NEW ARRIVALS

Fresh from an appearance on Space Afrika’s 'Honest Labour’ album, collaborations with Klein and Lol K and a placement in the Dazed 100 list, LA Timpa finally offers his head-turning 'Equal Amounts Afraid' album on vinyl following a short CD run just before the pandemic hit in early 2020. Served up on promising yung London label O___o, and made with additional mixing from Solange collaborator Kwes and mastering from sometime Dean Blunt engineer Amir Shoat, ‘Equal Amounts Afraid’ is a beautiful smudge of pop experimentation riddled with timeless musical soul. Following from his 2016 debut ‘Animal’, and guest production for Cold Specks’ trip hop sound, LA Timpa’s gently reserved and melancholic productions push an intimate pop vocabulary into spectral, dreamlike dimensions. Introspective and avant like Klein’s psyched chop-ups, as sensuous as Blood Orange, but with a taste for expressively harmonised pop refrains that clearly recall Yves Tumor via Richard Youngs, the album unfolds with its own logic, deploying eyelid-tugging levels of hypnagogic charm that practically demand to be heard in sequestered, lowlit situations. Seducing us to his singular temporality and hazy atmosphere with the vaporous falsetto and ambient soundfield of sirens and groggy bass in ‘Around’, a cut-up interlude leads into fragmented music box melody and intimate plainsong on ‘Fertile’, while ‘Core’ almost echoes the 4AD dream-pop of A.R. Kane, and ‘Give’ beautifully dematerialises indie-pop into ambient gauze. ‘Backyard Exotic’ surfaces his strangest side in a maze of mushied songcraft, ushering a trippier 2nd half where the songs really start to fray between ‘Caretaker’, the smokers’ hymnal vignette ‘Towel Under The Door’, before channelling Thom Yorke in the melting Mbira melody of ‘Rattle Snake’, and spooling out into proper ambient soul with the spine-tracing lines of ‘Tried Ice’ and the smudged magic of ‘Memory Phone’ where he truly divines a strength in his vulnerability in a way that should resonate with the most sensitive souls.

Nueen follows production for Iceboy Violet and a string of releases for Quiet Time Tapes, Good Morning Tapes and Balmat, with a sprawling new album for 3XL, an ambient drill epic featuring guest spots from Dawuna, Space Afrika, Loraine James, Xzavier Stone and RenzNiro. Everything clicked into place for Nacho Pezzati when he turned the humid soundscapes of his early releases into distorted beds for Iceboy Violet's casual free associations on the Hyperdub-released ‘You Said You'd Hold My Hand Through the Fire' back in 2024. He retains the same energy on 'Swerved', working alongside a team of vocalists and collaborators to locate a sweetspot between rap, dub and ambient vistas. His methodology is laid bare on 'Searchtiers', obscuring its UK drill-style sliding bass with weightless synths and gaseous FX, upping the ante when vocalist and producer Xzavier Stone jumps on the mic on 'Nowhere Near A Section'. The addition of proper hooks, adlibs and rhymes - "let it burn like Usher Raymond" - makes the production hit that much harder, not just referencing radio rap and R&B but challenging the paradigm. Fittingly, Loraine James, who early on inhabited similar zones, lends her voice to the grimy 'Atmosphere is my Style', whispering over Pezzati's hair metal samples and booming 808 Mafia-style basses. Manny's own RenzNiro checks in on 'Impls', rhyming over one of Nueen's most decisive beats, all clipped snares, gong samples and tweaked bass. And Space Afrika turn up with an assist on the low-slung highlight 'Shm', a smoove and sensual D'Angelo-style soul banger with none other than Dawuna on the mic. Dawuna returns on 'Matrix', splitting duties with Xzavier Stone who provides an impressive '00s post-jiggy hook and Pezzati's vision materialises. The haze of half-remembered bites of cloud rap, pop and club rap represents a post-P2P hauntology that's global, not really localised. And connecting with Space Africa again on the closing track 'I Guess', he travels beyond the boundaries of the album itself, lavishing SA's orchestral cries with fuzzy synths and swirling vocals.

Smouldering and aching in all the right places, Dawuna's latest mixtape is a muted hypnagogic R&B tour de force, pieced together while recovering from a traumatic head injury and conveying all the fragile, dizzy and ineffable beauty imaginable. Trust, it’s next-level gear tipped FFO D’Angelo, Prince, Niecy Blues, Soulquarians, Rodney Jerkins. ‘African Family Laptop Musick’ is Ian Mugerwa’s 4th dispatch as Dawuna since 2020’s still unfathomable ‘Glass Lit Dream’, an album that we called "the debut of the century thus far" and which has still, somehow, evaded any kind of meaningful crossover despite triggering total joy and bewilderment every single time we play it to the uninitiated. Since that album, and shortly after a relocation to Baltimore, Mugerwa was involved in a car accident that triggered a period of hospitalisation and amnesia. 'African Family Laptop Music' emerges from that difficult period; recorded and pieced together while still in recovery. He doesn't remember much about the project at this point, just small flashes, but it's easily the most personal, touching material he's shared to date. Mugerwa calls the compositions simple, but it’s the kind of simple many have spent a lifetime trying to engineer. On opener 'I am a woman too', daring lo-fi sound design lends texture to multi-tracked vocal harmonies and a beat rapped on a table with knuckles and finger clicks, before tuning in to a chat between elders on ‘Obulesi’, that he laments in the bloozy ache of the incredible ‘Family Trauma Drama’. Lashed to a celestial vocal performance, he fleshes out the arrangement with downsampled waltzing hats and a single snare hit with synths that sound like they've been lifted from a mid-'80s Sierra adventure game, before being filtered out to a low hum. There's a quiet virtuosity on show; it's lo-fi, with all the aesthetic hallmarks of some of the very best outsider gear, but Mugerwa builds on the foundations of 'Glass Lit Dream' and 'Naya' to provide an unmistakably Black ideation of hauntology. Approaching the very concept of memory from a unique vantage point, he muddles dreams and impressions, sorting through the canon (think 'Songs in the Key of Life', 'Sign O' the Times', 'Baduizm', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Full Moon' just for starters) as it vanishes from view. What makes the record hit even harder is that Mugerwa collages the more “proper” songs with skits and interludes that help map the narrative, taping conversations with his family and abstracting them with disorientating glitches, synths and FX. ‘Pressure’ pushes deep on a bittersweet bruise with lyrics about “the pain on your brain making fun of you”, set to the heaviest smudge of bass and organ recalling Angel Bat Dawid’s ‘The Oracle’, whilst the latter stages reveal precious gems in the harpsichord sway of ‘Bipolar Memory’,thru the lip-biting downswang and helium-voiced Camille vibes of ‘Grabba Boy Problem’ and a poignant sign-off addressed to his father - not sure if that’s his dad or him upstairs - in a delicate prayer ‘Undo This Damage,’ which once over, is bound to make you rake back over all Dawuna’s gear to date. "This is the last lil offering from a personal side of myself before I give y'all something big," he assures cryptically. "Enjoy." Incredible, really.

Michael J. Blood executes a stunning volte-face from rugged house and soul to more intuitive, introspective, world-building ambient jazz and electroacoustic dub realms under a new moniker SEES, signifying a newfound psychoactive frisson to his work that lands him somewhere in the spiritual vicinity of Vangelis, Moodymann, Ron Trent, Pendant, Terre Thaemlitz. ‘Ampersand Curve’ initiates a brilliant new phase of work by North Manchester’s most elusive artist, best known as Michael J. Blood. His string of ruffkut club bangers as well as jams with Rat Heart & Samizdat over the past seven years, have made his records a true cult property, and now find him signed to one of the UK’s most foundational techno imprints - more of which later this year. But under the SEES aegis, he swims in very different waters, following his instincts to use the studio-as-instrument to produce his most impressive, deep-minded work, made from - and for - the heart. Where MJB was all about off-the-cuff club jams cooked for immediacy, his new stylistic switch reveals myriad worlds of influence swirling under the hood, where interrelated spheres of spiritual jazz, dub, ambient and concrète more clearly light up his rich inner world. As the story goes, MJB was burgled a few years back, and lost most of his studio just as the project was hitting its stride. It prompted a personal review of his practice, re-learning new kit, allowing him to bend the rules. Adopting a sort of first thought, best thought approach to composition, the new methodology fuelled a renewed imagination in flux, or what he identifies as SEES: a personalised way of conveying complex emotions. That un-doing of musical and mental conditioning opens the walls of his music to vast new horizons. Opener ‘Ithaca’ fathoms sonorous midnight jazz with 10 mins of a plangent, searching sax solo in HD widescreen, like some alternate version to the Blade Runner Love Theme, while a resonant vocoder soliloquy ‘Unseem’ reaches into space harmonised between Alvin Lucier and Ron Trent, and ‘Sheer’ chases the devil out of labyrinthine dub dimensions. The floating dream architecture of ‘Caprices’ caps the LP’s underlying narrative and painterly qualities with a romantic conclusion of blushing pads and shivered, metallic echoes of the subtropical that suggest a coming-to-terms with worries, refreshed and good to go again. A huge, heartfelt tip for a 2026 stunner.

A wealth of DIY dubplates and 45s from Jah Massagan’s East London sound crop up for first time on tape with cherry-picking label Death Is Not The End - heavy roots dub troubles cut at the studios of King Tubby, Lee Perry, Channel One, and Joe Gibbs… Eljay Mass, son of Jah Massagan’s owner-operator, Lloyd Mass, dips into his dad’s enviable archive for an hour of rare, one-away platters that hail a self-organising rhizome of sound systems which sprang up in the UK with arrival of the Windrush generation, and brilliantly altered the course of music on this strange island in the process. The cassette-only session speaks to prevailing links between Caribbean culture and UK inner cities which reverberated from the ‘70s into the ‘80s, and has endured as a touchstone for some of our isles’ most vital music, setting templates for independent distribution networks and producing waves of innovative hybridisation. Owner-operator Lloyd Mass and his childhood pal and amp builder Tony Mass were a small but steadfast part of preserving these sounds, holding down their Leyton corner of London, where they would pass the torch to Eljay Mass and an extant network of rigs, engineers, Deejays and ravers who really do it for the culture.

Death Is Not The End unearth Ercilia Costa’s haunting 1920’s and 1930’s Portuguese Fado recordings made in Madrid As played in the label’s 20’s & 30’s Fado Special for NTS, Ercilia’s songs epitomise the melancholy elegance of Fado, a style of Portuguese folk music with roots in Moorish guitar music, and connections to old Portuguese trading routes and colonies.

Often credited as the father of multi-media theatre, Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) took complete creative control over his productions - including cutting-edge approaches to lighting and costume that transformed human bodies into shifting sculptural shapes, while also composing wildly innovative electronic music as accompaniment. After initially experimenting with musique concrète and tape manipulation (as demonstrated on the 1959 LP Choreosonic Music of the New Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais) Nikolais became the first owner of Robert Moog's synthesizer at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York in late 1964. Relying heavily on the Moog and later the Synclavier synth/sampler, these 21 tracks document Nikolais' highly-prescient compositions across the mid 1960s through to the late 1980s - existing not only as extensions of his other-worldly choreographic pieces, but standalone pieces of foundational mid-century American electronic and experimental music.

qorakitobchi aka Anvar Kalandarov is a music archaeologist, musician and producer from Tashkent, Uzbekistan whose work is dedicated to uncovering forgotten sounds from across Central Asia. In recent years he has emerged as a singular voice documenting the region’s musical heritage, co-compiling Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz for Ostinato Records and curating Digging Central Asia: Musical Archaeology Along the Silk Road split release for Death Is Not The End, alongside presenting his own Maqom Soul imprint. For this mixtape, Kalandarov turns his attention to the synth-pop, disco and electronic music that flourished across Central Asia during the 1980s and 1990s. Drawn from rare vinyl records, private archives and forgotten recordings, this selection explores a period when Soviet modernity, regional traditions and emerging synthesiser sounds merged to create a uniquely Central Asian vision of the future. From Uzbek disco and Tajik synth-pop to lesser-known oddities, the mix offers a glimpse into a musical world that remains largely unexplored outside the region.

Death Is Not The End return to the soul-stir sound of deep south Sacred Harp Singers in 1993 - although it could feasibly be any time since the advent of portable tape recording - in the blessed company of the Union Grove Baptist Church, Ozark, Alabama. Feels just right in this humidity… The Wiregrass Singers' Dewey Williams began learning the shape-note tradition in his childhood. He studied under Judge Jackson, who authored the landmark 1934 hymnbook The Colored Sacred Harp. In 1971, Williams formally organized The Wiregrass Sacred Harp Singers to preserve the music full-time. This unified troupe began touring nationally and leading workshops, which ultimately launched them onto stages at the Smithsonian and Newport folk festivals up until Williams' passing in 1995 when the group disbanded. The African-American Sacred Harp tradition in the Wiregrass region has steeply declined since the start of the 21st century, due to an aging generation of singers, and today it is largely sustained through archival preservation and occasional multi-book singing meetups. This raw recording, made at the Union Grove Baptist Church, Ozark in mid-April 1993 finds the group singing from B. F. White’s The Sacred Harp (1844), which together with his brother-in-law William Walker’s Southern Harmony (1835) formed the musical backbone of generations of Southern music and Southern musical styles.

Capturing an in-situ rehearsal of The Sterling Jubilee Singers, a long-running African American a cappella quartet, 'Jesus Hits like the Atom Bomb' provides an intimate view of a dying folk tradition. We should all know by now the foundational influence African American gospel music has had on subsequent popular forms, from country to house, but we rarely get to hear the real thing. This set was produced by the Alabama Folklife Association and aimed to document the rigorous process the Sterling Jubilees went through each week to maintain their notoriously high level of activity. The group was formed way back in 1929 from African American miners and mill workers in Birmingham, Alabama, and 'Jesus Hits...' catches up with them in 1994 in a hall that serendipitously sat next to a railway line. And whether you have any interest in OG gospel a cappella music or not, it's fascinating to hear the quartet in their element, praying in-between recreating their elaborate (and impeccably sung) set of standards. It's a porthole into another universe, for those of us who grew up far from the American South.

Adrian Rew's properly hypnotic cult classic 'Slot Machine Music' has finally been reissued and it sounds even more terrifying and prescient than it did back in 2013 at the height of the basement noise era. One of the best environmental recording records bar none - don't sleep. Back in 2009, PAN released its fourth album, 'Kenrimono', a set of recordings made by Greek sound artist Ilios at Japanese pachinko halls. The sheer density of it was as shocking and as intense as anything the noise genre had to offer, packed out with whirring, crunching and chiming resonances that took you to the smokey epicenter of the Japanese gambling world. And when 'Slot Machine Music' arrived a few short years later we assumed the sound would be similar; we were wrong. Initially dropped via Rew's own Ergot Records on CDr before the great Aaron Dilloway stepped in to handle the vinyl edition on his own Hanson imprint, the album seemingly grew from the Midwestern noise petri dish - but it wasn't an exercise in aesthetic posturing, using the racket of the modern American casino to mimic the intensity of a Wolf Eyes set. Instead, Rew was drawn to the experience itself, that's been meticulously designed by malign forces to guide behavior: those trapped inside the casino's four walls are seduced into spending more, losing more and returning to do it all over again. Rew didn't know much about the environment when he visited Cleveland's Horseshoe Casino for the first time in 2013 armed with an Olympus LS-11 recorder and a camera. And over four months, he developed a peculiar relationship with the culture, surreptitiously taping the soundscapes at various Midwestern locations - in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois - while attempting not to lose too much cash in the process. And it's a warts-n-all set, with dialog snippets and outdoor ambiance giving us more than simply the dense mass of chimes and stings and themes that you'd hear on the casino floor itself. What Rew is able to do is create a snapshot of a time and place, capturing the sheer desolation of the casino experience and using it to drive a narrative that Robert Altman would be proud of. The first thing you notice is that each machine's sounds are in tune with the next; "game designers," explains Rew, "tune their machines to the key of C in order to optimize harmonic cohesion." So although Rew's recordings are full-bodied, they're never too chaotic or discordant. Indeed, if you check in for the entire record - 2013's iconic 'Slot Machine Music' and its 2014 sequel 'Slot Machine Music Vol. 2' - you'll be lulled into the same false sense of security that entrances casino regulars. It's almost like ambient music, packed out with tiny sonic details that some well-paid sound engineer-cum-neurologist worked for years to figure out. Guided meditation music? New age crypto-psychedelia? It's all here, packaged in neon-lit one-armed-bandits aimed to target the dopamine centers of aging boomers with money to burn. And the best thing about the recordings is that Rew keeps some of the chatter intact, so we can hear him tangling with casino security, or haggling with his slot machine neighbors over change. We can hear the cheers and claps as paltry sums are won while vast fortunes are lost. The best moment for us comes when Rew wanders outside Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, Illinois at the dead of night, the crickets singing as the machines echo from behind grand double doors. A freight train rushes past and blots out any other sound, distorting the recording. It's a good reminder that although you might be able to hide from reality inside the casino, the Midwest will inevitably confront you with its rusted truth

The Louisiana Folk Fest was conceived and hosted by Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick (1933–1986), a Baptist minister, civil rights leader, and performer. The festival and this live recording reflect Kirkpatrick’s life and his causes, including the preservation of music and crafts for future generations. A veritable family affair, the album features gospel songs and spirituals performed by Kirkpatrick’s friends, colleagues, parents, and children. Liner notes include a brief biography of Kirkpatrick and candid photographs documenting the festival. This is Kirkpatrick’s second recording for Folkways Records; he worked with Pete Seeger and Jeanne Humphries on the 1972 recording Ballads of Black America

細野晴臣率いるティン・パン・アレーが、1976年5月8日、横浜・中華街の老舗中華菜館「同發新館」で行った伝説的なライブ。その夜の空気を克明に記録した音源が、半世紀の時を経て“ステレオ・ミックス”として蘇る。
今回のリリースでは、新たに発見されたステレオマスターをもとに、エンジニアの保土田剛による新たなミックス／マスタリングを実施。当時の会場の空気感、臨場感を感じる素晴らしいMIXを是非アナログでお楽しみください。50年という時間を超えてなお輝き続ける一夜のライブ音源が遂にLP化！

[Credits]
細野晴臣 Vocal, Marimba, Hand Clap
鈴木茂 E.Guitar, Banjo
林立夫 Drums
浜口茂外也 Percussions, Flute, Hand Clap
矢野顕子 Piano, Chorus
坂本龍一 E.Piano, Synthesizer
田中章弘 E.Bass, Hand Clap
羽鳥幸次 Trumpet, Hand Clap
新井英治 Trombone, Hand Clap
村岡健 Sax, Hand Clap

Mix, Mastering : Goh Hotoda
Cutting Engineer : Shinya Matsushita (PICCOLO AUDIO WORKS)

Art Direction & Design : Takashi Okada
Illustration : Takashi Okada, Yasuo Yagi
Photographs : Masashi Kuwamoto
Liner Notes : Yoshiro Nagato

【収録内容】
SIDE-A
1. つめたく冷して
(Words & Music : Otis Blackwell, Elvis Presley Japanese Words : Morio Agata)
2. 香港Blues
(Words & Music : Hoagy Carmichael)
3. 絹街道
(Words & Music : Haruomi Hosono)
4. チャタヌガ・チュー・チュー
(Words : Mack Gordon Music : Harry Warren Japanese Words : Haruomi Hosono)
5. ボレロ（メンバー紹介）
(Music : Maurice Ravel)
6. ハリケーン・ドロシー
(Words & Music : Haruomi Hosono)
7. ブラック・ピーナッツ
(Words & Music : Haruomi Hosono)
8. トーク・トゥ・ミー
(Words & Music : Irving Fields, Sunny Skylar)
SIDE-B
1. 北京Duck
(Words & Music : Haruomi Hosono)
2. 蝶々-San
(Words & Music : Haruomi Hosono)
3. アヤのバラード
(Music : Haruomi Hosono)
4. 熱帯夜
(Words & Music : Haruomi Hosono)
5. ファイアークラッカー
(Music : Martin Denny)
6. “サヨナラ” ザ・ジャパニーズ・フェアウェル・ソング
(Words : Freddy Morgan Music : Hasegawa Yoshida)

SideA：絹街道
SideB：ハニー・ムーン

A landmark collection from one of Guinea’s greatest African singers is finally back. West Africa is widely known as a treasure house of African music, but within that region, it is the culture of the voice that holds a particularly special place. This compilation presents the definitive works of the legendary vocalist Sory Kandia Kouyaté, who stands at the very summit of that tradition.

Sacro Bosco (“Sacred Grove”) is the starting point for Anna von Hausswolff’s new album All Thoughts Fly, incoming on Southern Lord on 25th September. Here in solo instrumental mode, the entire record consists of just one instrument, the pipe organ, and represents absolute liberation of the imagination. All Thoughts Fly radiates a melancholic beauty, and is distinguished by fluid transitions of contrasting elements; calmness and drama, harmony and dissonance, much like the place that inspires the music. Sacro Bosco is a garden, based in the centre of Italy, containing grotesque mythological sculptures and buildings overgrown with vegetation, situated in a wooded valley beneath the castle of Orsini. Created during the 16th Century, Sacro Bosco was commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini, some say to try and cope with his grief following the death of his wife Guilia Farnese, others speculate the purpose was to create art. About the album Anna explains “there’s a sadness and wilderness that inspired me to write this album, also a timelessness. I believe that this park has survived not only due to its beauty but also because of the iconography, it has been liberated from predictable ideas and ideals. The people who built this park truly set their minds and imagination free. All thoughts fly is a homage to this creation, and an effort to articulate the atmosphere and the feelings that this place evokes inside of me. It’s a very personal interpretation of a place that I lack the words to describe. I’d like to believe Orsini built this monumental park out of grief for his dead wife, and in my Sacro Bosco I used this story as a core for my own inspiration: love as a foundation for creation.” The accompanying video for the first single "Sacro Bosco" is, just like the music, an interpretation of the park with an imaginary twist. Directed by Gustaf and Ludvig Holtenäs.

A shining star in Mika Vainio’s dense microcosm returns to vinyl - and for our money it’s the most transcendent record in his revered catalogue, unfurling through an hour of disarmingly melodic romance and astral projection that never fails to bring a tear to our eye. First presented on CD in 2005 under Vainio’s Ø alias, ‘Kantamoinen’ became something of a sleeper gem, cultishly adored for its concerted embrace of extended melody and narrative tone within an ambient context, which made it stand out from his preceding decade of ascetic noise brutalism and minimal techno. Our first encounter, back at our Pelicanneck shop, left us utterly smitten with its soundtrack-like qualities, eventually prompting us to issue it on vinyl for the first time via our Editions label in 2016. Sadly, Mika passed the following year, which only made the material more precious as a lone, curious artefact in his deeply influential body of work. It now returns in this new edition, ready to flip preconceptions with a new generation of listeners through its exquisite carousel of tear-jerking soundscpaes where the artist’s most intimate, distinctive spirits endure. Dedicated to Mika’s grandma, Laina Vainio (1913-1991), and adorned with a cover image of her garden in Artjärvi, Finland, the 16-part 2LP is the closest you’ll get to a type of nostalgia in Mika’s catalogue. Whilst recorded 1999-2004 at an early crest of his game-changing work with Pan Sonic, the album clearly manifests a quieter space for Mika to emote far more nuanced feels, from the wide-eyed vastness of ‘Galaxy’ to a breathtaking ‘Sound Picture’, transitioning from Hans-Ulrich Obrist’s snippet of Oskar Sala into icy bliss, and the rosy warmth of a ‘Summerland’ clearly dedicated to his nan’s garden. The rest is better defined as ephemeral snapshots adding up to a broader picture, like a mind’s eye filling gaps in the memory from illusive vapours and sensations, generating all-time gems in the steepled choral synth voice of ‘In Wind’, or a sense of magic realism in the swaying organ of ‘Antenna-ant’, with the blooz folk wheeze of closer ‘To Home’ that could feasibly score the most haunting moments of a Bela Tarr flick.

The story of each re-release begins with the original. In the late 90s, Uwe Zahn (Arovane), along with Robert Henke (Monolake) and Stefan Betke (Pole), began releasing music on Torsten Pröfrock’s (Dynamo) newly launched DIN label. This was a very inconspicuous undertaking, but fans of the flourishing IDM, glitch, and constantly evolving abstract techno genres quickly picked up on the quality of sound coming out of Germany. After a few successful EPs, Zahn began working on his debut full-length, Atol Scrap. The release was a success, at least in the underground circles, where followers of the melodic harmonies, stuttering off-beat rhythms, and, most importantly, advanced sound design feverishly consumed the imprint’s output. There was only one thing missing – the album was never pressed on vinyl, and for decades remained in the digital domain. The fans, of course, inquired. There were multiple offers on the table, but Zahn retained control until he was assured that it was properly attained. “I thought of taking everything into my own hands and releasing the record myself,” says Zahn, “but at the end of last year, Matthias from Keplar asked me to re-release Atol Scrap on vinyl.” The label and its owner revolve in the Morr Music universe, and so it made sense for Zahn to trust the platform to treat the record right.

Listening to Atol Scrap over twenty years later it is inane not to admit how well it has held up. Where other genres clearly aged, becoming stale, bland, and dull, the music on eleven tasty tracks still keeps the neurons tickled with each note. More than an echo of the past, the bottled sound truly has matured. Many of the newly evolving techniques are recognizable on the album. “I created the digital artifacts with a digital multi-track recorder, the Fostex D80,” recalls Zahn. “The thing had a scrub wheel with which I could achieve wonderful glitch effects by winding through the audio data. I have sampled and further processed these artifacts.” And this approach is still embedded in Zahn’s sound design. “I still use my 24-track analog desk from Tascam to mix my audio. I love to use hardware synths and samplers. I’ve definitely built upon my studio experience in the 90s.” From this debut to the most recent output, Arovane’s sound has evolved to become more intricate, detailed, and pronounced. “My music has become much quieter and much slower. But that’s probably also due to the noise in the world.” And just as Atol Scrap reminds Zahn of the past, retaining charm preserved in a container traveling through time, it also jitters memories of long ago, when we were twenty years younger, less experienced, and bold. For me, among the many records of the time, this album held a special place in life, my heart, and many CD boxes moved across the world. And now I’m only happy to restock the vinyl space, where Atol Scrap belongs among the beloved records. Welcome home. - Mike Lazarev

Originally released in 2008 on Ezekiel Honig’s own Anticipate Recordings, Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band finds the artist refining a compositional language rooted in the methodologies of musique concrete, ambient, and beat research. Working from a palette of environmental recordings, instrumental fragments, and soft electronic treatments, Honig pushes the source material into an array of sympathetic forms ranging from pillow-soft, lowercase ambient to diffuse downtempo and minimal house. For its reissue on Keplar, the album has been remastered by Kassian Troyer (D&M), bringing a new clarity to its intricate, low-lit architectures. Throughout the record, serving almost as audiographic guideposts, are faint but insistent gestures toward propulsion, an abiding and recurrent 4/4 pulse that guides the music laterally and instantiates a slow negotiation between its various elements. This music invites close listening precisely by not revealing itself all at once, allowing small collisions of timbre and subtle shifts in emphasis to carry the weight. The traces of lived environments that remain embedded in the mix - distant crowds, sounds of transit, the indistinct acoustics of interiors in flux - expand the frame without breaking its intimacy, creating a potent dislocation between the nearness of the sound and the scale of its sources. Rather than foregrounding any single voice, this is music that distributes attention equally across its materials, allowing background details to assert their presence as much as melody or rhythm. Honig presents listeners with an astute practice that’s concerned less with building from the ground up than with uncovering what happens when disparate textures and structures are brought into close contact with one another. (Alex Cobb, 2026)

Hotel bed in a cold sweat, a ceiling fan rotates slowly, flashbacks of helicopters and drones. He closes his eyes but it’s all strobes and explosions. What to do? Escape? Or stay and finish the mission? Meanwhile, sounds heard through the radio static turn into a motorik pulse, the clicks and clacks of the Complex, encryption deciphered, zoned-factor authentication - reprogramming its listener until all that’s left is a scrambled man.

Vind is 12 pieces written and performed by CTM and produced by Jakob Littauer. The album consists of cello compositions with few exceptions - a daf enhancing the rhythm, a distant memory of the kora, a pensive flute or folly sounds. The softness of the acoustic instruments is counterplayed by concise compositions and hyperreal productions. The music presents itself as part spirit, part form; the movement in the moment, repetition, anticipation, what happened and what is to come. It's a sensuous search into stretched out moments, captured and held in one’s hand for a little while. It finds play and devotion, love and light. Dedicated to Jannis Noya Makrigiannis

Limited new edition with revised artwork on the sleeve and labels.Originally released in 2022, this is an epic collage and mixed LP of all original material, compiled and stitched together over three years by Morgan Buckley.KWALK features Roger Doyle, Mr & Ms KWalker, Sli Town Crier, Olmo, Davy Kehoe, Morgan Buckley, plus some surprise guests.

Straight from the weedy fields of swampville Bruxelles we bring you 8 ‘tranches de vie’ of deep zone-hall by weirdtronic bass veteran Michael Crabbé’s best fitting sound costume to date: the mighty Rudi J! You might know him from earlier outfits but that’s not the main issue here. Rudi J is!When this swamp thing touches the pads, it’s off-road after three seconds, even if you’re in the middle of Europe’s capital. Mixing analog dirt and digital sound bits in a very loose and personal take on dancehall, we’re pretty far away from the dance floor but definitely swinging. It’s a trippy affair wandering around concrete flowers with a deep ambient flavor, but it’s edgy.A hot summer fever dream following his own lusty path, full of life and wonder but with something sinister hiding around every corner. Often reaching for the stars, a deeper shade of bass keeps things nicely grounded. These sounds are built with a sound system in mind and bass culture at heart. Even if you can definitely surf on it from your couch, picking out all of its ear-pricking details, it will very much come alive on a big sound.A layered affair with almost jazzy and orchestral elements peeping through the stereo-field, spectral and dissonant but also playful. Like early dubstep, some of these tunes can destroy a clubsound, keeping you skunking out in pedestrian mode and snorting up the atmospherics, finally forgetting about that damn phone.

Music for movies by Václav Kadrnka "Absence of the loved one is a theme running through both films, but during the creative process we never discuss with the Havels the themes, symptoms or attributes of the characters. We do not specify any meanings. Our collaboration is intuitive, based on interconnectedness. We neither explain things to each other nor analyse. From the outset we have a common goal: to quieten the viewers’ perception, to attune them to certain vibrations by visual, musical and acoustic repetitions, thus enabling them to focus on every tiny detail, every subtle aesthetic quality, so that by the end of the film they have a sense of reconciliation. In fact it is a state similar to meditation or prayer. The aim is being shown Mercy. Each time, the linking of the filmed images with Irena and Vojtech’s music has uncovered a new quality that we have named: a commentary on eternity. Characters cease to be determined by their senses, psychological motivations, or the times they live in. They find liberation in the stream of eternal time." /Václav Kadrnka "We would like to thank all our friends, sound engineers and musicians. The main thanks goes to director Václav Kadrnka, his family and all his collaborators for the precious opportunity to assist them in creating both films. We have worked on our music for the film Saving One Who Was Dead for three years. We met with Václav, discussed the screenplay while it was being born and many other things. We have gradually prepared several working versions that included compositions for piano, Indonesian gamelan, gongs, Tibetan bowls, bells and mini-bells. Yet, step by step, we made it simpler and simpler and eventually only kept violas da gamba, organ and chanting. Everything else was redundant. We made most of the recordings of the compositions for viola da gamba in a church in Prague. The composition for organ was recorded in Milan where we performed a concert shortly before the pandemic arrived in December 2019. We tried to record it in various churches in Bohemia but it was not until the church in Milan that we found the best sounding organ. As for Little Crusader, we recorded the music for the film after it was completed. We had several versions and used the piano version for this album. Together with Václav, we searched for instruments that would work the best for this Medieval story. Eventually, we opted for harmonium with simple chanting which accompanies the character little boy Jenik. Violas da gamba intertwine, move close and then apart from each other the same way as paths of little boy Jenik and his father who is searching for him. Simple chanting and Tibetan bowl accompany scenes with little boy Jenik’s mother who awaits them at home. Trombone and saxophone are like metal swords and the knights’ armor. Violoncello and viola da gamba walk in the rhythm of horse’s hooves, in the rhythm of heartbeat of both the horse and his rider – a father searching for his lost son." / Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi

src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2063437934/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless=""><a href="https://havlovi.bandcamp.com/album/saving-one-who-was-dead-little-crusader">Saving One Who Was Dead / Little Crusader The Havels / Irena &amp; Vojtech Havlovi</a>