NEW ARRIVALS

Gilla Band Ireland’s favourite Avant-punk quartet has re-issued The Early Years EP, a collection of out of print 7” singles and covers originally released on Any Other City Records and The Quarter Inch Collective and then on Rough Trade Records in 2015. The re-issue features new artwork based on the original colour blocks plus The Cha Cha Cha has now been remastered alongside the rest of the tracks and is ready for the dancefloor once again.

Fan fave (and live setlist staple) featured on the collection is an eight-minute cover of post-dubstep mastermind Blawan’s absurdist banger and demented earworm “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage” that, simply put, is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before or since.

Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O'Rourke's fifth collaboration remixes live material from their 2023 European tour. Pareidolia weaves improvised performances from France, Switzerland, Italy & Ireland into a dynamic sound collage, blending computer-generated textures with flute & harmonica. A meditation on perception & randomness.

For this collaborative release, Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O'Rourke edited and remixed material captured at shows they played during a lovely two week tour through France, Switzerland, Italy and Ireland in April 2023. Pareidolia shapes an ideal collage from the best resonances and relationships from those nights. A dynamic medley of colour and shape to pulse through earbuds, speaker cones and the air around you, appealing to your suggestibility, wherever you find it - "the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern; to see shapes or make pictures out of randomness."

Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O'Rourke toured Europe for two weeks in 2023, a wonderful passage through France, Switzerland, Italy and Ireland. Pareidolia, the duo's fifth collaborative release, is a remix made up of resonances from those shows. The movement of sound in each performance and the relationships of sound between them; a dynamic medley of colour and shape to pulse through earbuds, speaker cones and the air immediately surrounding you. Improvisation is the preferred collaborative mode for Eiko and Jim. They both prepare separately, without discussing anything beforehand. The dialogue in the moment determines the performance; anything that takes place is a possible point of departure, allowing for a unique experience each time they play. These 2023 shows marked the first time Jim and Eiko had played together outside Japan. Perhaps the flow of parts unpacked from their respective computers was inspired by the experiences of the tour: the nature of the assembled audience, the quality of the meal on the day at hand. Additionally, Eiko played flute and they both played a bit of harmonica intermittently throughout the performances. These live acoustic signals were routed back to the hard drives, to provide further material to play with — and as they travelled, recordings of the previous nights' shows were among the materials for the next performance. With all this to play with, there was much fun to be had every night. Pareidolia's final mix is one further rearrangement of the elements — comping — say, a bit of Jim from Paris against Eiko in Dublin for a minute, before bringing them both back into the same room for a spell before another set of interactions comes into play. The choices and edits represented here make yet another unique dialogue, as well as a kind of 'best' version of what they were doing on the tour.

For us at home, the sense of inevitability in the parts as they flow together might suggest structure; happily, this occurs without Eiko and Jim really committing to anything of the sort. Their available sound sources could present as a hot-wired noise onslaught, with all faders up full. Endless possible interpretations to be had on either side of the experience! This is one of several ways that the LP title and sequence of song titles come into play. Listeners hearing something more should have a good look in the mirror and perhaps consider the old saying: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

Yes! Tommy Guerrero’s much-loved 4th LP – the smooth West Coast classic From The Soil To The Soul - gets its first ever vinyl release. As the follow up to his revered Soul Food Taqueria, this album was originally released by Quannum Records in 2006 but only on CD. Working with Tommy directly, the LP has been fully remastered, cut on to heavyweight wax, and comes with artwork freshly reworked by the man himself.

From The Soil To The Soul represents a continuation of Tommy’s blissful guitar-soul whilst demonstrating increasingly complex chops and a slightly darker side to his distinctive sound. His spare, effortless funk is blended here with elements of Americana, heavy psych, lo-fi fuzz and intoxicating Latin rhythms. Combined with his typically breezy, laid-back San Franciscan style, it’s a vibe from start to finish.

Recorded primarily in his home studio, Tommy wrote, arranged and played nearly all the instruments, including bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion and kalimba. Renowned street artist Barry McGee, aka Twist, designed the cover art which Tommy has now recast in a deep, deep red for the vinyl version.

As ever with Tommy, the highlights are many and memorable. From twinkling, sun-drenched opener “Hello Again” to the penultimate, punk-rocking track “Let Me In Let Me Out” (featuring the melodic yet fearsome rapping of Lyrics Born), the variety across the LP is relentless, but satisfying, and without once losing focus.

We’re treated to the gorgeous hip-hop blues of “The Under Dog”, Meters-style Hammond B-3 jams like “War No More” and “No Guns More Glory” and Balearic bangers like Bing Ji Ling’s star-turn on the sleazy “Don’t Fake It.”

Curumin’s soulful guest vocal elevates the already-great Brazilian lounge feels of “Salve” to hitherto unscaled heights and the heavy, driving basslines - funky and warm on “Badder Than Bullets”, sombre and intense in “Tomorrow’s Goodbye” and “Molotov Telegram” – never fail to move both body and soul.

But our favourite track is the beautiful breezy pop of “Just Ain’t Me”. A bittersweet, skipping ballad which boasts an incredibly rare instance of Tommy singing. “What you want from me, I can never give” he repeats throughout, lending the already-melancholic atmosphere greater poignancy. It would’ve been number 1 across the planet in a parallel universe.

In Sheep’s Clothing is excited to announce our first archival release: Electric Satie, a one-off conceptual project by acclaimed Japanese electronic music producer Mitsuto Suzuki. Originally released on CD-only in 1998, Gymnopédie ’99 reimagines Erik Satie’s beloved piano compositions in electronic form ranging sonically from downtempo bossa-nova (featuring Brazilian percussionist Marco Bosco and vocalist Silvio Anastacio) to freestyle ambience and chillout room IDM, not far from the music featured on Music from Memory’s Virtual Dreams or Warp Record’s Artificial Intelligence.

A deeply imaginative composer and arranger, Suzuki was inspired early on by Yellow Magic Orchestra to develop his own style of synthesizer music. Suzuki’s first releases include 1994’s Voices Of Planet, an acid techno set under his ARP-2600 moniker, and “Medium Feedback,” which was included on Haruomi Hosono’s 1996 Daisy World Tour compilation album.

On Electric Satie, Suzuki harnesses a unique mix of drum machines, synthesizers (Prophet 5, Memorymoog, PPG Wave, Juno 106, JX-8P, nord modular & nordlead, AKAI & Emu samplers), live percussion, soprano saxophone, piano, and spoken word to craft a lush and vividly futuristic sound world. Compositions like Gymnopédie, Sarabande, Son Binocle, and Musique D'ameublement (Furniture Music) are reimagined with electro-rhythms and inventive digital effects processing, while retaining the sweet melodic simplicity and otherworldly modal harmonies of Satie’s timeless piano works.

FJLP-05 continues with Forest Jams recent trend of Japanese re-issues from the 90’s. This one is E.S. Island’s “Southwind from Hachijo” a deep ambient exploration that is more tribal and spiritual than prior E.S. Island releases. This was recorded on Hachijo Island featuring several traditional instruments with the bulk of the music being played by Eisuke Takahashi (R.I.P.) and Nene Sanae. Limited copies.

"When I was little, I could open the window and go right up to the roof. I didn't have a balcony, so I would lie on the roof and watch the night sky." A dream to be releasing the first vinyl edition of Yahho no Potori, a treasured recording by one of our most cherished contemporary Japanese folk outfits, Eddie Marcon. Comprised of the core duo of Eddie Corman and Jules Marcon, Eddie Marcon was formed in Himeji in 2001, following Corman's involvement in noise-rock duo Coa and Shinsuke Michishita's fabled psychedelic outfit, LSD March. Marking a stylistic shift into delicate, acoustic territories, the duo would release dozens of albums and singles, mostly self-released through their Pong-Kong imprint, that have seen little distribution outside of Japan. An'archives helped us source some of their recent 7" singles, while Preservation, who compiled their earliest works in 2005, remains the only other label outside of Japan to have released their work exclusively. Recorded over a particularly humid summer and autumn, Yahho no Potori sees Eddie Marcon drifting from the delicate psychedelia of their debut EP (2002) into traditional song-based structures, first hinted at in their preceding and debut album, Aoi Ashioto (2005). A document of tenderness, wistfulness and joy, Marcon's deft yet effortless guitar strum sets a stylish backdrop for Corman's voice to ascend. Desirous yet self-assured, Corman breathes life into an intimate space adorned by the elegant instrumentation of Yashuhisa Mizatani, Yoriro Tatekawa, Ran Mizutani and Saya Ueno, whose ingenuous collaborative instinct has been gifted to listeners through collectives such as Tenniscoats, Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Spirit Fest. Here, she also lends her engineering prowess, having produced the entire album. Devotees of ambitious yet beautifully understated songwriting will find much to adore in the songs of Eddie Marcon, and followers of Reiko and Tori Kudo, Nagisa Ni Te, Ai Aso, and those curious about the wider contemporary Japanese underground, will not be surprised by the inclusion of the album's devastating climax, 'Toratolion', in Morr Music's Minna Miteru compilation in 2020. An intense and heartbreaking piece where Corman's voice takes centre stage, it remains a favourite amongst listeners and a centrepiece of Eddie Marcon's live performances. Released on vinyl on June 14 with remastered audio, faithful artwork and Japanese lyric sheet, A Colourful Storm is proud to give new life to a shimmering, underappreciated gem.

At the end of my armA finger, a thread, a vanishing pointWhere nothing can be seen and the air is movingAnnie A, the one-off collaborative project between Félicia Atkinson, Time is Away’s Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney, Christina Petrie and Maxine Funke, arrives on A Colourful Storm with a profoundly inquisitive, exploratory composition evoking questions of inconstancy and reconciliation, vastness and finitude, and the sometimes cruel deception of human perception. Who will conduct our dreams if we never wake?Annie A quietly observes and attempts to compartmentalise the answers. A geographically diverse yet determinedly like-minded ensemble, its seeds were sown during a spring night in London, where time on stage was shared and cherished by Atkinson, Time is Away and Petrie after years of mutual appreciation. Atkinson had found solace in Time is Away’s Ballads, Funke’s Seance and particularly the voice of poet and performer Petrie, whose remarkable delivery, first heard on Ballads, here drifts effortlessly from a wide-eyed stream of consciousness to crystalline sensory expression: “The wind is full of creases / It is shaking the weak threads in the cliff / The coast is releasing teeth and nails into the air”. It is the perfect accompaniment to Atkinson’s hushed tones - a sometimes textural, if not spectral, presence - spoken sensitively like a mother to a resting child, reflecting upon the forces of nature, the fragility of ecology and the surrendering of self to air, rain, and earth.Devotees of Atkinson’s practice will recognise the significance of the natural world in her work, her evocative sonic landscapes formed from a toolbox of keyboard, voice and materials collected from everyday life on the dramatic rocky coast of Normandy, as well as field recordings from places far and wide. She breathes life into liminal spaces, the sound of wind, whispers and the distant clatter of rocks conjuring visions of places both beautiful and eerily familiar. Petrie wanders curiously in these places. “First the Crocus” introduces her desirous cries above a wistful electronic signal, the alternation with Atkinson’s whispers suggestive of each other’s distant presence. “The wind that had not touched land, moving with the warm gyre of the sea / Is now touching land / And is beginning to draw the dust”. What is her fate when this wind touches land? The meeting of the other, the crossing of paths. Their voices, layered and dreamlike, drift and entrance each other with gossamer intensity.Interpreting and arranging the field of sonic accoutrements is Time is Away, whose weaving, layering and sensitivity to detail is likened to the meticulous assembly of an Anni Albers textile. The spirit of Albers guides the piece’s entirety, Petrie’s recounting of her loom and thread a symbol of endurance, vitality and seeking wonder in intricacies: “Every thread needs to pass through the eye of a needle before you begin / I keep wondering, I just keep wondering what will happen”. The piece concludes with a timely appearance by Funke, whose meditation on vulnerability confronts and surrenders herself to the enchanting natural world.

It is a human and artistic adventure made up of craftsmanship, passion, and continuous exchanges between high culture and pop tensions, that of Italo-House. A story of laboratories, sound workshops where the fascination for new technologies and the infinite possibilities they offered, is often mixed with the rigour for classical scores, the result of academic studies at the Conservatory. A story that is then intertwined with that of the balere, the places for dancing and socialising, where dance was not only an opportunity to stage a whirlwind pursuit of hedonism, but was born out of the desire to make a community, to meet, to discover a new family, that of the night, often more welcoming than the original one. It is also the concretisation of a dream, that of being able to ‘reconstruct’ an identity that did not taste of belonging, but of exoticism, of gazes turned towards the Afro-American culture, the one that derived from funk, soul, r'n'b, lived at times with the Salgarian spirit of ‘travelling without moving’.
Italian house was the first, anticipating the irruption of the digital scenarios that have forever changed ‘making art’, to redefine, to redraw a map that did not exist, that of the ‘young’ sound that shifted its creative trajectories from the megalopolises overseas (with all their urban poetics) to the Italian province, inside recording studios where a group of young maniacs of machines, mixers, synths, appropriated a language that was not their own and declined it by opening their minds, demonstrating, that indeed, anything is possible. They studied patterns that came from afar, they applied to those patterns the natural force of moving with sensuality, they showed that they knew perfectly how to build what rappers, a few years later, would call ‘The Perfect Rhythm’. They sought it out in the endless nights of discotheques, of dance halls, from the glitziest ones that would set the standard for Ibizan nightlife to the after-hours clubs on the outskirts of small towns. They succeeded in defining a syntax that, shortly afterwards, would mark, with its influence, the advent of what would become ‘club culture’. So many theme songs, often created for the occasion, rhythmic and melodic sequences packaged with the awareness that there are codified rules that can enhance ‘body language’. Sequences that, often, with their authors, would then fly to New York in search of the splendid voice to hire for a turn in the recording studio, to give the song that definitive and planetary dimension that has, with great ease, spanned the decades.
Authentic musicians, for the most part, those of the Italian house wave, often masters of the orchestra, other times electronic experimenters who were more familiar with the obscure and very, very underground rock clubs of new wave, with the distortions of post-punk, which had opened the ‘doors of perception’ in sound, rather than with the glittering clubs of the ‘original’ disco.
Music of mixture, in short, the representation of an aspiration, as one would say a few decades later, ‘glocal’, the maximum of localisation meets the maximum of globalisation. The airy crystalline openings, the national romanticism, the song that is tinged with black atmospheres, that wanders through the unfrequented streets of the ghetto and comes out with the strength of sentimentality that, in its best expressions, succeeds in making the liberating joy of dance a tactile experience. 

Andrea Burelli unveils her latest work, 'Sonic Mystics for Poems (of Life and Death of a Phoenix).' Rooted in her autobiography and metaphorically intertwined with myth, this work opens a portal to a mystical perspective on life, seamlessly weaving into the tangible fabric of our vulnerable human existence.

Structured around Andrea's evocative poetry, the album delves into the profound complexities of being, navigating shadowy depths while basking in the illuminating light of life. Burelli's vocals traverse landscapes lost in the sands of time, capturing the essence of captivating sunsets, the boundless infinity of the sea, and imaginary lands teeming with magic.

The sonic journey unfolds across 15 meticulously crafted pieces, showcasing the virtuosity of esteemed violinist Mari Sawada and cellist Sophie Notte, distinguished members of the renowned Berlin ensemble Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop. Drawing inspiration from a diverse palette, including experimental electronica, classical, and Mediterranean music, the album orchestrates both simple and intricate polyrhythmic structures and harmonies influenced by classical and folk traditions. Burelli's flexible vocal range intertwines seamlessly with the emotive resonance of acoustic strings, the textured tones of FM synthesis, minimal Machinedrum kicks, and deep Moog Synths basslines.

"'Sonic Mystics for Poems' is a work that has taken on profound meaning for me," confides Andrea. “When I think of where this record developed, my memory leads me to my origins, the Mediterranean. Its waters are home to me." The album's thematic richness derives from the Mediterranean diverse cultural influences, from Southern Europe, to Middle East and North Africa. Her texts are filled with colors, an imagery derived from her past practice as a painter, in stark juxtaposition to her black and white analog videos, which portray an intimate world of symbols and poetic associations, leaving open to one’s interpretation the possibilities of their significance.

Central to the album is an imaginary journey of a phoenix, an invisible pilgrim guarding Burelli’s world of dreams, symbolizing rebirth and creative transformation in her own artistic evolution. : “Involuntarily, my poetry becomes symbolist, occasionally revealing confessional undertones." The album encapsulates change, with water as its elemental force, signifying beginnings, endings, and the eternal cycles that arise. Andrea Burelli's 'Sonic Mystics for Poems' beckons listeners to embark on a transformative journey, where the boundaries of genre dissolve, and the magic of music transcends into a realm of timeless resonance.

She concludes with a heartfelt wish echoing through the waves of her evocative melodies, saying “I dedicate this album to my sea. May the peoples of its shores one day coexist in peace."

One of the definitive albums of 2024, edited and remixed by close pals and admirers; Conrad Pack, ML Buch, Blood Orange, Valentina Magaletti, Lolina, Smerz, Slauson Malone, HVAD and more.

The judicious pick of editors render the downbeat charms and quietly reflective, penetrating lyrics of ‘Great Doubt’ into spaces faithful to, adjacent, and far removed from Astrid Sonne’s beloved originals. Variously teasing its baked in ingredients of chamber music, art-pop, and R&B from curious new perspectives, they range, for example, from the plonging industrial dub rework of ‘Boost’ by Conrad Pack, to a standout 12 minute expansion of ‘Light and Heavy’ along moonlit, Autechrian lines by an ever reliable HVAD, whereas avant R&B star Blood Orange emphasises the breezy soul of ‘Give My All’ is a bright, lustrous overhaul refreshed with tumescent art-pop harmonies, and ML Buch puckers ‘Overture’ to a sparkling whorl that highlights her collaborator’s instrumental tekkerz.

Valentina Magaletti (whose work rate, at this point, makes us wonder if she’s a tulpa) can be counted on for a dusted downbeat take on ‘Everything is Unreal’, and Lolina likewise reliably enhances the oddness of ‘Almost’ in her elusive way, whilst the likes of pop duo Smerz and Slauson Malone amplify Sonne’s infectiouus hooks with a dance-pop appeal.

The first release by Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures in over five years is a perfect example of creative music looking to the future while expressing the sound of now. The amazing chemistry and collective language amongst the musicians reflects their many years of developing and performing Rudolph's concept. These musicians each have direct and personal connections to the roots and history of jazz as they have performed with and have been mentored by key figures in 20th century creative music such as Ornette Coleman, Yusef Lateef, Roy Haynes, Don Cherry, Sam Rivers, Jon Hassel, and many more.

Audiophile Limited Edition Double Vinyl - 300 copies pressed

The exceptional and modern recorded sound of Glare of the Tiger was done by long-time collaborator James Dellatacoma, head engineer at Bill Laswell's Orange Music Studio.

"This recording is the fullest realization of aesthetic and concept, which I have been developing for the past three decades. My aim was to compose music that inspired the musicians to express their inner voice, while still maintaining a clear focus on aesthetic and overall sound. It is my feeling that to honor tradition, one should look forward and not backward. The tradition is to sound like yourself and create a NEW music that reflects the NOW. To put it another way, Yusef Lateef often said to me, "Brother Adam, we are evolutionists."

Rough Trade release limited edition 7-inch singles boxsets to celebrate label's formative years (1978-1993) Having consistently released music by innovative, visionary, and transformative artists, Rough Trade have been defining record collections since their first release in 1977 (RT001 saw the shop help French punks Metal Urbain put out single Paris Maquis), continuing to release cutting edge albums and tracks right up to, and including the present day, with their current roster boasting the likes of Amyl and The Sniffers, Pulp, Jockstrap, Anohni, Dean Blunt, Sleaford Mods and many more. Now, to mark 45-plus years of the label, its co-MDs Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis have indulged in a rare retrospective look, personally putting together two boxsets featuring some of their favourite singles released by Rough Trade during its formative years. Accompanied by new sleeve notes featuring the pair's recollections, impressions and opinions, these limited-edition collections are no bog-standard trawl through the back catalogue but a personal look at the hits, gems, bangers, growers, underrated classics and more. Chronicling Rough Trade's emergence from behind the counter of the West London shop of the same name in the late 1970s, the first boxset in the series fizzes with the daring, Do It Yourself attitude that underpinned punk and subsequent musical expressions that surrounded the label's birth. "Typically for Rough Trade there wasn't a strategy,” says Jeannette of her and Geoff's enduring partnership at the heart of Rough Trade Records. "We just jumped in and hit it off. So, we've stuck together!"

With a clutch of EPs under his belt spanning a wealth of pallets, Henzo narrows the focus on his debut studio album “The Poems We Write For Ourselves” - a culmination of persistent iterations over several years, distilling his sonic milieu into something that feels decidedly his own. The album proper is coupled with a debut live performance which reinterprets the tracks and splices them with omitted material from the time of writing - recorded in full in the intimate confines of Manchester’s growingly infamous Stage and Radio basement. Honing his craft in the shadows of Lancashire, Poems is an expansive reflection of the producer’s time spent away committing to the scope of an LP.

A thread of stratified sound design weaves throughout the record, but with a discerning dancefloor proclivity mostly prevalent. Cold opener “Noggin” riffs on noughties Raster-Noton a la Byetone rebuilt with fractal tear out DnB, with closer “Indulgence” following suit on a puckered plod of Dub Techno ambience. More club-focussed moments come in the form of “Rustica Slump” and “Blue Will...”, the former’s sickly sweet vocals resolved by the latter’s stoic UKG/Techno rudeness. “A Bouquet of Clumsy Words” channels mechanical shuffle with a stripped back 2/4 pulse whilst maintaining a firmly FWD>>energy alongside “Plant Your Roots In Me” on a similar vector - swapping out a straight kick pattern for a bludgeoning 808 assault on an early Hessle-indebted tip.

“Take Stock, Touch Grass” harks to golden era ClekClekBoom and Night Slugs with a bare bones kick and vocal motif, updating the formula with a tweaking lead line that places it firmly in the contemporary space. “Swell:Shrink” sings from the same sheet with a shrieking, space age wobble doing the heavy lifting, knocking the pace back to a shoulder-lean swagger on a slow fast conundrum Henzo has shown his flair for on previous releases.

The outliers to Henzo’s more known approach, “Worm Grunting” with Belfast’s Emby, an amalgamation of halfest time DnB and illest mannered Road Rap, plus “The Rest Is The Mess You Leave”, a starkly anti-retro Ghettotek endeavour, give grounds to the LP. Clearly rooted in the comfortable universe of the dancefloor, these tracks expand the producer’s realm into loftier heights as he graduates into long play land.

We are delighted to present the new 12" maxi on Dubatriation records, two extended tracks for complete immersion ! This opus defines the encounter of Panda Dub and Adi Shankara, two artists already signed to the label.

Like buried treasures, these tracks from a joint studio session have been unearthed and reworked for this release.

Infused with the orientalist flavours of French dub, these two tracks elevate the genre with their neat sound design. Panda Dub's ethnic samples and catchy melodies blend with Adi Shankara's rough and hypnotic textures.

Following the label's signature style, this record offers a deep and solemn musical experience. Embark on an introspective journey without further ado !

Bringing together over 50 of Jamaica's greatest session musicians, whose work spans from the birth of reggae in the late 1960s until today, Roots Architects is the largest gathering of Jamaican musical talent on one all-instrumental album. Never before have so many veterans, who helped create the immortal rhythms that made reggae internationally successful, been assembled to play on new material without vocals. This project aims to celebrate and pay tribute to the unsung heroes of reggae music: the rhythm builders or Roots Architects. Following the outstanding success of the first chapter of the project, From Then 'Til Now (2024), Fruits Records is pleased to reveal the dub album From Dub 'Til Now. A veritable immersion in the mythical sound of Kingston studios in the late 1970s. Dub master Roberto Sánchez sublimates the work of the Roots Architects with wildly inventive sound experiments. Reminiscent of the finest years of King Tubby, Lee "Scratch" Perry and Scientist.

The project is the brainchild of Swiss keyboardist and producer Mathias Liengme. In 2013, he travelled to Kingston, Jamaica, to produce The Inspirators project, an all-star album gathering Leroy ”Horsemouth” Wallace, Lloyd Parks, Earl ”Chinna” Smith and Sangie Davis, the four of them acting both as musicians and vocalists. This first experience in Kingston studio life paved the way to what would become the Roots Architects project. In February and March 2017 Mathias Liengme travelled for the fifth time to Kingston to record as many of reggae’s greatest living veteran musicians as he could. With the help of a few of these Architects like Robbie Lyn, Fil Callender or Dalton Browne, he managed to gather over 50 session musicians aged 60 to 85 on nine instrumental songs.

Roots Architects are legends back together in Kingston studios doing what they do best: creating instrumental music all together!

Al Wootton samples a museum-worthy haul of vintage drum machines on this sick Library Record for his Trule label - big one for anyone into his work in Holy Tongue, or curios from Tolerance, Freedom To Spend, R.N.A. Organism. Tip!

Wootton was invited to Melbourne's Electronic Sound Studio where he got to work sampling their collection of rare vintage drum machines. And it's those boxes that laid the groundwork to 'Rhythm Archives', the prolific producer's most satisfying full-length to date. Wootton's been at this long enough to realise that restraint is the key, and playing with Holy Tongue has no doubt sharpened his skills. There's not much going on here, but that's what makes it so enticing - Wootton lets the machines set the pace for each track, and adds only the sparsest additional instrumentation for colour. On 'March', the plasticky beatbox pattern is fascinating because it's so weedy compared to the sounds of more modern machines - the kicks are like fingers on wet cardboard, and Wootton shadows them with bone-rattling rim shots, filling in the silence with cinematic piano twangs, white noise and a snake-charming flute.

In the wrong hands, this material would creep towards cringe - there's more than enough artists making canned library music or hauntological slop. But Wootton vaults over the pitfalls, staying on the right side of kitsch. The dissociated voices on 'Slow Rock' that shiver next to his new wave-patented Roland CR-78 take us to the seedy world of 'Liquid Sky', not the postmodern sampledelia that followed, and the footwork-inspired 150bpm whirr of 'Shuffle' is sneakily anachronistic, only echoing the Chicago genre's polyrhythmic patterns, not repeating them to the letter. Wootton does a good job staying away from very obvious genre signifiers; there's the character of each machine that's present, of course, but he sounds like he's trying to subvert the application, wondering how these decaying rhythms might react to his various processes.

If there's any real reverence here, it's for dub, and the genre's influence on everything that followed: post-punk, bleep techno, industrial music, whatever - Wootton sounds right at home threading tape echo trails thru his stuttering cycles. It's a love letter to the drum machine, and it doesn't lag for a moment.

Jim Coles’s fifth instalment of his best-selling ‘Acid Dub Studies’ series arrives in the form of the third set of original works exploring the infectious sound of the 303 bass-line in a dubwise setting. The album takes in traditional dub mixing approaches in a digital and roots/digi-dub style whilst also making space for more electronic and ambient processes to close the project.

‘Acid Dub Studies III’ arrives after 2 years of touring the material in a live setting at festivals and clubs including CTM at Berghain, Les Nuits Sonores, and Andrew Weatherall's Convenanza festival and is the culmination of some 5 years of experimenting with a style that has been met with critical acclaim, reaching far and wide into many a DJ’s box having been noted by some as a truly ground-breaking approach to working with the 303.

RIYL: The Focus Group, AFX, Mica Levi, Coil

Collaged from juddery electroacoustic rhythms, analog synth squelches, environmental recordings, text-to-speech poems and what Akira Umeda calls “ghost sounds”, ‘Clube da Mariposa Mórbida’ is a transcultural voyage into pure sonic fantasy. The São Paulo-based DIY maverick and former historian trades impressions and delusions with Nyege regular Metal Preyers, aka Jesse Hackett, imagining gory VR avatars, lovestruck arachnids, supermassive black holes and the titular morbid moth club, absurd iconography that stains their warped, mutable soundscapes. Hackett initially contacted Umeda after hearing last year’s sprawling ‘Gueixa’, an hour-long postmodern mixtape made from 202 fragments of the artist’s seemingly bottomless library of experiments. Spotting a similarity in the way they were both driven by collage and curation, Hackett embarked on four whirlwind months of exchange, sending Umeda audio snippets and concepts that the Brazilian eccentric would decode with Google translate. Umeda’s contribution was more uncanny; listening to the sketches on repeat until the sounds created “evasive impressions” in his mind, he used analog instruments and text-to-speech software to recreate these phantom occurrences. “Specters are never clear and always shifting, so the experience of synthesizing them is similar to clay modeling,” he explains. “To record these synthetic ghost sounds is like firing ceramic pots.”

And the hybrid nature of their collaboration doesn’t begin and end there. Both Hackett and Umeda work within visual art: Umeda has made films, ceramics and illustrations, while Hackett works on jewelry and sculpture with his father Bill, the proto-punk jeweler best known for creating Keith Richards’ iconic skull ring. Two of Bill’s artworks are featured on the album art and shadow the record’s themes, both carved in wood that’s stained with a shellac dye made from old 78rpm records. Umeda and Hackett’s music is similarly recycled, as if they’re dousing fresh art with long forgotten colors. On the opening track ‘One Eyed Weasel’, decelerated Brazilian funk syncopations are twisted with weightless voices, orchestral flourishes and canned screams before being lowered into eerie beds of unplaceable white noise. Even at the best of times, it’s difficult to pry apart what’s real and what’s synthesized; cyborg voices in different languages stutter around tangled, colorful musical threads: tablas, overdriven psych guitars, cryptic santur chimes and microtonal reed echoes. But Umeda and Hackett’s music isn’t an accompaniment to some post-Hassell Fourth World concept, it’s a projection into parallel future where our patchwork of cultures, digital and otherwise, has been reduced to hazy memories.

On ‘Boi de Piranha’, defective temple bells punctuate blown-out spiraling beats and unsettling backmasked chatter, and ruffled, featherlight rhythms and mbira-like repeating sequences quiver through sleazy 4/4 architectures on ‘Cut Throat Mickey’. Unfolding like a hypnagogic soundtrack to an unwritten queer, post-apocalyptic noir, ‘Clube da Mariposa Mórbida’ retches and heaves in the glamor of decay; slithering electro-plated music box earworms burrow into ‘Hora Do Slime’, while on ‘Olhos De Facão’ humid synth sequences chew on bone-rattling acoustic percussion and dissociated traces of humanity. It’s Hackett’s most bizarre offering yet, a few paces beyond ‘Shadow Swamps’ murking shadows towards Umeda’s kaleidoscopic concrète jungle.

Anderson do Paraíso is one of the most influential and seminal DJs and producers behind the downtempo and dark baile funk sound of the city of Belo Horizonte. At 27 years old, the artist gained notoriety with songs that draw an unusual ghostly atmosphere full of suspense and mystery to the frantic whirl of the famous Brazilian beat.

Anderson started producing music in his bedroom in 2012, taking the Tamborzão funk from Rio de Janeiro as a reference. But his sound went through a profound transformation between 2015 and 2016 when he started attending Baile do Serrão, the street party in Aglomerado da Serra—the largest favela in Belo Horizonte and the second-largest group of favelas in Latin America.

When Anderson started going to Baile da Serra, the funk parties in Belo Horizonte were also experiencing a remaking in their geography and sound. The city has a funk scene whose history goes back to the 1980s. However, until the 2000s, the main bailes took place in closed spaces, on sports club courts, like Baile da Vilarinho. The music back then was closer to hip hop, with MCs singing verses about the hard times in the hood, violence, crime, hope, and faith in better days ahead.

However, in the mid-2010s, the bailes were popping up in the streets of favelas. And it was there that a completely new musicality emerged. The MCs focused on verses about sex, drugs, and having fun, while the beatmakers began to invest in more minimalist and ambient arrangements, with slow pace and full of reverb, highlighting beats with high frequencies, as heard in "Sadomasoquista" and "Duvida Não Letícia". This is the sound of Funk BH (or Funk Mineiro), a scene that has been influencing musicians on a national scale as Belo Horizonte DJs and MCs amass hits on streaming charts and go viral on TikTok.

Anderson do Paraíso— o "queridão", the "dearest," as he is also known— is one of the sound architects of this music. His signature is the contrast of electronic elements (such as the robotic sounds of "Todas Elas ao Mesmo Tempo" and the trap hi-hats in "Pincelada de Angolano") with classical music instruments, such as the piano in "Se Faz de Santinha," the violins in "Aula de Putaria," the soprano backing vocals in "Quarentena Cheia de Ódio" and the timpani used as snare in "Blogueira Que Virou Puta". "União dos Rlk" is a collab with two other producers, Ph da Serra and Vitin do PC, that showcases a intricate sound craft and a futurist vision of the genre in mixing different types of baile funk beats in a single track.

Brazilian funk became internationally known for its chaotic energy. However, Anderson's music has an unorthodox and innovative approach that strips down its elements for a radical minimal sound, underlining silence to build a cinematic suspense. "Blogueira Que Virou Puta" showcases the whispery voice of MC Paulin do G floating in a refined and sparse structure oscillating between sensuality and terror, while the haunted bells of "Chama as Sua Colegas' and the choir of "Ultimo Medo do Ano" conjures an haunted aura of baile funk. And yet people create different ways to dance to this sound, stretching the boundaries of the dancefloor.

Hakuna Kulala debut from Kampala’s Catu Diosis — 7 tracks of mutant afrohouse, slanted Batida, and slow-burn Kuduro pressure. Deeply rhythmic, fiercely physical, and thrillingly unplaceable.

Stepping out from her work as a choreographer, MC, and co-conspirator with Rian Treanor, Catu Diosis delivers a remarkable first statement in Anyim — a body-moving, genre-splintering set that folds East African club DNA into warped afrohouse, achingly reduced Batida, and kinetic vocal meditations.

Opener “Chaa” sets the tone with a stunning post-rock/gqom splicer featuring Uganda peer R3ign Drops — all stuttering kicks and scorched atmosphere. From there, it gets deeper and stranger. “Legi” and the title track “Anyim” push into stripped rhythm experiments: skeletal percussive grids punctuated by breathy, mantra-like vocals, evoking a kind of ceremonial minimalism.

Across the record, Catu Diosis keeps things raw but fluid, staying close to the body and the floor. The beats swing but never settle, rooted in Kuduro’s momentum but constantly fracturing into unexpected pockets. It’s music as movement, shaped by a dancer’s ear for timing and a producer’s instinct for subversion.

One for the heads and the dancers alike. RIYL: Nazar, Nídia, Rian Treanor, Nkisi, Chino Amobi, Slikback.

Yallah Gaudencia Mbidde has always been ahead of the curve. ‘Gaudencia’ is her third full-length since 2019’s acclaimed breakout ‘Kubali’, but she’s been active for far longer than that, working tirelessly on the East African circuit since way back in 1999. She had to wait until time and technology caught up with her, and until she had found a kindred spirit in Berlin-based French producer Debmaster, who returns as the sole architect of this dizzying new set of forward-facing beats and tongue-twisting rhymes. If its predecessor, 2023’s electric ‘Yallah Beibe’, had looked outward, welcoming collaborations with Lord Spikeheart and Ratigan Era, and external production from Hakuna Kulala staples Chrisman and Scotch Rolex, ‘Guadencia’ digs deeper into Yallah and Debmaster’s collective psyche, laying out a revolutionary narrative that tramples over genre boundaries and questions rap’s elemental purity.

Yet again, it’s Yallah’s dexterity on the mic that sets her apart from her peers. Rapping, singing and ad-libbing in English, Luganda, Luo and Kiswahili over Debmaster’s time-fluxing beats, she formulates her own idiosyncratic flow without worrying about being lost in translation. “Even if they don’t understand, it’s the impact that I leave on them,” she told The Quietus in 2022. “Music speaks to the hearts of the people.” And this time around, Debmaster meets her lyrical innovations head-on, developing a sound that’s correspondingly multi-lingual. On ‘Kujagana’, his microtonally-skewed synth arpeggios liquefy into bass-heavy 808 drops and ear-piercing snaps, and Yallah puppeteers the rhythm and the harmony, rapping in double-time and crooning a haunting chorus. The ghosts of breakcore wind around ‘Lioness’ meanwhile, with ruptured distortions, spliced percussion and scraped ASMR FX that repurpose the rave canon while Yallah boldly asserts her position. “Watch me,” she commands through the wall of warped noise.

Jet engine whirrs and ominous, rolling beats underpin Yallah’s high-speed chat on ‘Wantintina’, and the mood is ruptured by wiry, wordless vocal chants. It’s apocalyptic music, but not without cracks of light – between the distorted interference and ritualistic drones, Yallah’s animated rhymes push her emotions to the surface, as if she’s wrenching herself out of harm’s way. And she’s never more flexible than on ‘Yalladana’, chanting, evangelizing and switching up her flow without warning, accompanying Debmaster’s widescreen airlock hisses and torched blips with accelerated prophetic observations. Yallah and Debmaster have cultivated a single voice on ‘Gaudencia’, figuring out a way to alloy dynamic, modern production with the world’s most ambitious oddball street poetry – it’s taken Yallah over two decades to find her congregation, but it was worth the wait.

Primitive Maxi Trial is a time-warped excavation from the archives of Emiliano Pennisi, the Palermo-based producer and underground fixture behind the Paradigma collective (DerFreitag, Algoritmo). Surfacing on the Heat Crimes imprint, this archival transmission feels less like a retrospective and more like a haunted artifact – a fragment of the pre-digital underground rendered in dusty, lo-fi hues.

Drawn from material produced between the late ’90s and mid-2000s, Primitive Maxi Trial occupies a blurred zone where early DAW fetishism meets pirate aesthetics and a scavenger’s ear for pop-cultural residue. Think cracked VSTs (Albino, SubBoomBass), MPC 1000 grit, and CD-ROM sample libraries ripped from Future Music and Computer Music cover discs—long-lost sonic ephemera unearthed like forgotten VHS tapes in the backroom of a failing electronics shop.

There’s an unmistakable hauntological hue here—not in the usual Ghost Box pastiche sense, but something rawer, more regionally specific. These tracks were forged under the looming shadow of the Mafia Maxi Trial, in a city fraught with paranoia, informal spaces, and cultural fragmentation. That tension bleeds into the music: compressed textures, iron-lung atmospheres, and bleakly humorous juxtapositions that wouldn’t feel out of place soundtracking a Mark Leckey installation.

But this isn’t mere nostalgia. Pennisi’s compositions slip between IDM’s jittery melancholy, no-fi techno, ambient detritus, and grotesque rave misfires with an almost outsider art sensibility. Surreal cuts appear like tape-warped memories of nights out you’re not sure really happened. In the best moments, Primitive Maxi Trial feels like music made not for release but for ritual—claustrophobic yet oddly liberating, deeply personal yet disarmingly tongue-in-cheek.

When Jako Maron reimagined Réunion island's politically-charged maloya sound on 'The electro Maloya experiments of Jako Maron', he focused on the genre's distinctive, revolutionary rhythms. Electro-plating the call-and-response thuds, he used the language of techno to upset the expected template, disrupting maloya's 6/8 pulse with modular bleeps and Roland kicks. He takes a different approach on 'Mahavélouz', focusing on the bobre, traditional maloya's only melodic instrument, a long bow amplified by a calabash that's known as the berimbau in Brazil. Maron was fascinated by the bobre's unique sonic signature, and noted that when it's usually played, it's drowned out by the louder percussive instruments. So he enlisted a number of traditional bobre performers to play a series of solos, using them to guide the album's four lead tracks and distorting and compressing the serrated hits until they stood confidently in front of his undulating roulér (bass drum) and sati (hi-hat) patterns.

"These four pieces are the culmination of my research into electronic maloya," explains Maron. "There's no need for words on this music; the bobre is the voice, and it is an ancestral voice. It's a reimagining of maloya kabaré in an electro form." This is the music that Maron has used to drive his recent live performances, so it prioritizes maloya's dancefloor potential. Swapping the traditional roulér and sati sounds for TR-606, TR-909 and TR-707 hits, he generates a hypnotic roll on opening track 'Paré po saviré' (rise up), forming a rubbery backdrop for Amemoutoulaop's acidic bobre twangs. Maron describes the track as a "call to bring spirits and people together", and using piercing feedback squeals to harmonize with the bobre, he introduces us to the voice that anchors the entire album. On 'Bék dann dir (try harder), he augments the bobre with glassy Korg Polysix chimes and Machinedrum sounds, and 'Zésprimaron'(the Maron spirit), ushers us towards a ceremony, shuffling his rhythm into a ritualistic throb, and using squelchy synth sounds to flutter into a trance.

Maron concludes his live bobre experiments with '1 piton 3 filaos' (one hill and three trees), and it's his most ambitious fusion, with hallucinatory flutes and technoid stabs rising weightlessly in-between Amemoutoulaop's frenetic performance. But this isn't the end of his investigation: Maron fleshes out 'Mahavélouz' with tonal studies that replicate the bobre synthetically. On 'Mdé prototrash', the characteristic ping is re-created by his modular system, and it's almost indistinguishable from the original instrument, buzzing and popping alongside Maron's surging percussion. The sound is more uncanny on 'dann kér Mahaveli' (in the heart of marvelous land) but no less affecting, knotted around synthetic bird calls and entrancing warbles. Even more idiosyncratic than its predecessors, 'Mahavélouz' is a bold step forward for Maron that builds on ancient foundations to construct a staggeringly new kind of dance music.

Bristol-based, London-born auteur ThisisDA has spent over a decade at this point furrowing out his own niche in the experimental rap landscape. Across a slew of under-the-radar solo releases and eclectic collaborations, he’s routinely peered beyond the boundaries of traditional hip-hop, taking a refreshingly open-minded, eclectic approach to his art. Working alongside jazz collective Sumo Chief, playing throughout Europe with Klein and breaking bread with bedroom pop viral superstar Eyedress, ThisisDA has always refused to stay in the same spot for too long, and his latest full-length offering is a testament to that spirit.

Dizzyingly inventive, ‘Fast Life’ crackles from idea to idea, gesturing to drill, grime, electro and trap but refusing to adhere to any conventional template. Featuring collaborations with Hakuna Kulala’s master beatmaker Debmaster – who’s racked up production credits on records from MC Yallah, Aunty Razor, Ratigan Era and more – and Welsh-born vocalist Mimi Jones, the album’s bound together by ThisisDA’s boisterous personality and lightheaded wordplay. “Elevate you like the rapture, it’s an independent matter,” he quips on the euphoric intro to ‘Breakout’ before handing the mic to Jones, whose seductive coos foreshadow a barrage of DA’s most tongue-twisting rhymes.

On ‘Tell Him’, Debmaster spaces out weightless synth stabs and skeletal, grimey kicks, leaving ThisisDA to grandstand for a moment. “Dat boy there is a pussy, flip the coin if you push me,” he spits, molding his voice into an android croon. But it’s not all bravado; there’s a more solemn flex to the ‘808s & Heartbreak’-inspired ‘End Up’ as ThisisDA recalls the trappings of the lifestyle, underpinning his words with soulful AutoTuned cries. Elsewhere, on ‘Captain’, neon-flecked Southern rap excesses rumble through DA’s squelchy, haunted soundscape, and its this wide-eyed, boundless fusion that sets him way out on his own.

“I wanna brush my hands between the clouds and claim that sky,” he exclaims on the album’s lulling closer ‘Change That’. With ‘Fast Life’, ThisisDA aims high and leaves the rest of the scene in the dust.