quête:less art

"Kontakt Audio and Infinite Fog Productions proudly present the 25-th anniversary reissue of the one of most unique albums on avantgarde/neoclassic music – Ihor Tsymbrovsky – Come, Angel.

Recorded in 1995 in Ukraine and released in 1996 just as a small run on cassette on Polish label Koka Records, the album without any promotion little by little became legendary and madly wanted by many fans all around the world. And from the first seconds, you can hear why it is so. Pretty hard to explain what songs play Ihor, moreover that would be senseless. “Come, Angel” is one of those albums which are so unique that takes you in a vacuum of verbal forms in an attempt to describe the record. In a few words, this is definitely very intimate and deeply emotional music with an absolutely incredible voice. The first associations could forward you to Antony Hegarty from Antony And The Johnsons, Marc Almond, Arthur Russell, Baby Dee, Bjork. Experienced listener familiar with these great artist knows that all of them are inimitable and Ihor Tsymbrovsky is totally inimitable as well.

In 2016 well-known German label Offen Music published 3 tracks from the album “Come, Angel” which brought a lot of attention to Ihor’s music. This time we’re excited to announce the first full album reissue on CD, Double vinyl, and tapes. Beside the full version of the album, you’ll find an exclusive bonus song from the cult compilation “Music The World Does Not See” – Nefryt Records 2000.

~

“For me, music is a certain way of cultural survival. Here I do not set myself theoretical problems or experiments.
The connotations of life are important: rhythms, melodies, their connection with language, poetry, real life, virtual or imaginary space. It is very important to me how the recitation of work sounds, how consonant and vowel sounds dissolve in singing, how they combine musically. I understand sound space as a field of my interpretations, preferences, priorities, and I do not use direct imitation. If I hear a melody or a musical phrase, and it is fixed in my memory, later I extract it in my own interpretation, as already formed by this field. In art, the goal is in the work itself, not outside it. For me, the expression “To be is to create a new reality” is another winged reality.” – Ihor Tsymbrovsky

~~

“Tsymbrovsky – an architect, musician, a poet, an artist; one of the most underestimated musicians in Ukraine’s artistic world. Many critics pulled their hair out trying to get to the bottom of Tsymbrovsky’s music. It has been inspired by jazz, minimal, modern, ethnic, and meditation music. Tsymbrovsky is not a virtuoso, however, he creates whole worlds with his astonishing falsetto. Although Cymbrovsky’s music is simple it is made of many elements. Filled with magic and unusual sensitivity and warmth it can be therapeutic for the listener. This is that kind of music, which can be listened to many times – in a different way each time.” – Koka Records.

~~~

“Igor Tsymbrovsky’s only album “Come Angel” (1995) still remains perhaps the most bizarre phenomenon in Ukrainian music since independence. The story of its author is a vivid example of cultural amnesia. In the pre-Internet era, Tsymbrovsky was a prominent figure in the Ukrainian underground, performed on the “Red Route”, went on tour in Germany. However, he left a minimum of evidence of his activity and became a silent legend for a few. We talked to Igor to find out where he came from and where he was going.

The album “Come Angel” is eight compositions performed with a falsetto to the accompaniment of a piano. (Tsymbrovsky’s falsetto is a legacy of the Lviv Dudaryk choir, where he sang as a child.) It would seem that it could be easier. But, despite such ascetic tools, Tsymbrovsky managed to create a phenomenon unique to Ukrainian culture. Some people compare him to Benjamin Clementine and Anthony Hegarty, but no comparison will be exhaustive. The lyrics of the songs attract special attention: two of them were written by Tsymbrovsky himself, the others demonstrate his remarkable literary knowledge. Here and Guillaume Apollinaire, and Mikhaijl Semenko, and even less obvious poets, such as Mykola Vorobyov or Jozsef Attila.

The young performer’s first performance took place in 1987 in the club of the Forestry Institute. It is quite symbolic that this room used to be a Jesuit church because such a chamber environment suits his songs about angels much better than the noise of big festivals. However, there were also many festivals in Tsymbrovsky’s career: in 1989, Chorna Rada and Chervona Ruta, in 1991, Kharkiv’s Nova Scena and Ukrainian Nights in Gdansk, Alternativa in Lviv. Ihor calls his first performances musical performances and notes that they sounded completely different. Unfortunately, we will never know exactly how.” – Amnesia

~~~~

“The magicians at Dusseldorf’s Offen Music pluck a madly beguiling pearl of late-night songcraft by Ukraine’s Ihor Tsymbrovsky to follow their vital releases by Toresch and Rex Ilusivii. Come Angel was first recorded in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1995, and issued on cassette by Poland’s Koka Records in 1996. There appears to be no prior mention of the release or artist on the internet and quite how it came into of Offen Music possession is not disclosed, and that only ratchets the record’s enigma to astonishing degrees once you’ve heard the music. In a quivering, high register, androgynous trill, Ihor Tsymbrovsky beckons heavenly beings in the remarkable A-side Come, Angel against a swirling backdrop of phasing, subtly delayed organ. It was recorded in one take (this is the 2nd version), and, if we’re not mistaken, you can hear the keys being pressed rhythmically in the background, which seems to be the song’s only tangible connection to this mortal world as Ihor vaults octaves high and close-in-the-mix with the sort of alien, dreamlike vocal that requires pinching oneself to make sure you’re awake. Spellbinding is definitely the word. On the other side he (we’re assured it is a ‘he’ in the promo text) sets two poems by Mykola Vorobyov and Mykhal Semenko, respectively, to emphatic piano keys, this time more shy of FX save for some delay, placing that willowing, avian vocal at a dreamy arms reach in Roses for the Poet, and with a sort of liturgical dark jazz feel, sorta like Lewis repenting his sins as a castrato monk, in the spare atmosphere in By the Sea. This is gold-seal business, we tell ya. Clock the clips and clear some swooning room.” – Boomkat

credits:
Music By – Ihor Tsymbrovsky
Lyrics By: Ihor Tsymbrovsky (tracks: C2, D1)
Atilla Joszef (tracks: B1)
Mychajl Semenko (tracks: B2, C1,C3, D2)
Mykoła Worobjow (tracks: A1,A2)
Engineer – Edward Hryhorjew
Remastering – Ihor Tsymbrovsky"

"Matasuna Records" returns to Mexico for a third time to dig for rare treasures. They got their hands on a special gem - two obscure Latin/Jazzfunk tunes by a band called "Colorado" from "Mexico City". The songs were released in 1976 on the Mexican label Peerless and the super rare original 7inch is virtually unavailable. Fortunately, the release is finally available for the first time as an official reissue in a remastered edition. An unjustly under-the-radar Latin jazzfunk highlight!

The song "Colorado", named after the band, opens the "A-side" of the single. The hypnotic fender rhodes puts the listener in the right mood right from the start, before the drums and percussion set the rhythm. The horns also add depth and melodiousness before the song takes a turn and reveals its funky side with guitars, synths and bass. A nice guitar solo also reveals the affinity for rock music without losing sight of the vibe of the song or tipping it a different direction. Definitely a fabulous song that comes up with a lot of ideas and inspirations, offering an unexpected richness in the under 3-minute running time.

The "B-side" also continues musically energetic in the same way with "Para Ti". Here, too, you can feel and hear the playfulness and experimentation of these extraordinary musicians. Atmospherically dense passages alternate with quieter phases and solo parts, before the tension rises again and literally explodes. As in the song "Colorado", rhodes, brass, guitars & bass offer a great and varied interplay. The secret highlight, however, might be the drum and percussion parts in the middle of the track, which will surely enchant not only the B-Boys and B-Girls.

Artist info:

The internet, a source of almost endless knowledge, offers no information about the band Colorado. All the more fortunate that one of the band's founding members, "Emilio Espinosa Becerra", provides detailed info for the reissue.

In 1968 the three brothers "Luis", "Francisco" and "Emilio Espinosa Becerra" from Mexico City started to rehearse together to play wellknown rock & pop songs at friends or family parties. At first, they played on Japanese guitars and a Teisco bass borrowed from a school friend. They saved up money to then buy guitar & bass amps and a microphone, which they always had to rent until then. However, the budget was only enough for Mexican replicas of the legendary Fender Bassman and the Fender Super Reverb. Original equipment was simply unaffordable.

Shortly thereafter, more members joined the band. Three musicians from the school band "Tepeyac": "Marco Nieto Bermudez" (trumpet), "Raymundo Mier Garza" (tenor saxophone) and "Alfonso Romero" (trombone). Another classmate named "Carlos Mauricio Fernández Ordóñez", who studied piano, also joined the group. His father had a chemical factory in the United States and helped bring equipment (amplifiers and a Farfisa Fast 5 organ) - hidden in the back of a truck - to Mexico. In the time that followed, more instruments were acquired, including bass and guitars (from Gibson, Rickenbacher and Fender) and microphones (from Shure) for vocals and horns.

With a larger band and new equipment, they played many parties in their district of "Lindavista" in "Mexico City" and neighboring areas from 1970 to 1973, as well as gigs at various festivals and school events. The group's band name at the time was "Sound Core Brass". However, more and more often people with turntables and speakers showed up at parties, which were also able to heat up. The so-called "Sonideros", a sound system culture that was emerging in the 1960s, charged less than a multi-piece live band, so the band's performances declined.

During those years, three other "Espinosa Becerra" family members joined the band: "Jorge Rafael" (trombone), "Sergio Alejandro" (tenor saxophone) and "Felipe de Jesus" (drums and percussion).

A brother of the musicians, "Carlos Espinosa Becerra", studied electrical engineering at the University. Together with another fellow student, he designed and built a 10-channel console with a variety of functions and features that far surpassed the devices available at the time. They also went to the US again to buy JBL speakers & tweeters to build their own sound system. On another trip to Los Angeles, they bought Phase Linear amplifiers, which offered enormous power by the standards of the time and had an extremely low distortion factor. With this equipment they could turn up the volume really loud and noise-free.

This was also the time when they stopped playing music from English bands & youth groups and changed their repertoire completely. They played mambos, chachachas, pasodobles and tangos on special occasions in big ballrooms and halls. Also, every now and then they hired a string quartet of well-known Mexican violinists to provide the musical entertainment at dinner events.

During those years, classmate "Pablo Rached Diaz" joined the band, playing tenor saxophone. Pablo was very active and organized many parties. He was also the one who helped the band to record on the Mexican label "Peerless". So in 1975 they were asked by Peerles Records to record their own songs. They had recorded a total of 12 songs - six of these songs were released on three vinyl singles (45rpm). Most of the songs were composed by "Gustavo Ruiz de Chavez Sr.". The band was asked to adopt a more commercial name, and so they had chosen the band name "Colorado". In the course of the releases, the band made some promotional tours and appeared in shows on "Televisa", the most important television station in Mexico in those years.

Later, several members of "Colorado" graduated and began to pursue regular professions. They didn't stop playing at events, but priority was given to more formal duties and the band was no longer as active as it had been in its heyday.

About 8 years ago, the band got back together to play again. The next generation of musicians also joined the band: two sons, a nephew and a brother-in-law of the original band members. Currently, they are back playing at friends' parties and family gatherings in Mexico City.

repress

"The haunting ambience of Beat fit somewhat with the then-popular Massive Attack and Portishead, but the album's subsonic drone made it more of a minimal mood piece than a collection of songs." MAGNET

The second in a trio of albums released by the core duo of Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener, Beat is without doubt their definitive artistic statement.

Coming 20 years to the day of its original release, this is the first time this album has been available on vinyl in almost two decades, and the first ever U.S. vinyl release. (Was released here on Beggars Banquet, original copies very hard to find..)

The second album from New York City's Bowery Electric was released in late 1996, less than 15 months after their self-titled debut, but it found them having traveled light years musically in the interim, the group having seemingly decided to see how far they could take the guitar/ bass/ drums/ vocal setup into the atmosphere.

Every aspect of their approach had been refined and focused: squalling, distorted guitars had been transformed into hazy, sensual sheets; the live drums transmuted to sampled rhythms more in debt to the blossoming downtempo sound of the day; bass lines reduced to their most basic diagrams; vocals submerged to become one with the narcotized fog of the instruments; even the lyrics were reduced to a few minimal lines used sparingly so as not to overshadow the dynamic.

Beat is a lush and dense mantra of shadowy percussion, barely-there vocals and immersive drones that envelops the listener in an opiated blanket of sound.

quotes:

"Bowery Electric have made something utterly astonishing here. So deep, so wide, and somehow as intimate as a train crash. The first six tracks are just the most crushingly beautiful thing I've heard in 1997; the last five are even better. Good god, THIS IS IT." Melody Maker

"While cymbals shower down over the songs like a torrent of shattered glass, their austere beauty is never static. Ambience has rarely sounded so messy." Exclaim

A near-perfect mix of shifting dance beats, menacing electronic drones, analogue bleeps,
syncopated rhythms and ethereal vocals." Now UK

Parallel Minds returns after a two-year hiatus with a dub-infested celestial dance debut from a promising Toronto-based producer, record-slinger, and long-time DIY scene mainstay, Ficilio

Ficilio, a.k.a. Will Gillespie and the Parallel Minds crew have enjoyed a long musical friendship. Having met at various underground raves in Toronto, it wasn't long before they found themselves on the same lineups and began trading tunes post-show. When label co-founder Ciel first heard the tunes that would eventually end up on Parallel Minds 003, she was mesmerised by the deep, misty grooves present throughout. 'Dangerous Goods' is the creation of an artist with a super dialed-in sound, whose attention to detail, cohesion, and sound design suggest experience wise-beyond-their-years.

‘Rush-V’ begins the release with a shimmery bang, propelled by infectious chord stabs that sound like they're sprinkled with alien fairy dust and grounded by a driving and subby drum groove. 'Fluid Form' continues in this trajectory, all spacey synths and dubbed out stabs propped up by tough and bouncy drums and a deep low sub. There is an unmistakable 90s influence on these tracks, halfway between old Swayzak and the early 90s output of Dutch label ESP Records. Ficilio is not afraid to flirt with dub techno AND trance influences, which is most discernible on the last track on the A-side, the sublime 'UAM'.

In comparison to the other side, the B-side is a more sub-loaded affair. The drums on this side are less driving and more broken, chopped, and staggered. They work spectacularly on the title track, its vocal chops complement the low-slung groove of the drums to a hypnotic head-nodding effect. 'Second Fold' intrigues immediately with its unusual tempo, fluttering along in a leisurely way until these enchanted synth stabs come in and the track blooms like a beautiful flower. The release comes to a Zen-like close on 'Frame (Amber Mix)', the heavy sub and sparse arpeggiated loops draw us deep within its cavernous interiors.

This is the third set in our Soul Slabs sets, which compiles tracks from our diverse 45 releases showcasing artists big and small. It's a great way for folks to discover some of our lesser known artists or just discover our label's sound. Record shops have previously described our compilations as their RSD soundtrack! Our previous compilations have always sold out the day of (nearly) and maintained demand even upon the black vinyl represses.

After the 2021 Re-Release of “Schwingungen” (MG.ART612) and together with “Seven Up” (MG.ART613) we proudly announce “JOIN INN” as Part3 of the authorised 50th Anniversary “A.R.T.” Re-Edition Series.
“JOIN INN” is the fourth album by Ash Ra Tempel. It was recorded at Studio Dierks and originally released on LP by Ohr Musik-Produktion, catalogue number OMM 556032. Each side of the LP comprises one long track.
In 1972 ASH RA TEMPEL teamed up again with Klaus Schulze during the recording of Walter Wegmüller's Tarot album, and after one of the recording sessions, ASH RA TEMPEL members: Enke, Göttsching and Rosi, together with Klaus decided to "play it again" in a late night session. This recording led to the birth of the “JOIN INN” album, as well as two legendary last concerts in February 1973 in Paris and Cologne.
Manuel Göttsching recalls Hartmut Enke on bass and Klaus Schulze on drums being a dream-team rhythm section for him to play his guitar, especially here to hear on “Freak'n' Roll”, that was ingenious and not to replace ever since.
It was the last recording ever where Klaus Schulze (who sadly passed away this Year) played the Drums and also Hartmut (the Hawk) Enke soon after quit the Bass and music forever.
Join Inn marks the end of the collaboration with Klaus Schulze.
However, together with Ash Ra Tempel, their eponymous first album, which will be released in 2023 as the final edition of our Series, it is considered a highlight of the Krautrock movement.
As for the music itself we again refer to Julian Cope´s review from his book “Krautrocksampler” (published by Head Heritage, 1st ed. 1995):
""Freak’n’roll” fades in like it never started - just was always there from the beginning of time, a dry wah-guitar freerock riff-out unlike any of the other Ash Ra Tempel LPs, and not much like any other music. Yes, there are bluesy riff but none of them have a blues context. Manuel Gottsching’s guitar is so confident that he sometimes drops down to a simple major chord groove, whilst the Hawk pushes that round woody bass into strange overlapping rumbling melody. And ... it’s the return of Klaus Schulze on drums which propels “Freak’n’roll” to its height. No-one but Klaus has the ability to
transcend rock’n’roll in such an on-the-beat non-groove-y way and still send sparks of light into the cosmos as he does it.
-> continued on page 2“Freak’n’roll” is so egoless that it even works at a quiet volume as meditational music. Themes rise from the high tempo pulse beat, then are carried along the muscles of the song into the main area where the riff actually becomes real and expressionist for just long enough before slipping back into the musical fabric of the song.
As usual with Ash Ra Tempel, the other side is an enormous drift piece called “Jenseits (The Next World)”, a beautiful Klaus Schultze meditation of haunting synthesizer chords over which Rosi Muller tells the story of the Cosmic Couriers’ meeting with Timothy Leary. Gradually, the pulsing guitar becomes increasingly intense and turbulent, but Rosi never sounds less than freaked out. Essentially, “Jenseits” is a precursor to Klaus Schulze’s later spacey minor-key grooves.
Unfortunately, this was the last Ash Ra Tempel album in its particular ‘series.
(…) After “JOIN INN”, Manuel Gottsching took over the Ash Ra Tempel mantle alone.”

After the 2021 Re-Release of “Schwingungen” (MG.ART612) we proudly announce “Seven Up” as Part 2 of the authorised 50th Anniversary “A.R.T.” Re-Edition Series.
“Seven Up” is the third studio album by Ash Ra Tempel and their only album recorded in collaboration with American Ph.D. in psychology, Dr. Timothy Leary. The Coverart for “Seven Up” was designed by famous Swiss Artist Walter Wegmüller. Recorded in August 1972 at Sinus Studio in Berne, Switzerland, remixed September 1972 at Dierks Studios in Stommeln, Germany. First release in spring 1973 by OHR Musik - the first release on the new sub-label "Kosmische Kuriere", Kat-Nr. KK 58001.
We release “Seven Up” in a Re-Cut carefully overseen by Manuel Göttsching himself, on September 9th 2022, also being Manuel Göttsching´s 70th Birthday. Our Edition features the full original text for the “7 levels of consciousness” by Timothy Leary in English, i.e. “Instruction Manual for Pleasure Panel” plus a previously unreleased glimpse view of the original scripts incl. notes and mark ups as well as partly unreleased photos from the recording session. ->continued on page 2->continued on page 2 As for the music itself we again refer to Julian Cope´s review and remarks from his book "Krautrocksampler” (published by Head Heritage, 1st ed. 1995):
“When the Leary Mob met the Kaiser Gang, the sparks flew ever Up-wards... 7up is a stone classic in every way. Yes, it is unlikely to find Timothy Leary singing lead vocal in a cosmic group, but even weirder that he chose to sing a wild yelping freaked out blues !
Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke had begun their careers in The Steeple Chase Blues Band back in the mid-'60ies, and they quickly felt their way through what Barritt and Leary were aiming for. They reconciled it all as a kind of West Coast chordless psychedelia, where blues riffs sparkle out of nowhere and the sheer weight of synthesizers renders everything with an unreal Pere Ubu/early Roxy Music quality.
The greatness of Ash Ra Tempel burned so brightly on 7Up that there is really nothing else like it. Hartmut Enke and Manuel Gottsching here returned to their riffy roots. It can hardly be called a retro act, though, as the context of music is everything. And with Dierks at the controls, even the New Kids on the Block would have sounded psychedelic.
7Up is like a late night radio show glimpsed through a shattered tuner where all but the most truly dangerous sounds have been allowed to stay, to drift and to dance around the performers.
The result is an extreme gem, a flash of hysterical white lightning, and a pre-punk Technicolour yawn in the grandest of traditions.
In typical Ash Ra Tempel style, the record is divided into two pieces, “Space” and "Time”. Within this, though,
Timothy Leary’s ideas are allowed to free-flow and the two sides are therefore divided into mini-songs all segued together. The highlight of Side 1 is “Power Drive”, a West Coast burn-up that transcends any W.
Coast music I ever did hear. Leary and Barritt present the greatest twin-vocal of all time, coming on like Jagger and Morrison but too caught up in their own maelstrom to be anything less than Heralds of the Punkfuture still five years away.
In chaos it was conceived and in chaos it was recorded. Yet Dieter Dierks, the great Aural Architect of the Cosmic Couriers, turned 7Up into a personal triumph and a Kosmische dream.”

Ash Ra Tempel – “Seven Up”
TIMOTHY LEARY - voice
BRIAN BARRITT - voice
MICKY DUWE - voice & flute
LIZ ELLIOTT - voice
BETTINA HOHLS - voice
PORTIA NKOMO - voice
HARTMUT "HAWK" ENKE - bass, guitar & electronics
MANUEL GÖTTSCHING - guitar & electronics
STEVE A. - organ & electronics
DIETMAR BURMEISTER - drums
TOMMY ENGEL - drums
DIETER DIERKS - synthesizer & Radio Downtown

Hailing from a city known for club anthems, Tha God Fahim has taken the road less traveled, channeling hip-hop’s grimy roots with complex, street-level lyricism and dusty, sample-heavy production. In the midst of his meteoric rise, the Atlanta artist released "Wide Berth", a rugged masterpiece executive produced by mysterious rap phenom Mach-Hommy. Featuring production by Camoflauge Monk along with Fahim himself, this 2018 classic is now available on vinyl for the first time ever, complete with new artwork.

Boston-based progressive death metal outfit Revocation return from the Lovecraftian outer limits on new album, Netherheaven. Four years in the making, the Billboard-charting trio—featuring Dave Davidson (vocals/guitars), Ash Pearson (drums), and Brett Bamberger (bass)--meticulously explore the allegorical and literal aspects of Hell as they dig deeper into the darker, more diabolical side of death metal. In short, where the previous album, The Outer Ones (2018), jettison Revocation into the horrific maw of the cosmos, Netherheaven bores deftly through the nine rings of Hell to directly confront Lucifer and his multitudinous faces. The album's stunning Renaissance-style Paolo Girardi (Firespawn, Power Trip) cover art says it all. Revocation will release Netherheaven on September 9th. Indeed, as the adventurous triumvirate enter their 16th year, they show zero signs of slowing down or softening up. If death metal was looking for an Album of the Year, it's got a top contender in Netherheaven.

Boston-based progressive death metal outfit Revocation return from the Lovecraftian outer limits on new album, Netherheaven. Four years in the making, the Billboard-charting trio—featuring Dave Davidson (vocals/guitars), Ash Pearson (drums), and Brett Bamberger (bass)--meticulously explore the allegorical and literal aspects of Hell as they dig deeper into the darker, more diabolical side of death metal. In short, where the previous album, The Outer Ones (2018), jettison Revocation into the horrific maw of the cosmos, Netherheaven bores deftly through the nine rings of Hell to directly confront Lucifer and his multitudinous faces. The album's stunning Renaissance-style Paolo Girardi (Firespawn, Power Trip) cover art says it all. Revocation will release Netherheaven on September 9th. Indeed, as the adventurous triumvirate enter their 16th year, they show zero signs of slowing down or softening up. If death metal was looking for an Album of the Year, it's got a top contender in Netherheaven.

Eric Dolphy's final studio album is hailed as one of the finest examples of mid-'60s post bop. Its reputation is purely one of backwards significance. Dolphy, having recorded the album in February 1964, was in Europe less than six weeks later and his all-too-brief life ended less than two months after that. Though likely he never held a copy in his hands or heard any critical opinion of it, it marked his last flurry of original compositions and is considered his apex. It is fascinating to consider whether he would had moved past or away from the album in 1965, had he lived.

Though Dolphy should not be considered an avant-garde musician by the term's most common definitions, most interpretations of Out To Lunch have been done by players working squarely in that area. So it is with this album, the most ambitious in its recreation of the five-tune disc (with one original added to the final "Straight Up and Down, extending the piece to almost thirty minutes). All five compositions from the original quintet LP are revisited in the same order, the record sleeve even duplicates the old album jacket, down to the typeface and black-and-blue color scheme, although a photo taken by Daidō Moriyama inside Tokyo's massive (and massively busy) Shinjuku railway station replaces the Dolphy's album's enigmatic "Will Be Back" sign, whose clock hands indicated no conventional time of expected return.

Otomo Yoshihide first came to international prominence in the 1990s as the leader of the experimental rock group Ground Zero, and has since worked in a variety of contexts, ranging from free improvisation to noise, jazz, avant-garde and contemporary classical. The always surprising and sometimes confounding turntablist, sound artist, onkyo improviser and now avant jazzer heading up a 15-piece aggregation of Japanese and European experimentalists. Who better to grapple with Dolphy's legacy -- so idiosyncratic in its day and yet so influential to creative improvisers who followed -- than a musician with his own singular take on how sounds can be organized in the jazz realm over 40 years later and half a world away? In other words don't expect the conventional from Otomo any more than you would from Dolphy himself. That's not to say that recognizable themes ("Hat and Beard," "Out to Lunch," "Straight Up and Down") don't appear, or that individual players -- including Alfred Harth on bass clarinet bursting into the mix and leaping across the instrument's tonal range in a way that recalls the master himself -- don't carry forward echoes from the past in the spirit of a sincere and heartfelt homage.

However, a good deal of the time all bets are off; in addition to the usual brass, reeds, bass, and drums (and of course a bit of vibraphone, here played by Takara Kumiko in far less prominent role than that of Bobby Hutcherson) are such sonic paraphernalia as sine waves, contact mike, no-input mixing board, and, of course, "computer." (Otomo himself plays skronky electric guitar.) From composition to composition and even during episodes within compositions, the band takes radically different approaches. There are blasts of free jazz energy not too far removed from the Peter Brötzmann Tentet, an impression reinforced by the presence of spluttering wildman Mats Gustafsson on baritone sax. Not surprisingly and often in contrast with the Dolphy original, the music is dense and filled to overflowing with sounds -- sometimes due to fundamental reworkings in structure rather than just the larger size of the ensemble. The middle section of "Something Sweet, Something Tender" somewhat belies the original's title with elongated howls and cries from the horns over slo-mo bass, drums, and electronic noise poised somewhere between dirge and drone, and the sudden explosion of punk-ish rock energy in the following "Gazzelloni" is a startling contrast.

At times, the feeling is that of listening to the original Out To Lunch while a séance is going on to contact Dolphy's ghost, with supernatural sounds swirling around the stereo. The effect is disconcerting, as is the post-apocalyptic cloud hanging over the arrangements, but it makes the effort more than an unnecessary tribute album. Instead, Dolphy is transported into the 21st Century and allowed to romp through modern developments in music. An inspiring concept and an album that will stretch the boundaries of anyone who comes into contact with it.

After Dinner’s Paradise of Replica is a concise nugget of tomfoolery that occupies a whimsical no man’s land between art pop, Japanese folk music and full-assed Art Zoydian avant proggery. Gentle, arcane and covertly sweeping, it typifies that friendly strain of experimentalism that Eastern music seems so predisposed towards and which curious minds find such great delight in.

Assembled by the enigmatic chanteuse and composer known simply as Haco, After Dinner was less a band and more of a loose art collective that utilized a plurality of different musical disciplines stapled together through free improvisation sessions. And some of this does come through on Paradise of Replica—the record is a scrapbook of bells, strings and koto humming under Haco’s ethereal vocals, and the effect, while perfectly tuneful, does come off more as a musical project than a conventional album.

But Paradise of Replica is far from an impenetrable scholastic endeavor—in fact, there’s something of an Elephant 6-like quality in its ability to warp conventions while still coming off more or less like pop music. Counter to the ramshackle hostility of much improvised music, After Dinner’s choices are melodious and feel deliberately sequenced. Even crescendos don’t tend to rise above a murmur, and there are even apparent hooks on tracks like “A Walnut” and “Ironclad Mermaid.”

Ultimately, there’s not much to be said about Paradise of Replica that can elucidate more than actually hearing it will be able to. Proggy, playful and lush, it’s a brief glimpse into something in the vicinity of genius, and just outside the realm of commercial music. It’s a quietly bold project that shows a softer side of the avant-garde, and makes a perfect companion to Stereolab and Magma at once.

Deluxe 180gram vinyl edition comes in a foil-embossed and die-cut cardstock jacket with printed inner sleeve and additional 12x12 art cards featuring the collages of Maciek Szczerbowski. All the art interacts with the die-cut jacket framing. Edition of 300. Rooted in a distinct and immediately identifiable sound_with the cello of Rebecca Foon (Saltland, Set Fire To Flames, Thee Silver Mt Zion) and the marimba of ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor percussionist Bruce Cawdron at its core_Esmerine has long embroidered emotive chamber works using threads of post-classical, post-rock, Minimalism, neo-Baroque, jazz, pop and a wide array of folk traditions. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson, who joined the group in 2012, has furthered Esmerine's melodic and ethnomusicological sensibility ever since, expanding the ensemble's palette as its third core member with guitars, ngoni, ekonting, hulusi, brass horns of all sorts, and more. Since 2003, six stately and filmic instrumental albums have inscribed compositional landscapes through epigrammatic miniatures, longform multi-movement chronicles, and all manner of evocative musical prosody between. Marked by an inimitably turbid yet tempered pastoralism, alternately lit by dappled dawn and disquieted dusk, Esmerine's musical narratives balance asceticism and romanticism, melancholy and hope, stillness and wanderlust. Esmerine now shares Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, its seventh full-length album and first in five years. The band surprise-dropped the full album digitally on 06 May 2022, with the CD and Deluxe 180gram LP editions hitting stores on official release date 26 August 2022. Following an acclaimed run of mid-career records on Constellation through the 2010s_the last three of which have all been finalists or winners of Juno Awards for Instrumental Album of the Year and/or Album Packaging of the Year_Esmerine began working on new music at decade's end. Under the auspices of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and a summer 2019 residency at Le Château de Monthelon (an artist commune in France where the band has cherished long-standing spiritual, creative, and personal connections), compositional seeds were planted_and then pandemic rooted everyone in place. In between lockdown waves, at the respective rural Québec homesteads of Cawdron and Foon, longtime co-producer Jace Lasek (The Bernard Lakes) began capturing the band in various stripped-down configurations with spartan remote equipment. More fulsome arrangement and overdub sessions at Foon's converted barn during the summer of 2021 brought the album to full fruition_where a notable increase in the use of acoustic piano also poured forth, with just about every band member having a go. The record also signals the definitive integration of bassist Philippe Charbonneau_having joined Esmerine as a touring member pre-pandemic, he plays throughout the album on upright and electric bass, with turns on piano and synth, as well as sound design contributions via tape echo and other processing. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More grapples with the existential tensions between atmosphere and airlessness, seclusion and claustrophobia, forbearance and coalescence. In many ways it is one of Esmerine's most restrained records. Only a few passages are driven by full percussion. There is palpably less Sturm and Drang or overt crescendos compared to its recent predecessors. The new album roils with a different sort of dynamic intensity, where instrumental densities ebb and flow within an overtonal centre, melding into each other with gauzy timbral warmth, sometimes tracing fleeting tendrils outwards, but always rotating around a saturnine gravitational force. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is like a dark forest lit by a closely-orbiting opalescent planet; it could be the alternate score to Von Trier's Melancholia or Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Note price increase and cat number change from last time around. In 1968, Don Cherry had already established himself as one of the leading voices of the avant-garde. Having pioneered free jazz as a member of Ornette Coleman's classic quartet, and with a high profile collaboration with John Coltrane under his belt, the globetrotting jazz trumpeter settled in Sweden with his partner Moki and her daughter Neneh. There, he assembled a group of Swedish musicians and led a series of weekly workshops at the ABF, or Workers' Educational Association, from February to April of 1968, with lessons on extended forms of improvisation including breathing, drones, Turkish rhythms, overtones, silence, natural voices, and Indian scales. That summer, saxophonist and recording engineer Göran Freese who later recorded Don's classic Organic Music Society and Eternal Now LPs invited Don, members of his two working bands, and a Turkish drummer to his summer house in Kummelnäs, just outside of Stockholm, for a series of rehearsals and jam sessions that put the prior months' workshops into practice. Long relegated to the status of a mysterious footnote in Don's sessionography, tapes from this session, as well as one professionally mixed tape intended for release, were recently found in the vaults of the Swedish Jazz Archive, and the lost Summer House Sessions are finally available over fifty years after they were recorded. On July 20, the musicians gathered at Freese's summer house included Bernt Rosengren (tenor saxophone, flutes, clarinet), Tommy Koverhult (tenor saxophone, flutes), Leif Wennerström (drums), and Torbjörn Hultcrantz (bass) from Don's Swedish group; Jacques Thollot (drums) and Kent Carter (bass) from his newly formed international band New York Total Music Company; Bülent Ates (hand drum, drums), who was visiting from Turkey; and Don (pocket trumpet, flutes, percussion) himself. Lacking a common language, the players used music as their common means of communication. In this way, these frenetic and freewheeling sessions anticipate Don's turn to more explicitly pan-ethnic expression, preceding his epochal Eternal Rhythm dates by four months. The octet, comprising musicians from America, France, Sweden, and Turkey, was a perfect vehicle for Don's budding pursuit of "collage music," a concept inspired in part by the shortwave radio on which Don listened to sounds from around the world. Using the collage metaphor, Don eliminated solos and the introduction of tunes, transforming a wealth of melodies, sounds, and rhythms into poetic suites of different moods and changing forms. The Summer House Sessions ensemble joyously layers manifold cultural idioms, traversing the airy peaks and serene valleys of Cherry's earthly vision. In the Swedish Jazz Archive quite a few other recordings from the same day were to be found. Some of the highlights are heard as bonus material on the CD edition of this album. The octet is augmented by producer and saxophone player Gunnar Lindqvist, who led the Swedish free jazz orchestra G.L. Unit on the album Orangutang, and drummer Sune Spångberg, who recorded with Albert Ayler in 1962. The bonus CD also includes a track without Cherry featuring Jacques Thollot joined by five Swedes including Lindqvist, Tommy Koverhult, Sune Spångberg, and others. With liner notes by Magnus Nygren and album art featuring a cover painting by Moki Cherry: Untitled, ca. 1967-68. Track list: 1. Summer House Sessions 2. Summer House Sessions.

Blue Marbled Vinyl

The final chapter in the RATS: INFEST series adds a left-field twist. Mike Parker is one of the most important historical Techno artists for us and has recently released two halftime EPs for Donato Dozzy & Neels Spazio Disponibile label which have been some of our favourite releases by another label in the last few years. Once we heard these EPs, we were on the hunt for some Mike Parker music on Samurai.

Mike Parker creates music live on an all-hardware setup and has done so since the mid-'90s. There is not really anyone that sounds like Mike and we're excited to have him on board at Samurai.

Mike has recalibrated his machines and created an all-new halftime sound specifically for this remix of 'Mainliner' and his upcoming EP for Samurai. Slightly more quirky and less dense than his usual approach, the machine pulses wind around a steadfast step. An unexpected, but perfect mood shift to re-imagine the Mainliner sinisterism.

Baby T makes a welcome return to the label following on from her debut EP Portra. This time the versatility of the Baby T sound is on display with a 140 Breakbeat killer re-sculpture of 'The Spell'. Dealing out euphoric vibe peaks with 4/4 punctuations and Reese/break combinations, this one is a guaranteed peaktime dancefloor weapon. We love Baby T!

One of the last great albums of the first wave of Peruvian rock, originally released in 1974, linking psych-tinged rock with Afro-Latin American beats and folk pop. This first record by (former Traffic Sound and Los Nuevos Shain's member) Zulu was also his last and one of the most enigmatic albums released in Peru in the '70s, as the artist vanished into the religious path, making sure his music got as unnoticed as possible... Reissued for the first time with the collaboration of Zulu, including extensive liner notes and one extra track. DESCRIPTION: The first record by Zulu was also his last. Shortly after releasing it in 1974, the artist withdrew from the music scene and never returned. 46 years later, his music still sounds out of time. His musical eclecticism heralded a different era and linked rock with Afro-Latin American beats and pop. His debut and only LP is one of the last great albums of the first wave of Peruvian rock. No other original records of this type were released in Peru until the early 80s. In the 70s, in Peru, most rock groups sang in English. For his LP, Zulu chose to sing in his own language and focus on his own emotions and experiences. In the early days of his career he became member of Los Shain's, for less than a year. Then he was invited to join Traffic Sound playing bass guitar and keyboards and record the band's third album "Lux". An offer to start a solo career would follow and 'Como una escalera ', 'Alegría' and 'Cariño grande' 45s were released. The expectations that his first solo singles generated were met by the release of the LP Zulu in 1974, boasting an eclectic and innovative sound. Andean folk, Afro-Latin beats, psych-tinged prog rock scents, moog glides, choir arrangements spread across the entire album creating a truly unique piece of music. A few demos were also recorded for the next album but this never saw the light. In December 1974, a few months after the LP was released, the artist decided to disappear. At this point of his life, he started to become aware of the need to define spirituality. After exploring and comparing countless religious, philosophical, psychological texts and trying transcendental meditation and yoga, he concluded that the Bible was the most profound and clearest text. While this was going on, his public figure grew thanks to the success of his album. At the end of 1974, Zulu surprised the manager of IEMPSA, Augusto Sarria, by communicating his decision to leave show business. The artist vanished into the religious path, making sure his music got as unnoticed as possible... This is the first ever reissue of Zulú's 1974 album. It has been supervised by the artist himself and includes extensive notes and the extra track 'Haces mal, pobre chico', B side to his first single that never made it into the album.

Limited edition 300 copies. Sababa 5’s debut single features the talented Japanese singer and belly dancer Yurika. The two songs - Crossroad of Love (Ai no Kousaten) and Blue Universe (Aoi Sekai) – blend Yurika's dreamy vocals and texts with the band's 70's sensibility and Israeli soul music. As the band plays a mediterranean groove of both Israeli and Arabic origins, Yurika's Japanese lyrics float effortlessly on top. Sababa 5 and Yurika met in the summer of 2017, when Yurika was in Israel for an internship at the Orly Portal Dance Company. Yurika, performing at the time as a belly dancer with Boom Pam and Ouzo Bazooka, wrote lyrics in Japanese for two melodies composed by Sababa 5 guitarist Ilan Smilan. Both songs on the single are love songs, love that is both personal and universal. The combination of lyrics in Japanese, Yurika's gossamer vocals influenced by the Kayokyoku style and the Israeli sound of Sababa 5 creates a unique and interesting sound. Yurika (vocals), Ilan Smilan (guitar), Amir Sadot (bass) In the recording Lior Romano (keyboards) and Assan (drums).

ABOUT SABABA 5 Sababa 5 was formed in 2016 by Amir Sadot and Ilan Smilan, both members of TIGRIS band and the Hoodna Orchestra. The four members of Sababa 5 are already well known for their work with some of Tel Aviv's top artists/vocalists such as Gili Yalo, Liraz Cherchi, Sari and Reno, Ester Rada and Kutiman - to name but a few. With influences that range from Wrecking Crew and The Funk Brothers recordings from the 60's, to analog Middle Eastern music from the 70's, the sound of the band constantly evolves around different genres and rhythms. Yet, in its core, Sababa 5 remains very much a groove-centric band. The main source of inspiration for the band are "lehakot ketzev" (beat groups) from Israel that played innovative combinations of psychedelic rock mixed with Mediterranean Arab music during the 60’s and 70's. The fusion of East and West, along with the new spirit brought by the band members, creates a unique mix of styles that comes together into a new and original work. The band is currently working on a new instrumental album alongside the production of new songs for local singers. ABOUT YURIKA Born in the Chiba district on the eastern outskirts of Tokyo, Yurika began her journey towards belly dancing at the tender age of five, taking up lessons in jazz dance. After high-school, she applied for belly dancing lessons almost by chance - yet as she quickly fell in love with the music and the nature of the movements, Yurika knew this is what she was meant to do. Before long, Yurika began traveling around the Middle East, learning belly dancing in different cities and countries like Egypt, Morocco and Turkey. Whilst in Turkey, she met the famous Istanbul-New York based female darbuka player Raquy Danziger - who later invited her to perform in Israel. Once in Israel, Yurika began studying with Orly Portal, a master of contemporary folklore dance. After finishing her studies with Orly, Yurika remained in Tel Aviv and joined bands like Boom Pam and Ouzo Bazooka as a dancer. In her work with Sababa 5, Yurika is featured as a vocalist for the first time.

SUBVERTED's second double vinyl release "The Collective Impact" features ten non-binary, trans and female identifying artists, presenting their craft in the field of industrial techno. From ambient to raw and impactful beats, ethereal atmospheres and fast hard hitting sounds, listeners are invited to a hopeful journey and a fight for a more just society.

Limited to: 300 copies.

Lera Lynn blurs the boundaries between genres, carving out a sound inspired by art-pop, indie-folk and the outer edges of American roots music. She’s a singer. She’s a songwriter. She’s a road warrior. She’s a multi-instrumentalist and producer. She’s a mother.

Texas born, Nashville resident Lera Lynn is just as comfortable creating an album entirely by herself, as she is collaborating with her heroes. In 2018, she worked with T Bone Burnett and Rosanne Cash on tracks that were not only picked up by the TV show True Detective, but Lynn was cast as a recurring character who performs in a dive bar frequented by the main characters.

However, nothing could have prepared Lynn for the lessons learned during motherhood. She welcomed her first son during the early months of the pandemic and began writing down her insights, chronicling this newfound experience of shifting priorities, strange endings, and new beginnings. Inside, she was battling postpartum depression. Outside, a bigger picture began taking shape: a feeling of interconnectedness, of cyclic renewal, of the knowledge that every beginning is an end and every end is a beginning. Those realizations coalesced into Something More Than Love, a record filled with synthesizers, lush soundscapes, the pop-noire punch of Lynn's voice, and the most dynamic melodies of her career.

Inspired by the cyclical patterns that shape our place in the world, Something More Than Love was co-produced and largely performed by Lynn and her partner, Todd Lombardo (Kacey Musgraves/Donovan Woods/Kathleen Edwards). They'd met years earlier, not long after Lynn relocated to Nashville from her college town (and musical launchpad) of Athens, Georgia. "My first time ever co-writing a song was in Nashville with Todd," she says of the ACM-nominated multi-instrumentalist. The two became fast friends and, eventually, partners; their creative chemistry giving way to romance and a growing family. That partnership reached a new milestone in 2021, with the newfound parents sharpening their creative instincts and expanding their palette for Lynn's sixth album.

"A lot of people were making records during the pandemic," Lynn notes, "and all they had was time. But it was the opposite experience for us. We created this whole record while still in the fog of early parenthood, and we didn't have the luxury of waiting for lightning to strike. We had to be focused and intentional."

Striking a balance between intimate self-reflection and universal insight, Something More Than Love poses big questions over even bigger-sounding music, with tempos and layered arrangements that find Lynn at her most dynamic. Illusion opens the album with spacey synthesizers before snapping into a taut, 1980s-influenced groove, combing reverb and rhythm into a song that swoons one minute and struts the next. I'm Your Kamikaze — a deconstructed burst of indie garage-rock, heavy on melody and percussive pulse — unfolds like a salute to self-sacrifice, with Lynn dedicating her own existence to ensuring her child's flourishing. What Is This Body? finds her reassessing her ideas of physical identity and womanhood, while the album's gorgeous title track makes room for slow-burn strings and a meteoric chorus.

Together, those songs turn Lera Lynn's experience with absolute surrender — surrendering oneself to the trials and triumphs of motherhood — into a universal record about the experiences that bind us together. This isn't just Lynn's story. It's the story of a life cycle that repeats itself over and over, every termination point becoming a starting line, every death matched by a rebirth, every edge giving way to the circular slope of the ouroboros.

Nothing goes quite like you plan it, and the same could be said for oso oso’s fourth full-length, sore thumb. The album is an unexpected and unintentional return-to-form; a capsule of early 2021 when oso’s Jade Lilitri (he/him; vocals/guitar/bass/drums) and his late cousin Tavish Maloney (he/him) holed themselves up at producer Billy Mannino’s (Bigger Better Sun) Two Worlds Recordings. For a solid month, the three of them practically lived at the studio, crafting this entire album together in between nerf gun fights and psychedelic trips. The idea was to spend that month writing and demoing, then take a month off to decide where and who to work with to bring it to life––but everything happens for a reason. Less than a month later, when Tavish suddenly passed away, Jade knew immediately that he was not going to be touching these songs. Almost nothing has changed since; aside from a brilliant mix by Mike Sappone, sore thumb was nearly complete the day the two cousins left the studio. Every quirk, and every conceptual song born out of a month spent stoned with your cousin recording whatever came to mind; sore thumb exists as a living memorial for Maloney. It's a celebration of life and chaos and art, a glimpse into a moment that will never happen again. One month in Long Island, preserved for eternity.

For an artist whose career is flush with enigma, myth, and disguise, Nashville Skyline still surprises more than almost any other Bob Dylan move more than four decades after its original release. Distinguished from every other Dylan album by virtue of the smooth vocal performances and simple ease, the 1969 record witnesses the icon's full-on foray into country and trailblazing of the country-rock movement that followed. Cozy, charming, and warm, the rustic set remains for many hardcore fans the Bard's most enjoyable effort. And most inimitable. The result of quitting smoking, Dylan's voice is in pristine shape, nearly unidentifiable from the nasal wheeze and folk accents displayed on prior records.

Mastered on our world-renowned mastering system and pressed at RTI, this restored 45RPM analog version zeroes in on the shocking purity and never-again-replicated croon of Dylan's vocals. Enhanced, too, are the images associated with the calmly strummed and picked acoustic guitars and decay connected to the fading notes. The dimensions and ambience of the Columbia studio translate via subtle echoes and natural blend of instruments melding with one another, akin to honey integrating with tea. Providing comparably soothing effects, relaxing vibes pour forth from this reissue, which affords this masterpiece the fidelity it's always deserved. Wider grooves mean more information reaches your ears.

"Is it rolling, Bob?," Dylan famously queries producer Bob Johnston at the beginning of "To Be Alone With You," indicating the laissez-faire feelings that surrounded the sessions and helped yield the laidback, convivial music defining the album – arguably the most unique in the artist's vast catalog. While he dipped his toes into country waters on the preceding John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline throws its collective arms around the style in bear-hug fashion and drops any obvious folk references. Everything from the songs' moods to the amicable arrangements reacts against the era's turmoil and popular sounds.

This beautiful and beautifully executed effort might stand as Dylan's most effective protest ever, even if many missed the point upon original release. Advocating peace, love, and old-world allure without calling attention to any characteristic in an overly forward manner, Dylan frames the songs as ballads, rags, lullabies, and gentle honky-tonk dances. He adheres to expeditious brevity, keeping the arrangements tight and free of any filler, thus allowing the melodies to immediately work their magic and place hummable memories inside listeners' heads.

Indeed, if any Dylan masterpiece is overlooked, it's Nashville Skyline. In addition to his superb singing and infallible songs, Dylan enjoys backing from a crackerjack assembly of Nashville session musicians including Charlie Daniels, Marshall Grant, W.S. Holland, Charlie McCoy, Ken Buttrey, and Norman Blake. Country pros, and their respective performances, don't come any better.

As much as on any of his records, Dylan resides in a good place, mentally and emotionally. The idyllic, warmhearted environs of Nashville Skyline stand apart now just as they did in the late 1960s. The sincerity conveyed on the inviting "Lay Lady Lay," relief sighed on the romantic "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," and unlimited promise expressed on the jittery "To Be Alone With You" parallel the lessons-learned yearning and genuine desire found on "One More Night," bracing "I Threw It All Away," and eternal "Girl From the North Country," performed to perfection with Johnny Cash.

French pianist, jazz vocalist and songwriter Matthieu Boré grew up surrounded by music and the arts. While his great-grandfather loved to give impromptu renditions of famous opera arias, his father's tastes were more modern and Matthieu's childhood was punctuated by the sounds of Eric Clapton, Bob Marley and the Stray Cats. At age 7, Matthieu began taking piano lessons, focussing predominantly on classical repertoire. In the 1990s he took his first steps into the music profession, singing in various punk and trip hop outfits, before pursuing his love of 1930s and 40s jazz. In early 2000, the young singer-pianist began playing the Parisian jazz club circuit and a year later, released an entire album of Fats Domino covers. In keeping with his fascination of 1950s R&B music, he issued Doo Wop in 2003. Sometimes on My Own (2007) is inspired by his idols Irvin Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael and Gershwin. 2009 saw the release of FriZZante!!, an album featuring a blend of covers and his own originals, with full orchestra. Matthieu Boré has performed at festivals and concert venues in both France and around the world, including the Montreal Festival, the Jarasum Festival (Korea), the New Morning and the Olympia. In 2011, he released a live album recorded at Paris's iconic Duc des Lombards. Roots (2012) was a surprising cocktail - a strong dose of New Orleans funk, from with Matthieu draws his own nonchalant style, combined with a predilection for acoustic sounds and syncopated grooves. In 2015, grammy-nominated Leo Sidran produced Naked Songs which explores the idea of pearing back songs to their defining elements. In Gumbo Kings (2019), Matthieu pays tribute to Allen Toussaint and The Meters through twelve original songs whilst his most recent release Till The Morning Light(2022) combines Jamaican ska and 60's garage rock influences.

Dutch pioneer Sp@sms returns to U-TRAX with 'From A 20th Century Box' LP, backed with remixes from Bloody Mary and Cosmic Force

On 'From the 20th Century Box' Arno Peeters, aka Sp@sms, returns to U-TRAX with his debut full-length album. Showcasing years of sonic exploration stemming from his time in various groups including Random XS and Voltage Control amongst others, the LP also draws from his experience studying and teaching music at the Centre for Electronic Music as well as his work in project-based sound design.

Filled to the brim with pulsating arpeggios, crunchy drums and dark, moody atmospheres, the LP is marked by a retro yet timeless feel. Inbetween its snaking, squelchy synth lines and old school electro grooves Sp@sms masterfully incorporates playful textures and elements from found recordings and unused projects, resulting in a vastly versatile and experimental album fusing all things techno, acid and EBM.

An expert lesson in sound design and composition taught by one of the Netherlands' most trusted and experienced artists, the LP also contains remixes from Dame Music's Bloody Mary and Utrecht electro stalwart Cosmic Force and arrives via heavyweight, colored double vinyl, digital, CD and cassette mediums.

As is typical for a U-TRAX release, each physical version has its own set of tracks. The vinyl and CD versions also come with a in-depth interview with Arno Peeters, as well as extensive background notes for each track (on the album's inner sleeves and a 24 page booklet, respectively).

STRICTLY LIMITED COLLECTOR'S 'ART EDITION' OF THE ALBUM OF THE SAME NAME + TONS OF BONUS SONGS.
Elegantly electronic as ever, the new songs draw a remarkable strength from their monumental arrangements and foreboding aura. Embellished by a vague sense of nostalgia and enhanced by old family photos from the private Ljung vaults, "Orchestra Of Knives" is ZEROMANCER's dark night of the soul, an odyssey trying to coming to terms with the ineffable fact that we're all going to die. Instead of wallowing in misery and self-pity, however, the Norwegians chose to use this intense realization to craft some of their most touching, most heartfelt and easily most monumental songs ever.

The harsh and the mellow, the dark and the light, the depression and the elation all flow together on "Orchestra Of Knives", an album worthy of the turmoil of our age. Once and for all, ZEROMANCER are the masters of electronic melancholy, the designers of a musical world nourished by the shadows we cast. It's been too long since we felt understood and at ease merely by listening to a song.

- Multicoloured vinyl
- Black, red and white in the form of rotating rays
- Each record individually made by hand
- Differences in pattern shapes and colours are therefore possible
- Every copy is unique
- 2 x180g 12" vinyl
- In total 9 bonus tracks off the EPs 'Damned Le Monde', 'Mourners' and 'Terminal Love'
- Sumptuous gatefold sleeve
- Printed inner sleeve and containing lyrics
- Printed vinyl labels
- Strictly limited to 300 copies only!!!

The LP ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release on 29th July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.
The album was all recorded, produced and mixed by Andy at Christchurch Studios, Bristol (home of Mezzanine era Massive Attack) with all vocals written and performed by T. Relly.
During 2021 the first two singles from the LP were released. The first was the juggernaut that is ‘Groove With It’. T. Relly growling out polemic against the relentless cacophony spun by Andy Spaceland, The brutality of the bass and horns is temporarily smoothed with Relly’s soulful, swaggering placation of ‘Turn your speakers on/ Till ya speakers blown baby/ If you’re feeling strong baby/ We can keep it going baby’.
This was followed in April by the 12” release of Combat featuring a thumping remix by Surgeon (Tresor Records) and an extended electro remix by Ree-Vo themselves.
2022 began with the limited red 7” release of remixes by NØISE and Batbirds with stunning original artwork by Shepard Fairey who came to the project via mutual friend Joe Cassidy (Butterfly Child). The release was announced on OBEY’s website
‘Spacebox’ which will be the last single to be released in time with the album is their hookiest, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control.
“Lift off, blast off, shirt off, dance off! Naked in the dancehall SPACE BOX!” is the beamed mantra, Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy.
“We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.
About Ree-Vo:
T. Relly​ is pure Bristol hip-hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 LP with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’. He collaborates with many crews including Innalife and Killer Crab Men.
Andy Spaceland​ (AKA Andy Jenks) got involved in Bristol bass music as soon as he moved to the city with Static Sound System​ and a collaborative 12” with Rudy Tambala (​AR Kane​) as Sugarboat Vs Sufi, before his band ​Alpha​ were signed to ​Massive Attack​’s label Melankolic, whilst he also became one of their tour DJ’s. His CV of collaborations range from ​Smith and Mighty​ to Madonna. He has released music on Dj Die’s label, Gutterfunk as White Bully and he is also currently releasing music with US producer ​Butch Vig​ in the band ​5 Billion in Diamonds​, whilst working on new tracks with ​Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) including remixes by Adrian Sherwood. His signature sound can also be heard on this remix for ​Elizabeth Fraser​ -

The LP ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release on 29th July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.
The album was all recorded, produced and mixed by Andy at Christchurch Studios, Bristol (home of Mezzanine era Massive Attack) with all vocals written and performed by T. Relly.
During 2021 the first two singles from the LP were released. The first was the juggernaut that is ‘Groove With It’. T. Relly growling out polemic against the relentless cacophony spun by Andy Spaceland, The brutality of the bass and horns is temporarily smoothed with Relly’s soulful, swaggering placation of ‘Turn your speakers on/ Till ya speakers blown baby/ If you’re feeling strong baby/ We can keep it going baby’.
This was followed in April by the 12” release of Combat featuring a thumping remix by Surgeon (Tresor Records) and an extended electro remix by Ree-Vo themselves.
2022 began with the limited red 7” release of remixes by NØISE and Batbirds with stunning original artwork by Shepard Fairey who came to the project via mutual friend Joe Cassidy (Butterfly Child). The release was announced on OBEY’s website
‘Spacebox’ which will be the last single to be released in time with the album is their hookiest, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control.
“Lift off, blast off, shirt off, dance off! Naked in the dancehall SPACE BOX!” is the beamed mantra, Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy.
“We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.
About Ree-Vo:
T. Relly​ is pure Bristol hip-hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 LP with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’. He collaborates with many crews including Innalife and Killer Crab Men.
Andy Spaceland​ (AKA Andy Jenks) got involved in Bristol bass music as soon as he moved to the city with Static Sound System​ and a collaborative 12” with Rudy Tambala (​AR Kane​) as Sugarboat Vs Sufi, before his band ​Alpha​ were signed to ​Massive Attack​’s label Melankolic, whilst he also became one of their tour DJ’s. His CV of collaborations range from ​Smith and Mighty​ to Madonna. He has released music on Dj Die’s label, Gutterfunk as White Bully and he is also currently releasing music with US producer ​Butch Vig​ in the band ​5 Billion in Diamonds​, whilst working on new tracks with ​Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) including remixes by Adrian Sherwood. His signature sound can also be heard on this remix for ​Elizabeth Fraser​ -

Recorded under a loft bed in the guest bedroom of his Nashville home, Michael Ruth aka Rich Ruth’s “I Survived, It’s Over” starts in a humble space. And while many contemporary music projects are produced in such an environment, “I Survived, It’s Over” sets itself apart in its transformative properties as well as its transparency. What we have here is honest sound exploration, session musician-level instrumentation, and a true love for nature run through the fingers of a dude who can channel some acute and undeniable magic. This music goes deep. "I conceived much of this record amidst the quiet and tumult of 2020 in my neighborhood that had recently been ravaged by a tornado," Ruth recalls, "I spent most of my days working on these pieces between bicycle rides - watching the beautiful Tennessee ecosystem flourish in Shelby Park, listening to Keith Jarrett’s The Koln Concert and John Coltrane’s Ascension." Underneath the swell of the strings and the shredding of the guitars, this record has hard working, rustbelt, drum-heavy roots all over it (which makes sense as Ruth hails from outside of Toledo, the album was mixed by John McEntire from Chicago band Tortoise). Many of the flutes, saxophones, pedal steel, and other instruments were recorded remotely because we live in the future, but this only adds to the collage of sampled and sample-able material that Rich Ruth has to offer. The organic relationships between the artist and other musicians on the album is evident even in the compilation style sampling that needs to occur in putting such a project together. "Working on this music is a daily meditation," says Ruth. "I constantly experiment with sound until it reflects the way I am feeling and attempt to sculpt something meaningful from it. Through years of being a touring musician, it is a constant inspiration and privilege to collaborate with the individuals that graced this record with their voices." And those relationships pay off, because “I Survived, It’s Over” is a sonic meal. It’s rich (no pun intended) with massive instrumentation that’s usually reserved for more symphonic delights. But at the same time it’s simple and leaves space to breathe–space you didn’t know you needed. In his own words; "I Survived, It’s Over is a meditation on healing, confronting trauma, surrendering, and finding peace. I wanted to encapsulate the tranquility and disarray found within this process." Ruth’s heart and the peace that his presence produces is all over this album. And despite his midwestern humility and willingness to brush off any praise, he’s put together something really special that carries its own weight. It's the kind of record that only comes around every once in a while and it's worthy of all the head-bobs, acclaim, and celebratory potlucks that Mike and the gang have coming their way. “I Survived, It’s Over” is a record you should buy for your friend, your foe, and yourself. It’ll sit perfectly on your shelf between Alice Coltrane and Hiroshi Yoshimura.

Sounds like supergroup. Rarely have outstanding figures of such a variety of musical styles collaborated on one album to pay homage to a nearly forgotten artist, one of the few black Beatnik poets, Bob Kaufman.

"All Those Streets I Must Find Cities For" by The Plastik Beatniks is an attempt to acoustically reanimate Bob Kaufman, to return the Beat to him in a transatlantic collaboration. It is a shimmering psychedelic, at times jazzy concept album, sometimes reminiscent of Krautrock or hip hop, about a Beat-era poet who was as great as he was forgotten. It takes spoken word to a new level, as a transatlantic showcase of musical avant-gardes and a joyful "sound archaeology" of modernity, in which the tracks of the "Plastik Beatniks" meet the best voices of America.

The 12 wildly different songs and audi collages, on the transatlantically-produced album, "All the Streets I Must Find Cities For," is based on lyrics by Beat author Bob Kaufman. They were originally part of the radio play "Thank God for Beatniks," for which author Andreas Ammer ("Ammer & Einheit"), Notwist‘s Markus Acher and Micha Acher and loop maker Leo Hopfinger ("LeRoy") formed "The Plastik Beatniks." On the eastern side of the Atlantic they composed music and crafted soundscapes. On the west side of the ocean, they asked three of the most renowned singers, activists and producers in the U.S. to recite or sing Bob Kaufman's poetry.

Punk-pop icon Patti Smith immediately signed on to read Kaufman's poem "Ginsberg (For Allen)". Free jazz vocalist Moor Mother passionately performed Bob Kaufman's "War Memoir". American jazz clarinetist, composer, singer and “International Anthem” labelmate Angel Bat Dawid, a legitimate successor to Sun Ra, polyphonically read and sang such poems as "The Sun is a Negroe" and "West Coast Sound 1956" and included some clarinet solos on top. Also on the album, Bob Kaufman himself recites his previously unknown poems "Hollywood Beat", "Would You Wear My Eyes", and the "Jail Poem" "All Those Streets I Must Find Cities For". Beat chronicler Raymond Foye, who still lives at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, contributed an interview he conducted with late beatnik Allen Ginsberg about Bob Kaufman. Completing the circle was hip-hop artist Adam "DoseOne" ("13&God"), who once gave Markus Acher a well-thumbed volume of Bob Kaufman, whom he admired. He contributed some raps. Thus 12 tracks emerged, as diverse as the artists, poets and musicians who contributed to it. More than an album. An epitaph. A work for the eternity of Beat.

Regarding Bob Kaufman - of course the FBI kept a file on him – first as a sailor, then a communist, and finally a Beat poet. As one of the mainstays of the movement, he edited the literary magazine "Beatitude" in San Francisco and defined "Beatnik" to Allen Ginsberg: half rhythm, half sputnik. Bob recited his poetry loudly on the streets (when he wasn't sunk into years of silence in protest of the Vietnam War) and in the bars and bagel shops of North Beach. Once, he almost landed a pop hit ("Green Green Rocky Road"), which then made Dylan's companion Dave van Ronk famous. That Kaufman is today less known than his friend Allen Ginsberg may be because he was a black Beat poet, and also a Jew. This was not compatible with fame in the US of the 1950s. Though Kaufman had the same publisher, City Lights, as Ginsberg, he was frequently arrested and jailed, and was treated with electric shocks until he developed serious mental heath issues. There he wrote his "Jail Poems". The seventh of these lent this album its name:

"Someone whom I am is no one / Something I have done is nothing Someplace I have been is nowhere / I am not me What of the answers / I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for, Thank god for beatniks."

From Pacific City Discs, to you the listener, this summer, a DJ mix of fantasy and splash-energy is coming to you in a small edition of vinyl.  Fantasy writer/recording artist, Francesco Cavaliere, while visiting his seaside childhood vacation location, was extended an impromptu invitation, to DJ an 80s swimming club. He had this to say about his experience:

“I was at Shangri-La and a boy and girl from the bathhouse in silver swimsuits and sand-colored streaks waved me over with a drink and asked me if I would like to DJ the next day during my lesson on the beach at Tana del Pirata! I then and there I laughed but then I accepted (I had nothing at home just my mp3 player and a Nokia with music inside) The next day there was a little wind on the beach and the umbrellas swayed to the left. From the heat they could catch fire, white flames, instead the sea was rough and that wind with very long wrists cheered us up, blowing gaseous clouds in our faces. Perfect for the day ahead. After the first few pieces, I began to see that a group of kids jumped into the adjacent pool trying flips bombs and candle dives. Someone at the bar was playing Altered Beast .. so sipping a drink with ice I imagined DJ werewolf repeating catchy pieces while a kite half cobra half skyscraper inflated above us.”

This Impromptu Disc is fresh now, for you to frolic with this summer, while entertaining a daydream in the midst of entering a body of water while witnessing an apparition in the sky.

Selected and compiled by Francisco Cavaliere
Artwork by Spencer Clark

It is to the detriment of our understanding of musicality that we mostly measure it by the capacity to produce, and much less by the capacity to receive some sort of acoustic information or event. The virtuosity of listening, of understanding the sonic situation and its potential, is, however, that which defines one's capacity to interact – with other musicians, with the audience, and with the environment. This could also be taken to mean that an ethical act is implied in the situation of listening – the decision to relate, to be attentive to, to actively position oneself in relation to what is heard.

Rarely is this capacity so thoroughly pronounced and ethically conscious as in the case of Manja Ristić, the Belgrade-born and Royal Academy of Music-schooled musician, composer, sound and multimedia artist (the list could go on), who currently lives on the island of Korčula in the Croatian part of the Adriatic. Ristić’s recent, field recording-based work, is indeed all about attentiveness, most of all towards the environment and the acoustic traces of the endangered ecological layers of her old-new Mediterranean surroundings. With that in mind, it is indeed no wonder that her newest album draws from Milton’s Paradise Lost, which could easily be the anti-slogan of the endangered Croatian coast, eaten up by the pressures of touristification and the usurpation and privatization of once common space. More precisely, the album is inspired by one of the fifty Gustave Doré illustrations of Milton’s epic, Him, fast sleeping, soon he found, In labyrinth of many a round, self-rolled, from which it draws its title. The verses and the scene are from Book IX, and depict the moment Satan inhabits the Serpent, the beginning of his subversion of God’s autocratic rule, as some interpretations would have it.

For Ristić, the actual Paradise she introduces us to is in a state of imbalance – the idyllic soundscapes of her island surroundings overlain with sonic anxiety, such as on the album’s first track, The Flies, with its unrelenting, nervous buzzing evoking the ominous Biblical entity of Beelzebub, or The Lord of the Flies. The next track, Whales, which beautifully utilizes archival whale recordings, could also be taken to establish an intertextual relation to Milton through Melville, whose Moby Dick was strongly influenced by Paradise Lost. The middle track of the album, dedicated to the Croatian-American painter and muralist Maksimilijan Vanka, uses to great, unsettling effect what to my ears sounds like a buried hydrophone, a technique often employed by Ristić in her work, giving us a rough, grinding impression of water beating the pebbles over a high-pitched drone. But perhaps the most ominous, pessimistic image is painted in The Flag Pole, in which the symbol of revolutionary victory (I’m thinking of the Yugoslav modernist Tin Ujević and his proto-avant-garde sonnet Farewell from 1914) becomes a source of terrifying sonic unease, as we are listening to the incessant sound of its rope hitting the metal pole. However, with Dlana Night comes relief – the drones become airier, calmer; there is a distant notion of people, dogs, everyday life, all shrouded in the calming sound of the crickets on the island of Silba. Ristić, ultimately, serves us some hope on this wonderful new album, showing us that something has been lost, but that something can also be gained through the thoughtful attention with which she listens to the world around her.

„My recording techniques all boil down to one thing – intuition. I do not use expensive or highly sensitive equipment nor do I employ special techniques. On the contrary, I believe that the information regarding a space or an object can be recorded well enough on an average device. My personal guideline when recording sound is the positioning of myself as the listening medium, active and with the intention of establishing a connection that is sometimes intellectual, sometimes conceptual, and sometimes phenomenological.” - Manja Ristić, in an interview for Kulturpunkt.hr

An album of incredible music inspired by endangered birdsong
This is the third album from The Birdsong Project that challenges ten artists from
a certain region to make an original track using and inspired by the song of a
threatened bird. 100% of the profits from the project go to bird conservation
NGOs working on the ground. Following South America and Mexico, Central
America, & the Caribbean, this album moves to Western Africa. The album mixes
well- known names from the World or traditional music scene like Vieux Farka
Touré, alongside electronic music producers like Buruntuma. This record is also
pressed on the greenest record available via Green Vinyl Records with 100% PVCfree, 100% recycled cardboard and 70% less CO2 emissions.

Sunny Ozuna is a living legend and a man worthy of praise on many levels. In the Texas and Latin Music pantheon, few have been at it longer and are more revered by their fans and peers than Sunny is. He became a star right out of high school in the late `50s and hasn't looked back in the seven decades since. Among countless other honors and notable achievements, Sunny was the first Latino artist to appear on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" (in 1963). He penned "Smile Now, Cry Later," a hit for him and The Sunliners, which along with the theater masks that grace the album's cover, became staples in the Chicano Soul and Lowrider Soul cultures. We have been fans of Sunny & The Sunliners' music for a long time. We first got in touch with Sunny to try to reissue some of his records in 2013 but we didn't sign a deal until 2015. It took a trip to San Antonio and then two years of steady phone calls before they decided "if you have been chasing us for this long, you must be serious." With Sunny's blessing we started getting everything mastered, scanned, and planned. First we released 2017's Mr Brown Eyed Soul Vol. 1 compilation that put rare 7" sides next to some of his biggest hits and mixed in some choice album cuts for good measure. In the wake of that, we released three of Sunny's full lengths with their original track lists and art: Smile Now, Cry Later, Little Brown Eyed Soul, and The Missing Link - all of which were Record Store Day releases that raised money for the victims of 2017's Hurricane Harvey. For the 7" collectors, we reissued 45s, making some very hard to come by sides widely available again and pressing some tunes on the format for the first time. In 2020, as an homage to Sunny, we released Dear Sunny... a compilation of Big Crown artists covering Sunny & The Sunliners songs. Through all of this we were able to do what we set out to do: get Sunny's music to a new audience of people and make it all accessible and available again to his existing fanbase. Sunny still keeps a busy schedule and loves performing as much as he did as a teenager. His music and the music that it directly influenced are seeing a resurgence in popularity in the last few years. With any luck at all, our efforts played some small part in that, and on that note, we present Mr Brown Eyed Soul Vol. 2 - another compilation curated by us, where we dig a little deeper into Sunny's catalog and pull some lesser known gems that hold court with his hits. Hats off again to Mr Brown Eyed Soul himself, San Antonio's own, Sunny Ozuna, we are sure you will enjoy the music.

Sunny Ozuna is a living legend and a man worthy of praise on many levels. In the Texas and Latin Music pantheon, few have been at it longer and are more revered by their fans and peers than Sunny is. He became a star right out of high school in the late `50s and hasn't looked back in the seven decades since. Among countless other honors and notable achievements, Sunny was the first Latino artist to appear on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" (in 1963). He penned "Smile Now, Cry Later," a hit for him and The Sunliners, which along with the theater masks that grace the album's cover, became staples in the Chicano Soul and Lowrider Soul cultures. We have been fans of Sunny & The Sunliners' music for a long time. We first got in touch with Sunny to try to reissue some of his records in 2013 but we didn't sign a deal until 2015. It took a trip to San Antonio and then two years of steady phone calls before they decided "if you have been chasing us for this long, you must be serious." With Sunny's blessing we started getting everything mastered, scanned, and planned. First we released 2017's Mr Brown Eyed Soul Vol. 1 compilation that put rare 7" sides next to some of his biggest hits and mixed in some choice album cuts for good measure. In the wake of that, we released three of Sunny's full lengths with their original track lists and art: Smile Now, Cry Later, Little Brown Eyed Soul, and The Missing Link - all of which were Record Store Day releases that raised money for the victims of 2017's Hurricane Harvey. For the 7" collectors, we reissued 45s, making some very hard to come by sides widely available again and pressing some tunes on the format for the first time. In 2020, as an homage to Sunny, we released Dear Sunny... a compilation of Big Crown artists covering Sunny & The Sunliners songs. Through all of this we were able to do what we set out to do: get Sunny's music to a new audience of people and make it all accessible and available again to his existing fanbase. Sunny still keeps a busy schedule and loves performing as much as he did as a teenager. His music and the music that it directly influenced are seeing a resurgence in popularity in the last few years. With any luck at all, our efforts played some small part in that, and on that note, we present Mr Brown Eyed Soul Vol. 2 - another compilation curated by us, where we dig a little deeper into Sunny's catalog and pull some lesser known gems that hold court with his hits. Hats off again to Mr Brown Eyed Soul himself, San Antonio's own, Sunny Ozuna, we are sure you will enjoy the music.

Sunny Ozuna is a living legend and a man worthy of praise on many levels. In the Texas and Latin Music pantheon, few have been at it longer and are more revered by their fans and peers than Sunny is. He became a star right out of high school in the late ‘50s and hasn’t looked back in the seven decades since. Among countless other honors and notable achievements, Sunny was the ­rst Latino artist to appear on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” (in 1963). He penned "Smile Now, Cry Later," a hit for him and The Sunliners, which along with the theater masks that grace the album's cover, became staples in the Chicano Soul and Lowrider Soul cultures. We have been fans of Sunny & The Sunliners' music for a long time. We fi­rst got in touch with Sunny to try to reissue some of his records in 2013 but we didn't sign a deal until 2015. It took a trip to San Antonio and then two years of steady phone calls before they decided "if you have been chasing us for this long, you must be serious." With Sunny's blessing we started getting everything mastered, scanned, and planned. First we released 2017's Mr Brown Eyed Soul Vol. 1 compilation that put rare 7" sides next to some of his biggest hits and mixed in some choice album cuts for good measure. In the wake of that, we released three of Sunny's full lengths with their original track lists and art: Smile Now, Cry Later, Little Brown Eyed Soul, and The Missing Link all of which were Record Store Day releases that raised money for the victims of 2017's Hurricane Harvey. For the 7" collectors, we reissued ­ve 45s, making some very hard to come by sides widely available again and pressing some tunes on the format for the ­rst time. In 2020, as an homage to Sunny, we released Dear Sunny... a compilation of Big Crown artists covering Sunny & The Sunliners songs. Through all of this we were able to do what we set out to do: get Sunny's music to a new audience of people and make it all accessible and available again to his existing fanbase. Sunny still keeps a busy schedule and loves performing as much as he did as a teenager. His music and the music that it directly in‑uenced are seeing a resurgence in popularity in the last few years. With any luck at all, our efforts played some small part in that, and on that note, we present Mr Brown Eyed Soul Vol. 2 – another compilation curated by us, where we dig a little deeper into Sunny's catalog and pull some lesser known gems that hold court with his hits. Hats off again to Mr Brown Eyed Soul himself, San Antonio's own, Sunny Ozuna, we are sure you will enjoy the music. Tracks: Side A 1 I Can Remember 2 Sitting In The Park 3 Give Me Time 4 Should I Take You Home (Keyloc Version) 5 If I Could See You Now 6 Come Back Baby 7 Viva Mi Triestesa Side B 1 Runaway 2 Sharing You 3 I’ve Never Found A Girl 4 Together 5 I’m No Stranger 6 Best Of Both Worlds 7 Baby, I Apologize

Hurtling out of Lesser Poland full of indignant rage and armed with defiant conviction come Lublin’s OHYDA with a third LP that puts Kaczyński and his PiS cronies to shame. The legacy of Polish forefathers DEZERTER lurks behind razor-sharp riffs and tightly-wound drums, but this record is no mere exercise in homage paying. Where other efforts may hide behind prescriptive cacophony, OHYDA leap out from the dark with a sound that is both cleaner and more considered while somehow remaining belligerently heavy and grotesque. Such is the catchiness that loiters beneath the swell of this tortured LP you might even pick up glimmers of TZN XENNA’s 1985 7” Dzieci z Brudnej Ulicy. Right-wing populists and pro-lifers are amongst the victims who are dressed down with both fury and absurdity. There’s also an entire tune that goes after Kaja Godek, which deserves a round of applause in itself. The band’s best work to date. (Christopher Dodd, Bad Breeding). Pan Bóg Spełni Wszystkie Pragnienia Lewaków... I Dojdzie Do Katastrofy! was recorded at the local Culture Center (CK Lublin) by Dariusz Kociński and mastered by Jack Control at Enormous Door Studios. Sleeve art by Dziki, mincing the head of Kaja Godek, a prolife/anti LGBTQ+ activist, with lettering help from Guitarrist Mike Champagne.

Ed Black, better known by his stage name, edbl, is one of the most talented musicians to come out of South London's independent music scene. Despite his lofi soul / hip-hop sound being frequently compared to the likes of Tom Misch and Jordan Rakei, Black's distinct production style brings out the best of each featured artist. The result is a sound quite unlike any other, showcasing the best of South London's incredibly talented and diverse scene, all tied together by Black's incredible production.

Incl. Schacke Remix

Having been extensively road-tested this past year by DJs including Daniel Avery, HAAi and Gerd Janson, Highdive arrives with tangible anticipation. The work of less-than-shadowy figures Gramrcy and John Loveless, the pair have passed lockdown and beyond remixing artists such as WH Lung, Discovery Zone and Ghost Culture. Debuting their first original material, closely following Gramrcy’s recent appearance on Loveless’s own Hot Concept imprint, Highdive is a long-anticipated explosion of energy.

Built around a sonic-boom breakdown, glossy rave chords and pounding post-punk drums, Highdive feels immediately at home on Phantasy. Having worked closely alongside founder Erol Alkan in recent years to shape the imprint's diverse output, Loveless' collaboration with the Peach Discs founder nods to the electro landscape of the label's earliest days. Having never left dance floors since, Gramrcy & John Loveless take a golden opportunity to plunge dancers into the sublime and the ridiculous.

While a stripped-down ‘Beats Mix’ sees the pair adopt a less-maximal approach, leave it to Schacke to stretch Highdive into hardcore rave heaven. The already-influential Copenhagen artist underscores his refreshing funk in the ‘fast-techno’ scene through which he has risen, turning the screws and upping the tempo with intense but elastic results.

100 copies only

Apron Records has been instrumental in shaping the current landscape of contemporary electronic music coming out of the U.K. since 2014. After almost a decade of pushing their unique vision has made the Apron Records imprint one of the most in-demand labels in most independent record stores. Now more than 45 releases deep in their journey, Apron Records have teamed up with Patta Soundsystem to work on their first various artists release and to celebrate this monumental milestone, both camps have collaborated to create a clothing capsule to accompany this release. After working with the artist formerly known as Funkineven on ‘The Wave’ late last year, it was only right to showcase the diverse talents behind this movement.

Sharing a drawing board with Patta for the first time with Apron Records, together they have created a Trucker Cap and a Graphic T-Shirt that echo the racing theme of the whole project. Better Together is the slogan that runs throughout the entire collaboration, stressing how unity makes us stronger as individuals. Artwork for the record has been provided by Amsterdam based artist Jim Klok. His unique Acetone printing technique has now been immortalised on this LP, juxtaposing vintage cars with checkered racing flags to create a dynamic cover that would be right at home in a picture frame as well as a record bin.

System Olympia’s ‘Passi Mai’ is a beautiful 80’s inspired driving riddim layered with her own vocals that wouldn’t be out of place in an arcade or a sticky nightclub floor. Followed up by ‘Leven’ by Brassfoot, we get a wobbler from the NTS regular. Layed with Jamaican vocal samples and audacious arpeggiated bleeps, Leven is a soulful approach to techno tropes that have been bouncing around Brassfoot’s head. Shamos’ 737363 is a cryptic masterpiece. With dreamy pads as a backdrop for shuffling drum beats, euphoric sweeps and dynamically designed synthesis, this closes off the themes explored in the first half of the record.

Side B kicks off with J M S Khosah’s contribution to the record titled ‘Lessons’ which is a dancefloor filler, adorned with glamorous percussion, vocal samples and syncopated stabs ontop of a driving 4x4 kick pattern. Kicking things into 6th gear is a club-ready production from London's most soulful selector Shy One. Groovy basslines and a 2-step riddim make ‘Candy Floss’ an ode to the grimey and the glittery sides of London nightlife. This project champions one of the people that have been pivotal in the success of the label, Steven Julien whose track E46 is an emotional journey through his synth-laden East London studio. Bookending the project are two compositions from Compton’s-own AshTreJinkins. Showcasing his abilities to approach the project from both an ambient and a pure beat-making perspective in order to hold the whole project together.

The Decades Collected compilations are part of the new Collected compilation series, which is a collaboration between Universal Music and Music On Vinyl. The compilations bring together the biggest names of each decade, combined with forgotten hits and less discovered gems, giving the listener an experience of listening to their favorite tunes while uncovering new musical grounds at the same time.

Various Artists - Nineties Collected features R.E.M “Man On The Moon”, Freddie Mercury “Living On My Own”, Texas “Say What You Want”, Lenny Kravitz “Always On The Run”, Erykah Badu “Tyrone (Live)” and Blind Melon “No Rain” amongst others.

The Decades Collected compilations are part of the new Collected compilation series, which is a collaboration between Universal Music and Music On Vinyl. The compilations bring together the biggest names of each decade, combined with forgotten hits and less discovered gems, giving the listener an experience of listening to their favorite tunes while uncovering new musical grounds at the same time.

Various Artists - Zeroes Collected features Nelly Furtado “I’m Like A Bird”, The Script “Breakeven”, The Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling”, Alphabeat “Fascination”, T.A.T.U. “All The Things She Said” and Mika “Grace Kelly” amongst others.