Novità e Uscite Vinili Beats - News

British producer Burland and Ghanaian vocalist Zongo Abongo join forces here for UK to GH, a new collaboration that collides the respective backgrounds of each artist. Reggae, highlife, dancehall, UK bass and rave all meet in a world of fresh rhythm and melodic invention. 'Telephone No Wire' opens with a feel-good highlife sound on a 2-step beat with vocalist Adotey Johnson in fine form. 'Nyura' heads to the club with weighty bottom ends and enchanting melodies then things get darker on the flip with 'Try To Test' exploring another take on 2-step with hints of UKG and grime overlaid with catchy vocal hooks. 'Last Chance' pairs dancehall vocals with downtempo breaks for a superb conclusion.

For Tricky’s fifth album Juxtapose he teamed with DJ Muggs (the architect of Cypress Hill’s sound, a clear precedent for Tricky’s) and DMX’s producer, Grease. This album is quite obviously a Tricky album: a highly eccentric artist, an unusual mix of collaborators, an entirely new expression and message. Tricky continues to evolve at his own irascible pace, a riddle always about to reveal itself. His journey remains equally fascinating and frustrating. Two tracks with DJ Muggs find their way to the only single “For Real” (“Pop Muzik”, a cover of the song by M) and the Japanese release (“Who”).

One of the UK’s most consistently inventive production minds of recent times, Lil Silva has perhaps one of the most varied resumes in the world. Causing a seismic effect on the world of club music with smashes such as ‘Seasons’ and releases with the likes of Night Slugs, production credits for a diverse range of artists such as Adele, BANKS, Mark Ronson and serpentwithfeet, and a collaborative project with George FitzGerald as OTHERLiiNE even before factoring stellar solo releases under the Lil Silva moniker using his own vocal, he has continuously combined a broad range of influences to create a transformative, varied discography. After the release of ‘Backwards’ last month alongside Sampha, today Lil Silva announces his long awaited debut album, Yesterday Is Heavy.

Over 10 years in the making, ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’ is a cumulative product of an already remarkable career filled with highlights. An album about stepping out: outside of a comfort zone, and, for Lil Silva, outside of himself. It’s a debut album of heft and heart, but most of all hope – and trusting the process. Buoyed on by the encouragement of long-time collaborators like Jamie Woon and Sampha early in his career (they both implored him to commit his own voice to record), and bolstered by incomparable session experience working with Mark Ronson, Adele and more, the Lil Silva story that started aged 10 in Bedford is beginning full circle. Created primarily in the town he grew up in (and continues to live now), the pervading solace of home courses through the project, while providing the thrilling moments of sleight of hand that Silva has always been capable of.

As he so often does, Lil Silva shares the spotlight with an astonishing international cast of guests. He fuses well-versed modern legends in the shape of Sampha, Ghetts, and Little Dragon with rising stars serpentwithfeet, Charlotte Day Wilson and Skiifall to thrilling effect, the whole time never allowing his deftly dynamic yet considered touch to be outshone throughout. The album has also been created with musical direction from Louis Vuitton musical director and BBC Radio 1 tastemaker Benji B, as well as creative direction from award winning visual artist BAFIC. It’s with the opening track ‘Another Sketch’ however, where his singular talent introduces itself.

With a visual directed by UKMVA Award winner Fenn O’Meally, ‘Another Sketch’ is a prime example of the vast array of talents that Lil Silva possesses. A video that transcends generations of Black Britons (featuring Lil Silva’s own family as well as Sampha), ‘Another Sketch’ focuses on the subject of time. Looking at generations of black britons as monuments, the visual centres on the idea that despite time being able to wear down your appearance, what’s inside of you can never depreciate. The main centrepiece of this is heritage, with archive and newly recorded footage showing Silva’s family and friends enjoying the same activities they did generations ago, spliced with footage and voice notes from one of the lands of his dual heritage, Jamaica. The track itself focuses on a central theme of actions, their consequences and changing our inevitable future, with Lil Silva’s stunning falsetto shining alongside background vocals from serpentwithfeet and an instrumental that initially opens minimalistically before gradually unfurling to unveil elements of his electronic beginnings; a thumping hip hop infused beat and swelling melodic embellishments.

With ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’, Lil Silva reaps the rewards of over a decade of influence to create the debut album he’s always imagined. Simultaneously riding the line between pertinent storytelling and virtuosic production, ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’ charts the story of one of UK music’s unsung heroes taking his time to build something that is truly timeless. Yesterday Is Heavy, but tomorrow is forever.

Bang on trend grooves from the Vivid camp, exploring the current fascination for all things that intersect both the garage and breaks genres. Lead track 'Wicked & Wild' is the one that leans furthest into UKG territory, its bumpy bassline and MC-style vocal giving it heaps of energy and attitude. Flip side instrumentals 'Push Past It' and 'Ronin' meanwhile, evoke the early 2000s spirit of breaksteppers such as Horsepower Productions, the latter especially maintaining the bassline pressure and adding it to the more hardcore vibe of rawer, sampled percussion. Maximum respect!

After we carried Ice Rave back in 2019, Sneaker Social picks up more coded sequences from Filter Dread’s outpost and transmutes them to wax for the good of the dance.

From obfuscated tapes of post-rave skits to slick and grimey bangers, there’s something slippery about the way Filter Dread operates, and it’s led to a highly individual discography that spans 10 years and labels like Ramp, Unknown To The Unknown, Fresh 86 and No Corner. His sound has a stark immediacy that revolves around sampling – just watch him work a live set on his Digitakt and you’ll understand everything. Through simple approaches comes the flexibility to glide between styles, displaying a virtuoso affinity for grime, jungle, dancehall and plenty more, with the means to put his own stamp on everything he touches.

On this new 12” we get six new slabs which slip between rave touchstones with poise, marrying up garish square wave womp with something akin to electro, slipping down into a more overtly grime-licked swerve, nodding to the early sublow days on ‘Asid 88’ and generally doing mad things with gargantuan bass and tuff, deadeye drums, It’s moody in a truly UK, spliff-friendly tradition, but it’s also plenty playful, with enough freakiness to get limbs loosened and a little heat up inside the place.

GHETTO TRAXX is back again.

Sorry for the delay, but working life has hit us harder than we thought.

Finally GTR02 - 'Return of the Sexmachine' is getting really close.

Same as the debut a year ago, it is packed with a variety of sounds from friends of the ghetto.

This time featuring 4 Tracks by Skuum, Toni Moralez, DJ Frankie and Mchy i Porosty. Prepare for machine sex (and love) and get ready again for maximum rave bangerz which will get you back to the toilet.

After more than two decades flexing his muscles on the local underground scene and gaining a legendary cult status on his Tenerife home turf, the island’s most famous postman, as he’s affectionately known by his consorts, Tomás de la Rosa aka Postman breaks radio silence to bulldoze his way through the canyons surrounding his hometown of Santa Cruz into an unknown and unsuspecting world. We present thus, Postman’s first ever album of original bangers, micro chopped two steppers and rage induced breakbeat anthems.

Constructed over the course of global confinement, Seeds of Light marks a return to creative activity from the man who regularly delivers your post (its not just a random artist name). Postman aka Tomás de la Rosa has taken his time, compiling sketches and unfinished songs, rummaging through the deep ends of his hardrive, stitching early production sketches with recent compositions, revising, reediting and rebuilding with a more mature and concise attitude, eventually completing, almost unintentionally, the perfect self referential retrospective album. Far from being just a compilation album, Tomás managed to create an explosive document, suspended in time, in which styles are intertwined regardless of fashions and fads – letting go of the ‘modern’ or ‘up to date’ burden - so common these days in electronic music.

It is not an easy album, like many of his previous work it demands extra attention to experience the full crystallization of his complex sound structures. We find ourselves in front of a truly surgically precise work of art whose result comes as a waterproof war machine, refined and incisive, resonating deep with soul and groove.

Postman develops his sound palette throughout the album from very basic sound snippets into a concrete dance world of synthetic sounds eventually creating a parallel reality where J. Dilla could be living in Chemnitz instead of Detroit and releasing records for a label called Raster-Throw. Glitch sampladelics!

Incursions into Grime are also abundant with nods to the ineffable East Man, reunions with his beloved Funkstörung or many other stimulating revisions of lifelong genres and breaks populate this multidimensional sound space, see soul, dancehall, breakbeat, two step and the UK hardcore continuum.

Special mention to the magnificent fluid artwork by the very talented Catalan visual artist Alba de Corral. A still photo from one of her kinetic AI systems programmed directly in code, which matches perfectly the essence of Postman's brutalist alien sound.

Vinyl limited to 200 copies

Green marbled Vinyl

East Man returns to HI TEK SOUNDS with something a little different… A foray into stompy mechanical Techno, as well as his own hybrid amalgamation of Grime and Techno, 8 Bar Techno, which he has honed over the last few years.

The titular track, Underground Software, opens with a burst of static noise before launching into a stomping kick drum and stab combo, gradually adding hi hats and snares as the track progresses, building into a funky mechanical groove.

The second track is something of a signature tune for East Man, bringing Techno and Grime together to create the hybrid genre of 8 Bar Techno. It fires out the gate from the off, doing exactly what the title implies. This is one for the Grime dances and the Techno raves.

The last track is Primary Source. A slower beat with a plodding thud that folds into a squelchy Techno groove. Full of funk and flavour this EP covers a wide range while maintaining a coherence that few others manage to pull off.

Always surprising sound... Deeply influenced by the nowaday Bass-Music styles... but still Electronica/Synthwave in the mood.

BIG alubm full of creativity and musical skills.

needed !

Throwing hi-def sounds into three-dimensional space and rendering bass in increasingly uncharted waters, Walton arrives on Sneaker Social Club with a future-leaning EP of dance wreckers for the tough crowd.

Even his earliest releases were pushing things forwards as the weightless grime thing gathered momentum, but Walton always swerved the rest of the pack and simply approached grime-rooted club music with his own experimental instincts. His mammoth body of work takes in totemic labels like Tectonic, Hyperdub and Ilian Tape, and as time has passed and music has moved on from micro scenes to a generically fluid individuality, so Walton has grown as an artist. Recent drops including his Maisie By The Sea album have started to embrace more experimental spaces alongside his familiar twist on grime, and this mini-LP for Sneaker continues that level of progression.

On the A side, long time Walton fans will be more than happy with the intensity of ‘PJD’, which is as fierce as we’ve heard Walton go to date. As ever, his beats are never a simple matter, with every hit embellished with needlepoint sound design. The sound zips around the stereo field, but never at the expense of the track’s impact. Still, there’s space for other vibes too, as on the deep, sweeping pads and electronica twitch of ‘Quasar’.

By and large, Walton keeps the pressure up. ‘Rush’ is a bludgeoning instrument and ‘Dread’ teases with a jerky, stop-start demeanour which lands heavy blows when it kicks in. But shorter cuts ‘Detach’ and ‘Shots Fired’ also allow space for other aspects of Walton’s craft to come through. It’s these cuts which add to the overall listening experience and show just how much he ahs to offer as a producer.

The LP version is limited to 1000 copies, pressed on blue vinyl, in a high grade spot-varnished gatefold sleeve.

700 Bliss is the forward-thinking duo of DJ Haram and Moor Mother. Their first full length for Hyperdub is an album of noise rap that ties together the raw edges of club music and hip hop with punk energy, jazz, house-party catharsis, percussion-heavy analogue sound design, and cheeky skits, ranging from experimental rap tracks with rolling hi hats and lyrical bravado, to poetry set to noise and sound collage.

Moor Mother and DJ Haram started collaborating in 2014 and eventually formed 700 Bliss, a blistering live act in Philly's DIY scene, releasing their 2018 debut, Spa 700 on Halcyon Veil / Don Giovanni Records. Since that time, both artists have grown global followings. Moor Mother is a prolific solo artist and collaborator, writer, and member of Black Quantum Futurism while Haram has been curating and creating radio shows, DJing, and producing (including an EP for Hyperdub in 2019).

‘Nothing To Declare’ is a smart, danceable revelation, a chiseled soundscape of dive bombing bass, piercing bleeps, crunchy distortion, and wavering synth lines. Welcoming in a variety of voices from their extended, cross-genre scene, 700 Bliss also bring along a cast of collaborators, including vocalists Orion Sun, Lawfandah, Ase Manual, and Ali Logout (from the band Special Interest), plus Palestinian producer Muqata'a, and writer M Téllez who delivers a surreal sci fi monologue over a pounding kick drum on ‘More Victories’.

‘Nothing To Declare’ is a deeply layered rewriting of hip hop and electronic music that gives more with each listen. You won't hear another rap album like it in 2022.

*repress*

After the recent collaboration with Walton for the last release, this release sees the return of the ‘Stop Flapping Your Gums’ instrumentals, with the second volume in the series.

The A side, ‘Jaws’, is a sharp and steely hard stepper with a deep brooding bass line that evokes an ominous feeling. The skeletal framework of drums prop up the sub bass, lurching inexorably forward towards an unknown terror. Produced around the same time as the album on Planet Mu you will have heard it in East Man sets on Balamii, Just Jam or Rinse FM, usually accompanied by Killa P on the mic, laying his patois infused lyrics over the top of this dread riddim.

The B side is another track that those of you familiar with East Man sets will definitely know. ‘Border Clash’ is an up tempo onslaught of distorted kick drums and sub bass coupled with clattering, wood-block percussive stabs that lend an almost primal urgency to the beat. This one is ready to mash up any dance floor… Just turn the lights out and the subs up!

a1. East Man - Jaws
b2. East Man - Border Clash

The dutch producer Halp releases his debut 12" on Golden Mist Records. 'Polar' EP is a contemporary artifact plated by sino-grime, where beautiful and warm melodies are melted in the cold world of machinery. A manifest to the unknown territories that our civilization is exploring, where the development of 'Artificial Intelligence' and the border between humans and machines is being narrowed.

Sheffield born production prodigy Lloyd SB has long been a secret weapon of the underground instrumental grime scene. His assertive club tracks have been staples in radio sets from the likes of Murlo, Scratcha DVA, Slackk and more, with his dominance over the more hard-edged side of grime production looking set to continue with his inaugural outing for Gobstopper Records, '8ths, 16ths/Princess Anna'. Opening to a cacophony of warped snares, the release's A-side swells early on with a glistening soundscape, providing the perfect build thanks to buried mechanised percussion before pushing its rhythmic elements to the forefront. Using full frontal percussive artillery as its main focus, '8ths, 16ths' almost completely removes any trace of melody in favour of unrelenting kicks, twisted snares and glass shatter sounds - providing a destructive take on the modern club blueprint. The release's second track exhibits a more melodic if no less frenetic side to Lloyd SB's production. Set to a pummelling bed of laser-esque bass sounds, 'Princess Anna' is a chaotic blend of 8 bit bursts, rapid-fire arpeggios and affected cymbals. Finding rhythm in the track's space, 'Princess Anna''s beat becomes more and more sparse as it progresses, utilising dizzying panning and hints of vocal chops as the sole human element in an instrumental that's as hard-edged and cold as they come. As an artist that's widely considered amongst his contemporaries to be one step ahead of the game, Lloyd SB's debut release for Gobstopper is a disorientating but focused example of forward-thinking club music. Both tracks embody the sound of a master of their craft, experimenting with their genre to push it into more devastating, and above all else, original places.

Absolutely lethal, classic footwork from these three originators — body-rocking, invigorating and startling, hybrid without compromise. The A is route-one dancefloor murder, honed and nasty, vintage Chicago and Detroit gone clear across the border; the flip is a fiercely dazzling juke vocal collage, bare and hard as nails.

When Will We Learn sees O$VMV$M reunite with Gloucester voice of thunder Rider Shafique for the spiritual successor to 2017’s Lion (LAVA LAVA). These tracks have been circling around in various forms for a few years and graced dancefloors / soundsystems from Riga-Bristol-NYC - but for various reasons are only now coming to light. The A side features Rider delivering a wake up call / warning over a Computer Paul via Radiophonic workshop style rhythm track while on the B side Dj Neek sends it through the desk on the fly and strips the instrumental down to its core essence.

This is a big release for Tectonic as label boss Pinch combines forces with Kahn to produce two killer rhythm tracks that meld deepness with futuristic dancehall powers. Normally this would be plenty to get excited about anyway - but if you then add the vocal talents of Killa P, Irah & Long Range - aka ‘Killa’s Army’ - there is even more reason! Dubstep meets grime meets dancehall, while Bristol meets Brixton.

All three MCs in Killa’s Army have their own, very distinctive but complimentary styles, bringing a hard, uncompromising vocal delivery to match Pinch & Kahn’s tough beats.

Long Range opens the track and sets pace, his rapid, agile lyrical flow bouncing off the distorted thumping of a darkside 142bpm dancehall-flavoured rhythm. Killa P unleashes the chorus with full force, then setting up the next verse. Irah drops it an octave and holds the mood with his unique tone and delivery. The track pulls back then for a moment, like a filmic interlude, before the General himself, Killa P comes in to finish off anyone who might try test, like an end of level boss. ‘Crossing The Line’ will be rattling out of speakers for many years to come, no doubt!

Flip the vinyl over and you’ll find another, instrumental track, from Pinch & Kahn. ‘Send Out’ is a dubstep banger that holds a deep mood whilst pushing the energy levels through the roof. A rhythm track that has been pulled up, wheeled; set dance floors ablaze with it’s almost heavy-metal levels of energy. An early version of ‘Send Out’ originally appeared as an exclusive track on Kahn & Neek’s Fabriclive mix but is now available properly for the first time.

Blue Vinyl

Hi Tek Sounds is the new label from East Man (AKA Basic Rhythm) set up after his debut album for Planet Mu 'Red, White & Zero'. The first release on Hi Tek Sounds is the first in a series of instrumental EP's from East Man, entitled Stop Flapping Your Gums, with the aim of exploring the deeper, instrumental side of the Hi Tek sound. The first two tracks on the EP, 'Twilight' and 'Future Tek', are sharp and steely, with angular rhythms. A skeletal frame work of kick drums, hard snares, sub bass stabs and brief synth splashes. Produced around the same time as the album on Planet Mu you may have heard them in East Man sets on Rinse FM or NTS, or his mixes for Resident Advisor and RedBull Radio. The B side opens with 'Nose Bleed', an up tempo onslaught of distorted kick drums and sub bass with metallic stabs and an emotive synth line. The closing track 'Mash Head' is a slower, more dub driven affair. Taking things down a notch for the head nodders.