MUSIC

"I don’t keep photographs, old letters, keepsakes or memorabilia.

I have sound-files, thousands of them, un-used, un-heard: folders of field recordings; sonic sketches; experiments that failed but weren’t deleted. The files are saved on hard drives or the cards of obsolete pieces of equipment replaced – bit by dusty bit – with something new, clean and shiny.

A remnant is what’s left over when the greater part it once belonged to has been used up, removed, or destroyed. I think of my sound-files like this, the remains of ideas, of a time too.

Remnants.

The sound-files that became this album were recorded through a particular period in my life when I found myself in flux, between jobs, flats, geographical areas; after the end of one thing, but before

the next thing had started. The recordings felt restless too…

They were packed up in boxes and moved across town.

Finding them again years later was disorientating. Background sounds that had been hum-drum were suddenly, even sickeningly vivid. The chatter of the crew who would turn up each day to drink beer in the square behind my building, the crows that would rattle and click in the tree hanging over

my small roof terrace, the thrum of aeroplane engines which ebbed and flowed without end.

There were sounds from excursions too: the street preachers of Brixton; some untypically groovy Hari Krishnas in Ramsgate; an orchestra tuning up in a church. There was something vertiginous and nauseous about the nostalgia I felt on the first listen, but I soon fell into a process of “fixing” all the loops and sketches, tugging them into shape, threading them into a whole tapestry.

Once this process came to an end they were put away once again…

Things have their time. I dug the project out for a late-night listening session with an old friend who’d known that place and that period in my life. Hearing them with him changed them. They were no longer the sonic equivalent of those old photos and letters I never wanted to keep; they became something else, more communal.

An album.

We hold on to all kinds of memories – bits and pieces, fragments, remnants we so rarely think to share.

Here are some of mine." - The Dengie Hundred

EM Records is proud to present “8 Automated Works”, the first full release by Componium Ensemble, an “indeterminate chamber music” ensemble helmed by Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks. Situated in a lineage of automated music that traces back to the ancient Greeks, Doran uses the possibilities of digital technology and its ability to automate a huge range of virtual instruments to move beyond human impulses and limitations to allow “new shapes to emerge”. Dedicated also to Noah Creshevsky, pioneer of what can be considered cyber-human music, Componium Ensemble features a wide and intriguing range of instruments including prepared piano, bowed harpsichord, celesta, bass clarinet, flute, cello, bamboo tingklik and more, often in multiple groupings. Despite this variety of instrumentation and the seemingly formidable theoretical underpinnings, the music is very accessible and attractive, spaciousand fresh, with a light touch and a sophisticated melodic sense which will appeal to pop fans as well as classical/contemporary music listeners. The album is mixed by longtime collaborator Joe Williams (Motion Graphics, Lifted) and available in 10-inch vinyl, CD and Digital formats, with EN/JP liner notes by Doran and a hyper-realistic cover by Japanese visual artist/graphic designer Kai Yoshizawa, using 3DCG software. The CD and Digital formats also feature a Carl Stone remix bonus track.

“The history of automated instruments reaches back as far as Archimedes and his "organum hydraulicum”, but it was the Banū Mūsā brothers in 9th-century Baghdad who first perfected the concept of a programmable, automated musician: a mechanically controlled flute which performed using a cistern’s hydraulic water pressure and a system of arrangeable punchcards using a visionary proto-MIDI structure. As European clock-making and mechanical music caught up to the Islamic Golden Age a millennium later, automated instruments intersected with aleatoric composition in Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel’s “self composing” Componium, a mechanical organ with two irregularly-shifting barrels that is said to have been able to arrange upwards of 55 trillion variations of an 80 bar piece divided into alternating 2 bar sections of pins. It is this intersection of chance systems and musical automatons that forms the terrain for the pieces on this release.

These basic principles remain unchanged in the contemporary virtual studio, but the array of automatable instruments within our software systems has widened to a near-unfathomable degree (not to mention the speed and ease in which they can be summoned). Virtual players can be manipulated by far deeper aleatoric processes of note randomization, tempos modulated by the pseudo-naturalistic values of perlin noise, with even the physical properties of instruments erratically contorted and continuously in flux...” - S. Doran (from the album’s liner notes)

EM Records is proud to present “8 Automated Works”, the first full release by Componium Ensemble, an “indeterminate chamber music” ensemble helmed by Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks. Situated in a lineage of automated music that traces back to the ancient Greeks, Doran uses the possibilities of digital technology and its ability to automate a huge range of virtual instruments to move beyond human impulses and limitations to allow “new shapes to emerge”. Dedicated also to Noah Creshevsky, pioneer of what can be considered cyber-human music, Componium Ensemble features a wide and intriguing range of instruments including prepared piano, bowed harpsichord, celesta, bass clarinet, flute, cello, bamboo tingklik and more, often in multiple groupings. Despite this variety of instrumentation and the seemingly formidable theoretical underpinnings, the music is very accessible and attractive, spaciousand fresh, with a light touch and a sophisticated melodic sense which will appeal to pop fans as well as classical/contemporary music listeners. The album is mixed by longtime collaborator Joe Williams (Motion Graphics, Lifted) and available in 10-inch vinyl, CD and Digital formats, with EN/JP liner notes by Doran and a hyper-realistic cover by Japanese visual artist/graphic designer Kai Yoshizawa, using 3DCG software. The CD and Digital formats also feature a Carl Stone remix bonus track.

“The history of automated instruments reaches back as far as Archimedes and his "organum hydraulicum”, but it was the Banū Mūsā brothers in 9th-century Baghdad who first perfected the concept of a programmable, automated musician: a mechanically controlled flute which performed using a cistern’s hydraulic water pressure and a system of arrangeable punchcards using a visionary proto-MIDI structure. As European clock-making and mechanical music caught up to the Islamic Golden Age a millennium later, automated instruments intersected with aleatoric composition in Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel’s “self composing” Componium, a mechanical organ with two irregularly-shifting barrels that is said to have been able to arrange upwards of 55 trillion variations of an 80 bar piece divided into alternating 2 bar sections of pins. It is this intersection of chance systems and musical automatons that forms the terrain for the pieces on this release.

These basic principles remain unchanged in the contemporary virtual studio, but the array of automatable instruments within our software systems has widened to a near-unfathomable degree (not to mention the speed and ease in which they can be summoned). Virtual players can be manipulated by far deeper aleatoric processes of note randomization, tempos modulated by the pseudo-naturalistic values of perlin noise, with even the physical properties of instruments erratically contorted and continuously in flux...” - S. Doran (from the album’s liner notes)

Here is a portal to a vast and relatively unknown world, the Japanese cyber-occult underground media scene of the early 1990s; our guide is the late Henry Kawahara, a media artist and electronic music producer whose expansive and visionary conception of digital technology merged with a desire to break free of the constraints of mere rationality. This collection, the first-ever archival release of his work, is drawn from recordings released during the period 1991-1996, an exceptionally fertile time for Kawahara. Originally released on CD by a few Japanese independent labels including Hachiman Publishing, a cyber-occult/new-age book specialist, the releases were available mainly in book stores, so this sumptuous and prescient music has remained relatively unknown. The original titles and tag lines of the CDs give clues about Kawahara’s interests and the music itself: Digital Mushroom, Subtropical Illusion, Never-ending Asia, and so on. This 15-track gateway compilation is available on double 12” vinyl and DL; the CD version has two extra discs featuring sound from two art installations entitled "Dysteleology - α" and "Dysteleolog - β" from the 1990s. All formats feature extensive English liner notes. 

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Henry Kawahara has been called “the Jon Hassell of Japan”, but upon closer inspection one finds that his work operates on very different terms. Like Hosono's forays into computerized Ryukyu folk “sightseeing music” or Tsutomu Ōhashi's Ecophony trilogy, Kawahara's world projected ancient musical traditions and notions of cultural identity onto the modern digital plane through a fusion of cybernetic thinking and pan-asian cultural introspection that makes Western attempts to do the same seem quaint in comparison. Kawahara's omnidirectional sound “illusions” were constructed not as albums but psychological experiences, billowing with a then-nascent notion of early 90s cybernetic spirituality that was proliferating on both sides of the Pacific as the hyperlinked state of global connectivity we know today was just beginning to crystalize. Through digital representations of folk instruments, shifting MIDI sequencing and custom binaural recording technology he aimed for psychoacoustic effect as much as artistic, all via a countercultural form of distribution untethered from the commercial expectations of post-bubble modes of artistic production. This EM collection draws out the best of his fruitful early-mid 90s period into a revelatory sequence, generously opening Kawahara's world to all. —Spencer Doran (Visible Cloaks) 

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Henry Kawahara's deal is Intimate, Intuitive, Adventurous, and Acidy! Spice is added to all, whether its ethereal guitar, nature effects, gamelan club trance, or LSD experimentations. In the vibe of Coil's “Love Secret Domain” and out there clubgamelan. The creative force of the jungle is mutated and interchanged with further sound palettes, and his effex palette has the schwing of a 90s grunge guitarist. His musical tendencies are natural and his scope and variety are dangerous. —Spencer Clark (The Star Searchers / Pacific City Discs)

2025 repress. There are certain albums which shake the world immediately upon release, and others which come from far underground and whose shocks and aftershocks rise to the surface gradually over the years, gaining momentum and power. “Ten Dubs That Shook The World” is of the latter type. Since its original vinyl release in 1988, the prescient impact of this Australian homemade dubwise solo massive by Anthony Maher aka Sheriff Lindo has become ever-more apparent and influential. With its dual-island combination of Jamaican dub and UK industrial and post-punk, and the twinning of spaced electronic drums and effects with some very fine, superbly rooted bass lines, the tectonic "Ten Dubs" has proven to be a durable, doubly-solid shaker. This 2025 repress is dedicated to the original producer John Blades, founder of the Endless Recordings label, who along with Maher and Richard Fielding constituted The Loop Orchestra.

2025 repress. There are certain albums which shake the world immediately upon release, and others which come from far underground and whose shocks and aftershocks rise to the surface gradually over the years, gaining momentum and power. “Ten Dubs That Shook The World” is of the latter type. Since its original vinyl release in 1988, the prescient impact of this Australian homemade dubwise solo massive by Anthony Maher aka Sheriff Lindo has become ever-more apparent and influential. With its dual-island combination of Jamaican dub and UK industrial and post-punk, and the twinning of spaced electronic drums and effects with some very fine, superbly rooted bass lines, the tectonic "Ten Dubs" has proven to be a durable, doubly-solid shaker. This 2025 repress is dedicated to the original producer John Blades, founder of the Endless Recordings label, who along with Maher and Richard Fielding constituted The Loop Orchestra.

live during the 4th anniversary of Sagome at Cafe Oto, London - 20th January 2024 ( January Jenilek + Ottomani Parker Live)

Recorded in one straight take - no over dubbing.

At long last, Takao is back with his long-awaited second album, seven years in the making. His 2018 "Stealth" was (and still is) a much-loved set, mixing elements of ambient and environmental music; with this new release Takao breaks free of the gravitational pull of these earlier influences and strides confidently forward. "The End of the Brim" jettisons some of the more abstract elements of his previous work, embracing a “universal listenability” and a more concrete intensity, with a focus on supple rhythms and strengthened senses of melodic development and harmonic sophistication. This musical growth can be linked with Takao’s admiration of composers Ken Muramatsu and Toshifumi Hinata, who are generally associated with commercial “production music” and easy listening. Another contributing factor is his private study with veteran keyboardist Ichiko Hashimoto of Colored Music. The ten tracks here include three vocal tracks, with three different singers (Yumea Horiike, Cristel Bere, Atsuo Fujimoto of Colored Music) and seven keyboard-led pieces. The vocal pieces are integral parts of the album’s flow, rather than typical “songs” driven by the name and personality of the singer. All of these factors, plus the veteran presence of engineer Hiroshi Haraguchi, known for his work with Haruomi Hosono, who mixed half of the album's tracks, along with the use of excellent old-school synths, aligned with Takao’s forward-looking vision, have combined to give us an album with a unique sense of timelessness. A spotlight illuminating future paths for pop music, available on CD/Vinyl LP/Digital, with English/Japanese lyrics, and liner notes by Yuji Shibasaki.

This 2-track single is a gift from the past, reissuing two rare Thai treasures from the late 1960s, big hits from that time which were actually covers of Japanese songs. Pan-Asian music produced by Surin Paksiri, a legendary presence in the Isan music scene from the 1960s until the present. The first song "Ya Deon Show" was Paksiri's first hit, a Thai-language version of "Soran Bushi", a traditional work song of Hokkaido fishermen, sung here by popular actor Banchop Chaiphra. The song fuses a Luk Thung arrangement with a Japanese "Dodonpa" rhythm. The second singer here is Samai Onwong, a key force in the development of Thai pop music, with "Sakura La Kon (Goodbye Sakura)", sung in both Japanese and Thai. The original was a 1968 hit by Pinky & The Killers and features some fine Khaen playing by Samai, lending a bittersweet Thai feeling. With English lyrics and liner notes, this is a lovely treat, guaranteed to bring a smile and perhaps a tear.

What is luk thung?

A musical genre whose name means ‘country person’s song’ or ‘children of the field’. The name became established in the latter half of the 1960s and now has the status of a national genre of popular song unique to Thailand. The lyrics of luk thung songs deal mainly with the rural idyll, comparisons between the city and the countryside, life in the big city and current affairs. There are certain typical traits to the music, but no official musical form.

Nora Guthrie's ultra-rare "Emily's Illness" is a lost gem of songcraft originally released in 1967, now reissued in the same 7" vinyl format (b/w "Home Before Dark") as the original. Featuring the pure vocals of the 17-year-old daughter of Woody Guthrie, "Emily's Illness" was written by Eric Eisner (The Strangers) and impeccably arranged by Artie Schroeck. A romantic collaboration of psychedelia, pop, and acid-folk, but informed by the harmonic and rhythmic developments of João Gilberto and jazz.

Glass Beams have announced their highly anticipated EP ‘Mahal’, out on March 22nd on their new label home Ninja Tune. Released alongside the news is the EP’s titular track “Mahal”.

The genesis for the Melbourne-based trio, which formed around founding member Rajan Silva, was through the rekindling of childhood memories relating to his father, who emigrated to Melbourne from India in the late 1970's. Silva recalled watching a DVD on repeat with his father; ‘Concert for George’, a star-studded tribute to late Beatles member George Harrison performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2002, featuring legendary Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar with daughter Anoushka, alongside Western icons Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney and ELO’s Jeff Lynne. This intersection of musical styles was reflected in the record collection of Silva's father, where the sounds of iconic Bollywood vocalists Asha Bhosle and the Mangeshkar lineage sat alongside music from blues legends like B.B. King and Muddy Waters. In particular, Silva was drawn to the fusion of Western musical styles and traditional Indian music; a concept pioneered by Indian artists like R.D. Burman, Ananda Shankar, and fraternal duo Kalyanji-Anandji.

This cross-pollination of East and West, of old and new, is a sentiment that the band have sought to capture in their self produced works. Across their output, Glass Beams presents a timeless fusion of cultures and sounds beamed through a prism of live instrumentation and DIY electronica, all wrapped up inside a mesmerizing and mystical visual world of their own making.

Their debut EP ‘Mirage’, released in 2021 catapulted them into the collective consciousness of new followers who came to discover their serpentine, psychedelic-tinged tracks through social media, streaming services and word of mouth, with the vinyl copies selling-out as quickly as it could be pressed via grassroots record store support.

In the wake of the unexpected success of their debut release and an abundance of festival invitations, Glass Beams were amplified around the globe performing hypnotic renditions of the 'Mirage' EP alongside an additional 20 minutes of unreleased music. Early clips of these “unreleased tracks” quickly began circulating online garnering millions of views and a fast-growing and ever-hungry following. As 2023 drew to a close and the dust settled after a whirlwind of touring, Glass Beams retreated to their home studio to record this much anticipated 20 minutes of music. They have named the record 'Mahal'. 

Seefeel is a pioneering, experimental electronic band. Formed in London in the early 1990s, they emerged as one of the most innovative bands bridging shoegaze and electronic music, known for their textured soundscapes, minimalist rhythms and ambient sensibilities. This new, expanded version of Pure, Impure brings together Seefeel’s three classic EPs; More Like Space, Plainsong, and Time to Find Me, and includes Aphex Twin mixes and a previously unreleased demo of “Moodswing”. Remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road Studios, this 11-track collection also features newly reimagined artwork.

Following years of memorable turns in collab with Dean Blunt and on her own solo recordings, ‘Blurrr’ is likely the moment Joanne Robertson ooozes into much wider acclaim and recognition - a stunning album of sparse heartbreakers recorded in the company of Oliver Coates and landing at an irresistibly fragile spot somewhere between classic Grouper, Cat Power and Arthur Russell’s ‘World of Echo’. A real delicate, special album - one of the year’s finest.

In pursuit of last year’s ‘Backstage Raver’ duo with longtime spar Dean Blunt, Manchester born, Blackpool-rooted, Glasgow-based Joanne Robertson casts her strongest spell yet on ‘Blurrr’, cementing her status as a master of timeless songcraft. On nine new songs, every strum and murmured lyric exposes a patient beauty and rare intimacy that transcends the sum of its parts. It includes a trio of co-productions with Oliver Coates - noted collaborator with everyone from Malibu and Mica Levi to Laurel Halo - lending an extra frisson of flesh-tingling substance to accentuate the sensuality of Robertson’s voice.

In solo mode, she has us by a thread on the album’s longest piece ‘Friendly’ where we're treated to harmonies and hooks that pull from Nick Drake through Sarah Records and the blissed Americana of Hope Sandoval, lilting into a filigree coda somehow comparable to Vini Reilly’s sun-kissed, balearic glissandi. Her blissed coos on ‘Peaceful’ set our arm hairs on end, and the languorous opener 'Ghost' is like Robertson's answer to Grouper's timeless 'Heavy Water’, while ‘Why Me’ feels like the Nirvana Unplugged x Cat Power hookup of our dreams; there's nothing heavy handed or overdone - just bare expressions - like a blast of cool air on a humid afternoon.

Coates elevates three of the album's most striking tracks. His emotive string flourishes are remarkably subtle, there's a trace of the cinematic wonder that elevated his work with Laurel Halo on 'Raw Silk Uncut Wood' and with Malibu on the now classic 'One Life', but Coates is careful not to overpower Robertson's songs, enhancing her harmonies without ever obscuring their faultlines. On 'Gown' we’re reminded of Arthur Russell's timeless 'World of Echo', and that connection deepens further on 'Doubt', where Coates' fluttering low-end reverberates below Robertson's cool-headed voice. The killer for us, though, is 'Always Were', a glittering masterpiece that sounds like Robertson’s voice has been recorded to a half-broken mic, then dubbed to worn tape, magnifying its emotional resonance as it cracks alongside Coates' heaving strings, snowballing into a dense mass of harmony and echo.

Part of a series of three new archival releases from Ndeya that showcase Jon Hassell and group in the late 1980s exploring a radical tangent on his Fourth World sensibility.

The Living City captures the Jon Hassell Group in September 1989 performing as part of an audio-visual installation inside the World
Financial Center Winter Garden in New York City, with Brian Eno mixing the band live. Eno had designed an audio-visual installation in the 10-story glass-vaulted pavilion, inspired by the hunting, ceremony, animals, and weather sounds of the Ba-Ya-Ka pygmy tribe from Cameroon gathered by Louis Sarno.

Jon Hassell and his then band, the musicians who had recently recorded the City: Works Of Fiction album, played in the Winter Garden Atrium over the course of three nights, with Eno mixing the band live with the installation sounds.

The audio presented here is an edited selection from the performance on the second night, available on vinyl for the first time, cut across four sides by Stefan Betke aka Pole. Gatefold vinyl edition includes download card and extensive sleevenotes.

The Kiyosato Museum of Contemporary Art was located in Kiyosato, Yamanashi prefecture from 1990 to 2014. It was a private art museum with a permanent exhibit based on a collection of unrivalled scale. The museum also collected and mounted exhibitions on the work of radical contemporary composers, including John Cage. The museum’s primary informant on music was sound designer Yutaka Hirose, one of the pioneers of Japan’s environmental music (kankyō ongaku) movement in the 1980s.

In 1992, the museum mounted a John Cage Memorial exhibition, and this release showcases Hirose’s work on the overall exhibition design and the creation of the sounds that were played in the museum during the exhibition, through a re-edit and reissue of the sound materials.

The sound materials that Hirose created for the exhibition environment were only ever distributed on CDr to members of the curatorial team so this is their first formal release. Hirose’s work for the exhibition was radical in its use of musique concrète and collages of noise and everyday sounds, and in his homage to Cage’s methods, these pieces represent a distinct departure from his normal approach at the time.

The A4 booklet includes texts about the exhibition by members of the team, Hirose’s own description of the pieces, and photographs of the exhibition. (Text in Japanese and English).

Angus MacLise, the first drummer for the Velvet Underground, was a poet, composer, and a member of The Theatre of Eternal Music alongside La Monte Young.

The "Tapes" 3CD Box is the first-ever reissue of a 3-cassette compilation that Pleasure Editions originally released in 2015, limited to only 100 copies. The 3CD box set comes with a miniature poster and track lists, and each CD has a paper sleeve that reproduces the original cassette card artwork. This comprehensive 3CD box set is over three hours in length and includes session recordings with Tony Conrad and William Breeze (of Coil, Current 93, and Psychic TV), mystical recordings from the filming of Ira Cohen's "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" (1968), shortwave experiments, and sounds of Tibetan Buddhist monks recorded by MacLise.

The "Tapes" compilation features excerpts from the archives of the Angus MacLise Papers, which are held at Columbia University Library. The archives contain over 100 hours of reel-to-reel tape recordings of live improvised music, theatrical performances, and sound experiments created by MacLise and his associates during the 1960s and 1970s. MacLise produced the original recordings in his own unique style, characterized by rough and peculiar editing.

The release is curated and sequenced by Will Cameron and Mark Iosifescu.

Jim O'Rourke completed a new sound restoration and mastering of the recordings in 2023.

The 3CD box comes with a miniature poster, a sheet of track list, and each CD comes with a paper sleeve which reproduces the original cassette sleeve artwork.

it was recorded live at my first concert in new york city in the summer of 2022, right before i recorded iiyo iiyo iiyo and right after i recorded the doober with sam gendel and then Nothing with Louis Cole.

i think it is my most grooving record.

SDK is the collaboration between Stano and David Kitt. Stano, a post-punk pioneer from Dublin, is known for his strikingly individual work. A recurring collaborator with All City, Going Back to the Unknown marks his first new material for the label and his return to vocal work after many years.

The project began after a chance meeting at All City led to a connection with David Kitt. In Kitt’s studio, guitars, pedals, tape delay, and synths combined to form dense, dreamlike textures. The music moves between ambient atmospheres, layered guitars, and fractured song forms. Stano’s words appear only where the music calls for them:

“I just turned the pages until the right lyric appeared — I like when the music dictates what the words should be.”

On the collaborative process, Stano adds:

“There wasn’t a conscious decision, it was just a reaction to what David was playing. It seemed to happen organically, we were really on the same wavelength. At the end of that day I knew we had something really interesting.”

The result is Going Back to the Unknown, a collection shaped as much by intuition and chance as by design. The album is completed by Kitt’s contribution “Fireworks,” which seals the record’s arc.

"Be Thankful For What You Got / Blood Is Thicker Than Water" is a 12-inch reissue featuring two classic Philly soul tracks by William DeVaughn from 1974. “Be Thankful For What You Got” is a mellow groove with a message of pride beyond material wealth—famously sampled by artists like N.W.A and Massive Attack. The B-side, “Blood Is Thicker Than Water,” is another warm soul track, making this release a celebrated double-sider that showcases the best of DeVaughn’s career.

Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, and William Parker. Just as those who once gathered in the lofts of New York built sound from rubble and dust, this trio too carves raw time itself, releasing The Ancients on eremite. Collier, the young Chicago firebrand, tears through the echoes of history with his tenor, moving between gospel exaltation and searing cries. Hooker carries the tradition of free drumming, each strike exploding with muscular intensity, while Parker grounds the ensemble with bass tones that resound like the tremors of the earth. What began as an homage to Milford Graves becomes not a mere memorial, but a living festival of blood, breath, and sweat. Filling the air of Los Angeles and San Francisco, their sound recalls the unbound spirit of the 1970s loft scene, yet surges forward as a black hymn thrust into the future.

" dean blunt & Elias Rønnenfelt - lucre LP. Single-sided, 180g vinyl "

Alek Lee’s Cold Feet is a rich, instrumental blend of dub, Balearic disco and smoky psychedelic grooves. Swirling synths, layered percussion and sunlit guitar lines flow through cinematic moods, from the title track’s slow-burn sway to the summer dub lift of ‘Was Was Was’. With two decades of DJ sets, live shows and idiosyncratic productions behind him, Lee delivers his most transportive statement yet.

The RAH Band's space-age pop masterpiece, re-issued to celebrate its 40th birthday.

"The RAH Band, the brainchild of producer and arranger Richard Anthony Hewson, has been synthesizing jazz, funk, and electronic pop into out-of-this-world tracks since the late 1970s. Mystery marked an important moment in Richard's career, following on from The Crunch & Beyond (1978), RAH (1980), and Going Up (1983). With this album, Hewson took his pop songwriting and commercial success to new heights while never compromising his unique and unbound production style.

At the heart of the album are eight perfectly crafted pop songs, each standing strong on its own, with no filler in sight. The lead single, Are You Satisfied?, set the tone for the album’s jazz-funk evolution, but it was Clouds Across The Moon, with its futuristic narrative of love and longing across the cosmos, that became a chart-topping phenomenon, reaching #6 in the UK. The track’s space-age storytelling cemented its place in pop history, with many still recalling that 1985 Top of the Pops performance as the moment they fell in love with The RAH Band - if you know, you know.

From the dreamy synth-jazz of Float, a club and radio favourite to this day, to the smooth saxophone solo on Out On The Edge, recently featured on Steven Julien (aka Funkineven)'s DJ Kicks mix, Mystery remains an essential album four decades later - a testament to the genius of one of the most quietly influential songwriter-producer-arrangers of our time.

Funky Best is a jazz-funk/disco cover album recorded in 1975 by Jiro Inagaki and his band. Featuring bold yet refined arrangements of soul and funk classics by Stevie Wonder, Kool & The Gang, and Ohio Players, the album showcases powerful horn sections and groovy rhythm work. While preserving the essence of the originals, it fuses jazz improvisation with the delicate sensibilities unique to Japanese musicians. Backed by top-tier players who led Japan’s jazz-funk scene, the album captures the raw energy of studio sessions with striking immediacy. Crossing boundaries between jazz, funk, and disco, Funky Best remains a genre-defying gem that continues to shine with the timeless creativity and musicality of Jiro Inagaki.