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Following two 12-inch singles released via the self-run label Plastic & Sounds, which launched unexpectedly this past July, the culmination of their work to date—the album Silent Way, comprising ten tracks—will be released on 27th March as a coloured vinyl 2LP (gatefold sleeve/33RPM/limited press) and digitally.Mastering and record cutting by Rashad Becker in Berlin. The artwork centres on photographer Yusuke Yamatani's work, with Satoshi Suzuki—who handles all P&S releases—constructing the overall aesthetic.Last October, they appeared on Resident Advisor's popular series “RA Podcast”, with audio from their world premiere live performance in April 2023 released. They held the “Plastic & Sounds” label launch party at Shibuya WWW. In January 2026, they performed a live set of their acclaimed album “Haet” at the venue's New Year's party.This release comes amidst growing international acclaim, with their previous album ‘Discipline’ featured in Pitchfork's ‘The 30 Best Electronic Albums of 2025’, and one of their signature tracks, ‘Butterfly Effect’, selected for RA (Resident Advisor)'s ‘The Best Electronic Tracks of 2000-25’.
Strut proudly presents the first-ever reissue of a landmark 1974 Ghanaian highlife classic Sikyi Highlife by Dr K. Gyasi & His Noble Kings, originally released on Essiebons. A defining recording of the era, Sikyi Highlife bridges tradition and innovation at a pivotal moment in Ghanaian music. Deeply rooted in the classic 1950s–’60s highlife sound, K. Gyasi drew inspiration from the ancient sikyi drum-dance of the Akan people of southern Ghana, shaping the album’s rhythms around its distinctive pulse. The vocal arrangements echo the traditional Akan modal style, grounding the music firmly in Ghana’s cultural heritage. Yet Sikyi Highlife is equally forward-thinking. As electric guitars became standard in highlife during the 1960s, the 1970s ushered in further experimentation. The Noble Kings broke new ground as the first highlife guitar band to incorporate keyboards and a full horn section into their sound, expanding the genre’s sonic possibilities while retaining its rootsy spirit. Gyasi’s approach was part of a broader indigenisation movement among Ghana’s electric highlife bands in the post-independence era. Inspired by the nation’s ‘African Personality’ ethos and reinforced by Afrocentric messages arriving from American soul and funk, artists began reclaiming traditional forms within modern arrangements. Contemporaries included Koo Nimo, who revived the older palmwine style, and drummer Nii Ashitey, whose Wulomei band pioneered a folklorised Ga highlife sound from 1973. Like many musicians of his generation, Gyasi was a passionate supporter of Ghana’s independence movement. In 1963, he travelled as a musical ambassador alongside Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, performing across North Africa and the USSR and carrying Ghanaian culture onto the world stage. The Noble Kings’ mid-’70s line-up featured some of the country’s finest musicians, including guitarist Eric Agyeman (who led the band at the time), Thomas Frimpong on drums and vocals, Ernest Honny on organ, and bassist Ralph Karikari - who was renowned for his innovative technique of translating the rhythms and tonal language of the traditional talking drum onto electric bass. Upon its original release, Sikyi Highlife became one of the biggest-selling albums of the 1970s for Essiebons, earning Gyasi the affectionate honorary title of “Dr” from his devoted fans. Today, the album remains an evergreen classic, still cherished across Ghana and beyond.
Gondwana Records is pleased to announce ‘Interlude’, the second album from Estonian-born, London-based composer and pianist Hanakiv. Showcasing an expanded sound, the compositions trace a journey of overcoming the past, unfolding into a seductively unconventional style imbued with hope and a therapeutic quality. Existing in a liminal space between genres, Interlude , the second album from composer, pianist and now singer Hanakiv is as mysterious as it’s seductively unconventional, with piano, often prepared, only one of its elements, both analogue and electronic. First inspired by “those crystallised moments where time almost stands still, pain hasn’t yet fully set in, and happiness is still just a glimpse,” it provides, all the same, “a sense of hope that standing still is part of living.” Interlude’s range is further intimated by its contributors, including Portico Quartet’s Milo Fitzpatrick, who, as well as playing double bass throughout, co-wrote the refreshed long-term live favourite, ‘Intro’, and the eloquent closer, Stillness’. Also present are saxophonist Pille-Rite Rei, cellist Joanna Gutowska, violinist Gabriel Green, and PIKE on drums, helping capture the instances Hanakiv calls “in-betweens”. Unpredictable, unfathomable, candid and carefree, Interlude embodies flaws embraced as well as senses regained. This record is a product of creative and personal revelation, earned only when one’s true self.
The album will be released on February 13, 2026
Strut proudly presents the debut album from producer, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist, Momoko Gill. Fresh from her critically acclaimed collaboration Clay recorded with cult electronic artist Matthew Herbert, Momoko steps forward in her own right for the first time with her remarkable debut solo album.
Momoko has long been one of the UK electronic and jazz scene’s best-kept secrets. A self-taught drummer, producer, songwriter, and vocalist, she has brought her unique touch to collaborations with Alabaster DePlume, Matthew Herbert, Coby Sey, Tirzah, and Nadeem Din-Gabisi (her musical foil in An Alien Called Harmony). Extensive touring behind the drum kit, at the keys and in front of the mic have honed her compositional and production instincts.
With Momoko, Gill emerges into the spotlight with an album that is entirely her own. Throughout, you can hear the stylistic flavours of jazz musicians as much as singer-songwriters, experimental artists and electronic producers. Though Gill rejects imitation, sculpting her sound through feel and expression rather than tradition. Based in London and having grown up in Japan and the US, Gill channels her breadth of perspective through her musical ideas and storytelling, with a unique voice developed through instinct, collaboration and solitary study.
The album’s eleven tracks take in a wide spectrum with the jazz-infused groove of ‘No Others’ and harmony-drenched, reflective ‘Heavy’ contrasting with the dark, confrontational sound of 'Shadowboxing' leading into an eerie left-field instrumental beat, ‘Test A Small Area' and the impressive 50-person choir on ‘When Palestine Is Free’ (which includes heavyweights Shabaka Hutchings, Soweto Kinch, Alabaster DePlume, Coby Sey, Marysia Osu and more). It is a deeply personal and poetic recording and showcases the full uncompromising range of Momoko’s vison, presented in her own voice.
Momoko was produced by Momoko Gill, recorded at Total Refreshment
Centre, mixed by Matthew Herbert and mastered by Alex Gordon at Abbey Road Studios.
Matthew Herbert and drummer/ vocalist Momoko Gill announce the release of new album Clay via Strut in June 2025. A soulful, elastic collaboration, Clay treads nimbly between the dancefloor and the more introspective moods of the early hours, both reminiscent of Herbert’s iconic album Around The House while taking off in a compelling new direction. Agile and open-hearted, Clay is a thrilling, sonically adventurous record from two of the UK’s most forward-thinking artists.
Orbiting around Herbert’s fleet-footed productions and the ingenuity of Momoko Gill’s dexterous, melodic writing, Clay is at once stripped-back and rhythmically complex, drawing on a variety of found sources - from japanese kotos to basketballs - to give the sound an unmistakably organic feel.
Bringing together original sampling techniques, live improvisation and lush, expansive arrangements, Clay is lifted into higher realms by Momoko Gill’s intimate vocal performance, soaring wide-winged across the album’s eleven tracks, whether on the euphoric melancholia of ‘Mowing’ or the emotive duet ‘Heart’.
Clay follows the 2024 release of debut collaboration ‘Fallen’ and Momoko Gill’s remix of Matthew Herbert’s ‘The Horse Is Here’. And yet, although Clay marks the first full-length release between Herbert and Gill, the duo’s shared passion for pushing sonic boundaries has played a crucial role in their respective careers to date.
For Herbert that means treating the world as an instrument, making music using everything from the sounds of a bomb exploding in Libya, a horse skeleton, a tank driving over a meal made for Tony Blair, 20,000 dogs, 245 shops and countless other noises. His album ONE PIG – which follows the lifecycle of a pig from birth to plate – remains one of the most ambitious and provocative pieces of electronic music this century, cementing his reputation as an utterly singular composer, artist and producer.
Self-taught in drums and composition, Momoko Gill’s journey to Clay has been similarly experimental – cutting her teeth in South London’s multi-disciplinary music scene, embracing new challenges and collaborating with the likes of Coby Sey, Tirzah and Alabaster DePlume. Although drums and vocals are her mediums of choice, Gill’s multi-instrumental talents were on full show on 2024’s EP as An Alien Called Harmony with poet/rapper Nadeem Din-Gabisi, and she continues to hone her style in the frictions between genres.
With an intuitive feel for one another’s sound, Clay is a meeting of musical minds that resonates far beyond the sum of its parts - a startlingly fresh, beautifully conceived record from two artists who sound like they’ve been playing together all their lives.
Zulu Guitar's Pioneering Tricksters
But for this compilation of rescued songs masterfully restored from rare 78 rpm shellacs, few could imagine the diversely beautiful roots of Zulu Guitar Music emerging during the period 1950 – 1965. Story-tellers and master musicians appropriate outlaw personae, re-purpose country and western, Hawaiian and other styles, to stretch and challenge our notion of “the Zulu guitar”.
Twenty-five songs (18 on vinyl) plunge us into the depths of the migrant experience. Translations in the liner notes offer us glimpses of pugnacity, melancholy and heartache, all coloured by the paternalism that circumscribed the singers’ apartheid-dominated lives.
The early mbaqanga undertow in many of the songs subverts the wanderlust of Country and Western music into a fugitivity burdened by nostalgia. Something irretrievable has been lost, prompting a blending of ideas and cultures to make sense through thankless acts of musical divination. Inadvertently they have been thrust into the role of the antihero, where outwitting competition for lovers is as important as evading the Black Jacks (apartheid’s municipal cops) and their informants.
Considering the politically repressive period that this music emerges from, we can surmise that the specificity in the storytelling went a long way towards evading censure. But even when words are absent, there is a narrative arc suggested by the musical expression.
With most of the master tapes wilfully destroyed or lost, modern transcription and restoration techniques from the original shellac discs present the original sound most likely more clearly than ever heard before.
Sought after two-tracker, Ricardo Villalobos releasing under his moniker “Richard Wolfsdorf” in his early years, remastered, new cut
Welcome to the world of Edward Blankman, a retired dentist who wrote elegant, minimalist jazz in obscurity circa 1970.
At least that’s the story. In truth, Edward Blankman’s Cape Cod Cottage is the 2021 concept album from Echo Park composer Brendan Eder.
A tender, wistful follow up to 2020’s To Mix With Time, the Cape Cod Cottage sound evokes the spirit of Erik Satie, Miles Davis with Gil Evans, and Stevie Wonder, balanced with the accessibility of 1960s lounge-exotica.
Eder created Blankman’s story to channel his own grief, with bittersweet tenderness. Read the liner notes (or watch the mini-doc), and you’ll be transported to the quiet shores of Cape Cod, where a lonely retiree mourns his late wife, Natalie, with walks in nature and evenings at his Wurlitzer.
The story is brought to life with a meticulously crafted package sporting classic liner notes, faux 1970s photographs documenting Edward with the musicians (taken during the actual session), a make-believe jazz label, and a commissioned oil painting of Edward’s cottage.
Eder brought together a dream line up with a ton of chemistry for the project; drummer Christian Euman (Jacob Collier), saxophonist Josh Johnson (Jeff Parker, Leon Bridges), and bassist Alex Boneham (Billy Childs), who all studied together at the Hancock Institute of Jazz. Rounding out the group is flutist Sarah Robinson, a recurring player in Eder’s ensemble, and Edward Blankman (Brendan) on the Wurlitzer.
The cast was booked for a single date with coveted engineer Michael Harris (Kamasi Washington, Angel Olsen) at famed Electro-Vox Recording Studios. To create realism for Edward’s story, the charts were purposefully withheld from the musicians until they arrived at the studio. The result is an authentic and natural performance delivered by players at the top of their game, captured on lauded vintage equipment including the legendary Neve-8028 console.
Cape Cod Cottage will be released on September 10th including a gatefold vinyl.
Music From Memory returns with their penultimate release of 2016, this time bringing together a compilation of works by the Italian composer and musician Roberto Musci. While studying guitar and saxophone in his hometown of Milan, Musci developed a deep fascination for non-western music and set out to travel across India, Asia and Africa, which he would do extensively between 1974-1985. During his many journeys Roberto would become deeply embedded in each unique world of rhythms, scales and approaches to making and performing music. Throughout this period of travel he would make many field recordings as well as collect and study many traditional and indigenous instruments that he would then later combine with synthesizers and electronics on his return to Italy.
Combining personal documents of music and sounds deeply connected to the history and cultures of those lands, with his own explorations and experiments with cutting edge sound technology Roberto Musci would develop through his music a very unique and at times wholly mystical space, where ancient and modern would evolve into a new musical language.
As well as making his own music, during the 1980’s and 1990’s Roberto would also regularly broadcast radio shows of experimental and indigenous music on Italian radio stations such as Rai and Radio Popolare. Deeply connected to the arts he would also compose and perform numerous pieces of music for theatre, dance and performance art pieces as well as soundtracks for film and television.
‘Tower of Silence’ brings together a double LP of material from Roberto Musci’s solo recordings commencing with the Loa of Music sessions from 1984 up until later very recent works. The compilation also includes a number of collaborative pieces, many performed and written in collaboration with Giovanni Venosa, such as material taken from their ‘Water Messages On Desert Sand’, which as an album was Grammy-nominated in in the UK in 1987. A unique and at times intensely mesmerising musical world ‘Tower of Silence’ offers an introduction to the work of a unique and visionary artist.
The first album ever to release on Jahtari vinyl, back in circulation for the first time since it’s original release in 2009! Twelve meticulously crafted lofi Dub oddities by disrupt, off-the-grid hiphop riddims with lots of SciFi samples, cheap synths and effects from another world, all soaked in gnarly but deeply cosmic textures and with expert low end mastering by peak time CGB1 at D&M in Berlin. This new vinyl LP version includes all-time classics like “SEGA Beats”, a killer chiphop dub cut of Misora Hibari’s “Ringo Oiwake”, as well as “Berzerk Dub” and “Echobombing” (the instrumental to Kiki Hitomi‘s “Nighwalkers“), which only have been released on CD or limited 7″ before. “The Bass Has Left The Building” comes with iconic cover art by Jimmy Cauty (KLF) – and an inlay poster with an exploding sound system…
Some 30 years after they first met in the DJ booth of Tokyo's Spacelab Yellow nightclub, close friends François Kevorkian and Dimitri From Paris have finally joined forces in the studio. The result is The Nassau Excursion, a dazzlingly good three-track EP inspired by their joint love of disco and boogie-era dance records made at Island Records' Compass Point Studio in the Bahamas. Featuring Dimitri's regular collaborator DJ Rocca, its is an expressive and fiendishly dubbed-out exploration of this distinctive sound - think echo-laden vocal snippets, thickset synth bass. D-Train style echoing keyboard motifs, jazz-funk flecked Wally Badarou riffs, colourful chords, dubbed-out congas and punchy drum machine beats, expertly arranged to include the kind of stylistic mixing traits and dancefloor dub tropes liberally employed by François and Dimitri over the course of their careers.
Bongo Joe records is pleased to present La Contra Ola, a compilation recording dedicated to the early 80’s Spanish Synth Wave and Post Punk scene. First to be published outside Spain, this anthology explores the electronic music side of the independent music produced in the days in the Iberian Peninsula: Synthetic pop music with industrial sounds including futurist Art Rock, dance-floor productions and low-fi experiments on cassettes. Classics or true hidden treasures, this selection of nineteen songs is symbolic of the musical dawn that Spain experienced during the decade marked by the return of democracy and by the creative freedom initiated by Punk music.
Grace & Raffaella is the first collaborative release by ML and Vittoria Totale. Over nine tracks, the album strikes a deceptively minimalist tone, taking in a ton of musical as well as literary references. An elegy on a journey back to the present, with all the hushed intensity of an informed fever dream, Grace & Raffaella has a magic-realist feel. Its vocal parts serve as loopy self-fulfilling prophecies. Cut off from the sun, the gorge grows darker. Using an electroacoustic sense of spacing, as well as abstracted current-day club influences, with scraps of background noise fading in and out, this album's use and treatment of a snippet-like narrative is its core aesthetic. A digital gleam drenches the spoken bits into instances of subtle surrealism. Like a kitchen sink drama stripped of all deadweight. We are on the edge of relinquishing all control here. Rip up your diary and let go of the language of the old ones. Grace & Raffaella is a seductive slice of modern hyper-pop that defines its own intentions over and over again.
Compiled by Hunee, 'Sounds from the Far East' features highly sought after material by legendary Japanese house producer Soichi Terada and fellow producers Shinichiro Yokota, Manabu Nagayama!
Soichi Terada is an adventurous multitalent and over all a good sport. He was born in the sixties, and as a child he loved to play on his fathers’ electric organ. Terada majored in Computer Science and Electric Organ and after he graduated, he founded his Far East Recording in 1989, because he couldn't find a label for his compositions at that time.
The sound of Far East Recording is very much inspired by early nineties US deep house. Soichi Terada went out to parties in the late eighties, were he was equally influenced by house and hip-hop. A few years later, Terada took on producing music by using digital sampling. In the early nineties he occasionally DJ-ed with a DAT player and some reel tapes, instead of using records and turntables.
"Sounds From The Far East" shines new light on Soichi Terada's label and consists of material that was originally released in the early nineties. Next to Terada's music, Hunee also selected a few tracks by fellow artist Shinichiro Yokota for this compilation, as well as 'Sun Showered', a track based on the incredible Paradise Garage gem called 'Sunshower', by Terada and Nami Shimada.
Pharoah Sanders' Impulse! swan-song is one of the most transcendent jazz recordings of all time, a plugged-in, high-minded evocation that shares musical DNA with Alice Coltrane's masterpiece 'Journey in Satchidananda' - this new "Verve Vault" edition has been remastered from the original analog tapes and sounds insane. Best known for his early records like 'Tauhid' and 'Karma', spiritual jazz milestones that showed Sanders' continuity from his time working alongside John Coltrane, Sanders kept on innovating until his death in 2022. But the period that fascinates us the most is in the early '70s, when he integrated African, Latin and Native American sounds on the startling 'Black Unity', recorded 'Journey in Satchidananda' with Alice Coltrane and closed out his epic Impulse! run with 'Elevation'. And it's this (mostly) live recording, captured in two blistering sessions at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles and fleshed out with the sedate, palate cleansing studio jam 'Greeting to Saud', that seems to broadcast the unstoppable energy of this period best. The title track alone, a side-long mantra that fills out the field with clouds of percussion from Lawrence Killian, Jimmy Hopps, Michael Carvin, Joe Bonner and Sanders himself. Even Bonner's jabs on the piano feel like percussive notes and aside from those sounds (and Calvin Hill's rhythmic bass twangs), it's left to Sanders to do the heavy lifting with his lyrical performance, slurring in fluttered post-bop cadences before overblowing over the explosive, double-time crescendo that eventually dissolves into a choir of bells and chimes. And that's not nearly the best thing here, either. 'Elevation' is essential because it contains the open-hearted, free-flowing masterpiece 'The Gathering', a live staple at the time that brims with energy, from its sing-along vocals to its earworm-y piano hooks.
Previously released on May 20th 2014. Kikagaku Moyo here sound anything but lost, their child-like wonder manifested in a confident, courageous exploration of sound. Labels – psychedelic, folk, prog-rock, psychedelic-folk-mixed-with-prog-rock – do little to accurately reflect the spectrum of influences on display, let alone the more impactful realization of completeness in Kikagaku Moyo’s songs.
Vibe Ride is the sixth release of Adam Rudolph's Hu Vibrational project and marks his 60th release as a leader or co-leader.
“With every record, the goal is to explore new creative territory,” explains Rudolph. Vibe Ride continues a deeper exploration of a trance-like groove and a conceptual framework known as Sonic Mandala. This album marks the most complete realization of that idea, partly due to the group's experience touring beforehand. That time on the road helped to refine ideas and strengthen musical chemistry. The recording process unfolded organically—likely due to the long-standing collaboration within ensembles like Go: Organic Orchestra and Moving Pictures, where the musicians have developed a deep familiarity with the shared musical language.
Sonic Mandala refers to a musical approach distinct from traditional linear structures of theme and development. Found in cultures across the globe, it may represent one of the oldest forms of musical expression—predating written history by tens of thousands of years. Today, it is most vividly preserved in the music of the Ituri Forest peoples (Aka, Baka, Ba Benzele, Mbuti), whose sound traditions revolve in cyclical, orbit-like patterns. Vibe Ride seeks to bring that ancient sense of circularity into a contemporary—and perhaps even futuristic—context.
The ensemble of Vibe Ride—Alexis Marcelo, Jerome Harris, Harris Eisenstadt, Neel Murgai, Tim Kieper, and Tripp Dudley—brings exceptional creativity and skill to the project. While grounded in the sonic languages of today, their performance channels an ancient vibrational lineage, connecting with ancestral sound makers who were attuned to the rhythms of the sun, moon, stars, and seasons. Human beings have always been deeply responsive to natural cycles.
Like a mandala, where the circle reveals itself as a spiral—always returning, but never to the exact same point—the Sonic Mandala musical experience spirals through motion. Refined signal patterns emerge through overtone-rich instrumentation. The groove becomes a threshold, shifting the listener from passive observation into active, even transcendent, participation. With open ears and an open mind, the sound spirals inward—toward a primal center—and outward into the cosmos. When this elevated state is shared among participants, it creates what mystics describe as resonance.
Vibe Ride thrives on the distinctive sonic voices of its players, interwoven with care and nuance into the compositions. Hu Vibrational merges elements of world music, electronica, and improvised jazz into something both funky and spiritual, intense and soothing.
Using signature techniques of organic orchestration, layered arrangement, and electronic processing, the compositions are sculpted from percussion, electronics, and ethereal textures. Rhythmic foundations drawn from diverse traditions serve not as endpoints, but as building blocks. As the saying goes, “Orchestration is the key.” In shaping the sound, the aim was to discover fresh ways of balancing structure and sonic color. As Don Cherry once said: “The swing is in the sound.”
Paris, 1978. Don Cherry walks into a French studio with a suitcase full of instruments nobody expected and meets Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan for the first time. No rehearsal, no plan, just two musicians who recognize each other immediately as kindred spirits. What happens next is one of Cherry's best efforts - an album only hardcore fans know about, recorded in Paris, released only in France in 1981, disappeared, and now back again in a special edition that demands attention. This is what "world music" should have been before the term got watered down into airport lounge background noise.
Don Cherry - the man who stood next to Ornette Coleman in Los Angeles and New York, playing trumpet and cornet through the birth of Free Jazz, that final structural revolution of American improvisation based on melody rather than harmony. But Cherry never stopped there. He had a voracious musical appetite and boundless imagination that pulled him toward India, Brazil, Africa, Indonesia, China - not as a tourist collecting sounds, but with deep personal engagement. His commitment ran deeper than novelty. This wasn't about exotic decoration. This was about a global vision of art and the human condition.
Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan - Delhi gharana lineage, new generation tabla master who extended what his predecessors had built, gained recognition as a soloist, ventured onto the international scene. Irregular rhythmic patterns, highly syncopated, rich in variety and originality. The kind of percussionist who could grasp Cherry's intentions immediately, warm up his fingers at astonishing speed, tune Cherry's entire diverse instrument collection - concert piano, Hammond B3 organ, chromatic orchestral timpani - with perfect pitch and no hesitation.
They had never met before the recording session. But they recognized each other immediately. Calm, focused, full of laughter. Cherry knew what he wanted to create. Latif posed no challenge - he was the answer. The result is an incredible mixture of jazz and Indian music that doesn't feel like mixture at all - it feels like the music that was always supposed to exist when these two worlds met at the right moment with the right people. Not fusion for fusion's sake. Not "exotic instruments" as decoration. This is two masters speaking the same language for the first time and realizing they'd been having the same conversation in different rooms for years.
Recorded 1978 in Paris. Released only in France in 1981. Disappeared. Forgotten except by those who knew. First reissued by Honest Jon's years ago. Now back in special edition format because some records refuse to stay buried.
Essential for anyone who thinks Don Cherry's best work ended with Ornette, or that "world music" has to choose between authenticity and imagination. This is both. This is neither. This is what happens when boundaries dissolve because they were never really there.
Third volume in Dave Huismans' stellar ex_libris series, further exploring the outer edges of deep house and leftfield music across three cuts in a total runtime of 25 minutes. The A-side offers up a rough-around-the-edges, spirited 4/4 beatdown epic, while the B1 & B2 venture into equally vivid world-building and fluttering wildlife curiosity. Limited edition - once again housed in lovingly hand-stamped, full-color sleeves. Design by Bernie van Vlijmen. Mastered and cut by Anne Taegert at D&M.
‘Araya Lam’ is the 3rd album by The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band. Following on from ‘21st Century Molam’ and ‘Planet Lam’ the band head deeper into the roots of Isan music, collaborating with others traditional musicians on Vocals, Pong-Lang, Pi and Sor. Each instrument brings something fresh to add to the group’s take on Molam music. In addition, the band nod to New York Post-Punk on ‘Zud Rang Ma’ and sounds from across the Indian ocean region on ‘Psych Lam Kor’. Looking back to their roots to move ever further forward ‘Araya lam’ is the next chapter in the always evolving Paradise Bangkok concept.
The shifting dimensions of Masana Temples, fourth album from psychedelic explorers Kikagaku Moyo,are informed by various experiences the band had with traveling through life together, ranging from the months spent on tour to making a pilgrimage to Lisbon to record the album with jazz musician Bruno Pernadas. The band sought out Pernadas both out of admiration for his music and in an intentional move to work with a producer who came from a wildly different background. With Masana Temples, the band wanted to challenge their own concepts of what psychedelic music could be. Elements of both the attentive folk and wild-eyed rocking sides of the band are still intact throughout, but they’re sharper and more defined.
More than the literal interpretation of being on a journey, the album’s always changing sonic panorama reflects the spiritual connection of the band moving through this all together. Life for a traveling band is a series of constant metamorphoses, with languages, cultures, climates and vibes changing with each new town. The only constant for Kikagaku Moyo throughout their travels were the five band members always together moving through it all, but each of them taking everything in from very different perspectives. Inspecting the harmonies and disparities between these perspectives, the group reflects the emotional impact of their nomadic paths. The music is the product of time spent in motion and all of the bending mindsets that come with it.
Smerz continue to mark out sui generis wyrd-pop territory on their second proper full-length, this time for the on-fire Escho label, stripping away the club nostalgia and doubling down on oddball R&B harmonies and quirky DIY-cum-downtown NYC production tics - a sort of genius missing link between Astrid Sonne, Cibo Matto and Luscious Jackson.
Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt's earliest gear was a torch in a dark digital corridor, a prophetic look at a hazy pop future that blurred genre boundaries and trampled across the borders between the mainstream and the underground. Needless to say, they set the stage for a sound that's more or less orthodox in 2025 - we see Smerz's shadow on ML Buch's world-beating 'Suntub', or Erika De Casier's bedroom R&B groover 'Still', for example. And their contribution to the canon hasn't gone completely unnoticed; the duo co-produced K-pop girl group NewJeans' impressive 'Get Up' EP in 2023 alongside de Casier, and turned in an edit of Astrid Sonne's 'Say you love me' in 2024. If there's a discernible scene coalescing between Copenhagen, London and Oslo, Smerz are operating somewhere near the center.
So four years after threading supersaw-led trance-pop and rattly footwork-pilled kicks through a lattice of offhand skits and classical interludes on their impressive debut album 'Believer', Stoltenberg and Motzfeldt return to an art-pop landscape that's humming with energy. Fittingly, they reply by setting a new sonic benchmark, pruning their productions considerably and focusing on the bumpy, textural weirdness that often lurked in the distance on prior recordings. The best way to get a handle on this one is to scrub thru the duo's archive of NTS shows (they've been producing weekly bulletins for the best part of a decade), where you might hear Klein, Morton Feldman, Leila, Angelo Badalamenti, Young Thug or Kaskade alongside demos and cuts from like-minded peers such as Clarissa Connelly, Lolina and Peder Mannerfelt.
They're enthusiastic, discerning listeners who can cut away some of the cultural baggage to figure out links between vastly different sounds, and that's exactly the experience 'Big city life' provides. From the first few notes of the title track it's as if we've been dialed into NYC circa 1981, with rubbery microsampled half-riffs that project like they're being coughed out of a malfunctioning Fairlight CMI. Trading schoolyard rhymes back and forth, Smerz sing-rap nonchalantly over jerky MIDI piano and strangulated breaks, imagining a mid-point between day zero trip-hop and Craig Leon's enduringly influential 'Nommos'. And that intermixture of casual amusement and heads-y deep digging nourishes the entire record. There's the whipsmart Stereolab-in-dub vibe of 'But I do', 'Close' with its sad lounge and sensual Chicago lilt, and the lead single 'You got time and I got money', that's a raggy doll stitch-up of Air's 'Sexy Boy' and Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' covered by Neneh Cherry.
And just like on their debut album, it's Smerz's bijou, ostensibly throwaway moments that fully crystallize their narrative. They understand exactly what draws us back again and again to "classic" albums (and good mixes, actually), and pepper 'Big city life' with elegant, eccentric digressions, like the General MIDI player-piano loosie 'What', and 'Street Style', a stripped-back candlelit ballad that couches the bolshy TR-909-led 'Imagine This', a screwed-n-chopped Mantronix moment that accents their vast knowledge of '80s rap and electro. And if you're missing the old Smerz, they throw us a bone with the Autotune-d trance digression 'Dreams', leading us out of the album with a melancholy reminder that the flicker of the club is still there, somewhere, just distorted into a hypnotic, euphoric outline.
Go Kurosawa is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and co-founder of the independent label Guruguru Brain. Best known as the drummer and vocalist of Kikagaku Moyo, he has spent the past decade building bridges between East and West, sound and silence, rock and ritual. soft shakes is something different. A personal chapter in Go’s journey, it marks his first solo album, created entirely by himself and made, for the first time, purely for himself. After Kikagaku Moyo disbanded, Go spent some time producing records for other artists, but with soft shakes, there was no plan. Just the instinct to pick up an instrument, play, and see what might unfold. As he puts it, “The whole framework is new. When I made music for the band, I always knew who would play what. This time, it was just me. No plan, no expectation. And weirdly, that became the concept: doing it all myself, for the first time.” Go has a rare kind of musical instinct. He can play anything, hears everything, and yet never takes himself too seriously. For a long time, making music alone wasn’t part of the plan. Music had always been about connection. But over time, as he travelled, collected instruments and set up Guruguru Brain studio in Rotterdam, the sound of a solo voice emerged. soft shakes came together between January and June in Rotterdam, through dark, rainy, quiet days. Each day, Go would head to the studio, pick up whatever instrument was around and simply play. The process was slow and instinctive. “If something still moved me the next day, I’d add to it. If not, I’d start something new. One step at a time, without pressure.” Even as a solo record, the music doesn’t feel tight or controlled. It has the looseness of jamming, the joy of following where the sound wants to go. “I wanted that feeling, even if I was jamming with myself.” What comes through is music that feels playful, layered, rhythmic and delightfully unexpected. Just like Go. The album artwork was created by his partner Ao, her first time doing artwork for a record. “It captures the freedom and boldness of trying something new and I love it,” he says. soft shakes arrives at a moment of transition. Go recently relocated to Fukuoka, Japan, after years of living and working in Europe. “While making this album, we were deciding where to move. I knew it would be my last creation while living in Europe. When I listen back, I can hear that longing for something, towards a far away home.” The record feels like the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. “Now I’m excited to build a studio in Japan and start again. I don’t know what will come next, but I want it to be shaped and influenced by new surroundings.” And while this record might be personal, Go hopes it offers something to others too. “I wish people would travel somewhere else through music. You float around, lose track of time, and when the record ends, you feel the soft comfort of coming home again.”