MUSIC

'Italian house music maestro Fabio Monesi delivers a smoking 8 tracks double LP of old school bombs for @L.I.E.S. Records You'd be forgiven for thinking these were produced in the '80s as all the classic and authentic elements are intact; catchy Yamaha DX basslines, crunchy TR-707 and Juno strings. Eight cuts all primed for the disco tech and nights of pure hedonism. These tracks go right back to the essence, hitting the full spectrum with stripped back classic New York and Chicago House cuts that wouldn't seem out of place in a BMX or WBLS mix from back in the day. Catchy dx basslines, slammin reverb drenched drum programming, and deep strings are on order for this one. All guaranteed to more the party all night long, drop the needle and let these do the talking....Huge huge party cuts, check the Moonriver vocal and you'll hear it immediately For fans of Delroy Edwards, Legowelt etc.'

Immense tramplers and jigs by the whirling percussive dervish of Valentina Magaletti (Moin), João Pais Filipe (HHY & The Macumbas) & Leon Marks’ (Hey Colossus) aka CZN - huge RIYL Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force, Shackleton, Bernd Friedmann, Uwalmassa, Don't DJ, Photek. On their 2nd mission for TTT after 2021’s ‘Luxury Variations’, CZN come hungry for the ‘floor in all five parts of ‘Station to Station to Station’. While the title is a nod to Bowie, the EP has fuck all to do with him, and everything to do with untangling creaky limbs and showing nuff options for the aerobic mystics and polyrhythm-metered DJs. The battery of Magaletti, Filipe and Marks make a wickedly disciplined racket from drums, drums, and more drums, sealed in place with sparing dabs of triggered synth and FX. ‘Compliance Crew’ gathers their energies in a pendulous mid-tempo swirl, congas and wraithlike vocies dubbed to the rafters, before ‘Lawn Thug’ more explicitly references West African traditions, notably the tussle of Mbalax, in its pugilistic call and response, and ‘Year of the Rat’ ramps it on the slow/fast bent with rattling drums corkscrewing at angles over rudest South London subs and pads like a lost Horsepower x Hatcha fantasy. The cosmic whorl of ‘Born to Snap’ is perhaps best compared with the proggier urges of Shackleton and Bernd Friedmann, leading to a the EP’s straightest, hypnotic, 15 minute highlight of rolling linearity recalling Shackleton’s remix of Villalobos or Ron Trent deep house.

Glo Phase is solo project of LA-based producer Joseph Rusnak. Chill House for fans of 100% silk or Mood Hut.

Comité Hypnotisé will let you flip-flop into his eleven chambers of the ‘Danza Del Piri-Piri: expanding the feral and contagious universe he started to build a lifetime ago. Levitating and shimmering a glistering way through deep old skool 70’s sitar vibes and jitterbug grooves. This boogieman aka the Millionaire mastermind and member of the Evil Superstars has carved some hot smoked out bass and organ flared cuts on wax. Ready to never leave you again. Whether it's with wood chopped kazou sounds stretching into hazy sunshine desire or dazzling basslines blending with interstellar and stuttering kick drums: the Danza Del Piri-Piri swings and slams into a wiggly relentless sonic future.

Thank you very much for your patience ♥ M's first release in the first year of Reiwa is YPY's new album! I don't need a difficult theory now. A letter from YPY who has become faithful to the starting point again ♥

Last year, he started the studio and has projects such as goat, "GEIST" and "Virginal Variations", which are the bands that the world is waiting for.・ YPY that no longer needs explanation as a project. There is a legend that Mr. Hino used to be a green mohawk, but it is this work "Be A Little More Selfish" that expresses that the spirit continues to live in him.

YPY's greatest appeal is that it has a mixture of hard songs that are likely to be welcomed by European DJs, new frontier afro and ambient percussive tunes, home-listening BGM-like songs, and songs that are not well understood. The underground live feeling remains the same! This is YPY's latest self-questioning update issued in a world flooded with glitter names and glitter sounds, and it is a psycho-psychic blow that blends in with the killer binding picture by Mr. NAZE! YPY's premium full-length album, which is still rare even though the live performance has been overthrown, is still rare ♥

Composition / Performance: Koshiro Hino
Cello on "All Wounds": Yuki Nakagawa
Mastering: Takuto Kuratani (Ruv Bytes)
Binding picture: NAZE

12 "LP version: Uses quality lacquer / stamper cut by Dubplates & Mastering.
CD version: Spread paper jacket specifications

RAMZi is returning home with these eight sonic quests, reanimating the dormant FATi Records, Phoebé’s own label. Feu Follets (Fire Sprites) are fireflies, flickering balls of light dancing in the dark shadows, found in fields, forests, chaparral, and scrublands, the many different landscapes of RAMZi’s whimsical adventures.

Top tier tackle from Heels & Souls Recordings for their fourth reissue as they let loose a much anticipated double header, Gold In The Shade’s 'Over You' backed with 'Shining Through'. Rough, tough, straight-from-the-heart ‘90s street soul, coming courtesy of TSR bossman Robert Roper and the Gold In The Shade ladies Arletta Davis and Sonia Johnson. One of the most sought-after cuts of this scene, it encompasses much of what made street soul special - heavy bass, gritty breaks, emotive chords and off-kilter vocals, marrying together to form a snapshot of a raw DIY scene with optimism at its heart. The trio’s first single from 1990, ‘Shining Through’ is a no nonsense, bassbin-rattling love song from the underground, seeing long-term friends Sonia and Arletta pulling on the heartstrings from the mic as Robert works his magic behind the studio controls. Lovingly remastered from the DAT by Cicely Balston, if only ‘Over You’ had been so easy. Two years of endless searching for the tape and subsequently a clean copy of the record, Heels & Souls even went to the lengths of having the multitracks restored so that Robert could attempt to recreate the original mixdown in the studio – but the magic of ‘91, unfortunately, can’t simply be conjured at the drop of a hi-hat. After all but losing hope, Sean P (by way of Backatcha’s Aiden Leacy), came to the rescue with a mint condition copy of the record that he had from running in the same circles as Robert and Duval back in the day, ripping and restoring it with a precision he’s rightly famed for. And so (finally!) here it is: distorted samples, low-fi hits, speaker rumbling bassweight and all. Raw to the core, but that’s the point – pure, unbridled emotion from the depths of North West London. Fully licensed from Robert Roper, 20% of profits from Heels & Souls Recordings and Prime Direct Distribution will be donated to Lives Not Knives, a youth-led London-based charity, working to prevent knife crime, serious youth violence and school exclusions.

This was it. This IS it. A true Big Bang for the scene as we know it today, materia prima out of which Príncipe came to be. "Vol. 1" was originally dropped in September of 2006 (first day of school) by Marfox, N.K., Jesse, Pausas, Fofuxo and Nervoso, then collectively known as DJs Di Guetto. With maximum respect for Nervoso's previous (and fiery) path, this was the next level, introducing a new generation capable of improving upon standards and in turn inspiring a still younger generation famously represented by Piquenos DJs Do Guetto: Firmeza, Lilocox and Maboku. The original compilation included 37 tracks, but we feel this selection of 13 perfectly captures spirit, sound and fierceness, a leap forward from straight kuduro and other crystallized styles that fed neighbourhood parties. Testing ground as well as tested ground, sureshot killers. Direct transport to the outskirts of Lisbon and the afro-portuguese experience with a sense of purpose, a mission if you will, the certainty of being part of a highly regarded heritage, the vision of fresh forms and details to continue carrying the torch, a futuristic and real transcendence of life conditions and limitations. Raw, uncompromising, respectful, true positive expression that branched out in all the beautiful ways we were blessed to be exposed to and later helped develop. Africa redesigned, repurposed in the bedroom and for the street, seeking to impress peers and make people happy in the dance. Not always understood and even marginalised within the more conservative-minded strands of the African music scene, this "guetto" style quickly became associated with trouble, even causing Nervoso (a few years older than the bunch) to suspend his DJ activities. There was a sense of danger in these grooves but maybe also of a type of freedom that was not merely artistic, a representation of the less glamorous aspects of the community. With the crew's permission we reissued "Vol. 1" 10 years ago as a free download package. Now presented in its compact version, it reappears with its power of expression intact, a beacon indicating the future, never a museum piece, prefiguring all the forthcoming new music and new artists to be undisclosed as our catalogue expands. A quick but fundamental touch-base.

The second part of the famous collaboration between two UK based electronic pioneers: John Bolloten aka The Rootsman and Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze. For this album the original The Rootsman material from his albums “Into The Light” and “52 Days to Timbuktu” was remixed and deconstructed by Muslimgauze. As always with Bryn Jones, all material is inspired by Arab culture. We hear distorted dub rhythms, sawn-off loops, traditional music, male and female voices and then distorted rhythms again. Closing your eyes, you can find yourself in the middle of an eastern city, walk along its noisy streets, admire the ancient architecture. This noise can tell amazing stories! First vinyl edition. Originally in 1999 on CD by Third Eye Music.

A Danish-Lebanese Afro-American who has learned Turkish and knows how to play the saz? Who entered the Anatolian Pop scene in Istanbul right in the heyday, the early 1970s? And who got so much musical credit that the renowned Turkish producer Nazmi Şenel released a solo album with him in 1988, recorded in Istanbul and including musicians like Turkish percussion star Okay Temiz? Sounds pretty unlikely. Sometimes miracles happen and highly improbable music gets released. A person with a diverse heritage as Nyofu Tyson can be seen as a ‘melting pot’, as a ‘synthesis’. Yet, he can be also seen as someone who is able to step out for new paths. This is the case for TÜRK LOKUMU – TURKISH DELITE. Like nobody before, Tyson connects and opens up Anadolu Pop towards a whole range of styles: Synth-Pop, New Wave, Reggae, Hip Hop/Break, Latin, Disco Boogie… He shows us how vital, compatible and versatile one could think Anadolu Pop at the end of the 1980s. The compositions are basically all Türkü-s, traditional Anatolian folk songs, yet updated with a poly-cultural music practice, which involved a lot of the then current musical trends. So, this is Turkish folk music and it has at the same time all what you like about the late 1980s pop music: cold electronic drum sounds, crisp-flashy synths, crunchy bass – all in contrast with warm distorted saz tones, wooden Turkish wind instruments, and a disco-soul proven female choir. This is crazy music. This is a miracle. This is Anatolian-Synth.

Music From Memory are excited to present 'hyphea', a new album by Montreal based artist Phoebé Guillemot aka RAMZi. Featuring ten mind-melting tracks ‘hyphae’ is RAMZi’s latest sonic quest and is based around sketches she originally made as a score for a documentary about mushrooms called 'Fun Fungi' (directed by Frederic Lavoie). Recorded between November 2021 and May 2022, writing 'hyphea' began as an attempt to transcend boredom and frustrations imposed by severe restrictions during the pandemic. For Phoebé the album was a way to reconnect with her alter ego RAMZi; who's energy brought her back to uniquely mystical feelings and hope for future magical adventures. RAMZi is a wild spirit from the forest and refers to a parallel autonomous world that keeps evolving. In Phoebé’s own words: “The music remains as a doorway to that world. It has never been about me, I always see that entity bigger than myself. The process of writing 'hyphea' was rather intuitive. I don’t think about styles of music before producing tracks. Those are more like an adventure in itself, each one set in a different ecosystem.”

Sam Hall’s new album as ghost orchard, ‘rainbow music’, is a collage of patience and meditation. The record was written in two halves, between the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2021, and is filled with nuances as quietly imperceptible as the seasons, or the profound movement of time, where one day looking back you realize your whole spirit has shifted. Where 2019’s critically revered ‘bunny’ was a love letter to a romantic relationship, ‘rainbow music’ documents the culmination of Hall’s first personal experience with loss in several forms. At the end of 2020, his longterm childhood pet passed away, and with it the last continuing threads of familiarity between being a kid and adulthood. Still based in the Grand Rapids, Michigan town he’d grown up in, the static ease of familiar living seemed to be coming apart at the seams, as friends moved on to bigger cities, relationships shapeshifted and in a short period of time, another kitten he’d adopted passed away prematurely, leaving Hall to question the trajectory in which he himself was headed. Recorded in the house that Hall currently lives in, ‘rainbow music’ is a timestamp of this environment. A myriad of shows used to take place at the residence, and the space still reverberates with the residual echoes of people as they pass though. Hall remains fascinated with the remnants of things left behind, and his home is replete with furniture and miscellaneous objects that reflect the core of his compositions: sonic maximalism paired with attention to detail. His music feels steeped in this place he has painstakingly decorated, where, much like the songs of ‘rainbow music,’ each individual object provides its own history and underlying connectedness to part of a greater collection. Bristling with the familiarity of being a stranger in someone else’s living quarters, amidst all their belongings and hoarded treasures, the album’s linear qualities remain rough around the edges, like gradually filling in the color of someone you’re just getting to know. “I love creating rooms,” Hall emphasizes, and this record “feels more inside of me than anything.” The oldest (and only proper love song), “soot,” was the first song to come after a period of static creativity, and effectively opened a floodgate that inspired him to finish half of ‘rainbow music’ in the forthcoming two months. Each track weighs with its own impact, as Hall grapples with endings and beginnings side by side, a rebirth that Hall equates to be as cathartic as crying. Many came about in a sudden stream of consciousness: the bare-boned structures of “rest” were recorded entirely in a day, and was an immediate reaction to his pet’s death and a way to process those feelings. More upbeat “maisy” and glitch-filled “cut” also came together tangentially to one another. “I feel more secure in my relationship to music,” Hall muses. With his previous work, “I was trying different things on, but ‘rainbow music’ feels more certain: this is me for better for worse at this period of time.” There’s a push and pull across the eleven songs, a sort of immediacy that’s made even more effective by Hall’s retrospective reflection. “comfort (rainbow)” was written in half prior to most of the grief that would alter Hall’s life, and was completed months later by the tuner who fixed the upright piano in his house. Produced almost entirely by Hall, the only further collaborator was Bennett Littlejohn (who has also contributed to Hovvdy and Katy Kirby’s projects), and these specific touches are integral to the cohesive footprint of ‘rainbow music’s miniature universes. Hall has previously described his work as “memory storage”, and in a way ‘rainbow music’ functions as an hourglass measuring out spoonfuls of both the past and future. An oscillating palette of instruments flit between acoustic guitar, piano and even fluttering drum and bass, where synths patter like barely discernible heartbeats and vocals feel more like an instrument than decipherable words. Hall has never released the lyrics to his music, but throughout the album’s insular quality sometimes you can hear smidges of the outside world from far away; a call and return echoed by repetition where meaning is sketched out in a dreamscape and a subtle darkness always surrounds the fringes. Like “songs in the key of life,” the title ‘rainbow music’ refers to the myriad of colors and qualities within Hall that are refracted throughout. It’s a symbolization of hope and the aftermath, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel (or “when a rainbow shows up after a big storm”). “Wish I could have fun anymore,” Hall ruminates on “dancing”, as well as confessing he “wish he made more upbeat bangers.” But reality packs more of a punch, and this collection of songs sees him finally be at peace with the current state of affairs. Relatable to anyone who has contemplated what it means to settle down, or even just catch your breath in an era where anguish is commonplace, the release of ‘rainbow music’ is a happy ending in its own right, a marker of survival that remains close to the bone.

The debut album of Istanbul born, Berlin & Copenhagen based artist Nene H (real name Beste Aydin) titled ‘Ali’. In this record Aydin has used her background as a classically trained pianist and her deep, foundational knowledge of musical theory to synergise contrasting electronic compositions and the mental process of mourning the death of a loved one. Born as a tribute after the passing of her late father, Aydin has found catharsis through a personal odyssey, the reflection of which can be seen through these 8 tracks. Raised in a traditional Turkish family and now living in Germany with its westernized lifestyle, informs the intersections of identity and duality that Aydin exists and creates from within. This consolidation of identity has pushed her to seek solitude and confidence in the power of being able to represent the process of her existence in the scene as a Middle Eastern woman with Muslim upbringing.

After a ten year pursuit, Efficient Space finally presents Late, Late Show, the last recordings of influential Sydney-via-Newcastle band pel mel. Taped in the mid-’80s, these charmingly unvarnished sessions pare the combo back to their core, producing blue-collar sophisti-pop to a danceable LinnDrum beat. From the funky disco-not-disco of ‘Mr President’ to the effortless pop perfection of ‘Fool’s House’, the six tracks reveal a creatively open and well-oiled pel mel before they inevitably disbanded. Formed in early 1979 as a misfit sextet from steel and surf town Newcastle, pel mel were inspired by New York and UK’s post-punk imports. Cutting their teeth speeding through originals and Joy Division, Wire and The Buzzcocks covers every Friday night to a regular turnout of dole bludgers, students and the under-age, the band would also cross-pollinate with electronic-leaning support act The Limp. In 1980, they decamped to Sydney to join the city’s flourishing alternative music scene alongside the likes of Laughing Clowns, Tactics, The Reels, Wild West and the M Squared crew, making an indelible mark with two albums and several singles as the only domestic signee of Factory’s Australasian licensee GAP Records. Catchy and intelligently experimental without being noisy, their musicianship and enduring legacy continues to be lauded by peers. Undoubtedly some of their strongest output, this previously unreleased demo suite documents pel mel free from the pressures of a commercial outcome, naturally elevating them to a class alongside Orange Juice, Antena and Young Marble Giants.

Tropical boogie meets mellow house on Space Ghost’s new album Aquarium Nightclub: An homage to the natural world set against the richly-diverse backdrop of Oakland.. After Space Ghost’s first album Endless Light took to international airwaves and echoed out of cities from London to Los Angeles, his forthcoming release Aquarium Nightclub brings back his signature lo-fi aesthetics with a fresh hit of inspiration from the natural world. Melding irresistible vintage synths with a meditative groove, Aquarium Nightclub is a journey of sorts. Taking listeners on a tropical tour through 80s house drums, lush synth landscapes, and deep bass melodies, the thirteen-track LP is as adventurous as it is restrained. “I was watching nature documentaries while I was making the tracks, sampling some of the audio. I was imagining living in that world, diving underwater with fish, or swimming alongside a shark in shallow waters. It brought the tracks to life and pushed them further,” he says. Growing up in a small town a few hours from California’s East Bay area, Space Ghost (Sudi Wachspress) moved to Oakland ten years ago to study at the California College of the Arts. In a city known for its vibrant cultural fabric and its experimental music scene, Space Ghost represents a new generation of young artists. His DJ collective Late Feelings, launched in 2013, has allowed him to find his own groove amongst monthly all-vinyl dance parties, where he plucks influences from various corners of the world. “I became obsessed with the feeling I got from today’s Italian sound. Other styles like Burrell Brothers’ underground house or Larry Heard’s smooth pads mixed in with bubblegum pop and African boogie while making the record. Aquarium Nightclub is relatable but still different.” More complex than last year’s release, Aquarium Nightclub shows off Space Ghost’s artistic hunger and unique sonic signature. Kicking off with “Sea Snake Island,” a track that is best described as late 80s house melancholia is a beautiful dance of shimmering keys, drum machines, and sounds of the jungle. The single “Sim City” ft. Morgan is a classic Chicago house beast; dark but uplifting with heavy bass undertones, fuzzy drum pulse, and plenty of mysterious synth melodies. Other tracks like “Ocean Odyssey,” “Night Dive” and “Aquarium Nightclub” plunge into an ambient world of slow 80s funk, though always rooted in the Bay Area sound. “These are not your typical dance tracks,” Space Ghost says. “With the song ‘Aquarium Nightclub,’ I imagined what it would be like inside that club, with everyone dancing to a slow watery song in a mellow peaceful groove.” A product of record-collecting and dance party hosting, Aquarium Nightclub is a glittering postcard from Atlantis. Profound yet undeniably groovy, its mesmerizing tropical undertones promise a safe journey back to the endless days of summer. The album artwork is designed by Space Ghost himself and the LP comes as a limited edition version printed on a silver laminated sleeve. The first 100 LP copies further include an album poster designed and risograph printed by Space Ghost.

New imprint Silver Triplet enters the world with a rocket of a collaborative album from two of electronic music’s most free-spirited mavericks. Combining the surrealist punk ethos of Scotch Rolex and the bass heavy psychedelia of Shackleton, Death by Tickling is ten tracks full of wild and unpredictable changes, incorporating odd time signatures, cosmic synth freak outs and dubbed out space vibrations. At times the album lulls the listener into a zoned out trance whilst at other times it startles with its ferocity, Death by Tickling has the whole range in its Helter Skelter approach. Produced in their studio in Berlin, both artists’ sonic signatures can be unmistakeably recognised on this album. Scotch Rolex is best known for his work with Kampala based artists MC Yallah and DUMA's Lord Spikeheart. With releases on Nyege Nyege’s Hakuna Kulala label, Rolex draws on dancehall, trap, Japanese traditional music, gabber, grindcore, Gqom, and Kuduro to unique and exciting effect. The same energy permeates this new release, but with a new elements of shamanism and deconstructed rhythms. Meanwhile, the founder of Skull Disco, Shackleton, has been carving out his own brand of esoteric ritual trance music for the best part of two decades on labels such as Honest Jon’s, Hot Flush and Perlon. This record sees him taking Rolex’s raw beats and devil may care trickery and exploding it through a dub effect rack into outer space. It is an hour of out-there music which will appeal to those who like it challenging and adventurous. At the same time, you could get the impression that there is even a savage humour or a cosmic joke underlying the whole endeavour, hence the title, Death by Tickling. To round off the package, the brilliant artwork is courtesy of Zeke Clough who can always be depended on to bring the unexpected.

Twoonky, the brothers duo from Brescia (Italy) formed by Michele and Simone Bornati, is back on Macadam Mambo for a second album. After their brillantissimo ‘Dezzo’ from 2019, which was well noticed by the underground scene, the new opus ‘Ottico’ won’t leave you static. This is the kind of masterpiece that the more you listen, the more you love. At the opposite of grandiloquent music that would have immediate effect, ‘Ottico’ is much more subtile, surfing on a cool wave of styles, a collage of vibes going from 70’s Kraut to 90’s Trip-Hop, where the analog sounds of guitars, synths, distorded voices, saxo, samples and electronics FX match so well, creating an ensemble in the unique mutant flow of the Twoonky’s that makes it so intemporal and so modern in the meanwile. It’s not about being curious, it’s about being open on crossing boundaries, like they are used to do with their unique place called Spettro in Brescia, where all the avant-garde of the electronic scene is coming to perform. ‘Ottico’ could be a kind of representation of the spirit of Spettro, and possibly one of the most interesting release of 2023. We don’t know why, but it’s true, Italians do it better ☺

The cult Canadian band lands on Mood Hut for an album of sunburnt It's difficult to imagine a more topical band name than Freak Heat Waves, though the Canadian duo have been using it for over a decade. A hard-to-pin-down staple of the country's eclectic DIY scene, Steven Lind and Thomas Di Ninno are as Montreal weirdo as they are Vancouver stoner. Their fifth album is their first for Mood Hut, which gives a hint as to where their heads are at these days. Cementing a gradual shift from wiry punk to vintage post-disco, Mondo Tempo finds the duo getting stuck into a style of humid machine funk that pairs samples and sequencers with live drums and distant vocals. It's a clever formula that should prove irresistible to any fan of the smoked-out sound Mood Has cultivated over the past decade, bringing the label's indie rock origins to the fore. If this is your first Freak Heat Waves release, on first listen, opener "The Time Has Come" could come off as Pender Street Steppers pastiche: dusty drums, flamboyant sax sample, semi-ironic disco guitar lick, muttered vocals. But it also sounds unusually lush and open. The reverb on Lind's ultra-baritone voice lends him a dollar-bin Barry White smoothness, and the drums fall into a funky pocket you can't get from a straight-up drum machine. Both of these elements are key to Freak Heat Waves' unusual appeal. On "Endless," Lind stretches out his vowels into hilariously exaggerated syllables—like "helpleeesss." His laconic drawl contrasts the precocious hi-hats and snares, which are panned left and right as if your head was inside the bass drum. The warmed-over quality of Mondo Tempo can might read lo-fi, but the duo create a rich and detailed word within their sepia-toned confines. Starting out sprightly and meandering from there, Mondo Tempo gets slower as it chugs along, with a particularly druggy back half. Highlights like "Off My Mind"—whose meditative beat and wailing diva samples sound like a synth funk band covering 808 State—and "Altered States" make a clear connection between Mood Hut and and the band's DIY punk past. After all, Mood Hut and the Vancouver scene built around it was started by members of rock bands who brought their instrumental chops and pop instincts to chilled-out house music. Freak Heat Waves reverse engineer that from the opposite perspective, making idiosyncratic dance jams out of off-kilter rock music. The title track is a great example, a stark climate change warning disguised as a chill-out room jam. With Lind warning about "One degree / Worldwide / Have we begun to reach the breaking," it would be painfully preachy if it weren't couched in such a seductively lazy beat—encapsulating the mix of paralyzing fear and resignation felt by so many of the world's young people. 
Lind's over-the-top baritone can make Freak Heat Waves feel like a stoner comedy sometimes. But any sense of irony falls away on album highlight "In A Moment Divine," which is the finest song ever released on Mood Hut. A collaboration with Cindy Lee, formerly of Calgary noise rock band Women, "In A Moment Divine" pulls together the band's lo-fi disco, synth pop and even progressive house into a unique torch song with a hint of breakbeat. Strings breathe in and out on the meek verses, while a sequencer somewhere between New Order and Sasha frames the more desperate choruses. When everything drops out to leave just those synths, the result is elegant and beautiful—heartbreak captured in the sputtering notes of a machine. Firing on all cylinders, here Freak Heat Waves reveal themselves as priests of a syncretic religion combining dance music and DIY punk, pointing to a future in both dance and straight-up pop. Which way, Canadian men? The beauty is that Freak Heat Waves don't have to choose, and they never have. Whether Mondo Tempo is a true fork or just a diversion, Lind and Di Ninno continue to go their own way, making a well-worn West Coast sound feel fresh all over again.

Total Annihilation Beach is the latest collection from Caveman LSD, one of the handful of monikers of Special Guest DJ / uon / sometimes just shy. Their releases under this name have always had the character of sonic transmissions – crushed sine-waves hurtling out of a wormhole, remote pirate radio bandwidths, whale-song picked up on radar, and so on. Here, the signal seems to come from a place whose remoteness is not defined by distance, but adjacency: these are alternate reality bops. What does it sound like? Kind of solarpunk, but dirty; not at all an artifact from a hopeless culture. Percussion at the forefront; warm timbres and tones – never have I heard this producer play with tabla and tambourine loops as they do in “Lost Hours,” the opening track of the EP. The buildup holds tension and dynamics tight, with a vocoder-smoothed moan – sampled from the caveman’s own voice, on the low – alternating between two notes; when the beat decompresses for the first time two and a half minutes in, one hears the amorphous and cavernous pads we know so well from shy. “Bottle Service Angels” picks up with another acoustic drum loop, and a clap entering 18 seconds in swings the rest of the track into your hips – there’s even an alternate percussion interlude sandwiched in the middle. The drums are turned over by a distorted and delayed wave, almost like a cop siren, which finds an answer in the track’s final seconds: we hear them blaring, but distantly (the demo version of this track, from spring 2020, was called “ACAB Beat”). The B side begins with a textured, heaving slab of ambience: “The Sun Will Sink Into the Ocean.” It is perhaps the sun one sees setting over “Total Annihilation Beach” – a phrase that came to shy while tripping on LSD in San Francisco, which felt to them like a post-apocalyptic haven for the rich. Seems on point. There is a machinic repetition to the track, but also sweeping curtains of sound that move like mist. But what comes at nightfall? Not cops, not raiders nor bottle service angels – nothing, actually. Just a void into which one lobs praise. “H6 Remix” adapts a Mesopotamian hymn to the divine wife of a moon deity, dated to 1400 BCE; the strings of the sampled oud playing it out are rich and trail beautifully with reverb. Caveman LSD’s gesture of remixing such a song reads sincere – the reality we inhabit is likely just as brutal as the one to which these transmissions belong; however, in both, honor exists. Love follows.

Ylia—aka Susana Hernández—had a remarkably productive 2020. In addition to releasing her debut album, Dulce Rendición, on Barcelona’s Paralaxe Editions, she penned compilation tracks for Lapsus Records, Hivern Discs, and Super Utu/Stars on Earth. But professional success can be deceiving: The following year was, personally speaking, terrible. Her grandfather died. Her father died. Her cat died. And she ended a relationship. “That’s a lot of things all at once, no?” she says. Her second album, Ame Agaru, is not necessarily a record of that year, but it is, she says, a response to those life events—a record of grief. The new album is clearly a continuation of the ambient investigations of Ylia’s debut, but it differs in key ways. Where Dulce Rendición was exploratory and faintly cosmic, Ame Agaru—a Japanese phrase meaning, roughly, “the rain lifts”— captures a melancholy sense of stillness. And where her debut was largely electronic, on the new album, Ylia has folded in a number of acoustic elements, even when they are not recognizable as such. Her partner, Alejandro Lévar, lends fingerpicked acoustic guitar to the glowing dronescapes of “Todos los Cuerpos”; multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Tete Leal adds flutes, clarinet, and soprano saxophone to “Ame Agari”—or “after the rain”—which opens the album with a moment of contemplative calm, the kind that follows an extended deluge. One track, the dub techno-influenced “Flowers in June,” grew out of Ylia’s live sets, but the rest are the fruit of improvisational sessions at home in Málaga, five minutes from the beach—jamming and then refining, searching for the ideal expression of a feeling as it was first captured. Searching for the spontaneity behind the stillness. In places, Ylia even incorporates piano, an instrument she has played since she was 10, yet has never included on one of her recordings before. For the most part on Ame Agaru, she seeks ways to fuse piano with synthesizers and electronic processes. But on the closing track, “El Único Adiós Posible,” she leaves us alone with the instrument in all its stark, unadorned beauty. It is a profoundly moving conclusion to an album defined by its economy of means and purity of expression: a cycle of life counted out in the passage of storm clouds and clearing skies.

For their third release San Francisco based Indian duo Baalti bring the heat and delve into what they say is their most personally authentic release to date, disclosing the record reflects the various club sounds they’ve been enjoying and discovering over the past year. The five track EP which they’ve titled ‘Better Together’, stays true to their signature sampling of nostalgic South Asian flavours derived from classic Indian, Pakistani, and Bangaldeshi music but on this occasion fused with a backdrop of breaks and euphoric club music which perfectly aligns with Seb Wildblood’s All My Thoughts imprint to which the EP will be released on. The duo have kept a consistent emotive element to the music throughout the EP combined with the leftfield dance- floor sounds they’ve been vouching for more recently. About the release which will be their biggest yet, Baalti go on to explain: ‘With this record, we wanted to lean into clubbier energy that’s been inspiring, enriching and energizing us. We’re trying to connect where we come from to where we are right now, bringing sounds we grew up with to dance- floors and spaces we’re part of today. It’s our most sincere and complete expression yet, and we’ve tried to capture all of the feelings we had from a year of touring, living with our bffs, being in love, finding amazing communities through music, and getting more connected with each other as a duo.’ – Baalti

Light in the Attic’s Pacific Breeze series has supplied the world’s growing legions of Japanese music fans with an expertly curated selection of the most sought-after City Pop recordings—the mesmerizing and nebulous genre of Japanese bubble-era music of the ‘70s-’80s that encompasses AOR, R&B, jazz fusion, funk, boogie and disco. These familiar sounds are spun through the unique lens of optimistic, cosmopolitan fantasy colored by Japan’s affluence at the time. Much of the music has previously been nearly impossible to acquire outside of Japan and continues to captivate listeners with its unique blend of groove-laden escapism, even birthing wholly new genres such as Vaporwave. Pacific Breeze 3: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1975-1987 marks the latest chapter in the famed series and features holy grails plus under-the-radar rarities. The collection bursts at the seams to reveal some of the greatest Japanese tracks ever laid to tape, pushing towards the edge of City Pop to reveal glimmers of the next waves of styles to spring forth from the country’s creative minds. The appearance of Pizzicato Five hint at the emergence of Shibuya-kei while the influence of hip hop and electro as an emerging global trend are also evident here through the prevalence of heavier programmed drum beats on tracks such as “Heartbeat” by Miho Fujiwara. This volume of Pacific Breeze, like its predecessors, is a female-forward offering with many tracks being voiced by women who would become household names in Japan as actresses and pop idols. Their songs here subvert the norm and brim with an innovative spirit that shatters gender roles in favor of sonic transcendence. Techno-pop classics from Susan, Miharu Koshi and Chiemi Manabe sit alongside sublime funk from Atsuko Nina and Naomi Akimoto while Teresa Noda slides into the mix with a sultry reggae jam. The genre span is stretched wider with hypnotic jazz fusion by Parachute and Hiroyuki Namba, a synthesizer fantasy from Osamu Shoji, and magnetic pop by Makoto Matsushita and Chu Kosaka. Although not front and center, the visionary members of Yellow Magic Orchestra are still very present on Pacific Breeze 3, with Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yukihiro Takahashi taking up producer and musician roles on many of these tracks. Pacific Breeze 3 serves up a captivating musical journey that adds an essential chapter to the iconic compilation series.

Since the appearance of his cult breakthrough debut Tuli Banyo released on Hakuna Kulala in 2018, Ugandan conscious rapper and MC, Ecko Bazz has challenged perceptions of East Africa's burgeoning rap scene. His style is hard to categorize blending elements of grime, dancehall and US hip-hop and twisting politicized lyrics in Luganda that explore violence, religion, drug abuse or the poverty in the Ugandan slums. This personality anchors his debut album Mmaso, an explosive call to action that balances his manic presence with production from MC Yallah collaborator Debmaster, Kenyan club futurist Slikback, Berlin-based Japanese beatmaker DJ Die Soon and the inimitable DJ Scotch Rolex. Mmaso is driven by Ecko Bazz's kinetic performance on the mic. Anyone that's had the privilege of seeing him live will know what to expect, and his unadulterated flow is immediately focused on the grinding title track. The rapper alternates freely between sober truths and hyperactive screams, flipping between intensity from verse to verse. On Lwaky?, an anxious Debmaster beat underpins Bazz's visceral hedonism bending his rhymes in double and half-time and wrenching his voice gymnastically over 808 booms and claps. There's a pause for breath on the more intimate Mugulu e'yo or the relatively restrained Empungo Mubanga where Slikback provides a breathy and minimal midnight trap rumble to couch the rapper's surreal exuberance. With DJ Die Soon's Bikuba, Bazz mimics the bouncy lead synth to command a presence that refuses to let you forget that, even at his most claustrophobic, he makes music that lives at the club. That's never more evident than on Nkoowola, a standout that made it to Nyege Nyege - Soundcloud Music for the Eagles compilation. Bright, powerful and charged with rebellious energy that resonates through East Africa and beyond.

Deadstock, the first collaboration between German electro heavyweights Burnt Friedman and Mohammad Reza Mortazavi released on Nonplace. Extremely minimalistic. The sound design is restrained, percussive, and beautifully constructed. This is an artistic and stoic work of human-powered techno, with a definite surge of heat in the midst of dynamic tranquility.