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ZZK Records Presents: Cruzloma’s Mitos & Ritos, a dialogue with the past, present and future of traditional Ecuadorian music

The hostile times humanity is going through have awoken a need to get back to our roots, reclaim ancestral knowledge, and question where the excessive exploitation of natural resources has led us. We have heeded that urgent call to care for everything that seems unlimited but which is increasingly scarce. And so we have looked to the past to understand our relationship with what surrounds us and establish a dialogue between the past, the present and the uncertain idea of the future.

Applied to music, this has aroused the interest of artists and producers who use the rich folklore and traditions of Latin America to replicate that dialogue between what was and what will be. With this in mind, Mitos & Ritos (“Myths and Rites”), the debut EP by the Ecuadorian group Crvzloma, consolidates in its six songs a spirit of promoting traditional rhythms in contemporary styles, a process of reinvention and self-discovery in homage to the indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian jungle and the riches of ceremonial music, based around the bambuco style from Esmeraldas on the northern coast, and the bomba del chota and the san juanito from Imbabura province. On this EP there are also sacred prayers of the Shuar nation, called Ujaj and Anets, including ceremonies like the taking of ayahuasca and of the tzan tza, all in a mix featuring electronica, global bass and dembow.

It is a journey into mysticism, the jungle and the dancefloor, reflecting a search for musical identity that is at once contemporary and futurist. 

Don Drummond (1932-1969), the great trombonist and original member of Skatalites, remade the killer number Last Call! In the 80's, the song was remixed by Jah Shaka, and this re-recording featuring veteran DJ Ranking Joe is just as tense and killer!

Is it noise? Jazz? Free improv? Rock 'n roll? Minimalism? Sound art? Punk? MOPCUT's third full-length is their most divergent, most genre liquefying statement yet, an album that creeps mischievously across the experimental scene at large, devouring its innovations and spitting away any lofty conceptual fat. With guest appearances from avant rap vanguard dälek, Philly poet and activist Moor Mother and esteemed turntablist and composer Mariam Rezaei, 'RYOK' oozes between various interconnected movements, constantly mutating and reanimating itself in the process. Unlike its predecessor 'JITTER', a set of 25 hyper-kinetic miniatures, 'RYOK' plays like cracked mirror image of classic album: nine dynamic, fully fleshed-out tracks that force us to question everything we think we know about structure, texture and physicality in music.

MOPCUT emerged back in 2018 as a collaboration between Taiwanese-American improv virtuoso Audrey Chen (on vocals and synth), celebrated Austrian percussionist Lukas König and idiosyncratic French guitarist Julien Desprez. Chen's visceral, electronically manipulated vocalizations - that range from guttural croaks to ear-piercing bawls - are already notorious at this stage thanks to a slew of vital solo works and diverse collaborations, while König's omnivorous approach to rhythm provides the backbone to albums like 2023's acclaimed '1 Above Minus Underground', and his collaboration with Elvin Brandhi and Peter Kutin, 'ParziFoooooooooooL'. Desprez, meanwhile, has spent decades turning a love of rock and jazz into an exploration of space and body movement, developing his own guitar technique that treats the motion of his feet on the effects pedals like a tap dance.

All of these various skills are laid out immediately on opening track 'SISMICA', when we hear Chen's stutters, wails and freeform improvised raps criss-cross with König's jerky stop-start beats and Desprez's juddering, metallic prangs. As an introduction, it works flawlessly, establishing the trio's sonic palette before they shift into fresh territory on 'WHERE TO BEGIN', forming their haphazard, chaotic noise into a bumpy beatscape for New Jersey MC dälek. Anyone who's been following dälek's output over the years will already know how comfortable he is rapping over unexpected backdrops, and his flow flawlessly marries with MOPCUT's punkish assemblage of oscillations, foley cracks and hoarse croaks. And after circling droned-out psychedelic rock on 'SEVEN ELEVEN', the trio curate an ominous, minimalist environment with 'REST TODAY', quieting their bluster for a moment to give Moor Mother's helium-voiced poetry the spotlight.

"I'm off," she squeaks. "No shadow, I'm beyond the planets." White noise hisses in the distance, while Chen's voice is reduced to a terrifying, phantasmagoric moan. This helps build the tension until MOPCUT's energy is released in under a minute on the title track, a rowdy improv-punk vignette that does exactly what it promises to. But it's the album's false ending 'Angelica' that provides the biggest surprise. A potent concoction of warbling, almost meditational drones, it's only intensified by Chen's unexpected operatic cries. It's not quite over yet, either: there's a "remix" from Mariam Rezaei that shows off her signature needle weaving technique, metamorphosing MOPCUT's live stems until they sound like industrial hardstyle, plus the 'TOPCUM REMIX', that ices the cake with a burst of instinctive machine noise.

In honour of fifty years in the performing arts—dating back to the founding of the legendary band The Pyramids in 1972—Idris Ackamoor proudly presents “Artistic Being” for Record Store Day 2025. This special recording features celebrated San Francisco actor, activist, and author Danny Glover, alongside renowned stage actress Rhodessa Jones.

In February 2024 Ackamoor’s performing arts company, Cultural Odyssey, partnered with The Lab, a prominent San Francisco venue, to co-present "Underground Jazz Cabaret" during Black History Month. Ackamoor expressed: “Collaborating with Danny Glover and Rhodessa Jones, two of the most revered Artistic Beings, was a profound honour. Their unwavering dedication to ‘art as social activism’ feels more urgent and necessary than ever.” The performance brought together new and classic works from Idris Ackamoor and his Ankhestra, including members of The Pyramids. The evening’s score served as a connective thread, weaving together a libretto that spans from the haunting legacy of the Middle Passage to contemporary meditations and dreams for the future.

Both Danny Glover and Rhodessa Jones lent their distinctive voices to a series of powerful spoken-word musical tone poems. Among these were "Grandma Cole Story," a poignant indictment of the slave trade told through the eyes of a ten-year-old African girl aboard a slave ship, and "China Lane Suite," which explores a forbidden romance between a Chinese laundry owner and a freed slave during Reconstruction. Glover also contributed his original work, "In God’s Country," a moving homage to his mother. The evening concluded with Ackamoor’s latest composition, "Now!," a striking reflection on the crises facing the Middle East today. All the narratives were underscored by an evocative score composed and arranged by Ackamoor himself, performed by his newly expanded 14-piece Ankhestra.

This performance not only celebrated a milestone in Ackamoor’s illustrious career but also exemplified the transformative power of art in addressing the pressing social issues of our time.

A winsome and dizzying spin on disco pop, recorded in westernized Iran during the last moments before the 1979 revolution. All but criminalized in the wake of Ayatollah Khomeni’s theocratic repression, Hamlet Minassian’s solo masterpiece is a testament to the Middle East’s forgotten dance music culture. This six-song, 44-minute LP hybridizes Euro attitude and Armenian traditional songs to create long, hypnotic proto-house, seemingly beamed in from another dimension.

“Maggot Mass,” the fifth full-length album by Pharmakon on Sacred Bones Records, marks the project's return after a five-year hiatus. This album signifies a departure from the original rules and structures established by Margaret Chardiet for Pharmakon, evolving into a new form. It retains the project’s experimental roots in power electronics and noise while incorporating industrial and punk influences. The album stems from a profound disgust with humanity’s dysfunctional relationship with the environment and other life forms. It explores the loneliness resulting from this broken bond and challenges us to acknowledge our personal and systemic responsibility. What peace can we make with privilege when the true cost of our comfort is not measured in dollars but in death? How can we reconcile with death when we impose the same hierarchical structures on it that we do in life? Is life worth living in the isolation of this self-imposed species loneliness? Humans often measure worth by accumulation—money, assets, objects—mistaking this for power and influence. Western heritage dictates a hierarchy, placing humans at the top, separate from the natural world. This delusion turns bodies into objects, land into property, and people into expendable tools. If our value were instead determined by our contribution to the ecosystem, who could claim that a human is more valuable than a maggot? Maggots recycle death into life, breaking down matter and nourishing new growth. They transform into flies, pollinating plants and sustaining the Earth’s flora. In contrast, humans pollute rather than pollinate, with a select few profiting from exploitation at the expense of biodiversity and the well-being of many. In grappling with grief and loss on both personal and global scales, Margaret sought solace in the idea of rebirth through death, celebrating the beauty of regeneration through decay. However, she had to confront the stark reality of the disconnection from the earth under oppressive systems. Pharmakon is here imagining a path where the final act is to give back what was received from creation, offering our lives and deaths to sustain existence. once I slough off this human skin I will find my home and ancestral kin… in the coffin-birth of my cadaver’s ecosystem All songs written and performed by Margaret Chardiet Lyrics by Margaret Chardiet Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Sasha Stroud at Artifact Studios Produced by Margaret Chardiet and Sasha Stroud

In his 1954 book The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley theorized that every person lives and experiences life on their own island universe. We can try to explain our experience to others using language, symbols, and art, but we’ll never be sure that we’re feeling something precisely the same as anyone else. This line of thinking has become a source of inspiration for many prolific artists. Now, Cincinnati-based producer Jason Grimez is inviting us to hear what it sounds like on an island of his own creation.   The Island of Dr. Bionic is the third installment in Dr. Bionic’s Terrestrial Radio series. Due out 5/2/2025 on Chiefdom Records, it’s a collection of instrumental fusion for fans of hip-hop, jazz, funk, and beyond. Grimez is the producer, mixer, and mastermind behind Dr. Bionic. He’s a Cincinnati-based creator with a deep understanding of 90s hip-hop and DJ culture, and he draws inspiration from music of all kinds.  Grimez’ ever-growing catalog is best described as organic groove. He calls on a rotating cast of veteran musicians to join him at his home studio to write, record, and try out new ideas. Long-time listeners will find some familiar names in the liner notes, for good reason. “Life Span” (track 14) features a head-bobbing beat from Marvin Hawkins. Nick Brown is responsible for the dreamy Rhodes performance on “Shell Of The Soul” (track 11). If Charlie Suit’s unforgettable sax performance on “The Path Of Stars” (track 16) is stuck in your head for more than 3 days, please consult Dr. Bionic. Once the recording sessions are complete, the real production work begins. “We get together and record a ton of stuff, and then I’ll go back and cut it and mix it together,” Grimez explained. “It all finds a home over time.”  As a chapter of the Terrestrial Radio series, The Island of Dr. Bionic is a fresh mixtape of musical loops and ideas, curated to flow naturally from one song into the next. Listen in the car, on a turntable, or on your own little island for a glimpse inside the Dr. Bionic universe.

The latest album from Langendorf United, the five-piece led by Swedish saxophonist Lina Langendorf, arrives via Sing a song fighter. Their previous release won the Alternative Swedish Grammy and established the group as a leading force in the new wave of European Ethio-jazz and global grooves. Once again, the music draws on Ethiopian scales and rhythms, intertwining a powerful rhythm section with Langendorf’s spiritual saxophone to conjure a sound that is both complex and intoxicatingly euphoric. Langendorf’s years spent in Ethiopia and Mali, and her encounters with local musicians there, infuse the ensemble with muscular interplay and profound spirituality. Precision and explosive energy, joy and lament coexist throughout—a commanding statement of jazz as truly “living music” in the present.

UK・ウェイクフィールド出身のアーティスト、Pretty Vによる初となるフル・アルバム『Destiny of Illusion』が、昨今大人気のBianca Scoutも作品を発表していた南ロンドンの〈life is beautiful records〉よりフィジカル限定でリリース！プロデューサーaloisiusとの完全共同制作による、ローファイな質感と実験的な構成が特徴的な作品であり、ジャンルを越境するサウンドと、自己表現への強い意志が感じられる一枚。デジタル配信無しとのこと！Dean BluntやMount Kimbieのファンにもレコメンドしたい、現代UKアンダーグラウンドの注目作。

中東地域のネットカルチャーとグローバル・ベース／クラブ・ミュージックの接点を捉え続けてきた〈HEAT CRIMES〉から、注目のコンピレーション『REEL TALK - BEST OF DOUYIN TRACKS』が登場。中国のショート動画プラットフォーム「抖音（Douyin）」上で流通したサンプリング音源やクラブトラックをキュレートし、カットアップ、スクリュー、トランス、スピードコア、トラップ、アンビエントまでを雑多に飲み込む全20曲。ネット特有の速度感と無作為さ、そして奇妙なエモーションが交錯する、デジタル以降のサウンド・アーカイブとしての一枚。カルト的人気を誇るシリーズ最新章。

A multidisciplinary artist and curator, Violaine Morgan Le Fur (aka Violence Gratuite) has spent the last few years sharpening her creative perspective, developing documentaries, producing exhibitions, and directing music videos and short films. 'Baleine à Boss' isn't just her debut album, but her first venture into music production; Le Fur had only begun to experiment with music software a few weeks before dubbing the record, a fact that makes this unique set only more bewildering. Singing and vocalizing candidly and producing each track alone, she sounds profoundly polished, invoking a beguiling haze of chanson, rap, no wave and experimental electronics that hovers around the margins of pop and the avant-garde.

Le Fur grew up in Paris's sprawling suburbs, and was provided with a diverse coterie of influences by her Breton mother and Cameroonian father. She's channeled her ancestry into her work before, splicing material from her mother's film archives with her own footage recorded in Bamiléké land to develop the autobiographical documentary 'À L'ouest' back in 2017. As Violence Gratuite, Le Fur thinks more cryptically, considering the vast forests of western Cameroon, lands ravaged by generations of bloodthirsty men and looping pulsing techno rhythms with fractured trap and the ghosts of French pop.

Her voice stands out proudly on opener 'Iséo', layered into a charming mantra over a brittle, grime-y beat assembled from stuttering samples and 8-bit blips. Acrobatic yet somehow casual, Le Fur splits her delivery, singing in French over undulating chants and spectral coos. And she switches up the flow on 'Olive', rapping in an icy cool deadpan while spiky synths bubble around jerky, Neptunes-like stabs. Then, on the nocturnal 'Smooth Operation', Le Fur guides us towards a moonlit ritual, crying sweetly into the darkness as hand drums and dreamy plucks chatter in the background.

On the title track, Le Fur strips the rhythm down to a moody, skeletal rumble, using rubbery drums and trapped chorals to mire herself in negative space. Speaking in a low rasp, she brings to mind Tricky's eeriest early material, or the wonkiest output of French no wave hybridist Lizzy Mercier Descloux. But the record switches gears relentlessly, lurching towards the Caribbean on 'Ragga Nieztches' and into spannered dembow on the hypnotic closing track 'Bad à Bras le Corps'. 'Baleine à Boss' is an unpredictable, labyrinthine suite that refuses to stay static, a variety show that's as comfortable in the club as it is at a fest noz.

On her moonlit second solo album, Hungarian Transylvanian vocalist, composer and performer Réka Csiszér composes an uncanny and chilling soundtrack that muddles the physical and spiritual realms, balancing crumbling realities with confident self-actualization. 'Danse des Larmes' is based on sketches commissioned for a theater production, and Csiszér widens the original concept of "Eastern European melancholy" by painting dreamlike memories from her childhood - of alienation, unconscious trauma and distress - into a hypnotic sequence of soundscapes that hum with tension, mystery and transcendence. She pulls from industrial music, dark ambient, Eastern European folk music and vintage horror soundtracks, smudging sludgy drones, dense electro-acoustic textures and her own breathtaking choral vocals until the roots vanish almost completely, leaving only ghostly traces behind.

The album follows Csiszér's acclaimed VÍZ debut 'Veils', a bold seven part audiovisual "body horror soundtrack" that spiraled out from her long-held interests in theater, cinema and opera. Those elements are still present on 'Danse des Larmes', but by examining her past, Csiszér is able to reach into the future, amalgamating gothic horror and speculative science-fiction. This is never more evident than on the album's eerie opening track 'Eden X', that juxtaposes wheezing synthesizer textures with soul-stirring choral echoes that liquefy into Csiszér's oily ambience. As the track washes to a close, Csiszér suspends her sounds in the silence, letting the obscured harmonies and rusted noise peer beyond the veil, setting the scene perfectly for the vastly different title track. Here, the influence of folk music bubbles to the surface, with distorted, eerily familiar vocal rotations that crack over woody environmental sounds. "I dreamt a dream tonight, that dreamers often lie," a processed voice speaks into the phantasmal forest. "In lovers arms they fade and die, I talk of dreams, I talk of lies, I dream of you, I dream of I."

Csiszér's voice is clearer still on the giallo-influenced 'Hyperálom', calling confidently across hymnal rhythms and woozy analog throbs, and on 'Angel's Throat', it's thrust into a parallel universe, reverberating wordlessly before Csiszér dexterously sculpts it into terrifying ferric shrieks and gaseous vapors. Elsewhere, she pays tribute to iconic Hungarian composer Mihály Víg on 'Vali 2.0', offering her own interpretation of 'Kész az egész', a piece featured in Béla Tarr’s 1987 film 'Kárhozat'. In Csiszér's hands, Víg's sardonic original is lifted into the clouds, obscured by celestial pads that drape around Csiszér's sensual, Julee Cruise-like vocals. It's a cunning way for Csiszér to trigger a memory and immediately obfuscate it, leaving a sense compelling disorientation in its wake. And that sense of terror and awe swirls throughout the album, questioning the horror of childhood trauma and the confusing echoes of the past and replacing it with something beautiful, and something new.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

オランダ・ロッテルダムのDJ Shaun-Dによる、バブリングからダッチ・ハウスへの進化を辿るコンピレーション・アルバム『From Bubbling to Dutch House』が、〈Nyege Nyege Tapes〉よりリリース。本作には、1990年代のスピードアップされたダンスホールを基盤に、エレクトロ・ハウス、トラップ、B-More、レイヴなどを融合させた、シュリルなシンセとシンクロペーションが特徴の全10曲を収録。初期の代表曲"Pull Up"や"XXXmachine"から、未発表の新曲
Outta Control"、"Ultra Instinct"まで、DJ Shaun-Dのキャリアを網羅した内容となっています。

A twisted web of diverse musical references and puzzling ambiguities, NET GALA's debut full-length is either a noise album that's aimed squarely at the dancefloor or a future-proofed club transmission that's been muddled and obscured by incomprehensible distortions - maybe it's both. The title has been on the South Korean producer's mind since 2020, a tongue-in-cheek reference not just to the Korean-English (Konglish) pronunciation of Galápagos and NET GALA's queer identity, but to "Galápagos Syndrome", a term to describe isolated, localized developments within global businesses. In NET GALA's hands, it's an apt metaphor for both their idiosyncratic, hybrid sound and their similarly distinctive dissection of queerness away from the stifling structures of the global north. And across 11 frenetic, eccentric tracks, they reconfigure loose genre signifiers and queer cultural references, figuring out what these motifs might mean within a new framework. There are few entrenched definitions in South Korea, which gives NET GALA with a relatively blank canvas to paint an enigmatic sonic landscape that provides more questions than answers.

'Galapaggot' develops a sound NET GALA has been diligently refining over the last few years. They cut their teeth as a member of the local LGBTQ collective Shade Seoul, playing regularly at the notorious Cakeshop venue, and after releasing their dazzling first EP '[re:FLEX*ion]' on NBDKNW in 2019, spent time researching Shinpageuk, an early 20th century melodramatic theatrical style, to heighten the drama of 2021's SVBKVLT-released '신파 SHINPA'. This time around, they take an even broader view, surveying how far they're able to push dance music before it shatters into pieces. Samples are shoehorned into unseemly places, and snares and hats - the primary signifiers of many club sub-genres - have been eliminated, or swapped with alternate sounds. The result is an album that pulses with a familiar energy, but sounds completely unconventional. Nods to footwork, ballroom, grindcore and hard trance are obscured with jagged sonic contortions and hyperactive rhythmic quirks, ripped up and assembled into dazzling new shapes.

Punk/grindcore artist Supermotel K steps in to scream '90s and '00s Korean gay slang on 'The Dog', vocalizing sensually over NET GALA's galloping, blown-out kicks and trance-inducing synth cycles, and on 'Rac Cap Cu', NET GALA taps Vietnamese collective Rắn Cạp Đuôi to help elevate their epic club collage of grainy, militaristic rolls and celestial chimes, forming the track around a guitar riff from drummer Zach Sch. And NET GALA puts their own mark on ballroom with the pneumatic 'KATRINAKATRINAKATRINA' and 'Ha Dance'-approximating 'Cistem Boom', using the genre's rhythmic pulse and singular momentum as a springboard to jack up their quirky sound designs and and harsh distortions. On opening track 'Joappa' and its follow-up 'Paran', NET GALA injects fierceness and drama into footwork with frenetic tuned percussion and cynical eagle calls, and they push the volume to 11 on 'Warp This Pussy (For Kitty)', a cacophonous, jerky dancefloor weapon that's led by a playful vocal call.

Disturbing politics with humor and mischievous defiance in the face of misunderstanding, NET GALA makes a powerful statement with 'Galapaggot'. It's a bold album that ignores comfortable aesthetic stereotypes in favor of proposing a cunning new direction for Korean electronic music. And although it might be sometimes jarring, it turns frustration and uncertainty into a rallying call for the world's most nebulous fringes.

Made up of four lengthy hallucinogenic incantations, Het Zweet's first self-titled tape was originally released in 1983 and shouldn't be confused with the later 1987-released album of the same name. The project was conceived by Dutchman Marien Van Oers, who sadly passed away in 2013, leaving behind a breadcrumb trail of mysterious, ritualistic deployments pieced together using an arsenal of home-made instruments. And 'Het Zweet' finds Van Oers at his most mystifying and most primal, forming rudimentary sounds into surging, percussive atmospheres that peer back towards ancestral rhythmic geometries and caking his repetitions in ferric, industrial-era dirt. The name itself means "sweat" in Dutch, and there's an identifiably herculean quality to Van Oers' mantas - these aren't simply loops, by any means, but contemplative feats of endurance that reward patient, deep listeners.

Opening track 'Vocus' is the album's most haunted stretch, almost 12 minutes of spectral decelerated gloop that infuses a sequence of chants with the dilatory, caliginous energy of doom metal. There's an almost monastic quality to the pitch-skewed synths that introduce the composition, but that's quickly interrupted by molasses slow vocal cycles that rumble enigmatically next to Van Oers' barely audible vocalizations. The artist's kinetic drumming is thrust into the foreground on 'Tribus', but the ritual quality never disappears, his cyclic intonations adding color to the pebbly pots 'n pans cracks and cavernous oscillations. It's music that lodges itself between Muslimgauze and Z'EV, crafted for patient listeners who can perceive the elemental grooves lying just beneath Van Oers' trance-like patterns and discombobulating effects.

On 'Tribus', Van Oers intensifies the magick, playing a languid, lop-sided beat that twangs as it pierces the red, creating its own eerie distortion. Unmistakably psychedelic gear, it breaks down into wisps of guttural, groaning white noise and temple chimes that Van Oers uses to catch his breath before bellowing into a foghorn-like home-made pipe and rebooting the rhythm. And the closer 'Indus' is the album's most focused, starkest stretch, almost 15 minutes of gymnastic drumwork that's accompanied by a vocal mantra that simmers softly in the background. Over four decades later, 'Het Zweet' is still startlingly unique material; not quite industrial, not quite dark ambient and definitely not new age, it's music that's plugged into cultural history, re-imagining long-forgotten ceremonies as a feat of physical and spiritual endurance for both the performer and the listener.

Prolific Portuguese musician and visual artist Jonathan Uliel Saldanha - of HHY & The Macumbas/The Kampala Unit - might be best known for his noisy, experimental excursions, but he's long been fascinated by the possibilities offered by the human voice. He's already composed a slew of choral pieces, such as 'Khōrus Anima', 'Del' and 'Plethora', and his last, 'Santa Viscera Tua', was an ambitious project for 150 voices. On 'Kembo', he builds on these experiences significantly, examining the commonality and shared spirituality of vocal music alongside the Kingdom Ulfame Choir, a seven-piece Uganda-based group of Congolese singers. The collaboration began at Nyege Nyege's Kampala studio, where Saldanha and the choir took the time to figure out their direction, singing together in an imagined language concocted from elements of Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo and French. Considering pre-linguistic communication, liturgical music and glossolalia (better known as speaking in tongues), their improvisations evolved into trances, with Saldanha's discreet electronic augmentations used only to accent the melodies and harmonies.

This process stands out immediately on opening track 'Boya Kotala' when the group trade poignant solos over Saldanha's aerated choral drones and ominous synthesized bass. The voices are suspended in time, cautiously referencing sacred music but disregarding the expected tropes, leaving hypnotic vapors that gust through the entire suite. 'Tokumisa Nzambe' is remarkably different, adding a brittle electro-acoustic pulse to the choir's tangled phrases that are ornamented with rhythmic chants and layered melodic outbursts. "Hallelujah," they repeat on 'Hosana', reaching back to familiar praise songs and building to a jubilant crescendo of voices. And later, on 'Nzambe Bolingo', the group's impassioned recitations are threaded through chopped, percussive vocalizations and exhalations. Taking a brief breather, Kingdom Molongi's words coalesce into a calming lullaby on the hushed 'Emanuel', and their appreciation of classic soul and gospel fizzes to the surface on 'Maloba ya Motema Nangai' with virtuosic wordless phrases that speak to the roots of the music, not its contemporary application.

'Kembo' is an album that investigates not just the mutability of language itself, but time, wondering how words and themes are reshaped as they tumble through history, picking up influences from various folk traditions, idiosyncratic pop forms and diverse quasi-religious expressions. Most of all though, Kingdom Molongi manage to highlight the enduring relationship between the voice and the spirit, and the transformative power of choral music.

Young Congolese DJ/producer Oyisse, based in Kampala, makes his debut on the white label series of Hakuna Kulala, a subsidiary of Nyege Nyege Tapes, the African version of PAN, a stronghold of experimental music from Uganda. It's an avant-garde fusion of abstract electronics, South African dark house (GQOM), trap, Central African music, and Congolese songs, all fused together in a futuristic imagination. Four tracks of experimental electronic sounds.

Furthering their explorations to the astoundingly singular creative sound world of Anima - the duo of Limpe and Paul Fuchs - Alga Marghen returns with “Anima Trip: Baummusik”, a never before released body of archival recordings made by the pair in the municipal gallery in the Bavarian city of Rosenheim. Joining a body of work that comprises some of the most incredible creations to emerge from Germany between the late 1960 and the 1980s, this much needed addition to Anima’s catalog is a rigorous and visionary real time exploration marked by restraint, ambience, deep resonances and mutual intervention, threaded by tension and explosive energy, that has to be heard to be believed.

** Edition of 300. ** Over their decades of activity, the Italian imprint, Alga Marghen, has illuminated a near countless number of historical artefacts within the field of experimental sound. During the years, often working closely with the artists at hand, they’ve helped entirely reconfiguring our understandings of the occurrences of radical sound over time. Far ahead of the curve, way back in 1999 - casting their gaze toward a fascinating juncture between the krautrock scene, free jazz, and experimental music - Alga Marghen reissued “Musik für Alle”, the seminal 1971 full length by - the duo of Limpe and Paul Fuchs working under Anima-Sound. Laying the groundwork of an important relationship with Limpe Fuchs, in 2022 they bore further fruit with the release of Anima’s “Underground Altena”, drawing on a previously unreleased body of recordings by the project. Now, three more years down the road, they return once again to the singular sound universe of Anima with “Anima Trip: Baummusik”, a truly stunning LP, comprising newly unearthed archival recordings made by Limpe and Paul Fuchs in the municipal gallery in the Bavarian city of Rosenheim. Tense and revelatory, offering crucial access to the project’s experimental explorations at the height of their powers - radically pursuing freedom with every texture, tone, and beat - this LP, issued in a beautiful limited edition, further breaks down the perceived boundaries between sound art, sculpture, and the German sonic avant-garde.

Founded at the periphery of the kraut / kosmische scene by then husband and wife team, Limpe and Paul Fuchs, during the late 1960s, Anima was easily one of the most singular and unique projects to have ever emerged from the European sonic counterculture. At the time of its inception, Paul was an avant-garde sculptor, while Limpe was a conservatory trained percussionist, violist, and vocalist. In addition to emboding a radical form of free living, and farming in the small Bavarian village where they lived, their collaboration centered upon a meeting of their respective creative worlds; Paul’s work and understanding of objects, and Limpe’s extensive musical knowledge.

Anima’s distinct sound was largely the result of the pair’s invention, building, and playing of unique instruments, notably the Fuchshorn, Fuchszither, Fuchsbass, and a ‘pendulum string’ based on a Pythagorean monochord, alongside regular instruments and vocals, within a radical approach toward the achievement of freedom through creativity. The result, which appeared across eight full lengths documenting their activities until they disbanded during the 1980s, as well as a handful of more recent archival releases, are some of the most remarkably experimental and sought after releases to have emerged from Germany during those years. Recalling that period’s activities, Limpe states: “In the Anima duo with Paul Fuchs beside the drum set I used iron tools and metal sheets from the workshop. Instead of the hi hat cymbals I had a metal ring with five strings and plucked them by foot with a plectrum. Paul had built the Fuchsharp with two pickups and glided up and down the scale.”

Paul and Limpe Fuchs describe their “Anima Musica” as “finding authentic sound combinations together”, attempting to get closer to reality”. It is this rough, exploratory proximity that unfurls across the two sides of “Anima Trip: Baummusik”. While most probably predominately improvised, utilising only a rough plan of approach, for more than three quarters of an hour the duo maintains an absolutely consuming impression of rigorous focus, harmony, and structure, tightly interweaving their response to the interventions of one with the next.

Defined by a deeply resonant sense of space and ambience within which percussive punctuations rise, rattle and fall against the dynamic rings of metal objects, “Anima Trip: Baummusik” balances tension and restraint to the heights of its potential effect, producing a wild form of minimalism from the tonal and atonal byproducts of the sound sculptures at their disposal, occasional soaring vocals by Limpe, and howling utterances of “fox horns”, - wind instruments that resemble the shape of prehistoric animal horns, “tube drums”, and other idiosyncratic percussion instruments, that push the gentler, spacious moments of ambient calm into wild explosions at the boundaries of free jazz.

Entirely singular within the history of music, with “Anima Trip: Baummusik” we catch yet another crucial glimpse into Anima’s absolutely stunning universe of sound, presenting a visionary and radical image of freedom with each acoustic intervention unfurling across the two sides of this beautiful produced, limited edition vinyl LP. When it comes to the German intersection at the boundaries of art and sound, it really doesn’t get any better than this!

“I Racconti di Aretusa” is the result of the encounter between Lino Capra Vaccina, a legend of Italian minimalism, and Mai Mai Mai, the alias of Toni Cutrone, a key international figure in the avant-garde/drone scene. A work that weaves together experimentation and Mediterranean echoes, creating a sonic journey of rare intensity. The collaboration was born during an artistic residency for the Ortigia Sound System (Syracuse, Sicily), a festival dedicated to the dialogue between traditional sounds and electronic research. The project took shape in an evocative location: the Church of Gesù e Maria in Ortigia, a place of extraordinary beauty whose acoustics imparted an almost mystical depth to the creative process. For two weeks, the two artists composed and recorded the album within this sacred setting, allowing the environment itself to influence the sounds and amplify their spiritual dimension. The final result was then refined by the work of Rabih Beaini, who handled the mixing at Morphine Raum Studio, and Matt Bordin, responsible for the mastering at Outside Inside Studio.

Lino Capra Vaccina, a pioneer of sound experimentation and co-founder of historic formations such as Aktuala and Telaio Magnetico (with Franco Battiato), brought to the project a refined and meditative musical sensibility. His use of vibraphone and piano creates hypnotic and ethereal atmospheres, built on deep resonances and soundscapes suspended in time. Engaging in dialogue with this aesthetic is Mai Mai Mai’s sonic language, which reinterprets and transforms the acoustic material through layered drones, hypnotic rhythms, and manipulated samples, constructing a dense and enveloping sonic universe. The result is a work that transcends time and space, a sonic passage oscillating between the sacred and the profane, between ritual and contemporaneity. Vaccina’s ancestral percussion merges with Mai Mai Mai’s electronic textures and distortions, giving life to a dialogue rich in tension and suggestion. At the same time, the location itself acts as an active element of the composition, almost as if it were an additional instrument capable of capturing and conveying the spiritual resonance of the place. The album's title is a tribute to the nymph Aretusa, a symbol of Syracuse, whose myth intertwines with water and the memory of distant times. This evocation becomes the key to understanding the entire project: just as the waters of Aretusa’s fountain preserve forgotten stories, so this album explores layers of sound and musical memory, revealing new possibilities for listening and interpretation.

“I Racconti di Aretusa” perfectly embolie Baccano’s vision: to restore a dimension of research to sound, fostering dialogue between artists from different eras and languages in a work that is not merely an encounter between past and present, but a true act of sonic rewriting. Though originating from distant musical worlds, Vaccina and Mai Mai Mai find common ground in experimentation and timbral exploration, shaping an album that reflects their artistic depth and visionary affinity.