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Given her extensive and varied recording catalog, if you're looking for a place to explore the talents of the late Nina Simone, then 1965's I Put a Spell On You is a great place to dip your toes - particular if you want to start with her more pop oriented sides.
The set features a truly eclectic mixture including stabs at jazz (the instrumental "Blues On Purpose"), R&B (the title track), French chanson ("Ne Me Quitte Pas") and a number of show tunes.

Seit der Veröffentlichung seines von Kritikern hochgelobten Debütalbums 'Come Around and Love Me' im Jahr 2023 hat Jalen Ngonda eine kometenhafte Karriere hingelegt. Der Song 'If You Don’t Want My Love' wurde zum viralen Hit und wurde bis heute 253 Millionen Mal gestreamt. Jalen war in einer Reihe von großen Fernsehsendungen zu Gast, darunter 'The Graham Norton Show', 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' und 'Later with Jools Holland'. Er war Support-Act für Thee Sacred Souls auf ihrer US-Tournee und hat als Headliner unzählige Clubkonzerte auf der ganzen Welt ausverkauft. Jetzt, im Jahr 2026, während die Glut seines Debüts noch hell lodert, bereitet sich Jalen Ngonda auf die Veröffentlichung seines mit Spannung erwarteten zweiten Albums 'Doctrine Of Love' vor.
Die harte Arbeit und die unermüdlichen Tourneen nach seinem Debüt haben sein Handwerk gestärkt. Seine Botschaft: 'Die Lehre der Liebe besagt, dass jeder Gedanke und jede Handlung in erster Linie von Mitgefühl für andere geleitet sein sollte, denn Liebe ist der höchste Maßstab für den Wert eines Menschen.' Die Titel des neuen Albums sind aus diesem Credo entstanden. Mit seinem tiefen Wissen und seiner Liebe zum klassischen Soul vermittelt Jalen Ngonda Authentizität in Hülle und Fülle. 'Doctrine Of Love' verbindet Pop-Sensibilität und soulige Melodien mit roher Kraft und Groove und erweitert die orchestralen Arrangements von 'Come Around And Love Me' um bläserreiche und gospelartige Backing Vocals, wodurch ein äußerst stilvolles Beispiel für moderne Soul-Kunst entsteht. Tipp!

Red "Eruption" Marble Blend" Doppel-Vinyl, inklusive 16-seitigem Booklet mit Texten und ausführlichen Liner Notes. Ursprünglich 1998 veröffentlicht, fing ,South Central Thynk Taynk" von Abstract Tribe Unique (Abstract Rude, Fat Jack, Zulu Butterfly Priest, Irie Lion King und DJ Drez) einen entscheidenden Moment in der Underground-Szene von Los Angeles ein - als junge schwarze Künstler den Hip-Hop von Grund auf neu erfanden. Mit einer Mischung aus jazzigen Beats, spiritueller Einsicht und einer äußerst unabhängigen Produktion wurde das Album zu einer Hymne auf Selbstständigkeit und kreative Rebellion. Jetzt wird dieser lange nicht mehr erhältliche Klassiker von Rhymesayers Entertainment als Deluxe-2xLP-Set mit einem Text-Booklet und einem Bonustrack neu aufgelegt und kehrt für eine neue Generation zurück. Im kulturellen Zentrum der Platte steht Project Blowed, eine legendäre Crew aus L.A., die von Abstract Rude und Aceyalone gegründet wurde und eine Reihe von Rap-Innovatoren hervorbrachte, deren Einfluss bis heute im globalen Hip-Hop zu spüren ist. Während der Mainstream-Rap den G-Funk-Boom der Westküste aufgriff, schlug die Blowed-Crew einen anderen Weg ein - geprägt von Jazz, radikaler Politik und afrozentrischem Futurismus. ,South Central Thynk Taynk" ist eine vielschichtige Zeitkapsel aus dieser revolutionären Zeit, die Ab Rudes tiefgründige Lyrik mit Fat Jacks genreübergreifendem Produktionsansatz verbindet und eine poetische Reflexion über Familie, Kampf und künstlerische Bestimmung schafft. Diese Neuauflage enthält den Titel ,L.A. Styles Back (Project Blowed Remix)" mit einer generationsübergreifenden Besetzung von Schwergewichten - Aceyalone, Myka 9, Medusa, Pigeon John, Blu, 2Mex, Ellay Khule, Riddlore und NGAFSH -, die unterstreicht, wie die Underground-Szene von L.A. seit Jahrzehnten ein kreatives Epizentrum geblieben ist. ,South Central Thynk Taynk" ist mehr als ein Kultartefakt; es ist ein lebendiges Dokument der Transformation, der Gemeinschaft und der künstlerischen Kraft.















[o] 15 : L.A. Styles Back (Project Blowed Remix)” [feat. Aceyalone, Myka 9, Medusa, Pigeon John, Blu, 2Mex, Ellay Khule, Riddlore, NGAFSH]

Last year Ace Records were delighted to reissue The Brides of Funkenstein’s debut LP from 1978, “Funk Or Walk”. Featuring their hit single ‘Disco To Go’, this album put the Brides on the map and sold strongly.

Before sessions commenced for a second album, Lynn Mabry left the group before sessions commenced for a second album, leaving Dawn Silva alone at the altar. George Clinton added P-Funk backing singers Jeanette McGruder and Sheila Horne to the mix, creating a three-pronged vocal attack.
Sessions featured the cream of the P-Funk players including keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell, bassist Bootsy Collins and guitarist Garry Shider. The resulting album, released in 1979, was even better that their debut.

The title track ran for over 15 minutes on side one, showcasing the vocal and musical prowess of all concerned. Other tracks included ’Party Up In Here’, ‘Smoke Signals’, ‘Mother May I?’ and the gorgeous ballad ‘Didn’t Mean To Fall In Love’.
Although it did not spawn a hit single, “Never Buy Texas From A Cowboy” sold as strongly as “Funk Or Walk” and over time has been hailed as a classic P-Funk album.
With liner notes from Ace’s Ian Shirley, we are delighted to release it on orange vinyl and CD. You don’t need your mother’s permission to buy it either.

Seit der Veröffentlichung seines von Kritikern hochgelobten Debütalbums 'Come Around and Love Me' im Jahr 2023 hat Jalen Ngonda eine kometenhafte Karriere hingelegt. Der Song 'If You Don’t Want My Love' wurde zum viralen Hit und wurde bis heute 253 Millionen Mal gestreamt. Jalen war in einer Reihe von großen Fernsehsendungen zu Gast, darunter 'The Graham Norton Show', 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' und 'Later with Jools Holland'. Er war Support-Act für Thee Sacred Souls auf ihrer US-Tournee und hat als Headliner unzählige Clubkonzerte auf der ganzen Welt ausverkauft. Jetzt, im Jahr 2026, während die Glut seines Debüts noch hell lodert, bereitet sich Jalen Ngonda auf die Veröffentlichung seines mit Spannung erwarteten zweiten Albums 'Doctrine Of Love' vor.
Die harte Arbeit und die unermüdlichen Tourneen nach seinem Debüt haben sein Handwerk gestärkt. Seine Botschaft: 'Die Lehre der Liebe besagt, dass jeder Gedanke und jede Handlung in erster Linie von Mitgefühl für andere geleitet sein sollte, denn Liebe ist der höchste Maßstab für den Wert eines Menschen.' Die Titel des neuen Albums sind aus diesem Credo entstanden. Mit seinem tiefen Wissen und seiner Liebe zum klassischen Soul vermittelt Jalen Ngonda Authentizität in Hülle und Fülle. 'Doctrine Of Love' verbindet Pop-Sensibilität und soulige Melodien mit roher Kraft und Groove und erweitert die orchestralen Arrangements von 'Come Around And Love Me' um bläserreiche und gospelartige Backing Vocals, wodurch ein äußerst stilvolles Beispiel für moderne Soul-Kunst entsteht. Tipp!

Following their 2023 LP Presents, Nathan Nelson's American Cream Band bring the Twin City heat back to Quindi with an album rooted in duality. From the yin and yang party-starting A side and meditative B side to the dual-attack boy-girl vocals, the nature of opposites and equals steer the expansive, artful strain of rock n' roll that spill out of this wholly unique Minnesotan export. For the ever intriguing Quindi, it's a strident step into Spring after the frosty introspection of Roudi Vagou & Läuten der Seele's Taghelle Nacht. While the world burns and injustice prevails, Twin is a celebration of unity and radical expression-all the more urgent against the backdrop of authoritarian overreach and righteous protest that has whipped through Minneapolis in recent times.
Twin continues Nelson's drive at the helm of American Cream Band to draw in a colourful cast of players to feed into his orgiastic sound, meshing the trance-induction of krautrock with the irrepressible funk of the post-punk-new-wave explosion. But principal among the cast of characters and forming a central tenet to the identity of this album is Liz Buhmann, lead vocalist and a formidable, playful foil to Nelson's own Midwestern twang. Around the electric spark between Buhmann and Nelson, a heavy duty ensemble wrangle guitar, bass, sax, a cornucopia of synths and a battery of percussion into all manner of sonic forms.
The double-sided concept manifests throughout Twin. On 'Call Me' Buhmann sings in French to contrast Nelson's English, while the strident strut of the NYC disco groove is offset by an inherent dreaminess that turns the track into a more cosmic kind of dancefloor workout. 'Ethical Vampire' is a spiky cut with a garage rock patina that spirals into a psychedelic, synth-soaked get-down. 'Don't Burn The House Down' is a loose and limber roller that captures Can at their funkiest along with the hypnotic vibe of other such esteemed long format jammers, but American Cream Band boils that energy into a hook-laden art pop sensibility before a gentle, drawn out landing.
Even the more pensive moments on Twin find space for friction. For all its tender, smoky temperament, 'Leda and the Swan' lets the electric piano and guitar fray at the edges and bleed into the red while Mat Heinrich's tumbling drums lurch with pent-up intensity on the one. 'No Funeral Necessary' skirts around the mellow pools of new age but prefers to let liberally doused Tape Echo tweak out Alex Meffert's honeyed sax inflections and Buhmann and Nelson's disparate sermons.
Nelson describes Twin as "an oppositorum coincidentia" - a reference to the mystical Latin concept of the coincidence of opposites that suggests contradictory ideas 'fall together' in a higher reality. Beyond the sound of the album, this idea also manifests in the cover photography by Sho Nikado and the swans on the LP labels by Autumn Garrington. As freewheeling and wide-open as American Cream Band feels, nothing appears by accident. The end result feels like a nourishing whole - rich with substance and nuance, deep enough to be explored and absorbed yet also so brazen and immediate you can't help but feel its surface charms from the first thrusts of 'The Hive Is Pissed' to the last ripples of 'We're Not So Sinister'.

Trace represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of Gridlock, bridging their earlier industrial roots with expansive ambient and IDM-influenced soundscapes.

Released in early 2001, Trace received critical praise and underground acclaim. Reviewers highlighted its blend of melodic drones reminiscent of Brian Eno with fractured beats and immersive ambient textures. Its evolving percussion and layered atmospheres marked a maturation of Gridlock’s original ethos, moving away from harsh industrial noise toward a more melodic, ambient, and cerebral sound.

The duo continued this trajectory on their final album, Formless, before disbanding, leaving behind a small but highly influential catalog. In tribute to Mike Wells, who passed away in 2022, Viasonde is reintroducing Gridlock’s work with the blessing of Wells’ family.

Second album of french incendiary fake big band Parasite Jazz. A krautrock, jazz-non-jazz, experimental album recorded along four seasons by three musicians (Alex Larsen, Tamara Goukassova & Théo Delaunay) from the french fringes ; members of Succhiamo, Diagonale des Yeux, Simple Music Experience, Violent Quand on Aime ... featuring Radio Hito, Kyle Knapp (Deliluh) & Hochiwah.



—

After its first release in 2023, the tiny big band Parasite Jazz brings its public iterations to fruition with “♫”, a testament to an alternate reality, matured voyaging across France over the span of four seasons.



It sees the music flee through exuberant forests and steep troglodytes ; a parallel genre movie with a soundtrack of diluvian rhythms, mocking chants, jazz noir and voodoo accidents. In this shifting, autonomous world, the elastic orchestra—whose members Radio Hito, Valentin Noiret, Kyle Knapp, and Hochiwah keep on appearing and disappearing—plays for nocturnal secrets and feverish cavalcades.

Limo Trax returns with what it does best - four big tunes from producers on the rise. Kevin Toro and Fragoso give us a sneak preview of what's to come in their forthcoming Limo EPs with two floor-filling nuggets on the A-side, and on the B-side, Limo Byte and Nug-Net alums Danny David & j.me take the next step with their Limo vinyl debuts. These are four ultra-playable cuts for serious DJs playing in any scenario.

Bolka is known as the man with the cap. His cap has lived through a lot: his glitchy and microtonal experiments, studies at Institute of Sonology in The Hague or through countless performative works. A few years ago, Bolka’s cap fell apart. By that time he was already a fixture on the slovak experimental scene, but only releasing his debut album, “smutné stropy.” He started wearing new caps from then: somehow reminiscent of the old one, but much more varied — same as “smutné stropy,” bubbling with motifs, charming humour and pop sensitivity layered over detailed soundscapes popping with surprises.

On schwarzkopf, Bolka returns wishing for a thick black hair. With his charming love songs, that are positioned somewhere between a tightly run freak folk orchestra, deconstructed ballads and colorful ecstatic melancholy, he creates an album that thrives on juxtapositions that are completely unique, yet strangely familiar. Bolka’s songwriting is at once tender and irreverent — lovestruck whispering suddenly tripping over absurdist jokes and surreal images that fizz like soda. His songs move in that strange space between vulnerability and mischief, where intimate confessions collide with radical playfulness and the poetic rubs shoulders with the delightfully ridiculous.

On schwarzkopf, Bolka expands his world with a wide circle of collaborators and an even richer sonic palette. The album is meticulously detailed yet carefree: delicate moments sit next to sudden explosions, drifting from gentle pop to bursts of noise. Toward the end, the album even slips into a footwork-infused remix by Kodiki, passes through Julek ploski’s signature neon-baroque string perspective, and briefly wanders into Lénok’s cinematic sonic world. Bolka sings that he wants to dissolve into a healing ointment, to be ground in a mortar with calendula — and he invites us into this musical spa with him: a place that stings a little but ultimately soothes, a gorgeous soundscape that is both painful and joyful at the same time.

Clear Coloured Vinyl incl. Booklet in silk screened pvc sleeve

Sound fragments unfold across Zurich, making loss, memory, and cultural change physically and acoustically perceptible. In The Rhythm of Design, Zurich-based fine arts duo Michael Meier & Christoph Franz explore urban displacement and its impact on the local music scene.

Focusing on six venues that have disappeared or are under threat, the artists collected materials on site—wood, metal, and other architectural elements—and, with the support of professional instrument builders, transformed them into six musical instruments. Six artists and groups connected to these spaces—namely Kalabrese, Tobibi Ferrari-Bienz, Rafal Skoczek, Lucien Badoux & Jeremy Sauter, Nicola Kazimir, and Dualism—each composed a piece for them, forming the basis for site-specific performances in September 2025. Rather than performing as an ensemble, the works—ranging from experimental funk and punk to kraut, noise, and drone—unfolded simultaneously in spatial fragments at the original locations. Only through movement and listening across the city did the composition emerge as a whole. ​​The work was realized in collaboration with the City of Zurich, Art in Public Space (KiöR).

Eight months after the original performances took place, the pieces are released via Switzerland-based publishing platform Präsens Editionen. The record—available as a limited-edition coloured vinyl with a special artwork, as a digital album, and for streaming—carries the fragmented sounds of Zurich into a new form of collective memory, extending the work beyond its original locations as a lasting document of urban transformation.


* Edition of 300 clear color vinyl
* Special artwork feat. silk-screen printed plastic sleeve and an extensive booklet, designed by award-winning graphic design studio A Language, Melina Wilson and Martin Stoecklin
* Published by Präsens Editionen

Bliss Point is proud to welcome the Bogotá born, New York based Matük to the label with Sendero, a collection dripping with life, with lust, with joy in the face of it all.

Birthed from weekend-long studio sessions in the heat of New York summer, Sendero is luscious and visceral party music, crackling with the spontaneous possibility that runs through city streets as temperatures peak, asses throw and emotions run high.

Hailing from Colombia and deeply immersed in the New York underground, Matük’s influences collide into an ecstatic tapestry on Sendero, blending the rich traditions of Afro-Caribbean musics with experimental and club sonics, long the sounds of joy as defiance from deep within the imperial core.

Many paths cross on Sendero. “Ricotta” features vocals from BRAVA, the Basque DJ and MC whose raw, infectious spirit has injected new energy into the international bass and footwork scene. She is joined by Argentinian-Colombian artist FEDRA on synth and vocals, transforming voice notes the trio sung into their phones over a long weekend of dancing into a party anthem of their own. “Lio”, the EP opener, pairs Mexico’s Renn Loop with Matük himself, trading sultry, heated frustrations over latinx futurist production. Things slow down on “De; Dioses y Pantallas”, a yearning, introspective plea to the night sky, before returning to the party with the bouncing, acid-fueled remix of “Ricotta” from Mexico City’s Soos.

Sendero is a snapshot of a scene in motion, a document of serendipity and collaboration, music made in the long tradition of enjoyment as a revolutionary act.

Filmmaking and music-making share a common element of worldbuilding. Whole cloth, environments are raised in which a perspective can be placed; the viewer, the listener, is taken on a ride into the unknown for a time. Movie, the newest album by DMV-based duo Lifted, is like a film shot with microphones rather than cameras, using the pacing, spatialization, and semiotics of cinematic sound design to lead us through a surreal soundworld that draws as much from Foley artistry as dub, jazz, and electronic music. Musical elements and field recordings shift in and out of focus, collaged in spontaneous improvisation sessions on CDJs by the core duo of Andrew Field-Pickering (Max D, Dolo Percussion, Beautiful Swimmers) and Matt Papich (Co La, Ecstatic Sunshine). We may not see where we are, but our ears give us all the information we need.

We open on a pedal steel, played by More Eaze, but it’s been warped and slowed, gradually pitching upward until it's met by drums and electronics. Imagine the THX logo emerging onscreen. Movie is bookended by two related themes, “The Ice Chewers (Opening Credits), ” and “Midnight Snack (End Credits), ” giving the spatial experiments at the heart of the record form and focus. If there’s a broader narrative to latch onto, it’s in the transition moments, the juxtaposition of various field recordings that indicate movement of characters through space and life happening at its own pace. Tracks are defined by other thematic elements: a wandering piano in "Repossessed, " the drone of Duncan Moore’s bagpipe on “Melts Very Nasty, ” the delicate dance of Dustin Wong’s guitar over Jeremy Hyman’s drums on “Midnight Snack. ” Even with such an expansive ensemble cast, the focus remains squarely on the flow from one scene to the next.

Robert Altman’s use of sonic perspective shifting, as well as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s intricate construction of environmental ambience and aural representations of the unknown, were both inspirational for Lifted’s focus on sound as a way to establish set and setting in film. We hear Altman especially in the way dialogue emerges and recedes: as Papich puts in a sandwich order, as Field-Pickering browses the grocery store. These techniques have been a part of the duo’s arsenal in Lifted and their own projects for years, but here, without the mandate to make something overtly musical, they are foregrounded and placed in crisp focus. Here is another way to listen to the world, to understand how time, place, and personality are communicated through sound as Lifted closes the gap between artforms. What you can’t see only drives the imagination to more brilliantly invent.

Dope 4 track EP featuring some jazzy downtempo remixes/edits/tracks. MARC RAPSON does a funky head nodding remix of SARAH VAUGHN's "MYSTERY OF MAN", then he teams up with MECCA:83 for "THE EXPANSE". On the flip ALEXIS DAVIS drops 2 killer piano driven jazz hop cuts: "THEME" and "FEEL IT". Limited!

Fust’s first record "Evil Joy" was a bitter domestic drama obsessed with the kitchen-sink passage of time measured by moments of leaving and returning. With "Genevieve", we find a different kind of leaving: leaving behind, leaving one’s old ways, starting anew, a small life together, in “Family Country.” Thus, Genevieve: an historical name for both the saintly and the ordinary, the peasantry and the family, the community and the wife, extreme devotion and absolute forbearance. While sonically and instrumentally louder than Evil Joy, Genevieve is thematically more quiet about its pains—more settled in its ways. It is a collection of pathetic love stories written in dedication to “small life,” moving from gentle exceptions (“I can take the late hours if you’re with me”) to pitiful admissions (“I’m never going to change when I leave…”). What comes with a quiet life? The highest forms of beauty, but we also find here songs of unspeaking companions, the sublime dread of having children, the balance of humility and humiliation, playing the fool for the greater good, and… budget birthday parties. With these stories of possible growth, "Genevieve" can’t help but also feature tried and true examples of crisis and repression: seeking a bygone lifestyle in an old friend who hasn’t changed much over the years, pissing contests, search parties as the form of community for melancholics with no clue what they’ve lost, old flames you won't let go and dying flames you won’t admit. "Genevieve" was recorded throughout 2021-2022 (mostly) at Drop of Sun studio in Asheville NC by Alex Farrar. The painting by Sasha Popovici is exactly right: a domestic scene yet unfinished. Many friends helped to make it much better than it was without them—Xandy Chelmis, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Indigo De Souza, MJ Lenderman, Courtney Werner.

Im Frühjahr 2019 reisten ShitKid - Åsa Söderqvist und Lina Molarin Ericsson - in die USA, um ein paar Auftritte beim SXSW-Festival in Austin, Texas, zu spielen. Doch noch vor dem Festival schafften sie es, ein paar Tage im Studio unterzubringen - zuerst in LA mit den legendären Melvins und dann in Austin mit Paul Leary von den Butthole Surfers. Das neue Album ,Duo Limbo/Mellan himmel å helvete" versammelt die Aufnahmen dieser beiden Sessions, von denen die Hälfte ShitKids erste Aufnahmen in ihrer Muttersprache Schwedisch sind - mit vier Songs als Ausgangspunkt machte sich die Band daran, diese sowohl auf Englisch als auch auf Schwedisch aufzunehmen, was eine Spielzeit von knapp über 26 Minuten ergibt.

k 11Mudcrawlers (Feat. Benji Webbe) version











k 11Mudcrawlers (Feat. Benji Webbe) version











[k] 11Mudcrawlers (Feat. Benji Webbe) [version]











[k] 11Mudcrawlers (Feat. Benji Webbe) [version]











[k] 11Mudcrawlers (Feat. Benji Webbe) [version]

BBE Music’s celebrated J Jazz compilation series reaches its fifth and final volume in early 2026, culminating in a track list that maintains the exceptionally high standard first set with volume one back in 2018. This final volume features a selection of tracks that is as diverse as it is deep, reflecting the rich and varied Japanese jazz scene that spanned from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, a golden era of innovation and creativity. J Jazz volume 5 sees compilers Tony Higgins and Mike Peden dig ever deeper into their respective record collections to reveal tracks that encompass myriad styles including white hot jazz funk fusion from Toshiyuki Honda (Eastern Legacy) and Mikio Masuda (Sonic Barrier), super rare ethnic jazz crossover by Christal Zone - their one-off 45 promo release from 1971, Rai Rai, a deconstructed and abstract jazz classic by Yasuhiro Kohno with his solo piano rendition of My Favourite Things, and Mile and Half’s skin-tearing, shredding freak-out from their mega rare private press album.

A track that is so relentless, it leaves the listener in need of oxygen and a Valium. These hand-picked selections sit alongside other specially chosen numbers that embrace hard-driving samba (Seiichi Nakumura’s Judy’s Samba), epic head-nodding soul jazz (Masaru Imada’s World Line), psychedelic private press fusion (Aoyama Gakuin 101’s Fervor), angular post-bop tear-ups (Akira Miyazawa’s Nijimasu), intense and insistent fusion (Motohiko Hino’s Olive Step), serene cinematic pianism (Hideo Ichikawa’s On the Trade Wind) and tripped-out hallucinogenic tribal funky jazz (Masahiko Sato’s Garandoh’s Africa to Africa). Most of the tracks on this collection are being reissued for the first time, many of them only available previously on extremely limited and mega-rare private press or independent releases. J Jazz volume 5 is a fitting end to a compilation series that helped create a new audience and appreciation of Japanese jazz Some of the albums the tracks are drawn from are featured in the large format book J Jazz: Modern and Free Jazz from Japan 1954-1988, by Tony Higgins and Mike Peden, published by BBE Music in 2024. With almost 7000 words of extensive sleeve notes, J Jazz volume 5 comes in a triple 180g vinyl set inside a deluxe gatefold sleeve with obi strip, and comes with a 4-page insert, with photographs from the renowned Tokyo Jazz Joints project. It is also available as a double CD and digital download. Mastered at the Grammy-nominated Carvery Studio by Frank Merritt, this latest collection is a worthy successor to the preceding four volumes that set the bar so high. The J Jazz series is curated for BBE Music by Tony Higgins and Mike Peden.

Produced by Manilow and longtime collaborator Michael Lloyd, What A Time brings together an eclectic and cross-generational group of collaborators, including Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, nine-time GRAMMY® winner Dave Cobb, and longtime co-writers Bruce Sussman and Adrienne Anderson. The result is a collection that pairs Manilow’s signature melodic grandeur with fresh textures and stylistic turns — from classic, string-swept torch songs to groove-driven R&B flourishes, heartland rock touches, and gospel-inspired crescendos.

On her new album, Neon Summer Skin, Bedouine, the project of Azniv Korkejian, explores this feeling of safety long before one can fully understand the concept. Written with vivid, honest and intimate imagery after visiting her family in Saudi Arabia, it tells the story of family and upbringing, and mourns the end of her childhood. There is a singular resonance and newfound heft in this music previously unheard in Bedouine’s discography. Bedouine is known for making gentle, lilting folk songs that build fingerpicked guitar melodies into tsunamis of emotion. Her masterful songwriting and timeless melodies have earned her praise from publications like Pitchfork, who said her music “boasts a surreal calm and lived in glow,” and Rolling Stone, who lauded her “humble folk-pop brilliance,” plus an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and tours with the likes of Fleet Foxes and Father John Misty. While working on the record, Bedouine realized the pain of displacement, of searching for home, has been a throughline in her family history. Other relatives have also experienced this sense of loss as they’ve migrated between Armenia, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. “I felt so frustrated about the places that I'm from becoming war torn or difficult to return to,” she says. “My family has been split apart time and time again.” This realization prompted her to document and honor her parents’ lives and stories. On a family trip to Houston, Bedouine recorded a conversation with her mother and sampled the introduction to “Canopies.” The song tells the story of her mother’s time in an orphanage. She was put there by her own mother as a way of escaping her abusive father. Nearby, her mother would sing about feeling her daughter’s essence in the air: "The waves of Beirut's beaches flutter, and how sweetly they blow my darling's air." It’s a story of profound yearning told with the quiet profundity of a flower blossoming.

Eine der geheimnisvollsten Bands der klassischen 4AD-Ära: Swallow. Gegründet von Louise Trehy und Mike Mason, die sich Anfang der 90er im kreativen Schmelztiegel Camberwell in London begegneten. Was folgte, hatte fast etwas Mythisches: Kaum geschrieben, wurden ihre ersten Songs auf einem einfachen Tascam-4-Track aufgenommen. Ein Demo - roh, direkt, voller Atmosphäre - landete bei Ivo Watts-Russell. Ohne die Band je gesehen zu haben, unterschrieb er sie sofort bei 4AD. Für die Aufnahmen ihres Debüts borgten sie sich Instrumente, zogen von Edinburghs Palladium Studios bis zu den legendären Blackwing Studios in London und arbeiteten mit Produzent John Fryer, frisch von den Arbeiten an Pretty Hate Machine. Mit Hilfe von Eventide Harmonizern - bekannt aus dem Klangkosmos der Cocteau Twins - entstand ein schillernder, fast schwereloser Sound. Doch als Blow 1992 erschien, fühlte es sich für die Band nicht richtig an. Zu glatt, zu weit entfernt von ihrer ursprünglichen Vision. Anstatt neu aufzunehmen, entschieden sie sich für einen radikaleren Schritt: Sie zerlegten die Songs und bauten sie neu zusammen. Das Ergebnis war Blowback - düsterer, fragmentierter, näher an ihrem inneren Klangbild. Diese Version erschien nur in kleiner Auflage und verschwand schnell wieder - ein verborgenes Juwel, das nur eingefleischte 4AD-Fans kannten. Jetzt, Jahrzehnte später, wird dieses Kapitel endlich neu erzählt: Mit Blown, einer liebevoll kuratierten Veröffentlichung, die beide Versionen vereint und den ursprünglichen Aufnahmen neues Leben einhaucht.

Mit "Eyes Full" legt Zoh Amba ein eindringliches Songwriter-Debüt vor - und zugleich die erste Veröffentlichung bei Matador. Bekannt geworden als Saxophonist:in der New Yorker Freejazz-Szene und gefeiert auf internationalen Festivals, kehrt Amba nun zu den eigenen Wurzeln zurück: zur Gitarre und zur Heimatstadt Kingsport in Tennessee. Die Songs auf "Eyes Full" tragen den rauen Geist dieser Landschaft in sich - zwischen schlingerndem Blues und Appalachian Folk. Im Zentrum steht das Sehen und Gesehenwerden. Amba richtet den Blick auf Menschen aus amerikanischen Kleinstädten: Arbeiter, Suchende, jene, die kämpfen und oft übersehen werden. Aufgewachsen in den Bergen Tennessees, zog Amba mit 17 nach San Francisco und später nach New York. Doch die Vergangenheit lässt sich nicht abschütteln - sie fordert ihre eigene Stimme. Lange glaubte Amba, dass instrumentale Musik allein zur Transzendenz führen könne. Doch irgendwann drängten sich Worte nach vorn. Die Gitarre wurde zum Werkzeug, um Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen direkt zu begegnen. So entstanden Songs voller Empathie für Menschen am Rand der Gesellschaft - Figuren zwischen Schmerz, Einsamkeit und Hoffnung. Aufgenommen wurde "Eyes Full" live und ohne Overdubs in den Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville. Kevin Hyland an der E-Gitarre und Jim White am Schlagzeug verleihen den Songs eine rohe, unmittelbare Kraft. Ambas Stimme knurrt, flüstert und brennt sich durch die Stücke. Zärtlichkeit und eruptive Energie liegen hier oft nur einen Herzschlag auseinander. "Eyes Full" ist ein Album, das hinschaut - und lange nachhallt.

45 Jahre auf der Bühne haben nicht nur den Musiker Rainhard Fendrich geprägt. Seine Lieder wurden
in dieser Zeit zum persönlichen Soundtrack für Generationen von Menschen. Bleibende Erinnerungen und
ganze Lebensgeschichten sind bis heute eng mit seiner Musik verwoben. Mehr noch: Aus Liedern wurden
Hits, die sich verselbständigt und ein Eigenleben entwickelt haben, weil das Publikum sie zu etwas gemacht
hat, was weit über ihre ursprüngliche Bestimmung hinaus geht.
Seine Jubiläumstournee „45 Jahre – Nur ein Wimpernschlag“ hat Fendrich dazu genutzt, um gemeinsam mit seinen Fans 45 Jahre Erinnerungen zur feiern und mit ihnen auf eine musikalische Reise zu gehen:
mehr als vier Jahrzehnte Hits, von den 80er Jahren bis hin zur Gegenwart.
Das Album „45 Jahre“ ist ein einmaliges Erlebnis! Vor der beeindruckenden Kulisse des Wörthersees in
Klagenfurt und in der Stadthalle Wien wurden drei Stunden Emotionen, Erinnerungen und unvergessliche
Melodien live eingefangen.

HVS is stoked to have Wetman back for the second time on the label! This is part one of a two part series showcasing original tunes from Wetman and remixes of those tunes, so stay locked for the next one soon! Dan had initially sent me two original tracks of his along with the two remixes of “Inside” from Etch & Meridian. We both agreed it would be cool to spread out the tracks into a series since there were already two remixes of the same tune, so Laramie and I whipped up a third mix and here we are!

As most of you know, Dan and I both started Vivid way back in 2017 so it's really really awesome to still be releasing tunes from him almost 10 years later! Dan has since gone back down to Cali while I'm stuck up here in Seattle, but we still collaborate as often as we can. His original mix is so damn creative and probably the wildest mix of the bunch. Excellently sourced samples per usual from him, most of which I didn't know, but Meridian is actually the one that tipped me on the Harold Budd sample!

I first heard BC badman Meridian's EP on Disrupt Records when it came out a couple years back, and was floored with his tunes! I was really excited to have a mix from him for this. And his mix really delivers IMO. With some seriously precision cuts/choppage and a really excellent balance of light and dark in the mix. It's very cool having a (sort of) local producer on the label as well!

Etch, out of London needs no intro really, with a ton of quality releases under his belt spanning all sorts of dance genres, it's really an honor having him on the label! Being a fellow FL user and also a gear fanatic make for some fun chats with Etch as well. His mix is the most mellow of the bunch but it still slaps hard everytime.

Laramie's mix is super duper techy, which is a bit different to his usual niceness style! But he wanted to switch it up for this one. I was happy to jump in the studio and record a vocal for the track. We think this mix came together nicely!

Stay locked for Part 2 and many releases in 2026!

Mit "Eyes Full" legt Zoh Amba ein eindringliches Songwriter-Debüt vor - und zugleich die erste Veröffentlichung bei Matador. Bekannt geworden als Saxophonist:in der New Yorker Freejazz-Szene und gefeiert auf internationalen Festivals, kehrt Amba nun zu den eigenen Wurzeln zurück: zur Gitarre und zur Heimatstadt Kingsport in Tennessee. Die Songs auf "Eyes Full" tragen den rauen Geist dieser Landschaft in sich - zwischen schlingerndem Blues und Appalachian Folk. Im Zentrum steht das Sehen und Gesehenwerden. Amba richtet den Blick auf Menschen aus amerikanischen Kleinstädten: Arbeiter, Suchende, jene, die kämpfen und oft übersehen werden. Aufgewachsen in den Bergen Tennessees, zog Amba mit 17 nach San Francisco und später nach New York. Doch die Vergangenheit lässt sich nicht abschütteln - sie fordert ihre eigene Stimme. Lange glaubte Amba, dass instrumentale Musik allein zur Transzendenz führen könne. Doch irgendwann drängten sich Worte nach vorn. Die Gitarre wurde zum Werkzeug, um Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen direkt zu begegnen. So entstanden Songs voller Empathie für Menschen am Rand der Gesellschaft - Figuren zwischen Schmerz, Einsamkeit und Hoffnung. Aufgenommen wurde "Eyes Full" live und ohne Overdubs in den Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville. Kevin Hyland an der E-Gitarre und Jim White am Schlagzeug verleihen den Songs eine rohe, unmittelbare Kraft. Ambas Stimme knurrt, flüstert und brennt sich durch die Stücke. Zärtlichkeit und eruptive Energie liegen hier oft nur einen Herzschlag auseinander. "Eyes Full" ist ein Album, das hinschaut - und lange nachhallt.

If – in some parallel universe (or perhaps a not-so-distant-future version of the one we’re already sentenced to living in) – the evil overloads of artificial intelligence were actually successful in their attempts to create convincingly enjoyable “original music,” more specifically tasked with wholly encapsulating my own personal tastes by data-chugging some cocktail of – oh, I don’t know – the posters on my wall, the records in my “most listened to” pile, the mixtapes I made for others, intensive physical scans of my auditory cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, heart strings, whatever else they have splayed out on their autopsy table with the intention of generating one all-encompassing “perfect band” based on the fruitful sum of their findings – that band, for me, would be (or would at least sound exactly like) the Tara Clerkin Trio. It is, quite simply, without exception, the music I wish to hear.

Formed in Bristol UK (where none of them are from yet all of whom are deeply engrained) in 2020, the Tara Clerkin Trio – as it somewhat democratically exists today, despite the singular authority implied by its name – consists of the titular Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Sunny’s brother, Patrick Benjamin. I’ll confess, I don’t know what their respective roles are within the operation and there’s only a very small part of me that cares to learn, as one of my favorite qualities in an objective listening experience is the mystery of who is playing what, which sounds are “authentic” versus synthesized, which chunks are performed “live” in a room together versus meticulously Frankenstein’ed from measure to measure, or how exactly the overall sound is so (seemingly) effortlessly achieved. Though, I suspect, if and when I do witness a live performance by this band at any point, my enjoyment of the music will not be lost in my better understanding of it.

With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 debut, this upcoming Somewhere Good LP is, in many ways, the band’s most realised work. In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic (*an overused adjective for which here there is regrettably no sufficient alternative) approaches, Clerkin & co. colour in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes - never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification - allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before.

Of course, there are traceable influences herein, if one felt that such comparisons were necessary to properly examine and enjoy this music (they aren’t)… Being the big dumb American from the small boring town that I am, cornfed on ‘90s alternative radio with the enchantingly exotic sounds of Maxinquaye and Mezzanine emanating from my chunky tube television, I can’t help but to make a blatantly obvious reference to a “Bristol sound”, ie the whole trip-hop trip, the pastoral crooning over the suggestive urban grime of cracked electro/piano treatments, the digitally-yet-primitively reconstructed James Bond soundtrack string-beats, etc.. But the Tara Clerkin Trio is so infinitely much more than that. There are elements of avant-pop, modern classical, kraut-folk, audio verité, dare I say indie rock (and not of the beer guzzling, masturbatory fuzz-flex variety but perhaps more like a Trish Keenan-fronted Faust, Adrian Sherwood at the mixing desk of If You’re Feeling Sinister, or – in expanding on our alternate reality – a world in which High Llamas cut a full-length for Warp Records with Andrew Weatherall on coffee duty).

The hazy, unmappable skyline-mirage of droning harmonium, upright bass, peculiarly accentuated wind instruments, acoustic guitar, hushed yet literally mighty keys combine to hypnotizing effect. The band may make underlying nods to jazz, sure, but it’s not appropriation, it’s that they have the actual chops to build it out. Beneath the janky samples and oddball percussive embellishment lies actually great drumming. Beyond the manipulated vocal witchery and woefully reflective plain-spoke moments are Tara’s subtly inspired melodies, sung with what might honestly be the glue to the whole crazy equation. A calming consistency throughout the otherwise unpredictably dynamic, boldly intuitive, uniquely British exploration of this (their own) universe in song. – Ryan Davis (Chicago, February 2026)

In 1979, the Soviet label Melodiya released a record that immediately stood apart from most Soviet jazz of its time and perhaps for that very reason never became widely known. Oriental Suite by Oleg Gotskosik Quintet is a rare example of jazz, Eastern musical tradition, and compositional thinking coming together not as an exotic stylization but as a fully formed artistic statement.

This is not “Oriental colour” used as decoration, nor folklore treated as an ornament. Oriental Suite grows from within another musical tradition, with its monody, modal logic, slow unfolding of form, and focus on inner states rather than outward effect. The music is calm and concentrated. It does not try to impress, but gradually draws the listener into its own space.
Oleg Gotskozik was born in Tashkent in 1951, a city where Eastern music was part of everyday life rather than something distant or exotic. That may explain why his engagement with traditional material sounds so natural. He does not quote or stylize; he thinks in the same musical categories. By temperament, he was closer to a composer than to a jazz musician in the conventional sense. For him, jazz was not a style but a way of working with form and improvisation.There is no standard “theme and solos” logic in Oriental Suite. Improvisation is woven into the fabric of the music itself and unfolds in the same way as in oral traditions, gradually, with rising tension and a clear sense of arrival. Individual sections refer to traditional Uzbek genres such as lullabies, lyrical songs, and funeral laments, but these are not genre sketches. They are states of being. The music unfolds slowly, avoiding familiar harmonic drama and relying instead on modal scales and subtle internal movement.

A special role is played by trumpeter Yuri Parfyonov. His approach, with delayed vibrato, micro-glissandi, and melismatic phrasing, sounded unexpected at the end of the 1970s and still feels remarkably fresh today. This is not expressive jazz virtuosity but a focused, almost meditative voice, where improvisation becomes a form of inner speech.
It is also important to note that the original recording was not without technical flaws. Like many Soviet jazz releases of the time, Oriental Suite was captured under far from ideal conditions, and the master contained audible imperfections that were never part of the music itself. For this edition, the restoration was approached with great care and respect, working through the recording moment by moment to remove unwanted artifacts while preserving the character and atmosphere of the original. The aim was simple: to make sure nothing stands in the way of fully experiencing the music.

In the early 1980s, Oleg Gotskozik left the Soviet Union, and after that his name virtually disappeared from Soviet music journalism and literature. There were no official bans or public statements. He was simply no longer mentioned. Oriental Suite continued to exist on its own, without an author and without context. The record never entered the canon, received no continuation, and was never officially reissued. It seemed to fall out of time.
The original vinyl pressing was released in a run of around 32,000 copies, but most of them remained within the republic and never reached wide circulation. Today, original copies are hard to find and have long become objects of interest for collectors. There have been no official reissues, only attempts that never went beyond test pressings.
Today, Oriental Suite sounds surprisingly contemporary. It is music that can be described as deep ethno-jazz and even, in a certain sense, spiritual jazz. There is no exoticism here, no decorative borrowing, only a complete immersion in another musical way of thinking. It does not require explanations and does not need to be justified by its time.
This is not a forgotten curiosity revived for collectors’ sake. It is music that simply waited for the moment when it could be heard without ideological filters or genre expectations. Now it is returning quietly, without noise or hype, but with the clear sense that this is not an artifact of an era, but a living and genuinely rare artistic statement.

Repress of 2018’s classic compilation from Brownswood.

A primer on London’s bright-burning young jazz scene, this new compilation brings together a collection of some of its sharpest talents. A set of nine newly-recorded tracks, We Out Here captures a moment where genre markers matter less than raw, focused energy. Looking at the album’s running order, it could easily serve as a name-checking exercise for some of London’s most-tipped and hardworking bands of the past couple of years. Recorded across three long, fruitful days in a North West London studio, the crossover between each of the groups speaks to the close-knit circles which make up the scene.

Surveying the way that London’s jazz-influenced music had spread outside of its usual spaces in recent years, this album bottles up some of the vital ideas emanating from that burgeoning movement. Giving a platform to a scene where mutual cooperation and a DIY spirit are second-nature, it’s a window into the wide-eyed future of London’s musical underground.

Ubiquitous, much-lauded saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings is the project’s musical director. His own recent projects span from South Africa-connected, spiritually-minded jazz players Shabaka and the Ancestors to Sons of Kemet, who match diasporically-connected compositions with viscerally-direct live shows. His entry on the album, ‘Black Skin, Black Masks’, is typically difficult-to-define: with an off-kilter, shifting rhythmic backbone, repeated phrases – mirrored between clarinet and bass clarinet – shape the track with an alluring hue. His input ties together a deft, genre-agnostic sensibility that’s shared through all the players on the record.

Theon Cross – who’s also part of Sons of Kemet with Hutchings – starts his track, ‘Brockley’, with the solo, distinctive low rumble of his tuba. Winding and mesmeric, it sees tuba and sax lines winding together in rhythmic and melodic parallels. Ezra Collective – whose drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso has toured with Pharaohe Monch – run a tight, Afrobeat-tipped rhythm on ‘Pure Shade’, with the final third changing gear into a melodic, momentous closing stretch.

Joe Armon-Jones, whose ludicrous chops on the piano have seen him touring with the likes of Ata Kak, showcases earworm-like, insistent motifs on ‘Go See’, balanced with a playful, improvisatory approach with room for ad-libbing and solos a-plenty. Taking a softer tact than many of the other entries, Kokoroko – whose guitarist Oscar Jerome has been making waves with his solo material – spin a lyrical, steady-paced meditation on ‘Abusey Junction’, matching chanted vocals with gently-played guitar.

Nodding to spiritual jazz influences, Maisha’s ‘Inside The Acorn’ is a wandering, explorative rumination, balancing delicate washes of piano and percussion with sharp interplay between flute and bass clarinet. In contrast, Nubya Garcia’s ‘Once’ is taut and carefully-poised, her tenor sax guiding a carefully-built energy to an explosive conclusion. And finally, Triforce’s ‘Walls’ is a performance in two parts: starting with Mansur Brown’s languorous, lyrical guitar, the second half switches up to a low-slung, g-funk-tipped groove.

Robert Hoods interstellares Projekt Monobox gab 2003 mit diesem Debütalbum gleichzeitig seinen Einstand bei Logistic. Der Meister des Minimalismus nimmt uns mit auf eine Reise durch eine andere Ecke seines Universums, irgendwo zwischen "Minimal Nation" und "Nighttime World". Eine tiefe und hypnotische Reise durch Zeit und Raum. Ein Meilenstein des Minimal Techno.

What better way to celebrate 100 releases than with a handmade box containing soul expanding music!? Höga Nord Rekords have reached an important goal and releases a rare box set containing all 12” from the HNRUK-series plus a new record from Birds, unique for this box. Except Birds, this compilation includes Dark Strands, High Boys, Vox Low, Timothy J. Fairplay, Fontän, Bird Of Paradise, Mythologen, Jamie Paton and Frak.

The music is of course the main focus of all releases on Höga Nord Rekords but what birthday gift comes without a proper wrapping? This exclusive handmade box made in Norrmalms kartongfabrik in Stockholm, is a celebration to the Scandinavian Bronze age. You’ll find rock carvings like those on the artwork scattered over the land but mostly near Gothenburg, home of Höga Nord Rekords on the Swedish west coast.

Archaeological evidence proves similarities in ornaments and pictures between the Nordic and European Bronze age, just like you find common features in the music released on our label. Though the acts in this compilation box come from all over Europe and beyond, they stem from an obscured and mysterious common source of escapism, purity and creativity.

Split System, the Aussie group featuring Jackson Reid Briggs (Jackson Reid Briggs & The Heaters) on vocals and Arron Mawson (Stiff Richards) on guitar, took the punk world by storm with its debut EP this past spring. That was hardly surprising given the talent involved. But whatever my expectations were for Split System, the Melbourne-based outfit far exceeded them. Not just another "super group" (also on board are guitarist Ryan Webb Speed Week, bassist Deon Slaviero, and drummer Mitch McGregor [No Zu]), Split System is straight-up one of the most powerful and exciting punk rock and roll bands of recent memory. The band's EP was a smasher, and now debut album Vol. 1 emphatically follows suit. My god, this record is a monster! Essentially Split System's sound is classic Aussie punk. That may sound like nothing new, but this band executes the style with a force and fury rarely heard these days. It doesn't hurt that Jackson Reid Briggs is one of the best rock and roll screamers going. He's got a fire inside of him. Meanwhile, Mawson and Webb form one hell of a guitar tandem. And that rhythm section is insane. These are all brilliant players who come together to make an extraordinary band. Vol. 1 comes storming out of the gates with "The End" and never lets up. Of course we knew some of the previously-released tracks ("Hit Me," "Demolition," "Climbing") were going to rip. But the newer material is just as good and will just about melt your face off. Songs like "Ringing In My Head" and "Grip" are pure energy and ferocity, while closing track "Feelings" has a mellowed-out Saints feel. This band knows how to rock and roll, and there are literally no songs on this album that don't entirely kick ass. Sometimes we think of these all-star groups as "side projects," but such categorization would sell Split System woefully short. If we're talking about the top three or four punk bands in Australia right now, this has to be one of them! Josh Rutledge/ Faster and Louder

Dr. Lonnie Smith’s 1969 album Turning Point featured the organ virtuoso with a dynamic band featuring Lee Morgan on trumpet, Julian Priester on trombone, Bennie Maupin on tenor saxophone, Melvin Sparks on guitar, and the funky drummer Leo Morris (aka Idris Muhammad). Highlights include covers of “See Saw” and “Eleanor Rigby” plus soulful originals.

This Blue Note Classic Vinyl Edition is stereo, all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal

Tucked in the heart of Koreatown, Los Angeles, lies The Libra Hotel—the titular architecture of Nick Malkin's new album and site of his musical and psychogeographic exploration. Unlike most musical "site-specific" studies, Malkin remains wholly ambivalent to the documentarian approach, instead sharpening an auteur-like focus on the site as a conceptual and highly expressive backdrop. The Libra is musically explored as a space that houses a noir fragmentation of identity—the exhausted trope of a complicated protagonist walking through rain-soaked street corners and fumy neon lights—where an inner monologue is rendered in both miniature and at a cosmic scale. Casting aside stifling tropes around field recording, ambient, and improvised music, Malkin's work finds its own unique fidelity and emotional core through the assembly and reassembly of memory. Nearly every sound on the album—from frayed saxophones, lambent pianos, and dissected jazz drum kits—are multiplied, shattered, and reconstituted into shapes that adorn The Libra in a motion-blurred fog. The narrative of the Hotel suddenly appears as if out of the mist, with intersecting characters interacting within its walls by happenstance. Adminst the languid set pieces, wraith-like sonic grains gravitate around wide subbass beams that give structural form to The Libra, a narrative tension like when a scene is shot from hundreds of different perspectives: an image both luminous and veiled.

Much like Frank Sinatra's own spatial residency immortalized on "Live at The Sands," "At The Libra Hotel" showcases an exuberant view of entertainment, hospitality, and a form of masculinity, one that can quickly detourn into darkness. Knowing this, Malkin extracts a melancholic core out of The Libra locale. The flickering shadows of American decadence are shown in their ephemeral honesty, lines that trace how even in everyday life virtue is tested, sanity is tested, even reality is tested within the confines of desire, within the night. The album is draped in fleeting textures, carefully arranged with a trance-like microtonality, the faint inflections and articulations of a jazz band cascading into dissipated stillness. Voicemails about changed locations and covert eavesdropping on guests' whispered conversations provide an atmosphere of missed connection and voyeurism—a purloined letter of desire receding into a vanishing point. Like the music itself, The Hotel, a chapel perilous at the intersection of desolation row, the center of it all, yet simultaneously at the edge of town, becomes a structure between libidinous virtuality and actuality—our inevitable half-light.

Ultimately, the pensive atmosphere of "At The Libra Hotel," powerfully asserts a plea for the kinds of intimacy only possible in transient spaces. Here, memory cascades into a force that feels like something supernatural, perhaps even religious, yet always subject to the infidelity of our imagination. Here, the album opens into its primary psychodrama, the transient nature of subjectivity itself and how this becomes fractured in the tumult between our commitments and desires. Within this nocturnal space, to quote Louise Bourgeois, "you pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture."

Sun Ra is better known to most as a musician than a poet, but he identified equally as both. My Words Are Music provides direct access to the sentiments of a poet who never called Earth home. The spoken word album hosts an inspired array of artists who personally chose their favorite Sun Ra poems to recite. Freed from the page, his poetry acquires an unexpected simplicity and poignance it possessed all along.

This all-star and intergenerational lineup of artists conjure wisdom from his words: spoken word elder Abiodun Oweyole of The Last Poets; rapper, and singer-songwriter Saul Williams; jazz experimentalist Melanie Charles; British-Trinidadian poet, novelist and musician Anthony Joseph; poet Mahogany L. Browne; poet, playwright, and conceptual artist Carl Hancock Rux; musician/digital composer L’Rain; singer, actor, and director Tunde Adibempe of TV on the Radio singer; British DJ and BBC radio host Zakia Sewell; ballistic hip-hop poet Jive Poetic; and longtime members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Marshall Allen, Knoel Scott, and Tara Middleton.

Punctuated by impish electronic interludes composed and played by Marshall Allen, these voices bless Sun Ra’s poetry with new life My Words Are Music offers the opportunity to follow Sun Ra into a
better future. “Prepare for the journey,” he writes in his poem “The Cosmic Age”, “You have a rendezvous / With the living wisdom.” My Words Are Music is a project developed in conjunction with Living Sky, the all-instrumental Sun Ra Arkestra album released on Omni Sound in 2022

The new recordings from The Dengie Hundred unfurl on Tain Records after a busy year releasing a solo tape on Sagome and a collaborative LP and tape with Japan Blues on Demdike Stare's DDS imprint.

Lammas Land is an album which meditates on the Walthamstow Marshes, an ever-changing watery landscape, rich with history and wildlife. The Dengie Hundred writes:

"I am sitting at my table overlooking the marshes listening to Lammas Land in November 2023, watching crows fight a never-ending aerial battle with the gulls. In summer, you can see bats from here every evening, fluttering around the windows as the light begins to fade, but today it is colder so there is smoke rising from the boats on the River Lea and the dog walkers are wrapped up tight against the wind.
Most of Lammas Land was made sitting right here, playing guitar and recording the sounds passing by. I would hang a microphone out of the window to capture the ‘putput’ boat which delivers provisions, or the trains that rattle along the tracks that cut across the marshes and up to Stanstead, carrying passengers to the airport and away.
I wonder what tourists make of the marshes as they cross them, the landscape opening up for a moment between the urban sprawl of the East End and the rampant development of Tottenham. They offer a jarring pause of green and sky. I feel very lucky to be living in that pause, a resident, for now…

The album contains a whole year of found sounds recorded from the window and while out walking. It is full of bird song and radio sounds, singing, life.

Many others have been inspired by this space, this pause. The author Esther Kinsky who wrote River, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, captures this area so perfectly. I borrowed the two track names for this album from her book. I hope she doesn’t mind.

Also, the photographer Paul Fuller whose work reflects the atmosphere I feel here precisely. On hearing the music he wanted to collaborate on the Lammas Land project, He spent a year filming the marsh through the seasons. Some of his images are included with the vinyl release, and there is an accompanying film close to completion. I am so pleased this project is continuing in new forms.

The vinyl also contains a piece of writing, ‘Sound Fishing’, by Gemma Blackshaw, an author, art historian and curator who in a twist of fate also found herself spending time on the marshes, but that is her story, for another day."




The Dengie Hundred
Lammas Land
LP, with essay insert + five photographic prints
Cat No: TAIN02
Price: £14.49
Due next week

A: A hand full of ever thickening twilight
(Sample clips 1 / 2 / 3)

B: A string of pearls pulling
the night away
(Sample clips 1 / 2 / 3)

Craig Clouse has devoted the past several decades to exploring a wide range of avant-garde avenues for his brainchild Shit & Shine. The monolithic riffs of raw and powerful psych'n'roll hysteria, the freeform dance miasma, sub-heavy electronica and the blissful stupidity crafted for ecstatic ascension: all perfectly-placed in the idiosyncratic world of Shit & Shine. There's also fertile soil for twisted noises in their lowest form, often obscured by groovier comrades in S&S releases yet vitally important for the substance of Clouse's compositional carcass and OOH-sounds has given him the required space to stretch out his longtime interest in developing loose structures and crackling landscapes to transcend his rhythmic comfort zone.

Making an enthusiastic transgression into noisy tones, "Joy Of Joys" has a friendly way of presenting difficult material. The rough and ready cheapo electronics sparkle in full electrifying mode, welding an ascetic gamut of aural hypnotics with a wormhole of uncompromising loop brut. Clanks, bangs, twangs and creeping, ragged globs of sound bloom on the bones of repetition to focus on the swinging stream of dirty anarchy. Stepping out of any context and genre disciplines, S&S finds new sonic trajectories in "Joy Of Joys" which perfectly sit in-between a wobbly cabal of international sub-underground acts: the idiot-avant strategies of LAFMS, early Mego bad digitalia, no-brow enthusiasm of Wolf Eyes family, micro-DIY ethos of Chocolate Monk and the sheer hellish nonsense of US noise circa '00s.

Clouse was already established as a landscape painter with a series of faux naïf paintings charmingly accompanying his releases. With his heart full of passion for abstract minimalism, he continued these narrative forms but was always in search of the confidence to paint non-figurative art. The first step into the chaotic abyss is coming from his sonic side by abandoning the beat and riff layers of his previous works to complete nakedness and reductionist courage. At once Clouse makes an evolutionary lurch into extremes as well as taking us back to basic forms in "Joy Of Joys". He creates an entire new parallel world to Shit & Shine with his maverick imagination presenting us with one of the most mutant releases to bear his name. Arthur Kuzmin

OOH-sounds family members more eaze, pardo & glass join forces on a celestial album linking ambient neo-folk, fractured electronics and romantic escapism.

Referencing to Wim Wenders' 1984 road-movie drama masterpiece, 'paris paris, texas texas' is a strikingly cinematic tapestry of americana, resampled guitars, glistening electronics, subtle field recordings and processed vocals.

The beginnings of this project date back to the summer of 2022 when pardo and glass started recording some improvisations in a small studio with the aim of making an experimental guitar record. Over time, the drafts developed into mesmerizing slabs of guitar textures, simultaneously immense and intimate. No material was better suited for more eaze to add to the recordings her transversal and sensitive approach, linking the past and the present.

Ranging from gentle ambient folk to winding pedal steel passages, from twinkling electronics to distorted drones, 'paris paris, texas texas' is an album that's not just "atmospheric", it conjures its own unique atmosphere from thin air. Like a snake shedding its skin, the record slowly mutates from track to track - an epiphany, a transformation, a tangible and perceptible moment. Despite its distant trans-Atlantic origins, it evokes a warmth and intimacy that is hard to deny, an emotion that has perhaps been held back for too long. A landmark release in OOH's catalogue, capturing the magic of its curation and sensibility in one sublime record.

Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, artwork by incepBOY, words by Adam Badi Donoval