quête:sound of house vol 4

New Series from SIRS Maxi Maximal Cuts will focus on reworking timeless classics for maximum pleasure.

Time Of My Life - sounds like a lost or unreleased Dub version from the original, the main arrangement has been changed to focus on the bass and strings to give it a Balearic feel, building to the payoff. Let us Dance – pure 80’s Euro pop vibes which has been remixed and arranged with today’s dancefloors in mind.

On the B side with have an epic rework of ‘State Of Independence’ with added keys and beats, changing the melody and vibe for a more 90’s House feel.

Gelateria Fisotti (a real gelato spot located in Otranto, Apulia) chose to give life to the "Gelato Italiano" project in 2023, with the idea of creating a soundtrack that would be able to enter the Gelateria spaces as a protagonist. A compilation that presents the contributions of different artists, moving between disco, house, broken-beat, with different nuances within it, almost like the various flavors of an ice cream and which this year reaches its 3rd volume. The sound is unfailingly summery, in balance between "body" and "sweetness"

The year is 1995, Italy has just witnessed the biggest corruption scandal in its history, a new sound is thriving in the underground.

Far from the idyllic atmospheres of Dream House, “Location EP” by mysterious producer Universe City (moniker of Michael Preti) erupts like an earthquake on the dance floors of a shattered country: telluric textures, metallic echoes, a state hypnosis induced by volcanic tension.

A new genre was born, Progressive Trance, and this was just the beginning..

Die queere Singer-Songwriterin jasmine.4.t ist die erste britische Künstlerin, die bei Phoebe Bridgers' Label Saddest Factory unter Vertrag steht. Ihr Debütalbum wurde komplett von Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers und Lucy Dacus, auch bekannt als Boygenius, produziert. Jasmine und ihre Band sind nach L.A gereist, um das Album in den Sound City Studios aufzunehmen und haben das innerhalb von 12 Tagen fertiggestellt. Die Songs des Albums entstanden inmitten persönlicher Umbrüche im Jahr 2021: ""I came out as trans to my nearest and dearest. Some did not accept me, but some did." Trotz der schmerzhaften Erfahrungen, bietet "You Are The Morning" einen persönlichen Einblick auf ihr Liebesleben. Jasmine lernte Gitarre spielen, als ihr Onkel, ihr sein altes Instrument geschenkt hatte. Sie spielte zunächst Songs Ihrer Lieblingsmusiker nach, doch Musik spielen und Texte schreiben gehörte für sie immer schon zusammen. Der Titeltrack paart Jasmines gezupfte Gitarre mit Streichern, die ein Gefühl von Leichtigkeit und Sicherheit vermitteln. Textlich handelt der Song von Zugehörigkeit und Verbundenheit. Auf dem abschließenden Track "Woman" wird sie von dem Trans Chorus of Los Angeles unterstützt. Dieser generationenübergreifende Chor besteht aus Transpersonen, die genau wie Jasmine ihre Stimme als Quelle für Zusammenhalt benutzen. Der Song beginnt mit einer Solonummer, die in eine Gruppenperformance aufblüht und handelt von der inneren Kraft, die daraus entspringt zu wissen, wer man im tiefsten inneren ist: "I am, in my soul, a woman". Für jasmine.4.t sind Aktivismus und Performance eng miteinander verbunden. Mit ihrer Plattform sammelt sie weiterhin Spenden und macht auf die Trans Mutual Aid Manchester aufmerksam, eine Organisation, für die sie sich ehrenamtlich engagiert hat. Sie möchte Gleichgesinnten etwas zurückgeben. Um ihre Geschichte auf "You Are The Morning" zu erzählen, bezieht sie sich immer wieder auf dunkle Aspekte Ihres Lebens. Umgeben von Freunden, war der Aufnahmeprozess jedoch voller Hoffnung. Durch ihre Auftritte, ihren Aktivismus und ihr künstlerisches Schaffen läutet jasmine.4.t eine neue Ära ein.

Kulture Galerie returns with its fourth vinyl compilation, showcasing a futuristic collection of Techno and Tech House tracks infused with hints of Braindance, Electro, and Acid. The compilation opens with tracks from London’s rising star YSANNE (Semi Delicious) and Rare Happiness, both delivering perfect dancefloor destroyers that have already been tested in clubs across Europe.

Next, analogue enthusiast Perseus Traxx presents a relentless live jam packed with squelchy sounds, while on the flip side, Uncanny Valley’s Herzel teams up with North Macedonia's own L.O.V.D to deliver a slow and chuggy Electro cut.

The compilation closes with Barcelona’s mysterious and multitalented artist Sal Abi and his track “Mariani,” a unique machine-made beat full of soul and magic. Following this is the fast-paced groove of “Expandy” by Acid maestro FLX, and finally, the record concludes with the blissful and timeless “Parking” by Global Aphasia.

b A2 Let's Try = Let's Try!; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo
[c] A3 お花畑にて = In The Flower Garden; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo

[e] A5 対クッパ戦 = Battling Bowser; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo

[g] A7 Super Pipe House = Super Mario House; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo








[p] B7 ごきげんスター = Irrepressible Star; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo









[z] C5 ねぇねぇジーノごっこしようよ = Play "Save The World" With Me!; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo



[xd] D1 土管からコンニチハ = Greetings From The Pipes; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo






[xk] E1 Long Long Ago… = Long, Long Ago...; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo
[xl] E2 ちょっとドキドキ = A Little Anxious; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo







[xt] F2 対 クリスタラー戦 = Battling Culex; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Nobuo Uematsu
[xu] F3 クリスタラー戦での勝利 = Victory Over Culex; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Nobuo Uematsu
[xv] F4 クリスタラーの会話 = Conversation With Culex; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Nobuo Uematsu





[yb] G5 オノレンジャー参上 = The Axem Rangers Bust In; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo
[yc] G6 クッパ城（其ノ弐） = Bowser's Keep (Second Visit); Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo





[yi] H5 お・し・ま・い・! = The End!; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo


[b] A2 Let's Try = Let's Try!; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo
[c] A3 お花畑にて = In The Flower Garden; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo

[e] A5 対クッパ戦 = Battling Bowser; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo

[g] A7 Super Pipe House = Super Mario House; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo








[p] B7 ごきげんスター = Irrepressible Star; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo









[z] C5 ねぇねぇジーノごっこしようよ = Play "Save The World" With Me!; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo



[xd] D1 土管からコンニチハ = Greetings From The Pipes; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo






[xk] E1 Long Long Ago… = Long, Long Ago...; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo
[xl] E2 ちょっとドキドキ = A Little Anxious; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo







[xt] F2 対 クリスタラー戦 = Battling Culex; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Nobuo Uematsu
[xu] F3 クリスタラー戦での勝利 = Victory Over Culex; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Nobuo Uematsu
[xv] F4 クリスタラーの会話 = Conversation With Culex; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Nobuo Uematsu





[yb] G5 オノレンジャー参上 = The Axem Rangers Bust In; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo
[yc] G6 クッパ城（其ノ弐） = Bowser's Keep (Second Visit); Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo





[yi] H5 お・し・ま・い・! = The End!; Written-By [Original Score Written By] – Koji Kondo

* Limited edition 12' vinyl pressed on transparent red wax, housed in a full colour sleeve inspired by classic Philly Blunt artwork.

* Fresh Blunts Vol. 1 brings that same energy to a new generation of DJs and selectors, with four dancefloor-focused cuts that pay tribute to the label's roots while pushing forward with modern production values.

* On the A-side, Bladerunner steps up with 'Chronic' and 'Straight Up' — his first solo release on the label in over a decade. With his deep ties to the scene (Dread, V, Souped Up, Kings of the Rollers), these tracks are a masterclass in classic jungle flavour with upfront punch.

* The flip introduces Chimpo & Sl8r to the Philly Blunt catalogue, blending grime, jungle, and Manchester's unmistakable underground sound. Having previously released on labels like Metalheadz, V Recordings, The North Quarter, and Hospital, their debut here shows just how wide the Philly Blunt family now reaches.

* Launching the brand-new Fresh Blunts vinyl series, Philly Blunt Records continues its legacy of heavyweight jungle and drum & bass. Originally founded in 1994 as a raw, party-focused sister label to V Recordings, Philly Blunt helped define the sound of mid-90s jungle with anthems like Leviticus' 'Burial', Dillinja's 'Sky', and Firefox's 'Buck Rogers'.

* Strictly limited run!

Mysticisms is delighted to present the music from one of the inspirations for the whole Dubplate series, the lesser known, but admired Digi Dub label. Hailing from the late 80s / early 90s South-East London squat scene, the music of label head Lee Berwick and cohorts was unlike any other at the time. Not simply a retake on digital dub emanating from Jamaica, Digi Dub mixed the heritage of reggae with the alternative-culture of Britain to forge a unique version.

Inspired by punk and the early electronics of the likes of A Certain Ratio, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, Berwick came to music production later, after first quitting a career as a computer programmer to travel through Asia, returning after several years just as electronic “computer music” was gaining a fundamental new lease in 1988. A regular at Jah Shaka gigs over the burgeoning rave scene of the time, he steadily built a studio centered around the Akai Sampler.

Based, at the time, in South-East London, it’s lack of underground “Tube” lines and challenging transport links, helped create its own social and music eco-system. Squatted houses, shops, clubs and parties all thrived around the triangle of Bermondsey, New Cross and Camberwell. After meeting Kenny Diezel and the Mutoid Waste Company, he started to formulate his “dubby electronic sound” by literally play live to thousands of wide-eyed Ravers at Mutoid Waste parties.

Recording as Launch DAT, the first tracks with Kenny formed, soon joined by Harry and Nick, the trio progressed from building a sound system to L.S. Diezel being created. Friends since their teens Harry and Nik progressed from playing in bands, jamming Sly and Robbie dubs to moving from the countryside of the Home Counties to urban Peckham and into the orbit of Mutoid Waste and the squat and party scene.

Progressing to include Atari S1000HD, Akai S3200XL, Alesis Sequencer and Roland 303, the sound expanded but the raw spirit remained. The early recordings with Berwick, in the beautiful “Lovers style” that is For The Love Of and its stripped-back instrumental “Stepper” dub accompaniment in Bad Boys, as well as an early take on take on the merging of digital dub and hip hop in Skunk Funk, all capture the essence of that London period.

However, the inclusion of the seminal Suicidal Dub, that appeared as the title to their debut album and was recorded on a bus a few years later after Mutoid had relocated to Rimini, Italy, offers a glimpse to the future. Heralded as a proto-dubstep classic it has long been sought after and its inclusion makes for the essential.

Mutate The Mystery.

The name dreamcastmoe is somewhat synonymous with the Peckham based "Rhythm Section INTL" Label. With a sound equally indebted to hip hop, house, hazy electronics and DC"s very own "go-go" sound - dreamcastmoe, born Davon Bryant-James burst onto the scene with a refreshing mix of styles matched with an irresistible personality.

Wenn drei visionäre Köpfe der elektronischen Musik aufeinandertreffen, entsteht ein Sound, der Grenzen sprengt. Demise Of Love ist das Projekt von Daniel Avery, James Greenwoods Ghost Culture und Working Men’s Club – eine Kollaboration, die aus gegenseitiger Wertschätzung und dem Streben nach neuen Klängen entstanden ist. Demise Of Love verbindet rohe Energie mit klanglicher Präzision. Das Ergebnis ist eine Fusion aus industriellen Klanglandschaften, pulsierendem Acid-House und melancholischen Melodien. Ihre Musik fordert heraus, fesselt und bleibt haften. Die EP, abgemischt von Alan Moulder, bringt das Beste der drei Musiker zusammen: Synthesizer, die den Raum aufbrechen, intensive Refrains und eine Soundästhetik, die sich nicht einordnen lässt. „Strange Little Consequence“ wechselt spielerisch zwischen Acid-Groove und monumental anmutendem Rock-Refrain. „Carry The Blame“ fängt die Weite des Detroit-Techno ein, „Be A Man“ verbindet Industrial-Punk mit düsterer Melancholie, und „Like I Loved You“ hebt mit hymnischem Gesang in elektronische Höhen ab. Auch inhaltlich geht die EP tief: Texte über Entfremdung, Kontrollverlust und die Suche nach Verbindung verleihen der Musik zusätzliche Schwere. Zeilen wie „Dead peasants excite you / Rewards of the plight fall / Into your hands“ aus „Strange Little

Consequence“ oder „Your ways are antiquated / And I’m bored now“ aus „Be A Man“ spiegeln das Unbehagen unserer Zeit wider. „Demise Of Love“ ist keine bloße Zusammenarbeit, sondern eine Verschmelzung dreier einzigartiger Klangwelten zu etwas völlig Eigenem. Hier trifft Innovation auf Emotion – kompromisslos, intensiv und von zeitloser Eleganz.

Musique Pour La Danse is proud to present the definitive edition of the highly acclaimed and globally beloved Donkey Kong Country soundtracks, meticulously recreated by composer and producer Jammin' Sam Miller. Released in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Donkey Kong Country was celebrated not only for its groundbreaking quasi-3D graphics but also for its exceptional soundtrack.
The soundtrack featured a variety of compositions, and has been highly praised for its diverse and high-quality music, with tracks like "Aquatic Ambiance" and "Fear Factory" standing out as fan favorites. The influence of the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack extends beyond the gaming world, having inspired modern artists and changed the way video game music was perceived.

This limited edition boxset, limited to 500 copies, comes as a triple DLP set, containing Volumes 1, 2, and 3. Pressed on red, green, and blue marbled vinyl, it is housed in a hardboard slipcase featuring new and original artwork by Andrew Beltran.

Don't sleep on this ultimate release-the previous boxset edition has been sold out for a long time, and if you can find it, it's being sold for crazy money.

Using hex SPC data converted to MIDI, Jammin' Sam Miller painstakingly recreated the DKC soundtrack note by note, sourcing the original equipment used to create it. He then translated the MIDI into a modern studio context, incorporating keyboard samples, remixing the sounds with added effects, and mastering the tracks. To learn more about his process, watch the explanatory video here: cutt.ly/ulUHE6J.

A heavyweight slice of Afro House excellence. MoBlack Gold VOL. XII brings together deep, driving rhythms and rich textures from top-tier artists: Jamek Ortega, MoBlack, Armonica, Zamna Soundsystem, PEATY, and Faros. Each track is a standout, built for movement, mood, and dancefloor heat. Pure fire, pressed on wax.

"Disco Tape 4" is the fourth volume in a series of vinyl records released by Sound Exhibitions Records. This compilation offers an eclectic selection of tracks ranging from classic disco to nu-disco, and from house to deep house. The tracks, produced by emerging and established artists such as Tj Edit, Phil Disco, Alexny, The Mechanical Man, Just Guess, Tecam, and John De La Noise, promise to make both disco music nostalgics and lovers of new electronic trends dance. A must-have vinyl for genre enthusiasts and those who love to explore refined sounds and engaging grooves.

Sex Tags UFO presents the first part of the non stop ongoing HOUSE music collaboration between
the Burger man and Berlin based DJ Sommer! Music created as house music as a FEELING!

A four track EP smashing out some fine underground house music, all with the mix of DJ Sommers studio skills and old-school hardware approach, and the Burger man's wonky touch! The almost weekly live session recorded in DJ Sommer's studio, then arranged and mixed at Casa de Fett bare some fruits, and here is their first record!

The opening track, the first one the duo ever produced. Heavy present bass and kicking 909, atmospheric deep soundscapes, and an emotional uplifting melody! Simple, basic and efficient. Heavy stomping groover and a classic house workout!

Second track a more mellow and relaxed tune, still got the groove and the 909, but this time with a classic Ibiza guitar to set the mood for the sunrise or sunset! Massive vibe, deep, emotional and groovy for a perfect vibe for promising events to come.

One the flip side another emotional house tune, with the driving present dance bass, a shuffled 909 workout to make it swing, the pads keeping it deep, sentimental and groovy! House music and the dreamscape meet.

The last tune on the record, a heavy acid house workout, loud, raw and unpolished in the edges, tougher than the previous tracks, but with an atmospheric pad that gives it deepens in combination with the intense landscapes of the drums and the acidic drips!

A versatile, simple, raw dance floor oriented HOUSE EP made in and for the underground!

Enjoy!

‘Keep it in the Family Vol. 2’ sees Handy Records return with our first release of 2025- the second instalment of our compilation series- featuring 5 carefully curated house cuts from a range of label mainstays and fresh sounds from artists between Wales, the Netherlands, Brazil and beyond- a stellar array of emergent and established artists.

Following our club-ready releases on our recently launched sublabel Natural Frequencies throughout 2024, we felt it was the right time to return to our roots - providing the finest in timeless and broad-reaching house music.

Following several releases that continue to establish Glitterbox as the hub for independent house and disco worldwide, four sought-after mixes that have soundtracked the label's parties appear on wax for the first time. Leading Glitterbox Jams Volume 7 is label head Melvo Baptiste alongside Detroit trio Dames Brown with the infectious 'Sweat', a track that made waves in 2023 with its irresistible rhythms and stellar vocals. Marking their first original track on the label, Lovebirds ‘Burn It Down’ showcases the Berlin-based duo as the house and disco authorities that they are. Next up, Art Of Tones & Inaya Day make dancefloor magic with their uplifting collaboration 'Give My Love', before sensual earworm ‘Smooth Sweet Talker’ by Young Pulse & Fleur De Mur closes out the compilation. This four-track package once again shows the disco, funk and soul sound of Glitterbox at its very best.

Pete Herbert is back with another tasteful assembled and escapist compilation. This one focuses on slowed-down, low-slung sounds for the golden hour when love is in the air and the vibes and blissful. Balearic mainstays feature throughout with Max Essa's 'Warm Enough' a delightfully humid and synth-laced deep house jaunt, Fernando's 'Moon Rocks' full of shimmering synth lushness and Pete Herbert's remix of Mantas & Vencla's 'Sun' offering some piano laced fun to rouse the 'floor.

2025 Repress in Arctic Pearl Vinyl
Alles fließt, nichts bleibt wie es ist. Diese philosophische Erkenntnis gilt auch für das dritte Studioalbum der aufstrebenden niederländischen Rockband DOOL. Der treffende Titel "The Shape of Fluidity" zielt keineswegs nur auf die musikalische Innovation. Sondern das Album dreht sich um Themen wie persönlicher Wandel, physische Veränderung, psychologische Weiterentwicklung und die sich erneuernde Welt um uns herum. DOOL und insbesondere Sänger/in und Gitarrist/in Raven van Dorst stellen Fragen: Wie wirkt sich der Wandel auf uns aus? Wie bleiben wir uns selbst in einer Welt treu, die so unglaublich herausfordernd und aggressiv gegenüber dem Individuum ist? Wir müssen so fließend wie Wasser sein, um in diesem Ozean von Möglichkeiten und Ungewissheiten erfolgreich zu navigieren - und Frieden mit Chaos und Unbeständigkeit zu schließen. Musikalisch setzen DOOL den auf den beiden vorangegangenen Studioalben eingeschlagenen Weg fort, der emotionale Rockmusik mit Elementen aus dem Metal kombiniert. Dabei demonstrieren die Niederländer eine auffällige Reife und Kontrolle im Songwriting, die aus Jahren der Erfahrung gewachsen sind. "The Shape of Fluidity" zeigt eine eklektische, aber nahtlose Verschmelzung von Progressive und Post-Rock sowie Doom und Heavy Metal, die mit einer stets präsenten Eingängigkeit und hintergründigen Dynamik kombiniert sind. Es ist offenkundig, dass sich das Album thematisch mit dem Konzept der Identität vor dem Hintergrund einer sich ständig verändernden Welt befasst. Die Texte des Albums sind eng mit der Biografie von Leadsänger/in Raven verknüpft. Von Geburt an intersexuell, entschieden die Ärzte chirurgisch, dass der Säugling als Mädchen durchs Leben gehen solle. Dies führte zu einer Existenz auf der Suche nach der eigenen Seele, dem Kampf gegen Tabus und die Überschreitung von Grenzen, bis Raven vor kurzem beschloss, das zurückzufordern, was andere versuchten hatten, ihnen wegzunehmen - und ihre hermaphroditische Natur zu akzeptieren. Der Bandname DOOL leitet sich vom niederländischen Wort für "Wandern" ab. Bereits das im Jahr 2017 erschienene Debütalbum "Here Now, There Then" landete einen sofortigen Volltreffer. Der frisch-wilde Rock- und Metalsound aus den Niederlanden wurde von den renommierten deutschen Magazinen Metal Hammer und Rock Hard zum "Album des Monats" gekürt. Auch Vice (US), Aardschok (NL) und De Volkskrant (NL) überschütteten die junge Band mit Lob. Mit ihrem zweiten Album "Summerland", das 2020 erschien, übertrafen DOOL die ohnehin schon hochgesteckten Erwartungen. Es gab weitere "Album des Monats"-Auszeichnungen in den deutschen Magazinen Rock Hard (10/10) und Sonic Seducer sowie eine #2 Soundcheck-Position in Metal Hammer (DE) und Metal.de, und eine weitere #1 im polnischen Metal Hammer - mit einem Berg herausragender Kritiken auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks. Mit "The Shape of Fluidity" bieten DOOL sehr viel mehr als nur verdammt coole Musik. Die zusätzlichen Dimensionen von Tiefe und Bedeutung sind Teil ihres einzigartigen Reizes und kommen auf dem neuen Album deutlich zum Vorschein. Mögen sich alle, die wandern, unter der fluiden Flagge von DOOL versammeln!

Googling “paradise house”, the first results to pop up are an endless list of European b&b’s with whitewashed lime façades, all of them promising “…an unmatched travel experience a few steps from the sea”. Next, a little further down, are the institutional websites of a few select semi-luxury retirement homes (no photos shown, but lots of stock images of smiling nurses with reassuring looks). To find the “paradise house” we’re after, we have to scroll even further down. Much further down.

It feels like yesterday, and at the same time it seems like a million years ago. The Eighties had just ended, and it was still unclear what to expect from the Nineties. Mobile phones that were not the size of a briefcase and did not cost as much as a car? A frightening economic crisis? The guitar-rock revival?! Certainly, the best place to observe that moment of transition was the dancefloor. Truly epochal transformations were happening there. From America, within a short distance one from the other, two revolutionary new musical styles had arrived: the first one sounded a bit like an “on a budget” version of the best Seventies disco-music – Philly sound made with a set of piano-bar keyboards! – the other was even more sparse, futuristic and extraterrestrial. It was a music with a quite distinct “physical” component, which at the same time, to be fully grasped, seemed to call for the knotty theories of certain French post-modern philosophers: Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Paul Virilio... Both those genres – we would learn shortly after – were born in the black communities of Chicago and Detroit, although listening to those vinyl 12” (often wrapped in generic white covers, and with little indication in the label) you could not easily guess whether behind them there was a black boy from somewhere in the Usa, or a girl from Berlin, or a pale kid from a Cornish coastal town.

Quickly, similar sounds began to show up from all corners of Europe. A thousand variations of the same intuition: leaner, less lean, happier, slightly less intoxicated, more broken, slower, faster, much faster... Boom! From the dancefloors – the London ones at least, whose chronicles we eagerly read every month in the pages of The Face and i-D – came tales of a new generation of clubbers who had completely stopped “dressing up” to go dancing; of hot tempered hooligans bursting into tears and hugging everyone under the strobe lights as the notes of Strings of Life rose up through the fumes of dry ice (certain “smiling” pills were also involved, sure). At this point, however, we must move on to Switzerland.

In Switzerland, in the quiet and diligent town of Lugano, between the 1980s and 1990s there was a club called “Morandi”. Its hot night was on Wednesdays, when the audience also came from Milan, Como, Varese and Zurich. Legend goes that, one night, none less than Prince and Sheila E were spotted hiding among the sofas, on a day-off of the Italian dates of the Nude Tour… The Wednesday resident and superstar was an Italian dj with an exotic name: Don Carlos. The soundtrack he devised was a mixture of Chicago, Detroit, the most progressive R&B and certain forgotten classics of old disco music: practically, what the Paradise Garage in New York might have sounded like had it not closed in 1987. In between, Don Carlos also managed to squeeze in some tracks he had worked on in his studio on Lago Maggiore. One in particular: a track that was rather slow compared to the BPM in fashion at the time, but which was a perfect bridge between house and R&B. The title was Alone: Don Carlos would explain years later that it had to be intended both in the English meaning of “by itself” and like the Italian word meaning “halo”. That wasn’t the only double entendre about the song, anyway. Its own very deep nature was, indeed, double. On the one hand, Alone was built around an angelic keyboard pattern and a romantic piano riff that took you straight to heaven; on the other, it showcased enough electronic squelches (plus a sax part that sounded like it had been dissolved by acid rain) to pigeonhole the tune into the “junk modernity” section, aka the hallmark of all the most innovative sounds of the time: music that sounded like it was hand-crafted from the scraps of glittering overground pop.

No one knows who was the first to call it “paradise house”, nor when it happened. Alternative definitions on the same topic one happened to hear included “ambient house”, “dream house”, “Mediterranean progressive”… but of course none were as good (and alluring) as “paradise house”. What is certain is that such inclination for sounds that were in equal measure angelic and neurotic, romantic and unaffective, quickly became the trademark of the second generation of Italian house. Music that seemed shyly equidistant from all the rhythmic and electronic revolutions that had happened up to that moment (“Music perfectly adept at going nowhere slowly” as noted by English journalist Craig McLean in a legendary field report for Blah Blah Blah magazine). Music that to a inattentive ear might have sounded as anonymous as a snapshot of a random group of passers-by at 10AM in the centre of any major city, but perfectly described the (slow) awakening in the real world after the universal love binge of the so-called Second Summer of Love.

For a brief but unforgettable season, in Italy “paradise house” was the official soundtrack of interminable weekends spent inside the car, darting from one club to another, cutting the peninsula from North to centre, from East to West coast in pursuit of the latest after-hours disco, trading kilometres per hour with beats per minute: practically, a new New Year’s Eve every Friday and Saturday night. This too was no small transformation, as well as a shock for an adult Italy that was encountering for the first time – thanks to its sons and daughters – the wild side of industrial modernity. The clubbers of the so-called “fuoriorario” scene were the balls gone mad in the pinball machine most feared by newspapers, magazines and TV pundits. What they did each and every weekend, apart from going crazy to the sound of the current white labels, was linking distant geographical points and non-places (thank you Marc Augé!) – old dance halls, farmhouses and business centres – transformed for one night into house music heaven. As Marco D’Eramo wrote in his 1995 essay on Chicago, Il maiale e il grattacielo: “Four-wheeled capitalism distorts our age-old image of the city, it allows the suburbs to be connected to each other, whereas before they were connected only by the centre (…) It makes possible a metropolitan area without a metropolis, without a city centre, without downtown. The periphery is no longer a periphery of any centre, but is self-centred”.

“Paradise house” perfectly understood all of this and turned it into a sort of cyber-blues that didn’t even need words, and unexpectedly brought back a drop of melancholic (post?)-humanity within a world that by then – as we would wholly realise in the decades to come – was fully inhuman and heartless. A world where we were all alone, and surrounded by a sinister yellowish halo, like a neon at the end of its life cycle. But, for one night at least, happy."

Limited Edition 12"

Left Ear are delivering two previous unreleased Australian ‘experimental’ electronic tracks from the 80’s and honoring them with a split 12” release.

Side A: Features an unreleased full-length version of Tim Gruchy’s Jungles, a solo electro-percussive piece recorded in Tim’s Lab D’Avoid studio in Brisbane. The track is emblematic of his style during an era when he worked extensively in music, both as a percussionist and primarily with electronics, including early analog synths.

A shorter version was originally released on the Meanjin (Brisbane) art collective ZIP’s Eye Ear EP book package in 1986 and, more recently, on Left Ear’s Antipodean Anomalies 2 compilation.

This original version of Jungles was initially part of the soundtrack for the ZIP Performing Group’s infamous Ironing Board Dances. Footage of the performance was treated through a Fairlight synthesizer, mixed with hand-painted slides, and transferred to VHS for various film festivals.

Side B: Michael Krillich’s Arnhem Land began its journey in 1982 in a shared house in North Bondi. Inspired by Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, he experimented with tape loops, cut-ups, and samples, incorporating synthesizers, effects pedals, a drum machine, and an unknown sample from an Australian Aboriginal record. This creation became part of his cassette release, Thematic Variations.

In 2010, Krillich uploaded an unreleased extended version of Arnhem Land from Thematic Variations to YouTube, which was shared by record dealer Matt Bowden with Left Ear Records, who pursued to release it on vinyl. Their search to uncover the sample’s origins led them to Arnhem Land Vol. 1 (1957), recorded by Peter Elkin in the Daly River region.

After years of research and through the guidance of Professor Allan Marrett and local custodians, the sample was verified as a “Wangga” ceremonial song sung by George Morkai, an Emmiyangarl man. Rights to the song had passed through generations to Tobias Worumbu, who granted us permission for its use, bringing Arnhem Land full circle.

From the deepest trenches of deadstock 45s and the unsung annals of soft rock infamy, we present SR4HT02: (Till You're) Back In My Arms.

Universal Cave and the Street Road Band cover Dan Strimer with Insured Sound's cult anthem (Till You're) Back In My Arms which was originally released as a 45 in 1977 on Lost Nation Records out of Guysville, Ohio. When Universal Cave featured Back in My Arms on Soft Rock for Hard Times Vol 8 in 2023, we reached out to Dan Strimer to tell him how much we loved his record, and quickly made a friend who helped us release a cover of his song 47 years after it first came out. Dan is still making music to this day and there are even rumors of some unreleased recordings making their way out in the near future.

On vacation in Hawaii when we released Soft Rock for Hard Times Vol 8, Alex Tebbs Mitchell of Universal Cave kept coming back to Dan's catchy, rural classic rock tune. When Alex returned to Philadelphia, he assembled the Street Road Band to record a laid back, 'southwestern Balearic' cover version with André Ethier on vocals, Charles Simon on guitar, Jesse Spearhawk on Pedal Steel, Alex Tebbs Mitchell on Rhodes and bass, Ryan M. Todd on synthesizers, and Shawn Ryan and Brian Cassidy on additional programming and arrangement. The result is a blissful soft rock ballad inspired by the likes of Chris Rea and Mark Knopfler.

After recording the cover, we called in the UK's finest Balearic maestro's Coyote to take the multitracks to the White Isle and back for a remix worthy of Cafe Del Mar. Coyote send the song into a dreamy, dubby, deep house groove, confirming that the record is, in fact, Balearic.

Mixed by Alex Tebbs Mitchell
Mastered by Mat Leffler-Schulman

The second volume of Roundabout Sounds' 'All Hands' is another brilliant house collection. Arguably one of the Peckham's best known is Wbeeza, who kicks off with the grading mechanical house of 'FLIP SHxT' which brings to mind the best of Omar S. Demetrio Giannice keeps it deep and swaggering with his stripped back but enticing 'Talk', while Joe Babylon layers up lovely synth chords and organic beats on 'Adepsis'. The ultra mysterious Unknown Deetroit shuts down with 'It's Never Over' which is some playful loopy fun.

Six track EP full of warm deep house music, spacy jazz not jazz, african and brasil rhythms, plus a portion of psychedelic funk poetry.

‚Children Of Zu Zu‘ is Charles Petersohn‘s restart after his previous label release from 18 years ago, besides some experiments on Bandcamp and SoundCloud. On this EP sound merges into each other, is producing an organic flow. Smooth deep house, different kinds of jazz and jazznotjazz, african rhythms, Brasil batucada, psychedelic funk poetry, inspired by Dr. John and most of all the space music and afrofuturist philosophy of Sun Ra and his Arkestra. Soundscapes and atmos in the background of each song give the music a deeper feel. It took its time to get the music ready. There was the desire of having Web Web pianist Roberto di Gioia in the music, took months. But it was worth waiting. Roberto planted some magic moments in to it. On other hand Charles is hyper critic with his own sound. If jumping into to arena again, there should be something special. When he will be okay with every inch of his sonic work, then its done! ‚Children Of Zu Zu‘ became a collage of thick, warm and smooth housemusic, spacy Ambient Jazz and two dancefloor tools with a deep Afro and Brasil feel.

Here we go with six tracks full of love, full of dreams and full of space.

"Children Of Zu Zu" ist Charles Petersohns Neustart nach seiner letzten Label-Veröffentlichung vor 18 Jahren mit dem Pianisten Jasper van't Hof bei "Jaro". Deep House Music, Jazz Not Jazz, afrobrasilianische Jazz-Grooves, Ambient Jazz, eine von New Orleans Legende Dr. John inspirierte spirituelle Botschaft, einen Gesang von Frauen und Mädchen aus Samoa vom "British Commonwealth Sound Archive" und nicht zuletzt die intergalaktische Poesie von Sun Ra und seinem Arkestra. Soundscapes im Hintergrund fast aller Tracks versetzen die Musik jeweils an einen fiktiven Ort. Es hat seine Zeit gedauert, bis die Musik fertig war. Der Wunsch, den Web Web Pianisten Roberto Di Gioia für die Musik zu gewinnen, schien fast unmöglich. Seine Teilnahme verzögerte sich um mehrere Monate, denn Roberto ist ein vielbeschäftigter Musiker und Produzent. Am Ende hat sich das Warten gelohnt. Er hat der Musik einige magische Momente beschert. Auf der anderen Seite ist Charles mit seinem eigenen Material meist überkritisch. "Wenn ich mich parallel zu so vielen großartigen Musikern und Produzenten überall in der Welt und darüber hinaus mit einer eigenen Botschaft in die Welt begebe, muss das schon etwas Besonderes werden!" Nach endlosen Sessions in seinem Mini-Studio ist 'Children Of Zu Zu' um einiges mehr geworden, als er sich vorgenommen hat. Statt zwei, sind es am Ende sechs Tracks und zwei Bonus-Versionen voller Liebe, voller Träume und voller Space, innerspace und outerspace, geworden. Musik für den Dancefloor, für Jazz Clubs, Chill Zones und obendrein für Kinderzimmer!

compiled by tsunaki kadowaki
artwork by yoshirotten
mastering by kuniyuki takahashi

Tsunaki Kadowaki, a staff member at Kyoto’s record store Meditations, the supervisor of "New Age Music Disc Guide", and the founder of Sad Disco, curates the fourth installment of "Midnight in Tokyo" themed around Ambient Kayō.

The Midnight in Tokyo series by Studio Mule focuses on Japanese music, serving as a soundtrack for Tokyo nights—whether for home listening, club play, or as a driving BGM, transcending location and space. After a six-year hiatus, the fourth volume takes "Ambient Kayō" as its new perspective, compiling genre-defying tracks released between 1977 and 1999 to explore the intersection of Japanese ambient and pop music.

For this long-awaited fourth installment, selections were made regardless of record label status (major or independent), era, format (vinyl or CD), original release price, or prior reissues. Instead, the focus was on music that deeply moves the listener, is open-minded and evocative, brims with inspiration and spiritual insight, and embodies the "utagokoro" (singing heart) of Japanese artists.

Opening the compilation is "Umi e Kinasai" by Yōsui Inoue, a legendary Japanese singer-songwriter whose works have recently gained renewed interest as hidden gems of Walearic and ambient pop

Composed and arranged by Katsu Hoshi—who is also known for his arrangements on Inoue’s masterpiece Ice World—the track features renowned players such as Masayoshi Takanaka, Hiroki Inui, and Shigeru Inoue. The song embodies a yearning for Balearic horizons, tinged with youthful vibrancy and sentimentality.

Next, "Oritatamu Umi", compiled from Keiko Nosaka, a 20-string koto player, and George Murasaki, a pioneer of Okinawan rock, is an instrumental track from their album "Niraikanai Requiem 1945". As the title suggests, it carries themes of requiem and remembrance, conveying poetic lyricism even without words. Blending Ryukyuan/Okinawan harmonies and indigenous elements, it unfolds as an intimate and nostalgic piece of progressive rock.

Also featured is "Natsu no Kowareru Koro" by Higurashi, a folk-rock band led by Seiichi Takeda, formerly a guitarist of The Remainders of The Clover, the predecessor of RC Succession. Like the opening track "Umi e Kinasai", this song was also produced by Katsu Hoshi. It stands as a folk/new music piece that takes a step into an "otherworldly" realm, recommended for fans of Twin Cosmos and Masumi Hara.

From the enigmatic Blue, the only work left by the mysterious composer S.R. Kinoshita, comes "Mangrove", a hidden treasure of Japan's ambient/new age scene from the CD era. With an oriental and enigmatic atmosphere, the track evokes a mystical world of deep, uncharted jungles, unfolding as an otherworldly New Age Kayō.

"Yaponesia Sakura", selected from Rehabilual’s sole album New Child, is a masterpiece of Japanese new age music. Produced by Swami Dhyan Akamo, a disciple of Indian meditation teacher Osho and a renowned balafon player, the track features Michio Ogawa (Chakra) and Atsuo Fujimoto (Colored Music). Their collective artistry creates an exquisite spiritual ambient pop sound.

"Asa no Hitoshizuku", the opening folk song from Sachiko Kanenobu’s album Sachiko, is also included. Known for her legendary folk album Misora, produced by Haruomi Hosono, Kanenobu’s fourth album after resuming her career was inspired by her experiences living in San Francisco and revolves around the theme of "love." This track carries the same intimate poetic world as Misora, imbued with a pure, crystalline innocence.

From the synth-pop band E.S. Island, known for the Haruomi Hosono-produced *Teku Teku Mami", comes "Yume Fūrin ", selected from their long-lost new age classic Nanpū from Hachijo. Created while the band’s core duo was living in Hachijō Island, the album aimed to sonically capture "the high and happy vibrations of everyday island life." This track offers a dynamic, tribal-infused New Age Kayō experience.

Dubbed "the world's first Min’yō House Mix" "Esashi Oiwake (Maeuta) " comes from Kanazawa Akiko HOUSE MIX Ⅰ, a collaboration between Japanese house music pioneer Soichi Terada and Akiko Kanazawa, a renowned min’yō singer. Through the prism of club music, Hokkaido's Esashi Oiwake, one of Japan’s most iconic folk songs, is transformed into a futuristic ambient pop piece with intricate sound design.

The compilation also includes "Sweet Ong Choh", a track from Voice From Asia, a group active between 1989 and 1992 featuring vocal artist Shizuru Ohtaka. Taken from their imaginative minimal work Voice From Asia, released under Aoyama Spiral’s music label Newsic, the song presents a tranquil, tribal-minimal soundscape enriched by ethnic instruments.

Hailed by Haruomi Hosono as having “a shaman residing in her voice,” singer-songwriter Nami Hōdatsu also appears in the selection. Known for her collaborations with Henry Kawahara, her debut album featured "Asa-Hikari-Ame-Yume", a track that now stands as a precursor to modern vocaloid/synthesized vocal music—a hidden gem of post-choir aesthetics that deserves rediscovery.

Likewise, "Tennessee Waltz", from Naomi Akimoto’s album One Night Stand, supported by members of Mariah, serves as another early prototype of vocaloid/synthesized vocal music. The track weaves fragmented vocal samples, pastoral yet sweetly minimal synth sounds, and mechanical beats into a strikingly unconventional piece in the history of Japanese music.

Closing the compilation is "Heaven Electric", a track from Nav Katze’s album Gentle & Elegance, which featured remixes by Autechre, Seefeel, and Sun Electric. Merging elements of IDM, ambient techno, and chillout, the song embodies an optimism reminiscent of space music while seamlessly blending a mystical Japanese aesthetic—an ambient pop masterpiece.

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The album presents 12 exquisite pop tracks infused with an ambient feeling, resonating deeply with the evolving landscape of the mid-2020s—a time of post-hyperpop and Y2K revival.

Tsunaki Kadowaki (Compiler)

Born in 1993 in Yonago, Tottori, Tsunaki Kadowaki is a staff member and buyer at Kyoto’s Meditations record store. He is the editor of New Age Music Disc Guide (DU BOOKS) and a contributor to Music Magazine, Record Collectors' Magazine, ele-king, and more. Kadowaki has written liner notes for multiple Japanese releases (Brian Eno, Masahiro Sugaya etc.) and runs the Sad Disco music label under Disk Union. He also curates Spotify’s official New Age Music playlist and performed as a DJ at YCAM’s Audio Base Camp #3 in 2024.

Two new faces on the label with the two-faced eagle! Both artists have been much respected forces on the international club circuit for a while. IDA ENGBERG is best known for her affiliation with Stockholm’s Drumcode and Truesoul labels. For her Speicher debut though, she’s tapping into a quite different sound territory. “Nothing Feels The Same” will go down in history as the first 2 Step track ever released on KOMPAKT EXTRA. It’s as sensual as it’s booming. Definitely one for those late morning hours. With “Pink Monkeys” is an EBM/sawtooth trance amalgamation of the highest order with enough psychedelic headroom for the festival season.

MARCO RESMANN’s deep involvement with the late Berlin club legend Watergate has made him one of the German capital’s beacons of house and techno. He’s one half of Lunar City Express and former member of Pan-Pot which speaks volumes about his stylistical versatility.”“RIMA feat. Laatz” he delivers a frenetic rollercoaster ride of a techno track. It’s radical, it’s menacing and super fun all at once – A truly one of a kind techno track. “Dimensions” is a low-slung electro bulwark full of intricate details to keep head and feet going in unison.
Zwei neue Gesichter auf dem Label mit dem doppelköpfigen Adler! Beide Künstler sind seit einiger Zeit angesehene Größen in der internationalen Clubszene. IDA ENGBERG ist vor allem für ihre Zusammenarbeit mit den Stockholmer Labels Drumcode und Truesoul bekannt. Für ihr Debüt auf Speicher betritt sie jedoch ein ganz anderes Sound-Territorium. „Nothing Feels The Same“ wird als erster 2-Step-Track, der jemals auf KOMPAKT EXTRA veröffentlicht wurde, in die Geschichte eingehen. Es ist ebenso sinnlich wie dröhnend. Definitiv etwas für die späten Morgenstunden. Mit „Pink Monkeys“ ist eine EBM/Sägezahn-Trance-Verschmelzung der höchsten Güteklasse mit genug psychedelischem Headroom für die Festivalsaison entstanden.

MARCO RESMANNs tiefe Verbundenheit mit der jüngst verstorbenen Berliner Clublegende Watergate hat ihn zu einem der Fixpunkte der deutschen Hauptstadt in Sachen House und Techno gemacht und weit darüber hinaus. Er ist eine Hälfte von Lunar City Express und ehemaliges Mitglied von Pan-Pot, was Bände über seine stilistische Vielseitigkeit spricht. Mit „RIMA feat. Laatz“ liefert er eine frenetische Techno-Achterbahnfahrt, die gleichermaßen radikal, bedrohlich ist und ungemein Spaß macht – ein wirklich einzigartiger Track für die Ewigkeit. ‚Dimensions‘ wiederum ist ein tiefgründiges Electro-Bollwerk voller komplexer Details, das Kopf und Füße sicher im Einklang hält.

Robot84 is a master of blending Italo disco and Balearic house into perfectly escapist sounds for grown-up dancefloors and now he returns with Promo Vol 5, another vital drop in his celebrated limited edition vinyl series. This one has four more standout tracks including the lead 'Let's Do It' (Vocal) and its dub counterpart, 'Let's Do It' (Dub) alongside the Balearic-inspired 'Beats From the Far East' (which has already been hammered by the likes of Bill Brewster, Chris Coco and Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy) and the more calming sonic waters of the blissful 'Ambient Love'.

Timeless deep cosmic house from the Miquifaye music vault

VENTILATEUR is an instrumental project combining sounds from the vivid worlds of contemporary jazz and postpunk. The three-piece band, consisting of Iben Stalpaert on drums, Jasper Hollevoet on bass and Daan Soenens on guitar, uses angular rhythms and flowing melodies to construct compositions that embody both contrast and cohesion. Originally from Bruges, the band currently has Ghent as its homebase.

The trio released its self-titled debut EP on 22 March 2019. VENTILATEUR won awards at Fresh Fish, Red Rock Rally and Burgrock that same year and was one of the laureates of the then brand new Sound Track. Thanks to Sound Track 2020, the band received a residency at Het Entrepot in Bruges and a year of professional coaching from VI.BE and other national players in the music landscape.

In 2020, VENTILATEUR joined forces with young Ghent theatre collective Camping Sunset for the performance Happiness. The band composed the soundtrack for the play and also performed it live during the five-week run of the production. The music was subsequently recorded and released under the title A Soundtrack For Happiness at the Brussels label Sentimental.

In 2022, VENTILATEUR released its first full-length album with W.E.R.F. Records. Hoofdplaat, titled after the village near the manor house that served as its recording location, is the result of a long process of purification. VENTILATEUR presents the essence of their sound, stripped from all ballast.

VENTILATEUR balances on the border between the ‘niche’ world of instrumental jazz and the accessible world of the pop-rock circuit. From this position, the band aims to bring instrumental music to a wider audience. Apart from being purely intrinsically artistic, the trio's ambition is to excite a new audience for cultural participation and specifically the rich genre of jazz. Through their choice of accessibility within the experimental, the band aims to form a bridge between a wider audience and a musical world still too often labelled as ‘niche’. The musicians not only focus on the club and festival circuit, but have already written soundtracks for some short film projects and are also reaching out to the theatre world.

In its early years, VENTILATEUR was mainly known within the Flemish arts landscape on the Bruges-Ghent-Brussels axis. A soundtrack for Happiness and Hoofdplaat introduced VENTILATEUR to a new audience. Songs from the albums got airtime from Radio 1, Klara and other stations, and singles appeared in national playlists. The band’s music was also picked up by VRT, which used the single Nectar during several programs. In 2023, the band scored their biggest gig yet: Ghent Jazz on a podium curated by their label, W.E.R.F. Records.

VENTILATEUR as a project can count on the support of organisations such as W.E.R.F. Records, Cactus Music Centre, Het Entrepot and VI.BE. The band also has close ties with theatre companies such as Camping Sunset, Compagnie Cecilia and Ontroerend Goed and, of course, numerous connections within the Flemish and Brussels music scene.

Some of Stay True Sounds most celebrated hits of 2024 assemble on Stay True Cutz Vol. 8, the eighth vinyl edition of the label’s compilation series featuring standout sonics that defined a year. Opening with a record that fuses deep house and neo-soul, Jimpster’s remix of ‘Say Yes’ by SA torchbearer beatsbyhand, featuring Rona Ray on vocal duty, was the bestselling release of 2024 on the Traxsource Deep House chart. What follows is the compelling collaboration from two leaders of the Afro scene, China Charmeleon and Hypaphonik with ‘We R 1’ - plus jazz and house maestro Crackazat’s 3-step release ‘Can’t Blame A Soul’ (Mana’s Dub). Closing out this curation of four tracks that capture Stay True Sounds’ unique aesthetic is ‘SARS’, an original also from the mind of talented DJ and producer beatsbyhand.

King Street Sounds continues to deliver deep house classics with the third various artist sampler in the series. This release taps into the essence of original house music and features iconic names such as DJ Pierre, Blaze, Kenny Bobien, Palmer Brown, Dannell Dixon, and Big Moses.

The EP begins with Dannell Dixon's track 'Dance Dance (DJ Pierre’s Wild Pitch Mix).' This engaging piece features a steady groove, multiple percussive elements, and captivating vocal hooks that keep listeners immersed in the rhythm.

Next is Big Moses' 'Brighter Days (Extended Mix),' which showcases the unmistakably smooth and sultry vocals of Kenny Bobien. As is often the case with Kenny's lyrics, this song explores themes of love, hope, and the promise of 'brighter days,' delivering uplifting dance music.

On the B-side, DJ Pierre makes a second appearance with 'Dancin’ (Club Mix).' This track radiates sunshine and block-party vibes, effortlessly transporting listeners to a lively street party in New York City.

Finally, the record concludes with 'Shine (Shelter Vocal Extended Mix)' by Blaze. This track brings down the tempo just a notch, making it a perfect addition to sets when the dancefloor needs a moment to catch its breath and regain its energy.

Once again, King Street Sounds delivers a knockout release that is a must-have for collectors and DJs alike

Legendary French DJ and producer The Hacker debuts on Radio Slave’s Rekids with the ‘Laser & Smoke’ EP on 21st February 2025. The two-track ‘Laser & Smoke’ EP harkens back to The Hacker’s early 90s roots in Detroit-inspired Electro & Techno. First, he starts with ‘Turborave’, a tasteful, bleepy cut with an unignorable bassline and muted dub chords that wash over its snappy groove. ‘Turborave’ is the kind of heads-down, lose-yourself dancefloor moment for the later hours before ‘Harmonia’ sees The Hacker play with high-voltage cables on the B-side. Charged-up zaps and zippy acid call and respond while bodied drum hits keep the rhythm moving, whistles and pads occasionally joining in.

Pioneering DJ and producer The Hacker is renowned for being a leading proponent of Electroclash in the early 2000s, his Techno and EBM-infused sound, and iconic collaborations with Miss Kittin. With releases on labels like Dark Entries, Mannequin Records, and Turbo, as well as remixes for Air, Soft Cell, Dave Clarke, and Front 242, The Hacker remains a vital force in electronic music. He now adds Radio Slave’s Rekids to his extensive discography for the first time via the ‘Laser & Smoke EP.

Radio Slave’s Rekids was founded in 2006 and has since spawned successful offshoots with the Techno-focused Rekids Special Projects in 2017 and its newest sublabel, REK’D, in 2024. With Matt Edwards as the sole A&R, Rekids has been crucial in developing early artist careers and has become a haven for established acts operating in House and adjacent genres, having recently featured the likes of Harry Romero, Hilit Kolet, William Kiss, Bushwacka, Mathias Kaden, Tiger Stripes, Tal Fussman, and many more.

Reissue

Phonogramme is thrilled to announce a special reissue of the iconic "Analog Trax 1" by Abacus including the original tracks with an exclusive instrumental version. Originally celebrated for its rich, analog sounds and deep, emotive grooves, this classic release is a cornerstone of house music. Abacus, also known as Austin Bascom, delivers timeless tracks that continue to resonate with both old and new fans alike. Don't miss this chance to own a piece of house music history, lovingly reissued by Phonogramme for a new generation of listeners.

Poet, novelist, musician and academic, Anthony Joseph teams up with legendary UK producer Dave Okumu for forthcoming album, ‘Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back’

Dave Okumu, known perhaps best as frontman for The Invisible, though digging deeper into his production credits, huge names emerge such as; Grace Jones, Amy Winehouse, Jesse Ware, Rosie Lowe and Eska. On this album, the magic and alchemy of Dave’s production style showcase subtle sonics and deep layering resulting in a contemporary sound to carry Anthony’s afrofuturistic metrical meanings.

Anthony and Dave first came across each other when working with Shabaka Hutchings during Covid broadcasts, and then after Anthony performed some poems on Dave’s 2023 album ‘I Came From Love’, the seeds of collaboration were sown.

With a little more psychedelia, a little more experimentation, Dave’s eclectic vision focuses on the actual sounds on these pieces. Anthony stated that “The best producers guide you, not push you” now add to that the fact that both these humans were born on the same day, a concoction of laid back attitudes in people with strong purpose, some real magic can happen, naturally.

Early writing sessions for this record took place in 2022, around Mount Blanc in France. Anthony was away touring with long-time collaborator, Jason Yarde. Ideas were a little thin and they found themselves somewhat repeating previous work resulting in Anthony rethinking things a little, and so entered Dave Okumu.

LP opener ‘Satellite’ is a fine example of how this new partnership pans out. New musicians have been enlisted; Dan See (Drums), Aviram Barath (Synths), Nick Ramm on Fender Rhodes and Byron Wallen (Trumpet). Add to that the mighty vocal power house of Eska and we have a whole new dimension of soul and depth, to carry Anthony’s statements. “You build a wall, we go under, you build it higher, we go higher, like a satellite” .

On the album's second single, ‘Tony’ - there’s a nod to all drummers and creators of African rhythms, from the point of view of Afrobeat legend Tony Allen. Highlighting this is drummer’s drummer Richard Spaven as Dave’s choice of skin beater. He successfully reminds us that Tony was someone who understood the real power of rhythm and how it is used to unite people.

As well as the new musicians on this LP, Dave Okumu played all the guitars and used the studio as his tool. On ‘A Juba for Janet’ - a poem to Joseph’s mother, and a track so bass heavy that it feels as though it could sit in a deep dubstep set in Plastic People days, - Anthony’s voice reaches straight down your ear canals next to dark drums, huge synths and delayed saxophone stabs from Colin Webster. Slightly more introspective verses on ‘An Afrofuturist Poem’ see Dave’s beats show off the real future sound of this record, kalimba, moog bass and guitars all played by the man himself.

Mellower and deeper moments are also present, Anthony’s cryptic yet informative storytelling is at its absolute best on ‘Churches Of Sound (The Benetiz-Rojo)’ - Caribbean and Windrush history reeled off alongside a linear musical timeline of Black music in the diaspora.

A reminder that this body of work is first of 2 volumes, ‘Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back’ is not a follow up to Anthony’s previous album, but more a development of his 2006 novel, ‘The African Origins of UFOs’ a book where experimental elements of afro-futurism, metafiction, science fiction, surrealism, mythology are rewritten in Anthony’s innovative language. Look out for Volume 2 also coming in 2025.

Anthony Joseph releases, ‘Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back’ (Vol. 1) via Heavenly Sweetness 7th February 2025 and he will play live at Ronnie Scotts in London on 14th March 2025, with Dave Okumu as a special guest.

CREDITS:

Vocals - Anthony Joseph

Additional vocals, vocal arrangements - Eska Mtungwazi

Producer - Guitars, Bass, Moog, Synthesisers, Programming, Percussion - Dave Okumu

Drums - Dan See

Drums on ‘Tony’ - Richard Spaven

Synthesiser - Aviram Barath

Fender Rhodes, Synthesisers, Nick Ramm

Trumpet - Byron Wallen

Saxophones - Colin Webster

Trombones - James Wade Sired

In the late 1980s, as techno and house made its way around Europe, mutating as it hopped from city to city, one young DJ from Curacao made a mistake that would inspire a brand new sound. While he was performing at Den Haag's Club Voltage, DJ Moortje accidentally dropped a dancehall track at 45RPM rather than 33, and let it play out. Thirsty for a hi-NRG sound, the crowd loved the squeaky vocals and rapid beat, and bubbling (or bubbling house) was born.For the next couple of decades, bubbling was a crucial part of Holland's Afro-diasporic club landscape. And as a new generation of wide-eyed young DJs and producers began to take the reins, it evolved accordingly. In the late-2000s, Den Haag-based teenage prodigy Guillermo Schuurman followed in the footsteps of his uncle DJ Chippie (one of the genre's co-founders) and cousins DJ Daycard, DJ Master-D, Stiko Jnr and DJ Justme, and began performing and writing beats. Using Fruityloops, he fused familiar bubbling rhythms with rap and R&B samples, trance synths and electro house wobbles, and his tracks quickly became a regular fixture on the Dutch circuit."Bubbling Inside" is a collection of Schuurman's most essential cuts from the era (2007-2009), with a couple of newer productions added for context. Crafted solely for the dance, most of these tracks were never properly released and have been painstakingly hunted down and collected by the Nyege Nyege Tapes together with Sascha Roth from Pantropical in Rotterdam and De Schuurman himself. Hearing them together highlights just how forward thinking the young producer was, steering a Dutch institution into the future.2008's 'First One' is a proto-Berghain belter, with booming bass-heavy kicks underpinning the kind of cheeky melodies that remain the calling card of the genre. 'Pier Je Bil!!' ratchets up the tempo, twisting bubbling's syncopated dancehall kicks into a rapid-fire club clatter and decorating them with steel-pan melodies. Elsewhere, 2019's 'Domina' shows how Schuurman's production style has developed as he mutates trap percussion, dubstep bass and eerie synth textures, while retaining the DNA of bubbling. "Bubbling Inside" is a testament to the evolution of the bubbling genre, as witnessed by one of its most visionary producers.

In the late 1980s, as techno and house made its way around Europe, mutating as it hopped from city to city, one young DJ from Curacao made a mistake that would inspire a brand new sound. While he was performing at Den Haag's Club Voltage, DJ Moortje accidentally dropped a dancehall track at 45RPM rather than 33, and let it play out. Thirsty for a hi-NRG sound, the crowd loved the squeaky vocals and rapid beat, and bubbling (or bubbling house) was born.For the next couple of decades, bubbling was a crucial part of Holland's Afro-diasporic club landscape. And as a new generation of wide-eyed young DJs and producers began to take the reins, it evolved accordingly. In the late-2000s, Den Haag-based teenage prodigy Guillermo Schuurman followed in the footsteps of his uncle DJ Chippie (one of the genre's co-founders) and cousins DJ Daycard, DJ Master-D, Stiko Jnr and DJ Justme, and began performing and writing beats. Using Fruityloops, he fused familiar bubbling rhythms with rap and R&B samples, trance synths and electro house wobbles, and his tracks quickly became a regular fixture on the Dutch circuit."Bubbling Inside" is a collection of Schuurman's most essential cuts from the era (2007-2009), with a couple of newer productions added for context. Crafted solely for the dance, most of these tracks were never properly released and have been painstakingly hunted down and collected by the Nyege Nyege Tapes together with Sascha Roth from Pantropical in Rotterdam and De Schuurman himself. Hearing them together highlights just how forward thinking the young producer was, steering a Dutch institution into the future.2008's 'First One' is a proto-Berghain belter, with booming bass-heavy kicks underpinning the kind of cheeky melodies that remain the calling card of the genre. 'Pier Je Bil!!' ratchets up the tempo, twisting bubbling's syncopated dancehall kicks into a rapid-fire club clatter and decorating them with steel-pan melodies. Elsewhere, 2019's 'Domina' shows how Schuurman's production style has developed as he mutates trap percussion, dubstep bass and eerie synth textures, while retaining the DNA of bubbling. "Bubbling Inside" is a testament to the evolution of the bubbling genre, as witnessed by one of its most visionary producers.

Volume 1 of this expertly curated project of 90s Italian House - put together by Don Carlos.

If Paradise was half as nice… by Fabio De Luca.

Googling “paradise house”, the first results to pop up are an endless list of European b&b’s with whitewashed lime façades, all of them promising “…an unmatched travel experience a few steps from the sea”. Next, a little further down, are the institutional websites of a few select semi-luxury retirement homes (no photos shown, but lots of stock images of smiling nurses with reassuring looks). To find the “paradise house” we’re after, we have to scroll even further down. Much further down.

It feels like yesterday, and at the same time it seems like a million years ago. The Eighties had just ended, and it was still unclear what to expect from the Nineties. Mobile phones that were not the size of a briefcase and did not cost as much as a car? A frightening economic crisis? The guitar-rock revival?! Certainly, the best place to observe that moment of transition was the dancefloor. Truly epochal transformations were happening there. From America, within a short distance one from the other, two revolutionary new musical styles had arrived: the first one sounded a bit like an “on a budget” version of the best Seventies disco-music – Philly sound made with a set of piano-bar keyboards! – the other was even more sparse, futuristic and extraterrestrial. It was a music with a quite distinct “physical” component, which at the same time, to be fully grasped, seemed to call for the knotty theories of certain French post-modern philosophers: Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Paul Virilio... Both those genres – we would learn shortly after – were born in the black communities of Chicago and Detroit, although listening to those vinyl 12” (often wrapped in generic white covers, and with little indication in the label) you could not easily guess whether behind them there was a black boy from somewhere in the Usa, or a girl from Berlin, or a pale kid from a Cornish coastal town.

Quickly, similar sounds began to show up from all corners of Europe. A thousand variations of the same intuition: leaner, less lean, happier, slightly less intoxicated, more broken, slower, faster, much faster... Boom! From the dancefloors – the London ones at least, whose chronicles we eagerly read every month in the pages of The Face and i-D – came tales of a new generation of clubbers who had completely stopped “dressing up” to go dancing; of hot tempered hooligans bursting into tears and hugging everyone under the strobe lights as the notes of Strings of Life rose up through the fumes of dry ice (certain “smiling” pills were also involved, sure). At this point, however, we must move on to Switzerland.

In Switzerland, in the quiet and diligent town of Lugano, between the 1980s and 1990s there was a club called “Morandi”. Its hot night was on Wednesdays, when the audience also came from Milan, Como, Varese and Zurich. Legend goes that, one night, none less than Prince and Sheila E were spotted hiding among the sofas, on a day-off of the Italian dates of the Nude Tour… The Wednesday resident and superstar was an Italian dj with an exotic name: Don Carlos. The soundtrack he devised was a mixture of Chicago, Detroit, the most progressive R&B and certain forgotten classics of old disco music: practically, what the Paradise Garage in New York might have sounded like had it not closed in 1987. In between, Don Carlos also managed to squeeze in some tracks he had worked on in his studio on Lago Maggiore. One in particular: a track that was rather slow compared to the BPM in fashion at the time, but which was a perfect bridge between house and R&B. The title was Alone: Don Carlos would explain years later that it had to be intended both in the English meaning of “by itself” and like the Italian word meaning “halo”. That wasn’t the only double entendre about the song, anyway. Its own very deep nature was, indeed, double. On the one hand, Alone was built around an angelic keyboard pattern and a romantic piano riff that took you straight to heaven; on the other, it showcased enough electronic squelches (plus a sax part that sounded like it had been dissolved by acid rain) to pigeonhole the tune into the “junk modernity” section, aka the hallmark of all the most innovative sounds of the time: music that sounded like it was hand-crafted from the scraps of glittering overground pop.

No one knows who was the first to call it “paradise house”, nor when it happened. Alternative definitions on the same topic one happened to hear included “ambient house”, “dream house”, “Mediterranean progressive”… but of course none were as good (and alluring) as “paradise house”. What is certain is that such inclination for sounds that were in equal measure angelic and neurotic, romantic and unaffective, quickly became the trademark of the second generation of Italian house. Music that seemed shyly equidistant from all the rhythmic and electronic revolutions that had happened up to that moment (“Music perfectly adept at going nowhere slowly” as noted by English journalist Craig McLean in a legendary field report for Blah Blah Blah magazine). Music that to a inattentive ear might have sounded as anonymous as a snapshot of a random group of passers-by at 10AM in the centre of any major city, but perfectly described the (slow) awakening in the real world after the universal love binge of the so-called Second Summer of Love.

For a brief but unforgettable season, in Italy “paradise house” was the official soundtrack of interminable weekends spent inside the car, darting from one club to another, cutting the peninsula from North to centre, from East to West coast in pursuit of the latest after-hours disco, trading kilometres per hour with beats per minute: practically, a new New Year’s Eve every Friday and Saturday night. This too was no small transformation, as well as a shock for an adult Italy that was encountering for the first time – thanks to its sons and daughters – the wild side of industrial modernity. The clubbers of the so-called “fuoriorario” scene were the balls gone mad in the pinball machine most feared by newspapers, magazines and TV pundits. What they did each and every weekend, apart from going crazy to the sound of the current white labels, was linking distant geographical points and non-places (thank you Marc Augé!) – old dance halls, farmhouses and business centres – transformed for one night into house music heaven. As Marco D’Eramo wrote in his 1995 essay on Chicago, Il maiale e il grattacielo: “Four-wheeled capitalism distorts our age-old image of the city, it allows the suburbs to be connected to each other, whereas before they were connected only by the centre (…) It makes possible a metropolitan area without a metropolis, without a city centre, without downtown. The periphery is no longer a periphery of any centre, but is self-centred”.

“Paradise house” perfectly understood all of this and turned it into a sort of cyber-blues that didn’t even need words, and unexpectedly brought back a drop of melancholic (post?)-humanity within a world that by then – as we would wholly realise in the decades to come – was fully inhuman and heartless. A world where we were all alone, and surrounded by a sinister yellowish halo, like a neon at the end of its life cycle. But, for one night at least, happy.

This version comes with sample CD
The sample CD's contain over a 100 samples from the legendary Waldorf Wave Synthesizer and have been out of press since 2015.

The Long awaited release of My Life With The Wave Vol 2 is here. Mike Huckaby is finally ready to take you on another journey of skillful sound programming using the legendary Waldorf Wave Synthesizer.

Yes, this is Volume 2 of My Life With The Wave. 4 tracks of strictly deep house music made entirely from the Wave. Enjoy another experience of music made exclusively with this synthesizer, The Waldorf Wave.

180-gram 45 RPM double LP. Pressed at Quality Record Pressings. Tip-on old style gatefold double pocket jacket with textured stock by Stoughton Printing

Genesis' seventh studio album was released in February 1976 on Charisma Records and was the first to feature drummer Phil Collins as lead vocalist after the departure of Peter Gabriel. The album was a critical and commercial success in the U.K. and U.S., reaching No. 3 and No. 31 respectively. A Trick Of The Tail was a landmark album for the band, and it still stands today as one of their best with classics such as "Dance On A Volcano" and "Squonk."

In the wake of Peter Gabriel's departure from the band, the remaining members of Genesis were determined to forge ahead, showcasing their songwriting prowess and recording prowess in the absence of their iconic frontman. This period marked the genesis of A Trick of the Tail. In mid-1975, the band embarked on an intensive creative journey, crafting new compositions and diligently rehearsing them. Their quest for a new lead vocalist led them to sift through a staggering 400 audition tapes.

As the autumn leaves began to fall, Genesis found themselves at Trident Studios in October, accompanied by producer David Hentschel. Surprisingly, the recording sessions began with an air of uncertainty regarding who would take on the role of lead vocalist. However, fate intervened when Phil Collins was persuaded to step up and deliver a powerful rendition of "Squonk." The strength of his performance not only won over the band but also paved the way for him to assume lead vocals for the entirety of the album.

Genesis has always been synonymous with grandeur and innovation, both in their electrifying live performances and their trailblazing studio albums. From timeless classics such as Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England By The Pound, to the epic concept album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, the band has consistently pushed the boundaries of musical creativity.

Pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings, and housed in a tip-on old style gatefold double pocket jacket with textured stock by Stoughton Printing.

Over the span of four remarkable decades, Genesis has left an indelible mark on the music industry, having sold a staggering 150 million albums worldwide. Their influence extends far and wide, inspiring artists ranging from the indie rock stylings of Elbow to the experimental sounds of The Flaming Lips, and even the soulful resonance of Jeff Buckley. A Trick of the Tail stands as a testament to their enduring legacy and their ability to adapt and thrive in the face of change.

Damian Lazarus uncovers ‘SPIRITS VII’, the seventh chapter of Crosstown Rebels’ visionary annual compilation series. The eight-track package sees the Crosstown Rebels founder curate another stellar lineup of emerging and established talent for the latest instalment of the ongoing highly acclaimed series.

Since its debut in 2017, Damian Lazarus’ SPIRITS series has become a definitive platform for rising stars and established talent pushing cutting-edge sounds, consistently setting the tone for the year ahead. With the release of ‘SPIRITS VII’ this February, Crosstown Rebels continues its tradition of curating groundbreaking talent, delivering an impressive collection of tracks from both new and returning names. Building on the momentum of previous volumes, the eight-tracker offers an expertly crafted selection of deep grooves, hypnotic rhythms, and forward-thinking productions - providing a glimpse into the future of house and techno while staying true to the genre’s roots.

Opening the release, US-based duo Lisbona Sisters present ‘OK GURL’, a trippy and warping track with their original vocals that sets an otherworldly tone. Next, Netherlands-based SHARE follows releases on Mobilee and Abracadabra with ‘Oh Please…’, an acid-led cut with hooky vocals from Def Eff that leave a lasting impression. Next, Bonafique, part of the Maccabi House family, infuse ‘Desperadio’ with signature Middle Eastern influences and organic, rhythmic drums, while Dino Lenny delivers ‘I Have Sampled Father’, a playful yet off-kilter cut loaded with a kaleidoscope of diverse elements balanced by captivating grooves.

The journey continues with Upercent’s ‘Where Are You’, a dynamic composition characterised by soaring synths, sharp drums, and heavy bass licks. Collaborating on ‘Le Tourbillon’, Timo Maas & Inámo craft a hypnotic blend of grooves and sweeping melodies, perfect for late-hour moments. Recorded in his Ibiza studio, John Monkman energises the collection with ‘Colours’, a track brimming with intricate synth work, standout vocals, and dynamic sound design, before Enamour closes with ‘Jackpot’, a dreamy and hazy masterpiece featuring colourful sonics and enchanting soundscapes.

With its distinct ability to uncover hidden gems and elevate them to global recognition, Crosstown Rebels remains a leading force, and this latest edition of SPIRITS proves precisely why it remains at the forefront of the global electronic scene as one of its most vital imprints.