After a stellar year Toumba finally makes his debut on Nervous Horizon with: 'Janoob EP'. Influenced by the sounds of his motherland, Jordan, Toumba manages to perfectly blend traditional music with futuristic drum patterns and drony synths creating a brand new style which gives him a unique signature sound. 'Janoob' (????), meaning 'The South' in Arabic, is the area of Jordan where the Bedouins reside and where most of the musical influence of the EP came from. From the opening track 'Janoob' to the closing track 'Bouquet of Kicks' this release will take you on a journey of BPMs through its syncopated rhythms and sound design that will make you start jumping up and down in the club in no time, it's truly a masterpiece and one of the best Nervous Horizon EPs to date! More

Sound artist and researcher Amit Dinesh Patel aka Dushume began working in the field of music technology in 2000. In 2021, he began a research project addressing the distinctive lack of visibility for Black and Brown artists within the field of experimental music and sound: "Exploring Cultural Diversity in Experimental Sound", hosted at the Sound/Image Research Centre, University of Greenwich. Disruptive Frequencies is one output of this research. Patel, together with five other Black and South Asian experimental and electronic artists recorded new music to release as part of this compilation. Crossing noise, high-energy electronic music, deep bass, ambient and experimental soundscapes, this compilation is a statement challenging institutional Whiteness, racist biases, lack of visibility and access to experimental practices. Each contribution pushes the boundaries of sound manipulation, turntablism, field recording, audio fragmentations and sound collage techniques. More

Keeping the possibilities for Brukkage reliably wide as we enter the album sphere, we're proud to present a heavyweight long player from Japanese maverick Kohei Matsunaga, aka NHK yx Koyxen. Keeping up with Matsunaga's past work requires a diligent detective, mangling his aliases like he mangles his sound but always coming up with provocative, rave re-arranging goods for labels like Diagonal, DFA, Pan, L.I.E.S. and right back to Mille Plateaux, WordSound, Important and Skam. If that sounds like a lot of name-dropping, it's simply to paint the picture of a long-serving polymath whose wares can attract the most critical ears, and as such it's a privilege to release a new album of his works. On this new record he brings that unmistakable flair to a towering 13 tracks of side-swerving dance abstraction. From airlock electro reveries and music box malfunctions to blunted beatdowns thrown down dusty corridors, this album splits the difference between a suite of full-blown productions and the sketch-pad sonics of a mixtape. The hip-hop influence looms large, but it's pinged through oscillators oscillating at freak-frequencies and interrupted by creaky gates in need of a good oiling, upended by slippery pools of sonic interference. Consistently sick and never stalling, this is everything we needed from an album on Bruk, even if never could have predicted goods as cracked and precious as this. More

The third album from crooner Pink Shabab, for fans of Avalon era Roxy Music, Bullion, Gary Lucas and other odd pop troubadors. Strong air play from Charlie Bones of Do!!You!!!Radio More

First Word Records is very proud to welcome the return of the inimitable Kaidi Tatham, with his 5th album for us, entitled 'The Only Way'. Kaidi Tatham is a legendary multi-instrumentalist born in the Midlands and based in Belfast. Established as one of the original creators of the Broken Beat sound, he is a virtuoso on the keys and a true innovator in sound production. A deeply prolific artist, this is Kaidi's 5th solo album under his own name, following on from 'Don't Rush The Process' (2022), 'An Insight To All Minds' (2021), 'It's A World Before You' (2018), and 'In Search Of Hope' (re-pressed in 2020), all released on First Word, along with several EPs from 2017 onwards. 'The Only Way' is the latest chapter in Kaidi's entirely unique explorations into sound. 11 tracks touching on bruk, funk, jazz, mid-tempo hip hop and hyper-energetic Brazilian flavours, all thrown into a melting pot that's difficult to define, but all containing Kaidi's unmistakable sonic signature. The epic opener 'Reason We're Here' starts the album softly, before switching midway into KT's trademark synth-lead bruk boogie, to set the scene of what's to come. Lead track 'The Only Way' sees the return of Philly MC Uhmeer (Jazzy Jeff's son), his third collab with Kaidi and a timely celebratory track about this thing called Hip Hop, in its 50th year. 'Feels Like I'm On My Own' is a statement within itself, starting off as a jazz-funk jam, before switching to breakneck Brazilian choro, in the only way Kaidi can, with 'It's On' on a similar vein. 'Fricassee' is some heads down dancery business, and there are more guests with Trian Kayhatu appearing on 'Alien @$^%' and Matt Lord on the super energetic album closer 'Not Suffering'. Kaidi Tatham continues to grow on his already impressive catalogue, a body of work that falls within the cracks of jazz and dance music, exemplifying modern British black brilliance; uncompromising, innovative, groundbreaking, intricately sophisticated and deeply funky. His fanbase expands on every release and it's no surprise that that fanbase includes a diverse set of peers such as Madlib ("ahead of his time"), Gilles Peterson ("a key part of an entire movement") and K15 ("a limitless source of inspiration") to name just a few of the many influenced by Kaidi's sound. More

Mancunian pianist and producer Matt Wilde prepares to release his debut album 'Hello World' via Band on the Wall Recordings. With a slew of hotly tipped projects released over the past two years via Root Records & Inner Ocean Records- Matt has been steadily gaining support from the likes of Jamie Cullum, Gilles Peterson, Jazz FM & many more. With his name firmly cemented as one to watch in the Jazz / Beats landscape, 'Hello World' promises to be his most expansive body of work to date. 'Hello World' is an audio catalogue of personal experiences, thoughts and feelings, shared with honesty and curiosity for the human condition. Matt crafts emotive and uplifting compositions denoting a tender illustration of the human experience, finding and celebrating the simple and beautiful moments of life. More

Ocela can be a dance album if you want it to be, but above that, it is an album about dancing. The second instalment in a planned trilogy, it regards dance as a form of pathmaking, a physical chronology of a journey. Its voyager is the eponymous Ocela // an invented feminine form of the word steel // who wields both strength and brittleness. While the first album (Spojky Ciary) focused on Ocela's inception and youth, here she is mature // on a resolute trajectory between birth and passing away.Ocela is not a concept album // unless you want it to be // but it is an album built around beats. While there is a loose precedent for rhythms in the two-piece project Jamka, the trilogy also marks Daniel Kordik's solo return to melodical composition. On this record, Ocela dances on her orbits in patterns that are harmonious but always slightly elliptic. Each song on the album travels with its own varying velocity, before it abruptly finds itself at the subjective beginning. Then it goes through further revolutions, with determination bordering on a lack of choice.Recorded live onto a 4-track before mixing, Ocela is unlike its predecessor in that it shuns any form of field recording, and was instead made using only hardware (Elektron Octatrack MK1, Elektron Digitone, Jomox Mbase01).Daniel Kordik, also known as Iskra, is one half of Jamka, member of the Urbsounds Collective, co-founder of Earshots Recordings and Ocela is his second release on the melodramatic label Weltschmerzen. More