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Survival Of The Sickest offers no respite from the horrors of reality. Instead, BLOODBATH’s latest and greatest album gleefully confronts the slavering ghoul lurking in the shadows, and treats him to ten songs of ripping death metal frenzy. In contrast with their last album, Survival of the Sickest goes straight for the jugular in true old school fashion. With strong echoes of everything from Morbid Angel & Death through to Deicide & Obituary. Survival Of The Sickest boasts a smattering of irresistible cameos from the great, and ghoulish of the metal underground, including Barney Greenway (Napalm Death), Luc Lemay (Gorguts) & Marc Grewe (Morgoth). On Survival Of The Sickest, BLOODBATH evoke their most horrifying sonic scenarios to date.

»Keskipäivän hetken sumea vaillinaisuus« collects new dark ambient & industrial leaning tracks by Finnish producer Ilpo Väisänen (Pan Sonic).

Light Splitting is a love letter to the purest of sonic signals, to curiosity and to the way we interact with sound.

Based out of Berlin, Germany, electronic music composer and performer Hainbach creates shifting audio landscapes THE WIRE called "One hell of a trip". His music has been released on Opal Tapes, Seil Records, Spring Break Tapes, Limited Interest and Marionette. He has been fascinated with sine tones, noise and FM since he discovered the dial on the radio. Never losing his childhood wonder, he still searches for the sounds in between on modular synths and other devices.

Through his YouTube channel Hainbach brings experimental music techniques to a wider audience. He creates videos on the composition of experimental electronic music, esoteric music equipment and avant-garde music techniques. His live A/V show, performing with tape loops, modular synths and test equipment, accompanied by the visuals of Nani Gutiérrez aka Orca, was presented at venues such as Kantine am Berghain, Uebel & Gefährlich, Acud Macht Neu and Arkaoda Berlin.

Slyder Smith first swaggered onto the stage as lead guitarist with glam-tinged power popsters, Last Great Dreamers. After releasing four studio albums and one live album on Ray Records & having toured extensively throughout the UK & Europe with LGD, Slyder now takes centre stage leading Slyder Smith & The Oblivion Kids (Tim Emery, Bass and Rik Pratt, Drums) in an honest outpouring of grit, glamour and emotion. Stepping out of the shadows and into the spotlight, the self-confessed ‘frustrated lead singer’ has been forced to delve deep into his own psyche, to carefully craft lyrics and melodies that speak from the heart. Slyder’s emotive vocals are powerful, yet melancholic, the perfect balance of light and shade sitting effortlessly within the sonic landscape of his varied rhythm guitar sounds and highly melodic & anthemic lead lines. “This album has been a real labour of love for me, I’ve really put my heart & soul into it. Over the last year or so I’ve been working very hard developing my guitar playing, music & lyric writing pulling myself in all sorts of directions, really stretching myself. I feel I have accomplished what I set out to do, create songs from the heart in no specific genre & perform them to the best of my ability on the record. I guess for years I have been a frustrated lead singer so I have relished the opportunity to showcase what I can do vocally too.” – Slyder Smith - Stage left, Slyder is joined by Tim Emery, a towering enigma, whose stylish bass lines are the only thing to outshine his impeccable apparel and at the back sits the Oblivion Kids’ powerhouse and beat master, Welshman, Rik Pratt. A man of few words but whose presence is palpable in this rock steady rhythm section. But this is no ordinary guitar-based rock album; together with producer Pete Brown (George Harrison, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Marc Almond, The Smiths and Sam Brown), Slyder has allowed the songs to dictate the direction they have gone in; discovering melodies and hook lines along the way. Making use of Hammond organ and piano with the help of Neil Scully (Richard Davies & the Dissidents), a 1950s Phillicord organ, lap steel guitar & even a bit of banjo. A chocolate box of sonic sensations offering up a little something for everyone - from heavy riffage with walloping drums akin to the brothers Young to the anticipated sleaze rock shades of Hanoi Rocks. However, this band is not afraid to step away from their rock roots, instead, with nods to the likes of The Doors, Velvet Underground, The Stranglers and The Kinks from the past and the alternative rock sound of Manic Street Preachers, The Oblivion Kids have reimagined an 80s synth pop classic and mastered singalong pop, gothic, dark Americana, and dare I say it, funk rock?! There are a few firsts for Slyder on here too in the form of an instrumental track with a western feel and to a duet featuring the ethereal vocals of Nina Courson (Healthy Junkies). The result is an idiosyncratic 14 track album of outstanding versatility. A Charming debut, I’m sure you’ll agree.

LP on Black Vinyl. First new album 2018’s Romance. Mastered by Alan Douches. Recommended If You Like: Can, Tortoise, OOIOO, Sonic Youth, Ty Segall, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Bitchin Bajas, The Cars, Liars. Experimental psych-punk institution Onedia returns with Success, the band’s most guitar-centric, rocking album in decades. Long straddling the gray area between the NYC punk/psych/rock community and the art/experimental world, the music of Oneida is celebrated for its mix of abstract, atmospheric sounds and pulsing, hammering anthems. Success finds the band getting to the core of what makes minimal rock music so good - songs pared back to beat and melody with a limited number of guitar chords. If a song or two gets ripped in half later by a corrosive guitar solo, well, what did you expect? This is Oneida. “Oneida are the rare experimentalists who can hammer away at a riff or idea incessantly and somehow make it really last.”

LP on Black Vinyl. First new album 2018’s Romance. Mastered by Alan Douches. Recommended If You Like: Can, Tortoise, OOIOO, Sonic Youth, Ty Segall, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Bitchin Bajas, The Cars, Liars. Experimental psych-punk institution Onedia returns with Success, the band’s most guitar-centric, rocking album in decades. Long straddling the gray area between the NYC punk/psych/rock community and the art/experimental world, the music of Oneida is celebrated for its mix of abstract, atmospheric sounds and pulsing, hammering anthems. Success finds the band getting to the core of what makes minimal rock music so good - songs pared back to beat and melody with a limited number of guitar chords. If a song or two gets ripped in half later by a corrosive guitar solo, well, what did you expect? This is Oneida. “Oneida are the rare experimentalists who can hammer away at a riff or idea incessantly and somehow make it really last.”

823 is a multifaceted Perth-based record label, fashion brand, and artistic community, founded by Australian producer and all-around creative, Ta-ku (846k monthly listeners on Spotify). With an ethos of attention to detail and appreciation for the everyday things in life, 823 doesn’t stick to any particular genre. 823’s releases include Cabu’s (800k Monthly Listeners on Spotify) “So Far To Go” EP, Ta-ku and matt mcwaters’s duo project “Black and White,” which featured Masego collaboration “Flight 99” (14 million streams on Spotify), their debut release with Australian producer and instrumentalist Kuzich, and multiple sold out clothing capsules. “All Things Considered Vol. 1” set off a collaborative series of curated compilations, featuring both budding and well-established artists around the world including Idealism, Wun Two, pastels, SwuM, Jinsang, Saltyyyy V, and more. “All Things Considered Vol. 2” sees the continuation of this project, this time in partnership with fellow Perth-based powerhouse, Butter Goods.

Butter Goods is a Perth clothing brand rooted in skating culture and style, but drawing inspiration from hip-hop, jazz, and music at large. Butter Goods has been featured in major publications, including GQ, Complex, and HYPEBEAST. They’ve collaborated on releases with Peanuts and Puma, and have reached international levels of popularity. Butter Goods co-founder Garth Mariano’s deep love for and eclectic tastes in music drive his creativity, and are front and center in his partnership with Ta-ku and 823 on “All Things Considered Vol 2,” where the two team up to curate a wide-ranging compilation.

Arriving on September 2nd, 2022, “All Things Considered Vol. 2” is an exploration of Ta-ku’s and Mariano’s extensive and often overlapping musical palettes in two parts. The record pays homage to the love of instrumental music and hidden gems of new school jazz and funk that act as a source of inspiration and nostalgia for the both of them. The collaboration brings together over a dozen producers and instrumentalists from Sydney to Chicago, including Jadu Jadu, Gnarly, Tenderlonius, silentjay, and more. Side A is curated by Ta-ku and 823. It’s as much a love letter to the past as it is a nod to the future of beat-making. Featuring sample heavy, drum looped beats, sprinkled with the occasional ear candy for the attentive listener, it presents cruisy soundscapes & easy listening. Side B is curated by Garth and Butter Goods. It’s a raw and eclectic companion to Side A, leaning heavily into the texture and grit of multi-layered jazz and funk-driven beats.

As with any 823 release, the project is as visual as it is sonic. The artwork and visualizers are a celebration of Garth’s love of thrift culture and old nature documentaries, fused with 823’s design aesthetic of bringing everyday inspirations to the forefront. CRT style visuals are paired with 90’s spin, slide and fade away transitions. When partnered with the music, each visualizer could easily work as the intro for an episode of a VHS series of nature docos.

1st single, “senzu bean,” arrives on July 7th and kicks off Side A, showcasing Ta-ku’s hip-hop-centric tastes. Sydney producer Jadu Jadu teams up with UK-based TAMBALA, apltn, and Makzo for a vibrant instrumental. From a head-nodding bassline beneath fuzzy synths, to soft horn licks sprinkled over electronic drums, “senzu bean” is sonically rich and multilayered.

2nd single, “Too Much” by UK producer saaaz arrives July 20th. It’s a moody and low-tempo beat that builds itself up over time, complete with cryptic vocal samples and syrupy drums and bass. Also off of 823’s Side A, “Too Much” maintains a laid-back hip-hop theme but with saaaz’s signature and definitive lo-fi twist.

3rd single, “Goodmorning” from Baro Sura and silentjay of Melbourne arrives August 3rd, kicking off Butter Good’s Side B. The track is bright from start to finish and is a sun-filled track perfect for closing out the summer with. Final single, “Fool’s Gold” by Los Angeles producer L.Dre arrives August 17th. The infinitely creative beatmaker layers soft hums and the sounds of crashing waves over crisp drums and an infectious bassline. Together, it makes for a beat that sounds like it was made outside, under the sun, and is best enjoyed in the same way.

Focus track, “Seventh Wonder” by Tenderlonius, comes off of Side B, and is a window into the ideas and palettes on both sides of the compilation. The beat slowly fades in, one sound at a time, until it reaches a full-fledged groove, soaked in synths, bass, and horns, that’s impossible not to move to.

On the whole, “All Things Considered Vol. 2” is a forward-focused, sonic journey into the minds behind two of today’s great creative brands, and is as artistically eclectic and varied as those minds are, and a proud follow-up to its first volume.

LP contains A2 poster on uncoated stock.

Delroy Wilson’s rich vocal tones always added magic to any song put his way. The ‘Cool Operator’ as he was affectionately named, after he worked on a tune with the legendary Jamican producer Bunny Lee.

A match made in heaven that you will hear on the album where he was put against some of the finest rhythms made in what would be a high point in Reggae’s history.

Delroy Wilson (b.1948 Kingston, Jamaica) began his musical career at the school which was Coxonne Dodd’s Studio One label. His first release at the tender age of 13 was the Lee Perry produced ‘Joe Liges’. This Ska enhanced tune gave the young singer his first hit
and the follow up single ‘Spit in the Sky’ that also flew out the record store doors.

After a brief stop in 1969, Delroy began working for producer Sonia Pottinger’s Tip Top label which gave him more hits including ‘It Hurts’ and ‘Put Yourself in My Place’.

The 1970’s saw Delroy Wilson’s arrival at Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee’s door and what would turn into a winning formula, scoringhit after hit.
It is from this great period in Delroy’s career that we have compiled this selection of killer tracks, cut with drum and bass rhythm kings themselves Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare.

A great dub set mixed at the one and only King Tubby’s studio … We hope you enjoy the set …

Copenhagens own dj legend and veteran producer KIM KEMI releases another jacking and euphoric banger- ONLY SMOKE - his stylish and subtle sound design and varied arrangement take hints of Robert Hoods minimal riffs and flesh out a full funky arrangement taking us on that classic luxurious sonic journey. Pres play and trigger the
smoke machine - or the soap bubbles.
Martinez ́s remix is a more electro affair that could blend well with classic Underground Resistance releases. Watch out for the acid topline. Martinez is a Swedish electronic music producer and DJ, currently based in Copenhagen. Martinez kick started his carrier
in 2000 with his "Laidback Grooves EP" on the notorious Chicago based Deep-House label Guidance Recordings.
Asmus Odsats remix of SMOKE KILLS is taking the track in a more broken but funky IDM territory, breaking the track down adding avantgarde dub details over the stuttering beat.
Asmus Odsat is a former resident at Culture Box and co-founder of Ritual Malmö as well as the BULK club night releases via. FALK DISKS, the club focused sub-label of FALK (Fuck Art Lets Kill) with his ‘Ecstatic Half Truth’ EP, is played by Courtesy - even in her BBC Radio 1 show mix.
An added bonus to these 3 unique remixes is Kim Kemis beautiful
Tropical Tucan, a perfect opening track fusing sensual chilly Detroit pads and jacking understated beats into a growing glowing mind-state that is worthy of a Carl Craig spin - let it ride - don't miss the climax - you will end up looping it. An essential tool. Enjoy!

The Globeflower Masters Vol. 1 takes its inspiration from classic soundtrack and cinematic composers such as Axelrod, Morricone, Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Vannier and Piero Umiliani. Created during Summer 2020, this album is the product of a fruitful collaboration between Brighton-based musicians Glenn Fallows (The Impellers / Andres y Xavi) and Mark Treffel (Blue States / The Soul Steppers). These seasoned performing and recording artists have put their abundance of experience and skilful musicianship into effect with aplomb on this album. This is as accomplished a debut release as you will ever hear, and dare we say, a future classic in the making.

The Globeflower Masters project was borne from an idea Glenn had to create an album that leant on the influence of soundtrack and library composers - particularly of the late 60s and early 70s. This rich sonic palette had previously been innate in his writing and composition but, for this album, the direct inspiration was placed front and centre. After penning several sketches, Glenn contacted Mark to fulfil the vision he had for a complete sound. Mark had an arsenal of vintage synths, pianos and other fun toys which could supplement the drums, guitars and bass that Glenn had been working on. As the album progressed, the pair worked increasingly collaboratively, with each of them starting and sharing ideas to curate the final eight finished tracks.

The results are an album of lush, warm, timeless productions that are drenched in strings and classical instrumentation. Awash with atmospheric excursions, it is a listening experience that moves you through moods whilst transporting you to a world of deeply evocative settings and imagined scenarios. The Globeflower Masters Vol. 1 resonates equally as well on a dark melancholic Winter's day as it does sound-tracking a halcyon Summer day. Though influenced by 60s and 70s productions the record is not a simple pastiche, feeling both simultaneously brand new as well as authentically retro.

- Stunning debut album filled with lush, warm, timeless productions.

- Taking inspiration from classic 60s and 70s soundtrack, and cinematic, composers such as Axelrod, Morricone and Gainsbourg

A complete album masterpiece in every sense of the word, considered by many people to be one of the greatest ever made, regardless of genre.
Recorded at Studio Somil, Rio De Janeiro in 1972, the album was produced, arranged, directed by the self-taught, Arthur Verocai.

Previously he had worked on many records in various capacities, with artists including Jorge Ben, Ivan Lins and Celia, but this album gave him the chance to do his thing in it’s most pure form.

The 29 minute masterpiece, perfect in it’s arrangement and fusion of sonics, epitomises the sound of Brazil at the time; strings, guitars, pianos, break beats, bass lines, synthesizers, vocals from the wonderful Célia, Carlos Dafe and Oberdan (Banda Black Rio), plus percussion from Pedro Santos and Paulo Moura on sax. Bossa nova, samba, jazz, MPB, psychedelics and funk sit side by side effortlessly.

The album transcends the genre of Brazilian music, and infact all genres. Highlighted in part by the number of artists that have sampled from it; MF Doom, Ludacris & Common, Little Brother, Jneiro Jarel aka Dr Who Dat?, Dibiase and Action Bronson amongst others.

The original Continental version of the album now fetch around $2000. Our definitive re-issue is an exact replica of the gatefold original LP and the source master is taken from the Continental tapes, re-mastered in 2012 under Arthur’s supervision.

Last time he brought his Emperor Machine project to Leng, via the seductive, call-to-the dancefloor that was ‘Dance Par Amour’, Andrew Meecham had vocalist Severine Mouletin in tow. On this welcome return to the label, Meecham has enlisted the help of another sublime singer: Bom Carrot 봄캐롯, lead vocalist with South Korean punk-pop outfit Tirikilatops.

Although the pair share a mutual friend, who had extolled the virtues of a potential collaboration to Meecham, it was only when Bom Carrot 봄캐롯 reached out on social media that the pair were finally connected. Meecham jumped at the opportunity to kick-start a collaboration, quickly firing over a track he’d been working on. A few months later, her vocals landed in his inbox and the rest, as they say, is history.

The resultant track, ‘춤춰 Chumchwo – Let’s Dance’, may feature many of the aural trademarks of Meecham’s Emperor Machine work – spiralling analogue electronics, vintage synth sounds, effects aplenty and infectious grooves inspired by New York’s no-wave movement of the early 1980s – but is somehow even more thrillingly wild, excitable, and exhilarating than you’d reasonably expect.

A big part of that, of course, is the inspired contributions of Bom Carrot 봄캐롯. Her freewheeling vocals – part sung, part spoken, and part improvised – are energetic, distinctive, and addictive, adding layers of post-punk abandon and a genuine sense of musical freedom. Combined with Meecham’s outrageously unpredictable backing track – there are twists and turns aplenty, as well as surprising percussive and musical touches that seemingly appear and disappear at will – the resultant song is like the unlikely sonic lovechild of Talking Heads, YMO, Pierre Henry and K-Punk.

As you’d expect given his track record of delivering freewheeling instrumental reworks, the vocal version comes backed with an extra-special Emperor Machine ‘Instrumental Dub’ version. Stripped back and percussive, with dropouts and breakdowns aplenty, this is no mere vocal-free take, but rather a reconstructed revision piled high with extra percussion, spacey electronics, echoing vocal snippets, bubbly bass and razor-sharp Tom Tom Club guitar licks –all arranged to rise, fall and rise again around Meecham’s killer groove. As the track’s title suggests: “Let’s Dance!”

Glenn Astro and Hulk Hodn (to some known as mighty Hodini) release their new full-length record “Ghosts” via Kommerz Records on August 26th.
Producers Astro & Hodn‘s first joint album “Turquoise Tortoise” in 2018 combined uptempo beats, hiphop and spaced out lo-fi slow jams effortlessly. On “Ghosts” the duo develops their exploration of new
aesthetics even further through synthesized soundscapes and numerous collaborations with young talent from all over the world. Artists such as Danish neo soul discovery AGGi, King Krule collaborator Gal Go, Kamohelo from Studio Barnhus band Off The Meds, Berlin-based voice experimentalist Yosa Peit and many more deep dived into the collaboration and transformed the album into a sonic multiverse.
New Release Information
Glenn Astro and Hulk Hodn are connected through a long lasting musical friendship. With their Detroitinspired house releases they gained wider recognition by critics and listeners alike. Nevertheless,
they’ve never been one dimensional artists. Berlin-based Glenn Astro‘s diversified approach to production as showcased on labels such as Ninja Tune and Tartelet bridges the gaps between ambient, hip-hop, techno and bass.
Meanwhile Cologne‘s Hulk Hodn gained the status of a German underground hip-hop legend. Through his records and shows with rapper Retrogott he gathered a cult-like following besides dropping high quality projects with other beat makers such as Hubert Daviz and Twit One and rappers such as Eloquent. Most recently he dropped the instrumental LP “Sparklez” on Sichtexot sub Casual Low Grind.

Eric Dolphy's final studio album is hailed as one of the finest examples of mid-'60s post bop. Its reputation is purely one of backwards significance. Dolphy, having recorded the album in February 1964, was in Europe less than six weeks later and his all-too-brief life ended less than two months after that. Though likely he never held a copy in his hands or heard any critical opinion of it, it marked his last flurry of original compositions and is considered his apex. It is fascinating to consider whether he would had moved past or away from the album in 1965, had he lived.

Though Dolphy should not be considered an avant-garde musician by the term's most common definitions, most interpretations of Out To Lunch have been done by players working squarely in that area. So it is with this album, the most ambitious in its recreation of the five-tune disc (with one original added to the final "Straight Up and Down, extending the piece to almost thirty minutes). All five compositions from the original quintet LP are revisited in the same order, the record sleeve even duplicates the old album jacket, down to the typeface and black-and-blue color scheme, although a photo taken by Daidō Moriyama inside Tokyo's massive (and massively busy) Shinjuku railway station replaces the Dolphy's album's enigmatic "Will Be Back" sign, whose clock hands indicated no conventional time of expected return.

Otomo Yoshihide first came to international prominence in the 1990s as the leader of the experimental rock group Ground Zero, and has since worked in a variety of contexts, ranging from free improvisation to noise, jazz, avant-garde and contemporary classical. The always surprising and sometimes confounding turntablist, sound artist, onkyo improviser and now avant jazzer heading up a 15-piece aggregation of Japanese and European experimentalists. Who better to grapple with Dolphy's legacy -- so idiosyncratic in its day and yet so influential to creative improvisers who followed -- than a musician with his own singular take on how sounds can be organized in the jazz realm over 40 years later and half a world away? In other words don't expect the conventional from Otomo any more than you would from Dolphy himself. That's not to say that recognizable themes ("Hat and Beard," "Out to Lunch," "Straight Up and Down") don't appear, or that individual players -- including Alfred Harth on bass clarinet bursting into the mix and leaping across the instrument's tonal range in a way that recalls the master himself -- don't carry forward echoes from the past in the spirit of a sincere and heartfelt homage.

However, a good deal of the time all bets are off; in addition to the usual brass, reeds, bass, and drums (and of course a bit of vibraphone, here played by Takara Kumiko in far less prominent role than that of Bobby Hutcherson) are such sonic paraphernalia as sine waves, contact mike, no-input mixing board, and, of course, "computer." (Otomo himself plays skronky electric guitar.) From composition to composition and even during episodes within compositions, the band takes radically different approaches. There are blasts of free jazz energy not too far removed from the Peter Brötzmann Tentet, an impression reinforced by the presence of spluttering wildman Mats Gustafsson on baritone sax. Not surprisingly and often in contrast with the Dolphy original, the music is dense and filled to overflowing with sounds -- sometimes due to fundamental reworkings in structure rather than just the larger size of the ensemble. The middle section of "Something Sweet, Something Tender" somewhat belies the original's title with elongated howls and cries from the horns over slo-mo bass, drums, and electronic noise poised somewhere between dirge and drone, and the sudden explosion of punk-ish rock energy in the following "Gazzelloni" is a startling contrast.

At times, the feeling is that of listening to the original Out To Lunch while a séance is going on to contact Dolphy's ghost, with supernatural sounds swirling around the stereo. The effect is disconcerting, as is the post-apocalyptic cloud hanging over the arrangements, but it makes the effort more than an unnecessary tribute album. Instead, Dolphy is transported into the 21st Century and allowed to romp through modern developments in music. An inspiring concept and an album that will stretch the boundaries of anyone who comes into contact with it.

Ever since Tsuyoshi Hamada, better known as Dayzero dropped his now-sold-out first ZamZam “Orbit Dub” b/w “Theory Dub” in 2020 we’ve been eager to bless listeners and dancers with a next chapter of his unmistakable, menacing 140 dubs, and that Part 2 is finally here. In the two years since his first Zam he’s worked with Sentry, Vomitspit, Endz, and most recently branched out with an EP of leftfield styles & textures for Bristol’s legendary Livity Sound. Now he's back on 7" vinyl with a pair of stompers just the way we like them.

“Word sounds and power gonna mash them down” couldn’t be a more choice sample to lace “Pages” with, a skanking behemoth of 140 energy powered by swaggering kick & sub, reverb soaked snare, driving shaker, scratchy guitar licks, and mad delays twisting out at bewitching angles.

“Sen” counts off through a dodgy radio frequency, flying low and dropping into a ruff attack of dirty drums & bass, shifting, off-beat mid-range melodics, sleigh bell and percussion cutting through the hazy sonic miasma threatening to envelop the tune. At once eyes-down and hands-in-the-air, Dayzero strikes again with a guaranteed high score in the dance.

Strictly limited to 700 copies for the world. No digital, no repress. Art, design & two-color screen print by Polygon Press. Mastered at Precise, Pressed at Third Man.

(Cargo Collective Title) RIYL: Silver Mt Zion, Rachel’s, Grails & Do Make Say Think. 180g LP, custom window-cut letterpress jacket with artworked 300gsm inner + DL. Esmerine presents Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, its first album in five years, following a celebrated run of Juno Award winning and nominated records throughout the preceding decade. Founded by ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor percussionist Bruce Cawdron and cellist Rebecca Foon (Saltland, Silver Mt Zion, Set Fire To Flames), the acclaimed instrumental music ensemble and has long embroidered emotive chamber works using threads of post-classical, post-rock, Minimalism, neo-Baroque, jazz, pop and a wide array of folk traditions. Esmerine conjures a distinctive and immediately identifiable sound that consistently defies the trappings of “fusion”, forging emotive cinematic soundtracks under the overriding sonic sensibilities of postpunk grit, Wall-of-Sound, drone and dark ambient. Recorded by longtime co-producer Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes), the new album manifestly carries on in this fine tradition. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More completes Esmerine’s “Anthropocene” triptych: a series of album-length meditations that began in 2015. The album title itself has minor meme status in eco-artistic circles, appropriated from its original context Alex Yurchak’s 2005 book about the collapse of Soviet Russia by several exhibitions and works interrogating artistic production in the age of environmental crisis. (Foon is also well-known for her climate activism as co-founder of Pathway To Paris.) The album grapples with existential tensions between atmosphere and airlessness, seclusion and claustrophobia, forbearance and satiation, scarcity and abundance; it is one of Esmerine’s most restrained and wistful works. Instrumental densities ebb and flow, melding into each other with gauzy timbral warmth, sometimes tracing fleeting tendrils outwards, but always rotating around the saturnine gravitational force of a darkly glowing sonic center. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is like a somber forest lit by a closely-orbiting opalescent planet; it could be the alternate score to Von Trier’s Melancholia or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.Esmerine planted these compositional seeds before pandemic rooted everyone in place, under the auspices of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts and a 2019 residency at Le Château de Monthelon in France. Lasek then began documenting the band between lockdowns in various stripped-down configurations with spartan remote equipment at the rural Québec homesteads of Cawdron and Foon, culminating in final sessions at Foon’s converted barn in summer/fall 2021, notably with extensive use of the barn’s resonant acoustic piano. Brian Sanderson appears on his fourth Esmerine album since joining in 2012, continuing to expand the ensemble’s ethnomusicological sensibility and melodic sound palette with guitars, ngoni, ekonting, hulusi, and brass horns of all sorts. Everything Was Forever… also signals the full integration of bassist Philippe Charbonneau, who joined Esmerine as a touring member pre-pandemic and plays throughout the new album, along with sound design contributions via synth, tape echo and other processing. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More features the pandemic collage artwork of Maciek Sczcerbowksi, in a second Esmerine album art collaboration following their Juno award for Album Package of the Year for Lost Voices in 2015.

2022 repress, 45 rpm
incl. download code

Second Woman is a new collaborative project featuring Turk Dietrich of Belong and Joshua Eustis of the renowned Telefon Tel Aviv. As one would imagine, Second Woman is a nonpareil debut of futuristic electronic music fusing the coveted genetics of the duos respective previous endeavors into an alluring new enigma of ASMR-inducing kaleidoscopic dub. Second Woman is a fully realized entity; a well-crafted sound world and a refreshing shared effort which is inspiring in its purity and painstaking in its design.

The opening "100407jd7" wastes no time exhibiting mastery in both sound and structure, contorting the frequency spectrum into a psychoactive mirage with its mutating tectonics and vaporous tone clouds. Cuts like "200601je6" and "700358bc5" are bar-raising examples of veteran craftsmanship and vision, refining and reengineering the blue prints of their early works to create an original and dynamic album. The deliberation and control over every particle is obsessive, but the end results of each individual track unfold with an organic temperament unparalleled in a grid-locked world of DAW shaped musics and rat's-nest modular aleatory. Words fail where essential sonics are concerned, and this vital new creation speaks for itself.

The remarkable nine track debut from USELESS USERS is a lesson in style and eloquence. The band is comprised of former Sarah Records alumni, (members of Action Painting! and Secret Shine, and featuring Even As We Speak). This is sonically adventurous Pop Music, packed with melody, dreamscape swashes and élan. Bold and opulent, and brilliantly constructed, Useless Users are pushing the boundaries of preconception, poised to grasp attention and reward the listener. "Reminiscent of Pulp's Fire Records Years, in both chord choice and vocal delivery" The Quietus "..the odd twist or two along the way." Whispering and Hollering "... a real gem, a moody piece with debts owed to late Sixties psych" A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed RIYL - The Associates, Bowie, Dreampop...

In the gutter lie sun dried leaves, scraps of paper, burnt matches and cigarette butts. It is early morning; the sun rises with warm grace. you've come to the right party... you see, the body of a young man sitting by a pool, nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with a couple of "b" pictures to his credit. He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end he got himself a pool, but let's go back some time and find the day when it all started in “Hollywood,” the place where they pay a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

Three years after he celebrated “Sketch of Japan” EP, Superpitcher returns to Mule Musiq, bringing an epic super-pitched 40 minutes trip named “Hollywood”, that perfectly works as the score for the above remixed opening scene of a famous movie on the trances of Hollywood, the cage, that catch our dreams. It’s a slow grower, incorporating some of core elements of the city of celluloid dreams: action, drama, romance - all epic noir and yet so flooded by light. As ever the producer and DJ from Paris garnished his long building up and going down voyage with se-ducing melodies, glamorous pop, and psychic rhythms, creating the hippy dance ambiences he is famed for. Even though the twelve inch comes in accustomed a/b chapters, “Hollywood” should be perceived in one go to feel the depth of Superpitcher’s tropical leaning story arc, that stretches the idea of a track into a dream of satin teardrops on flickering velvet lights. It paints sonic celluloid pictures of ghostly creatures, while a female/male voice is the music’s constant melodic companion, injection Janus-faced longing dream pop spheres on the overall tripping house melancholy. A heroic electronic drama, elegant as Tamara de Lempicka painting. It asks for endless rides on the Hollywood freeways. in the back the sun – a big orange ball – sinking slowly below the horizon.

You've come to the right party... you see, the body of a young man sitting by a pool, in the back a long, graceful bar, bathed in soft light, filled with elegant customers. There's nothing else, just us and the music and those wonderful people out there in the dark, ready for a divine dance in closeup.

FIRST PRESSING ON WHITE VINYL*Regenerator is the fifth full-length from the Rochester, New York-based trio King Buffalo.

Written and recorded by the band with mixing and engineering by guitarist/vocalist Sean McVay and mastering by Bernie Matthews, the seven-song outing is the third in King Buffalo’s stated ‘pandemic trilogy,’ following 2021’s The Burden of Restlessness and
Acheron.

Both of those albums – like 2018’s Longing to Be the Mountain, 2016’s
debut, Orion, and the various EPs and other offerings they’ve made over the last eight years – made bold declarations about who King Buffalo are as a band, and Regenerator is no different. As McVay, bassist/synthesist Dan Reynolds and drummer Scott Donaldson continue to explore the outer reaches of modern psychedelic
music, melding progressive rhythms, drifting atmospheres and
accompanying surges of electricity, this new collection only further establishes them as one of the brightest lights shining in underground rock today.
As the third of three, Regenerator inherently ties together the previous two LPs, and as the band unfold the leadoff title-track across nine and halfminutes, it becomes clear just how truly they have marked out their own sonic presence.

The later melodic highlight “Mammoth” – with McVay’s most confident vocal performance yet – shimmers with hope that somehow doesn’t come across as desperate; on “Hours”, the group engages classic space rock, and the closing “Firmament” acts as a summary
for all three albums, marking the final installment of this trilogy as the
essential cornerstone of King Buffalo's work to date.

Regenerator is available on 180.gr white vinyl (including download) and CD.

Option Explore, Dylan Moon’s second full-length album, is a glassy-eyed survey of pop’s playing field both past and present, and a collection of clever, colorful songs filtered through frequencies, timbres, and dreams discovered and discarded while its maker shifts from one sub-genre to the next.

Option Explore signals a significant departure from Moon’s debut 2019 album Only the Blue s, which at its heart is a folk record from the forlorn fringes of psychedelia: a little mysterious, but ultimately lucid in its internal logic and generous with standalone, but sing- along, songs. Dylan’s 2020 EP Oh No Oh No Oh No suggested both a shift in his writing and listening habits, culminating with the 2021 compilation Moon’s Toons Vol. 1. On Option Explore, Moon willfully spins multitudes. With a careful study of synthpop, a penchant for warped yet unwavering guitar grooves, and an effortless songwriting ability, he leans into unlikely convergences, and arrives at something deeply futuristic in its disregard for genre sanctity.

A guiding principle for Option Explore was the “explore/exploit trade-off” concept, a behavioral mechanism of foraging (“the choice between exploiting a familiar option for a known reward and exploring unfamiliar options for unknown rewards”) which has been employed within computational neuroscience and psychiatry. Moon uses exploratory foraging as a manifesto for song construction: music without end, without limit. Many of these songs avoid conclusive compositional conventions, and sound more like turning a radio dial than pressing preset play. Tracks begin at what feels like a midpoint and fade out with little warning, adding to the sensation of sonic melt.

Option Explore, Dylan Moon’s second full-length album, is a glassy-eyed survey of pop’s playing field both past and present, and a collection of clever, colorful songs filtered through frequencies, timbres, and dreams discovered and discarded while its maker shifts from one sub-genre to the next.

Option Explore signals a significant departure from Moon’s debut 2019 album Only the Blue s, which at its heart is a folk record from the forlorn fringes of psychedelia: a little mysterious, but ultimately lucid in its internal logic and generous with standalone, but sing- along, songs. Dylan’s 2020 EP Oh No Oh No Oh No suggested both a shift in his writing and listening habits, culminating with the 2021 compilation Moon’s Toons Vol. 1. On Option Explore, Moon willfully spins multitudes. With a careful study of synthpop, a penchant for warped yet unwavering guitar grooves, and an effortless songwriting ability, he leans into unlikely convergences, and arrives at something deeply futuristic in its disregard for genre sanctity.

A guiding principle for Option Explore was the “explore/exploit trade-off” concept, a behavioral mechanism of foraging (“the choice between exploiting a familiar option for a known reward and exploring unfamiliar options for unknown rewards”) which has been employed within computational neuroscience and psychiatry. Moon uses exploratory foraging as a manifesto for song construction: music without end, without limit. Many of these songs avoid conclusive compositional conventions, and sound more like turning a radio dial than pressing preset play. Tracks begin at what feels like a midpoint and fade out with little warning, adding to the sensation of sonic melt.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are repressing their sixteenth album, K.G. n 2010. In the wake of a global pandemic, it’s a collection of songs that saw the six members of the band retreating to their own homes scattered around Melbourne, Australia to compose and record remotely. But have no fear! Not a drop of that unnamed alchemical something that makes this band so special is missing. This is the Gizz firing on all sonic cylinders, for if ever a band were built to swiftly adapt to adverse circumstance then it is them. Hell, on paper Covid-19, with its monstrous yet unseen face, ecological implications and new language, even sounds like an abandoned concept for a King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard album.

Truth be told, the practicalities of the creation of K.G. is a side-issue. It is the contents and the sheer visceral power of music that matters. Music that will live on long after a virus has passed. Back in 2017 the band released Flying Microtonal Banana, now one of their most highly regarded albums. That it was the first of five released by the band that year and was only part the story – a story made all the remarkable by the fact it was recorded using a microtonal musical scale that requires quarter tone tunings, on instruments custom-made for the occasion. It spawned a plethora of live favourites such as ‘Rattlesnake’, ‘Sleep Drifter’, ‘Nuclear Fusion’ and ‘Billabong Valley’ and showed the wider world that the Gizz paint from a palette that extends far beyond the musical colours of western rock. Here were songs in tunings more common in traditional Turkish or Arabic music.

“FMB was one of the purest and most enjoyable recording experiences we’ve had, and the ideas just kept coming” explains de facto band leader and multi-instrumentalist Stu Mackenzie. “But we didn’t think we would play it live as the music dictated a new medium that requires different instruments, new flight cases and so. It was a liberating studio-based experiment which surprisingly translated seamlessly and spawned some of favourite songs to play live.”

So now they return to the microtonal tunings on K.G., an album best described as a pure distillation of the King Gizzard sound, one that cherry picks the best aspects of previous albums and contorts them into new shapes and via defiantly non-Western rock scales. There’s walk-on theme song ‘K.G.L.W’, the celestial disco-funk of ‘Intrasport’, the righteous life-giving staccato rock of ‘Ontology’, epic stoner-sludge closer ‘The Hungry Wolf Of Fate’, which ends the album in abrupt burst of white noise. All come together to represent the next-level of the expanding Gizz sound.

K.G. is both a stand-alone work and also part of a bigger musical picture. More news on that shall be forthcoming – fans of the band know by now that King Gizzard don’t do things by halves. If music were organic matter, then their albums are ever-changing entities: initial highlights are often superseded on further exploration, favourite tracks replaced by less obvious moments, while riffs or bursts of noise from four or five albums back might suddenly rear their heads again.

Back in soon, note new price. The second Silver Mt Zion album featured an expanded band, with a similarly expanded band name. The addition of cello, second violin and second guitar allowed SMZ to develop richer, denser arrangements while preserving live ensemble playing. The opening instrumental pieces picked up where the debut left off, with found-sound loops and treatments introducing repeated melodic themes that move slowly through various counter-melodies the greater breadth of instrumentation brought extra subtlety, complexity and harmonic range to bear on these neo-classical dirges. Guitars and vocals moved to the fore on the album’s centerpiece tracks. “Take These Hands And Throw Them In The River” is an astounding juxtaposition of rhythmic thrust and ricocheting vocals, driven by a battered lyrical paranoia that conjures equal parts fear and rage. The calm after this storming piece comes by way of another vocal tune, this time fragile and near-whispered, with dual lines that alternately mask and reinforce each other. A piano and cello interlude prefaces the last side of the record, which features two guitar-driven songs, the first a blazing rock piece that builds to an exuberant distorted climax, the second as close to a pop masterpiece as this band is likely to craft, highlighted by a lovely arpeggio guitar riff and the defiant refrain “musicians are cowards”. While remaining anchored in an underlying sadness and mourning over this failed world, this album reveals an angrier, more urgent face as this unique ensemble charted ever-widening sonic and emotional terrain.



[c] B1 . Built Then Burnt [Hurrah! Hurrah!]

. One of the first Grunge Records ever released. Sourced from the original 1985 Master Tapes. Includes Unreleased Bonus Track. Mark Arm & Steve Turner of Mudhoney, Jeff Ament & Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam. Features Studio Master Tape Box image w/ lyrics. Released in 1985, Green River “Come On Down" was a record existing in its sonic universe out of step with its own time. Was it glam? Was it punk? Was it metal? Was it cool? We now know it was one of the building blocks of what Mark Arm would coin as "grunge" but in 1985 this record was a silent groundbreaker. It was not only the raw, sludgy, slower guitar sound that makes this band important in its place in rock history, but the members of Green River would go on to lead some of the biggest names in the genre: Mudhoney and Mother Love Bone, the latter of which also contained the roots of Pearl Jam. The record includes the iconic original cover artwork, now pressed on black vinyl, and includes a printed inner sleeve with lyrics and photo of the original master tape box, plus an unreleased rare bonus track!

From Rafael Anton irisarri: It’s sometimes hard to go back and speak to work that was made in the past. Things change, but they also stay the same in some ways. I feel this strongly coming back to these pieces.

Agitas Al So was a companion suite of materials that was composed alongside my album Solastalgia. For those with a keen eye for wordplay, they might notice each title is an anagram of the other. In some respects this is actually a very fitting sonic analogy too for the pieces from the two records. They mirror each other in various ways, harmonically in the very least, but they also share the same deep sense of pressure that forged them so acutely.

To come back to these pieces I was struck by how much they expand on the ideas contained in Solastalgia. Where as Solastalgia might have been me breathing in, this set of pieces is a deep, deep exhale.

Remember to breath.

Madfish are extremely proud to present:

LAURA NYRO - AMERICAN DREAMER

An 8LP Deluxe Vinyl Box Set housing 7 of Laura’s breathtaking original albums - More Than A New Discovery, Eli And The Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat, Gonna Take A Miracle, Smile & Nested, alongside an original LP of Rarities & Live Recordings.

During the singer/songwriter movement in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Laura Nyro was one of the most celebrated tunesmiths of her day. She penned soulful, literate songs that took the folky introspection of her peers and infused it with elements of soul, R&B, jazz, and gospel, giving them an emotional heat that set her apart. Nyro was a hugely respected recording artist, whose confident piano work and rich, expressive vocals made other sonic trailblazers such as Miles Davis and Alice Coltrane navigate towards her. She has influenced the greatest of songwriters - Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Neil Young, Carole King, Kate Bush and Elvis Costello among them. That influence continues today being heard in the works of Alicia Keys, Tori Amos, Suzanne Vega, Jenny Lewis and more. Nyro’s wonderfully
expressive and poetic songs – of which many became major hits by other artists, most notably The 5th Dimension, Three Dog Night and Barbra Streisand – remain hallmarks of outstanding quality. ‘Eli’s Comin’, ‘Gibsom Street’, ‘Wedding Bell Blues’, ‘And When I Die’, ‘Stoned Soul Picnic’, ‘Map To The Treasure’, ‘Sweet Blindness’ and ‘Stoney End’ are magnificent examples. Nyro was 18 years old when
she signed her first recording contract and wrote the songs for which she is likely to be best remembered. By the time she was 22, she had become one of the most successful composers in American popular music. But at the age of just 24, she drew back from her creativity and fame, battered and drained by the sheer energy and nerve required to sustain her career. Fortunately for those of us who loved her music, that was not the end of the story. She returned briefly to the fray for three turbulent years in the mid-to-late 1970s, and then enjoyed a final decade of artistic achievement and public acclaim, before illness took her from us at the tragically early age of 49 in 1997. Nyro found her early fame challenging yet despite living under an unrelenting spotlight, she was able to create this series of utterly beautiful
and stunningly unique albums.

Vinyl Packaging: Gatefold LP + download card. Indie Exclusive Transparent Orange vinyl in gatefold jacket Limited to 1000. CD 6 panel Digipak. Gnosis is the highly anticipated 8th full length from Russian Circles. Across the span of their previous seven studio albums, Chicago-based instrumental trio Russian Circles traversed a diverse topography of sounds, moods, and approaches with their limited armory of drums, bass, and guitar. It’s difficult to chart an evolution in their sound when their records have always felt like well-curated playlists. It wasn’t uncommon to hear drone-heavy meditations, dazzling prog exercises, knuckle-dragging riff-fests, haunting folk ballads, and tension-baiting noise rock all within the span of one album. Still, it’s difficult to ignore the progression from the pensive and intricate melodies of Enter (2006) to the layered distorted dirges of Blood Year (2019). It’s been a gradual sonic shift owing to the band’s rigorous tour schedule and a predilection towards playing their more authoritative material on stage. But with their latest album, Gnosis, Russian Circles eschew the varied terrain of their past work and bulldoze a path through the most tumultuous and harrowing territory of their sound. As was the case for so many artists in the age of COVID, the obstacles of geography and isolation forced Russian Circles to reevaluate their writing process. Rather than crafting songs out of fragmented ideas in the practice room, full songs were written and recorded independently before being shared with other members, so that their initial vision was retained. While these demos spanned the full breadth of the band’s varied styles, the more cinematic compositions were ultimately excised in favor of the physically cathartic pieces. Gnosis was engineered and mixed by Kurt Ballou. Drums and bass were tracked at Electrical Audio in Chicago to maximize the natural room sounds of the rhythm section. Guitar and synth overdubs were conducted at God City in Salem, MA to take advantage of Ballou’s vast inventory of amps and effects pedals. Despite the entirety of the album being written remotely, the songs were recorded with the full band playing together to retain the live feel of the material. Owing to the climate of the times and a new writing method, Russian Circles created their most fuming and focused work to date—an album that favors the exorcism of two years’ worth of tension over the melancholy and restraint that often colored their past endeavors. European Co-Headline tour with Cult of Luna slated for Marc 2023 (Dates TBA). Russian Circles have received coverage from most notable press including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, FADER, AV Club, Consequence, Decibel, Revolver and much more.

Mississippi Bluesman Vasti Jackson is a force to be reckoned with, as an artist, Vasti is known for sweat-drenched, soul ripping performances.

In 2015 he recorded the real soul masterpiece ‘I’m Still In Love With You’. The song is a testament to the fact that true love never dies. Passion lives forevermore and grows stronger with every kiss and embrace. Share this delicious, sensual, sonic delight with that someone special, and let them know that you are still in love!

The B Side should not be overlooked either, another big sound ballad from two years earlier.

Repress in legendary Soul:r Sleeve for 2022


A Soul:r classic by Phil Tangent. 'Billie's Smile is a absolute Anthem! Sweeping strings rise over a mysterious female vocal enveloping your consciousness as super tight beats rain down. Showing D&B can be emotive and inspiring whilst remaining powerful enough for the dancefloor. 'Lunar' on the flip roams with a Detroit techno and funk backbone keep the groove driving to end. Surreal sonics evolve as a wall shaking bass line contorts the sub frequencies. A classic 12' not to be missed.
DJ support from Marcus Intalex, Doc Scott, Bailey, Hype, DJ Lee.

"His music filled me with the urge to connect with the world," Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith says of Emile Mosseri. She first heard his work while watching the 2019 film The Last Black Man In San Francisco; just minutes in, she paused it to look up who did the score and wrote to him immediately. "I love Emile's ability to create melodies that feel magically scenic and familiar like they are reminding you of the innocence of loving life." Those talents saw recognition in 2020 with an Oscar nomination for Mosseri's original score to the film Minari. He was already a fan of Smith's and became increasingly intrigued by her impressionistic process as they started to talk. "The music feels so spiritual and alive and made from the earth," Mosseri says. "I think of her as the great conductor, summoning musical poetry from her orchestra of machines." I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon, their two-part collaborative album, introduces an uncanny fusion of their sonics. Constructed using synthesizer, piano, electronics, and voice, this soft-focus dream world is lush, evocative, and fleeting. It finds two composers tuning their respective styles inward as an ode to mutual inspiration, a celebration of the human spirit and its will to surrender to the currents of life. As a full album set, I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon moves fluidly from track to track, panning through textural vignettes. Two roughly 17-minute halves, the set evokes the bittersweet sense of something too bright or rare to last, a short-lived glimpse into a golden hour. There is a dreamy, elemental intention to this music, which Smith and Mosseri say came naturally, as they both embraced intuitive interplay throughout their creative back-and-forth. The stylistic threads of each composer are recognizable yet become more ambiguous as the album progresses, sewn into a singular vision.

Detroit's deep techno master, Deepchord, makes a more than welcome return to Soma after 5 years. With a brand new album dropping, Rod Modell delves deep into his ethereal sonic world to bring you 'Functional Extraits 1'. The first single to be taken from the forthcoming album. Built in a way that only Deepchord can, he transports you to different realms with lush soundscapes and perfectly processed electro-acoustics giving you an insight to the mind of the unique artist.

Shale glides across a field of electo-static noise, guided gently by cisps, fleeting percussion and gently warping synths. Lateral begins awash with waves of sound and glistening dub stabs while rolling beats acts as the heart beat of the track with a building intensity adding a sense of urgency. The uplifting yet dystopian sounds of Mapping spiral into existence urging you down the rabbit hole as more classic techno percussion manoeuvres this track on it's journey. Modell seeking out his roots as yet more traditional dub techno prevails via the final track, Ricochet. Pumping kicks and sub set to a perfect pace and ambience is a perfect, contemporary nod to the time honoured Deepchord sound.

With their sophomore full-length "Gotta Light?", dark rock innovators CRONE are cruising in a high octane fuelled hotrod. Channelling their personal musical inspirations that range from ALICE IN CHAINS, via KILLING JOKE, NEW MODEL ARMY, and JOY DIVISION to PINK FLOYD among many others, the Germans leave their very own and personal mark on the genre that has been brought back to the forefront of interest by acts such as GHOST in recent years. While composer, guitarist, and singer Phil Jonas had felt tired, burned out, and empty, working on new songs for CRONE provided the spark that kindled the firestorm of fresh ideas and led to the creation of "Gotta Light?". The album title was inspired by the haunting eighth episode of David Lynch's masterpiece TV series "Twin Peaks". A corresponding element of the mysterious and surreal permeates all of the new songs that revolve around topics such as the hope of receiving signals from the afterlife ('Waiting for Ghosts'), shattered dreams ('Abyss Road'), and a guiding last will ('Gemini'). CRONE was conceived out of a musical collaboration between Phil "sG" Jonas and EMBEDDED drummer and guitarist Markus Renzenbrink. Both musicians wanted to explore musical horizons beyond the metal limits of their regular bands at the time. As a result the "Gehenna" EP was released in 2014 and sparked a first wave of interest. Critics labelled the first effort post-rock, post-punk, and even as shoegaze. The well-received debut full-length 'Godspeed' hit the streets in 2018 and its more focussed and consistent songs got often filed under "post-rock". With CRONE having been elevated to the main band of each protagonist, the band's renewed focus and urgency is clearly audible on "Gotta Light?". With Christian Schmidt a permanent keyboard player has been added to the line-up that now also features lead guitarist Kevin Olasz for added sparkle and sonic depth. From the ashes of SECRETS OF THE MOON a dark reborn phoenix is rising with CRONE and this bird of prey is ready to rock humanity's unstoppable descent into madness: "Gotta Light?"

With their sophomore full-length "Gotta Light?", dark rock innovators CRONE are cruising in a high octane fuelled hotrod. Channelling their personal musical inspirations that range from ALICE IN CHAINS, via KILLING JOKE, NEW MODEL ARMY, and JOY DIVISION to PINK FLOYD among many others, the Germans leave their very own and personal mark on the genre that has been brought back to the forefront of interest by acts such as GHOST in recent years. While composer, guitarist, and singer Phil Jonas had felt tired, burned out, and empty, working on new songs for CRONE provided the spark that kindled the firestorm of fresh ideas and led to the creation of "Gotta Light?". The album title was inspired by the haunting eighth episode of David Lynch's masterpiece TV series "Twin Peaks". A corresponding element of the mysterious and surreal permeates all of the new songs that revolve around topics such as the hope of receiving signals from the afterlife ('Waiting for Ghosts'), shattered dreams ('Abyss Road'), and a guiding last will ('Gemini'). CRONE was conceived out of a musical collaboration between Phil "sG" Jonas and EMBEDDED drummer and guitarist Markus Renzenbrink. Both musicians wanted to explore musical horizons beyond the metal limits of their regular bands at the time. As a result the "Gehenna" EP was released in 2014 and sparked a first wave of interest. Critics labelled the first effort post-rock, post-punk, and even as shoegaze. The well-received debut full-length 'Godspeed' hit the streets in 2018 and its more focussed and consistent songs got often filed under "post-rock". With CRONE having been elevated to the main band of each protagonist, the band's renewed focus and urgency is clearly audible on "Gotta Light?". With Christian Schmidt a permanent keyboard player has been added to the line-up that now also features lead guitarist Kevin Olasz for added sparkle and sonic depth. From the ashes of SECRETS OF THE MOON a dark reborn phoenix is rising with CRONE and this bird of prey is ready to rock humanity's unstoppable descent into madness: "Gotta Light?"

Clear Vinyl
2022 repress, ltd. edition of 300 copies, 45 rpm
incl. download code

Second Woman is a new collaborative project featuring Turk Dietrich of Belong and Joshua Eustis of the renowned Telefon Tel Aviv. As one would imagine, Second Woman is a nonpareil debut of futuristic electronic music fusing the coveted genetics of the duos respective previous endeavors into an alluring new enigma of ASMR-inducing kaleidoscopic dub. Second Woman is a fully realized entity; a well-crafted sound world and a refreshing shared effort which is inspiring in its purity and painstaking in its design.

The opening "100407jd7" wastes no time exhibiting mastery in both sound and structure, contorting the frequency spectrum into a psychoactive mirage with its mutating tectonics and vaporous tone clouds. Cuts like "200601je6" and "700358bc5" are bar-raising examples of veteran craftsmanship and vision, refining and reengineering the blue prints of their early works to create an original and dynamic album. The deliberation and control over every particle is obsessive, but the end results of each individual track unfold with an organic temperament unparalleled in a grid-locked world of DAW shaped musics and rat's-nest modular aleatory. Words fail where essential sonics are concerned, and this vital new creation speaks for itself.

Acclaimed composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith returns to Ghostly International with Let’s Turn it Into Sound, her most ambitious, intuitive, and inviting work to date. Though ambient and modern new age circles have embraced Smith’s catalog, Let’s Turn it Into Sound favors a more baroque and robust form of avant-pop. The music bursts with vertiginous vocal harmonies and detailed sound design, forming a truly unique sonic vision.

Acclaimed composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith returns to Ghostly International with Let’s Turn it Into Sound, her most ambitious, intuitive, and inviting work to date. Though ambient and modern new age circles have embraced Smith’s catalog, Let’s Turn it Into Sound favors a more baroque and robust form of avant-pop. The music bursts with vertiginous vocal harmonies and detailed sound design, forming a truly unique sonic vision.

BLACK VINYL REPRESS

ITS 25 YEARS Since the first Heads album was released.. .so.. for 2021..Rooster has decided to get the album back in print on vinyl.. but changing the artwork. With some silver foiling and bordering, the single sleeve has been boosted to a sweet gatefold, Rooster also got the Radio 1 sessions from the time remastered, and re-cut along with the huge b-side to their Television 7” “Jellystoned Park”.
So there you have it, a double vinyl silver jubilee reissue of a fantastic debut album!

From the original reissue sales notes:
“The Heads had self-released a couple of 7"', and then Cargo Uk's inhouse label Headhunter UK got to release a further 7", and then the Debut album in 1996. Amidst a world suffocating in Britpop smarm, the Heads cut a timely swathe with their unkempt rock psychedelique. The album contained 10 tracks of guitar driven, amp destroying rock, with cues taken straight from the US underground, Stooges, MC5, Mudhoney, Pussy Galore, early Monster Magnet too but with a disitinctly British stamp, some of the drone and fuzz from Loop / Spacemen 3, some of the attitude of the Fall, Pink Fairies and Walking Seeds and overlaid with the spaced rock of early Hawkwind. It was obvious that the four members of the Heads were music obsessives. The debut album was recorded at Foel studios (owned by Dave Anderson from Hawkwind) and engineered by Corin Dingley, it was mastered by John Dent at LOUD.”


We’ve asked for some new appraisal of the Heads for the Silver Jubilee edition from good friends....

Stewart Lee February 2021
“The Halley's Comet victory orbits of historic heavy artefacts from Detroit, like The Stooges or The MC5, leave grateful onlookers aghast. But, hidden away in Bristol, The Heads are still with us now, our homegrown acid-garage godfathers, an ongoing thirty-two year old concern with a back catalogue arguably more consistent than the super-dense psyche-rock groups that inspired them. The Heads arrived fully formed and have spent three decades becoming more like themselves, a musical black hole that sucks in all surrounding matter. I love The Heads “

Phil Alexander February 2021
“The Heads make music for freaks in the know. If you were there in 1996, you’ll know just what that means…

Back then, they were gloriously out of step with the pop-cheese of the time and geezerly lumpiness of Britpop. Theirs was an altogether different take on music – a take inspired by the glorious burn-out of the ‘60s, the sonic overdrive of the ‘70s and the axis of joy created by the combination of excess volume and repetition.

We could name-check some inspirations and kindred spirits: The Stooges, Hawkwind, Floyd, Loop, Sabbath, Amon Düül II, Spacemen 3, Walking Seeds, Mudhoney, Monster Magnet among them... But in all honesty, The Heads have always existed in a world of their own, surfacing as and when the mood takes them, before returning to their subterranean rehearsal room to jam their way through yet more mind-altering riffs and mood-altering rhythms.

Relaxing With The Heads is their first defining statement. It is also possibly their most straight-forward release, the sound of a band attempting to find structure in their playing rather than abandoning themselves to their wildest impulses. That would come later…

And yet, 25 years on, this album blasts forth like few records from that time, its slacker charm welded to super-fuzzed riffs that propel its 10 tracks ever onwards. Righteous is probably the only word for it…”

Radio Diaspora works on the concept of cultural identity, which is flexible and dynamic. This provocation is generated by referring to all African ancestry moved by the diaspora and its sonorous, vocal, polyrhythmic, and polyphonic codes - all the ancestral heritage that has spread throughout the world following expropriations, genocide, and slavery - sampling and amplifying references that become triggers of energetic approaches. A heavy core of representations and senses aims to exorcize through noise and strangeness all secular violence against people of the African diaspora. In the title song of this album, 'Negro Humor', the respected Brazilian actor Grande Otelo highlights the contradiction of the clown, which awakens joy in everyone but is a sorrowful, lonely figure, ridiculing himself and putting himself in the most embarrassing situations. Relieved, loud laughter echoes in the audience because it is not the target of ridicule. In 'Despacho', Radio Diaspora explores the dichotomy of society by introducing a speech by Brazilian lawyer Hédio Silva Júnior specialised in Afro-Brazilian religion. He questions a rule under discussion in Brazil's Congress that would prohibit the use of chickens in Candomblé and Umbanda rituals. Silva Júnior points out that everyone takes a stand to protect the rights of animals, but the same cannot be said of the defense of young black people and outlying societies. The track 'Meia-Noite' evokes a celebrated point of Umbanda, an Afro-Brazilian religious syncretic cult, permeated by free jazz and electronic atmospheres developed by the duo. The other songs on the album are divided into two parts. They feature the voices of North American icons of the black struggle for civil rights: The tracks 'A.H.M. Al-Shabazz 1 and 2', amid sonic dissonances, use extracts from speeches by the American leader Malcolm X, and in 'Muhammad Ali 1 and 2' we hear quotes from famous interviews given by the boxer and activist. Ali ironizes the questions he asked his mother as a child, why all good and positive things are associated with white. "Mother, how come is everything white? Why is Jesus white with blonde hair and blue eyes? Angels are white, the Pope, Mary, and even the angels. When we die, will we go to heaven? She said naturally we go to heaven. So, I said, what happened to all the black angels they took from the pictures." His Inquiry, however, is seen as a joke by the white audience present at the TV show, which laughs off Ali's scathing criticism. Radio Diaspora uses art as an instinctive force to reject submission to traditions and culture as taming. Music is the weapon. "The (album) sound means to exorcise racism out of our minds and make us ready to act". - Rômulo Alexis

1972-1985 KATEBEGIAK - Prog-Rock, Psych-Folk & Jazz-Rock Music from the BASQUE COUNTRY. The album KATEBEGIAK, now published by ELKAR, contains 13 tunes on double LP gatefold edition from Haizea, Izukaitz, William S. Fischer, Magdalena, Enbor, Itoiz, Koska, Itziar, Errobi, Lisker, Amaia Zubiria & Pascal Gaigne, Gontzal Mendibil & Taldea and Urria, and the CD-Book edition adds an extra bonus track by the great unknown artist Juan Arkotxa. Complied by Mikel Unzurrunzaga Schmitz aka DJ Makala. Music produced in the 70's in the Basque Country got trapped between two earth shattering artistic currents; Ez Dok Amairu in the 60s and Basque Radical Rock in the 80's, and unfortunately, most of the lovely discs and tunes created at that magical time have been pushed to a remote (and sometimes even despised) corner of our collective memory. 60's and 80's music currents are almost opposite, and both work as magnetic poles with a very strong power of attraction, and maybe also as a burden for any of the later artistic currents. 60's generation of artists searched within their rich and ancient cultural roots to acknowledge and update them, in proud, hopeful and unforgettable folk songs. The 80's one on the other hand, worked in a flammable environment in constant social and political conflict and found in punk the perfect way to express their anger and weariness for so many unfulfilled promises and the lack of opportunities into short, noisy, direct and corrosive songs, technically sparse but full of energy and expressive power. Most of the "classic" names engraved in our memory come from one or the other like Benito Lertxundi, Mikel Laboa, Lourdes Iriondo and Xabier Lete or Kortatu, Hertzainak, Zarama, Las vulpes, Eskorbuto or Cicatriz. 70's generation and their music work somehow as the "missing link" ("katebegia" in Basque) between the two. They loved folky tunes and don't forget their ancient roots, but they also look outside for inspiration and experimentation. Just as the 80's boys and girls found punk the 70's guys found a completely different sonic and aesthetic landscape in the works of Grateful Dead, Fairport Convention, King Crimson, Soft Machine, Gong_ and worked closely with keen souls in other neighboring regions such as Maquina!, Pau Riba or Sisa in Catalonia or Smash and Triana in Andalusia. This resulted in more abstract and poetic lyrical content, much longer psych-folk-prog-jazz tunes, full of complex instrumental passages and mesmerizing structures of sheer ambition and masterful execution in many cases. But, most important of all, they found a voice of their own, rich, unique, and fascinating, and that's what makes them so valuable to us. Not only to us, but also to lots of vinyl collectors and crate-diggers around the world, who have in many cases paid fortunes for some of the original editions of LPs that are the source of tunes in this compilation. Mikel Unzurrunzaga Schmitz aka DJ Makala, DJ and producer of worldwide scope and wisdom, noticed this fact first and decided to pay homage to these wonderful tunes through this masterful and dedicated selection for your pleasure and as an open invitation to dig deeper into your adventures in the dark and hidden side of Basque popular music.