Toronto-based artist and co-boss of Parallel Minds, Ciel, known for her distinctive, precise, playful, and intricately crafted electronic productions, delivers a vibrant new EP on SUZI titled "Sada’s Dream". Originally performed during a live set at MUTEK Montreal, Ciel has refined these initial ideas into a five-track journey that showcases her unique sound palette, marked by meticulous attention to rhythmic and melodic interplay.

The EP opens with "Be That As It May," setting a contemplative tone with complex rhythms and a haunting flute-like melody that gradually unfolds into a brighter, expansive atmosphere.
Following this, the second track "Viral Load" shifts towards a tougher sound, featuring digital bleeps and arpeggiators that swirl around modern dubstep elements, creating a dense auditory texture.

The third piece, "Divide and Conquer," blends airy textures with a robust, infectious bassline and glitchy, compelling melodies, demonstrating Ciel's ability to balance delicacy with power.
Moving forward, "Bubble Gum Pop," the fourth track, adopts a clubbier vibe with its vigorous house vocals and lively breakbeat drums, offering a sharp contrast to the preceding tracks.

Concluding the EP is "Sada's Dream," the title track. This fast-paced, playful composition marries minimalist rhythms with whimsical bleeps and snippets of vocals, ending the EP on a note that feels both conclusive and invitingly open-ended. "Sada's Dream" is a sonic tapestry that weaves together the subtle complexities of Ciel's signature style with a narrative that is both intimate and expansive, capturing the essence of her artistic vision. More

Parallel Minds’ fifth label release is a major landmark for the Toronto-based label. Not only is it their first full length LP, it is also the debut album from co-founder Ciel, who is also making her first solo appearance on the label since its inception.

In 2021, spurred on by a productive creative streak and the economic austerity of pandemic lockdowns, the Xi’an-born and Toronto-based DJ Ciel (real name Cindy Li) applied for grant funding from the government of Canada to write her debut album. Self-proclaimed “DJ first, producer second”, Ciel never thought she would have the self-confidence and desire to write an album. It wasn’t until after spending prolonged time away from clubs & festivals whilst dedicating herself to daily sessions in her studio that she gained the motivation and aspiration to make a musical statement that only an album could express.

Since the start of the covid19 outbreak, Ciel, like many other Chinese diaspora people in the West, had felt a great deal of anxiety and pain at the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment and racism in the media — even in her corner of the dance music industry. Tired of expressing her frustrations fruitlessly online, she felt inspired to channel that into her music, to turn something that was filled with hate into a thing of joy and beauty. It was within this context that Homesick began to take shape.

After researching the rich history of Chinese instruments, a concept began to form around the album in which she could marry her love of sampling and analogue instruments. Using the eight types of traditional Chinese instruments (silk, bamboo, wood, stone, metal, clay, gourd, and hide) as a guideline, Li began writing each track with a focus on one of the eight. She hired traditional Chinese instrumentalists to play the guzheng and the xiao, whilst purchasing and teaching herself the smaller hand drum instruments like the kuaiban (bamboo clappers), and muyu (temple blocks). With the news that she had successfully been granted funding from Canada Arts Council, she wrote, recorded, arranged, and mixed all nine tracks of her album over the first three months of 2022. More than just highlighting Chinese instruments, the music on this album encapsulates so many musical influences from Ciel’s childhood when she began her lifelong love affair with music. True to her style as a DJ, the LP incorporates a diversity of genres she loves, from drum & bass to house, electro to breaks - even downtempo.

What has come out of these sessions is a deeply personal dancefloor record, a true expression of love for Cindy’s culture that came out of a time of relentless chaos, negativity, and uncertainty. Ciel sees her compositions as a distillation of herself — her life experiences, her wide interests and passions, and her often-turbulent emotions. Immersing oneself in the LP feels like listening to the musical confessions of an artist heading towards the peak of their career, who is finally starting to make sense of her artistic identity. What a joy to witness it. More

Toronto-based producer and DJ Ciel is renowned for a style of dancefloor material that’s as heady as it is visceral. The Xi’an-born artist’s ascendant profile has seen her cutting- edge and club-ready EPs released on UK labels Peach Discs and Coastal Haze, as well as Stateside imprints Spectral Sound and Mister Saturday Night.

As a member of the renowned collective Discwoman and the creator of femme-forward party Work in Progress Ciel’s thoughtful narratives are clear, running in parallel to the perception-altering sounds that are consistently woven deeply into her wide-ranging sets, beloved mixes and inventive collaborations. Now the Parallel Minds label co- founder is crystallising her imaginative and omnivorous sound with her !K7 Records debut, ORLANDO.

Written during her emergence from an uncharacteristic bout of writers’ block, the three original tracks of Orlando chart a return to the musical self, spurred along by a cinephile’s embrace of film, a love of classic literature, and a curiosity for the oddest corners of popular culture. “SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE” might share a name with the episodic series, but is rather a nuanced critique of the modern rite of union, moving through structured chapters, and mirroring the un-static nature of longtime love.Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s radical novel, and its superphysical protagonist, “ORLANDO” considers the cult literary figure who lived from the renaissance to the modern age, and embodies both sides of the sex binary. The thrown sounds and aural illusions of “EL CALIFA” create the effect of a beckoning, beguiling psychedelic experience. To complete the EP, Ali Berger, Ciel’s recent collaborator on the Jacktone Records’ release Damn Skippy! repurposes the mind-bending flourishes of “El Califa” into a noodly and spacious deep house production, replete with pillowy, gauzy pads. More

Ecstatic Editions is the new label by Eris Drew. Due to changes in the industry, the cost of production, and the wait times for manufacturing, the renowned vinyl-only deejay laments not having more of her favorite producers’ music on vinyl, so she decided to start a label for special vinyl editions, as well as archival releases. The first volume of Ecstatic Editions is an anthology of work previously unavailable on vinyl by the Xi’an-born and Toronto-based musician, Ciel. Her work was the impetus of the label because many of her amazing productions, collaborations and remixes have never been pressed to vinyl. As a producer, DJ, pianist and radio presenter, Ciel’s work is not only prolific and compelling, it involves an international network of individuals, labels, projects and artists; a musical meeting-place of positive intentions and creative interactions. This volume is needed not only because it makes these incredible original productions and remixes available to vinyl DJs, enthusiasts and collectors for the first time, but also because it tells a cohesive story, in a physical object, of an artist with a truly unique rhythmic, melodic and psychedelic style. Included here are three tracks from The Trojan Horse EP, a track from Naive’s “No Justice No Peace” compilation and fund-raising effort, Ciel’s remix for the Stockholm-based band Off the Meds, a track by Psychedelic Budz (a collaboration between Ciel and fellow Canadian D. Tiffany), a track from the Montreal Bass Coast Music festival’s annual digital-only compilation titled 12 Days, a remix of Toronto's downtempo soul saviors, the electronic duo LAL, and Ciel’s remix for Japanese artist Cuushe, which originally came out digitally on Tokyo’s FLAU. More

Under the alias Ciel, Xi'an-born/Toronto-based producer, pianist, DJ, and Discwoman affiliate Cindy Li embodies the social conscience of progressive electronic music. She is at once a local and global artist, having flourished at the fringe of cutting-edge club culture since 2015, firmly rooted in her adopted city while reaching increasingly outward, her sets echoing from Berlin’s Berghain to Chicago’s Smartbar to Lisbon’s Lux Fragil. Back in Toronto, she co-runs the label Parallel Minds and event initiative Work In Progress, an extension of her radio show in both name and M.O. to improve female representation in the scene. She’s helped write safe space policies, hosted DJ workshops, and applied activist pressure on promoters through varying methods with a single-minded resolve. Those efforts have evoked responses, which Li has spent time reckoning with over the past two years. Now, manifesting as a self-guided reaction to her experiences as an artist and activist is Ciel’s Spectral Sound debut, Why Me?, a deeply personal and physical work More

Ciel - "when I played it for my mom, she said it made her feel like she was flying in the night sky to the moon." More

The 4th release on Peach Discs is a debut EP from Torontoâ??s very own Ciel, formally known as Cindy Li, sheâ??s been DJ and running parties for some time now so its about time for her first dreamy wicked 12''

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2x12" orange vinyl edition of Tygapaw's landmark album 'Get Free'
Bold visceral techno that harnesses the energy of 90's Detroit.

During the pandemic shut down of 2020 we became absorbed and obsessed by one record in particular. That record, released digitally via Mexico City label N.A.A.F.I., was ‘Get Free’ by TYGAPAW, which features multidisciplinary artist Mandy Harris Williams. A complete body of work intersecting their musical and cultural roots, this is an 11-track collection of hard-hitting, cathartic energy, exploring black joy, the active dismantling of imagined limitations, and the eradication of self doubt using techno landscapes.

Upon learning that there was no plan to release the record on vinyl we started a conversation about making that happen on Mister Saturday Night Records.

Two years later and through numerous pressing delays we are honored to announce the belated release on two slabs of orange vinyl and updated artwork. More

Label head and Nowadays co-founder Eamon Harkin returns to Mister Saturday Night records for his third release on the label building on the mood of recent EPs for Fixed Rhythms and Coastal Haze. Four tunes bristling with emotion made during lock down that examine the many of truths in our existence, chief of which is the truth of our connectedness More

Nowadays family member Love Letters delivers the next record on Mister Saturday Night records. The Vermont native turned New Yorker delivers a beautiful 5 track release that meanders effortlessly from peak time banger to delicate experimental passages to off kilter poly rhythms. A thoroughly enjoyable listening experience from start to end and the sound of an artist finding their voice and perfecting their craft. More

New James Bangura!
Drum & Bass, US Techno and broken beat all get put through Bangura grinder for his debut 12" on Mister Saturday Night More

We’re putting out the first Mister Saturday Night Records release in a long while. It’s by Russell E.L. Butler, and it’s called “Blah Blah”. The record comes out on Friday, September 4, and it contains three tracks made in Prague at the Synthesizer Library and one track made in Russell’s pre-New York home in Oakland.

On the EP’s release date Sept 4th, which is Bandcamp Day, all of the Mister Saturday Night Records share of Bandcamp proceeds from the release will go to Princess Janae Place, an organization that provides referrals to housing for chronically homeless LGBTQ adults in the New York Tri-state area, with direct emphasis on Trans/GNC people of color.

The vinyl release, designed by Boot Boyz Biz, includes a poster featuring these words from Russell:

What are my dreams when they are spoken into real space? Are they statements centering my desires? Are they indictments to hold myself accountable to my vision of life?

My consciousness is meandering and at times I celebrate this drone of words. Stripped of meaning, to reveal what’s beneath. Not an answer, but further questions. The purpose of the mantra is to quiet the conscious mind until the spirit takes over.

Place is important. It grounds the abstract in our humanity. These things came from somewhere. Many places. To culminate into one. Connecting them all. And creating something entirely new. Not an answer, but more questions.
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Esteban Adame cut his teeth DJing at the ditch parties and house parties of East LA in the 90s. He then moved to Detroit to apprentice with Mad Mike Banks, performing as part of Los Hermanos and Galaxy to Galaxy. More than twenty years on, he still lives and breathes music. This is his debut record for Mister Saturday Night Records, raw and joyful. More

A two-track heater from one half of the Mister Saturday Night duo.
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Shore is a vibraphonist and composer based in Brooklyn. Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter from Mister Saturday Night met him through NYC music institution, Nublu, where he worked with the legendary jazz maestro Butch Morris and Sex Mob and Tom Waits drummer Kenny Wollesen. At the very first Planetarium listening session, where Eamon and Justin blend records into live performances for people sprawled on the floor of a loft for six hours, one of Justin's friends leaned over to him and asked, "What is this record? It's amazing." It wasn't a record. It was Shore, playing A Hundred Times in the corner of the room.

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Alex Falk first showed up on our radar back in 2013 when his Terse EP dropped on Tennessee-based label Proper Trax. That record – specifically "PTR", which we pitched way down and turned way up – was a regular fixture on our platters, so we were stoked when the man in Knoxville got in touch with these groove-heavy, stripped-back floor fillers that now make up the Anjuna EP. More

General Ludd are back with Sunset Yellow, their third EP for us in as many years. This one picks up where "Are You Losing My Hearing?" left off with three more doses of heady drum breaks and spacey synth lines that have been psyching out our dance floor in New York for quite some time now with no negative side effects. More

Keita Sano is back in the house. This time our man in Japan comes through with two sample-heavy stompers, fully primed for peak-time at the disco. Pow! Pow! More

Jun Kamoda is a producer, DJ and MC from Tokyo. New to the label but a friend of the party, Jun came to Mister Sunday in NYC last year and ended up hanging around for a few days afterward, digging for records and sharing bowls of spaghetti with the boys. When he returned to Japan, he got to working on the music we now present to you on The Clay EP. This is Jun blending loopy, psychedelic disco stylings with chugging drum work for three party-ready cuts. They've been chopping up our dance floors months; we're excited to hear them do the same to yours. More

Jun Kamoda is a producer, DJ and MC from Tokyo. New to the label but a friend of the party, Jun came to Mister Sunday in NYC last year and ended up hanging around for a few days afterward, digging for records and sharing bowls of spaghetti with the boys. When he returned to Japan, he got to working on the music we now present to you on The Clay EP. This is Jun blending loopy, psychedelic disco stylings with chugging drum work for three party-ready cuts. They've been chopping up our dance floors months; we're excited to hear them do the same to yours. More

Nathan Melja is the same young Frenchman whose debut EP we released under the name Melja late last year. Since then, he moved to New York and worked at Mister HQ for a few months, manned the light booth at the Mister Saturday Night and Mister Sunday parties (DJs make the best light guys), and spent most of his time outside that making music. Leo Draws is the culmination of that music-making, two murky but beautiful tracks centered around vocal samples and one off-kilter number aimed at the dark corners of the dancefloor. More

Atlus is a young man with the world on his shoulders. He holds it from misty Glasgow, where he spends most of his time in the halls of Rubadub. In the three songs on this epic EP, he lifts up party-melting disco house, clanging ambience and bubbling techno – and not for a second does he hint at letting the ball drop. The first of many, many records from him, we hope. This kid's a titan. More

Archie Pelago is a trio from Brooklyn. Greg plays cello; Zack plays saxophone; and Dan plays trumpet and works the knobs. The Archie guys did one of the very first releases on Mister Saturday Night Records; and we're very happy to have them back – especially with such brilliant tunes. The A Side, Clammy Customer, takes dozens of twists and turns, weaving in vocals by the always excellent Gabriel Garzon-Montano; and the B Side, Madame Suede Nightshade, was apparently made with us in mind (check the initials). Both sides are tried and tested on our dancefloor and cut at 45rpm for maximum oomph.
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