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East Los Angeles quartet Levitation Room’s floaty, cosmic songs are always a trip. Since forming nearly a decade ago, they’ve self-produced dizzying, otherworldly music that’s connected with fellow travelers in the hallucinogenic world of outré rock music. Led by singer and guitarist Julian Porte along with founding members Gabriel Fernandez (lead guitar) and Johnathan Martin (percussion), the band has enchanted live audiences at Desert Daze and on tour with like-minded groups Post Animal and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. The band’s vivid sound has found them placed on popular playlists like Modern Psychedelia and the legendary superproducer’s Danger Mouse Jukebox. Their 2015 debut, “Friends,” has surpassed 18 million streams. Joined by new member Kevin Perez (bass) in 2021, Levitation Room have continued to expand their colorful, unearthly sound, a process that has culminated with the vibrant new album Strange Weather. Collaborating with former Brian Jonestown Massacre keyboardist Rob Campanella, Jason Kick (Mild High Club), and Black Crowes’ Joel Robinow, Levitation Room take a new step in their story and vision with Strange Weather. The record’s lyrical narratives—about love in the park, life in the city, and the fact that “The world today is such an illusion”—are appropriately steeped in ’60s sonics and a dreamy, lo-fi atmosphere. It’s spacey, celestial guitar music for escaping into, and “it feels just like heaven.” Join Levitation Room on their new voyage.

Maya Youssef is a multi-award winning musician and composer from Syria. She is hailed as ‘queen of the qanun,’ the 78-stringed Middle Eastern plucked zither. Maya’s intense and thoughtful music is rooted in the Arabic classical tradition but forges pathways into Western classical and contemporary styles. It explores the emotional and healing qualities of music.

The 'Finding Home' is a journey through memories and the essence of home both within and without in the search of that place of peace, comfort, and healing which manifests in everyone in a unique way.

Maya wrote this album during a time of spiritual awakening. Over time she has come to accept the loss of her homeland and in the process of grieving (which she explored in her Album Syrian Dreams in 2018) Maya has found a much greater sense of home in the most spiritual sense.

“As any Syrian will tell you, there is this overwhelming sense of loss and an overwhelming sense of grief. Because that world which existed before the war started, despite it naturally having problems, was a beautiful world with a booming economy, artistic scene, film festivals and visiting international artists, Damascus was the third safest city in the world. The loss of that world was heart wrenching and, in a way, steered me towards a universal concept of home.

The main trigger that made me create Syrian Dreams was the Syrian war and the loss of my homeland. And it's only by embarking on that spiritual journey of constant meditation and of finding home within God and within myself that I started to feel consolable and started to feel that I have my own home within me. I felt that the world is my home and humanity is my home. With my latest album I want to take people through a transformative journey, where they land in that place of home for them. No matter how that will look like for each person.” Maya Youssef

Owen Ashworth's albums have always been about the human condition, and his latest is no exception. That may sound strange, given that it's called Animal Companionship, but it's as human as anything he's done before. After hearing problems forced the end of his electronic pop project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2010, Ashworth started making quieter music as Advance Base, releasing A Shut-In's Prayer in 2012, Nephew In The Wild in 2015 and a slew of tapes and 7" EPs in between. Taken as a whole, Animal Companionship is not just a step forward for Advance Base_it's the culmination of everything Ashworth has been building for the past two decades. It's a record that's gentle in approach and endearing in practice, the kind of thing that only Ashworth could create.

Warehouse find!

While the German producer Martin Matiske averages a new release under his given name every few years, there was a long stretch of time in which sightings of his Blackploid alias were much more rare. After dropping an EP for Frustrated Funk in 2006, fans found further material hard to come by over the next decade or so. However, Matiske has reinvigorated Blackploid in recent times, with the project making a few compilation appearances and dropping a couple of EPs across 2020.

That run now culminates inCosmic Traveler, a four-track affair which marks Matiske's debut appearance on Sheffield's Central Processing Unit. Given the long wait, it's great just to see Blackploid back among the fray once again. But for the project's CPU curtain-raiser to be an EP of such high-quality techno jams? Now that really is spoiling us.

Cosmic Traveler's title nods towards the sort of stargazing aesthetics one finds in classic Detroit techno. However, while there are undoubtedly ties to the Motor City in this music, the record ultimately steers less towards spacious atmospherics and more towards the taut, lean machine-funk of seminal practitioners like Dopplereffekt.

Matiske sets his stall out from the off. Opener 'Electric Engine' begins with a run of stiff-necked 808 kicks before hissing hi-hats, a grizzly bassline and all manner of futuristic sounds enter to warp the tune into hyperspace. Following cut 'Night Drive' repeats the trick of 'Electric Engine' but adds a pleasingly dinky synth lead in order to nudge itself slightly towards bleep-techno territory.

The two cuts on Cosmic Traveler's B-side are pure late-night goodness, a pair of mid-set heaters primed for dark basements. 'Pleasure Activism' delivers on the promise of its title and then some, pushing the Kraftwerk template to extremes by bringing a load of gnarly synth lines into play over a wobbling acidic chug. Finally, EP closer 'The Race' is reminiscent of both the twisted machine-funk of Gerald Donald's Japanese Telecom project and the playful modern evolutions of artists like fellow CPU high-flyer Jensen Interceptor.

The resurgence of Martin Matiske's Blackploid project continues withCosmic Traveller, an EP of timeless electro-funk and techno.

FFO: Dopplereffekt, Japanese Telecom, Jensen Interceptor, Cardopusher

Creeping through an imaginary border, sidesteppin’ through the night like cyber phantoms eavesdropping on early morning machinery shifts, an industrial solstice for pagan mystics. After five years Torino’s mysterious SabaSaba are back with ‘Unknown City’ an imaginary soundtrack for a dystopian city: digital raga, horror Exotica, half-speed techno, metallic dub and organic electronics.

The duo of Andrea Marini (synth, guitar, electronics, tapes) and Gabriele Maggiorotto (drums, percussion, effects, programming) return with their most political manifesto yet, an intricate musical essay inspired by China Miéville’s novel ‘The City And The City’, examining border control, repression, an unknown city where people move like ghosts without personality and without communicating, monitored on sight by the authorities. SabaSaba’s personal OST is a whirlwind of analog and digital instruments colliding, textured samples, syncopated drums and spiritual synth sweeps often heightened by Ambra Chiara Michelangeli’s eerie viola playing, an ancestral force resisting under a cement tower, modulars gasping for air, endlessly reverberating into noir-soul and gray landscapes.

Like Miéville’s two imaginary cities Ul Qoma e Besźel, SabaSaba’s journey is cavernous, claustrophobic at times, but a clear sense of evasion and resistance breaks through, small flickers of light, like a cyborg calibrating himself - the hypnotic dub ambient of ‘False Speech’ - for an ecstatic liberation - the trance inducing ‘Wrists Free’ featuring UK industrial techno duo Jerome. ‘Ul Qoma’ unites

Harm’s Way is Duck Ltd.’s most intuitive and organic album yet, the result of keen observation, self-possessed songwriting, and a collaborative spirit. Building on the successes of their previous releases, the deeply relatable album displays a band operating at a nuanced, lyrical and musical best.

Ducks Ltd. make inviting and frenetic guitar pop for when life feels overwhelming. While the band’s songs are ostensibly breezy, a palpable anxiety boils underneath that communicates something deeper about everyday existence. On their latest album Harm’s Way, the Toronto duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis hones in on interpersonal and societal collapses, urban decay, and the near-impossibility of keeping a level head when everything around you seems to be falling apart.

“They’re songs about struggling,” says singer and lyricist McGreevy (who also plays bass and rhythm guitar). “About watching people I care for suffer, and trying to figure out how to be there for them. And about the strain of living in the world when it feels like it's ready to collapse.” 

Even with its often dark subject matter, Harm’s Way is Ducks Ltd.’s most vividly rendered and collaborative collection yet. It’s an undeniable evolution for the band, not just in how these songs soar, but in their entire writing and recording processes. Composed on tour while supporting acts like Nation of Language, Illuminati Hotties, and Archers of Loaf, the album displays the band’s finely tuned songcraft and well-earned, road-tested confidence. “When we got signed, we had played maybe five or six shows ever. After last year, it’s in the hundreds. That experience can change your perception of your own music and songwriting,” says McGreevy. “In the past when we got stuck on a song we had a tendency to look at our favourite records to see how they tackled it. But now, instead of asking ‘what would Orange Juice do?’, we’d ask, ‘what would we do?’.” Lewis adds, “We have this really great thing where every decision with the band is filtered through both of us. Here especially, we really figured out how to make something that truly sounds like us.”

The band, fortified by this strong sense of sonic identity and a self-assurance in their new material—and in contrast to their critically acclaimed 2021 debut Modern Fiction and 2019 EP Get Bleak, both self-recorded and self-produced in a Toronto basement—wanted to bring Harm’s Way to life in a new city, with an outside producer, and with some of their favourite musicians. “We realised that so many of our favourite bands who are making guitar music right now are from Chicago,” says McGreevy. Working with producer Dave Vettraino (Dehd, Deeper, Lala Lala), they enlisted a marquee cast of Windy City collaborators to round out the tracks on Harm’s Way, including: Finom’s Macie Stewart (violin, string arrangements); Ratboys’ Marcus Nuccio (drums on most tracks); Dehd’s Jason Balla (who helped arrange the backing vocals, to which he also contributed); and backing vocals from Julia Steiner (Ratboys), Nathan O’Dell (Dummy), Margaret McCarthy (Moontype), Rui De Magalhaes (Lawn), and Lindsey-Paige McCloy (Patio). The band’s touring drummer, Jonathan Pappo, and bassist Julia Wittman also appear on the LP.

Ducks Ltd. are a band that already thrives on skirting the edges of buoyant jangle pop and driving power pop, and the duo credits these collaborators with helping to push their sound even further. “Historically our process has been really tightly controlled and insular. On this record, we worked with people who we trusted with a pretty wide range of musical backgrounds and they had approaches and ideas that helped open up the record's sonic palette,” explains McGreevy. “Jason thinks about backing vocals in a totally different way than I do and is super intuitive with melodic ideas. Julia and Margaret have a really deeo understanding of harmony. Macie and Dave were comfortable with the idea of improvising string parts which took some of those layers in some surprising directions. Dave also has an amazing ability to create atmosphere on a recording, and encouraged us to use a bunch of different techniques, tones, and processes to achieve that.”

Harm’s Way’s lush, melodic swagger is clear from the first notes of opener “Hollowed Out.” A song about living with decline (inspired by a Toronto sinkhole), its bright, indelible catchiness serves in contrast to its lyrical unease. Anchored by Lewis’ shimmering electric guitar, “The Main Thing” laments growing apart from a person whose views you once shared while managing to toss in references to both the unglamorous lives of middle relief baseball pitchers and the occult. Other songs split the difference between country and krautrock, like the rollicking “Train Full of Gasoline,” which uses the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in Quebec as a metaphor for self-destructive patterns. Meanwhile, “Deleted Scenes” mourns the absence of someone no longer in your life (even if for very good reasons) and recalls The Cure at their most direct, and closer “Heavy Bag” employs enveloping, mournful strings to evoke a sense of how misery frequently loves company.

Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden. Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone's music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages. Malone's new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019's breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone's compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O'Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve. All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across its 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition's internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony. The titular composition "All Life Long" appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice In the latter, Malone pairs the music with "The Crying Water" by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, "All Life Long" moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator's relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. "Passage Through The Spheres," the album's opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamban's essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamban defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs. This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and its fixation on the infinite, but draws its weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.

From 1967-1980, Kansas City's Forte Records captured nearly every iteration of popular Black music; basement beehiver-y from The Ray-Ons and Four Darlings, funky soul from Gene Williams Lee Harris, Louis Chachere, and The Fantastiks, downtempo disco ballads from James W hitney and Sharon Revoal, and the newly independent work of James Brown's former Soul Sister # 1 Marva Whitney. Compiled here are 28 of the label's enduring sides, contextualized with copious photos, ephemera, and essay, all housed in heavy weight gatefold jacket. Who knows how to do "The Hen"?

From 1967-1980, Kansas City's Forte Records captured nearly every iteration of popular Black music; basement beehiver-y from The Ray-Ons and Four Darlings, funky soul from Gene Williams Lee Harris, Louis Chachere, and The Fantastiks, downtempo disco ballads from James W hitney and Sharon Revoal, and the newly independent work of James Brown's former Soul Sister # 1 Marva Whitney. Compiled here are 28 of the label's enduring sides, contextualized with copious photos, ephemera, and essay, all housed in heavy weight gatefold jacket. Who knows how to do "The Hen"?

Artisjok Records is happy to announce the first release of XL Regular's album, "Store Duties". Hailing from the city of Rome, XL Regular is a young and innovative producer who seamlessly weaves together a tapestry of musical genres, including jazz, broken beat, house, and soul, into a mixed journey experience. The foundation of XL Regular's identity is grounded in a profound love for percussions and grooves. Drawing inspiration from global percussion traditions, XL Regular weaves intricate rhythms that form the backbone of his tracks. The result is a sound that is both dancefloor-friendly and artistically rich, showcasing his abilities producing over a broad spectrum of electronic music genres. You'll notice a rich fusion of traditional and contemporary influences. The jazz elements add a layer of sophistication and intricacy to the compositions, while the broken beat rhythms create a dynamic and ever-evolving sound. This blend is skilfully infused with the groove-inducing essence of house music and the timeless emotive power of soul. In the vast realm of the internet, where connections are not often strong and sometimes superficial, XL and AliA discovered each other in the world of music. It all began with a simple online exchange, a connection that would evolve into a profound friendship and a transformative journey into life inside and outside the music industry. "The album for me is an occasion to fullfill the need to express myself throughout every style of music I want to produce, without forcing myself into genres, something that felt natural for a label like Artisjok" - XL Regular

This is the story of the one the great disco labels, a legendary label who were at the forefront of a genre during it fruition and creative peak. Sam Weiss started SAM Records in Long Island City, New York in 1976. Sam, and his brother Hy, were born in Romania before moving to the Bronx in New York City when they were young. Sam and his brother were no strangers to the music business having been in the industry since the mid-50s running labels Old Town and Parody Records. • During the mid-1970s Disco took New York by storm and emerged into a revolutionary musical force that re-shaped the face of the City. It was however a genre major labels largely ignored initially. It was the smaller, independent labels that led the way in disco’s early years. Founded in 1974, Salsoul was the first. Sam’s new label SAM Records arrived a year later, followed by West End and Prelude in 1976: four labels from which umpteen disco classics emerged. • This compilation compiles all of the classic material that SAM release during the years 1975 and 1983. Offering up a treasure trove of disco essential this compilation features tracks from Gary’s Gang, John Davis & The Monster Orchestra, Komiko, Rhyze, Convertion, Vicky “D”, Greg Henderson alongside deeper cuts by Lucy Hawkins, K.I.D and more. • The audio used here has been sourced from the SAM archives and in many cases the mixes are appearing in their truest 12-inch form. The set is complete with extensive liner notes by The Guardian’s chief music critic and disco authority Alexis Petridis. • SAM Records has forever left its footprint on the Disco and music history, and this compilation is an essential addition to anyone’s collection.

Sharpshooters is the long-awaited collaborative album from Destruct & DJ Zole. The two Natives from Southern California who have been true contributors to the Los Angeles Hip-Hop scene for over a decade now. Sharpshooters showcases a vast arrangement of styles blended into one solid LP with a hint of nostalgia hence the title of the project.

Sharpshooters while paying homage to the golden era of Hip-Hop also has a fresh perspective on how the culture sounds today and at the same time inspired one of the greatest wrestlers, Bret Hart.

In a refreshing way it all culminates into a unique experience for the listener with amazing guest features to back it, at the end of the day Sharpshooters represents two genuine and diverse artists entering their prime and creating a timeless piece of art appropriately named after a legend’s finishing move.

Sharpshooters is released on vinyl by the label Mind The Wax as of March 8th, 2024 and includes 11 tracks.
Destruct has been in the music scene and has released over 30 studio albums including two with his live band "Inner City Soul". He has been blessed as well to run his own studio "Area 52" where he provides recording and executive producer services. He also has a film production company now called “The Resident People” where he has directed and filmed several music videos and short films with much more to come.

By today, Destruct has rocked hundreds of shows with legends like KRS-One, Slum Village, Dilated Peoples, Rakim, Psycho Realm, Method Man from Wu-Tang & more. He has also collaborated with artists such as Grammy award-winning Sirah, Sean Price, Kev Brown, Blu and Exile to just name a few.

All and all Destruct is here to be much more than your everyday Hip Hop artist, but a true contributor to the culture and lifestyle, progressing the movement forward. Destruct is here for a legacy, not a trend.

DJ Zole is a DJ/Producer from Southern California. He gained his experience coming up as a touring HipHop DJ and Producer/ Turntablist who has been a DJ for major acts ranging from Sage Francis (Strange Famous Records), Atmosphere, Abstract Rude, Project Blowed, 2Mex, and many others.

Since 2004, DJ Zole has travelled the globe performing and creating. He's a highly decorated engineer and producer with his degree in Audio Engineering Mixing and Mastering Certified through Musicians Institute Hollywood.

Optimo (Espacio) started life as a weekly club night. It was born at The Sub Club in Glasgow on a wet, windy, wintry November Sunday night in 1997. Run by JD Twitch and partner in crime Jonnie Wilkes. Optimo was a reaction against what felt like an increasingly conservative musical soundtrack in clubs here at that time. Clubland felt as if it had become very bland and a bit too serious; it was the era of the dawn of the Superstar DJ. Clubs often felt like bastions of male energy. It seemed dance music and culture was going somewhere far, far away from where it was meant to be. The notion of fun had got lost.

It was no longer the world they had devoted ten years of their lives to already, and lots of their friends felt the same. When the opportunity came up to do a Sunday night at The Sub Club it felt like the perfect opportunity to rip it all up and start again. So they did. There was nothing in the city (or possibly anywhere) like it. As the club believed wholeheartedly in what they were doing, there was no pressure from The Sub Club to fill the club. So, they embraced the freedom. Groups of people who had never been in the same room at the same time before came together. A community of kindred spirits started to emerge.

Word spread, slowly. Lots of people checked it out. Many loved it, some hated it. The core of the Optimo idea was to embrace music they loved that might work on the dancefloor from whatever era or genre they thought felt right. It might not seem very radical now but at that time it was revolutionary.

After about a year and a half, the club went from having 100 people attending most nights to suddenly one week having 500 people turn up. It was very weird. It was as if a collective light bulb went off in people’s heads in Glasgow. From that week on, until the very last weekly Sunday night at the Sub Club, in 2010, over a decade later, it was packed.

There were 550 Sunday Optimo nights. A LOT of music was played. So, what was the music? People often find it hard to pin down exactly what Optimo is. This has been a positive but also a negative as we live in a world where people want easily defined “brand identities”. The simplest definition of the music played is “music for dancing”, which of course is a very broad definition. Even better than trying to define it in words, we have these 2 volumes of music that give a hint of what that might be.

This is not a “Best of Optimo” or a “Greatest Hits of Optimo” compilation. For people who come to, or used to come to the nights there are of course “Greatest Hits”. But, over such a long timespan they are “hits” belonging to a certain moment in time and space. Someone who came to Optimo in 1997 would have a completely different notion of the big tracks at the club to someone coming in 2003, or 2010, or today. This compilation is just a snap shot missing several genres that might make up the DNA of Optimo. There is though a broad sweep through lots of music Optimo loves, that they believe is amazing. Music that they know will rock a dancefloor, that they have played between 1997 and 2023. Of course Optimo nights were not all about rocking the dancefloor. The first hour was always a time for them to play music they loved that often was far removed from the dance. Side 1, Volume 1 of this compilation is the kind of music one might hear at the very start of an Optimo night.

Optimo have always loved a good slogan. The most long lived, and fitting Optimo slogan is "We Love Your Ears", which is in essence what it is all about to them.

Optimo (Espacio) started life as a weekly club night. It was born at The Sub Club in Glasgow on a wet, windy, wintry November Sunday night in 1997. Run by JD Twitch and partner in crime Jonnie Wilkes. Optimo was a reaction against what felt like an increasingly conservative musical soundtrack in clubs here at that time. Clubland felt as if it had become very bland and a bit too serious; it was the era of the dawn of the Superstar DJ. Clubs often felt like bastions of male energy. It seemed dance music and culture was going somewhere far, far away from where it was meant to be. The notion of fun had got lost.

It was no longer the world they had devoted ten years of their lives to already, and lots of their friends felt the same. When the opportunity came up to do a Sunday night at The Sub Club it felt like the perfect opportunity to rip it all up and start again. So they did. There was nothing in the city (or possibly anywhere) like it. As the club believed wholeheartedly in what they were doing, there was no pressure from The Sub Club to fill the club. So, they embraced the freedom. Groups of people who had never been in the same room at the same time before came together. A community of kindred spirits started to emerge.

Word spread, slowly. Lots of people checked it out. Many loved it, some hated it. The core of the Optimo idea was to embrace music they loved that might work on the dancefloor from whatever era or genre they thought felt right. It might not seem very radical now but at that time it was revolutionary.

After about a year and a half, the club went from having 100 people attending most nights to suddenly one week having 500 people turn up. It was very weird. It was as if a collective light bulb went off in people’s heads in Glasgow. From that week on, until the very last weekly Sunday night at the Sub Club, in 2010, over a decade later, it was packed.

There were 550 Sunday Optimo nights. A LOT of music was played. So, what was the music? People often find it hard to pin down exactly what Optimo is. This has been a positive but also a negative as we live in a world where people want easily defined “brand identities”. The simplest definition of the music played is “music for dancing”, which of course is a very broad definition. Even better than trying to define it in words, we have these 2 volumes of music that give a hint of what that might be.

This is not a “Best of Optimo” or a “Greatest Hits of Optimo” compilation. For people who come to, or used to come to the nights there are of course “Greatest Hits”. But, over such a long timespan they are “hits” belonging to a certain moment in time and space. Someone who came to Optimo in 1997 would have a completely different notion of the big tracks at the club to someone coming in 2003, or 2010, or today. This compilation is just a snap shot missing several genres that might make up the DNA of Optimo. There is though a broad sweep through lots of music Optimo loves, that they believe is amazing. Music that they know will rock a dancefloor, that they have played between 1997 and 2023. Of course Optimo nights were not all about rocking the dancefloor. The first hour was always a time for them to play music they loved that often was far removed from the dance. Side 1, Volume 1 of this compilation is the kind of music one might hear at the very start of an Optimo night.

Optimo have always loved a good slogan. The most long lived, and fitting Optimo slogan is "We Love Your Ears", which is in essence what it is all about to them.

"Along with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, Fear helped define the sound and style of L.A. hardcore. Even though they formed during the first wave of punk in 1977, they didn’t put out an album until five years later, titled The Record. They used their music to piss off everyone around them, and they achieved that goal with flying colors on this debut album. It remains a punk classic to this day and Record Collector’s Mark Rigby called it “probably the most exciting and impressive, one-dimensional, ill-mannered, distasteful, odious ‘hate’ record ever made.” The album only spawned one single, “I Love Livin in the City”, but includes many more gems, including “We Destroy the Family”, “Let’s Have a War”, and “Beef Boloney”. The Record is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on translucent magenta coloured vinyl."

Roberto Agosta, or just Agosta as he likes to be called, is a Sicilian DJ and producer from Catania active all along the eastern coast of Sicily, a place that proved to be a soulful place and a training ground for a long career, making him an excellent music selector and a reference point in the spread of alternative music.

A soundtrack music enthusiast since he was a child, now a vinyl "serial gathere", Agosta has always put his vast knowledge at the service of a very personal sound that sums many different music styles and contaminations, simple and profound but straightforward and direct at the same time.

Agosta’s eponymous album, released on LP, CD and digital formats, was conceived during the Covid-19 lockdown, thanks to the precious collaboration of friend DJ and producer Massimo Napoli aka Galathea, with whom Roberto has already started another project called AN-AN that will produce a new record for Space Echo at the end of 2022.

This record highlights a typical chill-out aesthetic, thanks to its trip-hop and ambient rhythms and atmospheres, while a deeper exploration reveals the psychedelic essence of the entire work, a daring and exciting journey in the most primitive Sicily, and the energy that sustains all of its ten tracks.

Much of their author and his lifestyle - mainly based on meditation, the search for spiritual elevation, the relationship with nature and the regaining of contact with those particular places and with the people who live there - is revealed by those tracks that constitute a soundtrack for this spiritual but also extremely physical journey.

The song titles are, in fact, intrinsically linked to Roberto’s real life: the Gorna and Ilice mountains at the foot of Etna, the Carricante vineyard and its excellent wine, Unna, Three Chestnuts, Varanni, Don Alfio, Lady G. Each of them represents a pleasant and dreamlike narration and the escape from the complex dynamics of a city like Catania, among echoes of the most dreamy Pink Floyd, the softer side of ’70s krautrock, but also the Massive Attack and Tricky’s Bristol scene.
There’s also an excellent choice of synthesizers and overdubbed guitars, thanks to the talent of the multifaceted musician and producer Salvo Bruno Dub, and of Manuela Amalfitano, Loredana Poidomani and Deran Obika’s voices.

Agosta is an introspective, deep work with a cinematic vocation, perfectly rooted in the territory where it took shape, among sunny landscapes, lush with vegetation but also deserted and arid lands. From Sicily to the cosmos... enjoy!

PHILIPP ROLLER produced his album, "Sommer 97," back in 1996 during his student days in his small home studio. Drawing inspiration from acts like Kraftwerk, Orbital, various artists on Warp Records, and computer game music, Roller crafted a unique sonic experience. Initially released on cassette, the album was unveiled to an intimate audience at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in February 1997. Following the initial release, Roller had the opportunity to sign with a small British label. Unfortunately, circumstances led to the label's dissolution before the record could see the light of day. Despite efforts to secure a new label, "Sommer 97" remained confined to DAT tapes and hard drives for years. Fast forward to 2020 when Michael Kübler and Daniel Varga (Rework) joined forces to establish EXLOVE Records. Recognizing the album's potential, they decided to bring "Sommer 97" out of obscurity and into the world. Philipp Roller, now residing in Berlin and working as a freelance interface designer for music software, has had an illustrious past creating a lot of music not only on his own but even for fashion shows, art and image films, and contributing ideas to Rework's debut track "Anyway I Know You" on Playhouse. In August 2021, Roller released his first single, "Kiss & Tell / Roller Disco," on Exlove Records. Finally, after a remarkable 26-year journey, Roller's legendary "Sommer 97" tape is set to be released as a double album on vinyl.

1000 miles away from the beating musical hearts of Rio and São Paulo in the late ‘70s, the Brazilian city of Belém gave rise to a little-known record label called Erla - Estudio Rauland. Though not prolific in its output, the label made up for it in quality and experimental offerings, with several records on the label now becoming sought-after pieces among collectors. One such release is the sublime four-track psych, MPB, rock EP by singer-songwriter Jarbas Mariz.

They say never judge a book by its cover, though on this occasion you pretty much can. The wonderful tripped-out ‘70s artwork by Baby is a sure-fire indication of the music lying within. Though the EP was recorded in ‘77, it clearly gained inspiration from the psychedelic hippy idols of the previous decade and could easily have been a soundtrack to an acid trip scene in an obscure Brazilian movie.

Low-fi and quirky, there are moments of beauty and splendour but also hints of darkness; with a sublime balance of music and styles throughout. At points Jarbas will have you drifting through a folk flute daydream, the next moment a growling, psych-distorted guitar breaks and parts the calm. An ability to make those elements blend cohesively is where Jarbas’ true brilliance shines through.

Jarbas played, and still plays, with some of the key figures in Brazil's musical underground. Guilherme Coutinho (whose Guilherme Coutinho - E O Grupo Stalo album from ‘78 was also re-issued on Mr Bongo) features on electric piano for this release, with fans of his work being able to pick out his tones and playing style. Elsewhere, Jarbas also collaborated with the late great Lula Côrtes on the 'Bom Shankar Bolenath' album from 1988 and 'Rosa De Sange' from 1980. He was a member of the wonderful Cátia de França band and is a regular in the legendary Tom Zé group.

'Transas Do Futuro' is a special record and one we are honoured to be reissuing.

Double LP on recycled & random-coloured "Re-Vinyl" Return to the unwavering wild in Downpour, where you explore new, harsh lands and survive new predators. As time passed, the slugcat has evolved. With five variants of the species - take advantage of various skills that they possess and explore their own personal tales. Black Screen Records, Videocult and Akupara Games are excited to take you an aural journey into the strange land of "Rain World: Downpour". Two LPs pressed on recycled & random-coloured "Re-Vinyl". The soundtrack is housed in a beautiful gatefold sleeve comes with UV spot varnish. The artwork was created by Kelocitta who has also reimagined the vinyl art for "Rain World". The "Rain World: Downpour" soundtrack is a collaborative work that was made possible by James Primate, Lydia Esrig, Intikus, Ongomato, Connor "12LBS" Skidmore and Progfox. A unique piece of music and very interesting mesh of different styles that truly bring the environment of Rain World to life. It's fully enjoyable without the game itself. The songs of "Rain World: Downpour" are a treat to experience, with some themes referencing the original soundtrack, such as "Threat - Waterfront Complex" or "Reflection of the Moon", and some being whole new, entirely original tracks, such as "Breathing Hyometer", "Fragile" and "Sheer Ice Torrent". Once you've experienced the "Rain World" soundtrack and gotten a feel for the style of the artists who worked on the music, "Rain World: Downpour" is an amazing continuation to experience next.

A lot of water has flown under the bridge since Błoto released their last album. Sadly, in Polish rivers it wasn't just water flowing, but also all sorts of sewage of unknown origin, which destroyed the condition of these once vibrant bodies of water; it eventually led to a real catastrophe on the Odra River, which, after all, surrounds the entire city of Wroclaw, the band's birthplace. It is time for a decisive response. Błoto is making a comeback with a seven-inch vinyl and their first singles in over two years - "Szlam" and "Ścieki".

Climate change had already led to a permanent hydrological drought, which was echoed on Erozje LP. Today, as many as 91.5 percent of Poland's rivers are in very poor condition. It is not only drought that threatens rivers, but also excessive salinity. This is precisely the kind of disaster that happened on the Odra river. It resulted in 360 tonnes of dead fish and death of the river along a stretch of almost 500 km, and the reason for that was short-sighted human activity that could have been avoided. Still, the decision was made to turn the river into a cesspool.

Two years of hiatus is far too long. During this time, reality has not let up for a moment, providing new inspiration. Szlam (eng. sludge) is the sediment that forms on the river bed and sometimes the river banks. The Polish word derives from German (Schlamm), which means swamp - or mud. Szlam is therefore a sticky and unsettling remorse that rests somewhere at the bottom of the human consciousness.

In "Szlam" and "Ścieki" tracks, you will not only hear references to Erozje, but also to Kwasy i Zasady LP. For it is also a metaphor for everything that pours out of the media, smartphones, and then flows into one's head. The constant bickering, conflicts and dirty play in political campaigns, scandals to which we are already numb. On top of this, hate speech, low-quality stupefying influencer content, resulting in an ever-decreasing cultural capital of a society that breeds conformists, individualistically-minded egoists and mindless consumers. This state of affairs spawns a society of egoists, incapable of critical reflection, questioning and rebelling against reality.

The sound and genres explored by the band are, as usual, difficult to pigeonhole. These two musical miniatures contain a lot of anxious and neurotic sounds, as well as synth glitches evoking emotions such as fear, anger, sadness and guilt. The quartet consisting of Wuja HZG, OlafSaxx, Cancer G and Latarnik managed to distill this mental state by encapsulating it in shades of breakbeat ("Szlam"), and broadly defined house music ("Ścieki").

The 7" vinyl will be released on January 08th 2024 by Astigmatic Records.

KNMDK records proudly presents Urban Art Orchestra, a powerful and lush sonic experience that celebrates the music and culture of Detroit, the Renaissance City.

As a continuation of Volume 1, Volume 2 keeps that same energy of celebration with arrangements and originals that represent the legacy of Detroit while pointing towards the future of what is to come. This project was produced, arranged, and conducted by 2x Grammy nominated composer De‘Sean Jones.

Batov Records' Middle Eastern Grooves 45s series welcomes the latest addition to its eclectic roster - a two-track EP from Eje Eje, the psych and funk inspired project from Şatellites band leader and producer, Itamar Kluger. Featuring the tracks "That Rainy Down" and "Coral Sex," the EP showcases Eje Eje's unique blend of Middle Eastern melodies, soulful grooves, and psychedelic sounds.

On the A-side "That Rainy Down," The electro baglama player takes the lead, building and building as if, “he is pushing himself to his limit”, says Itamar, “seeking catharsis as he walks to the edge of the cliff with confidence”, whilst the a baladi rhythm plays like an immense march of drummers. On the B-side we find the funkier "Coral Sex", which according to Itamar tells a story of a drunk tramp bothering the refined and self-important occupants of an exclusive hotel lobby. Reflecting this friction, the track juxtaposes a silky and sophisticated R&B sound, with loosely, pr even drunkenly, played take on rebetiko, a traditional Greek music associated with the poorest of city dwellers, played on a long-necked Greek lute known as a bouzouki.

As each track develops, new layers are revealed, inviting the listener to delve deeper. The effect is intentional. As Itamar says, "there is this kind of music that hooks you in a different way every time you hear it, different places in the songs lighting up in different colors, like slowly revealed layers. In our (Eje Eje) case, it is just such a hazed blend. It could make a very specific atmosphere, color a very specific movie scene that is lost in time or yet to be directed, or a very specific moment with your headphones on a long bus to the desert."

Itamar Kluger is best known for his work with the Şatellites, a six-piece band whose blend of Turkish folk and psych with funk and disco won them champions and listeners across the globe, from KEXP in Seattle to BBC Radio 6 Music, and FIP in France.

Eje Eje’s first 45 promises to be at least as quirky and original, if not more so, since the project is even more unshackled from traditional concepts of a band.

The new album Northwind was recorded with Adrija Tokic in Nashville with some of the most well-known session musicians in town. Spencer has been a featured ROOTS artist, a Pendleton artist, has toured US and Canada with City and Colour, Daniel Romano, Jenn Grant, and more. He has had press coverage fromAmerican Songwriter, Exclaim!, and Pop Matters Support tours with City and Colour, Old Man Luedecke, Dan Romano, and more
"the north wind really saved me over the past couple of years. It brought to me a new sense of life and a new urgency for it. I had thought my songwriting days were over, but with the help of this little guitar and a strong want for expressing my gratitude towards the north, I found myself writing again. Almost every song on this coming album was written on this guitar and in the north itself. A beautiful breeze it breathes and with every breath a song. I’m thankful for these wild places. I hope they never leave us. I’ll be here until the end of my days"

nehan is a Japanese free improvisation & avant-garde rock quintet formed in August 2022. Their performances are initiated by a 9hz brain wave emitted from a testee who has been brought into a deep meditative state via either hypnosis or acupuncture - a very relaxed but very alert state. nehan doesn"t begin until the testee has gotten into the state of "nothingness." It is only then that the improvisation can begin. The role of improvisation has been key to all the musical projects of Masaki Batoh. In 2010, as Batoh was winding down the activity of his long-standing "heavy chamber folk" group, Ghost, he became involved in the design of a machine to generate sonic data based on brain waves. An acupuncturist as well as a musician by trade, his interest was spurred by the rhythms of the body and the brain, and a desire to access the "pulses" of brain waves to initiate improvisations. Following the release of Brain Pulse Music, Batoh toured Japan, the US and Europe, making demonstrations of his process using a local volunteer and guest performers, when available. Today, nehan arrive at their performance space prepared with a Brain Pulse testee, bringing a wide array of instruments including gongs, timpani, tabla and other drums and percussion, Crumhorn, bagpipes, mellotron, oscillators and additional sound effects. Their performance is a transformative electro-acoustic display that passes through the prism of music styles, from east to west, from traditional folk and classical to rock, jazz, and avant electronic. While nehan"s performance presentation invokes a sense of ritual, they understand their process as being far removed from any type of spiritual endeavor - it has nothing to do with eastern thinking or any kind of religious ceremony - this is an action of improvisation, occurring in reality between the five musicians on stage, in response to the brain waves of an individual. For the personnel of nehan, Masaki Batoh asked players with whom he had good previous experiences in improvisation: Futoshi Okano (Ghost, Acid Mothers Temple, The Silence), Haruo Kondo (Espvall & Batoh) and Junzo Tateiwa (Ghost), along with female Brain Pulse testee Gozen on oscillators. The performance here, recorded live in August of 2022 at GOK SOUND in Tokyo, demonstrates their communal dedication to the improvisation. The players act as listeners and musicians simultaneously, inspired to make extended pieces of music out of the "nothingness" of brain waves. The possibilities of nehans"s chosen approach are almost infinite; an evening with nehan is only the beginning of their journey.

Studio One was founded by Clement "Coxsone" Dodd1 in 1954, and the first recordings were cut in 1963 on Brentford Road in Kingston.1[2] Amongst its earliest records were "Easy Snappin" by Theophilus Beckford, backed by Clue J & His Blues Blasters, and "This Man is Back" by trombonist Don Drummond. Dodd had previously issued music on a series of other labels, including World Disc, and had run Sir Coxsone the Downbeat, one of the largest and most reputable sound systems in the Kingston ghettos.
In the early 1960s, the house band providing backing for the vocalists were the Skatalites[3] (1964–65), whose members (including Roland Alphonso, Don Drummond, Tommy McCook, Jackie Mittoo, Lester Sterling and Lloyd Brevett) were recruited from the Kingston jazz scene by Dodd. The Skatalites split up in 1965 after Drummond was jailed for murder, and Dodd formed new house band the Soul Brothers (1965–66), later named the Soul Vendors (1967) and Sound Dimension (1967-). From 1965 to 1968 they played 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., 5 days a week, 12 rhythms a day (about 60 rhythms a week) with Jackie Mittoo as music director, Brian Atkinson (1965–1968) on bass, Hux Brown on guitar, Harry Haughton (guitar), Joe Isaacs on drums (1966–1968), Denzel Laing on percussion, and on horns (some initially and some throughout): Roland Alphonso, Dennis 'Ska' Campbell, Bobby Ellis, Lester Sterling, among others on horns during the era of Rock Steady. Headley Bennett, Ernest Ranglin, Vin Gordon and Leroy Sibbles were included among a fluid line-up, to record tracks directed by Jackie Mittoo at Studio One from 1966-1968.
During the night hours at Studio One from 1965-1968, singers like Bob Marley, Burning Spear, The Heptones, The Ethiopians, Ken Boothe, Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt, Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, Bunny Wailer[4] and Johnny Nash, among others, would put on headphones to sing lyrics to original tracks recorded by the Soul Brothers earlier each day. These seminal recordings included "Real Rock" (by Sound Dimension), "Heavy Rock", "Jamaica Underground", "Wakie Wakie", "Lemon Tree", "Hot Shot", "I'm Still In Love With You", "Dancing Mood", and "Creation Rebel".
Jackie Mittoo, Joe Isaacs, and Brian Atkinson left Studio One in 1968, recorded drums and bass for Desmond Dekker's and Toots' biggest hits at other Kingston studios, then moved to Canada. Hux Brown stayed in Jamaica to record on the soundtrack The Harder They Come, The Harder They Fall, and toured in Nigeria with Toots and the Maytals and Fela Kuti. The Soul Brothers (a.k.a. Sound Dimension) formed the basis of reggae music in the late 1960s, being versioned and re-versioned time after time over decades by musicians like Shaggy, Sean Paul, Snoop Lion, The Clash, String Cheese Incident, UB40, Sublime, and countless other Billboard originals and remakes trying to emulate their original Rock Steady sound at Coxsone's Studio One.
The label and studio were closed when Dodd relocated to New York City in the 1980s.

Studio One was founded by Clement "Coxsone" Dodd1 in 1954, and the first recordings were cut in 1963 on Brentford Road in Kingston.1[2] Amongst its earliest records were "Easy Snappin" by Theophilus Beckford, backed by Clue J & His Blues Blasters, and "This Man is Back" by trombonist Don Drummond. Dodd had previously issued music on a series of other labels, including World Disc, and had run Sir Coxsone the Downbeat, one of the largest and most reputable sound systems in the Kingston ghettos.
In the early 1960s, the house band providing backing for the vocalists were the Skatalites[3] (1964–65), whose members (including Roland Alphonso, Don Drummond, Tommy McCook, Jackie Mittoo, Lester Sterling and Lloyd Brevett) were recruited from the Kingston jazz scene by Dodd. The Skatalites split up in 1965 after Drummond was jailed for murder, and Dodd formed new house band the Soul Brothers (1965–66), later named the Soul Vendors (1967) and Sound Dimension (1967-). From 1965 to 1968 they played 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., 5 days a week, 12 rhythms a day (about 60 rhythms a week) with Jackie Mittoo as music director, Brian Atkinson (1965–1968) on bass, Hux Brown on guitar, Harry Haughton (guitar), Joe Isaacs on drums (1966–1968), Denzel Laing on percussion, and on horns (some initially and some throughout): Roland Alphonso, Dennis 'Ska' Campbell, Bobby Ellis, Lester Sterling, among others on horns during the era of Rock Steady. Headley Bennett, Ernest Ranglin, Vin Gordon and Leroy Sibbles were included among a fluid line-up, to record tracks directed by Jackie Mittoo at Studio One from 1966-1968.
During the night hours at Studio One from 1965-1968, singers like Bob Marley, Burning Spear, The Heptones, The Ethiopians, Ken Boothe, Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt, Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, Bunny Wailer[4] and Johnny Nash, among others, would put on headphones to sing lyrics to original tracks recorded by the Soul Brothers earlier each day. These seminal recordings included "Real Rock" (by Sound Dimension), "Heavy Rock", "Jamaica Underground", "Wakie Wakie", "Lemon Tree", "Hot Shot", "I'm Still In Love With You", "Dancing Mood", and "Creation Rebel".
Jackie Mittoo, Joe Isaacs, and Brian Atkinson left Studio One in 1968, recorded drums and bass for Desmond Dekker's and Toots' biggest hits at other Kingston studios, then moved to Canada. Hux Brown stayed in Jamaica to record on the soundtrack The Harder They Come, The Harder They Fall, and toured in Nigeria with Toots and the Maytals and Fela Kuti. The Soul Brothers (a.k.a. Sound Dimension) formed the basis of reggae music in the late 1960s, being versioned and re-versioned time after time over decades by musicians like Shaggy, Sean Paul, Snoop Lion, The Clash, String Cheese Incident, UB40, Sublime, and countless other Billboard originals and remakes trying to emulate their original Rock Steady sound at Coxsone's Studio One.
The label and studio were closed when Dodd relocated to New York City in the 1980s.

All true improvisation involves an element of chance: the coming together of a nexus of influences impulses and actions that result in spontaneous creation. Often in the world of jazz these creative sparks blaze briefly in performance, and then disappear as the sonic vibrations fade from the air, but sometimes chance intervenes again, and moments thought to be gone forever can resurface in unexpected ways. As master drummer Jeff Williams sorted through his archive of cassette tapes from his extensive international career, he had no idea that hidden within it would be a recording of a 1991 evening when he joined storied NYC legend David Liebman for a set of spontaneous performances. Reunited together fifteen years after the breakup of their seminal band Lookout Farm in 1976, the two players reaffirmed their deep musical bond with a set of free-flowing exploratory dialogues in front of a receptive audience. Believed lost for many years, these performances can now be experienced again, with all their fearless freshness and pure committed musicianship undimmed by the passage of time.

Jeff Williams has established a formidable reputation as a drummer, composer, educator and bandleader on both sides of the Atlantic. His relationship with Liebman was forged in the exciting, expansive atmosphere of the New York scene in the early 70s: the meeting of Williams, the laid back Midwesterner, and Liebman, the mercurial, quintessential New Yorker, was an inspired coming together of opposites that always made the creative sparks fly. Williams remembers the journey that led to the Bar Room 432 on that 1991 evening:

“Just as I was leaving my home town of Oberlin, Ohio to move to New York City in 1971, I was given David Liebman’s phone number by someone who told me that Dave had started an organisation for jazz musicians there. I knew of Dave, from Ten Wheel Drive and John McLaughin’s My Goals Beyond, but I couldn’t have imagined what a significant role he would play in my musical life. Shortly afterwards, Dave would leave Elvin Jones and Miles Davis to start his own band, with Richie Beirach, Frank Tusa, and myself, (later adding Badal Roy), naming it Lookout Farm. We released two albums on ECM and one on A&M to wide critical acclaim, and toured across Europe, Japan, India and the US.”

“Following the dissolution of Lookout Farm, Dave and I embarked on a short duo tour opening for Gary Burton. That would be the last time the two of us would play until the occasion of this recording, fifteen years later.”

“Fast forward to 1991 when I discovered an attractive bar located on the far West Side of 14th Street in Manhattan. Bar Room 432 would become a six night a week jazz club for a few years, providing me, and many others, with the opportunity to perform our music. Catching wind of this, Dave suggested we do a duo performance there.”

“Luckily, I recorded it.There was no preparation, no set music to be played - we simply improvised, picking up where we’d left off. David’s mastery of the soprano saxophone is in full bloom here, as well as his incredibly resourceful musical mind.”

The performances are revelatory, moving in pure improvisation from clear, songlike melody to furious density, from ambience to pulsing groove, from light into darkness and back again. Cleaned up and remastered by Alex Bonney, the sound of the tape captures the warm, wood-lined ambience of the room, allowing the full power and dynamics of William’s drums and the warmth and fullness of Liebmans’ soprano sax to sing out, engaging the contemporary listener just as it engaged the hip Manhattan crowd thirty three years ago.

Cam Cameron appears to be another one of those performers from an infinite list of Black American artists that cut a solitary 45 single and then disappear into obscurity never to be seen or heard from again. Couple this with the passing of any of the relevant protagonists from the time along with any of the surviving ones ever diminishing memories and the job of collating events and artists back stories from over 50 years ago becomes that much harder.

Cam Cameron appears to be one of those artists (although our investigations are ongoing). Therefore, from the information currently gleaned, the artist Cam Cameron was none other than Alvin Cameron the writer of the featured song “You Say”, with Cam being a kind of nickname. The string arrangements on both “They Say” and “I’m A Lonely Man” were provided by the late John Andrew Cameron a hugely respected arranger, producer and songwriter within the Chicago music scene of the 1960’s and early 70’s, more often credited as Johnny Cameron. Johnny’s credits can be found on many recordings of the time often working with fellow Chicago music scene producer Clarence Johnson, some of the highlights from this liaison being the song “I Really Love You” recorded by both Jimmy Burns (Erica) and Bobby James (Karol) and the girl group, ‘The Lovelites’, on their acclaimed album “With Love From The Lovelites” (Uni). Johnny’s involvement with the Scott Brothers goes as far back as 1965 when he provided the musical arrangements on The Howard Scott penned song “I’ve Got To Get Over” recorded by Syl Johnson for the TMP-Ting label. Although they share the same surname, Alvin (Cam) Cameron is believed to be of no relation to Johnny Cameron.



“You Say” would gain a release on the independent Capri label owned by Sephus Howard Scott who together with brother Walter Scott composed the 45’s flipside “I’m A Lonely Man”. Howard also featured as one of the songs producers alongside the mysterious Edgar Mullins (a name which has been found on a couple of other tape boxes, the investigations continue).

Musical accompaniment was provided by The Scott Brothers Band, with both songs being recorded at RCA Victor’s Chicago number 2 Recording Studio at 445 North Lake Shore Drive, in the Navy Pier section. on the 10th of August 1967 and released on Capri Records during the month of February 1968.



Cameron’s “You Say” was another 45 that was first introduced to UK Soul Collectors via those much lamented and fondly remembered soul packs, always regarded as a quality collector’s 45 the only regular turntable action remembered was provided by Northampton’s very own discerning DJ Cliff Steele at venues such as ‘Detroit Academicals’, ‘Bretby Country Club’ and later ‘Albrighton’ during the leaner days of the UK Rare Soul Scene?! Hopefully a wider appreciation of both sides of this soulful Windy City 45 beckons! The second release in Soul Junction’s Capri series.

Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) was one of the GDR’s subcultural hubs in the late 1970s and 80s. The industrial city in Saxony produced an impressively wide informal cultural programme beyond state structures. Bands such as Die Gehirne, Knut Baltz Formation, Die Arroganten Sorben, Kartoffelschälmaschine, AG Geige or the projects of cassette label klangFarBe created a complex artistic environment, in which Tropenkoller ran its spiritual exercises from 1986 to 1989. The “introverted experiment” remained distinct yet was exemplary of a KarlMarx-Stadt sound that considered dissonance a non-ideological form of harmonics. A first and only tape appeared in 1988. The extravagant packaging illustrated the edition’s exclusive nature; no more than twenty-five copies were released by Tropenkoller into the limited coterie of its open circle. tapetopia is a series of vinyl releases based on cassettes from East Germany’s 80s underground, particularly from the East Berlin "Mauerstadt" music scene, featuring original layouts and track lists. For over 30 years after their initial “release” the music on these tapes was neither available on vinyl nor CD, but they were important statements in the canon of the GDR subculture. Contrary to the small print runs of the time, many of the bands were considered cult in the underground,but suspect in the higher floors.

Ty Segall follows 2022"s acoustic introspection opus "Hello, Hi" with a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self. With Three Bells, he"s created a set of his most ambitious, elastic songs, using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. It"s an obsessive quest for an expression that answers back to the riptide always pulling him subconsciously into the depths. Questions we all ask in our own private mirrors are faced down here - and regardless of what the mysterious "Three Bells" mean in the context of the album"s libretto, you can be assured that Ty"s ringing them for himself, and for the rest of us in turn.

Die für ihr Debütalbum 'Lost In Paradise' 2017 GRAMMY-nominierten Pop-Reggae-Vorreiter Common Kings releasen den Nachfolger CELEBRATION. Die amerikanisch-hawaiianisch-polynesische Combo aus Kalifornien vereint Genres und Einflüsse aus Reggae, Pop, Rock, R&B, Hip-Hop und Dancehall zu einer zusammenhängenden Wohlfühlplatte mit dynamischem Sound. CELEBRATION ist genau das für Common Kings - eine Möglichkeit, auf ein Jahrzehnt musikalischer Exzellenz anzustoßen und dabei eine wirklich gute Zeit zu haben. An der Platte wirkten Reggae-Grössen wie J Boog, Demarco, Kabaka Pyramid und Marc E. Bassy sowie Produzenten wie The Audibles und Poo Bear mit.

With her captivating voice and richly detailed songwriting, Sarah Jarosz has emerged as one of the most compelling musicians of her generation. A four-time Grammy Award-winner and ten-time nominee at the age of 30, the Texas native started singing as a young girl and became an accomplished multi-instrumentalist by her early teens. After releasing her full-length debut Song Up in Her Headat 18-years-old, she went on to deliver such critically lauded albums as Follow Me Down, Build Me Up From Bones, and Undercurrent, in addition to joining forces with Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan to form the acclaimed folk trio I’m With Her. Her fifth studio album, World On The Ground, produced by John Leventhal, went on to win the Grammy award for Best Americana Album. In 2021 Jarosz released the Grammy-nominated Blue Heron Suite, a much-anticipated song cycle which she composed after being the recipient of the FreshGrass Composition Commission.

The seventh album from Sarah Jarosz finds the highly decorated songwriter at the apex of change. A Texas native, she’s spent most of her adult life living in New York City, but shortly before writing the album Jarosz left her adopted home to join her soon-to-be husband in Nashville, TN. The geographic shake-up led to a sonic one as well for Polaroid Lovers. For the first time in her career she opened herself up to collaborators, leading to writing sessions with Daniel Tashian, Ruston Kelly and Natalie Hemby. The creative reorganization of her writing process evolved to include a much richer and more electric sound in the studio and being in Nashville meant access to a world of hot shot players. She tapped guitarist Rob McNelley (Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood), Tom Bukovac (Tom Petty, Vince Gill) on guitar and organ, her husband- bassist Jeff Picker (Nickel Creek), and drummer Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams) for the album recording. Tashian took the helm as producer and the whole album was laid down at the legendary Sound Emporium.

As it goes with all change, Jarosz’s major life events had her feeling contemplative. While sitting on the precipice of adulthood, Polaroid Lovers finds her reflecting on past loves, childhood dreams, the places she lived in and all the versions of herself that she’s been. Although the listener experiences the sonic shift forward, the album’s subject matter is a photo album of the past. Jarosz has never sounded more assured. Polaroid Lovers is filled with the kind of confidence that comes from hard won life experiences and the conviction of someone who truly knows herself.

FAZI are a post-punk band based in the ancient Chinese city of Xi'an. However, there is much more to their story than meets the eye_ With five immersive full-length records and a brief stint on peak-time commercial TV already establishing the four-piece at the forefront of a truly pioneering wave of alternative music in China, the Euro-pean re-release of their latest offering, `Folding Story', represents an incredible new beginning for a band who have already spent years honing their craft - transforming timeless traditions of love, life and death into a perpetual dance of fre- netic, krautrock energy and sprawling, shoegaze panoramas. Fittingly, `Folding Story' is itself a cyclic experience of rebirth, renewal and a return to origin. Album opener `Invisible Water' is a contemplative start as frontman Peng Liu's yearning vocals reach out across synthesisers reminiscent of sonar and the hypnotic lapping of water on an un- known shore. Described by Peng as an "artistic conception of amniotic fluid in the mother's body", this motif returns at the end of the album's final track, `Way to Atman', this time as a gentle tide washing away the ash of a spent funeral pyre. Just as the album and its protagonist is born at the beginning and dies at the end, by deliberately opening and closing `Folding Story' with the sounds of water, Fazi invite listeners to flow through the record on a never ending loop, to listen to a story without pause, one that rises from a whisper to a roar only to subside as quickly as it arrived. First released in 2022 on pioneering Chinese record label Space Circle, `Folding Story' is a collection of 10 tracks that serve as stories themselves as well as part of a universal narrative in constant flow. A phenomenal accomplishment, its forthcoming re-release in Europe via Pelagic Records will ensure that Fazi continue to blow as many minds and ruffle as many feathers as possible. Gatefold sleeve, silver offset ink, printed on special all-black cardboard. FFO Joy Division, Suicide, Savages, Cabaret Voltaire, Iceage, Gilla Band, Fontän

The first release from the remastered catalogue campaign on Melanie’s own revitalised Neighbourhood Records label (via UKs Easy Action) features the song recently used on the cult TV show Black Mirror, backed with an unreleased version of the 60s hit ‘Bo Bo’s Party’. This year Shindig Magazine did a 3-page feature on Melanie as more and more people start to ask who is she? The 7” is limited to 350 coloured vinyl copies and comes in a spined picture sleeve. Melanie landed in the New York City music and radio scene in the late 1960’s. Her first single Beautiful People immediately became a turntable hit. Her first tour began with an impressive 40-day run of shows at Paris’ world-famous L’Olympia Theater at the personal invitation of Bruno Coquatrix. In the years to come she would entertain millions: at An Aquarian Exposition (the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival), at Carnegie Hall, and the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury music festivals, The Sydney Opera House, the South Korean DMZ, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the Royal Albert Hall, and other Venues around the globe. Melanie launched Neighborhood Records, making her the first American woman to open a mainstream record label. She recorded over 20 chart hits. Melanie received an Emmy after composing lyrics for the theme song of the hit television series Beauty and the Beast. “What Have They Done to My Song Ma” was re-recorded by Ray Charles with the Count Basie Band. Nina Simone delivered a remarkable rendition, as well. “(Lay Down) Candles in the Rain” was re-recorded by Mott the Hoople on their 1971 album Wildlife. Meredith Brooks and Queen Latifah later re-recorded the anthem. “Some Say (I Got Devil)" was re-recorded by Smith’s frontman Morrissey. Melanie has always known her calling in life was to entertain. Audiences have welcomed her to the stage for more than fifty years, and she continues to perform today.

This record contains four tracks taken from a live performance which took place on December 3rd 2021 at the vinyl harvest record store in Esch-sur-Alzette Luxembourg. The concert was curated by non-profit organisation I am esch twenty too and the label mint.conception.recordings. I am esch twenty too was founded in 2020 as an alternative suggestion to the city of Esch-sur-Alzette being European Capital of Culture 2022 and its role and program. The budget for this concert was generated by the entrance fee to the concert only.

Jan Jelinek has for more than 20 years been one of the most essential voices in contemporary electronic music. Arthur Clees is a young percussionist from Luxembourg and a bright talent intent on finding his own way into jazz, improv and electronic music. Both performers had never met each other before.

The latest by Texan-turned-Angeleno progressive vaporwave producer Carlos Ramirez aka AURAGRAPH finds him shifting focus to the dance floor across eight chrome clockworks of cosmic acid house and liquid rave glide: 'New Standard'. Inspired by lessons learned during a 5K mile American road trip tour in the summer 2022, he set to work in his Simi Valley Tuff Shed of synths and hardware, pursuing an explicitly DJ-friendly muse: "I realized I wanted to make a record where every track could go off in a live setting."These cuts do just that, revved and rhythmic, peppered with slap bass, Madchester whistles, filtered acid, gated snares, baggy cowbell, and sample pack classics - record scratches, orchestral stabs, the "Yeah! Woo!" from Lynn Collins "Think (About It)." Ramirez describes the process as immediate and instinctual: "I'd turn on the MPC, pick a tempo, and just improv - it was incredibly fun."From sleek freeway techno ("110 Cruising") to arcade lurker acid ("Coast 2 Coast") to big room bangers ("666 Ambience"), the tracks time-travel across the canon of club music, sifting tricks and styles to fashion fresh anthems of hypnagogic jack. It's an album channeled as much as crafted, tapping into the decks of mythic warehouse infinities past and present, where the system rips all night and acid never dies.

Consisting of MCs A+, Phesto, Opio and Tajai (with production by A+, Domino, Del the Funky Homosapien, Jay Biz and Casual), East Oakland’s Souls of Mischief burst onto the scene in the early 90s with an impact that few other West Coast artists had at the time. Culminating in the release of their classic debut, they created a bouillabaisse that was most parts West Coast swagger but - similar to The D.O.C. and Cypress Hill - with a sonic approach that could just as well have stepped off the streets of New York City. Recorded in less than two weeks at San Francisco's Hyde Street Studios, 93 ‘til Infinity doesn’t suffer from a single freshman jitter or misstep. It’s a fully-realized effort, packed from start to finish with ridiculous lyricism - all carried out in impressive four-part, tag-team style - and backed by a wide range of musical possibilities, from hard boom-bap to 70s CTI-jazz-sprinkled grooves. But without worthy music, the group’s high-level lyricism could have fallen by the wayside. Digging deep into crates that other producers had yet to mine, the production crew gave the quartet exactly what they needed, with unpredictable rolling basslines, dusty drums and jazz keyboard and horn stabs and swirls. Non-singles like Disseshowedo (produced by Domino and Jay Biz), Batting Practice (Casual), Limitations (Jay Biz, with Del and Casual contributing verses) and What A Way To Go Out (Domino) made sure that the fast-forward button remained untouched. Get On Down is proud to present a 30th Anniversary pressing of this west coast Hip-Hop classic on cloudy blue and cloudy yellow vinyl, packaged in a gatefold jacket with liner notes and a commemorative 30th Anniversary stamped numbered OBI.

The first in a four-volume retrospective of Kuduro and tarraxinha pioneer DJ ZNOBIA. Incoming unto the world for a very long time from the musseke of Rangel, home of Casa da Mé&e Ju, in the Angolan capital o Ldanda, one if not the pivotal visionary of his country’s music electronic and digital modernism DJ Znobia, o/fum/an inventor. Usually considered the first purveyor of the fluency regarding tarraxinha (drinking in its foundational slow shuffle from the city of Benguela), as well as a main player in free thinking, spontaneous, funny, depressive, silly, melancholic, hilarious all encompassing beats within kuduro, batida, techno and beyond, his influence as a producer, DJ, MC and public fiuce has had a great imprint in Angolan culture for the better part of the last three ecades. This venture went through over 700 tracks of his archive (more than double are lost in the meantime between his and the NNT library) in order to collaboratively select a fiercely representative albeit balanced affair from his production, between instrumentals for sung kuduro, instrumental kuduro/batida, sung and instrumental tarraxinha, and other creative styling from the late 90’s to the mid 2000’s. Forms now heard around the world which started here, with Znobia a decisively influential contributor, along with several of his peers and collaborators, which will be also in evidence in this four volume retrospective. His story is way too far flung for this endeavor to try and make a simple narrative out of it. You have to be him, you have to be within this territory, and we ask of the people who will approach to ask him what has happened with the history of this music and what is the current reality at ground zero Luanda, as he is a mirror and visionary of its streets, in a country with such complicated dynamics and brutal treatment of its citizens. To try to put in a clean slate for this conversation, let’s talk to a genius of street music. Your question. First, here's the opening collection of what we have to share with you.