MUSIC

Congo Natty is one man, a family, a movement. Mikail Tafari aka Rebel MC stands at the core, but as “Jungle Revolution” shows, he’s the lens that brings the whole into focus.

Ten tracks long, “Jungle Revolution” clearly lays out the way in which Tafari sees Jungle as a re-boot of roots reggae for a new century. Full of blood and fire, the sternum-buzz of sub-bass, rapid fire drum breaks, sweet hooks, righteous anger and professions of love, it’s the kind of passionate, committed, raw and spiritual, beautiful record that doesn’t come along that often. “The message of reggae is Ras Tafari and Ras Tafari is love,” he explains. “They sang about love but they was also prophesying and talking about the system, talking about things that were going on in the world. I saw Jungle as being that same music, where we were going to spread a message.”

That message is spread by a diverse cast of collaborators. The album was mixed with On-U legend Adrian Sherwood and Skip McDonald (whose career goes back as far as the Sugarhill Band) plays guitar and, on the deep dub of “Revolution,” melodica. Production smarts are martialled from Benny Page (on the straight up ragga-jungle of “UK Allstars”), Vital Elements (the 150bpm anthem “Jah Warriors” and “Jungle Is I and I”), Serial Killaz (the pure roots bounce and rinse out of “Get Ready”) and Boyson & Crooks (creeping technoid paranoia on “London Dungeons”). Vocalists, meanwhile, run a huge range. There’s a who’s who of UK soundsystem culture on “UK Allstars.” True Congo Natty family like Nanci & Phoebe (check out Phoebe “Iron Dread” Hibbert’s verse on “Microchip” and Nanci Correia’s contributions throughout the record) and La La & The Boo Yaa (“Jungle Souljah”) fill the album with sweet hooks and total commitment. Last, there are artists perhaps best known for their work with others, but drawing new sustenance from Congo Natty’s Rasta beliefs and political views. Lady Chann offers a scintillating contribution on “Jungle Is I and I” and Buggsy, best known for his work with Joker, makes a telling intervention.

That this all holds together into a coherent whole that nods back to the legacy of roots reggae and classic jungle without being in thrall to either is down to the clear-eyed vision of the pioneer behind it. That he could make a record so vital, so alive with love and anger and pure joy, shows that Congo Natty the man is more than just a legend. He’s a revolutionary. And that revolution is happening now. 
 

One of the rarest recordings in Sun Ra's enormous catalog. Recorded in 1982, featuring the groove-infested x-rated warning hit 'Nuclear War.' The remaining tracks include four originals and three standards, Ellington's 'Drop Me Off In Harlem,' 'Sometimes I'm Happy,' and 'Smile.' A cult album finally repressed on virgin audiophile vinyl.

Limited edition silver 2LP Vinyl in printed inner sleeve in custom origami fold out outer sleeve, packed in printed poly bag

With Lucifer, Kompakt presents an album of rare beauty from two masters of modern music. A family affair, it’s a collaboration between the Italian father-and-son duo of Luciano Michelini and Lorenzo Dada, whose combined histories bring to Lucifer a depth of experience alongside clarity of vision and a finely tuned, neatly developed combined compositional voice. A lovely, beguiling suite of music that combines the electronic and the acoustic, the urban and the pastoral, its gorgeous night-eye vision and tender melancholy sits neatly within the Kompakt universe, while offering the curious listener some rich new perspectives. There is already plenty to know both artists by. Lorenzo Dada creates across multiple fields – a techno producer and DJ who has already worked with the likes of Jay Haze, Fete, Leo Benassi, and Der, he’s released a small clutch of stylish, smartly designed EPs, and a solo album, Second Life (2018). His complementary background in classical music and composition informs his ensemble project, Tears Of Blue (who appear on Lucifer), where Dada paints with neo-classical tones for a quartet of violin, viola, cello and grand piano, supplemented by electronics for live performance. Luciano Michelini’s history is yet richer. He may be best known, to many, for his piece “Frolic”, the theme to Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm series; it was also sampled by Snoop Dogg for 2022’s “Crip Ya Enthusiasm”. But there’s much more to Michelini’s story. A successful soundtrack composer, Michelini both studied and taught at the Conservatoro di Santa Cecilia, and worked for RCA from the sixties to the eighties; his soundtracks from this period are gorgeous examples of the form, particularly his work for Il Decamerone Nero (1972), L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (1979), and the devastatingly gorgeous Dimensione Donna (1977). In the eighties, Michelini and his wife Anna Gutling founded the Electronic Music Division studio and academy in Rome, which is where the majority of Lucifer was recorded. Dada reflects on the experience: “We never worked together before, so it was all new for both of us,” with Michelini adding, “I truly love this experience with my son. He’s a talented pianist and composer. I am not very familiar with electronic music nowadays, but we did it fluently.” There’s certainly a familial energy at play through Lucifer, and you can hear how Dada and Michelini, through exploration and experiment, find a shared language, balancing Dada’s tendency toward minimalism, and Michelini’s composerly voice. Lucifer flows as a suite that interweaves electronic music with acoustic instruments: the lonely sigh of saxophone; Michelini’s lush, verdant piano; the weeping strings of Tears Of Blue (recorded at the studio of Michelini’s friend, the late Maestro, Ennio Morricone). These multiple voices are located within the electronic sighs and swarms from Dada’s kit; there are moments of propulsion, and passages of lambent drift, where the album revels in its tonal sweetness. If it flows so effortlessly, that’s because Lucifer was designed that way, as a suite or a sonata of sorts. And the title? Dada reflects, “Lucifer was an angel who decided not to be one anymore. The miracle of life is that we can decide what we want to be, even if we are born as angels or vice versa.” This feels somehow apposite: there’s certainly something of the transformative, and the transportive, in Lucifer, a unique family collaboration of rare poetry and sensitivity, where two generations meet in the modern crucible that is the electronic music studio.

Emerging out of Amsterdam's vibrant squat scene in 1979, The Ex – a name chosen for the ease and speed with which it could be spray-painted onto a wall – have for four decades been an entirely self-sustaining musical entity, charting a course through the global underground with a spirit of freedom and radical exploration. On 1985's Pokkeherrie (Dutch for "terrible noise"), The Ex return to the more stripped-down instrumentation on their early LPs. A key lineup change would also see the arrival of drummer Kat Bornefeld (whose supple rhythms propel the group to this day). Recorded at the new location of Koeienverhuur Studio in the basement of storied squat/venue Emma, Pokkeherrie is a testament to the angular momentum of a group in full creative flux. Right from the opening track, bassist Luc Klaasen generates a relentless pulse. Terrie Ex's sparse/acidic guitar and G.W. Sok's impassioned vocals combine in a vein similar to The Minutemen, Flipper or Rudimentary Peni, except The Ex have the patience and wherewithal to sustain their approach beyond just brief explosions. Perhaps only The Fall from this period can match The Ex's ability to hold a melody together while utilizing otherwise harsh sonic elements over an extended piece, most effectively on "Soviet Threat," "1,000,000 Ashtrays" and "White Liberals." This first-time vinyl reissue comes with 17" x 24" poster and 20-page booklet.

Dettinger’s Intershop and Oasis have long been held, by many fans of ambient and electronic music, to be some of the finest albums in their field. Produced by the mysterious Olaf Dettinger, about whom not much is publicly known, they were some of the earliest full-lengths released by the then-nascent Kompakt, and in many ways, they both articulated and defined the sound that would come to be known as Pop Ambient, while also existing, somehow, to the leftfield of any clearly recognisable genre. Beautiful, sui generis works, it is a rare pleasure to see them being reissued on vinyl for a new generation of listeners to embrace. Originally released on CD only in 1999, Intershop was Kompakt’s first artist full-length. The music here simmers and broods, with opulent banks of tone marking out territory for rhythms that seem to be built from the clacking detritus of technology – hisses, thunks, knocks. Bass is deployed carefully, each drop a dubbed-out depth charge; drones spin and spiral, warping and weaving between the beats. Oasis, released in 2000, refined the palette that Dettinger had explored on its predecessor. A blurred crusade of ambient texturology, its unassuming patterns, and subtle, incremental dynamics, admit to real beauty, and a kind of abstract sensuality that you don’t often experience with music that is, perhaps, similarly tooled, but not as poetic. Through seemingly simple gestures – whether lushly expansive repetitions, hyper-acute tremolo tones, or ear-tickling rhythms – it builds complex emotional resonance. It’s no surprise to discover Oasis is held in high esteem by artists like Panda Bear of Animal Collective, who once said of Dettinger, “For us, he was the dude.” There is, of course, other music to know Dettinger by, too – his three excellent EPs for Kompakt, Blond (1998), Puma and Totentanz (1999), the latter of which, Michael Mayer once argued, “invented dubstep.” There is also a small, yet graceful run of compilation contributions, many of which can be found on Kompakt’s Total and Pop Ambient series. All this music has plenty to recommend it, sharing a clarity of purpose, and a rare, human warmth and depth. But Intershop and Oasis are the releases that distil Dettinger’s singular vision, and allow him, should he wish, to claim his place as a modern master of ambient and electronic music.

HEAVY, ENTRANCING TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE GREEK UNDERWORLD Continuing Mississippi's exploration of the darkest reaches of Greek music, we bring you 12 rarely heard recordings of addled suffering and love from the most legendary of all Greek rebetika artists, Markos Vamvakaris. Rebetika is the sound of Greece and Asia Minor clashing amid civil war, mass population exchange, and the anarchy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Poetic, mournful, and bitter, rebetika music was born in the hash dens (tekes) of Mediterranean ports, its verses whispered in Greek prisons before spilling out to the greater population in the 1930s, propelled in no small part by a series of remarkable recordings by Markos Vamvakaris. Markos (first name basis for all fans of Greek music) sang heady, drugged out songs of love, pain and yearning at brothels, bars and hash dens in the port of Piraeus. He arrived as a youth in 1917, working as a skinner in a tannery. By the time he picked up the bouzouki around 1924, he was fully taken by the life of the manges, the lowest rungs of the Greek social ladder. They lived by their own code and in total opposition to the rest of the population, dressing, walking and speaking in their own style. Rebetika was their music. On these twelve early tracks, recorded in Athens between 1932 and 1936, Markos was already a master of the bouzouki. His forceful, clean playing compliments his hoarse voice and his stunning rhythmic sensibility, the result of his years as a champion zebekiko dancer. Tracks build and spiral outward, his open-note drones and melodic lines drawing calls of ecstasy and encouragement from his fellow musicians. Translations of songs like “Hash-Smoking Mortissa” and “In The Dark Last Night” provide a glimpse into the life and language of the manges - Ottoman cafe music, the calls of displaced Greeks of Smyrna, the chaos and suffering of port life, it all comes through Markos’ songs. These recordings, incredibly rare and expertly remastered, mark the height of rebetika, the brief period between the music’s emergence on the recording scene in the early 1930s and government censorship of all lyrics starting in 1936. During the Axis occupation there was no rebetika recording, and though Markos had some hits in the years after the war, he never again attained this level. These are the dizzying, entrancing, and heaviest works of one of the great artists of the 20th century. Expertly remastered from rare 78s by Stereophonic Sound, pressed on heavy 160gm vinyl at Smashed Plastic, includes full size 8 page booklet with detailed historical notes, rare photos, and lyric translations.

During the 1990s Shizuka self-released a series of four cassettes, barely heard by anyone outside of their inner circle. Culling together live recordings and home demos, these served as companions to the scant amount of proper Shizuka releases at the time (including the recently reissued Heavenly Persona). Concentric Circles is proud to present the third and most anomalous cassette from Shizuka, simply titled III, on vinyl for the first time in an edition of 500 copies. Formed by guitarist and singer Shizuka Miura, alongside husband Maki Miura, who’d previously played with both Les Rallizes Dénudés and Fushitsusha, the group known as Shizuka started in the early 90s with Jun Kosugi (also of Fushitsusha) on drums, and a revolving cast of bass players, including J.J. Junko, whose sole recorded appearance with the band is here on III. Devoid of any of their trademark noise and bombast, III feel distinct from their studio and live albums of the era, largely due to its fragility; haunted and spare, the songs revolve around Shizuka Miura’s gentle, unforced sighs, and Maki’s flickering, flinty guitar. The first side of the album features four songs – “For You,” “Lunatic Pearl,” “The Night When The Door Opens” and “To The Sky” – which will be well-known to Shizuka fans from previous recordings, but the drastically understated renditions here are particularly moving for their quietude and intimacy. The second half of III consists of a side-long duo session, just Shizuka and Maki Miura together at home, circling around the simplest two-chord motif for twenty minutes, Shizuka singing the most heavenly melody, strung through the sky of this lengthy improvisation. It’s an astonishingly beautiful performance, one that stills time through its becalmed repetition, pointing towards the endless forever. In this respect, it feels like an ultimate extension of Opal’s early recordings, Big Star’s 3rd or even Galaxie 500’s quietest moments. III lifts the darkness away, allowing for a softer, more gentle Shizuka to shine through, bringing with it a side to the band that most never knew existed. A lovely discovery if there ever was one.

The debut album “grace” by haruka nakamura was released on the schole label in 2008. It was first released on fastcut records in 2018 and sold out, but in response to many requests, it is now being re-pressed for the long-awaited reissue!

The only 1971 album by People, this album was based on the concept of Buddha + Rock. The album is full of unique psychedelia sound with chanting of "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo" in the background of fuzz guitar, sound of monk's geta, bell, wooden fish, sitar, etc. with Obi.

Dedicated to the Island -soundwalk & music for SAUNTER magazine- is a new work by DJ/musician Kaoru Inoue, also known as Chari Chari. The album was released in September 2023 as a limited edition bonus CD for the special feature "Yakushima Today" in the sixth issue of SAUNTER magazine, a travel magazine published by the Yakushima-based publishing company Kiltibooks, and is now available for the first time on vinyl! The album is a gem of organic electronic music, including 9 tracks such as "Mizukumi," "Nagareru," and "Hoshifuru," which were produced based on field recordings made in Yakushima. It will be released as an RSD limited edition LP record (180g vinyl with liner notes) on "RECORD STORE DAY" on Saturday, April 20, 2024.

Japan's world-famous masterpiece by the late Rei Harakami is set to be revived!

The soundtrack of "TENNEN KOKEKKO" (A Gentle Breeze in the Village), created by Rei Harakami, has been remastered by ex-Denki Groove member Yoshinori Sunahara and will finally be released on limited edition vinyl!

The soundtrack for the film adaptation of the manga by Fusako Kuramochi, which is one of Ray Harakami's most popular albums, is now being transformed into a long-awaited analog record. Ray Harakami, who passed away in July 2011 at the young age of 40, left behind a remarkable musical legacy.

Bomb! * Edition of 200. Hand-made covers (each one is unique), comes with a postcard. *  At the end of October 1973 Ricky Reets Hubba-Hubba Band was disbanded. It had been decided that what was needed was “a band without Musicians” and many wild experimental jam sessions took place. Finally on November 23 a particularly inspired jam was named “Cat Cheese” and the band SMEGMA was born. Although we had only been playing music together (or at all) for a few months, we decided to record a full length “Live in the studio” Christmas album that included three original songs and an Elvis Presley Cover! Budding sound engineer Mike Lastra offered us our first studio recording session in a garage in San Diego, and after a few rehearsals, every track was recorded in one take and history was made.
We wanted to do some old-fashioned songs so we asked two willing “Musicians” Reed Burns and Richard Wagner to help and since only four Smegma members could make the session “Danny” Danton Dodge (14 years old) was recruited as well.
Of course at the time only 2 or 3 copies on Cassette were ever dubbed. The Ace Of Space received one and promptly became the first person to join our group, but now 50 years late this album is finally made available to public for the first time!

Side One:
1. “Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)” Lead Vocal: Ju Suk
2. “Auto Suk” Lead Vocal: Ju Suk
3. “Whatever (for now)” Solo Flute: Amy
4. “Christmas Trees Are Free” (Words: A.B. Lloyd) Vocals: Fats & The Kid

Side Two:
1. “Beans In My Eye” (edit) Solo Flute: Amy
2. The Cheez Stands Alone (Improv.) Group Vocals
3. “Happy Holidays” (TK version) Words, Music & Vocals: Fats

On this Album Smegma was: WhateverWoman (Amy, Amazon Bambi), Chucko-Fats (D.K.), The Quackback Kid (Dennis Duck), Ju Suk Reet Meate with Reed Burns, Richard Wagner, Danton Dodge.

Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground artists. LAFMS primarily reached outside Los Angeles via word-of-mouth and the United States Postal Service, foreshadowing the self-publishing and cassette trading networks of post-punk and industrial subcultures. In 1976, Joe Potts solicited recordings from LAFMS affiliates and admirers to edit and compile I.D. Art #2, utilizing correspondence art's technique of "assemblings." (The first installment in this series was a magazine, and the third was a coloring book.) Potts received dozens of pieces by members of Le Forte Four, Doo-Dooettes, Smegma and Ace & Duce as well as painters, filmmakers and non-artists with few recording credits to their name, creating a delirious, winking sound-art collage of field recordings, voicemails and improvisations. Participants purchased time on the record and received one copy each of the finished LP, realizing the philosophy contained in LAFMS' motto: "The music is free, but you have to pay for the plastic, paper, ink, glue and stamps." This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with insert.

The now 10 year old Acid Test 09 sees a special 10th Anniversary Edition repress with a new vocal mix of track “Test 3”. The original EP saw acid nomad Tin Man team up with techno dreamweaver Donato Dozzy for three slices of deep acid and dubby, bleepy ambient. In this special 10 Year Anniversary Edition Test 3” comes with a new vocal mix and it’s a welcome return to the mic for Tin Man. Perfectly-placed words sit among chiming bells and are layered deep into the echoes, almost like the synths themselves are speaking. Acid Test 09 proved to be pairing in 303 paradise, but the results outclassed even Dozzy and Tin Man’s special partnership - they created simply a timeless signal that could broadcast through space ad infinitum. Mastered and recut by Rashad.

A full decade ago, Godspeed You! Black Emperor released Yanqui U.X.O. with no publicity or press availability, no marketing plans, no cross-promotions or brand synergies, driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication.To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement, but Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy.The band has been blazing its own path again since 2010. We think they have made a new record that maintains if not exceeds the standards of their previous work. After almost two years of post-hiatus practicing, playing and touring, Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! delivers two mighty sides of music that are definitively stunning, immersive and utterly true to the band’s legacy. The future looks dark indeed, but on the evidence of this new recording, Godspeed appears wholly committed to staring it down, channeling it, and fighting for some rays of sound (and flickers of light) that feel hopeful and true.

Deadstock copy of Greek New Age Composer Vangelis Katsoulis's album. For fans of Franco Nanni, Ditto, Cabaret Du Ciel and Vito Ricci

After the 2021 Re-Release of “Schwingungen” (MG.ART612) we proudly announce “Seven Up” as Part 2 of the authorised 50th Anniversary “A.R.T.” Re-Edition Series. “Seven Up” is the third studio album by Ash Ra Tempel and their only album recorded in collaboration with American Ph.D. in psychology, Dr. Timothy Leary. The Coverart for “Seven Up” was designed by famous Swiss Artist Walter Wegmüller. Recorded in August 1972 at Sinus Studio in Berne, Switzerland, remixed September 1972 at Dierks Studios in Stommeln, Germany. First release in spring 1973 by OHR Musik - the first release on the new sub-label "Kosmische Kuriere", Kat-Nr. KK 58001. We release “Seven Up” in a Re-Cut carefully overseen by Manuel Göttsching himself, on September 9th 2022, also being Manuel Göttsching´s 70th Birthday. Our Edition features the full original text for the “7 levels of consciousness” by Timothy Leary in English, i.e. “Instruction Manual for Pleasure Panel” plus a previously unreleased glimpse view of the original scripts incl. notes and mark ups as well as partly unreleased photos from the recording session. ->continued on page 2->continued on page 2 As for the music itself we again refer to Julian Cope´s review and remarks from his book “Krautrocksampler” (published by Head Heritage, 1st ed. 1995): “When the Leary Mob met the Kaiser Gang, the sparks flew ever Up-wards... 7up is a stone classic in every way. Yes, it is unlikely to find Timothy Leary singing lead vocal in a cosmic group, but even weirder that he chose to sing a wild yelping freaked out blues ! Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke had begun their careers in The Steeple Chase Blues Band back in the mid-'60ies, and they quickly felt their way through what Barritt and Leary were aiming for. They reconciled it all as a kind of West Coast chordless psychedelia, where blues riffs sparkle out of nowhere and the sheer weight of synthesizers renders everything with an unreal Pere Ubu/early Roxy Music quality. The greatness of Ash Ra Tempel burned so brightly on 7Up that there is really nothing else like it. Hartmut Enke and Manuel Gottsching here returned to their riffy roots. It can hardly be called a retro act, though, as the context of music is everything. And with Dierks at the controls, even the New Kids on the Block would have sounded psychedelic. 7Up is like a late night radio show glimpsed through a shattered tuner where all but the most truly dangerous sounds have been allowed to stay, to drift and to dance around the performers. The result is an extreme gem, a flash of hysterical white lightning, and a pre-punk Technicolour yawn in the grandest of traditions. In typical Ash Ra Tempel style, the record is divided into two pieces, “Space” and "Time”. Within this, though, Timothy Leary’s ideas are allowed to free-flow and the two sides are therefore divided into mini-songs all segued together. The highlight of Side 1 is “Power Drive”, a West Coast burn-up that transcends any W. Coast music I ever did hear. Leary and Barritt present the greatest twin-vocal of all time, coming on like Jagger and Morrison but too caught up in their own maelstrom to be anything less than Heralds of the Punkfuture still five years away. In chaos it was conceived and in chaos it was recorded. Yet Dieter Dierks, the great Aural Architect of the Cosmic Couriers, turned 7Up into a personal triumph and a Kosmische dream.”

A Colourful Storm begins 2024 with a luxurious suite of daydreaming introspection courtesy of Unchained, the longstanding solo project of Nathaniel Davis. Recorded at home between 2020 and 2023, Gabbeh is the latest expression of Davis’s guitar-based instrumental musings and represents an almost two decade-long stylistic evolution of his self-released noise tapes and CD-Rs into romantic, bossa nova-influenced melody-making. He wrote the tracks sporadically, with minimal instrumentation and intervention. Electric guitar, bass improvisations and rhythms from an old drum machine are layered and given new life, the space between them softly breathing with minutiae of the everyday: the buzz of cicadas, the passing of cars, the whistling of passersby. The psychogeography of Grenoble, Davis’ home since 2018, played a conscious role in the weaving of Gabbeh’s fabric: “I think certain songs reflect, in ways, Grenoble’s natural surroundings. ‘Drac’ is named after the river that flows from the mountains down to the city… ‘Dru’ is the name of a well-known peak near Chamonix”. And from the city’s strange humidity, alpine surroundings and significance in the lives of, say, Henri Fantin-Latour and Stendhal, feelings at once hopelessly romantic and deeply melancholic permeate throughout the album. Opener ‘Largo’ sets the mood, its primitive samba rhythm concealed by a cloud of saudade, guided by the spirit of Wes Montgomery. “I take inspiration from Wes’s disregard for conventional technique and his insistence on feeling above all else,” reflects Davis, who also cites the multifaceted dexterity of Toninho Horta and lucid expressionism of Maurice Deebank as influences on his work. The bebop sensibility follows suit in the title track, the tension between its angular picks and percussive shuffle a wondrous balancing act, while the intoxicating sway of ‘Rambler’, an updated version of a track Davis self-released in 2020, is perhaps the most poignant expression of longing and loss we’ve heard in recent years. Pure atmospheric bliss floating into the clouds, Gabbeh captures a longing for endless, hazy days.

Reset, the acclaimed 2022 collaborative album from Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, has been reimagined by the legendary British dub producer Adrian Sherwood as Reset in Dub. Sherwood created his version of Reset at his On-U Sound Studios with a crew that included such storied musicians as Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald (Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five).

Released in late 1968, the second Pearls Before Swine record continued to deliver music with a preternatural sense of what the youth of America wanted to hear. One Nation Underground had been a surprise hit when released in 1967 by the hipster free-jazz indie label ESP, receiving an incredible organic response, with continuous underground radio play and sales. Coming from obscurity in Florida into a position of speaking to people everywhere, Tom Rapp and his bandmates felt emboldened to embark upon an evolved piece of record making. The music of Balaklava strips away the manic, post-garage band diversity of the first album, instead grounding the production around Tom Rapp's guitar and singing, with the touches of instrumental color all the more dramatic and striking. Producer Richard Alderson utilized breathy sweeps of reverb, sound effects, tape manipulation and spoken word recordings along with an array of instrumental overdubs including banjo, marimba, organ, clavinet, flute, English horn and strings (played by the band along with New York jazz session players Bill Salter and Al Schackman, plus The Fugs' Lee Crabree and legendary saxophonist Joe Farrell, with Selwart Clarke and Warren Smith contributing string arrangements) to reach for the universal space sought in Tom Rapp's meditative, existential songs. The message writ between the leaves of Balaklava -- WAR NO MORE -- is elegantly written . . . Musically, the message is conveyed with one or two passing lyrical references, letting Tom Rapp's use of literary reference and allegory dwell on the transcendence of love and pastoral beauty in life, achieving a stinging impact, as much by what isn't said as what is. This sets Balaklava apart from much of other protest music from the Vietnam era -- and it has allowed it to age gracefully into the 21st century. Like One Nation Underground before it, Balaklava celebrates 50 years of life in stunning fashion. Original producer Richard Alderson has remastered the album, restoring the precision of the original mix -- and in the process, revealing fantastically dynamic performances and dispersing the haze of the years that had gathered over latter-day editions of Balaklava. The music and message it intended to deliver to the world are still needed, the peace still sought. The fight to understand and to change is still ongoing. And so, Balaklava has fresh purpose, after all this time...

The feeling that Anastasia Coope's music transmits seems to emanate from a precipice beyond the material world, like a void or memory pressing up against the veil. It’s exacting and enveloping, but unmoored in space and time: ghostly, spectral, far-out folk. Darning Woman, her debut album, feels like a dispatch from another past. Akin to lullabies or nursery rhymes, its minimal folk instrumentation contorts into something staccato and strange led by Coope's expressive, stratified vocals. In spite of the suggestion of antiquity that runs through Darning Woman, 21-year-old, Brooklyn-based Coope is very much a contemporary artist. Born to an English father and American mother (whose original Martin acoustic she uses to compose), she was raised in the New York village of Cold Spring. The lonely landscapes and small towns of the Hudson Valley populate her songwriting, setting wintry backdrops against the acrobatics of her voice. Her experience making this record was a largely insular one, too; she began recording music while staying at a relative’s empty home in Beacon, NY, experimenting with recording software in an empty living room, singing directly into the open space. Until that point, Coope had only thought of herself as a visual artist, not a musician– but it felt right immediately. Throughout the next year, she worked to invent the lush, sweeping universe conveyed here. Her voice is the core of this work - emotive, oscillating between shadowy effervescence and something more guttural, building atop itself. Coope spent months teaching herself to sing in a new way, through hocketing and layering her voice, constructing choirs of herself. These songs often start from a chorus or phrase that gets stuck in Coope’s head and bloom into chaotic, fractured earworms. There’s a slew of past cultural touchstones that inform her approach to music making – the avant-garde art rock of the ‘80s; Trish Keenan or Su Tissue or Brigitte Fontaine; medieval choruses; church choirs; contemporary folk; romantic close harmonies groups of the ‘50s; Meara O'Reilly’s Hockets for Two Voices. But rather than the sonics of those works, Coope was instead moved by the ephemera surrounding them, their songs’ abilities to conjure whole worlds. Here, the lush, romantic opener “He Is On His Way Home, We Don’t Live Together” is the portal into Coope’s universe. It teeters in, disquieted, a choral slowburn building into something between hysteria and euphoria, with a slinking piano and a jarring electric guitar line closing out the din. On later songs, like “Sounds of a Giddy Woman,” the auditory illusions became tactile as she composed: “I was able to envision a room of things happening, rather than me just building something,” Coope says. “The record was me starting to think spatially about music.” Coope’s songwriting revolves around intuition and aesthetics, rather than precise lyrical storytelling; she has a striking ability to invoke a sense of movement with her makeshift mantras. The word “woman” appears repeatedly throughout the album’s song titles, but for Coope, that was an unconscious motif. “The word ‘woman’ was having a physical idea of what my songs were trying to represent through this idea of a muse or an idol or an icon,” she says. “It was a mix of the idea of being maternal, of housekeeping, and then also the idea of a character, a star.” The title track serves as a skeleton key for the entire record; “Darning Woman” is a hyperphysical sing-song, a literal instruction to darn and repair, the wane and waxing repetitions that make up a life. It’s the umbrella under which the rest of the songs live. Decisive in its fervor, it loops around nesting: mending, cleaning, housework – collecting, building, and decorating – the hands-on, tangible aspects of at-home life. These songs are built from that, and mantras plucked from the ether or poems and fragments of overheard conversations jotted down, transformed into an entity unknown. Like Coope’s paintings, drawings, and mixed media artworks, which occasionally feature among the imagery in her album and single materials, her songwriting yields an esoteric distance. It’s the feeling of the work pushing back on you, holding you at arms’ length. It invites you to see, to feel, rather than know – but for all that’s arcane here, Darning Woman is rooted deeply in the things we can touch. --Libby Webster

Dream Walker is an album intended for late nights. For those moments when you are ready to let go of your physical self and transcend momentarily into another world. Dream Walker is also an album about someone who can walk between dreams. One who can surpass the boundaries of reality and slip into unseen worlds. A visitor who is writing a sonic story with every step he takes. Dream Walker is also a love letter to all the music I love. I set out to make something that sounded good to my ears with no preconceptions or limitations, so it wears its influences on its sleeve. When you listen, if you start to feel like you know, then you know. Every sound was made with hardware, mostly synthesizers, in 2023. It is also true that it was made by attempting to enter a trance state while recording each of these tracks and letting the subconscious take control to put a touch of otherness in the mix. And that is that. I hope you enjoy this record. It was always intended to end in this form and to find a way into your ears. Believe Walker, believe. –Carlos Giffoni, November 2023

Malegría, Reyna Tropical’s long-anticipated debut full-length album, is at once a vibrant arrival and an electrifying bridge. The portmanteau, born from a 1998 Manu Chao song by the same name, is akin to bittersweet and blends the Spanish “mal” which means “bad" and “alegría” which means “happiness.” It marks Reyna Tropical’s movement from a duo to a solo project. The album is a contemporary celebration and continuation of wide-reaching cultural traditions—from Congolese, Peruvian, and Colombian rhythms to revolutionary artists like lesbian guitarist-singer Chavela Vargas—these influences meld and are remixed through the distinctive lens of trailblazing guitarist and songwriter Fabi Reyna. Traversing themes including queer love, feminine sensuality, and the transformative power of intentional relations to the earth, Malegría spotlights narratives often pushed to the margins and offers them a sonic homeland. Formed in 2016, Reyna Tropical began as an organic, unhurried exchange between Fabi Reyna and Nectali “Sumohair” Diaz who met during a workshop series for emerging musicians. “Our first EP was so spur of the moment,” Reyna recalled. “What we needed was to document, to just do something for our hearts. Not for money, not for our livelihood. Just for us.” The band formed when Reyna had been immersed in full-time work founding and building She Shreds, the world’s first magazine dedicated to women and nonbinary guitarists, and was itching for a creative release and return to her musical roots. By January 2018, the band’s self-titled EP, Reyna Tropical, dropped and the foundations of the band’s spellbinding and distinctive sound were documented and formed. Best known for their rhythmic, hip-swaying tropical feel, the first Reyna Tropical tracks featured Ableton-made beats produced by Diaz—featuring Afro Indigenous drum patterns and environmental samples—expertly mixed with dreamy guitar riffs and soft vocals by Reyna. After the EP’s release, and the debut single, "Niña," was featured on NPR Alt.Latino’s “Songs We Love” series, newfound fans and opportunities alike flocked. By year’s end the band was regularly selling out shows, joined as support on Bomba Estéreo’s US tour, and began booking gigs for major festivals and shows including SXSW, Cumbiatón, and Colombia’s Baile Sagrado. The band released another celebrated EP, Sol y Lluvia, in 2019, created and recorded during creatively enriching extended stay in Colombia. “Things kept coming—studio tours, gigs, and different opportunities,” Reyna said while reflecting on the changes the band went through during the transition. “We were like, ‘Whoa, this is so weird! It’s working,’ but we didn’t even know what it was working for.” In 2020, after eight non-stop years building a business without time off, Reyna withdrew to nature for a community retreat. It was during this moment of stillness that the purpose of her life’s work, beyond running She Shreds Magazine, crystallized. For the next two years, Diaz and Reyna immersed themselves in a tropical journey guided by the music—from Cartagena, Colombia to Fajardo, Puerto Rico and Cuaji (la costa chica de Guerrero)—along the way, invited into a harmonious relationship with local land, culture, and music wisdom keepers. Malegría is the culmination of self exploration fortified through an attunement to land—alongside Diaz and through his passing. From the interludes to the found sounds, Malegría offers a home to diasporic beings de aquí y de allá, diasporic beings who are in the process of searching for and returning to ancestral roots. On “Cartagena,” the bright, multi-layered rhythms and vocals sing of feeling caressed and energized by the elements, and, at the core, there is the sense of a mutual exchange of trust and care between her and the land. By contrast, “La Mamá,” which opens in a seemingly-serene rainforest, builds into a drumline-backed battle cry denouncing the commercialization of healing and the spiritual tourists who seek only to extract from the environment—medicinal, or otherwise. The interludes, which weave between each musical track, unfold a narrative all their own. “Goosebumps” and the subsequent “Singing” each offer peeks into the beautiful, unexpected push-and-pull that can transpire amid symbiotic collaboration. We, as listeners, are invited into the creative exchange between Diaz and Reyna, and the growing sense of power Reyna has found and is now sharing with others through her music. Meanwhile “Mestizaje” and “Queer Love and Afro Mexico” work together to chronicle the unlearning of erasure under a flattened definition of unity and, instead, uplift the importance of naming and celebrating distinct multifaceted identities and histories. These sounds seamlessly blend into the final track, “Huitzilïn,” a tranquil, grounding ballad in which Reyna announces finally feeling her body, her spirit, her soul, and listening to all that surrounds her. “Huitzilïn,” the Nahuatl word for “hummingbird,”