Buscar:country

Hip Horns Brass Collective presents Brassvillain, a tribute to the cult album Madvillany by MF DOOM and Madlib with the collaboration of Las Ninyas del Corro, Ana Tijoux, Escandaloso Xpósito and Rodrigo Laviña. The catalan brass band covers iconic songs like Figaro, Meat Grinder or All Caps, with the metallic explosion that characterizes them and the voices of some of the best artists on the current rap scene. Daniel Dumile, aka, MF DOOM is not only a musical reference, but also the illustrations that accompanied his project have a great role in the history of hip hop. For this reason, Brassvillain is also a great graphic epic where the versatile artist Hermes LeBleu displays all his versatility. In the featurings appears HO$$$ Benítez, one of the most renowned drummers on the hip hop scene, who has already accompanied them on their previous releases, “The Dream” and “Thunder”. The production is by Hip Horns together with one of the best bassists and musicians in our country, Tito Bonacera, making this tribute a multidisciplinary meeting point between artists who grew up with the masked hero. On the B side we have two new singles from the band, BRAM! and Mulligan, in which they unleash their full potential both in composition and in execution to prove once again that they are one of the leading brass bands of the moment.

The Japanese-born duo Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda relocated to New York and christened themselves with the band name Cibo Matto, which is Italian for “crazy food”. The band teamed up with drummer Sean Lennon, percussionist Duma Love and drummer Timo Ellis for their second studio album Stereo Type A, which was originally released in 1999. It was the last album before the group disbanded a few years later, until their 2011 reunion. With this album Cibo Matto received praise for combining styles and genres such as heavy metal, pop and hip hop, while the album was also described by critics as “eclectic, hot and funky”. It was the band’s way of breaking down stereotypes.

Rare groove is a world of many rare grooves, and this 7" is among them. It has been taken from Coming Right At You, the sole album by Chicago guitarist Danny Leake's nine-piece outfit 100% Pure Poison, which was originally released exclusively in the UK in 1974. 'Windy C' has spent decades as one of the genre's most revered cuts - it's sophisticated, soulful and endlessly sampled and the flip's 'No More City, No More Country' is just as beloved among diggers and is prized for its irresistible rhythm and distinctive percussion break. This is the first time it has ever appeared in its full-length form.

This album is a glimpse into the creative outpouring from Todd in September and October of 2025. He returned to the Purple Building in East Nashville to perfect what he called “the sound of country music 10 years from now”. This meant taking his favorite country music tropes, dismantling and reassembling them over stretched-out, swampy grooves with New Orleans-style horns. He was so sure of this sound, feel, and his studio band's pliability that he insisted on recording his vocal and guitar first, with no accompaniment or click track. Todd wanted the band to record after him, so they would HAVE to follow his lead wherever it went. In his mind, he was attempting to write and record a double album. His excitement over the recordings and the push to capture that much material meant that by mid-October, Todd had recorded his vocal, guitar and the band's rhythm section for at least an album’s worth of material, with plans to continue recording. Sadly, Todd passed away before the remaining overdubs and additional songs could be completed. Fortunately all the notes, directions and encouragement he left behind in the form of emails, voice memos and demos provided an extensive roadmap for his band. Following that roadmap as closely as possible, his band was able to complete Todd's last work, My Second Rodeo, Part 1.

Moulded By Industry is William D Drake's six album, his first for ten years and a return to the richly layered sonic texture and epic production of his majestic Briny Hooves. He is joined by long time collaborators James Larcombe, Dean Gaisburgh-Watkyn and Steve Jackson, with the addition of a new crew member, singer Treana Morris. Moving on from his nine years of pianistic and compositional duties in Cardiacs, Drake's solo work has been known for its synthesis of Mellotron-driven grandeur with a surreal playfulness.

But the deep heart of Drake's work is in its powerful evocation of the landscape of the countryside and its connection with love, longing and loss. To this end, his own enigmatic lyrics have rubbed shoulders with poetry drawn from across the centuries. From obscure sources such as Samuel Spree to the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Rupert Brooke, his settings make old words shimmer with human emotion. The texture of his music also reflects an inspirational lack of concern for distances of time. The earthy breath of his harmonium is interwoven with tones teased from archaic instruments by James Larcombe – hurdy-gurdy, dulcitone and melodeon.

But Drake's sound-world is no museum. Here, ancient words and the timbres of ancient instruments become one with the rush of a moment's emotion. Moulded By Industry brings this approach a new sonic depth, intoxicatingly shaded by Treana's lush vocal harmonies and underpinned by Steve's rhythm. Dean's evocative guitar textures give an oceanic sense, tinged with Americana, recalling his work with Drake in their alt country band Nervous. These many layers of sound are drawn together into vivid soundscapes by the painterly mixing of producer Ott. Renowned for his work in electronica and dub, Ott's two decades of experience working with artists such as Sinéad O'Connor, the Orb and Brian Eno bring an organic touch here, more akin to the elemental forces of land and sky than grid electricity. More than any of Drake's previous albums, Moulded By Industry reignites the emotional urgency of old texts. The gorgeous single The Flickering Shade, haunted by glimmers of lost possibilities, is set from words by Thomas Ashe. Turtledove's heady evocation of the blissful madness of love sets the words of an anonymous 17th century ballad. above all, the album is a testament to Drake's love of John Clare, 'The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet'. Clare wrote as the centuries old process of enclosure, in which wild and common land was appropriated commercially, was accelerating.

His works, rather than representing simple sentimentality, are passionate love poems to the landscape and cries from a soul reeling from the creeping unfamiliarity devouring it. This sense of the tension between passion and ill-ease has its most potent expression in Green Shadows. The brooding, slow-tempo energy of Steve's drums drive a horizon-wide lament, alternately lulled by Treana's vocal textures and made restless by James' plaintive hurdy-gurdy and the emotive pull of Dean's slide guitar. The present moment is also a time of enclosure, both metaphorically, as our lives, memories and emotions are drawn into the commercial space of social media, and literally as land and water are swallowed by vast data centre developments. Moulded By Industry celebrates a regained sense of being in the moment in the landscape, in life and in love. The album closes with the utterly delightful single Love In The Universe. The kind of song that could make a cynic use the word 'joyous' without irony, this Harry Nilsson-esque romp reassures us, with a wink, that 'in an infinite universe everything has its place ... even the human race'.

Brazilian artist Rubel isn’t one to be pigeonholed and typecast into staying in one sound. Casas, the follow-up to his debut album Pearl from 2015, brought a bigger, more epic, and richer production quality to the table. Fusing the worlds of MPB and hip hop, Rubel’s sophomore LP built on the momentum of its predecessor, gaining a Latin-Grammy nomination along the way. Mr Bongo is proud to be giving Casas its first worldwide release on vinyl and CD outside of Brazil and Japan.

The cliché they say is that the second album is always the trickiest; however, Rubel doesn’t seem to have had any problems on Casas. It’s a fountain of creativity and originality, marking an artist in full flow.

Conceived after Rubel spent six months living in Los Angeles, Casas is MPB-leaning at its core but is also driven by a hip hop inspired pulse. There is a clear influence from hip hop’s aesthetic across the 2010s woven subtly but fundamentally throughout. Nods to Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, The Creator can be heard across an album full of playful edge and personality. Luscious string-led arrangements and tracks that explore the rich folkloric rhythms of Brazil, sit next to songs with low-fi drum machines and features from acclaimed Brazilian rappers.

One of the highlights of the album, ‘Mantra’, starts with a traditional Brazilian rhythm that morphs into a hazy hip hop beat. A sublime song with a hooky call and response chorus, it features a guest appearance and verse by the Brazilian MC Emicida. Another highlight is the epic ‘Colégio’ (College) which further showcases the melding of stripped back drum machine beats with cinematic, sweeping arrangements. Elsewhere, ‘Partilhar’ is a swaying, heartwarming hug. A tale of longing and love that has become a singalong fan favourite at Rubel’s concerts.

Casas also shines a light on a string of key players in Brazil’s new vanguard, such as Pedro Fonte, Gus Levy, and Brazilian rapper / poet Rincon Sapiência to name a handful. The record has pop sensibilities yet also feels underground. It beats with the heart of a singer-songwriter, a feeling that was felt so strongly on Pearl, yet this time is bolstered by a level of arrangement and richness of sound that take it to another dimension - soaring horn and string sections elevating the songs from home recording to stadium-ready anthems. Keeping that intrinsic beauty and simplicity of a well-constructed song yet reframing it within a pop context is the true gift of this album.

Casas cemented Rubel’s status as one of Brazil’s leading contemporary talents and a key figure enriching the country’s already effervescent scene.

Killer Groove Records presents a new 7" by Electric Circus, pairing "High Fever" and "Ogres": raw, hypnotic funk built on obsessive bass lines, sharp horns, dub delays and wah-wah guitars.

Both tracks are taken from Rites, the band's second studio album, out November 27 on limited-edition LP, CD and digital. The 7" is limited to 500 copies worldwide and is out September 25.
On the A-side, "High Fever" maps Electric Circus's territory: '70s funk, Afrobeat and psychedelia meet in a steady build toward a climax of synths and groove. The track grew from a bass line written over one feverish weekend and runs as a single continuous rise in tension.
The groove takes its cue from The Meters, locking syncopated accents into place while a punchy horn section cuts through from the opening bar. Dub delays and layered textures then open the arrangement out, trading space with wah-wah guitars and a treated clavinet that sounds vintage without dating the mix. After a darker, nocturnal passage, the saxophone rises over percussion and synths for the climax.

On the B-side, "Ogres" was the first track conceived for the album and the last to be completed. It began as a bass-and-percussion ostinato in an Ethiopian pentatonic scale, modelled on a war march, and grew into a dense groove with psychedelic and trip-hop textures. Its rhythm conjures a twilight bestiary of dark, menacing or perhaps merely curious creatures, building to a tense climax before resolving into a smooth, dreamlike finale that suggests awakening, or re-emergence.

Like the rest of Rites, both tracks started in jam sessions and were recorded in stages: live takes of the core arrangements first, then dedicated sessions for synths, horns and overdubs. Marco Sirio Pivetti engineered at Metrò Rec Studio in Riva del Garda, Gio Solo at Sberdia Studio in Turin. Overdubs were reamped through tube amplifiers and analog outboard. The band co-produced with Pivetti, who also mixed; Riccardo Ricci mastered at Velvet Room Mastering Studio in Brighton.

Electric Circus are based in Turin. They released their debut album, Canicola, in 2018 and have toured the U.S. Scoring Contrecourant (2021), a documentary series shot in Senegal and Mali, led them to Sahel Roots, a duo from the north of the country. The two groups recorded On est ensemble (Mieruba, 2023) remotely between Turin and Bamako, each writing two pieces for the other to finish.

For fans of The Heliocentrics, Calibro 35, BADBADNOTGOOD.

Singer-songwriter Willis Alan Ramsey was 20 years old when he became the third signing to Leon Russell and Denny Cordell's Shelter Records – after Russell himself and the legendary J.J. Cale. The result was Ramsey's 1972 eponymous debut, a masterpiece of laid-back Texas country-rock, blues-inflected folk and outlaw ballads.

As a child, Ramsey was an obsessive radio listener – from Elvis and the Beatles to Delta blues, country and even classical music. By middle school, he had formed his first garage band and started writing songs. After a brief stint at the University of Texas, he took to the burgeoning coffeehouse circuit where he toured alongside folks like Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker and Keith Sykes. It was during these shows that Ramsey developed much of the material for his LP, a diverse yet coherent mix that revealed his varied influences.

Recorded in Memphis, Nashville and at Russell's home studio in the Hollywood Hills, the album features some of the era's greatest session musicians: Eddie Hinton on guitar, Red Rhodes on pedal steel and the rhythm section of Leland Sklar and Jim Keltner. A true songwriter's songwriter album, its tunes have been covered by Waylon Jennings ("Satin Sheets"), Jimmy Buffett ("The Ballad of Spider John") and, most famously, Captain & Tennille ("Muskrat Love"), but no cover can beat the originals from the wise-beyond-his-years Ramsey.

Though Willis Alan Ramsey has continued to perform regularly and write new songs, a second album is yet to be released. For years, whenever someone asked about it, Ramsey was known to answer "What's wrong with the first one?" The answer is, of course, absolutely nothing. In fact, it's perfect.

This first-time vinyl reissue reproduces the original lyric sheet. Includes new interview with Ramsey and liner notes by author Richie Unterberger.

Inspired by the ska and reggae sounds crossing the border from Belize, the Mexican band Ely Combo was among the first in the country to incorporate Jamaican rhythms into its repertoire in the early 1970s. This single brings together two funk classics—Isaac Hayes’ ‘Shaft’ and the dancefloor favorite ‘Express Yourself,’ originally recorded by Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band—reimagined here as two explosive reggae tracks.

A remarkable anomaly within the Latin American music scene of the 1970s.

Rasante Gitarren, hämmernde Drums und eingängige, aber tiefgründige Texte. Das sind die Mittel, mit denen Pardoner seit über einem Jahrzehnt ihre ,Slacker"-Songs formen. Auf ihrem fünften Album ,Target Practice" verfeinern sie ihren Ansatz weiter, auf der Suche nach einem himmlischen Pop-Hit Ö. Da sie einen kulturellen Rückfall in Richtung Math-Rock und Prog spüren, ist dies ihr bisher geradlinigstes Album. Fehlende sind die überraschenden Blast Beats und Szenenwechsel, die die Markenzeichen von ,Came Down Different" (2021) und ,Peace Loving People" (2023) waren. Übrig bleiben 10 prägnante Songs, geprägt von verspielter Boshaftigkeit und Satire. Es ist schwer, inmitten der feindseligen Kräfte dieser Welt kein ,Blackpilled"-Doomer zu sein. Die Angriffe der Band auf pseudo-intellektuelle Hochkunst und Kollegen aus der Szene sind jedoch nicht frei von Selbstkritik. ,Driving across the country // Preaching bulls**t gospel" wird auf der Lead-Single ,Twisted" halb gesungen, begleitet von klirrenden Gitarrenklängen. ,Target Practice" - vom ,Record Store Final Boss" abgesegnet - ist eine moderne, spritzigere Interpretation des College-Rock der 80er/90er. Flying Nun, Smudge und die lautere Seite von Yo La Tengo sind alle im Geiste präsent. Die Single ,Don't Slouch" ist ein Versuch, einen Blessed-Virgins-Song auf Xanax-Art zu interpretieren. Wann wurde diese Band das letzte Mal auf einem One-Sheet erwähnt? Vor ihrem Album-Closer ,Changing Mags", bei dem die Band ihr Herz auf der Zunge trägt, covern sie die Nuggets-nahen The Barracudas, deren Text ,Target Practice" auf den Punkt bringt: ,Ich bilde mir das nicht ein, ich sehe die Zeichen. Wir leben in gewalttätigen Zeiten."

For more than 20 years, every CASPIAN album has been driven by a desire to stretch boundaries — a relentless ambition that's resulted in one of post-rock's most revered catalogs and established the Massachusetts quintet as an enduring, global force in the genre's modern era. On CASPIAN, the band’s first album in six years and debut for Wax Bodega, the more unexpected way forward was to stop searching for what they hadn’t yet done and instead trust what had defined them from the beginning.

The six-song, 39-minute effort draws freely from the musical vocabulary the band have spent their career writing: evocative melodic themes, dense textures, swelling crescendos and crushing heaviness that rolls in like a slow-moving storm on the horizon. But they still find new possibilities within those familiar contours, allowing patient development and repetition to carry as much weight as surprise. The nine-minute “Remain” turns a recurring melody into a sweeping study in tension and release, while “No One Left to Tell” layers subtle shifts around a hypnotic tremolo figure and “A Great Fire” sends serpentine guitars crashing into buzzsaw riffs. Even the graceful 3/4-time closer “Waltz for the End,” completed in a half-hour burst of inspiration, reflects the quiet confidence of five musicians comfortable enough in their skin to resist tearing everything down for the sake of reinvention, even as the circumstances surrounding them change dramatically.

For more than 20 years, every CASPIAN album has been driven by a desire to stretch boundaries — a relentless ambition that's resulted in one of post-rock's most revered catalogs and established the Massachusetts quintet as an enduring, global force in the genre's modern era. On CASPIAN, the band’s first album in six years and debut for Wax Bodega, the more unexpected way forward was to stop searching for what they hadn’t yet done and instead trust what had defined them from the beginning.

The six-song, 39-minute effort draws freely from the musical vocabulary the band have spent their career writing: evocative melodic themes, dense textures, swelling crescendos and crushing heaviness that rolls in like a slow-moving storm on the horizon. But they still find new possibilities within those familiar contours, allowing patient development and repetition to carry as much weight as surprise. The nine-minute “Remain” turns a recurring melody into a sweeping study in tension and release, while “No One Left to Tell” layers subtle shifts around a hypnotic tremolo figure and “A Great Fire” sends serpentine guitars crashing into buzzsaw riffs. Even the graceful 3/4-time closer “Waltz for the End,” completed in a half-hour burst of inspiration, reflects the quiet confidence of five musicians comfortable enough in their skin to resist tearing everything down for the sake of reinvention, even as the circumstances surrounding them change dramatically.

Fontaines D.C. announce their fifth studio album, Dopamine Chamber, released on 16th October via XL Recordings. Produced by James Ford, it is the follow-up to 2024’s UK platinum-certified Romance – and the sound of a band moving decisively away from the guitar language of their early records into something colder, stranger and more synthetic. It arrives today alongside lead single “Marianne” and its accompanying video, directed by Dave Meyers.

Dopamine Chamber arrives like a constellation behind undulating sighs of smog: potent balladry, anthemic melodies glinting through the murk. In a world tipping towards collapse, it asks how pleasure mutates amid peril—and what our pursuit of it reveals about us. Across the album, Fontaines D.C. – Grian Chatten, Carlos O’Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Tom Coll – move between gratification and dread until the two meld together, reflecting the overwhelm of artificial intelligence, environmental collapse and political violence all riding the same algorithms as memes, jokes and celebrity culture. “The album itself is a dopamine chamber,” says Chatten. “You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.”

Where Romance held its tension in balance, this record tips it. “I think Romance was maybe 60 per cent human and 40 per cent corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling,” says Chatten, who spent time among the faded grandeur of Venice, Vienna and Sicily in search of lyrical inspiration. “This one feels more like 60 per cent corrupted — the mask is wearing the face a little more.” He resisted any pull towards easy optimism: “I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.”

“Our albums have always questioned a sense of place,” says bassist Conor Deegan. “First Dublin, then being away from Dublin, and then trying to find the romance elsewhere. On this record, the question became: where do you escape to?” Into the self, perhaps – or hedonism, fantasy, cosmetic perfection, eternal youth or the endless refresh of a screen.

Fontaines D.C. have spent five albums refusing to repeat themselves – from Dogrel (2019) through A Hero’s Death (2020), the No. 1 Skinty Fia (2022) and the anarchic, kaleidoscopic Romance (2024). Dopamine Chamber is their most radical turn yet: cold synthesiser tones, marching drums, samples and triggers, several songs with no guitars at all, and the swooning strings of 1960s Italian pop pulled into something synthetic. For guitarist Conor Curley, the aim was to break from the band’s own reference points: “I was trying to find stuff that pointed into the future.” It was made with James Ford between London, the English countryside and Palermo, where Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions.

“There’s a poignant sense of us being on the brink of some other kind of form of humanity, or non-humanity,” says Chatten. For their fifth album, Fontaines D.C. have built the chamber. What happens to the listener inside it will be the experiment.

Fontaines D.C. announce their fifth studio album, Dopamine Chamber, released on 16th October via XL Recordings. Produced by James Ford, it is the follow-up to 2024’s UK platinum-certified Romance – and the sound of a band moving decisively away from the guitar language of their early records into something colder, stranger and more synthetic. It arrives today alongside lead single “Marianne” and its accompanying video, directed by Dave Meyers.

Dopamine Chamber arrives like a constellation behind undulating sighs of smog: potent balladry, anthemic melodies glinting through the murk. In a world tipping towards collapse, it asks how pleasure mutates amid peril—and what our pursuit of it reveals about us. Across the album, Fontaines D.C. – Grian Chatten, Carlos O’Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Tom Coll – move between gratification and dread until the two meld together, reflecting the overwhelm of artificial intelligence, environmental collapse and political violence all riding the same algorithms as memes, jokes and celebrity culture. “The album itself is a dopamine chamber,” says Chatten. “You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.”

Where Romance held its tension in balance, this record tips it. “I think Romance was maybe 60 per cent human and 40 per cent corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling,” says Chatten, who spent time among the faded grandeur of Venice, Vienna and Sicily in search of lyrical inspiration. “This one feels more like 60 per cent corrupted — the mask is wearing the face a little more.” He resisted any pull towards easy optimism: “I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.”

“Our albums have always questioned a sense of place,” says bassist Conor Deegan. “First Dublin, then being away from Dublin, and then trying to find the romance elsewhere. On this record, the question became: where do you escape to?” Into the self, perhaps – or hedonism, fantasy, cosmetic perfection, eternal youth or the endless refresh of a screen.

Fontaines D.C. have spent five albums refusing to repeat themselves – from Dogrel (2019) through A Hero’s Death (2020), the No. 1 Skinty Fia (2022) and the anarchic, kaleidoscopic Romance (2024). Dopamine Chamber is their most radical turn yet: cold synthesiser tones, marching drums, samples and triggers, several songs with no guitars at all, and the swooning strings of 1960s Italian pop pulled into something synthetic. For guitarist Conor Curley, the aim was to break from the band’s own reference points: “I was trying to find stuff that pointed into the future.” It was made with James Ford between London, the English countryside and Palermo, where Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions.

“There’s a poignant sense of us being on the brink of some other kind of form of humanity, or non-humanity,” says Chatten. For their fifth album, Fontaines D.C. have built the chamber. What happens to the listener inside it will be the experiment.

Ariwa Sounds started in a front room in Thornton Heath, South London. Four tracks, some homemade equipment, and Neil Fraser, better known as Mad Professor, at the controls. That was 1980. Over four decades later, the label has more than 300 albums to its name and a legacy that stretches well beyond the reggae scene.

This compilation pulls twelve tracks from across the catalogue. Dub, lovers rock, heavy roots music, digital dancehall — it's all here. What ties it together is the Ariwa studio sound all going through Mad Professor’s desk.

Mad Professor is the backbone of it. Dub Me Crazy got him known and his production credits run from Jah Shaka and Horace Andy to Massive Attack, Sade and The Orb. The tracks here — the Dub Sampler, H2SO4, Disco Dude, Kathmandu Dub — show why.

The Jah Shaka collaboration Only One God is a landmark. Two of the UK's most important dub figures on one track. Dark and heavy roots music.

The Robotics appear twice — Hong Kong Flew! and Miss Mood. They are Ariwa's house band and have backed U-Roy, Lee Perry, Big Youth and more over the years.

Aisha closes things out with Can You Feel It. A track that crosses reggae, soul and boogie funk. Collectors have been after original pressings for years.

Starky Banton, Ragga Doll, Professor Doppler and Earl Lawrence complete the compilation. Exactly the kind of thing that reminds you how wide the Ariwa net was cast.

Sleeve design is by Trevor Jackson. One of the UK's most respected graphic designers. His work has defined the visual language of British music for thirty years. His involvement here signals exactly the kind of release this is. A serious serious catalogue and compilation of music, treated with the respect it deserves.

Ariwa sits alongside Greensleeves as the most important reggae imprint this country has produced. This compilation shows why.

Over the last decade and a half, Rotation Sound System’s annual gathering in the Staffordshire countryside has become one of underground dance music culture’s true success stories – an intimate gathering of like-minded friends and partygoers, powered by a custom-built six-way sound system, with music provided by a carefully curated line-up of dusty-fingered diggers, selectors and hand-picked live performers.

At the heart of the collective’s unique and much-loved approach lies a dedication to finding and sharing lesser-known gems and audio obscurities – fantastic records whose charm and quality has long been overlooked.

Last year, the core members of the crew – founders Dean Meredith and Ben Shenton (renowned for their productions as Mind Fair), and Wrekin’ Havoc trio Rob J, Stuart Robinson and Rich Hall – offered a snapshot of their unique musical approach via debut compilation Everything You Are About To Hear Is True, Volume 1, in the process introducing a global audience to some of the countless unknown mid-tempo classics nestled in their collections.

Fresh from another sold out edition of their acclaimed micro-festival, they’re back with volume two, another must-have collection of slept-on classics, loved-up shufflers and wide-eyed Balearic beats, all of which have played a part in Rotation’s story over the last 13 years.

Appearing on gatefold double vinyl with extensive liner notes telling the stories behind the tracks, Everything You’re About To Hear Is True, Volume 2 is full to bursting with music that sounds mind-blowing on the crew’s high-end sound system.

For proof, check the analogue-rich intergalactic shuffle of Paul Atreides’ 2015 jam ‘Arrakis Walk’, the relaxed boogie-soul of Rocky Winters’ Chaz Jankel produced ‘Vicious Circle’, the easy-listening-jazz-rock bliss of Vincent Maclin’s ‘Should’ve Took a Chance’, the 80s soul squelch of ‘Ecstasy (Centurion Mix)’ by Endgames and the immersive British dub drift of Sigma’s ‘Remember (Dub Style)’.

Everywhere you look, you’ll find eye-opening and ear-pleasing delights. There’s Pinky’s lightly acid-flecked, breakbeat-fuelled, acid house-era street soul classic ‘I Wanna Be The One (Instrumental Groove)’, the 1992 new age downtempo seduction of Linda Myers (‘Shine On Me’), the Clavinet-and-synth sporting jazz-rock/space-rock fusion of Wolfhound (1984 gem ‘Another Moon Song’), the Gallic colour of Buzy’s ‘Keep Cool (Version Maxi)’ and the guitar solo-laden electrofunk explorations of mid-80s UK act Lifesighs (‘Get Serious’, here presented in its extended instrumental form).

John Weldon "J.J." Cale was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Though he avoided the limelight (being temperamentally averse to celebrity), his influence as a musical artist has been widely acknowledged by artists like Mark Knopfler, Neil Young, and Eric Clapton, who described him as one of the most important artists in the history of rock.

J.J. Cale is considered to be one of the originators of the Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz. Cale unfortunately passed away in 2013, but his legacy lives on. Number 10 is Cale’s 10th album and contains another wonderful and laid back/mellow collection of typical J.J. Cale tunes. "Traces", "Artificial Paradise", "Low Rides" and "Jailer" are considered part of his best 1990s songs.

Number 10 is available as a limited edition of 1000 numbered copies on turquoise vinyl, and includes an insert.

Both Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn had already started promising solo careers in the 1980s, but something special happened when Tim DuBois suggested they record together. Brooks & Dunn was not just a temporary collaboration, but the beginning of one of the most impressive and successful stories in country music.

The men were unstoppable. Their debut album delivered four number one hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, going seven times platinum in the US (seven million copies sold) and three times platinum in Canada. "Boot Scootin' Boogie" was the album's biggest hit and single-handedly revived line dancing in the 1990s. This undeniably shows the album's cultural significance. Finally, this classic gets the LP treatment it deserves.

Brand New Man is available as a 35th anniversary edition on smokey marbled vinyl and includes an insert with lyrics.

Despite the widespread popularity of reggae music in the UK, following its explosion onto the international music scene in the late 1960s, many of these in charge of Britain's mainstream media were reluctant to give the exciting new sound coverage, wither in print or over the airways.

In an attempt to counter this prejudice, Trojan Records took the bold step of embellishing recordings from Jamaica with sophisticated orchestration, with the resultant ‘commercial reggae’ sound immediately finding favour with the country’s reggae fans.

Consequently, the company not just maintained, but in fact extended the procedure, employing producers to record the country’s finest British-based reggae acts. The result was the release of an abundance of superbly crafted recordings, the production values of which rated with the best that British pop had to offer.

The Malian virtuoso, indisputably one of the most creative talents of his country, deserved his solo career decades ago. In May 2026, we released his debut solo album SOBRA DANCE featuring his wife Mariam Kouyate on vocals. The groovy and variated electric album, went straight to the top lists of World Music Charts Europe and Transglobal World Music Chart as well as selected for TOP OF THE WORLD by SONGLINES. Gaoussou's solo debut got several 5 star reviews.DJANGO BLUES is a tribute to Gaoussou's father and childhood teacher, who's nickname is Django. On this album the talented guitarist and composer goes deeper into the roots of Malian Dessert Blues, with the variations from the Arabic soundscapes from the north.In Senegal, Gaoussou is nick named "The new Ali Farka Toure". But even though Ali Farka was one of Gaoussou's greatest inspirations, Gaoussou has developed an unmistakable style of his own. He breathes music and goes to his studio every day to work. He uses his composing to reflect, and as a ventilator when things are hard -they often are in his country of contrasts- and as a love declaration to life itself. He is a true Mandingue, a Griot, peaceful and kind, as the philosophy preaches.Accompanying such legends like Toumani Diabate and Kasse Mady Diabate, Gaoussou Kouyate, with his beloved village 'Sobra' as his middle name, has long proven his level. Yet his name has been relatively undiscovered. The trio performed a memorable concert at Dakar Music Expo, led by their producers, Dudu Saar and Lucy Duran. What started being noticed internationally through this exceptional trio was Gaoussou's composing skills.The electric SOBRA DANCE album was released first, to contrast and give space to the acoustic GUITARI BARO album. Now comes the time for DJANGO BLUES. This great album features Gaoussou's band as well as an exceptional Moroccan Ribab- Amazigh violin master and singer, Aziz Ozouss.

‘Unfindable Ring', out October 23 on Bayonet Records, is an adventurer’s epic. The arc of the journey, like any good Spirited Away or Neverending Story, lands its wide-traveled protagonist right back at home before bedtime. Grumpy, like many great hero tricksters before him, has always been a project of juxtaposition: upbeat radio-ready hits whose buoyant, goofy hooks belie the dark thoughts they describe. Much of this, Schmitt acknowledges, owes its due to the matter-of-fact morbidity of the trans experience in America. It’s from these experiences—personal, romantic, political, and existential—that the tale of ‘Unfindable Ring’ unfolds.
Ambition and play have always defined the Grumpy sound. Late last year, the Fader praised their “demented, hooky” EP, “Piebald,” whose innovative fuzz-pop confections earned them coverage in NPR and the New York Times. Stereogum heralded them as “wonderfully weird,” and Paste designated them “the best of what’s next.”” Through boisterous collaborations with the likes of Sidney Gish and Claire Rousay, they’ve effortlessly ingratiated themselves with the titans of DIY, and, more recently, Schmitt has become an unlikely favored collaborator of chart-topping country giant Zach Bryan, who named his new record––which prominently features Schmitt’s harmonies–– conspicuously, ‘With Heaven On Top.’
In Grumpy, Heaven Schmitt is joined by Anya Good, Ellie Long (Kid Lake), Austin Arnold, Diego Clare (D.A. Crimson), and Lane Rodgers, who each contribute to every step of the process—engineering and recording, mixing, drafting artwork, producing, and making music videos. A kind of interdisciplinary thieves’ guild, the project, while once Schmitt’s solo eponym, is a labor of communal love.
“We are living these happy lives, and there are people we come across who don’t know us at all who want us to die,” Schmitt, explains. Often the visibility of the joy itself is what prompts the vitriol––“I’m so happy I could die,” Schmitt belts over and over on the chorus (a familiar figure of speech, sure, but one which, upon any scrutiny, shows Schmitt’s hand in the macabre.) A middle finger to fate, Good started asking, “What are you going to do with your One Beautiful Life?” Grumpy is going to keep playing, touring, searching, finding.

No Home is the new album by Lane Hartley, releasing October 23rd 2026 on Royal Oakie Records. Produced in collaboration with David Hartley of The War On Drugs & Adam McDaniel (Animal Collective, Angel Olsen, Geologist), the album was recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville and features contributions from North Carolina’s tight knit music community–including Mary Lattimore, Seth Kaufman of Floating Action & Dream Sitch, David Hartley, Jack Victor Johnson, and more.

After recording his debut album Naming Horses, Lane left Los Angeles and returned home to the Carolinas, eventually landing in Asheville. It wasn’t too long until the songs started flowing and Lane found himself reaching out to Adam McDaniel at Drop of Sun Studios–a vaunted space that’s been at the heart of indie-rock the past few years, bringing to life recent albums from MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Fust, and more. McDaniel introduced Lane to David Hartley, and what originally started with discussions to record one song quickly turned into a plan to track a whole album live with a six piece band. Once in the studio, co-producer McDaniel encouraged the group to lean on intuition–“All of the players on this record really brought it to life in such a cosmic way. They instilled so much childlike wonder and fun into the making of the album. It inspired me to keep going” says Lane.


Lyrically the album is a collection of vignettes about people who’ve become alienated from their deepest desires of connection, belonging, intimacy, and autonomy–inspired both by Lane’s own life and the lives of people he’s loved. The unique character of the album emerged when Lane made the decision to pair the dark lyrical content with bright & lush arrangements, inspired by Gene Clark’s No Other, Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, and Amen Dunes’ Love. In Lane’s words, “The content of the songs got way darker, and my reaction was to make the songs catchier, and to lean harder into the music that influenced me. I wanted each song to feel like a room in a haunted house, with a beautiful garden growing outside”.

Album opener “I Am Not Ashamed” was inspired by the anti-memoir of actress Barbara Peyton, a 1950’s Hollywood starlet who met an untimely end; “It’s about knowing that whatever you’ve done to survive, you still deserve love” says Lane. “Mother” pairs lyrics about ancestral trauma with the sunshine-pop influence of Colin Blunstone, featuring backing vocals from Lane’s sister Barrett Hartley. “It's about coming to terms with the fact that the people meant to protect us are dealing with their own trauma…”

Meanwhile, “All Of This Is Yours” and “Tone Poem” form the spiritual center of the album, an attempt to transmute anger & pain to bittersweet acceptance in the wake of a breakup. “I feel like on the surface this is essentially a breakup album, a lot of these songs are about mourning the end of a relationship and reflecting on what went down. I was falling in love and getting my heart broken, then waking up and driving across the country and doing it all over again.” “Love Is Not A Song” was inspired by Margo Guryan’s Love Songs, pairing bright piano with playful lyrics about an old man who’s been beaten down by life but still believes his greatest love is yet to come. Last but not least, title track “No Home” sums up the album’s key theme of alienation, “It all goes back to this feeling of wanting to belong to someone or somewhere, wanting to belong in your own body.”

By the time Michael Nau completed Popfly, the songs felt less like compositions than companions. Arriving in fragments, notebook lines, and fleeting observations, these pieces kept company for years until taking their final form. The result is one of Nau's most openhearted, expansive records, both homespun and otherworldly at once. Radiant folk melodies, tape-warped textures, and flashes of everyday wonder coexist in perfect balance on Popfly. Nau has never been a songwriter who forces songs into existence. Instead, he follows them, trusting intuition over agenda and allowing songs to gradually reveal themselves. Writing and recording often blur together, with melodies evolving before lyrics are finished and stray recordings forming the basis for new songs. Popfly showcases these creative detours: thoughtful folk songs, sonic experiments, and accidental beauty transformed into fully realized compositions. Many songs began at home, growing in meaning. Since he entered the Vermont studio, Little Jamaica, with longtime friend and collaborator Benny Yurco, many of them had already lived several lives. "Studio recording feels like covering my own songs," Nau says. This idea flows throughout: performances are lived-in, feeling effortless, as if assembling itself. The title track carries a flicker of wonder in its simple observations. "New Slack" moves with the loose confidence of a song content to follow its own path. On "Lost Station Hideaway," soft static and fading signals become something strangely comforting, as if the song itself is being broadcast from somewhere just beyond reach. Family and friendship are deeply woven throughout the record. Nau's children contribute vocals, bringing warmth and spontaneity to the album's communal spirit, with longtime collaborator and wife Whitney McGraw lending her serene voice. The harmonies that drift from them extend the album's central impulse of people gathering to make something beautiful. Across Popfly, loose-limbed folk songs mingle with homespun psych-pop, porchside country-folk, dreamlike atmospherics, and quietly profound observations. The record moves with the ease of conversation among old friends, finding beauty in tiny revelations, strange coincidences, and everyday mysteries. The record is full of transmissions from different moments in Nau's life, stitched together by instinct, affection, and time. Taken together, they form a portrait of a life spent paying close attention to the world and its small miracles.

,Lick the Spoon, Let it Soften" ist das zweite Album von Lamplight, dem Projekt des in Virginia ansässigen Songwriters Ian Hatcher-Williams und seiner Band aus bewährten Mitstreitern, darunter Mitglieder von Lightning Bug und hemlock. Das selbstbetitelte Debütalbum aus dem Jahr 2024 wurde von KEXP, Stereogum, WBUR, Brooklyn Vegan und The FADER gelobt, landete auf Playlists von Apple Music, KEXP und der Numero Group und führte zu gemeinsamen Auftritten mit Jake Xerxes Fussell, Advance Base, John Andrews und Mutual Benefit. Während das Debüt über mehrere Jahre hinweg Gestalt annahm, entstand dieses Album recht schnell. Die meisten Songs entstanden im August im Rahmen einer ,Ein-Song-pro-Tag"-Schreibübung, teilweise inspiriert von Kahlil Gibrans ,Der Prophet". Das Album wurde dann komplett in Eigenregie in einer Hütte am See in Vermont produziert und aufgenommen, mit einer weiteren Session in der Stadt im selben Winter. Das Ergebnis ist zugleich gemeinschaftlich und privat: ein Album über Trauer und ein verändertes Verständnis von Liebe in all ihren Formen, das sich durch straffere Arrangements und prägnanteres Songwriting auszeichnet als sein Vorgänger. Es ist außerdem unverhohlen appalachisch geprägt. Das ist kein Alt-Country, aber selbst seine vielschichtigsten Momente tragen einen natürlichen Twang in sich.

For more than two decades, Vidmantas ?epkauskas has occupied a singular position within European underground culture. As the driving force behind Opium Club and gallery 1986 in Vilnius, founder of Ant Bangos, Alfavilnius and OLE festivals, curator, label owner, promoter, DJ and artist, he has spent much of his life creating the conditions for other people's music to be heard.
It makes sense then that he has no shortage of friends and collaborators in play. Across ten tracks, V presents shades of Italo, krautrock, post-punk, minimal synth, industrial pop and neon-noir romanticism, arriving somewhere between the dancefloor and a dream-state. The cast of collaborators both contextualize and help sharpen the vision.
First and foremost, much of the album was crafted alongside Frankfurt's Philipp Lauer, whose friendship with V grew through marathon studio sessions. Curses lends his unmistakable blend of dark romance and theatrical energy to "Is This What You Want?", Australian cosmic journeyman Dreems joins for the kaleidoscopic "Blitz Disc," Domenique Dumont brings their unmistakable emotive touch to "Avventura," while Lithuanian artists Noyus and Ruta MUR, both distinctive voices from the country's queer scene, whose vocals add another dimension to the record's emotional palette. As V puts it, "These are the people I've been vibing with."
That he finally delivers a full-length LP with such elusive qualities is more than a clue to his character. The title itself, a nod to Magritte's famous paradox and his years living in Brussels, suggests that any attempt to define V through a single image is destined to fail. At once playful and philosophical, 12:55 (Ceci n'est pas une V) questions ideas of identity and artistic value while marking the closing chapter of the musical persona that followed ?epkauskas' earlier success as Vidis. Neither retrospective nor statement of intent, it feels like a connected set of reflections spanning a lifetime of influences.

2026 Repress

"La Duquesa", the most tender and most refined piece of the album Amygdala, perfectly casual and serious, deep and euphoric, all at the same time, is dedicated to the Spanish Duquesa de Alba, who, as holder of 46 titles of nobility, is even more highly decorated than Queen Elisabeth. Koze is fascinated by this lady: With her peculiarly creepy appearance she seems like a relic from the past era of the Spanish nobility. She is the most pictured woman in Spain and a pop phenomenon. When, in 2011, she married a man 24 years younger than herself, the entire country badmouthed her. Sometimes Koze would love to be that younger
man, who the Spaniards dismiss as a legacy hunter! Encore the needle is cookin'. Dj Koze did it again. His homage to Audrey Horne. "Burn with me" - a fucked up, deep and schizophrenic brainfoodbouncer with legato bass and hi hats way out of time. The beat burst like shagging, the dirty off hi-hat lashes remorseless in the twatherd - everyone just wants to get laid straight away.

Noch bevor Brian Eno dies tat, schuf Mort Garson zurückhaltende Musik. Garson, der an der Juilliard School ausgebildet wurde und in der Nachkriegszeit als Session-Musiker tätig war, komponierte Lounge-Hits, schrieb die Musik zur Mondlandung von 1969 und schuf opulente Arrangements für Doris Day sowie die sehnsuchtsvollen ,Countrypolitan"-Streicherbegleitungen für Glen Campbells ,By the Time I Get to Phoenix". Mitte der 1970er Jahre fegte eine Naturgewalt über die kontinentalen Vereinigten Staaten hinweg, die alle Schichten unabhängig von Rasse und Klasse durchdrang und sich in unseren Köpfen, unseren Häusern und unserer Kultur festsetzte. Es war weder ,Der Exorzist", noch ,Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" oder gar Schlaghosen, sondern ein Buch mit dem Titel ,Das geheime Leben der Pflanzen". Das Werk des Okkultisten/ ehemaligen OSS-Agenten Peter Tompkins und des ehemaligen CIA-Agenten und begeisterten Wünschelrutengängers Christopher Bird schoss an die Spitze der Bestsellerlisten und breitete sich wie Kudzu über das Land aus, bis es zu einem Phänomen wurde. Scheinbar über Nacht blühte das Geschäft mit Zimmerpflanzen in voller Pracht auf, und photosynthetische Eukaryoten aller Gattungen hingen an den Wänden, thronten über Bücherregalen und sonnten sich auf sonnigen Fensterbänken. Die wissenschaftlichen Ansätze hinter ,Secret Life" waren fadenscheinig: Pflanzen können unsere Gebete hören, sie sind Lügendetektoren, sie sind telepathisch, in der Lage, Naturkatastrophen vorherzusagen und Signale aus entfernten Galaxien zu empfangen. Doch das hielt Millionen Menschen nicht davon ab, ihre neuen Pflanzen zu kaufen und zu pflegen. Die vielleicht verrückteste Behauptung des Buches war, dass Pflanzen auch Musik mögen. Und ganz gleich, ob Sie eine Schlangenpflanze, einen Spargelfarn, eine Friedenslilie oder was auch immer bei ,Mother Earth" auf der Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles erwarben (oder eine Simmons- Matratze bei Sears kauften) - Sie nahmen auch ,Plantasia" mit nach Hause, ein Album, das speziell für sie aufgenommen wurde. Mit dem Untertitel ,Warm Earth Music für Pflanzen _ und die Menschen , die sie lieben" war es voller idyllischer, charmanter, kiff-freundlicher und entschieden unwissenschaftlicher Melodien, die auf einem neumodischen Gerät namens Moog eingespielt wurden. Das Album erlangte Jahrzehnte nach seiner Veröffentlichung eine enorme Kult-Anhängerschaft. Die Neuauflage von Sacred Bones aus dem Jahr 2019 trug dazu bei, ,Plantasia" einem breiteren weltweiten Publikum bekannt zu machen, und bescherte Garsons ungewöhnlichem Meisterwerk ein bemerkenswertes zweites Leben. Was einst ein seltsames Relikt der Pflanzenbegeisterung der 1970er Jahre war, ist zu einem geliebten Evergreen geworden, der von einer neuen Generation von Hörern wiederentdeckt und neu geschätzt wird und weit über seinen ursprünglichen Moment hinaus gedeiht, wobei er sich von einer obskuren Kuriosität zu einem geliebten Kultklassiker und einem Meilenstein des Streaming-Zeitalters entwickelt hat. Nun, 50 Jahre nach seiner ursprünglichen Veröffentlichung, markiert ,Plantasia" von Mother Earth einen bedeutenden Jubiläumszeitpunkt. Ein halbes Jahrhundert später hallt es weiterhin nach - eine bleibende Erinnerung an Mort Garsons Fähigkeit, das Synthetische seltsam lebendig und das Skurrile auf merkwürdige Weise tiefgründig wirken zu lassen.

Jack Hamill concludes his trilogy of space saga albums with The World Overhead landing on Tiraquon Recordings on October 30, 2026, with a special limited transparent blue edition issued exclusively via Bandcamp from October 16, 2026.

Introducing the science fiction realm of Mikrosector-50 and Mr. 8040 on breakthrough electro funk 12-inch, The Love Quadrant (2009), Hamill signed to R&S Records with the double 12-inch "prequel", The Pathway to Tiraquon6 (2011), setting the stage for debut-album proper Welcome to Mikrosector-50 (2013), where Prince-inspired funk and sleek '80s synth-pop soundtracked Mr. 8040's hazardous journey home via heartbreak and drugs. By Love Beyond the Intersect (2019), Hamill's vocoded opus turned introspective, pairing gentle krautrock influences with themes of love, redemption and self-discovery, mirroring Hamill's personal life, sobriety and creative renewal. Through lockdown Hamill retreated to the countryside around Belfast to reacquaint himself with his machines, experimenting with driving acid and trance, and playing guitar, culminating in a fuzzy shoegaze meets banging IDM sound. Relocating to Amsterdam in 2024 and setting up a new studio, Hamill wrote the third installment of Mr. 8040’s saga, bringing the storyline – and himself – back to earth.

Presenting under the new moniker, Jack Tiraquon, and releasing via his own label, Tiraquon Recordings, The World Overhead is the sound of Hamill removing the guise of Space Dimension Controller and concluding the space-themed concept to move forward as the cinematic hardware musician he's always been at the core.

The much-admired southern soul singer Eddie Giles’ final single for his local Shreveport label Murco, was a self-penned bluesy plodder called ‘Ain’t Gonna Worry No More’. Hiding on the flip was ‘Tingling’ a catchy, atmospheric song written by Murco executive Dick Martin and Jimmy Johnson whose pop group the Peermonts were label-mates. His subsequent release by the same production team appeared on the Silver Fox label so his management may have felt his time at Murco was up - the few pressings of ‘Tingling’ are now in the rare soul big price league.
Around the same time Eddie cut a version of a 40s Country song written by Fred Rose which leant itself to being an excellent mid-tempo soul number; though not released at the time. Despite its sparse instrumentation, it is a very good performance, now on vinyl for the first time.

Seit der Gründung von 2nd Grade im Jahr 2018 hat der in Philadelphia ansässige Songwriter und Produzent Peter Gill (der auch Gitarrist der Alt-Country-Band Friendship ist) eine Reihe spektakulärer neuer Welten erschaffen ausgehend vom 20. Jahrhundert-Gitarrenpop, wobei er dessen typischen Klischees irgendwie meilenweit hinter sich lässt, indem er sie genau bis zu ihrem logischen Ende verfolgt. Girls and Boys" ist das neueste Album von 2nd Grade und das erste bei Lame-O Records eine Sammlung von zwanzig Songs, von denen keiner länger als drei Minuten dauert, vollgepackt mit unwiderstehlichen Gitarrenriffs, Power-Akkorden, rasanten Drumbeats und wirbelnden Melodien. Songs von schwindelerregender Komplexität, die man trotzdem nicht aufhören kann zu summen. Auf Girls and Boys" gelingt 2nd Grade immer wieder der wundersame Trick des perfekten Popsongs: Es so aussehen zu lassen, als wäre es ganz einfach.

It’s that time of year again! Are your copies of “Now! That’s What I Ca l Christmas” and “A Motown Christmas” finaly feeling worn out? Strut has the ideal antidote this year, as we dive into the world of festive records made by African artists spanning the late 1960s to the 1980s with our new Krismasi: Christmas Sounds From Africa compilation.

Taking in music from across the continent from Nigeria and Ghana to South Africa and Zimbabwe, Krismasi draws from a wide range of sounds from fun novelty records and spur-of-the-moment jams to spiritual and gospel favourites. Featured artists include Ghanian great Kwadwo Donkoh with a meditative highlife praise song from his much-loved Christmas Africana album. Elsewhere, pop star turned pastor, Jerry Boifraind, has some fun with a song celebrating seeing friends at Christmas and Nigerian pop favourite Martha Ulaeto features with the lilting lead track from her own Christmas Africana release. We pick out some choice Central and East African sounds with Kakai Kilonzo’s bri liant Kilimambogo Brothers Band and Congolese legend Baba Gaston’s Orchestra Baba National capturing the joy of the festive season. We stop off in Zim for a rare Dorothy Masuka acoustic piece and one of the country’s great musicians post-independence, Paul “Dr. Love” Matavire with ‘Christmas Yaswedera’ (‘Christmas Is Near’). Township jazz star Reggie Msomi appears with a joyous township instrumental and, fina ly, we couldn’t release a Christmas co lection without some carols. Here we include here a great version of ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ by UK-based Nigerian highlife musician Flash Dominci and a hi-octane funky medley of favourite festive hymns by Ghana’s Oscar Suley.

The compilation is the first in-depth co lection of rare African Christmas recordings, uncovering a rich and often overlooked chapter of the continent's musical history. Krismasi is available on Red & White Inkplosion Vinyl LP and CD. Vinyl restoration is by Colin Young at See Why Audio, mastering is by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, and the album features striking new artwork by Liam Large.

Finnish-American guitarist Raoul Björkenheim and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love join forces on their new album PING, released by We Jazz Records on 30th October on LP, CD and digital formats. Recorded in Helsinki, the album finds the seasoned duo firing on all cylinders and delivering a remarkable set of contemporary free music.

PING brings together nine excursions beyond “guitar + drums” and way beyond “free jazz”. That being said, those are still good touching points for the music that is wild, imaginative, raw, yet also at times delicate and introspective. Friends and collaborators for decades in groups such as the lauded Scorch Trio, Raoul and Paal have the history and the trust to create memorable and original improvised music that stuns and moves the curious listener.

Raoul Björkenheim (b. 1956) is a Finnish-American guitarist and composer who has been creating original music for the past four decades living in New York City and Helsinki, where he is presently based. Describing his on-going work as investigative guitarism, he is best known for an expressionistic and lyrical guitar style. Björkenheim’s eclectic discography numbers 50+ albums, ranging from ambient soundscapes to visceral free jazz, from duo to big band. His large-scale works for symphony orchestra have yet to be recorded, and he has also composed scores for over ten films and dance productions. Björkenheim has collaborated musically with Bill Laswell, Toshinori Kondo, William Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Hamid Drake, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Gerald Cleaver, Henry Kaiser, Lukas Ligeti, Morgan Ågren, Paul Schütze, Edward Vesala and Juhani Aaltonen, for the labels ECM, Rune Grammofon, Cuneiform, Tum Records and Long Song records. Björkenheim has been awarded various prizes including the Emma prize for best jazz recording of the year, and been nominated three times for the Nordic Music Award.

Paal Nilssen-Love (b. 1974) is a Norwegian drummer, composer, bandleader, and producer known for his central role in Scandinavian free jazz and improvised music. Since the mid- 1990s, he has appeared on more than 280 albums, including 70 released through his label, PNL Records. He has performed with influential groups including Atomic, The Thing, Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, Scorch Trio, and Frode Gjerstad Trio, and collaborates regularly with artists such as, Ken Vandermark, Akira Sakata, Otomo Yoshihide, David Murray, Arto Lindsay and more. Paal Nilssen-Love’s fascination with traditional and experimental music has taken him around the world. Since his first visit to Ethiopia in 2009, he has built strong connections with musicians and artists in Addis Ababa, leading to collaborations, performances, teaching, and artist exchanges with Norway. Since his first trip to Brazil in 2013, he has returned regularly, developing collaborations with artists and musicians across the country. His musical explorations have also brought him to Tsugaru and Aomori in northern Japan, where he has developed an interest in the region’s traditional music. Nilssen-Love is also an active organizer and educator. He started both Oslo’s all-Ears festival, the Blow Out festival and FRAM Kunstfest, and has led workshops internationally and in Norway.

Kalita presents the fourth and final instalment of their groundbreaking ‘Borga Revolution!’ series, uncovering another selection of essential recordings from the rich and far-reaching world of Ghanaian highlife. Spanning deep, hypnotic highlife through to the vibrant electronic productions of 1980s Burger Highlife, Volume 4 captures a period of extraordinary musical change, as Ghanaian artists absorbed influences from funk, disco, boogie, and new synthesizer technology. With previous volumes championed by tastemakers including Gilles Peterson, Antal, Tom Ravenscroft, and Hunee, this final chapter turns its attention once again to the music of the Ghanaian diaspora.

Volume 4 brings together rare recordings from artists such as Rex Omar, Nat Fredua, and CST Amankwah, alongside the elusive, deeply hypnotic and beautiful sounds of the Abibifo Dance Band of Ghana (led by the legendary bassist Ralph Karikari) and Baffour Kyei. Unearthing recordings that have languished in obscurity for over forty years, the compilation moves between deep highlife, rhythmic dancefloor cuts, and pioneering digital productions, revealing yet more musical ingenuity of Ghanaian artists both home and abroad. The final instalment in the ‘Borga Revolution!’ series, it offers another vital collection of forgotten favourites and hidden treasures for DJs, collectors, and anyone drawn to the endlessly inventive sounds of Ghanaian music.

The 1970s and 80s saw Ghanaian musicians begin to incorporate Western sounds like funk and disco into their music, reflecting the changing global musical landscape. However, the country's political instability and economic hardships, marked by military regimes and curfews, forced many artists to leave Ghana in search of better opportunities abroad. In Europe and the U.S., these musicians fused their traditional highlife roots with emerging digital sounds, using cutting-edge technology like the DX7 synthesizer and drum machines to create the genre now known as Burger Highlife.

With ‘Borga Revolution!’ Kalita offers a vivid exposition of this musical transformation, using rare interviews, archival photos, and detailed liner notes to bring to life the pioneering spirit of both well-known icons and unsung innovators of Ghanaian Highlife, one of West Africa’s most exciting musical movements.

· The final installment in Kalita's 'Borga Revolution!' series, examining the development of Ghanaian dance music in the 1970/80s, and focussing on the phenomenon of Burger highlife (a blend of Ghanaian highlife with disco, boogie and synths).

· 2xLP in gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves examining the stories of the artists featured on the volume.

· Includes 10 highly sought-after and under-the-radar recordings, including those by the phenomenal Rex Omar, Nat Fredua, CST Amankwah, Baffour Kyei, Chief Kofi Sammy, and the Abibifo Dance Band of Ghana.

Dylan Atlantis' Insta bio read 'amateur artist' at the start of the year.

Now she's on a billboard in Times Square.

With vocals and lyrics that extend well beyond her young years, Dylan Atlantis is the definition of meteoric rise.

Pitchfork describes her as ""the silky R&B singer, sliding in with the laid-back cool.""

THE PHILIPPINES-BORN, WEST SYDNEY BASED MUSICIAN WAS RAISED on a musical diet of RnB and Hip-Hop by her Mum. Now a self-professed lover of all genres of music (even country), she's out here sharing her innermost thoughts and lyrical experiments with the world. ""I kinda just treat music like a diary but also a science lab where I can experiment expressing myself in different ways until it's awesome enough that I feel compelled to share it.""

Impressed Recordings are proud to present Dylan Atlantis' release - It Starts Again, on limited edition vinyl.

A native of the island nation of Cape Verde, Cesaria Evora was known as the country's foremost practitioner of the morna, a combination of West African percussion with Portuguese fados, Brazilian modinhas, and British sea shanties. After a short singing career in the 1970’s, she returned in the late ‘80s with a string of critically acclaimed and increasingly popular albums.

Her 1999 album Café Atlantico (a reference to her home where she frequently entertained guests) is a much-acclaimed masterpiece, finding Evora venturing into more Latin American musical landscapes, as opposed to Portuguese, which dominated her previous albums. Evora draws from traditional Cuban and Brazilian music to mesmerizing effect. The music is heart-breaking and nostalgic, warm and tragic all at once.

Café Atlantico is available on black vinyl and includes an insert with lyrics.

With one foot in the Mexican underground rock scene and the other one in the global tape trading circuit, Las Ánimas del Cuarto Obscuro found themselves in the middle of a crossroad after their first LP. México wasn´t the same country as when the band first started. Even though access to non-commercial music still was a difficult task in the late eighties, the fringes of culture had way more resources thanks to the stubbornness of certain anonymous heroes: dwellers of El Tianguis Cultural del Chopo, niche record stores, illegal underground parties and hosts of late night Mexican public radio shows.


Ubiquitous social unrest expressed itself in every way possible. The aftermaths of the 1985 earthquake weren’t the only matters on the table. Protests erupted after a rigged presidential election and a student strike hit Mexico’s biggest public university. This was just the tip of the iceberg of issues PRI’s perfect dictatorship was or wasn’t addressing. The clash of the authoritarian regime against new and fresh ideas.


If the first record was about the loneliness of self-destructive youth and it’s urban phantasmagories, LACO’s second LP dealt with change as the axis of human existence. Las Ánimas is just the beginning of the sonic metamorphosis Toño Sánchez went through until this very moment.
The departure of former bandmembers set a different approach towards more experimental and atmospheric sounds. As the project’s only member, Toño Sanchez took an alchemical trip aiming for more mysterious horizons.


Despite the fact that we can still find conventional dark pop and catchy songwriting, the record rests on sound landscapes closer to Jorge Reyes or Tuxedomoon and This Heat than the orthodox ways of so called post-punk, seasoned of course with the lack of music gear and the economic reality prevalent in Mexico of those convulsed times.


Las Ánimas is a goodbye letter to underground but not because the next move is the mainstream. Far away from it, it’s a farewell to traditional rock and a the first steps down into the depths. From now on, Toño Sánchez will dedicate his musical efforts to weirder sounds and scarcer audiences in the search of the arcane, possessed by a mania of constant change that infects the soul after crossing the black door’s threshold.

Synth driven perpetual punk rock, darkened by atmospheric touches in its production and songwriting, yet uplifted by its intention to distill that darkness into light. Pop music from France on either side of the punk explosion has never shy’d away from electronic elements and on Nuits Blanche’s Helás LP there is plenty to remind us of that legacy. The sounds we are given rub against neither pop or dance, but instead absorbs the impact of quite tough sounding street punk. Four on the floor drums, like Disco’s ghost stamped across the face by the weight of the electric guitar run with songs not out of place if “A Country Fit For Heroes” got shoved inside the sleeve of “Wanna Buy A Bridge” and the two became one. Helás has the heft and the violence of boots treading across concrete en masse but within that is the lightness and the style of a dark smokey room filled with people wearing dark glasses and considering the inevitability of the pointlessness of existence…off the dance floor anyway. (Jonah Falco)

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the release of Remek Depo, the very first electronic record from the former Yugoslavia, the group Beograd has decided to unveil eight previously unreleased tracks in the context originally intended. The band initially planned to title their first album as Mrak ( eng. Dark). Recorded with Du Du A and other collaborators, this album serves as a manifesto of resistance—not only in Belgrade and Yugoslavia but everywhere else.

The A-side opens with the track 1984, named after George Orwell’s seminal novel. This piece was recorded in a single night in the same year, featuring Zoran Zagorcic (Du Du A) and one of the first Yamaha DX7 synthesizers. It encapsulates the dark and tense atmosphere of Belgrade during a period marked by economic crisis, characterized by shortages of essential products like coffee and oil, as well as electricity restrictions. This oppressive environment also impacted personal relationships, leading to unconventional expressions of passion and desire, as exemplified by the subsequent track from 1985, Mracni Predjet Zelja (eng: That Obscure Object of Desire). However, the primary source of frustration was political, stemming from the abuse of nationalism and the incitement of inter-ethnic conflicts within the complex Yugoslav society. This sentiment is vividly illustrated in the songs Hare Krishna and Belgrade Beat, recorded just before the country’s collapse in 1991. Remarkably, despite their protest, these songs convey messages of strong optimism and hope. In “Belgrade Beat Dejan Kostic (Du Du A) raps and Dejan Stanisavljevic sings. ”Od Studija B do Amerike, Beograd širi svoje talase, mi nismo sami u nama je svet, dolazi veliki preokret” (eng. “From Studio B to the USA, Belgrade spreads its waves, we are not alone, the whole world is with us, a great change comes!”). It is no surprise that this song was frequently broadcast on student Radio Index during the student and anti-war protests in 1992.

The B-side features contemporary songs produced by Beograd, which reflect protests against the current societal conditions in post-war Belgrade. Crafted with musical clarity and irony, these tracks satirize figures of repression, hitting their mark with an almost childlike purity, reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The collaboration between Dejan Stanisavljevic, the leader of the Beograd and the Du Du A group not only influenced his musical expression but also laid the groundwork for the group’s socially engaged music in their later career.

As we remember the two late leaders of the Du Du A group, Dejan Kostic and Zoran Zagorcic, alongside the recently departed member of the Beograd, Milan Bubalo, this gramophone record stands as an important testament to the contributions of previous generations of artists in the fight for a fairer society. We hope it will inspire the younger generation in their current struggles, especially at a time when such inspiration is needed more than ever.