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STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

Unlike anything we have heard from her before, Okkyung Lee returns to Shelter Press with "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", a deeply intimate body of recordings at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque, that stands as radical intervention with what experimental music can be, and the place that organisations of sound occupy in our lives. For more than two decades, Okkyung Lee has stood at the forefront of the most radical trajectories of experimental music: a virtuosic cellist and improviser, renowned for her creative rigour and emotive depth. Particularly noteworthy for her range, dexterity, and adaptability, over the last five years Lee's output has revealed unexpected shifts and developments that move far afield from the realms of free improvisation for which she is most well known. 2020's "Yeo - Neun", a heart-wrenching, ambient chamber work - drawing inspiration from the Korean popular music of her youth - was issued by Shelter Press to great critical response, followed closely by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)" - one of a series engrossing electroacoustic works created at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris - on Portraits GRM, and then "Na-Reul" in 2021, regarded by Lee as a closing statement of more than two decades living in New York, which set the precedent of her allowing her emotions to fully occupy the forefront of the music for the first time. Marking her return to Shelter press, "Just Like Any Other Day": Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", encounters Lee upturning the apple cart once again, weaving a profoundly intimate artistic statement on completely unexpected terms. Like its three aforementioned predecessors, "Just Like Any Other Day" belongs to broadening shift in Lee's approach to composing that roughly aligns with her return to her native South Korea, having lived in the United States since her late teens. Infused with a deep reengagement with her own culture and relationship to memory, it is equally a response to those critical challenges and questions provoked by significant life change. Worked on in isolation, and continuously returned to, over the course of four years, the album's nine pieces began with a simple recognition that experimental music is not always what we imagine it to be. It is a practice and a pursuit - a music for which, at its inception, the outcome is unknown - rather than an idiom defined by certain syntaxes, approaches, and qualities of structure and sound. From this departure point, Lee began to inquire after the utility of music itself: what is it for, what does it do, and what place does it (or can it) occupy in our lives? This solitary and durational journey, each composition gradually moving through different phases and evolutions over years, led Lee toward uncharted ground: a music that is not only playful, introspective, and seductive, but also intended to provoke a relationship to experimental music beyond its normative expectations. Rather active or deep listening, it pursues passive listening. Rather than a grand statement, it is discreet. Rather than virtuosity, it embraces the elegant and direct. Even more strikingly, for the first time, the music of "Just Like Any Other Day" encounters Lee leaving the cello entirely behind. Created at home on keyboard, computer, and an inexpensive cassette recorder, "Just Like Any Other Day" presents a remarkable form of ambient music - organisations of sound that become their own environment, to be occupied - intended, as the album's subheading infers, as Background Music For Your Mundane Activities. An expansion of the creative pathways opened by the Korean pop imbued compositions of Yeo - Neun, aspects of electronic process explored by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)", and the emotive foregrounding of "Na-Reul", each of the pieces presented across the two sides of "Just Like Any Other Day" implies something far greater than the limits of its own temporarily: a mood, provocations of memory and place, mirrors for the solitude within which it was made, and palpable emotion lingering just out of grasp. For Lee, each of the album's compositions could be continued or looped for an indeterminate duration: straddling a ground between the minimal and the baroque, enveloping the listener in endless cycles of appreciating, repetitive and rhythmical notes, flirting with the melodic and implying a disembodied imagism that borders on the profound. Remarkably beautiful and direct, Okkyung Lee's "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities" - issued by Shelter Press on vinyl - represents a radical reconfiguration of experiential music, stripped to its bare essence in defiance of the widely presumed aesthetic signifiers. Unlike anything we've heard from her before, this immersive body of intimate recordings not only reveals new dimensions of Lee's striking range as an artist, but also of how we might regard and occupy music itself: an ambience to lived and felt like a second skin.

Das selbstbetitelte Album von Ava Luna markiert eine fundierte und introspektive Entwicklung für das Quartett aus Brooklyn. Die Band, die nun aus Carlos Hernandez, Julian Fader, Ethan Bassford und Felicia Douglass besteht, kehrt nach einer längeren Pause mit einem reduzierten Sound zurück, der sich auf Schlagzeug, Bass und zwei Gesangsstimmen konzentriert. Dieser Back-to-Basics-Ansatz, eine Abkehr vom ,kosmischen" Gefühl ihres Vorgängeralbums ,Moon 2", hat seine Wurzeln in gemeinsamen Erfahrungen in NYC und den Rhythmen des Alltags. Themen wie Erschöpfung, Gemeinschaft und fragile Freude tauchen in Songs wie ,Lasting Impression" über die Arbeitsmüdigkeit und ,Math Money Job", einem spielerischen Gesang über Wiedersehen und Verkörperung, auf. Julians Schlagzeug und Ethans Bass Themen wie Erschöpfung, Gemeinschaft und prekäre Freude tauchen in Tracks wie ,Lasting Impression" über Arbeitsmüdigkeit und ,Math Money Job", einem verspielten Gesang über Wiedersehen und Verkörperung, auf. Julians Schlagzeug und Ethans Bass treiben das Album an, das teilweise vom rohen Sampling-Stil von Soul Coughing inspiriert ist, der in Tracks wie ,Frame of Us" zu hören ist. Gesanglich bewegen sich Carlos und Felicia wie eine Einheit - sie verschmelzen, harmonieren und fragmentieren mit Absicht, besonders in ,Archive". Obwohl im Kern minimalistisch, ist der Sound des Albums üppig und strukturiert, angereichert durch Congas von Reggae-Legende Larry McDonald, Klavier, Samples und Gitarren-Noise. Songs wie ,Social Diving" und ,My Walk" spiegeln persönliche und urbane Geschichten wider, während ,Your Man" und ,Fancy" von Widerstandsfähigkeit und Würde erzählen. Das Ergebnis ist Ava Luna in ihrer ehrlichsten und raffiniertesten Form - ein Porträt von NYC und einer Band, die sich noch immer weiterentwickelt und nichts von ihrer Dringlichkeit eingebüßt hat.

On September 19, 2025, Mac Declos will release his second album, MTY-013 « Nothing Stands Still », on Mama Told Ya. Following the acclaimed MTY-007 « Hard Work Always Pays Off » and a trilogy of striking EPs : Angel Eyes (2025), Endless Cycle (2024), and Cuir en Cage (2023), as well as countless DJ sets and All Night Longs around the globe, Mac is now ready to unveil a bold new chapter in his musical journey.

Nothing Stands Still is a sonic artefact: a double-vinyl album composed of 12 timeless tracks. Eleven pieces are produced solely by Mac Declos, with one co-produced alongside Anetha. The album also features unique contributions from Mac’s mother, Doona Rolls, and Mac’s dad, Eric Declosmenil, adding emotional
depth to the project. While music is often elusive and ephemeral, with Nothing Stands Still, Mac Declos set out to create an archive of the future that transcends time and trend, an echo meant to endure. Once again, Mama Told Ya reminds us: Music remains.

"Message Music by Daweh in a Mafia & Fluxy & Wandering Lion production. Hard hitting roots music!"

People of Earth,

They assigned me your heavy, brooding planet. I don’t complain. Because what lies ahead is Contact.

You are still primitive. That’s not an insult — just an observation. You’re tangled in your inner workings. Fascinated by your metaphysical genitals, if we’re being precise. And yet — your spirit scored pretty high on the Interplanetary Index. Which is rare, and promising.

Your Enlightenment is near. And Enlightenment is essential — for Contact.

Many of you have already tasted the Synthetic Harmonies.
They’re signals. Invitations. Crafted by Artists who, knowingly or not, have already opened the gate.

You look up. You name stars.
You build flying machines.
You surf the sky in metal tubes, sipping juice.
You make big sounds with small boxes.
You fly above the clouds — and play with fire, hoping it counts as progress.
It does.
You’re getting closer.

But first, you need to fix one thing.

Learn to float.
In sound.
In light.
In pulse.
Float in the silence between the kicks.
And stop talking on the dancefloor!

Soon, we’ll drift together through the Great Cosmic Pattern.
Soon, your voices will be heard beyond atmosphere —
not shouting, just resonating.
Believe — Contact is closer than you think.

Truly yours,
The Upgrade Cube

Bangs and Talbot get back to business with a stonking new 45 for 2025, their take on the instrumental classic ‘K Jee’.

Originally by US band the Nite Liters (an instrumental precursor to soul act New Birth), this classic track has been a club favourite for decades. It was later covered by MFSB and included in the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Taken from their forthcoming album on Acid Jazz, this latin disco funk flavoured jam is written by Motown hit producer Harvey Fuqua and Charles Hearndon. It features Mick Talbot on Wurlitzer, organ and piano, ably assisted by German funk guitarist Felix Fraenkel, Italy’s Donato Greco on flute, brass from California’s Dan C, and drums, percussion, and bass from original Acid Jazz DJ/producer Chris Bangs.

On the flip is a Mick Talbot-original ‘Re-Micks’ from the ‘Back to Business’ sessions, which gets a heavy-duty live boom bap rework by hip hop pioneer DJ Premier Inn.

Presented on black vinyl in a new colour version of the current Acid Jazz house-bag, with labels reminiscent of the classic RCA design for an authentic ’70s touch…

Modularz 93: UHFVHF – A Sonic Exploration of Analog and Digital Frequencies
Modularz is proud to present Modularz 93, a groundbreaking collaborative project between two heavyweights in the techno scene: Developer, the visionary producer and label head, and Stanislav Tolkachev, the Ukrainian techno ambassador known for his raw and experimental approach to sound. Their new release, UHFVHF, is a deep and immersive journey into the sonic interplay of analog and digital frequencies, a love letter to the mystique of over-the-air signals and the grey areas where the known meets the unknown. This project marks the culmination of countless hours spent in the studio in Berlin, where Developer and Stanislav have fused their unique creative processes. By blending analog hardware with cutting-edge digital techniques, the duo has crafted a sound that is both timeless and forward-thinking. The result is a series of tracks that explore rhythm and texture in their rawest form, pushing the boundaries of techno’s narrative and embracing the unfiltered power of sound. Through UHFVHF, Developer and Stanislav continue to redefine the parameters of contemporary techno, offering an uncompromising experience that speaks to both the mind and the body. This release is a testament to their dedication to the art of sound, offering a sonic landscape that pushes the boundaries of what techno can be. Modularz 93 – UHFVHF is a must-listen for anyone who seeks the raw energy and unapologetic power that defines the heart of true techno.

The Birmingham master, Mick Harris, arrives with his first vinyl installment of his "Culvert Dub Sessions" series. Mick has taken to the studio desk with his live hands on mixing approach and conjured up 8 tracks of classic, deep, slow rolling dub techno in the traditions of the greats. Think heavy nautical dub outs, windswept delays, low ends to make you seasick, high freqs cutting through the scenery, this is Harris at his finest. No holds barred, sincere electronics from the gut in pure form. A perfect soundtrack for a chilly fall sunset on the river bank.

In 1982, the elite, core musicians (MFSB / The Salsoul Orchestra) behind the soulful Philly Sound - Earl Young (drums), Ron Baker (bass), Norman Harris (guitar), Lenny Pakula (organ), Larry Washington (percussion), Vince Montana, Jr. (vibes) - and powerhouse vocalists David Simmons, Joe Freeman, Ron Tyson and Bobby Love convened at Philadelphia’s historic Sigma Sound and Virtue Studios to record some of the genre’s biggest hits. This small, but amazing set of lush recordings, which were mixed at Alpha Studios - ensuring that every note and nuance was captured with the highest fidelity, recently caught the attention of the famed producer and remixer Eric Kupper. Kupper got his start working as a keyboardist and guitarist for such producer/remixers as David Morales, Frankie Knuckles, Arthur Baker, Peter Rauhofer, and Richie Jones, just to name a few. Since 1986, he has played on, remixed, and/or produced over 1400 records for artists spanning all contemporary musical genres. Presented here is “Bad Luck” which features Simmons’ incomparable lead vocals and a brilliant remix by Kupper. This release is not just a tribute to the past, but a vibrant continuation of the legacy these legendary musicians helped create.

When we did the first ever vinyl reissue of this 1972 masterpiece back in 2012 it sold out so fast and so many lost the chance to grab a copy has translated into continuous messages asking us to do a repressing of this marvel - which we did and, again, it sold like hot bread. So here is a new edition of this UK jazz masterpiece, this time with a twist :

- Silk-screened cover art : we respect the original design, but have upgraded the printing from regular offset to silk screen to give it an artistic touch!

- In adition to the limited black vinyl edition (400 copies), we offer an ultra limited clear vinyl version (100 copies-only!)

One of the big names in UK Jazz, Neil Ardley was offered the leadership of the seminal New Jazz Orchestra in 1964. Under his direction the Orchestra moved though different styles and changes of personnel, bringing in musicians such as Mike Gibbs (trombone), Harry Beckett andHenry Lowther (trumpets) or even Jack Bruce (bass), some of them also contributed with the writing of some original compositions, making the NJO the root from which the UK's 70's jazz scene was to blossom.

By 1972 the NJO was already defunct, but his legacy remained in the works of its members. Ardley's 'A Symphony Of Amaranths' is a perfect example of what was boiling in the UK jazz scene. It was Ardleys tribute to his idols Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, and featured the skills of some great musicians of the scene including Don Rendell,Stan Tracey, Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett, Jeff Clyne & Jon Hiseman. Side B is inspired by the words of Edward Lear, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce and Lewis Carroll that are musicated by Ardley and feature, among other highlights, Ivor Cutler's narration of 'The Dong With A Luminous Nose' and Norma Winstone's vocals on 'Will You Walk A Little Faster'.



Musicians that participated in the recording session :

- Derek Watkins, Nigel Carter, Henry Lowther, Harold Beckett (trumpets)
- Derek Wadsworth, Ray Premru (trombones)
- Dick Hart (tuba)
- Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Don Rendell, Dick Heckstall-Smith (woodwind, saxes)
- John Clementson (oboe)
- Bunny Gould (bassoon)
- Dave Gelly (glockenspiel)
- Neil Ardley (prepared piano)
- David Snell, Sidonie Goossens (harp)
- Stan Tracey (piano, celeste)
- Karl Jenkins (electric piano)
- Alan Branscombe (harpsichord)
- Frank Ricotti (vibraphone, percussion)
- Chris Laurence, Jeff Clyne (bass)
- Jon Hiseman (drums, percussion)
- Eric Gruenberg, Jack Rothstein, Kelly Isaacs (violin)
- Ken Essex (viola)
- Charles Tunnell, Francis Gabarro (cello)
- Ivor Cutler (narrator)
- Norma Winstone (vocal)
- Jack Rothstein, Neil Ardley (conductors)

Hip-hop legend Ice Cube finally returns with his latest studio album “Man Down” – a hard-hitting statement that once again proves why he remains one of the most vital voices in rap today. With “Man Down”, Ice Cube delivers a powerful project that dives deep into today’s social realities, both musically and lyrically. Fans can expect raw lyrics, strong production, and real stories from one of the most inflfluential MCs of all time.

Exclusively for collectors and true fans: “Man Down” is available in several formats: Black Double Vinyl, Limited Marbled Double Vinyl, Music Cassette

Following the success of the 12” “Trip To Your Mind (The Reworks)”—where Delfonic and LTJ Xperience both brought their own magic to Hudson People’s disco/jazz-funk anthem—we’re back with a fresh twist: DJ Friction steps in for an official 7” rework, breathing new life into this cult classic in his own unmistakable style.

For those who’ve been following the story, you know “Trip To Your Mind” is a true favorite among DJs and collectors since decades, from its creative inception by the writer Reginald Hudson with the GI funk band Body Heat, to the original recording taking place in the late 70s in London that eventually paved the way for disco lovers to produce this recent string of reworks.

Where the 12” reworks stretched out the groove with extended intros and club-friendly builds, Friction’s version keeps things tight and energetic. He adds his own drums, claps, synth touches, and some new vocal layers—combining the standout parts from both the original mix and the classic UK remix. The result is a punchy new take that’s perfect for DJs who want maximum impact in a short format, but still want all the funk and psychedelic flavor that’s made this song a dancefloor staple for decades.

And for collectors? The original 7” of “Trip To Your Mind” is notoriously hard to find—and pricey when it turns up. This new release finally makes it easy to spin a fresh, fully licensed version on 7” wax, expertly mastered for today’s systems.

Whether you were hooked by the Delfonic or LTJ Xperience edits, or you’re just discovering this tune for the first time, DJ Friction’s rework is a natural next step in the ongoing journey of “Trip To Your Mind.

RYC presents a four-track journey at the junction of their respective universes, teleporting us straight to a propulsive, mind-expanding headspace as we're invited to explore sonic territories still uncharted and harmonics yet unravelled. The collaborative A-side begins with the dynamic title-track, 'Cross Passage', a proactively future-facing number packing the kind of utopian drive that used to define the original techno sound. A highly cinematic narrative boasting Detroit-style vision and epic breath, 'Cross Passage' builds bridges between hi-tech elation and organic integration, transcending mere functionality to push back and expand the limits of techno as a deep communication vessel between the individual and the mass. Firing off like a binary script gone astray, 'Fibre Axis' takes us on a further bumpy ride across shape-shifting interfaces and blurred-out digital scapes, via abrupt pixel landslides and fractured 3D renderings. Side-B finds each producer dishing out a slice of his/her own musical idiom. Polygonia strikes first with the pulsating 'Voltage Blues' - a mesmeric roller cut from pure eerie synth algebra, boundary-pushing abstraction and surgical but experimental-leaning rhythmic assault. The result is a piece of cutting-edge techno hoodoo, ready to take on clubs with utmost abrasive swagger. Sniping a hail of rainbow-like analogue synth outpour, Wata Igarashi's solo contribution 'The Tunnel Dreams' rounds off the journey on a fiercely nonconformist note. Merging a hard-hitting main swing with 8-bit-esque audio pointillism and brooding bass undertones, the Japanese producer cuts a path of antigravitational abandon and relentless rush towards absolving euphoria, which shall leave all in the room levitating somewhere between sheer daze and love-thirsty XTC. *Clad in the sleekest cover art courtesy of designer Atact, RYCL024 is pressed to red & white marbled vinyl for you, fancy platter collectors and picky audio-visual aesthetes alike.

NYC house legend Joaquin “Joe” Claussell steps up for a fantastic remix of Arp Frique’s 'Save Your Soul' taken from the recent album “The Gospel Of Jesamy”. Support from Floating Points, Palms Trax, Antal and Hunee amongst others. Big TIP!

Sticking to the gospel roots, the 'Sacred Rhythm Praise Version' opens with an organ and piano solo before the iconic "Claussell drums" kick in followed by additional disco strings. Powerful vocals provided by Rocq-E Harrell, Muriel Blijd and Brandon Delagraentiss whilst Arp Frique’s instrumentation glues the whole track together.

Remix on the A-side and original mix on the B-side, pressed at 45RPM.

Peach Discs’ first EP of the post-summer season comes from DJ, producer, and our good pal Amaliah.

The five tracks that make up the Hypnosis EP are a true showcase of Amaliah's rapidly growing skills as a producer, as she picks thoughtfully from her inspirations and flips them into a uniquely Amaliah-coded record – leaning into the housier side of her sound while incorporating elements of bass, garage, UK funky, and prog that have become her calling card.

Lead track "Hypnosis" draws a line straight back to her early UK raving days, with tuff, speed-garage-indebted drums bouncing off prowling subs and emosh, pinging synth lines, while "Watch This" harnesses a similarly heaving bassline but dips towards classic UKG territory with its swinging, broken beat and disembodied vocal chops.

The closest thing to straight-up house on the EP, "Hold Me Closer," features Amaliah's vocals for the first time, as well as additional production from Shanti – an influence evident in the tight, ascending bassline that wraps itself around the stomping percussion.

"Laser Tag" and "Earthling" are maybe the most Amaliah-coded tracks on the record – a pair of highly percussive, UK funky inspired tunes that balance shoulder-bumping drums with wild, arcing synths that prowl across the stereo field, trippy and screwface inducing in equal measure.

Amaliah is also the founder of Borne Fruits, an independent label, event series, and monthly Rinse FM show, showcasing new sounds and emerging talent. This record follows neatly in that vein, as her own emerging talent marries forward-thinking sound design with her roots in raving and soundsystem culture for an EP that's all her own, and one we're thrilled to release.

Local Suicide kündigen ihr lang erwartetes Debütalbum "Eros Anikate" an, das am 13. Mai 2022 auf ihrem eigenen Label Iptamenos Discos erscheinen wird. Der Titel bedeutet übersetzt "unbesiegbare Liebe" und ist inspiriert von Sophokles’ Stück "Antigone”.

Das Album bleibt dem Technodisco-Sound des Berliner Duos treu, für den sich die beiden einen Namen gemacht haben, und zeigt ihren unverkennbaren Stil, der 80er Retro-Feeling mit einem modernen, düsteren Twist kombiniert. In gewohnter Local Suicide-Manier zeigt das Debütalbum des Duos augenzwinkernde Texte über mystische Abenteuer, Lieb...

Dead Heat ist eine Crossover-Hardcore-Band aus Oxnard, Kalifornien, die 2016 gegründet wurde und für ihre energiegeladenen Live-Auftritte und ihren aggressiven Sound bekannt ist, der Einflüsse aus verschiedenen Subgenres von Punk und Metal vereint.Die Musik von Dead Heat zeichnet sich durch schnelle, thrashige Riffs, treibende Rhythmen, harmonische Leads und intensive Vocals aus, die oft ins Geschriene oder Gebrüllte übergehen. Die Texte der Band behandeln typischerweise soziale und politische Themen sowie persönliche Kämpfe und Erfahrungen.Im Laufe der Jahre hat Dead Heat mehrere EPs, ein Split mit den New Yorker Heavyweights Mindforce und zwei Alben veröffentlicht, darunter ihre neueste EP "Endless Torment", die 2023 über Triple B Records und Tank Crimes mit kritischer Anerkennung erschien. Sie haben auch ausgiebig getourt und Konzerte in den Vereinigten Staaten, Europa und Japan gespielt.Neben ihrer Musik ist Dead Heat auch für ihren DIY-Ansatz zur Punk/Metal-Kultur und ihre Beteiligung an der breiteren Hardcore-Szene bekannt. Die Bandmitglieder waren an der Organisation von Shows und Events beteiligt und unterstützen verschiedene soziale und politische Anliegen.Sales Points/Treiber (Karriere-Highlights/Fakten/Marketing-Info):• Shows und Tourneen mit Drain, Exodus, Cavalera Conspiracy, Mastodon, Harm's Way, Terror• Produziert von Paul Fig (Deftones, Alice in Chains)• Verfügbar auf Digital/Streaming, CD und LP• Authentischer Crossover-Sound mit Thrash-, Punk- und Hardcore-Einflüssen• DIY-Ethik und starke Verwurzelung in der Hardcore-Szene• Starke Live-Reputation mit Shows in USA, Europa und Japan• Kritisch gefeierte vorherige Veröffentlichungen

DEVO’s Hardcore documents the group’s beginning as pre-punk outcasts in the fertile Akron, Ohio, underground rock scene. Spawned at the nearby college of Kent State, site of the infamous May 4 Massacre, DEVO formed as a conceptual art project armed with the radical philosophy of de-evolution. Brothers Mothersbaugh (Mark, Bob and Jim) and Brothers Casale (Jerry and Bob) along with drummer Alan Myers soon whipped up an otherworldly brand of “devolved blues” that could hold its own alongside the beatnik groove of 15-60-75 (a.k.a. The Numbers Band) or the primal rock poetry of The Bizarros. Recorded on various four-track machines and in tiny studios, basements and garages between 1974-1977, Hardcore reveals their strikingly clear vision: rock ’n’ roll stripped bare of its collective cool and jerked back into propaganda fit for post-modern man. It’s no surprise that these transmissions would soon catch the eye and ear of Brian Eno, who later produced their landmark 1978 debut album. Noisy synth, strangled guitar chops and a primitive rhythmic thud power the early DEVO sound. Threaded beneath it all are lyrical themes of post-McCarthy paranoia, middle-class ephemera and DEVO’s long-running topic of choice: sex, or lack thereof. Few moments in pop music history can match the grinding, pent-up energy of “Mongoloid” and the spastic bounce and sputter of “Jocko Homo” (two anthems presented in their earlier and superior versions here). Cult favorites like “Mechanical Man” and “Auto-Modown” make Volume 1 essential listening. Superior Viaduct and Booji Boy Records are proud to present DEVO’s Hardcore to a new generation of spuds, lovingly packaged with Moshe Brakha’s stunning cover photography. As David Bowie said in 1977, DEVO is indeed “the band of the future.”

Jessica93, prodigal bastard of our glorious french squat scene, relocated on Born Bad : this is no picnic. Geoffroy Laporte, alone against all odds, alternates bass and guitar to build harsh loops with a drum machine spitting pre-Gulf War patterns. That’s where it gets tricky : every musical posse claims him. Grunge, sure, but Jessica doesn’t indulge in necrophilia. His circuit is punk, he doesn’t dress the part though. Cold wave, the atmosphere fits somehow, but the gear does not. The self-confident rock horde saw him playing with hair in his eyes… but he never joined the Party. Metal had something to say but sadly, nobody listened. Maybe it's time to give it a rest and let Jessica93 cook his great misery broth on her own, called « 666 tours de périph’ » (666 laps on the beltway). Witnessing Jessica93 live makes you dread that he'll get up the next morning, drive 200 miles and one nap later kick it again, when it takes us a good week to recover from the bad half of that same evening. Like so many other unknown soldiers during our very own world war of music, he patrols small venues relentlessly.



At the heart of this cultural pentacle painted by french weirdos Bryan's Magic Tears, and Carine Krinator, Jessica93 has built a sound validated by years of chosen vagrancy, birthing bands with joyously stupid monikers, in the humid jungle of small labels. Jessica93's debut album had a track celebrating Omar Little, HBO’s gay bandit from Baltimore. This story begins on the beltway, where Florence Rey, accidental copkiller turned to political icon of the 90’s. Geoffroy offers his brilliant analysis : " C’est la police qui nous tire d’ssus / C’est mon trou d’balle qui leur chie d’ssus « (Police shoots us down / my dripping asshole gets the job done).



A previous album was haunted by bedbugs, this one is essentially about love, a delicious scourge just as hard to eradicate. Two black diamonds peek out of the LP : ’’La colline du crack’’, heartbreak song about the ultimate temptation of violent delights, located on crackhead central in Paris. The brilliant chorus, ‘Take my hand and come with me to Crack Hill’ will put an end to the rumours, almost everything was really false. And Bébé Requin, alternative obituary that’ll make you shiver, where our nice couple states ‘’on kiffe la drogue dure et les ptits chiens’ (‘we love hard drugs and little dogs’). And that is the reason we face the wall of sound jostled by unnecessary shoulder thrusts: those nice fat chunks of charcoal poetry, hidden under light sarcasm.



The rest of the record demonstrates the know-how acquired in loop-by-loop construction of ruins that are pleasant to squat in together. There’s your classic doom delicatessen, with bits of heavy metal inside, crafted with the manic care typical of hard wankers. Arthur Satàn, who produced and mixed the album at home in Bordeaux, helped him get his head out of the reverb safe house. And Jessica93 took the opportunity to switch to the dark side of the language : french at last. Worth the wait ! Sing along : « nique sa mère / nique sa grosse mère » (translate that yourself).

The latest boy band in town, POP VAMPIRES COLOGNE, opens the party with the enigmatic ‘Karianne’. SUPERPITCHER knows how to make a grand appearance, accompanied by high-calibre guests. His electro-pop treat ‘Pandora’s Box’ features Hot Chip’s ALEXIS TAYLOR​ on vocals.​ JÜRGEN PAAPE isn’t coming alone either, but with newcomer HELLA in tow. ‘Grace (A Tale)‘ once again shows our resident hit maker at his best. JÖRG BURGER also has a table companion, the extremely talented Irene Kalisvaart, and remixes himself on top of that. REINHARD VOIGT points out that money never sleeps and proceeds according to the motto: ’​Zahl an einem anderen Tag (Pay another day​)’. Our Brazilian whirlwind GUI BORATTO returns after a long absence with the banger ‘Panorama X-Press’. After careful consideration, ROBAG WRUHME has named his new track ‘Total’ and sings in the chorus with his family for the first time. WASSERMANN contributes an ultra-fat remix of Mayer’s ‘Brainwave Technology’, while MICHAEL MAYER himself marvels at the rare ‘Erdbeermond’. HARDT ANTOINE’s ‘Let Me Go’ really gets the party going again before WASSERMANN orders a large taxi and skips out on the bill.

See you again next year!

TOTAL 25… Schon wieder ein Jubiläum in einem an Jubiläen ohnehin nicht armen Jahr. Zum 25. mal versammelt sich die Kompakt Familie zum alljährlichen Stelldichein. Ohren angelegt, los geht’s!
Die neueste Boygroup in town, POP VAMPIRES COLOGNE eröffnet die Party mit dem enigmatischen ‘Karianne’. SUPERPITCHER weiss, wie man einen großen Auftritt hinlegt, und zwar in hochkarätiger Begleitung. Sein Elektropop-Leckerbissen ’Pandora’s Box’ featured Hot Chip’s ALEXIS TAYLOR an den Vocals. Auch JÜRGEN PAAPE kommt nicht allein, sondern mit der Neukommerin HELLA im Schlepptau. ‘Grace (A Tale)’ zeigt unseren Haus- und Hitlieferanten mal wieder in Bestform. JÖRG BURGER hat ebenfalls eine Tischdame im Gepäck, die überaus talentierte Irene Kalisvaart, und remixed sich obendrein selbst. REINHARD VOIGT gibt zu Bedenken, dass Geld niemals schläft und verfährt nach dem Motto: ‘Zahl an einem anderen Tag’. Unser brasilianischer Wirbelwind GUI BORATTO meldet sich nach längerer Abstinenz mit dem Banger ‘Panorama X-Press’ zurück. ROBAG WRUHME hat seinen neuen Track nach reiflicher Überlegung ‘Total’ genannt und singt darauf erstmals selbst im Chor mit seiner Familie. Der WASSERMANN steuert einen ultrafetten Remix von Mayers ‘Brainwave Technology’ bei, während MICHAEL MAYER selbst den seltenen ‘Erdbeermond’ bestaunt. HARDT ANTOINE’s ‘Let Me Go’ bringt die Party nochmal so richtig in Schwung, bevor der WASSERMANN ein Großraumtaxi bestellt und die Zeche prellt.

Wir sehen uns wieder im nächsten Jahr!

Hard Times welcomes back Alex Arnout and his BLACK LOGIC project, following their recent ‘Pull Up’ EP with a second installment of new music from collective - The Illusions EP.

Hailing from West Yorkshire, Arnout spent his formative years on the Hard Times dancefloors, absorbing the beats and vibes that would later shape his own productions. His journey with the label reignited when he was invited to remix Michael Watford’s classic 'Love Change Over' and Steve Silk Hurley’s fresh hit 'All I Need'. Now, he returns with something truly special.

“Black Logic was born out of the pandemic,” says Arnout. “I wanted to move away from drum machines and synths, getting back to sampling jazz and the deep house sounds of the ‘90s - taking inspiration from artists like Bugs in the Attic, Jazzanova, and Ernest Saint Laurent.”

What began as a solo project soon evolved into a collective effort. Bassist and guitarist Alan Riggs, a former member of Delta 5, joined the sessions, bringing warmth and groove to the productions. Vocalists Tempo O’Neil, Anthony Beckford, Mariana Orsho, and Sophie Barker added their distinct voices, completing the vision

Across four tracks, The Illusions EP pulls us deeper into Black Logic’s rich, live-wired universe. The title track pairs Tempo O’Neil’s vocal with a grooving, low-slung bassline, whilst “Dusty” drifts in on brushed snares and ghostly Rhodes, its saxophone lines curling through the mix like smoke. “Chasing Daze,” analog synth shimmer and Tempo’s velvet tones, is a track suspended between head-nod groove and astral lift.

The curtain falls with “Disco Down,” a jubilant ensemble of Hammond organ, flute, guitar, bongos, and horns locking into joyous conversation.

Erstmals international auf Vinyl – zum 50. Jubiläum neu aufgelegt

Stones Throw Records präsentiert die erste internationale Wiederveröffentlichung von Haruomi Hosonos Kultalbum Tropical Dandy – fast genau 50 Jahre nach der japanischen Originalveröffentlichung von 1975.

Erhältlich als Standard Black Vinyl und limitierte Ocean Blue Edition, jeweils auf 180g-Vinyl mit OBI-Strip und einer neu übersetzten Version der originalen Liner Notes von 1975.

Tropical Dandy markierte Hosonos musikalischen Wendepunkt – ein wagemutiges, genreübergreifendes Werk zwischen Exotica, Jazz und Pop, das als stilprägende Grundlage für das spätere Japanese City Pop gilt.

Haruomi Hosono ist Gründungsmitglied der Folk-Rock-Band Happy End sowie der legendären elektronischen Formation Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) und gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Künstler Japans. Sein Werk überschreitet seit fünf Jahrzehnten spielerisch Genregrenzen und Kulturräume.

Diese Veröffentlichung ist die zweite Zusammenarbeit zwischen Stones Throw und Hosono, nach dem Compilation-Album Hosono House Revisited, das u. a. Beiträge von Mac DeMarco, Sam Gendel und John Carroll Kirby enthielt.

Erstmals international auf Vinyl – zum 50. Jubiläum neu aufgelegt

Stones Throw Records präsentiert die erste internationale Wiederveröffentlichung von Haruomi Hosonos Kultalbum Tropical Dandy – fast genau 50 Jahre nach der japanischen Originalveröffentlichung von 1975.

Erhältlich als Standard Black Vinyl und limitierte Ocean Blue Edition, jeweils auf 180g-Vinyl mit OBI-Strip und einer neu übersetzten Version der originalen Liner Notes von 1975.

Tropical Dandy markierte Hosonos musikalischen Wendepunkt – ein wagemutiges, genreübergreifendes Werk zwischen Exotica, Jazz und Pop, das als stilprägende Grundlage für das spätere Japanese City Pop gilt.

Haruomi Hosono ist Gründungsmitglied der Folk-Rock-Band Happy End sowie der legendären elektronischen Formation Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) und gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Künstler Japans. Sein Werk überschreitet seit fünf Jahrzehnten spielerisch Genregrenzen und Kulturräume.

Diese Veröffentlichung ist die zweite Zusammenarbeit zwischen Stones Throw und Hosono, nach dem Compilation-Album Hosono House Revisited, das u. a. Beiträge von Mac DeMarco, Sam Gendel und John Carroll Kirby enthielt.

Zelienople frontman Matt Christensen returns to Miasmah with Constant Green - a record of reverberant country inspired songs that puts the weight somewhere between Johnny Cash and Slowdive. Matt pours out his soul through flashes of life - small and large. His voice roaming over the guitars in a way which feels like a floating poetic deluge.

Appearing fresh from last years Zelienople album Hold You Up, Matt has made a very personal record that arrives as perfectly as it could be. It is full of beautiful sparse moments that capture the feeling of time standing still while simultaneously flashing in front of your eyes. As a child of the 70ies, growing up with country influenced AM rock on the radio, riding around in cars without seatbelts, Matt creates this nostalgic feeling of free riding through the city streets at dusk : a dream world where one can see green as a symbol for humanity and optimism. Not to say the album doesn't have it's share of darkness. Christensen always lingers deep in melancholy, driving his fears and anxieties out through music.

Visions of being able to move anywhere, picking his mother up from jail, family matters, change, the small things in life - all outtakes from what he sings about. Although it's hard to pick up on unless you really listen, as his ramblings can at one moment be fully clear while in the next drowned or muffled - becoming a mere meditative element to the music. Steady collaborators Brian Harding and Eric Eleazer from Zelienople accompanies on pedal steel and keys to further fill the sound into a warm dream, following in the footsteps of Matt ́s previous Miasmah album Honeymoons (2016). That said, while Honeymoons used drum machines and vast open spaces, Constant Green is another step closer towards the classic singer-songwriter folklore. Timeless gold from an artist that never stops creating.

Returning with its final instalments, Die Schachtel's Decay Music series extends its explorations of inspired contemporary experimental efforts of the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract with Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello’s “Liminale” and Sergio Armaroli and David Toop’s “And I Entered Into Sleep”, two astounding electroacoustic gestures of blurred space and time, plumbing complexity of meaning bound to sonority. Creatively groundbreaking and inspired, radically rethinking the terms of what ambient music can be perceived to be, they stand among the most striking efforts to appear within the series to date.

An aural bridge between two distinct generations of Italian experimental musicians, “Liminale” is the debut collaborative outing from the creative partnership of Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello. Active within the context for roughly two decades, Turra (b. 1975) is a reductionist/electroacoustic composer, noted from his tense deployment of concrete and acoustic sources — particularly small sounds and noises — whose work threads the balance between silence, tactile auditory perception, and aleatoric music. Martusciello (b. 1959), on the other hand, is a musician and composer working across the fields of acousmatic and electroacoustic composition, sound installation, multi-media and audiovisual art, and computer music improvisation, who is widely celebrated for both his solo efforts and his collaborations with Eugene Chadbourne, Mike Cooper, Alvin Curran, Chris Cutler, Rhodri Davies, Iancu Dumitrescu, Michel Godard, Tim Hodgkinson, Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris, Jérôme Noetinger, Tony Oxley, Evan Parker, Z'EV, and others.

A single, nearly 40 minute work, extending across the two sides of the LP, “Liminale” — as its title eludes — is an exploration of the liminal through sonic means: “places that exist on the threshold, transitional spaces suspended between a before and an after, between the real and the evanescent” conceiving the soundscape as “a liminal place, a space to be inhabited without the certainty of where it leads.” Unfurling like a labyrinth navigated in darkness, the piece’s first half is marked by sparseness and restraint, as slow-paced guitar tones and harmonics thread silences and resonant ambience within a sprawling sense of space, delicately populated by tiny sounds, fleeting punctuations drawn from undeterminable sources, vocal utterances, and the unexpected appearance of intoxicating piano tones.

As “Liminale” progresses into its second half, Turra and Martusciello enter a more densely populated notion of the in between. No less defined by the presence of space and mystery, discreet textures rustle and writhe within passages of pure concrete abstraction and a fragmented, stretched sense of musicality: long-tones, metallic pulses, minimal vibrations, processed vocalizations, guitar harmonics, and deconstructed piano melodies, buried in spectral, gauzy hazes drifting from beyond arm’s reach within an imagistic and immersive landscape of profoundly meditative scope, where each sonic element flirts the line between emergence and disappearance.

Intimate, fragile, and achingly beautiful, “Liminale”, Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello’s debut collaboration, is a masterstroke in sound-craft and composition, revealing the potency of meaning locked within transitional spaces and the undefined, and imbuing silence with monumental gravity and weight. Mastered for vinyl by Giuseppe Ielasi, and taking electroacoustic minimalism to an etherial extreme, “Liminale” is issued as the ninth entry in Die Schachtel’s Decay Music series, highlighting inspired contemporary experimental efforts of the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract.

Fetter’s Body of Noise erupts at the threshold between ravey hypnosis and avant-pop experiment, slithering through the hinterlands of unconscious desire. Nine shape-shifting tracks conjure haunted landscapes where beauty refuses clarity and dancefloor logic warps underfoot. Vocals swoon, drift, and demand—stacking into fragments that multiply and weave through saturated pulses and shimmering, snarling synths.

Opening track "Like a Rose" traces a dreamer’s transition into the unstable physics of a perplexing but familiar dream world, where they gradually become lucid. “Beast” follows up humming with shadowed urgency, threading a path through self-sabotage and metamorphosis. “Spathiphyllums” drifts a while in a lush lostness, aching for something new before fracturing into wild, cathartic collapse. Side B’s “Do I Exist? (D.I.E)” and “The Longing” spiral into existential wonder, searching for a human origin story—both personal and collective—against a backdrop of uncertainty, while “Headache” thrusts forward as an absurd and insistent manifesto to stay the course and harness one’s own power within the madness.

Body of Noise is crafted not only for sweating bodies in motion, but for distorting time and opening psychic portals, where surrender becomes strategy and uncertainty transforms into ecstatic navigation. Rooted in all-hardware improvised production and shaped by Fetter’s years of boundary-blurring visual and performance art, their debut LP feels alive and in flux. Reminiscent of a spectral pop chorus trapped in a loop of broken machinery, or a lost broadcast from a dancefloor in a parallel realm, Body of Noise is a journey into chaos, transformation, and a bold refusal to be contained.

About Fetter:
Fetter makes clubby self-destructing noise pop to dance and weep to. Oscillating between ethereal and pounding, their all-hardware, largely improvised live sets take listeners through a foggy wilderness of saturated rhythms and menacing synth lines, a golden voice guiding the way through. Fetter is the stage moniker of multimedia artist Jess Tucker. Their performances take place in clubs as well as galleries, often incorporating video, installation, and interactive performance art elements to create other-worldly surrounds of mesmerizingly unhinged bodies and faces.

Litania is a doom/hindustan psych band from Italy and Serbia. The sound is based on drones, heavy riffing and inspired by ancient hindustan singing and playing (with instruments such as Sitar, Dilruba and Harmonium). Litania is also the title of our first album, eight tracks of evocative, hypnotic doom, where the raw power of guitars merges with the spiritual depth of Indian classical music. The songs, intense and dark, are interspersed with instrumental passages featuring sitar, dilruba, harmonium, and tanpura. The vocals, deep and ritualistic, draw inspiration from ancient Indian Ragas, evoking a sonic journey suspended between abyss and transcendence.

Red vinyl. Litania is a doom/hindustan psych band from Italy and Serbia. The sound is based on drones, heavy riffing and inspired by ancient hindustan singing and playing (with instruments such as Sitar, Dilruba and Harmonium). Litania is also the title of our first album, eight tracks of evocative, hypnotic doom, where the raw power of guitars merges with the spiritual depth of Indian classical music. The songs, intense and dark, are interspersed with instrumental passages featuring sitar, dilruba, harmonium, and tanpura. The vocals, deep and ritualistic, draw inspiration from ancient Indian Ragas, evoking a sonic journey suspended between abyss and transcendence.

10 year anniversary edition of Kreng's massive »Works for Abattoir Férme 2007 - 2011”« 4 LPs worth of slow, skin crawling cinematic ambience made for the Belgian theatre group Abattoir Fermé.

It could hardly be a better time to again dive deep into Kreng and Abattoir Fermé's disturbingly beautiful underground worlds. Through 8 full- length vinyl sides we are transported through the most terrifying, shadow- filled, down-right bizarre moments of the subconscious. What could be the sound of your darkest dreams or most surreal fantasies gradually unfolds throughout the three and a half hour duration. Exactly this is what Abattoir Fermé specialises in, and Pepijn Caudron's scores perfectly reflect and accompanies both this theatricality as well as our own fears and desires in a masterful way.

Each extended side is crafted from an arsenal of samples, disintegrating vinyl and corroded tape, and Pepijn Caudron manipulates these sounds in a way that belies the sources. Rather than allow the sounds to emerge, they stay trapped beneath swathes of noise, tape delay and oppressive bass giving us a compositions that emerge like a cross between William Basinski, Jerry Goldsmith (circa Alien) and Henryk Górecki.’ »Works for Abattoir Fermé« is not for the faint of heart, but for the rest of us it might be just what the Doctor ordered...

“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” This quote from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe sums up the lamenting, primal work that is "All That We See or Seem"; a project conceived between Finland, England and Brazil. The self-titled album consists of two long-form pieces of droning mysticism hailing from the trio of Gruth (concept, production, electronics), Ellen Southern (vocals, field recordings, percussion) and Johanna Puuperä (violin, modular synthesizer, additional vocals).

The album opens straight into a thousand yard stare with “Myrskymielellä", adapted from a 1891 poem by the Finnish national poet, Eino Leino, who wrote it at the tender age of 13. Here a blank distant droning of synths and the sounds of flowing water hover underneath like a dark river observed from the air. This is a sound and feeling that will stay constant for the entirety of the piece´s thirty minute duration. It is a trance-inducing composition that slowly unfolds elements of pagan ancestry into its own life. At first, faint female vocals are introduced as distant spatial elements, which gradually advance into waves of cries and anguish as the piece progresses and moves further into the storm. The tranquility of the first half is slowly morphed into a full blown ceremony as driving ritualistic percussion and a foreboding witch-like presence shifts the piece into a Dead Can Dance-like territory. Here a constant enveloping mixture of violins, modular synths, field recordings and vocal screams creates the feeling of a grande finale. It is an astounding piece of music that develops like a drone symphony for the beginning of time.

With the second piece, “A Dream Within A Dream”, from Edgar Allan Poe´s 1849 poem, you are transported to the shores of an undisclosed island; a place where it´s only you, your thoughts and the endless emptiness. The continual sound of waves is soon brought together with a cloud of synths and mourning violins that will keep a steady dreamlike state during most of the piece´s duration. This time the wordless vocals feel almost angelic in their pageantry. The composition flows like a slow caress of the soul and feels like the spirit twin of Gavin Bryars' “The Sinking of the Titanic” with its lamenting slow movements towards the unknown.

Truly a ghost of a record, “All That We See or Seem” is an experience hard to shake and feels like entering sacred ground. We are in a place surrounded by earth, both ancient and present. "Let loose, Vanha, the rage of an earthly storm! Detach the elements, completely open the sky! In the Earth, let an incessant storm prevail, so that in my chest I would not feel the miserable pain” - Eino Leino

Erik K Skodvin's feature-length score to Thomas Roth's thriller "Schächten" feels like the epitome of all his musical projects, conjuring a dark cinematic trip through 1960's post-WWII Vienna in a film that touches on topics such as law, justice & revenge.

Releasing a soundtrack as a stand-alone album can be challenging; and "Schächten" is by no means a typical listening experience. The record contains 24 more or less short pieces evolving through dramatic movements, underlaying menace and deep emotive scenes. One thing that stands out is the linear atmosphere throughout the story which creates a wholeness that keeps your attention to the very end. Set in wintery Austrian landscapes in dimly saturated colours, the film's dramatic events with dark political undertones feels like a perfect situation for Skodvin's atmospheric collages - perhaps sounding closer than ever to his early works as Svarte Greiner or Deaf Center. Cello, violin, piano, analogue synth and plenty of hardly recognizable instrumentation come together in a record that feels very organic in its subdued tones. The score also features percussion by Andrea Belfi as well as a Chopin piano interpretation by Kelly Wyse to the bizarrely schizophrenic piece "Judenfreund".

With the contemporary world sliding into darkness again, listening to the soundtrack feels like coming to terms with ones own anxieties - something that in the end comes through as a cleansing experience. As quoted in the film "Everyone is their own devil. And we make this world our hell".

Short synopsis : "Vienna 1960s - The young Jewish business man Victor has to witness how the prosecution of a Nazi crime against his family fails. The political and legal system is still virtually run by former Nazis with large parts of society being entangled in the past. When Victor also loses his grief ridden father and his girlfriend’s family opposes their relationship and his identity, Victor begins to loose faith in formal justice and takes matters in his own hands."

The Pitch is a quartet made up of Boris Baltschun, Koen Nutters, Michael Thieke and Morten Joh. Founded in Berlin in 2009, they play a hypnotic form of structured improvisation full of acoustic exploration and electronic intervention. On Neutral Star, The Pitch are joined by Australian guitarist/composer extraordinaire Julia Reidy for a record of star gazing electro-acoustic jazz.

Reidy's playing and compositional technique between Takoma-style fingerpicking and Glenn Branca'esque microtonality, perfectly complements the loose improvisational framework The Pitch is providing. Endless ≠ Limitless, a recent piece by Reidy and Joh, is transformed from a washed-out/obscured tape delay composition into a colorful, meandering ensemble piece with a swarming character - blooming with intrigue for the patient ear. The B-side strikes a more gentle tone: the 24-minute Neutral Star begins with a siren-like overtone whose drone-like flowing slowly morphs into a deterritorial modality with jazzy undertone. Accompanied by constant eruptions of vibraphone, clarinet, electronics and double bass punctuation – while permanently questioned by Reidy's drippingly pearly steel guitar work. Slowly evolving into new territories through the expansive instrumentation and keen listening between the players.

The fact that Neutral Star was recorded in one take (by Rabih Beaini in his Morphine Raum studio/venue) in front of a live audience and without overdubs is hard to believe, even for the trained ear. The recording appears to be too multilayered for a single snapshot, with its compositional structures constantly shifting and moving against themselves, counterintuitively and anti-cyclically. Reidy´s playing has been described as "unstable harmonic territory, and the collaboration with The Pitch interprets this concept brilliantly - adding further non-places to the territory. And the listener, however, is never left alone in the process of tectonic shifts - at least as long as their listening is attentive and contemplative at once.

Returning to Die Schachtel with his fourth full-length with the label, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, delivers “Lacinia”, a new, immersive cycle of compositions, delving deeper into the realm of metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, weaving astounding arrangements of sonority from a palette of synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion. Resting at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music - overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, - “Lacinia” stands as a high-water mark in Pilia’s already remarkable and forward-looking career.

Since its founding in Milan during the early years of the new millennium, Die Schachtel has occupied a singular place in the landscape of experimental music, issuing a carefully curated body of reissues and archival releases by historically significant figures and projects like Christina Kubisch, Luciano Cilio, Marino Zuccheri, Prima Materia, Claudio Rocchi, Lino Capra Vaccina, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Roland Kayn, and numerous others, balanced against bristling contemporary counterparts by the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Giovanni Di Domenico, Nicola Ratti, Luigi ArchettI, Valerio Tricoli, etc. Running like a spine through the label’s output is a deep dedication to the work of the Italian guitarist and electroacoustic composer Stefano Pilia. Now Die Schachtel returns with “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth full-length with the label and their first release of 2024. Building on the ground of deeply personal engagement with metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, explored within his previous LP with Die Schachtel, 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, “Lacinia” encounters the composer working in close calibration with various ensembles, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze and Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, weaving synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion into an astounding reconfiguration of immersive, contemporary minimalism that stands among Pilia’s most noteworthy releases to date. Issued by Die Schachtel in two special double vinyl editions and a CD edition, “Lacinia” features artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano, and is an absolute marvel that draws you in and doesn’t let go.

First emerging during the early 2000s, over the past two decades – via solo releases and numerous collations with artists like Oren Ambarchi, Valerio Tricoli, Alessandra Novaga, Z'EV, Andrea Belfi, David Grubbs, and numerous others - the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia has presented a singular voice within Italian experimental music, harnessing visceral energy and hands-on immediacy within delicately woven tapestries of sonority, each investigating the sculptural properties of sound and illuminating its relationship to space, memory, and the suspension of time. “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth solo venture with Die Schachtel, encounters the composer reentering his longstanding practice of collaboration with various ensemble forms, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze, for the albums central piece, “Lacinia Off Axis”, spinning stunning string confirmations by Pietro David Carami and Elena Maury on violin, Alessandro Savio on viola, and Mattia Cipolli on cello.

A new, important cycle of compositions by Pilia, “Lacinia” (meaning "lace" in Latin) builds upon the exploration of the metaphysical, spiritual, and divine dimensions through numbers, geometry, and the creation of tonal forms explored by 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, mirroring archetypal, immutable forms at the juncture of the abstract realm of mathematics and architectural structures in the physical world, expands the poetics and compositional ideas featured in its predecessor. Regraded by Pilia as both a series of individual compositions and a single work, “Lacinia” was conceived to “define a circular path (a sort of "rhizomatic lace") where the beginning and end touch, suggesting the concept of time not only as linear but also cyclical and ritualistic—an eternal return, a process of transformation where matter changes, its state changes, but without altering the invisible internal principle of mutation”, embarking upon a a series of “steps, degrees, and energetic quanta in a progression of archetypal whole numbers and transcendent creation.”

The resulting 16 tracks unfold as a series of complex sonic meditations. While deeply resonant with the minimalism of composers like Arvo Pärt, LaMonte Young, Pauline Oliveros, and Eliane Radigue, Pilia digs deep and moves far beyond the predictable tonal relationships and structures of that idiom, echoing the ancient liturgical and devotional music of composers like Gesualdo da Venosa, Monteverdi, and John Dowland, at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music.

Fascinatingly structured as a whole to include a number of motif returns, across which we encounter works like “Lacinia Off Axis” appearing in slightly different rendering, states, or evolutions three times, and compositions like “Eve” appearing twice in subtly different forms and arrangements - first for four oscillators, guitar and voice and then for string orchestra - as well “Maris Stella”, which similarly makes two appearances, first for horn trio, organ and percussion, and then for string orchestra, with “Lacinia” Pilia delves further into the world of chamber music than ever before, creating a deeply inward, mediative body of work the totality of which, guided by its rich string arrangements of arching, sorrowful tone, feels almost like a mass for some unproclaimed loss; simultaneously locked in the nuances of a moment, while managing to suspend time.

Perhaps most remarkable is Pilia's ability to create a remarkable sense of sonic cohesion while using such a varied number of ensembles and instrumentation. From the sprawling string arrangements delivered by Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, under the direction of Paolo Mancini, and Ensemble Concordanze, and a flute trio (Cadux / Plectere) brilliantly played by Manuel Zurria, to pieces for sax, organ and percussion, violin duo and percussion, organ and percussion, Pilia manages to create a sense of singular, encompassing world that flows forward like a shifting stream.

Overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, “Lacinia” is unquestionably a high-water mark in Stefano Pilia’s already remarkable, forward-looking career. Nothing short of a marvel of contemporary Minimalism that, through its shifting arrangements of harmonics, tonality, and texture draws flickering images of ancient forms of music into the present day, “Lacinia” is Issued by Die Schachtel in two special editions on double vinyl and a CD edition, featuring artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano. This is an immersive all-consuming listen that can’t be missed.

On May 30, 2025, Pet Shop Boys will reissue their 18-track greatest hits singles collection ‘Discography : The Singles Collection’ on limited blue vinyl, featuring updated 2023 remasters. ‘Discography’ was first released in 1991. The album charted No 3 in the UK album chart and includes ‘West End Girls’, ‘Always on My Mind’, ‘It’s a Sin’, ‘Domino Dancing’ and ‘Suburbia’.



Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music history in the 1999 edition of The Guinness Book of Records. Pet Shop Boys have won three Brit Awards and have been nominated for 6 GRAMMY Awards. At the 2009 Brit Awards in London, they received an award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2016, Billboard named Pet Shop Boys the number one dance duo or group since the chart's inception in 1976. In 2017, the duo received NME's Godlike Genius Award, and in 2024, they were awarded the Pop Pioneers award at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

On their new album The Besnard Lakes are the Ghost Nation, Montreal’s The Besnard Lakes return with their post-rock psych; but this time around, with a lightness and optimism at play.

Unique among their furrowed brow peers, The Besnard Lakes are unafraid to marry textured, questing headphone sonics to the honeyed pleasure of radio hits past: the rapture of My Bloody Valentine entwined with the romance of Fleetwood Mac. Imagine dreamy Beach House riding Led Zeppelin dynamics, with unabashedly androgynous vocal harmonies; a melodic yet mountainous sound world.

In a crowded leaderboard of their own making, The Besnard Lakes are the Ghost Nation might just be their best album yet; a strive for hope when it is needed most.

Cloudy Gold Vinyl. This 10 Year Anniversary Edition features new, gatefold packaging with updated photos, lyrics and liner notes. Disc one incldues the originial album in full and the brand new second disc features rare b-side "Nail In Your Hand," a re-done version of "Heaviside" with artist Wisp performing vocals on the song, and seven never-before heard demo versions of songs from Citizen's second album. Ten years ago, Citizen released Everybody Is Going to Heaven _ a record that marked a bold turning point in their career. Following the breakout success of Youth, the band could have stayed the course. Instead, they doubled down on darker textures, heavier moods, and a fearless sense of experimentation. Released in 2015, Everybody Is Going to Heaven expanded Citizen's sound beyond their emo and post-hardcore roots, weaving in elements of grunge, and alternative rock. Tracks like "Cement" and "Stain" captured a raw, unsettled energy that explored mortality, depression, and identity with an honesty that still resonates today. It wasn't a record built for easy listens _ it was built to last. Now, a decade later, Everybody Is Going to Heaven stands as a defining moment in Citizen's evolution _ a record that challenged both the band and their audience, and helped shape the fearless, genre-blurring artists they've become. As they celebrate its 10th anniversary, Citizen remains a band deeply committed to growth, refusing to be tied to a single sound or era. Everybody Is Going to Heaven didn't just mark where they were; it lit the way for everything that came next.