Suche:d saw

Yellow Vinyl

Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai'i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It's also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs - written solo or with his brother Kody - Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It's a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the saltcorroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like `Layla' and `Nadja. ' During the pandemic's early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin's wedding in Hawai'i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious uptempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, `Weekend Run' and `That Life'. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family.Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai'i, and began dividing his time between Hawai'i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai'i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents' lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he'd internalized from his childhood. There's a type of music in Hawai'i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V's penultimate song, `I Killed Captain Cook'. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they're mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra's first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realised he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.

Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai'i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It's also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs - written solo or with his brother Kody - Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It's a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the saltcorroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like `Layla' and `Nadja. ' During the pandemic's early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin's wedding in Hawai'i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious uptempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, `Weekend Run' and `That Life'. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family.Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai'i, and began dividing his time between Hawai'i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai'i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents' lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he'd internalized from his childhood. There's a type of music in Hawai'i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V's penultimate song, `I Killed Captain Cook'. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they're mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra's first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realised he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.

Dwight Trible announces new album “Ancient Future” out 17th March via Gearbox Records + Shares new single “Truth” Album features special guests Kamasi Washington, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Greg Paul, Megashia Jackson, G. E. Stinson, André Gouché, John Beasley, and Rene Fisher Today, the inimitable jazz vocalist, activist, and nominal godfather of the LA jazz scene, Dwight Trible, returns with the announcement of his new album “Ancient Future”. Out 17th March via London jazz aficionados and analog specialists Gearbox Records, the new record follows his critically acclaimed album “Mothership”, which was released in 2019 and saw him collaborate with the likes of Kamasi Washington, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Miguel Atwood-Fergus, and more. On “Ancient Future”, Trible collaborates once again with Kamasi Washington (saxophone), as well as lauded LA multi-instrumentalist, Georgia Anne Muldrow (vocals), who is signed to Brianfeeder and has previously worked with the likes of Madlib, Denzel Curry, Mos Def, Blood Orange, and Brittany Howard. Elsewhere, the record also features Grammy nominated pianist, John Beasley; Kamaal Williams touring drummer Greg Paul; gospel bassist André Gouché; percussionist and backing vocalist, Megashia Jackson; LA guitarist G. E. Stinson; and percussionist Rene Fisher.

For a quarter of an hour, Zürich was the navel of the world. Let's look back: at New York's CBGB's, pre-punks were shredding away, Malcolm McLaren, as a man with a fine-tuned taste for the hip, imported the sound to London, where his sweetheart Vivienne Westwood dressed the test-tube band The Sex Pistols. A few pop magazines later (we are in an analog world!) punk bands sprouted everywhere, like shiny pimples on poorly fed teenagers. Contrary to legend, even back then, it was often those with a musical background who were the most successful. One such example, Henrich "Wüste" Zwahlen, who had learned the violin, attended a jazz school and went into prog-rock before joining the Nasal Boys, one of the first punk bands in Zürich. The scene included the female band Kleenex (cover: Fischli of art heroes Fischli/Weiss), whose minimalism was praised by the London music press, while the world's most important rock theorist, Greil Marcus, wrote an ode highlighting Zürich's role as the birthplace of Dadaism. A fertile ground for the militant youth movement that exploded in 1980 and stirred up the city of banks, protestantism and boredom with raw wit and expressive violence. Gathering at concerts of local bands and fueled by endogenous and artificial substances - they paid homage to exuberance and self-indulgence.
The mantra of "everything-is-possible" was driven forward on the musical front by progress in terms of means of production: analog electronic instruments were no longer reserved for hippie nerds, who sat in front of large plug-in boards like autistic-psychedelic switchboard operators connecting cables for their sound carpets. Now snazzy stage personnel elicited fast-paced sounds from handy devices often made in Japan. Kraftwerk was fashionable, the Zurich duo Yello experimented with new synthetic sounds, and the groundbreaking album "Alles Ist Gut" by the Düsseldorf based duo D.A.F. (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft) was released, which chanted its program of provocation times danceability with lines such as "Tanz den Jesus Christus, tanz the Mussolini, tanz the Adolf Hitler." In England meanwhile, electronically backed New Romantic bands were replacing New Wave. The Human League, Heaven 17, Duran Duran, OMD, Depeche Mode or Visage stormed the charts.
In Zürich's underground, the duo Aboriginal Voices caused a stir at that time. A couple, good-looking, styled, looking cool into the cold neon light, with a danceable beat and sequenced electro sounds, to which Micheline gave a very unique touch when she sang in French and English. Micheline had a classical piano education, had left home early, worked as a lighting technician in a strip joint and at Booster, the hottest boutique in town (one of the relicts that still exists). Voilà: a musician who was as stylish as she was tough. She was already playing with Wüste in the band "Doobie Doos", a band where everyone played an instrument they didn't master. In 1980 the Aboriginal Voices were formed, initially with vocalist Magda Vogel (of later UnknownmiX fame), who was trained as a classical singer.

Frustrated by organizational friction and constant hassles with band lineups, Wüste and Misch decided to do everything as a twosome: self-mixed, self-styled, self-produced. With the top-of-the-line Linn drum machine clocking the beat, Wüste's guitar and Micheline on the Yamaha synthesizer created a unique sound of danceable electronic music. Whereby the Aboriginal Voices acted as a kind of proto-influencer, receiving the latest equipment to try out, especially since they made it a point not to work with tapes, but to design everything for live shows. They had an interface built for the legendary Roland MC-4B, who sequenced the modular Roland System 100M but where one output controlled a light show synchronized with the sound. A pioneering act that fit well into the DIY spirit of punk, with its self-distributed tapes and fuck-you attitude towards the cretins of the music industry. Consequently only two cassettes and an EP were released. There was something futuristic about the sound, the vestiary style and the electronics, while the attitude remained rebellious. Of course something so deeped in the Zeitgeist wasn't meant to last. Wüste moved to New York, Micheline stayed in Zurich, both still active in the music scene to this day.

Sven Regener, head of the band Element of Crime and one of Germany's most successful pop writer said a few years ago when asked if he knew of any Swiss music: "Of course! In 1983, a Swiss band called Aboriginal Voices played with us at a festival in Zurich. Great, avant-garde electro-pop. That was my first encounter."

If you ever saw them live, you never forgot them, and so over the years you belonged to a teeny-tiny circle of insiders, happy to be joined after all these years by new aficionados who appreciate the sound of that quarter-hour, when Zurich was ravishing, creative and exciting.

- Thomas Haemmerli

Japan's guitar hero Takeshi Terauchi reworks traditional songs and lets everything go wild with his magnificent and frenzied guitar sound. Enter the electrifying world of Eleki!

Gatefold 180g heavy vinyl LP, reverse board print. Comes with extensive liner notes by Japanese pop culture writer Julien Seveon (Cinexploitation)

All tracks licensed by King Record Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.

Mastering and lacquer cut by Jukka Sarapää at Timmion Cutting Lab, Helsinki, Finland.

Artwork by Nker

The aftermath of World War II gave rise to a global phenomenon that saw new generations of young people rise up determined to forge new paths from their elders – culturally, politically, and musically. Japan was no exception and the recent past made the local youth angrier, hungrier and even more determined to fully experience something different from their parents. The country caught on to the early rock & roll craze almost in tandem as it was happening in the States. Teenager Chiemi Eri singing "Rock Around The Clock" and Kazuya Kosaka with "Heartbreak Hotel" were among the first to make what would soon be called Rokabiri accessible to a large audience. Teacher and parent associations showed concern regarding this new music when teenagers started missing school to attend afternoon shows – one of which most notably being the Nichigeki Western Carnival where all the top names of Rokabiri played to sold out audiences. But by the end of the 1950s, the youth of Japan had moved on to something else entirely: Eleki.

The 50s and 60s were a time of rapid change that saw trends come and go. Japan, like all other industrial countries, saw its youth move from one musical sensation to the next. And in the early 60s, there was one band in particular that created a distinct new flavor: The Ventures. Leaving behind vocals and focusing strictly on the impact of the sound of the electric guitar, The Ventures drove kids crazy all over the world. Other bands followed, most notably The Shadows, but in Japan, no other instrumental rock band managed to leave such an impact. The sound of The Ventures helped boost guitar sales in Japan and soon hundreds of cover bands were popping up all over the country. The Eleki Bumu (electric boom) was now in full effect with Takeshi Terauchi emerging as its first and greatest guitar hero.

Terauchi was born January 1939 in the prefecture of Tochigi, north of Tokyo. His mother taught music and played the shamisen – a traditional Japanese stringed instrument – while his father ran, among other things, an electronics shop. Their respective professions were to be decisive in the path that Terauchi would later take. Serendipitously, at the age of five, Takeshi was given his first instrument – a guitar. His destiny sealed, he quickly began experimenting with different tools from his father's shop to give his instrument a stronger sound. The technological approach came from his father, the technique from his mother. Terauchi's signature playing style owes a lot to his mother's instrument of choice, as he attacks the notes on his guitar as one plucks the strings of a shamisen.

This exceptional compilation you are holding in your hands explores some of the best works by Takeshi Terauchi, recorded between 1966 and 1974, where the guitar hero looks inwards to Japan for inspiration. A meeting between traditional folk songs and the unique way Terauchi and his band play: the content is explosive, inspired, and highly addictive! The 60s and 70s were undoubtedly Terauchi's finest hours, and in the late 60s, one Japanese critic said that Terauchi was not only the best guitarist in Japan, but also in the world. You can now find out why.

Mute reissue ‘Our Likeness’ by the renowned avant-garde artist Phew.
Originally released in 1992, ‘Our Likeness’ was Phew’s second solo album, following her self-titled debut.
This long out of print album saw Phew collaborate with the legendary and peerless Alexander Hacke (hackedepicciotto, Einstruzende Neubauten), Jaki Liebezeit (CAN) and Chrislo Haas (Crime & the
City Solution, DAF, Liaisons Dangereuses).
After leaving the pioneering Japanese punk band Aunt Sally, she worked with many other innovative
artists from around the globe, although this particular line up is hard to beat and sounds as
great as you’d imagine it would.
This reissue follows Phew’s latest album, ‘New Decade’, which was released in October, 2021.

CIRQLE & CYQLE are TRUENOYS & MIDM.
Together they have been working on different projects over the past years which saw them release albums & 12's on Pulver Records, DEEP MEDi Musik, Lovemonk Rec, Compost Records etc. They also created the soundtrack to Akala's novel "The Ruins Of Empires" together with Mala and directed by Andy Serkis which aired on BBC TWO.

Coming from different interests/styles it's only natural to bring these vibes all together to create their own style and that's how this LP sounds.
Productions & previous projects have been championed/played by the likes of Benji B, Moodymann, Mary Ann Hobbs, etc

Jeugdbrand is the voice (Dennis Tyfus) and the beat (Jeroen Stevens) of Antwerp. They perform a sparkling drama, a theatrical tragedy, marinated in our classic Antwerp anarchic sense of humor. Recorded at Joris Caluwaerts’ Finster Studios - a landmark in Belgian music.

Inside the multiverse that is Dennis Tyfus’ oeuvre there exists this body of detailed pencil drawings of various sizes. In these drawings the artist puts himself in many tragic situations. Like vomiting on his way home after a long night at the bar. Boiling right wing idiots. Telling sweet little lies on your Tinder profile. Or, you know, taking out the garbage on a Sunday evening. The horror. These seemingly hermetic pencil drawings show a deceivingly simple world. But you’re often stuck with a bitter aftertaste when you understand a bit more what is actually happening behind the colorful masque.

When it comes to his music - and in contrast to aforementioned drawings - Dennis pencils a more piecemeal picture. His recordings and performances often feel like spliced excerpts. Strange sentences and funny remarks waiver by and interconnect. Musical symbols are casually thrown on the table. Instead of a clear picture, we now have the feeling of looking at a bunch of different doodles. Like… sometimes I have the feeling compared to how focussed Dennis works on his drawings, how unfocussed and sketchy he treats his music. We are simply thrown from emotion to emotion. From laughter to tears. It’s a bumpy ride.

I’d like to imagine that Dennis constantly notates all the shards of conversation he picks up during his regular walks in the centre of Antwerp - a wormhole congested with characters, the one more tragic than the other. In a kind of R. Murray Schafer way, Dennis takes in every sentence very un-arbitrary… and that’s the soundscape. Dramatic, normal, boasted, silly, urgent…

Enter Jeroen Stevens. Antwerp’s number one percussionist. If I would have to list all the bands he performs in this text, well, we would be truly wasting data and printers. Jeroen is the grand gift of the wellschooled session musician. But thank the heavens of white improv, he is also sweet and creative. Jeugdbrand is his second entry in the Edições CN catalogue, after taking care of some of the percussive fragments on the “KAGIROI" LP with Sugai Ken (2021). Recently Jeroen has been performing very lengthy - thus correct - performances of Satie’s Vexations for midi instrumentation; Christmas music; and his famed De Stoeltjes project, where he covers Stooges songs on a camping chair. Apparently much to the confusion of Iggy himself. This might all feel like a big joke to you, but when you dare to listen, you will have to admit that Steven’s adventurous music is very rewarding. Special stuff.

The music of Jeugdbrand reminds me a bit of the music of the late Ghédalia Tazartès - especially when it comes to reinterpreting and combining musical idioms - but trying to put a direct reference on this album does it a bit short. Most important, this is music how it could be: incomprehensible, hilarious, serious, ludicrous, well crafted, sloppy, non-genre. With a strong sense of personality. You know, a fragmented beam for your own overstimulated temple. To shake things up a little … “They told us, they told her. I told everybody.”The albums comes with a drawing by German artist Albert Oehlen and with a text by Angela Sawyer of Weirdo Records, Boston.

Originally released in 2003, Bazooka Tooth was the fourth studio album by Aesop Rock. It features production by Blockhead, El-P (Run The Jewels), and Aesop Rock himself. Guest features include El-P (Run The Jewels), Camp Lo, Mr. Lif, and Party Fun Action Committee. On Bazooka Tooth, Aesop's dizzying delivery and oscillating growl paired well with the production, delivering more apocalyptic angst and future-funk flavor than its predecessors. Buried within these sawtooth grooves, listeners have discovered a plethora of Aesop's keen observations on the state of the industry, the state of the world and the state of humanity.

After the success of the Pan Machine album that saw the Ebony Steel Band cover Kraftwerk, OM Swagger’s Ian Shirley was desperate to work again with the talented Delphina James who arranged the tracks on that fantastic LP.

Shirley had the idea of interpreting the works of famed contemporary composer and pianist Ludovicio Einaudi through the prism of the steel pan.

Delphina James wrote out arrangements for classic tracks like I Giorni, Passaggio and Samba as well as lesser-known works like Moto and Respiro. She then formed a trio comprising of Tara Baptise (three pan cello), Nadine McCleary (bass) with herself on Tenor and set to work rehearsing the material. Once the trio mastered the material, James took it upon herself to write and arrange the track Siempre Conmigo as a tribute to the Italian piano master.

Produced by Ian Shirley, Play Ludo was recorded at the internationally famous The Pool studio in Elephant and Castle.

Anyone who enjoyed Pan Machine will love this. Fans of Ludovicio Einaudi around the world will rejoice in hearing the master’s work interpreted in a totally different musical setting. Respiro, for example, takes Einaudi into ambient electronic territory even though the instrumentation used is acoustic.

Like Kraftwerk, Einaudi’s music sounds like it was written specifically for the steel pan.

THE SUBWAYS remain one of the most exciting live bands on the current touring circuit, thrilling crowds with their explosive rock sound and wild stage performances.

Back in 2005, with an average age of just 18, Billy, Charlotte and Josh crashed onto the international music scene with their debut album ‘YOUNG FOR ETERNITY’, and their rock-club floor-filling single ‘ROCK & ROLL QUEEN’. The NME proclaimed them “The sexiest thing to sweep rock n roll off its feet in years!”. An appearance on American smash teen drama THE OC and in Guy Ritchie’s London Gangster flick ‘RocknRolla’ has helped make the track a Spotify Rock Playlist mainstay.

The band have released four albums to date. Their sophomore, ‘ALL OR NOTHING’ (2008), was recorded in LA with heavyweight producer Butch Vig and, is “Buoyed with emotional heft and supernova guitar riffs, wired around a maturing song craft” (MOJO). The tracks were written at a time when Billy was battling to save his voice following surgery to remove nodules from his vocal cords. ‘MONEY AND CELEBRITY’ followed in 2011, filled with “brilliantly anarchic punk-pop vignettes; each being a big musical finger that sticks it to financial greed, the mediocre mainstream and the fame fetishists” (ROCKSOUND) and included the Radio 1 A-listed single ‘WE DON’T NEED MONEY TO HAVE A GOOD TIME’. Their self-titled 4th album saw the emergence of singer and songwriter Billy Lunn as a producer, as he took control of engineering and mixing duties and is "On Par with the best things they have ever written... and finds the band energized, focused and battle-ready" Q Magazine.

The global pandemic, though cutting short their 40+ date international ‘Young For Eternity Anniversary Tour’, has kept Billy busy in his newly-established Hertfordshire studio, with Charlotte and Josh in their respective homes focused on remotely recording Album 5. Makeshift under-stair vocal booths were constructed, and the album is now ready for a summer, 2022 release alongside a full European Tour

In April 2021 the band signed to ‘Alcopop’ and released the politically-charged, Black-Lives-Matter-inspired single “Fight”, which they describe as “a letter in two parts: a gesture of solidarity with the Black community and communities of colour as they face their daily oppression at the hands of systemic racism, and a wake-up-call to the white community that such oppressions do in fact exist, and that we must acknowledge these oppressions and fight alongside marginalised communities as allies.”

If credibility were currency, FAKE NAMES" wealth would be off the charts. Composed of Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Dag Nasty), Michael Hampton (S.O.A., Embrace), Dennis Lyxzén (Refused, INVSN, The International Noise Conspiracy), Johnny Temple (Girls Against Boys, Soulside) and the newest member Brendan Canty (Fugazi, Rites of Spring), the band is a veritable post-hardcore dream team. However instead of rehashing the past, Expendables is a reinvention that sees the band dialing back the distortion and leaning into the melodies. The result pairs their unparalleled pedigree with a pop sensibility that"s slightly unexpected and wholly satisfying. "For our last record 2019"s FAKE NAMESthe general influences were 70"s U.K. punk and power-pop; but it wound up with a little classic rock vibe as well, like the Vibrators meets Aerosmith. We never saw that coming!" , Baker explains. For Expendables the band enlisted producer Adam "Atom" Greenspan (IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Baker explains, "The pop influences are a little more out front on this one and the production really helps it shine. It sounds more direct, more urgent." Expendables is the latest exchange in a musical conversation that spans four decades. Baker aptly refers to the lineup of FAKE NAMES as a "mutual admiration society" and says that once the five members got in the same room together, it felt as if they had already been in the band together for years.

LIMITED BLACK & WHITE COLOURED VINYL EDIT

If credibility were currency, FAKE NAMES" wealth would be off the charts. Composed of Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Dag Nasty), Michael Hampton (S.O.A., Embrace), Dennis Lyxzén (Refused, INVSN, The International Noise Conspiracy), Johnny Temple (Girls Against Boys, Soulside) and the newest member Brendan Canty (Fugazi, Rites of Spring), the band is a veritable post-hardcore dream team. However instead of rehashing the past, Expendables is a reinvention that sees the band dialing back the distortion and leaning into the melodies. The result pairs their unparalleled pedigree with a pop sensibility that"s slightly unexpected and wholly satisfying. "For our last record 2019"s FAKE NAMESthe general influences were 70"s U.K. punk and power-pop; but it wound up with a little classic rock vibe as well, like the Vibrators meets Aerosmith. We never saw that coming!" , Baker explains. For Expendables the band enlisted producer Adam "Atom" Greenspan (IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Baker explains, "The pop influences are a little more out front on this one and the production really helps it shine. It sounds more direct, more urgent." Expendables is the latest exchange in a musical conversation that spans four decades. Baker aptly refers to the lineup of FAKE NAMES as a "mutual admiration society" and says that once the five members got in the same room together, it felt as if they had already been in the band together for years.

+ mp3

Das Amsterdamer Duo Weval kündigt sein lang erwartetes neues Album, „Remember“, an, das am 3. März 2023 beim Ninja Tune-Sublabel Technicolour erscheint. Das Amsterdamer Duo Weval (bestehend aus Harm Coolen & Merijn Scholte Albers) veröffentlicht sein neues Album ‘Remember’. Es ist ein energiegeladener Trip voller nostalgischer Erinnerungen und euphorischer Emotionen, auf der das Elektronik-Duo in Erinnerungen an seine eigene musikalische Reise schwelgt und gleichzeitig über die wichtigsten Einflüsse und Inspirationen der letzten Jahre reflektiert. Dieses zentrale Thema wird in klanglichen Kontrasten erforscht, da Weval stark verzerrte Beats verwenden, die das Potenzial haben, Lautsprecher zu zerstören, nur um dann von melodisch hoffnungsvollen Akkorden vor dem Zusammenbruch gerettet zu werden. Ihr neuer bombastischer Sound ist das Ergebnis neuer Songwriting-Methoden, bei denen Weval scheinbar disparate Ideen, die völlig unterschiedliche Leben und Energien in sich tragen, miteinander vermischen. Elemente aus Pop, Dance und allen dazwischen liegenden Genres werden eingeworfen und zu ihrem bisher intensivsten, spontansten und gehaltvollsten Werk zusammengefügt.

Scottish composer and multi-instrumentalist Bill Wells and virtuoso tuba player Danielle Price once more team up for Karaoke Kalk under the name The Sensory Illusions. The two further explore the affinities between their idiosyncratic musical approaches across a variety of styles and genres while also expanding their sound palette. After its predecessor saw Wells working strictly with his electric guitar, on the »Sensory Illusions II« the piano enters the mix on two of the eleven pieces. Much like his brass-heavy collaboration album »Osaka Bridge« with Japanese collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz—made available again on vinyl by the German label Karaoke Kalk in February 2023—this album injects melancholic atmospheres with a sense of playfulness. Picking up on elements from jazz, pop, blues, and classic songwriting while acknowledging their debt to techniques from the worlds of avant-garde and improv music, The Sensory Illusions weave together disparate elements into a colourful, imaginative suite of songs.

Starting with the folky chords of opener »Four Chord Dream,« the track titles spell out Wells’ characteristic use of ideas that literally come to him in his sleep (the project was even named after a record he found while browsing a store in a dream). The National Jazz Trio Of Scotland leader then fleshes them out together with Price, who again serves as a one-woman rhythm section, as she does throughout most of the album. When Wells enters 1960s spy movie territory with a swirling rendition of John Barry’s »Theme from Vendetta« and picks up on those dynamics with a rolling riff in the next song, her versatile playing provides the backdrop for that. Once Wells sits down at the piano for the tender »Flotsam Bodes,« however, their roles are being reversed and Price—a seasoned and multifaceted musician who was one of only six applicants chosen to attend Chilly Gonzales' Gonzervatory in 2019 and who is currently working with acclaimed London-based trumpet player and composer Laura Jurd—takes the lead. »I’m the Urban Spaceman« makes it even more apparent how seamlessly these two experienced players leave each other space to showcase their respective talent and expand on their individual ideas: Marked by Wells’ soloing and exploring different sonic possibilities of the guitar, it also sees Price showcasing her reduced yet agile solos before they both return to the idea at the heart of the song.

It is precisely those ideas that guide the duo’s way through the individual pieces, but their sometimes widely different approaches yield very distinct results. While working with the piano once more on »Mr. Sophie« results in a fuller and more anthemic sound, they opt for a more restrained, melancholic one the album closer »Desk Aunt«. It is precisely these kinds of variations in mood and tone that underscore how these two musicians are perfectly attuned to each other. As the second duo record in their six years of working together, »The Sensory Illusions II« proves once more how much musical ground they are able to cover with their instruments and open minds alone.

Following on from their well received albums ‘Primitve Fuck (2018) and ‘The Wholly Other’ (2020), London based psych rockers Black Helium release their third album ‘Um’ via Riot Season Records on March 3rd, and take things even further…

Here we find psychedelic defiance at its most incendiary and joyous!

Returning to record at Bear Bites Horse studios with Wayne Adams, Beck Harvey, Diogo Gomes and Stuart Gray deep dive into lysergic rock primitivism sparking sprawling stream-of-thought explorations to bring about an album that is as fried as it is alive.

Black Helium are a psychedelic power trio, based in London. Never afraid to stray from the beaten path, they traverse aural hallucinatory soundscapes; from detuned Neanderthal rock to deep oceans of introspective blissed out psychedelia.

BLACK HELIUM are

Stuart Gray (vocals, guitar) Beck Harvey (bass, vocals) Diogo Gomes (drums)

Our next foray into the world of 12” vinyl sees three classic cuts from Tyrome - aka Kris Vanderheyden and Pascal Deneef, remastered for today’s standard and pressed onto glorious wax for that nostalgic feel. Tyrome formed in 1996 and quickly gained a following with their brand of electronic dance music. Their first outings appeared on the famous Bonzai Trance Progressive label where they’d deliver these three top-notch joints before appearing on other labels. Kris is a Belgian techno and electronic music producer who is considered one of the leading pioneers of the Belgian techno scene. He is also known by his stage name Insider, as well as The Assistant and he belonged to a host of groups including Quick Reverse, Cherry Moon Trax and Tripomatic Allstars to name just a few and he contributed heavily to the Bonzai sound of the 90’s. Pascal is also a name synonymous with the 90’s techno sound in Belgium. He worked closely with Kris on several projects including Indicator, Technodrive, Total Remedy and Quick Reverse. His repertoire also includes the monikers Big Jim and Emoryt (Tyrome spelt backwards) and has appeared on a raft of labels over the years.

On the A-side we get a taste of Tyrome’s most famous groove, the 1998 joint ‘Electric Voodoo’, with its instantly recognisable vocal sample. A highly charged and energetic slice of trance with a nice techno edge that always gets the crowd moving. On the flip, the B1 slot holds the much deeper grooves of ‘Noxious’ which saw the light of day in 1996. Dark and mysterious, the beat mesmerizes as a melodic siren fades up to the backdrop of erotic voices. A definite contender at any late-night session to keep the party flowing. Concluding the release in the B2 slot, the 1997 cut ‘Monkey Way’ has the honours. A feisty number with a driving groove thanks to a powerful bassline and rhythmic percussions. The track is laden with stabbing synths and pent-up energy just waiting to be unleashed onto the floors.

If you find the time, please come and stay a while in abracadabra’s beautiful neighbourhood; a magically wonky wonderland where strangers leave as friends to a block party soundtrack as eclectic as it is infectious. The California duo’s album shapes & colors is a dazzling collage of psych-fuelled synthscapes and contemporary Baroque-pop of anti-capitalist movements and escapism, precisely pieced around their own working lives in a blue-collar town.
In the heart of Oakland’s industrial Jingletown above a former auto-repair shop in what was once a mechanics’ break room where poker rounds ensued, Hannah Skelton (Vocals, Synthesizers) and Chris Niles, (Bass, Synthesizers) constructed the angular 80s-tinged anthems (think John Hughes montages to Talking Heads) of their new album, to positively offset the pandemic’s amplification of dysfunctional society. “It reflects our current reality: a huge mess that is systematically broken but isn’t entirely lost,” Hannah tells. “We’re inviting listeners to conjure up every drop of hope and willpower left inside them, pour that into the giant vat of anger and frustration bubbling inside us all, and with this potion collectively enact the necessary change to bring love and light into this dark space.”
When Covid forced Hannah from her salon in San Francisco to become a backyard mobile hairdresser, what she saw inspired them both and the lyrical foundations for their new record. “I’d drive to mansions and people would complain about how hard the pandemic had been next to their swimming pool and tennis courts.” First meeting after the album’s co-producer Jason Kick (Mild High Club, Sonny and the Sunsets) recruited the pair for a Halloween band covering Eurythmics’ art-rock debut ‘In The Garden,’ the pair hit it off and shapes & colors is a product of the years that followed. It combines Chris’ own rhythmic demos following years on the road touring and opening for Amon Tobin, Matthew Dear and Generationals in Maus Haus with Hannah’s lyrical musings honed from project Cassiopeia, so even when topics are as heavy as the beats, they’re met with luminously positive arrangements of hope and warmth.
The by-product of a psychedelic New Year’s Eve escaping a monotonous 2020 reality, the title track itself captures fireworks over East Oakland as viewed from the pair’s couch whilst listening to Mort Garson’s Plantasia for 6 hours straight. The daydream collage of ‘inyo county’ is “a little souvenir taking me back into the bottled-up essence of a slow lazy morning, waking up in bed far from home,” Hannah tells recalling those enforced stay-at-home days. “It fell out of me because I was craving that blissful flavour.” Meanwhile ‘dawn of the age of aquarius’s new parallel reality evolved from a happy accident when their demos had reset to a drone which Jason reworked into a Laurie Anderson-esque breathy vocoder effect. Even bloops and beeps from a forgotten recording session at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum in Emeryville can be heard, where the pair used Mini Moog, Fairlight EMI and ARP 2600 to arrange their sound into shapes whilst distortion and dirt from mixing on 1979 Neve 5313 Console added to the recordings’ color.
Casting a brighter rainbow still, in all its pastel-hued glory, Hannah, also illustrated a self-portrait of the band for the album artwork. “It reflects our makeshift recording studio to encapsulate all aspects of that time and space,” she shares of their abode where, over an intense two-week period and fuelled by the aroma of fermenting vino from the winery below, their single chord, bass and drum-heavy, groove-first momentum took them on an unexpected journey whilst the next-door couple would fire pizzas in their yard and a grandfather across the road would sweep the street clean. “We’d drink coffee and start the day, consistently working, without interruption,” Chris tells of finding their flow. “The loft is a cool space with skylights, tall ceilings and no shared walls so we could be as loud as we wanted to be.”
Just as well. Diving into decades of electronica and crunchy sound effects, field recordings and animal sounds, blended with an infectious Latin influence, shapes & colors is bolstered by live percussionists Greg Poneris (drums), K. Dylan Edrich (Vocals, Percussion: congas, bongos, chimes, cow bells and wood blocks, tone drum and tri-tone whistle) and Tom Smith (Guitar, Synthesizers, Vocals).
NIMBY crews grab those earplugs now. abracadabra is your new noisy neighbour, and there’s no turning this party down.

Started as a reggae band, Chequers were formed by the Matthias Brothers, John & Richard, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1973. Inititally releasing in the early part of the 1970s (with their first single Rudi's In Love charting in the UK) their sound then developed to also incorporate Philly soul influences in the mid-70s, then releasing a rare but solid LP 'Check Us Out', in 1976. The group eventually evolved into a seven piece funk outfit in the late 70s, playing shows to larger and larger audiences and touring throughout the UK & Europe.

1980 saw the birth of the Matthias brothers' own small independent outlet for the group, Matthias Records. The press release of the new label's first single declared that their "roots in the reggae and soul music of the last mod era" were being brought up to date, now embracing "the music of today and tomorrow...". That 45 (the cheeky pop-punk meets ska cover version of Midnight Hour, backed with the uptempo instrumental funk of Move Up) didn't necessarily come good on that promise. 3 years would then pass until this 45 showcased the throughly-updated & stellar electro-boogie sound of Hard Times and it's equally strong b-side If You Want My Love.

Following this neither Matthias Records nor Chequers as a group ever released anything further - the record's scarcity (and hideously inflated prices on today's secondhand market) hint at low sales and potential distribution problems upon it's original release, perhaps leading to the label and the group calling it a day. Conjecture aside, there's really no denying this record slaps, and with discogs prices reaching beyond ridiculous levels there is only one option - get it before it's gone!

Red Vinyl

Initial LP copies pressed on opaque red vinyl! As its name suggested, the intimate and sultry Cuntry Covers Vol. 1 was always going to have a follow-up. Led by the brooding vocals of Bria Salmena, Cuntry Covers Vol. 2 is every bit as potent as its predecessor whose noir-inflected alternative country-rock stood in sharp contrast to the singer's commanding delivery as leader of post-punk revivalists FRIGS. Debuting the project in 2021, the languid, reverb-drenched Cuntry Covers Vol. 1 saw her artfully collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Duncan Hay Jennings and reimagining a carefully picked collection of Americana anthems. Vol. 2 pushes the envelope further and harder. Encompassing feverish takes on tracks by Gillian Welch, Paula Cole, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Robert Lester Folsom, Glenn Campbell - by way of Nick Cave - and the late, great Loretta Lynn, Bria's deliciously dark approach shimmers through these six startling songs. Created during a break from Salmena and Jennings' work in Orville Peck's world-conquering backing band, Vol. 2 was recorded directly after Peck's second album and Bria's US tour supporting Wolf Alice. Embracing contrast, the sunny circumstances in which Vol. 1 was made were flipped on their head. Instead of a bucolic barn in the Canadian countryside, they recorded the new tracks in chilly Toronto, huddled together in their tiny makeshift home studio, with Jennings at the controls. They enlisted the help of local Toronto musicians Lucas Savatti (FRIGS), Simone Baril (US Girls, The Highest Order, Darlene Shrugg, Partner), Andrew Manktelow, and frequent collaborator Jaime Rae McCuaig. While Vol. 1 was Bria's attempt at subverting country music's conservative roots and primarily white and heterosexual agenda, here the emphasis was on experimentation. While Vol. 2 might be less personal, it's just as idiosyncratic, with half of the reversions staying true to the originals and others taken to a different universe entirely. Building on the tried-and-true/bold-and-new duality of Cuntry Covers' first offering, Vol. 2 delivers a deeper dive into the duo's brilliant alchemy of traditional and contemporary reinterpretations. The added experimental flourishes, from dizzying electronica and pulsing bass to sax-driven soul, take Bria's new EP into previously uncharted territory, signalling a thrilling new step in Bria's adventurous evolution.

The two full-length records that Jeff Mangum made as Neutral Milk Hotel sound both in and out of time. Like translations of a shared subconscious, 1996's On Avery Island and 1998's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea give voice to the perennial spirit of youthful epiphany, of beginning to see the world clearly, to process and express it-no matter when you encounter them. With lo-fi indie rock, accordion, singing saw, tape collages, the so-called "zanzithophone" and beyond, Neutral Milk Hotel created an eternal entry into their Elephant 6 scene and an enduring feeling of possibility. Mangum was born in the small city of Ruston, Louisiana, in 1970, coming of age within the '80s and '90s indie and punk undergrounds, a movement of teenagers recording in their bedrooms, sharing zines and trading tapes, listening to hardcore and experimental music on college radio. For all the mythology Mangum's elusive persona has accrued-particularly during the 15 years immediately following Aeroplane, when he abruptly left the band behind-it's the beguiling songs themselves that have resonated so deeply for generations. In 2011, Mangum collected nearly all of the band's recorded output in a limited-edition box set (self-released under Neutral Milk Hotel Records, a small operation helmed by Mangum and his mother) which is now re-pressed by Merge. // CONTENTS: Black matte box is a 2-piece telescoping casewrapped package. Outer shrink-wrap includes a front sticker with "Neutral Milk Hotel," and a back sticker listing box contents. The box set includes 2 folded posters, each printed one side and each 24 x 24 inches when flat, and 1 postcard, printed front and back with box set information and sized 3.75 x 5 inches. Vinyl records: 1. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea: LP is 11 tracks pressed 33RPM to black vinyl in a gatefold jacket + printed insert for full album download. --- 2. On Avery Island: 2-LP is 12 tracks pressed to double black vinyl in a gatefold jacket + 11 x 11 printed insert + printed insert for full album download. Sides A, B and C pressed 45RPM. Side D pressed 33RPM. --- 3. Live at Jittery Joe's: 12-inch picture disc is 11 tracks pressed 33RPM to a full color picture disc in a heavyweight poly jacket + printed insert for full album download. --- 4. Ferris Wheel on Fire: 10-inch is 8 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + postcard insert + printed insert for full album download. --- 5. Everything Is: 10-inch is 7 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + postcard insert + printed insert for full album download --- 6. "Little Birds": 7-inch is 2 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + printed insert for full album download 7-inch housed in a heavy-weight poly jacket. --- 7. "You've Passed": 7-inch is 2 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + printed insert for full album download. 7-inch housed in a heavy-weight poly jacket. --- 8. "Holland, 1945": 7-inch is 2 tracks pressed 45RPM to black vinyl in a printed jacket + printed insert for full album download. 7-inch housed in a heavyweight poly jacket.

The Origins of Power Pop.
Remastered and pressed on Gold Vinyl. Includes printed inner sleeve.
In these songs you’ll find the DNA of The Direct Hits. Although very Elvis Costello like in both style and vocal delivery, these early recordings, dating from 1979 show a remarkable pop sensibility that had come on leaps and bounds since the release of the band’s first single, the now highly sought after ‘Fashion Plague’ b/w ‘Cheam’ released a year prior to these being recorded. Songs like ‘We broke up today’ have all the hallmarks of classic merseybeat, while out and out power pop like ‘Holiday Shots’ and ‘Fool to fall in love’ encapsulate perfectly the sheer exuberance of the genre.
More than a few steps ahead of several of their contemporaries, the band’s built in tunesmiths Buckmaster and Swan were writing catchy songs that carried a powerful punch performed with the energy and excitement of the period. The Exits left behind a wonderful set of recordings that are worthy of a comprehensive vinyl retrospective release,
These recordings first saw the light of day on a CD only release back in 2007 when Cherry Red released the CD ‘The Legendary Lost Exits album’ through its Rev-Ola offshoot. Reportedly the band members were disappointed with the overall mix on the finished release for being a little Lo-Fi . There are no such issues with this specially remastered version for vinyl. The tracks sound fresh, punchy and full of annoyingly great hooks! We are delighted to bring you yet another great addition to our catalogue of long since undisturbed sleeping giants, the Exits, and their Legendary Lost album!

Debut album by Ani Zinc, member of the Spanish experimental duo Diseño Corbusier and co-founder of the iconic record label Auxilio de Cientos. - First time reissue of this much sought-after record on the highly collectable Spanish experimental label Auxilio de Cientos. Formed in 1981, NEO ZELANDA was the way of expression of a woman, Ani Zinc, who since then began to experiment with vocal music, manipulated tapes or sound collages. As a child, radio had been her only contact with music. She received her first shock listening to 'Remember Love', the repetitive song by Yoko Ono. She later found out about Llorenç Barber, Spanish experimental music pioneer. After recording a single ("Paso Hambre") and several cassettes ("Radio-Sabotage", "Ese Lenguaje"), which helped her to gain international recognition, and the inclusion of her work in various contemporary cultural centers (Juan March Foundation, among others), her first LP saw the light of day in 1986 on her own label, Auxilio de Cientos (also home to Diseño Corbusier, pioneer Belgian EBM/Industrial band The Klinik, and the amazing compilations "Pas De Deux" and "Terra Incognita"). "Mix Zelanea" brings together part of her experimental work with voices and sound effects ('Si Esto Es Amor' or 'Il Drama'), together with new compositions, in which she is accompanied by some friends and welcomes the use of conventional instruments such as drum machines, keyboards, etc, resulting a richer and more diverse outcome ('Alemana Mix', 'Extenso Mundo Brillante', etc).

Minimal Wave present Kintsugi, Martin Dupont’s first album in 35 years. The album features lush re-works of their old songs, originally released on their highly sought after 1980s albums. The French band is known for making beautiful, heady electronic, with striking, poetic vocals. A hard-to-classify group from Marseille with a cult following and some mainstream success, Martin Dupont has inspired some of the luminaries of the contemporary music scene crossing many genres from trip-hop to electro to techno. Kintsugi reassembles their old spirt that is colorful, enthusiastic, and delicate, yet also melancholy and mysterious. A mixture of hot and cold, light and dark. Martin Dupont’s music is considered electronic though they incorporate guitars and clarinets as well. They are described by many as New Wave, though their music truly transcends genres. Listen to Kintsugi, a collection of Martin Dupont’s emotive songs that have now been reinvigorated with a larger than life presence. Record manufactured in France and organized via Meidosem.

Sisters Eleanor and Bonnie Whitmore, two of roots music's most
accomplished songwriter/instrumentalist/vocalists, released their first
album together as The Whitmore Sisters in 2022
Titled 'Ghost Stories', inspired by the loss of family, friends, ex-boyfriends and - on
the title track- people who died by police violence. These ghosts chose to appear
right as Covid became entrenched -when live music evaporated, and people were
isolated from each other.
Bonnie, whose four solo albums are all state- of- a- real- woman's- heart jewels,
decided to join sister Eleanor and her husband Chris Masterson in their Los
Angeles closed circle for a break. Chris, who's recorded four albums with his wife
as The Mastersons, saw the visit as an opportunity to issue a mandate: If Bonnie
was coming, it was time for the sisters to make a record.
Not just an album, but "the album" - the musical inevitability that's been
simmering since a 22-year-old Eleanor was protecting her curly-headed 15-yearold sister at gigs in local bars. The Whitmore Sisters' original songs, along with
two covers - a song by their pal Aaron Lee Tasjan ("Big Heart Sick Mind" and "On
the Wings of a Nightingale" (written by Paul McCartney for iconic siblings The
Everly Brothers) - was produced by Chris Masterson and completes 'Ghost
Stories'.

Inspired by the likes of old-school legends including Venom, Kreator, Sabbat JPN & Metallica, James McBain formed Hellripper in 2014, showcasing an electrifying brand of blackened thrash. Building on the already impressive foundations laid by their early EP & split releases, the first full-length album, Coagulating Darkness',
was released in 2017 to media acclaim, with the UK's Metal Hammer hailing Hellripper as Scotland's King of the arcane mosh & the band receiving notable attention throughout Europe & the US. This was followed by the Black Arts & Alchemy' EP, before an eventual deal was inked with Peaceville Records, resulting in the masterful The Affair Of The Poisons', further propelling the band to the forefront of the UK metal scene. Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags' - Hellripper's third studio album - establishes a new threshold of excellence & raises the bar further over The Affair Of The Poisons', with an opus standing at the crossroads between the sound that Hellripper has become known for & a whirlwind of different influences up until now yet to be explored, resulting in James McBain's most personal & diverse
work to date. With a greatly expanded scope to the tracks, incorporating more epic & melodic blackened anthems alongside the high- speed metal attack & blistering solos, Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags' marks a new highpoint for the band. Inspired by the landscapes & legends of the Scottish highlands, McBain explores the darker side of Scottish history & folklore - the title itself taken from a
line in the Robert Burns poem,Address to the Deil' - as well as including references to clan culture (including his own) throughout the album. For example, one of the tracks ( The Cursed Carrion Crown') is based on the legend of Sawney
Bean' & the Bean Clan (a spelling variation of McBain'') & tells the story of a family of cannibals that lived in a cave & committed various gruesome acts. As always, the writing & recording process was carried out by James McBain himself, with a few guests offering contributions in the form of additional vocals & instrumental
parts. With recording taking place between March 2021 & June 2022, the album was also mixed by McBain & mastered by Damian Herring at Subterranean Watchtower Studios. The suitably sinister & ominous artwork appears courtesy of Adam Burke. Hellripper will be embarking upon a series of shows in support of the album throughout 2023.

Mint Condition - A record label focused on excavating the outer fringes of classic House and Techno. Unreleased mixes, classics and overlooked gems mined from the last 20+ of contemporary dance music are the order of the day. From Chicago, Detroit and New York to London and beyond, Mint Condition have got their expert digging hats on to bring you exclusive heat and those rarer than rare jams that have been on your wants list for years! Dig in....

Back to 2002, the beginning of the new millennium. Tom Churchill's Headspace Recordings label had already been making an impact on the deeper strains of techno emanating from within the UK. With releases from detroit's Sean Deason, CiM, Hanna, Vince Watson and many more, Headspace was already a 'must check' label within record buying and DJ circles. This stellar split EP with NYC's Dennis DeSantis saw the pair remix each others tracks, both turning in very different, but equally complimentary sonic excursions. Churchill's 'Spaces' is surefire deep-space techno boogie of the highest order, swinging and funky and melodic in equal measure. The DeSantis remix of 'Spaces' is also a total winner, a stripped back exercise in expert minimalism, full of feeling and a perfect partner to the original mix. On the flip is Dennis DeSantis' 'Leisure', a sprawling and laconic broken house jam. Brilliant and teasing melodic synth motifs sit atop nagging acidic basslines and space. Again, the remix follows the original and Tom Churchill dials the track down into chasm deep shuffling drums and basslines and dubbed out FX. It's hard to think of an EP where two artists can remix each others music in such a compelling way, and for it to work so well. This is truly an excellent release and it's a real pleasure to see these tracks back on the streets. Sublime, and essential.

'Spaces / Leisure' has been legitimately re-released with the full involvement of Headspace Recordings for 2020 and remastered by London's Curve Pusher from the original sources especially for Mint Condition. 100% legit, licensed and released. Dug, remastered, repackaged and brought to you by the caring folks at your favourite reissue label - Mint Condition!

DOUBLE BLACK LP : 2 x 140 G Black Vinyl , Sleeve & 2 x Heavy Weight Printed Inner with UV Gloss Finish

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

2 x Solid White LP, 5mm spine Sleeve UV Gloss Finish, 2x Heavy Weight Printed Inner Sleeve UV Gloss finish, marketing sticker.

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

Freestyle drops another 12" rarity from the annals of UK funk & boogie history - this time giving the sounds of VeiraKrew's "Sexy Lady" from 1985 a fresh new cut.

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Elvis Veira was born on the Carribean island of Nevis and moved to England alongside his pianist and music teacher mother at the age of 2, quickly becoming profficient on piano, guitar & bass by the time he was in his early teens. His love for playing music and singing in choirs propelled him on this musical journey, and his late teens to 20s saw him supporting top acts such Heatwave, Wham, Second Image, Katrina and the Waves, Mezzo Forte, Chris Rea, Shakatak and many others.

In 1983 he started working under the alias VeiraKrew, and a couple of years later in 1985 laid down this 12" at Bedford's Thatch Cottage Studio on a shoe-string budget. Backed up with the title-track's killer instrumental version and the b-side "Welcome to a Dream" it was self-released by Elvis on a x1000 run (since becoming quite the collectors item, with clean copies changing hands for up to £150 a piece).

Following the release of Sexy Lady, Elvis continued playing and working as a session musician and vocalist, going on to release a further 12" in 1988 signing to Stevie V's Beatbox International label for the house-inflected track "Good Stuff". Fast forwarding to present day, Elvis has had some time away from music but is now back actively playing and producing, alongside working with the OMG (Outreach Music Group) - helping to provide support and music therapy within the NHS.

Sophomore album from the singer who NPR are calling "the Next Queen Of Americana Folk." Boomerang Town marks a bold step forward for this country-folk-leaning singer-songwriter. It is an arresting, ambitious song-cycle that explores the generational arc of family, the stranglehold of addiction, and the fragile ties that bind us together as Americans. This is a record that understands that love and grief are two sides of the same coin. Jaimee Harris turned 30 during the pandemic. It’s a milestone that is a rite of passage even during normal times. But for this Texas-born singer-songwriter, it came in the midst of one of the strangest and most tumultuous periods in American history. When the world stopped during lockdown, Harris, like many others, found herself gazing back into the past, ruminating on the nature of her hometown and family origins, and reckoning with their imprint on her. The term ‘nostalgia’ derives from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain), and if Harris’s Boomerang Town can be regarded as a nostalgic album, it is only nostalgic in the sense that the longing for home is a desire to return to the past and heal old wounds. For Harris, the album began gestating around 2016, a time of great loss for many in the Americana community, with the songwriter losing several musicians close to her. The shift in the nation’s political landscape had ushered in a new level of polarization that saw whole swaths of cultural life being demonized. For someone who grew up in a small town outside of Waco, Harris believed the values instilled in her by her parents were not entirely in line with how many on the left were viewing — and vilifying — Christians, citing them as responsible for the new change in leadership. As a person in recovery, Harris has had to re-evaluate her own connection to faith and find strength in a higher power (“Though he’s not necessarily a blue-eyed Jesus,” she laughs), though she certainly knows what it’s like to “be told how to vote” in a Southern church setting. It was from the intersection of these social, personal, and political currents the album was born. And while much of the material on Boomerang Town was inspired by personal experience, the songs on this collection are far from autobiographical xeroxed copies. More than anything, they come from a place of emotional truth. “My goal is to just write the best possible song I can write,” Harris says, “and I wanted to have ten songs that made sense together sonically.

Inhaler return with their 2nd album Cuts & Bruises in 2023. The album includes the singles These Are The Days & Love Will Get You There. Cuts & Bruises is the follow-up to Inhaler’s debut It Won’t Always Be Like This which debuted at no.1 in both the UK & Irish Official Charts. It Won’t Always Be Like This became the fastest-selling debut album on vinyl by any band this century and saw Inhaler become the first Irish group to top the Album Charts with a debut in 13 years. 2022 has seen a relentless touring schedule with a run of festival dates, including their first Glastonbury performance, a homecoming gig in Dublin at the city’s Fairview Park alongside support shows with Arctic Monkeys & Kings of Leon. The band once again support Arctic Monkeys in 2023 alongside stadium shows with Harry Styles and Sam Fender.

Inhaler return with their 2nd album Cuts & Bruises in 2023. The album includes the singles These Are The Days & Love Will Get You There. Cuts & Bruises is the follow-up to Inhaler’s debut It Won’t Always Be Like This which debuted at no.1 in both the UK & Irish Official Charts. It Won’t Always Be Like This became the fastest-selling debut album on vinyl by any band this century and saw Inhaler become the first Irish group to top the Album Charts with a debut in 13 years. 2022 has seen a relentless touring schedule with a run of festival dates, including their first Glastonbury performance, a homecoming gig in Dublin at the city’s Fairview Park alongside support shows with Arctic Monkeys & Kings of Leon. The band once again support Arctic Monkeys in 2023 alongside stadium shows with Harry Styles and Sam Fender.

Dub & Sound International are presenting here one of the final recordings from the acclaimed Jamaican vocalists and dub poet George Scott aka Nazamba. He sadly passed in July 2022. This one saw him hook up with the label's studio band The Dubsetters for a heavy rhythm. It finds Nazamba, who has worked with the likes of French O.B.F. and others, retuning to the roots of reggae both in terms of the music and the lyrics and as such it marks a superb debut for the label. On the b-side is a brillaint dub to seal the deal.

PUPPY formed in 2015 when school friends Jock Norton (vocals, guitar) and Billy Howard (drums) met bass player Will Michael while working in a London bar. Later that same year, the band released their eponymous debut EP, that quickly earned comparisons to acts like The Smashing Pumpkins and Dinosaur Jr. A second EP quickly followed in 2016, and “Vol ii” saw the band take their first major steps into the live sphere, with UK festival appearances at Download and 2000 Trees. The Goat, Puppy's debut album, was released in January 2019, while the band were midway through an epic European tour with Monster Magnet. In support of the album, the band recorded a live set at BBC’s iconic Maida Vale studios (their second), and racked up festival appearances everywhere from Glastonbury to Bloodstock Open Air. That year also saw PUPPY travel to the US for the first time, selling out a headline show in Brooklyn’s iconic St Vitus Bar for Revolver Magazine. Without missing a beat, the band saw out the year by releasing a surprise EP, ‘iii’, and is now ready to open a new chapter.

repress!

3x12'' Re-issue of this Drexciyan masterpiece that was previously released on Supremat. Now including the tracks that were only available on the CD version when the album first came out in 2001.
If the late James Marcel Stinson left anything in his wake it's certainly the staggering amount of beauty he produced over the years. Tresor Records prepare to re issue a slice of that beauty on October 10th.
Thematically, 'The Opening Of The Cerebral Gate' saw Stinson shift away from the grand narrative of the Drexciyan saga, instead exploring a sub-plot of esoteric concepts revolving around internal, mental and psychedelic tropes. Musically, it presents the electro genius at the height of his game.

2023 Repress

In between the re-releases of the two legendary Drexciya albums released on Tresor in '99 and '01, the Berlin techno institute is proud to re-present Transllusion's 'Mind Over Positive and Negative Dimensional Matter' the 12' single which originally accompanied the album 'The Opening Of The Cerebral Gate'.

Produced by the late James Marcel Stinson and released in 2001 via Supremat, a short-lived sub-label Tresor dedicated to a more abstract and experimental electro sound, both releases were conceived as the second part of the so-called Drexciyan Storms - a whopping stack of seven albums by the Detroit pair released under different monikers within a single year (the Tresor album 'Harnessed The Storm' being the rst).

This phase marks a groundbreaking time for the duo, their cosmos breaking wide open, right at the dawn of a new technological era in electronic music production. All this is deeply reected in Transllusion's rst album and single.

Thematically, 'The Opening Of The Cerebral Gate' and 'Mind Over Positive and Negative Dimensional Matter' saw Stinson shift away from the grand narrative of the Drexciyan saga, instead exploring a sub-plot of esoteric concepts revolving around internal, mental and psychedelic tropes. Musically, it presents the electro genius at the height of his game.

This land runs through Katherine Paul’s blood. And it called to her. In dreams she saw the river, her ancestors, and her home. When the land calls, you listen. And KP found herself far from her ancestral lands during a time of collective trauma, when the world was wounded and in need of healing. In 2020 she made the journey from Portland back to the Skagit River, back to the cedar
trees that stand tall and shrouded in fog, back to the tide flats and the mountains, back to Swinomish.

It is a powerful thing to return to our ancestral lands and often times the journey is not easy. Like the salmon through the currents, like the tide as it crawls to shore this is a story of return. It is the call and response. It is the outstretched arms of the people who came before, welcoming her home. The Land, The Water, The Sky is a celebration of lineage and strength. Even in its deepest moments of loneliness and grief, of frustration over a world wrought with colonial violence and pain, the songs remind us that if we slow down, if we listen to the waves and the wind through the trees, we will remember to breathe.

There is a throughline of story in every song, a remembrance of knowledge and teachings, a gratitude of wisdom passed down and carried. There is a reimagining of Sedna who was offered to the sea, and a beautiful rumination on sacrifice and humanity, and what it means to hold the stories that work to teach us something.

Chord progressions born out of moments of sadness and solitude transform into the islands that sit blue along the horizon. The Salish Sea curves along her homelands, and when the singer is close to this water she is reminded of her grandmother, how she looked out at these same islands, and she’s held by spirit and memory.

The Land, The Water, The Sky rises and falls, in darkness and in light, but even in its most melancholy moments it is never despairing. That is the beauty of returning home. When you stand on ancestral lands it is impossible to be alone. You feel the arms and hands that hold you up, unwilling to let you fall into sorrow or abandonment. In her songs Katherine Paul has channeled that feeling of being held. In every note she has written a love letter to indigenous strength and healing.

There is a joy present here, a fierce blissfulness that comes with walking the trails along the river, feeling the sand and th stones beneath her feet. It is the pride and the certainty that comes with knowing her ancestors walked along the same land, dipped their hands into the water, and ran their fingertips along the same bark of cedar trees.

This is a story of hope, as it details the joy of returning. Katherine Paul’s journey home wasn’t made alone, and the songs are crowded with loved ones and relatives, like a really good party. And as the songs walk us through the land it is important we hover over the images and the beauty, the moments that mark this album as site specific. The power of this land is woven throughout, telling the story of narrow waterways, brush strokes, salmon stinta, and above all healing.

Let it take you. Move through the story and see the land through her eyes, because it is a gift, a welcomed sʔabadəb.*

*The word “gift” in Lushootseed, the language of the Coast Salish people“