MUSIC

With this album, even the passing summer will make a comeback in the blink of an eye. The latest title from popular US disco producer Sorcerer arrives on Growing Bin. It's full of balearic house, modern boogie, downtempo, and new age vibes. It seems as if the West Coast's exhilarating breeze is blowing away the gloomy air. Superb!!

"Ambient Music For A Young Girl", a very good new title, has arrived. This is a masterpiece of ambient music that exudes warm nostalgia and a profound sense of tranquility towards the approaching footsteps of autumn. The latest solo album by Cass., one of Germany's most important new age/ambient artists, is now available from Growing Bin. Beautiful. With the music of the foreground, it is a fascinating experience to rescue oneself from ego. After a year of isolation in the current situation, this album is for many people who are going through introspection. Please listen slowly and deeply.

弊店でも毎度瞬殺完売必至の大人気レーベル、濃密な音楽体験をお約束する”Cairo Records”の最新タイトルとなる第８弾コンピレーション！Mississippi recordsがディストリビューションする、このコアな黒人音楽遺産レーベルの最新作は著名アーティストから発見することすら困難なオブスキュアな無名アーティストまで超絶ディープなバラッドを収録した、Harry SmithのAnthology Of American Folk Musicのソウル版とも言うべき、鋭い審美眼による選び抜かれた豪華ソウル・ミュージックを25曲収録。場末の酒場は今日も歌へと酔いしれ、哀歌へと沈み、黄昏の夕日へと焦がれる毎日。遥か遠い日を夢に見る男と女の心打つバラッドの数々に乾杯です！金箔プリント・カバー&ブラック・インナー・スリーヴ仕様。28ページにも渡るフルカラー・ライナーノーツが付属。完全限定盤。同レーベルからのコンピは再プレスもなく、瞬時レア化しているため今回も争奪戦が予測されます。この機会を絶対にお見逃しなく！全音楽好きに大・大・大・大・大推薦です！

弊店でも毎度瞬殺完売必至の大人気レーベル、濃密な音楽体験をお約束する”Cairo Records”の最新タイトルとなる第七弾コンピレーション！Mississippi recordsがディストリビューションする、このコアな黒人音楽遺産レーベルの最新作は今日までヴァイナルでのリリースも為されてこなかったデモ曲含め、著名アーティストから発見することすら困難なオブスキュアな無名アーティストまで超絶ディープなバラッドを収録した、Harry SmithのAnthology Of American Folk Musicのソウル版とも言うべき、鋭い審美眼による選び抜かれた豪華ソウル・ミュージックを36曲収録。場末の酒場は今日も歌へと酔いしれ、哀歌へと沈み、黄昏の夕日へと焦がれる毎日。遥か遠い日を夢に見る男と女の心打つバラッドの数々に乾杯です！金箔プリント・カバー&ブラック・インナー・スリーヴ仕様。28ページにも渡るフルカラー・ライナーノーツが付属。完全限定盤。同レーベルからのコンピは再プレスもなく、瞬時レア化しているため今回も争奪戦が予測されます。この機会を絶対にお見逃しなく！全音楽好きに大・大・大・大・大推薦です！

Group Theory: Black Music is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis Moholo-Moholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2014 with Project ELO, Mogorosi has been in the vanguard of the South African creative music scene’s burgeoning outernational dimension, taking the drummer’s chair in both Shabaka Hutchings’ Shabaka and The Ancestors formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched. As Mogorosi’s first project as leader since 2014, Group Theory: Black Music marks a return to the drummer’s musical roots. The sound is anchored in the transnational tradition of Great Black Music, with the core of the group comprising a quintet of newcomers Tumi Pheko (trumpet) and Dalisu Ndlazi (bass) alongside the experienced guitarist Reza Khota, with Mogorosi himself and altoist Mthunzi Mvubu, another Ancestors member, representing the current generation of South Africa’s creative music torchbearers. Motivated by Mogorosi’s driving dynamism, the group create deep-hued modal grooves that burn with a contemporary urgency, while established pianist Andile Yenana brings an elder voice to three of the tracks. Featured vocalists Gabi Motuba (Project ELO, The Wretched) and Siyabonga Mthembu (The Brother Moves On) take differing approaches to the spiritual standard ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’, while poet Lesego Rampolokeng pours out lyrical fire on ‘Where Are The Keys?’, creating a bridge back to the Black Consciousness movement and figures such as Lefifi Tladi and Wally Mongane Serote. But where Group Theory: Black Music moves an established format dramatically forward is in the addition of a ten-person choir. Conducted by Themba Maseko, their massed voices soar powerfully above every track as a collective instrument of human breath and body, and enter the album into the small but significant number of radical recordings to have used the voice in this way, such as Max Roach’s "It’s Time", Andrew Hill’s "Lift Every Voice", Billy Harper’s "Capra Black", and Donald Byrd’s "I’m Trying To Get Home". At the same time, the presence of this wall of voices brings an inextricable connection to the venerable tradition of South African choral music, and to the importance that the Black choir has had for South Africa’s religious, political and social cultures, including the culture of South African creative music itself. From the Manhattan Brothers and the choral compositions of Todd Matshikiza to figures such as Johnny Dyani and Victor Ndlazilwane, the collective power of voice has been one of the cornerstones of improvised creative music in the country. ‘I started out in a choir’, says Tumi, as he reflects on the significance of Black voices in concert. ‘There’s this idea of mass, of a group of people gathering, which has a political implication. And the operatic voice has both a presence, and a capacity to scream, a capacity for affect. The instrumental group can sustain the intensity of that affect, and the chorus can go beyond improvisation, toward communal melodies that everyone can be a part of.’ This potential for communality in the music swings close to Group Theory’s conceptual centres of gravity. The title refers to the mathematical theory of the same name, the essentials of which concern the axioms that make a simple set of items into a true mathematical group – associativity, closure and an identity element. These mathematical ideas offered Mogorosi a metaphorical platform for thinking about the way that individual players in a musical unit are also bound together at the moment of creation, in a unity that begins to challenge the individual and complicates conventional ideas of leadership and hierarchy. In bringing experienced musicians such as Yenana and Khota into the orbit of younger players, Mogorosi also wants to re-orientate the idea of teacher-student relations toward a more open vision of intergenerational knowledge sharing. ‘We are looking for questions, not answers’, he says. Mogorosi’s overarching vision on Group Theory: Black Music is encapsulated by the touchstone quotation from Amiri Baraka – ‘New Black Music is this: Find the self, then kill it.’ For Mogorosi, these words speak to an essential feature and function of Black creative and improvised art – the search for the point where individual boundaries collapse into the universal ongoing flow of the music, at the moment of group creation. This flow is not local, it is transglobal, and it joins the music of the diaspora with Africa, allowing connections and relations to range across historic and contemporary spaces of struggle, self-determination and transformation. Such effects are also transtemporal, dropping deep down into the wells of history to bring forth sounds from the present and future, and allowing the music to burrow back into the past. As Baraka’s words imply, the individual cannot escape this search unchanged, and the creative musician does not desire to: in the time of its creation, New Black Music intends to flow into and through the performers from sources beyond them. The writer of a song is never the only author; the soloist always speaks for others; the leaders are never one but a host of many. Previous times and places, previous performances and compositions, previous souls and struggles are always made manifest in the music; the search for the inner self is also a quest to dissolve the individual into the living soundways of those who came before and those who will come after. ‘The album is under my name,’ says Tumi, ‘but the ideas aim at a decentring of the individual composer or author, and a a decentring of the idea of the “leader” – it tries to encapsulate the idea of a group effect, to go beyond the point of origin, and it refuses geo-specific narratives.’ South African creative and improvised music, with its nomadic history of journeys between the US, Europe and South African, has always been exemplary of these ongoing processes, and it is fitting that Group Theory: Black Music should itself be the result of an international collaboration. Starting from a shared vision and understanding of the parallels between the music being made in their respective countries, South African label Mushroom Hour Half Hour and London based label New Soil were able to pool their resources to support Tumi’s large-scale creative vision for this project and enable it to find the global audience it seeks and deserves.

Written, recorded & performed by Muslimgauze, this album was withdrawn by Bryn Jones, and replaced by the ‘Betrayal’ album in 1993. This is the album in its original form, as intended by Jones. The material was recovered from a cassette copy of the album as the original DAT was reused. ​ "Shekel Of Israeli Occupation' was never meant to be released. This is the only release of the album in its original form, as intended by Bryn. The material was recovered from a cassette copy of the album as the original DAT was overwritten with new material. Remixes of the tracks "Khan Younis", "Jerusalem Knife" and "Yasser Arafat's Radio" appeared on the album 'Hamas Arc'. The tracks "Caste" and "Amritsar" appeared on the album 'Satyajit Eye'. A version of "Drugsherpa" appeared on the mini album 'Drugsherpa'. Versions of the tracks "Khan Younis", "Drugsherpa", "Amritsar" & "Jerusalem Knife" appeared on the extended 'Drugsherpa' album."

olina project emerged at a time when CDJs became standard in clubs and artists from many disciplines began exploring their possibilities. In Lolina’s records and performances, they are used as a live sampling tool allowing her to move between composition and improvisation. On “Fast Fashion”, discarded vocal takes and phone recordings made while watching videos online or walking down the street are re-sampled across long-form collages. “Mark Ronson’s TED Talk Intro (Using Computer Remix)”, restyles a lecture about sampling and constructed of samples into a track that can’t be contained by any of its elements. Relaxed beats break down into stuttering, jokes turn into abstract situations, and meaning is altered through repetition. With transitions between different parts defining the listening experience, “Fast Fashion” reveals a process by which one thing can be changed into another. “Fast Fashion” is Lolina’s fifth album and first working with Deathbomb Arc. Digital to be released on Oct 27th with vinyl to follow in early 2022 ~ both on pre-sale now. Lolina previously released music as Inga Copeland and was a member of the band Hype Williams between 2009 — 2013.

The prolific shapeshifting artist known as Emma DJ is back on L.I.E.S. following his "FUSION" split lp from last year. His new nine track "Melon Siesto" lp is a deep dive into the warped world that is Emma DJ and his musical perversions. Mechanized soundblasts, tortured voices rising from the rubble, slowbeat mind destruction, and fast paced teeth grinding dance not dance make this album what it is. And what is it? Think about armor piercing bullets shot from close range with maximum blood splatter across your xxxl white tee while a tricked out Honda Accord side swipes your falling and now lifeless corpse and you're getting the idea. Limited to 250 copies worldwide.

"Chicago's Boogie Munster Crew teams up with Star Creature for it's third reissue compilation and it's another major piece of work. Compiled by Tim Zawada and Kool Hersh, the project picks up where The Chicago Boogie Volumes 1 & 2 (Attack of Chicago Boogie and This Love Will Last) left off. Four more Holy Grail Private Press Chicago Boogie tracks officially licensed and sourced directly from the artists right in their own backyards. Mega Boogie Grails seeing the official light of day for the first time. Some of these originals haven't even made it to YouTube, unseen and unheard and now unearthed. Slight DJ Friendly Touch Ups, remastered and beefed up for some modern world."

Italian dj, record collector and beat-maker Phonorem sprouts his roots into golden-era hip hop. Since 2017 he leads the phat! Radio show, at Rocket Radio Verona, occasionally with international hosts.

Algorythm shines light on his background in electronic music: synth-wave sounds on wonky homemade downtempo beats, fused towards ambient and cinematic atmospheres, with live drum recordings, drum machines and few samples.

Including a remix of "Arborea" by the mighty Glenn Astro (termina records / tax free records). Characterised by syncopated grooves and fat wobbly synths, glenn's sound is immediately recognisable, making him one of the cardinal points of the german 2013-15 scene, leaving a distinctive signature on everything he touched.

Finally! The long awaited reissue of a very rare album that was originally released in 1985 on For Life! One of the last treasures of Japanese music, highly recommended for lovers of Japanese New Age, Japanese New Wave and Avant New Wave. This is an analog reissue of the only work left by MU-PROJECT, a fantastic unit formed by synthesizer player Ryoichi Kuniyoshi, known for his participation in the works of Riri, Yoshikazu Sasaki, and Motoharu Sano, and engineer Kiyoshi Toba! The original was priced at nearly 30,000 yen and has been long overdue for a reissue. Shuichi Murakami (Ponta), Hideki Matsutake, Kiyohiko Semba (Haniwa-chan), Keishi Urata (Aragon, The Seatbelts), and many others participated in this exotic oriental/ Balearic new age album. I recommend this album to a wide range of listeners who are looking for something out of the ordinary, not only Mariah and YMO, but also to those who like Digital Trip and the Synthesizer Fantasy series!

600 copies. Lovely crafted tip-on sleeve. Remastered from the original master tapes. ** Sunstroke were Ben Bollaert and Etienne Delaruye, both were obsessed with the burgeoning possibilities of electronic music and it made sense that they collaborate in the studio. The resulting experiments culminated in the 1985 release of Nothing's Wrong in Paradise. The record was conceived as a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist - a sophisticated meeting of post-Berlin-school dreaming, Yen-records hi-tech calm and Impressionist Café music ennui. What makes it most compelling though, is that even while it conjures a seemingly perfect world, something around the edges lets you know that all might not be as it seems. Maybe there is nothing wrong in paradise. Or maybe that’s just wallpapering over the cracks. The rough edges and regret of everyday life cannot help but intrude. Once you have spent some time with it, the whole record starts to seem bathed in a dim half-light, suggesting utopia glimpsed through a smudged lens. Just like the ethereal space in their music Sunstroke only existed for a moment, a second LP was planned but never materialised, briefl

At Richard Swift's National Freedom studios, the live-to-tape ethos allowed the songs on Damien Jurado's 'Maraqopa' to expand and retract like a great beast's breath. Every in-the-moment bell and whistle here is hung with a natural, casual care. And from this, each song offers up its own unique gift: the enchanting children's choir that echoes each line of Jurado's lament for innocence lost on "Life Away from the Garden"; the breezy bossa nova that begins "This Time Next Year" and rises as effortless as a smoke cloud into high-noon showdown pop; "Reel to Reel"'s wobbly, Spector-symphony and its meta themes; the wonderful falsetto vocal work Jurado pulls from himself on "Museum of Flight." The Seattle Times recently called Jurado "Seattle's folk-boom godfather," a praising recognition to be sure. But also a title Jurado might not yet be ready to accept. That's a title for someone who has settled. With each visit to National Freedom, Jurado is exploring, taking risks. He's not only freeing his songs. The gate is opened wide to allow us all into his once-isolated musical universe. One gets the sense he's just now hitting his stride.

Connecting Wasulu hunter music, griot praises, Senufo pastoral dances, Fula and Mandingo repertoire alongside Western psychedelia, blues and afro-beat, Zani Diabaté’s Super Djata Band de Bamako was among Mali’s top orchestras by the late 1970’s well into the mid-1980’s. Tracked live inside Radio Mali’s raw but inspiring studio in January 1982, En Super Forme was briefly available via Côte d'Ivoire’s Musique Mondiale imprint. The album centers around Diabaté and his electric guitar’s pyrotechnics, a relentless shredder that stands shoulder to shoulder with Mali’s fingerstyle gods Ali Farka Touré and Rail Band's legendary Djelimady Tounkara.

Kelz’s debut ‘5am and I Can’t Sleep’ delivers us a frothy dream-pop introduction to the mind of Vietnamese-American producer and multi-instrumentalist Kelly Truong. Written and recorded in the middle of the night in her Orange County, California home, these songs tell a nostalgic yet hopeful story following loss. For kelz, carefully looping beats, tinkering with synthetic waveforms, and interweaving guitar picking serves as a meditation--a mode of processing emotions and the inevitable passing of time. Front and center are her airy vocals, recorded in a whisper so as to not wake people in the other room. Each song folds in on itself like a wave’s undertow, reorienting infectious melodies from tracks previous. When asked about the tracks, kelz reflects on the process as “feeling like running towards something” but not knowing what it is. Escape with kelz on a long night drive with this effervescent electro-pop debut.

Gassing the tempo and playing it loose & tracky as f*ck, Rat Heart’s 5th solo album in the space of 18 months twists his grimy kaleidoscope to spy a more manic, ruffcut batch of warehouse scrappers and basement brukkouts injected with levels of scuzz and blunted vocals. It’s an instant classic shot at the rise of cosplaying posh DJs, alongside thee rudest steppers and spannered grime. Aye, you’re in for a treat - Massive RIYL Michael J. Blood, H-Fusion, Demdike Stare, Actress, Laswell, Hints of this sound are strewn across Tom Boogizm’s gush of Rat Heart releases, but never quite so intently and single-minded as on ‘Ratty Rids The Clubs From The Evil Curse Of The Private School DJ’s’. Under that canny titular nod to Scientist’s classic album, he makes absolutely no bones about his antipathy toward the way dance music - traditionally a working class past-time - has been cuckooed and blanched by the British middle/upper class in the past decade (obvious correlations with 12 years of Tory dickheads?). To be fair, the politics aren’t overbearing - he’s not trying to be Wigan’s Chumbawumba - but they’re inherent to what makes him tick, and patently result in a brilliantly dare-to-differ sound. Taking a big lick of the salty chip, he comes off like MES meets H-Fusion in ‘A Poem 4 The Modern Day DJ Private School Online Activist’, before cycling thru some of his strongest uptempo shit, keeping toes off the ground between the ghettotech percs of ‘Stressss’, his outstanding rimshot stepper ‘Teeth Like a Burnt Fence M8’, and lip-bitingly tight hi-hat thizz on ‘Leigh via Hag Fold’, plus the Sockethead-adjacent ace ‘Yeye’ and a Devil mix style mutation ‘No Tick 4 Lads in V-Neck Shirts (Brave Lil Piggy Mix)’. There’s something else happening on this one too; a very specific je ne sais quoi that’s giving us momentary flashbacks to Laswell, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Gray’, even John Cale’s super distinctive production style on 'Squirrel And G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)’ - bits like the claggy ambient of ‘$hatterdance’ and hot-boxed grogginess of ‘Wot Happens if U Just Eat Crisp’ - all designed to ideally temper the flex.

Vampisoul present a first time reissue of Los Kintos' self-titled album, originally released in 1970. In the late sixties, a generation of young Peruvian musicians, who were fans of tropical sounds, chose Cuban rhythms over the onslaught of boogaloo and Colombian cumbia. This musical movement attracted a legion of young followers, mostly from popular districts of Lima. In 1969, percussionist Domingo Guzmán Villanueva was commissioned by the MAG record label to get together a group to revive Cuban musical tradition. To lead the project he recruited, Francisco "Pancho" Acosta, founder and guitarist of the Compay Quinto. The new group was baptized Los Kintos, in a nod to their desire to carry on playing in the Compay Quinto style. The link between the two groups appears on this first album, as the group's name is written in two different ways: Los Kintos, on the front cover; and Los Quintos, on the back. Recordings began in 1969 and included the stunning "Descarga Kinto", Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz's original "Pancho Cristal" -- renamed here "Pancho Guzmán" -- and Cuban classics from the repertoire of the historic Trio Matamoros like "Lágrimas Negras" or "Mentiras", all with lead vocals by Kiko Fuentes. The success of their concerts would take them on tours across the country, always recognized as outstanding figures of Cuban music in Peru. This reissue brings back an album that marked a milestone in the history of Peruvian tropical music and revives the fame of the group's legendary live performances.

Ulla Straus is a Philadelphia-based ambient artist who has released a number of masterpieces of acoustic dub/ambient music under the direction of Huerco S. collaboration with Pontiac Streator on West Mineral, a label that is now recognized as a sacred place, caused quite a stir. This album was released in 2020 under a different name from a new label [Experiences Ltd] started by uon, a special guest DJ who is an important acoustic dub act at [West Mineral]. It's so beautiful and so deep, you can sink into it forever. This album is built around chant sampling and piano, and is a further exploration of the world of "Big Room", a masterpiece ambient cassette released last year on [Quiet Time]. Mastered by D&M and amp; cut to perfection. Limited to 400 copies. Don't miss it if you like "Mono No Aware" or "bblisss", not to mention [West Mineral] works!

reversals and slippage toward glass, reconfigured
smasht past it
smeared the oil cross currents
and me
plant rotting its container, or, grains lovingly
no warm water to spit back
no cloth to tie

i glance back
refractions stack right.

a kiss that will stew until it evaporates
scuffed across my feet, feet crossed

bubbled trash that spilt intermittently,
who cleaned the air with a smudgey for you.

Huerco S’ West Mineral label follow Pendant’s sublime 'Make Me Know You Sweet' album with uon’s wholly absorbing study in brownian motion and isolation tank ambience; a hypnotically lush exploration of underwater romance. If you're into the impeccable run of Vainqueur releases on Chain Reaction, this one's for you.

It’s the 2nd release from the enigmatic project, whose debut 12”s in 2017 was among the year’s standout ambient and dub-related releases. On this new one uon poetically describes three different behaviours of water and its amorphous states through a gently elemental push and pull of forces best considered in the vein of Basic Channel, Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas or the shimmering convections of Ross 154.

Beautifully elusive but crucially watermarked with a sense of originality in personalized style, Solaris opens the set with a 17 minute cut - a seemingly infinite journey through swells of diffracted chords and silty filters, simultaneously connoting sensations of opiated amniotic safety and oceanic infinity.

Where the A-side feels like floating in a lush mass, the bass-heavy articulation of his B-side’s J may well urge listeners onto the ‘floor with the same, inexorable traction of classic Vainqueur records, and in a way smartly reflects uon’s mutable DJ style, before the aqueous qualities of his final track Bus soothes to a deeper blue state of loved-up introspection which, like Solaris, could have have easily taken up a side to itself.

Bliss.

Spiro World (or One Must First Become Aware Of The Body) is the definitive Time Wharp full-length coming of age collection. Unhinged to any particular music scene, Spiro’s (in reference to prescription drug spironolactone) unabashed yet vulnerable all genre album story by its Brooklyn-based artist Kaye Loggins describes somatically profound personal experiences of derealization, the endocrinological mixolydian heaven & pharma hell on earth, and love letters to New York. Imagining and creating futures can be frightening, joyous, difficult, effortless, inevitable.

Selva Discos fulfills its duty of giving a new life to Fernando Falcão's long lost LPs with the reissue of his album Barracas Barrocas, originally released through Egberto Gismonti's cult record label Carmo in 1987. Somehow, an original copy of this album is even more elusive than its predecessor Memória das Águas and it is a pity that such a stunning piece of music was kept apart from listeners worldwide for so long.

The follow-up to Memória das Águas was recorded in São Paulo after Fernando Falcão returned from his exile in France in 1984. In order to conceive Barracas Barrocas, the musician had the help of illustrious friends, such as singer-songwriter Alceu Valença and singer Tetê Espíndola, alongside brothers Myriam and Daniel Taubkin. At the time, Falcão was still using the sound sculptures he created for Memória das Águas, as he is credited in the liner notes for playing a "water orchestra" and his berimbau variant called balauê.

Barracas Barrocas is an album that works as a more condensed and coherent artistic statement of Falcão's œuvre. Lush strings, swelling brass, glowing production, and humming atmospheres fill the record, adding a beautiful yet subtly linked counterpoint to his previously explosive debut. It is very cinematic, sounding like the soundtrack of a play that only existed in the musician's mind.

For this release, not only the sound was remastered but the artwork of Barracas Barrocas was completely and faithfully restored. Also, the reissue comes with unprecedented liner notes featuring rare photos of the musician and his sound sculptures plus an article that tells the story of Fernando Falcão after returning to Brazil fol

After travelling to India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bali and Java in his younger days, Cybe released three cassette tapes. "Tropisch Verlangen” now compiles a series of ten wonderful handcrafted analogue electronics from those tapes, sounding like lush fields of electronic wheat swaying in voltage controlled wind. It reads as a musical travelogue from a Dutch musician from Haarlem, who listened to way too much Gong and went searching for inspiration, sound recordings and instruments in the East in the early eighties. Right up my alley, and hopefully yours too.

Japanese Balearic Masterpiece ('93) is re-pressed on Clear Blue Vinyl! HIROSHI II HIROSHI" is a unit of Hiroshi Fujiwara and Hiroshi Kawanabe (Tokyo No.1 SOUL SET). This is their chill-out~Balearic classic (EP), which was distributed as a picture disc with a vinyl jacket at the time, and is now a popular and expensive item on the second-hand market. The EP features "H2O," the first track that takes you to a fictional resort with its gentle guitar strumming, and "Beauty & Beast + Bagle (Dub)," an exquisite summer resort dubwise track with melting sounds and the melancholy of the sun in the west. The album also includes six evergreen songs that pioneered the Café Del Mar craze that later spread throughout Japan. The artwork is a faithful reproduction of the CD-era design by Hiroshi Nagai.