MUSIC
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Techno, Mondo, Lo-Fi - they anticipated the entire universe of these genres in 1978.
Recorded on a 4-channel tape recorder before their debut and released as a CD in 1996 to great acclaim, the legendary sound collection "1978" is finally being released as an LP for the first time after 30 years. It includes three previously unreleased tracks, including "Confusion," which had a different version on a fan club-exclusive flexi-disc.
A year before releasing their debut album from Toshiba EMI, Hikashu was already creating their own fascinating music. In a house off a narrow alley leading to the train tracks from the intersection at 6-chome, Toyotamakita, Tokyo, with the shutters closed and blankets hung, they reverberated sounds to intense rhythm machines. —Koichi Makigami
2025 repress; clear vinyl with white Hi-melt. "1998: Tortoise's third studio album TNT is released. In and out of print over the past decade we are happy to finally give everyone what they have been asking for - TNT on vinyl again! Pressed on high quality virgin vinyl, the two LPs are packaged in a deluxe old-style tip-on gatefold jacket fully replicating the original artwork and includes a download coupon for the first time!"
This is just sublime: Stroom & Hessel Veldman illuminate 13 unreleased gems by a sacred figure of ‘80s DIY Dutch tape music, nestling deeply precious, noctilucent synth works for lovers of BoC, Eno & Harmonia, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream & Klaus Schulze, Dominique Lawalrée...
Trust the Lowlands standard bearers at Stroom to pluck this quietly breathtaking bouquet from behind the ear of DIY synth and ambient music history. Adding to prized reissues of Enno Velthuys’ work over the past decade - from albums to songs secreted on comps for LSD and Light in the Attic - ‘Music From the Other Side of the Fence’ helps fill gaps in the patchy knowledge of his cultish catalogue 1975-1990. While the label are being typically, poetically playful with background info, a crudely educated guess can assign pieces to recordings that made up his four cassettes issued 1982-1987, but it’s better taken as a lovingly sequenced overview of his harmonious short stories, each riddled with an exquisite atmospheric magick that tiles up to an adorable portrait of the troubled artist.
If memory serves, it was a pair of LSD comps that first anonymously seeded Velthuys’ ohrwurms ‘Blue Heron’ & ‘The Day After’ to our lugs, at least, and it wasn’t until a reissue of their motherships ‘Landscapes in Thin Air’ (1985) & ‘Different Places’ (1987) that things began to fall in place. A slightly broader picture now emerges via this new raft of signature, woozy arabesques and powdered ambient pads threaded with a feel for extended melody that ties it all off with a ribbon bow. A solitary, melancholic presence guides from the frosted carillon of ’Something Special’ thru the reedy romance of ‘Uplands (Unplugged Alt Version 2)’, sashaying to types of aerial waltz in ‘Underneath a Dark Sky’ and slowed, Vangelisian brass fanfare with ‘Moonlight Serenade’ that surely shiver nostalgic timbers with an evocative, tongue-tip timbre that tickles places others don’t reach.
100% no brainer for hopeless ambient synth romantics and introverts.
An album consisting of four magically shimmering instrumental works. Moreover, both the album and its sleeve are more or less transparent—in other words, the especially perceptive music lover can truly see the light through the sound. AO is still a well-kept secret from Gothenburg: a new name from the Swedish underground, yet with long tentacles reaching back through the ages. AO creates an intelligently playful and playful music, with many dizzying points of entry, winding rooms, and smiling exits. AO is a rough diamond in the shadows. The album Stiltje began as a pile of collected sounds, intended to drown out the traffic outside the window of the condemned buildings on Fabriksgatan in Gothenburg. Sounds that could create calm while the road outside could be erased—or transformed into gentler waves. AO has created a form of spiritual embalming on vinyl; thus, we will all move toward a brighter, more sonorous future! Regardless of state, color, shape, or planet, AO’s music moves into your room, communicates, bounces around, and spreads its warm, tranquil glow.
Holy Tongue are a trio composed of Valentina Magaletti, Susumu Mukai, and Al Wootton. Accomplished musicians in their own right, they create expansive rhythmic music that moves freely through dub, trance, post-punk, free improvisation and cinematic psychedelia. Such a dynamic energy and force is mapped across a trilogy of critically acclaimed EPs, their debut album Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare and their collaborative album with dub-pioneer Shackleton. The trio recorded a series of improvisations in the Swiss Alps and London. Built on the foundation of vintage drum machines and instinctive interplay they created compositions where no stylistic borders apply. The record melts and the musicians’ instruments synergise, with a rawness added with featured vocals from collaborator and experimental vocalist Dali de Saint Paul on two tracks. The record is out via AD 93 on the 9th October. Dub techniques meet ritual percussion, hypnotic pulse and vast Popol Vuh-esque landscapes. Drawing equally from popular music, experimental traditions and spontaneous interaction, the trio treats playing, recording, editing and transformation as part of the same creative act. Sounds emerge, dissolve and reappear in new forms, creating a music that is both deeply physical and endlessly open. With no fixed boundaries and no allegiance to genre, their work embraces movement, texture and collective energy. The result is immersive, transportive music that shifts between meditation and propulsion, intimacy and scale, always evolving in the moment.
In 2009, the label Art Yard sent a probe into the outer regions of contemporary electronic music, releasing Berliner Ring's "Orbital" album, a dub techno hymnal for Berlin’s orbital ring road. Drawing together the disparate elements of invented instruments, modified keyboards, customized rhythm and string machines, it was built around moods and themes drawn from the Berlin landscape. One member of the Ring, Alexander Christou, also a part of the Berlin electro rock group Elecdrones, recording for Katzensonne. The band were “not interested in the crafting of chunks of music ready to be consumed”. Christou has since been recording under the moniker Al Chem, crossing analogue and digital realms, synthesizing a kind of philosopher’s stone. As Al Chem, he released on Tummy Touch Records, and now follows with a collection of foggy electronic dub meditations recorded between 2000 and 2005 in a full album. In the battle to harness the elements, ancient mists permeated Chem’s music. A murky, mercurial humidity saturates the project. A distinctly north European descendant of dub, a kind of Seventh Seal that Bergman could have made, if provided enough hydroponic infusions. No Hopper is a rework of the Ras Michael song No Hoppers, from his legendary album, Rastafari Dub, Chem's version shuffles the pack of electronic percussion with organic, Moondog-like rhythms and hazy atmospheric chords; The Prophet pinpoints Chem's GPS firmly in Berlin, just as The Red Tower blurs that kick-drum parallel between reggae and house music; Baudelaire sputters digital delay, piling on the pressure, a clatter of surgical implements performing an operation out of Dead Ringers, the patient storming out of the theatre with loosely fitted mechanical body parts; the instrumental No Hopper only serves to highlight the distant gathering storm. Ladder of Perfection rounds off the set with a drone, creaking with bubbling digital mud pools.
Named after a now-shuttered nightspot that overlooked the beach on Italy's picturesque Tuscan coast, Maxime Denuc's 'Club Imperiale' is a work of speculative historical fiction, a record that imagines a point of creative symbiosis between the Catholic church and the ecstatic dancefloors of the early '90s. Using a MIDI-controlled pipe organ, Denuc creates dense clouds of impossible-to-play notes that ricochet backwards and forwards through history, from Rome's reverberant cathedrals to the white, sandy beaches of the Balearic Islands. Not simply an album of trance and techno music performed on the organ, 'Club Imperiale' is a byzantine mass of references and lived experiences that considers the physical impact of sound, architecture and setting - and Denuc can trace its genesis to a single moment. Two years ago, the Brussels-based French composer was forwarded a surprising video by a Belgian fan. It was shot during a Wedding at a church in Menorca, where the organist was playing 'Infinite End', the lead track from 2022's 'Nachthorn'. Immediately, Denuc knew that this was the thematic backdrop he'd been waiting for; he imagined the aftermath of the event, wandering through small villages and teetering on a cliff's edge, finding a provincial nightclub and retracing his steps back to the beach to witness the sunrise.
This time around, Denuc was gifted the time and the access he needed to fully refine his concept. The technical side of the process had already been solved; after recording 'Nachthorn', he was now very confident with his system, able to control the pipe organ's keyboards, stops and pedals incredibly precisely using Max/MSP and OpenSoundControl, or OSC. And his relationship with the St. Antonius Church in Düsseldorf had deepened significantly. The cantor offered him a three or four days each month for a year to record the project and Denuc jumped at the chance. He moved into a small apartment nearby and spent every available hour behind the organ, working from 9AM until 5PM, stopping for mass and then returning for another long session, heading back to his studio on the off days to listen back to the recordings and plan fresh approaches. This allowed him to sculpt the experience meticulously, thinking about the history of sacred music and considering the real reasons that its compositions have lingered in the secular consciousness for so long. He wanted to concentrate on the visceral acoustic qualities of the church itself, so used a spatial multi-microphone setup to situate listeners between the concrete walls, fabricating an acoustic experience that's multi-dimensional and cinematic.
And the music itself also had to completely validate Denuc's themes. His compositions needed to feel like waves lapping at the shore, humid air rushing through aging pipes and hazy rave memories imprinting themselves on pliant brains. So on opening track 'Hallucinogen', Denuc reaches back to the mid-'90s directly, directly referencing 'LSD', an enduring psychedelic trance anthem penned by Shpongle's Simon Posford. The track interpolates a minuscule section of Posford's original, mapping its brain-tickling squelches to the pipe organ and using the church's natural reverb to capture the vast majesty of the building. "I tried to construct a whole world on top of it," Denuc explains. The album's aquatic themes meanwhile make themselves visible on 'Atlantis', the first example of Denuc's most recent compositional breakthrough, when he realized that using extremely short note repetitions he could create a seemingly continuous drone that shimmered like the surface of water. Imagining a dazzling white church in the Balearics, Denuc pens a revisionist trance anthem on 'Everytime', enhancing the imagery that inspired the record and letting the core motif bounce around the church walls.
These core elements course through 'Club Imperiale', folding in on themselves and melting into each other. Using his own hand-built Max/MSP sequencer, Denuc flutters towards the sun on 'La Paloma', noting the similarities between baroque music and progressive trance. And on the title track, Denuc hits the album's dreamy emotional core, a space where the afterparty begins in earnest, heralding the blurry, mirage-like second half of the record, where natural delays and breathy emotional traces seem to dissolve the very fabric of time. Moving through the dramatic 'Plasters Figures' and the '90s music video atmosphere of 'Impreza', 'Club Imperiale' concludes with 'Pegasus', a long chord sequence that heads steadily downwards into contemplative reminiscence, never quite taking flight. Even the best parties come to an end eventually.
Named after a now-shuttered nightspot that overlooked the beach on Italy's picturesque Tuscan coast, Maxime Denuc's 'Club Imperiale' is a work of speculative historical fiction, a record that imagines a point of creative symbiosis between the Catholic church and the ecstatic dancefloors of the early '90s. Using a MIDI-controlled pipe organ, Denuc creates dense clouds of impossible-to-play notes that ricochet backwards and forwards through history, from Rome's reverberant cathedrals to the white, sandy beaches of the Balearic Islands. Not simply an album of trance and techno music performed on the organ, 'Club Imperiale' is a byzantine mass of references and lived experiences that considers the physical impact of sound, architecture and setting - and Denuc can trace its genesis to a single moment. Two years ago, the Brussels-based French composer was forwarded a surprising video by a Belgian fan. It was shot during a Wedding at a church in Menorca, where the organist was playing 'Infinite End', the lead track from 2022's 'Nachthorn'. Immediately, Denuc knew that this was the thematic backdrop he'd been waiting for; he imagined the aftermath of the event, wandering through small villages and teetering on a cliff's edge, finding a provincial nightclub and retracing his steps back to the beach to witness the sunrise.
This time around, Denuc was gifted the time and the access he needed to fully refine his concept. The technical side of the process had already been solved; after recording 'Nachthorn', he was now very confident with his system, able to control the pipe organ's keyboards, stops and pedals incredibly precisely using Max/MSP and OpenSoundControl, or OSC. And his relationship with the St. Antonius Church in Düsseldorf had deepened significantly. The cantor offered him a three or four days each month for a year to record the project and Denuc jumped at the chance. He moved into a small apartment nearby and spent every available hour behind the organ, working from 9AM until 5PM, stopping for mass and then returning for another long session, heading back to his studio on the off days to listen back to the recordings and plan fresh approaches. This allowed him to sculpt the experience meticulously, thinking about the history of sacred music and considering the real reasons that its compositions have lingered in the secular consciousness for so long. He wanted to concentrate on the visceral acoustic qualities of the church itself, so used a spatial multi-microphone setup to situate listeners between the concrete walls, fabricating an acoustic experience that's multi-dimensional and cinematic.
And the music itself also had to completely validate Denuc's themes. His compositions needed to feel like waves lapping at the shore, humid air rushing through aging pipes and hazy rave memories imprinting themselves on pliant brains. So on opening track 'Hallucinogen', Denuc reaches back to the mid-'90s directly, directly referencing 'LSD', an enduring psychedelic trance anthem penned by Shpongle's Simon Posford. The track interpolates a minuscule section of Posford's original, mapping its brain-tickling squelches to the pipe organ and using the church's natural reverb to capture the vast majesty of the building. "I tried to construct a whole world on top of it," Denuc explains. The album's aquatic themes meanwhile make themselves visible on 'Atlantis', the first example of Denuc's most recent compositional breakthrough, when he realized that using extremely short note repetitions he could create a seemingly continuous drone that shimmered like the surface of water. Imagining a dazzling white church in the Balearics, Denuc pens a revisionist trance anthem on 'Everytime', enhancing the imagery that inspired the record and letting the core motif bounce around the church walls.
These core elements course through 'Club Imperiale', folding in on themselves and melting into each other. Using his own hand-built Max/MSP sequencer, Denuc flutters towards the sun on 'La Paloma', noting the similarities between baroque music and progressive trance. And on the title track, Denuc hits the album's dreamy emotional core, a space where the afterparty begins in earnest, heralding the blurry, mirage-like second half of the record, where natural delays and breathy emotional traces seem to dissolve the very fabric of time. Moving through the dramatic 'Plasters Figures' and the '90s music video atmosphere of 'Impreza', 'Club Imperiale' concludes with 'Pegasus', a long chord sequence that heads steadily downwards into contemplative reminiscence, never quite taking flight. Even the best parties come to an end eventually.
Ricky V runs wild on Mohammad Reza Mortazavi’s Persian tombak hand drum actions, expanding a 4 min kernel of inspiration into 24 minutes of mesmerising polyrhythmic traction. From an original 'Swamp' piece that practically recalls Ricardo’s style of slinky minimal techno sorcery to begin with, the Chilean-German maverick derives a more driving tract of rough hewn rhythmic grit bound to hypnotise dancefloors for the duration. Accentuating the undulating bass and dialling up the volume whilst retaining the frictional grind of the original, Villalobos gets right inside the groove with typically obsessive tekkerz, plucking out additional string motifs and tempering the flow with signature, taut but sinuous, loosey goosey flex that cross-pollinates cultures and gets right under the skin of the thing. Mohammad Reza Mortazavi (b. 1979, Iran) is a virtuoso percussionist known for his groundbreaking work with the tombak and daf, traditional Persian drums that he has radically redefined through new playing techniques and extended vocabulary. Mortazavi began playing the tombak at the age of six. By nine, he had already outpaced his teacher and won Iran’s national tombak competition — a distinction he would earn six more times. By his early twenties, he was widely regarded as one of the foremost players of the instruments. Since then, his music has continued to evolve, embracing new forms and vocabularies beyond tradition. Ricardo Villalobos (b. 1970, Chile) is a pioneering figure in minimal techno, celebrated for his hypnotic approach to rhythm. Raised in Germany after his family fled Pinochet’s regime, Villalobos was drawn early to percussion — he began playing congas and bongos at eleven, developing a tactile relationship to rhythm that would later inform his distinctive production style. Immersed in both Latin American folk traditions and the emerging house and techno scenes of late-80s Europe, he began DJing and producing in the early 1990s, quickly achieving cult status within global club culture. Swamp originally appears on the album Nexus, released in 2025 via Latency.
Parisian label Latency presents "Without References / Cindy van Acker (Variations)", a new release by goat (JP) and legendary producer Ricardo Villalobos. For this project, Villalobos reinterprets two tracks – "Orin" and "Factory" – originally composed by goat (JP) for choreographer and performance artist Cindy van Acker’s dance piece "Without References". The release follows Latency’s recent publication of Villalobos’ variation on percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi’s "Swamp" (Latency, 2025), continuing the label’s exploration of reinterpretation and rhythmic dialogue. goat (JP), led by Osaka-based composer Koshiro Hino (YPY, Kakuhan, Boredoms, Mark Fell), is widely regarded as a leading force in contemporary minimalist composition. In “Without References/Cindy Van Acker”, goat (JP) transforms non-tonal rhythmic patterns into intricate, hypnotic structures with remarkable depth. In this new version, the group’s simultaneously tribal and futuristic sound is reshaped by Villalobos’ distinctive production style, which draws from both minimalist techno and Latin American rhythmic traditions. Ricardo Villalobos is a pioneering figure in minimal techno, known for his hypnotic and deeply rhythmic approach to electronic music. Born in Chile and raised in Germany after his family fled Pinochet’s regime, Villalobos developed an early fascination with percussion, beginning to play congas and bongos at the age of eleven. This tactile engagement with rhythm continues to inform his production work today. Influenced by both Latin American folk traditions and the emerging house and techno scenes of late-1980s Europe, he began DJing and producing in the early 1990s and quickly gained cult status within global club culture. Cindy van Acker’s dance piece "Without References" features scenography by visionary choreographer Romeo Castellucci. The stage environment evokes a space that shifts between a waiting room, a train station hall, and a mid-century installation. Eleven dancers interpret Van Acker’s precise yet fluid movements, interacting with goat (JP)’s percussive, stripped-down compositions to create a visceral and immersive performance. The artwork features photographs by Magali Dougados from a staging of "Without References" at the Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis.
Two raw minimal cuts from '94 that will piece up any self respecting dance floor; Mika Vainio, Ilpo Väisänen & Sami Salo at the controls - an ESSENTIAL 12" from Sähkö Recordings, TIP!
'Denshi Ongaku No Bigaku Vol. 3', a Cosmocities compilation put together by label owner Matt Soulie which continues the journey through Japan’s diverse sonic landscape. "Since its inception, the Denshi Ongaku No Bigaku project has paid tribute to a musical culture that has profoundly influenced the Cosmocities vision. Where the first volume explored dreamy ambient textures and deep electronic moods, and the second shifted focus towards boogie-laden rhythms and jazz-fuelled dancefloor excursions, Volume 3 finds a natural balance between introspection and movement. The compilation opens with Yosi Horikawa’s sublime “Bubbles”, an ambient masterpiece whose delicate organic textures gently set the tone. Chari Chari’s “Luna de Ritmos” follows with deep, ethereal house atmospherics before Force Of Nature’s hypnotic “Skyy High” guides listeners further into immersive territory. The journey continues through the experimental electronics of XTAL’s “Skygazer” and the analogue warmth of Takuya Matsumoto’s “Jump Rope Music”, while regular Cosmocities contributor Yuu Udagawa delivers the sophisticated high-tech jazz house groove of “Little Secrets”. On the second half of the collection, Kuniyuki’s remix of Slow Didi’s “Follow Me” brings rich jazz-inflected elegance, leading seamlessly into the futuristic techno-swing fusion of DJ Eiji Takehana featuring Yusuke Nakamura’s “Deep Track Jazz”. Tominori Hosoya’s “Summer Dreamers” adds a deeply emotional and dreamlike house moment before Azzurro’s “Just A Touch Of Love” shifts the focus firmly towards the dancefloor with a hypnotic late-night thumper. Closing the compilation is AcidGelge’s “Fatality 4”, a beautifully spacey and atmospheric finale that leaves the listener suspended somewhere between the club, the cosmos and the imagination."
2024 Repress. Essential stuff from Finnish legend, Mika Vaino ( Ø, Pan Sonic ++ + +).
One for the headphone amp / hi fi sound system crew.
Minimal & reduced nordic techno and electronics - Mika Vaino's second album from 1996 - only released on vinyl for the first time in 2019.
Discover the world of Swiss artist Dominique Savioz. An anthology of self-released rarities, made between 1984 and 1997, that blend funk, synth-pop, and balearic vibes. Limited pressing, comes with insert - carefully remastered, fully licensed, and including previously unreleased tracks. A1, A3 Originally released on Jambo and Evasion Disques « Jambo » (EB 100 129) A2 - Originally released on Dominique Savioz’s record «Intime» A4 - Originally released on Dominique Savioz’s record «Nous sommes du soleil» B1, B2, B3 - Previously unreleased
Simplicity floods itself in textured imperfection and anointed noise on the debut oracular folk guitar album released under the UK's 5 Gate Temple. A roughly recorded stack of improvisations on a classical-style guitar, God Spill embodies the broken, all while un-doing the expectations around traditional guitar folk. Mingot's fingerpicked tones meld with unsteady pedal loops and hissed drones rotating through flawed circuitry. A slow to becoming repair that is translucent, cryptic and oblique. Mingot's misty glitched landscape paints the polarity of both presence and disappearance, all cyclically mirroring the unseen. Honesty, discordance, impatience, and certainty all find home alongside blurred vocals. Since 2022, the EU-based, Queens NYC native has released music elusively as hardcore high priestess St Agnis and now swims waters of the acoustic - with soft rage and pursuit.
Brazilian avant-jazz vanguardists Grupo Um celebrate their 50th anniversary, sharing a second previously lost 1970s album from the vaults. Nineteen Seventy Seven (titled after the year it was recorded) is another rip-roaring instrumental fusion treasure from the band which spawned from within Hermeto Pascoal’s famed mid-1970s São Paulo collective.
Like their debut album Starting Point, Grupo Um’s Nineteen Seventy Seven was recorded when Brazil's military dictatorship was at its most repressive. “There were no open doors to those who dreamt to be protagonists in creative instrumental music”, remembers drummer Zé Eduardo Nazario, “even popular composers and singers had to submit their songs to censors and many records were banned and confiscated from the stores.”
Just like Hermeto Pascoal's Viajando Com O Som (1977) and Grupo Um's previous album Starting Point (1975), both of which remained unreleased until the 21st century, Zé Eduardo asserts that the 1977 album was flatly 'without any chance to be released at that time."
Recorded at Rogério Duprat’s Vice-Versa Studios in São Paulo, the group were under both time and space restraints, “we chose the small Studio B,” Lelo Nazario recalls, “which had a Tascam (TE AC) 12x8 console and a 4-channel AMPEX AG 440 machine. Therefore, we had to record without overdubs, everything straight to tape.”
Expanding from a trio to a quintet, original Grupo Um members Lelo Nazario (keys), Zé Eduardo Nazario (drums), and Zeca Assumpção (bass) were joined by saxophonist Roberto Sion and percussionist Carlinhos Gonçalves. Carlinhos, Zé and Zeca had already played together in the group Mandala, while brothers Lelo and Zé had just finished a stint backing Hermeto Pascoal during his years in São Paulo.
Lelo was deeply immersed in modular synthesizer experimentation during this period, working extensively with the ARP2600 and EMS Synthi AKS. These electroacoustic explorations formed the sonic foundation for "Mobile/Stabile," one of his first compositions to merge modular synthesis with Brazilian music, a fusion that would ripple throughout the Brazilian jazz scene. The piece premiered at the first São Paulo International Jazz Festival in 1978, performed by Grupo Um with guest trumpeter Márcio Montarroyos. In a shocking moment, festival organizers interrupted the show mid-performance, sparking fierce backlash from both audience members and journalists who denounced the incident as artistic censorship during Brazil's era of political and cultural repression. The version on Nineteen Seventy Seven is the first recording of the composition.
Nineteen Seventy Seven combines Afro-Brazilian rhythm, modular synthesis and a plethora of whistles, percussion and effects pedals. Album opener “Absurdo Mudo” - so titled for the absurd difficulty it poses to the musicians performing it - starts out in a cloud of mysterious dissonance, before the haze breaks for a glorious keyboard and saxophone interplay atop an uptempo samba groove. “Cortejo dos Reis Negros (Version 2)” (Procession of the Black Kings), based on the maracatu rhythm, inverts the traditional jazz song structure by beginning with improvisations, which are followed by the theme and a final coda. “The studio also had two Parasound electronic reverb units,” Lelo notes, “and the timbre is very audible on the soprano sax and percussion.”
Grupo Um’s daring music represents a manifesto of resistance during the dictatorship years, but it’s one which remains just as relevant today. As Lelo puts it: “For me, the aesthetic issue has always been about combining contemporary avant-garde languages with Brazilian music, independent of categories and commercial interests. The result of this fusion takes music to a new level.”
Nineteen Seventy Seven will be released for the first time on vinyl LP, CD and digitally on 23rd January 2026 via Far Out Recordings.
Written and produced by Mika Vainio in Turku in 1993
Muutaja is written and produced by Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen
Strut presents Nigeria 80, the next essential chapter in the legendary Nigeria 70 series, diving deep into the explosive sound world of 1980s Nigeria. Following the global impact of 2001's Nigeria 70, which helped introduce rare Nigerian recordings to international audiences, Nigeria 80 continues the journey, unearthing a rich, restless, and wildly creative decade of music from Lagos to Enugu. Despite economic instability and restrictive political conditions in the 1980's, Nigeria’s music industry flourished, driven by a growing network of independent labels such as Tabansi and Phonodisk, which championed local artists and expanded creative freedom. The 1980s also marked a significant rise in visibility for female artists, with trailblazers like Onyeka Onwenu helping to reshape the landscape and open doors for a new generation of performers, writers, and producers. Nigeria 80 showcases the extraordinary breadth of this era, with all tracks reissued here for the first time. The compilation brings together essential recordings from across Nigeria’s musical spectrum: highlife greats Victor Uwaifo and Nico Mbarga appear alongside Paulson Kalu, whose personal favourite “Akugbue Nwa Ewu” stands out as a prime example of the style. Prince David Bull’s “Soko Soko” (later reinterpreted in Starboy’s Afrobeats hit “Soco”) features as a key touchpoint between eras. Segun Adewale delivers a driving juju workout, while Lekan Animashaun, longtime bandleader of Africa 70, contributes a late-era Afrobeat classic produced in collaboration with Fela Kuti. The compilation also highlights more experimental and hybrid sounds, from I.C. Rock’s proto–hip hop gem “Advice” to Evi-Edna Ogholi’s self-produced reggae statement “The World”. The set closes with “Apama” by Ibealaoke Chukwukeziri, the “Apama Boy” from Achi in eastern Nigeria, featuring hypnotic vocals and percussion from his Anaedeonu band. Nigeria 80 is available as a Strut Exclusive Edition 2LP including an extra 12" insert, a black vinyl 2LP housed in a gatefold sleeve, or CD digipak, which includes a 16-page booklet with artist photos and liner notes by Francis Gooding. Compiled by Duncan Brooker. Audio restoration by See Why Audio. Mastered by The Carvery.
Strut presents Nigeria 80, the next essential chapter in the legendary Nigeria 70 series, diving deep into the explosive sound world of 1980s Nigeria. Following the global impact of 2001's Nigeria 70, which helped introduce rare Nigerian recordings to international audiences, Nigeria 80 continues the journey, unearthing a rich, restless, and wildly creative decade of music from Lagos to Enugu. Despite economic instability and restrictive political conditions in the 1980's, Nigeria’s music industry flourished, driven by a growing network of independent labels such as Tabansi and Phonodisk, which championed local artists and expanded creative freedom. The 1980s also marked a significant rise in visibility for female artists, with trailblazers like Onyeka Onwenu helping to reshape the landscape and open doors for a new generation of performers, writers, and producers. Nigeria 80 showcases the extraordinary breadth of this era, with all tracks reissued here for the first time. The compilation brings together essential recordings from across Nigeria’s musical spectrum: highlife greats Victor Uwaifo and Nico Mbarga appear alongside Paulson Kalu, whose personal favourite “Akugbue Nwa Ewu” stands out as a prime example of the style. Prince David Bull’s “Soko Soko” (later reinterpreted in Starboy’s Afrobeats hit “Soco”) features as a key touchpoint between eras. Segun Adewale delivers a driving juju workout, while Lekan Animashaun, longtime bandleader of Africa 70, contributes a late-era Afrobeat classic produced in collaboration with Fela Kuti. The compilation also highlights more experimental and hybrid sounds, from I.C. Rock’s proto–hip hop gem “Advice” to Evi-Edna Ogholi’s self-produced reggae statement “The World”. The set closes with “Apama” by Ibealaoke Chukwukeziri, the “Apama Boy” from Achi in eastern Nigeria, featuring hypnotic vocals and percussion from his Anaedeonu band. Nigeria 80 is available as a Strut Exclusive Edition 2LP including an extra 12" insert, a black vinyl 2LP housed in a gatefold sleeve, or CD digipak, which includes a 16-page booklet with artist photos and liner notes by Francis Gooding. Compiled by Duncan Brooker. Audio restoration by See Why Audio. Mastered by The Carvery.
Afro-Latin electronic producer, global-sounds inspired DJ, and bassist for Little Simz, Marla Kether returns with her highly-anticipated second EP Luso, released on Strut Records. Featuring a hand-picked selection of collaborators from across her creative circle, Marla continues to craft genre-bending bangers rooted in African, Brazilian, and UK sounds. The 5-track EP spans Batida with grime rapper Mez, Afrobeat with rapper Reek0, Broken Beat with Sofia Grant and a Samba House anthem with Margaridas. With Luso, Marla brings her musical worlds together into her most fully realised project to date. Written and developed between Lisbon and Brasilia, the EP reflects the movement, collaboration and cultural exchange that shaped its creation. “As a producer that first recorded during lockdown, this project was all about getting musicians into a studio and really celebrating the unbeatable energy of live recording,” says Marla of Luso. “I wanted the music to feel human, warm and alive, rooted in rhythm, connection and joy.” Live percussion, bass, vocals and electronic production move together throughout the EP, creating music built for clubs, headphones and festival stages alike. Marla weaves together Brazilian musical traditions, Broken Beat, Afro-Portuguese Batida, Afrobeat and jazz-inflected club music into a deeply rhythmic and emotionally rich body of work. At its core, Luso is a celebration of community, movement and musical freedom - a release shaped by travel, collaboration and the energy of shared spaces. The result is a bold statement from an artist entering a new creative phase. With Luso, Marla Kether confirms herself as one of the most exciting cross-disciplinary artists emerging from the UK underground today.
As the world sinks deeper into screens and algorithms blur the line between creation and imitation, Nubiyan Twist returns with Chasing Shadows, a record that reclaims the pulse, warmth and spontaneity of human connection. The band’s fifth studio album is a rich and restless blend of jazz, afrobeat, hip hop and electronic textures, exploring the space between the organic and the digital. It’s music that moves, sweats, and breathes, made by real people in real rooms with heavyweight features bringing together varied voices from the music community which they inhabit. Bandleader and producer Tom Excell explains: “We wanted to make something that felt joyous and defiantly human — something that couldn’t exist without that connection between people. You can get an AI to write a fugue in seconds, but it can’t capture the chemistry and chaos that happens when musicians lock in together. Chasing Shadows is our way of holding onto that.” Following 2024’s acclaimed Find Your Flame, praised by Rolling Stone, Jazzwise, NPR and more, Chasing Shadows pushes the band’s sound further into new soulful territory under Excell’s expert guidance, featuring new lead vocalist Eniola - a recent graduate of Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London - and a glowing cast of icons and innovators. Malian star Fatoumata Diawara lights up the title track on a powerful slice of Afrobeat, Joe Armon-Jones leads the dub workout ‘Rhythm Of You’, Patrice Rushen steps in on piano in ‘Threads’, and the band take it back to their hip hop roots on great collabs with The Pharcyde’s Bootie Brown, Ghanaian MC M.anifest and London dancehall favourite, Mr Williamz. On Chasing Shadows, Nubiyan Twist continue to look outwards with their music but keep the focus firmly on humanity and positivity. It is an album which crosses continents and which shamelessly celebrates our collective strength.
