RECOMMENDED

Hold on to your mind! Led by Belfast-born phenom David Lewis, Andwella made three LPs circa 1970 for London's Reflection label, redolent with Cream-y rock workouts, soaring post-Sgt. Pepper psych experimentation, and earthbound laments The Band might've dreamt up at Big Pink. Barely heard back then, they now conjure a popular rock fantasia to challenge the most expertly composed and orchestrated songs of the era. This deluxe set includes meticulous reproductions of the band’s 3-LP discography, plus an ephemera-packed booklet detailing Lewis's brief moment as a downbeat songwriting visionary at the height of his powers.

A sublime set of roots, vocal and dubbed out instrumental magic, Close Encounters Of The Third World is a real lost gem in the treasure-filled Creation Rebel back catalogue. A true cross-atlantic collaboration - initial rhythm tracks were laid down in London in 1978, with horns and vocals overdubbed at Channel One in Jamaica, before bandleader Crucial Tony returned to London with the tapes for the album to be mixed by a visiting Prince Jammy.

Originally released on pre-On-U Sound label Hitrun, and the second album released by the group chronologically. Unavailable for 45 years, it has been carefully pieced back together, for this new edition featuring extended 12” discomix versions of “Beware” and “Natty Conscience Free”, re-cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery. Includes new sleevenotes by reggae scholar David Katz that tells the story of the album in full.

Sun Ra's legendary 1978 Italian studio sessions, now available together for the first time ever on vinyl!

"Cuban-born, drum genius Francisco Mela is releasing the third chapter of the iconic tribute to his legendary mentor and bandleader McCoy Tyner. Featuring William Parker on Bass and Leo Genovese on Piano." Recorded November 13, 2020 by Jeremy Loucas at Douglass Recording, Brooklyn, New York. Assistant engineer: Juanma Trujillo. Mixed and mastered by Jeremy Loucas at Sear Sound, New York City.

Il Quadro di Troisi presents La Commedia Everything changes, all things evolve: four years after their eponymous debut, Il Quadro di Troisi return with a new album and a new line-up. The perfect circle traced by Eva Geist (aka Andrea Noce) and Donato Dozzy (aka Donato Scaramuzzi) becomes a triangle with the permanent addition of Pietro Micioni, who collaborated in the previous recordings and had been part of ll Quadro’s live set. Nothing stays the same, and the world is a lot different from what it was in 2020. The global crisis generated by the constant escalation of conflict and by the pandemic was mirrored by a time of individual crisis and personal, often irreversible transformation that underscored the entire period of the album’s composition. The influence of these turbulent times is felt in the writing: La Commedia is about turning a crisis into an opportunity and using change as a catalyst for rebirth. Much like the characters in classic Italian comedies, who are masters in using irony to face life’s hardships, Il Quadro di Troisi explores the vast and unpredictable terrain between the lighter and darker sides of the human experience, matching the magical with the mundane. La Commedia is about the many facets of life: each song is named after an archetype (e.g. the truth, the night, the Earth, the prophet), as though our existence were a tarot deck and its reading an exercise in collective consciousness. La Commedia marks the band’s embrace of a more traditional song form, shaped by a very personal and distinctive musical style. The distinguishing elements of Il Quadro di Troisi’s music – classic Italian songwriting with an electronic spin – meld into a unique mix that is both seductive and eerie, elegant and earthy, contemporary and timeless. La Commedia celebrates the band’s cultural roots while constantly moving into new territory, balancing nostalgia with a forward-thinking approach. La Commedia is a rare gem that confirms Il Quadro di Troisi’s relevance in the international music scene, as demonstrated by the number of top-level artists featured on the album: from Suzanne Ciani, a legend and a pioneer of independent music with a career spanning five decades, to Aimee Portioli, aka Grand River, a Dutch-Italian musician, composer and sound designer based in Berlin, along with Francesca Colombo’s eclectic violin (the de facto “fourth angle” of Il Quadro di Troisi’s frame), Fiona Brice’s strings, cultural agitator and icon of the Roman underground scene Stefano Di Trapani (aka Demented Burrocacao and a member of Trapcoustic and System Hardware Abnormal, among other projects), Maestro Daniele Di Gregorio, an excellent musician and a longtime collaboration of songwriting legend Paolo Conte, and Tommaso Cappellato, whose professional description goes well beyond “drummer” and who has been working with artists like Rabih Beaini and Maurice Louca. The cover of the album, as well as those of the singles, was designed by Francesco Messina, another icon of Italian music. Messina is a longtime Franco Battiato collaborator and co-author, a cult musician (his Prati Bagnati del Monte Analogo, made in collaboration with Roul Lovisoni, is considered a seminal record by the alternative Italian music scene), as well as a photographer, visual artist and the author of legendary record covers.

This is a limited edition 2x7" edition of a wildly experimental and unique gem from 1981 (originally released on Japan's Pinakotheca). Spread over two records packaged in a bubble wrap outer sleeve - , the set features unreleased full length takes and unheard material from the band's master cassettes. All transferred and mastered with the blessing of the original musicians. The release features heavy involvement from Morioka based musician, Onnyk (key member of the near mythical The Fifth Column group) , an underground behemoth who's released music on seminal labels such as Vanity Records (JP), Insane Music (BE) & Thirdmind (UK) to name a few. 2 discs. 26 minutes of incredibly forward thinking music from 43 years ago... Ships with a scan code to liner notes - the information is as intriguing as the music.

We invite you to enter the strange and enchanting world of Nino Gvilia, where nothing is quite what it seems. These two ep's (presented on one disc in March 2024) draw you deep into her dreamlike sound-world of hushed late night atmospherics and surreal songwriting. Born in Poti, near Lake Paliastomi in Georgia, Nino Gvilia is a singer-songwriter whose lyrics offer up meditations on what it is to be human in the 21st Century, and aim to carry us beyond into ecology and the politics of the non-human world. Her songs are influenced by folk and minimalism and make use of magnetic tapes, field recordings, vocal samples of contemporary thinkers and philosophers, and an array of strange instruments and vintage textures, drawing for us an intense dreamlike atmosphere. On these two EPs, Nino Gvilia collaborates with Zevi Bordovach (synth / keyboards) and Pietro Caramelli (electric guitar / vocals), with Giulia Pecora and Clarissa Marino adding violin and cello. Now I should tell you that Nino Gvilia does not exist. She is a purely fictional character invented in order to help us reflect on the place of the songwriter in times of global crisis.

During his 40 years spent operating in the farthest margins of L.A.’s cutthroat music business, Consolidated Productions founder Mel Alexander penned a total of 73 original songs while running one of the longest running Black-owned independent record conglomerates of the 20th century. Across those same decades, he’d track hundreds of tunes for his Ajax, Angel Town, Car-A-Mel, City Lights, Emanuel, JGEMS, Kris, Libra III, New Breed, Simco, Space, Tyshawn, Us, and Velvet labels. Between stints spent naming this flurry of newly formed record companies, he’d also try his hand at distribution, setting up the S&M, Soul Record, and BAB outfits at addresses dotting Pico Boulevard, along Los Angeles’s Record Row. He’d log hours as an on-air personality for KORG radio, and establish a host of promotional firms with names like Retail Record Network, World Wide Enterprises, Macro Media Incorporated, Melohank and Roice Promotions, and Associated Talent Development Company. Until well into his seventies, he’d still be busy tinkering with a never-realized public works project: his Watts Blues Walk of Fame. “The blues is about living, it’s about people, it’s about things,” Mel Alexander told the People’s Tribune ina 1991. “If you’ve never lived, you’ve never had the blues.” And Mel still had quite a bit of living to do. “For a long time we have been pondering over our economic dilemma,” Alexander wrote in a letter to his many associates in 1968. “I feel togetherness is our only way out of this pitfall.” And it would be the only way, after a fashion. Across the next decade, Mel Alexander brought on an untold number of ambitious new partners, co-founding his next label or enterprise year after year, and changing his business address just as frequently. The next big hit seemed forever just around the corner—if only he and his Consolidated Productions cohort could turn up the right slogan, the perfect logo, the correct zip code, or that committed new colleague. All Mel asked was that you believe.

Outside of the international house underground, where his early ‘90s works for the Far East Recording label he co-founded with Shinichiro Yokota are rightly celebrated as bona-fide classics, Soichi Terada is best-known for his work composing music for video games. Yet until now, few of his productions for video games have been released outside of Japan, especially on vinyl. Apes In The Net, a six-track EP featuring music composed for the popular PlayStation 1 series Ape Escape, sets the record straight. It not only showcases Terada’s quality as a composer and producer, but also his versatility. Like much of Terada’s work on the Ape Escape series, the tracks featured don’t explore deep, New York and New Jersey influenced house sounds, but rather his lesser-celebrated love of jungle and drum & bass – a sound he fully explored on 1996 album Sumo Jungle. “The producer of the Ape Escape games heard that and got in touch,” Soichi remembers. “They asked me to make the soundtrack, and then work on the music for the sequels after that. I used to love making music with AKAI hardware samplers, synthesisers, and computers, so I played and recorded the tracks using almost the same methods as I did when I made house music. Using breakbeats and audio samples with a sampler was the most useful way to make the soundtracks.” The six tracks on show, which were originally recorded in the ‘90s but reconstructed and remastered for Japan-only CD and digital releases over a decade ago, mix elements of Terada’s familiar deep house style – think warming chords and pads, memorable melodies, and emotive musical motifs – with blistering D&B breakbeats, 16-bit synth sounds, electronic bleeps and undeniably weighty basslines. They’ve stood the test of time and arguably sound just as fresh now as they did at the turn of the millennium.

A subjective mixtape by Dj Salinger. Mixed, recorded and assembled by Dj Salinger in a state of deep melancholy. Mastering by Franz Kirmann.

Franz Kirmann is a French music producer living in London. He has made albums for various labels including Denovali, Bytes, Mercury KX. He also writes music for film and TV and is a lecturer in music production at Point Blank Music school.
 

A slightly revised & edited take of our Jamaican Gospel special for NTS Radio, originally broadcast for the station back in late 2016. A dusty heap of JA gospel from the 60s and early 70s. Split across two sides - all vinyl and all 45s - played through a touch of delay pedal with crackle aplenty. Enjoy.

Silly track titles that are mostly in-jokes with my little brother, a.k.a. DJ Denim. A cliché unfair record deal. A conspicuously missing title track. A pretentious looking poem in French about the stupidity of poets. A grid of pillows on the cover that the Japanese audience mistook for bags of heroin, resulting in myths about my being a heavy user. Super nineties Photoshop swirls. A graphic overlay of a UFO turning into an oyster shell that opens to reveal a mountain inside? Those are just a few of the embarrassing things I had to come to terms with when preparing this thirtieth anniversary restored and expanded edition of my first full-length album, Tranquilizer. Originally released in 1994 by the New York label Instinct Records, Tranquilizer is admittedly a bit of a shit-show. The album followed up on my 1993 self-released vinyl EP debut, Comatonse.000, featuring "Raw Through a Straw" on the A-side, and "Tranquilizer" on the B-side. I put out that EP mostly for the experience of pressing a record, with no expectation of people actually buying or listening to it. Lacking a distributor, I loaded up my backpack and lugged copies to all the local record shops, a few of which took some on consignment. As I later found out, most shops never pay for consignment sales, nor return unsold copies, so in the end I basically gave away most of them for free. Then, to my complete surprise, David Mancuso began regularly playing the A-side, transforming it into a Loft house classic. Equally surprising, the B-side caught the attention of ambient producers like Mixmaster Morris and Bill Laswell. Those random bits of buzz caught the attention of Tak Uchida, a US-based buyer for the Japanese vinyl distributor Cisco Music, which would remain the leading supporter of Comatonse Recordings vinyl releases until they went under in 2008. All of that was just enough hype to catch the attention of Instinct, which offered me a textbook fucked up two album record deal. Not wanting to be taken for a sucker, I came in for a contract negotiation meeting with my bona fide real McCoy idiot lawyer who didn't give me an ounce of good advice, the paperwork was signed, and Tranquilizer was underway to becoming a reality. Instinct's plan was simple: grab control of as many tracks as possible on the off chance I (or anyone else they signed) might be the next Moby, who was their cash cow. With typical music industry sleight of hand, the album's title track "Tranquilizer" was cut and released separately on a compilation, contractually requiring me to come up with additional tracks to fill the album. So that solves the mystery of the missing title track. The majority of tracks on this album were actually already done before signing with Instinct. I recorded them as a hobbyist between 1993 and 1994 using heavily edited Korg M1 and E-MU Vintage Keys synthesizers, and two Casio FZ-10M samplers. Despite the silly titles and hobbyist approach, there were social messages to be heard. Many of them stemmed from my longstanding interests in constructivism, industrial ambient records, disco, and queer subcultures. All of these put me at odds with the new age spiritualism and "zippy" techno-hippy raver hooey that dominated ambient music in the US. For example, the opening track "040468," which is the date of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, features a recording of the police radio during the chase and escape of his assailant James Earl Ray. Recorded at a time when King's "I Have a Dream" speech was still being dubbed over house anthems ad nauseam, it was an antithetical choice pointing away from dreams toward hideous reality. As one would expect, all of this was lost on music journalists who - assuming nothing could be more than a simplistic projection of the musician's ego - usually mistook the title for my birthday. "Fat Chair" is a critique of the colonialist fantasies latent in most ethno-ambient music of the time. Rather than taking the listener on a soothing armchair journey to a third world paradise, it focuses on a recording from the Nigerian-Biafran war during the late 1960s, in which a Western journalist's meddling gets a Biafran hostage killed. "A City on Springs" takes its title from a line in a constructivist manifesto calling for the prioritization of engineering over art. While I have never shared constructivism's optimistic faith in humanity's ability to achieve social equality, be it through communism or other means, it did inspire my career long criticism of the social and economic functions of art and music. And "Hovering Glows" features a monologue from a Hal Hartley film about scratched records as a metaphor for abusive family ties. I had planned on including a text on these themes in the original CD booklet to Tranquilizer, but Instinct quickly made it clear that wasn't going to happen. They feared it would alienate their audience. In response, I wrote the "anonymous" little poem against poetics above. Initially in English, I asked my friend/day-job-co-worker/Comatonse-Recordings-label-mate Erik Dahl to translate it into French so that the staff at Instinct would be less likely to understand it. In the end, they included it as a graphic element adding a bit of romantic flair. Still, it left me feeling dissatisfied. Two years later I managed to insert more meaningful imagery into the design of my second-and-last album for them, Soil, but I still was not allowed to include any text. In this thirtieth anniversary edition, disc one depicts the full-length album as I had initially intended it to be released, restored to include the title track, "Tranquilizer." Due to CD time constraints, this meant removing "Meditation of the Mountain Oyster." I also replaced the ending track "Fina•Departure" with its longer, original version. For the completists out there, the 1994 album versions of both tracks appear in their entirety on disc two. Additionally, the second disc includes a rare vinyl mix of "Hovering Glows," featured on Instinct's Untitled Ltd. Edition Ambient Double Vinyl Pack (US: Instinct Records, 1994, EX-291-1). Another rarity is "Get In and Drive," which found limited release through the compilations Muting the Noise (DE: Innervisions, 2008, IV CD02), and Comp x Comp (JP: Comatonse Recordings, 2019, CxC). "20min. Epoch," "Fina," "Fina•Departure (Original Long Version)," and "Hovering Glows (Little Guy Mix)" all get their first proper hi-fi physical release here, having been included as hidden MP3 bonus tracks in my Dead Stock Archive: Complete Collected Works (JP: Comatonse Recordings, 2009, C.018). Considering how few copies of the Archive exist, they are sure to be new to most peoples' ears. Last (and perhaps least?), "Pome" and "Day Off" are previously unreleased. Oh, in case you were wondering, Little Guy was the name of my cat. He loved sitting like a loaf in front of my speakers to feel the 808-style bass hits in "Hovering Glows." - Terre Thaemlitz, 2024

Ever unpredictable, Drumm this time takes the fellow time-traveller through what sounds like an electronic field recording, a journey through an electronic soundscape of luminescent textures that invites immersive listening.

Cylene II is the new materialization of the collaboration between François J. Bonnet & Stephen O'Malley, initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then, taking form in a myriad of contexts ranging from common practice to recording sessions, concerts and tours. Cylene II bears witness to these different contexts, offering a multifaceted sound signature developed on different occasions The epic opening track 'Four Rays (Anti Divide)' welcomes, for the first time, other musicians -- in this case a wind quintet -- expanding the duo's sonic palette without betraying the fundamental component of their music, namely the driving of sonic energy. Elsewhere, Bonnet and O'Malley propel the energy between themselves, extending the singular climate that has characterized their musical development over the past five years. Among their minimal presentation of tones and resonances, as glacial harmonic intersections slowly elevate with massive physicality to an orchestral degree, new refinements become evident: the music's relationship to silence, and a brightening of the fine metallic edge glowing at its core. For the listener, Cylene II is a sound that reaches from the deep and scales up to the far firmament in its careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul. A séance of sorts for all who witness it, whether playing or listening.

The second part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s. The music included here can probably all be said to have all stemmed from a style that initially took root in the Fanti region of coastal southern Ghana. Fusing local percussion instruments with the introduction of western (most notably Portuguese) guitars that had made their way to the Fanti region of southern Ghana via the Kru seamen of Liberia, who are said to have pioneered the distinctive two-fingered style of playing while sailing the high seas. Mingling amongst the Kru as well as with other sailors and local working-class people during the 1920s & 30s, the guitars infused with the traditional Akan seprewa harp-playing technique, creating a style known as 'odonson' or 'Akan blues' - a rootsy highlife style also commonly referred to as palm wine music, so named after the palm wine bars where the music was commonly performed. Western record companies such as Zonophone, Columbia, Odeon, HMV, and later Decca/EMI's West Africa imprint, released much of the recordings included here - with the earliest inclusions appearing courtesy of George William Aingo, Nicholas De Heer, Edmund Tagoe & Frank Essien, and Jacob Sam's Kumasi Trio (all recorded in London during the late 1920s). The form would become a key element in the popular development of both Ghanaian & Nigerian highlife, as well as the maringa of Sierra Leone, the juju of western Nigeria, and the Congolese "dry" guitar music of central Africa. With thanks to John Collins and the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation.

The first part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s. The music included here can probably all be said to have all stemmed from a style that initially took root in the Fanti region of coastal southern Ghana. Fusing local percussion instruments with the introduction of western (most notably Portuguese) guitars that had made their way to the Fanti region of southern Ghana via the Kru seamen of Liberia, who are said to have pioneered the distinctive two-fingered style of playing while sailing the high seas. Mingling amongst the Kru as well as with other sailors and local working-class people during the 1920s & 30s, the guitars infused with the traditional Akan seprewa harp-playing technique, creating a style known as 'odonson' or 'Akan blues' - a rootsy highlife style also commonly referred to as palm wine music, so named after the palm wine bars where the music was commonly performed. Western record companies such as Zonophone, Columbia, Odeon, HMV, and later Decca/EMI's West Africa imprint, released much of the recordings included here - with the earliest inclusions appearing courtesy of George William Aingo, Nicholas De Heer, Edmund Tagoe & Frank Essien, and Jacob Sam's Kumasi Trio (all recorded in London during the late 1920s). The form would become a key element in the popular development of both Ghanaian & Nigerian highlife, as well as the maringa of Sierra Leone, the juju of western Nigeria, and the Congolese "dry" guitar music of central Africa. With thanks to John Collins and the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation.

“My heart is loud,” Julia Holter sings on her sixth album Something in the Room She Moves, following an inner pulse. The Los Angeles songwriter’s past work has often explored memory and dreamlike future, but her latest album resides more in presence: “There’s a corporeal focus, inspired by the complexity and transformability of our bodies,” Holter says. Her production choices and arrangements form a continuum of fretless electric bass pitches in counterpoint with gliding vocal melodies, while glissing Yamaha CS-60 lines entwine warm winds and reeds. “I was trying to create a world that’s fluid-sounding, waterlike, evoking the body’s internal sound world,” Holter says of her flowing harmonic universe.

“What is delicious and what is omniscient?” she sings on “Spinning”, the album’s incantatory centerpiece. “What is the circular magic I’m visiting?” Or as Holter put it: “It’s about being in the passionate state of making something: being in that moment, and what is that moment?” She found it anew on Something in the Room She Moves, singing in somatic frequencies.

The strange thing about the music of Anima is that it’s often considered as strange, while it’s actually very natural. It has a free spirit, analog to nature. For this release the natural spirit is strengthened by the participation of indigenous American flute player and composer R. Carlos Nakai who did a series of concerts in the US and Europe with Paul and Limpe Fuchs in the 1980’s. As with almost all Anima work, the natural feel manifests itself not only by the musical approach and sounds generated by metal, wood, stone and air, but also by the absence of electronic devices. This LP is a reissue of a rare privately released cassette from 1988 and was recorded by the Bayerischer Rundfunk. May this slice of timeless free spirit be a trigger to more awareness concerning our decaying freedom.

Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación! delves into the heart of Dominican merengue, a genre whose significance often eludes the spotlight. Bongo Joe's venture into unexplored terrain takes us to the Caribbean, specifically the Dominican Republic, shedding light on its musical tapestry. Curated by Xavier Daive, aka Funky Bompa, the compilation unveils rare '60s and '70s gems, providing a glimpse into a transformative period following the fall of the Trujillo regime. With over 20 years in the Dominican Republic, Xavier Daive meticulously sources original 45s, offering a snapshot of merengue's evolution during a creatively charged era post-Trujillo. The genre's roots, dating back to the 19th-century Dominican Republic, predate salsa, establishing its unique identity with the introduction of accordions via German trade ships. The genre's classic típico configuration emerged in the mid-'60s, leaving a lasting impact on its evolution. Focused on the explosive '60s and '70s merengue típico scene, influenced by genre pioneers like “Tatico” Henríquez and Trio Reynoso, the compilation showcases technical finesse and high-speed rhythms. Tracks like Rafaelito Román’s "Que Mala Suerte" embody the genre's infectious energy. Aristides Ramírez’s "Los Lanbones" adds a touch of humor, cautioning against pub freeloaders. Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación transcends the realms of a typical reissue; it's an immersive journey into the roots of Dominican merengue, expanding its narrative beyond borders to enrich the global musical landscape. This compilation goes beyond individual tracks, providing a historical and cultural context, enriching our understanding of the genre's evolution in the Dominican Republic during a crucial period. Designed for both connoisseurs and wild dancefloors, this compilation is not only a historical and cultural exploration but also a treasure trove for DJs seeking to infuse their sets with the vibrant rhythms of merengue típico.

The debut solo album from Ronnie Lion, one half of Ambient Warrior, is a homage to Spanish Town the capital of St Catherine in Jamaica. As the title suggests the Spanish guitar features heavily from both Ronnie and lead guitarist Sean Wilkinson. The album has a reggae palette at its core with the rhythm section of Ronnie on Bass and Horseman on drums providing a rock solid foundation for the intricate and memorable hooks provided by Sean’s Spanish Guitar. The album’s fusion of Reggae with Bossa Nova & Flamenco Guitar creates another special album that will appeal to fans of Ambient Warrior and beyond. The LP is pressed on heavyweight 180 Gram Vinyl with full sleeve artwork from Bradley Pinkerton.

All music by Egil Kalman except the traditional melodies on A3 and C4. All rights reserved (TONO/NCB). Performed and recorded live, without overdubs, on THE ELECTRIC MUSIC BOX, Series 200 designed by Don Buchla. Recorded 21 October - 7 November 2021 at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm to two stereo track, one dry and one through an AKG BX20 spring reverb. Additional control voltage supplied by an Eurorack modular system. Pre-recorded drums on D4 by E.K.

Hakushi Hasegawa is a musician/singer-songwriter based in Tokyo, Japan, and the first Japanese artist signed to the Brainfeeder label. Brainfeeder announced the signing back in July 2023 and shared a single – “Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)” – featuring bass by the super-talented Sam Wilkes (Leaving Records). A few days later Hakushi blew fans away, making their debut at the iconic music festival Fuji Rock in Japan. In September Hakushi created the soundtrack for the noir kei ninomiya Spring/Summer 2024 runway show for Comme des Garçons at Paris Fashion Week. Now Hakushi is the focus of a cover-to-cover takeover at Yuriika [Eureka] for November’s issue of the historical Japanese literary magazine specializing in poetry and criticism.

Consistent with Brainfeeder’s ethos of seeking out artists operating outside the confines of genre since the label started in 2008, Hakushi’s music is tricky to categorize as it straddles a few genres: alternative, electronic, jazz, pop/J-pop. Sometimes it’s pretty, at times it’s very intense and fast-paced. Releasing since 2018, they’ve already made a name for themselves domestically in Japan with a string of wonderfully wild releases and started to build a cult following internationally. Collabs to date have included Kid Fresino, yuigot, TOKYO SKA PARADISE ORCHESTRA, Yukichikasaku/men and Eye from Boredoms.

“Somoku Hodo” was Hakushi’s debut release in 2018 as a teenager, featuring fan favourites ‘Somoku’ and ‘Doku’ – a hyperspeed junglist jazz workout that makes early Squarepusher material sound positively pedestrian. Their debut album “Air Ni Ni” followed a year later in 2019, cementing their reputation as one of Japan’s most exciting, adventurous artists. Hakushi performed at the online festival “Secret Sky” in May 2020 hosted by Porter Robinson (4M viewers) and they graced the cover of influential music publication “MUSIC MAGAZINE” in September 2020. 

New compilation and long overdue next entry in the long running 'Jah Children Invasion' compilation series! This volume focuses on Wackies' foray into digital reggae, with a killer selection of tracks from the late '80s and early '90s. There are three previously unreleased tunes alongside seven others culled from prior rare and long out of print releases. In DKR style this comes in a 2 sided hand silkscreened jacket.

Whispers from Ancient Vessels is a collection of tales, ‘speakings’ and relationships with nature’s beings such as trees, the sea and the inner self. The tracks pose as reflections of relearning to join with nature again. To grieve and to hope. To take in wise words, to listen to truth that can feel intense. Reconnection can be a painful process. The sounds and the visual identity of Whispers from Ancient Vessels is an attempt to remove the rose tinted view of nature and to put it at the forefront of the piece. Nature often tends to be a pretty backdrop where we come and go as we please. But this is a reminder that it is not separate from us and we exist as one. To realise its beautiful evil. To amplify alternative communication. The tracks are about listening to the wisdom of the earth, translating it and taking the wisdom on board. Being vulnerable to the rawness and darkness of the earth. Being vulnerable to truth, to change and proximity. Succumbing to oneness.