MUSIC

All the music in the world is at your fingertips, and it’s up to you to set the vibe… So, what should we listen to? If you’re having trouble deciding, turn on the radio. It’s the perfect place to discover something new, or jam along to a tried-and-true station that’ll never let you down.Tune In is due out 11/1/2024 via Chiefdom Records. The second of three installments in the Terrestrial Radio series, it’s a carefully curated collection of instrumental fusion, designed to serve as the perfect radio mix for fans of jazz, hip hop, funk, soul, reggae and beyond. It’s the latest release from Cincinnati based executive producer Doctor Bionic (Jason Grimez). As a DJ, producer, and former member of 90s rap group MOOD, Grimez’ musical career revolves around hip hop. He’s always preferred to sample songs from the late 60s and early 70s because of the authentic tone. “Growing up collecting and sampling records was an education, whether we realized it or not,” he explained. Grimez records and produces music using analog gear to emulate the instrumentals that he’s always loved as he works with some of the best musicians in the Cincinnati area to bring his ideas to life. Among others, Jonathan Luck Spaulding and Josh “Mojo” Cole made several appearances on guitar throughout the record. Every Doctor Bionic release is accompanied by a unique, thought-provoking album cover. For Tune In, Grimez worked with Refael Idan Suissa, a painter and digital artist based in Israel.Next time you’re looking for some new instrumental tunes to set the tone, you can count on the growing catalog from Doctor Bionic.

This is the first album by Teno Afrika, a hot project led by Lutendo Raduvha, a 21-year-old young musician who is one of the most important figures in the latest "Amapiano" movement born in South Africa, where homegrown jazz, boogie, Afro-house, kwaito, etc. are rapidly being revived. This is the first album from Teno Afrika, a project led by Lutendo Raduvha, a 21-year-old young musician who is a key figure in the latest Amapiano movement emerging in South Africa. Born in the townships of Gauteng, South Africa, Teno Afrika has rapidly gained momentum over the past five years, evolving into a nationwide mainstream genre of "amapiano," a new genre influenced by kwaito. Having spent most of his life moving back and forth between Johannesburg and various townships in the suburbs of Pretoria, Gauteng, he has incorporated the influences of these areas into this exciting new collection of Afro-dance tracks.

This release holds special significance as it captures MC Conrad’s final recording session, completed just days before his passing. On the day of the session, Conrad and DJ Prime Cuts laid down the chorus for Together, with plans for further writing that tragically never came to be. This release is both a tribute and a responsibility for DJ Prime Cuts, honoring Conrad’s last creative contribution and sharing it with the world. Proceeds from the single will go toward the MC Conrad Foundation and a GoFundMe campaign, supporting Conrad’s son and continuing his legacy. A-side Together is a vibrant electro-funk track combining chopped vocals, jazz-infused loops, and MC Conrad’s legendary voice. DJ Prime Cuts’ production masterfully blends the soulful essence of Roy Ayers with innovative, future-forward rhythms. The 130 BPM tempo breaks from Conrad’s typical work, but this track pushes beyond genres, creating a timeless piece that speaks to both artists’ versatility. The B-side, Our Time Is Now, stands as a high-energy tribute to Roy Ayers. It showcases DJ Prime Cuts’ prowess as a producer, blending deep basslines with techno-infused elements to create a track that’s both innovative and nostalgic. Originally conceived as part of the tribute to Ayers, the track celebrates the present moment and is a powerful homage to one of music’s greatest legends. With its infectious rhythm and dynamic production, Our Time Is Now is a must-listen for electronic music fans and Roy Ayers.

Moritz von Oswald, who has laid the groundwork for a deep interaction between genuine Jamaican dub and Detroit-style classic techno through his collaborations with Mark Ernestus, dub techno legend =Basic Channel and Rhythm And Sound, is creating ambient techno. Moritz Von Oswald Trio, a legendary trio teamed up with Max Loderbauer of Sun Electric, the pioneer of , and Vladislav Delay, a master of avant-garde electronic music from Northern Europe and Finland. The fifth album "Sounding Lines" released in 2015 from London's prestigious is in stock!

Smiff'n Wessun released this classic album in 1995, which is a classic in the history of Hip-Hop. The album is an wellknown hip-hop classic that spawned such classics as "Bucktown," "Wrekonize," "Sound Bwoy Bureill," and many more. The original album "Dah Shinin'" is now being reissued on cassette in a completely limited edition!　The album contains 18 tracks in total, with bonus tracks added to the original!

Following the release of the well received Rave ‘Till You Cry compilation of unreleased versions from the vaults in 2019, Disciples follow it up (a mere 5 years later!) with a new album from Rephlex alumni Bogdan Raczynski, complete with another manifesto style title: You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever.

A collection of warmly melodic electronic sketches, with tracks alternately drifting beatless on the breeze or underpinned by lo-fi drums, sometimes barely held together with a delicate construction of odd synth patches and ping-pong percussion. Each piece is short and to the point, a record of perfect miniatures. Whilst this description may sound utopian, the album is conceived around themes of late stage capitalist brutality, hyper consumerism, online doom and alogorhithmic apocalypse. Beauty in the face of planetary collapse and 24/7 livestreamed genocide. The theme summed up by the front cover which just features a giant (readable) QR code, that most ubiquitous of modern symbols. We’ve asked Bogdan on several occasions for more background information on the creation of these tracks, but received a different answer each time. One of the below statements might be true, though it’s equally possible that none of them are, just like the real news.

1) All these tracks are a result of Bogdan asking AI to make an EDM album.

2) These tracks originated in a desperate bid by Bogdan to crack the lucrative mood / chill / coffee / gym algorithmic playlist market.

3) All of these tracks were commissioned for a Tesla infomercial but rejected when Elon Musk heard them.

4) The music on this album is over ten years old.

5) The music on this album was made in a furious weekend of creative inspiration in early 2024.

The QR code on the cover takes listeners to an ever-evolving page on Bogdan’s website which may delve into some of these theories in more detail, or ignore them completely.

We leave you with Bogdan’s text in the booklet that accompanied Rave ‘Till You Cry as the closest we may ever get to some kind of logical reasoning:

“Burn the damned art labels. Ambiguity is wonder. Information is an affront to expression, a death knell to spontaneity. For if an explanation is required, then a connection has failed to be made. Art should be like an overtone, resonating invisibly with your history to form an ethereal experience. Either it hits you or it’s wrong time, wrong place. To hell with the dawdling interviews and vanity shots. One turns to music precisely because it least resembles what’s in the mirror. Put away the arrogance and pride, and boast and bias. With each word uttered, your mystery wanes. Your shimmer dims. In my nostalgia, your light show is drowned out by the ricochet of soundwaves. Art is best when all else is drowned out. Black as though the moon forgot to come out. Let the night cover my flailing humanity like a veil. Gangly arms tangled, feet aflutter, yet all but silent against the din. This is not an escape. This is me screaming, happily, inside, out through my fingertips. This is my beck and call. Carefully assembled to drw forth some other form of you. May we partake in this moment together, for just a little longer.” 

nujabes passed away suddenly in February 2010 due to an accident, and this "metaphorical music" is the first album he put all his energy into after releasing mainly analog singles until then. It is a masterpiece that continues to be loved by many even now, and is the core of nujabes and hydeout productions. It is a historical masterpiece that contains many of the great songs that defined his presence. The first chapter of his miraculous mental landscape music, in which a piece of his soul that burned briefly but fiercely resides, has been released on cassette tape after a lapse of 20 years.

nujabes passed away suddenly in February 2010 due to an accident, and this "metaphorical music" is the first album he put all his energy into after releasing mainly analog singles until then. It is a masterpiece that continues to be loved by many even now, and is the core of nujabes and hydeout productions. It is a historical masterpiece that contains many of the great songs that defined his presence. The first chapter of his miraculous mental landscape music, in which a piece of his soul that burned briefly but fiercely resides, has been released on cassette tape after a lapse of 20 years.

In celebration of the album’s 20th anniversary, MM..FOOD has been repackaged with all new artwork by Sam Rodriguez! Originally released in 2004, MF DOOM's MM..FOOD is hailed as a classic hip-hop album full of inventive production, remarkable wordplay, and unique themes. Celebrated for its seamless blend of humor, wit, and social commentary, the album ushers listeners into a bizarre world of food-related metaphors, painting a bitterly comedic portrait of a life tainted by vice, violence, and jealousy. It was a brilliant and novel concept that gave DOOM plenty of room to explore the album’s subjects. Throughout MM..FOOD, DOOM embeds complex ideas within seemingly simple narratives. Album opener “Beef Rapp” is a multi-pronged metaphor reminding listeners of the dangers involved in the glorification of conflict, especially within the rap game. “Hoe Cakes” borrows its name from the sweet, hot water cornmeal patties, which he uses as a symbol to rhyme about indulgence and excess. Continuing the motif, DOOM uses the Madlib-produced “One Beer” to fold layers of depth about escapism and ego, while the popular “Rapp Snitch Knishes” critiques the self-incrimination and contradictory behaviors of some rappers. Overall, MM..FOOD is both a social commentary and a piece of social satire, showcasing MF DOOM’s ability to blend serious themes with his unique, playful lyrical style.

Honour’s debut album is a ligament stretching from Lagos to London and to New York, curling across the diaspora and brushing the darker hues of blues, hip-hop, free jazz, ambient, gospel with Christian mythology and Yoruba folklore. As cinematic as it is painterly, Àlàáfíà is a meditation on themes of life, death and love that pulls inspiration from the poetic profundity of God, remembered dreams, unexpected casual conversations, field recordings, literature, ephemera, and personal archives. The result is an impressionistic vision in Black and Blur that both exhausts and implicates language and that sublimates boundaries between everywhere and nowhere; history and the present; the individual and the universal.

On "SHAME", producer 2K88 (Przemysław Jankowiak, fka 1988) invokes the era and spirit of PL SOUND, a local genre inspired by British soundsystem music but infused with the social, urban, and sonic themes that developed during Poland’s post-communist transformation. "SHAME" is a progressive, bass-fueled transmission built from scraps of hip-hop’s past; it’s a cinematic vision of Y2K Polish rap that’s in constant flux, where every detail is just as important as the whole structure. Sampling the Polish canon of beats from the low-rent districts of the nineties, 2K88 plunders tracks already based on samples and channels the experiences of the generations that grew up with those sounds, struggling and celebrating with them. And just as he did with his previous projects Etamski and 1988, 2K88 draws out, processes, and ages his elements in an echo chamber, asking questions and formulating answers. Jankowiak works on the fringes of genre: traces of ambient, dub, rap and jungle flicker into low-lit urban rhythms, chunky nightclub basslines and paranoid production touches. This is in keeping with his new, futuristic handle, 2K88. Not for a second does he succumb to today’s omnipresent nostalgia, instead putting reconstruction before deconstruction — he finds whole worlds in his scraps, and in the long-gone turn-of-the-millennium period, whose liminal qualities feel like a precursor to the unease of the present moment. The end-of-the-20th-century paranoia has only intensified in the past 30 years, and paranoia, as Philo Gant once said in the 1995 sci-fi film "Strange Days", is “just reality on a finer scale”. By that logic, 2K88 offers a picture of the grittiest reality blown up to truly awe-inspiring proportions. ______________________________________________________________ 2K88— fka 1988, aka Przemysław Jankowiak — is a music producer, graphic designer, and audio director raised in the Poland of the 1990s and on the pioneering rap records of that time. The rawness, chunkiness, and paranoia he took from this period have always been an integral part of his music. They were there when he made his first homemade beats and stayed with him when, in the following years, he distanced himself from hip-hop, going deeper into the world of sampling experiments and the post-genre avant-garde. Later, he and Robert Piernikowski created the universe of the duo Syny - an irreal spectral/ontological phenomenon built out of memories, dreams, and bass, rap, dub, and smoke. Since the end of Syny, Jankowiak has let loose his beatmaker impulses on a collaborative record with Warsaw’s legendary MC Włodi, created the album Ruleta [Roulette] with over 30 featured guests, and struck up a dialogue with the electronic soundsystem work that’s fascinated him for years on the Ring the Alarm EP. He’s also created chart-topping avant-pop with Brodka and a mimetic soundtrack to “Splinter”, but it is SHAME that is the album we might call his sonic résumé.

This tape contains a recording of a live of NPLGNN recorded atHuman Razzmatazz (Barcelona) on March 2023.Everything you hear it comes from two Korg Electribe EMX1 +Pioneer DJM900 NXS + Traktor. To describe the sound it makes sense to bring back what was the press release of “Sigma/Tau” the first record of NPLGNN released in 2014 on Where To Now? (RIP): “NPLGNN creates a less pampered style of body music, stripping away the usual signifiers such as melodies and bass lines to create something more utilitarian, brutal and pure. This is the pre-babel language of dance music - it's cadences are rhythmic and its meaning is comprehensible to all on an innate, primal level.” Ten years later this tape makes those words still remarkable to describe the sound of the Neapolitan head.Among a bunch of unreleased sounds you can go through all the NPLGNN recent records for LavaLava, Youth, Hundebiss and it own lathe cuts series dubbed here and there with vocal cuts intersections. Coming off like the rude son of early ‘00s breakcore heroes, quoting the Manchester Boomy heads, NPLGNN delivers a 45 mins mutant soundsystem recording. It's acid dancehall punk, amorphed ragga riddimz, or whatever you want to call it. 100% dancefloor melting. Ask Aphex Twin for a couple of IDs ; Soundsystem mutant NPLGNN shells blistering and bone rattling yardcore styles in his recording made at Barcelona’s Human Razzmatazz in 2023 A decade since they emerged via Where to Now? and the NZO-related OKNO label, with subsequent turns for everyone for Reel Torque to Youth and their rhythms rinsed by likes of AFX, plus killer programming of the MBE mix series and Forever Now with Dave saved; NPLGNN has surely held his ground in ruggedest mutant dancehall terrain. ‘Live At Human Razzmatazz’ catches them in full flow rattling thru stacks of custom soundsystem dubplates that roughly resemble the millennium era surge of scuzzy breakcore by Ambush don DJ Scud or DJ /rupture as much as his contemporary, Ossia, or even Rat Heart’s rudest; harnessing coarse machine rhythms of spark-sputter hi-hats and nervy snares with depth charge subs and ragga chat, crudely dubbed into the red and maximized for steppers pressure and battling stacks.

Acoustic Rhythm & Texture Sequencer Available as C60 Limited Edition of 50 mirror dubs- (same on both sides) + Inserts written and produced by S.Gordon 2024. additional percussion by Islay Spalding - TRK 7, recorded at SFS studios 2024 Synths & Radial - SDGordon. The Radial instrument was designed to explore various material's acoustic characteristics in ways that could only be achieved through mechanical and electronic control. It creates sporadic dense percussive sequences & sharp reciprocating sweeps or can focus in on tiny acute angles to produce deep shaking drones among a host of other planned and unplanned acoustic sounds. Radial uses 5 voltage controlled motors and interchangeable textured cylinders captured via contact microphones positioned within the chassis. The cylinders can be synchronised or independent & the blades are interchangeable allowing the flex of certain materials to skew and augment the movements and sounds and sequences. Playing the Radial instrument is a direct visceral experience. Its sequences sound unlike anything else i have used and the simple design by no means limits the scope of its rhythmical output. After feeling out the controls you arrive somewhere in-between the rubbery juddering fuzz or clockwork blasts of percussion and can step back allowing the physicality of the instrument itself to dictate how things proceed. Minor adjustments can have a butterfly effect on the entire tone inmate rewardingly unpredictable but controllable way. On certain tracks there’s some synth work in a move away from the potential “instrument study” vibe of the release and Islay Spaldings blistering scrap metal percussion on Track 7 was incredible to watch.. Additional thanks to Stephan P Richter “SPR” for the advice and encouragement through the whole build.

Uncleared is the name of my new 29-track instrumental beat-tape. In a more “back-to-basics” approach to beat-making, this tape began as a creative exercise for myself to return to the music that made me who I am. Around Q3/Q4 of 2023 I had read about a “one 4-bar loop a day” regimen to keep output flowing, and this practice was entirely effective in churning-out beats during self-imposed down-time for music making amidst my record label/family balance lifestyle. It was then that I had set a goal to produce & release 40 new beats by the time I turned 40. I found an almost entirely sample-based production flow in Ableton referencing an ongoing list I kept of material to sample & chop as the foundation for the track, culling from the timeless All The Breaks folder for the drums, and finishing the track with a synth bass-line that I’d quickly dial-in & play by hand using Teebs' old M-Audio midi keyboard controller that I am somehow still borrowing and cherish. Most of these beats are under 10 stems in any given project - drastically different in comparison to my projects in the past (Outmind, In My World, Time Flying Beats et al) where stems would be consistently breaching 50+. Furthermore relating to the title, I was recently served an uncleared sample notice from a bigger label entity. It’s the first time this has happened so I suppose we’ve been lucky, and it’s honestly the first time I’ve reconsidered casually releasing this type of material - particularly on major streaming platforms. I’m not sure what lies ahead for sample-based music culture - but i'm hopeful it will be able to sustain and evolve as we attempt to emphasize the reclamation of the spaces on the internet where this music can be safely & responsibly shared, supported, and appreciated. During the last few weeks leading-up to release, artist neighbor / bestie Aaron Raays would come over to my backyard studio shed at night to listen to the developing material and provide me with trusted feedback notes. I have a habit of whip-testing music obsessively in my 2010 Prius driving around Los Angeles, and at the Leaving offices on the Mobius Acoustics system there. These check-ins were crucial in seeing this one through. Only 29 beats made the cut, but I had a lot of fun making these, and I’m having even more fun performing them.

UK hip-hop artist Roots Manuva's two classic albums Roots Manuva's two classic albums are reissued by Big Dada to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their release.

Spring /Autumn
THE NORTH FACE Sphere, an ambitious new store building to be opened in Harajuku, Tokyo in 2022.

In response to a request for "one album for each of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter," haruka nakamura created "Light years" as the soundtrack for the new building, which became a project to produce four albums over one year.
The LP is divided into "Spring and Autumn" and "Winter and Summer" based on the world view of the production timeline, and is the best of the four original albums.

The "Winter/Summer" album is the best of the first album "Light years" and the third album "from dusk to the sun".
（The "Spring and Autumn" version will be released at the same time.)

Winter/Summer
THE NORTH FACE Sphere, an ambitious new store building to be opened in Harajuku, Tokyo in 2022.

In response to a request for "one album for each of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter," haruka nakamura created "Light years" as the soundtrack for the new building, which became a project to produce four albums over one year.
The LP is divided into "Spring and Autumn" and "Winter and Summer" based on the world view of the production timeline, and is the best of the four original albums.

The "Winter/Summer" album is the best of the first album "Light years" and the third album "from dusk to the sun".
（The "Spring and Autumn" version will be released at the same time.)

Released in 1993 by Brooklyn, NY's regency hip-hop unit Black Moon, this is one of the most famous albums in hip-hop history, featuring tracks such as "Who Got Da Props?" and "How Many MC 's..." and "I Got Cha Opin," the album is now being reissued on cassette in a completely limited production run!　The album features 16 tracks in total, with bonus tracks added to the originals!

Thus far, Zach Saginaw's releases as Shigeto have been fragments, albeit singularly satisfying fragments--EP-length glimpses into the Brooklyn producer's creative psyche. After filling two EPs on Ghostly International, Shigeto's lush, sumptuous take on instrumental hip-hop has fully materialized. Full Circle, the artist's first full-length album, completes the journey begun with Shigeto's Semi-Circle EP, synthesizing the drummer/producer's signature themes of family, continuity, and musical boundary-pushing into a vibrant, fully unified artistic statement. The sounds on Full Circle come from four years of obsessive field recording and collaboration. Saginaw brought his Tascam mini-recorder with him everywhere, capturing the "glasses, chains, breathing, children, family meals, monks singing in cathedrals, walks in the south of France, and good friends offering their musical skill" that would all find homes in the record's compositional nooks and crannies. As a result of Saginaw's constant documentation, the songs on Full Circle play like chapters in an ongoing story--as in "Escape from the Incubator", whose initial rhythmic claustrophobia opens up into a boom-clap nocturnal chase, or "French Kiss Power Up", whose romantic digital strut gives way to discord and fragmentation as the waves of synthesizer give way to a shaky, neurotic coda. Full Circle is framed by the "Ann Arbor" diptych, a pair of beat suites named after Saginaw's hometown (one featuring a sample of Detroit MC SelfSays), all double-thick synths and triple-strength kick drums. Saginaw plays the majority of his rhythms by hand, and Full Circle's consistently deep pocket is the record's secret weapon, thumping and breathing like a living being. Having set the stage with Semi-Circle and What We Held On To EPs--twin treatises on Saginaw's Japanese grandmother's escape from a US internment camp--Shigeto is clearly ready to draw the tale to a close and take center stage. "This release represents the end of the beginning--or perhaps that there is no end and no beginning at all," says Saginaw. Regardless, Full Circle is the start of something great.

UK hip-hop artist Roots Manuva's two classic albums Roots Manuva's two classic albums are reissued by Big Dada to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their release.

Following in the steps of last year's mysterious "Beyond the Garage" 12 inch, L.I.E.S. throws another curveball with a 30 track continuous LP from veteran West Coast producers, Vinny+Charlie. Each side running 20 minutes, this can best be described as a smoked out, haze filled afterparty beat tape on wax. Obscure samples, dusty sp-12 crushed beats, head nodding loops, sweet low rider soul..chopped, sped up, slowed down and ready to wreck your system. Limited edition white label housed in a lp jacket with custom art by LA artist SOB STORY. 300 copies worldwide.

Underneath his mysterious metal mask, MF DOOM hides the cachet underground legends are made of. After his first group KMD’s sophomore album Black Bastards was shelved by Elektra in 1994, and his blood brother Subroc — one half of the sibling rap duo — passed away, surviving frontman Zev Love X slowly mutated into the supervillain MC known as MF DOOM, and the rap world is better for it.The 1999 release of Operation: Doomsday marked MF DOOM’s official debut, reintroducing a mysterious figure who would soon become one of underground rap’s greatest voices. Within its 19 tracks, Operation: Doomsday reveals the confluence of DOOM’s tragic past, personal interests and daring creativity. His clever rhymes and remarkable schemes stood out against the landscape, and every sound he touched — from cartoon theme songs, to ‘80s soul, to rap classics and more — got reinterpreted into something brand new and surreal.Decades later, MF DOOM is still celebrated for all facets of his work and influence. In the face of tragedy, DOOM re-infiltrated the rap game on his own terms, and crafted an instant cult classic. Operation: Doomsday stands as a testament to the power of betting on yourself against all odds.

MM..FOOD, a 2004 concept album "about what you find at a picnic or at a picnic table," released by underground rap's greatest voice MF DOOM on Rhymesayers, is back in analog form! The fifth studio album, which debuted at #17 on Billboard's Independent Albums chart, features guest appearances by Count Bass D, Angelika, 4ize, and Mr. Fantastik.

Honour’s debut album is a ligament stretching from Lagos to London and to New York, curling across the diaspora and brushing the darker hues of blues, hip-hop, free jazz, ambient, gospel with Christian mythology and Yoruba folklore. As cinematic as it is painterly, Àlàáfíà is a meditation on themes of life, death and love that pulls inspiration from the poetic profundity of God, remembered dreams, unexpected casual conversations, field recordings, literature, ephemera, and personal archives. The result is an impressionistic vision in Black and Blur that both exhausts and implicates language and that sublimates boundaries between everywhere and nowhere; history and the present; the individual and the universal.