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Leigh-Anne Pinnock is ready to reintroduce herself. After conquering the pop world with one of the biggest groups on the planet and stepping out as a solo artist, she has reached a new clarity: no more compromises, no more limits.

With the introduction of her debut album ‘My Ego Told Me To’, Leigh-Anne isn’t reinventing herself, she’s restoring the woman she always was. Bold, unapologetic and free, this album is the purest expression of her artistry to date and musically reflects every facet of Leigh-Anne Pinnock - unfiltered, independent and finally on her own terms. “Everything that has been in my heart, everything I’ve wanted to do, I’m doing now. It feels like freedom. It feels right.”

Nach zwei erfolgreichen Demo-Tapes, »Bloody Karnage« (1984) sowie »Surrender Or Die« (1985), begaben sich Torontos Slaughter im Februar 1986 erneut ins Studio, um ihre Debüt-Single »Nocturnal Hell« aufzunehmen, die aus dem Titeltrack, “One Foot In The Grave” und “Tortured Souls” bestand. Die Besetzung bestand aus dem Gitarristen und Sänger Dave Hewson, Bassist Terry Sadler sowie Schlagzeuger Ron Sumners. Die Originalpressung der 7“ Single erschien auf Brian Taylors Label Diabolic Force in einer limitierten Auflage von 1.000 Stück. Der hektische Death/Thrash Metal von Slaughter traf voll den Zeitgeist wurde von den Fans sofort ins Herz geschlossen. 1987 folgte auf »Nocturnal Hell« das legendäre Debütalbum von Slaughter, »Strappado« (ebenfalls auf Diabolic Force veröffentlicht). „Sämtliche Stücke von »Nocturnal Hell« wurden schon in der Session zum »Strappado«-Album mit aufgenommen“, erklärt Dave Hewson heute. „Die Aufnahmen und der Mix nahmen insgesamt ganze zwei Tage in Anspruch und kosteten lächerliche 500 US-Dollar. Eine 7“ war eigentlich nie geplant. Aber ich glaube mich erinnern zu können, dass Diabolic Force/Fringe Records in finanziellen Schwierigkeiten steckten und deswegen die Single vor der »Strappado«-LP herausbrachten, die dann ein Jahr auf sich warten ließ. Das Album wurde im Februar 1986 aufgenommen, kam aber erst 1987 heraus. Wir waren sehr froh darüber, wie die Scheibe geklungen hat, super heavy nämlich. Das Schlagzeug ist im Mix vielleicht ein wenig zu laut gewesen, aber insgesamt waren wir wirklich zufrieden mit dem Sound.“ Rechtzeitig zum 40-jährigen Jubiläum legen High Roller Records nun die inzwischen sehr gesuchte »Nocturnal Hell«-Single in ihrer ursprünglichen Fassung noch einmal neu auf.

NOFX waren sauer (sind es möglicherweise immer noch) und wollten uns das wissen lassen! Ursprünglich 1999 veröffentlicht, war "The Decline" ein mutiges Werk und markierte einen großen Wendepunkt für NOFX. Der Song, der weithin als eines ihrer Meisterwerke gilt, ist ein 18-minütiges Punkrock-Spektakel, das die Entertainmentqualitäten, den lyrischen Witz und die Musikalität der besten Punkrockband aller Zeiten richtig zur Geltung bringt. Der Song, der den Zustand Amerikas satirisch darstellt und die gleichgültigen Massen und Politiker gleichermaßen aufs Korn nimmt, ist auch im Jahr 2026 natürlich leider noch aktuell und kritisiert somit weiterhin die Mächtigen auf eine Weise, zu der nur wenige Künstler den Mut haben. Die Vinyl-Single enthält auf der B-Seite die erste Version von "Clams Have Feelings Too" (das später auf dem Album "Pump Up The Valuum" wieder auftauchte) und ist ein Muss für jeden NOFX-Fan. Erneut auf schwarzem Vinyl wieder da und und limitiert in neuem farbigem Vinyl. Inklusive Beilage mit Texten und Bildern.

Athens-based percussionist and sound artist Yorgos Stavridis makes a stark, physical debut for Heat Crimes with »Solo Percussion«, a set of one-take improvisations that approach percussion as a field of friction between body, objects, space, and sound. Working with membranes, metals, found objects, and feedback systems, Stavridis foregrounds timbre, texture, and spatial presence, collapsing distinctions between instrument, environment, and recording apparatus.

Microphones and speakers are treated as unstable instruments in their own right, introducing opaqueness, resistance, and feedback into the performative chain. Scrapes, low-end pressure, brittle metallic chatter, and sudden bursts of resonance emerge through close bodily engagement with surfaces and materials, each piece documenting a specific configuration of objects, gestures, and acoustic conditions. Performed and recorded live, »Solo Percussion« captures sound in its most contingent state; situational, physical, and irreducibly present. Eschewing narrative, pulse, or formal development, the record sits squarely in Heat Crimes’ lineage of process-led, uncompromising sonic research, where listening becomes an active, tactile act and sound itself is the primary event.

Barabajagal is the seventh studio album, eighth album overall and most fascinatingly the third of our re-issue programme from British singer-songwriter extraordinaire Donovan. It was released in 1969 and again features production duties by Mickie Most.

Do You Want More?!!!??! Is the second studio album and the major-label debut from The Legendary Roots Crew. The album, recorded with the original crew, including Scott Storch, was released January 17th, 1995, and was immediately welcomed with open arms by critics, the Chicago Tribune wrote, “This is an impressive display of skills, intelligently arranged and performed.” Do You Want More?!!!??! prepped fans for what The Roots were capable of, and would later show on their magnum opus, Things Fall Apart.

2026 Repress

DJ Quik is a giant of West Coast hip-hop. With his fourth album Rhythm-Al-Ism he created his masterpiece, a perfect hip-hop album. As Quik explains, “the name Rhythm-Al-Ism alone tells you what I was doing. I was mixing up rhythms. I was meshing R&B with hip-hop and jazz. And a little bit of comedy”. It’s absolutely sensational and as with a lot of mid-90s albums those original vinyl copies are now rare so here’s the Be With re-issue.

A preternaturally gifted producer/rapper, DJ Quik has produced scores of LA gangsta rap classics. He’s released platinum and gold records of his own, as well as helped craft them for the likes of Tupac, Snoop Dogg, and Dr Dre. Quik has always been quirkier and more interesting than his gangsta rap peers, both musically and lyrically. An old-school funk producer at heart, he’s also incredibly nice on the mic. His raps often deal in boasts, jokes and good times but also cover his beefs, his trials and his trauma. Partying and pain, all mixed up. DJing and producing hype beat tapes from age 14, Quik’s tracks blended the languid funk and rubbery synths of Zapp and George Clinton with a gangsta aesthetic, creating a more danceable foil to Compton’s more typical nihilistic hedonism. Ultimately, his records sound custom engineered to drift out over sun-soaked barbecues.

Released in 1998 on Profile, Rhythm-Al-Ism was the closest Quik ever got to making a commercial splash. “You’z A Ganxta” and “Hand in Hand” made radio waves across the country and the less radio-friendly tracks like “Medley For A ‘V’” were bumping out of car stereos. Combining his soulful, jazzy P-Funk/G-Funk beats with his effortlessly smooth flow, Rhythm-Al-Ism was the quintessential West Coast Party. Squelchy synths, bouncy bass, monstrously knocking drums and freaky keys - this is peaking acidic party-rap, straight out the gate. Music for gliding, for skating, for time with your people and your poison. Sunshine. No cares. BBQs. Heavy smoke in the air. Dripping with wit and good humour. A real swing to the vibe.

The album opens with Quik setting out his mission statement with “Rhythm-Al-Ism (Intro)”, telling us what this is all about before the self-explanatory “We Still Party” rocks the spot. It’s definitely all about the party here, complete with Quik’s signature head-nod/body-moving beat. Next up, the undeniable laidback funk and dripping swing of groove-laden “So Many Wayz”. This positively slaps.

Then we get to the three huge singles. The R&B-tinged radio-friendly minor-hit “Hand In Hand” closes the first side only for the flip to get straight into the rolling and scratching of bleepy computer-funk banger “Down, Down, Down” (featuring a particularly nice use of Howard Johnson’s epochal “So Fine”). The effortlessly smooth, flute and guitar-laced “You’z A Ganxta” completes the trio. Next up the fast-paced, vocoder-enhanced, woulda-beena-global-hit “I Useta Know Her”. This coulda (shoulda) been a single too. Head-nod funk workout “No Doubt”, with its ace sample of Prince's “Sexy Dancer”, closes out the second side.

“Speed” races out the gate on the second disc, sampling Edwin Birdsong’s “Rapper Dapper Snapper” in a harder, better, faster, stronger way than those daft Parisian punks. Amphetamine-swift raps over soaring, string-drenched b-boy beats. A total anthem. Up next, the staggering, near 8-minute laconic, lounge-y sax-rap of “Whateva U Do” cools things down and smooths things out with its flute wrapping around a sample of Smokey Robinson’s “So In Love” and some oh-so-classy lounge-piano tinkling. And speaking of smooth, things don’t get much smoother than the blissfully melodic glider-anthem “Thinkin’ ’Bout U” riding that ace flip of SWV’s “Use Your Heart”. Exceptional.

The exquisite funky-flute-slapper “Medley for a ‘V’ (The P***Y Medley)” opens the fourth and final side, with star turns from Snoop Dogg and a typically suave Nate Dogg. It’s followed by the supremely skanked-out “Bombudd II”, a beautifully sweet reggae-fuelled ode to the herb. “Get 2Getha Again” is slick funk. Stunning.

This 2022 Be With double LP re-issue has been mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman and pressed at Record Industry. Unusual for the time, Rhythm-Al-Ism was originally pressed as a double and we’ve reproduced the original LA vibe picture sleeve and insert to match.

As that original front cover says, this is “over 70 minutes of commercial free music” and it’s absolutely perfect from start to finish. There are no stand-out tracks here. It’s all gold.
: Rhythm-al-ism (2LP)

Cory Wong's 2023 debut performance Live At Montreux Jazz Fest!

The Meth Lab returns for its third instalment with “Meth Lab Season 3: The Rehab,” a sharp, hard-hitting chapter that cements Method Man’s place as one of hip-hop’s most consistent and enduring voices. Executive produced by longtime collaborator Handz On, this project finds the Wu-Tang legend in rare form—polished, precise, and laser-focused.

“The Rehab” pulls listeners back into the world Meth has been building since the first Meth Lab sessions: a mixtape-style showcase blending razor-sharp lyricism with streetwise storytelling, packed with energy and attitude. Method Man’s flow remains timeless, weaving between gritty boom-bap, polished modern production, and the unmistakable Wu-Tang aesthetic. A strong lineup of guests brings extra fire to the set—Cappadonna, RJ Payne, Redman, KRS-One, JoJo Pellegrino, Jadakiss, Carlton Fisk, Hanz On, Intell, Iron Mic, 5th Pxwer, Chunk Bizza, Eddie I, Cortez, and more—each stepping into Meth’s world with their own hard-edged energy. Behind the boards, producers like P. Version, Rockwilder, Eric Sermon, Adam McLeer, Daniel C. Wells, Darnell Norman McConnell, and Joshua D. Zimmerman craft a gritty yet refined sonic framework that elevates every performance.

More than just another chapter, Season 3: The Rehab feels like a victory lap: a culmination of decades of craft, a celebration of the Staten Island movement, and a reminder that Method Man still out-rhymes rappers half his age. It’s a must-own for Wu-Tang fans, East Coast purists, and anyone who appreciates sharp writing and decades-deep mastery.

Toronto-based musician and producer David Psutka’s long dormant Egyptrixx alias returns, with How Tidal. A compendium of sorts, which retells the story so far, reworks of highlights from his catalogue sit alongside brand new tracks, serving as a bridge between the past and the future, preceding more fresh music in 2026.
With the originals still sounding remarkably current, a straight best-of wouldn’t have been out of question, but ever the tinkering student of sound, Psutka thought he’d break them apart, just to see how he could put them back together again.

The music on is How Tidal is cutting-edge and futuristic, but never difficult, instead offering accessible gems where multiple strains of bass music are infused with a zingy, techno-pop bounce, whilst ambient moments gift sonic lozenges for maximum contentment. Psutka creates optimistically welcoming environments, where synthetic birds chirrup in cyan skies over babbling rainbow brooks, as 15 inch subwoofers boom by.

Egyptrixx gained renown across the 2010s with his hard hitting yet tranquil experimental dance music dubbed ‘celestial jeep music for a Saturn moon’. Colourful sound design was braided with dancefloor structures, creating an exhilarating tension between melodic and dissonant, euphoric and inward. The debut album Bible Eyes was released in March of 2011 to critical acclaim.

As Egyptrixx, Psutka has released four studio albums, collaborated, remixed, and toured with some of the biggest names in electronic music.
The widely acclaimed moniker is foundational to Psutka’s complex body of work that encompasses multiple solo projects, plus a diverse range of collaborative work. He has performed live at Sonar Festival, Roskilde, Mutek, MOMA PS1 Warm-UP and CTM Festival, and presented sound installations at Galeria Civica Commune di Modena and Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

In 2015, Psutka launched Halocline Trance as a home for his various sound projects, events and collaborations. In recent years, the label has quietly established itself as a platform that facilitates many of Canada’s most exciting creative music projects.

“Tubby did three original dub albums, ‘Dub From The Roots’. ‘The Roots of Dub’ and the third is ‘Brass Rockers’ with Tommy McCook ‘pon the flying cymbals. Where he mixed it with the horn going in and out in a dub way and one named ‘Shalom Dub’ you can call Tubby’s too because he mixed the versions as they were off forty fives’’

Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee

King Tubby and Producer Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee are intertwined in the birth of Dub Music. After discovering a mistake that made a ‘serious joke’ (more of which later...) they went on to release the first pressings of this new musical genre namely ‘Dub Music’. Tubby’s vast knowledge of electronics and Bunny’s vast catalogue of rhythms would lay the foundations of what today is taken as a standard... the Remix / Version cuts to an existing vocal tune.

Osbourne ‘King Tubby’ Ruddock was born in Kingston, Jamaica on 28th January 1941 and grew up in the High Holborn Street area of downtown Kingston. He studied electronics at Kingston’s National Technical College and also on two correspondence courses from the U.S.A... When he had qualified Tubby began repairing radios and other electrical appliances in a shack in the back yard of his mother’s home. His work in the early days included winding transformers and building amplifiers for Kingston’s Sound Systems. Tubby built his first Sound System in 1957 playing jazz and Rhythm & Blues at local weddings and birthday parties. His reputation as a man who knew and understood both electronics and music grew steadily and as the sixties drew to a close. Tubby
purchased his own basic two track equipment. He installed this alongside his dub cutting machine, a home-made mixing console, and his impressive collection of jazz albums in the back bedroom of his home at 18 Dromilly Avenue which he christened his music room.

Tubby and Striker were at Treasure Isle Studio’s one day while Ruddy from Spanish Town was working with the engineer Byron Smith....

“Tubby and myself was talking when Ruddy was cutting some dub but Smithy (engineer) made a mistake through we were talking and forgot to put in the voice. It was two track recording in those days. Ruddy said ‘No Man! Make it stay! and so they cut the rhythm. When I went over to Ruddy’s that Saturday night a dance was in progress and when they played the vocal to the tune... then he said we’re going to play ‘Part Two’. They never called it ‘Version’..and then he played the rhythm track. The song was a catchy song and everybody started to sing along and the deejay started to toast so everything went down well. On Monday morning I went up and I said ‘Tubbs the mistake we made was a serious joke.It mash up Spanish Town! The people went wild. So you have to start to do that now ‘cause when the man put on the ‘Part Two’ everyone start singing this song. It played about twenty times. I said you try Tubbs!’...Well the next Saturday night now when Tubby strung up down the farm U Roy said he’s going to play ‘Part Two’ but Tubby did it different now. He started with the voice then dropped it out and let the rhythm run and then he brought in the voice in the middle and from there Tubby started to get really popular.’’
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee

Dynamic Sounds upgraded to sixteen track recording in 1972 and Tubby purchased, again with the help of a deal brokered by Bunny Lee. The old four track equipment and the MCI console from their Studio B. The four tracks now gave him far wider scope to work with and he began to create a new musical form where the bass and drum parts were brought up while the faders allowed Tubby to ease the vocal and rhythm in and out of the mix. It was only a matter of time before Tubby’s dub plate experiments began to make it on to vinyl and the first ever long-playing King Tubby releases would feature a collection of his mixes to a selection of Strikers rhythms. So please sit back and enjoy this historic set of sounds. Lovingly restored and with a few extra gems added to the CD Editions. These releases were the first to carry the name of King Tubby and the first to credit the great musicians that contributed so much to the rhythms that made these albums possible.

Reggae music in many ways reminds us of America’s Motown records. The music comes out of its stable fast and furious we tend to know the songs, the artists, the
studio but who? are the players. The unsung heroes that in many cases, cut most of our favourite tracks One such band this applies to in the Reggae field is the Soul Syndicate Band.

Each Jamaican record producer would have their favourite set of musicians they would use, availability permitting. Although several musicians crossed over into different named bands. For example, a set of players working with Producer Bunny 'Striker' Lee would go under the guise of The Aggrovators. The same group working with Producer Joe Gibbs would work under the name The Professionals. Soul Syndicate were the band of choice for Producer Niney the Observer, who used them for his own recordings and when you put that aside the other artists Niney produced, Dennis Brown, Max Romeo, Michael Rose, I Roy, The Ethiopians, Barry Brown, Gregory Issacs and Freddie McGregor.  To name a few and not necessary all, you begin to see the amount of material this set of musicians played on.

Built around the rhythm section of Calton 'Santa' Davis and George 'Fully' Fullwood, drums and bass respectfully. They were usually accompanied by Earl 'Chinna' Smith, Tony Chin on guitars, Keith Sterling, Gladstone 'Gladdy' Anderstone, Bernard 'Touter' Harvey, organ/keyboards and Noel 'Skully' Simms, percussion. Niney's tracks tended to be rhythm heavy and thus Sound System favourites.But when brass was needed/called for ,this was provided by the likes of Tommy McCook, Bobby Ellis, Felix ' Deadley Headley' Bennett. Niney not having a studio of his own at the time used most of Kingston's studios, again availability and money providing. But most of these cuts
selected for this release were cut at Channel 1 and a few exceptions at Randy's Studio 17 and at Joe Gibbs studio at Burns Avenue.

Niney also worked closely with King Tubby on his dub plates, so tracks after the recording sessions were taken to King Tubbys for reconstruction and sometimes
re-voicing over an existing rhythm. These were then used as version sides to the vocal cuts, but most importantly used to nice up the dances, being played out on King Tubbys Hometown Hi-Fi Sound System. We have pulled together a selection of such dub plate specials cut by the Soul Syndicate band for this release. Dub sides that emphasise how well the band worked together, and with Niney at the reigns and the added bonus of some Tubby magic sprinkled on top. Please see our Niney the Observer at King Tubbys 1973-1975 (JRO11) for further examples of this work.

We at Jamaican Recordings hope we are not alone in saluting the musicians, that played such a big part in producing many of our favourite Reggae Sounds. Having released titles by The Revolutionaries (JR003), The Aggrovators (JR005), Sly and Robbie (JR006), we are now pleased to release a selection of rare Dub cuts by another one of Jamaica's finest, the Soul Syndicate band to our catalogue...

Respect Jah Floyd.

Jennifer Touch release her next LP 'Aging at Airports' on Fabrika Records. The idea for the record title came before the music even existed as Touch was spending an increasing amount of time in airports while touring. In her own words: "It felt like I waste a large part of my life waiting for the next show to come, to entertain and perform my music and build timeless moments with others. This waiting, the slowly ticking time at the gate, was in complete contrast to what I want to do as an artist: to be in flux, to create things that will last forever. The airport, as a busy hub, was like a symbol of this ambivalence. And a reminder: every second, whether waiting or on the move, I have to accept that I am fading, that my creative power, my face, and my body are fading. As a (performing) artist, everything feels like a strange contrast. While you want to stay true to yourself and speak authentically from the soul, you are also expected to appear forever young, and powerful. Artists are often wanted to distract people, but creating this art forces me to confront my own transience. I feel the struggle to fit into this powerful artificial framework that the world has set and the desire to break free from it."

Minority Records is releasing a unique boxset Politique du silence with three early albums from Sylvain Chauveau, French composer of minimalist neoclassical music.
“When I made my first albums as a composer, I was obsessed with minimalism, and this quote from the film director Robert Bresson summed up my state of mind. I set myself three principles: 1) Use silence as a starting point, 2) Only add sound when it's absolutely essential, 3) Don't imitate the Anglo-Saxon musicians I admired, but draw on the musical culture of my country, France which lead me to listen intensively to Satie, Debussy and Ravel.” Chauveau explains the background to his work.

The collection Politique du silence contains the recordings of Des plumes dans la tête (2004), Un autre Décembre (2003) and Nocturne impalpable (2001) on coloured 180 gram vinyls. The cover features artwork by French photographer Valéry Lorenzo.

“When I discovered the simple and powerful black and white pictures by Valéry Lorenzo, in the 90s, I immediately fell in love with them. We became good friends and since then I ask him to let me use one of his photos for most of my album covers, or to make my portrait for press shots. It has become a real collaboration, music and images, for more than 25 years. It was then logical to ask him again for the cover of this boxset, like a gentle reflection on my piano and strings era. It's a true honour for me to see my early music recollected, repackaged, remastered after all this time. Which gives me hope that this music, in which I've put all my soul and heart during the years 2001 to 2003, is maybe not forgotten yet.” Chauveau himself adds of his collaboration with Valéry Lorenzo.
Nocturne impalpable and Un autre Décembre were re-issued by Minority Records in 2014 and 2015 and both titles completely sold out. This year’s release also includes the album Des plumes dans la tête in its world premiere on vinyl.

Nocturne Impalpable is a world of minimalism, abstraction, and contemporary rendition of classical music with variations for the piano, clarinet, strings, and accordion which are often compared to the compositions of composers Harold Budd and Claude Debussy. Here, Chauveau partially reveals his versatility as a composer by connecting electronic elements, noises, and ambient planes with monumental strings and piano preludes. The
album of piano variations Un autre Décembre is interspersed with field recordings and electronic noises. The inspiration for the recording of the album and for its name was the song Jaurès by the Belgian singer and composer Jacques Brel. This song tells the story of the grandparents’ generation who toiled in the mines. “Comfort and health won’t protect our generation from sadness and discontent. We also live through winter times, even if these are slightly warmer due to the current climate.” An album of 20 short instrumental sketches with several delicate intermezzos for the piano, string quartet, and the clarinet, Des plumes dans la tête, was composed for the eponymous film by director Thomas de Thier.
Sylvain Chauveau was born in 1971 in the French town of Bayonne and currently lives in Barcelona. His extensive discography of mainly meditative neo-classical recordings for the music labels FatCat, Sub Rosa, Sonic Pieces, and Flau is enriched by several collaborations and his participation in the Ensemble 0, Arca, and On projects. Chauveau has also composed many film soundtracks as well as music for the theatre. He has presented his works in Prague several times, most recently in the spring of 2024 at the Spectaculare festival. His compositions get tens of millions of streams on streaming services, and he’s been called the French king of minimalism.

Following the widely acclaimed release of Body Shell in Spring 2025, Carré returns to Tempa, for a new EP, ‘Hibiscus’, featuring a collaborative track with LA-artist Bbyafricka, highlighting the synergy of West Coast Rap & London Soundsystem culture.

Connected by warmth and groove that define where Carré is musically right now, each of the four tracks on ‘Hibiscus’ stands on its own, yet together they continue to showcase Carré’s flair for producing sleek dubstep with melodic verve. From the shimmering ‘Warm Light’, the razor-sharp edge of ‘X Effect’, the deep stepper ‘Ride It Out’ to the stripped back ‘Hibiscus’ which glows with the addition of Bbyafricka’s sultry vocals, the EP is a concise statement of Carré’s evolving sound.

Speaking about the collaboration, Carré says, “I’d been a fan of Bbyafricka’s sound, style, and tone — tracks like ‘Baton Rouge’ and ‘Dumbo’ really stood out to me — and I could already imagine how her voice would fit with my production. The fact that she’s from LA made the connection feel even more natural. When I reached out, she was down straight away and came back with something I genuinely loved. She captured the energy of the track perfectly, and together I think we created something that feels authentic and even better than I’d imagined.”

For Bbyafricka, working on ‘Hibiscus’ was a moment of overcoming writer's block, “this song was me coming out of it on a weekend spent in Joshua tree, sitting outside looking at the view and the solar panels. I think you can envision what my view was when you play the song,” she explains.

Carré’s next outing on Tempa is a welcome return, signifying the home run she’s on as a producer and marking another impressive instalment in the producer's growing catalogue. In the last three years, Carré has quickly become a leading figure in the contemporary wave of artists pushing the true school Dubstep sound to new places and new audiences, expanding on the roots laid down by the likes of Skream, Benga, and Loefah.

After appearances on Freakadelle’s ’44’ compilation series as well as on a Night Defined Recordings 12inch alongside Mesak, Even Tuell and Mary Yalex, Nurah presents his debut album, which will also be the last release of the Freakadelle imprint before entering new waters.

CTRL aims to point out that the world of perception is strongly guided by frequencies in music. CTRL combines modified sounds with minimal sonic structures and creates rhythms that transcend genres. From an artistic point of view, CTRL auditorily as well as visually hints at the versatility of earthly sensations.
Nurah explores electronic music in its many facets and places his ever-gro-wing, musical challenges at the forefront of his work.

Original 1996 3 x 10” albums unplayed, mint condition (have been stored in boxes since ‘96). Not shrink-wrapped – never were…

Malena Zavala is an Argentinian-born, London-based artist, producer, and filmmaker, known for crafting ethereal, genre-blending music that navigates the space between her Latin heritage and her British upbringing. With the forthcoming album If This Life Could Start Again set for release on 30 January 2026 on Paraná Records, Zavala presents her most intimate, cohesive, and accomplished work to date, marking a significant evolution in her artistic journey.
With her new album, Malena creates an atmospheric dream pop world, weaving singer-songwriter intimacy with synth pop, Argentine folk, indiepop, rock and experimental music, threaded together by her blissful vocals and dreamy guitar work. Gorgeously warm and vivid, If This Life Could Start Again charts the journey from pain to acceptance, mapping out the non-linear nature of healing through a sonic landscape. Each song embodies a distinct emotion within that journey, from grief and chaos to feeling lost, seeking refuge, finding confidence, and finally acceptance and letting go. Drawing on her Argentinian roots, Malena uses the Andes mountains as both a visual and thematic anchor – the difficult climb towards higher ground becomes a metaphor for healing, whilst being lost at rock bottom reflects the darkest moments of the journey. 
Completely composed and performed by Malena herself, the album was recorded in Girona’s L’Empordà countryside in Spain with producer Luke Smith. As a professional producer and audio engineer, this was Malena’s first time relinquishing production control – an intimate creative shift that allowed their shared vision to shape the album’s rich, enveloping sound. 
However, Zavala’s career to date has been a testament to self-sufficient artistry. Her critically acclaimed debut, Aliso (2018), was written, recorded, and produced alone in her parents’ garage, which honed her dreamy bedroom pop sound. The album, praised by The Guardian for its “gently warped and beguilingly melancholy guitar pop,” ****, immediately catapulted her from DIY beginnings to prestigious stages, supporting acts like Lord Huron at London’s Roundhouse and Men I Trust at Village Underground and subsequently continuing on their UK/EU tours. Later with standout performances at Latitude, Green Man, and All Points East. Her consistent radio support from key influencers including BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 1's Huw Stephens, and Steve Lamacq has solidified her presence on the airwaves.
Her second album, La Yarará (2020), saw Zavala delve deeper into her roots, exploring Latin traditions like Cumbia and Bolero. This exploration of identity continues powerfully on the new album, but with a newfound lyrical depth and sonic confidence. The new album, If This Life Could Start Again, is a raw and transformative eight-track journey that maps the emotional landscape of healing. Written after a period of personal upheaval, the album traverses themes of grief, hereditary trauma, and self-discovery. The record’s narrative is structured like a mountain ascent. A challenging climb through varied emotional terrain, posing the central question: “Will you join the journey?” Sonically, this journey mirrors the non-linear path to acceptance, evolving from acoustic folk and synth-pop to funk-infused rhythms and rock anthems.
As a formidable live performer, Zavala has built a robust touring profile across the UK and Europe. She will embark on an extensive tour in February and March 2026 to support the album, with dates spanning major cities from London and Glasgow to Berlin, Paris, and Barcelona.
With If This Life Could Start Again, Malena Zavala fully realizes her artistic vision as a self-taught producer to an autonomous artist commanding her career through Paraná Records whilst reflecting the vast landscapes of her heritage and affirming her place as a compelling and evolving voice in contemporary music.

At the start of this summer, following a three-year hiatus for Daphni (punctuated only by his first ever collaborative Daphni track ‘Unidos’ alongside Sofia Kourtesis), he dropped ‘Sad Piano House’. The track represented something of a continuation in the Daphni catalogue, its roots growing from Cherry’s ‘Cloudy’ and its subsequent Kelbin remix, something in that song’s makeup having a profound effect when played on dancefloors by Snaith and countless others. ‘Sad Piano House’ deployed more intangibly irresistible bendy piano to equally satisfying effect and continues to achieve similarly rhapsodic dancefloor saturation.
Though a sizeable gap for Daphni releases, between Cherry and Butterfly however of course sits Honey, the latest Caribou album and one that saw the more instantaneous and dancefloor leaning traits of Daphni peaking through the cracks more than ever before. This blurring of the lines leads to an intriguing collaboration in Butterfly’s lead single ‘Waiting So Long (feat. Caribou)’. An unlikely duo - in that both artists are the same man, Dan Snaith - ‘Waiting So Long’ is not so much an identity crisis, ego trip, or the result of a chemical spill in the Snaith laboratory. It’s simply a track that Snaith felt for the first time belongs to both aliases, and might appeal to fans of both. He has never sung on a Daphni track before, and did not set out with the intention to do so this time, and yet this strange billing was born.

Daphni music has always been Snaith’s way of hitting directly to the core of the dancefloors he spends so much of his time playing to, and those dancefloors have been steadily expanding as his name grows, with the music following suit. This album however also draws from further back with a definite kinship to the very first Daphni album, the invigorating bag of ideas that was Jiaolong.
Butterfly is a showcase of the wonderful variety and surprising twists and turns that made that album such an exciting new prospect and that still to this day make Snaith such an intriguing DJ. There are more heavy hitters here, tracks that fill those dancefloors better than anyone, like ‘Clap Your Hands’ which picks up the energy of ‘Sad Piano House’ and flips it, exposing the gritty and intoxicating underbelly of Snaith’s hitmaking side, while retaining the playful urgency that runs through all of his work of late. Meanwhile ‘Hang’’s comic-strip horns are unpinned by gleeful force, unrelenting and thrillingly unshakeable. Elsewhere though comes a clutch of other tunes that might creep out somewhere more off the beaten path, a path Snaith has never stopped seeking in amongst his larger billings. ‘Lucky’ is squirmy and elusively intoxicating, ‘Invention’ skitters down meandering, inviting corridors, ‘Talk To Me’ grumbles and broods in the murk, and ‘Miles Smiles’ could roll on endlessly, so confident in its groove. There are no obvious peaks in these tracks or unifying moments, in fact many of them really have no business being on the dancefloor at all, and yet in the right setting, they could be the most fun to be had all night.

One such club is a good microcosm for the ethos of Butterfly as a whole. “Around the time I was finishing up this album I played a long set in a club called Open Ground in Wuppertal, Germany.” Snaith recalls, “It’s kind of, in one sense, the platonic ideal of the kind of club I’d want to play in. Every single decision has been taken, at great expense, with the aim of making the perfect sounding medium sized club room. But on top of it being the perfect acoustic environment it also is run by an amazing collection of people in a way that gives it a sense of community that dance music at its best provides. It is an absolute pleasure to play in that room to a crowd of people who come from all over. Playing in there you feel like you can play anything, and I played works in progress of pretty much every track on this album in my set there. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing a short set at a festival or in a more raw warehouse kind of club where you bang it out and only really functional music works but on record I guess the point of these Daphni records is to keep in mind a more expansive idea of dance music where the parameters are broad and the church is broad. I think that actually, putting really functional stuff next to weirder tracks (both on an album and in a dj set) might be the thing that’s still most interesting to me.”
This is the feeling that’s most palpable on Butterfly, and in every single time you see Snaith DJ. Right from the inception of the Daphni alias - and even before that – the thrill of trying stuff out, pushing at the boundaries has always been there and on Butterfly is present in all its twists and turns. It leaps all over the place and yet it hangs together, never feeling like a grab bag of dancefloor utilities but rather a distillation of all the strings to Snaith’s bow, exhilaratingly human and unified by one singular concept – simple and joyful exploration.

A chance meeting in Mexico City set Points of Inaccessibility into motion. When Ibero-American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri crossed paths with Dutch media artist Jaco Schilp at MUTEK in 2024, a conversation about how technology shapes perception revealed an unexpected common ground. Schilp invited Irisarri to a spring 2025 residency at Uncloud, the Utrecht-based collective he co-founded, where Irisarri's sound began to take form amid an environment shaped by Schilp’s visual research.

The Uncloud studio was located inside the former Pieter Baan Centre, a forensic psychiatric prison where suspects of violent crimes were once confined. Its long history of silence and containment shaped the atmosphere in which the project developed. Within this setting, Irisarri coaxed long bowed-guitar tones through a network of pedals and looping systems. The raw gestures thickened into a vaporous and architectural field of sound. Schilp processed the material through a custom point-cloud software patch that produced images in continuous flux. The visuals flickered, dissolved and reformed like memories that resist coherence, functioning as a digital Rorschach that reflected the observer’s own perception.

Amid these spectral echoes, the project evolved into an examination of how the past persists within present signals. Memory endures as residue and interference, continually shaping perception even when its source has faded.

Schilp’s visual process required a continuous stream of sound in real time. Irisarri improvised throughout the residency, generating material that allowed the visuals to develop in parallel. Once back in his New York studio, he began shaping the recordings by carving pathways through the improvisations and mapping selected passages into MIDI. This process allowed him to build outward from the bowed-guitar material with minimal overdubs, adding Prophet 5 textures, Moog bass and strings that expanded the harmonic field while keeping the original performances at the center. To refine the structure, Abul Mogard provided editorial input, working with Irisarri’s stems to guide transitions and strengthen the overall pacing. The material, originally created under conditions of immediacy and constraint, evolved into a fully realized work through careful revision, patience and sustained reworking.

The title engages the geographic concept of the Poles of Inaccessibility, locations defined solely by their distance from all surrounding points. Irisarri adapts this idea to the conditions of digital life, where new forms of inaccessibility arise through the informational enclosures that structure perception. What appears to be a fully connected network often produces a deeper kind of separation, one shaped by the filtering logic of the systems that mediate experience. In this sense, the digital sphere mirrors its geographic counterpart. We inhabit spaces saturated with signals, yet the possibility of genuine contact becomes increasingly remote.

At its core, Points of Inaccessibility considers what can be understood as the new rituals of capitalist realism. Irisarri uses the term digital shamanism to describe the forms of simulated connection that organize contemporary life. These systems promise comfort through algorithms, influencers and AI interlocutors, yet they often reproduce the same conditions that generate loneliness in the first place. What appears as connection becomes the echo of connection, a sequence of gestures that imitate solidarity while withholding it. Like the geographic poles, these rituals are defined by distance. They pull us into environments where everything is illuminated, yet meaningful proximity becomes increasingly rare. In this sense, the work approaches a hauntology of the present, a reflection on futures that have stalled and intimacies that have been thinned by the algorithmic infrastructures that surround us.

This thematic tension unfolds across the album’s four movements. Faded Ghosts of Clouds introduces the work with textures that rise and dissipate in slow cycles, creating an atmosphere that resists clear definition. Breaking the Unison occupies a pivotal position in the sequence and focuses on the moment when the individual and the system fall out of alignment. Its shifting patterns trace the scattering of signals that once suggested connection, revealing the instability at the heart of contemporary perception. Signals from a Distant Afterglow forms the center of the album and features vocals by Karen Vogt, whose presence enters the sound field like a fragile transmission shaped by distance and delay. The closing piece, Memory Strands, follows motifs that appear, recede and briefly intersect before returning to quiet. Across these movements, the album outlines a landscape in which emergence and disappearance continually inform one another.

Listening to Points of Inaccessibility is an encounter with a sound field that is constantly in flux. Elements surface briefly, shift position and recede, creating a sense of motion that resists stable interpretation. The music moves between closeness and vastness, carrying traces of memory while withholding a clear point of resolution.

The album’s visual identity completes the project’s conceptual arc. In Mexico City, where Irisarri and Schilp first met, Daniel Castrejón transformed stills from Schilp’s point-cloud visuals into the cover image. The final artwork captures a single suspended frame of the digital material, a moment extracted from a field that is normally in constant motion. Its surface recalls the texture and abstraction found in the work of Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies, where material presence and erasure coexist within the same plane.

What emerges is a work that examines the tension between technological systems and human presence. Points of Inaccessibility asks whether connection is still possible within environments shaped by mediation and delay, or whether we have become isolated points within the very networks that promise proximity. What possibilities for relation persist within environments organized by algorithms and interruption? And how are we meant to understand presence when so much of it is constructed at a distance?

Points of Inaccessibility will be released on BioVinyl on February 6, 2026, with audiovisual performances planned throughout 2026.

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Artwork by Jaco Schilp
Design and layout by Daniel Castrejón
Artist photo by Iulia Alexandra Magheru.

You don’t need to be Freud to regard teeth as a delicate issue. They can make joy look joyous and pain look painful, and on the cover of the new múm album they do both at the same time. As »Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is Okay« (2001), »Finally We Are No One« (2002) and »Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know« (2009) »Smilewound« is another example of the band’s art of juxtaposing two conflicting meanings and taking advantage of the energy created through the tension between both.

Sparser in sound than many of its predecessors, »Smilewound« is an airy, relaxed record. The múm-core-duo of Örvar and Gunni doesn’t make you laugh out loud (except maybe for the quirky vintage Arcade-sound-start of »When Girls Collide«), but it will make you smile often - despite the heavenly voices singing about violence in one form or another in most songs. Musically, múm’s capability to build playful electronic sound-ornaments around simple melodies is in full bloom. And these days they know that trimming the ornamentation can strengthen the melody. Take »The Colorful Stabwound«: an aguish drum’n’bass piece and »Smilewound« gets close to a straight pop-song. Even that isn’t very close, but it combines its rhythmic strength with a simple yet effective piano-line and the soothing lushness of a female voice to something compelling that follows you like the smell of a delicate eau de toilette. Or »Candlestick« which started out as a little ditty strummed on an acoustic guitar many years ago and has grown into this bouncy piece of synth-pop that changes its musical colours every couple of beats until you feel comfortably dizzy. Perfect pop in very fancy clothes. No wonder that antipodean pop-princess Kylie Minogue wanted to collaborate with múm on the »Whistle«, the main song in 2012-movie »Jack & Diane«.

Recorded in, among other places, the band’s practice-space, an old baltic farmhouse and on the kitchen-table after dinner, the album was produced by múm themselves. And being the revolving collective they are, it comes as no surprise that we see the return of former member Gyda. Defining satellites as part of the core fits nicely with the band’s penchant for ambivalence - in fact that's part of the album's charm.

In 1999, on December 23 to be precise, the electronic music landscape changed forever. On that day, the now legendary Icelandic band múm released their debut album “Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK”. The thing is though, back in the day, hardly anybody realized. It was Christmas after all, people were busy with potentially more important things and didn’t pay attention to some kids selling records on Reykjavík’s high street. Little did those shoppers know.

Thankfully, those 10 tracks weren’t overlooked for long. On the contrary: the album went on to become one of the most influential building blocks of what back then was called electronica and today is considered an art form playing a crucial and important role in shaping and defining the rich electronic music culture of the 21st century. Now, 20 years after the record dropped onto planet Earth, Morr Music is re-issuing the remastered album with its original artwork, adding newly commissioned re-works: A note-for-note representation of “Smell Memory“ by Kronos Quartet (with additional drums by múm’s Samuli Kosminen), a gentle reinterpretation of “Random Summer” by acclaimed pianist and composer Hauschka and an otherworldly new version of “Ballad Of The Broken String” recorded by label mate Sóley. Additionally, four remixes produced in the early 2000s are made available for the first time ever on vinyl here.

In 1999, electronic music was in full bloom. The dance floors were thriving worldwide.Yet the concept of using electronic sounds in acoustic-based productions (or vice versa) was still in its infancy. Many producers were trying, most of them failed. The results felt often forced, fabricated, unimaginative, random and forgettable. New ideas require new mindsets after all. With “Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK”, múm established a new approach in music production. Instead of setting a fixed agenda and working with a distinct hierarchy for their sonic palette, Gyða Valtýsdóttir, Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Smárason let each instrument and sound source be true to itself, creating an ever-evolving universe of sonic bliss. Listening to the album in 2019 still makes every music lover’s heart jump. Combining Drill-and-Bass-inspired beat-chopping, future-informed DSP-programming, ethereal vocal work, indie rock’s boominess, folk music’s soulful brittleness and a lofty feeling for melody and arrangement, the album is a rare example of musical transcendence and remains impossible to categorize.

Many of the ideas formulated and recorded for the album quickly became an integral part of the canonical self-conception musicians around the world were and still are aspiring to. How these ideas really came about, though, is not known – the dynamics, the struggles, the qualms, the sudden realization of having achieved something which might actually stick. Maybe that is a good thing. Örvar Smárason remembers that most of the album “was recorded in a tiny, sweaty room in the summer of 1999 with carpenters banging nails around us, but sometimes we put on headphones so we couldn’t hear them.” It is a good thing they did. As is often the case with classics, all one can do is listen closely and let the magic sink in – again and again.

There is a breaking point where the mind yields and the body takes command. This is precisely the territory of Frenetic Habits EP.

Asymetric80 lands at INDUSTRIAS MEKANIKAS with an unapologetic statement: a direct immersion into the aesthetics of collapse and extreme habits. The work places you in the center of a post-apocalyptic scenario, where survival no longer relies on calm, but on your ability to endure mechanical tension.

The sound is built upon solidity and saturation. You won’t find fragility here, but rather an architecture of EBM, New Beat, and Industrial Techno designed to dominate any sound system that dares to play it.

Side A establishes the hierarchy with Frenetic Habits. Far from linear, the track unfolds a broken, demolishing rhythm, generating a devastating sonic pressure that completely envelops you. It is a piece of constant drive, an armored machine advancing over the very ground you stand on. It is followed by Exile and Unmasked, which shifts the strategy towards depth: a hypnotic immersion where industrial textures densify, creating a dark atmosphere that traps you with no escape.

On Side B, Bleak materializes the heaviness of the environment. A slow-burning, corrosive track with deep bass, which you can feel advancing with the force of concrete. To close, Dementia releases the accumulated tension with overflowing kinetic energy; a final outburst of controlled aggression that closes the cycle with maximum intensity.

Frenetic Habits EP is a record of ironclad textures and terminal atmosphere. A work that documents not defeat, but the brute force needed to remain standing when everything around has come crashing down.

Explicit isolation is the third album by the international collective E/I, led by composer and percussionist Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek. The group’s seven core members came together while studying at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory and the Royal Danish Academy of Music. For this latest release, they are joined by Slovenian musicians Samo Kutin (hurdy-gurdy) and Kaja Draksler (organ), alongside Danish tuba player Rasmus Svale.

The three compositions distill sound down to its essential elements, drifting freely through space. The material is minimal, moving in the geological rhythm of endless cycles of tension and release, formation and dissolution, density and lightness. Pimpon acts here more as a guide than a creator with a master plan. He is a navigator, leading us to the most crucial moments where sonic emissions merge into vibrating drones, building to an inevitable leap—an explosion after which the particles rearrange themselves once again. It feels like futuristic temple music infused with intergalactic spiritual jazz, the extensions of drone music, and acoustic ambient textures, all highlighted by the jolly grin of the navigator.

“I wrote the scores and asked each of the musicians to record their parts individually. What’s interesting for me about doing it this way is that it removes the element of immediate interaction and introduces a factor of randomness. I then edited and mixed it myself, also adding my own parts. Previously, it was strictly acoustic music, and the recordings were ‘live,’ meaning they were captured in one room at the same time, with no subsequent edits.” Pimpon has also incorporated electronics, which make the album even more airy and organically complement the sounds of the hurdy-gurdy and organ, recorded in Trboje, the small Slovenian village.

At 19, Helviofox adds his signature to the batida template that by now seems to have been in existence since forever. Such is the strength of this primordial fountain, a source of rejuvenation. Also within the literal family: Helvio cites brothers Dadifox and Erycox as main influences.

Curiosity for the sound made him go into production by the time he was 13. A couple of years later (2020) he became co-founder of TLS with E8Prod, Alberfox, DiionyG and other mates. His talent fully developed since then, opening a slight detour that became a new path parallel to the main road.

Lively basslines anchor the beat directly lifted from tradition and clearly channeled to the dancefloor. Strong, well rounded grooves, a spot-on sense of timing and tempo, elegant atmospheres, all part of Helvio's notion of arrangement and his perception of dance music boundaries, stretching them just enough to present a challenge but not as far as to disconnect head and feet and risk losing the floor.

This liminal space between experimentation and popularity is both dangerous and attractive. There is no one formula. Precisely why it still retains plenty of fuel for current and future generations to contribute personal visions.

Lisboa, 2025

blickwinkel releases WILDERNESS, the fifth instalment in Ameel Brecht’s cassette series exploring the theme of sleep. This closing volume delves into the world of dreaming and what it does to our minds, and for the first time in Brecht’s oeuvre features newly composed parts for (bass) clarinet.

"Sleeping and dreaming in your childhood: the first dreams you remember, the whole wildness of it;
dreams of flying, and of disappearing,
the strangeness of blue twilight,
worrying about the nightmares of a sibling, listening to the dreams of your parents,
struggling with falling asleep,
writing dreams on postcards
dreams that feel so true they linger for days -
sleep is wilderness."

A house is something that is so deeply temporary, yet it can hold so much energy. How do we carry or leave behind those energies while transitioning into new spaces? How does each space we occupy for some time shape us and how do we tear ourselves away from it and its influence once it’s time to go? These are some of the core questions behind CC Sorensen’s new album for mappa, ‘Phantom Rooms’ – it’s a record about movement, change, transformation, family, juxtapositions… but most of all, home.

CC Sorensen was reflecting a lot on their childhood home in rural Kansas, USA while working on this music. The album could be characterised by a familial, chamber feel and both of CC Sorensen’s brothers, Ryan and Nyal Ruehlen, make an appearance on ‘Phantom Rooms’, among other instrumentalists. Using a wide palette of sounds – CC Sorensen alone in charge of keyboards, software instruments, voice, electronics, percussion, trumpet, guitar and field recordings, in addition to guests on pedal steel, voice, chimes, saxophone and drumset – the American musician crafts music as mysterious as it is inviting. The idea behind it would be almost surrealist – ghostly rooms in houses where we live – if we all didn’t know exactly what CC Sorensen means. Home isn’t something concrete, but it’s also not just an abstract concept. It’s a space beyond space; home in itself is a phantom room we enter. And what enables us to enter is the object of exploration here.

CC Sorensen’s approach is playful – tracks like “Beat Bot” and “Plastic Portals” are almost fun – but also contemplative. They make thoughtful, meandering chamber music intertwined with field recordings and electronics. Reeds, strings and percussion often set the atmosphere – sometimes airy, gentle, at other points more insistent – as the music grapples with departure, instability, deep reflection and imagined future spaces. Especially in the closing “Bexar” there’s a tangible yearning for a stable home, a longing to rekindle and keep ablaze this beautiful familial connection to a physical place. It’s both music that invites to reflect and music that in itself reflects; desires, hopes and dreams.

To decay is also to transform. Rusting metal is the visible traces of passing time, as the oxidation process accumulates dampness in our atmosphere and imprints it as unpredictable patterns onto hard iron and steel. Working in construction for a year now, Kensho Nakamura sees rust all the time, clambering up ageing chunks of material. Normally discarded as waste, Nakamura began discerning beauty in the phenomenon, organically spiralling around and consuming some of the very hardest of manufacturing stuffs into unique new forms.

‘Electric Rust’ continues the conceptual electronic composition mode of Nakamura’s previous works with a series of fractured musical dioramas. These scurrying notes, sparse hums, and quivering bleeps explore the topics of rust and the accumulation of time. The music ticks like a clock, drips like a tap, and manifests unknowable inorganic shapes. Recognisable musical snippets of bells, pianos, or murmured voices are buried inside counterintuitive synthetic rhythms and tension.

On ‘wet air’ piano notes tinkle and pipes gargle, digital detritus tap dances and arpeggios stumble. On ‘unique faces’, idle marimbas and malfunctioning animalistic squeaks flounder. This is music from the promethean space between being forgotten and being conceived. ‘Electric Rust’ is a topography of a world of rust, where corroding structures evolve into new — and beautiful — patterns of life.

Inspired by witnessing the broken tension and renewed possibilities of a laptop breaking down at a gig – not to mention the void left behind by the sudden end of a relationship – Pentu’s latest release is a jump-cut menagerie of musical moments. Sewn together into ‘And I Saw My Devil And I Saw My Deep Blue Sea’, these fifteen tracks continue the London-based producer’s active departure from the soundscapes and song structures that dominated their previous writing style. These disparate pieces slice themselves off into sudden silence, or veer into unpredictable sidebars, hopping from hyperactive instrumentals to beautifully deconstructed YouTube samples. Described by Pentu as “emotionally intuitive to write”, this is music by and for the endlessly scrolling modern mind – “navigating the world alongside the splintered, interruptive emotional hyper realities of social media.”

The sudden silences, drones, and interruptions are perhaps less surprising than the guitar-based textures of metal & shoegaze woven into several vital passages by Pentu. The result is a collage that encapsulates the erratic feeling, not only of a relationship’s end, but simply of navigating online mediascapes.”I found myself realising that my phone, the constant interrupter of nothingness and silence, was both a cause of depression (reliving memories, dating apps) and a relief from it (creating new friendships, distractions, also dating apps)”, says Pentu.

Pentu’s attempt to overcome content overload by actively curbing his setup of laptop-guitar--synth does little to reduce the scope of this album’s sonic palette. YouTube vlog samples (from videos with next-to-no views) are an attempt to recontextualise and dramatise material that “would have otherwise been throwaway moments lost in the internet”, adding staccato moments of reality to Pentu’s beautiful and jarring album-length paean to overstimulation.

Inspired by the soundtrack from the motion picture American Graffiti, this 3LP collection captures the sound of late night cruising, jukebox romance and early rock ’n’ roll rebellion. Spanning doo wop, rockabilly and classic pop, the set brings together era defining hits from the mid 1950s to early 1960s, featuring timeless favourites by Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Dion, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, The Platters and many more. Pressed across three vividly coloured vinyl records, red, blue and yellow, this set is both a nostalgic listening experience and a striking collector’s piece, celebrating the golden age of American rock and pop in authentic style.

Der in Berlin lebende syrische Musiker Khaled Kurbeh gibt sein Debüt bei Research Records mit Likulli Fadain Eqaéh Jedem Raum seinen eigenen Rhythmus, einem Klangteppich aus Sounds, die er über vier Jahre im Rahmen seiner Praxis muhawalat Versuche, Variationen und hawamesh Ränder geschrieben, aufgeführt und aufgenommen hat: ein Ausdruck von Gesten, klanglichen Fußnoten und Beobachtungen aus dem Alltag.

Kurbehs erste Veröffentlichung seit sieben Jahren weicht von seinem weitgehend akustischen Debüt "Aphorisms" ab, einer Zusammenarbeit mit dem Oud-Spieler Raman Khalaf und einem Ensemble mit Elementen aus Maqam und Jazz.

Likulli Fadain Eqaéh Jedem Raum seinen eigenen Rhythmus präsentiert eine Sammlung zehn elektroakustischer Kompositionen – grübelnd und experimentell mit Anklängen an Musique concrète. Die Trackliste impliziert eine Reisebeschreibung. Feldaufnahmen von Schwalben und dem Knacken und Entschalen von Sonnenblumenkernen im Zwischenspiel Nuzha I Exkursion I werden durch eine spärliche Komposition aus Low-End-Synth, Harmonium, Klavier und präpariertem Fender Rhodes, gespielt mit Schlägeln, auf Darb I–II Pfad I–II kontrastiert. Beckenmuster und bewegte Glockenklänge erklingen auf Jauqét Ajras Chor der Glocken, während Streichinstrumente auf al-Ajraf [Die Klippen] zittern und stottern. Die Veröffentlichung fängt vier Jahre sich überschneidender Klangwanderungen ein und balanciert fein die Spannungen von Harmonie und Dissonanz, Stille und Resonanz, Textur und Rhythmus – aufgenommen im Innen- und Außenbereich.

Das Gatefold-Cover zeigt Kunstwerke von Ida Lawrence und enthält ein Booklet mit zehn gemalten Variationen einer Szene. Auf der Außenseite erstrecken sich Wege unter einem dramatisch akzentuierten und lebendigen Himmel; im Inneren erscheint dieselbe Landschaft immer wieder in unterschiedlichem Licht.

Likulli Fadain Eqaéh [Jedem Raum seinen eigenen Rhythmus] erscheint im Sommer 2025 bei Research Records, Naarm/Melbourne. Ein weiteres Solo-Klavieralbum von Kurbeh, aufgenommen in seinem Studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg, erscheint noch in diesem Jahr.

After the success of Soda Stereo’s three albums and their impressive Signos tour, the band released their first live album,
Ruido Blanco - En Vivo. This live album was recorded in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Mexico.

This shows how the band's already has a substantial fanbase across Latin America after just three studio albums.

The album features some of their biggest early hits, such as "Prófugos", "Persiana Americana", and "Signos",
and these live recordings give the songs really an extra kick.

Ruido Blanco - En Vivo is one of the most iconic live albums in Latin rock history, celebrating Soda Stereo’s status as pioneers of the Rock en Español movement and their enduring legacy.

When you listen to birds, they usually talk about food, sex/family, or anxiety. If they knew about the true nature of humanity's cruel and exploitative relationship with birds, they would be discussing rebellion. Humanity's current trajectory about birds is to cause the extinction of one-third of all bird species by the end of this century.

This record crystallises the borders between memory, beauty, and anxiety. At the core is an amalgam of all the birds we have met and heard, their sounds synthesised from a blend of memories. Esthetically it simulates the qualities of bird sounds, hitting similar frequential sweet spots. There is a great variety of birds captured here, from high to low frequencies, from solo voices to groups, from birds standing on their own to complex world-building, where the bird voices are part of an ecosystem, becoming one of the instruments.

You could stop there, enjoying this record on a musical level, but it invites us to do one step further, to consider reconfiguring our relationship with the Earth and its inhabitants. To question our impact, and to ask why we need synthetic bird music. Is it just a visionary endeavour or is it because we are failing at fostering a world in which organic birds and other creatures can thrive?

32 artists from the whole world, including our favourite artists from Eastern Europe, have contributed to this compilation both with new and previously released music. Their music is ordered from dawn to dusk and into the night. For many of the artists it's their first time on mappa, but some have previously released an album with us.

After following Luke Blair's work for approaching two decades from his 2007 debut as Lukid on Actress' Werk Discs, we're humbled to present a new album on Death Is Not The End. Following relatively hot on the heels of 2023's Tilt (his first in 11 years, not counting his work with Jackson Bailey under the Rezzett guise) Underloop brings Blair's innate knack for building loops and sound structures further to the surface, while allowing his ear for emotional expression to be dialled up a notch. Those fortunate enough to be familiar with Lukid's work as a DJ will be aware of how distinct his ability is to seamlessly disappear into loop-based abstraction and back again seemingly without blinking, and often Underloop feels much like a collection of the sludgey interludes and foggy sketches that underpin his sets. Blending apparently ramshackle melodies and textures and pulling them together into an undeniable whole, Blair's tendency for pairing the simple and the indescribable with an understated vigour is fully on show here.

Written and produced by Luke Blair. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

This one already has created a nice little stir with the soul crowd, and rightly so.

The A side "Is It Still Good For You" is a wonderful Modern soul chugger that oozes that late night club feel. Simple in its melody and production but bounces along so soulfully. Great vocals but the late Johnny Kemp with the group on some killer backing harmonies.

Kinky Foxx could be described as an ever changing funk machine with nuts and bolts that remained strong over time. This band planted its roots in the Bahamas where the name "Kinky" was given to Joseph Foxx and teaming up with his Brother Donny Foxx formed the musical group named, "DER KINKY FOXX"!!! The two Foxx Brothers added members Kevin Bassett-Guitar, Johnny Kemp-Vocals, and Burnis Stubbs-percussion performing clubs and concerts in the Bahamas. Moving to New York City Kinky Foxx changed members to compete with the major funk venue during the early 80s. Acquiring Dan Atherton Sr. AKA "The Slammin 'Drummer", Larry Robinson-Keyboardist, Timmy Allen-Bass, Kevin Robinson-Guitar these musicians combined forces with Johnny Kemp, Kevin Bassett, and Burnis Stubbs to form the New York City based "Original" Kinky Foxx from '79 to '81, burning up the famous Cellar Club in NYC, the mecca for Black Funk entertainment. With a front line of top musical talent some members moved on to follow solo recording and production careers and contracts. To fill lead gutiarist and Bass guitarist vacancies Jerry Powell was added on guitar,and Leslie Booker was added on bass. In 1982 Kinky Foxx added Vincent Lilly on lead vocals and Curtis Styles on Keyboards.The Foxx released the hit song "So Different" on Sound of New York records in '83 and embarked on a Canadian experiment leaving the US to play briefly in Montreal, Quebec at Club Checkers. The rest is history as the band became so popular in Quebec and Ontario they could have been called Canadian residents, usually working 6 nights a week and 11 months out of the year from '83-'91 . Dan Atherton moved on in '83 to pursue a career as The "Slammin Drummer" for hire, and was sought after by a barrage of major artists,touring with Bobby Brown,New Edition,Levert,Teddy Riley and Guy,Cameo,and Atlantic Starr. Tyrone Govan aka "King" moved in as the Foxx Drummer in '83 and remained with the group until the band went their separate ways in the mid 90's. The Foxx's last performance in the States was in North Carolina on tour and backing Prince's sister Tyka Nelson in the 90's. Currently the band has sparked interest once again writing and recording new material and is forming a reunion show which will eventually lead to additional performances with other recording acts and headline shows.

Operating at the intersection of club functionality and cerebral sound design, London-based artist Anoesis has steadily built a reputation for forward-thinking electronic music that feels as at home in the warehouse as it does in the headphones.

He’s back for the third time on Cyphon Recordings with the Idle Kosmos EP, another stunner from a master of the craft!

Nina Wilson, better known as Ninajirachi, is a 26-year-old Australian electronic producer who released her debut album I Love My Computer earlier this year via NLV Records. A concept record built on her connection with her PC, swiping between genres of EDM, tech-house, speed garage, dubstep, and hyperpop. Wilson builds on the legacy of early-2000s and 2010s Australian electronic artists like PNAU and Flume using technology as a medium, a motif, and a mirror for reflection. Between remixing Princess Nokia, Deadmau5 & The Neptunes, releasing on Nina Las V egas’ NLV Records and RL Grime’s Sable V alley, Ninajirachi has performed at Lollapalooza, EDC, Laneway, Listen Out, Splendour, Falls Festival, and more and toured with Mallrat, Charli XCX, Porter Robinson and Cashmere Cat.

The House OG comes thru with 5 brand new cuts of slippery 303 acid. These seriously infectous ear worm acid lines will have listeners bleep-blooping along, while hard hitting 909 drums make their feet and necks work.

Repress!

4 To The Floor is committed to delivering seminal house music to wax, making sought after heritage tracks readily available on vinyl for crate diggers to add to their collections. The fourth edition of the series pays homage to one of the most loved names in house music – Sandy Rivera. Known for his soulful dancefloor cuts he has produced timeless classics, with his long-lasting career and multitude of aliases captured by this 12” release. Opening the A-side is the Moodymann Edit of Kings of Tomorrow’s ‘Fall For You’, featuring the stunning vocals of long-time collaborator April Morgan, followed by Sandy’s grooving ‘Come Into My Room’ which features LT Brown. On the flip is Soul Vision’s ‘Don’t Stop’ with its atmospheric strings and gospel vocal. The release is closed with Kings Of Tomorrow featuring Elzi Hall ‘Show Me’, an atmospheric club cut that shows the versatility of this house legend.

Max In The World & Kroba is a collaboration between producer Max In The World and saxophonist Kroba.

The project began with the release of 2023’s Excursions on Bliss Point, a record that explored the space between club and home listening and became a favorite at many an early morning afters.

On Structures Of Feeling 1, the duo have conjured three cuts of dubby and expansive downtempo: dance music for dreaming, deep house for liminal states, body music awash in the feeling of living now, in these times, in these bodies.