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Born and raised in Seoul, Didi Han's passion for the arts began in high school.

During her time at university, where she majored in art and textile design, Didi worked as a designer. Didi Han first began blurring the lines between the arts of fashion and music after working as a music director for fashion shows and selecting music during fashion week. It wasn't long after that, that Didi went to DJ academy to learn how to DJ, inspired by a performance from Nicolas Jaar.

After her success as a member of the "Deluxe Seoul” collective, with whom she played at multiple popular venues across Korea, Didi Han was asked to perform for the world-famous Boiler Room platform on two separate occasions, and later toured across Europe and Asia. While active as a DJ, Didi Han discovered a desire to create her own music. Her 2019 release Forest gave her fans a glimpse of exciting production activities to come, featuring a low-fi texture and the sound of a flugelhorn.

Wake Up is the first project from Didi Han on french label Roche Musique. The 5 track EP was completed after the Seoul based-producer's trip to Bali in 2020. Inspiration from the sounds heard and the experiences had in the warm sunlight and emerald ocean, are what influenced the chill house tracks. Here, Didi Han introduces a mellow and melodic debut-EP which features a lots of percussion. Wake Up mixes elements of hip hop, jazz and house, and features collaborations with established artists such as Wansun Kim, Lydia Lee, Nelick and fellow Korean producer, L-like.

Already keen on Roche Musique musical identity, she quite naturally decided to release her first project under the French label.

“We first met in 2018 while Roche Musique was touring in South Korea, we instantly matched around our vision of the club scene : fresh, bold and spontaneous! In 3 years we had time to build a genuine relationship.”

Storage units hold possessions on pause from the outside world, objects capable of reconnecting us to a time or place. Hana Vu (born in 2000s California) grew up with her family making regular use of public storage spaces in Los Angeles, moving every few years, leaving a mix of the sacred and the mundane to sit inside concrete and steel. The 20-year-old musician sees the art of making and releasing songs in a similar sense: “these public expressions of thoughts, feelings, baggage, experiences that accumulate every year and fill little units such as ‘albums.’” She lived next to one of these buildings when she started writing her full-length Ghostly International debut, Public Storage, and its towering presence lends a metaphor to a record that sounds far bigger than the bedroom it came from.

Vu’s relationship with music began when she picked up a guitar her dad had lying around and taught herself to play. She’d wake up every day and listen to LA’s ALT 98.7, home to ‘90s and ‘00s alternative rock; later in high school, she found the local DIY scene. She remembers, “A lot of my peer musicians were surf rock/punk type bands and so I tried to fit into that when I was gigging around. But what I was listening to at that time St. Vincent, Sufjan Stevens was very different from what I performed.” Ultimately she’d do her own thing, keeping a journal of bedroom pop ex-periments on Bandcamp, including a low-key Willow Smith collaboration and covers of The Cure and Phil Collins. She caught the ear of Gorilla vs. Bear, who released Vu’s self-produced debut EP in 2018 on their Luminelle Recordings imprint, followed by a double EP the next year.

Public Storage builds on the sound of Vu’s early work underscoring her strengths as a songwriter with a deeper sense of luster, sophistication, and urgency. She calls it “very invasive and intense sounding music,” refreshingly out of step with contemporary trends; this is music to engage with rather than lean back to. For the first time, she welcomes a co-producer, Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), who helps Vu create a vast, grainy, multifaceted world to stretch into vocally, her distinct contralto drifting freely between evocative low-lit ruminations and soulful, skyward bursts.

Storage units hold possessions on pause from the outside world, objects capable of reconnecting us to a time or place. Hana Vu (born in 2000s California) grew up with her family making regular use of public storage spaces in Los Angeles, moving every few years, leaving a mix of the sacred and the mundane to sit inside concrete and steel. The 20-year-old musician sees the art of making and releasing songs in a similar sense: “these public expressions of thoughts, feelings, baggage, experiences that accumulate every year and fill little units such as ‘albums.’” She lived next to one of these buildings when she started writing her full-length Ghostly International debut, Public Storage, and its towering presence lends a metaphor to a record that sounds far bigger than the bedroom it came from.

Vu’s relationship with music began when she picked up a guitar her dad had lying around and taught herself to play. She’d wake up every day and listen to LA’s ALT 98.7, home to ‘90s and ‘00s alternative rock; later in high school, she found the local DIY scene. She remembers, “A lot of my peer musicians were surf rock/punk type bands and so I tried to fit into that when I was gigging around. But what I was listening to at that time St. Vincent, Sufjan Stevens was very different from what I performed.” Ultimately she’d do her own thing, keeping a journal of bedroom pop ex-periments on Bandcamp, including a low-key Willow Smith collaboration and covers of The Cure and Phil Collins. She caught the ear of Gorilla vs. Bear, who released Vu’s self-produced debut EP in 2018 on their Luminelle Recordings imprint, followed by a double EP the next year.

Public Storage builds on the sound of Vu’s early work underscoring her strengths as a songwriter with a deeper sense of luster, sophistication, and urgency. She calls it “very invasive and intense sounding music,” refreshingly out of step with contemporary trends; this is music to engage with rather than lean back to. For the first time, she welcomes a co-producer, Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), who helps Vu create a vast, grainy, multifaceted world to stretch into vocally, her distinct contralto drifting freely between evocative low-lit ruminations and soulful, skyward bursts.

Most of these are for Lost Evenings, London event
Cassette for Lost Evenings 2021 & retail.

Percussionist Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim recorded this
mix of Latin and spiritual jazz in his adopted home of
Denmark in 1988. Sought after for the African
influenced ‘Kalahari Suite’, ‘Harlem’ is actually eight
tracks of brilliance that sees the veteran performer
lead a local band through their paces. A perfect
example of America meets Europe.
As Juan Amalbert he had led the in-demand Latin Jazz
Quintet who recorded for Prestige and United Artists in
the early 60s, including Caribé, which featured Eric
Dolphy. In 1966 he was asked to appear with John
Coltrane’s group at the performances that produced
the album ‘Live At The Village Vanguard Again’. Soon
after Amalbert recorded another album, which this time
featured Pharoah Sanders in the horn line-up. All that
appeared at the time was a single on Golden Earth
Records, but the album was later released as ‘Oh!
Pharoah Speaks’ in the wake of Sanders’ solo
success.
He then made the soulful 45 ‘When You Lose You
Groove’ / ‘The Knower’ and the spiritual jazz classic
‘Total Submission’ for Cobblestone, which featured the
updated version of ‘The Knower’, called ‘Al-Alim’,
which Acid Jazz included on ‘Jazz On The Corner 2’.
After that, like so many American jazzmen, he packed
his bags and headed to Europe to carry on his career,
which is where, in 1988 he recorded ‘Harlem’.
Acid Jazz are happy to officially reissue this album on
vinyl for the first time since its initial release, with full
co-operation of Rahim’s estate.

Mystery Jets announce that their sixth studio album ‘A Billion Heartbeats’ will be released on 27th September on Caroline International. The band also release ‘Screwdriver’, the first single to be taken from the album.

Screwdriver is an uncompromising look at the rise of the rebranded alt-right in the UK, built around a powerfully positive message: "Fight them with love / then the world will be ours".

Lead singer Blaine Harrison says of the song, “Screwdriver is about the mechanics of intolerance. Looking back at times of economic instability in history, we see how easily deep chasms grow in society and the population seeks change wherever it is most convincingly promised. Conflict arises as cultures and belief systems clash, unwilling to accept one another’s place in society, because we are fed the rhetoric that our neighbours are those responsible for our problems: then inevitably nationalism once more raises its ugly head above the parapet. But whereas political agendas fuel divisiveness, music unites and reminds us of all that we have in common. The message of Screwdriver is not a pessimistic one - because perhaps faced with confrontation we can find understanding, and even maybe learn how to listen to, and love one another.”

Each room of the house in the video is a metaphor for the different sections of society in the UK. It wraps around the narrative of the song, that in order to overcome adversity, you have to “Fight Them With Love”. The visual showcases the song’s inherent message, clashing aggressiveness with tenderness, and culminates in showing after anger, we can always come together through love.
All great albums start from a unique perspective. But try a window on the Strand, in an abandoned office block, overlooking the kind of political upheaval London hasn’t seen in a generation. Blaine Harrison was living as a property guardian right around the corner from Trafalgar Square when he found himself witness to an entire year of protests. Every weekend from January 2017 on, people were marching for a different cause: "In the space of six months it was Black Lives Matter, the huge ‘Our NHS’ march, Unite for Europe," he recalls. "Then the solidarity sleep-out organised by Help Refugees, where we slept in Whitehall for the night... The protestors would wake me up in the morning. I’d just walk down and join in.”

Over the course of that year, Mystery Jets' sixth long-player, A Billion Heartbeats, was born. "This album wasn’t about making pointed opinions,” says Blaine. “It was about being a mirror for what’s going on, reflecting back the way people are feeling.” By turns tender and fierce, abstract and full of classic rock energy, A Billion Heartbeats achieves a balance of passion, fear and hope. Amid the colourful cavalcade of rich harmonies, heavy guitars and rallying cries, the album’s essential message - about personal responsibility, and the power in becoming engaged. In a sense, it's not just their "state of the nation” record but their “state of a generation” record too.

We increasingly hear from musicians that music should be an escape these days - that there’s enough suffering in the world, enough misery on the news, without writings songs about it too. A Billion Heartbeats makes all that sound like a bit of a cop-out. These are songs of protest that get the heart racing in joy; high on hope, and serious in their message. Proof, basically, that music speaks louder than words.

To celebrate Billy Preston’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in October 2021 Apple Records and Universal Music Catalogue will be making Billy’s highly regarded 1970 album ‘Encouraging Words’ available on vinyl for a limited period. First released in the UK on 11 September 1970 the album was co-produced by Billy and George Harrison, with two of George’s songs – ‘All Things Must Pass’ and ‘My Sweet Lord’ – issued here for the first time, two months before his own recordings appeared on the triple album ‘All Things Must Pass’.In 2010 Record Collector magazine described ‘Encouraging Words’ as “one of the finest titles in the Apple Records catalogue”, while virtuoso keyboard player Rick Wakeman told BBC Radio 4’s John Wilson he considered Preston’s two Apple albums “absolute gems – a perfect combination of gospel and funk.” The album was last released on vinyl in 1992. The original album credits did not include details of contributing musicians, though the sleeve notes of the 2010 CD reissue included Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, Ringo Starr, Bobby Keys and the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

Dieses Jahr kommt die 25-jährige Jubiläumsausgabe des zehnten Studioalbums von R.E.M., New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Das 1996 erschienene Album war die letzte Studioaufnahme von R.E.M. mit Gründungsmitglied Bill Berry, der die Band im folgenden Jahr einvernehmlich verließ. Als fünfte Zusammenarbeit der
Band mit dem langjährigen Produzenten Scott Litt (Green, Out of Time, Automatic for the People und
Monster) experimentiert das Album mit neuen Klangtexturen, die von filmischen Bildern, dissonanten
Noten und eindringlichen Effekten geprägt sind. Der Platin-Seller enthält die Singles ”Electrolite”, ”E-Bow
the Letter” (mit Patti Smith) und ”Bittersweet Me” und ist mit einer Gesamtlaufzeit von 65 Minuten die
längste Studioveröffentlichung von R.E.M.. New Adventures in Hi-Fi erlangte Jahre nach seiner Veröffentlichung Kultstatus und wurde in mehreren Presserückblicken - und von den Bandmitgliedern selbst -
als eines der besten Alben im R.E.M.-Katalog eingestuft.

What happens when you put four of the most creative musicians from the Norwegian jazz scene in lockdown? They create. In march 2020, when the corona pandemic forced Norway into lockdown, Flukten found their oasis. Flukten springs out of one thing - the will to create music. Flukten consists of musicians from some of the most critically acclaimed jazz groups in Norway: Hanna Paulsberg Concept, Atomic, Moskus, GURLS, Wako, Espen Berg Trio, Hullyboo, Skadedyr and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra.After Flukten's debut concert last year one music critic wrote: "if there is one band debut that really has left their mark in soul and heart, it is this".With a musical reference library filled with the likes of John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Per "Texas" Johansson, Salif Keita and Paul Motian, they take detours through hip hop, soul and folk music from all over the world. Here, all spontaneous whims can be cultivated and explored. Flukten gives you dirty jazz that makes you move, and soft, fine tuned jazz that makes you think. This is music that celebrates life and embraces the unbelievable. In February 2021, the four musicians entered the recording studio with the same open attitude as when they first jammed together. On Flukten`s debut album you hear saxophonist Hanna Paulsberg's eternal vocabulary and multifaceted tone unfold completely without compromises. You hear guitarist Marius Klovning somewhere in the middle of John Scofield, sharp soul, western and Norwegian folk music. Hans Hulbækmo's drumming is tempting to compare with the playing of a solo pianist in his melodic repertoire. Bassist Bárdur Reinert Poulsen drives everything with his punchy, hard swinging hand, but also provides us with emotional solos.Together, Flukten are an explosion of joyful playing from some of Norways most talented musicians. The songs of Flukten's debut album span from playful melodies to dissonant harmonies. Sometimes it's a composition based on a voice memo of someone humming. Other times we hear snapshots from improvisations in the vivid studio atmosphere. The music dances, other times it is like a soft caress. Suddenly they fly into ecstasy. This album is the sonic equivalent to jumping from a hot sauna and into cold water. The music wakes you up. This is music that could only appear this exact moment from these exact musicians. Maybe you spend hours lying on the floor, lost in a book. Maybe you get drunk, or you run into the woods? We all need to escape now and then.

Green Vinyl

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the Spice Girls smoked crack and joined forces with the Power Rangers on acid? Meet BĘÃTFÓØT. These punk-infused electronic poltergeists and big-beat acid trio are Udi Naor, drummer and founding member of electronic duo Red Axes, Adi Bronicki (who also fronts Israeli garage-punk-folk band Deaf Chonky) and ace of all trades guitarist Nimrod Goldfarb.
The band have been launching warped stoner-acid-pop out of Tel Aviv with maniacal intent and are producing post-punk rave bangers that will scorch every dance floor with a huge lethal smile. BĘÃTFÓØT
are a DIY supergroup who describe themselves as sitting somewhere between Aqua, Beastie Boys and The Prodigy.
Their music endeavours feel akin to being hurtled through a kaleidoscopic waterslide, overflowing with the spirit of 90’s youth culture. The radioactive trio are DJ’s, musicians, songwriters and producers with a diverse range of individual projects and talents, their combined sonics map your journey across the hazy astral spectrum of hip-hop, big beat and rave music. Morph these radioactive pieces with the no New Release Informationnonsense attitude of punk-rock and the venomous spitting flow of golden-era rap and you might just come close to fabricating the freakish sound of BĘÃTFÓØT.
The band’s self-titled debut is set for release on 17th September on Manfredi Romano aka DJ Tennis’ Life and Death. Founded in 2010, the imprint curates soulful dance music with a post-rock aesthetic.
This refreshingly original and experimental LP from BĘÃTFÓØT marks a new direction for Life and Death this year and beyond.
“BĘÃTFÓØT” takes unsuspecting listeners on a wild ride of unprecedented musical madness (firmly without seatbelts). Fizzy synthesiser programming stimulates you effervescently through the album like the welcomed sting of sour sweets, surprising accompaniments appear in the form of manipulated vocal lines and quirky samples, all jovially mixed together in a gummy melting pot of wild conceptualisation and starry eyed rhythms.
Thirteen tracks of unprecedented dancefloor mutations send us triumphantly into the candy-covered kingdom of BĘÃTFÓØT with open arms and infinite imagery of fanciful gutter-glam escapades. This project fulfills the role of a musical bulldozer, flattening all previous conceptions of what it means to belong to a genre and leaving behind a hot mess trail of anarchic musical fragments in its wake. The undying spirit of the nineties.
With fans that include legendary Irish born singer, songwriter and producer Roisin Murphy, BĘÃTFÓØT are a breath of fresh air set to be igniting dancefloors this summer.

-io is the sixth album by vocalist and composer
Haley Fohr, best known as Circuit des Yeux.
A celebrated figure in Chicago’s music community,
she has released acclaimed albums via De Stijl,
Thrill Jockey and Drag City and toured throughout
the world. However, ‘-io’ is Circuit des Yeux’s most
ornate and elaborate work to date - a set of
compositions that nest Fohr’s otherworldly fouroctave voice amid a 24-piece string, brass and
wind ensemble.
The album was put to tape last fall by Cooper
Crain at Chicago’s Electrical Audio studio and
mixed by Marta Salogni (Bjork, Holly Herndon)
with Fohr acting as arranger and producer. Written
in the wake of personal loss and recorded in the
midst of the pandemic, ‘-io’ maps a geography of
grief - a place where “everything is ending all the
time.”
While Fohr’s music has never been short on
ambition, these songs are striking in their brilliance
and strangeness. On '-io', Circuit des Yeux has
delivered a work that is vivid, immense and fully
illuminated.

Biffy Clyro will release the surprise new project ‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’ on October 22nd. The record is a homegrown project that represents a reaction to their #1 album ‘A Celebration of Endings’ and a rapid emotional response to the turmoil of the past year. It is the ying to the yang of ‘A Celebration’, the other-side-of-a-coin, a before-and-after comparison: their early optimism of 2020 having been brought back to earth with a resounding thud. It’s the product of a strange and cruel time in our lives, but one that ultimately reinvigorated Biffy Clyro.

“This is a reaction to ‘A Celebration of Endings’,” says vocalist / guitarist Simon Neil. “This album is a real journey, a collision of every thought and emotion we’ve had over the past eighteen months. There was a real fortitude in ‘A Celebration’ but in this record we’re embracing the vulnerabilities of being a band and being a human in this twisted era of our lives. Even the title is the polar opposite. It’s asking, do we create these narratives in our own minds to give us some security when none of us know what’s waiting for us at the end of the day?”

Grounded by lockdown, Biffy Clyro recorded ‘The Myth’ in a completely different way to how they approached ‘A Celebrations’. Rather than spending months in Los Angeles, they traded one West Coast for another by recording for just six weeks in their rehearsal room (converted DIY style into a fully functional studio by rhythm section brothers James and Ben Johnston) in a farmhouse closer to their homes.

The trio went in with the intention of completing some unfinished songs from ‘A Celebration’, but instead ‘The Myth’ took over as it started to take shape late in 2020, with everything written and recorded within a ten-mile radius. Traditionally, 90% of Biffy songs have been written in Scotland before the band head to London or Los Angeles for recording, but this represented the first time they’ve ever recorded in their homeland. As Simon jokes, “It’s our first full-on tartan album!”

‘The Myth’ blends experimental flourishes with flashes of old school Biffy. ‘Existed’ is the moment that shaped the record an elegant expression of self-doubt that redefines the sonics of the band’s catalogue of vulnerable slowburners, while ‘DumDum’ is an even bigger departure, having been constructed primarily around soft synths sampled from Simon’s voice. And ‘Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep’ is just as audacious a closer as ‘Cop Syrup’ from ‘A Celebration’. It also represents one of a selection of “easter eggs” or “turns of phrase” that subtly complement and contrast the two records.

At the other extreme, devoted fans will connect with the feral anger of ‘A Hunger In Your Haunt’, the arena-scaled drama of ‘Errors In The History of God’ and the sheer catchiness of ‘Witch’s Cup’.

‘The Myth’ has been launched alongside the new track ‘Unknown Male 01’. In six adventurous minutes, the band explore every facet they’re renowned for, taking in the unguarded emotion of its introduction, a skewed off-kilter breakdown, and a jagged, spiralling riff that builds towards a cataclysmic crescendo. The song reflects on friends who have taken their own lives.

“When you lose people that you love deeply and have been a big part of your life, it can make you question every single thing about your own life,” he says. “Like a lot of creative people, I struggle with dark thoughts. If you’re that way inclined you realise you’re staring at darkness, but you don't want to succumb. Those moments don’t stop. As the song says, ‘The devil never leaves.’ There’s never a day where you wake up thinking, ‘I feel great, it won’t cross me ever again.’”

A recurring concept of the album is the power of personal convictions, which have taken on an almost religious fervour via the echo chambers of social media and news platforms. But that idea has the nuance to rise above contrasting sides of an argument, arguing that greater unity and open-mindedness is the only way forward. Elsewhere, it spans everything from gaslighting to the ultimate devotion of cults and the beautiful failure of a Japanese racehorse.

‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’ is now available to pre-order here, with ‘Unknown Male 01’ provided as an instant download. It will be released on CD and digital formats, as well as a limited edition red vinyl which is packaged with a must-have bonus CD for fans: full audio of the acclaimed livestream show that Biffy Clyro performed at Glasgow Barrowland in August 2020 to commemorate the release of ‘A Celebration of Endings’.

After headlining Reading and Leeds in August, Biffy Clyro will also play further large-scale outdoor gigs this summer at Cardiff Bay and Glasgow Green. Plans for 2022 are also taking shape, with April’s long sold-out ‘Fingers Crossed’ intimate tour and a huge Saturday night headline set at Download. Please see the band’s official website for a full list of shows and ticket information.

Grey Marbled Vinyl

VARIÁT is the new experimental metal one-man band of Ukrainian artist Dmytro Fedorenko. Through dissonant noise poetry, corrosive synthesis, and subtle seeds of interiority and folk song, VARIÁT creates a sound world of austere urban psychedelia, invoking themes of primitivism and mysticism within the volatile currents of a contemporary digital era.

Conceived in 2020 as a provocative creative outlet, VARIÁT is founded on ideas of transgression, reinvention, and liberation, the consequence of observing prescribed artistic boundaries and pursuing new depths of aesthetic freedom. The project began as an exploration of new recording techniques: metallic materials used as percussion and channelled through blown amps, toms played with a hammer, drilled cymbals, raw, dimensional textures produced from found objects.

For the project’s debut album ‘I Can See Everything From Here’ a library of recordings rooted in musique concrète initiated countless sessions of seismic, discordant guitar noise and overloaded detonations of low end. Synthesizers calibrated and treated to sound like traditional instrumentation, rhythms of deluge and disarray. Compositions constructed with an intent to preserve their original modality; the chaotic spark of their inception.

The artwork created for ‘I Can See Everything From Here’ is an aquarelle (watercolour) painting, an ink-based projection which mirrors the sound of the album with dense, fragmentary shades of black and extensive tendrils of detail. A microcosmic depiction of the graphic power that defines ‘I Can See Everything From Here’.

Omara Portuondo, the leading lady of the Buena Vista Social Club, is one of Cuba’s most celebrated voices.
The album ‘Buena Vista Social Club Presents Omara Portuondo’ was released in 2000 in the wake of the phenomenal reception of the original Buena Vista Social Club album, and was remastered from the analogue tapes for its 2019 LP reissue. Omara is backed by a dream band formed of many of the original Buena Vista Social Club members including Ibrahim Ferrer (vocals), Rubén González (piano), Compay Segundo (guitar) and Orlando ‘Cachaito’ Lopez (bass).

To celebrate the “Women In Music” theme of this year’s National Album Day, this classic album will be pressed on limited edition purple colour vinyl.

Days Of Speed is an acoustic, double live album featuring songs from across Paul’s career including The Jam classics; That’s Entertainment and Town Called Malice, The Style Council’s Headstart For Happiness and Down In The Seine and solo hits, You Do Something To Me and Wild Wood. Originally released in October 2001, charting at no. 3 in the UK, the initial double vinyl release was strictly limited and now sells for £250+ on the secondary market. The 2021 reissue features faithful original packaging replication & was cut at London’s Metropolis Studios.

NME: “Live acoustic brilliance from the master songsmith.” (4.5/5)

Starring James Fox as a British gangster on the run who finds refuge in the home of reclusive ex-rock star Mick Jagger, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's PERFORMANCE is one of the great cult movies of the 1970s. The film's soundtrack, produced by Jack Nitzsche for Warner Bros., is equally noteworthy. Needless to say, the Rolling Stones connection is strong; the Jagger-sung single "Memo From Turner" was co-written with Keith Richards, and vocalist Merry Clayton (famous as the duet partner on "Gimme Shelter") appears on three tracks. Several up-and-coming WB artists also make key contributions, including Randy Newman (the raucous "Gone Dead Train"), slide guitar virtuoso Ry Cooder and Little Feat leader Lowell George. Like the film itself, the PERFORMANCE original motion picture soundtrack offers a fascinating glimpse at one of the most exciting eras in rock.

Peter Sagar — also known as HOMESHAKE wrote the majority of his fifth studio album, Under the Weather, in 2019, when he was going through a long, unrelenting period of sadness. “I was in a deep, deep depression,” he recalls of that time period now. Sagar and his partner were living in Montreal, and while everyone was out being social, he was inside listening to ambient music, binging Star Trek, and writing songs. (Sound familiar?) “It was a bit of a dark pit,” he says. “That’s kind of what the whole album is about.”

Under the Weather is hazy and moody, the pace slow as syrup, and from beginning to end, a fog falls over every synth and guitar line. “Oftentimes when you’re in a dark place, you’re supposed to journal and that helps release the pressure,” Sagar says. “For me, it always found its way into the music.”

Capturing the cloudy sound of a depressive funk was no simple feat, especially in the headspace Sagar was in for over a year. For that reason, he decided to enlist his friend, Jerry Paper ’s Lucas Nathan, to help with production on the record. Having Nathan contribute helped Sagar dial back some of the “dry, pristine digital sound” that defined his fourth studio album, Helium , and add back personal analog touches that drew people to the HOMESHAKE project in the first place.

As Sagar readies for the album’s release this September, the record he wrote about feeling isolated, alone, and despondent has begun to seem eerily prescient. “I’ve been writing about feeling isolated my whole life,” he says — but with age, he has come to understand them better. “I had a fairly clear idea what the album was going to be like based on where I was emotionally at the time,” he says about Under the Weather . “I just try to make music that is honest about how I’m feeling.”

Featuring an impressive list of collaborators, including Ty Segall and
members of Woods, Cibo Matto, Sharon Van Etten’s band, Wand,
Heatwarmer, Mega Bog and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, ‘Geist’ is the
follow-up to Shannon Lay’s 2019 Sub Pop debut, ‘August’, which
featured friends and collaborators Ty Segal (whose band Shannon
played in) and Mikal Cronin.

‘Geist’ feels like a window - or a mirror - into possibilities of the self
and beyond. Shannon Lay’s new album is tender intensity, placeless
and ethereal. It exists in the chasms of the present -- a world
populated by shadow selves, spiritual awakenings, déjà vu and past
lives. “Something sleeps inside us,” Lay insists on the opening track,
and that’s the guiding philosophy throughout. A winding, golden,
delicate thread of intuition that explores the unknown, the possibility.
Its title, ‘Geist’, the German word for spirit, is rife with an otherworldly
presence, the suggestion of another. The promise that you are never
alone.

Lay tracked vocals and guitar at Jarvis Tavinere of Woods’ studio,
then sent the songs out to multi-instrumentalists Ben Boye (Bonnie
“Prince” Billy, Ty Segall) in Los Angeles and Devin Hoff (Sharon Van
Etten, Cibo Matto) in New York; trusting their musical instincts and
intuition. She then sent those recordings to Sofia Arreguin (Wand)
and Aaron Otheim (Heatwarmer, Mega Bog) for additional keys, while
Ty Segall contributed a guitar solo on ‘Shores’.

As a whole, ‘Geist’ is both esoteric and accessible. Songs range from
a concise, pared-back cover of Syd Barrett’s tilt-a-whirl-esque ‘Late
Night’, to the meditative, Dune-inspired ‘Rare to Wake’, to the mostly
a-cappella ‘Awaken and Allow’, which channels Lay’s deep Irish
roots, a moment of reflection, before a drop happens - its intensity
mirroring the anticipation and anxiety that come with taking the first
step to accepting change for yourself. And the title track ‘Geist’, a
song about the power living in all of us, is a love song to the
possibility of healing, an ode to falling into the arms of what you’re
becoming. It’s a glimpse into the parts of yourself you have yet to
meet.

Initial copies of the LP pressed on Sun Yellow coloured vinyl.

Singer-songwriter Tim Dawn’s debut-album includes the hits ““To Love Somebody” and “Walking On A Wire”. The inspiration for Everyday Magic came after a trip to Los Angeles, where he worked with several songwriters and producers. Tim writes deep and sensitive songs which are, at the same time, modern and fresh. His breakthrough single “Walking On Wire”, became NPO Radio 2 TopSong in 2018. The Bee Gees cover “To Love Somebody” was featured as the song for the PLUS supermarkets Christmas commercial.

"Ever try to escape your bedroom, but feel like you're still asleep? Ever try to wake up, but find yourself back in the dream? Ever try to take off your mask, but another one pops up beneath it? Ever try to consult your inner self, but inside your skin is merely a rotting corpse? Ever feel like every path you take is just another mobius strip leading you back to where you first began? Congratulations, welcome to the Psychocastle." – Taraka

Since the breakup of the legendary underground cult duo Prince Rama, former frontwoman Taraka has thrown herself headlong into the dark existential world of her “inner teenager," merging bastard elements of outsider-psych, post-edenic grunge, kaleidoscopic punk and post-adolescent angst to create her debut solo album.

The core of the album is seven songs she wrote in the late 1980s and early ‘90s —“One Way Out,” “As Cool As You Try,” “I’m No Angel Myself,” “For the Last Time,” “Save Myself,” “That Would Be Me” and. “Wild Wild Wild.” Rounding out the set are two other previously unreleased songs, “You Have No Idea” and “Life Goes On,” recorded at an intimate and boisterous 2002 concert at the Roxy in West Hollywood.

These songs bristle with energy and emotion, a rock ’n’ roll edge and personal depth as sharp as anything in her canon. The first seven come from a time in which she was finding her first measures of fame with bolstered confidence and ambition. But it was also before she was ready to be fully open about herself. These songs show her finding her voice, but when it came to it she wasn’t ready yet to say it in public.

“It was an emotional space, a tender sort of place that I was reluctant to go to before I came out,” she says. “So yeah, I did hold back on that sort of thing. And now it was really fun to just step forward and fearlessly present these songs and play them. You know, really being set free.”

In 2013, while working on a proposed box set of archival recordings, Etheridge came across these songs again and found that they spoke to her anew with fresh vantage. A lot had happened in the intervening years. Etheridge had come out, become a parent, risen to status of multi-platinum album sales and top concert headliner, was diagnosed and recovered from breast cancer, won an Academy Award (for her song “I Need to Wake Up” from Al Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, gotten married, taken on activist roles on various fronts and had continued to record and tour at as fierce a pace as always. With all of that, these songs needed to be given new voice, new settings.

Ben Bertrand weaves transverse waves into otherworldly compositions. He embodies the singular motion of these melodic and harmonic forms in order to draft new sonic possibilities freed from the laws of the physical plane. Pulsating at the kernel of Ben Bertrand’s musical universe are vivid dreams generating the fabric of these tapestries. Dokkaebi is deeply familiar yet refreshingly unknown, like a comforting whisper from your subconscious. It gently drifts into perception, glistening like the sun sparkling off a glacier gliding along the edge of your vision.

Deep listening to these tonal sculptures is enriching. By opening oneself to their deliberate unfolding, you will discover new principles for sound organization far afield from common modes of operation. The gradual, rhythmic progression of his compositions are ever-shifting grains, which upon thoughtful contemplation, reveal astonishing worlds. Bertrand’s music is constructed from blueprints drafted with honest intentions aspiring to bring humans closer to a sense of wonder.

Ben Bertrand welcomes each listener to discover his music anew from their own perspectives. It is infinitely in time with your time. These are the ripples in the wake of successive revolutions of universal evolution. Dokkaebi is an example of musical expressions adapting to the contours of the human psyche through gentle reflection of multiplicity. They are sounds reshaping themselves to suit the contours of each individual’s subconscious—sonic entities projected simultaneously as molecular and holistic.

Dokkaebi is an oceanic expression softly set in motion by honest aims that echo and grow. Ben Bertrand beckons you to listen up and look in. There is great reward in this generous flow.

Ben Bertrand was accompanied by Christina Vantzou, Geoffrey Burton, Indré Jurgeleviciuté, Echo Collective: Margaret Hermant & Neil Leiter, Otto Lindholm.

TOTAL turns 21 this year, and Kompakt’s venerable compilation series couldn’t have asked for a more auspicious coming-of-age collection. If TOTAL 20 was consolidation against the odds, the Kompakt crew producing for a dreamt-of dancefloor in an uncertain future, then TOTAL 21 feels abuzz and alive with possibilities. Significantly, it’s the first TOTAL in some time that’s streamlined down to a single disc; this makes TOTAL 21 even punchier than usual, a joyous, reflective, and always thrilling 75-minute audio scan of the world according to Kompakt.

As with every instalment of TOTAL, there’s a deft balancing here of Kompakt regulars and new blood. Of the latter, there’s a first appearance by KOLLMORGEN, remixed by PATRICE BÄUMEL into an astral torch song; Amsterdam’s NICKY ELISABETH, offering up ROMAN FLÜGEL’s pulsating, arpeggiated remix of “Celeste”; and CAPTAIN MUSTACHE swoops down into view, PLAY PAUL in tow, with the dream-like electro lift-off that is “Everything”. JONATHAN KASPAR also drops by with a new track, “Von Draussen”, a stealthy and lethal floor-hugger with prowling bass.

Elsewhere, there’s the lead track to MICHAEL MAYER’s astonishing recent EP, “Brainwave Technology”, which not-so-gently spears the tech-futurist babble of AI, transhumanism and posthumanism, soundtracked by one of Mayer’s typically lush, glimmering soundscapes. JOHN TEJADA reaches back to the heyday of glitch and dub techno with the gorgeous “Spectral Progressions”, while the brothers VOIGT & VOIGT, on “Nicht Mein Job”, seem reinvigorated by the interwoven patterns and funky minimalism of the Profan days. Not to be outdone, JÜRGEN PAAPE kicks TOTAL 21 with “La Guittara Romantica”, a chiming and lilting lullaby for woozy late-night reflection.

Throughout, it feels as though Kompakt are taking a moment to both breathe in the dust of the past and look forward to a bright future. Perhaps that’s why, on “Fasson”, SASCHA FUNKE seems so confident, with pinprick melodies bouncing around a hall of audio mirrors, or why THE BIONAUT returns with “Blue Sky Motor Lodge”, a song so moistly melancholy, so enduringly lovely, it’ll make you weep tears of joy. ROBAG WRUHME gets a little delirious on the ticking, twisting “No”, and then GUI BORATTO mops everything up with the bubbling, bumping glam-stomp “Wake Up”.

That’s not all – spring for the digital and/or vinyl edition and you’ll get a new cut, “Happy”, from MICHAEL MAYER, and MARC ROMBOY & C.A.R.’s “I Am A Dancer”. But however you choose to play it, now TOTAL’s turned 21, it’s your duty to throw it the celebration to end all celebrations. Let the party begin, and don’t forget to bring a party favor…

John Dikeman – saxophone
Jaimie Branch – trumpet
Luke Stewart – bass
Aleksandar Škorić – drums


A powerful collision of musical personalities - American saxophonist (and Dutch resident) John Dikeman invited avantgarde trumpeter Jaimie Branch, bassist Luke Stewart (Irreversible Entanglements) and drummer Aleksandar Škorić to form a new band project! This quartet presents its own definition of contemporary improvised jazz -with no distinct leader and with tight and supportive interplay, they demonstrate the independent musical voice of each own. Album cover by Jaimie Branch.

Essential Aliensis the 10th Helvetia album. Helvetia is the solo project of Jason Albertini from Duster. Helvetia resides in Portland, Oregon but was formed in Seattle, Washington in 2005 after Duster first went on hiatus. The songs onEssential Aliens were recorded over the last year, in Jason's basement. Since the band's inception, Jason has continued to employ a rotating cast of band members and collaborators, which now includes Steve Gere and Samantha Stidham. Steve and Jason also played in Built To Spill together from 2012 until 2018. In 2019 Duster started playing shows and recording again. During this time Jason started writing what would becomeThis Devastating Map. Released at the beginning of August last year, Post-Trash called it"a constantly shifting project that takes experimental lo-fi into brilliantly colored psych directions with a concise glow."Then the pandemic took hold. With normal life at a standstill and unable to hang with his bandmates, Jason focused his energy on his daughter's homeschooling schedule, and recording. He focused on finishing one song a day and was soon honing in on a new album. Essential Aliensdistills and simplifies the Helvetia sound. Reverb and delay are absent, replaced by warm fuzz and intimate room sounds. Progressions morph with stoner repetition and end in head scratch. Drums distort, muted bass lines prop up acoustic guitars blown out on a cassette four-track. Cheap electric guitars are barely in tune and recorded direct, almost painfully in your face. The songs are short blasts of psychedelic chill, unrooted by genre, a rummage around an alien radio dial. These are simple songs about keeping yourself from falling apart, to remind you that you can be strong. The visual elements for the album come from a recurring dream, which centers around a period in Jason's childhood when he lived in Basel, Switzerland, and believed that he lived with a ghost. In the dream, Jason's life becomes turned upside down because of a series of unexplainable events that turn out to be orchestrated by the ghost, and he wakes up convinced that he is a ghost as well. These are simple songs about keeping yourself from falling apart. To remind you that you can be strong. This is a weird blues.

The scottish musician, born in 1953 in Port Glasgow, is one of the most eclectic artist of the so-called minimal wave scene. Alongside german singer Claudia Brücken (vocalist of the hit-makers Propaganda) he formed Act a short-lived synthpop group signed to ZTT Records in the late eighties. Licensed by Cherry Red in 1982, the double album ‘Contradictions’ is the third effort in Leer high and rising career. After the seminal debut on Industrial Records with Robert Rental – The Bridge (1979) – Leer ventured on a solo career with the brave synth wave of ‘Letter From America’ and his personal masterpiece ‘Contradictions’. The latter is such an enigmatic piece of work, with alien melodies as in the case of the ‘Soul Gypsy’ infectious white funk. The whole album was recorded in his living room at home onto 4-track using borrowed equipment ( Korg synth, Ult-sound drum computer & guitars ) from his friend Morgan Fisher. Featuring Leer’s haunting, uncertain vocal – recorded quietly, so as not to wake his girlfriend in their bedsit! – crooning over a minimal bass pulse and discreet whines and washes of primitive Wasp synthesiser, it retains its peculiar lo-fi magic four decades on.

The Great Alternative Boom of the early ’90s had begun to wither on corporate FM barely halfway through the decade, but the ever-changing underground had almost entirely regenerated after two major-label thrifting trips. In the ever-in-flux city of Boston, Karate positioned themselves as a crucial tendril in a sprawling nationwide community. They did so largely by refusing to stick to any single formula from the myriad of styles at their root—slowcore, post-hardcore, and jazz. As if to make a point, Karate’s lineup went through its own shift too. In the lead up to 1997’s In Place of Real Insight, Eamonn Vitt took up the guitar, and Karate compatriot Jeff Goddard entered the fold to become the band’s bassist. Armed with two guitarists, the band got significantly louder, and they smeared punk fury all over their second LP.

The Great Alternative Boom of the early ’90s had begun to wither on corporate FM barely halfway through the decade, but the ever-changing underground had almost entirely regenerated after two major-label thrifting trips. In the ever-in-flux city of Boston, Karate positioned themselves as a crucial tendril in a sprawling nationwide community. They did so largely by refusing to stick to any single formula from the myriad of styles at their root—slowcore, post-hardcore, and jazz. As if to make a point, Karate’s lineup went through its own shift too. In the lead up to 1997’s In Place of Real Insight, Eamonn Vitt took up the guitar, and Karate compatriot Jeff Goddard entered the fold to become the band’s bassist. Armed with two guitarists, the band got significantly louder, and they smeared punk fury all over their second LP.

The principles of the inclusive band "21 downbeat": Intoxication and ecstasy, or thump and confetti! Beyond the usual boundaries and ideas, the band members create their very own sound from their own texts and poems by contemporary authors. Perhaps the musicians can be called Satyroi, cheerful demons in the wake of Dionysus, who is difficult to tame and for whom our current limits and ideas do not play a role. At appearances at Mensch Meier, the canteen at Berghain and at the Fusion Festival, the band has already put on spectacular stage shows that caused euphoria right down to the last row.

The now appearing debut ep "Shower" contains 4 pieces. Energetic percussion meets a rough synthesizer sound, the vocals are mostly polyphonic, clear and straightforward. All lyrics of the EP are based on poems by the award-winning author Yoko Tawada.

In the wake of Bitch Magnet and current of Superchunk, Sooyoung Park and Mac McCaughan formed a raw version of Seam in the summer of ’91. With bassist Lexi Mitchell, the trio banged out an album and two singles worth of shambolic dream pop in the sweltering Chapel Hill heat. Ten songs of talk-whispered vocals, sloshing guitar solos, scattered snare rolls, Velocity Girl’s Sarah Shannon, and the original version of Codeine’s slowcore classic “New Year’s,” on LP for the first time in 30 years.

John Dikeman - saxophone Jaimie Branch - trumpet Luke Stewart - bass Aleksandar Skoriæ - drums A powerful collision of musical personalities - American saxophonist (and Dutch resident) John Dikeman invited avantgarde trumpeter Jaimie Branch, bassist Luke Stewart (Irreversible Entanglements) and drummer Aleksandar Skoriæ to form a new band project! This quartet presents its own definition of contemporary improvised jazz -with no distinct leader and with tight and supportive interplay, they demonstrate the independent musical voice of each own. Album cover by Jaimie Branch.

New York City 4-piece deliver a modern blues rock masterclass on their feisty debut album.

“A timeless classic rock sound that revels in lean riffs and raw emotion.” – Afropunk

In an age where artistic merit is awarded to those who shout the loudest, Dakota Jones pride themselves on an unwavering ability to leave a lasting impression. Spearheaded by Tristan Carter-Jones fierce and unashamedly uncensored songwriting, the band’s fast-growing reputation as formidable live act has stamped Dakota Jones with the hell-hath-no-fury power of Chaka Khan, the wild spontaneity of Janis Joplin, and the honey-dripping sensuality of Marvin Gaye. Their debut album’s message of proud black heritage and triumphant queerness manifests itself in Carter-Jones’ ability to challenge norms of adulthood and femininity as she takes a deep dive into some of life’s most visceral emotions.

Tristan Carter-Jones: “I’m a black, queer woman expressing myself through love and music. Some folks still find that to be a transgressive act in and of itself. I work to fight that idea. I write a lot about my
Continued over…
sexuality and the ways in which I express it. Songs about sex and love bounce back and forth between songs about heartache, hangovers and self-medication, and the pleasure and pain of truly finding yourself. I don’t think we get to hear these things from a woman’s mouth as often as we should.”

Serving as an instant tone setter, the album opens with the line "Stretch marks from growing pains" with Carter-Jones lamenting the woes of adjusting to adulthood on lead single ‘Did It To Myself’ - her husky and commanding vocal instantly asserting its place in the spotlight. The atmosphere soon turns steamy on the flirtatious title track ‘Blacklight,’ whilst fantasising over a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde love affair the funk-laden ‘We Playin Bad Games’ packs a punch with its tale of free spirits entwined in a haze of late-night revelry.

Elsewhere, stories of caustic heartache twist the knife into wounded blues guitar riffs on ‘Like That’ and ‘Black Magic (That Power)’, in which Carter-Jones’s stoical voice never once faulters as she mourns the memories of a previous flame. Personal prayer ‘Lord Please’ recites empowered words of reassurance, and solidarity in the face of injustice erupts into a rallying cry for change on the classic sounding ‘Noise’ – written as a reaction to the 2016 US election. “I woke up after the election feeling pure panic and fear in my body,” remembers Tristan. “I wanted people in a place of privilege to stand up for what I was feeling, stand up for injustice, stand up for all of the things we need to change as a country. I wanted their rage, and I wanted their noise.”

Finally, the band’s tender tropes of togetherness eventually boil into gritty, guitar-slung balladry on hidden bonus track, ‘California,’ where, knees buckling under the weight of past trials and tribulations, Carter-Jones sets out on one final journey of self-discovery, hastily pulling out from reality and leaving only a dust cloud in her wake.

Production comes courtesy of the Grammy-winning John Wooler, ex Virgin Records A+R and founder of the Blues label Pointblank who has worked with everyone from John Lee Hooker and John Hammond to Isaac Hayes and Van Morrison. The album also features a wealth of hugely talented and accomplished musicians, including backing vocalist Kudisan Kai, former backing vocalist for the likes of Elton John, Chaka Khan, Anita Baker, Natalie Cole, Beck, Sting, Mary J. Blige and Jill Scott. Also present; Grammy winning keyboardist Jon Gilutin, who has spent years working with some of the industry’s most respected and iconic artists including Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Lady Gaga, Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Jackson Browne, Celine Dion, Bonnie Rait and Carole King. You’ll also hear the talents of acclaimed guitarist Michael Toles. Most well-known for being a part of the Stax Records group The Bar Kays, and for his contributions on famous records by Issac Hayes, Al Green, BB King, Johnny Taylor, Rufus Thomas, Albert King to name just a few.

Dakota Jones are a rising funk, soul and blues rock band from Brooklyn, New York City. Comprising of Tristan Carter-Jones (vocals), Scott Kramp (bass) Steve Ross (drums), and acclaimed musician Randy Jacobs (guitar) - former member of Was(Not Was) who has recorded for Seal, Bonnie Raitt, Tears for Fears, Elton John and many others. Though Carter-Jones and Ross first met in 1999 whilst at primary school, the band formed years later following a series of home jam sessions in 2016. The band’s collective alias originates from Carter-Jones’s middle name, ‘Dakota’. Dakota Jones have since released a string of acclaimed singles and EPs as well as received international attention for their track, ‘Have Mercy’ after it featured on Netflix’s 2019 film, Always Be My Maybe starring Ali Wong and Randall Park – and now after years of hard work and determination, the band are finally set to reveal their long awaited debut album. “We’d been regularly releasing EPs, waiting for our chance to come, and wondering what that would look like,” says Carter-Jones. “We didn’t realise until we started making this record that we needed to stop waiting for some break to come along, and just do it ourselves, independently.”

“Black Light really dives into a place of funk soul and everything that comes with it. There’s joy and dancing, sleek guitar licks and funky bass slaps. There’s pain and longing, and there’s the feeling of relief when you come out of that place and find your joy and purpose again. Black Light is my story.”

In James McMurtry’s new effort, ‘The Horses and
the Hounds’, the acclaimed songwriter backs
personal narratives with effortless elegance
(‘Canola Fields’) and endless energy (‘If It Don’t
Bleed’).
This first collection in seven years spotlights a
seasoned tunesmith in peak form as he turns
toward reflection (‘Vaquero’) and revelation (closer
‘Blackberry Winter’). Familiar foundations guide
the journey. “There’s a definite Los Angeles vibe to
this record,” McMurtry says. “The ghost of Warren
Zevon seems to be stomping around among the
guitar tracks. Don’t know how he got in there. He
never signed on for work for hire.”
‘The Horses and the Hounds’ is a reunion of sorts.
McMurtry recorded the new album with legendary
producer Ross Hogarth (Ozzy Osbourne, John
Fogerty, Van Halen, Keb’ Mo’) at Jackson
Browne’s Groovemaster’s in Santa Monica,
California. Hogarth recorded McMurtry’s first two
albums - ‘Too Long in the Wasteland’ and
‘Candyland’ - and later mixed McMurtry’s first selfproduced album, ‘Saint Mary of the Woods’.
Another veteran of those three releases, guitarist
David Grissom (Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Dixie
Chicks), returns with some of his finest work.

To celebrate its tenth Anniversary, Matt Berry’s
debut album for Acid Jazz, ‘Witchazel’, returns to
the shops with this caramel vinyl edition.
Featuring the theme from his BAFTA Awardwinning TV show ‘Toast Of London’, ‘Take My
Hand’, it has been his biggest selling album and
has been out of print on vinyl for several years.
Acclaimed at the time of release, The Guardian
said “‘Witchazel’ is enchanting… genuinely
impressive,” while The Times labelled it “… psychfolk genius.” The album has since matured into an
acknowledged classic

To celebrate its tenth Anniversary, Matt Berry’s
debut album for Acid Jazz, ‘Witchazel’, returns to
the shops with this caramel vinyl edition.
Featuring the theme from his BAFTA Awardwinning TV show ‘Toast Of London’, ‘Take My
Hand’, it has been his biggest selling album and
has been out of print on vinyl for several years.
Acclaimed at the time of release, The Guardian
said “‘Witchazel’ is enchanting… genuinely
impressive,” while The Times labelled it “… psychfolk genius.” The album has since matured into an
acknowledged classic

The Room will be Ricky Reed’s first artist album since becoming a house-hold-name producer, and launching his own label with Nice Life Recording Company. The project features Leon Bridges, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Dirty Projectors, Terrace Martin, Duendita, Ayoni, Lido Pimienta, St. Panther & John-Robert and more. The Room is a title that came to him in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the galvanizing of the Black Lives Matter movement across America and the world. He wanted to create a communal place where it’s as necessary to cry as it is to rejuvenate; where it’s as vital to be angry as it is to find joy. The music is an invitation to share experiences, commiserate, rejuvenate, and offer hope. It is upbeat in places, meditative always, and has real soul to it. Ultimately, Reed feels fundamentally changed by quarantine, particularly with his process of creating. All the songs were written via text and voice memos. The Room feels like an offering to the world at a time when Reed was back in the process again. Back at a new start. “When this comes out, whether it is well or not, the only thing that matters is that I made it.”

Brock Van Wey returns as Earth House Hold and his third full album under the alias, continuing to explore the furthest influences of Ambient-infused, deconstructed Deep House in all its varying elements.

“...from the second I descended those stairs, lived it for myself, and the events that followed, I knew my life had changed forever. A life that brought with it a beauty as infinite as its pain”.

Daybreak Basements and Broken Hearts explores a new aspect of Brock’s early Deep House influences, one that meticulous followers of this guise would have been patiently trying to guess since his last outing in 2018. If Brock’s debut Earth House Hold album (When Love Lived, 2012) took the grooves and danceability from Deep House, and his second, (Never Forget Us, 2018), highlighted the powerful progression of vocals and melodies, then Daybreak Basements and Broken Hearts continues to build on the many aspects and inspirations of the Deep House genre, with a raw, dirty and somehow deeper take on the sound that Brock grew up with many years ago.

Brock’s signature vocals once again provide the narration and backbone to an album that is designed to progress; from its patient and spacious beginnings to its energetic and emotional closing chapters. Reverberating synths fill cavernous spaces as basslines rumble, bringing a darker, more abstract, early-morning vibe to an album born from a place of both reflection, and personal experiences.

“This is a house album in the purest sense of the word - just as much as the furthest thing from one that ever existed. As much a deconstruction of what deep house means as an attempt to reconstruct a time, and a life, it built.”

Oneknowing is the debut artist album by acclaimed composer and producer Lena Raine, most recently known for her multiple award-winning soundtrack for the video game Celeste. Based in Seattle, Raine has been composing soundtracks for games and media for 12 years, her breakout momentcoming with her work on the classic PC game Guild Wars 2. Her most celebrated work, however, has come in the form of 2018’s Celeste soundtrack. A game based around themes of anxiety, self-examination and more, Celeste is considered by many to be the key indie game of 2018, and has won multiple awards for both game and soundtrack – something which Raine painstakingly developed in tandem with the game’s design since its first steps. A flagship year for Raine was capped off in December, where she performed live with soundtrack legend Hans Zimmer at The Game Awards, the video game industry’s flagship annual award show (Celeste was nominated for fourawards, and won two). Although she’s released several nonsoundtrack releases, both under her real name and her Kuraine alias, Raine considers Oneknowing her debut artist album - a 10 track set that ranges from distorted paranoia to ambient pop, brought together by the shimmering melodies that make her soundtracks so memorable. An album that draws from “personal experiences, important places, dreams and the lack of dreams”, Oneknowing’s tracks are also threaded together by Raine’s own vocals, sung in a language unique to the album and manipulated by the software Vocaloid. In Raine’s words, “I have nostalgia for my voice as it sounded when I was younger. I can't de-age my voice, but I was able to use software and tweak its settings to a point that it has a similar quality to my voice from backthen”. At times (‘Tsukuyomi’, ‘Light Rail’) her vocals lean towards traditional pop structures, while on tracks such as ‘Wake Up’, they’re repeated, chant-like, to create a hypnotic effect. As well as vocals and software, Raine plays rhodes piano, zither and various hardware synthesizers on Oneknowing, while Michaela Nachtigall contributes violin and viola to various tracks. A succinct but expansive record full of detail, Oneknowing represents Raine’s most personal and realised original material yet, while showing a different side to one of the most unique and accomplished composers of the modern era.