MUSIC

Guangzhou-based producer and DJ COLA REN released her debut LP, 'Hailu' in June 2023, a fulsome ambient, balearic, and downtempo brew with a gorgeous sense of melody and spirituality that offers a soothing escape. To celebrate the release, we have invited 8 talented musicians to the enchanting realm of ‘Hailu'. This remix compilation serves as a metaphorical exploration akin to the "Chakras," symbolizing the diverse energy centers within the human body. Through the collective reinterpretation of Hailu's original composition by 8 musicians, each imbuing it with unique hues and symbols, the remix reflects varied spiritual essences and elemental qualities.

2023 marks the tenth year of Music From Memory; a decade of groundbreaking archival releases, cross-generational collaborations and long-standing creative partnerships with our ever-expanding community of artists. To celebrate this milestone, earlier this year we asked our roster of artists to submit a piece of music for an anniversary compilation. As submissions gradually came in, we were blown away by what we received and slowly began to piece them together into what was to become “10”. Featuring work from artists who were present during the formation of the label, such as Gigi Masin, Joan Bibiloni and Michal Turtle, as well as artists like The Zenmenn, RAMZi and Dea, who have helped the label expand over subsequent years, “10” serves as a natural bookmark of where we are musically, whilst simultaneously reflecting on the label's rich musical past. In keeping with the Music From Memory ethos, the music of “10” spans both time and space, with submissions ranging from Vito Ricci's 'Da Hamptons' (1985) to Yu Su & J. Wilson's 'Mitti Atar' (2023). It crosses the globe, with a total of 10 countries represented across 17 tracks. The final result is an immersive musical compilation that flows perfectly from start to finish. Tragically, during the last few weeks of finalising MFM066, label co-owner Jamie Tiller passed away in a sudden accident. “10” was always intended to be a way to reflect on the journey of Music From Memory. The fact that it is now also one of the last releases that the team all worked on together adds a whole other level of reflection and makes it all the more special.

Carl Stone continues his late career prolific renaissance with a new album of sculpted, tuneful MAX/MSP fantasias. Stone “plays” his source material the way Terry Riley’s In C “plays” an ensemble – with a loose, freewheeling charm connected to the ancient human impulse to make sound, melody, and rhythm from anything. Stone’s unique technique simultaneously focuses and sprays sound like a symphony of uncapped fire hydrants. Is this techno, avant-garde, sound art? It’s simply (or rather fantastically messily) Carl Stone.

First heard by global audiences on Sahel Sounds' Music from Saharan WhatsApp series, Malian guitar hero Bounaly (the stage name of Ali "Bounaly" Traore) makes his full-length debut with "Dimanche à Bamako" ("Sunday in Bamako"). Recorded live on location, the music on "Dimanche à Bamako" is a mix of regional favorites, traditional standards, and originals. Long songs with looping rhythms, pounding kick, and electric shredding guitar, punctuated by shout outs to the guests of honor. A raw and frenetic take on Northern Mali desert sound, playing for the diaspora at a Bamako wedding.

Vocal Shades And Tones is a miraculous leftfield library classic from the genius mind of celebrated UK composer/singer/vocal arranger Barbara Moore. It's a heavenly groove-based blend of jazz, Latin, soft-psych, folk-funk and gospel soul. Recorded for the legendary Music De Wolfe in 1972, it's an audacious start-to-finish listen, as dizzying as it is dazzling. It's a perfect snapshot of a musical era, supported by Moore's glorious vocal arrangements. Widely regarded among collectors, DJs, and lounge/easy-listening acolytes as an absolute essential it is viewed as the holy grail by many production music heads, rarely appearing for sale and disappearing in a flash when it does. Indeed, originals now go for over £300 and it's easy to see why. Just one of the reasons why this fresh Be With reissue, part of a wider De Wolfe reissue campaign, is so utterly crucial. Racing out the gate, the driving "Hot Heels" is a bright, sophisticated scat groove which sounds Brazilian, richly produced as if coming by the hand of Arthur Verocai. Yes, *that* good. It's followed by "It's Gospel" which is, er, a wonderfully slow and deeply soulful gospel treasure. The appropriately monikered "Steam Heat" is a darker, breathy gem, one for salacious crates and one of the record's most infamous tracks. "Fly Away" is pastoral West Coast soft rock, very much in conversation with John Cameron and Keith Mansfield's epochal KPM recording, Voices In Harmony. "His Name Was" is a stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks Beach Boys accapella church-organ stunner, whilst "Swing Over" is another carefree, richly produced sun-dappled smasher. The gentle Bossa and sunshine soul of the aptly-titled "Touch Of Warmth" closes out a virtually perfect A-Side. The B-Side opens with the easy grace and dramatic build of "Voice Force Nine". The jaunty "Very Fine Fellow" may be the only track to slightly grate so we advise heading to the slower, moody "Shades-Tones", eminently more compelling with sparkling, hypnotic piano throughout, underpinning the gorgeous wordless vocals. Just beautiful. It was sampled by Redman for his Method Man-featuring "Do What Ya Feel" on the great Muddy Waters. We're back in Brazilian territory with the cool, uptempo "I'm Feather" before swooning to the warm, relaxed "Drifting", another total highlight which was famously sampled by Koushik on his legendary remix of Madvillain's "America's Most Blunted (Doom's Verse)". The penultimate track, "Take Off" is a bright, organ lounge groove before this remarkable set is rounded out by the beaty "Fly Paradise". It's so so good, it sounds like Rotary Connection fronted by The Mamas & the Papas. As noted in a recent Guardian article on Moore's life, "there is a plushness and electricity in the tight vocal harmonies that spring out, sung with the precision of cathedral choristers decades before Auto-Tune." Amen. In the 1960s, Barbara Moore was a member of Top of the Pops’ resident vocal-harmony group, The Ladybirds and sang backing vocals for Dusty Springfield’s TV show. Her own outfit, the Barbara Moore Singers, were regulars on TOTP, singing with Jimi Hendrix when he performed "Hey Joe" live in Lime Grove Studios. An important detail for Moore was the shepherd’s pie she bought Hendrix when she found him alone, looking emaciated, near the BBC canteen. By 1970, she was working as a session singer for De Wolfe and, by 1972, was composing her own tracks for De Wolfe and working within their tight creative strictures. Each short track had to evoke an obvious mood and theme, with no significant key or tempo changes. Her response, this very album, managed to stay between the lines while cohering as an overarching artistic masterpiece. The audio for Vocal Shades And Tones has been carefully remastered by Be With regular Simon Francis, ensuring this release sounds better than ever. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the records have been pressed to the highest possible standard at Record Industry in Holland. The original, iconic sleeve has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their debut album 'Small Medium Large' began as a collection of long form improvisations recorded during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park, Los Angeles venue ETA. Unfortunately, this major development site for the burgeoning new West Coast jazz & improvised music sound closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023. The venue, perhaps best known outside of LA for Jeff Parker's 2022 album 'Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy', was the perfect location for the start of SML, especially given that both bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are part of Parker's quartet that held down a regular gig at ETA since the venue's early days (and hence thoroughly documented, heard on Parker's album). 'Small Medium Large' was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML across their various home studios. While editing, chopping, and rearranging stereo mixed improvisations is hardly a new idea (for a modern and relevant example we can look to Makaya McCraven's output on IARC) these results are a stunning expansion of the Teo Macero / Miles Davis editing concept explored on classics like 'In a Silent Way', 'On The Corner', and 'Get Up With It'. Stylistically though, these recordings have more in common with the proto-trance repetitions of Harmonia, and with Holgar Czukay's re-assembly technique used in his work with Can. Throw in a supremely intuitive utilization of polyrhythmic floating patterns (a la Susumu Yokota), and the result is a truly innovative take on time-clocked electronic rhythms augmented with live instrumentation that never loses that elusive human sway. 'Small Medium Large' is a sublime assemblage of circulatory grooves and textural anomalies, at different moments recalling the synth-laced improvisations of Herbie Hancock's Sextant, the jagged dance punk of Essential Logic, the rhythmic revelry of Fela Kuti, the low-end elasticity of Parliament/Funkadelic, or the glitchy dub techno of Pole. Taken in totality, the album captures a euphoric creative synchronicity between some of today's most exciting musicians.

“It’s is an extraordinary noise, an acidic tone dialled up in all directions, not just distortion but an intense vibration with huge amounts of treble to emit a stinging sound that could loosen your dentistry.” MOJO ★★★★ “There is a lot of colour crammed into this compilation…an escalating dense cascade, a display of virtuosity” The Quietus (Compilation of the Week) "Azerbaijan’s Rəhman Məmmədli dazzles, deserving of recognition for his imaginative reconfigurations of longstanding forms and palpably impassioned playing" Pop Matters In the heartlands of Azerbaijan, where the melodies of the Caspian Sea meet the rhythms of the Caucasus Mountains, the electric guitar has become more than an instrument—it's a symbol of cultural fusion and artistic expression. Building upon the success of their first compilation, "Azerbaijani Gitara," which showcased the pioneering work of Rustem Quliyev, Bongo Joe Records are thrilled to present the highly anticipated second volume, featuring the legendary guitarist Rəhman Məmmədli. The roots of Azerbaijani gitara culture run deep, stemming from a rich tradition of musical experimentation and innovation. From the early 20th Century oil boom to the socialist era of Soviet rule, Azerbaijani musicians and composers embraced the electric guitar as a vehicle for blending indigenous traditions with global influences. The introduction of electric guitars from the Czechoslavakian factory 'Jolana' sparked a musical revolution in the Caucasus, with young musicians like Rəmiş leading the charge. Draw

“It’s is an extraordinary noise, an acidic tone dialled up in all directions, not just distortion but an intense vibration with huge amounts of treble to emit a stinging sound that could loosen your dentistry.” MOJO ★★★★ “There is a lot of colour crammed into this compilation…an escalating dense cascade, a display of virtuosity” The Quietus (Compilation of the Week) "Azerbaijan’s Rəhman Məmmədli dazzles, deserving of recognition for his imaginative reconfigurations of longstanding forms and palpably impassioned playing" Pop Matters In the heartlands of Azerbaijan, where the melodies of the Caspian Sea meet the rhythms of the Caucasus Mountains, the electric guitar has become more than an instrument—it's a symbol of cultural fusion and artistic expression. Building upon the success of their first compilation, "Azerbaijani Gitara," which showcased the pioneering work of Rustem Quliyev, Bongo Joe Records are thrilled to present the highly anticipated second volume, featuring the legendary guitarist Rəhman Məmmədli. The roots of Azerbaijani gitara culture run deep, stemming from a rich tradition of musical experimentation and innovation. From the early 20th Century oil boom to the socialist era of Soviet rule, Azerbaijani musicians and composers embraced the electric guitar as a vehicle for blending indigenous traditions with global influences. The introduction of electric guitars from the Czechoslavakian factory 'Jolana' sparked a musical revolution in the Caucasus, with young musicians like Rəmiş leading the charge. Draw

Church Andrews and Matt Davies weave intricate patterns from Fibonacci sequences on new mini-album, Yucca. Producer and composer Church Andrews (aka Kirk Barley) and drummer Matt Davies return to explore the outer limits of rhythm on a six-track suite that is at once angular and fluid, natural and systematic. Drawn to the restrictions of working solely with one synth and live drums, the pair found creativity in limitation, developing a compositional dialogue between the sonic timbres of Kirk’s productions and Matt’s percussive practice. Evoking the primitive yet complex form of the plant from which it takes its name, Yucca features tracks that are built around rhythmic ratios of the Fibonacci sequence. Mirroring spiral patterns exhibited in nature, each track evolves like a cellular structure of its own, from the livewire syntax of ‘Chirp’ and the deconstructed ebb and flow of ‘Ferns’, to the mini-album’s title track, where crisp grooves flit between modulated electronics like fireflies. “I’ve always been inspired by music that is complex without sounding complex,” Matt explains. He maintains a sense of bounce amid the intricate phrasing and cites drummers Roy Haynes and his grandson Marcus Gilmore as inspirations, alongside sabar drummers from Senegal and Mridangam drumming of South India. With a shared background in hip-hop and the swung beats of J Dilla and Flying Lotus, Kirk Barley and Matt Davies were also inspired by the minimalism of Terry Riley and the sparse palette of dub techno. Written and recorded in Lewisham in the spring and summer of 2023, Yucca follows the release of Axis in 2022, with the duo having also performed at festivals such as Rewire and Waking Life, and recorded live sessions for FACT magazine and Worldwide FM. The third release on Yorkshire-based Odda Recordings, following Kirk Barley’s Marionette and Flaer’s Preludes, Yucca confirms the label’s reputation for championing music on the unstable ground between the organic and the synthetic.

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.

Richard Wolfhouse comes through on Trule with his debut release, Percussion Edits Vol. 1. Three tracks indebted to 1970s African percussion records and 2000s minimal techno. Long, winding percussion workouts woven with modular synthesis and drum machines primed for dancefloors.

Originally released in 1982, Kakashi is another high water mark in the 80s Japanese underground. This album, which has gathered cult status in recent years, is the project of musical visionary Yasuaki Shimizu, and considered to be a highlight of his solo career. Shimizu was the bandleader of Mariah, who also saw their album Utakata No Hibi reissued by Palto Flats in 2015. Kakashi offers a similar blend of saxophone experimentations, jazz fusion and ambient dub excursions.

The earliest musical memories of young Prince Istari are of his mother beautifying the home with her piano playing. She would repeatedly play the tranquil pieces of Erik Satie. Skipping school and sitting in the sun, young Prince would listen to these catchy, calm compositions. In the first week of 2024, the older Prince Istari rediscovered himself and found a box containing his mother's old sheet music. He transferred them to his computer and began spinning dub versions from them. It became a tapestry. As his mother used to say: "To weave a net, one must first spin." The form of the pieces dictated the direction each would take. The heavy dub transforms here into a light weightiness until it dissolves into a pure piano piece accompanied by a synthesizer. However, the last piece is much older, from the time when Prince was still known as Istari Lasterfahrer. The ending includes a distorted recording of Huberta, Prince's mother, playing a Gnossienne by Satie. At the end, she turns the sheet music, and the record can be turned back to the beginning. In the essence of its material, this record rejects the Loudness War. The originality of the compositions guided the dub within their tracks, thereby imparting to each a form descriptive of its essence. record release of 200 copies, printed sleave, numbered.

"Best New Reissue" - Pitchfork (May 6, 2023) Legendary debut album by Junko Tange, originally issued by Osaka’s Vanity Records in 1979. Dadaesque recitations and sparse guitar, piano and electronic meanderings combine for a beguiling, hypnotic dreamworld. Officially licensed from the custodians of Yuzuru Agi's Vanity Records archives, this edition has been fully remastered from new transfers of the original analog tapes by Stephan Mathieu.

The strength of the Akira soundtrack lies in its unique blend of traditional Japanese instruments and futuristic electronic sounds. Shoji Yamashiro weaves together an eclectic mix of influences, creating a sonic landscape that mirrors the dystopian and cyberpunk themes of the movie. The use of traditional chants, taiko drums, and Shakuhachi flutes alongside electronic synthesizers and orchestral elements generates a hauntingly mesmerizing atmosphere that perfectly complements the visuals on screen. The composer also drew from the chants of Noh, traditional Japanese theater. Combined with polyrhythmic drum machine beats and synths tuned to gamelan microtonal scales, these styles give a sense of ritualistic tension to the dystopian world of Akira.

An album that sounds like The Menahan Street Band playing in a tropical jungle, at dawn, right at the point when the first rays of the sun penetrate the dark depths of the forest. During the 2022 summer of natural disasters, under an unprecedented heatwave, and haunted by news reports of ancient relics, sunken ships, and hunger stones resurfacing as rivers dried-up all-over Europe, Alex Figueira started to hear uncanny metallic vibrations and eerie melodies of untraceable origins, day and night. He recalls nightmares of winged creatures inside timeless structures of Escherian architectures playing cosmic instruments amidst tropical storms and acid rains. As the visions came more often, his wife Hester reported that he babbled during his sleep about South American demon Yurupari. Soon, Alex found himself in a sleepless state and decided to cleanse the studio, with hallowed rites and the intense burning of Palo Santo. After almost burning the studio down, he turned to his neighbourhood’s most experienced psychic, seeking answers. He was told there were “cosmic entities” trying to manifest a message “too complex for us to understand in this dimension” and the only way he could find peace was to deliver those messages in a decipherable form. It was then he decided to transmute his hallucinations into music, an all-or-nothing cathartic solution. Alex entered a feverish dream, fuelled by the kaleidoscopic motion of the cosmos, ancient meteor showers, and visions of forgotten interstellar South American gods. He remembers very little of the work, but the outcome is this record. Entirely composed, recorded, produced, and mixed in a frenetic nine-day studio stint. How the experts describe it: ”Just when outernational vinyl vampires thought they had it all sewn up, the metronomic makeshift magician known as Alex Figueira unravels the entire fabric of your record collection to expose a gaping hole where PUNKUMBIA and Transplant-Tropicalia should be. Reducing an expansive palette of influences to a recipe that tastes wildly exotic but comfortably over-familiar, Alex’s roles as both scavenger and chef, bookend a whole ensemble of other highly adept musical personalities in between. Discover this record NOW, or wait until all your friends (or enemies) recommend it to you later.”

Almost a decade on from his last full length for the label, the religiously themed Teopatia, Marco Papiro returns to Planam with Con un occhio aperto, his most challenging and ambitious work to date. Known as one of the most dedicated contemporary investigators of the potential of analogue synthesizers, the musicality and personal touch of Papiro’s work stand apart from a field dominated by gear fetishism and nostalgia. In recent years, one of the unique ingredients of Papiro’s music has been his use of synthesised human voices, often lending his productions a dimension of uncanniness. Here, he pushes this aspect of his work much further, presenting a suite of four pieces where most listeners would be hard pressed to trace the sounds they hear back to electronic sources. The opening title piece, ‘Con un occhio aperto [With one eye open]’, begins with metallic textures, similar to bowed cymbals or gongs, which are soon joined by waves of percussive sound, both drum-like and metallic. Irregularly rising to the surface and receding into the background, at times reminiscent of natural rhythms of rain, wind, or sea, these percussive textures are accompanied by haunting voice-like tones, at once strikingly realistic and disorienting in their non-human patterns of articulation and attack. Like the voices, the percussive sounds can at times be almost indistinguishable from real cowbells, gongs, or hand drums, precisely mimicking their attack, decay, resonance, and spatial diffusion. At the same time, however, they possess an unsettling, unreal quality, producing in the listener a feeling of disorientation that Papiro links to dreams. Perhaps the closest parallel to these overlapping waves of rattling, pulsating percussive sounds and eerie extended tones is Jon Gibson’s classic Visitations, where the line between instrumental, electronic, and natural sound is blurred in a mesmerising drift. Here, the ambiguity is heightened even further through the electronic origins of the seemingly acoustic sounds. On ‘La caverna [The cavern]’ and ‘Superfici [Surfaces]’, Papiro continues the exploration of synthetic textures, but in a more monolithic direction. On 'La Caverna', we are treated to shimmering, glassy overtones, patiently sounded over a mysterious burble of clicks and pops. On ‘Superfici’, the complex resonance of synthetic bells conjures an atmosphere of ritual or meditation. In both pieces, the slow movement and sustained focus on unstable harmonic phenomenon comes across almost as a kind of otherworldly take on Romanian Spectralism, cleansing the ears for the luscious closing epic, ‘Vita segreta dei peli [The secret life of hairs]’. Rich, piano-like chiming tones form the foundation of the piece, slowly repeating melodic patterns until they are gradually transformed in the closing moments into something closer to bowed strings. Threaded through this hypnotic arrangement, we hear, for the first time on the record, recognisable synthesizer figures, alongside long tones performed on alto flute and bass clarinet by Christoph Bösch and Toshiko Sakakibara (members of Basel’s Ensemble Phoenix). While entirely in keeping with the restrained, uncanny sound world of the remainder of the LP, this closing piece has a gently psychedelic quality, something like a slowed-down, stretched-out take on Battiato’s Sulle corde di Aries. Like Teopatia, Con un occhio aperto arrives in a sleeve bearing beautiful and comical self-portrait photographs of his father. While on the earlier release, he styles himself as a saint, here he appears as a fur-clad hunter: a fitting image for this singular, exploratory music, which, like the photographs, is at once playful and primal.

The DDS 12” series follows that blink-n-miss Shinichi Atobe opener with this full curveball from Demdike Stare, finding the UK x US brukbeat axis twisting wildstyle thru the deadly first shots of a Demdike x Dolo Percussion hookup that’s been years in the making, set to dominate dancefloors for the foreseeable. Since 2019 Demdike Stare had been playing edits of Dolo Percussion’s bare-boned breaks in their DJ sets, eventually sharing them with Dolo’s Andrew Field-Pickering (Beautiful Swimmers, boss of Future Times) and fomenting a creative fusion that hits at the square root of their shared tastes for unruly, deadly rhythms. In a transatlantic back ’n forth - or what Kodwo Eshun termed a double refraction - they juggle the rudest aspects of UK hardcore, as derived from electro, breaks and garage-house - that would feed into Dolo’s pool of sound, and return to the UK via the likes of breakbeat wizard Karizma, who was a key touchstone for the whole late ‘90s broken beat movement key to Demdike’s tastes. Still following the thread? It’s not that tricky - both US and UK operators favour breakbeat music more than anywhere else, and this devilish hook-up is the epitome of a conversation ongoing for generations now. At each parry, the three cuts here are exemplary of the way DJs, producers and dancers on both sides of the pond have pushed each other to new heights in a feedback loop designed to make the dance throw the maddest shapes. ‘DOLO DS 1’ racks up a full clip of flintiest breakbeat hardcore, pivoting gasping samples inna dervish of ruffneck syncopation, ruggedly distinguished from the pitching, gritty drum machine chicanery of ‘DS DOLO EDIT 1’, and their super crafty sidestep into the offbeats, hingeing around ghost snares and practically spectral levels of percussive suss in ’DOLO DS 2’ which basically sounds like a prime Autechre tumbling thru dub. It’s fair to hear recent Demdike mixtapes such as ‘Physics’ as the testing ground for this steez, and if you love that one as much as we do, you’ll be snatching this one f a s t.

Finally, Regis lets his rhythmic noise opus out into the world, a bruising and hauntingly absorbing new album - his first since 2001 - recorded in Berlin with Einstürzende Neubauten’s engineer/producer Boris Wilsdorf and an absolute must if you want a dose of highest grade industrial rhythmic noise or into anything from British Murder Boys to Test Department, Jeff Mills and Cabaret Voltaire. On a masterful twenty-year followup to ‘Penetration’, Karl O’Connor yields a definitive solo LP that distills his passions for sonic brutalism and bastardised Chicago tracks with syncopated UK swagger and reverberating warehouse ballistics. Its lip-bitingly gripping effect is testament to a resounding reputation as one of Industrial music’s most influential producers, and sees the artist bring his own influences - from Test Department to Jeff Mills - into line with his potent palette of narcotised tones. Recorded in Berlin with Einstürzende Neubauten’s producer/engineer Boris Wilsdorf, the album’s supple, spartan, and rhythmic gymnastics notably benefit from acres of icy room to roll around and lash out. Snagged around muscular bassline revs, and caressed with keys and vocals by post- punk catalyst Annie Hogan (whose recent turn for Downwards was a total revelation), the 9 tracks portray Regis at his leanest and most mesmerising, which is all the more impressive coming from an artist who’s deliberately held his line through Industrial mutations for more than 30 years. Between the razor-sharp electro of ‘Everything is Ahead of Us’, and the pure voodoo of ‘Calling Down A Curse’, he sharply carves a uniquely UK and shark-eyed style that lets on to influence from tech-step D&B and dark garage rolige as much as Test Department’s seminal ‘Beating The Retreat’ or 23 Skidoo and ‘Crackdown’-era Cabaret Voltaire. Highlights such as the swingeing 11 minutes of swordplay drums and bubbling acid in ‘The Sun Rose Pure’, and the straightjacketed funk of ‘I See Fire’ epitomise the rudeness at play, and together with the viscerally personalised sound design virtues of ‘Another Kind of Love’, the immaculate noirish vignette ‘Alone of All Her Sex’, and the lush tristesse evoked by ‘Eros in Tangiers’, this album effectively defines Regis as peerless in his field, and is essential to fans of the artist’s solo classics and with British Murder Boys, Sandwell District, Ugandan Speed Trials and CUB. KILLER!!!

Finally compiled on CD, Mark Fell & Will Guthrie’s Infoldings / Diffractions is an inspirational, almost 80 minute long study in four parts, informed by Gamelan and South Indian Carnatic musics. Essential listening if you’re into Autechre, Michael Ranta, The Necks, Milford Graves. Infoldings / Diffractions combines synthesis and acoustic percussion in unpredictable, pointillist arrangements where Guthrie plays against patterns derived from Max MSP patches by Fell. The album’s four longform expositions are in this sense different to the man-machine concept of Fell’s acclaimed ‘Intra’ album, where he triggered performances by Portugal’s Drumming Grupo De Percussão to play a metallophone designed by Iannis Xenakis. Here, the pair find common and sometimes contrasting purpose in a probing of rhythmic signatures, with groundbreaking results. Recorded at HFG, Karlsruhe (where Fell is guest professor), and finished later in respective isolation, the pieces were edited from iterations of call-and-response between Fell’s rhythmic patterns and Guthrie’s overdubs. They effectively propose beguiling solutions to electronic music’s problems with grid-lock, using generative processing to make physical actions seem unfeasibly effortless, while melting the computer’s clock to a real-time, free-hand syncopation. Taking the influence of gamelan and fusing it with the fractal computer music that Fell has obsessively picked-at over the last four decades, the duo zoom into a sound that’s completely captivating; mutating into polyrhythmic outer-realms and eerie universes of microtonality that are hard to fathom in a single sitting. There are trace echoes of free jazz hanging from the rafters, the post-everything chatter of Humcrush and Food drummer Thomas Strønen’s mind-expanding solo material or even Autechre at their most confounding. The genius here is that just as you convince yourself that the music could only possibly have been generated by a computer, Guthrie’s unmistakably human flex edges into focus - playing with perception and expectation in the most wild, liquid way imaginable.

Laxmichand "Babla" Shah began his career and a drummer and percussionist on Bollywood soundtracks composed by his older brothers Kalyanji V. Shah and Anandji V. Shah, and then made history through Babla's Disco Sensation, the adventurous disco and synth-pop recasting of popular film hits released by Polydor in the late 1970s. This rare beast kicked off the "Disco Dandia" craze and is a total killer from start to finish, the sitar funk grooves and eastern melodies clashing with all kinds of Moog madness. It's a crate-diggers special that was sampled by Metro Area and others -- grab your copy now and play loud for best effect!

SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their debut album 'Small Medium Large' began as a collection of long form improvisations recorded during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park, Los Angeles venue ETA. Unfortunately, this major development site for the burgeoning new West Coast jazz & improvised music sound closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023. The venue, perhaps best known outside of LA for Jeff Parker's 2022 album 'Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy', was the perfect location for the start of SML, especially given that both bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are part of Parker's quartet that held down a regular gig at ETA since the venue's early days (and hence thoroughly documented, heard on Parker's album). 'Small Medium Large' was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML across their various home studios. While editing, chopping, and rearranging stereo mixed improvisations is hardly a new idea (for a modern and relevant example we can look to Makaya McCraven's output on IARC) these results are a stunning expansion of the Teo Macero / Miles Davis editing concept explored on classics like 'In a Silent Way', 'On The Corner', and 'Get Up With It'. Stylistically though, these recordings have more in common with the proto-trance repetitions of Harmonia, and with Holgar Czukay's re-assembly technique used in his work with Can. Throw in a supremely intuitive utilization of polyrhythmic floating patterns (a la Susumu Yokota), and the result is a truly innovative take on time-clocked electronic rhythms augmented with live instrumentation that never loses that elusive human sway. 'Small Medium Large' is a sublime assemblage of circulatory grooves and textural anomalies, at different moments recalling the synth-laced improvisations of Herbie Hancock's Sextant, the jagged dance punk of Essential Logic, the rhythmic revelry of Fela Kuti, the low-end elasticity of Parliament/Funkadelic, or the glitchy dub techno of Pole. Taken in totality, the album captures a euphoric creative synchronicity between some of today's most exciting musicians.

This whole text about a compilation of legit chill slippers could be over with one quote of drummer Aaron Sterling. The John Mayer band member and studio guru called Basso (our compiler) the „ECM of chill wave“. As we all know, even if some words may be hollow, good quotes help to tell a story. And that is definitely a great quote and if someone has a good story to tell, it is Basso. Best known for his label Growing Bin and probably even more so for the online record shop of the same name, he is one of those miraculous figures in music or record culture who can be called a true believer. Helplessly addicted to collecting music nonstop (hence Growing Bin) from all corners of the spectrum and with an uncanny knack of finding precious little diamonds, where others only assume slop, his shop features everything from original trance tapes to fake reggae and plain private press folly. Much to the pleasure of his devoted customers and even more so to the nickel nursers who use his website for window shopping and go bargain hunting in the dusty canyons and wide plains of the internet. Unfair, you might think, because knowledge like that comes with a commitment. A commitment that is not only financial in nature, but also involves time, dedication, thrift store and flea market visits and hardships (lacerated cuticles especially). Sitting in Trees for International Feel is a sampling demonstration of this commitment. Devotees of his previous compiling efforts Proper Sunburn (Music For Dreams) and Lucky Are Those Who Hear The Birds Sing (Growing Bin), know what to expect: some of the best songs you have never heard before, some you would probably never hear without this and even some that you did not know you would even like. Even self-proclaimed record diggers might not recognize more than Mystery Voice by smooth jazz new agers Dancing Fantasy. It is a world of merry music that pretty much is boundary- and genre-free and includes sunshine stepper like Beau Michael’s Move Away. Patrick Jahn’s and Erobique’s previously unreleased Moonlight Shuffle (the soundtrack to a lost Schimanski Tatort) and Christian Ch. Kneisel’s impossible-to-find Balearic digi gem Jungle Connection. All contextualized, explained and wonderfully described with meticulous liner notes by the king of record descriptions himself: Basso. But what else would you expect from a DJ turned trip-hop-producer turned artiste turned record sommelier? Magic moments galore that won’t make you move away!