Acclaimed electronic musicians, producers and sound architects Max Cooper and Rob Clouth team up for a new collaborative EP; a dark, playful four-track dive into ambient, breakbeat and techno’s subconscious flow, featuring a standout vocal performance from South London rapper FLOHIO.

Recorded over a series of spontaneous London sessions, “8 Billion Realities” channels years of creative exchange between two of the genre’s most quietly innovative artists and is a result of a decision between the longtime friends to refrain from conceptual overthinking in favour of instinct and joy.

As long-time admirers of each other’s audio/visual work, Cooper and Clouth collaborated in London together after both emerging from intense, idea-heavy album cycles. What followed was a series of exploratory sessions, half-improvised, half-built around half-formed thoughts.

The result is a club-ready EP that feels alive and human: imperfect and hypnotically rich.

“Rob Clouth has been one of my favourite electronic music producers since I first heard his work in 2011,” says Cooper. “His work is more full of ideas and structure than anyone else.” “We were both coming from extensive conceptual studio albums and both in the mood for simplifying things and having some fun with the music, so that’s what we did”.

For Clouth, no stranger to Max Coopers Mesh label having previously released an array of EP’s plus his 2020 debut album “Zero Point” this record marks a new chapter, both creatively and personally.“Something pretty new for me is collaborating,” he says. “You kind of have to when to stop, because if you develop an idea all the way to its endpoint, the other person has nowhere to jump in.”

The first “A Moment Set Aside” began as a break from another idea, a live, unplanned improvisation based around arps and ambience. “The track was written in about as long as it took to play it,” says Cooper. “It was pulled from a 1 hour recording session, more or less as you hear it… the energy and excitement grew as the unplanned moment bore some magic.”

“The lesson being that sometimes it’s helpful to set aside a moment without forcing results, and let the subconscious have something to say.” What followed was darker, heavier. “Asymptote” is detuned techno. Subversive and euphoric in its descent. “We found a sort of brain mangling, half consonant, half wandering detuned techno pulse, which we started chatting about being a sort of pit of spiralling body parts we were falling into,” says Cooper. “It was a lot of fun to work on and let loose with bigger kicks than I usually ever get to unleash.”

Then came “8 Billion Realities”, featuring a standout rap performance from FLOHIO; an emerging figure in the UK grime and rap scene. The track was inspired by conversations about algorithmic echo chambers and hyper-personalised online worlds. Frantic, direct, and South London to the core, FLOHIO brings this tension to life. Her sharp, intense flow cuts through distortion and rhythm, landing the track somewhere between chaos and control instantly making it one of the most striking moments in either artist’s catalogue. “A different reality for all 8 billion of us,” says Cooper. “We weren’t sure if it would work… but there was something about the energy of the percussive idea and the story which felt like it might fit.” “Then FLOHIO had a play with it and straight off the bat absolutely killed it, not just with the lyrics and energy, but the harmonising too, it was a beautiful process.”

The final piece on the EP “Candeleda” originated from Clouth’s solo experiments with a live rig made entirely of vocals and keys, using his self-developed “cheatbox” system. “He put forward a beautiful stumbling melodic sequence which we bounced back and forth adding harmonies and synth layers,” says Cooper. “It rounds off a collection covering some of the breadth of music that we both love.”

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Next up on Mesh is Throwing Snow’s ‘Jackals’, a five-track EP drawing on echoes of UK subcultures.
Written in Ireland late last year with the London 2010s in mind, ‘Jackals’ is Throwing Snow’s love letter to his time spent there, tapping into a detailed web of sounds and styles through a personal lens, but skillfully produced to resonate with many. Locating memories in a transient city that is constantly reconfiguring itself, each track is an attempt at honouring fragments of recent, but seemingly distant, musical history. Taking us from DMZ at Brixton Mass to FWD at Plastic People, or Future Garage Fridays in Soho (IYKYK) to early days of NTS, the EP captures some of the fleeting moments that continue to play a significant part in the city’s sonic patchwork.

Production-wise, all the tracks share the same sounds twisted in different directions. The hats are vocoded with noise and random LFOs, and much like the chaos of London, every bounce has a unique pattern.

Opening track ‘Jackals’ walks the line between dub and UK bass, quickly overtaken by a wonky synth lead that spirals eternally upwards. ‘Ohnein’ jumps in with a massive pad swirling above a half-time step. In Throwing Snow’s own words, ‘I had to check with Martyn whether I'd ripped him off, turns out I hadn't, but it's a heavy head nod crossed with Un Vingt from my first 12"’. ‘A Cloud Mountain’ - a nod to the timeless James Holden remix of Nathan Fake’s ‘The Sky Was Pink’, leans into a maximalist progression of deep chords and fractured synths. ‘Forged’ steps into a weightier space with sparse drums driven forward by a deep cut of bass and twitchy echoes. Rounding things off, ‘Path Dependency’ speeds things up with touches of DnB in the drums, distant echoes in the forefront and the occasional sub wobble holding things together.

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Black Vinyl!

Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?

Over a two year journey, audio-visual artist and electronic innovator Max Cooper has inverted the creative process by collecting hundreds of anonymous quotes, posing deep but open questions such as "What would you like to express which you cannot in everyday life?" and "What is it like to exist inside your head?"

The goal: to understand what it is truly like to be human right now. The result: his new album On Being, to be released in February 2025 with the first single "Sun In A Box" coming this September 4th.

With On Being, Cooper aimed to probe under the synthetic surface of social media to "create a snapshot of our minds these days," as he puts it by asking people to share anonymously what they dare not ever say publicly. The result is an emotionally raw and shockingly honest kaleidoscope of confessions, ranging from suicide contemplations to miserable marriages to simple pure loneliness, contrasting with hundreds of anonymous confessions of love and longing.

"I was interested in the way I interact with people for my writing process, which usually involves a one-way communication of feelings and ideas that I later find out whether they resonate with others or not," says Cooper.

"With this I could start instead with people's thoughts and feelings, what resonates for them, and make my own interpretations of those musically and visually, and then send those back out to everyone. It's more of a collaborative approach to making an album, and more intense."

Grief, hope, regret, joy, hurt and love form the basis for each track, taking Cooper's ever-evolving creative process in a completely new direction - with profoundly intense results.

"Rendering the experience of being is at the core of what I do musically - but I hadn't realised the impact that other people's words on being would have on me until I started reading the database of thoughts," he says.

"It was like finding a secret window into everyone's minds, and discovering amongst the chaos, pleasure and pain, the experiences that we all share at different times of our lives, and overwhelming emotions and connections that call out to be explored."

Despite what we see in the maelstrom of rage in the echo chambers of society ‘On Being’ reveals that humans still have an innate need to trust one another and express communal generosity - more easily done from the safety of an anonymous portal.

"The quotes carried so much weight for me - I interpreted them with my usual musical tools, but as you can hear in the music, everything got more extreme as I dove into the depths of what everyone had to say later in the record," says Cooper.

The result is a unique work of art that demonstrates unequivocally not only the power of using music without words to express emotions, but the power of words to express what seemed to be inexpressible.

On Being will continue to evolve as Cooper gathers more confessions to feed into this ecosystem of emotions and to create a new range of art projects and other accompanying works which hopefully will speak truthfully to humanity today - and of who we are and who we can become.

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Following on from his Mesh debut Jinjé returns with Escape from Luna, a four-track EP expanding further on the infinite sonic worlds of his solo production work.

Lead single and opening track ‘BBLO’ launches with a voyage into detailed textural layers, gliding through microscopic ambient-leaning compositions before dropping into a weighty electronic beat with touches of electro and dub.

As a founding member of the Leeds-based experimental band Vessels - an act acclaimed for their ability to defy categorisation - Lee Malcolm is no stranger to breaking the boundaries of genre. With his solo project, Jinjé, he delves into atypical sonic wanderings that navigate between acoustic and electronic, synthetic and organic, employing a learned ear for the fusion of seemingly disparate elements. For this latest release on Mesh, he hones in on these moments of coalescence, fusing various stylistic pieces together with an infectious sense of optimism and an open mind.

Jinjé steers his work across various genres not out of a desire to be referential, but out of a necessity to explore the peculiar spaces that sit between. Implementing this approach with a great understanding of musical production and spatial composition, ‘Escape from Luna’ stands as a crucial documentation of his craft.

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Orange Vinyl!

Following on from his Mesh debut Jinjé returns with Escape from Luna, a four-track EP expanding further on the infinite sonic worlds of his solo production work.

Lead single and opening track ‘BBLO’ launches with a voyage into detailed textural layers, gliding through microscopic ambient-leaning compositions before dropping into a weighty electronic beat with touches of electro and dub.

As a founding member of the Leeds-based experimental band Vessels - an act acclaimed for their ability to defy categorisation - Lee Malcolm is no stranger to breaking the boundaries of genre. With his solo project, Jinjé, he delves into atypical sonic wanderings that navigate between acoustic and electronic, synthetic and organic, employing a learned ear for the fusion of seemingly disparate elements. For this latest release on Mesh, he hones in on these moments of coalescence, fusing various stylistic pieces together with an infectious sense of optimism and an open mind.

Jinjé steers his work across various genres not out of a desire to be referential, but out of a necessity to explore the peculiar spaces that sit between. Implementing this approach with a great understanding of musical production and spatial composition, ‘Escape from Luna’ stands as a crucial documentation of his craft.

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Acclaimed musician, sound designer and creative Max Cooper announces his first new music of 2023.

As he continues to cut a unique and noteworthy path, the intensely explorative Motif EP see’s the London based audio-visual artist breathe impressive life in multiple directions, and requests our own imagination to see the full picture.

Released on his own Mesh platform, Motif EP is composed by a producer capable of dismantling genres to render them brighter, bolder and ultimately more personal, demonstrating the rich purity of his craft and how his music can be expressed as both a flagrant and elegant listening experience at once.

The first single "Vertebrae / Forgotten Places” featuring Australian singer/songwriter Kathrin deBoer, also known for fronting electro-soul outfit Belleruche demonstrating remarkable control and detail in her haunting voice set amidst a transfixing blend of glitchy electronica and uncompromising drum and bass.

While the presence of integrated thinking around releasing music has long distinguished Max Cooper, it is the notion of performance and entertainment grafted into his style which really admits Max to charge into new territory.

A collection of his influences and a set of motifs from a life in electronic music, Motif EP is equipped with purpose and emotional intimacy. Far from a dark moment of introspection but a diverse collection of audio-visual ideas, each playing a particular role in his live shows which traverse all of his musical passions combined with being alive at this time; immersed in shared history and experience.

Six impressively contemplative and powerful songs that oscillate between Max’s calm, heartfelt reminiscences and youthful remnants of 90’s rave, and a playful precision of dancefloor spirit as he incorporates the sounds of breakbeat, drum and bass and techno.

Reassuringly direct and familiar, fans will recognise signature sound motifs from over a decade of producing, performing and DJing. But more distinctively, Cooper seems disinterested in solely capturing the present and is more concerned with investigating his music's history and investing in crafting its future.

“The mixture of genres on this record might make more sense looking at my life in electronic music. Beginning in the 90’s with an upbringing on classic synth pop and classical music, then my first tape “Prodigy Experience”, and first night out at their Breathe Tour ahead of a delve deep into the Trance, Techno and remnants of Rave of the late 90’s in Northern Ireland and Ibiza. I then moved to Nottingham in ‘99 and went to my first Drum and Bass night at the Marcus Garvey Ballroom, after which I started integrating those records into my collection”
Max Cooper

Playing on the idea of motifs, the cover art was created by Mykola Haleta and features the graphic artist's distinctive textile patterning design.

There is a fresh utilitarian layer to the new EP as it experiments with the interplay between rolled melodies that form a loose web of pensive sound around a more aggressive club-driven production and performance-led frequencies.

Whether serving as an empathetic foil to his new immersive 3D/AV shows or a reinterpretation of his own musical education, Max Cooper’s bold electronic compositions feel excited and increasingly like part of a longer, more timeless story.

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This was pressed using recycled pellets so each colour is different. We've no way of telling you what colour you'll get :)

Introspective, engaging, electronic music exploring the concept of “unfinished” in relation to oneself, art, architecture and surroundings; ‘No One Really Listens To Oscillators’ is the gloriously titled new album by Indian Wells, the project of producer Pietro Iannuzzi from southern Italy. Announced today, along with new single ‘Calabrian Woods’, the nine track album is set for release on 15th July 2022 on Max Cooper’s Mesh imprint.

The album’s initial conceptual input came from an article in The New York Times referencing a new conceptual architectural style. The term “Incompiuto” (Unfinished) which was theorized by Alterazioni Video & Fosbury Architecture and concerned unfinished works that reveal the inability of projects to make infrastructures useful and sustainable for the community.

“The head of this article was a photo of an escalator in the middle of nowhere in Calabria, where I live,” explains Pietro. “I knew this escalator very well and I immediately realized that my perception of this "reality" could be really different from people who have never lived in this area. It can be said that I grew up in the unfinished - between unfinished houses and other half-built works that are now an integral part of the landscape, without really noticing. In reality, our experience is influenced by everything that surrounds us and this context shapes us to make us live a distorted reality, which we very quickly get used to.”

“Before I started to create this album, I cleared my mind,” says Pietro. “I went back to when I fell in love with electronic music and listened to Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac, Warp artists like Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin, Border Community, William Basinski, Massive Attack. I felt my last album was unfinished, and realised something had to change in my music.”

Indian Wells’ last album, 2017’s warmly received ‘Where The World Ends’, was supported by an array of tastemaker press (“Soaring euphoria” Mixmag Top 50 Albums of 2017, “Tender, pulsing techno” Resident Advisor, “A standout cut in the realm of emotive techno” XLR8R, “Techno with an artful, emotive edge” Clash, “A refreshing vision of club music” Electronic Sound, "The album simply glows" A Closer Listen) and standout track ‘Cascades’ received plays across BBC Radio (Gideon Coe, Huw Stephens, Jamz Supernova, Pete Tong, Phil Taggart, Tom Ravenscroft).

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Respected producer, DJ and sound designer Alex Banks presents his third studio album ‘Projections’, returning to Max Cooper’s Mesh imprint.

The work follows up critically acclaimed releases on Modeselektor’s Monkeytown, Ninja Tune, where he remixed Bonobo, and his sublime sophomore album ‘Beneath the Surface’ from 2019. Produced in his studio in Brighton, UK, the album is an immersive nine-track masterstroke covering the gamut of electronica, techno, breakbeat, bass and IDM, fit for clubs and home-listening alike.

The project was born in the early stages of 2021. With little outside stimulation to draw inspiration from, Banks invested in new gear including a Moog Matriarch, DFAM and a host of Eurorack Modules - and set about immersing himself in the possibilities of his new semi-modular synths.

In terms of sonic reference points, he found himself in new territory, too. “Usually going to a club night, or concert, or even the simple things in life that you take for granted all feed into a melting pot of things that inspire me to create. But without these, I instead found myself drawing on memories of experiences, and imagining new ones for the future to come. I began to feel like these were projections, almost like memories of experiences I had been projecting via the music I was creating,” he shares, adding that memories of clubbing trips to Berlin, London and Brighton fuelled his vision for the album.

Furthermore, the seclusion we collectively experienced allowed Banks to philosophise on the nature of human connection, which fed into the album concept: “I started to think about how during our period of relative isolation, we are all projecting into the digital ether, searching for a connection in an increasingly virtual world where shared human contact and experiences have become scarce.”

In ‘Projections,’ Banks creates an immersive world to get lost in, typified by the ambient opener, ‘Transitions’, where he builds up a dreamy ocean of sound. ‘Into the Realm’ sees the artist set the scene for the off-kilter album landscape to follow, as modulated synth patterns ricochet throughout. First single ‘A Way Out’, due out 6 April, takes us onto the dancefloor, a foot in breaks and techno alike, flanked by his signature pads and intermittent synth melodies that radiate a sense of melancholic optimism. The track is complimented by a striking video clip by award-winning motion graphics designer Matthew Clugston who has translated its contrasting moods into a brilliant juxtaposition between artificial and natural life cycles.

Made during a four-day period where Banks locked himself away in his studio, ‘Introspective’ conveys the uneasiness of its creator and is his most intense production to date, as a soaring wall of sound drops down into an exhilarating gabber finish. Elsewhere another notable includes the big rolling electro-edged techno cut ‘Recall Mindset’, as Banks channels the feeling of being back on a Berlin dancefloor. ‘Before the End’ is similarly brilliant, swinging between bass and IDM and features vocals from a demo by his wife Maya Wolff, which were chopped, re-pitched and layered with FX.

Banks will be touring the album this summer with a new A/V experience featuring stunning audio reactive visuals and a custom- built pyramid light structure. Performing with Ableton and a selection of the analogue gear he used to create the LP, he will rework the tracks to create a unique experience with every show.

Tracklist:

A1. Transition
A2. Into the Realm
A3. A Way Out
B1. Introspective
B2. Recall Mindset
C1. What We Have
C2. Before the End
D1. Resonate
D2. Stratosphere

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MAX COOPER announces new album Unspoken Words, released 25th March on Mesh. Today he shares lead single "Everything" and its accompanying video.

"Everything" is an excitable expression of freedom and joy, an explosion of colour referencing classic synth sounds from Max Cooper’s formative years and the golden era of idealism in music and popular culture of the '80 and '90s.

“I love feeling that anything is possible. It feels like I’m bursting and need to find some expression," says Cooper. "The synths seemed to carry the hope of everything I could imagine, condensed into the simple chord progression, improvised pads and layers of distortion. It was a lot of fun to work with, and spending time in that creative mindset generated lots of ideas which could be shot down later under less manic conditions.”

As an audio-visual artist, Cooper often goes to the medium of video to enhance his music and the ideas and stories which inspire and inform his work. "Everything" is one of 13 short films combined into Unspoken Words and the metanarrative which will be released as a film on Blu-ray to accompany the album on 25th March.

Cooper developed the visual story for ‘Everything’ with long term collaborator Nick Cobby and photographer Andrey Prokhorov, who has a huge library of imagery from around the world.

About Unspoken Words

“I’ve always struggled with words.

"Trying to communicate anything meaningful about my internal state, in any way which seems to do it justice, has always been beyond me.

"But music bypasses language. It is my means of expression, which is why I make a lot of it - I’m compelled to create.”

- Max Cooper, January 2022

Unspoken Words is Max Cooper’s most revealing work to date, leading the listener through experiences of escapism and connection with personal stories of reflection, acceptance, grappling, idealism and rejection.

The raw expression of Cooper’s own mental state illuminates the universal experience of being human. Unspoken Words offers common ground, a unifying space for anyone who faces internal discordance and feels the need for greater connection and greater expression.

Speaking about the process of writing Unspoken Words, Max continued: “I find existing inside my mind to be a sometimes beautiful, sometimes intense, sometimes abrasive, messy, baffling, relentless experience, and I’ve tried to put as much of that feeling and form as I could into the album.”

The deftly mixed audio is accompanied by a visual story which unfolds through 13 short films by a range of visual artists commissioned and directed by Max Cooper, and mixed in Dolby Atmos surround sound.

Unspoken Words will be released on Mesh on 25th March on Blu-Ray + CD, vinyl and digital.

Tracklist:
A1. Unspoken Words
A2. Inanimate to Animate feat. Kotomi
A3. A Model of Reality feat. Kotomi
B1. Ascent
B2. Spectrum
B3. Symphony in Acid
C1. Pulse at the Centre of Being
C2. Exotic Contents
C3. Broken Machines Broken Dreams
D1. Small Window on the Cosmos
D2. Everything
D3. Solace in Structure
D4. Stream of Thought

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Constructed from a library of sounds collected by the artist in the rainforests of Borneo, Llyr’s debut album is an expansive documentation of natural beauty and human interference. Out July 29th on Max Cooper’s Mesh imprint, it is the first full-length album from the Berlin resident.

The result of painstakingly manipulating these recordings via a multitude of cutting edge production techniques, Biome is an expression of precarity and beauty. It invites the listener to be enveloped by Llyr’s augmented reality rendering of the tropical rainforest, one of the Earth’s most biodiverse and iconic biomes, and encourages them to consider our impact on the natural world.

Split into two sections - Pre-Anthropocene and Anthropocene - Biome tells its story with vast sonic ecosystems of molecular detail. Opening to the sounds of bird call, faint monkey hollers and the gentle crackling of mist-enshrouded trees, the album sets its tone with an archetypal impression of the jungle; one of instant familiarity. This is then expanded on across eight tracks, with the first four offering an abstract meditation on the marvels of nature, and the remainder of the album presenting a sonic vision of human interference - more chaotic and complicated than before.

Llyr’s recordings include signifiers of human presence left untouched as an integral part of the story, with natural phenomena manifesting in different ways on each track. The resulting creations are a testament to the inherent musicality of the natural world. ‘Courtship Signal’ uses a recording of frogs singing in Kubah National Park to map out the rhythms and pitches of its composition, reconstructing an exact structural replica of these mating calls before manipulating and recomposing. Elsewhere, ‘The Hawthorne Effect’ captures a swarm of insects engaging in a rare mating ritual, sampling both a collective hum and individual percussive moments to build an entire library of sound. Similarly, ‘Winged Chamber Music’ carves out a majestic sonic cave using recordings of water dripping and the chattering of bats pitched down to human hearing range. Having engaged wholeheartedly with these moments as they occurred, Llyr extracts themes and motifs with a sincere respect for their origins.

The first section is made in its entirety from Llyr’s own rainforest recordings with no use of drum machines, synths or samples. The recordings feature at every possible scale from macro to micro: unmodified binaural field recordings set the scene; granulated layers add pseudo-synthetic textural atmosphere; iteratively processed one-shots provide punctuation; and carefully designed custom instruments, forged from short fragments and cycles, express harmony and rhythm. The second half, heralding the arrival of humans, relaxes the rule book and a smattering of synthetic elements enter the fray to maximise visceral impact.

The resulting work is a debut album that considers extensive themes by weaving these rare recordings into a remarkably coherent sonic blueprint. Biome resonates as both an affecting listening experience and a thematic exploration of the changing world we inhabit.

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Repress soon!

As mood changers go, this track is up there with the best. Last year whilst DJing with miche at Shapes festival in the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, a breathtaking yet ominous Alpine sky suddenly became a picture postcard moment. The clouds parted and a double rainbow formed, as miche dropped Studio Rio's bossa nova remake of Bill Withers’ all-time classic 'Lovely Day'. From there, the dancefloor shifted gears and morphed into full-swing feel-good vibes, in a beautiful, spontaneous moment nobody could have planned for.

Mr Bongo now proudly presents a reissue of this brilliant, bossa-channelling Bill Withers reinterpretation from Studio Rio’s 2014 release ‘The Brazil Connection’. Masterminded by the German, Grammy award-winning Berman Brothers, the project was born out of their deep love of Brazilian music. “Our goal was to bring the Brazilian joie de vivre to iconic performances by well-known artists. What would these classic songs sound like had they been recorded in the studios of Rio de Janeiro in the first place, with the best Brazilian musicians and arrangers?” the brothers reflect.

Capturing the life force of Brazil, the beating heart that is its music, they set out to find the musicians who would fit best with their concept. Landing in Rio in 2013 a series of coincidences led to them being introduced to their idols Marcos Valle and Roberto Menescal, who both agreed to come on board. The Berman Brothers also wanted to find some of the musicians who recorded with one of Brazil’s most influential composers Tom Jobim. “Fifty years after Jobim made the music that really defines bossa nova, we found that many of his sidemen were still active, including Paulo Braga of Jobim’s famed rhythm section. It was magic; everything just fell into place.”

There's no question that the original of ‘Lovely Day’ is up there as one of the most feel-good, spirit-lifting anthems of all time. Here the brothers, with the help of a whole host of Brazil’s finest musicians, rework Bill’s soul-fuelled groove into a bossa nova slice of sunshine. With the blessing of Bill and Sony, they were given access to the original multitracks so they could incorporate Bill’s vocals perfectly into the new arrangement.

Joy-injected horns and bouncing double bass blend with the smile-inducing samba flavour of Pretinho da Serrinha’s cavaquinho playing. Tying it all together Torcuato Marinao who worked with the likes of Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, completes the line-up as arranger of the songs.

The perfect end-of-the-night track, mood lifter or soul warmer, remakes don’t get much better than this.

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Repress!

The core duo of Max D and Matt Papich debut on Peak Oil following full-lengths for Future Times and PAN with a fresh suite of tactile, diffuse fusion. Half the collection emerged from a 2021 session at Tempo House rounded out by Dustin Wong, Mezey, and Jeremy Hyman, while the rest took shape in moments both collaborative and isolated, collaged together with CDJs into something more liquid and liminal than the sum of its parts.

Across fractured jazz, pitch-shifted downtempo, revelatory guitar, and interstitial interplay, Lifted’s sound is one of flux, fragments, and filigree. Oblique harmonic synergies dusted in chance encounters and rogue acoustics. Diverse moods mapped with split strings and the space between notes. Music untethered by form or expectation, snaking like an ungrounded cable through a geodesic dome of deep-listening.

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New York-based Patrick Sullivan AKA P-Sol has a terrific track record when it comes to refined re-edits and classy, sample-rich mash-ups. Even so, his latest effort, delivered on a tidy and must-check seven-inch, is particularly potent. On the A-side, he takes us into immersive, seductive and ultra-deep territory via the mid-tempo house headiness of 'Everybody' - a kind of 'quiet storm goes deep house' affair featuring warming electric piano chords, heady bass and selected vocal samples from a soulful classic. On 'Walk Away', he provides a warming, percussion-rich new take on R&B classic 'Don't Walk Away', adding her familiar vocals to a head-nodding instrumental full of mazy solos, rubbery bass guitar and handclap-heavy beats.

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DJ Support: Andy Votel, Nemone (BBC Radio 6), Andy Bell, The Quietus and more

The sweet hum from the vampire wood returns as Five Green Moons make another orbit. Ritual incantations and Dubwise vibrations are fused with angular guitars and skittering basement electronics to form a new entity. Moon 2.

Justin Robertson's second outing as Five Green Moons is a fusion of influences. The presence of occult mystery can be felt in the chants and vocal motifs, there lurks a manifestation of elastic post punk in the zigzag echo further enhanced by the appearance of Brix Smith, former high priestess of the Fall on two tracks. One could draw comparisons with P.I.L, Holy Tongue, the hauntological sound of Current 93, the trippy off kilter hypnotism of Brown Rice era Don Cherry, and of course the solid foundations of Dub. The bass is heavy, the sound spacious. This is a new form of pastoral dub!

Pressed on Limited Green Vinyl.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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Joaquin Joe Claussell Presents the Second Installment of His Acclaimed Alias: BlackSalsoul
Brooklyn, New York City - Renowned producer, DJ, and spiritual music visionary Joaquin Joe Claussell returns with the second chapter of his celebrated alias, BlackSalsoul. Continuing his lifelong exploration of deep, soulful soundscapes, this latest release focuses on edits and reinterpretations across Spiritual Jazz, Soulful Disco, and African Dance traditions.
Following the success of the debut 7" (Cat# CIRCUIT.7), which sold out within weeks and remains a one-time pressing despite overwhelming demand, the BlackSalsoul series reaffirms its commitment to exclusivity. Each edition will be available strictly on limited 7" and 12" vinyl-a tribute to the physicality and ritual of true record culture.
Blending the warmth of analog production with Claussell's signature spiritual energy, this release bridges eras and continents-honoring the roots of soulful expression while speaking directly to today's dance floors.
For fans of Fusion Jazz, Soulful Disco, and Afro-inspired Edits, the new BlackSalsoul record offers another essential journey through rhythm, emotion, and transcendence.


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Tracklisting
A1 Temudo - The Rhythm Track
A2 Ricardo Garduna - Groove Bender
B1 Casual Treatment - Prometheus
B2 Fresko - Vamp

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Los Angeles-based producer and DJ Captain Planet returns with his sixth full-length album, DIG—a high-energy project that channels the global spirit of his world-renowned DJ sets. Having lit up clubs and festivals across Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and the U.S., Captain Planet is celebrated for his ability to fuse Afro, Latin, and Caribbean traditions with hip-hop, dancehall, and electronic funk. With over two decades of experience, he delivers a sound that is as eclectic as it is unifying, built to move dance floors worldwide. DIG brings together vocalists from Brazil, Colombia, Haiti, Nigeria, Ghana, and Angola, weaving their traditions into bass-heavy, drum-driven tracks with infectious energy. Standout single Tony's House—a rework of Afrobeat legend Tony Allen's "Afrodisco Beat"—is already earning heavy festival play from top DJs around the globe. The record also showcases Captain Planet's versatility, from the nature-infused textures of "Thirst No More" to the soulful "Mi Calor" with longtime collaborator Chico Mann. Backed by international press coverage (The Fader, Complex, Bandcamp), strong radio support (BBC, NPR, KCRW), and chart-topping past releases, DIG cements Captain Planet's reputation as a boundary-pushing producer bringing global sounds to the modern dance floor.

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LTD. White Vinyl

Khruangbin did not know if they were actually making an album. All they knew in the first frigid days of 2025, as they shivered in the Central Texas barn where they’ve recorded almost all of their music, was that the 10th anniversary of their debut, The Universe Smiles Upon You, was steadily approaching. Months earlier, they’d bandied about ways to mark the occasion, debating orchestral arrangements or compendiums of bonus materials and alternate takes. Thing was, back before Khruangbin helped establish a new modern idiom of semi-instrumental and gently psychedelic American music, there had been no bonus material, no unused songs. And how interesting would alternate takes or symphonic extravagance really be for a band whose aesthetic—essential vibes, infinite grooves, riffs that rippled across the horizon—seemed so direct and pure, anyway? What if, they had instead wondered, they went back to the barn where it all began and recut the record that had started it all, on the actual 10th anniversary of those sessions? They decided, at least, to try.

It did not take long for Laura Lee, Mark Speer, and DJ Johnson to know that the idea was indeed a good one, that in holding up a mirror shaped by the past 10 years to their formative set of songs they could feel and hear how they had changed as people and players. The result is The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, 10 entirely new renditions of the songs from Khruangbin’s oldest album, played and sequenced in a way that works for them now without being strictly allegiant to who they were then. Watchful eyes, for instance, will notice that “Bin Bin ii”, a bonus track back in 2015, has moved toward this album’s center. More importantly, attentive ears will hear how liberated Khruangbin sound from any expectations rendered by their own success, how this is once again the sound of three longtime friends deciding how this material might move in real time.

The barn is an essential piece of Khruangbin lore. In 2009, many years before Khruangbin’s early singles started to shape their course or even before they were really a band, they began to head to the barn, bought by Speer’s parents in the ’80s on a modest cattle farm midway between Houston and Austin. They’d been looking for a place to rehearse in Houston when Speer’s parents volunteered the spot and the small house next door—three bedrooms downstairs, dorm-style bunks above, a century-old stove in a small kitchen. The process was so consummately D.I.Y. that, when they convened there in January 2015 to make what would become The Universe Smiles Upon You, Speer and Lee rushed to remove a nest of bees by playing bass and smashing cymbals loudly before Johnson (famously not into bees, mind you) arrived. They made the record for $1,500.

This time around, Khruangbin decided to try a few functional updates. They finally ripped out the plywood dancefloor that had been installed for a wedding nearly two decades earlier but had since become something of a sanctuary for critters that would inevitably destroy any gear left behind. They rented a new floor, then bought silent new space heaters and boxes of hand warmers that they’d stuff into gloves during sessions. The first day was Central Texas paradise—T-shirts in January, the sun shining as they set up their instruments, ran cables, and even recorded the seven-minute version of “Two Fish and an Elephant” that appears here, the rhythm that Lee and Johnson built offering a welcoming group hug for Speer’s flickering lead. But then the cold set in, a cold so gripping that they stuffed bits of construction flotsam into every crack and crevice they could find inside the barn. They moved closer and closer as the four days progressed, as if trying to absorb one another’s radiant heat.

Perhaps, then, that’s why The Universe Smiles Upon You ii feels so warm, as if they were tending a fire simply by playing together. Early into “August Twelve ii,” Johnson watched an eastern meadowlark sing just outside the barn, its song picked up by the microphones. It wasn’t their favorite performance, but they knew it captured the magic of the time and place, the yellow beauty’s melody calling these six gorgeous minutes to order. They are likewise jubilant during this very extended take on “People Everywhere (Still Alive),” applying the lessons about pace, momentum, and dynamics they’ve learned during a decade on the road to start and sustain this dance party. It is an immaculate map of the moment.

Funnily enough, while on tour with this electric trio during the last several years, Speer became fascinated with early European instruments that could sound full without being loud—the viol de gamba, for instance, or the clavichord. He imported that enthusiasm into these sessions, not only often playing acoustic guitar alongside Lee’s hollow-body Höfner bass and Johnson’s brushed drums but also covering instruments in contact mics, so that they sounded close and real. You can hear that pursuit clearly on “White Gloves ii,” a song that has become such a Khruangbin staple they initially struggled with how to remake it here. When Johnson suggested it become “country disco,” though, the track suddenly unlocked. A rural-funk canter buttresses the bittersweet vocals and twilit guitars; the recording makes it feel as if you’re sitting in the center of the barn, head pressed between the bass amp and bass drum as Khruangbin drift away.

In many ways, The Universe Smiles Upon You ii represents the close of Khruangbin’s first chapter, the complete culmination of the music they made when they arrived at the barn in January 2015. During the last decade, they have reached an apotheosis of sorts, their love of Thai pop and heavy dub and American soul and Ethiopian haze perfectly crystallized in a string of splendid records and live shows that have hypnotized massive theaters and festival crowds alike. They’ve repeatedly sold out the United States’ most famous venues, from Red Rocks and Forest Hills to the Hollywood Bowl and Radio City, and they’ve crowned festivals from Glastonbury to Bonnaroo. Paul McCartney plucked them to reimagine one of his songs, while they’ve collaborated with Mali legend and band inspiration Vieux Farka Touré to honor his late father on 2022’s Ali. After more than a decade of relentless touring and recording, their expertly polyglot 2024 album, A LA SALA, helped earn a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. Not bad for a band that recorded its debut in a barn of bees and mice for a grand or so.

So, then, what is next? The Universe Smiles Upon You ii provides a point of pause for Khruangbin, a chance to step back from a sound they now know so well and figure out where it may go from here. They talk about woodshedding, about spending a few hours every day with their instruments to see what new shapes they can make. Khruangbin’s splendid next run, then, begins where the first one did, too—in the barn, finding their way into the world through the songs of The Universe Smiles Upon You, second time even more absorbing than the first.

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