its re-release which also coincides with the release of the exquisite double 7” Smɔl Smɔl with cktrl — a wonderful piece which calls on the listener to play both records at the same time to hear the music or play them separately and hear different versions. Duval is strengthening us, encouraging us to feel comfortable with discomfort, with incompleteness, with the hard-to-understand. This is a beautiful thing.

"Red Rocks 2020 covers an amazing range of music from Rateliff’s celebrated career, music that had never been performed together live before the ill-fated tour including several jewels from And It’s Still Alright, and Rateliff solo albums, In Memory of Loss, Falling Faster Than You Can Run and the Shroud EP, along with “Still Out There Running,” a haunting and urgent track from 2018’s much loved Night Sweats LP, Tearing at the Seams.
The stellar cast of musicians includes Rateliff (guitar) with fellow Night Sweats Joseph Pope III (bass), Mark Shusterman (keys), Patrick Meese (drums, keys, guitar) and Luke Mossman (guitar), along with James Barone (drums, guitar), Joy Adams (cello), Rachel Sliker (viola), Adrienne Short (violin), and Chris Jusell (violin).
In addition, close friend Kevin Morby joins Rateliff and the band here for an amazing version of Leonard Cohen’s “There Is A War”."

REPITCH Recordings welcomes VTSS to its ranks. The Polish DJ and producer (real name Martyna Maja) being a proud alumni of Warsaw’s Brutaz club night and Jasna1 club (as well as one of Discwoman’s most recent acquisitions), it is no wonder her style overflows with dark energy and tenacious ravey vibes. Her REPITCH debut channels this same ardor into four heavy-hitting bangers that serve as sonic power conductors and ecstatic stamina enhancers. The industrialized pounding of her drum sounds is always accompanied by a taste for reimagining the classic vestiges of techno, rave, and even hardcore: from hoover sounds and sampled vocal refrains to classic Berlin style staccato synth pulses. Her approach is though far from just piling a set of tokenized references, and the raw urgency that fuels her creative energy keeps her production as fresh as her behind-the-decks manifestations.

Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti has been torching the fringes of electronic music since the mid 1990s, a process that's found him melting a wide spectrum of musical innovation into his cult brand of experimental minimalism. From the skeletal jazz deconstructions of his 1997 Vladislav Delay debut "The Kind of Blue EP" to the blurred dub techno variations of 2000's "Multila" and 2012's "Kuopio", Ripatti has betrayed a restless, voracious passion for sound. "Fun is Not A Straight Line" builds on this impressive legacy, retaining his sonic signature and adding a playfulness that harks back to his beloved deep house smash, Luomo's "Vocalcity". After becoming frustrated by the inflexibility of the 4/4 house idiom, Ripatti found solace in rap and bass music's rhythmic complexity and anarchic structures. "I bought Nas's 'Illmatic' when it came out in '94 and have more or less been listening to rap since," he explains. "I'm not really sure why now, but that rap influence wanted to come through." Chopped rap vocals, booming subs and gritty, neck-snapping beats are the primary colors of "Fun is Not A Straight Line", painted into the foreground and blended into an immediately recognizable rhythmic palette. The tracks cross into the same continuum as Chicago footwork, with stuttering samples that build thick walls of bass and flurries of wordless rhymes amid a narcotic haze of beats. On 'monolith', Ripatti's love of New York rap is in full focus as he obscures chipmunked vocals with tight, crackling percussion that disintegrates into rolling kicks; 'speedmemories' is even more upfront, channeling the raw sunshine energy of So So Def electro into rhythms that are powerfully skeletal. Elsewhere, syrupy Southern-fried TR-808 bass womps are tangled with molasses-slow vocals on 'videophonekitty', fuzzed into textured, dissociated ambience. Since the beginning, Ripatti has tried to find a balance between his experimental urges and drive to create more universal music. As his more recent albums have traveled into darker, more extreme realms, he has craved something different for balance. By drawing a crooked line between DJ Premier, DJ Screw and DJ Rashad, Sasu Ripatti has emerged with the most accessible and unashamedly enjoyable album he's produced in years.

A little over a year ago, Nathan Williams found himself back in San Diego, writing what would eventually become Hideaway, his seventh album as Wavves, in a little shed behind his parents’ house. It was also the place where he made some of his earliest albums, before he became known for his uncanny ability to write songs that sneered at the world while evoking pathos, sympathy, and a deep understanding of how sometimes we’re our own worst enemies, and that can be okay. Williams’ return to his childhood home was not just a symbolic attempt at jumpstarting creativity. It came as a result of a series of major life changes. A decade ago, Williams released King of the Beach on the maverick indie label Fat Possum. The album was a cocky collection of pop punk gems that catapulted him into the public consciousness, eventually prompting a jump from Fat Possum into the major label system, where he released two albums before becoming disillusioned by the lack of creative agency available to him. In 2017, Williams self-released You’re Welcome on his label, Ghost Ramp. Now, Williams has returned to Fat Possum with a barbed collection of anxious anthems that grapple with the looming sense of doom and despair that comes with getting older in an increasingly chaotic world. “He’ll always skew toward the Bart Simpson character,” says Matthew Johnson, founder of Fat Possum. “But that does not mean that he doesn’t have some commentary, and once in awhile, it’s totally spot on.” Across its brief but impactful nine tracks, Hideaway is about what happens when you get old enough to take stock of the world around you and realize that no one is going to save you but yourself, and even that might be a tall order. The album features Williams’ most universal and urgent songs yet. “Honeycomb” lopes along sunnily, as Williams sings affecting lines like “I feel like I’m dying, it’s cool, it’s great, just pretend I’m okay.” His directness is shocking, and proof that Williams is the kind of songwriter who can capture pain and uncertainty with resonant brutal force. “It’s real peaks and valleys with me,” Williams says. “I can be super optimistic and I can feel really good, and then I can hit a skid and it’s like an earthquake hits my life, and everything just falls apart. Some of it is my own doing, of course.” It’s this self awareness that permeates each of Hideaway’s songs, marking them each as mature reckonings with who he is. After realizing the material he’d been working on in the hideaway was starting to take shape, Williams, along with bandmates Stephen Pope and Alex Gates workshopped the songs in a series of now-abandoned studio sessions, before linking up with musician and producer Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio to help fully realize their new songs.

Traditional village music transformed into fiery and frenetic underground Hip Hop. Emerging from the digital cultural renaissance of the early 2000s, where DIY studios sprung up throughout West Africa, "Patriote" is a shining example of localized global music. Hypnotic and driving rhythms built from sampled percussion and chopped-up instruments combine with syncopated staccato "ragga" inspired flow into infectious hammering tracks that sound like nothing before. Mamaki Boys was formed in 2002 by Aziz Tony, Bachou Issouf, and Salif André, when a local Hip Hop movement was exploding in the capital of Niger. "Patriote" was recorded to address a trend in the scene they perceived as too derivative. Produced at Studio BAT, one of the first studios in Niamey, Mamaki Boys sought to merge modern Hip Hop with traditional music. They invited elder musicians into the studio to play Nigerien instruments like duma and kalango, which were sampled and looped over their compositions. "We wanted to put tradition in the rap, ancestral dances, the things that our grandparents did in the village," Aziz explains. "Our mission was to re-value the culture, put it into Hip Hop, and to show all the colors of our country." Self-describing their music as "tradi-moderne", a Nigerien movement of folk revitalization, their cultural manifesto presents through every aspect of their work. Each track relies heavily on traditional instruments, and each rhythm is based on a dance from Niger. Their mission extends to the urgency of their lyrics: Takai challenges the population to preserve their culture, Kagani Kagani is a demand to take back mineral, oil, and uranium rights from their colonizers, while Komando uses war cries to inspire artists to keep speaking out. A strong entry in 21st-century global music, Mamaki Boys "Patriote" takes back the tools of globalization, repurposing them in the fight for cultural identity. Originally self-released in 2009 on limited edition CDR in Niger.

My Morning Jacket’s ‘Evil Urges’ is now available as a
beautifully coloured 2-LP set, pressed on cream coloured vinyl
with a black blob and housed in a premium gatefold jacket. My
Morning Jacket’s Grammy-nominated ‘Evil Urges’ is the band’s
most ambitious and controversial album to date. On their fifth
studio album, an emboldened My Morning Jacket created a
fiercely uncompromising, highly eclectic and deeply personal
album that catapulted the band into public consciousness and
solidified their place as innovators and titans of indie rock

For Bajram Bili, every new record is the kick off for reinventing himself in a series of explorations and experimentations.
After venturing through techno, Adrien Gachet opens a new page bursting with artistic possibilities and sonic freedom. His new research is founded on two cornerstones : his reassuming of the piano, the historic medium he’s left aside those past years, and the deconstruction of contemporary electronic music. The result is a flush yet tight affair condensing the broad spectrum of its ambitions in just six tracks.
A true mine for textures and melodies, Detuning Euphoria feels like a blinding mirage. The music conjugates cinematic composition and borrowings of the 2020’s club music, where laser synths and skeletal beats melt one another in bare and frontal feelings. It’s a total work, an exhilarating and untamed piece opening a new chapter in a maniac and turbulent discography. We’re very proud to be associated to this new stage of Bajram Bili’s fascinating research for new horizons.

It’s been ten years since Adrian Gachet first ventured into electronic soundscapes under his Bajram Bili moniker. On wax, the project started with the romantic label Another Record with the Sequenced Fog EP and his dance-kraut manifest of a debut album Saturdays With No Memory.
The affair became more muscular with the acquaintance of the Neo Punks from Le Turc Mecanique. After a first warning with the break-heavy Distant Drone (with the banger ‘Roger and Stan’) and the blasting Need Meditation, the Remembered Waves LP is released, oscillating between ecstatic urgency and foggy electric landscapes.
The following Spin / Consequence was dedicated to the drills of seminal techno giving way to the quieter Reshaped Distortion EP on Chloe’s label Lumière Noire.
Those years of intense creation, massive live sets and federating DJ sets come together in today’s new research, mixing the experience of his epic machinery with the deviation of the acoustic piano, following the aesthetic of his new record Detuning Euphoria.

Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti has been torching the fringes of electronic music since the mid 1990s, a process that's found him melting a wide spectrum of musical innovation into his cult brand of experimental minimalism. From the skeletal jazz deconstructions of his 1997 Vladislav Delay debut "The Kind of Blue EP" to the blurred dub techno variations of 2000's "Multila" and 2012's "Kuopio", Ripatti has betrayed a restless, voracious passion for sound. "Fun is Not A Straight Line" builds on this impressive legacy, retaining his sonic signature and adding a playfulness that harks back to his beloved deep house smash, Luomo's "Vocalcity". After becoming frustrated by the inflexibility of the 4/4 house idiom, Ripatti found solace in rap and bass music's rhythmic complexity and anarchic structures. "I bought Nas's 'Illmatic' when it came out in '94 and have more or less been listening to rap since," he explains. "I'm not really sure why now, but that rap influence wanted to come through." Chopped rap vocals, booming subs and gritty, neck-snapping beats are the primary colors of "Fun is Not A Straight Line", painted into the foreground and blended into an immediately recognizable rhythmic palette. The tracks cross into the same continuum as Chicago footwork, with stuttering samples that build thick walls of bass and flurries of wordless rhymes amid a narcotic haze of beats. On 'monolith', Ripatti's love of New York rap is in full focus as he obscures chipmunked vocals with tight, crackling percussion that disintegrates into rolling kicks; 'speedmemories' is even more upfront, channeling the raw sunshine energy of So So Def electro into rhythms that are powerfully skeletal. Elsewhere, syrupy Southern-fried TR-808 bass womps are tangled with molasses-slow vocals on 'videophonekitty', fuzzed into textured, dissociated ambience. Since the beginning, Ripatti has tried to find a balance between his experimental urges and drive to create more universal music. As his more recent albums have traveled into darker, more extreme realms, he has craved something different for balance. By drawing a crooked line between DJ Premier, DJ Screw and DJ Rashad, Sasu Ripatti has emerged with the most accessible and unashamedly enjoyable album he's produced in years.

Kojaque follows his critically acclaimed cult concept record, ‘Deli Daydreams’, with an
expansive, urgent debut album. In this landmark debut, Kojaque mines both his
emotional interior as an artist, and the external forces of a love triangle barrelling
towards chaos. ‘Town’s Dead’ is a mind-bending, explosive and expansive trip,
documenting a tumultuous love triangle that unfolds across New Year’s Eve in a
place where gentrification poses as much a threat as the violence of street dealers.
Sonically, the record smashes any previous expectations, stretching an aural palate
that leaps from rage to solace, from clattering musical combustions to tender
ruminations. The tremendous scope and scale of ‘Town’s Dead’ demonstrates an
artist utterly untethered to assumptions about what a particular voice or genre should
be, and instead explores radical musical territory. Dark corners of parks, bedrooms,
clubs, streets and psyches are excavated and pouring over the rubble is an artist
who refuses to conform, unafraid of the vulnerabilities that are exposed when the
voice rings true, because there’s just no point in being anything else.
Kojaque is part of a new wave of Irish artists flooding the world with blistering and
sophisticated literature, film and music - ideas and work that emerged from a social
revolution stonewalled by late-stage capitalism. Welcome to that state of mind, where
the path less travelled is the only one worth taking.
On the announcement of his debut album Kojaque has said: “‘Town’s Dead’ comes
from the potential that I see in Dublin and in the people I’m surrounded by day in and
day out. There’s nothing but talent and ambition among young people, I’m constantly
reminded of that through the art and music that I see being made but I think so often
the city grinds you down, it takes your hope and your ambition. I know that it can
change because so many of my friends express the exact same wants, desires and
frustrations with living in Ireland. If so many of us are on the same page then I know
that things can change, there just needs to be some sort of catalyst to kick start that
change and for me that’s always been art and music. Time and time again, amazing
art continues to be made in spite of the struggles and setbacks that are presented
when living here. The title track and the album is a fight against what can sometimes
feel inevitable, it’s a rejection of what people tell you is your destiny as a young
person in the city, Town’s NOT dead it’s just Dormant.”
CD housed in digisleeve containing 12-page lyric and photo booklet.
Black double vinyl housed in 5mm wide spine single sleeve with 12-page lyric and
photo booklet.
“Hints of Odd Future and its offspring... Kojaque is not your average rapper” - i-D
“Dublin’s hip-hop community are making waves right now... an intimate introduction
to the world this bold artist inhabits” - Clash
“Social realist rhymes set to silky hip-hop” - NME
“Likeable and funny” - Trench
“The Dublin MC forcing us to face real life; both the gory and the glory” - Wonderland
“Ireland’s freshest hip-hop hope, Kojaque, serves ‘soft hip hop’ with a side order of
poetry and performance art” - Notion

Reissued for the first time.
Double vinyl that includes their critically acclaimed and highly sought after debut album ‘Glasshouse’ from 1985 and the 1986 follow up ‘Simplicity’. Presented in a gatefold sleeve adorned with the artwork from the Glasshouse EP, which features in the Prints & Drawings collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
With printed inner sleeves and a download code for all 31 tracks on the double CD. Including all tracks from the singles and EP’s plus unreleased recordings
Pressed on colour vinyl. Disc 1 is Purple. Disc 2 is Gold.

Formed in Barnsley in 1981. Party Day, with their bass led rhythms and sharp powerful drums gigged extensively and released their debut single ‘Row The Boat Ashore’ in 1983.
Their brand of Post-Punk Indie Rock with Gothic overtones soon got the attention of DJ John Peel and sold out almost immediately.
The follow up single ‘Spider’ from 1984 again received extensive airplay from John Peel and received rave reviews from the national music press. “Mouthy pellets of malevolence” NME “Excellent punk junk howl” Sounds.
Their self released debut album ‘Glasshouse’ was released in 1985 to glowing reviews and has gained popularity over the years. Now very collectable, it exchanges hands for big money on the second hand market.
The Glasshouse EP followed later in 85 heralding a more commercial approach and widening appeal.
Their second album ‘Simplicity’ was released in 1986
“Proving that they’ve grasped more than an inspirational nettle, the recurrent throb finds their trousers igniting during the quite punctilious rawk of the title track, the urgent prodding of ‘Career’, which reminded me uncomfortably of early Killing Joke and the attractive, though slightly over-wrought black sheep, ‘Glorious Days’, which could have brought a lump to Mario Lanza’s trousers.”
Party Day Split in 1987.

Weaving its way through the tapestry of influences from Lonnie Liston Smith, Softmachine and Ravi Shankar, the title track takes a more contemporary approach merging U.K. urban / spoken word, with a meandering melancholic melody, driving home the message that it’s a 'Matter of Urgency’.

Opening the recording, 'Jazz Emergency' has a laid back vibe, coasting on a hypnotic bass line, with layered wailing trilled horns, creating a blanket of tenor sax, delayed Rhodes and pianos over and around.

Crooked Urge (Part 1 & 2) (Trk: A2, B1) came about from a first time session with drummer Sergiu Fanica, Ozan and pianist Aziz. Although a jam, the band were keen to share the spirit of this recording!

The track 'Matter of Urgency' is a call to the inner self, to take care of the world around us and to pave a better world for the generations ahead. It is an enchanting fusion of wailing horns with spoken word poetry over the top.

'Sound of Pulsar' is another spaced out journey that came about from a jam night in the studio, bass line looped and off into the musical cosmos...

Once again we thank all the amazing musicians and friends sharing their creativity on this album and to those who inspire us to create!

Very limited LP on Cream / Blue twist vinyl. Emma Houton is a timeless, celestial voice from New York City. We felt an urgency to share this incredibly calming product of Lockdown with the wider world, Trapped Animal Records. // "her ambient soundscapes brim with escapism _and enchantment" Highclouds Magazine // "a truly bewitching, gorgeous sonic tapestry." Beats Per Minute // Composed after ethnographic study into her Irish folk song roots, and recorded as part of her senior thesis in experimental electronic music, Emma originally wrote The Bath as a piece for eight voices to be performed live. Due to the COVID pandemic, she ended up recording all eight parts alone in her childhood bedroom, mixing and producing it herself. On recording the piece, Emma says: "When composing the album I had an interest in recreating the feelings I had hearing folk tales as a kid. We had a giant book of Irish folk tales my grandmother gave me, and I was both fascinated and scared shitless by them! I intended this to be a live performance initially and so the whole album is scored. I write most of my music by constructing layered loops of my voice using a loop pedal and then singing a melody line over them, and I was trying to translate that practice into a live performance in which each "loop" is sung and repeated, creating the effect of looping without actually recording loops. I was hoping to create something where voice is used as an instrument, rather than standing apart from instruments as it often does I took source material from hymns and traditional folk songs, with the lyrics centering on water-related themes like drowning, baptism, and purification, which I tried to reflect in the sonic environment of the piece through enveloping delays, cavernous reverb, and a general sense of being completely immersed in sound. The concept for the piece in its live form is much more of a production than the album itself, which became more of a "how do I record something written for an ensemble alone with an SM58?" project, and I've figured out how to perform these pieces solo with the loop pedal, in a very coming-full-circle turn." Emma found her way to Trapped Animal Records after a quirk in the Bandcamp algorithm led her to listen to - her now label mate - Maija Sofia's similarly named debut "Bath Time". Signed within a fortnight of making contact with the label at the end of 2020, during a bleak winter, the label quickly ploughed ahead to schedule release of "The Bath". Label partner Kerry Devine says "there was a feeling of urgency to share this incredibly calming product of Lockdown with the wider world, we felt compelled".

Rubyworks are pleased to present a vinyl release of 'Marcata', the much-loved 2011 debut album by Dublin rock-trio The Minutes. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its release. 'Marcata' will be released on a limited edition fluorescent pink vinyl pressing. 'Black Keys' from the album is currently soundtracking a Jameson Whiskey TV advert. 8/10 - The Goes The Fear An underground classic debut from one of Ireland’s loudest - live4ever One of the Top 30 album releases of 2011 - Hot Press. It is as fine a rock record as you'd expect from Ireland, or any other country for that matter - entertainment.ie Artrocker - The greatest rock 'n' roll band in Dublin. **** A cacophonous, confident and crushing slab of authenticity, steeped in the anarchic history of rock 'n' roll – Hot Press “A thundering combination of old school rock 'n roll with modern guitar music. The Minutes have taken their time in getting here and it was worth every second” 8/10 - State.ie **** “You want to bang your head until it and your neck ache” - Irish Daily Mail **** “Loud, energetic and worth the wait” - News Of The World ***1/2 “A melodic and irresistible strut that makes for compelling listening” - Heineken Music *** “This debut booms, bangs and pulsates from the first note. Boiling over with a sense of urgency” - The Sunday Times *** “Fans of straight up, 'classic' rock will find lots to enjoy here” - The Irish Independent “Marcata certainly cements their status as one of the most exciting sounding bands on the scene at the moment” – Goldenplec “Full of raucous thrills and high-voltage riffage” – The Guardian “Authentically gritty, pulse-quickening rock 'n' roll in the grand style” 7/10 – AU magazine “The Minutes’ debut is a classic rock n’ roll album” – We Are Noise “Heavy riffs, urgent vocals, and pounding beats, the way rock'n'roll should be” – The Herald

Growing Bin switches back into reissue mode with an off-kilter obscurity from Austrian eccentrics Molto Brutto. Equal parts amateur funk, indie jangle, art rock and idiot pop, "2" is a real weird bastard with a whole lot of charm. As the Bin continues to grow in all directions, there's plenty of space for new sounds to take root. Alongside patches of Ambient, Balearic, Kosmische and Jazz, Hamburg's audio allotment now stretches to accommodate the strange waves of Molto Brutto.

Basso dug their first LP a decade back in Stuttgart's Second Hand Records, embracing their abrasive style of sandpaper sonics and experimental urges. Interest piqued, he made the journey through their DIY catalogue, capturing excellent collaborations under the Ganslinger alias before bumping into the second of their two LPs. Originally released on their Golfdish imprint in 1988, "2" walks into the pub with an air of accessibility, but quickly unravels into glorious chaos - pissing in the corner and passing out on the bar. Pop structures are suggested then subverted.
Pints of Paisley slosh out of a broken Glass, tape loops spool onto shabby Material, and indie janglers are just a couple of stamps short of a Postcard.

Turning you tipsy, this loveable rogue starts to tell you his life story, but you're going to have to fill in some blanks. They miss 'Blackie', but who is he - a dog? What happened on the 'Deadly Vacation'? Is that song really about a 'Goldfish', or did they find out the name of America's horse? Words repeat until they lose all meaning, awkward poetry masks a lost laureate and a drunken Wurlitzer sends the room into a spin.

The pubs are shut, so get happy drunk with Molto Brutto.
Patrick Ryder

Written with a libidinal urgency that has come to characterize Kool Keith’s legendary lyricism, “Keith’s Salon” explores our current obsessions with luxury, beauty, and notoriety. But rather than fetishize the beautiful dum-dums who walk red carpets in black Prada gowns,

Kool Keith's most recent studio album shifts our attention to the work and workers that underpin our fantasies of American excess and the good life.

As such, the album is also a timely meditation, during quarantine, on the economic precarity many of us now find ourselves in. Having doubled-up with Triple Parked, the production team of avant-techno maven Bruno Pronsato and Benjamin Jay, “Keith’s Salon” moves between halcyon sonics and atonal warlord dystopia, while keeping beats minimal for Kool Keith to spread extra ketchup on the hamburger. An album at once topical and futuristic, lush and bizarre, "Keith's Salon" is about the business of making people beautiful. It's time to work.