MUSIC

Originally released in 1977 and expanded for a 1995 edition by Musica Elettronica Viva founder member Allan Bryant, 'Space Guitars' uses no electronics, Bryant instead prepares and plays his modified instruments to remodel the sound into unclassifiable waves, clusters of bleeps and insectoid chirps. Bryant wasn't averse to electronic music - he started an influential electronic improv act with Alvin Curran, after all - but he didn't want to rely on synths to make "fascinating new and completely different sounds." And 'Space Guitars' collects studies he made specifically for guitar, whether it immediately sounds like it or not. The title track alone is mindbogglingly unique, making Derek Bailey and Fred Frith's prepared jammers sound almost pedestrian in comparison. We're not completely sure what Bryant is doing, but using only amplification and his arsenal of instruments, he creates sounds with as much variance and texture as a room filled with synthesizers, constantly modifying the pitch and any identifying sonic markers to prevent us from hearing anything that might be too straightforward. It's hard to believe 'Bouncing People Planet' isn't firing from a rack of modules; the way Bryant stacks his ping-ponging string sounds is undoubtedly inspired by synth methodologies and the sound itself is confounding, dense and rhythmic in ways you struggle to comprehend. Best of all though is 'Space Train', where Bryant makes his guitar sound like one of Alan Lamb's legendary aeolian harps, stretching its strings to make it mimic train wheels moving across miles of track.

Originally released in 1977 and expanded for a 1995 edition by Musica Elettronica Viva founder member Allan Bryant, 'Space Guitars' uses no electronics, Bryant instead prepares and plays his modified instruments to remodel the sound into unclassifiable waves, clusters of bleeps and insectoid chirps. Bryant wasn't averse to electronic music - he started an influential electronic improv act with Alvin Curran, after all - but he didn't want to rely on synths to make "fascinating new and completely different sounds." And 'Space Guitars' collects studies he made specifically for guitar, whether it immediately sounds like it or not. The title track alone is mindbogglingly unique, making Derek Bailey and Fred Frith's prepared jammers sound almost pedestrian in comparison. We're not completely sure what Bryant is doing, but using only amplification and his arsenal of instruments, he creates sounds with as much variance and texture as a room filled with synthesizers, constantly modifying the pitch and any identifying sonic markers to prevent us from hearing anything that might be too straightforward. It's hard to believe 'Bouncing People Planet' isn't firing from a rack of modules; the way Bryant stacks his ping-ponging string sounds is undoubtedly inspired by synth methodologies and the sound itself is confounding, dense and rhythmic in ways you struggle to comprehend. Best of all though is 'Space Train', where Bryant makes his guitar sound like one of Alan Lamb's legendary aeolian harps, stretching its strings to make it mimic train wheels moving across miles of track.

From hollowed-out corridors and whispering tunnels, through soundsystem pressure in darkened rooms illuminated by a single intermittent light, Long Gone's fifth release traces the contours of Miles J Paralysis' mind. Dub elements drift through the fog of post-punk disintegration, while echoing percussion and solemn vocals emerge and recede like distant signals. Heavy with bassweight and foreboding, yet never collapsing under its own density, the record occupies that rare space where dread, depth and breathing room coexist.

Lost Soul Super Rarity “Here I Am Baby” by Lady Jane reissued by Athens of the North Rare 1980 Detroit funk-soul LP finally surfaces after 45 years, revealing a powerful story of survival and artistic resilience Edinburgh based label Athens of the North is pleased to announce the reissue of Here I Am Baby, the only studio album by soul and funk vocalist Lady Jane (Jane Brice), originally recorded at Studio A, in Dearborn Heights and privately released in 1980. Lady Jane recorded these sessions during a turbulent period in Detroit in the late 1970s, working with respected engineer Eric Morgeson and a studio band on material largely written by her then-husband. The album remained virtually unknown for decades, with copies destroyed in a flood and masters held by her ex-husband. A chance discovery by Friends of Sound Records founder David Haffner in 2022 set the reissue in motion. Remarkably, before his death, Jane’s ex-husband returned the original master tapes to her—yielding not only the complete multitracks for Here I Am Baby, but an entire album’s worth of unreleased material, also coming soon on AOTN. Here I Am Baby showcases Jane’s extraordinary voice across a compelling blend of soul, funk, and disco, from the opening ballad through heavy funk excursions like “Never Lived In The Ghetto” and “Space Flight.” The album’s final track, “She’s A Star” - the only song Janewrote herself - carries profound personal significance. Recorded without her husband’s knowledge, the song directly addresses her survival of childhood sexual abuse and stands as a moving testament to resilience and self-belief. Now an ordained minister, Jane Brice has spent decades away from the spotlight. But her voice—at once forceful, delicate, and vulnerable—deserves to be heard. Newly mastered from the recovered tapes, Here I Am Baby and the forthcoming Miss Disco present not merely a rare funk-soul artifact, but a powerful document of a woman’s courage in reclaiming her own story.

Spiritual Jazz 19 - West Coast USA Part 1: 50s & 60s examines the influence and expression of the underground jazz that evolved in California and surrounding states during the latter part of the 20th century. "The West Coast of the USA has long been associated with the ‘cool jazz’ popular explosion of the 1950s, though wherever jazz was played, modal, Afro-centric and spiritualised streams flowed and flourished too - the West Coast was no exception. In the post-war years, Los Angeles’ Central Avenue was second only to Manhattan as America’s greatest jazz district. Yet while Manhattan might have been the de facto centre of the jazz universe during these years, it was California that came to exert the greater pull on culture at large, drawing people from across America toward its burgeoning 1960s counter-culture. Here we explore the effects of that counter-culture on jazz. We examine the influence of the most significant force in post-civil rights Black politics – the Black Panthers, and we delve into the novel spiritual practices and religions of the coming ‘New Age’. A variety of idiosyncratic indies such as Arhoolie, Theresa and Nimbus were located in California as well as many more private enterprises, and we showcase the results of their efforts to express their musical freedom. All of these factors can be seen to have an influence on the way that jazz and jazz musicians developed and thrived on the West Coast - and the evolution of spiritual jazz here is examined in detail."

Spiritual Jazz 19 - West Coast USA Part 1: 50s & 60s examines the influence and expression of the underground jazz that evolved in California and surrounding states during the latter part of the 20th century. "The West Coast of the USA has long been associated with the ‘cool jazz’ popular explosion of the 1950s, though wherever jazz was played, modal, Afro-centric and spiritualised streams flowed and flourished too - the West Coast was no exception. In the post-war years, Los Angeles’ Central Avenue was second only to Manhattan as America’s greatest jazz district. Yet while Manhattan might have been the de facto centre of the jazz universe during these years, it was California that came to exert the greater pull on culture at large, drawing people from across America toward its burgeoning 1960s counter-culture. Here we explore the effects of that counter-culture on jazz. We examine the influence of the most significant force in post-civil rights Black politics – the Black Panthers, and we delve into the novel spiritual practices and religions of the coming ‘New Age’. A variety of idiosyncratic indies such as Arhoolie, Theresa and Nimbus were located in California as well as many more private enterprises, and we showcase the results of their efforts to express their musical freedom. All of these factors can be seen to have an influence on the way that jazz and jazz musicians developed and thrived on the West Coast - and the evolution of spiritual jazz here is examined in detail."

大人気シリーズの第19弾として、20世紀後半の米西海岸におけるアンダーグラウンド・ジャズの真像に迫る2部作の完結編『Spiritual Jazz 19 - West Coast USA Part 2: 70s & 80s』。公民権運動後の黒人政治思想やニューエイジ的な精神的探求が最高潮に達した時代を背景に、〈Arhoolie〉や〈Theresa〉〈Nimbus〉といった自主レーベル群に残された密度の高い音源を凝縮。深遠なアフロ・ベースの地鳴りや開放的なモーダル旋律、エレクトリックな質感も交えた多角的なアンサンブルが熱い祈りのように響き渡り、圧倒的な表現の自由を感じさせる。50年代の「クール・ジャズ」というステレオタイプを完全に塗り替えた前作に続き、70〜80年代のカリフォルニアでさらなる深化を遂げたスピリチュアル・ジャズの黄金期を解き明かす充実のコンピレーション。

Deluxe edition, housed in a reverse board printed sleeve with printed inner sleeve. Three LPs came out on Jihad, the label Amiri Baraka ran out of his own house in Newark. Two of them - Sonny's Time Now and A Black Mass - entered the canon of the New Thing decades ago. The third stayed a rumour: a title traded between collectors, a track a radio DJ might drop once a year, a record far more people had heard about than heard. Original copies surface rarely and sell for three figures. Black and Beautiful... Soul and Madness is back, on vinyl for the first time since 1968. Baraka - still signing as LeRoi Jones - had returned to Newark after the Harlem Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School collapsed, and built Spirit House on Stirling Street with his wife Amina: part theatre, part meeting hall, part studio. This is where the album was cut, months after the city had burned in the summer of 1967. Jihad existed to put that work on record. The people making it thought of themselves, in Baraka's phrase, as cultural workers. The music is warmer and odder than the reputation suggests. The Jihad Singers - Freddie Johnson out front, Yusef Iman holding the bottom, Aireen Eternal, Leonard Cathcart and Gilbert Monk filling the middle - sing street-corner harmony that owes everything to Motown and to the doo-wop groups of a decade earlier. Beautiful Black Women was built on the frame of Smokey Robinson's Ooo Baby Baby. Underneath, congas and Russell Lyle's alto and flute keep the arrangements loose, closer to a rehearsal room than a session date. And over it, through it, sometimes against it, Baraka declaims - flat, insistent, pushing ahead of the beat in a cadence that would not be named for another fifteen years. That is the thing worth holding onto. This came out two years before the first Last Poets album, two before the Watts Prophets, two before Gil Scott-Heron walked into a studio. The form barely existed and here it is, fully assembled, on a record pressed by a poet for a Newark community centre. The politics are unbrokered and the rhetoric is of 1968, not of now - Baraka himself spent the rest of his life arguing with the man who made it. It remains a document with the temperature of the moment still in it. Reissued by Moved By Sound, a label that leaves copyright and publishing with artists and their families and takes only its share of the vinyl. That principle is why this took as long as it did: after a protracted rights situation the record is finally in production. Worth the wait. Recommended. "Calling all black people calling all black people, man woman child Wherever you are, calling you, urgent, come in Black people, come in, wherever you are, urgent, calling you, calling all black people calling all black people, come in, black people, come on in." - Amiri Baraka

Guess-again specialists Death Is Not The End reissue Earle Brown’s 1974 solo debut of otherworldly concrète, notably featuring piano by live electronics pioneer and Cage foil, David Tudor, contributing to its uncanny magnetic tape soundscapes. ‘Music by Earle Brown’ features compositions written 1952-1963 during the years after its maker moved to New York to be closer to kindred spirits Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and David Tudor, whom he met years prior when they performed in Denver where he was teaching the Schillinger technique of composition. In New York, his style of open form composition would influence Cage’s own developments guided by indeterminacy, which in turn exposed Brown’s music to Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna, and whch led him to work with Morton Feldman, as heard on their 1962 split side - Brown’s first recording credit, for Time Records. The four works speak to the pivotal emergence of new music during that era. In chronological order, ’November 1952’ features a stop/start angularity, shards of keys and persuasive detonations precisely performed by David Tudor, gripping in its embrace of negative space, contrasting with the fractious concrète cut-up tones of ‘Octet I’, a 1953 piece composed and executed entirely by Brown and comparable as much with Stockhausen’s early electronics as the oddities emerging from Pierre Henry’s studio around that same time. Forward ten years to the album’s long-form bookends, where he conducts an acoustic octet in the fever dream-like play of dissonance and queered pitches on ‘Novara’ (1962), and conducts many of the same performers, and joins them on magnetic tape, for ‘Times Five’ (1963), a fascinating electro-acoustic whorl of rich colours and icicle rhythms that slips off the page into sustained, pitch bent notes with an effect that must have felt radical at the time, and still represents the curiosity and freedoms of the New York School of composers.

DINTE present a cassette-only issue of an NTS radio broadcast from back in early 2019. "A cross-continental trip through instrumental surf, short-run garage rock, and space-age psych oddities from across the globe, incl. groups from the US, UK, Peru, Angola, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, India & Singapore among others."

Required listening for computer music freaks, 'Synthesized Voices' originally appeared in 1976, collecting innovative composer Charles Dodge's prophetic vocal experiments - recordings of Mark Strand's surrealist poems recreated on Bell Laboratories' uncanny synthetic speech tech. If you're into Anton Bruhin's deranged 'Speech Poems', this'll hit the spot. You've got to applaud DINTE for the timing of this one. Right now, it's hard to tell what's a real voice and what's been cobbled together using LLM tech, Frankensteined from decades of scraped voiceovers and newsreels. Synthesized voices are stapled to short form content and used to provide an air of humanity to mass-generated robo-slop. And listening to Dodge's set of pioneering studies, it's remarkable how the technology has evolved in such a short period of time. In the early '70s, when Dodge began his investigations, heavily synthesised voices were terrifyingly mechanical, usually used to depict malign forces - just cop any of those vintage Doctor Who episodes that feature Cybermen. What's fascinating is that Dodge seems to understand its crucial limitation; he doesn't attempt to make the voice sound more human (and therefore more tolerable), but mirrors Strand's absurdist logic instead, going beyond the limit of the larynx. Dodge explains that he labels it computer music because it's the Bell Labs computer setup that analysed and synthesised the voices, but he's quick to say that it's not generative music. Each poem was recorded to tape first then fed into the mainframe, that was then able to recreate the language using a pre-loaded archive of words and phrases. This would have resulted in a dry study, so Dodge tested the limits of the system by reconfiguring the parameters beforehand, shifting the pitch contour, the formants and duration of the syllables to radically diverge from the way we actually speak. The eight-minute 'In Celebration' is a great starting point. Composed in 1975, it seemingly shreds Strand's poem of the same name, in actuality locating its spirit, hanging on the word "you" just like Strand does. Dodge works with speed and pitch radically, twisting the phrases into machine-gunned barrages or disorienting decelerated harmonies. The words are still there - "your lungs prepare themselves for an ashen feeling" is a banger - but they've become hoarse, noisy growls or synthetic cries. The four part 'Speech Songs' is lighter, rooted in poems that were intended to invite audiences to respond with laughter, yet there's something even more disturbing about a computerised voice noisily bellowing out the same word, stuttering and getting stuck on throwaway rhymes. Really, Dodge hits his stride with the ambitious 'The Story of Our Lives', an "operatic dialogue for male and female synthetic voices" that we'd love to think Robert Ashley heard. There's a similar commitment to breaking down the formula of theater and opera on display here as Dodge corrupts these mundane utterances, forcing out near-songs and high drama from soap opera-ready domestic situations. With Dodge at the controls, the words shift haphazardly from recognizable to horrifyingly alien for almost no reason whatsoever, adding a sense of danger to what might regularly be daytime telly. It's an astute skewering of American culture that's maybe more relevant now than it ever was.

Required listening for computer music freaks, 'Synthesized Voices' originally appeared in 1976, collecting innovative composer Charles Dodge's prophetic vocal experiments - recordings of Mark Strand's surrealist poems recreated on Bell Laboratories' uncanny synthetic speech tech. If you're into Anton Bruhin's deranged 'Speech Poems', this'll hit the spot. You've got to applaud DINTE for the timing of this one. Right now, it's hard to tell what's a real voice and what's been cobbled together using LLM tech, Frankensteined from decades of scraped voiceovers and newsreels. Synthesized voices are stapled to short form content and used to provide an air of humanity to mass-generated robo-slop. And listening to Dodge's set of pioneering studies, it's remarkable how the technology has evolved in such a short period of time. In the early '70s, when Dodge began his investigations, heavily synthesised voices were terrifyingly mechanical, usually used to depict malign forces - just cop any of those vintage Doctor Who episodes that feature Cybermen. What's fascinating is that Dodge seems to understand its crucial limitation; he doesn't attempt to make the voice sound more human (and therefore more tolerable), but mirrors Strand's absurdist logic instead, going beyond the limit of the larynx. Dodge explains that he labels it computer music because it's the Bell Labs computer setup that analysed and synthesised the voices, but he's quick to say that it's not generative music. Each poem was recorded to tape first then fed into the mainframe, that was then able to recreate the language using a pre-loaded archive of words and phrases. This would have resulted in a dry study, so Dodge tested the limits of the system by reconfiguring the parameters beforehand, shifting the pitch contour, the formants and duration of the syllables to radically diverge from the way we actually speak. The eight-minute 'In Celebration' is a great starting point. Composed in 1975, it seemingly shreds Strand's poem of the same name, in actuality locating its spirit, hanging on the word "you" just like Strand does. Dodge works with speed and pitch radically, twisting the phrases into machine-gunned barrages or disorienting decelerated harmonies. The words are still there - "your lungs prepare themselves for an ashen feeling" is a banger - but they've become hoarse, noisy growls or synthetic cries. The four part 'Speech Songs' is lighter, rooted in poems that were intended to invite audiences to respond with laughter, yet there's something even more disturbing about a computerised voice noisily bellowing out the same word, stuttering and getting stuck on throwaway rhymes. Really, Dodge hits his stride with the ambitious 'The Story of Our Lives', an "operatic dialogue for male and female synthetic voices" that we'd love to think Robert Ashley heard. There's a similar commitment to breaking down the formula of theater and opera on display here as Dodge corrupts these mundane utterances, forcing out near-songs and high drama from soap opera-ready domestic situations. With Dodge at the controls, the words shift haphazardly from recognizable to horrifyingly alien for almost no reason whatsoever, adding a sense of danger to what might regularly be daytime telly. It's an astute skewering of American culture that's maybe more relevant now than it ever was.

Guess-again specialists Death Is Not The End reissue Earle Brown’s 1974 solo debut of otherworldly concrète, notably featuring piano by live electronics pioneer and Cage foil, David Tudor, contributing to its uncanny magnetic tape soundscapes. ‘Music by Earle Brown’ features compositions written 1952-1963 during the years after its maker moved to New York to be closer to kindred spirits Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and David Tudor, whom he met years prior when they performed in Denver where he was teaching the Schillinger technique of composition. In New York, his style of open form composition would influence Cage’s own developments guided by indeterminacy, which in turn exposed Brown’s music to Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna, and whch led him to work with Morton Feldman, as heard on their 1962 split side - Brown’s first recording credit, for Time Records. The four works speak to the pivotal emergence of new music during that era. In chronological order, ’November 1952’ features a stop/start angularity, shards of keys and persuasive detonations precisely performed by David Tudor, gripping in its embrace of negative space, contrasting with the fractious concrète cut-up tones of ‘Octet I’, a 1953 piece composed and executed entirely by Brown and comparable as much with Stockhausen’s early electronics as the oddities emerging from Pierre Henry’s studio around that same time. Forward ten years to the album’s long-form bookends, where he conducts an acoustic octet in the fever dream-like play of dissonance and queered pitches on ‘Novara’ (1962), and conducts many of the same performers, and joins them on magnetic tape, for ‘Times Five’ (1963), a fascinating electro-acoustic whorl of rich colours and icicle rhythms that slips off the page into sustained, pitch bent notes with an effect that must have felt radical at the time, and still represents the curiosity and freedoms of the New York School of composers.

‘Hall of Life’ is an EP by the artist bambinodj. It’s his second release on OST. To quote bino, it’s “a sanctuary” — a zone of infinite sky and slow-drifting currents. It’s a place of outstretched hands and horizons without end, of long sighs and levitation. Not a getaway, but an invitation to rise above. It’s the sound of an artist in pursuit of a conduit to something both immediate and higher. The ambient balearia of opener ‘Deep Blue’ is instant immersion. It flings open the windows to a panoramic expanse, cinematic in scope and lush in texture. Five minutes of concentrated ego death; unbound, paradisiacal. A drumless reconstitution of a sound that’s unmistakably bino’s. It’s followed by the one-two kiss of ‘Drummyfeb’ and the Mikey Enwright-elevating ‘Seastar’, which transplant drums inspired by Afro-Caribbean and Latin rhythms onto tingling synths. ‘Spellfall’ plays host to artist Merely, marrying bursts of distortion to juddering beats, electrifying cascades of piano, and shredded guitar. Pure energy; unearthly light refracted on ocean. ‘Unfurling’ and ender ‘Windwoods’ ebb and flow between tension and a cautious optimism, shedding the strictures of the artist’s earlier ‘trancehall’ pigeonholing. It’s fitting — ‘Hall of Life’ is something unto itself, framing a world of its own —a world that rejects escapism and embraces connection. It all feels right.

Portland’s Osmosis chart a cross-section of North American-derived electronics, ranging from Priori’s slow techno slug to Ben Bondy & Special Guest DJ's bleep special as Xphresh. The Osmosis party / festival / interdimensional research consortium’s label wing serve ravers of odder persuasions with something to bite into. Priori & wav4ms’s greazy grindr ‘Colossi’ is a big highlight, and wav4ms also lends to another standout, the sloshing gamelan trip of ‘Belladonna’ with local Portland artist, Carly Banton, which shares a fascination for tuned percussions with muck’s subbass-propelled halfstep mutation ’Ugamelon Spirit’. Xphresh, the duo of Ben Bondy & Special Guest DJ, whisk-up the featherlike bleep stepper ‘Burning Sand’, and the restless writhe of ‘Fuul’ from mor-f.

Equiknoxx’s crackshot screwball Gavsborg meets Grammy-nominated bassist Pele Fyah on a tracky soca and zouk style knees-up blessed with dreamy, discoid synth hooks and wickedly weirdo phrasing. 10 years since Equiknoxx’s landmark debut LP of skewed dancehall on DDS, and chasing up his Carrier collab, Gavsborg maintains an expressively off-kilter style and pattern on ‘Black Roses’, all bolstered by Pele Fyah’s spring-heeled steppas basslines, as formerly found in his band Raging Fyah. Limber like Usain, they bolt the traps at pace in the soca x digidub zinger ‘Black Roses Corner’ and brilliantly temper the momentum in 'Sak Pase', zipping up singeli-esque 16th note trills on swingeing bassline and tropical breeze pads. A killer ‘Spice Island Social Club’ tilts into something like Kraftwerk gone zouk, before they send it cosmic on a standout closer ‘Laventille Space Program’, recalling Hieroglyphic Being and Denis Wise astral-projecting the dance in its corkscrewing craftiness. Tip!

Effortless dub house swangers and steppers by Gradient, backed with spellbinding remix diffusion by Echospace’s cv313 Igor Arsenjev aka Gradient finely balances elemental warmth and nippiness in his three originals, rolling out from the bleakly sunlit haze of chords and padded bass to ‘Layer One’, thru the denser M-series dub chord togging of ‘Layer Two’ to the clipped strut of ‘Layer Three’. Stephen Hitchell’s cv313 remix prove a master at work in the atmospheric details that swim and refract thru his more saturated ‘Starfall Dub’.

2026年リプレス！ドイツ・ハンブルクを拠点にニューエイジ・リバイバルを牽引したBasso主宰の名門レーベル〈Growing Bin Records〉や、ギリシャ系ニューエイジを掘り起こした〈Into The Light〉などからのリリースや、アンビエント・ダンス・ユニットEarth TraxやPtakiなどの名義でも活動するポーランド・ワルシャワのバレアリック／アンビエント鬼才ことBartosz Kruczynskiによる最新ソロアルバム、今回も凄い才能＆内容！16年リリースの『Baltic Beat』が当店でも大ヒットを記録した人気アクトによる、4年振り最新アルバム！温かみのあるビブラフォン、張り詰めたアルペジオ、重なり合うストリングス、孤独なディレイチェーンなど、アンビエントの重なり合うスタイルに、常に独自のスピンを加えてきた名手による、安定のバレアリック／アンビエント作品！

Sa Pa explores the murkier edges of dub techno and deep house on Rhythm From Ambient, the second release on his Dub Techno For Life label.The title track rolls through heavy dub pressure and gravelly percussion, while ‘Rhythm’ reworks an industrial techno piece originally intended for Sa Pa’s 2015 MDR EP. ‘Last Dance’ stretches into deep house territory with a slow-burning, dubbed-out pulse, before ‘Bo Riddim’ closes things down with deep sub-bass, heavy drums, loose percussion and fragmented melodies. Another experimental outing from Sa Pa, moving between dub techno, house and stranger electronic terrain.

Carrier winds the rhythmic tension to breaking point on his 4th self-released 12”, flexing fine-tuned muscle memory and inch-tight production in acres of negative space across a trio of soundsystem phantoms that dance in the long shadow of D&B and broken beat science. Huge tip FFO Autechre, Burial, Photek, T++. Now three years into a generational run of inspirational plates - including an AOTY ’25 with ‘Rhythm Immortal’ for Modern Love - Carrier’s core sense of discipline and restraint continues to yield peerless reward on ‘Thresholds’. A lifetime’s love of, and immersion in, fwd UK dance musics has prompted him to chase a particular dragon of syncopated swerve and cavernous psychoacoustics to logical, next-level depths diffusing that dread pressure with an adroit, tendon-twitching precision and tactility. Carrier has been instrumental in reminding ravers what was lost when D&B went stadium and pop-chart scale over the past decades, daring to run against the grain, trust his instincts, to return a sense of mystery and bold experimentalism to what was once a thrilling paradigm. This new trio of cuts eke exquisite nuance from tweaked fundamentals, swivelling 2-step off the bone into smoky hall-of-mirrors reflections of ‘Cure’, and specialising in a razor’s edge, toes-off-the-ground sorcery in a recursive, wraithlike zinger, ‘Scout’ that dips to the sexiest, tongue-tip breakdown, beside the tantric, anticipatory chicanery of ‘Black Channels’ which finishes us off with an all-tension-no-release weapon for the ages.

Komet, aka: Frank Bretschneider, is one of the founders of Germany's Raster.Music label and has become an important contributor to the world of microscopic sound and digital sonic art. Recently, he has been releasing material on labels such as Raster, 12k, and Mille Plateaux, among others. Rausch (roughly: white noise, or, distant noise) is a very organically composed blend of clean sinetones and faint echoes of melody and air with a subtle dub aesthetic and intensely polyrythmic microbeats. It is Bretschneider's most engaging album since 1997's Flex.

The landmark work from Steven Hitchell—better known for his Deepchord and Echospace projects—returns under his Intrusion alias. Originally released in 2008 and later expanded into a two-disc CD edition in 2014, this long-awaited reissue brings the second disc to vinyl for the very first time via echospace [detroit]. Evocative deep dub techno visions such as “A Night To Remember” and “Under The Ocean” sit alongside iconic pieces like “Tswana Dub (Phase90 Restructure)”—also featured on Deadbeat’s classic mix Radio Rothko—while overlooked gems “Love In Lofi” and “Never Forget” finally get their due. The set also includes the live recording “Kingston’s Burning Dub [Live in NYC]”, balancing archival significance with immersive sonic force. Remastered by none other than Stefan Betke, aka Pole, who lends even greater depth to its already profound resonance.

Over the past decade, Chaos In The CBD, the brotherly production duo of Louis and Ben Helliker-Hales, have captivated global audiences with their spectral, jazz-inflected deep house sound. With over 100 million streams worldwide, the New Zealand-born, London-based artists are set to release their highly anticipated debut album, A Deeper Life on May 9, 2025 via the label head’s very own In Dust We Trust imprint.

To celebrate the announcement, Chaos In The CBD have shared the atmospheric lead single ‘Love Language’, featuring fellow New Zealander Nathan Haines on Saxophone. It’s an undeniable standout moment on the album—moody, ethereal, and naturally soothing. Speaking on the track, Chaos In The CBD explains: “‘Love Language’ is a track that suits almost any setting, evoking the laid-back, easygoing rhythm of life in New Zealand. Perfect for a road trip to the beach or those magical moments at an after party when the sun reappears. Love Language feels like a reflection of the journey that brought it to life and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”

The 14 track LP marks a significant evolution in Chaos In The CBD’s artistic journey. Known for their signature sound epitomised by their breakout EP Midnight In Peckham on Rhythm Section, the duo’s debut album unites live instrumentation and vocal collaborations for the first time, fusing together key musical influences such as Ambient, Soulful house, R&B, Jazz & Balearic into a melting pot of an epic journey that will surely become a future classic. If Midnight In Peckham was the duo’s coming of age; then their debut album is Chaos In The CBD coming full circle. It features contributions from legendary figures such as Josh Milan of Blaze, Lee Pearson Jr., Stephanie Cooke and UK grime MC Novelist, among others.

Though they’ve been based in London for over a decade, Louis and Ben (aka Beans) have never stopped feeling at one with their homeland. A Deeper Life is nostalgic for their nature-filled youth, exploring the magical coastline and lush rainforest of New Zealand. “The title refers to our childhood, which was idyllic,” says Ben. “It was just the sun, the sand, the sea, waterfalls, birds and fish...” The result is an international dance sound that feels unmistakably like Chaos and ebbs and flows from the beach party to the club to the afterhours. “It’s laid-back but still driving at the same time; it’s club ready, but still deep,” Ben explains. It’s also distinctly Balearic: The brothers found a particular affinity with 90s Ibiza chillout music, being from such a “chill place” themselves. “In its own way, New Zealand is incredibly Balearic, but without the party side” says Ben.

The brothers hope that their debut evidences their deep appreciation of 90s house music, from David Morales’s Red Zone mixes and Kerri Chandler to DJ Sprinkles, Larry Heard and beyond. “We didn’t go to the school of hard knocks, we went to the school of Carl Cox,” they wrote in one of their typically hilarious posts on Instagram. But while they’ve built a meme-driven online personality for their social media accounts, their album shows a deeper side to them too. “We joke around but we want this album to be taken seriously,” says Louis. “It’s music from all around the globe, and there’s a deep meaning to how it flows and sticks together”.

For Chaos In The CBD, A Deeper Life is more than an album—it’s a celebration of their roots, their community, and their enduring bond as brothers. “This is a love letter to home and the feeling of being within nature,” says Louis. “It’s also an ode to a slower pace of life.” The album is an invitation to journey through their world: from the beaches of New Zealand to the heart of London’s dancefloors, and everywhere in between. A Deeper Life is set to be both a club-ready triumph and a reflective escape for listeners worldwide.

Sa Pa launches Dub Techno For Life: a dedicated outlet for the artist’s more dancefloor-focused material - work that has largely sat outside the conceptual frame of his previous releases. The label’s first release, Girls on Tour EP, opens with “Mokira Ultra Dub”, a 10-minute club rework of Mokira classic “Manipulation Musik”. Originally produced alongside an ambient version commissioned for Kontra Musik’s 2016 Kontra X compilation, the dancefloor mix was ultimately shelved until now. With Andreas ‘Mokira’ Tilliander’s blessing, it finally surfaces as a standalone Sa Pa production. A track too banging to go unreleased. “Waiting For You” traces back to Sa Pa’s orbit around the giegling ecosystem via FORUM. Once lined up for an official release on the parent label before plans stalled, the track slipped into the archives. Buoyant and disarmingly pop by Sa Pa standards, it finds its place here as the A2 - tuned to the collective memory of mid-2010s German house music. Harnessing the spirit of Chain Reaction from the abandoned patches and borrowed machines of a rainy night’s recording in Taipei, the B-side’s “Modular System” captures a late-night, one-take modular jam. A broken yet hopeful “World Saving Banger” closes the EP with some raw and IDM-leaning force, showcasing Sa Pa’s new label - and the Girls On Tour EP - as a space for neo dub techno ideals to take shape.