MUSIC
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download code included with the record.
+2 bonus tracks
友人カ仏 from Moe and ghosts - 通過 (Rap Phenomenon Remix Demo)
Madteo - Hatsuentou (Madteo's Edit #2)
Root Echoes is described by Pedro Elías Corro, better known as DJ Babatr, as “a celebration of resilience, joy and solidarity on the dancefloor.” The album offers a raw, powerful snapshot of the raptor house sound in one of its most formative and expressive periods. Carefully selected from Babatr’s personal archive, it connects ground-shaking tracks produced in Caracas between 2003 and 2007 with more recent material that keeps the genre’s pulse alive today. Recognized as a foundational figure in the creation of raptor house, Babatr shaped a style defined by its fusion of Afro-Venezuelan percussion, tribal techno, acid, Eurodance, and the street-level intensity of Caracas working-class neighborhoods. His tracks spread organically through minitecas, bootleg CDs, and street parties, becoming part of the shared sonic vocabulary of a generation.
These tracks were born within the vibrant miniteca scene of early-2000s Venezuela. Known locally as changa, this was the catch-all term for the electronic dance music, house, techno, Eurodance, that powered matinées and street parties. From that ecosystem, raptor house emerged as its own distinct identity, marked by galloping rhythms, serrated synths, and hypnotic structures designed to energize and empower. Opening with 2024’s “1 2 3 4 Ladies on the Floor”, the album delivers a relentless floor-filler that fuses technoid drive with Venezuelan percussive textures, a contemporary statement of Babatr’s ability to refract global sounds through his own lens. It then moves back to 2003 with “The Tech Sounds”, where trance-like synths spiral around tough, wooden drum patterns in a track as raw and defiant as the dance floors it was built for.
These are not just tracks. They are sound documents of space, community, and survival, a genre built for collective release and celebration, echoing from the barrios of Caracas to sound systems worldwide. More recent cuts like “Let’s Do It” layer classic TR-909 kicks and echoing vocal stabs with synth work that nods to foundational techno. “You I Wanna Bass” (2005) reimagines 90s Euro club leads with a Caracas edge. “Call Space” channels the mysticism of pre-Hispanic flutes into shrill, trance-infused riffs, pulling the listener into its own sonic ritual.
Root Echoes is an intimate and deliberate selection from over 700 tracks Babatr has recorded across two decades. It captures the heartbeat of a movement that never stopped, music that traveled hand to hand, through bootleg CDs, online sharing, and word of mouth—ultimately finding its way into the sets, remixes, and samples of DJs around the world, resonating across global club networks.
In his first studio album, legendary singer John Katokye shines an unprecedented light on the rich vocal music of the Banyankore and Bahororo people of Western Uganda, bringing to the fore two singing styles intimately anchored in their century-long practice of cattle herding. When still a young boy, Katokye ran away from home to immerse himself in the traditional songs of his region. Herding cattle in different farms to earn a living, he roamed his homeland singing for several decades, refining his art form one performance at a time. Now approaching his 60th birthday, Katokye has become arguably the most talented and popular traditional singer alive in his region today.
Specializing in the style of ‘ekyeshongoro’, Katokye improvises short poetic sentences, like a long series of Japanese haiku, to convey morsel-sized impressions on the land and history of his people and their cherished cattle. On a regular performance, one or several singers usually back up the meandering of the lead vocalist, overlapping their verses in a continuous vocal flow – at times stretching well beyond ten minutes – transforming the moment into a long meditative experience. Marking the major twists and turns of their river-like performances, all the singers punctually raise their pitch together, steadily increasing the intensity of the current that pulls the audience along their mesmerizing praising chant.
Named after Katokye’s clan, ‘Abanzira’ pays tribute to the moral values and beauty of the women from his lineage, while ‘Ekyeshongoro Kyabakazi’ singles out the merits of the people of Karengo, a village at the heart of the Ankole region where Katokye settled with his loved ones. Throughout this song, Katokye peppers guttural breaths reminiscent of the mooing cows grazing in the hills surrounding his home. To say that the Banyankore and Bahororo people have a deep bond with their cattle might be an understatement in a culture where the generous eyelashes and quiet gaze of calves shape beauty standards, while the subtle taste of smoked milk flavours family reunions and friendly hang outs.
‘Okugamba Ente’ illustrates this intimacy well as Katokye salutes cows’ understanding of human nature, beating with his herding staff the pulse of another form of praise singing deeply rooted in the region, transporting listeners from the meditative river of ekyeshongoro to the dense and wordy waterfall of the ekyevugo style. Gluing words together to recite a dense series of sentences in one breath, ekyevugo singers draw on local myths and history while evoking cattle as signs of beauty and wealth to praise their audience and highlight the quality of the moments lived together at weddings, political rallies, or family gatherings. Acknowledging the praises, the audience usually concludes each flow with a short and vocal ‘eee’ during which the reciter quickly catches breath to draw strength and fire the next verse.
And the talent lives on in the younger generations as the album concludes with ‘Omuhogo gwa Rujeru’, foregrounding Katokye’s acolyte and longtime partner Samuel Rujeru who takes the lead in driving a song usually opening fire sessions, calmly warming up the audience and performers for an evening of storytelling. As they listen to the singers’ whirling melismas and passionate bursts, it’s not unusual for people to raise their arms in the air in imitation of the iconic long horns of their beloved cattle with which they share their lives in the bushy hills of the region. Rendered for the first time in an intimate studio recording session, listeners can now feel the warmth of these amazing vocal styles that for so many years accompanied the lives and dreams of the Banyankore and Bahororo people.
In English, the Xhosa word “useza” means to arouse or elicit a feeling, and it perfectly illuminates Sekuru Chaka Chawasarira’s lifelong practice. The eminent Zimbabwean artist and educator is among the last remaining masters of the matepe, a large mbira-style instrument that’s played with both thumbs and index fingers to expand its rhythmelodic complexity. And on ‘Useza’, he fully demonstrates the matepe’s illusory potential, overdubbing hypnotic sequences to provoke shifting harmonic progressions that ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey labeled “kaleidophony” back in 1970. An ancient art within North-Eastern Zimbabwe’s Shona culture, the matepe is traditionally used in local rituals, where its ambiguous psychoacoustic mirages evoke trance states to aid communication with ancestral spirits. Only half a century ago, ceremonies amongst the Sena Tonga and Kore-Kore peoples would involve up to six musicians, each playing interlocking polyrhythmic sequences. In 2025, the music is threatened with extinction; following decades of vilification from Zimbabwe’s evangelical and pentecostal churches, who associate the rituals with witchcraft, there are fewer than ten master musicians left.
Called the “Mozart of mbira” by composer Keith Goddard, 83-year-old Chawasarira has been developing his relationship with the instrument since he was just a young man. He grew up in a Catholic mission and was dedicated to the church, founding his own choir, but he maintained his connection to Zimbabwean culture by studying the region’s traditional rhythms. Chawasarira’s father had been a prominent drummer, and when Chawasarira was older, working as a teacher at the mission school, he ventured out to observe local mbira ensembles, eventually participating regularly in spirit ceremonies. And although there were tensions between Chawasarira’s work with the church and his interest in controversial folk music, he managed to strike a precarious balance, introducing drums to his Catholic services in the 1960s and even composing a mass for karimba. Chawasarira’s reputation grew steadily; he was invited to Lousville University in the 1990s to represent Zimbabwe at a contemporary composition festival, and his youth ensembles helped popularize Shona mbira traditions not just at home, but around the world.
Today’s evangelical Christians are less tolerant than the Catholic church however, with fundamentalist preachers blaming mbira music for all manner of tragedy. Chawasarira remains undeterred; living in Chitungwiza, he builds matepes and karimbas and tutors children, and ‘Useza’ is a celebration of his years of experience, a way for the maestro to preserve his repertoire for future generations. Recorded at the dead of night while the rest of the township is sound asleep, the album reproduces the mesmerizing sound of a Shona ritual by overlaying discrete fractal sequences filled with haunting overtones and buzzing rhythms. Chitungwiza works alone, harmonizing with himself and chanting over the weightless polyrhythms to create musical illusions that sound different depending on where the listener might be positioned. It’s a technique that’s been approached by various minimalist composers and avant-garde explorers in the 20th century and beyond, and Chitungwiza goes straight to the source, skillfully substantiating kaleidophony and safeguarding Zimbabwe’s heritage.
Heavy, heavy, heavyyyyy rhythmic madness from Shackleton, Scotch Rolex and Omutaba, invoking new rhythmic traditions on an enchanted debut album for Nyege Nyege Tapes, twisting galvanic rhythms from HHY & The Kampala Unit's Omutaba into sozzled, psychedelic peregrinations. Dubby, kinetic and viciously mind-bending, it's peak gear if you're into anything from African Head Charge to Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force.
Leading on from Shackleton and Scotch Rolex’s maiden merger, ‘Death by Tickling’ in 2023, the duo pull in the dextrous limbs of Omutaba - known from his work with STILL, Metal Preyers and HHY & The Kampala Unit - for a dervishing session of dubbed-out and tumbling polyrhythms and psychoactive vibes as Three Hands of Doom. Shackleton’s hand on the tiller is patently apparent but, as with his recent works with Heather Leigh and Wacław Zimpel, he proves a mutable collaborator and porous to the shared spirits of fellow electronic music journeymen Scotch Rolex and Uganda’s Omutaba in four swingeing sections defined by their joint ability to diffract the flow between rolling and irregular grooves.
‘Ring Dirt’ opens the session with a limber display of monotone strings and suspenseful synth work that calls to mind Can sent economy class to the equator for ritual teachings. Enlightened, they proceed thru the lush, whorling metric calculations of ‘Insect Vibration’, layering shivering incantations and worm-charming subs with a frisson of field recordings. At this point fully attuned to each other, Omutaba’s Ugandan drumming is felt most powerfully meshed into the 10 minute matrix of rug-pulling and thunderous detonations to ‘Burnt Earth’, before they all buckle into the outright dread of a standout eponymous title tune that appears to follow rhythms from the Congo thru West Africa, to Haiti, via Japan and Berlin, and back to Uganda.
Both Shackleton and Ishihara have been on blistering form in the last couple of years, and 'Three Hands of Doom' feels like both a continuation and an extension of last year's 'Death By Tickling', weaponizing Omutaba's exhilarating playing into something that feels much, much more than the sum of its parts.
Space funk from keyboardist Dexter Wansel, originally released in 1976. Sampled by DJ Shadow.
CLEAR VORTEX CHAMBER charts a new period of exploration and discovery for Alexander Tucker both as musician and producer. After discarding a year’s worth of material, Tucker sought the advice of Downwards Records label boss Karl O’Connor aka Regis who advised him on production techniques and approach. Along with further support form Freddy Lomas of Kinn and Emptyset’s James Ginzburg, Tucker got to work on a new set of material with a heightened sense of clarity and density. Tucker explains “Making this album really tested me, it was the outcome of a long period of hard lessons and harsh realities, but I had some good friends to guide me along the way and pull me out of the mire.”
At the core of MICROCORPS is Tucker’s complex modular systems, knitted into the tracks are triggered samples of his own cello and bass guitar playing, which meld into the electronic fabric of each track. Tucker expands “I wanted the album to sit somewhere between machine technology with something primitive, where synthetic and acoustic sources become intertwined. I like the idea of different dimensions phasing in and out of one another, creating new areas where I can explore sound, structures and imaginary spaces”
These imaginary spaces play a key role in the construction of CLEAR VORTEX CHAMBER. Tucker’s background in fine art and his current work with experimental comics bleeds into the unspoken landscapes of his music. “I want to trigger parts of the brain that can dream up imagery whilst at the same time focus of the sonic structure of the music itself, I guess I’m still obsessed with trying to create some sort of psychoactive environment” The architecture of each track presents itself in the form of massive kicks, sonar clicks and kinetic percussive rhythms, supported by pulsing bass drones. Cello and bass guitar samples initially bowed, plucked and hit by mallets are triggered creating dense wooden timbres that punctuate the electronic field. Voices and vocals both treated and untreated weave throughout the album in the form of cryptic dialogues and unspooling wordless singing, adding to the cross pollination of something human, machine and a space in-between.
Collaboration is a key element to MICROCORPS. Justin K Broadrick’s heavy spidery guitar lines and processed screaming rip wormholes in ‘FEDBCK’, Regis lends his distinct vocal work to ‘ZONA’, Japanese artist Phew injects organ drones, vocals and fried electronics throughout ‘SANSU’. On penultimate track ‘FEBCK 2’, Karl D’Silva’s droning saxophone joins Broadrick’s feed backing guitar noise and improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist Elvin Brandhi spits out cut up diatribes across final track ‘MALLETS’. Throughout the album Tucker’s own processed voice sits alongside singer JJOWDY’s eerily gentle laments
Japanese bamboo flute maestro and goat (JP) cohort Rai Tateishi makes an impressive debut statement with his holistic attempts to transcend the limits of ancient instruments to reveal gently delirious insights comparable with Jon Hassell, Phew, Bendik Giske, FUJI|||||||||||TA.
‘Presence’ is a triumph of improvised, elemental musicality that distills aspects of myriad folk traditions in pursuit of the artist’s own truth. For 40 minutes of singularly weird, locked-in performance, Rai Tateishi diverges his formative training in the shinobue (a bamboo flute) to applications for its elder sibling, the shakuhachi, and its distant relatives in the khene mouth organ of Northeastern Thailand and Laos, and even the Irish flute, with remarkable results returned from each.
Piece to piece, Tateishi adapts a spectra of unusual and extended instrumental experiments to articulate uniquely animist sound arrangements, with judicious use of a ring modulator and delay effects only subtly altering his sound in real-time, gelling the harmonics and smoothing off its contours. Some 15 years of studies and accreted knowledge of histories, timelines, and spirits are deftly tattered in the air and rebound in precisely complex ribbons that become all the more impressive by virtue of its in-the-moment recording.
Presented with no overdubs, the six works were recorded by label head and KAKUHAN/goat lynchpin Koshiro Hino across three days of adventurous improvisation capturing the breadth of Tateishi’s vision in a mix of succinct flights of fancy and one durational wonder where he really cuts loose. An opening piece of rapid percussive fingering and rasping sets the tone for increasingly intricate explorations of the shinobue, and bluesy cadence of a reedy Thai khene - antecedent of the shō - whipped into headier harmonic overtones, whilst his 5th piece for Irish flute best recalls Ka Baird or Michael O’Shea’s lysergic impishness, and a 13 minute closing piece most boldly fucks with folk and jazz traditions, in-depth and with the genre short-circuiting audacity of Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Landing in the wake of prism-shaking works by Will Guthrie & Mark Fell, goat (jp) and Kakuhan; Tateishi’s ‘Presence’ more than lives up to NAKID’s impressive levels, unflinchingly operating by its wits with a verve and dare-to-differ moxie that gets at it from the first hit to the last, harnessing the kind of skill and ingenuity that’s distinctive but still strikingly minimal and overwhelmingly physical. It's a remarkable achievement.
Yungwebster returns with II, a hallucinatory sequel shaped by producers Space Afrika and Nathan Melja. His AutoTuned flow drifts through spectral beats, orchestral drones and weightless pads, pushing cloud rap deep into dreamlike abstraction.
‘Skyfall’ opens with Space Afrika’s strings and sirens, shifting tempo between normal speed and chipmunked acceleration to fracture time itself. On ‘Disheveled’, Nathan Melja strips the bass to near silence, leaving Webster’s cracked voice to take centre stage. The eight-minute ‘Crochet / I Swear’ floats on ambient textures and clipped rhythms, blurring rap into ambience.
By the closing tracks, II dissolves into hushed fog, its murmured refrains more atmosphere than lyric — a narcotic, hypnotic twist on cloud rap.
A miraculous union of techno and dub reggae, featuring two tracks remixed by Mark Ernestus & Moritz von Oswald's Basic Channel, "Remake (Basic Reshape)" (1994) and "The Climax (Basic Reshape)" (2001) under the name Carl Craig-Paperclip People. A universal masterpiece of immersive ambient dub techno, remixed by von Oswald's Basic Channel.
unification of techno and dub reggae. An outstanding universal masterpiece of sound dub/minimal techno released in 1993 by Mark Ernestus & Moritz von Oswald's Basic Channel, repressed in 2025.
The distinctive sound of Linus is born from a delicate balance between folk, jazz, minimalism, chamber music and free improvisation. Starting as a duo, Ruben Machtelinckx and Thomas Jillings have always tried to infuse their compositions, which tend towards poetry and simplicity, with the ungraspable spirit of true open-minded improvisation. In the search of new stories to tell, it therefore did not come as a surprise that they chose to expand their palette by including both an eclectic mix of instruments (from banjo and Hardanger fiddle to electronics and an orchestral bass drum) and a range of collaborations with some unique voices in the world of improvised music. Showing much affinity for the thriving Norwegian scene, they collaborated with the likes of Nils Økland, Ingar Zach, Christian Wallumrød and Øyvind Skarbø, as well as Jakob Bro, Frederik Leroux and Niels Van Heertum.
On Light as Never, the second album by this constellation and the fifth by Linus overall, one no longer hears a meeting of different worlds, but rather the creation of a new one. A world where the blending of Scandinavian fiddle-tunes, abstract electronic soundscapes, meditatively repeating melodies and jazz-inspired free improv is no longer an experiment, but simply a state of mind. From the joyful interplay of Playful to the serenity of Ostinato, the microtonal alientation of Affirms Nothing to the wide-eyed energy of Conway, the almost bluesy warmth of Light as Never to the cold emptiness of Echo, nothing about these connections feels contrived. They simply represent a new outlook on improvised music.
