MUSIC

A dream-within-a-dream sequence of chopped & screwed cumbia that occupies a very specific spot on our shelves somewhere between The Caretaker and DJ Screw - Debit’s new album for Modern Love is a history lesson, hallucination and ghost-dance all in one, a vault of lost memories that’s intended neither for the club, nor as furniture music - but for full contemplative immersion.

Desaceleradas is Debit’s love-letter to the sounds of Rebajada - half speed cumbia pioneered by Sonido Dueñez in the early 1990’s and recently featured on a pair of first-time tape reissues. As the legend goes, Dueñez had been playing cumbia at a club in Monterrey when his turntable's motor overheated and slowed down to half-speed, turning the dance into slo-mo delirium which the crowd unexpectedly loved - cumbia rebajada was born.

Over the next few years, Dueñez dubbed a popular series of mixtapes, hawking them at the flea market on the dried-up Santa Catarina riverbed beneath El Puente del papa, the bridge that links downtown Monterrey with Independencia. These woozy archives became the stuff of legend, poetically but subconsciously shadowing DJ Screw's series of epochal cassettes that appeared over the border in Houston - and which have now inspired this latest concept-driven masterstroke from Delia Beatriz, who incidentally grew up in that same bustling city in the north of Mexico.

Beatriz uses Dueñez's first two tapes as the starting point for 'Desaceleradas', entering into a dialogue with time, culture and geography as she recalls the sonic ecosystem that surrounded her decades ago, long before she emigrated to the USA. If 2022's acclaimed 'The Long Count' was an attempt to recover concealed pre-Columbian history in the face of colonisation, 'Desaceleradas' jumps forward, figuring out how memory and shared celebration can resist a more contemporary form of cultural erasure.

In Beatriz's hands, cumbia rebejada is sculpted into a symphony of psychedelic breaths and dreamy gestures as the tapes are re-voiced with her ARP 2600 and re-played on her mother's accordion before being pulverised by her careful granular processes. "The goal was not to sample," she explains, "but to engage in conversation." And from track to track, the slowed down sonics, that follow the lead of scratchy sun-baked wax dragged across cheap hi-fi needles and stretched tape winding over busted heads, make salient connections to electronic music's tangled web of subgenres, from dub reggae in Jamaica to vaporwave and its TikTok-friendly "slowed + reverb" progeny.

On 'La ronda y el sonidero', cumbia's familiar syncopated 2/4 shuffle is ground down until its street corner sway becomes a cloud of ruptures and distortions. She pays respect to Monterrey's tape culture on 'bootlegs', introducing her impressionistic harmonies with crackle, and gives a nod to Monterrey's Cholombianos - groups of cumbia fans who dressed in brightly coloured baggy clothes, slathering their long sideburns with gel - on the wistful 'Cholombia, MTY'. By harnessing her memories and casting Sonido Dueñez's legacy in amber, Beatriz provides a space for listeners to hear history itself: to wander down 'El Puente del papa' and breathe in the atmosphere of Monterrey. It's an archive with a pulse.

His latest work is already here! Inspired by the global anti-racist protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the mixtape "hybtwibt?" was released in 2020 as a fundraiser against racism in the UK. Where To Now?" was featured on Pitchfork and Bandcamp as one of the "best ambient albums of the year. Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang & Joshua Tarelle) is an experimental duo based in Manchester, UK, who have been featured on various cutting-edge labels such as Where To Now? Their new album is out now on the prestigious Dais label. Liquefying garage, jungle, grime, and even dream pop into a glittering trail of pulses and pads, they've boiled down the music of Dean Blunt, DJ Spooky, the Cocteau Twins, and Klein into a candlelit narrative.

KILN return with an opulent new display of hue and swing on Lemon Borealis, a sumptuous gallery of dazzling motifs that display a finely hewn concoction of visual tones and vital pulse.

Across its 12 cuts, this collection utilizes a fresh process of condensing immersive sprawl into compact, punchy and colorful sound. Using aspects of live performance, beatmaking and waveform sculpting, the troika of Kevin Hayes, Kirk Marrison and Clark Rehberg III create evocative and invigorating dioramas, continuing to surprise and enchant listeners after over thirty years into their collaboration.

Deep in waves of Hi-meets-Lo Fi, KILN delivers a panchromatic daymark arranged to biochemically align and stimulate your personal syntax, forging a tapestry of sonic reveries ranging from the aquarium-on-fire radiance of DrnkGrlfrnd, a garden groove of field-recorded percussion in Maplefunk Diptych, to the sizzling guit-noise whiteout of Deacon Rayhand.

Their eighth album, and first for A Strangely Isolated Place, on Lemon Borealis, KILN expands upon the long-explored themes of mosaic texture, subtle melancholy, eroded consonance, and vivid cadence to reveal yet another aperture to their unique magnetic universe.

Lemon Borealis will be available on 12” Transparent Yellow/Ochre Smoke vinyl and digital on July 18th. Lacquer cut by Andreas Lupo Lubich, and featuring artwork by KILN.

The album opens at dusk with an imagined final stop before departure, a roadside gas station just as daylight fades. This introductory scene, conceived as “Last Gas Station Before the Horizon,” places the listener amid passing cars, distant seagulls, and the low hum of anticipation. The idea is to frame the record as part of a radio program, potentially guided by a radio announcer’s voice drifting in and out of the soundscape. From there, the journey moves fully into night. Tracks progress like signals picked up along the drive, calm, reflective, and gently nostalgic, until the album’s closing moment. “Peaceful Blue” represents arrival at the final destination at dawn, when the sky shifts into a deep blue and the listener waits quietly for the sun to rise and a new day to begin. Transcoastal Night Drive is an album about motion, atmosphere, and memory, less a narrative than a feeling, inviting listeners to settle into the drive and let the night pass by.

Stroom’s Swedish recruit channels the saucer-eyed spectres of early ambient techno - HIA, Biosphere, FAX - thru a frosted lens of isolationist detachment, with well weathered results akin to Civilistjävel! or 1991.

A prevailing breeze of ‘90s ambient sentiment fills the sails of ‘Maidstone’, the Velv.93 debut for Stroom. His follow-up to a series of more club-edged turns, solo and with Acronym for his Velv label and mutism, notably sheds the rolling grooves in favour of letting it all drift quietly outwards across an hour of contemplative airs blessed with nuanced harmonic resonance.

The spirits of the elders are sifted for salient, flickering filaments that endure in the modern day, teasing out pads and acidic synth lines into soft tissue structures. In procession from the fluttering motifs and choral keen of ‘Lobelia’ to the crankier ambient noise of ‘Naked Eye’ we hear the glow of ‘90s ambient and its descendants in decay with a declension of energies.

Knackered pulses nudge the icy melody of ‘True Blue’ into what feels like a screwed 1991 on ‘Star Grain’, and echoes of Swedish organ minimalism on its title piece, with ‘Medway’ lighting a lone beacon of obfuscated shoegaze, and ‘Aging Cycle’ perhaps best betraying that sunken bridge between OG ‘90s ambient and where it’s shored up decades later.

Limited of deep dub influenced music from 12' from Greville.

In late 2024, Oakland-based artist Jerod S. Rivera released his second full-length project, Dot-Dash, featuring a collaboration with Cat Lauigan on the track “Seamstress Clock,” which fuses Rivera’s Buchla experimentations with Lauigan’s vocals and spoken word. From there, Rivera and CST reached out to friends across different scenes and cities, shaping those connections into a carefully curated remix 12”.

The mysterious dub/techno/leftfield mastermind behind False Aralia dives further into territory explored on iri.gram, uptempo and dancefloor-ready in a more maximal Perlon-ish way while still embracing a half-time dub feel. Philipp Otterbach (Music from Memory, Offen, RIO) goes deeper into the guitar zone he’s been exploring, channeling Earth 2, Boris, and the like for some heavy drone. Oakland duo DJ ML and Wonja adopt their Motoko & Myers moniker (Future Times, Soda Gong), zeroing in on some choice vocal snippets that mesh perfectly with a live drum break and bassline for a Seefeel-esque version that could have come from a 90’s UK studio. Slowfoam embraces the more experimental elements of the original with a remix that starts sparse and minimal but builds into a glitchy rhythmic climax. The release is rounded out with a bonus remix from Jon Carr, unleashing heavy, industrial-sludge rhythms.

Psychotropic’s seminal 1990 12” Only for the Headstrong is reissued, reconnecting us with the raw energy of the early UK rave era. Emerging at the height of acid house, the track fused house, breakbeat and psych-pop into a euphoric anthem that still captivates today.

The duo of DJ Gavin Mills and cult psych-pop experimentalist Nick Nicely created the record in a single inspired South London studio session, using little more than an Akai S900 sampler, a Fostex 8-track and a Casio CZ-101. Its hypnotic loops, soaring keys and infectious groove captured both the chaos and innocence of the scene, while B-side ‘Out of Your Head’ added a funk-driven, Prince-style twist.

Beloved by DJs, collectors and ravers alike, Only for the Headstrong became an underground hit, topping London’s indie shop charts and cementing Psychotropic’s reputation for marrying psychedelic textures with club-ready beats. This reissue arrives with liner notes by Nicely, offering fresh context for a track that embodies the open-minded DIY spirit of late-80s warehouse culture.

NaMShaN / eShaMilDe is a dense and primitive 7-inch by MeNeM, fusing elements of traditional music from Central Asia and the Middle East with minimal electronic sound design.

"Misha Panfilov, the Estonian composer whose name has become synonymous with space-age exotica, withdraws once more into the solitude of his studio and emerges with “To Blue From Grey In May.” Recorded amid the ever-changing light and shadows of Tallinn between March and May 2025, the album stands as a testament to immersion. Here, Panfilov threads himself into the fabric of sound, enveloped by the mystical awe of Mellotron, organs, upright piano, harmonium, electric bass, percussion, synthesizers, and, at times, the faintest echo of his own voice.

He abandons melody almost entirely. What remains is the ritual of repetition, each phrase shaped by hand, without loops or sequencers. The instruments thrum and drift, unmoored. Four long compositions unfold, unlocking something ancient, something that seems to draw from the wellspring of those ancestral architects of sound."

Much of the Collide's sound is derived from an old Aria Pro II electric guitar from Leif’s childhood, scratched up with damaged and unpredictable electrics.

The record leans into this sense of things being broken or damaged - and how sometimes things need to break in order for us to make sense of them- revelling in, rather than resisting, unpredictability.

Lush textures traverse us across unexpected terrains.

One of Yokota's most loved releases that explores the intersection of jazz, new age ambience and a world of found sound and samples.

Grinning Cat confounded devotees of Sakura with a far more complex set of tracks. A landscape of ambiguous emotional resonance within an album of measured extremes. Sentimental without being schmaltzy, joyful without being saccharine, Grinning Cat sees Yokota at his most playful and experimental, channelling moments of transitory wonder and jubilation, and opening up a sonic environment in which we can romp and play.

First re-issue album from the Skintone Edition Volume 1 Box Set

Magic Thread is Susumu Yokota’s deeply soothing and delicate debut release on the Skintone label. With a spartan palette of sounds and textures, Yokota taps into a fundamentally human need to fuse and connect disparate fibres, magically forming work which glistens and pulsates with life.

Magic Thread originally came out in 1998 as a limited-edition CD release of 500 copies. Initially intended for the Japanese market, it came without any artwork in a standard transparent CD case adorned only by a sticker containing essential album information and a quote:

‘Somewhere in the process of evolution, the spinning and weaving of thread became possible for humankind. How did this come to pass? It can only be that the thread is possessed of magical properties.’ – Yokota, 1998.

Om Unit surprises us with a second volume of his 'Acid Dub Studies' project, once again fusing his love for the 303 with studio techniques given to us by musical heroes such as King Tubby, Adrian Sherwood, Jammys and Basic Channel

This second volume further solidifies the convincing narrative created by its best-selling predecessor, heading in a more groove-based direction in places whilst being underpinned by the same sonic narrative that has been enjoyed by many music fans from a variety of different spheres for the past 18 months or so

Support so far for the Acid Dub Studies project has come from many corners including some of the most highly respected names in UK Radio such as Don Letts and Steve Barker, Benji B and Tom Ravenscroft as well as a whole host of truly global worldwide underground support both via radio and in the dance

Om Unit says of this record: 'I felt encouraged by the sheer love for the original selection of works to go back in again and continue to experiment with this approach to writing whilst refining some of the process. Being able to combine processes and influence has been the mainstay of my creative life and I hope this next volume of Acid Dub will be enjoyed by everyone who was a fan of the first'

The beloved 303 bassline continues to inspire every new generation and Acid Dub Studies II is another storybook of sound in that vast continuum that shows no sign of slowing down

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.

Bedroom pop duo Babeheaven return after a short hiatus with a vulnerable "post rave" sound that's like Air split with Frank Ocean.

'Slower Than Sound' is billed as music that you might listen to on the bus back home after a night out and we can see it. Nancy Andersen's voice is just as lulling as it was on Babeheaven's debut album 'Home For Now' and Jamie Travis's instrumentation is warmer and more restrained this time around, a throb of exotica-ish Mellotrons, fingerpicked arpeggios and clunky drum machine loops. It's a creative rebirth for the duo, who sound as if they've checked in again after a few years of heartbreak and burnout. And when they allow themselves to really strip things down, like on the introspective 'Loud Thoughts', a track that features a star turn from Samba Jean-Baptiste, things get really interesting.

Hun Hun are 2 young brothers from Bruxelles who are doing a very special music in an ethno-shamanic-tribal vibe pretty cinematographic. With this first opus, an album of 10 tracks, they bring us on a journey into deep, dark and mysterious atmospheres with natural backgrounds from the forest, beautiful vocals, singular percussions, and rhythms that would easily fit for intro sets at Boccacio in 1988. This album could have been easily released on Crammed Disc in the 80’s, but it has a modern touch from today that makes it a proper gem for Macadam Mambo.

Featuring contributions from Nick León, More Eaze, and Ultrafog, Berlin-based producer ben bondy—a key figure in the post-“dubient” underground alongside peers like Exael and Ulla—unveils his latest work, XO Salt Llif3, now issued on vinyl via 3XL. A fragile sound-poem adrift in the fissures of emotion, the album layers microscopic textures, whispered vocals, and fragmentary lyrics. On “Bend,” the refrain etches the resonance of broken love and resignation, while hazy synths and grainy noise sketch out blurred contours. Tracks like “Ur Ghost Is My Shadow” and “Flood” summon waves of introspection and gloom that rise and recede like tides. Neither blessing nor refusal, XO Salt Llif3 stands as bondy’s latest statement—an inquiry poised at the edge of existence itself.

‘She who loves silence’.

Founder of KUMP and Meth.O tapes, Lyon’s Marc-Étienne Guibert (AKA Gil.Barte) awakens his new Mert Seger moniker for a shadowy Plaque excursion. Nine slow burners strike from the murk with venomous precision.

Wax’o Paradiso Recordings continues their exploration of antipodean downtempo sounds with WPR005 - The Perfect Harmony EP. Enlisting Guy contact and Solar Suite, who individually are known for more powerful club fodder across the progressive and trance adjacent sides of the genre spectrum, here we see them trading a few BPMs for a spacious, textural sound across four tracks recorded in 2023 in a shared studio in Naarm/Melbourne.

Skyapnea’s Giovanni Marco Civitenga - spar of Giuseppe Ielasi as Rain Text - tacks to a sort of illbient dub as Detraex Corp on a fragged-out trip going like a cruddy Wolf Eyes on a hazed jolly.

‘Live at Pompeii’ arrives on the Sagome label after scuzzy aces from The Dengie Hundred and Ssiege with a suitably groggy set of sloshing log drums and briny textures riddled with mycelia-like lines of crooked blooz and jazz. Meditative but not boring, it finds Civitenga hitting a new sort of hobbled stride on nine asymmetric, peg-legged grooves that may take a minute to lock into, but once you’re in there it flows with a naturally offbeat, downtempo quality that's really a mark for seekers of a certain grungy sound.

It’s a grotty pleasure to follow this one for stumbling rhythms and laid-back styles of no-wave steez in procession from the gasping lurch of ‘Tykes of’, thru the squashed drums and 4th world wooze of ‘Myth Prism Strip’, to the squirming jazz spectres on ‘Bullet Holes’, right down the rabbit hole into swilling skronk of ‘Channel 83’ and Werkbund-esue enigma of ‘Mount Point’.

Reflecting years of listening from behind the drum kit arrives Low Air, the first solo LP from Jeremy Hyman.

Building on previous dance-floor-tuned outputs for Max D’s Future Times label, Low Air moves into a broader compositional arena: pared-down rhythms guide a wash of understated harmony, and compositions surface from a stream of purling noise. There were no standard operations across the music, but one key to the sound is the doubling and tripling of playback speed to fit musical passages into old sampling equipment. This process opened up a new line of inquiry into fidelity and pitch that can be heard throughout the LP.

After the cult favourite Apron Japan Vol.1 dropped in 2023, we’re back with the next wave!

We’ve expanded our reach beyond Japan — this time diving deeper into the sounds of the East. Featuring a diverse lineup of producers and artists across Asia and the surrounding regions, Apron East Vol.2 celebrates the rawness, late night riddims, and future classics.

FEATURING MUSIC BY:

Benedek, DJ Dreamboy, Hookuo, Isaac, DJ Jeyon, J M S KHOSAH, Kendall Timmons, KO SAITO, Jarren, Steven Julien, and Yuka Sunflora.

Psychic 9-5 Club marks the beginning of a new chapter for HTRK. It's an album that looks back on a time of sadness and struggle, and within that struggle they find hope and humour and love. It's Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang's first album recorded entirely as a duo—former band member Sean Stewart died halfway through the recording of their last LP, 2011's Work (Work, work).

Though the record is instantly recognisable as HTRK—Standish's vocal delivery remains central to the band's sound, while the productions are typically lean and dubby—they've found ample room for exploration within this framework. Gone are the reverb-soaked guitar explorations of 2009's Marry Me Tonight and the fuzzy growls that ran through Work (Work Work). They've been replaced with something tender, velvety and polished. This is HTRK, but the flesh has been stripped from their sound, throwing the focus on naked arrangements and minimalist sound design.

The album was recorded at Blazer Sound Studios in New Mexico with Excepter's Nathan Corbin, who had previously directed the video clip for Work (Work Work) cut "Bendin." Inviting a third party into their world was no easy decision, but in Corbin they found a kindred spirit. The LP was then refined and reworked in Australia at the turn of 2013, before the finishing touches were applied in New York during the summer. Psychic 9-5 Club was then mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin.

Of all the themes that run through Psychic 9-5 Club, love is the most central. The word is laced throughout the album in lyrics and titles—love as a distraction, loving yourself, loving others. Standish's lyrics explore the complexities of sexuality and the body's reaction to personal loss, though there's room for wry humour—a constant through much of the best experimental Australian music of the past few decades.

Standish explores her vocal range fully—her husky spoken-word drawl remains, but we also hear her laugh and sing. Equally, Yang's exploratory production techniques—particularly his well-documented love of dub—are given room to shine. They dip headlong into some of the things that make humans tick—love, loss and desire—with the kind of integrity that has marked the band out from day one. Psychic 9-5 Club is truly an album for the body and for the soul.