Karate’s defiant and final studio album punctuates a 12-year discography that spanned harDCore-style catharsis to feedback-saturated improv. This ’04 classic skipped the Friendster migration for back-to-basics songwriting suffused with jazz phrasings and beat-inspired lyricism. Featuring Codeine/Come guitarist Chris Brokaw, Pockets is remastered from the original analog tapes and housed in a deluxe tip on sleeve with reproduction lyric sheet.

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Whatever sense of unity bound a hodgepodge of underground American punk sounds in the 1990s like a Duct-tape wallet began to come unglued by the end of the decade. A couple years into the new millennium and the emo scene that once had enough space for a band as brazen in their fusion of slowcore, jazz, and post-hardcore as Boston’s Karate would barely be reflected in a cookie-cutter style commercialized by major labels and mid-level indies that acted like the majors. The part of punk that overlapped with indie rock would begin a slow ascent from its comfortable home on college radio charts to the soundtrack of American Apparel shops and eventually the Billboard charts. In this strange, stratifying milieu, Karate, a band that seemed to thrive by cleaving to a nether-zone between several sounds that otherwise never touched, delivered an engrossing constantly shifting shot of rock that covered three sides of 12-inch vinyl: Unsolved arrived in 2000.

Karate spent much of the ’ 90s wrestling punk aggression and volume into svelte shapes and often condensed what felt like a generation of scuffed-up intensity into whispers. The quiet moments carried much of that unbridled intensity throughout Unsolved—the fuzzy guitar squawk and snatchet of machine-gun drumming on “Sever” aside, things hit a little more sharply the moment the trio pivoted into their subdued jazz melodic interplay on that song. Karate’s transition into indie-rock maturity had become so complete by the time they dropped Unsolved that you could play the coffeehouse soul of “Halo of the Strange” and sultry jazz of “Lived-But-Yet-Named” to an unsuspecting punk and spend an entire evening trying to convince them that, yes, this band had made their bones playing the same DIY circuit made of bands that sounded like they wanted to harm their audience. But few bands other than Karate played like they understood the musical lingua franca of scene godheads such as Fugazi and Unwound, and knew how to make that language evolve, and nearly every song on Unsolved made that clear. If you didn’t get the memo by the end of the elegiac 11-minute closer “This Day Next Year,” which gained an irrepressible power from a plaintive guitar melody cycling through the song’s back half like a yearnsome cry for the divine, you might’ve been better off buying a ticket for Warped Tour and waiting a decade or two to figure it out.

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Karate’s defiant and final studio album punctuates a 12-year discography that spanned harDCore-style catharsis to feedback-saturated improv. This ’04 classic skipped the Friendster migration for back-to-basics songwriting suffused with jazz phrasings and beat-inspired lyricism. Featuring Codeine/Come guitarist Chris Brokaw, Pockets is remastered from the original analog tapes and housed in a deluxe tip on sleeve with reproduction lyric sheet.

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Caught between the Canyon and the Caribbean, Cathy Hamer's pair of extremely private LP's got lost in the Me Decade's hippy hangover. Tracked in '79 and '80 at Roanoke, Virginia's custom bluegrass powerhouse Threshold Recordings, these 11 originals breeze through all colors—folk, country, yacht, etc—of the cosmic American rainbow. Remastered LP comes housed in a tip-on jacket with accompanying booklet of notes and the precious few photos that survived from Hamer's brief time as a lady of the canyon, full of dreams and nowhere to go.

Tracklist:
1.1LADY FULL OF DREAMS
1.2THTHE HURT IS STILL THTHERE
1.3I'M MISSING YOU
1.4CONFUSION BLUES
1.5DECEMBER DREAMING
1.6WHEN I FALL IN LOVE
1.7HYPNOTISE
1.8PROMISES
1.9UNTALKABLE THTHOUGHTS
1.10LOVING AT THE FEELING
1.11JACKSON BROWNE

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tracklist:

1.valerian
2.aquan 1
3.mandragora louvareen
4.staticburst
5.xarella almandyne
6.milkysoft
7.blooded and blossom blown
8.hum vibralux
9.virgin blue eyed
10.seesaw
11.flowered smother
12.monar
13.silver (fairy threaded)
14.luma (web-like and crescent)
15.golden-handed
16.bones of angels a. bronze lit feathers b. her tongue pulled out
17.ghosts that swirl
18.mother of pearl


The ambient lofigaze soundtrack for interdimensional travel. Compiled from hissy cassettes 4-tracked between 1991-'95, lovesliescrushing's sophomore album xuvetyn originally released in 1996, now achieving the patina of legend some 30 years later. This double LP edition is housed in a tip-on jacket illustrated with Melissa Arpin Duimstra and Scott Cortez's abstract photography, plus a lyric sheet translating the expressive glossolalia.

"A disorientingly beautiful cloud of neon drones and voices from the other side. Music that will envelop you, that you can disappear inside of."

-Jefre Cantu-Ledesma

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Eccentric Sweet Soul is 43 minutes of unguarded romantic expression—broken and mended hearts and aching space between, delivered with disarming sincerity and late-night intimacy. Draped in lush, gentle strings, tender group harmonies, and relaxed rhythms, while breathy falsetto vocals float over polished production. Vulnerability is the main event here. Ride with pride.

TRACKLIST
A1 - Ice Cold Love - Wonderful To Be Loved
A2 - Jus' Us - Don't Stop Smiling
A3 - The Defaulters - Gentle Man
A4 - The Si-berians - Crying Baby Won't Help The Hurt
A5 - Third Generation - Love Is Gonna Rain Down On Me
A6 - Sweet Breeze - Slow Change Up
B1 - Family Connection - Lost Her Love
B2 - Ujima - All I Want Is You
B3 - Soul Pushers - With A Broken Heart
B4 - Majestic Arrows - The Magic of Your Love

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Tracklist:
1.1THE DAYS GREW LONGER FOR LOVE
1.2SUNDAY
1.3LOST A NUMBER FOUND A KING
1.4MAN WITHOUT A NAME
1.5CLOCKWORK MAN
1.6COCAINE
1.7SHADES OF GRAY
1.8HIGH ON A MOUNTAIN
1.9ANDWELLS
1.10MIDDAY SUN
1.11TAKE MY ROAD
1.12FELIX
1.13GOODBYE

Total abgefahrene irische Psychedelia für den Kater am Morgen nach dem "Summer of Love". Angeführt vom in Belfast geborenen Wunderkind David Lewis, verwischt Andwellas Dreams Debütalbum Love and Poetry" aus dem Jahr 1969 die Grenze zwischen Denmark Street und Cyprus Avenue. Ein 13 Songs umfassender pastoraler Fiebertraum, der im CBS-Lagerhaus verloren gegangen war, jetzt neu gemastert und in seiner ursprünglichen Pracht wiederhergestellt.

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For our 100th Eccentric Soul 45, Numero returns to our Ohio roots with three replica 45s from the Capsoul universe. Marion Black's timeless two-sider "Who Knows" b/w "Go On Fool" made a few blips upon its 1970 release, but has taken on a life of its own soundtracking prestige TV and car commercials around the globe and finally going gold after 65 years. We discovered Ron Harrington's "Because You're Mine" demo amongst the Capsoul tapes, a demo cut for founder Bill Moss that never escaped greater Columbus. The mid-tempo harmony joint "It Happened To Me Again" adorns the flip, with a lo-fi funk backbeat tossed in for good measure. Capsoul's crown jewel group harmony quartet Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr cut just two records in their short time together, but the quartet's "You Can't Blame Me" has endured as a classic example of the raw and unhinged soul sound that Numero is known for. Eccentric Soul from the heart of it all.

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For our 100th Eccentric Soul 45, Numero returns to our Ohio roots with three replica 45s from the Capsoul universe. Marion Black's timeless two-sider "Who Knows" b/w "Go On Fool" made a few blips upon its 1970 release, but has taken on a life of its own soundtracking prestige TV and car commercials around the globe and finally going gold after 65 years. We discovered Ron Harrington's "Because You're Mine" demo amongst the Capsoul tapes, a demo cut for founder Bill Moss that never escaped greater Columbus. The mid-tempo harmony joint "It Happened To Me Again" adorns the flip, with a lo-fi funk backbeat tossed in for good measure. Capsoul's crown jewel group harmony quartet Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr cut just two records in their short time together, but the quartet's "You Can't Blame Me" has endured as a classic example of the raw and unhinged soul sound that Numero is known for. Eccentric Soul from the heart of it all.

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For our 100th Eccentric Soul 45, Numero returns to our Ohio roots with three replica 45s from the Capsoul universe. Marion Black's timeless two-sider "Who Knows" b/w "Go On Fool" made a few blips upon its 1970 release, but has taken on a life of its own soundtracking prestige TV and car commercials around the globe and finally going gold after 65 years. We discovered Ron Harrington's "Because You're Mine" demo amongst the Capsoul tapes, a demo cut for founder Bill Moss that never escaped greater Columbus. The mid-tempo harmony joint "It Happened To Me Again" adorns the flip, with a lo-fi funk backbeat tossed in for good measure. Capsoul's crown jewel group harmony quartet Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr cut just two records in their short time together, but the quartet's "You Can't Blame Me" has endured as a classic example of the raw and unhinged soul sound that Numero is known for. Eccentric Soul from the heart of it all.

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After three albums of reverberated guitar wandering, Master Wilburn Burchette's Psychic Meditation Music takes a turn towards the kosmiche. Two side-long synth explorations transport the listener to the avocado hues of 1974, expanding consciousness one oscillation at a time. Bug out your third eye!

Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiLfq--9n1c

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The idea of what makes "modern soul" has long been a subject of debate, even among those at the top, specially tasked with arbitrating its definition. At Success Bottling Co., such spats escalated to the point where A&R team members Stephen Arndt and Tim Zawada had to be physically separated during a heated tracklist meeting. Yet we know that M-soul's origins can be traced to the UK's Northern Soul scene, where, in the late 70s, disco-adjacent 45s began appearing alongside traditional 60s selections. Today, modern soul is often associated with the 80s, incorporating synths and rhythm-machines. Quibbles persist: How much brass is too much? Can strings and synths truly coexist? Eccentric Modern Soul explores these ideas across eleven rambunctious ones, pinching previously unissued recordings from Wee, Ujima, and Wind alongside neat classics from Universal Togetherness Band, Mind & Matter, Maxx Traxx and 94 East.

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Townies, homecoming queens, and big men on campus manifest a homegrown and revolutionary sound in Civil Rights-era Greensboro.

Among presidential hopefuls and future astronauts, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, located in Greensboro, was a hotbed of black excellence, activism, and raw talent. At the helm of a half-dozen labels, local yokel Walter Grady assembled a rotating cast of townies, homecoming queens, and big men on campus to manifest a scintillating sound that was both homegrown and revolutionary. Eccentric Soul: The Linco Label compiles melodic milestones from the birthplace of the civil rights movement.

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Whatever sense of unity bound a hodgepodge of underground American punk sounds in the 1990s like a Duct-tape wallet began to come unglued by the end of the decade. A couple years into the new millennium and the emo scene that once had enough space for a band as brazen in their fusion of slowcore, jazz, and post-hardcore as Boston’s Karate would barely be reflected in a cookie-cutter style commercialized by major labels and mid-level indies that acted like the majors. The part of punk that overlapped with indie rock would begin a slow ascent from its comfortable home on college radio charts to the soundtrack of American Apparel shops and eventually the Billboard charts. In this strange, stratifying milieu, Karate, a band that seemed to thrive by cleaving to a nether-zone between several sounds that otherwise never touched, delivered an engrossing constantly shifting shot of rock that covered three sides of 12-inch vinyl: Unsolved arrived in 2000.

Karate spent much of the ’ 90s wrestling punk aggression and volume into svelte shapes and often condensed what felt like a generation of scuffed-up intensity into whispers. The quiet moments carried much of that unbridled intensity throughout Unsolved—the fuzzy guitar squawk and snatchet of machine-gun drumming on “Sever” aside, things hit a little more sharply the moment the trio pivoted into their subdued jazz melodic interplay on that song. Karate’s transition into indie-rock maturity had become so complete by the time they dropped Unsolved that you could play the coffeehouse soul of “Halo of the Strange” and sultry jazz of “Lived-But-Yet-Named” to an unsuspecting punk and spend an entire evening trying to convince them that, yes, this band had made their bones playing the same DIY circuit made of bands that sounded like they wanted to harm their audience. But few bands other than Karate played like they understood the musical lingua franca of scene godheads such as Fugazi and Unwound, and knew how to make that language evolve, and nearly every song on Unsolved made that clear. If you didn’t get the memo by the end of the elegiac 11-minute closer “This Day Next Year,” which gained an irrepressible power from a plaintive guitar melody cycling through the song’s back half like a yearnsome cry for the divine, you might’ve been better off buying a ticket for Warped Tour and waiting a decade or two to figure it out.

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Wenn sie nicht gerade aus dem Fenster auf die stürmische Skyline von Manhattan blickte, verbrachte Margo Guryan ihre dreißiger Jahre damit, Ohrwürmer für Leute wie Bobbie Gentry, Jackie DeShannon, Claudine Longet, Carmen McCrae und Julie London bei CBS's April Blackwood Music zu schreiben. Guryans zeitlose Gedanken über Liebe, Sonntage, Erdbeben, Weinen und Jungs namens Timothy haben unzählige Filme und virale Videos unterlegt. Meisterwerke aus früheren Zeiten. 28 ihrer Songwriting-Demos aus den 60er und 70er Jahren sind auf dieser 25-jährigen Jubiläums-Doppelalbum-Edition.

Trackliste
1.1WHAT CAN I GIVE YOU
1.2SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH THE MORNING
1.3I LOVE
1.4SUNDAY MORNING
1.5CAN YOU TELL
1.6THINK OF RAIN
1.7SUN
1.8MOST OF MY LIFE
1.9THE 8:17 NORTHBOUND SUCCESS MERRY-GO-ROUND
1.10LOVE SONGS
1.11THOUGHTS
1.12I DON'T INTEND TO SPEND CHRISTMAS WITHOUT YOU
1.13COME TO ME SLOWLY
1.14TIMOTHY GONE
2.1IT'S ALRIGHT NOW
2.2VALUES
2.3I THINK A LOT ABOUT YOU
2.4THE HUM
2.5PLEASE BELIEVE ME
2.6YES I AM
2.7I'D LIKE TO SEE THE BAD GUYS WIN
2.8CALIFORNIA SHAKE
2.9SHINE
2.10HOLD ME DANCIN
2.11GOODBYE JULY
2.12WHY DO I CRY
2.13UNDER MY UMBRELLA
2.14I OUGHT TO STAY AWAY FROM YOU

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Channeling the Euro-pop sensibilities of Crepuscule and the ethereal goth of 4AD, Vazz arrived in Glasgow just as the Sound of Young Scotland was taking off. Armed with a drum machine, guitar, bass, and Anna Howson’s icy cooing, the duo offered a darker take to a scene dominated by poptimists Orange Juice, Josef K, and Aztec Camera. This 40th anniversary edition of their 1986 mini-album Your Lungs and Your Tongues compiles their complete Cathexis recordings and adds a handful of unissued minimal wave pearls. Colder than Dalwhinnie on the solstice—better bring a parka.

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Two talents with careers spanning varying eras, yet artists positioned at the heart of Italy’s current house landscape, Alex Neri and Mennie are adding to their rich solo discographies with a series of selected works in partnership with one another. Tuscany’s Neri, co-owner of the iconic nightlife institution Tenax and label boss at Wildflower Records, stands as one of the legendary Italian names from the past 30 years, holding residencies at the likes of Pikes in Ibiza while releasing a long list of classic records since the early 90s under numerous aliases, including Kamasutra alongside Marco Baroni. A familiar name to FUSE fans, having released material via sister imprints LOCUS and INFUSE, Mennie has seen his career flourish of late, regularly touring Europe’s key venues while also holding a residency at the legendary Tenax. Here, the two build on their recent joint studio projects with a debut on FUSE for the third edition of the label’s collaborative X Series, unveiling a quartet of impactful house cuts in heavy rotation for label head honcho Siragusa.

Taking a deep dive amongst swirling synths and cosmic interludes, ‘Reality’ opens proceedings with a trippy and punchy lead cut as the duo introduce slick groove-laden drum arrangements to get things moving, while ‘Find Me’ keeps the pressure on with bumping low-ends, shuffling hats and a menacing yet captivating bass groove sure to keep dancers moving in lockstep. On the b-side, ‘Rockets’ brings luminous melodies amongst breaks-influenced percussion for a playful and dynamic production, before ‘Watch Me’ rounds things out with another all-action affair as acid-dipped and kinetically charged closer made for big moments.

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2023 repress

Tracklisting:
A1 Munir Nadir - Dream Team
A2 Munir Nadir - Roast-Beat
B1 Munir Nadir - It's time to kick Ass
B2 Munir Nadir - Just for
B3 Munir Nadir - Breaking point

Sales Note
For the fourth release, straight from the frying pan lands 'Roast Beat' by Munir Nadir, first and longtime resident DJ of the Turin clubbing project, on Outcast Planet with his ep.

His tracks range from house to techno with trancy and happy sounds that usually characterize his DJ sets.



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LIMITED EDITION SPLATTER VINYL. TRACK LISTING: A Higher State Of Consciousness (Tweekin Acid Funk), B Higher State Of Consciousness (Deep And Slow Chill edit)

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Tropical Solution Green Vinyl Best listened to from inside the womb, Duster's 1998's debut Stratosphere simultaneously capped off and reinvented the slow core's first wave. A four track dreamscape that will wake the neighbors and then lull them back to sleep. Hazy, arpeggiated guitars layer over a deliberate drummer with no real place to be, as semi-inaudible vocals warn of millennial malaise and subtly encourage the listener to "rock out, rock out, rock out, rock out." "Music for dark spaces and closed eyelids, deeply psychedelic but without sprawl, ambient music with a serrated edge of punk."_The Ringer "Warm, fuzzed-out sounds that hit home like a tight, melancholic embrace from your favorite person."_Vice
Tracklist
1.1MOON AGE
1.2HEADING FOR THE DOOR
1.3GOLD DUST
1.4TOPICAL SOLUTION
1.5DOCKING THE POD
1.6THE LANDING
1.7CONSTELLATIONS
1.8THE QUEEN OF HEARTS
1.9TWO WAY RADIO
1.10INSIDE OUT
1.11STRATOSPHERE
1.12REED TO HILLSBOROUGH
1.13SHADOWS OF PLANES
1.14EARTH MOON TRANSIT
1.15THE TWINS / ROMANTICA
1.16SIDERIA

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Strictly Limited Clear Vinyl Edition!

Tracklist:
1.Flimsier
2.Pink Shell
3.Seaforth
4.That Is My Life, That Is Yours
5.Tortoise Of Independency
6.Empty Stomach Space Cadet
7.Flimsy
8.Hamburgerphobia
9.From The Swamp
10.King Krule feat. Raveena & Raveena - Seagirl
11.Our Vacuum
12.Space Heavy
13.When Vanishing
14.If Only It Was Warmth
15.Wednesday Overcast


Written from 2020 to 2022, between London and Liverpool, Space Heavy took shape over the course of commutes between the two cities where Archy Marshall was splitting his time. Befitting an album quite literally written on the commute between the two places he called home, Archy found himself fascinated by the notion of “the space between” - the space haunted by dreams of love, touching a narrative of lost connection, losing people and situations to the guillotine of the universe. Once written by Archy, the music was developed by frequent collaborator and producer Dilip Harris and long-time band mates Ignacio Salvadores (Saxophonist), George Bass (Drummer), James Wilson (Bass Guitarist) and Jack Towell (Guitarist).

The result is a 15-track full-length by the musical polymath that inhabits the deepest reaches of the subterranean sonic world that Archy has constructed over the course of his career as King Krule. In it you hear a generational artist stepping into the height of their artistic powers – the auteurism apparent on his debut 6 Feet Beneath The Moon, the shapeshifting sonic palette of The OOZ, the primality of Man Alive! and the raw vulnerability expressed on You Heat Me Up, You Cool Me Down all coalesce into a wizened, dynamic body of work that reveals new elements with each listen. In line with Archy’s interest in the space between, it is an album wherein the negative space demands the same attention as the positive space. If one is willing to wade into the mire the reward is rich.

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“‘A La Sala,’ I used to scream it around my house when I was a little girl, to get everybody in the living room; to get my family together. That’s kind of what recording the new album felt like. Emotionally there was a desire to get back to square-one between the three of us, to where we came from–in sonics and in feeling. Let’s get back there.” - Laura Lee Ochoa

The title makes it clear. A La Sala (“To the Room” in Spanish), the fourth studio album by Khruangbin, is an exercise in returning in order to go further, and do so on your own terms. It extends the air of mystery and sanctity that’s key to how bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, Jr. and guitarist Mark “Marko” Speer approach music. Yet if 2020’s Mordechai, the last studio album Khruangbin made without collaborators, was a party record whose ensuing post-lockdown tour enhanced the band’s musical reputation far and wide, A La Sala is the measured morning after. It’s a gorgeously airy album made only in the company of the group’s longtime engineer Steve Christensen, with minimal overdubs. It is a porthole onto the bounties powering Khruangbin’s vision, a reimagining and refueling for the long haul ahead. A La Sala scales Khruangbin down to scale up, a creative strategy with the future in mind.

It is also a response to the unique moment Khruangbin finds itself in now: following a decade spent cultivating extraordinary music paths, beginning a year when they'll perform for more people, in more iconic spaces, staging a live show that pushes a creative envelope peculiar to them alone. (Look for the band at major festivals and venues near you.) 2024 feels like both marker and pivot, cementing Khruangbin’s stature as a commercially and critically successful group that continues to be guided by creative possibilities.

Such crossroads are familiar for iconic artists throughout the rock era — your Dylans, Stevies and Bowies, up thru turn-of-the-century Radiohead, all have navigated these straits. On A La Sala, Khruangbin also pulls exploration inward, spurning the din of the crowd’s expectations, mapping a personal direction home. The trio’s collective musical DNA and the years spent constructing it in Houston’s local-meets-global cultural stew ensure the band carries on sounding like no one but itself. A La Sala may in fact be Khruangbin’s purest distillation. A cascade of crisp melodies still emanates from Marko’s reverb-heavy electric, dancing gently around Laura Lee’s minimalist almost-dub bass triangles, while DJ’s drums serve as the tightened-up pocket and unwavering dance-floor on which all this movement takes place.

Where prior album-by-album growth seemed to point the narratives towards music’s polyglot edges, such inquiries now sound like known intimacies. What once seemed like sonic invocations — spaghetti-western film scores, found-sounds, dancing moments more living room than rooftop disco — are ingrained characteristics. This is who they are! And there’s a freshness to the instrumental interactivity on A La Sala that’s less concerned with getting further out than going deeper in. That depth is not about therapeutic self-reflection, but a profound desire to celebrate the world’s external wonders.
A La Sala invites intimate intercontinental partying. The first single is, after all, called “A Love International.” “Pon Pón” holds the band’s table at the West African discotheque; yet the joy now moves to the corner left of the dancefloor, where the back-and-forth between Laura Lee’s bass, DJ’s hi-hat, and Marko’s tuneful rhythm scratches, is a marvel of knowing head-nods. There’s “Hold Me Up (Thank You),” a familial sweetness in its spare lyrics, feeding off the rhythm section’s sturdy funk shuffle, and a chorus on which Marko’s guitar evokes both sides of the Atlantic in confident unshowy rhythms. They’re on “Todavía Viva” too, next to DJ’s noir-soul rim-shots, synth strings and a pregnant pause that is Laura Lee’s favorite moment on the album, the mood kin to the band’s glorious live interpretations of G-funk fantasias. And the rocked-up miniature, “Juegos y Nubes,” demonstrates Khruangbin’s Houston-born superpower to culture-mix, a dancing mood less concerned with worldly glamor than communal grooving.

“I read something long ago, attributed to Miles Davis. He said, ‘When they play fast, you play slow. When they play slow, you play fast.’ And it's definitely how I've approached looking at music: Don't follow the trends. And if the trend is this, then do something else.” - Marko

From the get-go, Khruangbin’s journey has been emphatically its own: a sound and visual representation with few precedents, ignoring pop expectations, relying only on internal inspirations, and a multitude of visions. It’s a mindset of penetrating the self, connecting to the surrounding world, modeling your own life experiences. This ethos is threaded throughout A La Sala, audible in the album’s form and function. (It’s even visible in the vinyl version’s physical package, which will be released as a set of seven distinctive covers and color-sets — more on which in a sec.)

The building blocks for the album’s 12 songs were jigsaw pieces found in Khruangbin’s creative past. Having stockpiled ideas originally set down as off-the-cuff recordings (voice-memos made at sound-checks, on long voyages, as absentminded epiphanies), they began fitting those pieces together in the studio. Which parts were apt? Which could be massaged and stretched out? Which inspired new sections or rhythms or musical interactions? Once more, Khruangbin’s familial DNA kicked in. Layer-by-layer, the intimate work, rework and re-rework bore new fruit. They also brought back a strategy once foundational to their records: seeding an album with field recordings.

Some results fold directly into A La Sala’s down-home feel. “Three From Two” and “May Ninth” are wistful mid-tempo numbers, with guitar melodies that reside somewhere between Bakersfield and by-the-riverside, cues that, for all its borderless inclusivity, another core Khruangbin value is being steeped in American roots. And in the landscape that music comes from. Like all albums prior to Mordechai, Marko made sure environmental sounds — natural and man-made — appeared as textures. (At times philosophically: the group recorded while cricket chirps played in their headphones, presumably for terroir.) It’s how A La Sala achieves such interconnected set-and-setting-ness.

Other results are more metaphorical, especially in Khruangbin’s flirtation with ambient spaces. The dramatically beatless “Farolim de Felgueiras” and “Caja de la Sala” both feature only Marko’s unmistakable guitar dueting with Laura Lee’s Moog, lightly layered with sounds of shoes on stone steps, and cicadas in an open field. The closing “Les Petits Gris” more fully reduces and fleshes out the ambiance, with a piano and a simple single-note bass pattern, Marko’s plaintive spare guitar echoing the melody of a ballerina-turning music box. It feels an apt way of ending — as a passing of this particular moment, preparation for the next one, soon-come.

Even the seven different covers that adorn A La Sala’s various vinyl editions offer a throughline from the music into Khruangbin’s current frame. Designed by the band using Marko’s multitude of travelog photos, they are windows from the band’s living room onto a set of daydreams, scenes of impossible skies, external glances illuminating what is going on inside. These are also directly related to David Black’s images of DJ, Laura Lee and Marko which accompany A La Sala, and to Khruangbin’s live staging reinvention. It’s all about looking out and looking back, in order to better look ahead.

“All the little moments you capture. You don't see how impactful they are until you hear what eventually comes of them. A lot of those scraps end up being the thing — and you don't realize it until it's ‘The Thing.’” - DJ
credits
releases April 5, 2024

Produced by Mark Speer & Steve Christensen
Written, Arranged & Performed by Khruangbin
Art Direction: Tiny Frees
Mixing: Steve Christensen
Mastering: Chris Longwood

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DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More

After a 19-year hiatus, Duster came back with their S/T chef-d'oeuvre in 2019. Recorded in band member Clay Parton's garage (aka Low Earth Orbit), the record bears all the hallmarks of the band's early work: gaunt basslines, spindly guitars, and melancholy lyrics that lurk in the background.
Tracklist
1.1MOON AGE
1.2HEADING FOR THE DOOR
1.3GOLD DUST
1.4TOPICAL SOLUTION
1.5DOCKING THE POD
1.6THE LANDING
1.7CONSTELLATIONS
1.8THE QUEEN OF HEARTS
1.9TWO WAY RADIO
1.10INSIDE OUT
1.11STRATOSPHERE
1.12REED TO HILLSBOROUGH
1.13SHADOWS OF PLANES
1.14EARTH MOON TRANSIT
1.15THE TWINS / ROMANTICA
1.16SIDERIA

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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Tracklist:
1. The Medium
2. Goes By So Fast
3. Magazine (Feat. Salami Rose Joe Louis) https://youtu.be/qSKlCWGaaao
4. Postman https://youtu.be/xI0alDWn2tM
5. THe Loop
6. Last Year
7. Mississippi
8. Clarity (Feat. Sofie)
9. Foreplay
10. Déjà Vu
11. Way Too Hot
12. Millennium (Feat. The Mattson 2)
13. Days In Love

Toro y Moi's seventh studio album, MAHAL, is the boldest and most fascinating journey yet from musical mastermind Chaz Bear. The record spans genre and sound_encompassing the shaggy psychedelic rock of the 1960s and `70s, and the airy sounds of 1990s mod-post-rock_taking listeners on an auditory expedition, as if they're riding in the back of Bear's Filipino jeepney that adorns the album's cover. But MAHAL is also an unmistakably Toro y Moi experience, calling back to previous works while charting a new path forward in a way that only Bear can do. MAHAL is the latest in an accomplished career for Bear, who's undoubtedly one of the decade's most influential musicians. Since the release of the electronic pop landmark Causers of This in 2009, subsequent records as Toro y Moi have repeatedly shifted the idea of what his sound can be. But there's little in Bear's catalog that will prepare you for the deep-groove excursions on MAHAL, his most eclectic record to date. The second the album begins we're immediately transported into the passenger seat, jeep sounds and all, ready for the ride Chaz and company have concocted for us. Seeds of some of MAHAL's 13 songs date back to the more explicitly rock-oriented What For? from 2015. MAHAL was mostly completed last year in Bear's Oakland studio with the involvement of a host of collaborators, Sofie Royer and Unknown Mortal Orchestra's Ruban Neilson to Neon Indian's Alan Palomo and the Mattson 2. "I wanted to make a record that featured more musicians on it than any other record of mine," he explains. "To have them live on that record feels grounded, bringing a communal perspective to the table." As a result, MAHAL is lush and surprising at every turn, from the cool-handed "The Loop," which recalls Sly and the Family Stones, to the elastic psych rock of "Foreplay" and the dizzying Mulatu Astatke-recalling of "Last Year." Lyrically, the album zooms in on generational concerns, picking up where the Outer Peace standout "Freelance" effectively left off. Bear seems to be surveying the ways in which we connect with technology, media, each other, and what disappears as a result. Cuts like the squishy "Postman" and the "Magazine" take a deep dive into our relationship with media in a changing digital world. "It's interesting to see how we adapt to this new age. We're so connected, but we're still missing out on things," Bear ruminates while discussing the album's themes. It's not all introspection. Bear cools things down near the album's end with the Mattson 2-featuring "Millennium," a laid-back jam with tricky guitar licks about ringing in new times even when everything else seems upside down. "It's about enjoying the new year, even when it's been shitty," Bear explains. "There's nothing else to do." Finding a sense of joy in the face of adversity is embedded in MAHAL's DNA, right down to the jeepney that literally and figuratively brings the music out into the community. "We know that touring is messed up for now, and large gatherings are a fluke," he explains. "It's about the notion of us going out to the people and bringing the record to them." And with the wide-open atmosphere of MAHAL, Toro y Moi stands to connect with more listeners than ever before.



Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More