MUSIC

Psychotropic’s seminal 1990 12” Only for the Headstrong is reissued, reconnecting us with the raw energy of the early UK rave era. Emerging at the height of acid house, the track fused house, breakbeat and psych-pop into a euphoric anthem that still captivates today.

The duo of DJ Gavin Mills and cult psych-pop experimentalist Nick Nicely created the record in a single inspired South London studio session, using little more than an Akai S900 sampler, a Fostex 8-track and a Casio CZ-101. Its hypnotic loops, soaring keys and infectious groove captured both the chaos and innocence of the scene, while B-side ‘Out of Your Head’ added a funk-driven, Prince-style twist.

Beloved by DJs, collectors and ravers alike, Only for the Headstrong became an underground hit, topping London’s indie shop charts and cementing Psychotropic’s reputation for marrying psychedelic textures with club-ready beats. This reissue arrives with liner notes by Nicely, offering fresh context for a track that embodies the open-minded DIY spirit of late-80s warehouse culture.

"High Contrast used to work in a record shop in Cardiff called Catapult Records. We lived on the other side of the city, but were always in there buying vinyl. Tough Guys Can’t Dance was everywhere, and If We Ever was the anthem. Ahead of summer this year we put together our own version just for fun, and the reaction was so wild, we ended up playing it in every set. Big thanks to High Contrast for this one. It means a lot to us" - OVERMONO

Aphex Twin’s definitive compilation Classics, gathering his essential early 90s tracks, returns on vinyl. Drawing from his formative EPs, the album vividly conveys the raw energy where hardcore acid techno collides with experimental sensibilities, making it the perfect entry point into his world. Relentless, floor-shaking beats are laced with moments of distortion, humor, and strange emotional undercurrents. More than just functional club tools, these tracks contain the seeds of his later ambient works and IDM explorations. A document of rave’s brute intensity crossed with the solitude of deep listening, Classics stands as nothing less than the primordial landscape of Aphex Twin.

New material from the cult label Tone Dropout. Featuring four of the label's highly respected box jammers. Opening up proceedings we have a perfectly poised slice of red lit warehouse acid, simmering away nicely as the unlicensed premises fills up with a collective energy of rebellion.

Capturing this newly found spirit is Dawl and "Night Of The Living Bass Drum", the anthem-not-anthem for modern warehouse dwellers. The spirit of hardcore runs deep in this one!

Onto side B and He-Men return with a fiery slice of bass, breaks and rumble with their track, "Battle Cat". Finally Ascot hits the turbo injection for a 4/4 propelled but equally destructive hybrid of hardcore, bleep and acid house - ended the ep with a no fucks given, up all nite ethos that's perfectly in tune with now.

Super limited copies - only 100 pressed! Cop now or you'll crying into your cornflakes come Tuesday. Hardcore will never die!

1993 debut album by the trio of Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns. Unavailable on vinyl and CD since original release. Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Colton, contains “Smokebelch II (Beatless Mix)” for the first time on the 2LP edition.

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On his latest full-length, Low End Activist swerves towards weightless grime and suspended hardcore miniatures to tell a very personal story. The UK-rooted producer continues his habit of zeroing in on a distinct approach for each release, leaving a logical breadcrumb trail of soundsystem science in his wake as he channels decades of bass absorption into 14 atmospheric cuts that prize patience and precision over obvious club functionality. Municipal Dreams plays out as a semi-autobiographical tour through the Blackbird Leys estate that the Activist grew up on. It’s a lived reflection on inequality and the ripple effect it has in working class communities, using the sonic palette to set the mood and scattering pointed samples throughout to spell out the story. In sampling the exhaust of a stolen Subaru Impreza, ‘TWOC’ looks back to the recreational car theft which was standard entertainment for the kids in his community. There’s an underlying idea that this ‘council estate sport’ wouldn’t have been so prevalent if there were public services and opportunities presented to the scores of disaffected youth looking for somewhere to direct their energy and frustration. In ‘Just A Number (Institutionalised)’ LEA alludes to the shattered juvenile detention system, growing up seeing friends and family members locked up at ease with little to no support on being released back into society, just meant that the same cycles of behaviour would play out over and over.

‘Violence’ samples from a short film shot by the drama division of the Blackbird Leys Youth Club to evoke the physical threat which formed a background hum to life on the estate. The industrial mechanics of the local car factory, which served an integral role as a workplace for many in the community, gets sampled in ‘They Only Come Out At Night’ while the ‘Everyone I look up to are either junkies or criminals’ sample in ‘Broke’ looks to a lack of positive role models. Municipal Dreams isn’t a one-note indictment of life on the estate, ‘Innocence’ captures the simplicity of a child at birth before their environment has time to shape them. The Hope interludes cut through the grim honesty of the longer tracks while a subtle thread of wry humour finds its way into some of the talking heads cutting through the signature LEA murk. But honesty is the operative word here, and the message feels all the more meaningful at a time when the UK’s social divisions are laid bare in the wake of a devastating stretch of austerity. Returning to Blackbird Leys to shoot images for the photo-zine and album cover, the Activist found the local community centre being demolished. The local pub stands derelict, its faded Welcome sign a grimly ironic portent of the options facing children of the estate in the wider world. Funnelling his memories, hopes and fears into a singular twist on the bass weight tradition, LEA captures evocative scenes that land somewhere between kitchen sink realism and rave futurism.

OK this is a full madness; visually impaired pensioners Anne Goss (75), Kathleen Allott (74) and Mick Gladwin (65) aka Rotherham Sight & Sound play the music of persistent prism disruptor Rian Treanor with a knockout set of mutant dancehall and mercurial electro-styled zingers, a huge tip if you’re into Autechre, SND, Kakuhan, Iueke, Shubharun Sengupta. Rian Treanor keeps knocking new doors of possibility with his new label Electronic Music Club and its initial focus on Rotherham Sight & Sound, participants of a community-based initiative in their shared post-industrial home town Rotherham. Utilising software synths designed by Rian and his dad Mark Fell, the trio twist out vortices of shearing, asymmetric anarchitecture, rudely resembling the sort of hyper-contemporary styles alluded to in Rian’s solo works, but inflected with cranky timing and an intuitive freedom that bears extraordinary results, especially when considering the fact the trio had no prior musical ability, and only encountered electronic music a few years ago. After a couple of years of practice and performance, ‘Action Potential’ now firms up their quicksilver sound for club and home buzzes with seven actions that warp and morph from the needling jolts and hoof of ‘Pass The Go’, to shuddering detonations in ‘Dial’, each with a properly electrifying force carrying a genuine futureshock. Working within Rian’s systems-based framework, Anne, Kathleen, and Mick deploy a tactile feel for the machines, finely honed over the course of many sessions at the Rotherham Sight & Sound facility, that uses their visual impairments to synaesthetic advantage. Between the wickedly metallic ragga swivel of ‘Hold’, the diffractive chain reactions of ‘When It Ends’, and more tempered, sloshing sensuality of ‘30 Seconds’, the trio follow their noses down wormholes that manifest an ideal of accessibility and expressionism within electronic music contexts that Rian and Mark have long worked towards, with Anne, Kathleen and Mick’s relative lack of cultural conditioning in this paradigm prompting them to act on pure instinct. Seriously, this has to be one of the most unexpectedly brilliant and boundary shattering sides of the year, not to be missed by any self-respecting follower of the future or hyper present.

Madteo is one of the great eccentric visionaries of Electronic Music and his new album Misto Atmosferico E Ad Azione Diretta on Unsure once more happens to be a mind-bending piece of art. Misto Atmosferico E Ad Azione Diretta shifts between focused gritty grooves and the long freeform associative adventures that you haven’t heard before, never static, sometimes overwhelming, always on edge.
The opener Cans People is an archaic rave monster, To Know Those Who is non-linear dub techno, Nocturnal Palates expands the Filter House universe and Rave Nite Itz All Right hits you hard and strange (yet subtle, in a way). The last two tracks then let loose; Madteo manipulates time, space and sounds to create the psychedelic secrets of Luglio Ottantotto. And Emo G (Sticky Wicket) explores the outskirts not only of House or Techno or whatever but music in general, a 15-min-trip through the low frequencies, the rumble, the dark hearts and the enchantment. Breathtaking. Bring The Voodoo Down.

In the fall of 2022, celebrated UK chill-out institution Seahawks landed in Los Angeles for the first time in their 15-year history, with plans to record a sweeping new age downtempo “exploration of visionary California.” Instead, they immediately fell ill with flu (Fowler collapsed next to a taco truck; 911 was called), and were bedridden for the better part of a week. Upon recovering, they resituated at the synthesizer sanctuary of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Kranky, Leech), channeling their post-sickness psychedelia into one of the band’s lushest and most elevated creations to date: Time Enough For Love. Inspired by the “groove and mood” of Harry Nilsson demos, as well as its wider 70’s wavelength – Rhodes, Wurlitzer, wood paneling – Seahawks transposed their classic post-rave ambient exotica onto a warm and woozy Golden State palette. Buoyed by the liquid touch of English maestro Kenny Dickenson on keys, the results rank high among the duo’s smoothest and most multi-sensory voyages. “Sail Across The Moon” delivers on its title, a simmering, phaser-smeared cruise through the beauty of the night. “Messengers” echoes the cosmic lounge of Air’s Moon Safari, shuffling, weightless, and ethereal, while “Falling Deep” reaches for the stars, pure cascading bliss, the ecstatic moment writ large. The album skews steadily more astral as it progresses, drifting towards jazzy, galactic outer reaches. “Like A Grain Of Sand” opens with a spoken sample by the celebrated late American poet Rachel Sherwood (“The children watch, breathless / with the birds / They feel an emanation / from this shuddering place”), before taking flight on a Balearic trip through island house, PM Dawn gold dust, upright bass meditation, and kaleidoscopic light. A remix of the title track by Chicago trio Purelink closes the record in a suitably subdued and skittery state of mind. Time Enough For Love radiates color, complexity, and positivity, infused by the “life enhancing” nature of the band's time in Los Angeles – sunsets, sound systems, and sativa, framed by coastlines and cloudbanks, the city’s mystic sprawl glittering beneath purple dusk.

On Hardcore, James Mapley-Brittle (GRRL) and Nick Sanborn (Made of Oak), meld their love of late-night club music to make mind-bending high-energy dance music. GRRL is one of the brightest emerging stars in the underground arts space and a regular collaborator with PC Music, NTS, and more; Sanborn is better known as one half of the Grammy-nominated electronic pop duo Sylvan Esso. First sparked during DJ sets in North Carolina basements, the duo’s unique creative chemistry has grown exponentially since the 2022 release of their debut EP, Inertia. GRRL x Made of Oak’s glitched-out sounds have been featured on Adult Swim, Fortnite, and with their own sample pack on Splice. Finding new fans in the likes of Björk, Arca, AG Cook, Porter Robinson, Barker and DJs across the world, GRRL x Made of Oak is an exhilarating experience that will shake the speakers and get any after-hours dance floor moving.

This album, which includes the two latest tracks under the name Basic Rhythm, which has maintained a strong dedication to UK Bass, is a masterpiece in which the aesthetics of an underground pirate radio DJ OG are incorporated into an atmospheric and ravy Jungle/DnB sound. In recent years, he has continued to develop a fairly consistent musical style based on influences from Jungle, DnB, Grime, Rave, etc., as well as industrial sound design, and those who like him will be hooked.

Hold tight for a double-sized drop of ruff n’ tuff jungle variations as Dead Man’s Chest and King Kutlass throw their weight around with six seismic slammers built for the shockout section. We previously welcomed Bristol’s Western Lore doyen Alex Eveson to Sneaker Social Club alongside Posse back in 2019, and now he returns with King Kutlass in tow for a 2 x 12” of heavy duty, darkside rollers. The Western Lore remit has always been to push at the limits of the jungle template, embracing distinctive twists without losing the fundamentals of the sound, and that comes through loud and clear on this searing workout. From the compression chamber, stepped breaks of ‘Ride The Storm’ to lurid rave game-ender ‘We Control’, this is not club music for the feint hearted. There’s even space for nightmarish 4/4 thrust n’ stabs on ‘Heart Of The Sun’, pointing to the liminal zone where breakbeat hardcore, techno and rave all crossed paths en route to more fully formed stylistic conventions. That’s the vibe which runs throughout this EP, where the rules feel a long way off and the madcap sample layering is heavily tipped towards psychological annihilation under the stuttering glare of the strobe light.

This tape contains a recording of a live of NPLGNN recorded atHuman Razzmatazz (Barcelona) on March 2023.Everything you hear it comes from two Korg Electribe EMX1 +Pioneer DJM900 NXS + Traktor. To describe the sound it makes sense to bring back what was the press release of “Sigma/Tau” the first record of NPLGNN released in 2014 on Where To Now? (RIP): “NPLGNN creates a less pampered style of body music, stripping away the usual signifiers such as melodies and bass lines to create something more utilitarian, brutal and pure. This is the pre-babel language of dance music - it's cadences are rhythmic and its meaning is comprehensible to all on an innate, primal level.” Ten years later this tape makes those words still remarkable to describe the sound of the Neapolitan head.Among a bunch of unreleased sounds you can go through all the NPLGNN recent records for LavaLava, Youth, Hundebiss and it own lathe cuts series dubbed here and there with vocal cuts intersections. Coming off like the rude son of early ‘00s breakcore heroes, quoting the Manchester Boomy heads, NPLGNN delivers a 45 mins mutant soundsystem recording. It's acid dancehall punk, amorphed ragga riddimz, or whatever you want to call it. 100% dancefloor melting. Ask Aphex Twin for a couple of IDs ; Soundsystem mutant NPLGNN shells blistering and bone rattling yardcore styles in his recording made at Barcelona’s Human Razzmatazz in 2023 A decade since they emerged via Where to Now? and the NZO-related OKNO label, with subsequent turns for everyone for Reel Torque to Youth and their rhythms rinsed by likes of AFX, plus killer programming of the MBE mix series and Forever Now with Dave saved; NPLGNN has surely held his ground in ruggedest mutant dancehall terrain. ‘Live At Human Razzmatazz’ catches them in full flow rattling thru stacks of custom soundsystem dubplates that roughly resemble the millennium era surge of scuzzy breakcore by Ambush don DJ Scud or DJ /rupture as much as his contemporary, Ossia, or even Rat Heart’s rudest; harnessing coarse machine rhythms of spark-sputter hi-hats and nervy snares with depth charge subs and ragga chat, crudely dubbed into the red and maximized for steppers pressure and battling stacks.

Highly anticipated would be an understatement; since their inception Overmono have purposefully cultivated a fanbase that heralds them as one of the UK’s most original contemporary live electronic acts. A run of ground-breaking club EPs between 2020 and 2022 built momentum and culminated in their breakthrough club single, ‘So U Kno’, which encapsulated the hearts of clubbers and went on to become a bonafide phenomenon as dancefloors re-opened; featuring in end of year lists published by Resident Advisor, Pitchfork, DJ Mag and Mixmag.

Since then, Overmono have been named ‘Best Live Act’ at the prestigious DJ Mag Best of British Awards, taken their custom audio-visual live show to the most credible festivals across the globe, including Glastonbury, Movement Festival, Dekmantel, and produced innovative releases including their instalment of their ‘Fabric Presents’ DJ mix series and collaborations with Joy Orbison. Now, Overmono return to present their most ambitious release to date. Across the twelve-track project, Overmono journey through a powerful distillation of their musical career so far; incorporating “So U Kno” alongside new music that propels them beyond the dancefloor. “Good Lies” remoulds and interweaves captivating vocal cuts into a series of multi-genre electronic sounds that flits effortlessly between euphoria and melancholy in the same 4-bar loop.

One year after the release of Overmono's debut album “Good Lies,” which reached #11 on the UK charts and is widely regarded as one of the best electronic records released in recent years (“the history of UK rave is distilled to perfection” - The Guardian), the critically acclaimed remix of The Streets' “Turn The Page” is now available as a single on XL Recordings. One year on from the release of Overmono's critically acclaimed debut album Good Lies (“a perfect distillation of UK rave history” - The Guardian), The Streets' remix of “Turn The Page” has been released as a long-awaited single on XL Recordings.

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’.

On his crazy solo debut album, EVOL’s Roc hails Eurodance x happy hardcore x acid trance as mutant folk music with a 2 hour collection of live recordings, oddities and installation works directly inspired by the contemporary Catalan dance sound of Mákina - a massive tip if yr into Pastis & Buenri, Nana Makina, The New Monkey, Acid in the Style of Peter Beardsley… Marking 25 years since EVOL’s first record, ‘Principio’ (1999) for Mego, the prolific project’s main man, Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, deploys a distinctly personalised conception of Mákina from his Barcelona IP. After 10 years of adding to its special folder, Roc yields 28 psychoactive cuts marinaded in synthetic bath salts and sweat to wickedly skew the sound’s conventions - virulent 303 arpeggios, see-sawing melodies, and in-your-face beats - with the sort of playfully singular bloody-mindedness that has come to define his EVOL works with Stephen Sharp and others. However, the sound here is distinguished by Roc’s personalised inflections and warped nuance that locates unique vitality in the viscera of Europe’s most maligned, but equally beloved, hard dance style. Although technically rooted in the ‘90s megaclubs of Valencia, Mákina (machine) music also became native to its Catalan neighbours, including Roc, based further up the Spanish coast. And with thanks to a bunch of entrepreneurial Mackems who were bitten by the Makina buzz in the late ‘90s, it more unusually sparked a phenomenon in North East England and Scotland, where it alloyed with happy hardcore and rhythmelodic auction-style MCs to form a whole new offshoot in its own right, heard everywhere from the estates to notorious/legendary clubs such as The Blue Monkey/The New Monkey by Charvers trotting their Rockports off in a sword-dance style hyperfolk step. Roc’s ‘Makina Trax 2013-2023’ follows with a celebration of the sound’s role as regional rave soundtrack and folk signifier, paying no concession to “taste” or normality as he isolates, gurns and exaggerates Mákina’s features to a ludicrous yet immediately functional effect as divisive and energetic as marmite-flavoured wizz. Pinging from gibber-jawed 303 graffiti to durational 14’+ screwball pounders, and even a killer old skool 808 electro variant (‘Makina Trax 22’), Roc really gets under the hood of this sound with results unmistakably comparable to the style and pattern fascinations of his EVOL gear, yet surely tweaked out with a notably more live-wire, hands-on, accentuation. We hear it in the 50 seconds of anthemic fanfare to ‘Makina Trax 16’, the pitching, throaty yowl of ‘Makina Trax 03’, and in the scuttling briskness of ‘Makina Trax 04’, with particular standouts in the screwed, almost bloozy Makina sleaze of ‘Makina Trax 06’, the extreme flange of ‘Makina Trax 19’, and a 180bpm goblin bop ‘Makina Trax 28’. Basically some of the most potent tackle by one of the leading rave experimenters of his generation, whose uncompromising, brilliant work links everyone from the dearly departed Peter Rehberg to Florian Hecker, Mark Fell, to Lorenzo Senni. Aweee the radgies, pasty droppers and pooter hooligans; it’s your time.

In 2018, Rian Treanor left his home in Rotherham, UK, and headed to Kampala for a residency at Nyege Nyege's villa studio. The mind-expanding experience inspired his critically acclaimed 2020 full-length "File Under UK Metaplasm", but that wasn't the end of the story. Treanor also spent time working alongside Acholi fiddle player Ocen James, developing an improvisation-heavy collaboration that would push both musicians' idiosyncrasies into completely new places. Treanor wanted this collaboration to be as tactile and reactive as a live performance with traditional instruments, so he set about working on a digital process that would synchronize with James' approach. Using physical modelling techniques, Treanor created an instrument that explored the tunings and sounds of the a'dungu, an arched harp, and the nah or nag. With Ocen playing his rigi rigi, a single string violin, they intuitively experimented with the spectral properties of sound, using texture and acoustic contours as their structural framework. They were able to develop a sound together that was unconventionally rooted in traditional Ugandan culture, but shuttled into different dimensions of noise, computer music and radical UK rave. "Saccades" is the buffer between two vastly different sonic universes, united in respect and sprightly curiosity. Treanor's hyperactive computer-controlled rhythms are immediately identifiable on opening track 'Bunga Bule', but the sound palette is distinct: it's more flexible and less digital. James' expressionistic fiddle strokes are a revelation, contorted into hoarse squeals and rough vibrations that rub and flex off Treanor's tin can shuffle. The fertile back and forth continues through the ruff DSP tumble of 'As It Happens', before James cracks open the melodic core of his instrument on 'The Dead Centre', allowing Treanor to dispense with rhythm and meet his fiddle strokes with heavenly drones. Each track steps down a different avenue for the two artists, from the nightmarish microtonal twang of 'Memory Pressure' to the 4AM inverted sci-fi club pressure of 'Naasaccade' and the folky dancefloor swing of 'Rigi Rigi'. And when the album closes on a cacophonous remix from Vienna laptop noise pioneers Farmers Manual it's an unexpected gift that makes perfect sense. "Saccades" is a cross-cultural collaboration that swerves simplicity but refuses to over-complicate itself - it's about interaction, improvisation and passion.

Utterly unmissable first ever reissue of SND’s god-tier triple pack, cruelly out of print since 2008, now finally available to discerning dancers/DJs - packing a pinnacle of avant-dance beat science certain to connect with fans of garage, UKF, footwork and experimental techno. If yr into owt from Beatrice Dillon to Timbaland, Ryoji Ikeda to El-B, Autechre to The Neptunes - this is a must have. A peerless masterclass in nanoscopic funk editing, ‘4,5,6’ has never been bettered in our books. It originally arrived as a limited pressing of 300 x 3LPs in 2008 but has been sorely notable by its lack of availability ever since, often leading us to offer wild handed descriptions to bewildered mates, who, even if they looked for 2nd hand copies, would still be stumped as nobody in their right mind is selling a set. However that is all corrected with this new edition, representing one of the most crucial reissues of the decade and an unmissable opportunity to revel in some of Mark Fell and Mat Steel’s finest work, bar none. When it landed in 2008, a decade after SND’s seminal early trio of self-releases, ‘4,5,6’ took our heads off. It marked a leap in form from their self explanatory ‘Tender Love’ LP of 2002 with a return to their early EPs’ avant club focus, but drawing on processes and tekkers they had sharply refined over the interim. Aspects of the deep house, garage and computer music that originally inspired them were rendered inside out, revealing and recalibrating their mechanics in something like an iridescent Haynes manual you could dance to, or simply marvel at if the legs weren’t willing. It stood out a mile from the rote minimal techno and dubstep of the time, which had started moving in the “future garage” direction by 2008, and effectively gave the sharpest side-eye to that sound, innovating-not-imitating in order to update and galvanise the original ‘90s forms with visionary mix of pointillist and mercurial flex. But, no mistake, for all its radical restructuring of garage and related styles, the results aren’t intended for chin stroking: they’re a direct, physically urgent extension of Mark and Mat’s deeeep love of dance and electronic music, itself rooted in original synth-pop/industrial and the first wave of US deep house/garage/techno that took their generation, and cities such as Sheffield, by the balls. In 2023, the ten tracks of ‘4,5,6’ are effectively equidistant from the original wave and now, and uncannily stand futureproofed by their vacuum-sealed reductionism and metallic lustre. However in many cases they’re still too much for DJs who all too often patronise their crowds with predictable pap. But if you’re a rare one, the likes of ‘C1’ are utterly primed to get fader chopped with early Roska riddims, and ‘E1’ is waiting to be threaded with Autechre and El-B’s most advanced funk, while the rest offers myriad options for interpretation at the craftiest hands. Basically, if you don’t already know this stuff; no excuses.

A surreal and futuristic HexD/nightcore masterpiece full of euphoria that has passed through post-hyperpop rave/hard trance. The CD version is limited to 75 copies.

Previously unreleased, Manchester, 1991. Betonska hits hard with their second release travelling back to an essential period of dance music history. A record blending rave, downtempo, ragga, dancehall, and early hardcore/jungle; a crossover which continues to shape and define some of the most innovative sounds of contemporary club culture. Produced by Philip Kirby, with vocals/rap by Martin Merchant (together Two The Hardway). On the A side Graham Massey (808 State) accompanied them on the synths, and Howard Walmsley played the saxophone on the B1 and B2. All tracks were recorded in ’91 in Phil’s house, where “funnily enough Massey co-wrote ‘Army of Me’ with Björk!”. Find more info about it in the text below. The whole release consists of solely ’91 originals: a deliberate choice to not take it out of context. The A side serves two versions of ‘Who Said?’, a mysterious midtempo jam with a jumpy acid line, organic yet punchy drums and a mesmerizing lead synth, played by none other than Graham Massey. The instrumental version has a more elusive feel to it, while the Vocal version tops it off with toasting by Manchester’s very own Martin ‘Sugar’ Merchant. Both tracks were pressed on the earlier test pressing from ’91, but have never been released officially before. The flipside boasts two mesmerizing versions of ‘Hot Number’. Driving protojungle rhythms and Sugar Merchant’s ragga vocals, are fused with secondary vocals by Phil and a saxophone solo by Howard Walmsley to form a seamless and smokey sonic concoction that will get bodies moving. Whilst the B1 surfs on a slick breakbeat rhythm with a deep bassline, the B2 bounces on a 4/4 beat with a pulsing hardcore bassline. To top it off, the B3 and final track in the running order is a deep and dubby downtempo dancehall track. Originally produced in the 90s, but recently finished by Phil, ‘Blossom Street Dub’ has an added synth line and an iconic King Tubby filter which help to enhance a time-warping, headrush effect. This track, alongside the ‘Hot Number (Alternative Version)’ B1 tune, will both be pressed for the very first time on vinyl, having been absent from the original ’91 test pressing.

この界隈の重要作家が一挙参加したショーケース的1本！”音割れ”への憧憬のこもった新興ジャンル「HexD」周辺も巻き込みながら、昨今、加速度的に勢いを増すブレイクコア/ドラムンベースの世界から飛び出した、カナダの新鋭プロデューサー「lhk」。『We Do A Little Music』や『[REDACTED] 001』といった特大コンピにも参加していたこの人が、UKのネットレーベル〈FOCUSONTHE〉から8月に発表した最新リミックス・アルバム『5D TETRIS MIX & REMIX』のカセット版最終在庫をストック！Aphextwinsucks、healspirit1、saves、Andy pls、SeyNoeらレーベルメイトを中心とした面々がリミックス参加した特大盤！実に10組もの豪華ゲストを起用したフリーフォームなブレイクコア/ドラムンベース作品。版元完売につき再入荷はございませんので、この機会をお見逃しなく。

A long-awaited repress of Detroit's H-Fusion's 2019 2LP masterpiece, which has been featured on Theo Parrish's Sound Signature and Derrick May's Transmat. The long-awaited repress! In the midst of the rave techno frenzy, Urban Tribe, Omar-S, Aaron Dilloway, and The Automatic Group mingle to create a psychotic, sagging monster of a record. Mastered and cut by Anne Taegert at Dubplates & Mastering. Limited to 500 copies.

Mark Fell & Gábor Lázár’s masterclass in shearing computer hyperfunk is one of its decade’s best; a peerless exploration of displaced dancefloor meter and warped chromatic tone, with mind and body-bending results. Finally re-issued in new artwork to sate demand. Still in a zone of its own, ‘The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making’ is the result of Mark Fell’s trip to Budapest in 2014, where he and his acolyte, Gábor Lázár practically unravelled the vernacular of contemporary computer and club musics and re-stitched them into brilliantly new & devious designs. Decimating elements familiar to 2-step, footwork, electro, flashcore and f*ck knows, they arrived at a mutual conclusion of sleekly turbulent minimalism in 10 jaw-dropping permutations that dance in the integers of rave music. In the process they effectively re-programmed limbic and motor systems in-the-moment with a wickedly diffractive sense of rhythmic anticipation and shockingly crisp sound for a pinnacle of modern experimental dance music. With benefit of hindsight, we can now hear this album as a watershed moment for both artists, and this style of production. Since its release, Mark has notably moved away from the sound to work with acoustic instrumentalists, while Gábor has firmly picked up the baton and run with it on the likes of 2018’s ‘Unfold’ album, and more recently ‘Boundary Object’ with Planet Mu. It’s not hard to hear it as a logical peak of Mark’s practice in this mode, solo and with SND, as much as a springboard for Gábor’s future work, while also catalysing a new wave of operators ranging from Rian Treanor to Kindohm, Kirk Barley’s Church Andrews, and Rhyw, who’ve all harnessed these sort of energies to their respective wills. No doubt the tunes still scare the shit out of DJs with their spasmodic flux, but brave cnuts will recognise the genius on show and let instinct kick in, finding proper club shockers in the slippery 2.1 step whorl of ‘Track 2’ and the scudding dancehall accelerationism of ‘Track 6’, while advanced adventurers will get theirs in the greased straightjacket laser-intensity of ‘Track 7’ or the devilish dexterities of its closing 12 minute zinger. It’s all just blindingly strong stuff for insatiable ravers and computer music neeks alike, properly future-proofed by its makers’ unyielding tenacity and visionary ingenuity.