PRE-ORDERS

A cranky, poetic-esoteric nEuro vibe puts wind behind the sails of Inkasso & ML’s maiden Stroom entry and their transition from whispered nocturnes to slompy cyber-slugs. Flickering shadowy integers of post-industrial, trip hop, theatrical music and sound poetry, ‘Fashion Recession’ finds the trio of Inkasso & ML indulging their whims toward a sort of soundtrack-like fantasy that leads on from their respective works for the artful types at Kashual Plastik and Osàre! Editions. The combo of dank synths with blunted vox and squashed grooves tessellates ideally with Stroom’s roster of angular audities primed for late night listening. Historic shades of everything from Tuxedomoon to Geins’t Naït and contemporary analogs Thomas Bush or Sholto Dobie come to mind in the album’s sideways drift from smudged downbeats on ‘Soft Layers’ to blown-out bass thunder in ‘Rhythm is a medium of change’, the soured music box melody of ‘Ghosting’, and striking moments of ‘90s noir in ‘Algorithm Poetry’ that sees it off into the Novo Line-like thrum and acidic croak of ‘Disturbing Circles’. Reckon this would all sound ideal on a solo midweek holiday to Antwerp after a break-up, when trying to write that novel you always intended to do.

My encounter with the Hoh Rain Forest, located inside Olympic National Park across the water from Seattle, felt like seeing a whole new world for the first time in my life. Long green fronds draped along the branches, like a scene in which fairies could be heard whispering to one another. But when you try to listen, no sound can be heard. Amidst the mysterious silence, in which no birds or insects make a sound, every living thing seemed to have stopped in its place, only to start dancing when some kind of spell is cast over them. -Hiroshi Yoshimura Originally issued on compact disc in 1996, Quiet Forest was Hiroshi Yoshimura’s last album-length work to be released before his passing in 2003. Largely inspired by his trip to the vast forests of the North American Pacific Northwest, the album is an aural reflection of the fantastical, surreal beauty he experienced as he walked through the otherworldly wilderness for the first time. The basic tracks were recorded in the fall of 1993. After numerous revisions to the song titles and a scrapped idea to overlay the tracks with nature field recordings, Hiroshi ultimately produced a latter-day masterwork that feels like the spiritual follow-up to Green, one of his defining works from a decade earlier.

Originally released in June 2009, The Ecstatic stands as a defining artistic statement from Mos Def (now known as yasiin bey) — a richly textured return to form that reaffirmed his status as one of hip-hop’s most adventurous and intellectually engaged voices. Arriving a decade after his celebrated debut Black on Both Sides, the album was widely regarded as his strongest work in years, earning near-universal praise for its lyrical breadth, eclectic production, and thematic ambition.Musically, The Ecstatic weaves a global sonic tapestry shaped by an array of forward-thinking producers including Madlib, J Dilla, Oh No, Preservation, Mr. Flash, Chad Hugo (of The Neptunes), and Georgia Anne Muldrow. The resulting soundscape is both rooted in hip-hop tradition and unbound by genre, integrating elements of jazz, soul, Middle-Eastern inflection, and experimental sample work. Tracks like “Supermagic” and “Twilite Speedball” establish a vibrant, restless energy that mirrors the album’s expansive creative scope.Lyrically, yasiin bey traverses personal, political, and philosophical terrain with characteristic incisiveness, confronting social inequality, Western imperialism, and questions of cultural identity with poetic urgency. Embracing risk and complexity rather than nostalgia, The Ecstatic remains a mature, deeply felt body of work whose ambition, depth, and enduring resonance have solidified its place as a standout entry in Mos Def’s catalog and in modern hip-hop history.