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We are thrilled to announce another underground gem on our label. This time, it's Collage's incredible 4-track EP "Mit den Puppen tanzen" (Dancing With The Puppets). Originally released in 1984 on the small FMusic label, the 12" EP is a true highlight in German Electro and NDW history, becoming a sought-after item among collectors. It features intense lyrics by singer Katrin A. Kunze, with music composed by Markus Kammann and Jürgen Grah.

Kammann and Grah, both originally from Solingen - a small city near Wuppertal - had previously collaborated on the new wave project Schwarze Bewegung with a different singer. Their self-titled LP was released in 1982 on Bacillus/Bellaphon. During this period, the electro sound pioneered by Kraftwerk evolved into electro-funk, sparked by the release of Afrika Bambaataa's groundbreaking track "Planet Rock", which achieved global acclaim. The iconic Roland TR-808 drum machine, masterfully employed by Arthur Baker's production team, revolutionized dance music with further hits like "Looking for the Perfect Beat" and collaborations with Planet Patrol. Markus Kammann cites these tracks, along with black music as a whole, as key influences on his work. In contrast, much of the electronic music emerging from Germany at the time rather leaned towards the styles of artists like Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream. Kammann's influences are evident in Collage's EP, which incorporates elements of early electronic hip-hop, such as the scratching sounds in the title track (created with tape rather than turntables) and short rap segments in "Niemals zurück".

By this time, Kammann and Grah had acquired their own Roland 808 as well as a JUNO-60 keyboard. Grah, originally a drummer, played keyboards and vibraphone, while Kammann, primarily a guitarist, also played bass. All the lyrics on the EP were written and performed by Kathrin A. Kunze, who hailed from Cuxhaven, a northern German city. She moved to Wuppertal around 1983 to study literature, and the group Collage was born.

Through Uwe Bauer, drummer of Fehlfarben, and their manager Horst Lüdge (of Profil), Collage connected with Werner Lambertz, a legendary sound technician from Düsseldorf. Lambertz's state-of-the-art studio featured custom-built sequencers capable of triggering the JUNO-60, as well as expensive equipment like a vocoder. Over the course of a week, the group completed all four tracks.

The EP's hard yet playful electro beats were complemented by Kunze's distinctive performance and introspective lyrics, which lent the songs a uniquely German and wavy touch. Her subtle songwriting conveyed a sense of paranoia and sorrow, as seen in lines like "Ich glaub mir selber nicht. Wer hält denn schon, was er verspricht?" ("I don't believe myself. Who stays true to their word, anyway?").

Unfortunately, the EP was never properly promoted and was distributed solely through the independent market via EFA. Despite this, Collage continued working on new material and pre-recorded an album that garnered label's attention. Polydor expressed interest but proposed using the compositions for a solo project with singer Inga Humpe (of Neonbabies), who was already signed to their roster. This would have required replacing Kunze as the vocalist, an idea the group firmly rejected. As a result, the album was never released. In 1987, Kammann, Grah, and Kunze launched another project called Cold End, which released another brilliant and highly sought-after 12" single, Metropolitan Jungle, originally issued on Tam Tam and recently re-released.

The first-ever reissue of "Mit den Puppen tanzen" is limited to only 400 copies - 200 on classic black vinyl and 200 on blue transparent vinyl. The cover art remains true to the original 12" release, designed by the aforementioned Uwe Bauer (aka Bimbo Art). This reissue is a must-have for DJs and collectors alike

An imperial phase Actress commits a lushly amorphous installation piece made for the Berliner Festspiele to vinyl, rendering a post-industrial symphony full of iridescent shifts in gyring, OOBE-like spatial coordinates landing somewhere between nutopian ambient, kankyō ongaku and sawn-off bass science.

‘Grey Interiors’ was made in collaboration with Actual Objects and is an absorbing animation and navigation of those post-human ideals that have prompted Darren J. Cunningham to his best work across the preceding two decades. In its hypnagogic symphony of the elements, he short-circuits distinctions of classical music’s metric freedoms and the hyperspatial sensuality of concrète/electro-acoustic and ambient musics with an artistic license that has come to distinguish his work in the contemporary field, and arguably identified him as this generation’s most vital electronic abstractionist.

The first half of the album is bewitchingly airless, materialised in a twinkling vacuum. Naturalistic environmental recordings and a half-heard piano swirl around nauseous airlock whooshes and eerie bass drones. It's all pulverised to a powdery, shimmering residue; if Actress's music is defined by its character and texture - that sweet spot between the bedroom and the soundsystem - then this one advances the narrative without losing its backbone. And like a lot of his best work, it comes into its own on the back of zonked eyelids, conjuring a play of shifting geometric patterns within its imaginary physics and nuanced narration of ephemeral melodic phrasing and vaporous textures.

At about the halfway point, that dissociated piano finds its groove, coalescing into a jerky drum machine rhythm popping like bubbles in the stifling atmosphere. We can draw some intersecting lines here thru electronic music lore - traces of vintage AE, Push Button Objects, UR - but Actress always leaves an indelible fingerprint on anything he touches. Even when he's rubbing against the gallery-industrial complex, he manages to fill a stagnant space with electricity and wit; look at the title itself: is it a reference to the "landscape beyond man" as the installation's press release might have us believe, or the institutions themselves?

Two new faces on the label with the two-faced eagle! Both artists have been much respected forces on the international club circuit for a while. IDA ENGBERG is best known for her affiliation with Stockholm’s Drumcode and Truesoul labels. For her Speicher debut though, she’s tapping into a quite different sound territory. “Nothing Feels The Same” will go down in history as the first 2 Step track ever released on KOMPAKT EXTRA. It’s as sensual as it’s booming. Definitely one for those late morning hours. With “Pink Monkeys” is an EBM/sawtooth trance amalgamation of the highest order with enough psychedelic headroom for the festival season.

MARCO RESMANN’s deep involvement with the late Berlin club legend Watergate has made him one of the German capital’s beacons of house and techno. He’s one half of Lunar City Express and former member of Pan-Pot which speaks volumes about his stylistical versatility.”“RIMA feat. Laatz” he delivers a frenetic rollercoaster ride of a techno track. It’s radical, it’s menacing and super fun all at once – A truly one of a kind techno track. “Dimensions” is a low-slung electro bulwark full of intricate details to keep head and feet going in unison.
Zwei neue Gesichter auf dem Label mit dem doppelköpfigen Adler! Beide Künstler sind seit einiger Zeit angesehene Größen in der internationalen Clubszene. IDA ENGBERG ist vor allem für ihre Zusammenarbeit mit den Stockholmer Labels Drumcode und Truesoul bekannt. Für ihr Debüt auf Speicher betritt sie jedoch ein ganz anderes Sound-Territorium. „Nothing Feels The Same“ wird als erster 2-Step-Track, der jemals auf KOMPAKT EXTRA veröffentlicht wurde, in die Geschichte eingehen. Es ist ebenso sinnlich wie dröhnend. Definitiv etwas für die späten Morgenstunden. Mit „Pink Monkeys“ ist eine EBM/Sägezahn-Trance-Verschmelzung der höchsten Güteklasse mit genug psychedelischem Headroom für die Festivalsaison entstanden.

MARCO RESMANNs tiefe Verbundenheit mit der jüngst verstorbenen Berliner Clublegende Watergate hat ihn zu einem der Fixpunkte der deutschen Hauptstadt in Sachen House und Techno gemacht und weit darüber hinaus. Er ist eine Hälfte von Lunar City Express und ehemaliges Mitglied von Pan-Pot, was Bände über seine stilistische Vielseitigkeit spricht. Mit „RIMA feat. Laatz“ liefert er eine frenetische Techno-Achterbahnfahrt, die gleichermaßen radikal, bedrohlich ist und ungemein Spaß macht – ein wirklich einzigartiger Track für die Ewigkeit. ‚Dimensions‘ wiederum ist ein tiefgründiges Electro-Bollwerk voller komplexer Details, das Kopf und Füße sicher im Einklang hält.

,Siamo tutti in pericolo" ist das dritte Album von Golem Mecanique, dem Pseudonym der französischen Multiinstrumentalistin und Komponistin Karen Jebane, das auf Ideologic Organ veröffentlicht wird. Jebane arbeitet am Rande des zeitgenössischen Folk (aka La Novea Community), des mikrotonalen Sounds und der frühen Moderne, berührt aber auch die Asche und die Fasern des Back Metal und die DNA der Gothic-Musik, der Literatur, der Zauberei und vor allem der Poesie. Jebanes Arbeit mit der Drone Box (einer mechanisierten Drehleier) und der Zither als glatte und wellige Oberfläche für ihren Gesang ist auf fast zeremonielle Weise sofort ersichtlich und lädt in einen Raum von klarer, dunkler Kreativität und Schönheit ein. Auf ,Siamo tutti in pericolo" arbeitet Jebane mit ihren Kompositionsformen auf neue Art und Weise, poetisch und sparsam in der Ausführung ihrer Techniken, durch ihre Hommage/Hymnen/Meditationen über die höchst unregelmäßigen Umstände und Fragen/Mysterien des Vergehens der Seele von Meisterkünstler Pier Paolo Pasolini. In perfekter Kombination mit dem Coverbild des Collagekünstlers Julien Langendorff präsentiert ,Siamo tutti in pericolo" Jebanes ,Golem Mecanique" in Reinkultur. -Stephen O'Malley, Brion, Frankreich, 1. September 2024

After many years of artistic collaboration, the long-awaited album, KILLING TIME, bringing together London-based MC Killa P and Italian Bass music collective Numa Crew, has finally arrived.

Killa P, a name synonymous with potent lyricism and raw energy in the Grime scene, delivers a vocal masterclass throughout his debut long-player, soundtracked by the stellar production of the Numa Crew. Together they expertly navigate genres including dubstep, grime, dub, and jungle, while maintaining a distinct and cohesive musical identity.

Not simply a collection of individual tracks, Killing Time is a meticulously crafted journey through sound system music. There are no stylistic boundaries, as the long-player encompasses the entire musical spectrum that unites the Italian crew with the London-based MC, with Killa P free to showcase his evolution as an artist. Alongside them, the album also brings together a diverse cast of friends and collaborators, vocalists, and producers, each adding their own unique flavor.

From the pulsating dubstep-infused Boys in Blue, a searing commentary on social inequality, to the reggae-tinged steppa tune Love Inna We Heart featuring Charlie P and Long Range, a plea for unity and love, Killa P's lyrical dexterity shines.

Tracks such as Champion Sound, Badman City Pt.2 featuring the French Ragga legend Big Red, and No Laugh featuring Big Chain and Bristol’s Buggsy are a nod to Killa P's roots, beautifully showcasing his mastery of grime's signature sound, while the sped-up tempos of the Fleck collaboration Jungle Leng, and Can't Get Me Down featuring Ras Demo, inject a jolt of Junglist attitude. Different Life is a vibrant ‘carnival’ jam, that infuses grime and dancehall moods and sees the great Lady Lykez on the second verse.

The album wraps on a contemplative note with Dreaming, a collaboration with Abstract Sonance, and Heartless, featuring Killa’s son GK on production, revealing an introspective note that adds yet more depth to Killa P's artistry.

As the album’s second track, Family, proclaims: ‘man a deal with family, not friends’ - a fitting line to define the album as a whole… An ode to the unity and strength of family.

Bad news: Not much is known about pdqb, and what we do know is most likely either wrong or made up. The man who is credited for the productions is said to have gone insane due to being possessed by an alien parasite. His whereabouts remain unknown. Good news: Fortunately, Synaptic Cliffs owns about a dozen releases from whoever or whatever is behind the mysterious abbreviation and will publish every single one of them…because they are ultra awesome.

With the original tapes of this Mini-LP, pdqb left a fragmented note in the '90s stating that he decoded eight tracks originally produced with the NCO6.27 for test subjects who were all given some strange form of brain implants, and that a certain wetware could be unveiled in that manner, and that he conducted that research long before he developed a machine capable of hacking into the dreams of everyone who has ever lived.

However, the music could best be described as playful and dark, old-school Techno/Electro/Industrial blended with Chiptunes, IDM/Braindance, and Electronica. It is pressed on a beautiful green splatter vinyl.

The first 150 customers will be rewarded with a free leftover flexi disc from the '80s featuring two exclusive tracks composed by pdqb while he worked for Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset TV production company. The flexi was originally included in the November 1985 issue of the Italian Playboy Magazine (cover girl: Grace Jones) and is extremely sought after.

T. Gowdy returns with a major statement and luminous stylistic expansion on his third album for Constellation. Trill Scan is an exquisite suite of songs literally and figuratively about alchemy, where Gowdy melds his background in choral and medieval music with his trademark analogue electronics. Following the acclaimed Miracles (Bleep Album of the Week / Albums of the Year 2022), Gowdy's bar-raising new LP centers human voice for the first time. Choral set-pieces and solo lead vocals, along with his own lute playing, are novel elements in Gowdy's work, and draw on strains of Middle Ages polyphony and the Baroque "broken style" to further distinguish Trill Scan from anything in his discography to date. Gowdy sees "the modal language of medieval Europe as a less distant cousin to indigenous traditional music practice" compared to a Classical-colonial "patriarchal order of tonality that honours a system of domination." The 12th century Notre Dame School of choral music and 17th century style brisé each carry tonal materiality, heterodox technique, and cultural-historical symbolism central to Trill Scan's conceptual and compositional alchemy. Gowdy coheres these beautifully into his palette of serpentine slowburn electronics, a minimal analogue-driven techno shaped by aleatory strategies and tinged with post-punk grit. Gowdy's sound has been aptly described as "gently transportative, flickering like a busted halogen lamp" and his overriding pursuit of psychoacoustic immanence likened to "getting your brain massaged" and praised as "blissful work that bristles with effervescent energy, like brain waves coming in and out of focus." Trill Scan expands this sonic sensibility with more conspicuous harmonic complexity, stylistic variety, and humanistic narrative arc. Alternately sacramental and intimately personal vocals, sometimes wordless and sometimes lyrical, are worked into superlative instrumental tracks, yielding a warmly immersive concept album that's equally Gowdy's most musical. Gowdy sings explicitly of alchemy on the hypnotic album centerpiece "Novus Lumen" with lyrics that gesture at these medieval processes of material investigation. The tension between the scientific and esoteric is crucial; the separation and synthesis of physical substances in medieval alchemy maps onto his fixation with the interplay between the materiality of sound and psychoacoustics. Gowdy follows the Jungian interpretation of classic alchemical texts as an historical bridge to theories of the psyche, where consciousness itself is treated as materiality and similarly subjected to methodical analysis and experimentation, to deconstruction, dissolution, transformation, reintegration, metamorphosis. Song titles like "Arislei Bone" and "Materiadiscipuli" further reference these mythopoetic throughlines from medieval alchemy to modern psychology. Gowdy chooses disruptive forms from the history of Western music that symbolize and prefigure the modern psychological subject and its struggle for/against order, even as they also evoke liturgy and the Renaissance court. The sacramental adds a potent dimension to his pursuit of psychoacoustic activation, meditation, and transcendence, as choral passages intersperse with electronic drone and pointillism throughout the album. His gorgeous Fennesz-meets-lute rendition of the Baroque composition "Courante" by François Dufault offers idiomatic salon-secular counterpoint. Album closer "Strewn" is bookended by a final recurrence of choral invocation, with pulsing earworm motorik techno in between, over which Gowdy whisper-sings a dreamlike vision quest of mythic-alchemical imagery: "as I washed my eyes they turned to metal / and the memories melted to the metal / the metal of my heart." A mesmerizing final song that explicitly invokes Gowdy's search for materialized abstraction and substantive musical immanence wrought from his own psycho-therapeutic subjectivity, and encapsulates the album's turn towards more harmonic, historicized, and humanistic elements. Trill Scan commingles empyrean and earthly electronic songcraft to genuinely original and absorbing effect. Thanks for listening. RIYL: Coil, Nicolás Jaar, Alessandro Cortini, Pantha Du Prince, Fennesz, Visible Cloaks, Actress,

Joni Void, the artistic persona of Montréal-based French-British producer Jean Néant (he/them) returns to songcraft on their warmest and most welcoming record yet, where the acclaimed sampledelic sound collagist chills out with an emotionally resonant song cycle tinged by downtempo, lo-fi, avant-pop, and trip-hop. Guests include Haco, Ytamo, Sook-Yin Lee, Pink Navel and N NAO. Every Life Is A Light expands on Void's recent stylistic turn towards more languorous and mellow lo-fi production, foreshadowed by the drifting looseness and ambient bricolage of their preceding experimental sound-art record. This transitional sensibility now shapes more defined song structures and styles, with loops are given time and space to unspool, and rhythms shot through the softer-focus lens of trip-hop and dub. Every Life Is A Light swaps the twitchy insistence of Void's acclaimed early albums for a newfound lightness and suppleness, still imbued with all the restlessness, sonic detailing, and emotional resonance that made their name. The neurotic brokenmachine kinetics of earlier Void, summarized by Sasha Geffen as "drawing despair and wonder from within the vast unfeeling of digital communication" in an 8.0 Pitchfork review, may be chilling out, but Void is becoming an ever better conjurer of hauntological feeling. Every Life Is A Light summons this in a comparatively buoyant, benevolent, head-nodding journey more open to tenderness and modest joys. Perhaps it's the sound of Void at greater peace with themselves and the world, despite the bittersweet cost: even as it channels grief, memorializing comrades and companions recently deceased, this album wants light. Void's raw materials continue to draw heavily from samples (their own Walkman cassette fieldrecordings and songs by others) and from a wide community of musical guests. Vocalists Haco on "Time Zone" and Ytamo on "Cloud Level" help levitate what could be lost tracks from a mid-90s Too Pure Records compilation of skewed-lounge electronica. Canadian musician Sook-Yin Lee sings on lead single "Vertigo," a sinewy 80bpm tape-loop and bassline groove propelled by psychedelically-layered lyrics that eventually turn the song in on itself entirely, like Grace Jones' "Nightclubbing" covered by Animal Collective. One of Void's greatest hip-hop loves is the Ruby Yacht collective; charter member Pink Navel drops some brilliant verses on "Story Board." The album's two minimal tracks, an extended piano loop set to a slow beat and shimmering electronics on "Muffin-A Song For My Cat" and the languid sampled bass riff and breakbeat of "Event Flow," are perhaps most overtly `lofi chill.' Indeed the whole album could be said to sit adjacent to those viral (if not already AI-generated) genre trends, which maybe begs the question on a lot of our minds: can specificity and authenticity of musical materials still be heard, still meaningfully signify substance and difference, still matter? Perhaps a question that fades in comparison to the career break Void could catch by landing on generic streaming playlists. More likely, these tracks remain too off-kilter, too genuinely lo-fi and ineffable, and too disqualified by the status of its peasant rights-holders, to catch the algos. Context remains the poor cousin of content. Meanwhile Void marches on, as a tireless organizer of local music events, bouncing around and often living in DIY venue, depending on the latest apartment eviction. With an ubiquitous polaroid camera in tow, they also document each communal happening with a single shot (and often a blinding flash bulb): a memory and metaphor for lives illuminated preciously, singularly, `imperfectly' in the moment. Dozens of these polaroids adorn the album's back cover and inner sleeve art in grid-like montages, as a fitting analog for the careful construction, grainy intimate materiality, and ephemeral feeling of these songs. Every Life Is A Light is Joni Void's most coherent and congenial record while relinquishing none of their experimentalist acumen as a producer or emotional attunement as a composer. Instead these qualities flourish, on an album that lights a humble flame for the fragile promise of homespun creative collaboration as unalienated labour and therapeutic communion, making an enchantingly idiosyncratic contribution to downtempo sample music along the way. Thanks for listening.

Aunes is a rare solo album from peripatetic Australian cellist-composer-performer Judith Hamann, presenting six pieces recorded across several years and countries. Developing the collage techniques and expanded sound palettes heard on their previous releases, Aunes makes use of synthesizers, organ, voice and location recordings alongside the dazzlingly pure, enveloping tones of Hamann's cello. The record takes its name from an old French unit of measurement for fabric, varying around the country and from material to material. Unlike the platinum metre bar deposited in the National Archives after the Revolution as an immovable standard, an aune of silk differed from an aune of linen: the measure could not be separated from the material. In much the same way, in these six pieces_which Hamann thinks of as `songs'_formal aspects such as tuning, pacing, melodic shape and timbre are not abstractions applied universally to musical material but are inextricable from the instruments and sounds used, even from the places and communities in which the music was made. Audible location sound embeds the music in its place of making, as in the delicate duet for church organ and wordless singing `schloss, night', where shuffles and cluttering in the reverberant church space form a phantom accompaniment, gradually displaced by a uneasy shimmer of wavering tones from half-opened organ stops. `Casa Di Riposo, Gesu' Redentore' documents a walk up a hill to an outdoor mass in Chiusure, layering voices near and far with footsteps, insects and other incidental sounds. Like in the work of Moniek Darge or Luc Ferrari, location recordings are folded on themselves in space and time, their documentary function dislocated to dreamlike effect. On other pieces, it is the emphatic presence of the performing body that grounds the music, whether in the intimate fragility of Hamann's softly sung and hummed vocal tones or the clothing that rustles across a microphone on the opening `by the line'. The idea of a music inextricable from its material conditions is perhaps most strikingly communicated on the album's briefest piece `bruststärke (lung song)', composed from layered whistling recorded while Hamann suffered through an asthma flare up, the results halfway between field recordings of an imaginary aviary and the audiopoems of Henri Chopin. More than any of Hamann's previous solo works, a strong melodic sensibility runs through Aunes, even when, like on `seventeen fabrics of measure', the music hangs together by the merest thread. At other points, Hamann's love of pop music is more obvious: the rich synth harmonies of `by the line' could almost be a melting fragment of a backing track from Hounds of Love. The expansive closing piece `neither from nor toward' exemplifies the highly personal musical language that Hamann has developed in recent years through constant solo performance (and a rigorous discipline of instrumental practice), pairing two overdubbed voices with the boundless depth and harmonic richness of just-intoned cello notes, calling up Ockegham or Linda Caitlin Smith in its elegiac slow motion arcs. Hamann's most personal work yet, Aunes arrives in a striking sleeve reproducing a section of a painting made from sewn pieces of dyed wool by Wilder Alison, a friend and fellow resident at Akademie Schloss Solitude, one of the temporary homes where much of this music was recorded.

Sub Pop proudly teams up with long-running Canadian punk icons Fucked Up for a limited-edition 7" single featuring two brand new, exclusive songs. "Disabuse" and "Self Driving Man" are unlikely light-speed cuts of pure hardcore from Fucked Up. These tracks bleed off the record, having been born from the indelible stamp of Poison Idea's 1990 anti-oppression anthem "Discontent" and Japanese punk legends Paintbox's "The Door." Sitting at the chaotic crossroads of punk, hardcore, and grunge, the two songs have found the most fitting home possible: a Sub Pop single. "Disabuse" is a song Damian wrote for his daughter, who experienced bullying and intimidation at school, while "Self Driving Man" wrestles the out of control automation of our world onto the pavement and into the abyss of faceless progress. The 7" comes on translucent emerald vinyl, and includes a lyric sheet.

‘Moonlight Concessions’ goes back to basics, a return for Throwing Muses to their esoteric off-kilter best courtesy of Kristin’s pin-sharp sketches and their suitably abrasive musical arrangements. The album follows their acclaimed ‘Sun Racket’ from 2020, a heady set filled with tough and tender tales spiked with surreal imagery. Produced by Kristin Hersh at Steve Rizzo's Stable Sound Studio in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ is a collection of snippets from everyday life writ large - think Raymond Carver Short Cuts, overheard conversations, recounted happenings and telling one-liners, all sewed together to illustrate the times as they slowly mature, fully peppered with original Muses’ vim and vigour. ‘Drugstore Drastic’ is a kerbside soliloquy caught en route to a more alluring rendezvous. Built on a brisk acoustic strum with a guitar sub-melody underpinning proceedings, it’s an unfolding tale of social awareness from a blurred sub-conscious. ‘Summer Of Love’ began as a bet with a guy for a dollar that revolved around the idea that the seasons don’t change us. The album opener, it’s a haunting baroque overture, bowed and brooding. ‘Libretto’s strings offset the acoustic ambience, the hot and cold of longing at the very heart of it, a thematic driver filed with warmth in a safe haven lubricated by tequila. Written in the differing South Coast environs of The Gulf Of Mexico and Southern California, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ pulls from the star clusters that light both, generating optimism and hope in varying degrees. Hersh explains, “In New Orleans the stars look greenish-blue, as it’s below sea level and swamp-lit. But on Moonlight Beach, they glow icy white. All these songs were written in these two glowy places, which helped our sonic technique find itself.”

Sun Ra was a master of misdirection. Tape boxes wrongly labeled—whether by accident or design—are legendary among Ra archivists. One can speculate about the artist's intent or carelessness, but source misinformation abounds on Ra tape cases, album jackets, cassettes, ephemera—as well as in interviews. It's as if Ra, in furtherance of his own mythmaking, wanted to keep historians guessing.

This project began as a misidentified tape discovered by Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive. The 7-inch reel, which contained a live Ra solo piano performance of 11 works—some recognizable, others not—was of stellar quality, and was marked as a 1979 Carnegie Hall date. But the program on the tape did not align with known facts (e.g., titles played, concert duration) which were chronicled in a Newsday review of Ra's appearance at Carnegie in September of that year. With a prod from writer/historian Ted Gioia and further research by myself, the tape was eventually identified as a mostly unreleased July 1977 performance by Ra at a downtown NYC "jazz café" called The Axis-in-Soho.

JP’s historic restoration carpentry has continued to be a baseline for his relationship to music; the yin to his yang, the Burt to his Ernie, the Dolly to his Porter. It was through this concurrent line of work that he met another twice-initialed singer with a penchant for old Americana music, obscure film, and overly elaborate ethnic meal preparations: one JD McPherson. The two became fast friends and would eventually, through many twists, turns, false starts, and biblically-proportionate plagues, enter a modest studio in Nashville to record Harris’ latest album.

Over the course of nine months in 2023, they recorded a sometimes lush, sometimes sparse, and sometimes jarring country album of Harris’ originals, loudly and violently squelching any attempt to pigeon-hole a song into any subgenre of country music. Only albums by Lee Hazelwood and an obscure folk album Waylon Jennings made when his hair was still short were allowed to be mentioned in reference. Featuring the guest vocals of Erin Rae, The Watson Twins, Shovels & Rope, and producer JD McPherson himself, the record is equal parts satire, reflection, and apology to those that would listen.

In a musical landscape of period-correct reproduction, “outlaw” internet posturing, and flavor-of-the-month variants on country,

“JP Harris Is A Trash Fire” burns bright as a dumpster in a Walmart parking lot on a moonless night; some will fear it, some will gravitate to its acrid warmth, and most will have no idea what to make of the situation. Harris has been steadily elbowing the definitive boundaries of “country music” wider with every album, both sonically and lyrically, and his latest piece of self described “Avant-Country” is no exception.

Lee Hazlewood made his bones producing and cowriting with guitarist Duane Eddy during the ‘50s, and then cemented his immortality with the classic sides he produced for Nancy Sinatra during the ‘60s. Over the past few decades, though, attention has turned to Lee’s idiosyncratic solo work, the heart of which he recorded for the Reprise label and his own LHI Records. Issued in 1968,

Love and Other Crimes is one of his Reprise releases, and it’s one of the weirdest records in his entire catalog. Recorded in Paris with such legendary Wrecking Crew members as guitarist James Burton and drummer Hal Blaine, Hazlewood sounds every bit the bon vivant (read: half drunk) as he swings from country ballads to lightly psychedelic pop highlighted by his rockin’ cover of Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew.” Other highlights include “Rosacoke Street,” which presents him at his most psychedelic lounge lizard-esque, (think a Hunter Thompson character from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and his moving “Wait and See,” an apology for bad behavior to an absent lover.

We’ve enlisted Mike Milchner to remaster this one for vinyl… don’t miss Lee’s stream-of-consciousness back cover notes, either. Pressed in sea blue vinyl limited to 1000 copies!

compiled by tsunaki kadowaki
artwork by yoshirotten
mastering by kuniyuki takahashi

Tsunaki Kadowaki, a staff member at Kyoto’s record store Meditations, the supervisor of "New Age Music Disc Guide", and the founder of Sad Disco, curates the fourth installment of "Midnight in Tokyo" themed around Ambient Kayō.

The Midnight in Tokyo series by Studio Mule focuses on Japanese music, serving as a soundtrack for Tokyo nights—whether for home listening, club play, or as a driving BGM, transcending location and space. After a six-year hiatus, the fourth volume takes "Ambient Kayō" as its new perspective, compiling genre-defying tracks released between 1977 and 1999 to explore the intersection of Japanese ambient and pop music.

For this long-awaited fourth installment, selections were made regardless of record label status (major or independent), era, format (vinyl or CD), original release price, or prior reissues. Instead, the focus was on music that deeply moves the listener, is open-minded and evocative, brims with inspiration and spiritual insight, and embodies the "utagokoro" (singing heart) of Japanese artists.

Opening the compilation is "Umi e Kinasai" by Yōsui Inoue, a legendary Japanese singer-songwriter whose works have recently gained renewed interest as hidden gems of Walearic and ambient pop

Composed and arranged by Katsu Hoshi—who is also known for his arrangements on Inoue’s masterpiece Ice World—the track features renowned players such as Masayoshi Takanaka, Hiroki Inui, and Shigeru Inoue. The song embodies a yearning for Balearic horizons, tinged with youthful vibrancy and sentimentality.

Next, "Oritatamu Umi", compiled from Keiko Nosaka, a 20-string koto player, and George Murasaki, a pioneer of Okinawan rock, is an instrumental track from their album "Niraikanai Requiem 1945". As the title suggests, it carries themes of requiem and remembrance, conveying poetic lyricism even without words. Blending Ryukyuan/Okinawan harmonies and indigenous elements, it unfolds as an intimate and nostalgic piece of progressive rock.

Also featured is "Natsu no Kowareru Koro" by Higurashi, a folk-rock band led by Seiichi Takeda, formerly a guitarist of The Remainders of The Clover, the predecessor of RC Succession. Like the opening track "Umi e Kinasai", this song was also produced by Katsu Hoshi. It stands as a folk/new music piece that takes a step into an "otherworldly" realm, recommended for fans of Twin Cosmos and Masumi Hara.

From the enigmatic Blue, the only work left by the mysterious composer S.R. Kinoshita, comes "Mangrove", a hidden treasure of Japan's ambient/new age scene from the CD era. With an oriental and enigmatic atmosphere, the track evokes a mystical world of deep, uncharted jungles, unfolding as an otherworldly New Age Kayō.

"Yaponesia Sakura", selected from Rehabilual’s sole album New Child, is a masterpiece of Japanese new age music. Produced by Swami Dhyan Akamo, a disciple of Indian meditation teacher Osho and a renowned balafon player, the track features Michio Ogawa (Chakra) and Atsuo Fujimoto (Colored Music). Their collective artistry creates an exquisite spiritual ambient pop sound.

"Asa no Hitoshizuku", the opening folk song from Sachiko Kanenobu’s album Sachiko, is also included. Known for her legendary folk album Misora, produced by Haruomi Hosono, Kanenobu’s fourth album after resuming her career was inspired by her experiences living in San Francisco and revolves around the theme of "love." This track carries the same intimate poetic world as Misora, imbued with a pure, crystalline innocence.

From the synth-pop band E.S. Island, known for the Haruomi Hosono-produced *Teku Teku Mami", comes "Yume Fūrin ", selected from their long-lost new age classic Nanpū from Hachijo. Created while the band’s core duo was living in Hachijō Island, the album aimed to sonically capture "the high and happy vibrations of everyday island life." This track offers a dynamic, tribal-infused New Age Kayō experience.

Dubbed "the world's first Min’yō House Mix" "Esashi Oiwake (Maeuta) " comes from Kanazawa Akiko HOUSE MIX Ⅰ, a collaboration between Japanese house music pioneer Soichi Terada and Akiko Kanazawa, a renowned min’yō singer. Through the prism of club music, Hokkaido's Esashi Oiwake, one of Japan’s most iconic folk songs, is transformed into a futuristic ambient pop piece with intricate sound design.

The compilation also includes "Sweet Ong Choh", a track from Voice From Asia, a group active between 1989 and 1992 featuring vocal artist Shizuru Ohtaka. Taken from their imaginative minimal work Voice From Asia, released under Aoyama Spiral’s music label Newsic, the song presents a tranquil, tribal-minimal soundscape enriched by ethnic instruments.

Hailed by Haruomi Hosono as having “a shaman residing in her voice,” singer-songwriter Nami Hōdatsu also appears in the selection. Known for her collaborations with Henry Kawahara, her debut album featured "Asa-Hikari-Ame-Yume", a track that now stands as a precursor to modern vocaloid/synthesized vocal music—a hidden gem of post-choir aesthetics that deserves rediscovery.

Likewise, "Tennessee Waltz", from Naomi Akimoto’s album One Night Stand, supported by members of Mariah, serves as another early prototype of vocaloid/synthesized vocal music. The track weaves fragmented vocal samples, pastoral yet sweetly minimal synth sounds, and mechanical beats into a strikingly unconventional piece in the history of Japanese music.

Closing the compilation is "Heaven Electric", a track from Nav Katze’s album Gentle & Elegance, which featured remixes by Autechre, Seefeel, and Sun Electric. Merging elements of IDM, ambient techno, and chillout, the song embodies an optimism reminiscent of space music while seamlessly blending a mystical Japanese aesthetic—an ambient pop masterpiece.

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The album presents 12 exquisite pop tracks infused with an ambient feeling, resonating deeply with the evolving landscape of the mid-2020s—a time of post-hyperpop and Y2K revival.

Tsunaki Kadowaki (Compiler)

Born in 1993 in Yonago, Tottori, Tsunaki Kadowaki is a staff member and buyer at Kyoto’s Meditations record store. He is the editor of New Age Music Disc Guide (DU BOOKS) and a contributor to Music Magazine, Record Collectors' Magazine, ele-king, and more. Kadowaki has written liner notes for multiple Japanese releases (Brian Eno, Masahiro Sugaya etc.) and runs the Sad Disco music label under Disk Union. He also curates Spotify’s official New Age Music playlist and performed as a DJ at YCAM’s Audio Base Camp #3 in 2024.

Montreal mainstay Sabola (aka Adam Hodgins) brings his intricate sound to Garmo with Útilykt, a six-track odyssey through shadowy IDM textures, fractured techno rhythms, and breakbeat experiments. Spanning a wide range of tempos, the EP evokes the tension between isolation and expanse—its beats heavy with introspection yet reaching outward toward something vast and untamed. Rooted in the sensibilities of early 2000s drum and bass, Útilykt channels the raw energy of that era while weaving it into Sabola’s deeply atmospheric and modern sound.

My Boy, the third solo record from New Zealand singer/ songwriter Marlon Williams, announces an artist emerging anew. Gone is the solemn, country-indebted crooner with the velvet voice - in his place comes a playful, shapeshifting creature. Following the release of his second album, 2018's Make Way For Love, Williams' toured the world, playing major festivals and collaborating with Lorde, Yo-Yo Ma and Florence Welch. He also forged a fledgling acting career with roles in films The True History of the Kelly Gang and Netflix series Sweet Tooth, as well as a cameo in Oscar winning film A Star Is Born. My Boy parlays this flush of worldly experience into a vivid record as spirited and kinetic as the unfolding life of its performer. "I've always explored different character elements in my music," says Williams. "And the more I get into acting, the more tricks I'm learning about representation and presentation. To get braver and bolder with exploring shifting contexts and new ways of doing things." As the pandemic paused global travel, Williams found himself at home in New Zealand, reconnecting with family and friends. Soon new demos and lyrical themes emerged: of self-identity and escapism; tribalism and a gnarled family tree; and ruminations on the role of masculinity and mateship. Co-produced with Tom Healy and recorded at Roundhead Studios in New Zealand, My Boy finds Williams' leading a new band through a set of genre-hopping tunes: from the cheery sway of `My Boy' and chugging `80s noir sheen of `Thinking Of Nina', to the charging synth of `River Rival', and the sultry pop jam `Don't Go Back.' All this sonic and emotional whiplash is intentional, and ultimately My Boy sees Williams having fun, even while interrogating the behaviors of himself and those around him.

My Boy, the third solo record from New Zealand singer/ songwriter Marlon Williams, announces an artist emerging anew. Gone is the solemn, country-indebted crooner with the velvet voice - in his place comes a playful, shapeshifting creature. Following the release of his second album, 2018's Make Way For Love, Williams' toured the world, playing major festivals and collaborating with Lorde, Yo-Yo Ma and Florence Welch. He also forged a fledgling acting career with roles in films The True History of the Kelly Gang and Netflix series Sweet Tooth, as well as a cameo in Oscar winning film A Star Is Born. My Boy parlays this flush of worldly experience into a vivid record as spirited and kinetic as the unfolding life of its performer. "I've always explored different character elements in my music," says Williams. "And the more I get into acting, the more tricks I'm learning about representation and presentation. To get braver and bolder with exploring shifting contexts and new ways of doing things." As the pandemic paused global travel, Williams found himself at home in New Zealand, reconnecting with family and friends. Soon new demos and lyrical themes emerged: of self-identity and escapism; tribalism and a gnarled family tree; and ruminations on the role of masculinity and mateship. Co-produced with Tom Healy and recorded at Roundhead Studios in New Zealand, My Boy finds Williams' leading a new band through a set of genre-hopping tunes: from the cheery sway of `My Boy' and chugging `80s noir sheen of `Thinking Of Nina', to the charging synth of `River Rival', and the sultry pop jam `Don't Go Back.' All this sonic and emotional whiplash is intentional, and ultimately My Boy sees Williams having fun, even while interrogating the behaviors of himself and those around him.

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY has had more than its share of out-of-nowhere bands following from the second big bang that was punk rock. The Babylon Dance Band, Circle X, Your Food, Squirrel Bait, Bastro...these are but some of the exceptional music acts originating in Louisville after 1977. Now it"s time for the great secret of the Louisville first-wave punk scene to be revealed: The Endtables. The Endtables were the crazed brainchild of guitarist Alex Durig, brooding chess-master of the amplified freak-out, and singer Steve Rigot, a flamboyant transgender giant from the shores of southern Indiana who reinvented himself as a Warhol Factory superstar. Like Scarlett O"Hara wrapped in a green velvet curtain, Rigot crafted his own glamorous reality from what was available in the blasted cultural landscape of 1970"s Kentucky. Gold spray paint, duct tape, Ace bandages ... a spectacularly other trailblazer who caused folks to toss their received ideas of beauty and go with the new thing instead. The band first took the stage in late 1978 and was finished by the summer of 1980. In the fall of 1979 they recorded six tracks at a Louisville studio, four of which came out on a 7" EP on their own Tuesday Records. The two remaining tracks ("White Glove Test" and "Trick or Treat") were issued as a single on Self Destruct records in 1991. Both records are among the rarest of any American punk release - more sought after than seen, passed on disintegrating cassette tapes and shouted over upon impact. The music of The Endtables is another chapter in pure American weirdness, as jaw-locking today as the day it was recorded. The scent of modern can be detected in Steve Rigot"s remote vocalese, set against Alex Durig"s guitar outbursts, while drummer Steven Jan Humphrey and bassist Albert Durig (age fifteen!) supply frenzied rhythm. The band rocks its fevered vision to a ferocious degree while Rigot grimly rhymes the truths that remained locked out of the public"s pop tastes in "79-"80. Thirty years of rap and roll later, The Endtables seem inevitable.

When it comes to musical discovery, sometimes the stars just align. DJ and record collector, Steve KIW, put Mr Bongo onto this amazing Chilean cover version of Jamie Principle & Frankie Knuckles' all-time classic 'Your Love'. Despite being originally released 13 years ago, it had recently started to prick the ears of house and Balearic connoisseurs in the UK, further cemented by inclusions in the Idjut Boys epic sets. Steve heard them play it, tipped us off and it soon became a favourite at Mr Bongo HQ.



By pure chance when the Mr Bongo DJs joined Luke Una to play at La Paloma ballroom in Barcelona a few weeks later, Luke dropped this incredible interpretation at the peak of his set. A good friend of his, Michelle from Huddersfield, had also put him onto the track and he instantly fell in love. A serendipitous coming together, 'Tu Amor' seemed like the perfect next instalment in the E Soul Cultura discography. The version in question was released in 2012 as part of a digital-only EP.



It came courtesy of the Chilean DJ, producer and singer Mamacita (Carolina Vallejos) and producer Sebastian Roman, aka Persona RS. Meeting Sebastian while out partying in Santiago during a boom time for electronic music in Chile, their shared passion for making house music in Spanish and their admiration for Frankie Knuckles led to the creation of this raw and unique cover version. Recorded on lo-fi equipment, including an old Windows laptop and a borrowed Neumann microphone, it nods to the DIY ethos of the early Chicago productions. The result is a stripped-back, quirky cosmic take on a stone-cold classic, full of squelching synthlines and Carolina's stunning Spanish vocals, that became a club hit on Chile's underground circuit. However, aside from some Latin American and US DJs picking it up, it never got the international recognition it deserved.



Fast forward to 2025, and E Soul Cultura is proud to present the glorious 'Tu Amor' on vinyl for the first time, backed with a new, extended, club re-edit by E Soul Cultura captain Luke Una and Luke Solomon (Classic Music). On first hearing 'Tu Amor' Luke Una recalls, There was a real charm to it, it was quite an unorthodox arrangement, a huge wonkiness and just sounded so DIY in a brilliant way. I was chatting to Luke (Solomon) about how much we loved it and we decided to re-edit it together. Accentuating the wonk of those crazy synths, we've extended it to make a fiercer underground club tool, without taking away that very charming cosmic feel.