quête:z id

“Dressed In Black” was curated and annotated by Cathi Unsworth, author of the book Season Of The Witch: The Book of Goth – a woman who considers herself fortunate to have had Siouxsie Sioux, Lydia Lunch and Diamanda Galàs for role models while she was growing up. For further illumination in Cathi’s own words, read on.

“The music gathered here is an aural manifestation of turbulent times, made by women possessed of supernatural abilities. The music I fell in love with emerged from the dark end of the 1970s: The Winter of Discontent of 1978-79, when intractable industrial action left the dead unburied and mountains of rubbish in the streets. All the promise of punk came to a brutal end with the deaths of Sid and Nancy in New York; IRA bombs exploded in central London and a seemingly uncatchable ripper roamed West Yorkshire with 13 murders under his belt. Ill omens that augured badly for the events of 3 May 1979, when Margaret Thatcher became our first woman prime minister. Dressed in blue and ready to whip the country to her heel.

“But at night, malcontent youth were united by forces of opposition, whose dissenting voices were aired across the land on John Peel’s Radio 1 show, set to the sound of slasher guitars, swirling fairground keyboards, loping basslines and percussion that recalled the echo of jackhammers or the march of insect feet. Here, punk’s unruly offspring distilled the dissonance of the times into a new kind of music. Flirting with the fetishist and taboo, drawing upon horror and science fiction imagery, they were the outlaw leaders of the greatest style tribe of the decade: the goths. Dressed in black, these kohl-eyed women voiced the alienation of their generation during the decade of the Cold War, the Miners’ Strike, privatisation and AIDS.

“To make sense of the absurd is genius enough. But to then cast the glamour of sublime music around those insights – I come back to my point about supernatural abilities. I hope you will find illumination within. You know the dress code.”

2026 Repress

Producer and bassist Huw Marc Bennett presents ‘Tresilian Bay’, a new project that draws from artists such as Tim Maia, Augustus Pablo and Idris Muhammed as much as the jazz scene and community he has found in south-east London. The languid, sultry sound fuses both modern and vintage, travelling from South London electronica, to Brazillian groove, Nigerian Afrobeat and Ghanaian Highlife along with a streak of Welsh psychedelia.

‘Tresilian Bay’ is a nod to hedonistic summer nights, whether spent on the Glamorgan coast or the hot Lewisham streets. The album is titled in honour of the bay near where Huw grew up, an area steeped in stories of ancient Welsh royalty, smugglers and pirates.

The album started out as a lost live session recorded at the Total Refreshment Centre studios, featuring Chelsea Carmichael (sax), Rosie Turton (trombone), Shirley Tetteh (guitar) and Jake Long (drums) with Huw at the helm on bass and compositions. With glorious vocal contributions from Miryam Solomon; Huw utilised his human style of production and multi instrumentality heard in his Susso project (Soundway Records, 2016) to mold these recordings into this mature and emotional debut.

The album was mixed and mastered by Albert's Favourites co-founder Adam Scrimshire with artwork by Jonny Drop.

This journey officially debuts with a Various Artists EP that perfectly embodies our sonic research, transcending musical genres and form to focus on pure feeling and connect to a timeless energy.

Opening the EP is Dismal with Holocryptic Woods, a 'psychedelic jungle' progressing vortex that challenges perception. Following is Little Sea with Jaguaro, a journey that evokes the golden-age aesthetic of progressive trance, balancing hypnotic structures and organic references to nature.

On the B side, Rambal Cochet presents Unreal Engine, a dark ritual at 135 BPM where Memphis rap meets acid spirals and neon atmospheres. Closing the VA, Electrodynamique delivers Ezo, an immersive electro trance dedication to the magic festivals’ nights feelings, rounding out the mosaic of identities of this project.

Surrender to the flow.

No matter where you are in the world, distance fades when like-minded people connect.
Clima Futuros understands climate as a condition rather than a setting. An environment where trajectories take shape, move forward and, sometimes by chance, intersect. Each track follows its own path until those paths briefly align — not as a destination, but as a shared moment in time.
At the center of the record, DJ F outlines a common atmosphere shaped by movement, reinterpretation and intent. The EP unfolds through original cuts and reworked versions, where ideas circulate, transform and return with renewed meaning.
One of the tracks features saxophone lines by Nala Rami, adding a melodic presence that sits naturally within the climate, while remixes by Less J and Jarren expand the EP from different angles.
Rather than a fixed narrative, Clima Futuros presents a shared space — shaped by aligned paths, recycled forms and the quiet convergence of futures moving in the same direction.

Vertice Di Convergenza explores the intersection between two rhythmicarchitectures. The sub-driven asymmetry of UK bass and dubstep blends thehypnotic cyclic motion of Dutch psy–IDM trance. Both share a focus on low-end design: basslines as structural anchors, kicks tuned to harmonic tension andpercussive spaces engineered for negative pressure. The result is a sonic plane where mechanical precision meets psychoacoustic flow.

TECH040, titled INTRO, is a functional exploration of electronic music’s most delicate moments. The concept was born from Nastia’s personal experience as a globally touring DJ, identifying a distinct gap in the modern market: a scarcity of sophisticated, atmospheric tracks specifically designed to set the tone during the first minutes of a performance.

This compilation is more than just a collection of tracks; it is a professional toolkit. From deep hypnotism to restrained energy, each contribution has been meticulously selected for its ability to prepare the space and the audience for the journey ahead.

Conceived as a functional extension of the DJ set, the Intro / Outro series explores the moments that frame the dancefloor experience. Focused on beginnings and endings, each release navigates the subtle tension between anticipation and resolution – from the first pulse that opens a space, to the final echoes that dissolve it. Stripped of excess and driven by intent, the series reflects a deeper layer of Techno: not just as a peak-time tool, but as a language of transition, atmosphere and control.

The record, bringing together techno legends and contemporary tastemakers around the art of the "opening set," featuring the long-awaited production debut of the label head herself.

Rinascimento Elettronico presents its first vinyl release: R/E001 — Divide By Zero EP by Translate, featuring a remix by Psyk. Out May 28th.
Argentinian artist Translate, a well-established name within the hypnotic techno scene, delivers a refined and immersive EP built on deep, looping structures, textured atmospheres and subtle rhythmic progression. His sound navigates between tension and introspection, maintaining a strong focus on hypnotic continuity and dancefloor functionality.
On remix duties, Spanish master Psyk reinterprets Inactive with his distinctive signature — stripped-back, precise and driving — adding a powerful and functional edge to the release.
With Divide By Zero EP, Rinascimento Elettronico sets the tone for its vinyl series, focusing on forward-thinking techno rooted in depth, repetition and sonic identity.

The Illegal Disco Limited series never misses. It's all about the king of cheeky edits adding his own spin to a carefully curated mix of disco and funk nuggets and, once again, here Monsieur Van Pratt is back with the goods. Though he always nods to the past with these reworks, he beefs them up with grooves designed for loud systems and to move floors. This one opens with the funk licks and disco stylings of 'Watcha Gonna Do' then gets celebratory with the feel good hands in the air vibes of 'The Contest'. Last but not least, 'Dance With Me' explores a more lavish sound with big vocals and lavish string stabs for good times only. Another doozy from Mr Pratt.

James Ruskin's Blueprint Records continue the 30th anniversary with another label stalwart as Mark Broom returns with his new EP, "Reality Check".



Mark Broom is a renowned British techno DJ and music producer whose career spans over three decades. Throughout his career, Broom has released over 150 singles, showcasing his versatility across various sub-genres of electronic music. He has collaborated with esteemed record labels such as Defected, Rekids, Warp, Ifach, M-Plant, Cocoon, Glitterbox and his own Beard Man (launched in 2009).



In addition to his solo projects, Broom has engaged in numerous collaborations. He partnered with James Ruskin to form The Fear Ratio, exploring experimental sounds that blend elements of hip-hop, IDM and techno with four albums (to date) on Skam Records, Tresor and of course, Blueprint. Another highlight has been their "Ruskin & Broom" EPs which have peppered the label's roster.Now based in Norfolk (England), Broom continues to be a driving force in the techno scene.



His work has been described as ranging from "club-ready techno and house to left-field electro, downtempo and IDM" highlighting his adaptability and broad musical range.? Returning to his driving Techno roots, his "Reality Check" EP is an essential release for fans of both Broom and Blueprint.

Born out of a shared pop-up studio on the 5th floor of an Omotesandō shopping mall, “Paradox” is the rousing result of a compelling musical collaboration between two British-born, Tokyo-based producers: The Magus Project (Rhythm King / The White Label, Silk Road Sounds, WhatSonic?) and Submerse (Hooversound, Future Retro, Straight Up Breakbeat, Breaker Breaker).

It also marks a collaborative first between The Magus Project’s own WhatSonic? label and Yeti Out’s imprint, Silk Road Sounds.

The archetypal DIY split-single approach — two individual artists offering a track each across a single release — is magnificently elevated in this case by a powerful connective force, in the guise of a shared rhythm spanning Paradox’s non-identical-twin tracks; a relentless pulse that, uniquely, allows either track to be mixed effortlessly into the other, bridging the transition between 126 and 168 bpm or vice versa.

Different speeds, different tracks, identical pulse: making the bpm matter and, well, not matter all at once: a kind of Schrödinger’s tempo, a thought-experiment in sonic form, an either/or/both of genre-spanning stylistic enquiry.

Between Bodies als Geheimtipp der europäischen Punk/Indie-Szene zu bezeichnen, ist mittlerweile ein großes Understatement. Nach ihrem Debütalbum, "Electric Sleep" von 2022, war die Band in aller Munde derer, die ein Herz für melodischen, treibenden, emotionalen Punkrock mit DIY Spirit haben. Spätestens über das Jahr 2025, als die Band aus Köln, Toronto und Paderborn, etablierte Acts wie Touché Amore, The Get Up Kids, The Hotelier oder Captain Planet in ausverkauften Clubs supportet hat, auf zahlreichen Szene-Festivals zu sehen war und seine Hörer*innenschaft noch einmal deutlich erweitern konnte, sind Between Bodies zu einer der spannendsten up-and-coming Punk-Bands hierzulande geworden. Die Songs und Texte der Ende 2019 gegründeten Band haben - wird oft behauptet, hier stimmt es einmal - internationales Format und erinnern an Lieblinge wie Joyce Manor, The Menzingers oder Tigers Jaw. Ihr Sound lässt ebenso an 90er Jahre Emo-Punk Klassiker denken, zeigt sich beeinflusst von 00er Jahre Post-Punk/Indie und verfügt dabei über reichlich Charakter und ein Ideenreichtum, der Between Bodies schlicht zu einer außergewöhnlichen Band macht.

Key long-term collaborators and Coil's "secret third member" Danny Hyde located the original Hellraiser studio session tapes, and the bonus material recovered from them is presented here as an "expanded ritual" edition.





For fans of pain & pleasure, Throbbing Gristle, lost horror soundtracks & haunted electronics.



Back in 1987, Clive Barker's supernatural body-horror classic Hellraiser hit cinemas worldwide and introduced audiences to the demonic Cenobites. Barker was a devoted COIL fan (Peter Christopherson and John Balance), and he famously said they were the only band he'd ever heard on record whose music he'd had to take off because, in his words, "theymade his bowels churn.". He initially invited them to compose the film's music, and the group began recording cues. But the producers at New World Pictures ultimately rejected the material in favor of a more traditional approach, bringing in Christopher Young, whose final score remains excellent, if less experimental. What remains from Coil is an unfinished soundtrack with surviving fragments and rough ideas, abruptly left behind mid-process, a glimpse into an alternate Hellraiser movie, one we can only fantasize into existence.



Nearly 40 years later, key long-term collaborators and Coil's "secret third member" Danny Hyde located the original Hellraiser studio session tapes, and the bonus material recovered from them is presented here as an "expanded ritual" edition, reassembled into a standalone, possibly definitive and strangely beautiful nightmare suite. Play it in the dark and experience the consequences of raising hell...

MUSIQUE POUR LA DANSE presents The Unreleased Themes From Hellraiser expanded ritual by Coil

Back in 1987, Clive Barker's supernatural body-horror classic Hellraiser hitted cinemas worldwide and introduced audiences to the demonic Cenobites. Barker was a devoted COIL fan (Peter Christopherson and John Balance), and he famously said they were the only band he'd ever heard on record whose music he'd had to take off because, in his words, "theymade his bowels churn.". He initially invited them to compose the film's music, and the group began recording cues. But the producers at New World Pictures ultimately rejected the material in favor of a more traditional approach, bringing in Christopher Young, whose final score remains excellent, if less experimental. What remains from Coil is an unfinished soundtrack with surviving fragments and rough ideas, abruptly left behind mid-process, a glimpse into an alternate Hellraiser movie, one we can only fantasize into existence.

Nearly 40 years later, key long-term collaborators and Coil's "secret third member" Danny Hyde located the original Hellraiser studio session tapes, and the bonus material recovered from them is presented here as an "expanded ritual" edition, reassembled into a standalone, possibly defnitive and strangely beautiful nightmare suite. Play it in the dark and experience the consequences of raising hell...

Notes by Danny Hyde
Original artwork by Trevor Brown
For fans of pain & pleasure, Throbbing Gristle, lost horror soundtracks & haunted electronics.

Nina Kraviz launches a new label.

treats is the younger, bratty sister label to trip, specialised in cool music for the dance floor that seems to ignore the idea of genres. To prove this point the first release brings together two tracks that have been roasted in Nina's sets for months and are genre bending.

On the A-side, Brazilian phenomenon and SoundCloud cowboy Joao Lagrima de Ouro teams up with Baile Funk legend MC Pogba. "Pitbull de Glocada" is an excessively naughty heater, with a serious nod to the regional Brazilian electronic music, creating an authentic blend of sounds.

On the B-side, Nina herself teams up with Rio de Janeiro marvel Mc Nick. The two met online, as Nina came across Nick's sensual hit "Mete com forza e com talento" and made her own version of it. Later during a Brazilian tour, the two finally met up on the mythical beach of Mc Nick's hometown where "sem amor" was recorded. Nina's signature minimalist production and approach to vocals pairs idyllically with Mc Nick's fiercely carnal and feminine raps.

treats 001 consists of two tracks with a fluctuating identity, spilling over with risque playfulness that might require parental advisory for some, but it's hard to deny the sheer joy these tracks exude.

Brånd is one weird/post black metal act from the Upper Austrian town of Linz.

Started off in 2015 as a solo act by Vritra (also in Kringa and Weathered Crest) with the need for a form of expression free from perfection or boundaries, over the past ten years the ever-evolving project ventured into various soundscapes, from crude black metal to lo-fi ambient and from ferocious post-punk to psych downer rock, all while splitting releases with extreme underground torchbearers like Absolute Key, Calvary and Rosa Nebel.

Joined by musicians to evolve old and new ideas, Brånd debut full-length album grew from 4-track demos gathered over the last decade to become an album of richly arranged songs from all over the fields of interest, breaking from their lo-fi tradition to new horizons.

To describe thoroughly “Tåg & Nåcht” is possibly the hardest task to do, given all the influences that are skilfully intertwined and perfectly balanced. In this witches’ brew the most schooled listeners will hear some angular post-punk à la Gang Of Four sustaining pagan declamations in the vein of Fenriz folk metal excursus Isengard. Straight forward dark anarcho punk assaults are mitigated by almost new age juxtapositions. Traces of 70’s German krautrock like La Düsseldorf are melted into a heavy metal cast, while wind instrument raids that are equally James Chance and Death In June seem to drop when least expected.

The sound is crunchy and surprisingly warm, contrary to what one might expect of a band emerging from a black metal background. But right now, Brånd is so much more than this: they can master a wide range of sounds that span from 70’s space rock, passing through 80’s post-punk and UK82, reaching 90’s black metal and 2000’s blackgaze, all in one incredibly coherent album. If this sounds too good to be true, suit yourself and press Play.
Split released with Tour De Garde in US/CA.

Transamericas reissues Atom™’s Kraftwerk-goes-chachachá classic

After 25 years out of print, El Baile Alemán — the cult album by Señor Coconut (one of Atom™’s many aliases) — returns on vinyl via Transamericas. What began as a half-joke (“The only way I’d cover Kraftwerk is as chachachá or death metal…”) became a fever-born epiphany: Kraftwerk’s electronic minimalism recast through a tropical imagination — where chachachá, mambo, and cumbia intertwine with glitch, breakbeats, and distressed samples.

Long before reggaeton and trap filled stadiums and playlists, Señor Coconut was already mapping the fault lines between Latin rhythm and electronic form.
Originally released in Japan in 2000, El Baile Alemán caught the ear of Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider, who unexpectedly championed the project. This reissue has been cut from Atom™’s 2022 remasters, preserving the album’s detail for a new generation of listeners. In the second half of 2026,

Transamericas will also reissue El Gran Baile (1997), his first outing — a rawer but equally idiosyncratic fusion of what Atom™ was going to frame as electrolatino.

Fust ist ein Songwriting-Projekt von Aaron Dowdy, das er zusammen mit seinen Freunden Frank Meadows, Avery Sullivan und John Wallace macht. Es fing 2017 als Heimaufnahme-Experiment von Aaron an, der sieben EPs mit jeweils vier Songs auf Bandcamp selbst veröffentlichte, bevor es zu einer Live-Band wurde. Die vier hatten über ein Jahrzehnt lang in verschiedenen Bands in Virginia und North Carolina zusammen gespielt. Diese Konstellation entstand 2018 in Brooklyn, wo sie alle zu dieser Zeit lebten, und sie trafen sich in Gowanus, um die einsamen, etwas hoffnungslosen Songs so leise wie möglich zu spielen - oder, wie die Band es bösartig nennen würde, da es eine Verletzung zu sein scheint, Songs über Fehlverhalten und Verzweiflung sanft zu spielen. Aber Fust interessiert sich auch für diese Themen und Stimmungen als Tropen und greift das Melodram der Country-Musik auf, vor allem die Idee, dass das Leben nicht viel bringt oder dass die eigene Güte nicht genutzt wird. Fust - das Wort für den muffigen Geruch, der an unbenutzten Dingen haftet - hat jetzt seinen Sitz in Durham, North Carolina, und Evil Joy ist sowohl ihr Plattenlabel-Debüt als auch die ersten gemeinsamen Aufnahmen der Band.

Sometimes the title of an album tells you everything you need to know. Laurence Pike’s Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet is like that: The music within represents a search for freedom, potentiality—liberatory strategies that transcend the ego and the solitary, atomized figure.

But in this case, the album title is also a red herring, because there is no jazz quintet here—just Pike, his drums, and his machines, not so much an ersatz ensemble as a purely notional one, a thought experiment equipped with drumsticks, circuitry, and the desire to go beyond hardwired limits.

And the results, strictly speaking, aren’t really jazz, though they incorporate the vocabulary of jazz, along with that of ambient, electronica, and post-rock. They are some other thing, cognizant of genre but never beholden to it. Again, we’re talking about a search for freedom here.

The Sydney-based musician has a long history of coloring outside the lines, not just in his solo recordings—including four albums for the Leaf label between 2018 and 2024—but also in the trio Pivot (later PVT); Szun Waves (alongside saxophonist Jack Wyllie and Border Community’s Luke Abbott); Triosk, which recorded an album with Jan Jelinek in 2003; and even post-punk titans Liars, whom he joined in late 2018.

Of his first album for Balmat, Pike says, “My loose concept was: What does music sound like when the expectations of late capitalism are removed from it? How might a jazz musician from an idealised culture of the future, or even another world, utilise musical language when the conventions of style and marketing are no longer a factor in music making?”

That inquiry, he says, connects to his “guiding principle: that the purpose of music is to access something bigger than the individual, and reveal a sense of possibility and freedom in the world to the listener. To create an understanding that the future can be something other than what we imagined or expect, even unconsciously.”

Heady ideas, but plug into his stream-of-metaconsciousness flow and you may start to intuit what motivates him. There is a deeply lyrical expression in these pieces—in the ruminative piano of opener “Guardians of Memory,” for example—but also a sense of exploded perspective, of ideas approached from more angles than any one mind could dream up. Of a collectivized consciousness, of mycelial networks branching across tone and rhythm and timbre, of ideas articulated in distributed fashion, nodal points dancing across drum heads.

Pike’s imaginary quintet is hardly without precedent; it’s a continuation of concepts floated across Jan Jelinek’s Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, Burnt Friedman’s many guises, and much of the recombinant improv of the International Anthem roster, not to mention the far corners of ECM’s catalog in the late 1970s and 1980s, which Pike says have been integral to his development since he was a teenager. Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet is a point in a continuum, a voice in a conversation, a question with no obvious answer: How can the search for otherness in music manifest something true about ourselves?