Gabon, 1980’s. President Omar Bongo has been in power since 1967. Together with his wife, the infamous singer Patience Dabany, he invents one of the ultimate political propaganda machine: ‘animation groups’, massive female choirs and dancers, up to 60 women deep, singing the praise of his regime over some of the best soukous rhythms ever, broadcasted live on TV.

Between 1982 and 1989, mainly thanks to the flourishing oil economy, a record-label is created, a state-of-the-art recording studio is set up, and the best Gabonese and Congolese musicians are recruited. Dozens of vinyls are pressed and sold with huge success all over the country.
The Bongo family has reigned continuously over Gabon until the 2023 coup d’état.

A1 - Missema - Mbela Bongo
A2 - Groupe Kounabeli de Masuku & Patience Dabany - Abaga Mbouga
B1 - Oyana Efiem Pelagie - Biloa.
B2 - Groupe d’Animation U.F.P.D.G. - Mpebe.
B3 - Groupe d’Animation U.F.P.D.G. -Tchatcha Tchatcha.
C1 - Kolikagie de Masuku - Miali Mi Kolikagie.
C2 - Mi Kouagna de Mounana - Legnila Nde Obele.
C3 - Groupe D'Animation Kakoula Djele De Bongoville - Yaya Omar Bongo
D1 - Kounabeli de Mbilasuku - Lekou Mobi.
D2 - Groupe Kounabeli De Masuku & Orchestre Banowita - Lessimbi
D3 - Patience Dabany - Ayanga. More

Welcome to the fascinating world of Terakaft, one of the most legendary bands from the acclaimed Desert Blues / Tuareg Rock scene that’s been nurturing in the Sahara desert for the last two decades.

A world made of light, dust, goats, tree shadows, gas, tea and fire.
A world where teenagers don’t dream of being footballers but guitarists like Ibrahim of Tinariwen, like Sanou of Terakaft, or like Ousmane of Tamikrest.
A world made of constant stuggles, of war zones, where getting a visa to tour is nearly impossible, where covering your face and head with tuareg turbans to face the desert winds will turn you into a potential islamist when boarding an airplane.
A world that Phillipe Brix knows damn well: he’s been managing those guitar heroes for the last two decades. Jagwar is his coming-of-age story, a tale of resilience, of doom, of family, of utmost tensions and unrivaled peace, the adventure of a life time.
His journey will take you from the deepest deserts of Mali, Morocco and Mauritania to the biggest music festivals all across Europe and America.

"In the desert, the dry air carries sound with clarity"
Philippe Brix

"A Kalashnikov has thirty bullets in a magazine; once you’ve emptied it, it’s over. A guitar has no limits."
Diara, Terakaft

A - Terakaft – Jagwar
B - Terakaft – Jagwar (Acoustic Version) More

Pleasure of Love reissue imprint, New Islands, launches with a quiet storm, soulful balearic stunner. Kim Yaffa’s Once Bitten was recorded in LA and released on a 1989 private press 7 Inch, only to be buried in american record bins for decades after. A re-emergence of Yaffa’s music on the internet in the last couple years has reached fever pitch, with collectors thirsting for copies of the record. Now, New Islands has worked directly with the artist to deliver an official reissue, professionally transferred from the mixdown reels, carefully restored, and remastered. The title track is an effortless class-act pop tune, with 80s blue eyed soul/Sade inspired sounds, and unknowingly balearic production that make it timeless (reminiscent of Linda Di Franco, Edie Brickell or 80s Fleetwood Mac). The 12 Inch is rounded out by new mixes from Nick the Record (Record Mission) and Michael David (Classixx) More

A counterculture movement united by an expansive, experimental and deeply soulful sensibility, Japan’s rebel protest music challenged the status quo and changed the country’s music industry in the process.
The birth of Japan’s nascent acid folk scene was rooted in the messy and invigorating political climate of the late 1960s. It is a story of Dadaists, communists, pharmacists and cult leaders, led by a young generation of upstart students, artists and dreamers hellbent on turning their world upside down.

Born on the campuses of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, and centred around newly formed independent label and left-wing stronghold URC, this uniquely Japanese form of folk expression provided an outlet for musicians who were tired of aping Western sounds and instead found ways to sing in Japanese and integrate traditional forms in new ways.

At the forefront of this movement was Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haroumi Hosono, a polymath innovator whose band Happy End released the first Japanese language rock album, and whose influence would go on to be felt across Japanese music for decades. Alongside, and informed by the Kansai scene’s Takashi Nishioka and Happy End collaborator Ken Narita, they experimented with cadences and accents of the Japanese language to open the door for others to experiment with their own forms of psychedelic folk too.

Some, like Nishioka, were more inspired by Dadaism than drugs, while others, like Kazuhisa Okubo, would ultimately find work as a chemist, having founded two further folk groups that flirted with varying levels of success. Obstinately uncommercial, relentlessly creative, the music featured on Time Capsule’s Nippon Acid Folk represents a broad church of influences.

Perhaps the wildest addition to this congregation however was Hiroki Tamaki, a classically-trained violinist and committed iconoclast, whose synth-prog odysseys hinted at his obsession with the divine. Subsumed by the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, he penned an album in praise of the infamous religious leader of which two superbly mind-bending tracks are featured on this compilation.

Charting the decade from 1970 to 1980 as the dreams of political and spiritual liberation seeded in the ‘60s turned to dust, Nippon Acid Folk surveys a little explored corner of Japanese music history, but one which ultimately laid the foundations for an independent music industry, launching the careers of Hosono and others in the process.

Nippon Acid Folk 1970-1980 is pressed on 12” vinyl and represents the start of Time Capsule’s deep dive into Japan’s rich history of folk and psychedelic soul music. More

The italian brothers duo behind Two Monkeys and Spettro club in Brescia, Michele & Simone Bornati, delivers a very special album made of dusty drum machines, acoustic sounds, unstable noise oceans, hypnotic synths, broken saxophones, crazy frog legs, and sparkling water with rhythms structured on 80's post-punk industrial music, in the extravagances of no-wave, krautrock, and the freak-out of contemporary electronic culture. TRIPPY! More

Gabon, 1980’s. President Omar Bongo has been in power since 1967. Together with his wife, the infamous singer Patience Dabany, he invents one of the ultimate political propaganda machine: ‘animation groups’, massive female choirs and dancers, up to 60 women deep, singing the praise of his regime over some of the best soukous rhythms ever, broadcasted live on TV.

Between 1982 and 1989, mainly thanks to the flourishing oil economy, a record-label is created, a state-of-the-art recording studio is set up, and the best Gabonese and Congolese musicians are recruited. Dozens of vinyls are pressed and sold with huge success all over the country.
The Bongo family has reigned continuously over Gabon until the 2023 coup d’état.

A1 - Missema - Mbela Bongo
A2 - Groupe Kounabeli de Masuku & Patience Dabany - Abaga Mbouga
B1 - Oyana Efiem Pelagie - Biloa.
B2 - Groupe d’Animation U.F.P.D.G. - Mpebe.
B3 - Groupe d’Animation U.F.P.D.G. -Tchatcha Tchatcha.
C1 - Kolikagie de Masuku - Miali Mi Kolikagie.
C2 - Mi Kouagna de Mounana - Legnila Nde Obele.
C3 - Groupe D'Animation Kakoula Djele De Bongoville - Yaya Omar Bongo
D1 - Kounabeli de Mbilasuku - Lekou Mobi.
D2 - Groupe Kounabeli De Masuku & Orchestre Banowita - Lessimbi
D3 - Patience Dabany - Ayanga. More

The first-ever reissue of this in-demand 94 jungle scorcher from DJ Fokus.

Having broken out with two 12”s on Monroe Production’s Blueprint Records, DJ Fokus quickly followed up at the Monroe Studios, under the watchful eye of legendary engineer Pete Parsons (Voyager), with two self-funded 12”s on his Suicide imprint before putting pen to paper with Lucky Spin Recordings. Now regularly demanding three figure sums both releases have achieved cult status amongst jungliests both young and old.

Available for the first time since its initial 1994 pressing, this black wax reissue of the first Suicide release was mastered from the original DAT sourced from Pete's personal archive (which includes the name of the previously presumed untitled b-side) and the lacquer cut by Beau Thomas (Babylon Timewarp/Intense). Expect the second release Watch Out/Media soon...

Fundamental Frequencies is a back room record label (headed by Doug Shipton of archival label Finders Keepers Records), dedicated to unearthing lesser-spotted, sought-after and unreleased choice cuts of jungle, acid, ambient, techno, hardcore, breakbeat (and the galaxy of genres scattered in-between) that helped shape and in some cases bridge the scenes. More

Twoonky, the brothers duo from Brescia (Italy) formed by Michele and Simone Bornati, is back on Macadam Mambo for a second album. After their brillantissimo ‘Dezzo’ from 2019, which was well noticed by the underground scene, the new opus ‘Ottico’ won’t leave you static. This is the kind of masterpiece that the more you listen, the more you love. At the opposite of grandiloquent music that would have immediate effect, ‘Ottico’ is much more subtile, surfing on a cool wave of styles, a collage of vibes going from 70’s Kraut to 90’s Trip-Hop, where the analog sounds of guitars, synths, distorded voices, saxo, samples and electronics FX match so well, creating an ensemble in the unique mutant flow of the Twoonky’s that makes it so intemporal and so modern in the meanwile. It’s not about being curious, it’s about being open on crossing boundaries, like they are used to do with their unique place called Spettro in Brescia, where all the avant-garde of the electronic scene is coming to perform. ‘Ottico’ could be a kind of representation of the spirit of Spettro, and possibly one of the most interesting release of 2023. We don’t know why, but it’s true, Italians do it better More