Search:who is who

A collection of spellbinding, melismatic vocal improvisations taken from 78s cut between the mid 1920s to mid '30s - a period defined by the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire’s partition, the Greco-Turkish War and the compulsory population exchange that followed.

This same period also represented a time of intense efforts, following the establishment of the Republic, to westernise the new nation's music - coupled with a ban on traditional music education in schools, and later a complete ban on broadcasting Ottoman-Turkish classical music on the radio. As such these performances seem shrouded in an even more distant past, and feel quite intimately connected with forms of Greek amanes and rebetiko - having stemmed from the same Ottoman makam system, both with a subject-matter focussed on heartbreak, yearning, and pain.

The Byrds were one of the earliest groups who could combine the best of two worlds. They caught on to the energy of the British Invasion and combined it with the lyricism & musical elements of the contemporary folk movement. Along the way they pioneered Psychedelic and Country Rock, always keeping things recognizable with their vocal harmonies accompanied by their jangly guitars.

On their third album Fifth Dimension from 1966 they started showing a more LSD-tinged side of themselves with the Psychedelic Rock of songs such as "Eight Miles High" and "I See You" and a preference for the Indian raga. One of their most pioneering albums!

Fifth Dimension is available as a 60th anniversary edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on orange vinyl.

Wacho is Kabul Fire Records" newest of talented beat makers who"ll be sure to serve all lovers of instrumental hiphop productions more than well. With his debut album "Simplicies" he offers his very own synth heavy take on lo-fi & boombap instrumentals and creating atmospheric sounds that will always have you trip in between earth and the moon.

The first OM album, Variations on a Theme, features Al Cisneros bass, vocals and Chris Hakius drums. It was produced by OM and originally released in 2005 on Holy Mountain. Variations on a Theme is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. Recorded with Billy Anderson.

The first OM album, Variations on a Theme, features Al Cisneros bass, vocals and Chris Hakius drums. It was produced by OM and originally released in 2005 on Holy Mountain. Variations on a Theme is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. Recorded with Billy Anderson.

Damian Dalla Torre returns with People Pleaser, a record shaped by movement, collaboration and an ever-deepening relationship with sound as environment.
The Leipzig-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer first found wide attention with his 2022 debut Happy Floating, and his subsequent album I Can Feel My Dreams was named the #1 Contemporary Album of 2024 by The Guardian, an accolade that broadened his audience and deepened confidence in his evolving voice. That second album, written between Europe and South America, opened unexpected doors and took Dalla Torre to stages across New York, Japan and Italy. “When you release music, it’s very intimate,” he reflects. “You show your emotions pretty raw. I was kind of scared. But getting so much positive feedback gave me a lot of self-confidence to try out more.”

People Pleaser begins in that quiet shift of confidence.

The title stayed with him for months before he committed to it. “It was a working title for a long time,” he says. “I didn’t actually think I would use it. But this term also felt somehow relevant in connection with the phase of self-negotiation during the development process. Some aspects are related to pressure, others are positive.” The ambiguity felt right. Rather than presenting it as a statement, Dalla Torre leaves it open, an invitation rather than a confession.
At the centre of People Pleaser is collaboration. Guitarist Bertram Burkert, whose playing stretches from classical delicacy to electric abstraction, joined Dalla Torre in the studio for an intensive three-day session, recording a wide palette of textures that would become the backbone of the album. Vocalist Laura Zöschg, a key live collaborator, harpist Babett Niclas, organist Felix Römer, tape experimentalist Markus Rom, marimba and vibraphonist Volker Heuken and Japanese artist Manami Kakudo also contribute, creating a sound that feels intimate yet expansive.

Damian Dalla Torre returns with People Pleaser, a record shaped by movement, collaboration and an ever-deepening relationship with sound as environment.
The Leipzig-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer first found wide attention with his 2022 debut Happy Floating, and his subsequent album I Can Feel My Dreams was named the #1 Contemporary Album of 2024 by The Guardian, an accolade that broadened his audience and deepened confidence in his evolving voice. That second album, written between Europe and South America, opened unexpected doors and took Dalla Torre to stages across New York, Japan and Italy. “When you release music, it’s very intimate,” he reflects. “You show your emotions pretty raw. I was kind of scared. But getting so much positive feedback gave me a lot of self-confidence to try out more.”

People Pleaser begins in that quiet shift of confidence.

The title stayed with him for months before he committed to it. “It was a working title for a long time,” he says. “I didn’t actually think I would use it. But this term also felt somehow relevant in connection with the phase of self-negotiation during the development process. Some aspects are related to pressure, others are positive.” The ambiguity felt right. Rather than presenting it as a statement, Dalla Torre leaves it open, an invitation rather than a confession.
At the centre of People Pleaser is collaboration. Guitarist Bertram Burkert, whose playing stretches from classical delicacy to electric abstraction, joined Dalla Torre in the studio for an intensive three-day session, recording a wide palette of textures that would become the backbone of the album. Vocalist Laura Zöschg, a key live collaborator, harpist Babett Niclas, organist Felix Römer, tape experimentalist Markus Rom, marimba and vibraphonist Volker Heuken and Japanese artist Manami Kakudo also contribute, creating a sound that feels intimate yet expansive.

Reissue 2026

The track "I'm So Crazy" by Par-T-One vs. INXS (a remix of INXS's "Just Keep Walking")

is widely praised in dance/electronic circles for successfully fusing classic rock attitude with driving house beats,

retaining the iconic guitar and vocals while adding powerful drums,

making it a timeless and energetic club anthem that captured the spirit of the original for a new generation.

Produced in 2001 by the Italian electronic duo Par-T-One (Sergio Casu aka Sergione and Andrea Pareo),

reviews highlight its infectious energy, inspiring guitars, and effective dancefloor appeal.

The song has been classified as "Punk House" because the video depicts people performing the Pogo move and Michael Hutchence's skinhead-like vocal style.

The song also features samples of Dennis Parker's "Like an Eagle" and "I'm So in Love."

The single reached number 19 in the UK singles chart and the video (directed by Sam Brown and Paul Gore,

who later found success directing videos for James Blunt and The Bravery) won and was nominated for various awards

in the Short Film category and Best Promotional Video.

2026 re-release remastered by Gianni Bini at HOG Studio

As the so-called “Latin boom” becomes a new anchor for hard-swung club sounds, it is crucial to recognize that the region’s musical culture extends far beyond dembow edits and the pop-trap hybrids that have edged into the mainstream. Monterrey-born, New York City-based producer and DJ Delia Beatriz, aka Debit, returns to NAAFI with Potpourri, a generous and kinetic collection of dancefloor-oriented tracks filled with percussive flourishes, squelching 303 basslines, and rhythmic mutations that actively challenge the status quo. Rather than rebuilding “Latin sounds” as a fixed category, the album rethinks their internal logic, tracing the evolution of techno and house in cities like Detroit, Chicago, and New York alongside parallel innovations emerging in Mexico, Colombia, and across the wider Latin world. Positioned on the bridge between Mexico and the US, Potpourri does not seek synthesis as a gesture of smooth fusion, but as a site of disruption.

The album can be heard as a loose follow-up to System (2018), Debit’s NAAFI-released EP that expanded the sonic potential of tribal guarachero through triplet-driven rhythms, industrial pressure, and noisy reconstruction. Potpourri retains guaracha as a structural backbone while drawing further influence from veteran DJ and producer Javier Estrada—who also appeared on System—and particularly from his fast-paced, nonlinear style of mixing. That approach becomes a formal principle here: canonical structures are dismantled, repetition is avoided, and tracks evolve without sacrificing propulsion. Coming after the introspective temporal inquiry of Desaceleradas and the speculative historical acoustics of The Long Count, Potpourri arrives as a deliberate surge of energy. As Beatriz explains: “It’s a manifesto for rethinking form and sound in dance music. By stepping outside traditional structures and embracing the potpourri approach, I’m creating new meaning with familiar rhythms. I’ve also been applying this to my DJ sets, using it as a tool to break free from established norms and explore new narrative possibilities.”

Years in the making, Potpourri imagines an alternate timeline in which the psychedelic squelch of acid—echoing pioneers such as DJ Pierre and Mr. Fingers—and the dub-inflected atmospheres of Basic Channel entered into direct and sustained contact with Latin American club mutations. Those references are legible, but never merely quoted. Instead, they are folded into syncopated hi-hats, overdriven kicks, and unstable arrangements that absorb both the intensity of the parties Beatriz remembers from Monterrey and the abrasive edge she sharpened at DIY noise shows in New England. The result is unmistakably a dancefloor record—heard in tracks as forceful as “Pero like” and the peak-time pressure of “tuvesuerte”—but one saturated with grotesque, psychedelic atmospheres, where sounds dissolve into hoarse croaks, acidic smears, and anxiety-inducing growls. Here, the rave becomes not simply a site of release, but a platform for navigating identity, hybridity, and artistic formation across borders. Moving through peaks and ruptures, Potpourri reveals a party narrative that is not linear but multidimensional.

By folding together the fluidity of DJ culture, the experimental charge of acid, and the rhythmic vitality of guaracha, Potpourri proposes a space of formal and political innovation within Latin America’s rapidly expanding electronic music landscape. It is a record that refuses containment, pushing against the templates through which Latin electronic music is often consumed, and insisting instead on friction, instability, and transformation as generative conditions for the dancefloor.

Even in these most turbulent of times, dub musician and fatigued onlooker Elijah Minnelli remains an inexplicable stalwart on the lower rungs of the Breadminster County Council.

His latest record ‘Clams As A Main Meal’ continues his astute siphoning of council funds, this time with help from the Breadminster Board of Abstinence. As a further mark of respect, the original head of the Board, Dr. K'houldoux, graces the cover art in his infamous ‘Looming Moon of Desire’ guise.*

As fine a backdrop as any for Minneli’s off-brand dub experiments, and ‘Clams...’ is the truest representation of his varied wheelhouse yet...

We find vocal appearances from dub goliath Dennis Bovell and Welsh-language singer Carwyn Ellis. A pair of tracks which build on 2024’s acclaimed ‘Perpetual Musket’, a collection of folk songs reworked alongside reggae vocalists, released by FatCat Records. It garnered glowing reviews, with nods from The Guardian and The Quietus concluding with prominent appearances on their respective yearly round-up lists.

Elsewhere, the album finds Minnelli in a more experimental mode, all wheezing contraptions and cockeyed bass, creaking with the weight of creation, a satisfying tactility laid seam-side up.

As well as ‘Perpetual Musket’, the new album follows years of sold out 7" singles, handmade and self-released. Online, the tracks have amassed global streams numbering in the millions. His tracks have found play across an eclectic range of radio mixes and dance floors, most notably the likes of Andrew Weatherall, Batu, Optimo and Zakia Sewell (BBC6Music).

It is perhaps worth mentioning that this everbuilding interest in his work is at great odds with the growing suspicions amongst his fellow townsfolk, who see his Breadminster County Council Music Initiative as nothing more than an empty cash-grab.

Further Reading on the Breadminster Board of Abstinence

In the late 70s, Breadminster was awash with the last vestiges of the hippy era. Though the flared silhouette of the lower leg remained, the utopian ideals that had once flowed merrily around the youth's shaded ankles had begun to wane. LSD and free love had led to a sharp spike in population and a generation of children raised by air-headed psychonauts unprepared for the bleary-eyed strictures of parenthood.

Aware of the crisis, the County Council entrusted Dr. Paulinque K'houldoux to spearhead a pushback, and it was his pro-abstinence movement - a mixture of education initiatives and radical renutrition campaigns - that came to impact Breadminster's census deep into the new millennium.

Being a pseudo-archipelago Breadminster has fundamentally limited resources, however deep-seated ties to distant coastal villages meant that oysters were a regular part of the local diet. K'houldoux pinpointed this as a factor in the town's overpopulation, and believed that simply replacing these with clams (a “lesser mollusk”) would help lower the erotic urges of the people. It was his “anti-aphrodesia” movement that first championed the idea of “Clams As A Main Meal,” and the slogan “Consider Abstinence” carried the message yet further.

The Breadminster Board of Abstinence soon became involved in all cultural happenings in the area, with K'houldoux MCing at prominent festivals and performances, sometimes dressed as the “Looming Moon of Desire” - an idea of his relating to the tide, seafood, menstrual cycles, and his privately held celestial predilections.

It was in 1981 that it was revealed Dr. K'houldoux had never fully qualified as a doctor and was seeking exile in Breadminster due to a series of botched bracelet heists in which he had previously been involved. K'houldoux was subsequently extradited to Basingstoke, where he served 3 of a 12-year sentence, owing to the lunar-oriented prisoner health campaigns he helped implement.

It has been a strange twist of bureaucratic fate that the Breadminster Board of Abstinence has never stopped receiving public funding, despite its lack of clear utility. And while its roots are tied to a rose-tinted past, the Board continues to sponsor cultural events and projects to this day.

An extract from: Eugeniq Schooner's article in Sydney Parishioner: “Clams, Breadminster and Countercultural Abstinence Trends” (2008)

Psyché Records is proud to present our first vinyl release, a piece that isn’t just heard—it’s felt, collected, and experienced. Five years dedicated to what we truly love, brought to life in physical form with this release that fills us with pride.

The artist bringing this debut to life is Dani Labb, one of our favorite local artists, who perfectly captures the essence of the label: depth, identity, and journey.

This vinyl represents much more than just music. It is the sound of Psyché brought to life.

Mad Rey is a Paris-based producer and DJ whose universe moves freely between warm house, raw electronic textures, and influences drawn from the international club scene. First emerging through the D.Ko Records collective and label—one of the key forces behind the French house revival of the 2010s—he quickly developed a sensitive and organic signature, blending analog groove, evocative melodies, and a deep dancefloor energy. His notable releases on D.Ko, followed by projects with labels such as Red Lebanese and Ed Banger Records, reflect a singular trajectory at the crossroads of France’s most influential underground and electronic scenes.

Constantly evolving, Mad Rey is now opening a new chapter in his journey. An upcoming EP on Yoyaku affirms a more club-focused and percussive direction, while new productions leaning toward tech house outline a sharper sound designed for powerful systems and late-night dancefloors. This evolution comes with a clear ambition: to carry his music beyond French borders and expand his presence on the international stage.

Balancing production precision, DJ instinct, and an ongoing search for renewal, Mad Rey continues to shape a distinctive artistic world—rooted in the present yet firmly oriented toward the future of the dancefloor.

King Tehuero features four cuts, including two dub versions on the B-side by Don Fe, who also mixed and mastered the entire record.

The record opens with the Guitar Version. Guitar as a lead in sound system culture is far from the norm, giving the track a distinctive edge shaped by Andalusian tones and echoes of ancient Iberian lore.

The remaining cuts strip the guitar away, shifting the focus back to rhythm and low end. On the B-side, both dub versions explore deep, dark territory, with the second pushing further into bass-heavy, dubwise pressure.

a a1. King Tehuero [Guitar Version feat. Martincore]

[c] b1. King Tehuero [Don Fe Dub]
[d] b2. King Tehuero [Don Fe Dubwise Cut]

Soul Jazz Records celebrate 25 years of working in partnership with Studio One with brand new editions of FIVE of their best-selling CLASSIC Studio One collections all released on limited-edition one-off pressing coloured double vinyl. Also available in new limited-edition card wallet CD editions. The new edition featured albums are Studio One Funk, Studio One Dub, Studio One Ska, Studio One Roots and Studio One Classics.

Studio One Classics features a non-stop selection of stone-cold classic Studio One killers! Spanning 40 years of the legendary label, this album is a celebration of the music of Studio One Records and features a who’s who of Jamaican Reggae: Bob Marley, The Heptones, Horace Andy, Sugar Minott, Don Drummond, Prince Jazzbo & more. This collection contains numerous legendary tracks, including Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Simmer Down”," "Love Me Forever" by Carlton & His Shoes, Slim Smith's "Rougher Yet," Horace Andy's "Fever,", Alton Ellis’s “I’m Just A Guy’, The Skatalites’ blazing ‘Confucious’ and loads more. Timeless stuff - every track here is indeed a classic, no-one can argue about that! Studio One produced literally hundreds of hits and this selection includes some of the label’s most enduring songs.

It is simply impossible to imagine modern Jamaican music without Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, founder of the iconic Studio One where virtually every singer and musician of note in Reggae cut their teeth. Studio One's output spans over four decades, all represented here. Coxsone Dodd pioneered nearly every new form of Jamaican music as it developed over time and this album includes Ska, Dancehall, Roots, Rocksteady, DJ, Lovers and more. This is probably the best entry of the many Soul Jazz Studio One releases if you're after a primer in the Studio One sound. Like it says on the wrapper 'Classics' pretty much sums it up

Moondata’s little-known sole single, 1984’s decidedly Balearic, jazz-funk/boogie fusion gem ‘Let The Moonshine In’, is a very important record to the Rotation Sound System crew. It has become a familiar favourite at their annual Rotation Garden Party micro-festival and formed the centrepiece of their first compilation, summer 2025’s superb Everything You’re About To Hear Is True Volume 1. It’s increasingly rare these days for an artist from the 80s to still have their master tapes but even rarer still for them to have the multitrack tapes too. This is something of the holy grail when it comes to licensing old music so when it happens the opportunity to remix and create new versions needs to be grabbed with both hands.

The original record, a genuine rarity beloved of synth-loving crate-diggers, had an unusual gestation. Originally recorded in demo form by musician Jean-Marie Gogniat, it was turned into a finished single by a group of German musicians with a little help from lyricist and vocalist Joe Mwenda, and a crew of backing vocalists whose number included a locally based American singer – a pre-fame Jennifer Rush. Fittingly, the pre-vocal instrumental mix, which has sat unreleased since 1984, is included as a bonus track on the digital edition of this new remix package. The Rotation Sound System crew’s mixes, headed up by long-serving producer Dean Meredith, sprinkle 21st century magic across Gogniat’s one-off masterpiece while retaining core elements of the original and offering nods aplenty to club-focused sounds of the 1980s. They are, in effect, the versions the track deserved – but never got – back in the mid 1980s.

To begin, Meredith reunites with long-time production partner Andrew Meecham for the pair’s first remix as Chicken Lips in three years – a typically sparse and spaced-out ‘Malfunction Dub’ with delay-laden synths, vocals and guitar snippets sit over a sparse post-electro beat and bass guitar. Meredith then joins forces with fellow Rotation Sound System member Ben Shenton for takes under their two bestknown aliases. First, they don the T-Kutt guise for some dubbed out, funky bass guitar-propelled boogie-meets-proto house action that rocks out a killer, Clavinet-expanded groove while spinning in talkbox and backing vocals.

The pair then re-emerge as Mind Fair, famed for their releases on Golf Channel Recordings and their own Rogue Cat Sounds, and deliver a warmer, deeper and more organic-sounding take that’s as languid and tactile as it is warm and saucereyed. To round off the vinyl version of the EP, Rotation Sound System’s other core members – Rob J, Rich Hall and Stuart Robinson – don the now-familiar Wrekin Havoc guise and re-invent the track as a raw, analogue-rich shuffle through 1980s electro – all squelchy synth-bass, stabbing, cut-up vocal samples, chiming synth melodies and echoing beats. The expanded digital download edition of the EP contains a trio of additional bonus rubs. Alongside instrumental versions of the T-Kutt and Mind Fair mixes, we also get a full vocal T-Kutt rework that adds back in Joe Mwenda’s beautifully delivered verses. These additional DJ tools round off a beautifully rendered set of re-imaginations of a genuine cult classic. Gogniat, the man who started it all way back in the summer of 1984, certainly approves.

For Record Store Day 2026, Brownswood Recordings mark two decades of boundary-pushing independent music with Twenty Years Deep, a limited-edition 3xLP vinyl compilation celebrating the label’s rich, global catalogue and enduring influence.

Founded in 2006 by broadcaster, DJ, and cultural tastemaker Gilles Peterson, Brownswood has spent the last 20 years championing forward-thinking artists who sit just left of centre: rooted in Afro-diasporic music, but never confined by genre. Twenty Years Deep is a snapshot of that journey: a carefully curated collection spanning the label’s early breakthroughs, cult classics, and defining moments.

Pressed exclusively for Record Store Day on 3 piece coloured vinyl Twenty Years Deep brings together tracks that reflect Brownswood’s long-standing commitment to artistic freedom, musical lineage, and future-facing sounds. From deep jazz explorations and dancefloor mutations to global collaborations and genre-defying hybrids, the compilation captures the connective thread that has defined the label since day one: trust in artists and belief in music that lasts.
Rather than a greatest-hits exercise, Twenty Years Deep functions as an archive and a statement documenting how Brownswood has maintained its own point of view. By following a highly instinctive approach to A&R the label has shaped music culture, introduced new voices, and built a catalogue that continues to resonate well beyond release cycles.

Twenty Years Deep will be available exclusively at participating independent record stores on Record Store Day 2026, pressed as a limited-edition 3 piece vinyl release.

House favourites Kai Alce, JKriv, Sean McCabe and Medlar debut on Universo Positivo with their masterful reworks from Universo Positivo’s catalog. After two years of agenda-setting sounds, the label is set to drop this classy remix EP, and in that time, founder Joseph Salvador has established the label with a mix of his own music and fresh grooves from carefully A&R’d pioneers and new school names. He has been doing much the same since the 90s with various projects from his cult TINK Records and the Tomorrow Is Now Kid! nights in Amsterdam, in collaborative production outfits like Black Tulip & Wendell Morrison, and releasing records by DJ Steaw, Malin Genie, Fabio Monesi and more. This latest release brings together some of the most respected names in the scene for four standout reworks.

First up, Atlanta-based NDATL label head Kai Alce, who has long been one of deep house's most influential architects. He flips 'Sonido Latino' into a smooth groove with jazzy, Roy Ayers-style melodies that bring a soft-focus glow and late-night intimacy. Then comes Bristol-based don Sean McCabe, a master of vintage synths with a 20-year back catalogue on seminal labels like Local Talk, Strictly Rhythm and Z Records. His take on 'Ipanema Jazz' maintains the original's samba shuffle but reframes it in a deep house groove with extra expressive jazz keys, dainty chords and playful trumpet motifs.

Brooklyn-based groove architect and Razor-N-Tape co-founder JKriv brings his many years of experience as a guitarist, producer and songwriter to his take on 'Caparica Sunset'. It's a deep, driving sound that's playful and romantic with flirtatious horns and soft acid, dusty breakbeats and luscious grooves for loved-up good time sessions. Last but never least, is Medlar, the South London underground maverick with a wide-ranging sound and album credits on the likes of the hallowed Delusions Of Grandeur. He remixes 'U R The Revolution' into a warm, euphoric rush of throwback house that's warm, melodic and sure to get the floor going right off.

DJ Support: Joseph capriati, Joris Delacroix, A-Trak, Eliza Rose, Damian Lazarus, Laurence guy, TSHA, Ame, Maslow Unknown, Malugi, DJ Heartstring, Anna Lunoe, Mera Bhai, Mat.Joe, Swoosh, Tyson, THELMA, Speaking Minds, Cole Knight, Joris Voorn, Peggy Gou, Eden Prince, Tony and many more

SHEE is a Dublin born house music producer and DJ whose sound bridges deep, soulful club music with a distinctly Irish identity. Built on years of consistent releases, relentless touring, and grassroots community, SHEE has established himself as one of Ireland's most exciting house music exports. The Rosebud EP anchored by lead single 'The Groove' in collaboration with New York legend A-Trak and Dub Katz is the most significant release of his career to date.

These days – on the new, ninth Fink album – Greenall is operating within a lineage of authentic, quietly revolutionary artists from England’s verdant southwestern toe. Artists like Michael Chapman. In 1970, the elusive acoustic guitar wizard released an album called Fully Qualified Survivor. The cult-classic served as a lodestar for Greenall – along with bandmates Tim Thornton and Guy Whittaker – as he began jigsawing together The City Is Coming to Erase it All, the follow-up to 2024’s Beauty In Your Wake. He even considered covering a song from it, but in the process, inadvertently stumbled into what became the album’s opener. ‘Wishing For Blue Sky’ circles a universal teenage ache: waiting for life to start. “No point dying of patience” goes the first lyric as crunching footsteps cue a resonant, open-tuned acoustic swaying into view. By 18, Greenall was fed up with waiting, so he left suburban Bristol and saw the world, sending postcards from the edge, waiting tables, squirreling away tips for the next flight. Thornton had similar experiences when the guitarist/drummer busked across Eur

This is nowstalgia more than nostalgia, though; there’s a parallel between these 18-year-olds and Fink’s autumn-aged family men. “You’re expected to be boring and settling down at this age,” Thornton says. “But we’ve still got this tremendous wanderlust. We want to go and discover, and also achieve things. It’s a nice life – home and family – but fuck, I can’t wait to get back out there.” City is a product of this hunger for discovery, and idolatry of the album as a form – like we had in 1974. City’s cover mirrors its interior, the first song is the greeting, the instrumental closer the conclusion. It’s a story. It’s a record for people who, like its creators, are curious. People who happily face a little cold for music, who light a crackling fire back home, who sit with these songs until they’re ready to chase after their own blue sky

Every so often in music, we come across voices that achieve a certain timelessness, so naturally do they encapsulate both past and present. Laure Briard is one of these voices, retro in form but contemporary at heart, spanning a career rich in aesthetic twists and turns, never without her signature magic, a special kind of eternal filter. Her first album, Révélation (2015), reveals her yé-yé influences, a testament to her love for ‘60s French pop music. Her second studio album, Sur la piste de danse (2016), follows in this vein and finds Laure accompanied as always by her long-time bandmates who share an affinity for warm, catchy arrangements that never lose their appeal. Her tour of Brazil marks a turning point in her career, introducing her to the local indie scene and thus launching her collaboration with the band Boogarins, as well as inspiring the release of multiple EPs composed and performed in Portuguese. Today, her music is embellished by touches of bossa nova and a folk sensibility, boasting increasingly intricate arrangements, as exemplified by her 2019 release, Un peu plus d'amour s'il vous plaît. Several years later, the Californian desert captures the musician’s imagination with Ne pas trop rester bleue, a poignant musical journey inspired by the rich history of Western legends and the role they play in shaping our collective consciousness.

In Voyage Mental, Laure Briard draws upon an inner energy unearthed during a new stage in her life, where the thrill of spontaneous adventure is not accessible in quite the same way. The result is a collection of sophisticated, introspective songs, narrating a young mother’s quest for balance in the face of routine. The album, nostalgic but always tethered to the present moment, is also the fruit of her collaboration with Gaëtan Nonchalant, a talented musician known for coaxing poetry out of the mundane. The two of them co-wrote and recorded five tracks at Studio Nocturne, accompanied by her long-time sidekick Pieuvre, aka Vincent Guyot, Léo Blomov, Pierre-Louis Vizioz, and Hedi Bensalem. The gentle pop opener “Rocking Chair” sways steadily to the rhythm of dynamic drums, followed by “Train,” a ballad that extends an invitation to set sail and daydream alone. The folk escapade continues with “Golden Sun,” a duet featuring the 1960s cult American musician F.J. McMahon, who Laure contacted via the internet on a whim. “Golden Sun” is an unlikely encounter between two generations and two cultures, giving new life to an old forgotten demo on the other side of the Atlantic. And while Laure sings of wide open spaces, cowboys, and sunsets sinking into the sea, we feel the city surrounding her in “Miroir,” a song composed by Hedi Bensalem that laments the suffocation of living in a crowded metropolis where the sky is a distant gray smudge. This pressing need for air, this search for rest and total disconnection, is one of the album's central themes. It may also explain the ever-present sense of nostalgia that pervades the songs, a welcome respite in our current era of doomscrolling and darkness. Along the way, Laure soothes us with melancholy guitar, delivers poetry set to scattered piano notes, and takes us by the hand during lively, uptempo passages. We climb onto her wings, never straying too far from the ground, soaring joyfully above her moods.

There are two versions of this album:

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

2. transparent orange 180g vinyl

LINER NOTES:

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

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

There are two versions of this album:

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

2. transparent orange 180g vinyl

LINER NOTES:

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

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

The new recordings from The Dengie Hundred unfurl on Tain Records after a busy year releasing a solo tape on Sagome and a collaborative LP and tape with Japan Blues on Demdike Stare's DDS imprint.

Lammas Land is an album which meditates on the Walthamstow Marshes, an ever-changing watery landscape, rich with history and wildlife. The Dengie Hundred writes:

"I am sitting at my table overlooking the marshes listening to Lammas Land in November 2023, watching crows fight a never-ending aerial battle with the gulls. In summer, you can see bats from here every evening, fluttering around the windows as the light begins to fade, but today it is colder so there is smoke rising from the boats on the River Lea and the dog walkers are wrapped up tight against the wind.
Most of Lammas Land was made sitting right here, playing guitar and recording the sounds passing by. I would hang a microphone out of the window to capture the ‘putput’ boat which delivers provisions, or the trains that rattle along the tracks that cut across the marshes and up to Stanstead, carrying passengers to the airport and away.
I wonder what tourists make of the marshes as they cross them, the landscape opening up for a moment between the urban sprawl of the East End and the rampant development of Tottenham. They offer a jarring pause of green and sky. I feel very lucky to be living in that pause, a resident, for now…

The album contains a whole year of found sounds recorded from the window and while out walking. It is full of bird song and radio sounds, singing, life.

Many others have been inspired by this space, this pause. The author Esther Kinsky who wrote River, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, captures this area so perfectly. I borrowed the two track names for this album from her book. I hope she doesn’t mind.

Also, the photographer Paul Fuller whose work reflects the atmosphere I feel here precisely. On hearing the music he wanted to collaborate on the Lammas Land project, He spent a year filming the marsh through the seasons. Some of his images are included with the vinyl release, and there is an accompanying film close to completion. I am so pleased this project is continuing in new forms.

The vinyl also contains a piece of writing, ‘Sound Fishing’, by Gemma Blackshaw, an author, art historian and curator who in a twist of fate also found herself spending time on the marshes, but that is her story, for another day."




The Dengie Hundred
Lammas Land
LP, with essay insert + five photographic prints
Cat No: TAIN02
Price: £14.49
Due next week

A: A hand full of ever thickening twilight
(Sample clips 1 / 2 / 3)

B: A string of pearls pulling
the night away
(Sample clips 1 / 2 / 3)

Shape of the Moon is the California based duo of Benjamin Burke and Bear Glass that explores existential headspaces beyond mundane frames of thought. Following streams of consciousness that contemplate the stardust that forms us to the very first human sound that reverberated through a cave, Shape of the Moon intertwines language and music into ambient dream-weaving narratives.

When the land is laid bare forms a collection of recordings composed of Burke reciting his introspective poems and Glass improvising gripping modular synth and string patterns. Burke brings a wealth of experience working between an impressively vast range of written and visual mediums to Glass’s live electronics and acoustic instrumentation mirroring the spoken word. The pieces on the album consist of excerpts from live outdoor performances under the night sky in the Mojave desert as well as sessions in Glass’s off-grid solar powered studio. Burke drapes vivid vocal narration over deeply immersive textures and melodies conjured up by Glass on Buchla, bass and sitar, painting peaks and valleys that live score the storytelling. The duo tread their own path fusing poetry with undulating electroacoustic instrumentals, arriving at meditative and ASMR territories that draw inspiration from ambient and electronica. Often joined on stage by guest musicians playing anything from Rhodes, percussion, jaw harp and saxophone, the recordings edge towards blues and spiritual jazz.

Benjamin Burke is a poet, writer, performer, and visual artist who spends his time lending a hand to unusual artistic expeditions around the world. Most recently, he helped to launch Dhun and Dhun School, a humanist eco-township and progressive education center on a 500 acre biopreserve in Rajasthan, India. He has written and performed countless unusual shows, experimenting widely and, through that, witnessing firsthand what makes ideas resonate for his audiences. This work evolved over time into an approach he refers to as Applied Poetics which he employs to help communities set intentions, scientists present their findings, and humanitarian organizations find their footing.

Bear Glass is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, music teacher, live sound engineer, and founding member of Mobius Acoustics who build innovative sound systems and host events on the West Coast (utilizing a quadraphonic setup for live performances and immersive drone bath sessions). Glass is involved in various collaborative projects with a couple of releases under different pseudonyms as well as a solo tape featuring a track with prolific producer Carlos Niño. For most of the year, Glass lives sustainably off-grid with his family on a plot of land outside Joshua Tree, a mini utopia infamous for his well curated private campouts and artist residencies. Wide skies, magnificent climates, and being surrounded by the love of family and friends inform Bear’s musical output and artistic practice.

Shape of the Moon present their debut album for Marionette’s 30th title, channeling an inquisitive yet playful state of mind that marvels at the mysteries of the universe.

Nightcode EP finds UK deep-house craftsman Jacksonville in full control, lacing warm chords, swinging drums and basslines built for red-lit basements. Across “Nightcode”, “Ecstasy in Starlight”, “Octobers in Love” and “Blind Spot”, he fuses classic Detroit/UK house textures with his own emotional, story-telling touch—timeless deep house for DJs who play past sunrise.

Feedbacks:


Laurent Garnier : Octobers in Love <3 <3 <3
Nick Holder : dope
Gina Breeze (Classic / Get Up / Homoelectric) : Feeling the deepness! Look forward to playing.
Nightmares On Wax (Warp Records) : Ecstasy in starl;ight and Blind spot are my jams !
Josh Wink (Ovum) : Deep, old old school flavored with new school production.
Alexkid (Rawax / FUSE / NG Trax) : Lovely
Lauren Lo Sung (LOLiFE records, e1even records) : Octobers in love is nice!
Dj Hutch (Ambers / Rinse FM) : grooves
Louise Chen (NTS) : This is so so sooo good! Can't wait to play on the radio!
Rob Pearson (Evasive Records / Sine 102.6fm) : Nightcode is the standout for me, will play tonight on Evasive
Eviltron / Paul Donton (Bombis / Triangle) : Blind Spot and Ecstasy in Starlight are the ones on the
D'Julz (Bass Culture) : feeling night code and blind spot . merci!
Junior Sanchez (Strictly Rhythm / Cube Recordings) : Really Cool EP!
DJ Three : this is all very high quality house that feels very much a
nd_baumecker (Ostgut Ton) : Nightcode and Octobers In Love for me. Quality as usual.
Sasha (Last Night On Earth) : Downloading for Sasha
William Kiss (Rekids) : very nice!
Monty Luke (Rekids / Black Catalogue) : thx for this...
Mystic Bill (Classic / Trax / Relief) : Will try some of these out, thanks!
Carista : beautiful
Crackazat (Freerange / Local Talk) : Sick sick sick
Jhobei (Bizarre Trax / FUSE / Felon 5) : Nice smooth deep
Khadija (Rek'd / Rafiki Collective) : Danke
Ben Sims : Now downloading - will check asap!
DJ Bone (FURTHER) : Very nice tunes here, thanks
Bake (All Caps/Rinse FM) : thank you!
Dj Deep (Deeply Rooted) : very nice tracks!
Oliver $ (Classic Music Company / Play It Down) : nice one!
Tripmastaz (Plant 74) : Nightcode is tight
Harvey Sutherland (MCDE / PPU / Voltaire Records) : couple of nice tunes here!
Anthony Collins (Frank & Tony / Scissor & Thread) : super nice deep tunes
Marcel Dettmann : thx
Voigtmann (Subsequent) : Ecstacy in Starlight is the one!
Gerd (4Lux / Clone) : dope house trax from the phonogramme crew once again!
Groove Armada : Great EP - Love Nightcode, Ocotber is love so good too±
Harri (Sub Club) : nice, will play and support
Jorkes (Freeride Millenium) : ecstasy in starlight..yes yes yes yes
DJ Minx (Women On Wax Recordings) : Every one of these...top tier! I'm on 'em!
DJ Rocca (Nang Records, Mantra Vibes) : Great EP. Nightcode is great, super bassline indeed
Jacques Renault : Ectasy In Starlight for me here!
Geir Aspenes (G-Ha (Sunkissed)) : Thank u
Mark Farina : dig it
Âme (Innervisions) : thanks
Djebali ( ( djebali ) / INFUSE / Freak n Chic) : Love it ! thanks for sharing. Blind Spot is my fav
Jaye Ward (Dalston Super Store / Netil Radio) : wicked release!! night code is a belter!!! thx
Iron Curtis (Mule Musiq, Morris Audio) : thank you!

For their third album As You Please, Citizen is looking inward. Pairing up again with longtime producer Will Yip, the band presents twelve songs that fuse aspects of their entire catalog into one neoteric whole. While the cathartic melancholy of their debut Youth and the jarring intensity of 2015's Everybody is Going to Heaven are both present, the most welcome addition to Citizen's arsenal on As You Please is the range of auxiliary instrumentation and sonic experimentation on the album. This is most notable on "In the Middle of it All," where vocalist Mat Kerekes is sampled singing the song title in a modulated, haunting chorus that echoes throughout the song. The addition of organs and unconventional drum effects on songs like "You Are A Star" and "Medicine" create shifting emphases on tension and frailty, while the huge choruses of songs like opener "Jet" and "I Forgive No One" are reminders that while Citizen dove headfirst into uncharted territory with their new album, the band is still as good as ever at writing emotionally-charged anthems. As You Please presents Citizen's vision at the most focused it has ever been - it is delicately crafted to provoke at every moment.

On her new album, Neon Summer Skin, Bedouine, the project of Azniv Korkejian, explores this feeling of safety long before one can fully understand the concept. Written with vivid, honest and intimate imagery after visiting her family in Saudi Arabia, it tells the story of family and upbringing, and mourns the end of her childhood. There is a singular resonance and newfound heft in this music previously unheard in Bedouine’s discography. Bedouine is known for making gentle, lilting folk songs that build fingerpicked guitar melodies into tsunamis of emotion. Her masterful songwriting and timeless melodies have earned her praise from publications like Pitchfork, who said her music “boasts a surreal calm and lived in glow,” and Rolling Stone, who lauded her “humble folk-pop brilliance,” plus an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and tours with the likes of Fleet Foxes and Father John Misty. While working on the record, Bedouine realized the pain of displacement, of searching for home, has been a throughline in her family history. Other relatives have also experienced this sense of loss as they’ve migrated between Armenia, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. “I felt so frustrated about the places that I'm from becoming war torn or difficult to return to,” she says. “My family has been split apart time and time again.” This realization prompted her to document and honor her parents’ lives and stories. On a family trip to Houston, Bedouine recorded a conversation with her mother and sampled the introduction to “Canopies.” The song tells the story of her mother’s time in an orphanage. She was put there by her own mother as a way of escaping her abusive father. Nearby, her mother would sing about feeling her daughter’s essence in the air: "The waves of Beirut's beaches flutter, and how sweetly they blow my darling's air." It’s a story of profound yearning told with the quiet profundity of a flower blossoming.

"I decided to just let myself go," Zzzahara says of their new record, 'Spiral Your Way Out' "I think I finally came to this acceptance that I don't have to be perfect. I want to be a good role model to my fans and stuff like that, but I also don't want to hide who I am." Zzzahara's music wades into the deep waters of love, lust, and self-discovery in a part of the world where artifice and authenticity co-exist. Emerging from the heart of LA's alternative music scene, their sound is raw in feeling and rebellious by nature.

Their 2022 debut album, Liminal Spaces, chronicles a coming- of- age in Highland Park, following painful childhood memories through to late- night, live- fast coping mechanisms, and the changes the neighbourhood has endured over the same period of time. Their 2023 follow- up, Tender, marked a period of slowing down, looking inward, and embracing a softer side of being. 'Spiral Your Way Out' sees Zzzahara evolve again. Emotionally, its foundations are built on scorched earth.

The album finds Zzzahara in the aftermath of a relationship spent trying to fit someone else's mould, being jerked around by indecision, and then hitting "emotional rock bottom." Made in a three-month burst that let all their pent-up frustrations loose, 'Spiral Your Way Out' is in part a work of self-reclamation, swapping there 2nd album Tender's meditative state for something fiery and more assertive. The new album marks another sonic evolution as much as an emotional one. Zzzahara's songs have always come wrapped in a warm glow that reflects how they were written -namely at home in their bedroom.

That glow remains on 'Spiral Your Way Out', but it also packs an ambitious streak and a gutsy punch. Taking a more collaborative approach than usual, Zzzahara worked with a range of producers including Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, No Joy, Sky Ferreira), Sarah Tudzin (boygenius / Cloud Nothings / The Armed), former Ducktails guitarist Alex Craig (Jelani Aryeh / re6ce) and Halsey tour drummer Franco Reid, who helped harness their intimate style of writing and blow it up into something more panoptic. After a year of upheaval, Zzzahara finally feels "calm." The musical equivalent to going several rounds on a punching bag, 'Spiral Your Way Out' finds solace between extremes. It licks its wounds in a place where pain and love, healing and abandon, sit side-by-side. If it has a message, it's one of standing tall in your own shoes - scuffs and all.

"I decided to just let myself go," Zzzahara says of their new record, 'Spiral Your Way Out' "I think I finally came to this acceptance that I don't have to be perfect. I want to be a good role model to my fans and stuff like that, but I also don't want to hide who I am." Zzzahara's music wades into the deep waters of love, lust, and self-discovery in a part of the world where artifice and authenticity co-exist. Emerging from the heart of LA's alternative music scene, their sound is raw in feeling and rebellious by nature.

Their 2022 debut album, Liminal Spaces, chronicles a coming- of- age in Highland Park, following painful childhood memories through to late- night, live- fast coping mechanisms, and the changes the neighbourhood has endured over the same period of time. Their 2023 follow- up, Tender, marked a period of slowing down, looking inward, and embracing a softer side of being. 'Spiral Your Way Out' sees Zzzahara evolve again. Emotionally, its foundations are built on scorched earth.

The album finds Zzzahara in the aftermath of a relationship spent trying to fit someone else's mould, being jerked around by indecision, and then hitting "emotional rock bottom." Made in a three-month burst that let all their pent-up frustrations loose, 'Spiral Your Way Out' is in part a work of self-reclamation, swapping there 2nd album Tender's meditative state for something fiery and more assertive. The new album marks another sonic evolution as much as an emotional one. Zzzahara's songs have always come wrapped in a warm glow that reflects how they were written -namely at home in their bedroom.

That glow remains on 'Spiral Your Way Out', but it also packs an ambitious streak and a gutsy punch. Taking a more collaborative approach than usual, Zzzahara worked with a range of producers including Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, No Joy, Sky Ferreira), Sarah Tudzin (boygenius / Cloud Nothings / The Armed), former Ducktails guitarist Alex Craig (Jelani Aryeh / re6ce) and Halsey tour drummer Franco Reid, who helped harness their intimate style of writing and blow it up into something more panoptic. After a year of upheaval, Zzzahara finally feels "calm." The musical equivalent to going several rounds on a punching bag, 'Spiral Your Way Out' finds solace between extremes. It licks its wounds in a place where pain and love, healing and abandon, sit side-by-side. If it has a message, it's one of standing tall in your own shoes - scuffs and all.

On her second album, Sawt El Doumouh (The Sound of Tears), Beirut-based Sandy Chamoun summons flickers of light from sadness. Influences from the Arabic tradition of Tarab – one of the first styles Chamoun learnt to sing – and polyphonic Cantu are reinterpreted and reimagined through her voice and electronics, synths from her SANAM and Ghadr bandmate Anthony Sayhoun, and live percussion from Ali Hout.
Marked by its times, the record isn’t what Chamoun had planned. “I wrote the lyrics between October 2023 and September 2025,” she explains. “The plan was to write about nature, since the album’s concept was inspired by Cantu, a tenor Sardinian ritual that celebrates humanity’s victory over nature. I intended to visit several places and regions in Lebanon and write a track for each, but after the genocide and the war in Lebanon, everything changed.”
“I chose the title because many mornings during this period I woke up crying silently. I remember a dark story from school: a teacher yelled at a small boy while he was crying and told him to cry without making any sound. I feel we are still living in that condition in the region — forced to die or suffer without making any noise.”
Sawt El Doumouh is a gorgeous refusal to be silent. It opens with a booming drum. Over keening autotune Chamoun’s pure voice cuts through, burying the despair to illuminate rays of hope. On “Ward W Shok” a shuffling swing gives way to a righteous organ interlude. The title track sees a choir of Chamoun’s vocals lull and lap. Drums arrive and indignation stirs, what’s mournful begins to stride.
Chamoun’s tracks are as beautiful as they are defiant. Why write songs in the face of horror? Perhaps because music can hold onto something better. By turning to song, Chamoun catches the hopeful glints and sparks that persist and strive outside the terror. In SANAM and Ghadr she often borrows lyrics from Arabic writers through the centuries, listening to what their words say in the present while reminding us the world can and has been different to how it is now. Solo she writes her own words, and the way her songs alternately soar and sigh evokes hopeful pluralities and suggestions of other, kinder realities. Even hearing someone cry is a connection to humanity.
It’s a possibility conveyed in the album’s most jubilant moments. “Shahed” is an incandescent dance of percussion and levitating synths. “I wrote it after I saw a photo of a small boy on a horse on the beach in Gaza,” Chamoun recalls. “I imagined a fantasy where the boy lives in the water and watches the terrifying reality on the shore, trying to bring water to put out the fire. Shahed is the witness who lives far from the shore, enjoying the water and trying to help. You can hear this duality: the percussion is desert-like, while the vocals and synths evoke the feeling of water.”
Although it comes from darkness, in Chamoun’s music we can hear faith in something beyond it.

Exactly four years and one day after ''All That Has Never Been True'' Ultha releases their fifth full-length studio album entitled ''A LIGHT SO DIM''.
It features 10 original new songs at a combined length of 74 minutes, with guest appearances by Pieter Uyttenhoven & Annelies van Dinter (TAKH), Pardis Latifi (DAEVAR), Danni Kann and the ''Chor Der Damen Ohne Namen'', a 40-women choir from Cologne.
Recorded, engineered and mastered at GOBLIN SOUND STUDIOS (Cologne) by ANDY ROSCZYK, who also contributed guitars and keys to various tracks. Artwork was done by TOBIAS HAHN, featuring photography by MAX HECKMANN.
After the conclusion of the trilogy consisting of Converging Sins, The Inextricable Wandering & All That Has Never Been True, the question was: where do you go when you've lost everything? You either accept defeat and die - or you start fighting. This is an album about hope in the darkest of times. It's a call to arms for the inner self, to find a rope of light in a world of mist. ''A Light So Dim'' is another concept album, with a narrative spinning from beginning to end. The unnamed narrator wakes up and tries to make sense of a world gone absolutely mad, where truth is nothing more than an empty shell of its once great self.
''IT'S THE STRUGGLE FOR AMBITION IN AN OCEAN OF DEFEAT. LIKE A FOREST FOR A GARDEN IN A WORLD YOU'LL NEVER SEE''.
This is for all of you!
Viva reason, viva love.

Bliss Point is proud to welcome the Bogotá born, New York based Matük to the label with Sendero, a collection dripping with life, with lust, with joy in the face of it all.

Birthed from weekend-long studio sessions in the heat of New York summer, Sendero is luscious and visceral party music, crackling with the spontaneous possibility that runs through city streets as temperatures peak, asses throw and emotions run high.

Hailing from Colombia and deeply immersed in the New York underground, Matük’s influences collide into an ecstatic tapestry on Sendero, blending the rich traditions of Afro-Caribbean musics with experimental and club sonics, long the sounds of joy as defiance from deep within the imperial core.

Many paths cross on Sendero. “Ricotta” features vocals from BRAVA, the Basque DJ and MC whose raw, infectious spirit has injected new energy into the international bass and footwork scene. She is joined by Argentinian-Colombian artist FEDRA on synth and vocals, transforming voice notes the trio sung into their phones over a long weekend of dancing into a party anthem of their own. “Lio”, the EP opener, pairs Mexico’s Renn Loop with Matük himself, trading sultry, heated frustrations over latinx futurist production. Things slow down on “De; Dioses y Pantallas”, a yearning, introspective plea to the night sky, before returning to the party with the bouncing, acid-fueled remix of “Ricotta” from Mexico City’s Soos.

Sendero is a snapshot of a scene in motion, a document of serendipity and collaboration, music made in the long tradition of enjoyment as a revolutionary act.

Filmmaking and music-making share a common element of worldbuilding. Whole cloth, environments are raised in which a perspective can be placed; the viewer, the listener, is taken on a ride into the unknown for a time. Movie, the newest album by DMV-based duo Lifted, is like a film shot with microphones rather than cameras, using the pacing, spatialization, and semiotics of cinematic sound design to lead us through a surreal soundworld that draws as much from Foley artistry as dub, jazz, and electronic music. Musical elements and field recordings shift in and out of focus, collaged in spontaneous improvisation sessions on CDJs by the core duo of Andrew Field-Pickering (Max D, Dolo Percussion, Beautiful Swimmers) and Matt Papich (Co La, Ecstatic Sunshine). We may not see where we are, but our ears give us all the information we need.

We open on a pedal steel, played by More Eaze, but it’s been warped and slowed, gradually pitching upward until it's met by drums and electronics. Imagine the THX logo emerging onscreen. Movie is bookended by two related themes, “The Ice Chewers (Opening Credits), ” and “Midnight Snack (End Credits), ” giving the spatial experiments at the heart of the record form and focus. If there’s a broader narrative to latch onto, it’s in the transition moments, the juxtaposition of various field recordings that indicate movement of characters through space and life happening at its own pace. Tracks are defined by other thematic elements: a wandering piano in "Repossessed, " the drone of Duncan Moore’s bagpipe on “Melts Very Nasty, ” the delicate dance of Dustin Wong’s guitar over Jeremy Hyman’s drums on “Midnight Snack. ” Even with such an expansive ensemble cast, the focus remains squarely on the flow from one scene to the next.

Robert Altman’s use of sonic perspective shifting, as well as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s intricate construction of environmental ambience and aural representations of the unknown, were both inspirational for Lifted’s focus on sound as a way to establish set and setting in film. We hear Altman especially in the way dialogue emerges and recedes: as Papich puts in a sandwich order, as Field-Pickering browses the grocery store. These techniques have been a part of the duo’s arsenal in Lifted and their own projects for years, but here, without the mandate to make something overtly musical, they are foregrounded and placed in crisp focus. Here is another way to listen to the world, to understand how time, place, and personality are communicated through sound as Lifted closes the gap between artforms. What you can’t see only drives the imagination to more brilliantly invent.

Fust’s first record "Evil Joy" was a bitter domestic drama obsessed with the kitchen-sink passage of time measured by moments of leaving and returning. With "Genevieve", we find a different kind of leaving: leaving behind, leaving one’s old ways, starting anew, a small life together, in “Family Country.” Thus, Genevieve: an historical name for both the saintly and the ordinary, the peasantry and the family, the community and the wife, extreme devotion and absolute forbearance. While sonically and instrumentally louder than Evil Joy, Genevieve is thematically more quiet about its pains—more settled in its ways. It is a collection of pathetic love stories written in dedication to “small life,” moving from gentle exceptions (“I can take the late hours if you’re with me”) to pitiful admissions (“I’m never going to change when I leave…”). What comes with a quiet life? The highest forms of beauty, but we also find here songs of unspeaking companions, the sublime dread of having children, the balance of humility and humiliation, playing the fool for the greater good, and… budget birthday parties. With these stories of possible growth, "Genevieve" can’t help but also feature tried and true examples of crisis and repression: seeking a bygone lifestyle in an old friend who hasn’t changed much over the years, pissing contests, search parties as the form of community for melancholics with no clue what they’ve lost, old flames you won't let go and dying flames you won’t admit. "Genevieve" was recorded throughout 2021-2022 (mostly) at Drop of Sun studio in Asheville NC by Alex Farrar. The painting by Sasha Popovici is exactly right: a domestic scene yet unfinished. Many friends helped to make it much better than it was without them—Xandy Chelmis, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Indigo De Souza, MJ Lenderman, Courtney Werner.

After breaking through with a gold selling debut in the late 1990’s, Harlem emcee Cam’ron quickly emerged as a leading figure in hip-hop, just as the genre was reaching mass audiences for the first time. A platinum-selling classic on Roc-A-Fella Records came a few years later, followed by the founding of the iconic collective Dipset and the release of three more seismic solo albums over the course of the 2000s. The last chapter in his historic run was 2009’s Crime Pays, which drew praise from critics while also lighting up the Billboard Charts, showcasing Cam’s sonic evolution while proving his pen game remained unmatched. More than 15 years after it’s release, this vital collection is now receiving an official vinyl pressing for the first time ever. A perpetually underrated lyricist with transcendent rhyme mechanics embedded in his leisurely flow, Cam’ron is in peak form on Crime Pays, effortlessly walking listeners through the details of his fascinating life and times. With suprisingly modern production supplied by AraabMuzik, I.N.F.O., Skitzo, and more, this memorable album is an important chapter in the story of a truly essential artist.

On March 20, 1964, legendary American comedian and harpist Harpo Marx joined the Riverside Symphony on stage at a benefit for the Southern California organization. By then, the comic had been in semi-retirement, and after a series of heart attacks in 1961, he was told to stop working altogether. But to a lifelong performer, nothing compared to the feeling of being on stage. Benefit shows, he slyly argued, were not technically work, since he wasn’t getting paid. For the next few years, Marx’s wife and doctors grudgingly went along with the pitch. Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert, out June 5 from Ramseur Records, captures a considerably remarkable, one-of-a-kind performance: The silent Marx Brother, the one whose trademark persona led many audiences to believe he was actually mute, spoke. As Harpo Marx’s first, and last—recorded just six months before his death—live album, Harpo Speaks! places listeners in the room, immersed in the swell of the Riverside Orchestra as Marx performs alongside the symphony and leads them in a narration of Peter and the Wolf. In another unusual move for Marx, he allowed the recording of the show for posterity, though the tapes seemingly disappeared after his death. Harpo Speaks! is the result of heroic archival work. Recently discovered by longtime Marx Brother archivist John Tefteller, he and Marx biographer and expert Robert Bader set out to restore the long lost recording. “The fact that we have a recording is a miracle,” says Bader. “It was not the most professionally recorded thing.

It was very haphazard. The work that was done to rehabilitate it is stunning. It’s as if you’ve found something covered with layers of mold and dirt, got it all cleaned off, and now are able to see something brand new underneath it.” Across the recording’s near-43 minute runtime, Marx, alongside the Riverside Symphony, takes the cheering audience through the delightfully lighthearted “Toy Symphony” and carries them into the softly romantic “Moon Medley,” (a medley of “Fly Me to the Moon” and “How High the Moon,” arranged by his son Bill, alongside his own composition, “Moon Tune”) and a rare instrumental performance of his composition “Guardian Angels.” And then the concert’s true highlight: the near 22-minute long riveting narration of Peter and the Wolf. For the first time, Harpo reveals his voice: deep, yet soft-spoken, refined, yet still retaining the slightest hint of his New York City origin. And, in speaking, he entertained, getting laughs not just for his physical gags, but for the storytelling itself: the dramatic inflections in moments of suspense, the arch mischievousness, and tongue-in-cheek references to Goldwater, Rockefeller, and Nixon.

Pianist and bandleader Linus Rebmann, together with Gabriel Widmaier on double bass and Johnny Walker on drums, shapes a transparent and powerful sound characterized by great joy in playing and a palpable sense of familiarity. The album's ten original compositions tell of observations, inner movements, and moments whose depth is better expressed through music than words. The three young musicians met in the Baden- Wurttemberg Landesjugendjazzorchester, and after winning the "Jugend jazzt south- west" competition in 2024, the trio was awarded the prestigious Deutschlandfunk Studiopreis at the national meeting. This made it possible to produce the album in the legendary Kammermusiksaal of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne - a space that has been among the country's finest recording venues for decades. The band members deliberately chose an intimate setting for the recordings. Everything was played through a single main microphone, without subsequent corrections to individual instruments. A working method that demands absolute presence and mutual trust. It is precisely this immediacy that shapes the sound of "Listen To The River": the album is transparent, organic, flowing, almost breathing.

Vanisher, Horizon Scraper is the highly anticipated follow-up to Quadeca’s 2024 critically acclaimed mixtape Scrapyard, which received a coveted score of 9/10 from Anthony Fantano (The Needle Drop) and currently sits as the #28 highest-rated mixtape of all time on RateYourMusic.


Vanisher, Horizon Scraper is a concept album—a modern apocalyptic folklore about a man who sails into the ocean alone in pursuit of freedom and cosmic understanding, subconsciously driven by his own self-destruction.


With a runtime of nearly 70 minutes, the album takes listeners on a transformative sonic journey, blending genres such as world music, ambient, hip hop, bossa nova, folk, rock, and other experimental styles.

Neu-Auflage auif schwarzem Vinyl im Gatefold

Die schwedischen High-Energy-Rocker The Hellacopters haben kürzlich ihr 30-jähriges Jubiläum gefeiert und nach der Veröffentlichung ihres neuen, vielgelobten Albums »Overdriver« am 31. Januar 2025, das zum zweiten Mal in der Bandgeschichte Platz 1 der schwedischen Charts erreichte 1 der schwedischen Charts erreichte – ist es nun an der Zeit, ihrer treuen Fangemeinde etwas wirklich Nostalgisches zu bieten.

»Cream Of The Crap! Collected Non-Album Works • Volume 3« ist der lang erwartete Nachfolger einer Reihe von Raritäten-Sammlungen, die 2002 begann und Material aus einer Vielzahl von Singles, EPs und Compilations vereint. Die 24 Titel dieses Sets wurden ursprünglich zwischen 1995 und 2004 veröffentlicht, die meisten davon nur auf Vinyl, und umfassen Originale wie »Disappointment Blues«, »Freeway To Hell«, »Doggone Your Bad-Luck Soul« und »Long Gone Losers« sowie Coverversionen von Songs von Motörhead, Wilson Pickett, Mc5, Smokey Robinson, Alice Cooper, The Ramones, The Nomads, Adam West – dessen Sänger Jake Starr die Liner Notes für diese Veröffentlichung verfasst hat – und vielen, vielen anderen.