Buscar:we like we

Air Texture proudly announces its latest artist-curated compilation, “Hardwired,” assembled by Berlin-based musician JakoJako. This expansive collection celebrates the implicit connection between hardware-focused electronic producers, featuring contributions from Rødhåd, Acid Pauli, The Field, Neon Chambers, and many more.

“Hardwired” draws its conceptual foundation from synthesizer terminology. As JakoJako explains: “A hardwired synth has connections already soldered into the machine—it comes with certain functions without needing to patch cables externally. As a hardware producer, I feel whenever I meet someone who creates music as I do, we have this immediate connection, like a hardwired synthesizer. There’s no need for small talk—we can speak about gear.”

This metaphor of pre-established connections forms the emotional core of the compilation, celebrating the community of hardware enthusiasts who share an intuitive understanding and appreciation for machine-based music creation.

JakoJako has established herself as one of electronic music’s most intriguing voices, exploring the territory between technical precision and emotional expression. Her artistic approach balances rigorous knowledge with unrestrained intuition, creating works that reach beyond genre boundaries.

A Berghain resident with performances at Dekmantel and Fusion, to the Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican, JakoJako has released music on prestigious labels including Tresor, Mute, and Leisure System, and crafted remixes for artists like New Order and Martin Gore. Her deep relationship with analog and modular synthesis, including her ongoing connection to Berlin’s SchneidersLaden, informs her distinctive sound.

Following her recent Mute album “Têt 41,” this curation for Air Texture provides further insight into the musical universe that has shaped JakoJako’s artistic vision.

“Hardwired” showcases 23 tracks for its digital release, with a select 9 tracks pressed to vinyl. The collection spans the spectrum of contemporary electronic music while maintaining cohesive focus on hardware-driven production approaches.

Highlights include collaborative works between JakoJako and fellow producers Mareena and Frank Wiedemann, alongside contributions from established artists like Rødhåd, Acid Pauli, and The Field, plus emerging talents representing the hardware renaissance in electronic music.

Founded by James Parker Healy, Air Texture emerged from New York City’s late ’90s rave scene, carrying forward the fundamental PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) ethos with a collaborative and curatorial focus. Air Texture has evolved from its roots in Manhattan’s club era and Brooklyn’s warehouse scene to embrace a global perspective, working with producers across diverse styles and regions worldwide through the label and its PLace: nonprofit series.

On the latest instalment of his VALA series, Finnish techno explorer Kaspiann tunnels into heads-down, mind-warping rhythm tracks of the highest order. Alongside his appearance on respected platforms such as Delsin Mantis and Optic Portal (alongside Spekki Webu), VALA affords Kaspiann the space to explore the depth and breadth of his sound with steely focus. The four tracks on VALA 4 are teeming with tactile textures and intricate detail that feel familiar and abstract all at once, perhaps best described by the titles that indulge in a little Finnish word play. ‘Sammalkämmen’, literally translated as ‘moss palm’, feels like a fitting reflection of the spongy mid-range matter on the opening track, while the humid, dense atmosphere of B1 cut ‘Suohunaja’ could indeed conjure a sense of ‘swamp honey’. From ‘Sienikieli’s tunnelling rhythmic intrigue to the intricately arranged, expressive percussion of ‘Niin Vain’, Kaspiann continues to broaden his vocabulary within the language of deep techno, triggering ineffable sensations from carefully sculpted sonic forms and strapping them to incisive rhythms.

Danilo and Liza Farba founded the band Farba Kingdom in Odessa, Ukraine. Like many other old port cities, it has always been a multicultural place – but also one of constant change. It is these rapid changes in living conditions that the duo processes musically – with a penchant for nostalgia as a protective shield for themselves and their audience. What does that sound like? Dark, electronic, and wavy.

In 2020, the band established this musical direction with their debut album "Німб": the desperation of post-punk, along with unsettling, crushing industrial vibes and well-thought-out hypnotic synth sequences. Listening to their music, one immediately conjures up the architecture of their hometown, where the mystical neo-Gothic style alternates with Soviet Constructivism. A visual experience that screams the hopeless sadness of this era to the world.

Danilo and Liza Farba are currently in exile in Romania.

The Australian master of the dark synth arts is back and – boy – he is out for blood.
We’ve been missing Marc Dwyer solo project Buzz Kull since his latest single Last In The Club from late 2019 and since back then we knew he was up to something. At first glimpse, the minimal wave days of We Were Lovers seem far away now that Marc has gone full Club Body Music with his upcoming new album, but there is a thread that binds Buzz Kull hits from the past such as Into The Void, Avoiding The Light and New Kind Of Cross with these ten new cuts: a thread of darkness proper to the most handsome man in the game and that’s here to stay.

Echoes of 90’s era Front 242 and Front Line Assembly will resonate from tracks like Fascination and Dead Inside; elements of early body music flirting with the dark side of British synthpop will rave from the grooves of Dancing with Machines and Man on the Beat, while late 80’s Belgian new beat cellar-like vibes rise from Do You See and Burn it to the Ground.

But Buzz Kull’s third full-length is not just about music subgenres we all know and love, it’s about a feeling that comes alive only with the dark and drives you through the small hours just to leave you drained and filled at once. The creature of the night is on the loose, the sticky dancefloor its natural habitat, its lust for the upside-down world of the club can’t be cured.

Monde UFO follow the celebrated ‘7171’ album with a trip to the mysterious ‘Flamingo Tower’. In the shadows of the Los Angeles bustling music scene, the enigmatic collective led by visionary Ray Monde create a trance-like fusion of psychedelia and avant jazz, mantra-like evocations, brash moody ambience and passages reminiscent of long-lost library music.

Magnifying Monde UFO’s idea of musical chaos, their early sonic escapades into off-kilter exotica is now elevated with sweeping atmospheric waves of sound inspired by an eclectic brew of Arto Lindsey, Khan Jamal’s ‘Drum Dance To The Motherland’, Keith Hudson, Milford Graves, Marion Brown, Don Cherry and Lennie Tristano.

Cast deep into number theory with occasional quasi-religious touchstones, ‘Flamingo Tower’ bustles with background sounds overlaid with intimate melodies conjuring plenty of suitably strange illusions; a synthetic orchestra plays baroque pop, a guitar is set to auto destruct and Ray Monde’s hushed vocals carry a bracing narrative. It’s an evocative album, one for the heavy music nerds, sprinkled with ear candy and proliferated by mysterious numbers which litter the song titles.

“Monde UFO wander through a humid mist of exotic samba shuffles, shamanic whispers, and reverberating laser beam synthesizers.” New Commute

After a three-year hiatus from releasing new music, Błoto knew they had to make up for the long wait with a flood of fresh material. Their fruitful recording sessions at Studio Pasterka produced a wave of new tracks—like mushrooms springing up after the rain. These sessions have already brought us two 7" singles, the Grzybnia LP, and now, rounding off this chapter, comes the final piece: the album Grzyby (eng. Mushrooms).

Anticipation for new Błoto releases reached a fever pitch. Vinyl collectors quickly snapped up all copies of the singles Szlam / Ścieki and Bakteria, the latter featuring a guest appearance by DāM-FunK. In less than six months, nearly all copies of Grzybnia were sold out—setting a record pace for Astigmatic Records. In the meantime, the album was nominated for a Fryderyk Award in the Alternative Music category. Though Grzybnia didn’t take home the prize, Błoto did win a Fryderyk for their track “Godzina W”, featured on the WAWA album dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising. It’s been an electrifying time for the band, filled with shows across Poland and abroad.

Limited Repress arrived !

We would like to remind you that this project is non-profit and that the proceeds will be donated to an Italian association that helps children with cancer and support their families.

Remastered by Hotrebor
Artworks by Federico Chiari
Executive Producer Andrea Cozzaglio

Read the book : Loopera
and watch the movie !

How would you like to hear it? This project is the brainchild of Andy Baxter, a multi-talented musician and multi-instrumentalist from London. His recording career began in 2018 when he released his first album, Green, on Village Live.

Buoyed by this initial recognition by his peers, he quickly released a second self-produced opus the following year, entitled Dusk. But it was his third LP, Shapes, released by KingUnderground, that took him to the next level.

Conceived during the first period of confinement, Andy played almost every instrument on the album (a few musicians joined in here and there): drums first and foremost, his instrument of choice, but also bass, guitar, keyboards and even the flute, which he had just learnt at the time of the album's creation. Largely inspired by the library music of the 70s, including some of his mentors such as Piero Umilani, David Axelrod and Brian Bennett, the album is nonetheless resolutely modern. But there's no denying the cinematic atmosphere that emanates from his compositions.

From the opening track "We're From Nowhere", with its heavy, funky bass, you get the impression of being plunged into the Harlem blaxploitation of the heyday, and you can't help but see a musical nod to Roy Ayers' "We live in Brooklyn, baby". But you soon realise that far from being a nostalgic musician, Baxter also listens to his contemporaries like Khruangbin and BadBadNotGood, as can be heard on tracks like 'Leaves', 'Odysea' and 'Ikigai', with their atmospheric guitars and Fransesca Uberti's haunting backing vocals, which instantly invite you to travel and escape! But there are times when the mood gets a little tense, like on the more angst-ridden 'Villains', with its almost free jazz flights of fancy. Finally, his drumming also comes to the fore on the last track, 'Stay Free', with its Afrobeat rhythm reminiscent of a certain Tony Allen and evoking creative freedom as a common thread running through his values.

In nine tracks, Shapes takes us on a neo jazz journey that once again demonstrates the vitality of the English scene in this field for several years now! At the start of 2022, Robohands released their latest album, Violet, on the same label, confirming all the good things we thought about them! By allowing a number of musicians to join him on this new opus, Andy Baxter has shown a willingness to work with more accomplished collaborators.

First part of the Drexciya re-issue series! Drexciya might need an introduction for some, for others it is the most influential techno project ever. Part of the heritage of Detroit's Underground Resistance, Drexciya explored techno music like no-one else before. Raw and uncompromising music that reflects the harsh environment of the city where Drexciya was conceived. The aesthetics and the mythical approach combined with the unique music made this one of the biggest cult projects in techno music. Drexciya arguably stands for the darker side of techno and electro, music not only made for the club scene, but a further development of the music as an expression and extension of the mind. 20 years after the release of ''Deep Sea Dweller'' (their first release), and 10 years after ''Grava 4'' (their last), we present ''Journey Of The Deep Sea Dweller''. This series is an almost complete collection of their early works, and is remastered from the original master tapes. Since the original releases have such a strong character, appeal and stand on their own, this re-issue can never re-create the magic of those originals. So instead we stirred up the catalogue taking the tracks out of their original context, giving the 'in the know' listener a fresh experience and the new listener a document that is the best possible introduction to the aquatic world of Drexciya.

Repress!

New Scene was a project created in the late 80’s by Arno Müller and Markus Barth. They were part of the roaster of the German label BOY Records together with acts like Time Modem, Cybex Factor and “O”. New Scene released in 1989/90 two singles/mega-mixes under the title of “Out of Control”, becoming both classics in the German Techno scene. Their third single “Tonight” also turned to a big success in the clubs and pushed New Scene to release their debut and only full-length album “Waves” in 1992.

Limited edition re-release with remastered audio and expanded double vinyl including as bonus the b-side “The Fog”.

Repress!

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.



Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.



Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytumcomosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”



But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.



The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.



“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.



Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.



Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’snew renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

Following on from last year's acclaimed ‘R.O.I.’ album, Manchester’s favourite sons Aerial Salad are set to return to the fray with a brand new 5-track EP titled ‘Roi de l’herb’ to be released June 27th via Venn Records.
Having released their ‘Dirt Mall’ album during lockdown, which was a pretty grim time to put an album out, the release still eventually opened up some exciting doors for the band and captured Aerial Salad at their most Aerial Salad; loud, brash, silly and emotive.
This led swiftly to 2024’s ‘R.O.I.’ album that marked a real evolution in the band’s sound and songwriting.

“R.O.I. is a concept album but rather than being about a band, it’s from the perspective of an individual pushed to the brink of insanity by the ever-present quest from commercial success,” explains singer and guitarist Jamie Munro. “The idea came from my job; I’ve been working in the tech industry in ‘sales’. ‘Return on investment’ was probably my most uttered phrase for a few years, I was sick of it, sick of having no positive impact on the world and sick of the tech bro, double espresso, thirsty thursdays, work hard - play hard bollocks culture that comes with it. ‘R.O.I.’ is me saying ‘know what, you can actually earn a lot of money in life, even without the fallacy of educational infrastructure and financial privilege, however, it comes at the cost of your soul, time and energy. ‘R.O.I.’ is called such because it’s in the opposite pursuit, it’s not about a return on a financial investment, it’s about doing something with your life that’s enjoyable.”
This brings us crashing into 2025, no longer in the same line of spirit destroying work, with some seriously exciting gigs on the horizon, Aerial Salad wanted to kick off the next era of the band with a short, fast and hard EP and have served up 5 absolute bangers that sit somewhere between ‘Dirt Mall’ and ‘R.O.I.’ The EP is called ‘Roi de l’herb’ because of the track ‘King Of The Grass’: “We tour and play a lot in France, we’ve played most of our “best” gigs in France, so out of curiosity I wanted to see if the title would translate well, naturally, when the translation contained both “ROI” and l’herbe” - I though, fuck it, that’s about as spot on a title for this EP as we can possibly muster.”
‘King of The Grass’ is about the band’s bassist Mike Wimbo who works for Rochdale council on the greens team, which means he spends his life in the pouring rain chopping down overgrown hedges and mowing lawns. Elsewhere on the EP, ‘Inject Your Blood’ is another romantic love song inspired by the TV series ‘True Blood’ (“I’d inject your blood, into mine just to feel you close”), ‘Wires’ rages against the world of AI and GPT, whilst the EP’s opening track ‘My Girl’ is a chaotic, high energy catchy punk song, nothing profound, nothing complicated. It’s a punk song as god intended, a few chords and a load of shouting.
“The EP is like the teaser for what’s next,” summarises Jamie. “The overall hook for this EP is one of hope, that by sticking to what you believe in you can do anything.”

Probably the first experiment in mixing hardcore attitude with OI! songwriting ever made within the UK punk movement, Attak were born as a four piece in New Mills in l98l, but immediately reversed to a trio when their singer left for school commitments and released two incredible singles on the No Future label in this form, right before recruiting a new guitarist and record “Zombies”, that came out in l983 on the same label. Known for featuring Mackie from BLITZ’s sister on drums, (and sounding a lot like his band!), Attak definitely split up in late 1983. This criminally underrated classic gets reissued on vinyl with his original artwork and fully remastered. Limited to 500 copies on Color Vinyl, complete with big 60x40 cm folded poster!

Dungen Meat duo Brawther and Tristan Da Cunha deal in heavyweight, no-nonsense house and that is embodied in their label Slabs, which focuses on the deeper side of things and now welcomes Dutch talent Job de Jong for a stylish brace of cuts. 'Like Dis' draws from all over - dubwise vocal samples, percussion from garage, kicks from house music and echo from dub. It's a physical, bouncy sound for energising the dance floor without ever resorting to gimmicks. On the flip, 'MB' pumps a garage-house vibe with dusty drum rotations and snares that flap in the wind. Add in bulbous organ lines and balmy pads and you have a nice neon heater.

Since first forming in 2016, London's High Vis have steadily polished their palette of progressive hardcore with shades of post-punk, Brit pop, neo-psychedelia, and even Madchester groove, mapping a middle ground between hooks and fury, melodies and mosh pits. Singer Graham Sayle describes their third album 'Guided Tour' as an axis of competing forces: "It's trying to be a hopeful record, while also being incensed." Rounded out by drummer Edward 'Ski' Harper, guitarists Martin MacNamara and Rob Hammaren, and bassist Jack Muncaster, the band's deep roots in the UK and Irish DIY hardcore scenes have kept them grounded but growing, inspired equally by restlessness and righteous anger. As Sayle puts it, "Everyone's scratching, everyone's working all the time, and their idea of relaxing is just getting fucked and avoiding reality. This album is an escape from that."From its opening seconds of a cab door slamming, a car revving away, and a baggy rhythm swinging to life, 'Guided Tour' sounds like a band reaching for new heights, bristling with energy. Recorded across a few weeks at Holy Mountain Studios in London with producer Jonah Falco and engineer Stanley Gravett, the results feel dynamic and dialed-in, like anthems burned into sense memory through sweat and repetition. Harper cuts to the chase: "We had a clear idea going in, every moment got used. Maybe when we're 60 we can sit around and get a drum sound right, but for now it's about getting things done."The album's 11 songs span the spectrum of contemporary guitar music, sharpened by experience, camaraderie, and societal frustrations. From swaggering street punk ("Drop Me Out," "Mob DLA") to jangling indie sneer ("Worth The Wait," "Deserve It") to heavy alt ("Feeling Bless," "Fill The Gap") to shoegazey spoken word ("Untethered"), the group's chemistry transmutes any style to their unique intensity. Sayle champions this evolving fusion: "For years coming from hardcore, we had pretty clear boundaries - other scenes were separate worlds. Now things are getting more blended, drawing from different places."Nowhere is this sentiment flexed more boldly than on "Mind's A Lie," a dance- punk anthem inspired by Harper's love of house, garage, and pirate radio. Stabs of sampled female vocals (by celebrated South London singer and DJ Ell Murphy) build into a razor wire rhythm of low-slung bass, tense drums, and sparkling guitar before Sayle's staunch voice starts barking harsh truths ("Face to face with all I've known / I can't call these thoughts my own"). After a sudden breakdown, the track regroups and takes off, cruising into the horizon in a haze of chiming guitars and Murphy's ascendant voice, from the streets to somewhere beyond.

Mexican enfant extraordinaire Iñigo Vontier is rolling in with his debut EP for Feines Tier and it’s a match made in heaven. Just judging on the name alone, as he seems to be from some kind of royal Tier family descent. But enough with the mind-numbingly bad puns and on to some brain-meltingly good music.
Rolling. Everything’s rolling. Zongato is rolling. We don’t know who or what a Zongato is (a Google search just led to a Twitch streamer with that name and 0 followers), but they are definitely rolling. It’s got this special combination of straight and uncompromising beat and bass paired with psychedelic synth sirens floating around your head that somehow only the Mexicans really know how to nail.
Astrolo is rolling. Like a well-oiled machine. Well, maybe like a not so well-oiled machine, one that’s shrieking and creaking, but has been running since forever and reliably will do so until we’re all gone from this Earth.
If you ask Google Translate, Mucha Onda means „very cool“ in English, „molto bello“ in Italian or „valde frigidus“ in Latin and there is nothing more to add to that.
The psychedelics are back (were they ever gone?) and kick in in full swing on Hedonist Lizard. A dangerous cocktail of high-proof alcoholic drum and bass patterns paired with some sugary spicy herbals of unknown origin, better not down it in one go. You were warned.
On The Sounds Are Good, the sounds are good indeed! And rolling.

LA-based producer Real Bad Man and Detroit artist ZelooperZ release their joint album Dear Psilocybin via the pro-ducer’s own Real Bad Man Records. The album marks the duo’s first collaboration, culminating in a full-length project that also features guest appearances from Boldy James, MAVI and a verse from The Alchemist. On Dear Psilocybin, ZelooperZ invokes unconventional production out of Real Bad Man to match his own unpredictable and outlandish delivery, working outside of traditional song structures and existing in a lane of his own. The Detroit multihyphenate, who is an integral part of Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigadecollective and also an accomplished visual artist, painted the album’s corresponding cover artwork as well.

“I definitely haven’t made anything like this before, it’s a very subtle version of my music as far as tone, ” ZelooperZ explained in a conversation with Real Bad Man for his RBM Radio show. He elaborates on the off-kilter approach to the way he recorded to say, “the album feels like a movie soundtrack for a film about a man losing his mind and getting spurts of memories along the way. ”

Speaking about how the project differs from the rest of his collaborative catalog, RBM says, “It’s trippy and it’s a little different – but the main goal was for it to be authentic to Z and his process. ” That dedication to authenticity rings true across his catalog, drawing back to the foundations of his beginnings as a producer, learning the fundamentals of sampling, experimenting with chords and learning to piece songs together by ear. RBM builds a cohesive production arc around each artist he works with, catered to their strengths as artists, working with a variety of lyrical stylists includ-ing Memphis rapper Lukah, Pink Siifu, Blu, Kool Keith, Elcamino & more.

Real Bad Man is the production moniker of visual artist and designer Adam Jay Weissman. A designer and visual artist first, he made his foray into music through his On High Alert series of imaginative, multi-generational compilations, which have featured the likes of Roc Marciano, ROME STREETZ, Pink Siifu, Maxo and more. In the years since, he’s partnered with some of hip-hop’s most talented and adventurous artists on full-length projects, refining and shaping the trajectory of some of rap’s most exciting independent artists.

Allen Toussaint’s debut as a solo artist, “The Wild Sound Of New Orleans” was released in 1958 under the name of Tousan. In the 60s, he established himself as a songwriter, producer and arranger for a number of labels and generated hits like ‘Working In The Coal Mine’ for Lee Dorsey that got to #8 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. Other classic tracks that Toussaint either wrote, produced or arranged included ‘Fortune Teller’, Lipstick Traces’ and ‘Ooh Poo Pah Do’

It was only in 1970 that he found time to record another solo album, aptly entitled “Toussaint”. As well as serving up his own version Of ‘Working In The Coal Mine’, Toussaint recorded other originals like ‘From A Whisper To A Scream’ and ‘Everything I Do Is Gonna Be Funky’. There were also four instrumental tracks – ‘Pickles’, ‘Louie’, ‘Either’ and a sublime version of ‘Cast Your Fate To The Wind’ listed as ‘Allen Toussaint at the piano’.
The original version of Toussaint was released in 1970 on Scepter records and is now hailed as a soulful classic. Ace were delighted to first reissue it in 1985 as “From A Whisper To A Scream” with the addition of a bonus track and with a slightly different running order.
On “Toussaint” we present the original album as Allen Toussaint intended it to be heard. Remastered to perfection this is an essential purchase

Bobby Lyle is a keyboard legend from the fusion period of jazz in the mid to late 1970s. He was the pianist with Young Holt Unlimited and played with Jimi Hendricks, booked to go on the road with him just ahead of the untimely death. In 1974 he moved to Los Angeles and went on the road with Sly & The Family Stone, and then through dates with Ronnie Laws he met ex-Crusader Wayne Henderson who took him to Capitol Records where this, the first of three iconic albums was released in 1977. Bobby also became Wayne’s keyboard player of choice on his solo albums and productions through the remainder of the 70s and early 80s, contributing to the ‘At Home Production’ sound which defines these albums. “The Genie” was rediscovered in the ‘rare groove’ period of the 80s and is from which Bobby gets his nickname for the lightning pace and magic of his playing. This album is ultimate jazz funk from a period that gave us artists like Lonnie Liston Smith, Joe Sample and Bob James. Bobby still tours to this day with artists like George Benson and Anita Baker.