MUSIC

Hive Mind and Sing-A-Song Fighter are delighted to present to you their first collaborative release, the amazing solo guitar album from legendary Congolese guitarist Kahanga Dekula aka ”Vumbi”. At last, Mr Dekula is finally releasing an instrumental solo guitar album after more than 40 years of playing lead guitar in numerous great bands and orchestras. Vumbi, who now lives in Sweden, is one of Europe's greatest ambassadors for Congolese music, has got a special story to tell and he uses his magnificent, infectious guitar playing to do so... Vumbi and the guitar go back a long time. Born with polio in the Kivu province of North Eastern Congo, Vumbi grew up in a Swedish missionary home and picked up the guitar at an early age. Listening intently to the radio, he learned the style and rhythms of Rumba and Soukous from the giants of the Congolese guitar sound, Dr Nico and Franco. "Listening and playing Soukous music makes you feel happy to be alive and you just have to dance to it no matter what". In the early 80’s Vumbi emigrated to Tanzania where he successfully auditioned to play lead guitar for the legendary group Orchestra Maquis. He toured extensively with the band, and from them he earned the nickname Vumbi, his solos being one of the main attractions of Orchestra Maquis' live shows. He moved to Sweden in the early '90s and played in numerous bands including the Makonde Band with Ugandan artist Sammy Kasule and Ahmadu Jarr's Highlife Orchestra. In 2008 Vumbi put together his own group, The Dekula Band, playing his beloved rumba and Soukous every saturday night to an eager crowd of dancers in a worn and faded restaurant in Stockholm called Lilla Wien. Vumbi has since taken the group's infectious and hypnotoic sound to Stockholm Jazz Festival, Face Z in Geneva and festivals and shows around Europe. Swedish producer Karl-Jonas Winqvist (founder of Sing-A-Song Fighter and member of Senegalese/Swedish act Wau Wau Collectif) has been a longtime fan of Vumbi Dekula’s artistry which led to him releasing The Dekula Band's debut album ”Opika” in 2019 with the Dekula Band. While watching the band perform was always a blast, says Karl Jonas, his desire to hear Vumbi play on his own, without the thunderous drums, wailing saxophones and chanting vocals grew in his mind, “Because, in a way, Vumbi’s guitar playing is like an orchestra on its own. And the idea of just concentrating on all the amazing riffs and beautiful, uplifting melodies was just so appealing”. Karl-Jonas proposed the idea of producing a solo album to Vumbi, and within a week the production process began Recorded in two days during lockdown at the Helter Skelter Studios in Stockholm, Karl and Vumbi allowed the music to guide them. Vumbi was inspired to play 2nd guitar adding some harmonies and melodies here and there, and on the final track (”UN Forces Get Out of the DR of Congo”) he introduced a banjo into the world of ”Congo guitar”. Karl Jonas started up his old rhythm box machine to some of the songs to see how Vumbi and his playing would react to it. Elsewhere, wordless backing vocals from Karl-Jonas and Emma Nordenstam were added to Maamajacy, bass melodica by Karl-Jonas appears on Weekend, and a little piano tinkering from Emma adds some sparkle to Zuku. But clearly, Vumbi's virtuoso playing remains the star of Congo Guitar.

LP version. Includes eight-page booklet; 425 gsm brownboard outer sleeve; 180 gram vinyl. "Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country..." So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc'h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, -- taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At the beginning of the 1970s, she discovered the Breton song tradition (soniou and gwerziou) through Yann Poëns and became involved in Névénoé, a cooperative of traditional expression founded by Gérard Delahaye and Patrick Ewen. It was under this label that her first album Marc'h Gouez, was released in 1976. With a dozen friends playing guitar, piano, violins, flutes..., Noguès composed not Breton music, but music from Brittany: a type of shared folklore in which imagination is married to the reality of the moment, that of social demands and companionship. At the very beginning of the record, we can hear her drawing up a chair, before the plucked notes of the harp become a cascade: "Enez Rouz", is an invitation to listen up close. You are reminded here of the Meredith Monk of "Greensleeves", there of the early albums of Brigitte Fontaine/Areski, elsewhere of Emmanuelle Parrenin, Pascal Comelade... Noguès rhyming pattern is ever changing: airy ("Hunvre"), cosmopolitan ("Pinvidik Eo Va C'hemener"), enigmatic ("Ar Bugel Koar"), profound ("Ar Gemenerez"), or enchanting ("Hirness An Devezhiou"). And then there is the track from which the album takes its name: "Marc'h Gouez" which, between nursery rhyme and chamber music, weaves a fabulous web in which the auditor is obliged to be caught. "Brittany equals poetry": so, said André... Breton; and Kristen Noguès proves it to be true. Licensed from Katell Branellec. Carefully remastered from the master tapes by Gilles Laujol. Graphic design by Stefan Thanneur.

Aphex Twin releases their latest album after 5 years!
Starting with an appearance at Copenhagen's "Syd For Solen" music festival on June 9, 2023, the band has made headlining appearances at various music festivals. Prior to the release of the new album, mysterious installations appeared at various festivals, and fans were creating various fantasies on Reddit and other message board sites. Now, posters with the hidden logo are posted in record stores around the world, and by scanning the QR code with a camera, you can enter the augmented reality world of Aphex Twin.

Hostile Environment is the first album in over forty years from the legendary Creation Rebel, who were the original On-U Sound house band and responsible for classics such as Dub from Creation and Starship Africa. The trio of Crucial Tony, Eskimo Fox and Magoo are back with producer Adrian Sherwood to create a modern spin on their heavyweight dubwise rhythms.

It is the seventh album credited to the group, who originally coalesced as a live backing group for the late, great Prince Far I, in the process sharing stages with the likes of The Clash, The Slits and Don Cherry. Vocals from their former band leader, preserved on archive tapes, feature on the new record, as well as guest contributions from the likes of Cyrus Richards (musical director for Horace Andy and the Dub Asante Band), Italian synth maestro Gaudi, and fast chat king Daddy Freddy.

The album title refers to former British Prime Minister Theresa May’s controversial policy towards asylum seekers, and the recent Windrush scandal, all too relevant to a group of musicians of Jamaican origin who have spent their whole lives operating in the darkening shadow of a former colonial power with a staggeringly short memory for historic wrongs.

Innse Gall ‘The Islands of the Strangers’ is a companion piece to the film An Dà Shealladh ‘The Two Sights’; a sound-forward documentary that cinematically re-connects the disappearing Gaelic oral tradition of the Outer Hebrides to its surroundings. The accompanying LP explores the shifting acoustic ecology of the islands interwoven fragments of dialogue, song, and industry. These two compositions were developed from studies made for the soundtrack of the film using the same elements: hydrophone and field recordings collected on the islands of Barra, Berneray, North Uist, Harris, & Lewis between 2017-19, collaged and assembled in Ithaca, New York 2017-20.

Opening the window, I look at the light, it connects me to something more vast. Felicia Atkinson’s music always puts the listener somewhere in particular. There are two categories of place that are important to Image Language: the house and the landscape. Inside and outside, different ways of orienting a body towards the world. They are in dialogue, insofar as in the places Atkinson made this record—Leman Lake, during a residency at La Becque in Switzerland, and at her home on the wild coast of Normandy—the landscape is what is waiting for you when you leave the house, and vice-versa. Each threatens—or is it offers, kindly, even promises?—to dissolve the other. Recognizing the normalization of home studios these days, she revisited twentieth-century women artists who variously chose, and were chosen by, their homes as a place to work: the desert retreats of Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keefe, the life and death of Sylvia Plath. Building a record is like building a house: a structure in which one can encounter oneself, each room a song with its own function in the project of everyday life. At times listening to Image Langage is immediate, something like visiting a house by the sea, sharing the same ground, being invited to witness Atkinson’s acts of seeing, hearing, and reading in a sonic double of the places they occurred. In an aching moment of clarity in “The Lake is Speaking,” a pair of voices emerge out of the primordial murk of piano and organ, accompanying the listener to the edge of a reflective pool that makes a mirror of the cosmos. “I open my feet to fresh dirt, and the wet grass. I hold your hand. You hold his hand. In the distance without any distance. The comets, the stars.” At other times, listening to Image Language is more like being in a theater, the composition a tangle of flickering forms and media that illuminate as best they can the darkness from which we experience it. On “Pieces of Sylvia,” a noirish orchestra drones and clatters beneath and around a montage of vocal images, stretching the listener across time, space, subjectivities. Atkinson says that Image Language is like the fake title of a fake Godard film. There is indeed something cinematic about Atkinson’s work—not cinematic in the sense that it sounds like the score for someone else’s film, but cinematic in the sense that it produces its own images and language and narratives, a kind of deliberate, dimensional world-building in sound. Image Langage is built from instruments recorded as if field recordings, sound-images of instruments conjured from a keyboard, instruments Atkinson treats like characters, what she calls “a fantasy of an orchestra that doesn’t exist.” And then, speaking of Godard, there are the monologues, operating as both experimental-cinematic device and a literary style of narration. Voice can be a writerly anchor or a wisp of a textural presence. Atkinson’s capacious and slippery speech plunges into and out of the compositional depths, shifting shapes, channeling the voices of any number of beings, subjectivities, or elements of her surroundings—not unlike her midi keyboard, able to speak as a vast array of instruments. Image Langage is an environmental record, in the vastest sense of the world. It is about getting lost in places imagined and real; it registers, too, the dizzying feeling of moving between such sites. It puts forth a concept of self that is hopelessly entangled with the rest of the world, born of both the ache of distance and the warmth of proximity. — Thea Ballard, 02.2022

The manc undergrowth continues to sprout new nodes on this killer double album - production by Michael J. Blood, vocals and songs by Samizdat, a real dense cloud of tunes on a tip somewhere between classic Theo Parrish mixes - heavy on the EQ - and Darren J. Cunningham’s Thriller edits, with a mumbled, punk swagger all its own. Like all MJB gear; sleep on it, weep on it. Honeyed and screwed, this one carries thru a long tradition of spiky, anti-establishment expression, augmented by MJB’s genius production and Samizdat's blunted - almost slurred - vocal delivery; mystical, itchy and red-eyed. The duo embody a deviant aesthetic, but guide you thru their narcotic vapours with ease. Like some screwed Ugly Edit, it’s all slow, clipped and hazed to fuck, pitched, and extended, all abrupt endings and no-starts, just over an hour of the special stuff. Yeah these two weave in and out of each other like nothing else. “I seek to fold into Blood’s productions as I believe in the collaborative idea of euphoria, like being touched by each other’s inflections. We try to celebrate and to re-appropriate the notion of what it is to be artistic outside of a “creative industry”. The sam part of the word means “self.” The whole samizdat—translates as: “We publish ourselves”—that is, not the state, but we, the people.“ Aye. Whatever DIY means, surely this is it.

Slow, methodical organ recordings on this major new work from Kali Malone; a quietly subversive double album featuring almost two hours of concentrated, creeping organ pieces governed by a strict acoustic and compositional code with ultimately profound emotional resonance. Featuring additional organ pieces performed by Ellen Arkbro and mastering by Rashad Becker, you’re gonna wanna spent time with this one. ‘The Sacrificial Code’ takes a more surgical approach to the methods first explored on last year’s ‘Organ Dirges 2016 - 2017’. Over the course of three parts performed on three different organs, Malone’s minimalist process captures a jarring precision of closeness, both on the level of the materiality of the sounds and on the level of composition.The recordings here involved careful close miking of the pipe organ in such a way as to eliminate environmental identifiers as far as possible - essentially removing the large hall reverb so inextricably linked to the instrument. The pieces were then further compositionally stripped of gestural adornments and spontaneous expressive impulse - an approach that flows against the grain of the prevailing musical hegemony, where sound is so often manipulated, and composition often steeped in self indulgence. It echoes Steve Reich’s sentiment “..by voluntarily giving up the freedom to do whatever momentarily comes to mind, we are, as a result, free of all that momentarily comes to mind.” With its slow, purified and seemingly austere qualities ‘The Sacrificial Code’ guides us through an almost trance-inducing process where we become vulnerable receptors for every slight movement, where every miniature shift in sound becomes magnified through stillness. As such, it’s a uniquely satisfying exercise in transcendence through self restraint - a stunning realisation of ideas borne out of academic and conceptual rigour which gradually reveals startling personal dimensions. It has a perception-altering quality that encourages self exploration free of signposts and without a preordained endpoint - the antithesis to the language of colourless musical platitudes we've become so accustomed to.

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.

At Week-End Fest 2021, the enthusiastic audience got the best impression: In Suzanne Ciani‘s „Improvisation On Four Sequences“, the whole history of electronic music is present, the awakening of the American musical avant-garde at the end of the 1960s, which eventually led to the clubs of L.A. and New York. We can hear in Ciani‘s improvisations everything that has made up the development of electronic music since 1970, but above all the dialogue between artist and machine, which simply ends when the concert is over. Laconicism, precision, sound sensitivity and the weight of a tradition that Ciani was instrumental in founding come together: spectacular precisely because it is so unexciting.

Two visionary maestros, Pierre Bastien and Michel Banabila, unite in their first collaborative album, Baba Soirée. The veterans of electronic music bring their unique expertise to the table, resulting in a captivating fusion of experimental styles. Bastien’s mechanical loops and fantastic instrumental setups merge seamlessly with Banabila's sound design and impeccable skills of sampling collages. It's not a dance party, nor is it an avant-garde intervention. It's a soirée: a cultivated evening of sonic alchemy hosted by these two charismatic gentlemen. Pierre Bastien is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with a background in French literature. He has spent decades crafting an idiosyncratic world of experimental sound with his self-built mechanical orchestra Mecanium. It was most notably showcased in audiovisual releases on Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Bastien's creations are a mesmerizing combination of traditional instruments (he has a vast collection) and mechanical automatons. The violin in the track Rotomotor, for example, is physically played by one of his machines. In Baba Soirée, Bastien also plays a prepared cornet (Slow Dance, Banbas Aura), infusing the recordings with a breathy, dreamy dimension. Michel Banabila, a sound artist, composer and producer, possesses an eclectic musical repertoire that defies genres. His blend of minimal electronica, tribal ambient, and neo-classical influences has earned him a prominent place in the world of experimental music, and an impressive discography (Knekelhuis, Bureau B, Séance Centre, a.o.). Banabila serves as the creative sampling editor for Baba Soirée, expertly weaving together the recordings to craft an evocative sonic tapestry. The two share a curiosity for traditional instruments from various cultures. The instruments used in the recordings are shown in the cover artwork. A mutual admiration for each other's work paved the way for this fruitful artistic partnership of the Rotterdam-based artists: Collaborating on a single as a fundraiser for Yemen in 2022 set the stage for the creation of Baba Soirée. For Pierre Bastien, Dada, Fluxus and International Situationism have played a significant role in shaping his artistic vision. The title Baba Soirée is an homage to Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg's "Kleine Dada Soirée" collaboration which took place exactly a century ago. There's an unmistakable stoicism and an anarchic not-giving-a-f*** attitude in these recordings by Bastien & Banabila, which resonates in the light of this Dada reference.

It's always a good day when a new Mr Fingers record lands!!!! A1. Around The Sun / A2. Drive / A3. Touch The Sky / B1. Coast Line Paradox / B2. Electrostatic Levitation / B3. Something's Going On / C1. Like The Dawn / C2. Pressureize / D1. Marrakesh / D2. Shimmer

Alleviated Records is proud to present a special re-issue of the Alien project. Larry Heard's productions always hinted at deepest outer space, but Alien was his first actual science-fiction record. It's almost as polished as the most mainstream dance production, but just as sublime as any Detroit producer. Heard's house roots often show themselves, while the chords and shimmering production make this an album almost on par with Heard's mid-'80s peak. The project was a recording & sound-development experiment that was mostly constructed around a Korg O1/W workstation keyboard.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Alvin Curran’s classic Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri, originally issued in 1978 on Ananda, the cooperative label run by Curran, Roberto Laneri, and Giacinto Scelsi. Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri (Light Flowers Dark Flowers) – its title inspired by an intersection in Milan – is the second in the series of four solo recordings Alvin Curran issued in the 1970s and early 1980s, preceded by Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden (1975), followed by The Works (1980) and Canti Illuminati (1982).

Each of these solo works combines field recordings with performances on synthesiser, various acoustic instruments, and voice, arranged in languorously paced, dreamy sequences. Far from the bracing pointillism of much musique concrete, the elements encountered on the meandering course followed by Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri – whether a frenetic piano improvisation, dense layers of Serge synthesiser and ocarina, or a monologue from Frederic Rzewski’s five-year old son, Alexis – often occupy the foreground of our attention for minutes at a time. As Curran explains, his approach is like that of a filmmaker in the editing process, working with “whole blocks of recorded time”.   The purring of a cat, toy piano, a child counting, plaintive synthesiser tones, the cacophony of exotic birds at the London Zoo – each disappears into the next, until, on the LP’s second side, a solo piano performance takes centre stage, moving unexpectedly from percussive minimalist permutations to a halting rendition of Georgia on My Mind. A subtle yet stunning work that more than forty years on still seems charged with possibility, Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri arrives in a loving reproduction of the original sleeve, featuring Edith Schloss’ beautiful cover painting, remastered audio and with new liner notes by Alvin Curran and Francis Plagne.

"Hip as hell" - The Wire

"Their output doesn’t suggest an incendiary avant-garde so much as an extended post-bop language, cool-tempered and abidingly hip." - WBGO

"It captures a really interesting period in his career... This is my favorite sound. It is just so chill and smart and just cool."
- Robin Hilton, NPR Music

After having released Don Cherry's Cherry Jam as a limited Record Store Day title in the Autumn of 2020, Gearbox presents this essential release on specialist Japanese Edition vinyl and CD as well as digitally.

‘Cherry Jam’ sets the scene in 60s Copenhagen, a city which at the time proved instrumental in the hosting and development of jazz musicians both local and American. Cherry had performed and recorded there with Archie Shepp in 1963, toured with Albert Ayler in the autumn of 1964, and would go on to have a residency at the hip Cafe Montmartre in 1966.

Our recording is taken from the original tape of a 1965 radio broadcast, programmed by Denmark’s national radio station (Danmarks Radio.) It was in this same year that Cherry
 would record his landmark Blue Note recording, ‘Complete Communion’, with Leandro 'Gato' Barbieri on tenor saxophone, Henry Grimes on double bass, and Edward Blackwell on drums, as well as feature on fellow American expatriate George Russell’s live album ‘George Russell Sextet at Beethoven Hall’. This particular line-up however, consisting of Danish musicians, has never been heard after its original broadcast date, and neither have the three original Don Cherry compositions that are featured on the recording credits.

These four pieces show Don Cherry in the midst of his transformation from pivotal sideman in New York’s avant-garde jazz scene to leader of his own groups and world traveller. His endless curiosity, free-thinking openness to different cultures, and rejection of musical boundaries paved the way for future creators in jazz, world music, and beyond.

A popular cassette work that has been evaluated among core listeners at our shop, is now available in a limited edition of 300 copies! A very mysterious work released in 2021 from the underground label in London, UK, whose details are completely unknown, and there is a lot of information trouble. "Untitled tape - Untitled work" is a must-see work that boasts a cult-like popularity, whose cassette version was out of print instantly even in the second press. It reminds me of the US underground noise/drones from the late 2000s to the early 2010s, when Kosmische madness swirled around Emeralds. Komische Ambient/Drone Music. Limited pressing with numbering.

LIMITED EDITION OF 5000 180 GRAM OPAQUE DARK BLUE VINYLProduced by Brian Paulson at River North Recorders in Chicago and released by Touch and Go Records in April of 1991, the six songs on Spiderland methodically mapped a shadowy new continent of sound. The music is taut, menacing, and haunting; its structure built largely on absence and restraint, on the echoing space between the notes, but punctuated by sudden thrilling blasts of unfettered fury. It is a sound that no one had heard before and that no one will ever forget. The eerie, now-iconic black and white cover photo of the four-band member’s heads breaking the surface of the water was taken by their friend Will Oldham. Spiderland spawned a whole new genre, frequently called Post-Rock, and came to be regarded as one of the most important and influential records of the past thirty years. SLINT broke up shortly before Spiderland was released. Band members went on to play in Tortoise, the Breeders, Palace, The For Carnation, Papa M, Evergreen, Interpol, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Available on vinyl for the first time in over 15 years! The Runners Four is Deerhoof's double-LP concept album about friends banding together as honorable outlaws in a corrupt world, deciding what to save in an apocalypse, passing secret messages of warning and hope from a remade future back to a soon-to-be-destroyed present. Abundant with lyrical allusions to the flood, where cargo hold claustrophobia inside meets a watery chaos outside, it was written and self-produced by Satomi Matsuzaki, John Dieterich, Chris Cohen and Greg Saunier while they holed up in a rented Oakland rehearsal room for the winter months 2004-5. On pink and blue vinyl."a heavy football, a no-half-stepping opus, a defining statement…The Runners Four should occasion a moment to notice how a little band has gotten its scale and balance right: producing strong and inexpensive-sounding records in its own studio, making coverts through frequent touring, changing its sound every six months or so. It's not easy, especially without becoming part of any movement…" - The New York Times"Deerhoof…has succeeded at something that's very hard to do: It has made records and built a devoted international following on the sheer power of its imagination. And it's a mad, wild imagination..." - The Boston Globe"Deerhoof has forged yet another delightfully odd pop gem, multifaceted and sparkling with creativity." - Rolling Stone"Deerhoof…makes the difficult wonderful." - The New Yorker"At first, The Runners Four is close to incomprehensible. Songs stop as soon as a hook seems to form; rhythms shift and cut like they're running for their lives…but when the mystery lifts and the melodies finally stick—and they do—the album has the undeniable power of complete originality." - TIME

Their first album to chart in multiple countries around the world, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s sophomore record II was released in 2013. Featuring the significant American hit ‘So Good At Being In Trouble’, it received plaudits for its funky, groove-laden blend of DIY indie-rock, classic Sixties pop and psychedelia. Tenth anniversary edition features an unreleased song from the same sessions (‘Two Generations Of Excess’), the era’s B-sides and the five acoustic tracks from the contemporaneously released ‘Blue Record’ EP.

Over the course of his career, Sufjan Stevens has blurred distinctions between the major and the minor, between the details that color our existence and the big events that frame our lives. He has turned historical footnotes of States into kaleidoscopic pop, and rendered the immeasurable grief of loss with intimacy and grace.His new album Javelin — Sufjan's first solo album of songs since 2020's The Ascension and his first in full solo singer-songwriter mode since 2015's Carrie & Lowell — bridges all these approaches. Sufjan uses the quietness of a solitary confession to ask universal questions in songs we can share communally. Accompanying the CD and LP formats of the album is a 48-page book of art and essays. With a series of meticulous collages, cut-up catalog fantasies, puff-paint word clouds, and iterative color fields, Sufjan builds order from seeming chaos and vice versa. And toward the middle of it all are 10 short essays by Sufjan, another window into the process that informed Javelin.

Colorful, powerful, and elegant.　A watershed masterpiece that encompasses the "before" and "after" of Kiyoshi Sugimoto, a master of the era. Since turning professional in 1960, Kiyoshi Sugimoto has been active in many sessions and recordings, and in the late 1960s he joined the groups of Hideo Shiraki, Akira Ishikawa, Terumasa Hino, and others, attracting much attention. Country Dream" and "Babylonian Wind". This album was recorded with Akira Ishikawa, Hiromasa Suzuki, Takao Uematsu, and others immediately after a year of study in the United States. The groovy and lustrous "Hour Time" and "Marmalade Sky," the weird keyboard-driven "Jones Street," and the melancholic and beautiful "Quiet Pulse" are just a few of the appealing tunes that fall somewhere between jazz rock and fusion. This work is representative of Sugimoto's mid-1970s period.

We’re glad to be back with the second instalment of our new series of DJ and Artist curated 12” mini compilations: Melodies Record Club. Ben UFO is up next for volume two, following Four Tet’s selection a few months back. Available early October in loud 12” format and digitally. Here we have two tracks which have been staples in Ben’s DJ sets at different times, but neither were originally produced with a club setting in mind, which is why they’ve never been available in this format before. On one side, we have “Drums” from Laurie Spiegel’s 1980 experimental electronics album “The Expanding Universe”, a collection of tracks produced between 1974 and 1976 using a computer playing the actual sounds by controlling analog synthesis equipment under control of the GROOVE hybrid system developed by Max Matthews and F.R. Moore at Bell Labs. Drums is a percussive seven minute computer generated workout inspired by Laurie’s interest in African and Indian musics, and which brings to mind the most far out kosmiche music of the period to modern day techno. A connection Ben has tried to make explicit by including it in his first BBC essential mix back in 2013. On the flip we have a track by Olof Dreijer from the Swedish band the Knife who’s work you might also be familiar with under the moniker Oni Ayhun. Back in 2009 his artist friend Adnan Yildiz curated an exhibition called “THERE IS NO AUDIENCE” in Montethermoso, dedicated to public imagination. Adnan commissioned a single piece from Olof called “Echoes from Mamori”, that played on loop during the exhibition and was subsequently released only on CD. A contemporary piece more clearly indebted to house music, Olof built the track around arpeggios generated using sounds of frogs he recorded in the Amazon and birds around Berlin, fed into a sampler. Ben’s instalment is out early October in loud 12” format and digitally (stream & download), first press comes with a folded A2 insert with words from and about the Artists. Graphic design by Atelier ChoqueLeGoff, illustration and animation by Nevil Bernard and for the audiophiles out there, remastered and cut at half speed by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios!

Blue Vinyl with Japanese Obi.

Top Boy is the British television crime drama series, created and written by Ronan Bennett. The story follows two seasoned drug dealers return to the gritty streets of London, but their pursuit of money and power is threatened by a young and ruthless hustler. It stars Ashley Walters, Kane Robinson, and the 2020 BAFTA Rising Star Award-winning Michael Ward. The first two seasons aired between 2011 and 2013, but following interest from rapper Drake, Netflix announced in 2017 that it would revive the series. Co-produced by the Hotline Bling-rapper, the third and fourth season of Top Boy launched in 2019 and 2022.

In the captivating Netflix series Top Boy, Brian Eno's transcendent music serves as a vital companion, molding the narrative's essence with its ethereal power. With a masterful touch, Eno's atmospheric compositions effortlessly transport us into the gritty world of crime, friendship, and survival in East London. From delicate ambience to pulsating beats, his sonic tapestry envelops every scene, elevating the storytelling and evoking a range of emotions. Eno's singular ability to capture the struggle, hope, and inner strength of the characters accentuates the raw authenticity of Top Boy, leaving an indelible mark on its viewers. His haunting melodies and intricately crafted soundscapes symbolize the unyielding resilience amidst chaos, making Brian Eno's music an integral and unforgettable component of this groundbreaking series. This album represents Eno's contributions across the entirety of the Series with music from every season and will be released alongside the final season launching on Netflix in September.

“From the beginning of Top Boy, I was given the freedom to work in the way I prefer,” says Brian, “making music and atmospheres and then giving it to the film makers to use as they saw fit. I try to absorb the idea of what a piece is about and from that I produce a lot of music, and say, ‘Here it is. Use it as you wish.’

“If you’d been scoring it in the conventional Hollywood way, the temptation would be to up the excitement factor, up the danger factor, all the time. But Top Boy is really about children in a pretty bad situation. So I explored the internal world of the children, not just what’s happening to them in the external world. Quite a lot of the music was deliberately naive, it was sort of simple. The melodies were simple, not really sophisticated, or grown-up.”