Beats News

For their second release of the year, Josiah Hartley’s Phuture Shock label welcome up-and-coming Manchester producer Szajna to the ranks; armed with his debut solo 12” ‘M41’ EP.

Teffa makes a more than welcome return to Foundation Audio with the 'Advance EP' featuring four of his greatest productions to date! The more attentive dubstep connoisseurs amongst you might well recognise 'Advance' which has been doing the rounds for a hot minute now mashing up countless raves. The rest of the EP ain't no joke either.. pure FYAH from front to back! Love to Teffa each n every.

The return of our VA series is marked with the new chapter ‘Freaky Friends Volume 1’ featuring the likes of P.Leone, Nasty King Kurl, Sentient State, Ole Mic Odd, Dj Swagger, and Main Phase.

Fresh off the back of two sold out releases, UKG imprint Time Is Now returns with another slab of dancefloor weapons from London based producer Holloway.

A very special boxset that will see for the very first time, the iconic Ram Trilogy Chapters 1 to 6 (produced by Andy C, Shimon & Ant Miles) brought together in a bespoke set. It will also include a 1 off slipmatt. The seminal 6 parts released from 1998 to 2002 by RAM Trilogy (Andy C, Ant Miles & Shimon) brought together for the very first time in a limited edition boxset. In celebration of 10 years RSD & 25 Years of RAM Records

After three years of throwing parties, we’re thrilled to announce something we’ve been
dreaming of for a while now, the launch of our label and the first Awkwardly Social record
release.

Similar to our events and mix series, it is our goal to use the label as a platform for exciting, up
and coming artists from within our community and beyond. Working together with our friend,
the very talented Greek-born, Berlin-based DJ and producer Aroent therefore has been a real
pleasure and something that felt natural from the get go. We hope you enjoy this wicked set of
forward thinking club tracks as much as we do!

Early plays by Ben UFO, Bonebrokk, E-Unity, Gramrcy, Opium Hum, Natureboy Gold, Yushh
and more. Big ups to everyone supporting the record so far!
Artwork by VOJD
Mastering by Andreas Lupo Lubich

Next up on Lost City Archives we have 4 dance floor specials from the man himself Coco Bryce. Essential for any ravers crate. Don’t Sleep.

Masterworks Music are back on the vinyl trail with their 15th 12" release, with Italian disco stallion Gledd in charge of the disco funk.

While some EPs might offer some down time and lower-tempo numbers, Soul Shapes goes for the dancefloor jugular with all four cuts designed to get you up and grooving.

Lead track 'Light of Florence' cleverly builds with strings and stylish background synths before dropping into a soul-searching vocal and gorgeous keys. With driving percussion, a walking bassline and cleverly restrained dynamics, it builds and bubbles with endless groove.

Follow up 'I Just Want You' builds on that teasing disco funk by upping the tempo and adding in blaring horns, a sizzling Rhodes breakdown that will have you playing air keys and yet more disco groove. Peak time, warm up, opening slot, closing track - this will work anywhere.

On the flipside, 'Of Rainbows' is a brilliantly-worked filter disco track, cleverly teasing in the disco loop with drop-dead-gorgeous strings before dropping back down to a deep house (and we mean deeeeeep house) bassline that carries the track from start to finish.

Gledd closes out the all-killer EP with 'Your Mind.' With Chic-style wah-wah guitars, clever drum fills and yet another stonking bassline, it's another beautifully crafted disco groover that cleverly blurs the line between peak-time heater and perfect warm-up material.

These run of releases on ‘Existence Is Resistance’ comes from the Legendary Proto Garage Record Label ‘Same People’, and see’s Persian & Long time musical partner DJ Texsta, repressing some of their most pioneering UKG E.P.s.

Repressed for 2020 on White 12"

One of the most important artists in the development of the Horo sound, Astral Projection is the first full length ASC album for the Horo label. Astral Projection follows on clearly from 'Imagine The Future' with the development of the Grey Area sound progressing and becoming intrinsic to a large majority of ASC's current work. But this LP is not a Grey Area addendum, Astral Projection is a luminous artistic statement from a sonic perfectionist who the term 'sound designer' was made to define. An accomplished and much respected ambient producer, ASC weaves his talent for soaring emotive soundscapes with his undeniable rhythmic prowess across a cohesive 12 track sonic voyage that again accomplishes a rare goal in todays electronic music landscape - a commanding listen from beginning to end. Very few artists are as prolific and consistent as ASC, but we are confident Astral Projection will be revered as one of his finest moments in years to come.

Space•lab records launches its interstellar mission to bring wigglers and warpers from all corners of the galaxy with a V/A made in Birmingham. Adam Pits kicks things off with Real Taste Of Gravity, a rising, trancey journey with a wonderful proggy bassline and synths-a-twinkling. Desert Sound Colony & Dr. Baird combine for the warpy, acid-flecked bassy roller Space Bass Express before Breaka and Adam Pits join for a classy breaks track with bubbling EFX called The Show Must Go On, named after Nic reversed a van into a parked car after setting up the space•lab party where they all met. Inner Zone (Rupert Worthington, Alex Anderson and label head Nic Baird) round things off with their debut release Niaaru - a sunrise weeper for those who like breakbeats with their coco pops.

Asquith brings his own imitable brand of UK garage/rave/breaks hybrid to Hypercolour for an EP brimming with real underground vibes.

Hot on the heels of a series of 12”s on his own Asquith label, the Lobster Theremin head honcho drops four cuts of heavy, distorted bass brain melters on the ‘Time & Space’ EP.

Danish duo Lyra Valenza (aka Hjalte and Jens Konrad) operates on the outskirts of contemporary electronic dance music. Armed with a playful approach and a patchwork of digital and analogue equipment, Lyra Valenza carved their own space in the Copenhagen scene by genre-blending Jungle, UK Garage, and Footwork into a mix of forward-facing and euphoric dance music for 2020 and beyond. A testament to the duo's unique approach to sound design, they were selected for this year's SHAPE - a platform for innovative music and audiovisual art from Europe.

Lyra Valenza's latest EP, Nightshade Edition, is a package of sweet and dangerous cuts to the taste of dystopian romance. The prime dance floor material hits with metallic percussion and bursts of fluttering synths tuned with just the right amount of trance. From stepping UKG, to lush digital soundscapes, the four breaks heavy tracks are hyper-modern sonic experiments processed through a retrospective haze.

The Nightshade Edition EP is released on Lyra Valenza's own Petrola 80 label. It follows their 2018 debut EP "Scan Deliver" on UK imprint Opal Tapes and an appearance on this year's Kulør 006 compilation.

DJ Support
Marcel Dettmann - "thx"
Carista - "nice one! Love low b4. Thanks for sending"
The Black Madonna - "Great!"
Rroxymore - "really good EP !!!"
Desert Sound Colony - "All about that Sport Mode. Sick track!"
Danielle - "wickeddd!"
Otik - "this is seriously good"
Ciel - "wonderful release"

First Second Label drop their first 12' of the year from sub-tech stalwart and Woozy resident Sputnik One. Four tracks scaling intense percussive workouts and low end mutations. Early support from the likes of Ben UFO, re:ni, Peach & more.

Danny Scrilla returns for 2020 with six tracks of varying flavours for Cosmic Bridge. One of the key and foundational artists on the label, his sound is widely appreciated from forest raves to tiny basements alike.

Low frequency mastermind, Zygos, makes his Albion Collective debut alongside returning roots commander, Dubbing Sun. Their single, “Cradle To The Grave”, empowers the dancefloor in a unifying steppas style. Intensifying the marching bassline, prophecies from Rider Shafique and Ras Addis urge the revolution forward.

Reinforcing the A-side, Digid leads the lion charge, churning the bassline with rock steady grit. Stripping the anthem back to stone-shaking 140, Somah rebuilds the B-side with Trinity Centre brickwork and trenchtown mortar.

Reaching forward while honouring its roots, Albion Collective adds new dubstep super-powers to its roster while welcoming back some of the label’s earliest titans. Zygos and Dubbing Sun’s original mix and its flips are set to keep raves stomping from the “Cradle To The Grave”.

repressed!

Lucid Dreams is the self-titled, new project from Jason Luxton aka Overlook, which also features close friends Dean Warburton, Joe Theobald & the vocal talents of Manuela Marchis. With Shades of post-punk, trip-hop and film score dynamics, The Lucid Dreams EP is an immersive multi-genre listening experience that travels through murky underworlds and dream-like hazes.

From 'Stone's Throw' to 'Hallucinogenics' the ‘Lucid Dreams’ EP plays more like an LP, with a narrative amalgamating the different moods created by Luxton to present something that feels clear and complete in its vision.

*Repress*

'Prole Art Threat' is producer Anthoney Hart's second LP for Planet Mu under his East Man alias, after 2018's well received debut 'Red White & Zero'. It brings together a set of MCs from all over London, Darkos and Eklipse from East London and Lyrical Strally from near Feltham who were on the first album, Ny Ny and Mic Ty also from East London, Streema and 'Vision Crew' member Whack Eye from Lewisham plus Fernando Kep, an MC from the burgeoning Brazil grime scene. They work across a cohesive set of tight riddims forged from thoughtful amalgams of grime, dancehall and drum & bass. The album takes its name from a Fall song/mission statement of the same title, the band being self-consciously working class and led by a brilliant autodidact in Mark E Smith. East Man relates that the title is to be taken as “a reflection of working-class creativity and how the establishment marginalise us and (perhaps on a subconscious level) see us as a threat.” Les Back, author of 'The Art of Listening' and 'Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics and Culture (with Vron Ware)' contributes liner notes to the record: East Man understands the force and the democracy of the mic. Listening to Prole Art Threat is like being at a dance. As the mic is passed between each of the MCs, a different tale is ‘elevated... off the map’ as Ny Ny puts it. We hear instalmentsfrom Forest Gate, Lee, Lewisham and Manor Park as these ‘lyrical gaffers’ and ’top boys and girls’ tell tough stories of life under the scrutiny of the ‘Feds’ in a brutal and divided city. The bars and rhymes document what it means to live here; from the double standards applied to the sexuality of young girls and boys to the corrosive violence of everyday life. All this is dissected without compromise. This is not just aLondon story though, the inclusion of Fernando Kep from the burgeoning Grime scene in Brazil is evidence of the outernational reach of the music. The tracks on East Man’s album explode the wilful ignorance of those who see ‘the working class’ in contemporary London as code for whiteness. This is the sound of a proletarian urban multiculture, made from Caribbean and African influences, sound system culture, pirate radio and the inexorable rhythms of Grime, Drum & Bass, Techno and Dancehall. It is the stirring of the "white" & "black" working classes who are living together and coming together on their own terms in sound. ‘Making music because you love it... what the fuck else could you do?’ as East Man says. The tracks and voices you are holding in your hands are, as a result urgent, vital, as hard nails and twice as sharp.

Soundsmith and technology rebel Katatonic Silentio back now on a solo LP one year after her first personal release.
Bass missiles, encompassing atmospheres & killer fast focused drums shouts, everything is intently encased in an emancipation act, an insurgent statute against our own oppressions.

Seven tracks pathway leading to a final act of awareness and deliverance from ourselves, without any aversion to go far away, beyond all flags, all frontiers, all countries, all barriers, all beliefs.

Haunting, ethereal, sublime. This already beautiful composition gets the Roque treatment. No digital, no repress.

The artist has chosen to donate proceeds from this release to Black Girls Code, who aim to empower girls of color ages 7 to 17 to become innovators in STEM fields, leaders in their communities, and builders of their own futures through exposure to computer science and technology.

This 12 track album is truly beautiful. Drawing influences from jungle and liquid as well as low-fi hip hop, with flecks of soul and RnB, all washed over with cool, ethereal touches. Facing Jinx has worked with his friends, people he met along the way for this record resulting in every track featuring a different collaborative vocal.

You will struggle to find an artist who has contributed to the culture as much as East London pioneer, Footsie. His position in the music hall of fame is firmly cemented with his foundations paving the way for thousands after him.

Already having garnered support from the likes of Mixmag and other vital taste makers around the globe, Overdue's continued onslaught is led on by none other than the highly talented, US based artist Dalek One. Keeping the torch brightly lit, the eerie soundscapes and forward-minded arrangements, spellbound within the "Witchcraft EP" serve as a perfect follow-up and yet another example of superb quality.

Going straight for the flip-side, "Witchcraft" lunges straight into a tribal encantation of overdriven tape - rhythms like water luring you towards mammoth bass surges - ecstatically driven forward by bold drums and unparalleled groove. Swaths of low
frequencies hitting your every fibre alongside enthralling percussive movements - danger of high impact on sound systems guaranteed.

Lowering the needle on the other side, "Breakthrough" does literally that. As it sets off with a rainy storm - industrious drone and thunder - metallic clangs propelling us onward into what turns out to be an absolute destroyer, full-on armageddon kind of banger. Heavily overdriven bass surges kick some sense into you as the off-kilter drums and experimental switch-ups keep you yearning for more. Minimal sound system
music executed at its finest.

Finishing off this highly combustible collection of music, "Terror Strike" leaves no prisoners as its tribal atmosphere baits unsuspecting listeners into a low frequency rapture, showcasing Dalek One's intricate sound design once again.

"It all started with Young H and Dread linking up on a tune, then they asked Rider to come in with a hook, and finally I got hold of it and worked with those elements for this version which we decided to release as a new record. I built Red as a heavyweight dance floor tune off the back of the energy response when playing 'We a talk' , the two seem to work well together. " Ishan Sound

a a1 We a Talk (Remix) feat. Dread MC & Rider Shafique

786 Recordings presents the next release of their 786X series.
 New signing Dalek One on the buttons for the second round 
 of this war sounds installment.

New weapons for your turntables.

4 ethereal beats which inspire evolution and transcend all borders, walls and language barriers by Jostereo & Radius ETC

Official re-issue of a 90's classic!