quête:bla

Freshly signed artist named Ian Ash (also know as “H” and Sunny G) delivers a massive filtered boogie house track. So What U Want will also come with a Lord Funk remix which sound a bit more electro funk to blast the dancefloor.

This track is a radio killer and should be loved by many musiclovers including DJs, producers or simply people who like to listen to mainstream vocal house as French touch production. A bunch of samples and played instruments make it efficient and support the
sweet voice of the singer Djemaïli. He is known first as an R’n’B singer, but he liked to perform on this future classic – and you can hear it! Ian Ash is known as a resident DJ of the World-famous Montreux Jazz Festival where he has spun records yearly between 2001 and 2019. Including 1st and 2nd parts of George Clinton Parliament Funkadelic, Spearhead feat. Michael Franti, Doctor L, Tony Allen,Jean Grae, Raphael Saadiq, Will Calhoun, Common,Dj Cam, Mister Mike, Benji B, Souljazz, Andy Smith,Buddah Monk, Jimmy Cliff back band, Jamie Lidell, and Claude Nobs himself! He spun also at Cargo (London), SPACE (Ibiza), NL (Amsterdam), Divans du Monde
(Paris), etc. He surely is in the top 10 Funk DJs in Europe. He also has been stage and studio audio engineer for 2 decades and has mixed a couple of live artists such as Joe Sample, Mandrill or even AIR. He has mixed more than 90 concerts at Montreux Jazz Festival 2002 and deeply participated in producing 4 Days in Geneva by Ohmega Watts
more recently.

Pavlov’s Dog, the 70’s AOR / Prog-rock band, was an odd crew. The band combined guitar, keyboards, percussion and bass with mellotrons, flutes, and violins. Pampered Menial was their first album, originally released on ABC Dunhill and re-released on Columbia in 1974. At the time the band was signed, they received a $600,000 advance from ABC which was a record advance for any new group signed at that time. The songs “Julia” and “Theme From Subway Sue” received the most airplay. Pampered Menial is a crossover albums of 70’s hard rock and progressive rock and is strongly recommended to fans of either of those genres.

Available as a limited 45th anniversary edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on transparent & black marbled vinyl.

• 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• GATEFOLD SLEEVE WITH DELUXE LINEN LAMINATE
• LEGENDARY PROG-ROCK ALBUM FEATURING “JULIA” AND “SONG DANCE”
• LIMITED 45TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF 1000 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED COPIES ON TRANSPARENT & BLACK MARBLED VINYL

Gil Scott-Heron was one of the foremost singer-songwriters of his generation. A committed
civil rights activist that also wrote a couple of unusual novels exploring negative elements of
the black experience and the punitive societal attitude against black people in the United
States, Scott-Heron recorded an exceptional body of work during the 1970s and 80s, and
although longstanding issues with drug addiction resulted in repeated bouts of imprisonment
and an ultimately shortened lifespan, he continued to produce noteworthy material into the
new millennium. Anyone that had the pleasure of seeing Scott-Heron and His Amnesia
Express band during the mid-1980s is unlikely to forget it; percussionist Larry McDonald,
drummer Rodney Young, saxophonist Ron Holloway and backing vocalist/keyboardist Kim
Jordan provide a full yet uncluttered backdrop to the man and his piano, as evidenced by
these stunning excerpts from the summer 1986 tour, with “Winter In America,”
“Johannesburg,” “Blue Collar” and “Shut ‘Em Down” being among the standouts.

West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She's continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body's relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her most recent full-length, The Mosaic of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself. "I guess in one sentence, this album is my expression of love and appreciation for electricity," says Smith. While writing and recording, she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers. Not a dancer by any traditional definition, she taught herself improvisatory movement realizing flexibility, strength, and unexpectedly, a "visual language" stemming from the human body and comprised of vibrational shapes. Understood as cymatics, as Smith says, "as a reference for how frequencies can be visualized," much like a mosaic. Smith describes her first encounters with this mosaic; "the inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other...My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday...into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself." As it has arrived, in a completed state, The Mosaic of Transformation is a holistic manifestation of embodied motions. Smith's signature textural curiosity that fans have grown to adore pivots naturally into a proprioceptive study of melody and timbre. Airy organ and voice interweave with burbling Buchla-spawned harmonic bubbles. "The Steady Heart" quivers to life, peppering blasts of wooden organ between winding vocal affirmations. As with a body, moving one portion requires a balance and counterbalance; here, subtle tonal twitchy signals fire in conjunction with coiling arias to create a mesmeric core. When the beat arrives at the midway mark, a swooping and jittery waltz, a sense of stasis in motion, a flow state, is sonically achieved. As soon as it syncs, it disappears back into the swirling ebbs of electric force. Other tracks stray into more ruminative physical realms. "Carrying Gravity" is built around string-like pads that expand and contract like a solar plexus, becoming taught and then loose. If the record could be summarized in a single movement, it is the 10-minute closing suite, a rapturous collage called "Expanding Electricity." Symphonic phrases establish the piece before washes of glittering electric peals and synthesized vibraphone helix into focus. Soon, Smith's voice grounds it all with an intuitive vocal hook, harmonized and augmented by concentric spirals of harp-and-horn-like sounds. Smith's music doesn't capture a specific emotion as much as it captures the joys of possessing a body, and the ability to, with devotion and a steady open heart, maneuver that vessel in space by way of electricity to euphoric degrees.

- 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
- GATEFOLD SLEEVE
- ALBUM FEAT. SKRILLEX, EXCISION, DATSIK, NOISIA,
KILL THE NOISE, AND 12TH PLANET
- FIRST TIME ON VINYL
- LIMITED FIRST PRESSING OF 2.500 INDIVIDUALLY
NUMBERED COPIES ON COLOURED (SILVER AND
BLACK MIXED) VINYL

The Path of Totality is the tenth studio album by American nu metal band Korn. Originally released in 2011, the album finds Korn shifting gears and exploring new territory.

On The Path of Totality band collaborated with some of the leading dubstep and electronic producers in the world, including Skrillex, Excision, Datsik, Noisia, Kill the Noise, and 12th Planet. This resulted in something completely new, yet utterly and definitively Korn.

The title The Path of Totality refers to the fact that in order to see the sun in a full solar eclipse, you must be in the exact right place in the exact right time,' Korn frontman Jonathan Davis explained.

The album includes the singles Get Up!', Narcissistic Cannibal', Way Too Far' and Chaos Lives In Everything'.

The Path of Totality won Album of the Year at the 2012 Revolver Golden Gods Awards. This was Korn's first victory at the Golden Gods Awards, a ceremony that celebrates the best in hard rock and heavy metal music. Korn was also inducted into the Kerrang! Hall of Fame during the 2011 Kerrang! Awards.

Available on vinyl for the first time, the first 2500 individually numbered copies are pressed on coloured (silver and black mixed) vinyl! Strictly limited!

The Art Of Us (TAOU) begins with the story of Blair French, a cosmic messenger raised in a house of 7 on the outskirts of a historic city. From dancing at mom's disco parties at a young age, to releasing rap tapes in middle school, winning best soundtrack for the multi-award-winning film DETROPIA and hitting the Billboard charts with his Pure Sounds of Michigan compilation; ultimately French found a home in the world of all things Detroit, Pan-African, Balearic, and ambient. TAOU is his first instrumental LP under his own name, (despite a 25 year career), bringing together his closest musical compatriots.

Originally released in 2002, Comet is proud to present the legendary album Homecooking, reissued with a remastered version. Tony Allen talks about the album: After Black Voices and Psyco on Da Bus albums, I came back with HomeCooking which was an album filled with guests. I brought in Ty, who had remixed some of my work previously, to rap on the record, and Damon Albarn, who had already sung about me on 'Music is my Radar'. Since the early days I've been trying to find things that everybody will want to listen to. I've always been pushing Afrobeat in different directions. Here's another one again, another style, almost clean but still rough, raggedy and radical.''

This record is about absence. Absence of change, of better days, of delights and pleasures that are still to be invented. Longing for better times, missing something that hasn’t happened yet but needs to come, being nostalgic of the future like a cold empty bed longs for warm bodies. Cause the present is resisting, holding on to the comfortable violence of the status quo, closing the castle’s gates ; trying to keep its land, its power and its crown. We can already feel the breeze of the unknown, the urge of better times slowly unfolding, the flames getting stronger.But we’re not there yet. The road will be long and exhausting. I feel like I have been waiting for you in this cold empty bed for a hundred years already and I can’t wait to set it on fire.
Known for his dilapidated vocal electronica and releases on Jealous God, Blackest Ever Black and L.I.E.S.,
December returns to Veyl with ‘A Hundred Years Without You’,

Blocaus series is back with it's 8th release, "Gods & Robots" EP by rising French artist Ruhbarb for his debut EP on the label. Involved with labels such as Materia and Odd Oven, Ruhbarb's sound is a mixture between techno, dub and ambient, nurturing a tone that is driving, groovy and dark, but always loaded with great emotional depth. Part of a promising new generation of French producers and DJ's, Ruhbarb delivers 4 fantastic cuts in his own personal style including on the B side two killer remixes from Answer Code Request and Antigone.

To challenge the leader of the five element ninjas, Shaw Cuts lines up a heavy squad on the next record, armed with versatile remixes of Farron's "Five Element Ninjas EP": Pugilist, Substance, Jonas Friedlich and Realitycheck.

First off the mark, Pugilist launches into battle dealing forceful blows with his version of "Liquid Shorts". Whirlwind breaks, sharp drum patterns and cavernous chords, lacerate the ninja leader. The heat is on!

Substance rolls in to support, shredding the field with his remix of "Contaship". With blood-spattered pads, a gargantuan rolling groove and harmonic synth elements, he brings the villain to his knees.

Jonas Friedlich blazes in with his remake of "Brooklyn Banks", catching the leader off-guard with dirty Hip-Hop rhythmics, swirling vocals and twist of the original's lead synth. The leader lurches forward...

Realitycheck furiously steps into the clash. His remix version of "It's Only 4 Life" circles the field, its propelling rhythm and floating percussions closing in on the enemy.

The target surrounded, attacking from four sides with full force and allegiance, they execute the ninja leader in one sweep.
The battle leaves them with deep scars, but suffering, like fate and death, is part of life. And through it, the strongest souls emerge.

GROUNDSWELLS’ is the third chapter in Wren’s seasonal lore exploration, and their first through Gizeh Records. These six melancholy-shrouded sonic ruminations swell between intimate performances devoid of adornment, and evolving soundscapes of auditory ruin. Tracing an elemental arch, 'GROUNDSWELLS' captures Wren delving into earthen awakenings.

Launching into a monochromatic dirge, ‘Chromed’ announces the LPs stylistic intentions, forgoing the trappings of traditional harmony with deliberate pendulums of pitch and tone. Swarms of percussion drag the track to its conclusion in a collage of insidious feedback, with oscillations sculpted by the record’s producer, Scott Evans of Kowloon Walled City.

Elsewhere, swift variance is displayed in Wrens’ deft handling of genre and form, refusing to be solely one of either. The record courses between rigid post-punk, broad waves of dreaded sludge, and austere choral reverberations. Pulsating Krautrock themes present in their previous work are revisited, with a focus on embracing archetypal motorik technique, as the LP stretches compositions to their furthest tensions through profuse repetition, straining the cracks between.

Inviting physical, elemental surrounds into ‘Subterranean Messiah’, Wren allow space for the sudden cloudburst of Middle Farm Studios in the introductory passage via location recording, embracing the interplay between source and locality. Combined with the painterly fretwork and ghostly chants of Fvnerals, the collaboration seeks an emotive new path of melodic vulnerability. In contrast, the closing elegy is layered with disharmonious cycles of agonised cello from Jo Quail. As with other conclusions on the LP, the track's commitment to strained repetition is rewarded with sonic climaxes of blackened psychedelia, led by stalagmitic spirals of atonalism.

Throughout the LP, Wren draws from their long-standing apologue, with a partnership of vocalists showcasing a lyrical and vocal interplay thick with a dense lore new to their compositions. 'GROUNDSWELLS' brings Wren to an equinox in their earthly contemplations. Ruminating on the decaying inanition that engenders renewal, this record is a revelry in the cyclical, repetitious infinity of planetary permanence.

It's been three years since the last vinyl by Ntogn was unveiled and now we're glad to share with you the result of his venture through the recent winter.

'Smedjan' is inspired by the dwarven craftsmanship of Norse mythology. It is made completely with organic sounds gathered from, and recorded in, the forests of Bålsta which is rich with northern heritage. Everything you hear is either processed textures of birch wood blocks, layers of a custom made Ukrainian artisan mouth harp or the artist's own voice.

There is no synthesis in this record. The kick drums are made by hitting these pieces of wood against each other with contact microphones. Bass layers are extracted from bark scraping against bark. Hi hats are crafted by recorded fire of the same wood logs burning and ambiance is built from the forests where the trees grew and from the woodshed where the artist chopped the wood during winter to keep his cabin warm. The rhythms and sounds in this shed is what inspired the making of this record.

By shaping these sounds of wood and metal Ntogn strives to create a sonic experience that connects the listener to the old Norse stories of the dwarven craftsmanship of Svartalfheim. It is they who made the famous trinkets and weapons that empower the gods of Asgård through stories of trickery and despair which has later inspired tales and literature for over a thousand years.

The record has been distilled from material that was meant to become a two-hour live set specifically made for Mo:dem festival which was unfortunately cancelled due to the corona pandemic. It was also the foundation of the artist's thesis at the university of sound design where he made a study of the effects of organic sound on an electronic expression such as techno music.

It will be released digitally and as a 200 copy limited edition black vinyl adorned with an artwork drawn by the artist's partner Gabriella Holmström using the ashes of the same birch wood blocks that was used to make the sonic content.

The record has received early support from Francois X, Takaaki Itoh, Abstract Division, BLNDR and Rambadu to name a few.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Ntogn en'togg-n is a conceptual electro-acoustic project developed by Hypnus Records' founder and sound design graduate Michel Iseneld (b. 1988, Sweden). It aims to breath life into a fascination for magic with the use of contemporary and classic sound design techniques. This has resulted in what Resident Advisor's William Lynch describes as 'fierce, artistic techno that sounds like little else out there' and a discography ranging from earth-shattering techno to dark, throbbing ambient excursions.

After spending nearly three years in isolation, deeply lost in literature on history, philosophy, occultism and epic fairy-tales; Michel developed an inner world which eventually found an outlet through the means of music in 2013. By the use of field recordings and various samplings of his voice and surroundings, something peculiar sprouted as his inner images started to manifest and mature into an organic sound inspired by the emerging hypnotic deep techno scene.

Today, all music is released on his own imprint Tome in order to preserve the projects' artistic freedom and originality. After two years of sound design studies at the university and a new-found passion for modular synthesis; there's plenty of music in store aimed to satiate the curious minds.

Debut solo album from Danny Woods – The Chairmen Of The Board singer, during a stretch when the band temporarily disbanded
1972 reissue of this soul classic originally releases on the Holland Dozier Holland’s Invictus label Highlights include the singles ‘Let Me Ride and ‘Roller Coaster’ and ‘Two Can Be As Lonely As
One’, ‘It Didn’t Take Long’. Reissued on 140g black vinyl with original artwork and printed inner sleeve

‘A celebration of the ever-expanding and evolving label family, LLI008 comprises an LP, a fifty-odd-page booklet (and eight page photobook and insert), further digital tracks and some web-based stuff contributed by friends new and old from far and wide.’

"I am sitting in a garden, I haven't left the property in weeks, someone is dropping off food once a week. I haven't seen a human being in ages, I feel like a reverse Schroedinger cat - do I exist when nobody sees me? I must be somewhere in France but I don't remember. I have lost my consciousness again. When I wake up I hear a broken record looping somewhere in the mansion. A washed-out opera. Behind the trees I see the dilapidated hermaphrodite sculpture in a field of verdant nettles and fern. I hear gunshots far afield, aeroplanes in the sky, sirens on the main road.
When unconscious I dreamt of sitting on the Concorde observing the scarab blue ocean and iridescent clouds from above, an erstwhile receding memory. Sometimes I hear the organ of the nearby Renaissance Cathedral merging with the Russian Church bells.
I am hallucinating again. Someone's humming in the kitchen? Singing? A Radio? I overhear two young women talking about art galleries in the neighbour's garden. Bees attack, again…..again and again. The hairspray finally intoxicates them. An amphoric japanese voice is whispering in my head saying I will die soon. Someone (something?) bangs on the vases. The fountain's water turns dark red.
Fleur calls and says mum died. The funeral will be televised on tuesday. We opt for the synthetic choir for the service. The call is suddenly interrupted. Mold is slowly taking over the house.
I go back inside."

Une Fille Pétrifiée is the debut album of new Black To Comm related entity Mouchoir Ètanche (after one recent 12" on Richter's own Dekorder label). Combining real and fake acoustic instrumentation, sampling, field recordings and excessive yet inaudible post production this is another sublime and ethereal statement. Influences are ranging from (French) Classical & Opera to the anecdotical compositions of Luc Ferrari, Chinese Opera, Chanson, Sacred Music / Church Music, JG Ballard and Surrealism.

Marc Richter records as Black To Comm for Thrill Jockey, Type and Dekorder and as Jemh Circs for his own Cellule 75 imprint. He also produces soundtracks and acousmatic multichannel installations for institutions such as INA GRM Paris, ZKM Karlsruhe and Kunstverein Hamburg.

The album title pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock with Eminem tweeting the below following the album release.

A 38 minutes exorcism, dionysac sexyness fueled with romanticism, made of mechanical incantations mixed with spectral vocals of forgotten imaginary tribes, words from a physicist (Incomprehensible Image), and mystical breathings… To remind you that music is demanding your soul and body, fully.

A master irritator, disclosing this talent all the way, down to every chosen title, for the album itself and all of its components (would you put Milk in Water ?). As repetitive or minimalist music may already make some of you feel nervous, it seems more accurate to talk here about primitive music – notwithstanding a non violent anarchism. But those are only words and vain attempts to attach TLT to a region or a family. Neither the burden of classical European music legacy, which eventually lead to pop music, seemed to interfere with his wild mind, and if it is no surprising to hear Bach in German electronic music, there is here a clear statement that you are out of this sirupy prison…

For D.W. is a sorcerer. He’s been empirically learning the speaking of trance with years of touring and experimenting with all kinds of audience and venues, from clubs to museums, from Mongolia to Brazil, from his performances with his bands Kreidler or Toresch to solo ones, sustained by a steady limited set up, as the one used when he’s recording : one MPC, rudimentary synths, few effects and a mixer. No sound engineer on stage as only he knows his secret language… Raw dubmaking, leaning towards hip hop, indubitably underlining here a significant distanciation from his previous industrial inspirations. The bewitchment of this record is operating with no warning from the very first seconds until the last epiphany of Sales Pitch.

He is using his knowledge of techno, psychedelism (Inverted Sea), UK bass (Jumping Dead Leafs), only to bring you out of it. We all tend to be slaves, without even being conscious about it, and a balance must be existing between being a slave and showing off. Mr. Weinrich’s answer is unsettling because it is an utter call to this balance, in our world of black and white and political correctness. There is no morality in music… Don’t expect anything else than an unaccountable liberating immediate experience. Don’t expect any kind of music because you are already in the past or the future… From his recording technique mainly relying on one takes, his adoration of mistakes and jeopardy, to the core essence of repetitive music, it is all here about being in the present. No ears no glasses.

Black Vinyl Edition

RAWAX proudly presents Ricardo Villalobos - AsloHop EP!
We are more than happy to welcome The Mastermind back on our label!

Three’s a charm, as they say. After „Waste The Time“ and „Socialo Blanco“ „Money“ completes Daniel Meuzard’s Feater triptych. Again joined by the likes of Eric Owusu and Sam Irl and their musical as well as technical skills, as well as by the lovely voice of Vilja Larjosto, the ageless beauty and intellectual brilliance of „Money“ is impossible to resist. It could have been imagined, written and recorded almost anytime in the last 50 years. Inspired or - better put - troubled by the rise and transformation of capitalist systems, fatalism, extravism, climate change and - surprise - the power, corruption and lies revolving around money, its topic is anything, but bubblegum. The music though, is ranging from powerful songs to clever synth experiments. Incredibly executed with a perfectly wonderful result. And even if Daniel writes that there is „no need to worry, I want you to panic“, we want you to listen to this album, while you do so! Hats off to Feater. „

Marilyn Manson returns with his eleventh studio album WE ARE CHAOS via Loma Vista Recordings. Co-produced by Manson and GRAMMY® Award winner Shooter Jennings Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker, the ten-track opus was written, recorded, and finished before the global pandemic. Manson heralds the record’s arrival with the title track and lead single “WE ARE CHAOS.”

Manson’s painting, Infinite Darkness, which can be seen on the album cover, was specifically created to accompany the music. His fine art paintings continue to be shown all over the world, including gallery and museum exhibitions from Miami to Vienna to Moscow.

Manson says of the album, “When I listen to WE ARE CHAOS now, it seems like just yesterday or as if the world repeated itself, as it always does, making the title track and the stories seem as if we wrote them today. This was recorded to its completion without anyone hearing it until it was finished. There is most definitely a side A and side B in the traditional sense. But just like an LP, it is a flat circle and it’s up to the listener to put the last piece of the puzzle into the picture of songs.

“This concept album is the mirror Shooter and I built for the listener - it’s the one we won’t stare into. There are so many rooms, closets, safes and drawers. But in the soul or your museum of memories, the worst are always the mirrors. Shards and slivers of ghosts haunted my hands when I wrote most of these lyrics.

“Making this record, I had to think to myself: ‘Tame your crazy, stitch your suit. And try to pretend that you are not an animal’ but I knew that mankind is the worst of them all. Making mercy is like making murder. Tears are the human body’s largest export.”

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Ashioto, the first international solo release from Japanese drummer-percussionist-composer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. Active for over a decade, Yamamoto has performed and recorded extensively with artists such as Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, as well as participating in innumerable improvised and ad hoc groups.

Ashioto presents two wide-ranging pieces that combine Yamamoto’s percussion work with piano, field recordings, electronics, and contributions from guest musicians Daisuke Fujiwara and Eiko Ishibashi.

Beginning with a passage of chiming metal percussion, the first side slowly builds into a rolling, open groove reminiscent of Yamamoto’s work on Eiko Ishibashi’s acclaimed Drag City LP The Dreams My Bones Dream. Spacious piano and synth notes, along with Ishibashi’s spare melodic figures on processed flute, hover above this propulsive rhythmic foundation, the whole effect adding up to a more abstract take on the area explored on Rainer Brüninghaus’s ECM classic Freigeweht. The LP’s second side opens up a cavernous space filled with ominous electronics and shimmering metallic percussion, which organically transitions into a passage of rumbling piano chords and mysterious concrète sound. Later in the piece, Daisuke Fujiawara’s saxophone enters, playing melancholic melodic fragments that are looped and layered, creating a seasick swaying effect familiar to listeners of James Tenney’s works with tape delay systems. Beginning as delicate bass drum pulses, Yamamoto’s accompanying percussion eventually builds the piece into a raging torrent of free-improv splatter, processed sax and fizzing electronics.

Though grounded in instrumental performance, Ashioto is very much a studio construction, making inventive use of electro-acoustic principles in its editing and mixing. Together with its sister Ashiato – a different take on the same ‘script’ released simultaneously on Japanese label Newhere – Ashioto demonstrates to an international audience for the first time the true breadth and ambition of Yamamoto’s work.

Mastered by Jim O’Rourke. Cover photos by Kuniyoshi Taikou. Design by Lasse Marhaug.

Triangulating a slinky signal to a square mile off the Swan River, Glowing Pin bring us ‘Pentagon Palette’, a master blast of frequency adjusted house, swamp stomp and chakra charmers from Australian newcomer Jonus Eric.

Though opening brace ‘The Cult’ and ‘Collect’ made first contact back in 2014, a loose connection between Perth and Hamburg hindered progress before ‘Mirrors’, ‘Emulator’ and ‘Waterfall’ walked across the web in 2019 to round out a dope debut release from this house auteur. Specialising in mind altering sound design and melodic flair, Jonus generates a neon swamp on ‘The Cult’, serving up a psychoactive roller caked in radioactive fuzz and insectile fizz. Thick bass swells and circular marimba make for a hypnotic rhythm, while a shapeshifting vocal and moody keyboard riff drag us back towards terra firma. The paradisiac refrain of ‘Collect’ soon sounds out through the jungle with a euphoric haze,

its sub-tickling bass and acid gurgle riding hyperactive drum programming as the track warps in the humidity. Soaked in serotonin and brisk at 137 BPM, ‘Mirrors’ burns off the mist to offer an airy update on the French Touch template. Though frazzled circuitry and dislocated vox serve this one with a twist, the chiming pianos and bouncy beat are still best enjoyed in a Golf GTI in the summertime. Jonus reaches for the lasers via the restless rhythm and rave sirens of ‘Emulator’, a fresh take on the funky house of the late nineties updated with unexpected breaks, squealing feedback and treated vocals usually found on a Four Set banger.

Next it’s off to the chillout room for ‘Waterfalls’, a fourth-world tone poem describing crystal caves, undiscovered wildlife and a holographic waterfall. Ditching the doof, and letting those colours tesselate, Jonus offers a +2 bump to your mana, before the post punk bassline, growling EBM vocal and off key organs of ‘YR Mind’ combine for a confrontational bonus track, only available in digital format.

Auf seinem zweiten Album "Neurofire" treibt L.A. Producer und FadeToMind-Betreiber Kingdom seine Suche nach schnellere, turbulentere und experimentellere Club- und Popmusik voran und fusioniert deepen aund aggressiven Club-Bass mit synkopiertem Scifi-Pop- und -R&B der Marke Timbaland und DanjaHandz, ohne dabei sein Faible für emotionale Synths und Vocals zu vernachlässigen. "Neurofire" bietet darüberhinaus ein Feuerwerk an Features von jungen Talenten wie Ghost, Kayla Blackmon, Tiara Thomas, Pheona, UNIIQU3, Semma, LUVK und Tre Oh Fie.

2023 Repress

STAR CREATURE’s first compilation featuring unreleased tracks and new mixes by label favorite’s E. LIVE, GIOVANNI DAMICO, SHIRO SCHWARZ, OURRA, SAUCY LADY, PROH MIC, AMALIA AND KUTKORNERS. Limited to 500 copies and should move pretty fast.

Washington collective, The 3 Pieces, privately-pressed Iwishcan William on their own DL Records in 1982. The 12 has Discogs, for one, confused. Is it soul, rap, jazz, go-go, funk, electro, or educational? By nature of its birthplace and date of birth, it`s all of those.

Synths shimmer in harp-like glissando. The bass grumbles, rumbles, machine-made. The beat pops and locks. The whole thing grooving and exuding positivity. One part the cosmic funk of say Cloud One`s Patty Duke. Another, the balearic chug of Will Powers` Adventures In Success. Like Brother D it looks to “agitate, educate, and organize”, and stirs in the sentiments of Razzy`s I Hate Hate. Imagine if the Last Poets jammed with sister Sarah Webster Fabio. Keys parp like car horns, a real trumpet blows a Don Cherry solo, but the track really revolves around its sweet Sesame Street call-and-response chorus:

“I wish love. I can love. I will love. I am love.”

Swiss gentleman DJ and Phantom Island resident, Lexx, produces a killer remix - smoothing out the OG`s jerky edges, upping its sophistication. Making clear the contributions of Lexx` new bubbling electronics. rescuing a clipped guitar, previously lost deep in the mix, and moving the children’s voices to the fore. Ensuring you’ll remember that

““I am” is the glory of a wish come true.”

Idjut Boy Dan Tyler then ties up the package, well he actually kinda sends it out into space - expanding everything in echo. NYC Peech Boys-esque delay. The result is a mind-blowing, psychedelic, almost ambient, Larry Levan-like, Paradise Garage dub. Where fragments of song fly at you from four corners. Trippily pan from left to right. The horn blasts now paying tribute to King Tubby`s Hi-Fi. François Kevorkian going bang!

All carefully mastered with love from the original master tapes by Sam Berdah at The Wall studios.

The second offering by Julie Carpenter’s textural orchestral entity Less Bells takes its title from a storied strain of decorative objects worn in remembrance of lost loved ones: Mourning Jewelry.
The album shares a similar mood of devotional pageantry, stirring ornamental laments born from a need to “create beauty out of grief.” Utilising an amalgam of strings, synthesisers, and choirs, the pieces ascend and descend in grand, glimmering arcs, ebbing from passages of “baroque complexity” to expanses of haunting emptiness. Certain songs also skew more overtly western than ever before, deeply reverbed plucks of banjo refracted against glowing horizons of sunrise drone: Americana gone ambient.

Furthering the music’s mystic intentionality, the track titles comprise “the major arcana of a tarot deck from an alternate universe,” lorded over by the “Queen Of Crickets,” ruler of “The Gates,” “The Fault,” and “The Fang.” Even so, the record requires no psychic divination to glean its fragile majesty, its muted tumult of mirage and melody. The beauty it possesses is too blatant, and bountiful.

When Upset The Rhythm released Normil Hawaiians’ lost album ‘Return Of The Ranters’ back in 2015, the band members got back in touch with each other after a 30 year break and starting playing music together again. Out of this the group played a launch show for the album and followed that up with more concerts, including an appearance at Supernormal, a residency at the Edinburgh Festival, gigs at Cafe OTO and supporting Richard Dawson in London too. They even recently toured Greece in support of having all three of their renowned exploratory post-punk albums finally back in print.

Throughout this time, Normil Hawaiians revisited their original songs for these live performances. However for a group always so interested in evolving their sound and seeking nuance, it comes as no surprise that they shirked the idea of a faithful retread of old material in favour of reimagining their songs. The group experimented by pushing their songs into new inventive dimensions, still progressive at heart, but now imbued with a cosmic uncanny. A cinematic, even pastoral approach that was always quietly present has come to the fore. The quaint weirdness of folk song, the humanity of communal practice and the group’s ecological mindedness have all found a place in Normil Hawaiians’ current sound world. With this conducive atmosphere brewing, the band’s first new songs in decades started to emerge.
Being far-flung across the UK, the Family Hawaii encamped to Tayinloan, a small village on the west coast of the Kintyre peninsula in Scotland with the intention of recording new music. They set up their own studio in an isolated, windswept house overlooking the sea and started the tape rolling. Noel Blanden from the band explains how the spirit of the location was such an inspiration to the group during this initial recording session: “Our time immersed in the place and the unique energy it generated in us allowed us to write ‘In The Stone’. It goes right back to our first album, this need to document experience before it passes over and eludes us. We were grabbing at the musical ether and letting it shape itself through the band.” From loose, improvised sessions and reflective periods of listening in Tayinloan, Normil Hawaiians captured the moment. ‘In The Stone’ is a motorik thrill of distorted guitars, locked rhythms and morphic resonance. Guy Smith is joined by Zinta Egle on vocals, skilfully sharing lyrics informed by Alan Garner and Nigel Kneale’s ideas around recurring events being linked to place and historical artefact;  a kind of residual haunting known as ‘Stone Tape’ theory. In keeping with the context of the song, sounds from several previous live recordings of the track were woven into its present being. Flipside ‘Where is Living?’ is a decidedly more delicate affair of questioning lyrics and eerie traces, droning strings and impressions smudged. This resultant 7” is a tantalising glimpse of Normil Hawaiians now, an echo from the past, an echo from the future.

Tape / Cassette
Brand new 70 mins blast from the Hair & Treasure crew pressed a double dung casing for your listening (dis)pleasure.

Recorded between 2017 - 2019 into Uncle Eddie's VHS player, magik happens inside the Archers boudoir.'

In the band’s own words:

‘’A clumsy wife with a tricky nose wants to feel deserving of her husband and a former male beauty pageant winner wants his out-of-place arm implants revised or removed.

Rating 6.2 “

Heavy Psych Sounds is really proud to announce a brand new series of split albums that will be called DOOM SESSIONS. We are going to release a bunch of compilations with doom bands from Heavy Psych Sounds roster featuring some of the heaviest bands of the world doom scene. Each volume will host two bands. This record you are holding is VOL. 2 - a split album with our heavy doom bands 1782 and Acid Mammoth. 1782 is premiering three brand new tracks "Bloody Ritual", "Hey Satan" and "Witch Death Cult". Acid Mammoth is releaasing three new tracks too: "Black Wedding", "Sleepless Malice" and "Cosmic Pyres".

In our latest chapter of Spiritual Jazz, we return to the source – the Impulse! label, and the monumental influence of its most prominent artist, John Coltrane.
Since the first release in the series back in 2008, we have mapped out the growth of the spiritual sound in jazz. Spiritually energised and politically conscious, the spiritual sound in jazz music is one of the most important currents in the music. Our series has charted the growth of the style from early experiments at Blue Note and Prestige to European excursions, exiled experimentalists, and sounds from across the globe. But whenever you think of spiritual jazz, it's a fair bet that the double exclamation mark and orange and black spine of Impulse quickly comes to mind. Home to John and Alice Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Yusef Lateef, McCoy Tyner and countless other musical pioneers, Impulse! was the most important and forward-thinking jazz label of the 1960s. With the music-first attitude of an independent but the clout of a major, producers Creed Taylor and Bob Thiele made Impulse the defining imprint of a crucial decade. They hand picked the top players of the moment and gave them freedom to record the music they wanted, setting out their stall with a bold slogan – 'The New Wave Of Jazz Is On Impulse!'

Here we dive deep into the Impulse! catalogue, bringing celebrated masterpieces from Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders into the arena, together with lesser known cuts from Phil Woods and John Klemmer as well as straight-up classics such from Yusef Lateef and Elvin Jones. Fifty years on and the new wave of jazz still sounds fresh, vibrant and as relevant as ever.

For anyone who can remember, Arca's &&&&& was a moment. Its 25-minute stretch of coiling, contorted grime and glitch; dub and hip hop dropped with the buzz of an impending co-production credit on Kanye West's Yeezus in 2013. It included cuts of sound and beats that were too weird for that pop project, while becoming a piece of experimental art that what would come to define what is by now broadly known as a `post-club' sound. It's music that is as visceral as it is experimental; made as much for the mind, as it is for the body. Released with no warning seven years ago, &&&&& became a bridge between Alejandra Ghersi's time partying and collaborating with her queer peers, while still living in New York to the next stage of her career releasing on Mute in London. She'd go from making beats for rapper Mykki Blanco and fashion label Hood By Air, posting lurching bass reworkings of pop hits on YouTube, and producing her first fluid mixtapes with DIS Magazine, to finishing off this seminal mixtape on the synths in Daniel Miller's studio. After dropping three impressive EPs the year before, &&&&& marked a transition. Continuations and extrapolations of material from Stretch 1 and Stretch 2 appeared in the mangled RnB sampling of "Century" and Arca's signature vocal layering in the pitched flow of "Waste". Along with the fluttering, muted heartbeat of "Obelisk", and the lumbering piano chords of "Mother", fourteen sonic sketches were elegantly woven together into a single, downloadable whole. As Alejandra's course turned toward moving to Europe from the United States, &&&&& became a remarkable challenge to the form of the mixtape, which was a relatively new trend taking hold of the online-oriented underground at the turn of the 2010s. But where many, if not most mixtapes where treated simply as a showcase of individual tracks presaging a more `official' release to come, &&&&& was a complete piece in its own right. "I wanted to make something that was my best work," Alejandra says about a record that has stood the test of time, "I listen to it very fondly today." This reissue of Arca's 2013 debut mixtape &&&&& features an etching on side B of the vinyl.

Led by French B3 Hammond maestro Guillaume Metenier and featuring an all-star lineup of musicians from the extended Mocambo fam, Pigalle Connection connect the dots between instrumental funk, b-boy breaks and cinematic soundscapes. After their celebrated and battle proven 45 "Paris Breakdown", this fantasy funk supergroup is finally back with a new double delight on 7 inch wax.

"Casino & Church" / "Vendetta James" is a nod to Peter Thomas and Ennio Morricone, two massively influential score composers who both sadly passed away in 2020. A-side "Casino & Church" is a blistering blend of afro-boogie, breakbeat funk, blaxploitation and eurocinema, led by hypnotic percussion and an infectious guitar. Flip to the B-side for "Vendetta James", where Mediterranean funk meets Italo Western and b-boy breaks in a sequence of hazy atmospheres and alluring moods.

Recorded live to 8-track tape with vintage equipment and instruments, both sides of Pigalle Connection's new 45 showcase the band's unique sound and deep appreciation for great film scores and heavy funk.

Hypnoskull is part of the global anti-music conspiracy networkTM (since 1992). Hypnoskull was created in 1992 as a solo project in order to experiment in the area of electronic noise combined with rhythmical structures. In the first years of its existence, Hypnoskull was releasing cassettes and tracks on international labels in the so-called cassette network, a widely spread network of independent and experimental musicians and artists who expressed themselves throughout limited tape releases often including artworks, ideas, texts. In 1998, hypnoskull signed to the German label ant-zen and up to today he is still releasing his albums on this highly influential record label. That is not a coincidence: ant-zen stands for ‘anti-zensur’ (anti-censorship), one of the main starting points of the provocative hypnoskull project. Patrick Stevens does not limit himself to just producing music as such, albums always include a severe message, a thought-provoking underlying concept text, questions. The main philosophy: ‘the dance floors, the clubs, the festivals,… are staged warzones with a different set of rules – a therapeutic zone where hidden anger and even aggression of both the artists as well as the spectators can be released in a proper, human way. Music as a means to open up the deepest anger inside human beings, letting it out in a way which is not harmful to others. A strange symbiosis between the two worlds Patrick Stevens is a part of: the techno and the industrial scene. Techno being a genre promoting a peaceful yet hedonistic way of life, industrial on the other hand being a highly nihilistic, philosophic but pitch black reflection on society. The mix of both musical as well as content wise elements of these genres result in what hypnoskull is all about. Added to this an explosive mixture of post-war and contemporary western subversive philosophy – in a rather impulsive manner – makes the project what it is today, after 30 years of existence.

Repress!

Wewantsounds presents this reissue of Billy Brooks' much sought-after album 'Windows Of The Mind', released in 1974 on Ray Charles' Crossover Records. It includes one of the most famous samples in hip hop history in the form of 'Fourty Days' which forms the backbone of A Tribe Called Quest's 1990 anthemic "Luck of Lucien". Newly remastered, the reissue comes with original artwork.

* The original sister label to Ram Records from the old Ram HQ studio in Essex, Liftin Spirit Records now celebrates it’s 25th year with a special ‘RELOADED’ limited vinyl series of remastered classics, alongside rare and previously unreleased tracks since the beginning in1992.

* DATs from artists such as Andy C, Ant Miles, Shimon, Joint Venture, Interrogator and Red One have been located in the archives. Also from the Ram & Liftin HQ came tracks for the Deep Seven label in 1993 and all these rare DAT masters have been located and now re-cut by Simon, the original Ram & Liftin vinyl masterer at ‘The Exchange’. Initially, Deep Seven remasters will present on a printed white label and unreleased tracks will have a black label.

* The 6th release on the celebrated Deep Seven Records label was the last Desired State production to emerge out of the Ram/Liftin Spirit HQ. Under the alias ‘Faze Lock’, 2 more 1993 Hardcore rollers emerged in the form of 'Come Again' and 'Feel It'.

At the end of the 90s, a movement began in West London that birthed a fresh direction in dance music. Though this movement never got mainstream press coverage, never had a crossover chart single, and never really transcended its community roots, there was a unique alchemy at work - a fertile moment of creativity, where a group of friends began to experiment with new cadences, rhythms and distilled influences, crafting a new direction in the attics and bedrooms of their neighbouring postcodes. Their music was a head-on collision between the sounds they had been raised on; the reggae sound system culture of Notting Hill Carnival, the sophistication and sheen of Electro-Funk, Jazz Fusion, Soulful House and Disco, the Afro-Beat sounds of Tony Allen and Fela Kuti, and the raw minimalism of early Hip Hop. Though "Broken Beat" was never a tagline that the producers anticipated, and one that they often publicly resisted, those two words would gradually come to represent the scattered rhythms, rolling basslines and soaring changes that were inherent to this exciting new sound. It's not clear who first coined the term "Broken Beat", but try to imagine how it felt to hear it for the first time; the production was grounded in MPCs and SP1200s, the hand-me-down samplers of the Hip-Hop and Jungle golden eras, and the drums that tumbled out of these machines at the hands of these creators had a jagged, stuttering feel, almost as though the groove was close to collapse.