MUSIC

Intifaxa is the first part in a series of 4 outstanding double vinyl albums with bonus songs, previously released on CD between 1990 and 1994 on the Australian cult label Extreme Music. Intifaxa is full of heavy percussion fire with deep tribal grooves, embedded in modulated field recordings. The album is a transcendental journey into Eastern soundscapes and a secret weapon for DJs who enjoy to tear down the borders of tribal underground house and psychedelic trance music. The original tracks were perfectly remastered for this first time ever vinyl release and the new masters received high praise from the Extreme Music owner Roger Richards. New sleeve designs were created by Oleg Galay, who is famous for his artworks for many Muslimgauze reissues. All 4 album covers are made from extra heavy cardboard with deluxe spot UV finish and inside print.

An official re-issue of the 1996 album, Beyond the Circle, from Dr. Osamu Kitajima presented by Forest Jams on vinyl for the first time. As the title suggests, Japanese music explorer Osamu Kitajima takes the listener beyond the known on a musical voyage into new territory where his compositions are a synthesis of Western electronics and ambient dance rhythms, tempered by the wisdom of ancient Japanese traditions. “Beyond the Circle” is music that is as energizing as it is spiritual and melodic.

Madteo is next for Accidental Meeting’s mixtape series, recorded live at an AM party at Spanners, London. NY drenched house oddities and disco curveballs, all served up raw, rough & ready in Madteo’s trademark style.

Blinding double pack of heavily old school influenced bleep, direct from the depths of England by prolific young producer, Tom Carruthers. These are heavily sample based mpc productions that harken to the carefree days when the pills were pure and the music was fresh and never stopped. When house was techno and techno was house, this long player takes the best elements from say Chill Records, early-Warp and the best Nu-Groove creating timeless dance tracks made for the warehouse dj. Essential stuff here.

Nearly 10 years out of print, recut and remastered from the analogue tape masters from Alchemy's pristine mastering work; focusing and enriching every finite detail into pure analogue bliss! This remastered edition features epic reworks of cv313's now classic, "Seconds To Forever" released back in 2010. The first track is a reshape by intrusion, dubbed out live in the mix from the original 8 channel analogue tapes as to summon the spirit of King Tubby. There's also two beautiful remixes from the brilliant Rod Modell (DeepChord). Those touched by his recent output will have a lot to love here. Gorgeous plumes of sound envelope the listener into near hypnosis, subdiving deeper than even the original work could. Sublime and beyond gravity, another exquisite excursion transmitting from the other side of the galaxy. Pressed onto 150 gram crystal virgin blue wax. Tip!

ダウンビート経由のディープ・ハウス/チルアウト・エレクトロニクス秀逸作！〈Tax Free〉を主宰するベルリンのダウンビート/ブレイクス名手Max Graefによる最新アルバム『Natural Element』が、Space GhostやNu Genea、Zopelarらの作品も知られるダウンビート/モダン・ファンクの一大聖地〈Tartelet Records〉からアナログ・リリース。低音重視の空想と繊細なダンスフロアの冒険をテーマとしたジャンルを超えたリスニング・トリップ。今回は、煌めく才能と伝染的なその魅力的なサウンドを、バックルームのビーンバッグに心地よく収まったサイケデリックで夢見心地のジャムへと落とし込んだものとなっています。

Light, textural daydream house from Edmonton’s Dylan Khotin-Foote, whose debut 1080p release under the Khotin title lands in the middle of close, bedroom zones and more club-friendly grooves. Since his initial moves towards house and techno genre experiments two years ago, Khotin has refined his unique slant on gentle acid and blurred yet effervescent hybrid house, with a stack of hardware: Roland TR-505, 606, 707, SH-101, Juno 106, Korg MS-10, Yamaha DX7, and various casio keyboards. Khotin’s lightly dusted grooves are inflected with a bedroom pop sensibility as much as reverence for heavy techno greats, scattering samples over breezy house rhythms. Loose themes of flight and brightness coast in and out of each side (mixed live); loose house drifters like “Flight Theme” and title track “Hello World” float on gentle bongos and hi-hats and brightly hued melodies (that are consistently focal and catchy across the record) while darker techno heavy hitters like “Why Don’t We Talk” and “Infinity Jam” bring a distinct take on cosmic hardware vibes.

A 14 minute solo piano piece from Terre Thaemlitz alongside an incredible 15 minute Dead End House mix from DJ Sprinkles on the second in this two-part vinyl series, proper head-melters the pair of them...  Presenting vinyl versions of the bonus reworks to his 43 minute Deproduction album track Admit It’s Killing You (And Leave), the A-side includes Terre’s haunting 14 minute Piano Solo, where he drops the unsettling backdrop of samples to leave the keys suspended in reflective space, reverberating in plangent overtones which take on a starker effect if you care to play it at 33rpm.   The B-side is Sprinkles’ uncanny, brilliant Dead End house mix, a more percussive adjunct to the House Arrest mix off EP1, framing traces of the original vocal and keys in a sumptuous, rolling and swinging deep house workout full of rustling congas and lustrous low end that marks up among her most affective, especially in its closing minutes.

Watch-Admit It's Killing You (And Leave) (Piano Solo) (Vinyl Edit)
Watch-Admit It's Killing You (And Leave) (Sprinkles' Dead End)

The return of Terre Thaemlitz / DJ Sprinkles with a first solo vinyl release in over five years, features an exclusive 17 minute vinyl edit of 'Names Have Been Changed’ from the Deproduction album and DJ Sprinkles’ incredible House Arrest mix - which totally destroys us each and every time...

Asking pertinent questions about the hypocritical nature of relations between LGBT agendas and Western Humanist notions of the nuclear family, Terre’s Deproduction sensitively yet unflinchingly broaches topics usually considered taboo by a mainstream who are all too happy to pick and choose parts of radical, fringe culture to fetishise, while swerving the bigger questions proposed by those niches.

In the vinyl edit of Names Have Been Changed, exclusive to this LP, Terre contracts the original, 43 minute blend of strings and unsettling scenes of domestic violence into a 17 minute version, beautifully suspended in the cut at 45rpm in order to best represent the work’s unique democracy of frequency - from the muffled row heard next door, to its hyperrealistic avian chirrups and modestly spare, foregrounded strings. 

On DJ Sprinkles' extended House Arrest mix on the B-Side, Terre’s ideas feel even more radical when juxtaposed with a sublime deep house production, placing them in context of what was and still can be a radical artform when done with insight and consideration. The result is one of this decade’s most sublime yet unsettling house tracks, bar none.

sample-Names Have Been Changed (Sound/Reading for Incest Porn) (Vinyl Edit)
sample-Names Have Been Changed (Sprinkles' House Arrest)

Cult north manc enigma Michael J. Blood provides the DDS 12” series with its latest instalment following aces by Shinichi Atobe and Demdike Stare x Dolo Percussion. From 170BPM ghetto tekkerz to bucking House, it's a full dose of fire if yr into Theo, Rezzet, H-Fusion, Marcellus Pittman... Michael J. Blood needs little introduction to followers of these pages; his misfit take on House at its broadest definition is a lowkey phenomenon, with each turn different to the previous, but all sharing a screwed passion for the rudest variegations that dovetail Demdike Stare’s own wayward instincts. Following up his outstanding recent Richie Culver link-up, on ‘Raven’ MJB plays with a custom-made trio of tracky blinders certain to set fire to yr floor. He boots right off with a searing title cut, starting up like a head-flapping nitrous oxide trip before locking into a 170BPM boot knocker imagining Howard Thomas’s H-Fusion via Rezzett at a free party. Flipside, he chills his beans in a more familiar style, wrapping warped chords around a wooden bassdrum synced to roving subs and offset claps for the loosey goosey crew, before tussling with the filters on ’TRGR’, a delicious section of insistent, Theo-ish loops woven with intuitive body geometry, liquifying limbs in a mode that also reminds us of Marcellus Pittman at his deadliest.

Here is the debut, self-titled album from a.s.o., singer/songwriter Alia Seror-O’Neill, and producer Lewie Day. ‘a.s.o.’ is a thematic consolidation of the previous three singles and an impressive artistic progression. Day and Seror-O’Neill show they’ve mastered the format of the radio-friendly pop song and found how to subvert it completely. Across eleven songs, they have built a rich and compelling body of work. We know where we are now, emotionally complex, trip-hop torch songs for club freaks. But the palette has broadened to encompass ethereal dream pop à la Cocteau Twins, slow-burning AOR-soul, and dubwise stylings. As a result, ‘a.s.o.’ is a satisfyingly coherent listen but never a musical monoculture. Variously there are nods toward Julee Cruise, Fleetwood Mac, and the uneasy listening of Portishead. It’s an album that wears its influences lightly, is never weighed down by them, and always sure of its own identity. It’s anchored by Alia’s unique voice. Her words speak of restraint and release, taking us from the elegiac to the euphoric. This elegantly crafted, perfect pop music sounds like it has had enough of your shit. And Day’s music is the perfect foil; deep, slightly menacing, restrained, and powerful. The album has a cinematic texture, as with David Lynch; the seemingly familiar becomes uncanny and strange the closer we look. a.s.o. take our emotions for a joyride before leaving us floating in space. ‘a.s.o.’ is a journey; by its end, we all are changed.

Two new songs from Khotin ideal for soundtracking slow dewy mornings.

“Plastic Love” often comes to mind as the quintessential example of City-Pop, originally written and produced by Japanese power couple Tatsuro Yamashita and Mariya Takeuchi in 1984. Later in 1991 it was covered with new Cantonese lyrics by Anita Mui, and now, over 3 decades later, the pursuit to give this song new aesthetics continues with yet another cover with Anita Mui’s Cantonese lyrics but with a completely different feel. What could be interpreted as relatively raw production methods is turned into a refreshing take on this classic Japanese 80’s anthem. Originally recorded during golden age of Japanese technology with a highly polished sound, Xiaolin gives it a new twist with a rougher edge established by the drum machines and saturated bass echoing video game soundtracks from a bygone era, beautifully juxtaposed with her dreamy vocals. Also included, a karaoke instrumental version on the B-side.

Repress. Masterpiece by detroit house legend Theo Parrish dropped from his Sound Signature label.

Feels as if we're stepping outside the known universe of Nigga Fox but simultaneously being invited in. It's not about being hermetic, shutting out followers of his trademark dance beats or making an experimental statement per se. All this music comes effortlessly during sessions such as any other, so don't throw away valuable time searching for a concept. "Chá Preto" sounds revolutionary but not so much in his discography, accustomed as we are to game-changing compositional solutions in the afro musical continuum but - never forget - also in Dance Music taken as a broad genre. But is it Dance? Certainly a fair amount of suffering and introspection comes clear throughout the album, namely in the sequence made up of "Má Rotina" and "Mutadoree Leonor". "Mutadoree" is a free, alternative spelling of "much pain" and each listener can process the info as s(h)e pleases. The music is also strikingly beautiful, so there's really no final word on this. Beats come sparse, a very personal phraseology, the dancefloor a memory. Or just something to keep in mind for a future night out. Presently there's no lack of adventure or excitement in these grooves, a uniquely themed one-person show of musical skills and bare emotion. It ends in a snap, not a trace of embellishment. Pragmatic and out of the loop. Rewind and feel it all over again. Any comparison in mind? Flip through History books and you won't find this chapter.

Paige Emery is an ecological artist interweaving music, painting, and plants through healing rituals to explore ways of remembering the Earth. She catalyzes ritual to illuminate the way our practices co-write our cosmologies and to find cyclical resonances that bring us back home. Works such as sound pieces to guide ecological journeys, paintings alchemized with herbal concoctions, ecopoetic tea ceremonies, plant remedies, and starting mutual aid guerrilla gardens with her community are among the ways this practice manifests itself. Intercommunications follows a cyclical journey of healing with plants. The album was seeded from her ritual of singing to her plants every morning after she meditated with them. As an inquiry into communicating with the nonhuman, the songs grew through deconstruction of language layered with sounds of the environment, a communication shaped by honest forms of harmony and chaos, death and rebirth. Each song represents a different state of connecting with plants, while the album as a whole serves as an arc through a healing journey with their medicine - opening, sensing, letting, washing, waking, dancing, calling, following, swelling, enduring, decomposing, which in the end leads to another opening. These states of being sing along with the cycles of nature that we can continue to learn from.

TTT’s scuzzy rave dream team Lukid & Tapes reprise Rezzett duties for the label’s wickedly ruffneck 100th release - unmissable crud for acolytes of Actress, Rat Heart, Lee Gamble, Demdike Stare, Jamal Moss Label MVPs since 2013’s introductory Rezzett EP, the duo have become emblematic of rave music’s mutant noisy patch over the past decade with a string of 12”s that led to their acclaimed, eponymous album in 2018. ‘Meant Like This’ makes up five years of near radio-silence with a reliably sore and bittersweet new volley of works that deglaze classic rave tropes and marinade them in Rezzett’s special, astringent sauce. Skull-scraped reminiscences of rambunctious breakbeat hardcore, lushest mid ‘90s jungle, Detroit techno and Chicago house are rinsed for quintessence and rebuilt with a shoegaze-like romance, with red-lining distortion and noise as a metaphor for the infidelity of memory and motion sickness of time travel. As expected, ‘Meant Like This’ is a heavily satisfying trip. If we’re playing favourites, the cold rush of its flashback montage ‘Vivz Portal’ is right up there, recalling Lee Gamble’s ‘Diversions 1994-1996’ marinaded in acetone, or even aspects of the Honour sides. But if you’re here for a knees up, we direct thee to outstanding bouts of breakbeat ‘ardcore rufige in the tape-of-a-tape-of-a-tape-textured ‘Leg It’, and the heart-in-mouth hardcore of ‘Borjormi Spring’, while lovers of the saltiest cosmic Midwest club music gets their lot in the sort of tones that loosen your teeth on ‘Spicy Pipes’, and a clattering beauty of Hieroglyphic Being proportions, ‘Ladbroke’.

"Every day, the skies of New York City fill up with unseen clouds of radio signals spreading over immigrant neighborhoods. These culturally charged clouds of radio energy burst with a flow of content that continually shifts and transforms, following the lifecycle and rhythm of the streets. In Brooklyn, the signals alight on Flatbush Avenue, blasting from radios in dollar vans, bakeries, churches and on street corners and kitchen tables. By accessing an analog technology that (outside of the radio itself) is essentially free for the listener, economically marginalized communities avoid the subscription and data fees built in to the conveniences of the digital life. Listeners, often the elders of the community, extend metal antennas and position the radios just so, trying to catch the elusive vibrations of crucial music, news and information that are seldom felt in New York City’s legal and mostly corporate owned media soundscape. In Flatbush, stations broadcast primarily to Haitians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Grenadians and Orthodox Jews. The Haitian stations are particularly active in East Flatbush with just under a dozen broadcasting daily in Kreyol to the large Haitian community. “I came across it at a very young age. There was this really popular station back in the late 80s, Radio Guinee, and it was based in Brooklyn.” says Joan Martinez, a young Haitian-American born in the US and a former program host on some of the unlicensed Kreyol language stations. “Nobody knows where it was, there are suspicions. But all I know is from Friday night all the way to Sunday night, you would just hear a series of these stations every weekend and it would be the place where you could listen to the latest in Haitian pop music, rap music. It was also the news, my parents and their friends would all sit around the radio and they would just be politicking in the living room getting really loud, you know, dancing, singing along that sort of thing. It was just like a meeting ground and the radio was guiding it.” This phase of New York City pirate radio rose from the ashes of a previous scene dating to the late sixties: a dozen or so stations sporadically run mostly by white teenagers: a mix of hippies, radicals and electronically inclined misfits. By 1987, this loose collective of friends and rivals devolved into infighting after a short-lived attempt to broadcast from international waters off Jones Beach. This created room for new pirate radio voices from diverse communities that were increasingly being pushed off the legal airwaves by high costs, format consolidation, and “the low power desert”, an FCC-led phaseout of small community broadcasters. The local pirates joined a growing national wave of progressive pirate radio activity taking advantage of a new generation of cheap FM transmitters imported from China or home-brewed in makeshift workshops by free radio activists. By the early 90’s, immigrant community-focused broadcasters In New York City flipped the unspoken rules of the earlier pirates who broadcast mainly late at night on a few pre-determined “safe” frequencies, instead filling the FM dial from bottom to top, day and night. In 2000, under pressure from a nationwide increase in pirate radio activity, the FCC introduced a new license class: Low Power FM (LPFM) but opposition from National Public Radio and the National Association of Broadcasters shut down the issuing of new licenses. That severely limited LPFM’s availability in major urban markets due to rules requiring LPFM’s to be “three click aways” from existing stations. Local pirates felt they had no alternative but to continue broadcasting and some stations in Flatbush have been on the air for decades. Despite the passage of the Local Community Radio Act in 2011, opening a new licensing window with relaxed spacing requirements, few new frequencies were available in NYC due to an already crowded dial. The continued pirate presence is enabled by a sort of safety in numbers, an FCC enforcement team hampered by a low budget and a bureaucratic process of enforcement. Interference aside, FCC commissioners and staff publicly fume at the pirates for a range of potential public safety violations, some more theoretical than others and claim they are somehow harming their own communities, and wonder finally, why don’t they just stream on the internet. By viewing radio piracy purely from a legal perspective, critics miss the cultural and historic forces driving the Haitian pirates. During the Duvalier dictatorship (1957-1986) Haitians had access to only two stations broadcasting in Kreyol, rather than French, the language of the elite. One was Radio Lumiere, a religious station and the other Radio Haiti-Inter, a fiercely independent voice whose director Jean Dominque was assassinated in 1999. “The peasant in Haiti, while he’s working on his farm you know he had a transistor.” Says Dr. Jean Eddy St. Paul, Director of the Haitian Studies Institute at the City University of New York. ‘And many peasants, they don’t have money to buy tobacco to smoke, but they will have money to buy the battery to put in the transistor. The first generation of migration, in the US, was during the 1960s and for many of those people the culture of transistor was part of their everyday life, so they’re still maintaining the culture of transistor. For them, having a radio station is very important.’ In July 2019, on a side street in East Flatbush, I met a man calling himself “Joseph” aka “Haitian” (“because I’m a pure Haitian!”), part of a group that keeps Radio Comedy FM on the air. “There’s no owners and committee. It’s a bunch of young guys”. Joseph says, “We have to do something positive for our community. Right now the Marines are in Haiti and we don’t know what’s next! CNN don’t show you this! BBC don’t show you this! So what we do, we have people in Haiti that call us and tell us what’s going on and will send us pictures. This is how we get our information. And bring it to the people…. I have family over there, my mother’s still there. So I have to know what’s going on. At this point in the digital age, it’s an open question how long these analog pirate stations will remain relevant, as their audiences age, neighborhoods gentrify and younger listeners gravitate to social media platforms. The answer seems to lie with their elderly and impoverished listeners. “They don’t have enough money to buy the newspapers understand?.” Joseph says.” For him that makes it worth it to keep Radio Comedy on the air despite a crackdown from the FCC backed by the PIRATE Act signed into law in 2020 that increases fines to $100,000 a day up to $2 million. But the legislation lacks funding to enforce the new regulations. With a federal statute still in place reducing fines down to the ability to pay, it’s unclear whether the PIRATE Act will be anything more than another in an escalating series of scare tactics. Though the FCC has recently suggested the possibility of a new round of LPFM licenses in the future, the already crowded nature of NYC’s FM band makes it unlikely that new frequencies will be made available to the current pirate stations. In addition the FCC doesn’t want to be seen as rewarding illegal activity by granting a license to former pirate broadcasters, which was a prohibition in LPFM’s earlier licensing periods. And for the moment, Joseph, who’s been running unlicensed stations since 1991 (‘it’s an addiction’) is equally unlikely to cede the airwaves. He sees Radio Comedy as not just a radio station, but a community lifeline. “You know many children we save? There was a bunch of guys…Jamaican, Trinidadian, Haitian trying to form a gang. We talked to them, bring them to the station. Most of them have a diploma now. Without the radio, most of them probably get locked up or dead.” Even with the PIRATE act on the books, the number of stations on the air in Brooklyn has remained steady with an average of about 25 per day and the advent of the Coronavirus pandemic has only sharpened their mission. In March 2020 as the spread of Covid-19 lead to NYC’s lockdown, the unlicensed Haitian broadcasters and the other West Indian stations in Brooklyn took a step closer to their listeners, increasing their air time and enhancing their formats to deliver information about the virus both in New York and in their countries of origin amid the heavy toll it took on the community."

On Unleash, Heavee works simultaneously outside and inside the box, rebuilding footwork's framework and vibe to his own unique specification.

Known to his friends as Darryl Bunch Jnr, Heavee is a Queer, Chicago born and raised DJ and producer. He has a long history within footwork, and like many producers in the genre, started off as a dancer. Notably his track 'it's Wack' with DJ Rashad, from his 2018 album WFM on the Teklife label ended up in Flying Lotus' Grand Theft Auto jukebox , his tracks ‘Icemaster’ and ‘8-Bit Shit’ from earlier Hyperdub compilations are still much loved, and outside the Teklife crew, he's also co-produced alongside Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones.

2022’s 'Audio Assault' EP on Hyperdub restarted his musical journey with some synth-driven, melodic footwork, but Unleash goes much further into audio world-building with a fresh, spongy and citrusy sound palette and rich, bright chord sequences. It's minimal, airy, balancing light and dark, sometimes breezy and sometimes clinical.

Rhythmically, it's dance floor ready, using footwork's 160 template as a springboard for building new drum sounds to express these rhythms. It's also marked out by transforming footwork's classic commanding chants into personal mantras and declarations - 'it's time for something different', 'Unleash the Freak'. 'Make It Work', with no time for unspecified enemies. At times, it seems to draw from R&B, rap, jazz and grime, with a sprinkling of bitter-sweet vintage Detroit techno and a resonance with ‘Pretty Ugly’ Era Scratcha DVA, but with the up-to-date palette and FXs you might hear from friends and contemporaries such as Fractal Fantasy and Suzi Analog.

It's clear that Heavee has upped his production and song writing game for Unleash and he cites studying physical modelling, modulation, and other forms of synthesis along with discussions and collaborative jams with peers that fed into the process. The album takes footworks 'eats all' approach to music in a fresh direction with a freedom of spirit. It's a strong addition to the footwork cannon and shows that experiments in dance music can be fun. 

Dancefloor fire bombs from Kolt, a DJ and producer thus far mostly operating under the crew name Blacksea Não Maya (with Perigoso and Noronha). This is his first Retirement record. No quotation marks here, Kolt is actually stepping down from a fruitful decade-long career as DJ and producer. Fat, techno-ish, idiosyncratic big room afro mind melt sounding like no other hyped or non-hyped dance cuts out there. Futuristic and decidedly non-European in structure, this set of 4 tracks carries a more synthetic DNA than previous material, if we exclude his quasi-gothic slow burners in BNM's "Máquina de Vénus" LP. But in "Verdadeiro" Kolt is all virtual open arms and bare chest, appearing to satirize this idea of the megastar DJ. But what comes across is distinctive and alive (consequently deadly on the club sound system), wiping out the floor of any zombie-preset-DJ vibes. Take "Bateste" as an example: an evil bassline, wtf beeps, a vocal snippet prodding the dancers and a final blissful 30 seconds to ease you out. "Shaman" is the final track, its title just maybe nailing the atmosphere felt by people on the dancefloor. Shamelessly epic and in your face, a simulation of a throwback to a more clichéd clubland but just so left of centre that one can't find a complete correlation to fit the picture. Yes, we all go OMG.

Chicago OG, Specter unleashes four cuts of deep house psychedelia that have been marinading in the archive, dedicated to his pal Brutus, pictured on the cover. R.I.P. little one. One of Sound Signature’s MVP’s, Andres Ordonez first really broke thru circa 2009 with a killer EP on Downbeat and his debut for Theo Parrish’s label, ‘Pipe Bomb’ in 2010 that really put him on the map. This new/old suite hails the singular producer during that era, and up to a few years ago, across four tunes that play to his wonkiest and jazziest machine tekkerz, comparable to waviest gear by Theo, Jamal Moss, Detroit’s Howard Thomas or even Michael J. Blood in their loose and dare-to-differ steez. Running in ever increasing circles, the vibes get progressively looser from the stop/start sequencer fuckry of ‘The Birth’, with its mazy B-line and intricate arps, thru to fizzing deep techno like MJB meets Legofeet on ‘The Spirit’, to a pair of 10 minute+ jams where he really gets lost in his thing, from the clipped strut and midi jazz spritz of ‘The Death’ to an outstanding finishing move of slow-mo cubist jazz house calculations in ‘The Ascension’.

Downtempo, Experimental, IDM … Knopha steps out on Mood Hut Records with ‘Kwong’. Ranging in tone from downtempo drum and bass to Herbert-like cut up house tunes, from esoteric pop to digital abstractions.

Mix Mup & Kassem Mosse mark a decade since their rudely offbeat debut with a 19-track, 1hr+ payload of woodcut drums and groggy samples tessellated in beatdown mode for fans of Theo Parrish, STL, Actress Back in 2012, MM/KM’s s/t maiden voyage was a staple round our ways, beloved for its odd bag of skewed grooves. After leaving us with only a 3-track EP ‘Have You Seen Them’ in the interim, the German duo return with ‘Ich sehe Vasen’, or ‘I See Vases’, making up for the big pause in duo production with a heavy satisfying session of loping, peg-legged rhythms, off-the-cuff keyboard lines and hiccuping ambient wobbles that feel right back at home amid the screwballs on TTT. The expanded run time of ‘Ich sehe Vasan’ allows for a far mazier and demonstration of their intuitive, lo-fi style, peppered with numerous beatless nuts and bolts that join the up the club workouts like a game of snakes and ladders on K. Roll the dice and expect to encounter the haziest, Theo Parrish-like Detroit house one minute, then trip down wormholes of lush ambient, or whirling percussive derives the next, popping out along the line at wheezing Actress-like grog, all primed for slinging on at the afters to regular calls of “what the fuck is playing, man?” until the sun goes down again.

Teno Afrika’s 2020 debut "Amapiano Selections" drew an international wave of support sparked by the producer’s deftly minimal take on the emergent style. Amapiano combines the South African predilection for deep house alongside a melange of endemic influences like kwaito, jazz and gqom. The 22-year-old’s new crop of songs "Where You Are" expands on his rhythmic subtlety hooded in warm bass adorned by amapiano’s telltale shakers, hi-hats and mid-tempo shuffle. Lutendo Raduvha hails from Pretoria, South Africa, where he produces music incessantly and DJ’s parties around Gauteng province. He hangs with a crowd of musical friends, many of whom join him on "Where You Are." For his second album Teno Afrika brings more vocalists into the sonic picture, unlocking an emotive and timbral escalation to his rapidly mushrooming catalog of work. Singers Leyla and KayCee feature on the title track and “Fall In Love,” respectively. Regular cohort Diego Don joins for two driving, pad-propelled works of significant vibrancy, “SK Love” and “AK Love.” The album's dramatic closer “Duma ICU” features another returning collaborator, Stylo MusiQ, who helps bring an icy, almost cinematic conclusion to a slice of the sound Teno Afrika is pushing at the moment. There’s a palpable feeling of not knowing where the young producer might go next.