MUSIC

The fantastic disco/world music project from Bremen, Germany that was never meant to be. Formed by Bremen DJ Ralf Behrendt in 1982, Saâda Bonaire was a unique concept band centered around two sultry female vocalists (Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld) as well as dozens of local musicians culled from the local immigration center. Originally signed to EMI in 1982, their first and only single, “You Could Be More As You Are” was produced by legendary Matumbi, Slits and Pop Group producer Dennis Bovell in Kraftwerk’s studio in Cologne. Its fusion of husky female vocals, Eastern instruments, dub and African music aesthetics, drum computers and synthesizers remains unique to this day. 

Saâda Bonaire compiles two songs from the original EMI single along with eleven previously unreleased songs recorded between 1982 and 1985. Also included are never before published photos, in depth interviews with band members, and a full gate fold cover for dedicated vinyl buyers. These lost recordings from the early eighties still sound fresh on today’s dance floor.

Sugar Minott, the man behind Black Roots Productions and Youth Promotion, started his career in the African Brothers with fellow musicians Tony Tuff and Derrick Howard, before building his reputation as a solo artist with Studio One. This well-crafted compilation by the French label "Deep Roots" showcases Sugar Minott’s productions in a showcase style, featuring vocals and dub versions that appeared mainly on the Black Roots imprint. This is not to be missed — a great collection from one of the most loved figures in Jamaican music.

Universal Dub brings together four pillars of dub’s golden era—King Tubby, Scientist, Bunny Tom Tom and Barnabas—in a definitive collection that celebrates the raw innovation and deep rhythmic spirituality of Jamaican studio culture. Remastered and curated for both longtime devotees and newcomers, Universal Dub showcases the producers’ inventive studio techniques, subterranean basslines and immersive echo-laden soundscapes that helped shape modern music. King Tubby’s pioneering studio architecture, Scientist’s fearless sonic experimentation, Bunny Tom Tom’s organicmusicality and Barnabas’s vocal gravitas create a complementary dialogue across this album. Each track is astudy in space and texture: stripped-down mixes reveal the heartbeat of the rhythm section while delays, reverband fader gymnastics transform simple elements into vast, hypnotic worlds.

"Phil Pratt (George Phillips Pratt) was an influential figure in the Jamaican music industry, recognized for his work as a producer, singer, and songwriter. Beginning his career in the 1960s as a vocalist, he soon transitioned into production, becoming an important contributor to Jamaica's golden era of reggae throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As a producer, Pratt worked with leading artists including Al Campbell, Dennis Brown, Horace Andy, and Ken Boothe, creating recordings that became foundational to the reggae genre. His production credits include notable releases such as The War Is On, as well as key tracks like Dennis Brown's 'Money in My Pocket' and Horace Andy's 'You Are My Angel.' Pratt's production legacy -- defined by his ear for melody, rhythm, and artist collaboration -- continues to hold significant influence in reggae history. Phil Pratt has since passed away, but his work remains widely respected and celebrated. Originally released by Burning Sounds in 1978, Star Wars Dub highlights Pratt's distinctive production style. This new edition faithfully reissues the album, featuring an insert with sleeve notes and pressing on limited edition 180gram Purple Transparent vinyl."

After slaying with her cold fusions of ’90s R&B, ’00s brukfunk and footwork on 2024’s ‘Concentrate’ EP and last year’s ‘Come Alive’ album, NZO returns with a deadly hyper-jiggy session for DDS - huge one FFO Various Production, Beatrice Dillon, Dolo Percussion, Rian Treanor, Akufen, El-B. Captured at Rotherham Minster (the finest perpendicular church in Yorkshire, don’t u know) for SoYo’s annual electronics music showdown, No Bounds, NZO’s custom-built results brim with an unusual grasp of the funk, prompting a uniquely jittery rush offset with a wicked refusal of rhythmic anticipation that does crazy things with your limbs. With the finest grasp of ghost snares and the confidence to slap and tickle drums where others wouldn’t, she deftly dances thru fresh routes of rhythmic pursuit. Low-key, this sort of experimental ingenuity betrays her background in the sciences, as much as a keen ear for offbeat and upfront dance musics - effortlessly joining and short-circuiting oblique dots between Timbaland x The Neptunes’ rugged nuance, El-B’s whipsmart torsion, RP Boo’s legwork and Beatrice Dillon’s precision-tooled arrangements, all gelled with daring confidence in her own thing. We can't tell you if NZO's a DJ or nah, but she approaches her set with a serious understanding of how to take control of your limbs, linking rhythms, samples and melodic phrases as if she's grandstanding on four CDJs. She rushes towards euphoria with truncated R&B coos that she expertly threads between dub stabs and garage-y organ vamps, keeping the jerky rhythms intact throughout. And just when you think you've tapped in, sugar-sweet vocals and brassy fanfares cut into a shudder of drums, an 'ANTI EP'-era AE bass whoosh comes out of nowhere to remind you where you are. NZO patches together an authentically Yorkshire-coded reaction to New York's post-GHE20G0TH1K evolution, the self-consciously p2p-driven movement that helped shape visionary DJs like Total Freedom and Juliana Huxtable. But she’s less conspicuously "deconstructed" than her predecessors and champions Sheffield's avant history, referencing Warp's early run, Mark Fell's continuous influence and the perpetual grind of heavy industry, blending these elements with her spectrum of influences from further afield. Freaky, hyper-articulated movers need to check it at the nearest opportunity, trust.

A unique and brilliant collaboration between the legendary dub/reggae pioneer and German electronic production duo Mouse on Mars (aka Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma). Lee "Scratch" Perry's last ever official album project before his passing in 2019. Recorded in 3 days at Mouse on Mars' Paraverse Studio in Berlin in 2019. Lee, Jan and Andi conducted a revolving cast of musicians and collaborators throughout the complex's different rooms and spaces. Spatial, No Problem. finds the artists breaking new ground - the one thing Lee was sure of was that this shouldn't be just another reggae album. It covers everything from krautrock, ambient, dub, jazz, New Orleans brass and much more.

Infamously the first artist signed to Warp that used guitars, Seefeel return with their first full-length album in fifteen years – Sol.Hz - a beautiful, hazy and blissed out collection of fractured melodies and vaporous textures.

In some ways, this can be regarded as Seefeel’s ‘dub’ album – the deceptively cloud-like arrangements of Mark Clifford are somewhat ambient adjacent at low volume, but blasting out of a proper sound system, the cavernous bass undertow and skilful employment of effects are more apparent, messing with the listener’s perception of time and audio placement. As always with Seefeel though, it never drifts too far into cold experimentalism or synthetic texture, the heavily manipulated vocals of Sarah Peacock lending the tracks a vital human element, with processed guitar loops allowing slivers of melody to drift through the trails of delay.

Stylistically, it builds on their 2024 mini-album Squared Roots, in the way that the material has been microscopically dissected and reversioned until it reaches the perfect iteration, shape perhaps being the wrong word for a group who blur the lines between solidity and space to such a radical degree. The much-reappropriated line from The Communist Manifesto, “all that is solid melts into air”, could be used as shorthand to describe the experience of listening to a Seefeel record. The album title Sol.Hz can be translated literally as sun plus electricity, although the exact interpretation is ambiguous and left open to debate, just like Marx’s oft-quoted line.

With All Shall Go, Damos Room (the trio of Luke Miles, Nicholas Elson & Huw Oleskar (a.k.a Elijah Minnelli)) delivers a work of deliberate unravelling — a record that resists spectacle in favour of pressure, proximity and slow erosion. For Long Gone Are The Old Traditions, this release marks a natural extension of the label's commitment to sound as atmosphere and atmosphere as doctrine: music that does not decorate space but alters it. Across these pieces, dub is reduced to its elemental properties — weight, echo, absence — while sheets of corroded texture and distant, disembodied vocals drift through a landscape that feels both devotional and terminal. Rhythm appears only as rupture, a disturbance in the grain. What persists is tension — patient, unblinking, almost liturgical in its austerity. In Damos Room's hands, sound becomes residue and invocation simultaneously, a procession of shadows that gathers momentum not through volume but through inevitability. All Shall Go stands as a document of attrition and quiet extremity, aligned precisely with the label's ongoing exploration of the haunted and the unmoored.

Vladislav Delay, primarily known as a highly regarded electronic music innovator, steps ahead with his acoustic jazz quintet, releasing "vd5" on We Jazz Records, 8th May. Echoing the forward-looking vd musical vision always ahead of the curve, the new album does not fit into any specific category, forging a path of its own across the 10 tracks. Recorded at Candybomber Studio in Berlin, the album brings vd together with Maria Bertel, Lucio Capece, Derek Shirley and Max Loderbauer. This is shape-shifting, elastic music that exists left of any given timeline. Based in Hailuoto in Northern Finland, Vladislav Delay has never fit into any preset mould as an artist. His prolific, at times mythical output has elevated him to a veritable legend status in all music cycles appreciating a unique artistic voice. Be it his forward-reaching recent releases as Vladislav Delay on his own Rajaton imprint, his Ripatti alias, or playing metallic percussion with the Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Vladislav Delay always has A SOUND. And that sound is ever-evolving, as his new jazz album shows. What "jazz" is this? There are certainly liquid elements there in the mix, not unlike the ones heard on previous vd productions. Then again, this is acoustic quintet music by and large, but not any specific kind we have ever heard before. Isn't that the whole point of "jazz"? Whatever came before is a springboard, not a limitation.

Throughout the illustrious several-decade recording career of Horace Andy, with its innumerable highs, his unmistakable falsetto has lit up just three albums of indisputable greatness - "Skylarking", for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One; "In the light", for Everton Dasilva's Hungry Town label, in queens, new york; and - with the biggest original impact, by far the most contemporary of the trio - "Dance Hall Style", for Bullwackies in the bronx. Recorded at the tail end of the seventies, dance hall style reworks songs like "Money Money", first recorded by Bunny Lee and Derek Harriott's "Lonely woman" - alongside a version of Lloyd Robinson's "Cuss cuss" - and births bona fide classics like "Spying glass" (later covered by Massive Attack). The musicians include Wackies regulars, men like Owen Stewart and Oral Cooke from Itopia, Ras Menilik and Jah T.; also Horace's multi-instrumentalist spar Myrie dread from the hungry town sessions. At the desk, Lloyd Barnes, Junior Delahaye and Douglas Levy coax unequalled vocal performances from Horace Andy, in correct showcase fashion, all worthwhile extended mixes. Iconic album, essential purchase.

Another blinder from Basic Channel's Wackies re-issue programme finally gets a re-press. Between stints in Jamaica for legends like Glen Brown and Junjo Lawes, Wayne Jarrett travelled from his Connecticut base to record this album during the same weeks as the sessions for everyone's favourite - Horace Andy's Dance Hall Style. These are two of the great vocal reggae LPs of all time - no questions asked. With Clive Hunt in full effect, Showcase Volume One follows the six-track dub-showcase format and Wayne never sounded more like Horace with his yearning throaty gargle! Blues afficionados might even want to discuss the influence of the late, lamented Bobby 'Blue' Bland on reggae vocals, but that's by the by. Including four unmissable Studio One versions - Azul's deadly Rockfort Rock, Sleepy's Every Tongue Shall Tell (with outrageous Isley fuzz), yet another Heptones cut via Leroy Sibbles, and a killer Drum Song.

''Love is lovely and war is kinda ugly. This mix tape will take you through the duality of mankind. Raggamuffin style. A style that's large and in charge.'' Mixtape by DJ Vera Righteous.

Originally recorded in the early 1990s, inrain's 'Rise' sweeps up the only material from A.R. Kane's Rudy Tambala and Cranes vocalist Alison Shaw, a long-lost bridge between shoegaze, dub, electro and trip-hop. Essential listening if yr into Seefeel, Locust or Zurich. Back in 1991, inrain appeared on Rough Trade's Singles Club series with a brief but brilliant 7" that sounded as if it'd been beamed in from another planet. A.R. Kane had been forward thinking, sure, but these three tracks - 'Grow', '...And Julie Rose' and 'Sleep' - juxtaposed Shaw's dreamy vocals with dubby, spacious electronics and shimmering guitars in a way that wouldn't really rise to prominence until years later. Music From Memory does the heavy lifting here, remastering that original 7" from the original DAT tapes and adding the extra track 'Biology' and an alternate version of 'Sleep' to bump up the package. But it's those original tracks that have us by the throat - we really can't believe they've been so slept on over the years. '...And Julie Rose' sounds like it should have been picked up for a Duophonic release a decade later, while 'Sleep' completely pre-empts Seefeel's 'More Like Space EP' that wouldn't appear for another couple of years. Prophetic stuff.

Heavyweight Dub album by Alien Trackers, a new project by cosmic trumpet specialist Pablo Volt (STA) and Jahtari space ship mechanic disrupt, landing right in the sweet spot between soulful Black Ark-warmth, digital Firehouse dancehall hitters and Jahtarian Dub psychedelics.

A lazy day at a beach, in a galaxy far, far away... Feel the sand between your tentacles and splash in the emerald acid sea. Snorkel with plasma squids and shock eels. Marvel at the double suns during the magic twilight cycle and bask in their glorious gamma rays. Gaze into the depths of the local Vortex...

Coming on alien-green vinyl, with hand drawn art by David 8000 Farris, additional bass & guitars from Dubsworth, and an all four thumbs up-rating, 'Dubs from Vortex Beach' is landing in your orbit right now!

Following June's brilliant 'Rhythm Archives', Holy Tongue's Al Wootton continues his hot streak, landing on Sähkö with half an hour of hazed, immersive rhythmic experiments, tracking from vintage dub(step) to minimal techno and confidently striding thru percussive forms that echo from the Balkans to North Africa. RIYL Shackleton, Azu Tiwaline, Muslimgauze, T++, Deena Abdelwahed.

Ever since he dispatched with the Deadboy moniker a few years back and reached into dubbier, more percussive spaces, Wootton's been figuring out exactly where his dexterous productions fit in.He's been most at home on his own Trule imprint, operating at his own pace and shaping the aesthetics as he goes, and 'Rhythm Archives' felt like a mark in the sand, a record that matched his interest in vintage gear and classic production methods with his dedication to wide-eyed, punkish experimentation. 'CRUX', his first record for legendary Finnish label Sähkö, follows that lead, assembling four long percussive jams that sound as if they've toppled off the timeline - if someone told us it was material rescued from a forgotten reel-to-reel, we'd believe it.

There's an outline of dubstep visible in the background on opener 'Essene' that's enhanced by the Skull Disco-esque sub-undulations and wormhole-splitting tape echoes, but the hollow hand drum runs and hallucinatory effects shuttle the composition into darker, more reflective landscapes. Similarly, the busted drum machine intro of 'Per Incanto' might reference Sähkö royalty Mika Vainio and Hertsi, but the track veers leftwards, muddling the mix with psychedelic African Head Charge-style reverberations and trapped, timestretched string loops. It's gear that's intended for deep, intentional listening; the tracks don't contain too much melodic content by design - Wootton's rhythms are layered and hypnotic, and anything else is there to reinforce the general spirit.

Just check 'Cloister', the EP's low-key stand-out, where the lead line is literally just tuned feedback, placed to disorient even the most abstinent listener, or 'Armen', that distorts its sputtering Bruce Haack-in-dub atmosphere with ghosted groans and faint remnants of a trip-hop undercurrent that never fully reached optimal pressure. If you've ingested all the psilocybin from Shackleton's recent run, this is yr next drop.

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.

Karate’s defiant and final studio album punctuates a 12-year discography that spanned harDCore-style catharsis to feedback-saturated improv. This ’04 classic skipped the Friendster migration for back-to-basics songwriting suffused with jazz phrasings and beat-inspired lyricism. Featuring Codeine/Come guitarist Chris Brokaw, Pockets is remastered from the original analog tapes and housed in a deluxe tip on sleeve with reproduction lyric sheet.

DUB FOREVER blends Reggae, electronic texture, his own vocals and references to classics — Bach's Air on the G String, Gossec's Gavotte, the traditional Japanese song January 1st, and more.Limited to 500 copies.

TRACKLIST
A1. SOFT feat. ALCI  Akebono - DUB  06:32
A2. SOFT  Floating Life - KND DUB  05:58
B1. SOFT feat. ALCI  Akebono - J.A.K.A.M. RMX  04:00
B2. SOFT feat. ALCI  Akebono - DAICHI RMX  08:29

New Age Steppers" is the first release from UK dub genius Adrian Sherwood's ON-U SOUND label. The project, which brought together 17 of the foremost artists of the time such as the Pop Group, Slits, and Creation Level, with Adrian at the center, created an unprecedented sound that went far beyond the categories of rock, punk, new wave, reggae, and dub. This is the first vinyl reissue in 40 years of a classic album that undoubtedly represented the 80's scene and is still appreciated for its innovation year after year!

The new album "Passing Tone" by SOFT, a band of Kyoto's party scene/music culture treasures, is released from their own base of activities, "softribe.

The album was jointly released in 2021 by 17853 Records and TUFF VINYL, presided over by CHEE CHIMIZU, and Crosspoint, presided over by J.A.K.A.M., the release source, and was followed by a vinyl reissue of their 2010 album Soft Meets Pan "Tam (Message To The Sun )", the 11th and latest album released on analog at the memorial timing of the 30th anniversary of the band's formation since "Tokinami" in 2018.

They have collabolated with various musicians in the past, but this album features only one guest musician, PRITTI, an old member, who participates in one song. The album was produced by the three members since the formation of the band, guitarist SIMIZ, drummer PON2, and double bassist UCON, as well as engineer/electronics KND, who is an indispensable part of the Kyoto music scene. Lurking in the background are vibrant sounds, psychedelic acoustics, and dub work in a style similar to that of a live performance. Their 30th anniversary live performances in Osaka and Kyoto, which were a great success, and their Asian tour are also included in this album.

Rhythms played by The Aggrovators, including Carlton Barret, Sly Dunbar, Carlton 'Santa' Davis, Robbie Shakespeare, Aston Barrett and Tony Chin.

Arranged, produced, mixed and mastered by Ivan Dubious (April, 2024) __________________________________ A - Ivan Dubious "Flamboyant" AA - Wilbur "Impassive" __________________________________ (c)+(p) Ivan Antezza 2024 __________________________________ nunkirec.bandcamp.com

Swiss powerhouse The 18th Parallel presents another slice of fine modern roots reggae! All Fruits Ripe is a heavyweight showcase album rooted in the foundations of reggae while firmly anchored in the present. Recorded between 2015 and 2025, the project brings together a powerful lineup of Jamaican vocalists — Micah Shemaiah, Keith Rowe (from rocksteady duet Keith & Tex), Rod Taylor, Var (Inna De Yard, Pentateuch), Hezron, and Itral Ites — each representing a different generation of conscious reggae music. The album features six vocal cuts and five dub versions, highlighting both lyrical strength and sound system culture. Carefully mixed by master engineer Roberto Sánchez, All Fruits Ripe stands as a transnational reggae statement: Jamaican voices carried by a European band deeply connected to the roots with a profound respect for the culture that gave birth to reggae and dub. It features legendary guest Jamaican musicians Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, Scully Simms, Dalton Browne, or Errol ‘Blacksteel’ Nicholson. A mature and carefully crafted release where every track feels essential — like fruit finally ready to be harvested.