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Willie “Junei” Lee spent the first half of the 1970s playing guitar with his older brother Robert Lee in the self-contained band Lost Weekend, recording a handful of singles and a still unreleased LP. The back half of the decade was spent touring with Albert King, Curtis Mayfield, and The Emotions, before returning home to Gary, Indiana, to focus on his own sound. In 1985, Junei’s girlfriend brought home a suite of Fostex home studio gear, including a 12 channel board, 8-track tape machine, and a halftrack for mix downs. He added a Yamaha drum machine and a Maestro echoplex and started his solo project. “The only artists I listened to was Hendrix and Santana,” Junei said. The emissions coming from his home studio were entirely different, however, as “Let’s Ride” channels the Euro sensibilities of Kraftwerk or Italo over virtuosic guitar. “I just didn’t want to sound like anyone else,” he continued. “Let’s Ride” achieved that differentiation, and managed to anticipate Chicago house by a few years. Pressed in minuscule numbers in 1987 on Pharaohs Records, the 45 never connected with the nearby scenes in Chicago and Detroit where it might have found purchase in fertile soils. Decades later “Let’s Ride” found new life as the bed for KAYTRANADA’s “Scared To Death,” and the track has slowly worked its way through the algorithm to a new generation of vapor huffers. “I am all for experimentation, trying new things, etc,” Junei said. “Kaytranada is a visionary and a talented producer. He has my respect.”

Seasons pass and recording sessions flow. Flow one after the other. With each new release Dub Shepards & Bat Records solidify their undisputable position as one of the leading production teams and suppliers of reggae music. From the outskirts of Clermont Ferrand, the Dub Shepherds quench the thirst of roots lovers and soundsystem selecters worldwide. With their authentic sound and their studio built in the tradition of the Jamaican forefathers that is stocked with razor sharp musicians, MCs and singers- they are always ready to go to work. Equipped with an exclusive approach to dub: Jolly Joseph and Doctor Charty have the ways and means to produce and share their own take on this music they love so deeply. Today they produce a handcrafted sound that is made-in-France. Paying tribute to reggae music's foundation stones. Their new project coming out in May 2025 is the culmination of several years of collaboration between Dub Shepherds and Junior Roy, a regular at BAT Records Studio and a key figure in the global soundsystem scene. This release is the French singer and MC's very first LP, entitled "Troddin On". After the successful release of a 12 Inch 45 in the summer of 2023, the Shepherds and Roy naturally began to ferment new ideas. The arrival of this LP on the turntables is both a milestone and a stepping stone towards the future of this union. As is customary with BAT Records the sound is warm, the basslines heavy and the riddims groove on solid rhythmic footing. "Troddin On" revives the feel of 80s and 70s Jamaican music. Behind the mic, Junior Roy navigates the highs and explores the sacred themes of the genre. His voice is vibrant, his emotionally charged lyrics soar, embracing instrumentals. Perfectly tailored to fit. This is roots music, this is reggae, no detours—each track is paired with its dub version, giving the project a traditional album showcase format. And when it comes to Dub, with the Dub Shepherds it’s all about "Hardmix"—no compromises, just great mastery!

The follow up to 2022’s ‘Return to the Island’ LP is a new 6 track EP influenced heavily by the evocative powers of incense and a deep sense of escapism. The EP has a more organic sound palette than its predecessor, from both the use of samples and appearance of various guest musicians. Lead track ‘Morning Star’ features long standing collaborator Mike Burn (Udaberri Blues & Mama Capes) who adds his trademark liquid gold lead and rhythm guitar lines with live bass from Fernando Pulichino. The guest on ‘Savanna’ is frequent Jack J collaborator Linda Fox, who provides emotive and melancholy sax over a Dub House backing track with a particularly dreamy chord progression. The EP features Instrumental Dubs of both tracks, alongside two other new productions, the 80s leaning ‘Hands Across the Sea’ and ‘Wah Fix’, which rounds off the more Dub influenced B side with a 125 BPM bouncy Dub House excursion. In 2026 the Jura Soundsystem project enters its 10th year and is the creative musical outlet of Isle of Jura founder Kevin Griffiths. All tracks produced at IOJ HQ in Moana, Adelaide between 2022 and 2025 with support from the incense gods of Cedarwood, Jasmine and Sandalwood. The 12” is housed in a 3mm spine full sleeve designed by Bradley Pinkerton.

When not overseeing A&R and label operations for Isle Of Jura, label boss Kevin Griffiths makes time for music creation in his garden studio in Moana, a sleepy suburb of Adelaide in South Australia. It’s an idyllic location surrounded by palm trees and tropical birdlife and an inspiring spot to fire up the machines, typically with the studio door wide open to soak up the soundtrack provided by mother nature. The resulting tracks, recorded in the midst of the pandemic with no gig distractions, were all heavily influenced by this backdrop of tropical birdsong and wind blowing through the palms, field recordings of which made it into most of the tracks. The album traverses Deep House, Nu-disco, Balearica and Ambient along with some Leftfield samples and a heavy dose Dub throughout. The LP is Pressed on heavyweight 180 Gram Vinyl with sleeve design by IOJ resident designer Bradley Pinkerton.

“Jürg Frey is inextricably tied to the group of Wandelweiser composers and musicians, and like that group, his music continues to elude easy categorization. The last year has been a particularly fruitful one, revealing extensions to his compositional approach. There was the release of the two-disc set Grizzana and other pieces 2009-2014 for small ensemble on the Another Timbre label as well as his residency at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, featuring multiple performances of his pieces. Two other releases, Circles and Landscapes and String Quartet No. 3 / Unhörbare Zeit deserve special focus as each represents the continued development of Frey’s compositional sensibilities.

Circles and Landscapes features a program of solo piano pieces performed by Philip Thomas, one of the preeminent interpreters of contemporary piano compositions as well as an accomplished improviser. Pitch relationships have always been central to Frey’s compositions, and in these pieces, composed over the last five years (with the exception of the opening “In Memorium Cornelius Cardew” from 1993) the harmonic underpinnings are even more pivotal to the structural foundations. In an interview on the Another Timbre site, Frey states, “I'm looking to find a confidence in chords, dyads and single notes, and I hope that accordingly they will resonate with confidence. This applies to every material, whether stones or a piano, but with the piano it seems to be more challenging because of the clarity of the material and how the instrument itself suggests it should be used.” The opening “In Memorium Cornelius Cardew” moves with slow assurance back and forth between low register intervals and a resonant chord, pausing midway to progress to a deliberately paced, falling phrase which pools in darkly voiced chords. Three pieces from the “Circular Music” series, composed a decade later, distill that concentration on intervals and resonance with poised consideration. Here, the notes and harmonies are allowed to sit. It is not about motion or development, but rather about simply letting the sounds unfold across the duration of the piece.

Frey has stated about his music, “A sequence of notes is most composers' starting point. And it's where I stop. Not that I cease to do anything at all; sometimes it takes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. There are so many traps, so many ways of destroying the sequence, because people think it needs a little compositional help ... More important is the relation of the material to elapsing time.” Listen to the half-hour reading of “Pianist, Alone (2),” and one hears these elemental building blocks accrue with a steadfast forbearance. Thomas places each phrase and chord-set evenly across the duration of the piece and the music advances with an unwavering beauty bereft of any standard notion of melody or harmonic progression. “Extended Circular Music No. 9,” composed over 2014 and 2015 layers in even more brooding consonance over its half-hour course. Yet even here, the music proceeds with notes and chords sounding alone with a sense of succession rather than melodic or harmonic progression.

Frey’s string quartets, particularly “Striechquartett II,” are some of his most absorbing pieces, particularly as performed by Montreal-based Quatuor Bozzini. In these pieces, the composer makes potent use of the microtonal nuances of the string instruments to elicit fragile, almost vocalized voicings of his poised harmonic structures. Where his second string quartet created a diaphanous scrim of sound, on “String Quartet No. 3,” he opens things up, introducing a spaciousness to the deft voicings. The members of the quartet are completely synched in to Frey’s strategies, fully embodying the tonal structures into a singular sound. Frey writes about this piece, “Elemental materials and constructions are thereby perceived as a sensation, and mindfulness consists in hanging these sensations in balance before they have arrived at the limitations of expressiveness.” And it is the way that the quartet hangs at the edges of expressiveness, letting the sensations of the notes and harmonies play out without investing them with dramatic expression. It is this equanimity and stability that allows the piece to play out in a totally absorbing way.

“Unhörbare Zeit” (inaudible times) adds two percussionists to the mx and here the structure opens up even more. The durations of silence are as central to the piece as the sounds of strings and the low rumbles of percussion. Frey states that he is working with “audible and inaudible durations that appear partly simultaneously and partly consecutively. They give the piece lucidity and transparency, as well as materiality and solidity.” While silence as a structural element has been fully absorbed into the vocabulary of contemporary composition, it is the way that Frey gives the silences weight and dimension within this piece that really stands out. The balance of the timbre of strings, low register percussion, the rustle of room sounds and the mercurial pacing of sound and silence is fully entrancing.”
–Michael Rosenstein, Point of Departure

“A few months ago I noticed the change in Jürg Frey’s music in recent years, when discussing two contrasting but very fine albums of his earlier and later music. A similar impression was made by the concert of his 2nd and 3rd string quartets by the Quatuor Bozzini in Huddersfield last November: that Frey is moving away from ideas and towards music. Frey has long been associated with the Wandelweiser collective, but his recent music has been compromising the “purity” Wandelweiser’s reverence for silence. With this supposed loss of aesthetic purity, Frey has embraced a purity of sound.

After releasing the quietly beautiful Grizzana album, Another Timbre released a CD of Philip Thomas playing Frey’s recent piano music at the end of last year. I previously wrote of his third string quartet that Frey was joining Morton Feldman as a fellow master of non-functional harmony, adapting some of the more rhetorical elements of classical and romantic music, but piecemeal, on his own terms and his own ends. In this piano music, most of it composed between 2010 and 2014, there is a similar sense of exploration, without any perceived goal, to that found in Feldman’s “middle period” before he discovered the tenuous equilibrium found in repeating patterns.

At that time, Feldman was also moving away from abstraction and responding to the need to create melodies (“big Puccini-like melodies”). An interview on the Another Timbre website shows Frey seeking a common solace in a material understanding of music, and in negotiating the paradoxes that arise when wanting to compose without disturbing the music’s material.

When composing for the piano, the notion of harmony is more prominent – although we know all the (lovely) extended techniques that have been developed for the piano, to make it sound unlike a piano. But yes, the piano remains the instrument to represent harmony…. When I write for piano, I shouldn’t rely on the piano itself, but on the composition. The piano gives single notes, dyads and chords too easily. Also, if I write consonant dyads, it could suddenly sound wrong, ironic, like a quotation rather than the real sound. In this context to compose means to build a basic confidence in the clear and restricted material that you are working with.

The shorter pieces have a meditative quality, alternating between pedal tones and chords. The longer pieces take on a resemblance to a journey through a succession of musical terrains. Sometimes progress is slow, tentative, with long periods stranded in one particular harmony or register, before unexpectedly moving on. It becomes clear that the journey is its own destination. If there is a structure underneath it all, Frey does his best to conceal or disrupt it or render it irrelevant to the listener.

The album begins with a much older piece, the brief In Memoriam Cornelius Cardew from 1993, with a tonal palette that anticipates the later works. Has Frey allowed a space for emotional expression in his new music, however abstracted? It’s interesting that when philosophy is raised in the interview, he demurs but admits that he feels “a closeness” to Deleuze and Spinoza, two Western thinkers who tried to reason without a dichotomy between mind and body.

The piano is close-miked on this CD, focussing on the grain of the instrument’s sounds. Thomas’ playing is softly-spoken but full-voiced – well suited to the quiet but indomitable character marking out a trail through an empty expanse, as in the longest piece on the album. It’s titled Pianist, Alone (2); a title which seems nakedly descriptive at first but takes on a narrative aspect after hearing it. This time, the protagonist is a little more experienced.”
Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill

A double CD with five beautiful pieces that engage with the work of the extraordinary French-Swiss poet Gustave Roud. Performers include Dante Boon, Stefan Thut, Andrew McIntosh and Jürg Frey himself.
“I think my process of work is similar to Roud’s: roaming with my sketchbook, taking a movement here, adding some notes there, following an impression, writing a little melody or a rhythmic constellation, deepening a feeling, extending a pitch, waiting and letting it happen…”
Interview with Jürg Frey

Disc One:
1 Paysage pour Gustave Roud (2007 / 2008) 14:25
Jürg Frey clarinet, Stefan Thut cello, Dante Boon piano
2 Haut-Jorat (2009) 7:51
Andrew McIntosh violin, Jürg Frey clarinet, Dante Boon piano
3 La présence, les silences (2013-2016) 41:07 Dante Boon piano

Disc Two:
1 Farblose Wolken, Glück, Wind (2009-2011) 48:10
Regula Konrad soprano, Stephen Altoft trumpet, Stefan Thut cello, Lee Ferguson percussion
2 Ombre si fragile (2007 / 2008 /2010) 15:09
Andrew McIntosh violin, Stefan Thut cello, Dante Boon piano

A double CD with five beautiful pieces that engage with the work of the extraordinary French-Swiss poet Gustave Roud. Performers include Dante Boon, Stefan Thut, Andrew McIntosh and Jürg Frey himself. “I think my process of work is similar to Roud’s: roaming with my sketchbook, taking a movement here, adding some notes there, following an impression, writing a little melody or a rhythmic constellation, deepening a feeling, extending a pitch, waiting and letting it happen…” Interview with Jürg Frey Disc One: 1 Paysage pour Gustave Roud (2007 / 2008) 14:25 Jürg Frey clarinet, Stefan Thut cello, Dante Boon piano 2 Haut-Jorat (2009) 7:51 Andrew McIntosh violin, Jürg Frey clarinet, Dante Boon piano 3 La présence, les silences (2013-2016) 41:07 Dante Boon piano Disc Two: 1 Farblose Wolken, Glück, Wind (2009-2011) 48:10 Regula Konrad soprano, Stephen Altoft trumpet, Stefan Thut cello, Lee Ferguson percussion 2 Ombre si fragile (2007 / 2008 /2010) 15:09 Andrew McIntosh violin, Stefan Thut cello, Dante Boon piano

CHINZADOPENESS, Stillichimiya (Young-G, MMM, Dengaryu, Mr. Maru, Big Ben) participated!

Here is the latest version of HIPHOP that America doesn't know yet. Juu, a Thai talent who represents Asia and locals from the opposite direction of 88rising, and therefore creates completely fresh music that can be used globally. Captain Beefheart with Autotune? Is it a drake on a buffalo? The 1st full album "New Luk Thung" is finally dropping!

Who is Juu? Thai HIPHOP scene where attractive acts appear one after another. Among them, Juu is respected as an OG, but it is extremely difficult to catch its existence from outside Thailand. Singing in Thai, there is no physical, OMK (One Mekong) traces the trace that existed only on Youtube and succeeded in contact. In 2017, he was finally invited to perform his first live concert in Japan, revealing his unusual musicality and character. The groove of the hi-hat that is too thick and finely carved is that of TRAP or later, but the flow that expands and contracts freely, the linguistic sense that mixes English, Thai, Japanese, Koshu valve, and the rich Thai music classic All of them (and their funny personalities) showed that they were in a completely different dimension from the world-famous TRAP copycats.

This is Juu's first full-length album, which was completed in about two years after the talents and OMK members collaborated with each other and started co-production with the lead of Stillichimiya / OMK's Young-G. Most of the tracks are in Young-G's hands, and the sound is also full of ambitions that reflect OMK's attitude. Thai instruments such as chin, cowbell, cane and pin are used everywhere, but never used for exotic seasoning. In order to inject the original beats and grooves in Thailand, they are inevitably incorporated. And what oozes out in the mellow song is the flow (singing heart) that is similar to Luk Thung and Japanese enka. They create an indescribable "new song feeling" through Juu's background HIPHOP and reggae.

As the title "New Luk Thung" shows, this work is a Pattaner (* 2) of the dying Thai song genre Luk Thung (* 1) with cutting-edge HIPHOP. Like HIPHOP, this music called Luk Thung cites (samples) and revives past classical music many times. And like HIPHOP, the lyrics (lyrics) are also very important music. The feature of this work is that the manners common to Luk Thung and HIPHOP have been completely digested without contradiction. The title of this work comes from Juu telling Young-G that "this is New Luk Thung" in the process of production, but this is an inevitable name. This work is both "latest HIP HOP" and "latest Luk Thung". In the world of Juu's poetry, which is respected as the best "master poet" in the Thai HIPHOP world, please check out the complete translation, which was extremely difficult to translate.

CHINZADOPENESS, Stillichimiya (Young-G, MMM, Dengaryu, Mr. Maru, Big Ben) participated!

Here is the latest version of HIPHOP that America doesn't know yet. Juu, a Thai talent who represents Asia and locals from the opposite direction of 88rising, and therefore creates completely fresh music that can be used globally. Captain Beefheart with Autotune? Is it a drake on a buffalo? The 1st full album "New Luk Thung" is finally dropping!

Who is Juu? Thai HIPHOP scene where attractive acts appear one after another. Among them, Juu is respected as an OG, but it is extremely difficult to catch its existence from outside Thailand. Singing in Thai, there is no physical, OMK (One Mekong) traces the trace that existed only on Youtube and succeeded in contact. In 2017, he was finally invited to perform his first live concert in Japan, revealing his unusual musicality and character. The groove of the hi-hat that is too thick and finely carved is that of TRAP or later, but the flow that expands and contracts freely, the linguistic sense that mixes English, Thai, Japanese, Koshu valve, and the rich Thai music classic All of them (and their funny personalities) showed that they were in a completely different dimension from the world-famous TRAP copycats.

This is Juu's first full-length album, which was completed in about two years after the talents and OMK members collaborated with each other and started co-production with the lead of Stillichimiya / OMK's Young-G. Most of the tracks are in Young-G's hands, and the sound is also full of ambitions that reflect OMK's attitude. Thai instruments such as chin, cowbell, cane and pin are used everywhere, but never used for exotic seasoning. In order to inject the original beats and grooves in Thailand, they are inevitably incorporated. And what oozes out in the mellow song is the flow (singing heart) that is similar to Luk Thung and Japanese enka. They create an indescribable "new song feeling" through Juu's background HIPHOP and reggae.

As the title "New Luk Thung" shows, this work is a Pattaner (* 2) of the dying Thai song genre Luk Thung (* 1) with cutting-edge HIPHOP. Like HIPHOP, this music called Luk Thung cites (samples) and revives past classical music many times. And like HIPHOP, the lyrics (lyrics) are also very important music. The feature of this work is that the manners common to Luk Thung and HIPHOP have been completely digested without contradiction. The title of this work comes from Juu telling Young-G that "this is New Luk Thung" in the process of production, but this is an inevitable name. This work is both "latest HIP HOP" and "latest Luk Thung". In the world of Juu's poetry, which is respected as the best "master poet" in the Thai HIPHOP world, please check out the complete translation, which was extremely difficult to translate.

Thai charismatic legend rapper Juu's first physical mix CD in his life. This is an important work that can be used as a subtext for the trembling Juu & G. Jee album "New Luk Thung", and is a must-listen for B-BOY, Asian music lovers, and club music lovers!

A special MIX CD limited to the venue produced for the hugely successful "OMK Tour" held jointly by Japan and South Korea in October this year, with Juu & G.Jee as the leading role. Limited distribution in response to requests! The content that mixes Thai music, folk songs, Luke Thun, Thai HIPHOP that had a decisive influence on the current style, and the tracks of his own album, which Mr. Juu has been familiar with, is exactly as the title (

Somtam Samurai GOLD”, the ultimate hyper-enhanced mini-album featuring the very popular killer tune ‘Somtam Samurai’ featuring stillichimiya from the JUU4E masterpiece album ‘New Lukutun’ (2019), with the participation of Monaural mini-plug! The album is a mini album with a DL code! Limited release on LP with DL code!

The third album from the renowned Thai producer/rapper JUU4E is “IS”. The “be” verb. A celebration of existence and openness after the deadly constrictions and restrictions of Covid, fusing “global” hip-hop and pop rhythms with “local” Thai instruments and lyrics. A further fusion and celebration exists in the lyrics themselves, which feature a Buddhist worldview joyously infused with the emotional and physical pleasures of the world. A work of both enlightenment and dance. JUU4E, born in Bangkok, now living Khon Kaen, Northeastern Thailand, is a loved and respected Thai hip-hop OG, affectionately known as “Master JUU” among Thai hip-hop fans. This release, with songs recorded 2023-24, sees the continuation of JUU4E’s fruitful collaboration with Japanese co-producer Young-G of stillichimiya/OMK fame, who also contributes liner notes. Available on CD or digital, with liner notes in Japanese and English, and lyrics in Thai, Japanese and English. Get together with your friends, play it loud, and celebrate!

What is HIP HOP Global? What is local? The new work of JUU4E, a Thai rapper who repaints the hype-covered , is a light of hope for pan-Asian music in the 21st century, and is a black ship released to the world. No, if it was a black ship that appeared dignifiedly in the daytime, this work is a small smuggling ship that sews the night and crosses the sea to carry .

TRAP beats born in Atlanta in the United States have become a common language in the world and continue to produce replicas, and as in Asia, many acts appear and disappear, and rappers from countries such as South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia have been attracting attention for a long time nowadays. "YouTube play XX million times!" "Instagram follower XX million people!" Such phrases flew around, and the rapper made full use of social media to aim for monetization from a single buzz. It is JUU4E that strongly expresses and continues to create original HIP HOP.

JUU4E is a rapper who has been respected as an OG in Thailand, where young talents are appearing one after another, and has established a unique standing position. In the previous work "New Luk Thung" (2019), under the production of Young-G of stillichimiya / OMK, a masterpiece that is the latest HIPHOP and the latest Luk Thung by eclectic Thai omnivorous ghetto song, Luk Thung with HIP HOP. I made it. This work shocked both inside and outside the country, such as being nominated for the prestigious RIN (Rap is Now) annual best in Thailand, but when this "New Luk Thung" was released, in fact, this work "Idiot World" was already produced. Was starting.

This work is all self-produced by JUU4E. The lyric that interweaves Thai, Japanese and English, the stretchable flow, and the track that has a lower center of gravity than the previous work and is boiled down in dubby are the same as the previous work that chewed HIP HOP / TRAP and made it completely own, but it should be noted. Is a point where you can feel the intention to strongly represent . Ron Gen, a Japanese folk song influenced by Malaysian music, and Teresa Ten's songs that JUU4E has been accustomed to since childhood are quoted, but they have been incorporated into JUU4E. Is lightly slashing the masquerading global and exoticism that world music once had, as well as the self-orientalism that is innocently rampant in the current Asian hip-hop.

If you touch this work by biting the information that floods the net with HIP HOP hot in Asia, you're lucky. I want you to be stupid by all means being overwhelmed by the lyrics that challenge the "stupid world" head-on and the sound that is bitten by overwhelming freedom.

What is HIP HOP Global? What is local? The new work of JUU4E, a Thai rapper who repaints the hype-covered , is a light of hope for pan-Asian music in the 21st century, and is a black ship released to the world. No, if it was a black ship that appeared dignifiedly in the daytime, this work is a small smuggling ship that sews the night and crosses the sea to carry .

TRAP beats born in Atlanta in the United States have become a common language in the world and continue to produce replicas, and as in Asia, many acts appear and disappear, and rappers from countries such as South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia have been attracting attention for a long time nowadays. "YouTube play XX million times!" "Instagram follower XX million people!" Such phrases flew around, and the rapper made full use of social media to aim for monetization from a single buzz. It is JUU4E that strongly expresses and continues to create original HIP HOP.

JUU4E is a rapper who has been respected as an OG in Thailand, where young talents are appearing one after another, and has established a unique standing position. In the previous work "New Luk Thung" (2019), under the production of Young-G of stillichimiya / OMK, a masterpiece that is the latest HIPHOP and the latest Luk Thung by eclectic Thai omnivorous ghetto song, Luk Thung with HIP HOP. I made it. This work shocked both inside and outside the country, such as being nominated for the prestigious RIN (Rap is Now) annual best in Thailand, but when this "New Luk Thung" was released, in fact, this work "Idiot World" was already produced. Was starting.

This work is all self-produced by JUU4E. The lyric that interweaves Thai, Japanese and English, the stretchable flow, and the track that has a lower center of gravity than the previous work and is boiled down in dubby are the same as the previous work that chewed HIP HOP / TRAP and made it completely own, but it should be noted. Is a point where you can feel the intention to strongly represent . Ron Gen, a Japanese folk song influenced by Malaysian music, and Teresa Ten's songs that JUU4E has been accustomed to since childhood are quoted, but they have been incorporated into JUU4E. Is lightly slashing the masquerading global and exoticism that world music once had, as well as the self-orientalism that is innocently rampant in the current Asian hip-hop.

If you touch this work by biting the information that floods the net with HIP HOP hot in Asia, you're lucky. I want you to be stupid by all means being overwhelmed by the lyrics that challenge the "stupid world" head-on and the sound that is bitten by overwhelming freedom.

Recorded in Villa Sarkia (Sysmä, Finland) and Kisustudio, Vallila (Helsinki,Finland) during the years 2017-2020.

Reticulated bassbin minimalism from NYC’s K Wata, runner of the pivotal clubnight, Slink, and now producer of note with a mutant style comparable to Batu or Mosca Daring to differ in a field of unapologetic copycats, K Wata makes a strong impression with his debut haul of skeletal rhythmic tics and aerated textures that feel like a ghostly distillation of current UK mutations. Feeling out murky negative space with brittle 2-step bones in ‘Meet me at the One’, he proceeds to dial up the atmospheric content around the displaced steppers footing of ‘2 Spot Text’, and proper gyring sound design in the superb centrepiece ‘Lost My Focus’. At its most supple, ‘Dot Dot Dot’ toys with delicate 2-step patterns in subtly warped hyperspace, and ‘Sling of Life’ reduces his style to pure plasmic textures and whispered murmurs that could make for a crafty bridge in DJ sets.

An intimate, mesmerising record about loss and change, sorry i thought you were someone else is K-LONE’s most personal album to date and his debut release on Incienso.

Made after his father’s passing, the album became a place of escape and reflection. A warm, hypnotic space to drift within.

Piano, handmade electronics, tenor sax, couple strings. I was after something tangible. Sounds you could roll around in your palm and consider different, complex, and flawed textures. Feel the weight, maybe even smell them. This desire is probably a reaction to the dissociative nausea from the constant simulacra of these early 2020s. Like deliberately going barefoot to feel yourself grounded in a real place, as I read Andrea Needham did when facing charges for disarming a warplane. Anyway, my methods to achieve these sound "objects" was to use a healthy amount of acoustic instrumentation with all its familiar sonic unevenness, to free sounds from rhythmic or thematic structure, and to give plenty of blank space around each note so the ear can reach in and pluck it out. A berry from a bush, an eyelash from a friend's cheek. Really though, a lot of the time now I just want to listen to the birds. There are plenty on here. Mourning dove, titmouse, helicopter. KF, Dec. 2021

“Trash Can Lamb” is a new solo album from Akron, OH-based multi instrumentalist Keith Freund. For the better part of twenty years, Freund has been producing intimate, shape-shifting music on his own and as part of collaborative projects such as Trouble Books, Lemon Quartet, and Aqueduct Ensemble. Here, he concocts a heady, homespun broth of analog synthesis, bit-reduced sampling, piano, standup bass, saxophone, and location recordings, arriving at a loose and evocative set of songs. Throughout the album, we hear 8-bit experimental delays mangling airy acoustic materials, denaturalizing them into primitive loop structures while retaining their golden-hued, melodic cores. The sputters, hisses, and croaks of handmade electronics nuzzle up to wistful piano and saxophone ruminations; the pure pandemonium of chaotic triangle wave patching and filtered noise settles into the serenity of a backyard dusk full of spring peepers (or maybe they’re crickets…). It’s in the space between the ragtag and rough-hewn and the romantic and yearning that Freund situates these compositions; it’s a peek inside a workshop that sits atop the trees, branches scraping on the windows, bluejays who just won’t knock it off, a table fan spinning slower and slower, its cheap blades covered in dust.

Cult Japanese outsider composer K. Yoshimatsu’s key 1980’s works are collected and reissued for the first time on new career retrospective Fossil Cocoon, binding ambient, abstract punk, music concréte and purist songwriting into a single unified artform. Over a furiously prolific period from 1980 to 1985, K. [Koshiro] Yoshimatsu composed, recorded and released some forty albums in the span of a few years. These records primarily appeared under his own name, some required aliases, and others saw him compose, arrange, and produce for friends and peers in his creative circle. All of them, however, surfaced on Japan’s cult and inimitably fertile DD. Records, an astonishingly exhaustive catalogue once described as “the most amazing DIY effort ever undertaken to document an alternative music scene”. Led by close Yoshimatsu associate T. [Tadashi] Kamada, DD. Records released exactly 222 cassettes of brazenly, addictively weird Japanese outsider music over a period of five years, each with typewritten liner notes and enigmatically constructed Xerox artwork of found materials. The cassettes remain the stuff of collectors’ dreams, fetching astronomic prices on the rare occasions they surface in record stores or private sales. However, a keen archivist, Koshiro Yoshimatsu’s master recordings remained in his possession (a not unreasonable outcome given that his work was all self-recorded in his home) and meticulously filed, ready for rediscovery. Conversely, label boss Tadashi Kamada is no longer in the public eye, and not even known to have any personal online presence. He is, writes one observer, “unlikely even aware of his cult following”. Only extensive retroactive cataloguing (ardently fuelled by the cratedigging detective work of German collector Jörg Optiz) can offer any remaining memorial to his extraordinary achievements with DD. Records. Koshiro Yoshimatsu was born in 1960 in Yamaguchi City in the Chugoku region of southern Japan. In 1978, then a student of Yamaguchi University and already deeply engaged in the local arts scene, Yoshimatsu was introduced to the Japanese communications magazine PUMP by his classmate and future bandmate F. [Fumie] Yasumura. In the classified ads he chanced upon the creative work and curatorial interests of the aforementioned Tadashi Kamada, at the time a medical student in a nearby town. From their correspondence bloomed an intensely symbiotic new friendship, initially trading homespun cassettes by mail and eventually co-forming a cassette-sharing postal society named The Recycle Circle. The Recycle Circle also included the idiosyncratic saxophonist T. [Takafumi] Isotani, a member of the university’s Light Music Club, with whom Yoshimatsu (now singing, and playing guitar, bass guitar, and synthesisers, as well as programming drum machines) went on to form the unique experimental band Juma. With fluctuating line-ups, Juma managed to compose, record, and release six albums (all via DD. Records) in a single year - 1981 - before disbanding. Yoshimatsu then graduated from Yamaguchi University and relocated to Hiroshima to pursue his passion for filmmaking, all the while continuing to release his own solo music on Kamada’s now-burgeoning label. Yoshimatsu’s first solo record was the mysteriously titled pʌls, released in 1981 while still a member of Juma, and receiving the distinction of being the third entry to DD. Records’ cassette catalogue numbers. It was not until the seventeenth that we see Yoshimatsu credited again as a solo artist, this time with the strange and delicate collage album Mirror Inside. Over the breadth of Yoshimatsu’s work - solo, ensemble, and in composition for labelmates - we see a remarkable generosity of musical talent. Some records (such as those produced for Fumie Yasamura, represented here in “Violet” and “Escape”) are formed of hazy, gliding 4-track pop songs coursing with hallucinogenic electricity. Others, such as 1982’s Poplar (and its namesake track on this collection), combine bucolic nylon-string guitar rambles, vibrantly coloured with sequenced MIDI arpeggiation and the dulcet bloops of early computer programming. Deeper still, “Pastel Nostalgia”, from the 1983 album of the same name, marries childlike piano with a wailing siren tone and dripping tap percussion. It is significantly creepier, more acerbic and disembodying than the ambient or New Age music of the era, despite a similarity in raw materials. Elsewhere, Yoshimatsu floats between ambient, rock guitar, new wave, industrial, musique concréte, abstract punk, vocal music, instrumental music and pure songwriting, all bound into a single, unified experience by his distinctive compositional voice. Compiling Fossil Cocoon was a task. Not only to pare down Yoshimatsu’s substantial catalogue into a neat collection, but also to compress these enormous abilities into single moments. Koshiro himself was an invaluable lighthouse throughout the curation process, guiding us through the depths and annals of his recording career, now forty years hence, shining light onto forgotten music rescued from home-recorded tapes. The result may be an expressly varied album, but it is held magically together by Yoshimatsu’s profoundly singular creative alchemy. Koshiro continues to reside in Hiroshima, and continues to work in film. James Vella Phantom Limb February 2024, Brighton, UK

This is the second album released from HIFUMI Records in 2000.

Kinichi Motegi (Fishmans, dr) participated in this ambitious album, which was recorded simultaneously with live instruments under the theme of "brown, light blue, and green = sky, earth, and natural trees" to contain the body heat and even the atmosphere of the place with humans and instruments. The album is a unique work with a fairy-tale, nostalgic worldview and experimental musicality full of humor, and the covers of "Give me a good word" by the Fishmans and "Minna yume no naka" by Kounosuke Hamaguchi are also wonderfully expressive!
The analog mastering by ZAK, who recorded and mixed the album at the time of its production, is used for The jacket photo by Masafumi Sanai is also a mysterious one.

Limited edition of 200 copies.* Ferns proudly presents a new release on the label, K.Mizutani's "Inferior's Betrayal". Reissue of the self-produced K7 in 1994 on Kiyoshi Mizutani's Ulcer House label. Mizutani was a member of Merzbow in the '80s and has done solo work since 1989. He has recordings on Ulcer House, ZSF Produkt, Shirocoal Recordings, NEdS, Sounds For Consciousness Rape, Pure, Artware, Kaon, e(r)ostrate, Povertech Industries, and Flenix Records.

Brooklyn-based DJ and producer Ben Bondy follows releases on Good Morning Tapes, West Mineral, 3XL and Quiet Time Tapes with Por, the second release from his k2dj alias. It arrives on Montreal label NAFF with six tracks of pristine, crystalline electronica with the notable presence of processed vocals which create a sort of metallic, shimmering futuristic alien pop music.

Kaethe Hostetter is a classically trained American violinist who embedded herself in Ethiopian musical life for 12 years, absorbed its melodic systems and spiritual weight, and re-emerged with a solo, psychedelic, loop-based violin ritual that refracts Ethiopian classics through dub, psych rock, and avant improvisation. This is a collection of musical vignettes by American violinist and composer Kaethe Hostetter. Sourcing from her 11 years living in Addis Ababa, she transports you to the bustling streets of the East African metropolis, evoking the crackling sounds of a saxophone blaring out of a barbershop radio, a shepherd's flute melody turned dub reggae, the fervent dancing on packed dirt floors of a rural honey-wine bar, and the big band sounds of Ethiopia's "Golden Era".

Kadapat adalah proyek musik dari Yogi dan Barga yang berbasis di Bali. Kadapat menggunakan ilmu putih/hitam Bali sebagai spirit dalam eksperimen musik elektronik-gamelan dengan tujuan menyampaikan tradisi dan legenda urban.

Berkenalan dengan Kadapat berarti bertemu dengan anak muda milenial dari suburban Bali yang ditempa oleh gamelan beserta tradisinya sejak usia muda. Tak hanya mumpuni secara teknis, Yogi dan Braga juga memainkan gamelan untuk upacara-upacara tradisi dan keagamaan di Banjar, sebuah komunitas masyarakat yang memiliki batas-batas wilayah yang berwenang untuk mengatur dan mengurus kepentingan masyarakat setempat, berdasarkan asal usul dan adat istiadat setempat yang diakui dan dihormati dalam sistem pemerintahan. Mereka berdua sangat intens bergumul dengan norma-norma tradisi yang konservatif dan kosmologinya yang transendental. Sebagai entitas milenial, mereka juga akrab dengan budaya urban, teknologi, dan kosmopolitanisme Bali. Identitas hibrida ini semakin kompleks saat mereka mendalami dimensi pendidikan seni formal dengan sistem pedagogi barat.

Ribuan unsur-unsur tersebut terwujud dalam karya musik Kadapat di album ini. Ia berkelindan dalam jaringan yang saling mencerap dan mencibir. Setiap elemen dan teksturnya bersuara konsensual, namun tak jarang masing-masing menyeruak secara mandiri mencoba menunjukkan eksistensinya. Secara utuh komposisi dalam album ini memiliki nyali politis. Imajinasi radikal yang diekspresikan dalam kondisi yang rumit bagi mereka: adat istiadat. Eksperimentasi adalah upaya uji coba. Apakah menguji pertunjukan Kadapat di Banjar, di kampus seni, di klab gorong-gorong, di beach party, di festival musik metal, atau di acara kawinan akan menimbulkan polemik? Tidak ada salahnya untuk dicoba. We just need to talk. — Wok The Rock