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LP FORMAT DETAILS: 2LP Black Vinyl in gatefold packaging.

TRACKLISTING:
A1. Two Doors featuring Joy Morgan
A2. Hypnotised featuring Mel Uye-Parker
A3. Might As Well Be Magical featuring Allie Armstrong
B1. Chain Reaction featuring Bianca Rose
B2. Fantasy featuring Verushka
B3. The Impossible featuring allie Armstrong
B4. Unrestorable featuring Siân Roseanna
C1. Tell Me A Secret featuring Siân Roseanna
C2. The Slip
C3. The Horror featuring Allie Armstrong
C4. The Way featuring Y’akoto
D1. Be Young featuring Daisy Godfrey
D2. Gold Dust featuring Bianca Rose
D3. Let Me Sleep featuring Bianca Rose

OVERVIEW:
Musca is the next in the series of domestic house albums to follow the groundbreaking LP classics? Around The House (1998), and Bodily Functions (2001).

2021 is proving to be a bumper year for Herbert fans who can also look forward to a package of very special 12” remixes later this summer and the premiere of 10-years-in-the-making-documentary, Symphony of Noise, about his work with sound.

After the wide expanse of his last big band album The State Between Us made with more than 1000 musicians and singers across Europe, this album instead is inward looking. Born of both intimacy and collaboration, features eight singers, Verushka, Siân Roseanna, Allie Armstrong,? Bianca Rose, Melissa Uye-Parker, Daisy Godfrey, Y’akoto and Joy Morgan - all of whom Matthew has never worked with before or met face to face. It also features musicians Nick Ramm, Tom Herbert, Tom Skinner, Finn Peters, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian and Leo Taylor, who, like the singers, all self-recorded and in isolation from each other.

Matthew says: “Like presumably many other albums made during the last year, Musca reflects on navigating the challenges and joys of our most intimate relationships whilst the world is in turmoil. Not just with Covid, but with the rise in state and political violence, facebook-friendly fascism, white supremacy and a climate in crisis.”

Matthew has talked about the need to retreat to an earlier, more familiar way of creating music as a form of solace during an unstable year. Having completed his PhD last year about the ethics of composing with sound and with his next experimental project based on more than one billion sounds, Musca is a moment of introspection, a pause. The album takes its name from musca -? the genus part of the latin name for a housefly and includes a variety of sounds from around the farm where he lives, including a synth made from his wife’s dog, one of his pig’s snoring and fox cubs gekkering.

Matthew continues, “The week last year when I wrote most of these songs seems like another era altogether. I have no idea how they will sound a year later now the context has changed so markedly. The optimist in me wants to leap forwards, vaccinated into the sunshine brandishing the NHS logo, but the realist in me is aghast at the wave of death unleashed upon this country by an incompetent and corrupt government. The record probably has ended up with both of those things however - optimism that an alternative way of organising ourselves is possible and anger and gloom that we’re not there yet.”

The 13 track album has been mixed by Matthew and mastered by long term collaborator and Grammy winning engineer, Mandy Parnell (Björk, Brian Eno and Aphex Twin). The artwork is by Sarah Hopper who has done nearly all the artwork for Matthew’s house music output for 25 years.

2021 also sees the release of a special documentary by Enrique Sanchez Lansch about Matthew and listening. Entitled A Symphony Of Noise, the film follows Matthew through 20 or so of his projects as an electronic musician, artist and sound activist over 10 years. The film was produced by Kloos and co and distributed by Rise and Shine Cinema. You can watch the trailer here

A Symphony Of Noise screening dates:
28th May - Premier, Poland
15th August - Premier, Berlin & Hamburg, Q & A’s with Matthew Herbert
2nd September - General Release in Germany Date in Autumn
TBC - Premier, London

Matthew Herbert is a widely acclaimed composer, producer and writer based next to the marshes of East Kent. His most recent album, The State Between Us was a collaboration across borders between 1000 musicians as part of the Brexit Big Band (2019), prior to that he released an album that was a book - the Music (A Novel Through Sound) published in 2018. Before that, A Nude soundtracked 24 hours of human activity through recordings of a single body. Matthew wrote the score for the Oscar-winning Chilean film A Fantastic Woman, the Academy Award nominated documentary The Cave, recent Julianne Moore film Gloria Bell and the acclaimed West End play People, Places and Things. More

Forever ahead of the curve, Matthew Herbert dropped this 3 track EP on Classic all the way back in 1996 and every track featured sounds like it could easily have been released yesterday. Such is the genius of Herbert, always managing to be one step ahead of most other producers, whether it's producing slamming house like 'You got to be moving', rolling emotive electronics like 'Fat king fire' or subtle, shifting percussion confusing jams like 'Housewife' all of his tracks retain this fresh energy that can't be pigeon holed. 'Classic Herbert' is exactly that, a 3 tracker that defies genre, celebrates the eclecticism of it's producer and still manages to be slamming (& classic) in the process! Essential stuff! This EP has always been tough to track down, proving to be a very sought after gem in the vinyl digging world. A repress was definitely needed!
'Classic Herbert' has been legitimately re-released with the full involvement of Matthew Herbert for 2017 and remastered from the original sources specially for Mint Condition. 100% legit, licensed and released. Dug, remastered, repackaged and brought to you by the caring folks at your new favourite reissue label - Mint Condition! More

Including limited silk screen artwork. Reissue of this 20y old timeless classic with new Linkwood remix on the b-side.

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Ultra raw analoque and soulful Detroit techno tracks from an old Warp head now operating under his new Raza alias. Essential! More

**Clear Vinyl** Styrax mix classic House and Techno from Mono Junk and Pub with new gear from Ryo Murakami and CBC. It seems Mono Junk's
seminal 'Channel B' has been reissued a few times now but we're not complaining as the more dancefloors who hear it, the better! It appears
on the A-side here next to the effervescent electronica of CBC's 'Promised Land', while B-side features the tingling, delayed gratification of Pub's 'Lick' from 2000 and a svelte, beatdown Dub House number from Ryo Murakami.
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**Clear Vinyl** Styrax balance Ross 154 and Claro Intellecto's classic House and Techno with up-to-date offerings from Damon Lamar and Lowtec.
Classic is definitely an over-used phrase these days but there's no better word to describe Ross 154's heart-melting 'Daze', which last appeared on the CD of his 'Strike' album, and equally Claro Intellecto's magical 'Signifier' taken from the legendary 'Peace Of Mind EP'. Similarly timeless, the deep house groove of 'Rising Sun' from Tetrode music's Damon Lasar, and the discreet vibes of Lowtec's 'Dat America' taken from his 1999 EP on Playhouse.
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**Clear Vinyl** Hot on the heels of his lovely 12" for MOM, Synkro serves three tracks of lush ambient Techno electronics for Styrax. 'Presence' suffuses the A-side with a blissed-out 4/4 roller buoyed by convective Reese bass and kissed by convective, effervescent atmospheres to sooth yer bonce. Flipside, the beatless 'Question' appears shades away from the 4th world cyber-jungle ambience of the recent Oneohtrix Point Never album, swooning to the sounds of simulated fauna and beautiful, widescreen synth pads. 'Memory' completes the set with with a tantalising 2-step reduction, all flickering, mercurial syncopation and plangent keys reminding of John Beltran. More

John Beltran was responsible for some of the greatest ambient techno records of the 1990s, and despite falling into near-obscurity for much of the 00s, his place in the canon has recently been secured thanks to reissues on Styrax and Millions of Moments. Here and now, 3 new ambient electronica tracks from John Beltran. Beautifully produced, generously melodic work of one of techno's unsung heroes. More

Two Classic Detroit / Techno tracks from Kenny Larkin & G-Man. With new mastering in 2011. More

Dubby deep doublepack for maximum melancholic space pleasure by the man with the big tattoos. Beautiful. More

A classic is announced ! JS (James Zeiter) tracks (JS-04 was never released) from 1997/98 in new and unreleased reworks.
Great minimalistic TechHouse and straight ahead moving clubtracks w/ long build up and serious "BC" feel.
Played by Sven Väth, Laurent Garnier, Margaret Dygas, Savas Pascalidis, Dorian Paic. More

Incredible techno record, Quo Vadis, El Jem and Sparticus was made in 1994/95, and released in 95/96.
You can feel the influences of classic Maurizio and DBX here. Already one half of LFO, Gez Varley definitely proves with this record that he can be a genius... Ltd Backstock More

Totally killer 2nd Part of a breathtaking neo Detroit classic! From the legendary album “Earth & Nightfall”, released on both Sinewave and R&S this really is a lost classic and another pristine release from the increasingly on-the-money Styrax imprint.
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BACK IN!! Official 2006 3-track release of breathtaking ultimative detroit classic! From the lengdary Album "Earth & Nightfall"! A 1990s "intelligent techno" blueprint - TIP! More

Killer re-issue of Basic Channel influenced chords and deep driven techno style production by Kim Rapatti (Mono Junk) from his Trope period. This is a must for all Basic Channel afficianados!
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