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Altar De Fey originated in San Francisco in the early 1980’s as part of the emerging musical form that would come to be
known as Deathrock. Out of the Zeitgeist flash of 70’s Punk Rock the new sound took the darkest elements of the counter
culture into ever deeper, gloomier and more mature territory.
Performing at legendary San Francisco venues Mabuhay Gardens, Graffiti, The Nightbreak and the rest billed with
Christian Death, 45 Grave, and all the fellow architects of West Coast Post Punk.
The original incarnation passed through a rotating cast of characters centered strongly by the vision and experimental
guitar of founding member Kent Cates. Eschewing the conventional chord progression/solo form entirely Cates’s guitar spins
strands of melody and rhythm, tone and texture in a style that to this day is all his own. The mood was perfected with the
innovative tribal drumming of Aleph Kali and Butch Mason’s haunted confrontational vocals.
Though the band had a strong base of support, no original recordings were ever released and the young members
carried on into new musical endeavors. By 1988 ADF disbanded.
Years upon years passed yet the name was never completely forgotten. As Goth Punk culture persisted, grew and
developed over time the band began to take on a kind of legendary hue among fans in the know; The lost mysterious
phenomenon of Altar De Fey. -There was a kind of poetry to it. Finally in 2011, when asked if they would play a reunion for a
festival in San Francisco Kent and Aleph surprised everyone by answering yes.
Reforming originally as a 2 piece with a drum machine Kent on guitar and Aleph on vocals to an enthusiastic reception,
the duo enjoyed it so much they decided to continue the momentum and quickly added Skot Brown on bass, Aleph switched
over to live drums, and Jake Hout was added on vocals. The new line up debuted in April of 2012 and has continued
regularly performing songs from the original 80’s catalogue and steadily adding new material ever since.
A new generation of underground Deathrock music is growing across the world, in closer, more direct communication
than ever before, and interest in the band has quickly escalated.
This unique compilation brings you 11 original ADF songs recorded between 1984-1986 (demos, rehearsal records, live
records). If you are into classic Christian Death, 45 Grave, Kommunity FK, Burning Image etc. grab this gem now before it’s
too late!

Autopsia is a cult art project dealing with music and visual production.
Its art practice began in London in the late 1970s and continued during the 1980s in the art centers of the former Yugoslavia.
Since 1990, Autopsia has acted from Prague, Czech Republic.
Above all Autopsia is not concerned with music. What is Autopsia? Art? Theory? Framing? Projection? Gaze? Autopsia is
language is image is sound. Autopsia is a tombstone on the grave of time. Autopsia is archaeology. The discourse of the
beginning and about the beginning. At the beginning is Death and the pity of Death. The music is in the pity.
The music of Autopsia oscillates from romanticism to avantgarde, from industrial rhythms and dark ambient drones to relentless
choral swells and academic minimalism.
Autopsia Archive 1982-1995
Engineered & Mastered at Mustakillah Studio Prague, 2017
Released by Other Voices Records VOX 35 LP
Marketed and distributed by Kontakt Audio

Amor Satyr makes his debut on Promesses with “Na Viela / Virar DJ”, a double single featuring Brazilian rappers MC Buzzz (Spain-based) and T9 RJ (France-based). For this release the French producer brings what he does the best : hybrid baile funk. “Na Viela” is a cartoonish club banger where Buzzz’ broken voice and T9’ deep breathy hooks melt with Amor Satyr’ epic strings and bassline. Followed by grimy glacial bullet “Virar DJ” where T9’ voices from beyond the grave match with sharp snare and hypnotic synth. The release contains instrumental versions of each song. "Na Viela / Virar DJ" is available on limited edition vinyl (handmade silkscreened cover illustrated by Acacio Ortas).

Dream Violence, Michael Beach’s fourth full-length, is an epic album that explores the duality of the human condition. Or, as Beach himself puts it, the album is about “human futility, passion, desire, anger, frustration, and the struggle to maintain hope in a somewhat hopeless time.” Dream Violence, then, addresses the existential crisis of being an artist in 2020.

Known for his work touring with the Australian guitar pop band Thigh Master and the late, brilliantly eccentric Israeli guitarist Charlie Megira, currently the focus of a number of reissues by the Numero Group, Beach is the architect of a sound that is both well-built and ramshackle, straightforward and indeterminably complex, out of the norm yet familiar in all the best ways.

Dream Violence unfolds like a revelation, filled with sonic tumbleweeds that reference Neil Young’s On the Beach, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, and the Go Betweens’ Before Hollywood. Influences ranging from the enigmatic outlier Megira to Glenn Branca to the Oblivians are combined to create a new, exhilarating sound, part of the path that Beach has been on since 2008’s Blood Courses. A veteran of year-end indie rock round ups beginning with Golden Theft in 2013 and continuing with Gravity/Repulsion, released in 2017, Beach distills the best of those early albums and adds sharpened intent.

Dream Violence works beautifully as a start-to-finish album. There are magnificent stand-alone moments: “Spring,” a raggedly building ballad that perfectly captures the ennui attached to new beginnings; “De Facto Blues,” a born-to-lose anthem that, says Beach, “is the sound of people totally at their wits end;” “Curtain of Night,” a simultaneously derelict and bright tribute to the late Megira, which sounds like it could’ve been cut at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio after the Rolling Stones wrapped up sessions for Sticky Fingers; and the delicately vulnerable “You Found Me Out,” which evokes equal parts Lou Reed and Joni Mitchell. On the latter, the lyrics “You found me out, on a ship at sea, you pulled me in, made a wreck of me,” encapsulate “the aimless of a modern world view in a future without hope and the draw/dependence of love in those times,” Beach explains.

Through music, Beach strives to convey both passion and compassion, energy and action. “My hope is that something gets communicated that makes people think outside of themselves or their surroundings,” he says. “To ask questions, and consider the effects of their decisions. To communicate some essential part of the human spirit that understands intuitively how to feel connected to each other rather than divide, exploit, separate, ignore, and all the other heinous shit we have the ability to do with each other.”

Recorded on two continents, Dream Violence documents Beach’s move from Oakland, California to Melbourne, Australia as he navigated a new music scene, plenty of bureaucratic red tape, and, ultimately, citizenship. Parts of the album were recorded and mixed at Tiny Telephone Recording in Oakland, at the end of a 2019 tour with Kelley Stoltz producing. Other tracks were recorded at Beach’s new home in Melbourne, where he could be “relaxed and sloppy in all the right ways,” and partially remixed at Phaedra Studios.

At the Memphis-based Goner label, Beach joins an increasingly unique roster of international musicians that reaches far beyond garage or indie rock to encompass artists like gospel singer Rev. John Wilkins, Kentucky rockers Archaeas, New Orleans iconoclasts Quintron and Miss Pussycat, and no-wavers Optic Sink.

Papa Roach are set to release their second greatest hits album, which covers the second decade of their career. On top of numerous fan favourites, the album includes exclusive remixes, previously unreleased acoustic versions and a new version of 'Broken As Me' feat. Danny Worsnop (Asking Alexandria). Papa Roach vocalist Jacoby Shaddix will also appear in the upcoming horror thriller 'The Retaliators'.

Two years after their first record came out, the crew operating legendary dance nights in Nantes are back on top of the new release pile. Two original tracks by Kanot and two remixes. Overall, their stylistic balance signature is maintained, although the gravity center is a bit more leftfield and poetic, a bit less dance-obvious. But that’s only in comparison to other material: any of the four pieces here can take a dance floor apart, played at the right time.

Hit & Run has a massive “star grabbing” feel, the synth and guitar surges sounding like as many jumps above the stratosphere, and the vocalizing choirs on top making it a definitive cosmic jam.

Turbulens is more earthy than spacy: drum breaks and big ass basslines bring out an irresistible leg shaking feel, the melodic guitars on top balance the vibe into that delicious moment when Caribbean sunsets turn the day into a warm a groovy night, certainly a party starter. The Pilotwings Remix is to the image of their added touch: trancy on edges but very far from easy or obvious. Constantly jumping above and diving under the line, it’s playing greatly with dancers’ feet, and eventually their minds.

Houseman Vidock delivers the most danceable material on this record. His strong experience as a DJ for parties focused on having people dancing freely for a long time is clearly audible. This slo-mo belter doesn’t need much advertisement, it just needs to be played to any dancefloor, be it at midnight or 8 am.

Revive the epic Arcade adventure with the Metal Slug 3 soundtrack on 2LP (Red/White splatters) and CD with booklets on both, officially licensed by SNK.

Following Samurai Shodown 2019, Wayô Records and SNK Corporation once again join forces to deliver an international edition of Metal Slug 3's original soundtrack, in honor of the game's 20 anniversary! Originally exclusive to Japan, this album is now available in this double vinyl edition.

With its distinctive "rock orchestra" sound, the music for SNK's series turned out to be as essential as the games themselves thanks to its uniqueness and incredible energy. Composed by the legendary SNK Sound Team, this soundtrack has a lot in common with the other titles in the series, but stands as the densest and most inspired. Filled with biting humor and explosive action, Metal Slug 3 is often regarded by fans as the best game in the series!

- Two vinyl discs, 33 rpm

- First Print Edition translucent red with white splatters

- Complete soundtrack newly remastered for the vinyl format

- Gatefold with a central wide illustration and two individual illustrated sleeves for each disc

- New comments from the game team

- Officially licensed by SNK

Repress

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Mord.
Morderstwo.
Rotterdam.
Herdersmat.
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With North Star, Viking Metal pioneers EINHERJER release their eighth studio album on February 26, 2021, proving their status as the pioneers of blending Nordic Black Metal and Folk Metal genres once again. The album marks the band’s return to Napalm Records after 25 years, and their release of the legendary Dragons Of The North album (1996). The Norwegian metal outfit remains musically true to themselves and reinforces their exceptional position. North Star was recorded in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic at the in-house Studio Borealis, owned by founding member and mastermind Frode Glesnes. The raw production ties in seamlessly with its predecessor Norrøne Spor and makes North Star probably the most powerful EINHERJER album to date! North Star is EINHERJER's musical mission towards something bigger - the search for guidance by the North Star in a constantly changing world that is searching for stability. The album’s opener, "The Blood And The Iron", peppered with uncompromising double-bass thunderstorms, pulls the listener in from the very first second, while "Stars" stomps through atmospheric soundscapes with dark chords. "West Coast Groove" underlines EINHERJER's technical songwriting sophistication with finest guitar solos. North Star will be available in black, blue/white inkspot and limited gold vinyl editions (gold limited to 300 copies). Founded in Norway in 1993, the band has significantly influenced the way of Viking Metal in the following years with Dragons Of The North - 25 years later, EINHERJER are stronger than ever and are bursting with energy on North Star! 1. SINGLE - EN Stomping drums and gloomy guitar chords, paired with ice-cold vocals by singer and guitarist Frode Glesnes - "Stars" draws the listener into the icy, dark world of EINHERJER! 2. SINGLE - EN With powerful double bass grooves, a catchy chorus and technically skilled guitar solos, EINHERJER are more uncompromising and harder than ever on "The Blood And The Iron"! 3. SINGLE - EN Old school vibes meet dark Viking Metal atmosphere in "West Coast Groove" - EINHERJER are in top form and still prove their status as genre pioneers after more than 25 years!

The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries - ‘Suns Out Guns Out’ Over the course of two prior releases — 2010’s ‘In The Pond’ (Sickroom) and 2013’s ‘Mass Grave’ (Kiam) — The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries quietly carved out a high-IQ corner of the U.S. rock underground reserved for taut, deathly catchy songs that showcased deft (if get-to-the-point) instrumentation. That the band have been kinda/sorta under the collective radar has more to do with their being otherwise occupied (more on that in a minute) than a lack of artistic ambition; they’ve slayed before and after a long break, they’re back to slay again. So you’re wondering, what could possibly take precedence in real life terms over playing in a band this awesome? Much as I hate to compare and contrast, part of the dilemma is that the principals of The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries — commonly referred to by their fans as “the Fuckin’ Ferries”, “The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries” by everyone else --- are in too many awesome bands already. Guitarist/vocalist Elisha Wiesner has previously set the world on fire with the Massachusetts sextet Kahoots and earlier this year released a 63 song (!) digital masterclass in songwriting under the John Pancake nom de plume. Drummer/vocalist Chris Brokaw has previously pounded on things for heavyweights including but not limited to Codeine, The New Year and Obnox, though there’s a fair chance you’ve also heard his guitar/vocal performances, both solo and with Come (as well as an impossibly long list of contributions to the likes of The Lemonheads, Dirtmusic, Thurston Moore, Consonant and more). Bassist/vocalist Bob Weston is internationally renowned for his sternum-crushing work on behalf of Shellac, Volcano Suns and sound manipulation tactics for Mission Of Burma (I’ve not heard any of the above, but I’m told they’re all “ok, if you’re into that sort of thing”) Add to this workload the tiny matter of the 3 players having spent most of the last 7 years living in 3 different time zones, it’s nothing short of a miracle the 3rd and finest Martha’s Vineyard Ferries album could pass for the sustained effort of 3 men who’ve been locked up together all this time, writing and recording a powerful statement to rival anything in their collective catalogs (I’m thinking of a scenario kind of like “The Lighthouse”, except there’s 3 men instead of two and there’s more guitars than birds, but maybe the occasional bird, as you tend to get a few of them near the water).

With 2017’s ‘Planetary Prince’, pianist/composer Cameron Graves established himself as a visionary creative force emerging from the Los Angeles genre-defying collective The West Coast Get Down.
With his sophomore album ‘Seven’, Graves further expands on his otherworldly inspirations, alongside guitarist Colin Cook, bassist Max Gerl, drummer Mike Mitchell and special guest Kamasi Washington.
Upon an initial listen, the juggernaut metal force and hardcore precision of ‘Seven’ can knock you back. After all, Graves grew up in metal-rich Los Angeles, headbanging to Living Colour as a kid and, after immersing himself in jazz and classical studies for years, he reignited his love for hard rock through records by Pantera, Slipknot and his most profound metal influence, Swedish titans Meshuggah.
But a closer listen to ‘Seven’ reveals a myriad of other influences at work. “Los Angeles is a melting pot of everything,” Graves points out. His father, Carl Graves, was a great soul singer, and you can hear his imprint along with the likes of Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding, on “Eternal Paradise,” which marks the younger Graves’ vocal debut.
Throughout the album, the generation of 1970s jazz-rock fusion pioneers is a source of inspiration. “Our mission is to continue that legacy of advanced music that was started by bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report and Return to Forever,” Graves says. “That was instilled in us by the masters. Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock - these guys sat with us and told us, ‘Look, man, you’ve got to carry this on.’
“Cameron Graves is a musical genius. He has an innovative approach to the piano that is completely unique.” - Kamasi Washington
“In all aspects of his being, Graves embodies intense seeking and absurd skill.”
- LA Weekly

It is the simple thing that is so hard to do. This is the paradox that musician Lael
Neale has lived within throughout her development as an artist. It is the reason she
became enthralled with poetry. Poems are a distillation. Lael says, “this challenge to
winnow away what is unessential is the most maddening and, ultimately, rewarding
part of writing a song.”
Lael’s new album ‘Acquainted With Night’ is a testament to this poetic devotion.
Stripped of any extraneous word or sound, the songs are lit by Lael’s crystalline
voice which lays on a lush bed of Omnichord. The collection touches on themes that
have been thread into her work for years: isolation, mortality, yearning and reaching
ever toward the transcendent experience.
Lael grew up on a farm in rural Virginia but for nearly 10 years called Los Angeles
home. Those years were spent developing her songwriting and performing in venues
across the city but the right way to record the songs proved more elusive. She says,
“Every time I reached the end of recording, I felt the songs had been stripped of
their vitality in the process of layering drums, bass, guitar, violin, and organ over
them. They felt weighed down.”
In a moment of illumination, the solution presented itself: do the simple thing. In
early 2019, in the midst of major transition, she acquired a new instrument - the
Omnichord - and began recording a deluge of songs. Guy Blakeslee, who had been
an advocate for years, set up a cassette recorder in her bedroom and provided
empathic guidance, subtle yet affecting accompaniment and engineering prowess.
Limited to only 4-tracks and first takes, Lael had to surrender some of her
perfectionism to deliver the songs in their essence.
The first song she recorded was ‘For No One For Now’, which calls to mind the
agitated beat of driving fast on the freeway against the backdrop of the San
Fernando Valley’s bent palms. The song contrasts romantic idealizations with the
banality of folding sheets and toasting bread. It highlights her oft-thwarted attempts
to enjoy the day to day while her mind wanders off toward the dream, the ideal.
While Lael returned to her family farm in April 2020, Los Angeles is a player on this
album and ‘Every Star Shivers in the Dark’ is an ode to the sprawling city, the
outskirts of Eden. One can envision her walking from Dodgers Stadium to downtown,
observing strangers and her own strangeness but determined to find communion
with others. ‘Blue Vein’ is her personal anthem, a Paul Revere piece that gallops
through the town as a strident declamation. It is an amalgam of thoughts, concerns
and lessons as she nearly speaks the words, unmasked by flourishes, ensuring the
meaning cuts through.
Normally a morning person, Lael recorded most of these songs in the darkening of
the early evening, and so became ‘Acquainted With Night’.
CD in gatefold altpack.
LP first pressing on white vinyl.
Cassette with three-panel J-card in clear case.

It is the simple thing that is so hard to do. This is the paradox that musician Lael
Neale has lived within throughout her development as an artist. It is the reason she
became enthralled with poetry. Poems are a distillation. Lael says, “this challenge to
winnow away what is unessential is the most maddening and, ultimately, rewarding
part of writing a song.”
Lael’s new album ‘Acquainted With Night’ is a testament to this poetic devotion.
Stripped of any extraneous word or sound, the songs are lit by Lael’s crystalline
voice which lays on a lush bed of Omnichord. The collection touches on themes that
have been thread into her work for years: isolation, mortality, yearning and reaching
ever toward the transcendent experience.
Lael grew up on a farm in rural Virginia but for nearly 10 years called Los Angeles
home. Those years were spent developing her songwriting and performing in venues
across the city but the right way to record the songs proved more elusive. She says,
“Every time I reached the end of recording, I felt the songs had been stripped of
their vitality in the process of layering drums, bass, guitar, violin, and organ over
them. They felt weighed down.”
In a moment of illumination, the solution presented itself: do the simple thing. In
early 2019, in the midst of major transition, she acquired a new instrument - the
Omnichord - and began recording a deluge of songs. Guy Blakeslee, who had been
an advocate for years, set up a cassette recorder in her bedroom and provided
empathic guidance, subtle yet affecting accompaniment and engineering prowess.
Limited to only 4-tracks and first takes, Lael had to surrender some of her
perfectionism to deliver the songs in their essence.
The first song she recorded was ‘For No One For Now’, which calls to mind the
agitated beat of driving fast on the freeway against the backdrop of the San
Fernando Valley’s bent palms. The song contrasts romantic idealizations with the
banality of folding sheets and toasting bread. It highlights her oft-thwarted attempts
to enjoy the day to day while her mind wanders off toward the dream, the ideal.
While Lael returned to her family farm in April 2020, Los Angeles is a player on this
album and ‘Every Star Shivers in the Dark’ is an ode to the sprawling city, the
outskirts of Eden. One can envision her walking from Dodgers Stadium to downtown,
observing strangers and her own strangeness but determined to find communion
with others. ‘Blue Vein’ is her personal anthem, a Paul Revere piece that gallops
through the town as a strident declamation. It is an amalgam of thoughts, concerns
and lessons as she nearly speaks the words, unmasked by flourishes, ensuring the
meaning cuts through.
Normally a morning person, Lael recorded most of these songs in the darkening of
the early evening, and so became ‘Acquainted With Night’.
CD in gatefold altpack.
LP first pressing on white vinyl.
Cassette with three-panel J-card in clear case.

Black vinyl pressing of the now sold out RSD 2020 reissue.

The Amorphous Androgynous unite their award winning psychedelic compilation series ‘ A MONSTROUS PSYCHEDELIC BUBBLE ( Exploding In Your Mind ) ‘ with their symphonic new single ‘ We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal’ ( taken from the forthcoming album ‘ LISTENING BEYOND THE HEAD CHAKRA ‘ ) to create this latest installment of the Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble series . Featuring a host of luminaries such as Peter Hammill -vocals ( Van Der Graaf Generator ) Paul Weller -piano and guitar and erstwhile members of the SPENCER DAVIS GROUP/ Ian Gillan Band AND SOFT MACHINE on lead guitar and sax among a plethora of other musicians ( including the Chesterfield Philharmonic choir and a full string section ! ) alongside collaboration & remixes with a host of bands ( ATOMIC SIMAO / HIGHER PEAKS / REGAL WORM / COBALT CHAPEL plus others ) to create one helluva progtronic psychedelic trip through the Amorphous Androgynous samplerdelic multiverse.

Herself is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist Gioele Valenti, also known as JuJu in more recent years (Fuzz Club) or as part of the psych project LAY LLAMA'S. Herself's work was described by critics as the harmonious meeting between Sparklehorse, Gravenhurst and Will Oldham. Valenti's songwriting takes inspiration from low-fidelity apocalyptic folk, crooning and pop; boasting a rather extensive discography. Well rooted in tradition, his music often ventures in the realms of subtle experimentation. His new album "Rigel Playground" prepares the listener for a journey through cosmic folk, in which traditional Brit Pop flirts with an alt vein, as if the Beatles and Sparklehorse would meet the torments of Nick Drake and the intimacy of a Mike Scott. Continuing a long list of illustrious collaborations (Amaury Cambuzat of Ulan Bator, John Fallon of The Steppes,Capra Informis of GOAT, among others), the prestigious guest on this record is Jonathan Donahue from MERCURY REV, a group of absolute prominence in the international indie panorama, which in addition to having lent his voice to the single "The Beast of Love" - as Herself says - informs the essence of the entire record. Not surprisingly Mercury Rev chose Herself to support them during their Italian tour last year.

In February 2018, Roy Ayers performed four sold out shows in Los Angeles as part of the Jazz Is Dead Black History Month series. It wasn"t until 2020 that fans of Ayers discovered that in addition to those shows, the legendary vibraphone player had also recorded an entire album of new material with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad.

NOTON signs Italian-born, Bern-based sound-artist and producer Saele Valese.
In ‘IVIC’, his debut LP, Saele Valese, distills hauntological noise, droning tonal experiments and minimalist rhythms into a series of electro-acoustic-wave ventures written over five years in Berlin, Saas-Fee and Thun.
Drawing influences from the psychoacoustic properties of the live album format, IVIC’s 11 tracks were mixed and recorded live on DAT cassettes and through DAW experimentation, without the possibility to revise the final recordings. Valese adopted this approach to conceptually propose reconciliations between the irreversibility of the
past, and acceptance of its residuals in the present. The track titles themselves follow this pathos, citing the works of the American photographer Francesca Woodman and the poet Sylvia Plath. The inclusion of passages incorporating live sonics and throes of industrialismnso,ton.info contributes to the images of gravity, intimacy and spatiality that the music presented here invokes.
In keeping with this imagery, the music possesses a dilated, shuffling rhythmic base, much like the firm traversal of a tanker against a storm of jangling components, and still moments of gloomy sonics
alternating with more ravenous upheavals of power electronics.
If the track divisions do not pass by unheeded, they are consistently assembled to sonically accompaign the emotional charges and momentum of an imaginary cinematic experience; the beats caves in
for instants of relief, only to recoil in a cognated tempo but rearranged structurally. In another gesture of cogitated stride, the portentous waves of the record progressively rage into a turmoil in its third quarter during 'Horse The Color Of Rust'. The album reaches its closure fluctuating through microtonal oscillations to slowly eclipse into silence.
´In Your Rosary ì and Yì ou Cannot See Me From Where I Look At Myself ì were previously released on vinyl via Saele Valese’s own imprint, JSMË.
The track ‘You Cannot See Me From Where I Look At Myself’ 4 - is dedicated to the memory of Marco Bacher.
Artwork designed by Carsten Nicolai. Mastering by Matt Colton (Metropolis Studios, London).

Hot on the heels of our tentacular project "The Most Famous Unknown", Planet Phuture is proud to welcome rising French talent Cuften to the fold. A most fitting match for PP's phuture-facing vision, Damien Peltier has been pushing some of the finest techno around over the last couple of years, landing a handful memorable cuts via the likes of Parisian label Tripalium and his own imprint, Purusu. Cloaked in dim-lit atmospheres and open-ended post-apocalyptic narratives, his debut solo 12" blends in all of the elements that made his sound stand out from the crowd of releases coming up these days - traversed by dogged primitive rhythms and reassessed 303-infused Detroit'isms, but also stamped with his signature no-frills rave elegance.

Speeding up the cosmic highway like Deckard roams San Fran's neon-splattered alleys on the hunt for replicants, Cuften takes us on a full-immersion journey into dystopian electronic soundscapes. Full-beam on, "Solar Ashes" has us drifting amidst ruins of a devastated city - its lysergic bass languidly threading its way across brutalist concrete facades and cold ember set for reignition. A more martial affair, "The Black Rain Order" pulls out the rattling drums, slo-boiling arpeggios and moebius-strips of wistful acid to score a supremely tense crescendo, both optimally tasted on and off the dance floor.

Moving up closer to the free-spirited vibe of the '90s open-air raves, "Rise Of The Neo-Humans" unleashes a baroque firestorm of sucker-punchy toms and hyperventilating shuffle, woven against an endlessly expanding corolla of hallucinogenic shapes and fluttering harmonics. Sinking further deep into all-dark dubby grounds, "Lasttt Batttle" extrudes its obsessive melody out a thick gangue of squelchy chords and bleepin' engineering to form the kind of brain-washing hybrid pumper that'll roast your last remaining neurones. Trouble-brewing isn't over though and the droney "Kjhfskjoize" shall take you to places unknown through eleven minutes of envelope-shifting shamanism, thinking noise bake-off and gravity-defying arrangements. Bend your mind.

Ltd. black LP, 180 g

Summer 2011, we discovered Triptides’ music through a music blog aggregator and immediately fell in love with it. Just after that, we decided to interview the band for our own blog and to release a single, their first-ever vinyl record, through our beginning sister label Croque Macadam. The single contained two songs Going Under & Outlaw, both coming from and self-released tape named Psychic Summer. One year later, Triptides released a CD album Sun Pavilion and we were releasing again another 7” record with the main single Bright Sky and an exclusive b-side (Darling). Both albums never were released as vinyl. 10 years later we are now releasing a beautifully remastered version of these two lovely albums. Since then, Triptides became one of the most endearing contemporary psych band alongside the dynamic Californian scene with which they share or shared members (Mystic Braves, Levitation Room, Frankie And The Witch Fingers…).
The Band then formed by the duo Glenn Brigman & Josh Menashe used to make their song from their Bloomington student home studio on an old Tascam 8 track tape recorder, already showing a deep interest for the sixties influenced music. If their first EP were showing some touching errors, despite the years passing, both Psychic Summer & Sun Pavilion are still offering a very nice musical experience for the listener. Their songwriting remains flawless and the DIY lo-fi production makes it sound as spontaneous and charming as it was back then. Our favorite songs such as Going Under, Who Knows, Satin Skies, Bright Sky, English Rain or Sun/Shine shows a great kraft for beautiful and catchy songs anchored in both a sixties tradition and the then-burgeoning modern indie-pop sound through very interesting surf influences and uses of a drum machine.
The reissue is a great opportunity to rediscover Triptides in their beginnings. The objects had been carefully made, Psychic Summer for example had a brand new artwork by psychedelic collage master Andrew McGranahan, both have color vinyl version and standard black. Far from being rough drafts, these two albums are still showing a beautiful angle on Triptides’ music and their always strong discography.

• 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• DELUXE HEAVYWEIGHT JACKET WITH LEATHER LOOK LAMINATE
• THE 1990 DEBUT-ALBUM BY JAY FARRAR, JEFF TWEEDY AND MIKE HEIDORN
• CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL “ALTERNATIVE COUNTRY” ALBUMS OF ALL TIME
• LIMITED EDITION OF 1500 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED COPIES ON CRYSTAL CLEAR VINYL

No Depression is cited as one of the most important albums in the alternative country genre. Due to the impact of the album on alternative country, the term ‘No Depression’ is sometimes used as a synonym for the genre - especially after a country music magazine named itself after the album. The album helped kick start a revolution which reverberated throughout the American underground. In 1999, Spin Magazine listed the album as one of the Top 90 Albums of the 90s. Its punk attitude, combined with Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy’s lyrical depictions of rural, blue-collar life paint grim portraits of Midwestern existence, left a long-lasting legacy. No Depression is now available as limited edition (only 1500 copies) on crystal clear vinyl. Each album is individually numbered and housed in a deluxe heavyweight jacket with special leather-look laminate finish.

Itzhak Perlman, the supreme violinist of his time, performs the supreme works for unaccompanied violin. In preparing the Bach Sonatas and Partitas, Perlman sought authenticity through the score itself, not through musicological research: “Music is a language, and, performed responsively, with musical logic as guide, it will make sense.”

Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas are a landmark not only of the solo violin repertoire but of all music history. No composer before or since has created a comparable architectural miracle, or made better use of the violin’s polyphonic capabilities, than did Bach in this set of six works. The improvements in instrument-making introduced by such experts in the field as Niccolò Amati and his pupil Antonio Stradivari meant that performers and composers could now push the tone and power of the violin to bold new limits. The Second Partita also includes a Chaconne which appears to stand outside space and time. Its complexity, power and splendor make it in a way the keystone of the entire musical edifice — a magnificent set of variations on a single theme which exploits the violin’s full harmonic and contrapuntal potential. While the great virtuosos of the nineteenth century, Paganini chief among them, expanded the instrument’s technical capabilities, Bach had already established its limits in terms of polyphony.
Perlman made several earlier attempts at recording the set, none of which was ever released, then performed it live on stage at venues around the world. In other words, he had the wisdom to wait until he had achieved a level of excellence in both performing and understanding this music before committing it to disc. The most practised of ears may detect a subtle difference in tone between the C major and A minor Sonatas, which he recorded on the “Soil” Stradivarius, and the other four works, recorded on the Guarneri del Gesù “ex-Sauret”.

Bristol-based trip hop trio Jabu this week announced details of their second album. ‘Sweet Company’ will be released on November 20th via the group’s own do you have peace? imprint.

Sweet Company is the second album by Jabu. Where their first LP, Sleep Heavy, was an unflinching exploration of grief, dark and disembodied, Sweet Company’s deep, sedative soul feels like more of a lovers’ outing: optimistic, becalmed, looking outwards as well as inwards, and longing for the kind of human connections where ego and self-consciousness might dissolve. It is perhaps also an exhortation to love and accept yourself, to recover a lost innocence and peace – that paradise which has always been lost. Released via their own do you have peace? label, Sweet Company is on the one hand a very intimate and private-sounding work - the sound of life played out in a room, a bubble, a home, a head. The rhythms of everyday domesticity: listening to the plants, cars in the street, voices through the wall…. going to work, not going to work, sleeping heavy or not sleeping at all. Wavering on the brink of a revelation, of something just beyond the material world, while you wait for the kettle to boil. The core Jabu trio of producer Amos Childs and vocalists Jasmine Butt and Alex Rendall is present and correct. Sweet Company has theexhilarating sweep and confidence of a collaboration between people who trust and understand each other implicitly, and, secure in that knowledge, are able to give the absolute best of themselves to us. As before, Jasmine’s voice is a textural, painterly instrument, layered and blurred into abstraction, resisting the limits of language; the songs she sings on are portals into vast internal landscapes where the normal rules of gravity are suspended, every sound is smothered in a cathedral-like resonance, and you're both fearful and hopeful that you might never find your way back out again. Alex takes a more narrative, confessional and no less engaging pop tack: as on the gauzy, decelerated 2-step of ‘Lately’, with his masochistic, self-mocking entreaties to “be cruel to me … I like it when you make a fool of me”. Childs has a true hip-hop fiend's ear for a striking sample, and how to loop it to most hypnotic and rapturous effect, but here takes things to ever more powerfully uncanny and auteurish places, drawing inspiration from the voidal bliss-outs of shoegaze (AR Kane’s amniotic dream-pop epic 69 is one influence cited) and the space-time disturbances of dub, commanding both a raindrops-on-cobwebs delicacy and an immense, oceanic pressure. His productions seem to resist linear progression - instead they move by a kind of unstoppable diffusion, like weeds reclaiming an unkempt garden, or alien flora patterning the sea-floor and coral-caves of the subaquatic level of a computer game which may exist only in your, or his, imagination. Perhaps it's Daniela Dyson, the British-Afro-Colombian artist who contributes her vivid, energising poetic mysticism to two tracks, who best sums up Sweet Company's ambition and effect: “Me quiero perder en los momentos tan puros en su esencia que Las Horas mismas se detienen para ser testigo de nuestro amor” (I want to lose myself in the moments so pure in their essence / that The Hours themselves stop to bear witness to our love…). For a precious half an hour, we're invited to celebrate the smallness of our lives - and the limitless grandeur which that smallness contains. When it ends, we step back from the brink but things aren’t quite the same anymore: we’re haunted by what we briefly almost knew.

It’s time for another dose of Classic Symptoms and this time get ready for an NHS trip back to the years of 2003-2006.
The fourteenth instalment of the exclusive release series which sees extremely limited vinyl presses of Hospital classics, has drawn for four untestable originals from Logistics, Q-Project, London Elektricity and Danny Byrd.
First up is Logistics’ 2006 liquid-funk anthem ‘City Life’ originally featured on his era-defining debut album ‘Now More Than Ever’ supported by legendary figures including Fabio & Grooverider, LTJ Bukem and Andy C. Hypnotizing piano loops and deadly subs keep things rolling on this exemplary slice of fast soul funk.
Drum & bass all-star Q-Project is up next as his timeless banger ‘Obsession’ gets a 2020 vinyl revival. Originally supported by the likes of High Contrast and Friction, ‘Obsession’ still receives widespread rotation to this day as its unforgettable melody and groove assert it as a certified dance music destroyer.
“Fast Soul Music” is the brainchild of Hospital head-honcho London Elektricity and was initially featured on his 2003 album ‘Billion Dollar Gravy’. A clear cut example of the much loved loungecore sound, the uplifting London Elektricity classic influenced styles and the legendary Hospital “Fast Soul Music” compilations for years to come.
Signing back to Hospital Records in 1999, Danny Byrd’s musical endeavour has been commendable to say the least. “Soul Function” represents the classic sounds of Danny Byrd with 2005 dancefloor energy. Garnering support from pioneers such as Bryan Gee and Total Science, Danny Byrd’s drum & bass style continues to go unmatched.
Don’t sleep on securing your extremely limited press of four Hospital classics from the 2003-2006 era. This one is for the serious collectors - once they’re gone, they’re gone.

The debut album from writer and artist Holly Childs and artist Gediminas Žygus formerly known as J.G. Biberkopf.

Initiated in 2017, Hydrangea grew out of a series of performances emphasising conspiracies and the designer realities that they generate. Navigating a tangle of digitally induced subjectivities and relationships, Hydrangea sees Childs & Žygus amidst a continuously evaporating world in which narratives dissolve, leak, fold in on themselves and loop.

Childs & Žygus ask: As individuals are siloed online, can rifts in reality ever be reconciled? Is history a form of science fiction? And are narrators ever reliable? The process of creating Hydrangea was defined by the search for a form to bind fiction, poetry, and musical experience. Its narrative is influenced by technical instructions, lectures and whispered conversations, in which slippage and floating focus can create new meanings in the listener that weren’t intended by the speaker.

Aspects of physical and informational security including passwords, codes, locks and obstacles speak to the ways in which meaning or material can be locked, unlocked or instrumentalised for a range of potential outcomes. Hydrangea reflects on the Machiavellian strategies of political ideologists such as Steve Bannon, Aleksandr Dugin and Vladislav Surkov who have made use of contemporary and postmodern artistic strategies to design narrative uncertainty—covertly braiding together questionable truths, slippery narratives and bespoke reinterpretations of history for undisclosed political ends.

"Hydrangea’s Just the Password Though, Right?"

Childs & Žygus employ a musical language that layers their cumulative practices and experiences. The compositions are cinematic and spatial, working with the illustrative qualities of Disneyesque string melodies and taking cues from Maurice Ravel’s impressionistic piano works.

The work is also influenced by both artists’ lifelong experiences of rave culture, beginning for Žygus during childhood in newly independent Lithuania, spending time juggling Disney and happy hardcore cassettes on the family stereo, and for Childs as a preteen in Australia, tagging along with her sisters to doofs and warehouse parties. Initiated while the artists were both working between Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 2017, the work also draws on Dutch gabber music.

Hydrangea’s development has been influenced by collaboration with artists and filmmakers Metahaven, who created the album art.

Holly Childs is a writer and artist. Her research involves filtering stories of computation through frames of ecology, earth, memory, poetry, and light. She is the author of two books: No Limit (Hologram) and Danklands (Arcadia Missa); and has presented her work at ICA (London), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Trust (Berlin), Elam School of Art (Auckland) and more.

Gediminas Žygus is an artist working within the fields of sound, documentary and performance. Their practice assembles a spectrum of influences deriving from architecture, ecology, ethnography, science studies, and media theory. As J.G. Biberkopf, their releases have found homes on Knives and Danse Noire. Žygus has performed at Barbican Centre (London), Berghain (Berlin), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), and Centre Pompidou (Paris), among others. credits

On his first EP, Forgiveness, the artist Max von Sternberg delivers four new tracks on the Munich label Musica Autonomica. With its strong basslines and expressive hi-hats, the eponymous piece, Forgiveness, is clearly made for the dance floor. It comes in two versions – one with lyrics and one as a dub version. Falling Star, the first track of the vinyl's B-side feels likely energetic. New Day, on the contrary, gets the more quiet tones, occasionally leaves a melancholic impression and is by that also made for contexts beyond the club.

Stars are created by gravitational collapse of large molecular clumps. Once formed, they stay in the universe for millions of years – and outlive all human life. The artistic creation of Max von Sternberg also is about outliving. With his driving and melodic sound he creates unheard soundscapes. Complemented by well placed lyric pieces, he underlines the the continuous change of our world and shows that nothing is forever. With his first EP, Forgiveness, on Musica Autonomica, he delivers four deep house pieces that cover the entire bandwidth – from bassy dance floor bangers to more quiet, melancholic sounds.

Temple Haze joins the rows of Tal der Verwirrung label, presenting his four-track debut vinyl full of mellow guitar, ethereal vocals and an intriguing, nebulous ambience.

A1 Ethereal vocals blend into spheric ambience, lush piano fills the gaps left by a kick drum which is beyond all smoothness. Temple Haze creates a title track which starts as a blurry dream an unfolds into a well known, universal memory.

A2 Straightforward percussive delays and a gentle hum spread good vibes from the start, while catchy guitar riff melts together with a warm baseline, altogether creating an intriguing pull into the track's gravity field. When Temple Haze joins in with marvelously creamy vocals, the story takes another turn and brings us somewhere we have not been before.

B1 Temple Haze invites us to a moment of contemplation and reflection, we swim in a warm cloud of misty thoughts. There is no start and no beginning, only connections and loose ends.

B2 A gentle guitar arpeggio and organic drum cycles immediately bring the heat of the summer with all its tempting sensations. Melodic elements are slowly spiraling towards each other, like two birds dancing together in a dark blue sky.

Relapse Records is proud to announce the first ever fully-authorized reissue of GISM's landmark debut LP, ‘Detestation’. Originally released in 1984, Detestation has since remained one of the most innovative, bewildering, extreme, and wildly influential albums in the punk and metal canon. To say ‘Destestation’ was ahead of its time would be a huge understatement -- it incorporated elements from so many genres: hardcore, punk, heavy metal, glam, thrash, industrial, and experimental. It was almost as if listeners didn’t know what to do with the record’s music but gravitated to it nonetheless as they recognized it was something unique and special. Maximum Rocknroll’s Jay Bentley’s 1984 review of ‘Detestation’ made that sentiment clear, describing the record as "Churning Metal-punk, or perhaps even speed-metal, depending on where you draw the distinction. GISM are undoubtedly a heavy metal band who've been heavily influenced by hardcore, but the music is so intense and the vocals so ominous that even I’m in a state of shock. These guys make VENOM sound like the KNACK, especially on side 1."

SUMMER OF SEVENTEEN are MONIKA KHOT (NORDRA, ZEN MOTHER), WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA (MAMIFFER), and AARON TURNER. (SUMAC, SPLIT CRANIUM).

Wildfires plagued Washington state during the summer of 2017, their smoke drifting westward toward the Seattle area and toxifying the air. Shortly before that trauma, MONIKA KHOT, WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA, and AARON TURNER had gathered at the latter two musicians' House Of Low Culture studio on idyllic Vashon Island with revered producer RANDALL DUNN. There they cut eight songs that capture the makeshift band's feelings of what COLOCCIA calls "a kind of doomsday lurking in the background." It's as if these highly attuned players had a premonition.

"Summer Of Seventeen" -which was edited and arranged by MONIKA KHOT, who records apocalyptic music solo as NORDRA and plays in the avant-rock band ZEN MOTHER—is a nuanced admixture of these musicians' sounds and a culmination of all of their previous collaborations. COLOCCIA and TURNER have created eldritch folk and chamber rock for over a decade in MAMIFFER while engaging in various solo and group projects that explore their profound spirituality in sound. MENCHE has been a fixture on the abstract composition scene for 31 years and COLLINS is a savvy explorer of drone and ambient forms. Their ephemeral summit meeting has yielded a masterwork for the ages.

A heaven/hell and beauty/beastliness dichotomy pervades the album—as if a titanic struggle was transpiring in that small studio. The fearsome trumpet fanfare that starts "Chorus Of The Innocents" heralds a baleful fate. With a subliminal industrial rhythm bristling beneath the eerie exhalations, the song submerges us in a slow-motion maelstrom, a horror-film facsimile of MILES DAVIS' "Bitches Brew". "Perceived Slight" threads death-metal screams through a stark, suspenseful atmosphere, with austere glints of guitar and beats like fists on a casket lid intensifying the dread.

Angelic chants and celestial drones perfume the air in several of the songs on "Summer Of Seventeen", countered with muted blast beats, serrated hums, jagged glitches, simulacra of grinding gears and lightning. It's as if no good deed goes unpunished. "Spirits Of Redeemer" could be an elegy for the human race while "Cultural Orphan" sounds like a symphony for a malfunctioning factory. The album ends with "Theatre Needs An Audience," a harrowing ballad somewhere between EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and MERZBOW; it's a savage rent in the space-time continuum.

"Thinking about this record now," COLOCCIA recalls, "it seems like we were all sort of anticipating something like this current pandemic happening, although we were thinking about it as fire in the hands of man (literal fire, and also gunfire) that would overturn the normal running of things and reveal the current false beliefs systems holding up most of America."

That grave aura infiltrates "Summer Of Seventeen", However, a hopefulness bubbles beneath the foreboding architecture of sound and noise summoned here. The bunker is the new penthouse.

-Dave Segal, April 2020

In the late-1970s Athens, Georgia was buzzing with a raw but sophisticated music scene. Traditional Southern rock had been the Georgia musical export for years before but the turn of the decade began producing new sounds from bands like the B-52’s, REM and Alt Rock luminaires Pylon.
 Before they were a band, Pylon were art-school students at the University of Georgia: four kids invigorated by big ideas about art and creativity and society. However, Pylon were less of a band and more of an art project, which meant they had very specific goals in mind, as well as an expiration date.
 While their time together as a band was short lived (1979-1983), Pylon had a lasting influence on the history of rock and roll. Throughout their brief history, they were able to create influential work that would help foster the post-punk and art-rock scene of the early 80s. Artists like R.E.M., Gang of Four, Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, Interpol, Deerhunter and many more claim inspiration from the band.
 Their 1979 single ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ reached legendary status, with Rolling Stone titling it one of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles Of All Time.
 In 1980 the band released their first record, ‘Gyrate’, and began touring across the country in support of the release. The band would soon develop a following across the country and specifically in the bustling music scene in New York City. One of their earliest gigs was opening for the Gang of Four in the Big Apple.
 Following the critical acclaim of their debut release, Pylon went back into the studio. They gleefully pulled their songs apart and put them back together in new shapes, revealing a band of self proclaimed nonmusicians who had transformed gradually but noticeably into real musicians. The resulting album, ‘Chomp’, was barely off the press when Pylon were booked to open a run of dates for a hot new Irish band called U2 (after previously playing two arena shows with them in the month leading to the album release). Most bands would have jumped at the opportunity but Pylon were sceptical. At a critical point in the life of Pylon, they opted to become a cult band rather than stretch their defining philosophy too far.
 “We fully intended Pylon to be an almost seasonal thing that we were gonna do for a minute and then get on with our lives,” says Curtis Crowe, drummer for the band. “But it just never went away. It still doesn’t go away. There’s a new subterranean class of kids that are coming into this kind of music, and they’re just now discovering Pylon. That blows my mind. We didn’t see that coming.”
 New West Records are proud to partner with Pylon to reissue ‘Chomp’ and ‘Gyrate’ back into the masses. Beautifully remastered from the original audio sources and pressed on vinyl (140g) for the first time in over 30 years.
 New West Records also present ‘Pylon Box’, a comprehensive look at the band that features the remastered studio LPs ‘Gyrate’ and ‘Chomp’, the 11-song collection ‘Extra’ - which includes rarities and previously unreleased studio and live recordings - and ‘Razz Tape’, Pylon’s first ever recording: a 13-song unreleased session that pre-dates the band’s seminal ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ debut.
 ‘Pylon Box’ also includes a hardbound 200-page full colour book featuring pieces written by the members of R.E.M., Gang of Four, Steve Albini, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Interpol, B-52’s, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, Mission of Burma, Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and K Records, Anthony DeCurtis, Chris Stamey of the dB’s, Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and many more. Features an extensive essay chronicling the band’s history, with interviews with the surviving members of the band as well as members of R.E.M., B-52’s, Gang of Four, Method Actors and more. It also features never before seen images and artifacts from both the band’s personal archives as well as items now housed at the Special Collections Library at the University of Georgia and the Georgia Museum of Art, UGA.

The 20th anniversary year of Dial Records couldn’t have been more exciting for us so far! After the extraordinary well-received release of Soela’s debut-album Genuine Silk and steady excitement around our ongoing series of digital anniversary compilations, we are more than thrilled to announce the second album release of this our very special year: XDB - Inspiron. As a longtime companion and true inspiration throughout the label’s twenty-year history, Kosta Athanassiadis aka XDB enriched our lives with his brilliant productions in the form of countless 12”s and legendary remixes. His long-overdue full-length debut album Inspiron in hand, we find ourselves unpacking the most beautiful jubilee present we could have ever imagined. For almost three decades now Kosta Athanassiadis aka XDB has been involved in the constantly changing world of dance music. His curiosity and dedication to electronic music spiral deep into the depth of House Music and Techno and where ever he appears he generously shares his unique knowledge in this field with equally dedicated crowds. Whether you follow his bloggish “Tracks I do really LOVE”, a collection of club essentials and a library of taste, or you witness one of his remarkable DJ sets from Panorama Bar to Freerotation Festival - XDB will elevate you to one of those unforgettably magical music moments. In 1993 Kosta Athanassiadis started his DJ career in the medieval hometown of Goettingen. To find what he was really looking for, namely, the newest and most exciting new records he frequently had to leave this picturesque city, that is most popular for inventing the traditional Baumkuchen pastry, but has not been on the maps of music connoisseurs necessarily. Frequent trips to visit records stores and clubs around Germany built a network of likely minded people. Some of his favorite and most thought after record labels of the time like the Chicago imprint Relief, or UK's Mosaic, are still fundamental to his very specific musical taste. By the turn of the century, XDB hosted a series of nights at Goettingen's Eletroosho, where he invited Dial’s own Lawrence and Carsten Jost in 2002- the beginning of a still ongoing friendship. He had established himself as a sought after and internationally active DJ and started his fist endeavors into music production as well. Later on XDB founded his own Label Metrolux and released on iconic labels like Sistrum and Wave to be followed by countless remixes for legends like Aaron Carl, Norm Talley and Patrice Scott. An extraordinary stream of gravity connects both, his productions and DJ sets. Once breaking through a seemingly transparent surface, one get’s lost in the beauty and depth of forms and figures. There’s barely DJs and producers who keep searching for this hidden formula in such a microscopically detailed way to pass a lifetime in House Music and Techno on to the world. XDB's Inspiron embraces this unique approach, filters and develops inspirations in an entirely delicate way, and magically emphasizes the desires of the most dedicated listeners and dancers.

In the late-1970s Athens, Georgia was buzzing with a raw but sophisticated music scene. Traditional Southern rock had been the Georgia musical export for years before but the turn of the decade began producing new sounds from bands like the B-52’s, REM and Alt Rock luminaires Pylon.
 Before they were a band, Pylon were art-school students at the University of Georgia: four kids invigorated by big ideas about art and creativity and society. However, Pylon were less of a band and more of an art project, which meant they had very specific goals in mind, as well as an expiration date.
 While their time together as a band was short lived (1979-1983), Pylon had a lasting influence on the history of rock and roll. Throughout their brief history, they were able to create influential work that would help foster the post-punk and art-rock scene of the early 80s. Artists like R.E.M., Gang of Four, Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, Interpol, Deerhunter and many more claim inspiration from the band.
 Their 1979 single ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ reached legendary status, with Rolling Stone titling it one of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles Of All Time.
 In 1980 the band released their first record, ‘Gyrate’, and began touring across the country in support of the release. The band would soon develop a following across the country and specifically in the bustling music scene in New York City. One of their earliest gigs was opening for the Gang of Four in the Big Apple.
 Following the critical acclaim of their debut release, Pylon went back into the studio. They gleefully pulled their songs apart and put them back together in new shapes, revealing a band of self proclaimed nonmusicians who had transformed gradually but noticeably into real musicians. The resulting album, ‘Chomp’, was barely off the press when Pylon were booked to open a run of dates for a hot new Irish band called U2 (after previously playing two arena shows with them in the month leading to the album release). Most bands would have jumped at the opportunity but Pylon were sceptical. At a critical point in the life of Pylon, they opted to become a cult band rather than stretch their defining philosophy too far.
 “We fully intended Pylon to be an almost seasonal thing that we were gonna do for a minute and then get on with our lives,” says Curtis Crowe, drummer for the band. “But it just never went away. It still doesn’t go away. There’s a new subterranean class of kids that are coming into this kind of music, and they’re just now discovering Pylon. That blows my mind. We didn’t see that coming.”
 New West Records are proud to partner with Pylon to reissue ‘Chomp’ and ‘Gyrate’ back into the masses. Beautifully remastered from the original audio sources and pressed on vinyl (140g) for the first time in over 30 years.
 New West Records also present ‘Pylon Box’, a comprehensive look at the band that features the remastered studio LPs ‘Gyrate’ and ‘Chomp’, the 11-song collection ‘Extra’ - which includes rarities and previously unreleased studio and live recordings - and ‘Razz Tape’, Pylon’s first ever recording: a 13-song unreleased session that pre-dates the band’s seminal ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ debut.
 ‘Pylon Box’ also includes a hardbound 200-page full colour book featuring pieces written by the members of R.E.M., Gang of Four, Steve Albini, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Interpol, B-52’s, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, Mission of Burma, Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and K Records, Anthony DeCurtis, Chris Stamey of the dB’s, Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and many more. Features an extensive essay chronicling the band’s history, with interviews with the surviving members of the band as well as members of R.E.M., B-52’s, Gang of Four, Method Actors and more. It also features never before seen images and artifacts from both the band’s personal archives as well as items now housed at the Special Collections Library at the University of Georgia and the Georgia Museum of Art, UGA.

DOWNFALL is the first album under the name SAITO created by Lena Saito, aka Galcid, and produced by accomplished analog synthesizer guru, Hisashi Saito, aka Lena’s husband. Having descended from a long line of Japanese sword-smiths, the industrial sound of smashing steel is embedded in Lena’s DNA and reflected in her music, however there are also refined, hypnotic tones showing a side with more finesse. The music itself is not scored and is predominantly improvised. Words and vocals are ad libbed as well. Sometimes the machines respond as if through telekinesis, altogether emitting a sound which can be categorized somewhere in the range between modern experimental dance music and something possibly making more sense to enlightened minds a thousand years in the future.




There is a new addition to the forge of talents of Mille Plateaux, a Japanese musician by the name of Saito whose album has been released on the label under the title of Downfall. After a whole series of releases under the signature tag clicks & cuts, there comes out a work, much more suited for a dance hall, that is different in terms of the genre from everything that has been published so far.
Like a bucket of ice-cold water poured over the head, erratic agressive hardcore rhythms pour all over the audience in the first track, interrupted only by grinding noises and minimalistic technogenic clicks.
Downfall won't fail to infect even the most experienced music connaisseur with its out-of-control energy, while offering a wide range of techniques: at times, robotic voices, one second long fragments of looped melodies and many other audio gimmicks.
Lena Saito (that is the author's name) is not afraid of conducting experiments in her chemical laboratory, freely mixing sound reagents without taking any precautions. It feels like, this new chemical substance, that she has been working on so thoroughly, contains quite a long list of ingredients, although its main component is the various rhythm breaks.
The synthesizer part of Red Hammer sounds in the best traditions of the acid style, and the rhythm section is akin to African tribal dances of the future. Downfall is absolutely unrelenting in its concept.
The melody of the composition Nucleosome is a little bit like the melancholic IDM of the 00s, finding itself secondary to the dominating, yet again convoluted rhythmical web meticulously woven by Saito.
This album can be definitely named as a big contender aspiring to start a new golden era of Mille Plateaux, and Saito as the hidden treasure of the label that can challenge even the veterans for the right to be the headliner.

In the horror genre, sequels are perfunctory. As the insufferable film bro Randy explains in Scream 2, "There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate-more blood, more gore. Carnage candy. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead." Last Halloween, Los Angeles experimental rap mainstays Clipping ended their three-year silence with the horrorcore-inspired album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. This October, rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson return with an even higher body count, more elaborate kills, and monsters that just won't stay dead. Visions of Bodies Being Burned is less a sequel than it is the second half of a planned diptych. It turns out, Clipping took to the thematic material of horrorcore like vampires to grave soil. Before the release of There Existed an Addiction to Blood, Clipping and Sub Pop Records divided the material up into two albums, designed to be released only months apart. However, a global pandemic and multiple cancelled tours pushed the release of the project's "part two" until the following Halloween season. Visions of Bodies Being Burned contains sixteen more scary stories disguised as rap songs, incorporating as much influence from Ernest Dickerson, Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson as it does from Three 6 Mafia, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Brotha Lynch Hung. Clipping's angular, shattered interpretations of existing musical styles are always deferential, driven by fandom for the object of study rather than disdain for it. Clipping reimagine horrorcore-the purposely absurdist hip-hop subgenre that flourished in the 1990s-the way Jordan Peele does horror cinema: by twisting beloved tropes to make explicit their own radical politics of monstrosity, fear, and the uncanny. The album features a host of collaborators: Inglewood's Cam & China, fellow noise-rap pioneers Ho99o9, Tortoise guitar genius Jeff Parker, and experimental LA drummer Ted Byrnes. The final track, "Secret Piece," is a performance of a Yoko Ono text score from 1953 that instructs the players to "Decide on one note that you want to play/Play it with the following accompaniment: the woods from 5am to 8am in summer," and features nearly all of the musicians who appeared on both albums. Since their last album, Daveed Diggs-the group's Tony and Grammy Award-winning rapper-has starred in the TNT science fiction series, Snowpiercer, voiced a character in Pixar's Soul, and portrayed Frederick Douglass in Showtime's The Good Lord Bird. Writer Rivers Solomon's novella based on Clipping's Hugo-nominated song "The Deep" has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and won the Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ SF/Fantasy/Horror novel. Clipping's song "Chapter 319"-a tribute to George Floyd (AKA Big Floyd) the former DJ-Screw affiliated rapper who was murdered by police officers in May of 2020-was released on Bandcamp on June 19th and raised over $20,000 for racial justice charities. A clip of the song also became a popular meme on TikTok, generating over 50,000 videos in which teenagers rapped the song's lyrics ("Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop_") directly into the frowning faces of their conservative parents. The band also contributed a Skinny Puppy-esque rework of J-Kwon's "Tipsy" to Save Stereogum: An '00s Covers Comp.

Dark, Hard, Harsh, dirty and evil techno... Rampage Hardtek !

In the horror genre, sequels are perfunctory. As the insufferable film bro Randy explains in Scream 2, "There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate-more blood, more gore. Carnage candy. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead." Last Halloween, Los Angeles experimental rap mainstays Clipping ended their three-year silence with the horrorcore-inspired album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. This October, rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson return with an even higher body count, more elaborate kills, and monsters that just won't stay dead. Visions of Bodies Being Burned is less a sequel than it is the second half of a planned diptych. It turns out, Clipping took to the thematic material of horrorcore like vampires to grave soil. Before the release of There Existed an Addiction to Blood, Clipping and Sub Pop Records divided the material up into two albums, designed to be released only months apart. However, a global pandemic and multiple cancelled tours pushed the release of the project's "part two" until the following Halloween season. Visions of Bodies Being Burned contains sixteen more scary stories disguised as rap songs, incorporating as much influence from Ernest Dickerson, Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson as it does from Three 6 Mafia, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Brotha Lynch Hung. Clipping's angular, shattered interpretations of existing musical styles are always deferential, driven by fandom for the object of study rather than disdain for it. Clipping reimagine horrorcore-the purposely absurdist hip-hop subgenre that flourished in the 1990s-the way Jordan Peele does horror cinema: by twisting beloved tropes to make explicit their own radical politics of monstrosity, fear, and the uncanny. The album features a host of collaborators: Inglewood's Cam & China, fellow noise-rap pioneers Ho99o9, Tortoise guitar genius Jeff Parker, and experimental LA drummer Ted Byrnes. The final track, "Secret Piece," is a performance of a Yoko Ono text score from 1953 that instructs the players to "Decide on one note that you want to play/Play it with the following accompaniment: the woods from 5am to 8am in summer," and features nearly all of the musicians who appeared on both albums. Since their last album, Daveed Diggs-the group's Tony and Grammy Award-winning rapper-has starred in the TNT science fiction series, Snowpiercer, voiced a character in Pixar's Soul, and portrayed Frederick Douglass in Showtime's The Good Lord Bird. Writer Rivers Solomon's novella based on Clipping's Hugo-nominated song "The Deep" has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and won the Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ SF/Fantasy/Horror novel. Clipping's song "Chapter 319"-a tribute to George Floyd (AKA Big Floyd) the former DJ-Screw affiliated rapper who was murdered by police officers in May of 2020-was released on Bandcamp on June 19th and raised over $20,000 for racial justice charities. A clip of the song also became a popular meme on TikTok, generating over 50,000 videos in which teenagers rapped the song's lyrics ("Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop_") directly into the frowning faces of their conservative parents. The band also contributed a Skinny Puppy-esque rework of J-Kwon's "Tipsy" to Save Stereogum: An '00s Covers Comp.

Rocksteady and Reggae have long been a part of the rare soul scene, since its inception in the early Sixties. It’s easy to hear the influence of early American R&B in the development of ‘Ska’ and as ‘Soul’ music took over as “the sound of young America”, in the mid-Sixties, it too tinged the sound of Jamaica. No more so than our dance floor anthem “I Feel So Bad” by the legendary JACKIE EDWARDS.
Edwards was born Wilfred Gerald Edwards in Jamaica in 1938 and by the age of 22 had already scored a No.1 record on the island. He’d had four chart-topping hits before signing to Chris Blackwell’s new ‘Island’ imprint in 1962. He became an integral part of Island Records, as a prolific artist, songwriter, producer and general helper. He wrote “Keep On Running” and “Somebody Help Me” for the British R&B band The Spencer Davis Group, both of which went to No.1 on the U.K. pop charts.
“I Feel So Bad” was released on the distinctive ‘red and white’ Island logo in 1967 and was adopted by the burgeoning U.K. underground soul scene, most notably at the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester. It has been played on the ever evolving Northern Soul scene ever since and, a half-century on, commands a price tag of £700+ for a mint original. Fortunately our devastingly good-looking “official” reissue can be bought for a more modest sum.
Jackie Edwards is also responsible for our flip-side “Baby Don’t Wake Me” which he wrote and produced for reggae singer DEL DAVIS at the turn of the Seventies. The combination of Jackie’s well-honed soul-induced musicianship and Davis’ gravelly soulful vocals create the perfect Northern/Crossover dancer.
Two fabulous reasons to make this one of the top reissue 45s of 2020!

Good Vids, Vile Times is the second album by Ant Antic. Its central themes are the never-ending flood of information and its effects on us. The Berlin-based singer and producer Tobias Koett wraps serious questions into radiant pop songs. What does constant bombardment of information do to us? What's lost along the way?

On his new album, Ant Antic observes the emotional power of media and information. The helplessness we feel in the face of predominantly bad news and the growing inability to take pleasure in good news. The way an overload of junk information leaves no mental capacity for real social connections. As a child of the first globally connected generation, he witnesses geographical boundaries dissolve and people consider humanity as one. At the same time, everyone seems to struggle to come to terms with a reality overflowing with possibilities. Slowly, we collectively turn into superficial nihilists.

"When I wrote my first album Wealth I looked inward to examine my own emotions, asking myself "How do I really feel?". For Good Vids, Vile Times I was focusing less on the how and more on the question of why. "Why do I feel that way?"", Tobias explains the creative writing process behind his second album as Ant Antic.

"I'm a bag of hot air / Push me up density / Feel like a millionaire / Don't bring me down gravity", he admits on the single Yellow Press. Referencing the album's cover artwork by Austrian photographer Erli Grünzweil, Tobias describes how it feels to advertise his own life to other people - when behind the meticulously crafted presentation, there's sometimes nothing left but emptiness and anxiety.

Good Vids, Vile Times is an album rich in variety, ranging from indie-pop to contemporary R&B. In stark contrast to the somber tone of the lyrics, the songs radiate a cheerful liveliness. Fueled by analog synthesizers and an electric guitar often not discernible as such, the record builds on Ant Antic's signature sound. It's all Tobias on Good Vids, Vile Times - writing songs, recording vocals, guitars and synths, all the way to production and mixing. Essential elements and ideas are put into focus by getting rid of everything else. At the same time, the new album sees singer and producer Tobias openly flirting with pop, exploring new sounds and aesthetics, and maturing musically and lyrically. No song is alike, each one tells an honest and relatable story - all held together by the magic glue that is Tobias' distinctive voice, which might stay with you forever.