quête:m p sound project

Music From Memory is delighted to be turning 50 with a special release: MFM050 - V/A - Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993-1997 (3xLP/2xCD). The first in a series of compilations, alongside more in depth artist-focused releases, Virtual Dreams will delve into music produced during the 1990’s that redefined the boundaries of ‘Ambient’. This was music that explored the possibilities of Ambient music within a new setting, created often by House & Techno music producers for a world beyond dance floors but made very much with the pre and post-clubbing listener in mind.

When House and Techno exploded out of America in the mid 1980s a whole generation was redefined not only musically but also culturally and chemically speaking. Peaking, quite literally, with a second ‘Summer of Love’ in 1988, millions of young people across the world would experience the life-changing ups of a brave new world but with it of course came the downs; enter the concept of a ‘Chill-out’ room. Whilst early Chill-out rooms lacked a specific sound and were often soundtracked by music such as reggae and soul, slowly young Techno and House producers themselves would become increasingly interested in developing a futuristic ‘Ambient’ soundtrack to a world beyond the thud of the main room.

‘Ambient’ in this new age now though had sharper teeth than in Brian Eno's key text for ‘Music for Airports’, instead here the sounds were the mode of transport rather than the backdrop. While the melodies were pretty, the soundscape steered away from the pastoral, dreaming of outer-space and technology as opening up exciting new dimensions. Much like in the first Summer Of Love; the musicians were again exploring psychedelic, mind-altering and transcendental possibilities of music. And also much as in the first Summer Of Love, a psychedelic visual language would accompany the music. Though now the tracks could be accompanied by music videos, utilising early CGI techniques, they would look almost entirely to the future: envisioning technology, nature and humanity intertwined in a new Utopian future. Virtual Dreams of a better world.

From Ambient and early Chill-out classics, to lesser known one-off projects, as well as Ambient deviations by some of House and Techno’s leading producers, Volume One of Virtual Dreams features tracks by Bedouin Ascent, LA Synthesis, LFO, Marc Hollander, Mark Pritchard & Kirsty Hawkshaw, Richard H. Kirk and more.

To celebrate our 50th release the first 1000 copies include a holographic 'Virtual Dreams' sticker plus a special insert poster with artwork by Victoria Pacheco and design by Steele Bonus.

The RED GREEN BLUE album will be released via 3CG Records on May 1320 The new Red Green Blue album brings together the band's three unique creative voices like never before with a third of the album written and produced by each brother (Taylor’s Red, Isaac’s Green and Zac’s Blue). The project brings together a team of collaborators, with the album co-produced by Grammy Award-winning Producer, Engineer and Mixer Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wilco), and Grammy Award-winning Artist and Producer David Garza (Fiona Apple, Midland, Sharon Van Etten). Beginning in June in Europe, the RED GREEN BLUE WORLD TOUR will bring HANSON to the US and Canada from July-September, Latin America in September and Australia & New Zealand in November. The band’s first major tour since their String Theory album & tour in 2018/2019, fans will be in store for a tour which not only features the premiere of 15 songs from the new project but will also be the first tour to include live performances of 2020’s Against The World as well as career spanning set lists of fan favorites. Fresh off of the release of Against The World, featuring seven songs released consecutively each month, the prolific band of brothers are reinforcing their deep musicality and credibility as writers, performers and producers with the new project. Leading up to May’s full album release of RED GREEN BLUE, fans will get a taste of the trifecta of sound, with a single featuring each of the brothers. Coming February 11 Taylor’s earnest and dynamic “Child At Heart”, March 11 will see the release of Isaac's organic and heartwarming “Write You A Song” and April 15 will feature the rock infused pop of Zac’s “Don’t Let Me Down”.

Endearing Montreal-based trio Afternoon Bike Ride announce their forthcoming second album "Glossover", set to be released via Friends of Friends. Consisting of Lia Kurihara (vocals, guitar, programming), David Tanton (vocals, guitar, drums, programming), and Éloi Le Blanc-Ringuette (vocals, keys, drums, programming), Afternoon Bike Ride is a lo-fi folk trio providing a comfort zone in audio form. It"s in the name. When all three artists are together, their chemistry culminates into one organic and lush sound. Sonics that feel natural and freeing, as if fireside with a handful of microphones and instruments and toys. The band has released a series of cohesive projects where field recordings blend with ambient, acoustic, folk, and pop. A cauldron of genres they stir during each song. With precision, Afternoon Bike Ride presents a soothing sound all their own, one that continues to expand and deliver with each new release.

2023 Repress On Vertigo Days, the first album in seven years for The Notwist, one of Germany’s most iconic independent groups are alive to the possibilities of the moment. Their music has long been open-minded and exploratory, but from its engrossing structure, through its combination of melancholy pop, clangorous electronics, hypnotic Krautrock and driftwork ballads, to its international musical guests, Vertigo Days is both a new step for The Notwist, and a reminder of just how singular they’ve always been. Most importantly, the core trio of Markus and Micha Acher and Cico Beck are reaching out: as Markus reflects, “we wanted to question the concept of a band by adding other voices and ideas, other languages, and also question or blur the idea of national identity.”

It’s been seven years since The Notwist’s last album, Close To The Glass, and in that time the various members of the group have been busy with side projects (Spirit Fest, Hochzeitskapelle, Alien Ensemble, Joasihno), guest appearances, a record label (Alien Transistor), movie scoring, helping organise the Minna Miteru compilation of Japanese indie pop & running a festival (Alien Disko). Those divergent paths feed back into Vertigo Days in surprising ways, from its structure, built from group improvisations, with songs flowing and melting into one another in a collective haze, to its spirit, which feels refreshed and alive. There’s something cinematic about Vertigo Days too, reflective of the group’s time working on soundtracks, and reflected in the rich, moody photographic artwork by Lieko Shiga that adorns the cover.

The first sign of this newfound openness was the album’s lead single, “Ship”, where the group were joined by Saya of Japanese pop duo Tenniscoats, her disarmingly hymnal voice sighing over a propulsive, Krautrocking beat. Elsewhere, American multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay sings on “Oh Sweet Fire”, also contributing “a love lyric for these times, imagining two lovers in an uprising hand in hand.” American jazz clarinettist and composer Angel Bat Dawid adds clarinet to the spaced-out dream-pop of “Into The Ice Age”, while Argentinian electronica songwriter Juana Molina gifts some gorgeous singing and electronics to “Al Sur”. Saya also reappears as a member of Japanese brass band Zayaendo, who guest on the album. Throughout, The Notwist also capture the openness of their live performances, too, where they mix and link their songs in unexpected ways.

Indeed, what’s most impressive about Vertigo Days is the way it sits together as one long, flowing suite, the album conceptualised as a whole entity – it’s perfect for the long-distance, dedicated listening experience. This is also captured by the album’s lyrics, which Markus states, “feel more like one long poem.” The dimensions of that poem are multi-faceted, something intensified by the geopolitical weirdness of its times: “As the situation changed so dramatically, while we were working on the record, the theme of ‘the impossible can happen anytime,’ more about personal relationships in the beginning, became a global and political story.” But it also works at a level of poetic abstraction, such that each song gestures in multiple directions – the deeply private pans out to the global. The one certainty is that there is no certainty. “It’s maybe mostly about learning and how you never arrive anywhere,” Markus concurs. To sit within uncertainty is brave, but it’s also where we feel most alive, and Vertigo Days is an album that is brimming with life, with enthusiasm and love for music and for community, all wide-eyed and dreaming.

Did you know Micheal "Eyedea" Larsen - one half of the progressive hip hop duo Eyedea & Abilities - once released a solo project under the moniker Oliver Hart? Fresh on the heels of winning three of the most notable MC Battles of the time - Scribble Jam (1999), Rocksteady MC Battle (2000) and the nationally televised HBO Blaze Battle (2000) - and the release of his debut album with musical partner DJ Abilities, First Born, Eyedea was inspired, intent, insatiable. He used most of his earnings from those MC battles and the group's rigorous touring schedule to build himself a home studio and teach himself how to record and mix records, and in less than a year's time, he returned to share the fruits of his labor. Originally released in 2002, The Many Faces of Oliver Hart or How Eye One The Write Too Think was written, produced, recorded and engineered by a 20-year old Eyedea (aka Oliver Hart). Featuring the songs "Weird Side", "Here For You", "Step By Step" and "Bottle Dreams", which Complex named as #11 on a list of the best songs ever released on Rhymesayers Entertainment, the album was a diverse body of work that demonstrated Eyedea could not be easily defined, nor should he be.

2023 Repress on Yellow Vinyl

On Vertigo Days, the first album in seven years for The Notwist, one of Germany’s most iconic independent groups are alive to the possibilities of the moment. Their music has long been open-minded and exploratory, but from its engrossing structure, through its combination of melancholy pop, clangorous electronics, hypnotic Krautrock and driftwork ballads, to its international musical guests, Vertigo Days is both a new step for The Notwist, and a reminder of just how singular they’ve always been. Most importantly, the core trio of Markus and Micha Acher and Cico Beck are reaching out: as Markus reflects, “we wanted to question the concept of a band by adding other voices and ideas, other languages, and also question or blur the idea of national identity.”

It’s been seven years since The Notwist’s last album, Close To The Glass, and in that time the various members of the group have been busy with side projects (Spirit Fest, Hochzeitskapelle, Alien Ensemble, Joasihno), guest appearances, a record label (Alien Transistor), movie scoring, helping organise the Minna Miteru compilation of Japanese indie pop & running a festival (Alien Disko). Those divergent paths feed back into Vertigo Days in surprising ways, from its structure, built from group improvisations, with songs flowing and melting into one another in a collective haze, to its spirit, which feels refreshed and alive. There’s something cinematic about Vertigo Days too, reflective of the group’s time working on soundtracks, and reflected in the rich, moody photographic artwork by Lieko Shiga that adorns the cover.

The first sign of this newfound openness was the album’s lead single, “Ship”, where the group were joined by Saya of Japanese pop duo Tenniscoats, her disarmingly hymnal voice sighing over a propulsive, Krautrocking beat. Elsewhere, American multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay sings on “Oh Sweet Fire”, also contributing “a love lyric for these times, imagining two lovers in an uprising hand in hand.” American jazz clarinettist and composer Angel Bat Dawid adds clarinet to the spaced-out dream-pop of “Into The Ice Age”, while Argentinian electronica songwriter Juana Molina gifts some gorgeous singing and electronics to “Al Sur”. Saya also reappears as a member of Japanese brass band Zayaendo, who guest on the album. Throughout, The Notwist also capture the openness of their live performances, too, where they mix and link their songs in unexpected ways.

Indeed, what’s most impressive about Vertigo Days is the way it sits together as one long, flowing suite, the album conceptualised as a whole entity – it’s perfect for the long-distance, dedicated listening experience. This is also captured by the album’s lyrics, which Markus states, “feel more like one long poem.” The dimensions of that poem are multi-faceted, something intensified by the geopolitical weirdness of its times: “As the situation changed so dramatically, while we were working on the record, the theme of ‘the impossible can happen anytime,’ more about personal relationships in the beginning, became a global and political story.” But it also works at a level of poetic abstraction, such that each song gestures in multiple directions – the deeply private pans out to the global. The one certainty is that there is no certainty. “It’s maybe mostly about learning and how you never arrive anywhere,” Markus concurs. To sit within uncertainty is brave, but it’s also where we feel most alive, and Vertigo Days is an album that is brimming with life, with enthusiasm and love for music and for community, all wide-eyed and dreaming.

Samuel Rohrer - drums, percussion, electronics, keys, modular synths Music produced, recorded and mixed by Samuel Rohrer
Samuel Rohrer’s newest solo album, Codes of Nature, shows the artist making yet more refinements and additions to an already rich catalog of musical ideas. Though he has excelled in collaborative projects with Ambiq, Ricardo Villalobos, Max Loderbauer, Tobias Freund, Dark Star Safari, Nils Petter Molvaer, Oren Ambarchi and
many others, it is fascinating to experience him also working in a field completely his own, yet managing to still give the impression of being fully integrated or connected with a larger musical universe.
A strange, intriguing ambiguity between the specific and the universal is indeed what makes Rohrer’s music worth playing on a loop – the cool, downtempo, yet energized constructions on Codes are powered by subtle atmospheric and tonal changes, and work like a camouflage adaptable to any environment. This is a record whose strength derives from its versatility. It’s clear that this versatility of sounds has been inspired by a commitment to positive differentiation that is not just a musical one, and that’s where this work will inspire others in turn.
— Total playing time: 50:04

RED APPLE MARBLE VINYL REPRESS.

Everything changed for The Beths when they released their debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealand’s tight-knit music scene, working full-time during the day and playing music with friends after hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their home town, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths’ second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the group’s earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends. Stokes’s writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home.

"If you're at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds,” Stokes says. “We did the same thing. When you're home, you miss everybody, and when you're away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the time.”

With songs like the rambunctious “Dying To Believe” and the tender, shoegazey “Out of Sight,” The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations/They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings on “Dying to Believe.” The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths’ view, is with abundant and unconditional love, no matter how far it has to travel. On “Out of Sight,” she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: “If your world collapses/I’ll be down in the rubble/I’d build you another,” she sings.

“It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, 'wish you were here, wish I was there,’ over and over again,” she says of the time period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths committed themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same time to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could. That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it -- a sentiment we need now more than ever.

Priscilla Renea Hamilton , known professionally as Muni Long (pronounced "money long"), is an American singer and songwriter. Under her birth name, her solo debut studio album, Jukebox, was released through Capitol Records in 2009. She then spent the following decade co-writing songs for other recording artists, including the singles "California King Bed" by Rihanna, "Worth It" by Fifth Harmony, "Love So Soft" by Kelly Clarkson, "Imagine" by Ariana Grande, and the global chart-topper "Timber" by Pitbull featuring Kesha. She has received four Grammy Award nominations throughout her career, including for Best New Artist, Best R&B Song ("Hrs & Hrs"), and Best R&B Performance ("Hrs & Hrs"). She also received a nomination for Album of the Year through her work on Back of My Mind (2021) by H.E.R. . Public Displays of Affection is a soundtrack of intimacy that seemed to offer an answer: You let love lead. "I am a lover," Muni Long explains. "I prefer to be kind. I believe in fairytales. The reason Public Displays of Affection worked is because love was absent in R&B." For that breakthrough project, Muni wanted to mimic the ebbs and flows of a relationship, dipping and diving between moods and sounds - which is real, because love can be tumultuous, too.

Repress!

Just over a year after his last solo project on The North Quarter, FD returns to the label with ‘Pleasure Rooms’. For this four-track EP, the London-born producer once again shows off his bass line dexterity, along with his trademark grooved percussion and mood-building samples. Heavier, grime-reminiscent tracks ‘Shawn Kemp’ and ‘Mama Told Me’ featuring Bristol MC Hella are combined with a more melody-driven, colourful sound present on ‘Double Drizzle’ and ‘Sails’. Following the major success of his minimal, experimental project LIN000 with Satl, this EP further shows the wide-ranging progress FD has been making in recent years.

Named after the Tottenham venue where FD went to his first rave, ‘Pleasure Rooms’ pays homage to the place that spawned his love for Drum & Bass. FD: 
“Pleasure Rooms was an old rave venue in Tottenham. My main memory is seeing Brockie & Det in a small room, sweat dripping off the ceiling and columns with mirrors on, totally fogged up. And going fucking mental. Being totally immersed in the music and the vibe, super excited and just hyped.

My Pleasure Rooms EP was made with thoughts of these kind of raves and parties in mind as this is a vibe and sound I've been enjoying quite a lot again recently - and it was such an important time for my love of Drum & Bass.

Utter presents the extraordinary audio-visual project 'SuperEverything*' by multi-media artists The Light Surgeons.

'SuperEverything*' is a live cinema performance piece that explores identity, ritual and place in relation to Malaysia’s past, present and future. Commissioned by The British Council in 2011, it was created in collaboration with a group of Malaysian audio and visual artists. Over the past decade, the project has toured to various film and new media arts festivals internationally.

'SuperEverything*' is a fusion of music, field recordings, documentary filmmaking and real-time moving image manipulation that together transports its audiences through a series of universal narratives; exploring themes of tradition and modernity, globalisation and development, race and national identity, to consumer culture and belief.

'SuperEverything*' surveys our human condition to reveal what unites and divides us. It weaves together a rich kaleidoscope of stories, sounds, images and smells live on stage. It is a truly immersive, cross disciplinary performative artwork that reflects on how our complex identities are formed through ritual in relation to our rapidly evolving physical and psychological environments.

'SuperEverything*' poses many questions about how people form a sense of identity in a world increasingly dominated by information networks and fast changing social and economic landscapes.

This limited edition vinyl and digital album features the nine original tracks that make up the musical score to this groundbreaking live cinema project, fusing traditional South East Asian instruments with field recordings, electronica and western classical string instruments.

Accompanying the record is a 24 page full colour booklet and double-sided poster, housed in a gatefold sleeve. The booklet contains quotes from the narrative interviewees whose voices are interwoven throughout the performance. These quotes accompany images from the production and performances to help illustrate the musical journey and allow you to contemplate the themes and ideas explored in this work. The poster design features a collection of filmstrips taken from the video material in the show with a single striking album image photo on the reverse.

The release is also accompanied by a previously unavailable film of the full live cinema performance recorded at Hackney Empire in collaboration with The Barbican in 2013.

Initially planned as a trilogy, given the success of this project, the series of 12” EPs featuring reinterpretations of tracks from the album “People Need People” - the brilliant work by Nicola Conte and Gianluca Petrella released in 2021 - closes with this fourth chapter, with the excellent contribution of Fred P. and his Interpretations.
Artist, DJ, Producer, Remixer and A/V Designer - born in New York and now living in Berlin - Fred P. has encompassed what it truly means to be an artist in the 21st century. With a discography growing exponentially year after year, he continues to push forward in his sound and his mind.
These two new interpretations of his constitute a little jewel in which Fred P. offers us a skilful blend where afro, jazz and house music create a cosmic spiritual journey at times nocturnal, suitable for the most sophisticated dance floors - in both cases with different rhythmic patterns, broken-afro for “African Spirits” and cosmic-house for “Tribes”, Fred creates here an open space, deep and simply at the centre of the music!

Back in 2010 Caribou's Dan Snaith hosted a remix competition for his track 'Sun' from his then-new album Swim. The winner was an unknown producer called altrice.

Hailing from Tucson, Arizona of Iranian/Mexican descent, altrice took the bright euphoric highs of the original and crumbled them into rumbling lows, the crystalline edges becoming rough and undefined. Along with a bursting goody-bag of prizes, Snaith also provided altrice with the stems for the rest of Swim and the offer to remix the whole album track-by-track, creating 'stem'. Aside from a further dream-come-true remix of Radiohead, this is largely the last we heard from altrice in the past 12 years.

A year and a half ago though, having kept up correspondence with Snaith over the years, altrice began sending new material. With encouragement from Snaith he eventually wound up with an EP which has since become essential DJ material for Snaith and the cohort of friends he's shared it with, as well as appearing in Leon Vynehall's Radio 1 Residency, KH (Four Tet)'s recent Essential Mix and more.

With three tracks already released from the EP receiving further DJ support from Avalon Emerson, Floating Points, Yu Su, Sofia Kourtesis, Mano Le Tough and more, today the EP is released in full officially via Snaith's own Jiaolong label. compciter is a collection of music that for the first time is entirely altrice's own sound, alluring and off-kilter, a wealth of sounds and styles that are tied together by an irresistible warmth.

Speaking of the EP, altrice says:

"This EP is the result of allowing my stylistic boundaries to be nudged in a new direction, putting away a self-inflicted notion that I’m only fluent in certain subgenres of electronic music. I made some production choices that, for better or worse, will make this project stand out. I’ve been overwhelmed by the reactions in clubs and at festivals, and individuals reaching out with kind words about the music. It’s surreal."
From the huddled and obscured yet comforting vocal samples - described by Pitchfork as "a beacon of light in an uncertain landscape" - of 'bda creature' to the swinging 90s eurodance drums of 'places faces' and the way the welcoming guitar melody and soulful vocals of 'eyes' gives way to a full on bass pummel, the tracks that have been released so far from the EP are already causing a stir both on and off the dancefloor. Today, the chopped up vocals and vast roomy sound of 'yoni' along with '1609km' - which would almost be straightforward house if it didn't pull the rug out to make way for delicate piano and harmonica flourishes - complete a set that fulfils a promise 12 years in the making..

* Comes with an 8 page booklet **

The Dead Mauriacs is the project of French artist Olivier Prieur, "Paravents et miroirs, une cérémonie" is a live soundtrack.

The Dead Mauriacs describe their music as "Exotica Concrete" - their music is composed of field recordings made on a daily basis, as well as a diverse collection of sounds, including piano, Indian harmonium, violin, ukulele, didgeridoo, pieces of wood, glass, paper, and metal plates. The album is a spectacular 40-minute sound collage, assembled by sampling Exotica music represented by musicians and arrangers such as Les Baxter and Arthur Lyman, who were active in the 1950s.

"Exotica is a musical genre or sub-genre that emerged in the 1950s in the United States with musicians and arrangers like Les Baxter or Arthur Lyman. It is an extraordinary music because it is false: bird calls imitate bird songs, you can hear the sound of the waves, it is a Western fantasy, particularly North American, of a world and an imagery that never existed. It is a music associated with mass tourism, mass entertainment, consumerism. Arthur Lyman recorded about 30 records in 10 years in Waikiki. With his band, they played and recorded under a geodesic aluminum dome. The dome belonged to the owner of the hotel he played for every night. They did this at night to avoid noise. It's music that is both profoundly naive and totally flawed. In this, it is seductive and intellectually interesting. It is music that could easily be criticized today, but it is an imaginary in itself, like the Italian film music of the 1960s and 1970s." (Excerpt from the calax's interview)

The Dead Mauriacs are not only involved in music, but also in a wide range of other creative endeavors, including video and painting. He also repsonsible for the artwork of this LP. The inside of the product is also accompanied by an 8-page interview with Mauriacs and compiled his amazing artworks.

The Dead Mauriacs
Paravents et miroirs : une cérémonie / Screens and mirrors: a ceremony

Side A
Courte dérive, une ouverture / Short drift, an opening
Le retour des insectes électriques / The return of the electric insects Les oiseaux étranges / The strange birds Tension, terreur factice / Tension, false terror
Dénouement malais / Malaysian ending
Rituels et vanités 1 / Rituals and vanities 1
Rituels et vanités 2 / Rituals and vanities 2
Italiens dʼHambourg / Italians in Hamburg

Side B
Secrets pour piano / Secrets for piano
La suite Monory, Padoue-Le Caire-Nassau / The Monory Suite, Padua-Cairo-Nassau Hommes à découper / Men to cut out Lassitude moite / Clammy weariness
Le soleil artificiel du pont croisière / The artificial sun on the cruise deck
Pirogues et palmiers, vus de la scène / Pirogues and palm trees, seen from the stage La traversée / The crossing Rideau / Rideau
Fields recordings : Semproniano and Siena, Italy, Figueira, Portugal, Charentes, France. An electrical wire with a frequency shifter gave birth to the insects. Real and fake piano. Everything made with a computer and a midi keyboard.
Music premiered at Hörbar, Hamburg, 28th of December 2017. Music (and video) Olivier Prieur.
Thanks to Thorsten Soltau and all people at Hörbar.
Hello to Felix Kubin & Marie-Pierre Bonniol, Julia & Jan Warnke. Kisses to Hélène.

Originally released in 2012, the second album by the São Paulo-born composer Rodrigo Campos marks a turning point in both lyrical and aesthetic inspiration. “Bahia Fantástica” is the result of the absorption of a then recent influence of soul music (especially Curtis Mayfield) and is in the middle of this path marked by an unlikely geography in the lyrical part (São Mateus, Bahia, Japan) and by an expansion of sound ( from samba to the indefinable, with a passage through black American music).

The album turns ten years old in 2022 and exudes vitality. The soul reference takes on a different aroma when it passes through the filter of the composer and his band – formed by Kiko Dinucci on guitar, Marcelo Cabral on bass, Maurício Fleury on keyboards, Maurício Takara on drums and Thiago França on sax: it has Brazilian sauce, hints of afrobeat and a very particular seasoning. The lyrics bear the artist's mark: they project scenes in the listener's imagination and design the characters and environments with their own style of subjective chronicle. Bahia is both imaginary and intimate in Rodrigo Campos’s music.

Killer shit from Flore - Tip for fans of Simo Cell, Ploy, Metrist and Batu

After the widely acclaimed "Rituals" album released in April 2020, Flore is now back to the cherished area of banger engineering with a four packer of original compositions to be unleashed this spring 2022 on her own POLAAR imprint.

The project’s title itself shows clearly what her program is all about : "Legacy & Broken Pieces" has to be seen as a cruise into the anterior future rather than a trip down memory lane. Following this mantra, it’s more than clear that her music does not constitute a tribute to any previous club music history, but has to be seen as a true proposition of sonic innovation and moving paradigms.

"I'm tired of the nostalgia that can be found in electronic music nowadays. With everything that is going on right now, the world will never be the same. Then why should music has to be so ?" says Flore.

Thus, she offers to rework this legacy with her very own vision of sound wizardry, providing a wide range of sonic textures to fulfill this forward goal of breaking patterns within the electronic continuum. Yet another proof of Flore’s skills for always trying to innovate and never repeat herself.

“Disruption” echoes an aerial jungle of the former century while “Fiery Principle” rides Jamaican waves of bass soon dynamited by minced voice samples evoking a soul goddess from the 90’s. The upbeat intro of “The Switcher” leads us towards a choir of drums navigating various black rooted rhythm traditions, but tripping into a very refined and spatial production effort. The records ends with “Primary Mineral”. Its rough and matte sound seems to drill into a wall of fragmented beats racing towards an elusive end, suggesting another musical adventures to be revisited soon…

Scene Unseen return with their second release, following the debut release from Jinjé and this time we see a release from a pioneer in the Chilean electronic music and Hip-Hop scenes, DJ Raff.

Having released more recently on the label Big in Japan (the previous label from the Scene Unseen camp), with his beautiful Resistancia EP, the label were keen to welcome him back onboard for the new project.

Raff’s routes were originally in the Hip-Hop scene back in his native, Chile. His influence of this scene cannot be understated, as his name appeared in the credits of over 50 Hip-Hop releases coming out of the country. Most notably with Anna Tijoux and Makiza, as well as seeing his own track ‘Latino & Proud’ used in the EA Sports game, FIFA 2012 and then later as the theme music for the Comedy Central show, Broad City.

As time moved on, so did Raff’s sound and he started to move into more of an instrumental focus, moving away from any vocals and the Hip-Hop rhythms. Since then he has released on Mutante Discos, Nacional Records, Wonderwheel Recordings and his own Pirotecnia label, among others. As well as remixing for the mighty Dengue Dengue Dengue, Landikhan and more.

DJ Raff has played events like Sonar Barcelona, Mutek.ES, Lollapalooza (US, Argentina, Chile), RBMA Mexico and Red Bull also invited him to mentor at the 2015 RBMA Bass Camp academy in Chile. His last album 'Movimiento' was released in 2017 on Nacional records and earnt him a nomination for best electronic music artist at the Pulsar awards in Chile.

Raff’s new EP for Scene Unseen, Estado Líquido, is an EP of true beauty once again, showcasing four tracks that combine his signature Latin American vibes with his hip-hop influences.

The title track opens the EP with the calm samples and inspiration from the sound of the ocean, an emotive nod to the people attempting to travel from Africa to Europe over the years and the struggles they have faced.

“Basta” translates to “Enough” in Spanish, this track is inspired by the large-scale protests in Chile back in 2019 and lasting until March 2020. An electronic hip-hop beat alongside a constant synth arpeggio that was something more common to his early productions. Casualidad is a reference to a more personal stage of Raff’s life, with soft, bright, and uplifting melodies flowing between more fine percussive works.

Final track, Ceremonia, combines percussive African rhythms with melancholic Synth leads and pads, alongside a deep solid bass line and repetitive chants. The repetitive chants and percussions hold together the opposite worlds of happy festive rhythms and nostalgic melodies, taking the song to a place where both feelings combine in harmony.

Artwork is made by DMNC (Francisco Meneses) a designer, art director and VJ from Santiago de Chile. Previous work is linked to 3D animation and he actively collaborates with various electronic music projects across Latin America.

For this uniquely personal retrospective spread over twelve vinyl discs, Sven Väth takes us back to the early days of his DJ career. On What I Used To Play we meet great pioneers of electronic music, gifted percussionists, obscure wave bands, and innovative producers of a bygone 'new electronic' era. Rough beats and irresistible grooves from the identification stage of house, techno, and acid remind us not just how far electronic music has evolved over the past four decades, but how great it was to dance to EBM, techno, and house for the very first time.

If there is one protagonist of the electronic music scene who has remained curious, innovative and at the very cutting edge of music for over four decades, it's Sven Väth. His multi-layered artist albums and Sound of the Season mix compilations have been defining the genre for over two decades, and even today, he is constantly on the lookout for the next top tune to add to the highlights of his next set. At least, that's the case when he's not producing them himself as an artist or remixer. "Actually, it's always been part of my DNA to think ahead," and nothing had been further from his mind than looking back at his past, but when in spring of 2020 the international DJ circuit had to be scaled down to virtually zero, the 'restless traveler' suddenly had time. Time to stop and reflect on "how it actually was back then, at the very beginning of my career..."

"It was a great trip and with every track, beautiful memories came flooding back".
In the London apartment, he had just moved into, Sven has set up a "little music room", where he cocooned himself for several days, "to look way back for the first time and review my musical journey through the eighties, so to speak."

The interim result was six thematically oriented playlists with a grand total of 120 tracks from 'early 80s' to 'Balearic late 80s', together with excursions into afrobeat, European new wave, and EBM sounds and a few epochal techno/house tracks from the USA in between. From these 'Best of Sven Väth's favorites', the project What I Used To Play crystallized. Sven remembers how the Cocoon team reacted to his proposal: "They found the idea of making a compilation out of it MEGA from the beginning and everyone said 'Sven, go for it', but then, of course, the work really started, namely, to clear the rights and to get clean sounding masters of the up to 40-year-old tracks. There was also disappointment, of course. We couldn't clear certain titles because the rights holders in the USA had fallen out with each other or simply disappeared from the scene. In short, it wasn't easy, but now I can safely say we got the most important tracks."

Finally, after two years of research, curation, design, and administrative fine-tuning, the "little retrospective" from 1981 to 1990 is available. The exquisitely packaged, and three-kilo heavy box set is not only physically impressive, WIUTP is also the definitive record of Sven Väth's musical development. On each of the twenty-four sides of vinyl, you can trace track by track, what influenced him during which phase, and how he took off as a DJ from his parents' Queen's Pub straight into the spotlight at Dorian Gray. There and at Vogue (later OMEN), Sven became the style-defining player in the DJ booth that he still is today.




1981 - 1990: Future Sounds of Now

In the early eighties, the crowd in clubs like Vogue and Dorian Gray danced to what nowadays we call 'dance classics' - mainly disco, funk, soul, and chart pop. It was up to a new generation of DJs, including Sven Väth, the youngest protagonist in the Rhine-Main area at the time, to create their own club-ready music mix. Good new tracks and potential floor-fillers were rarities that had to be sought out and found, in order to prove oneself worthy.
Without MP3s, internet streaming, or other digital download possibilities, music didn't just gravitate to the DJ, instead, it had to be tracked down. In well-stocked record stores in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden or even in Amsterdam, London, or New York, Sven and friends sourced the material for countless magical nights. On WIUTP we can follow Sven's very personal journey through this wild, innovative era in which synth-pop, funk, hip-hop, and disco were successively replaced as 'club music' by house, techno, acid, and breakbeat. By the end of the decade, it was clear to see that these once exotic 'fringe' phenomena would soon become 'mass' phenomena.



Early 80s

Dirty Talk by the Italian-American duo Klein & M.B.O. represents the most innovative phase of the Italo-disco genre in the early eighties like no other track. Mario Boncaldo (I) and Tony Carrasco relied entirely on the original synthetic drum and percussion sounds of the Roland TR-808, coupled with the raunchy vocals of Rossana Casale and guitar accents of Davide Piatto. Of course, other tracks from this period were also influential in style, most notably Unit by Logic System, which worked as the perfect soundtrack to the laser lighting system at the legendary Dorian Gray club. With stomping beats and robotic rap interludes, Bostich by Yello also belongs on Sven's eternal playlist - after all, it caught the attention of Afrikaa Bambaataa, who invited the Swiss duo to perform at the Roxy in New York in 1983.



EBM Wave - Mid 80s

From today's point of view, the almost ten-minute-long, downtempo track Giant by Matt Johnson's band project The The, would probably not be considered an obvious club classic. However, a closer (re)listen reveals the rhythmic intricacies of the percussion overdubs by JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus) on Johnson's composition, and it becomes clear why this exceptional piece of music is one of Sven's absolute favorites. Other classics from this phase include Kaw-Liga by the mysterious The Residents, the hypnotic-synthetic Our Darkness by Anne Clark (and David Harrow), and last but not least, the somber, monotonous anthem Where Are You? by 16Bit, one of Sven Väth's projects together with Michael Münzing, Luca Anzilotti from 1986.



US House - Late 80s

You certainly can't talk about Chicago house without mentioning Frankie Knuckles. The resident DJ at the Warehouse not only gave the name to an entire genre, but also produced epochal floor fillers on the Trax label like the timeless Your Love, sung (and moaned) by Jamie Principle. Acid house protagonists Phuture also hail from Chicago, and on We Are Phuture (also released on Trax) we hear the chirping acid sounds of the legendary Roland TB-303 in full effect. Another featured classic is No UFO's by Detroit's Model 500 aka Juan Atkins, who is rightly considered the 'Godfather of Techno' even if the genre-defining track from 1985 still breathes with the spirit of hip-hop and electro from the first breakdance era.





Afrobeat

Le Serpent, by Algerian-born Abdelmadjid Guemguem, is a track that sounds completely different from everything else on WIUTP. Made in 1978, it's a monumental, rousing groove created without bass or synths, just with five congas! Even though Guem sadly passed away in 2021, his immortal, acoustic beats are understood all over the world and will continue to enrich many thousands of DJ sets for years to come. Another classic that not only Sven appreciates beyond measure is Hugh Masekela's Don't Go Lose it, Baby. In addition to being one of the most important jazz pioneers, the trumpeter and freedom fighter from Johannesburg was very experimental, integrating electronic sounds into his music in later years, in a similar vein to Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. Dutch jazz pianist Jasper van't Hof's afrobeat project Pili Pili has also aged well. The trance-like, almost sixteen-minute-long track of the same name, manages to fill a whole side on the seventh of twelve vinyl discs in the WIUTP box.



UK-US-Euro - Late 80s

Time for a change of scene, in the truest sense of the word, and from a musical perspective, this section is like landing on another planet. First up is Andrew Weatherall's classic remix of Primal Scream's Loaded, featuring the iconic Peter Fonda sample (lifted from the 1966 biker film Wild Angels) that came to personify the mood triggered by the British Second Summer of Love in the late eighties: "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do, and we wanna get loaded...". This period also saw the emergence of M/A/R/R/S whose only single, 1987's Pump Up The Volume, became a club classic with support from DJ legend CJ Mackintosh. In this most eclectic of sections, we also encounter New York house and reggae producer Bobby Konders and his seminal Nervous Acid.



Balearic - Late 80s

Those who know him, know that Sven had already lost his heart to the 'magic island' of Ibiza as a teenager, so with that in mind, the WIUTP project couldn't end without a Balearic chapter. Inspired by Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, the immortal, eponymously titled Sueño Latino belongs in there without question. Equally popular on the island was, and still is Break 4 Love by Raze, which thinking about it, would also fit perfectly into the house chapter. Last, but not least, there's an overdue reunion with Sven Väth himself, in his role as frontman of the successful Frankfurt trio OFF. Together with Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti (later of Snap!) this 'Organization For Fun' created the off-the-wall club hit Electric Salsa in 1986 which incidentally turned into an international chart smash, putting Sven in the enviable position of having to decide between pop stardom and a DJ career. Well, we all know how that decision turned out and the rest, as they say, is history. A not insignificant part of his story is What I Used To Play. Enjoy!

Perth-based artistic hub 823, led by producer / creator-extraordinaire Taku, joins forces with producers Idealism & Lucid Green for “Undone,” a genre-melting LP that bridges sonic comfort, textured tones and lush timbres into one serene, 10 track experience. LP arriving February 3rd, 2023 via 823 x Jakarta Records.

Finnish-born producer and pianist Idealism (1.5mil Spotify Monthly Listeners - SML) and French transplant Lucid Green (568k SML) are no strangers to each other’s subtle, yet potent productions. Having worked together on a number of past releases, their upcoming, fully collaborative LP “Undone” is a natural journey into the beautiful ambient, downtempo, lo-fi worlds they’ve each created. Through visits to Lucid’s flat in Paris and ideas being exchanged remotely, the duo experimented with different sounds, instruments and aural environments, in the process crafting a natural partnership that sits in a comfortable, melancholic pocket. With lulling guitar and poignant piano progressions that provide a pillow to rest your ears, and downtempo percussions that keeps you ebbing and flowing along on a subtle current, unsure where one wave ends and the next begins, only the albums progressions dictate the head-nod. Featuring the likes of Yutaka Hirasaka (220k SML) and Charlie Kurata (aka Charlie – 200k SML; Duumu – 109k SML), the album soars, reminiscent of life’s simple, yet wholly memorable moments that bring you a nostalgic pause.
As with all 823 releases, the project is a visual one as much as it is a musical project. The first singles visualizers are a fusion of Hopes & Dreams Club & 823’s design aesthetics with personal super8 footage captured by Idealism & Lucid Green, beautifully expressed from Hopes & Dreams Club member Mindi Ossi. Each visualizer and single art will easily stand on its own, transporting you to worlds familiar, yet undeniably groovy and sonically comfortable.
823 is a multifaceted Perth-based record label, fashion brand, and artistic community, founded by Australian producer and all-around creative, Ta-ku (852k SML). With an astute attention to detail and an ethos that appreciates the everyday things in life, 823 doesn’t stick to any particular genre. Past 823 releases include “So Far To Go” EP via Cabu (753k SML), Ta-ku and matt mcwaters’s duo project “Black and White,” featuring Masego collaboration “Flight 99” (17mil streams on Spotify), the “All Things Considered” compilations, a curated, collaborative series featuring both budding and wellestablished artists around the world and have included Idealism, Wun Two, pastels, L.Dre, Flobama, SwuM, Jinsang, Tenderlonious, among a host of others, as well as multiple sold out clothing capsules.

Having spent the past few years supplying low notes as bass player for a who’s who of UK Soul and Jazz talent (including Tom Misch, LoyleCarner, Berwyn, Jordan Rakei, Poppy Ajudha, Jamie Isaac, Puma Blue, Jorja Smith, Alfa Mist & Charlotte Dos Santos) Rudi Creswick steps into the spotlight with his first full length solo offering ‘Different Forms’ on Alfa Mist’s Sekito imprint.

Hailing from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Rudi was immersed in club culture from a young age, the low end sonics of which guided his playing, and led him to discovering his own style In the years that followed, Rudi continued to hone his craft, melding the sub rattling sounds of Hip-Hop producers such as J Dilla, MF Doom and Knxwldge with the technical sensibilities of influential Jazz players such as Pino Palladino, Derrick Hodge and Thundercat.

With this record serving as a chance for Rudi to stretch his creative legs, the aim was to showcase the many musical sides of his creative spirit. The first single lifted from the project ‘Sometimes’ enlists the vocal talents of the incredible Emmavie - who dives into self-reflective and cutting, honest lyrics. She explains: “No one ever leads with “often temperamental, quick to anger and generally hot and cold” when describing themselves. Something about Rudi’s laidback production and bouncy singing bass line pulled this reflective and apologetic yet playful subject out of me. “

On the LP, Rudi says: ‘This whole project is thanks to Alfa , Barney Artist and the team at Sekito who’ve helped me realise my dream. They had faith in me for which I’ll always be grateful. The project’s kind of all over the place because there’s so many corners to anyone’s being, inspirations and their musicality, so I wanted Different Forms to reflect that’



Throughout the record, Rudi’s musical prowess and vast influences are laid bare for all to see. From the gliding melodies and twinkling keys and hazy fanfares of second single ‘Peace Of Mind’ (Feat. Manny & The Coloured Sound) through to the sparse and haunting tones of ‘Charlotte’ the LP traverses high peaks and deep valleys, channelling a sense of beauty of textured mystique throughout. Sporting an impressive roster of collaborators including Alfa Mist himself, Trumpeter Sheila Maurice Grey (Kokoroko), Chelsea Carmichael on Tenor Sax, Barrel Jones (Drummer for Nubya Garcia) and Vels Trio’s Jack Stephenson-Oliver (who played synth for the track ‘With Want You’). The lush instrumentation provides an incredible backdrop for esteemed performers such as Barney Artist to drop bars over the crisp drums and laid back strut of ‘Holding The Fence’, meanwhile Berwyn supplies sombre lyrics of the vast expanses of ‘96BPM’. An emotive and engaging listen from start to finish, ‘Different Forms’ is a truly stunning debut.

Celebrating its one hundredth release, Black Truffle is honoured to present a major archival discovery: a stunning document of the only performance by the trio of Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt and Jim O’Rourke. Across a two-night programme organised by David Weinstein at legendary New York experimental venue Tonic in January 2001, Conrad, Dreyblatt and O’Rourke presented individual projects before performing a collaborative set each night, the first with members of Dreyblatt’s ensemble and the second the trio heard here. As Dreyblatt points out in the wonderfully informative and reflective liner notes written for this release, this was a collaboration across generations, reflecting the profound impact of Conrad’s pioneering minimalism on Dreyblatt and O’Rourke. Both Dreyblatt and O’Rourke came to this collaboration armed with a deep appreciation of Conrad’s music and the just intonation principles at its core, Dreyblatt having first encountered the incredible power of Conrad’s precisely tuned violin chords during his tenure as an archivist for La Monte Young in 1975, while O’Rourke had performed with Conrad in various settings since the mid-1990s (as well as admiring, reissuing, and performing Dreyblatt's music). The flyer for the concert promised ‘massive, ecstatic, pulsating overtones’, and the trio certainly delivered. From the moment this keening stream of bowed strings begins, it is clear, as Dreyblatt writes, that we are in ‘Tony’s sonic universe’, as massively amplified, slowly shifting combinations of precisely chosen pitches fill the room with complex beating patterns and ghostly difference tones. For more than twenty-five minutes, the music operates at a level of intensity comparable to classic recordings such as Conrad’s Four Violins, until the texture thins out slightly in the performance’s final quarter, allowing for the listener’s first recognition of the individual voices that make up this enormous, overwhelming harmonic edifice. The constant stream of bowed tones is broken by a beautifully rich pizzicato from Conrad on monochord, the sliding low tones and metallic shimmer of the other strings taking the set's final moments on an unexpected detour into spacious pastoral psychedelia.

Though produced by three individuals known for their own distinctive bodies of the work, this is egoless music, the perfect expression of Conrad's desire 'to move away from composing to listening', to 'working "on" the sound from "inside" the sound'. Historically important and overwhelming in sonic impact, this release also serves as a moving tribute to Tony Conrad from two musicians profoundly marked by the example set by his art and life.

Following up on reissues of the 2000 compilation »Multila« and 2001’s »Anima,« Sasu Ripatti has thoroughly revisited the classic »Whistleblower« for its first ever vinyl issue on the German Keplar label. Ripatti created entirely new mixes of previously unheard-of alternative versions of the tracks that first appeared on CD through his own Huume imprint in early 2007. He thus shines a new, different light on a record that was as much an expression of reaching a turning point in his life as it also showcased a new, more direct and perhaps more abrasive side of his Vladislav Delay project. »Whistleblower« was marked by the insertion of more noise and disruptive elements into Ripatti’s slowly moving take on intricate electronic music that heavily leaned on dub techniques. Fittingly for an album written at the threshold between one life and the other, »Whisteblower« seems at once melancholic and forward-looking in both tone and style.

»Whisteblower« was the follow-up record to 2005’s »The Four Quarters« and produced in the German capital. »I had quite a hard time in Berlin towards the end and I'm sure the track titles and the music reflect some of that uneasiness,« Ripatti says 15 years later. Changes in his personal life had a profound impact on him when making the record. The fifth track, »Lumi,« was dedicated to his daughter who was born shortly after the album was finished. »I had to reconsider what my life had been,« he recalls this watershed moment in his biography. Having already previously embraced a sober lifestyle—hinted at with the last piece’s title, »Recovery IDea«—Ripatti started questioning his life choices more thoroughly. This is also expressed in »He Lived Deeply,« a track inspired by Miles Davis’s love for Duke Ellington whose title can be read as an implicit question that Ripatti nowadays paraphrases thusly: »Had I been living fully, or fully not living?«

The seven tracks also marked a musical turning point in Ripatti’s work as a producer, not only because it was the last one for which he primarily used analogue and vintage equipment. They are also more straightforward on a music level, more demanding and at times more concerned with subtle rhythms than with the thick textures that were so integral to his earlier work. »Whisteblower« represented the first step in a process of focusing less on sonic abstraction and more on direct (self-)expression. While Ripatti admits that he found working on the album difficult back then, he also points out that he was surprised to hear how »gentle and peaceful« it sounded when he started revisiting the original files he used as a basis for these newly mixed versions. »It probably proves how much more comfortable I had become with sound.«

The second instalment from London Odense Ensemble digs deeper into the group's vision of what modern psychedelic jazz should sound like. Cut from the same sessions as Jaiyede Sessions vol. 1, released last summer, vol. 2 presents a more nuanced approach to the material. On this set the ensemble focuses on shorter, layered pieces - travelling from deep spiritual jazz grooves to gorgeous free-flowing minimalism to full-on acid jazz. There's echo-drenched flutes being absorbed into layers of analog synth pads and guitars, bossa beats and double bass sequences merging with electronics. It's an intoxicating mélange of sounds and styles, spanning wide temporal and geographical distances. London Odense Ensemble came together when two of the finest exponents of London's flourishing jazz scene, flautist and saxofonist Tamar Osborn and keyboard specialist Al MacSween, came over to Denmark to explore new sounds with Causa Sui's Jakob Skott and Jonas Munk, as well as local bass player Martin Rude. For two days the group laid down grooves and ideas and experimented in the studio, and later the best segments were edited and mixed by Jonas Munk, who took a somewhat liberal approach to the mixing process, often dyeing the material with external effects and synthesizers. Jaiyede Sessions are the kinds of records that defy genre-terms, yet have its own instantly recognizable fingerprint. It carries a unique shared vision between the players of what modern psychedelic jazz sounds like. bios: Tamar Osborn: Saxophonist, composer and multi-wind instrumentalist is the creative force behind modal jazz ensemble Collocutor (On The Corner Records). She is a member of the Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra, performs and collaborates regularly with Sarathy Korwar, Jessica Lauren, Emanative, Ill Considered and DJ Khalab. Al MacSween: Keyboard player & founding member of Kefaya. Collaborations include American jazz legend Gary Bartz, Syrian qanun master Maya Youseff, London Community Gospel Choir, Palestinian jazz singer Reem Kelani & kora player Kadialy Kouyate. Martin Rude: Multi-string instrumentalist & lead singer in Sun River & Edena Gardens with members of Papir & Causa Sui. Jakob Skott: Drummer in Causa Sui with a slew of side projects on El Paraiso, including Chicago Odense Ensemble, Jonas Munk: Guitarist in Causa Sui & studio wizard on most releases on El Paraiso.

The only known EP released by Sick Hardcore, a project of Florence based Franco Falsini, the founder of Kaos Records, an important outlet for the Florentine 90s scene. “Digital Justice” is a collection of 4 proto rave dancefloor oriented tracks featuring sample based sounds over heavily percussive patterns of rhythm with an overall darker tone. Sometimes bordering EBM and New-Beat sentiments, yet also touching upon more progressive sounds and breakbeat elements. In addition to the original release's tracklist is a secret unreleased (more contemporary sounding) version of “Clinic Rhythm” which might have been put together by Franco himself more recently – hard to tell, but sure to impact any dancefloor for the better. Generously remastered for big room action.

Especial presents a 2 EP live concept collaboration with Berlin's Giraffi Dog. With live tours cancelled due the on-going changing world, the idea of bringing their live set to vinyl - an opera for your innerspace, while constrained from outerspace - was born.

Setting up Doom Chakra Tapes with DJ Deflektorschild in 2016, Max Webber's project first released the L'Existence Du Reve cassette album as a blueprint for the Giraffi Dog sound, with some tracks appearing on the acclaimed vinyl debut for Aiwo Recs, before a split 7" for the WARNING label series followed.

Teaming up with friend Max Heesen (Dessous, Poker Flat) to take the project live, their backgrounds in punk and hip-hop shine in their take on breakbeat driven club culture.

Recording live in the studio, as a different state of meditation, MCPs trigger drum machines, the duality of live synth and vocoder, while tape machines, reverb and FX looped, twisted and filtered for an inter-mind festival

Cut as a continuous mix, tracks like Concorida, Jam X and Multiverse, are a manifestation of their sets dropped from small basements in Berlin to fields in the outskirts of Paris, this first EP acts as a hypothesis for the parallel, the other, the alternate, the infinite.

THUGWIDOW & Bruised Skies land on Hooversound with a new EP

“music for everybody, to think to, to dance to.”

The 12th release on the Hooversound imprint sees THUGWIDOW and Bruised Skies come together for ‘Blimey’ (HOO12), cultivating an evolving new sound: a dark and deep soundscape - ready to immerse, whether on the dance floor or at home. The release also features two remixes from Denham Audio and Response which will be available on the digital version only.

THUGWIDOW is the ambient jungle project of Alex Lowther-Harris, who’s sound is a formation of tastes, otherworldly guidance and obligation, evolving organically from nothing more than an adolescent love rebirthed in a new millennium.

Bruised Skies (Matthew Heywood) creates layered, visual music that captures a melancholic isolated landscape, oceans of sound lapping against shores; guiding the listener. With previous releases on Blank Editions, Intervention and Astral Black his solo music is a cross between season 3 of Twin Peaks and John Carpenter’s experimental scores; beautifully dark, bleak and isolated in its journey throughout.

Brainwave research center is a new project from NYC-based house/techno producer, Chase Smith (W.T. Records, Apartment, is/Was), & documentary filmmaker, Christa Majoras (School of Visual Arts).

Conceived together over two years as musical thought experiments, brainwave research center’s debut album, figure 1, contains a genre-bending distillation of influences from experimental music (Steve Reich, Laurie Spiegel, Black Dice), 1990s ambient techno (The Orb, Pete Namlook/Fax Records), and Motorik/Kosmiche/Krautrock (Kraftwerk, Suicide, Manual Gottsching).

The songs embrace a raw, naive approach to sound design, instrumentation, and technical production to capture the feeling of experimentation of the works they are inspired by. Described by listeners as a mixture of Electronic, ambient, and kosmische/krautrock.

Recorded and produced in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in the back of Smith’s synthesizer/electronic repair shop, Specs Sales & Repair, Figure 1 is the first in a sequence of 4 works to be released.

Made primarily with TR-606, OB8, SH-101, MS-20, Fizmo, H3000, SDE-3000

The Art and Soul of Network is well and truly captured on this beautiful collection.

Fittingly for a remix selection, Network’s iconic artwork is reconstructed by Trevor Jackson, the designer of those original graphics. He has lovingly reworked the maverick indie house label’s distinctive branding for this 2 x 12 double album selection which rewinds to some of Network’s finest moments.

Network was based in Birmingham but as this release demonstrates had an international outlook and an alchemist touch for joining together disparate talents which lent itself well to the world of remixology.

Dave Lee’s remix,when he was working under his Joey Negro pseudonym, of The Reese Project’s awesome Direct Me is arguably his finest ever work. The original track fused Detroit electronica with the Motor City’s ever present Soul Music stirrings. Dave simply made the superlative perfect . The result was not only an iconic Network release but one of House Music’s greatest recordings.

There was possibly no better example of Network’s deft touch when it came to selecting unlikely combinations of people to work together than Day By Day. . Andrew Pearce, a raw but incredibly gifted 18 years gospel singer, was plucked of the streets of Wolverhampton and promptly despatched to Detroit where producer Kevin Saunderson and songwriter Ann Saunderson gave him the complete Reese Project template on the mesmerising Day By Day. Then Chez Damier & Ron Trent were drafted in to create their Urban Sound Gallery masterpiece of a remix. It truly is a gem.

Ann Saunderson is also central to Surreal’s hypnotic Happiness, not only as songwriter but as the vocalist too. Network then did their “let’s try this” thing by letting loose Italian house godfathers The Fathers Of Sound on the track parts. They threw down and created a progressive (but dreamy) house anthem that is to this day massively in demand.

Slo Moshun’s game changer (House slows down into Hip Hop then ramps up back into House) Bells Of New York was produced by Mark Archer & Danny Taurus.It became huge literally overnight. Various attempts to remix it were tried but in the end it was back to Mark who demonstrated that sometimes the original creator of a track is best able to re-imagine it by coming up with his much loved Beefy Bells remix.

Inner City’s stark and brutal Ahnonghay saw Kevin Saunderson going back to his Detroit Techno roots. Fittingly it was one of the UK’s disciples of that innovative Belleville Three era,Dave Clarke, who supplied the awesome remix contained here.

Rhythmatic’s Mark Gamble created a British Bleep House anthem with the sledgehammer Demonz. The original won the support of John Peel with repeated BBC Radio plays underlining incessant club plays. Again it’s the original artist who does that remix thing best with Mark’s Sequel mix managing to improv his classic original.

Neal Howard’s Indulge was the debut Network release. His music sounded like it was from another planet and he was hailed as Chicago’s answer to Detroit genius Derrick May..Here we present Derrick’s Mayday remix of To Be Or Not To Be which was the flip to Indulge. This was Network’s debut release, and it is hard to imagine a label having a more euphoric greeting card.

The album concludes with a remix of a track recorded at a live concert in 1989.. To be clear THE TRACK that defined that year’s Acid House cultural revolution. Derrick May brought along Carl Craig to perform with him as Rhythim Is Rhyhim when invited to support Inner City at London’s Town And Country Club . Luckily Kool Kat - the predecessor to Network - recorded for posterity an historic rendition of Strings Of Life. Roll on a few years and Network went into the vaults and asked Ashley Beedle to work on the tape. He completely remoulded it and conjured up a new incarnation of Strings Of Life.

Network - we coninue…

This 3-track sampler 12” is being released to tie in with the Network Remixes 2 x 12 Double Album. The Fathers Of Sound and Urban Sound Gallery remixes are included on the album, whilst Ashley Beedle’s rework is exclusive to this 12”. All 3 tracks are classics from the Network catalogue.

The Fathers Of Sound remix sees the Italian progressive house dons reinventing the Surreal gem written and sung by Ann Saunderson. It is massively in-demand.

Ann is co-writer of Day By Day. Andrew Pearce was an inexperienced but incredibly talented 18 years old gospel singer who was plucked from the streets of Wolverhampton and taken to Detroit where he was given The Reese Project template by Ann and Kevin Saunderson. Chez Damier and Ron Trent were then drafted in and conjured up a magical Urban Sound Gallery remix. It is truly a masterpiece.

Inner City’s revival of Donny Hathaway & Roberta Flack’s Soul anthem “Back Together Again” started its life as a fairly faithful slant on the original. That was the plan until Ashley Beedle got his hands on the tapes and created a homage to Walter Gibbons, Larry Levan. The Loft and all things vintage New York true disco.

We're delighted to welcome Émile Sornin's solo project, Forever Pavot, to the BMM family, with this heavily retro soundtrack for the French-Canadian motion picture Babysitter directed by Monia Chokri. As a fan of Jean-Claude Vannier and François de Roubaix, Émile illustrates this light and poetic movie with 18 melodic loops and short ambient pieces, faithful to the 60's and 70's French soundtrack style.

Enter The Decagon assembles friends of the label - near and far - for further excursions into the abyss of industrial, folk, jazz and ambient music.

From Copenhagen hails Kristi Brud (Bride of Christ) extending us with a shimmering violin contemplation initially made for the short art film piece "The Abduction of Europa", absorbing a modal ambiance of harmonics rooted in central European renaissance. Recorded in Svalöv in rural Skåne comes a hillbilly folk jazz piece constructed by Joel and Ivar on equal parts violin, flute, upright bass and percussion, recorded somewhere in the misty era of of 2012-2015. Then, an interlude follows, reconstructed from the very early live sets of the label's own Inre Kretsen Grupp, laden with tuned metallic percussions and synthesized bow sounds. Following up, the idiosyncratic local talent Fai Ling offers a piece of Basinski/Hassel-esque horn repetitions in full deterioration. Concluding the A-side of the compilation is the band that never was - the only released material of Prins Emanuel and Golden Ivy's Börringe Kloster project - encapsulating their minimal maximal approach of low quality sound samples turned in to a wall of sound of rhythm of sorts.

The B-side picks up on different musings in the form of ambient cadence and carefully sculpted soundscapes signed Phillipp Otterbach, who gives us an unraveling journey into kalimba-hampered harmonies carried through a bed of industrial, synthesized sounds. Moonilena follows up with an eerie yet beautiful minimal composition of radio disturbances and repetitive, ear catching melodies.
Breaking the barrier of stillness, local producer and Catholic chant music fiend Digge Shim performs a rhytmical, tongue-in-cheek number that pulls widely from both the hymnal traditions of medieval Europe as well as the zonked out ambient trance sounds you'd meet in a mid nineties Goa chill-out room.
Near the tip of the decagon, we find the Cypriot producer, singer and lyricist Spivak presenting us with a feeling of the-familiar-but-never-heard in the form of an ambient pop breakbeat number with carefully crafted choirs oscillating on top - hauntingly beautiful and equally danceable.
Ending in the best of styles, well-mannered umarel and purveyor of drum-smitten metallic sounds shows us what Moisture is really about - the mental image of finding your true self dancing in purgatory in a never-released Kenneth Anger film set, encumbered with red lights and occult paraphernalia.

For the past 20 years Nostalgia 77 has become a catch all for the musical life of Ben Lamdin. His schizophrenic offerings range from songwriting sessions, soundtracks, excursions into Soul and in this case Jazz. The Loneliest Flower in the Village is an album that sees Lamdin reunited with longtime collaborator and arranger Riaan Vosloo and experienced veterans from a host of Nostalgia 77 projects.

'It had been a long time since we'd gigged or recorded so the idea was as much a little reunion in the studio as any grand plan to record an album' says Lamdin. 'The idea wasn't to do anything new (the material is both a few originals and a few covers), more just hear these players and their easy familiarity with each other after the disruption of Covid'.

Playing a clutch of originals by Riaan Vosloo and James Allsopp and covers by long term influences from South Africa such as Chris MacGregor and Abdullah Ibrahim, the emphasis is on strong melodies and open reaches for the soloists. The title track draws upon the song written by South African bassist Johnny Dyani and the result is spectacular; British jazz at heart but awash with references to South Africa and its strong jazz heritage.

'I'm pleased to say that I think this record is the best account of how the band (playing in this lineup since about 2010 ) sounds live. Full of energy and ranging from serene to firing on all cylinders.'

Honoring the craft and the ones that came before him through undeniably infectious beats that brace the weight of his choice samples and original layers. Getting his chops up through his younger days, Shane spent his time developing instrumental obstacle courses for local emcees to dance around including Gift Of Gab (Blackalicious), Spills (NY) Kinetic Source (Ozomatli) and Cashus King (LA.) By the age of 21 Shane threw himself into the ring of the Stones Throw beat making contest. To only the surprise of himself, Shane walked away twice as a weekly winner of the battles. After a small hiatus due to the birth of his daughter Clementine, Shane jumped back on the pads and began crafting the instrumentals for what would become Apostolos. With the instrumentals in flux Shane reached out via Instagram to an upcoming emcee out of the Duck Down Camp, a prodigy of the late, great Sean Price, Rim. After chatting back and forth for a small time, making sure Rim knew Shane was in this project for the right reasons, Rim jumped on board and even helped land other up and coming NY emcees like Eddie Kaine & Spills. From there everything snowballed. One feature led to another and soon enough the album was taking shape with features from not only Rim and Eddie Kaine, but hip-hop heroes such as Masta Ace, Planet Asia, A.G. of D.I.T.C. and Geechi Suede. With a few more instrumentals and spaces to fill Shane reached out to long-time bay area engineer/producer Deegan Mack Adams to help with the mixing and mastering and overall release of the project. Apostolos gets its namesake and back cover imagery from Shane Sounds' great great Grandfather, Apostolos Christakis who immigrated to the United States from Greece at the turn of the 20th century. The documents you see on the back cover are Apostolos’s army registration documents only a week after coming to the United States. We pay our respects to the ones who came before us and allowed us to be here to create this project. Salute!

Eva Louise Goodman’s Nighttime project locates itself on a musical tree planted on the British Isles, perched atop the branch of folk leaning into sixties rock. Her upstate New York environs don’t stray far from that image. With tempered percussion, floating mellotron, and singing that evokes Bleecker & MacDougal on a fervent Saturday afternoon, her new album Keeper Is The Heart reaches deep into the essence of musicians such as Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier and Pentangle, breaking down the decades into a sound thoroughly and bizarrely modern.

Through her years performing with Mutual Benefit, Goodman fell in love with life on the road and the collaborative energy of a band. In this third Nighttime album, she channels these experiences into her own music. The creative journey from writing to recording to mixing drove her deeper into a sense of self while expanding her sound. In the process, she put aside lo-fi origins and challenged herself to achieve the same intimacy with a bigger production.

Like most paths of self-discovery, the journey started with displacement. In October 2019, Goodman set out to record the album on her own, while cat-sitting at a friend’s empty Brooklyn apartment. Rather than recording, she was drawn to the overgrown garden, where she spent her days listening to music and reading old journals. Charlie Megira, The Incredible String Band and Roy Montgomery invoked the spirit of the album, as she realized that a new, more collaborative approach would be necessary to bring the songs to life.

In March 2021, after a pandemic year immersed in sound experimentation and writing, she entered the upstate New York studio of recording engineer Rick Spataro (Florist). Together, Spataro and Goodman dove into creating the album, recording one song a day, letting the spark and excitement of spontaneity be their guide. “I've always been fascinated with ‘automatic’ arts,” Goodman says, “where things are created intuitively and without premeditation, from the subconscious.” In this light, they worked with abandon–pushing through the heaviness of songs written years earlier with the same energy as songs which were not yet fully developed. Taking chances, improvising, they sought to strip away pretense, and elude perfectionism at all cost.

Among their experiments, the duo manipulated tape speeds–slowing or speeding up different instrument tracks, imbuing passages with altered perspectives. Improvisation was the key in track five, ‘The Way,’ a song about “the magical act of carving out a path through life, amidst all possibility.” After a long day of recording, the song was feeling heavy and uninspired. As night fell, Spataro picked up the Stratocaster and, in one take, laid down a rolling, roiling guitar line that defined the track.

This spirit of surrender weaves through the album. “Break free from time, and sink in the pool of the mind,” begins ‘Garden of Delight’, an energetic highlight, propelled by 60’s-era organ and Jefferson Airplane-esque vocals. The song was accidentally deleted after the first day of recording. By luck or fate, the one surviving file captured the song’s loose and free-wheeling essence. Inspired, Goodman encouraged her circle of collaborators to work similarly: “I gave everyone trust and total freedom to contribute as they felt called to, encouraging an intuitive approach of simply improvising, playing through the song a few times and then sending over the results.” Synth, cello, violin, saxophone and flute all appear, but often in unconventional ways.

Keeper Is the Heart reflects Goodman’s process towards greater creative freedom. The first words she sings: “Lift the veil of all of this hate/To see the fear at its base.” Her last lines: “We’ll follow the fates across the great expanse of time/To the source of the light within our mind.” In between is a work of art awash in personal awakenings that revel in the freedom of intuition, the lifting of veils, and the beauty of transformation. As Goodman states, “What is it you find when you look inward to see beyond, past your fears, to your heart's true desires?”

Remixes by Moodymann, Potatohead People, Moodorama.

Kenny Dixon Jr. acuminates it deep and groovy, well, it’s his holy trademark sound. Potatohead People from Vancouver have been championed by Soulection, Nightmares on Wax, Questlove, Big Boi a.o. and have releases on Jellyfish Recordings, or NY label Bastard Jazz. The duo has worked with artists such as Moka Only, Kaytranada, Pomo, Phife Dawg a.o.

On top Moodorama’s remixes are trippy dubby jams. Moodorama have a long recording history, starting in the 90s on Stereo Deluxe, but even before that Martin Sennebogen was the DJ and co-producer of Knowtoryus, the legendary first hip hop outfit on Compost.

Inkswel & Colonel Red started out writing together more than decade ago & over the time have developed quite a unique sound when recording together,..a chemistry that blends music melody & lyric into every verse chorus & hook. So when Inkswel approached Colonel Red to create the 'Holders of the Sun' album, Redz response was to move his hectic schedule around & start immediately. Inkswel dropped the beats Colonel Red dropped the vocals & some fine musical tuning & 'Holders Of The Sun' Vol1 was born….while they promise a Vol. 2.
The fantastic artwork comes from Our Machine, Netherlands, who designed a lot of sleeves for Kindred Spirit, Tom Trago, Versatile, Build An Arc and m.o.

Colonel Red is a groundbreaking soul singer, musician, producer and performer, often referred to as one of the most powerful voices in the UK soul music community, a champion in equal parts of the original Broken Beat scene, as well as the UK soul scene. Working with and writing for the likes of Teddy Pendergrass, Amp Fiddler, Maurice White, Bugz In The Attic, Tony Allen and countless others. His track 'Belive In Me' was awarded the WORLDWIDE award from Gilles Peterson in 2014.
Colonel Red’s foray into the music industry began when Epic Record company giant Sylvia Rhone signed the then lead singer, Nikki Romillie, of Pride n’ Politix, to Atlantic Records. An accompanying publishing deal with Warner Bros. established the artiste, now known as Colonel Red, as one of the UK’s top cutting edge singer/songwriters.

Inkswel has been heralded as one of the busiest and most prolific beat based producers from Australia, a true master of his craft he has worked with the likes of Talib Kweli, Lee Scratch Perry, Andrew Ashong, Dwight Trible, Amp Fiddler and countless others as well as putting out timeless musical projects on labels such as BBE, Sonar Kollekiv, Rush Hour, Warner Music, Boogie Angst and others. He hovers evenly between Hip Hop and Club sensibilities, blending new age approaches with nostalgic leans. 'Holders of The Sun' is the audio melting pot of two musical aliens, future directive soul music drenched in the nostalgia of what once was.

Berlin based sound artist Sa Pa delivers AI-33, titled ‘Atmospheric Fragments’. Originally intended as a soundtrack to accompany ten short experimental films as part of a physical exhibition in 2020 curated by Manon Bernard, Atmospheric Fragments was alternatively premiered online as a digital showroom - with its music performed and recorded both live and independently in 2021. 

Atmospheric Fragments was conceived as a collaborative audio-visual project, positing the viewer inside a sonic boom of introspective parenthesis and offering a place for internal dialogues under the circumstances of a largely unknown and rapidly changing modern world. 

Sa Pa’s work presents a fresh sonic reinterpretation of urban landscapes, skylines and modern environments, procuring from its source material a whole new kaleidoscopic world of its own. The record consists of two mixes - ‘Studio’ and ‘Live’ - which demonstrate a deep explorational study of our everyday surroundings, plunging the listener into a realm of heightened sense experience and microscopic detail. Where the ‘Studio’ mix embodies the precision and management of the studio workspace and is more ambient in nature, such intricacies are exchanged for a larger, livelier sound stage and alternative sonic material in the ‘Live’ mix. 

A nebulous ocean of shifting spaces and effervescent textures, Sa Pa augments and modulates field recordings into a fluid and ever-evolving narrative. Seen through a viewfinder of deep and immersive observation, new transients, momentary artefacts and poetry in motion begin to reveal itself. In a world caught in momentary stasis, Atmospheric Fragments is a forensic inquiry into our perceptive environment, with its augmented lens placing us on the cusp of the ungraspable.

As we journey on with part two of the States of Bliss project. Opening we have a reminiscent moment with “NY”. A snapshot of early BJC which was remixed for 2014’s cult classic “Selected Compiled By Fred P”. Then we move on to a more ambient affair of the trance inducing “Awakening Desire” an example of celestial electronica at its finest. Closing part two is the trippy jazz fusion house sound Private Society has been spearheading for a of couple of years now, “High Fusion” is a none stop ride into galactic ascension that has been moving festivals from the UK to India. Fred P continues to go deeper into his sound defining a rare characteristic propelling the artist forward via lawed frequencies garnering a cult following world wide!!!

The new album Octagon Sphere by Duesseldorf duo Strafe F.R. comprises of four pieces recorded in 2020 and 2021 at the group's own studio. The work features heavily treated female vocals and includes rhythmic patterns and electronic sounds contributed by invited guest musician Detlef Klepsch (of the group keit). The overall atmosphere is tense and moody, both dark and uplifting at the same time. Octagon Sphere was mastered by Kai Blankenberg at Skyline Tonfabrik.

Octagon Sphere is the sister release to last year's CD Soundless Sphere – both albums are tied together by rhythmic alchemy and sound manipulation in highest detail.

STRAFE FÜR REBELLION was founded in 1979 in Düsseldorf by the two artists Siegfried Michael Syniuga and Bernd Kastner. Conceived as an experimental project rather than a band, the duo is active since the early 1980s, they continue to work together to this day.

They demonstrated their subtle abilities in numerous performances and concerts. The members of STRAFE FÜR REBELLION see themselves as researchers on different visual and acoustic levels; they always make use of their idiosyncratic and unusual humor. The duo emphasize that they not only explore the world of music, but also incorporate elements of knowledge, and thus all usable influences, into their experiments. Working plans, storyboards, and composi­tional schemas usually serve as the basis for new musical projects.

Their texts reflect their interest in science, history, philosophy, as well as everyday phenomena, mass media, and popular culture: in their experimental sound expe­riences, performances, and installations STRAFE FÜR REBELLION are absolutely avant-garde, working at the forefront of research-performatively, acoustically, visually, and in a variety of media. Their motto always remains aesthetically uncompromising with serious pleasure.

At the crossroads of past and present, Jean-Benoît Dunckel transports us into a timeless universe in the form of a tribute to the first electronic sound and music explorations.

Inasound Festival, Palais Brongniart, Paris, 2019: Jean-Benoît Dunckel, co-founder of the mythical band Air, creates a live performance. Inspired by a projection of archives evoking the beginnings of electro, JB Dunckel improvises solo on analog synthesizers taken out of his private collection for the occasion. He gives birth to a music which takes its source in the archives of the INA and develops in contemporary visions with a comforting dreamlike quality.

Embracing his career path as an emcee/entertainer, CRIMAPPLE returns with his latest solo effort, El Cantante, which serves as an ode to Hector Lavoe and The Fania Era of salsa music's profound storytelling.

Although devoid of any guest appearances, CRIME is joined by a supporting cast of praise-worthy producers throughout the project whom include Bohemia Lynch (Westside Gunn), Michaelangelo (Avenue, Vel the Wonder) as well as his frequent collaborator, Buck Dudley, among others. And while there’s tracks that borrow aesthetics akin to latin music—such as the syncopated rhythm patterns on “Tuesday,” or the looping pan flute heard on “Out the Way”—you’ll still find the archetypal soundscapes that have defined CRIME’s discography. These include the soulful/zone-inducing loops on tracks like the album opener, “My Song,” as well as “Together,” “Encore,” and “Precious.” And then there’s the chest-pounding bangers like “Cosos,” where CRIME lyrically remains in his bag with unrelenting, braggadocious rhymes: “You cheesecake, rappers know I get on this shit and eat great / Get better at any take and drop on anyone’s release date”.

All in all, El Cantante is a self realization of sorts as the New Jersey emcee shares his current life perspectives as he touches on what it’s like to be considered a hip-hop legend by many, while also reflecting on the path that brought him to this point in his career.