The cascading hollowness of Japanese producer Mars89's latest album 'Visions' for Bedouin Records evokes a hypnotising atmosphere that takes the listener on a cinematic journey through what is best described as a post-apocalyptic daydream. In its entirety, this album is a political act against capitalism and urban infrastructure as a whole, paying homage to those who endure the various ways in which capitalists and authoritarian governments attempt to infiltrate and control their lives, and all that surrounds them.Breaking musical boundaries in the creation of what is considered to be a new genre of Japanese street music, Mars89 draws on a wide range of influences –such as sci-fi films– to conjure an eerie dystopian scene, inviting the listener to imagine a world on the brink of collapse as a tyrannical authority stands by idly. Embedded in the back cover of the album, Mars89 pays tribute to the working-class resistance; 'This album is dedicated to the city dwellers who live with the rats and crows in the gaps of the city where the giant capital tries to control everything'.Opening the album with 'They made me do it', Mars89 manages to convey an uneasy welcoming party that tempts you to stay longer with flickering distorted explosions of sounds, then further captivates us with 'Tete Apotre' by using a series of vivid, and energising hushed tones that are somewhat opaque and abstract, making it difficult to identify the echoes as human or not. Accompanied by hollering alarms overhead and hurried echoes, the standout track 'Dick Laurent is dead' emits a dark, pulsating soundscape through the repetition of a distant voice stating; 'Listen up, told you once told you twice; You know I'm in this'. Signalling what could be perceived as the brink of frustration, or a looming warning.Through a combination of incessant bells and rhythmic distorted drums across the ten tracks, a building sense of urgency before a life-altering decision must be done begins to form in the listener. With its shuddering rhythms, abrasive whirring, and ominous chimes contributing to the ways in which the sounds break down into hisses and stark fluctuations between texture and volume; the surreal nature of this experimental album will enthral you.?With every riveting listen, we are offered a glimpse into something inconceivable through a plethora of celestial sounds. 'Visions' concludes with 'LA1937', a chilling 5 minutes track that suggests the end of a chase has been reached, bringing everything to a breath-taking closure. More

"In the closed circuit screen glow with the hand scripting the events of two people staring from a long distance for a matter of moments that seemed endless, vast, the pen takes to paper and senses apprehension in the author. Leaving things out from the self, the self knows the truth is well-guarded, security and a large key ring with one thumb-drive filled with secrets carefully placed beneath a granite prism, buried in brain cells and matter. Everything left unsaid is sacred and that sacrament is gold-leafed and stoic, crackling voicemail recording leaves out details, nearly telegrammed, a post-it's worth of vital information. We keep secrets to ourselves so tightly that we hide the secret from the self. Speak the truth, the closed circuit surveillance will manage the details." More

This building was intended to fall. The dust in all 6 rooms suspends in the air and light glitters on each particulate, a piercing bright like a headache behind the eye. Knuckles chapped like a dancer's feet, a listener survives in the building like it's a home. Makes it a home. Frantic energy holding still remains frantic. Trying to swallow, trying to catch your breath. Enough dust to settle and make the building in its exact image. Beating at the walls only makes the walls once more, 6 rooms, listening and responding. This is the sound of a space that cannot be unmade. Sorcery is permanent. More

Emotion Hospice is the debut LP by New York-based sound artist and writer Chaperone on Bedouin Records. Combining layers of doom electronics, dystopian ambient, and manipulated tape loops, Emotion Hospice reflects both the artist's suffering and recovery from addiction, as well as Philadelphia's history of socio-economic decay and misanthropy. Emotion Hospice was recorded from 2016 to 2019, when Chaperone's David Coccagna lived and worked in his hometown of Philadelphia, a city notoriously known for its poverty, redlined city divisions, and fascist policing tactics. While exploring the sound of the city and the effects of its political and social climate, Coccagna also struggled with and managed to overcome a severe addiction to alcohol, tying further the misaligned nature of the self to the maladjusted world he grew up in that is reflected in the record itself. Sonic thrills and their destruction is present throughout the record, as Coccagna experiments with the brutal manipulation of bossa nova, varying styles of jazz, hip hop, and rap, using 4-Track tape loops, shortwave radio frequencies, various apps on his iPad, and open source audio editing software. With Emotion Hospice, Chaperone liberates the inherent darkness of the cheerful and poppy music that he samples and transforms it into an extensive, doomy sound of a future that is dystopian, maladroit, suffering, but hopeful about human beings. The album was written and recorded entirely by Coccagna aside from the track featuring New York rapper and producer Andre Altrez, whose establishment of Girard Hall in Philadelphia was a beacon of DIY ethos that became legendary in the city in its own right. Chaperone's Emotion Hospice is his first release on Bedouin Records. His cassette release Dead Pitbulls Slung On Tired Shoulders was his first outing for Bedouin's now defunct sub-label Bastakiya Tapes in 2017. This initial tape was the catalyst to a working relationship between Coccagna and label operator Salem Rashid as collaborators and colleagues. More

Haku Sungho is a Korean-Japanese musician and artist, from Tokyo, who lives and works in Berlin. In addition to his work as a musician, he uses conceptual methods to create his own instruments and to develop his video and installation works. A developing circle, pinwheeling, restarts at every rotation before completing the circle. The circle does not close, but indicates the shape it seeks to finish. Each time, it seems nearer to closing, and the patience maintains. Still, no circle closes, in each rotation. Anxiety develops with the inability to resolve the shape, but the shape turns, a graph develops, two circles pinwheel, unable to close, but overlap now. One circle, pausing, casts a straight to indicate the radius, and stops, still one moves above the other, now clarifying. A message is buried in the charts and figures, an odious one. "I am breathing. You, too, are breathing. We are breathing. The subtle scent of us both breathing." Spelled out now, the circle never completes, just makes a letter in a message and makes difficult the reading. More

If you stand long enough at this bus shelter, it will begin to snow. The horizon that ends the road outward often feels like it will crawl closer, but it remains the same distance, the same traffic. When running on a track and the centrifugal force begins to carry you, and you feel as if racing the other user on the track is the winning solution, remember to race the track itself. The track does not move. The meditation of punching a brick wall is still a meditation. The moment you decide to walk, as the horizon is not far off, the moment you race the white chalk lines on the clay field you're running, when the bricks break before you, you find you the outcome. Place your phone in your pocket and sit back in the seat of this bus, place your head between your knees, and brace for impact. The scream of glass is only a second, then the peace of glitter as it becomes particles around you is overwhelming in beauty. You are the outcome. You are what made it this far in a single day, a mayfly's life-cycle, a work shift, several movies streaming in a dark room on a laptop, a cat's fur glowing. Turn the key for your flat and enter. Welcome home. Again. More

Elegies-in-waiting to the monotonous dread of exploitative labour, dosed with elliptical distortion, industrial noise and ear-crushing bass. in the lineage of Pan Sonic, Sun O))), and the more gruelling Scott Walker productions. Vex'd veteran Roly Porter drops by with a sci-fi reinvention of Council Flat, trading in IF's mogadon footwork and megaton polyrhythms for a less apocalyptic, more introspective blend of modern classical, dark ambient and dirty stinking breakbeat. More

This release captures kicks, rhythms, and snares—only to drag them kicking and screaming into a metallic underworld. In J. Tijn’s echo-sphere, there are only allusions to the status quo of sound and beats, and never a full-fledged embrace of the conventional. On Side A’s “Kanon V.I.P.” a grizzly digital war is left to play out between both kick and snare, with grainy battle lines drawn around upbeat and downbeat. Survivors of the conflict are rewarded with a groove reminiscent of grime, if only the genre had been reborn in a dystopian future. Side B opens with a roughneck beat on “MOR” before turning its hand into a fist and effectively destroying its own image. The groove lives through this barrage of sound, but as a heavy and dark undercurrent just strong enough to remind you where J.Tijn’s roots are. “Shy” lures you in with a rounded electro kick, before glutting the rhythm and ushering in a wall of sound. A snowstorm of screaming drum samples proceed to surround you: you may have been here before, but you are somewhere rhythmically unseen. Embedded in all of these tracks are perhaps a sign of the times: the things that used to be seen as normal have now changed and mutated. More

Diagonal welcome back a label mainstay, Kohei Matsunaga (AKA NHK yx Koyxen). "What You Know" is Kohei's first outing for the label since 2016's "Self Split EP" and it's a full length long player packed full of euphoric beauty. Nobody crafts a catchy, optimistic hook like this guy and we're truly proud to be putting out yet another NHK banger. More

Originally released in 1971, Detroit's 'El Count Executives' epitomise the mythical, spoken sentiment of love through their only single, 'Pot Of Gold' & 'Nothing Comes To a Sleeper (But A Dream)', written & released by Ohio native, Kennedy Hollman, on his record label 'Gemini', aptly named after his astrological sign. Hollman, who had his debut single 'I've Got Style' in 1967, recorded as 'The Mints', later known as 'The Imperial Wonders', became a leading figure amongst the Cleveland circuit. His initial release by 'El Count Executives', recorded in Detroit at Gary Rubin's 'Pioneer Recording Studio', was shortly followed by 'The Soul In-Pressions', released on 'Aquarius', another astrologically tipped label ran alongside Henry Watkins, Jr. & James Lately. Towards the late 70s, Hollman was part of Detroit's Soul/Disco act, 'Solid Solution'. More

Originally released on Greenback Records, a label from New Jersey consisting of George Greene & Gary D. Jackson, two producers who scouted local talent to record at George's home studio and independently distribute. The duo had a string of releases before Jackson relocated to Goldsboro, NC in the late 70s to establish a string of non-musical related business', when he met recent high school graduate, Karen Scott. Jackson enabled the potential of Scott's talent by searching for a group to write & record with. Satin Finish started out as a trio of Goldsboro musicians, Donald Oliver (keys), Joe Exum (drums) & Dennis Kornegay (bass) who came together for the recording project. Scott didn't write music so the group were tasked with coming up with an albums worth of material to take to the studio. Jackson had hired additional musicians for the session, three horn players & a guitarist, which would take place at Greene's home studio in Durham, NC. Three tracks were laid down for the purpose of a 7" single, the A side being Scott's calling card 'I Don't Want To Lose Your Love', written by Oliver, arranged by Kornegay & sang by Scott. Penned for the flip was 'I Didn't Know Funk Felt So Good', a song dropped due to being beyond 6 minutes in length, which made way for 'Took A Chance On Love', a song written & sang by Kornegay. The single had local success, however shortly after the release of the single Scott went to college to pursue her education whilst the group engaged new members and continued for another couple of years before disbanding. More

An elusive Soul/Funk masterpiece from mid-70s Lakeland, Florida. The Riley siblings; Carrie, Horace & James laid the foundation for the two songs they would bring to Auburndale's custom recording studio, Central Sound to be released on the Nashville/Florida label, 'Music City'. Jerome McNeil, William Freeman, Bruce Bolden & Sam Graham would complete the outfit and be collectively known as 'Carrie Riley & The Soul Fascinations' 'During the early 70's The Riley family members who formed the Fascinations (originally the Soul Fascinations), James, Horace and Carrie along with a few friends, were destined to develop and perform musically as music flowed through our veins. Our father was a musician who played piano and sang the blues. As children we gathered around an old upright piano after dinner to hear our father play and sang. By the time I was 14 and my brothers, James and Horace were 16 and 17, we had all learned to plan an instrument. My focus was on vocals with many role models to learn from in the music industry such as; Dianna Ross, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight and Mable Staple. My brothers loved the Commodores, Kool and the Gang, Rick James and Earth Wind and Fire. The Isleys's were a favorite of ours also. James was the driver of our success in recording as he made sure we practiced for hours on end. Sometimes we would practice popular songs until 2 in the morning. James began to write songs and develop melodies that he would share with Horace and I. We would make suggestions for revisions such as arrangements and melodies. Before long we traveled to Miami where we recorded, Super Cool which was our title song, 'Living in A Lonesome House' and a few other tracks. 'Super Cool' is a song that is personal to me. It is a song about relationships and trust, while the Lonesome house song was about love affairs and breakups. So much great music came out of the 70's. I am grateful that our music contributed to the industry during a time when great music was about love and relationships. More

Re-issue of this mid-80s electro/bedroom boogie single produced by Junei More

Double-sided Modern Soul single from 1983 by Van Jones & Mary Diggs. Two epic covers, revived & re-released by Fantasy Love Records More

Within any creative expression about love there's a shared experience, a sentiment hard to articulate but understood through emotion. One of the defining examples of a song that holds such sincerity is 'My Heart Is Broken' by 'The Four Dudes'. Charles 'Pooky' Russell, the lead singer of 'The Four Dudes' shares his story of a broken heart; his ambition to pursue a life immersed in music is what led Charles to leave his hometown of San Antonio for Houston and in doing so, leaving his lady. Charles' music career began whilst studying at Sam Houston High during the mid-60s. During choir is where he met Reginald Whitaker & Lawrence Alexander, and the trio would go on to establish their first vocal harmony group, 'The Three Dudes'. The Dudes, inspired by groups such as The Cadillacs & The Platters, would gain a strong local following that led to their first single 'Sad Little Boy' & 'I'm Beggin' You' produced & released in 1967 on E.J. Henke's 'Satin' label. By 1969, 'The Three Dudes' had become 'The Four Dudes' with the addition of Kenneth Ball. The Dudes had made the decision to pursue a full time career with their music and the opportunities available Houston propelled the move. Within the first year 'The Four Dudes' had found themselves a manager, James Davis, whom pieced the vocal group with Houston's own 'The Heavy Accents Band'. The group were gaining notoriety around town, performing several times a week, which led Davis to bring the outfit into the studio to release a single on his independent label, 'Sivad-J'. It was when Davis heard 'My Heart Is Broken' for the first time that they decided this would be the single, and within the same year would be recorded at SugarHill Studios & released as a 7" single. The sincerity of the song is what serenaded Houston across the airwaves in 69', a staple for George 'Boogaloo' Frazier on his show for KYOK 1590 AM amongst many others. The single became a local hit however, due to the lack of distribution and small pressing, the single barely made it out the city limits. 'The Four Dudes' continued to perform in Houston for 3/4 more years before heading to Philadelphia and forming a group called 'Image'. For the first time since its 1969 release, 'The Four Dudes' single is once again available through Symphonical Records as a limited 7" pressing. Licensed directly through the Davis family with the approval of Charles Russell. More

Re-issue of this obscure Bay Area, mid-80s Disco/Soul single produced by the late Harvey Scales & Cedrick Rupert More

This modern soul masterpiece, originally released in July of 1978 at a cabaret club in downtown Detroit has been revived and re-released via Fantasy Love More

A year and a half has passed since Slovak-Hungarian artist Adela Mede self-released her debut album 'Szabadság'. Its liner notes described it as "a navigation", a search through "the personal, familial, cultural, folkloric and geographic of her past and present." Her second album, 'Ne Lépj a Virágra' no longer searches; here, she puts down roots and delves deeper into the earthy reality of her home, Central Europe. Mede sings in three languages with newfound conviction and grace – this is an album of profound faith and confidence in the potential of this fertile soil. Composed and recorded during the last 18 months in Bratislava, Slovakia – a city where three countries meet, where the East and the West collide – 'Ne Lépj a Virárga' translates to "don't step on the flower". Its themes – budding potential, recognizing the beauty in the ordinary, solidarity, turning despair into hope – emerged through Mede's wholehearted involvement with her community, teaching singing to both children and adults, and various grassroots volunteering initiatives. It features collaborations with local artists, Mede's singing students, as well as fellow Eastern European contemporary artists Martyna Basta and Wojciech Rusin. Adela Mede embellishes carefully crafted songs with minimalist and folklore influences, but also embraces more experimental approaches. The result is a collection of quite varied yet consistent pieces which highlight Mede's proficiency as a singer, arranger, producer and improviser. It is a grounded, confident next step for the Bratislava-based artist. Whether her vocals are naked, heavily processed, warped and reversed, or looped and layered; whether the production is sparse and minimalist or overwhelming and swampy; none of that changes the fact that the gentle tentativeness of her debut is gone. This is "Central European music", at its most striking and meaningful: patient, determined, embracing both complexity and possibility. More

In apartheid-era South Africa, gospel music provided solace and served as a tool for covert communication to circumvent the censorship of the settler regime. By the 2010s, South African gospel, deeply ingrained in the soul of Soweto, assumed a new role—as a heartfelt cry against persistent failures and shortcomings, a cry mourning a South Africa that never materialized. A new South Africa needed a new gospel sound. In 2016, nine young men from different parts of Diepkloof, a celebrated neighbourhood brimming with talent within Soweto's sprawling township, came together to form the sound of a new South Africa under the name Diepkloof United Voice. Diepkloof United Voice's music has gone viral multiple times on TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook, garnering between 60,000 to 2 million views. The comments section displays flag emojis from Brazil to India, showcasing the global reach of their music. This album was recorded on site in Soweto, in an abandoned classroom of Lebowa Elementary School in Diepkloof Zone 3, where the choir rehearsed for years. Amid rolling blackouts, Diepkloof United Voice poured their heart, soul, and vocal chords into their debut record, combining classic South Africa gospel, Soweto's own kasi soul, American blues, and Zulu flavor, to present the contemporary gospel sound of a changing South Africa. The promise of a new South Africa might finally be realized, as Diepkloof United Voice guarantees the country's future is guided by the truth, uttered with each gasp of breath from their inimitable voices. More

This top-notch spiritual jazz album from Argentina will leave fans of Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane astonished. Recorded in 1975 and still surprisingly off the radar, this is one of the deepest jazz albums from South America. Inspiración is the meeting of two generations united by music: Ara Tokatlian and Guillermo Bordarampé, members of the influential 70s rock band Arco Iris (which Tokatlian cofounded with the now Oscar award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla), join forces with Enrique "Mono" Villegas, an admired jazz pianist who had been active since the 1930s. Meditative, soothing and serene, Inspiración is music your soul yearns for. Official reissue with sound off the master tapes, including a reproduction of the original 16-page booklet. With the blessing and support from Ara Tokatlian and Guillermo Bordarampe. More