Repress!
’At its darkest and most driving. The opener cuts deep into jazz, its darting trumpet melodies sinking the impulsive and questing approach of On-The-Corner Miles into the nocturnal longing of Lift To The Scaffold. Dark is a monolithic steppers’ in slo-mo, dense and dread. Set to the soft throb of a four-to-the-floor kickdrum, third track Club is the album’s explosive heart, twelve minutes of heady Berlin techno; and in finale Yangissa a soft African brass polyphony is spiced with nyabinghi–style drums, deeply dubwise, for fourteen minutes playing out an intrigue between chaos and control. The group is clear and unanimous — this is their best yet.’ More

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Tony Allen’s drumming centered, adventures into Techno-Jazz fields w/ Max Loderbauer More

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Meditative, absorbing dance music in true Moritz style — at times seemingly transfixed by its own elements, and minimal almost to vanishing-point, but quickly back ticking, kicking and amassing, with the lethal dubwise density of the classic Berlin sound. Twelve minutes long, trenchant and forbidding but sharply alive, the dub itself is a kind of deep Fort-Da gambit which scoops your brain out for a quick sluice, before replacing it slightly skewiff. Don't drop your guard because of the Tresor.

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Musically, this new stepper appears to swell out of thin air. Immense and minimal, the propulsive groove monstrous child of Krautrock is overlain during its twelve minutes with the blues abstraction of Tikiman's guitar, the swing and effects of Marc Muellbauer's double bass, Delay's digressive steel
percussion, and the otherworldly keys of Loderbauer and von Oswald. With characteristic intensity, (Digital Mystikz) Mala's rebuild ratchets up the drama and dread. A mounting barrage of bleeps rains down on a vicious, clopping drum pattern and steely synths. The bass is transfixing. An immensely powerful record.
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Precious, timely, moody reflections on migrating from Côte d’Ivoire to Moss, in Norway, over ruff breakbeat funk supplied by the nimble bass-playing of Maimouna’s old man (from Kambo Super Sound), and the expert conga and kit-drumming of Stliletti-Ana (from Jesse, in Helsinki). Even in their delirium, b-boys and girls will savour traces of the Incredible Bongo Band, in the chorus. Over the eight minutes, and going deeper on the flip, the mix lifts off into a cosmic steppers dub, featuring Gilb-r alongside Sotofett on keyboards, with no let up for the dancefloor in energy and vibes.
In beautifully letter-pressed, poly-lined sleeves.
“It was in 2001 / I got the letter / A letter that said / I would travel to a cold world / Not knowing what would happen / I was full of loneliness / No country / Everyone was different / Not only skin colour / The way people spoke / The way people behaved / That’s the adventure / Obey / This is the story we’re told / The key to success / So we can do everything for our parents / Who need us / Desperate for a better life / That’s the adventure.” More

Three murderous steppers dubs on a propulsive, rat-tat-tat rhythm, combining mystical spaciousness with detail and ferocity. Angry-lion bass and smears of brass, fusillades and explosions, scares and shocks, oriental pentatonics, clattering percussion and synthy transcendence… the business. The second mix is nastiest; the third is the wildest and most discombobulated (and our favourite).
Letter-pressed, poly-lined sleeves. More

A kind of intimate scrapbook of the startling collaboration between the techno maestro and this long-standing musical collective based in Bishkek, devoted to the roots music of Kyrgyzstan. Loose-leaved but balanced, lucid and intimate, it sets out from stunning a cappella and virtuosic komuz and kylak, mouth harp and traditional percussion: not field, but expert studio recordings, using marvellous vintage microphones, made over several days in Berlin. Further, a few of these are deftly treated by Moritz, using Reichian de-synced double-tracking, and discreet effects. Also two ten-minute dubs: a deadly, signature Berlin steppers, plus its version; and an echoing, mystical drum session, recorded live on stage in Bishkek. And a side-long, dream-like summation: the locomotive, oceanic, clangorous, dread Facets. Ravishing, rooted, searching music; beautifully presented. More

A kind of intimate scrapbook of the startling collaboration between the techno maestro and this long-standing musical collective based in Bishkek, devoted to the roots music of Kyrgyzstan. Loose-leaved but balanced, lucid and intimate, it sets out from stunning a cappella and virtuosic komuz and kylak, mouth harp and traditional percussion: not field, but expert studio recordings, using marvellous vintage microphones, made over several days in Berlin. Further, a few of these are deftly treated by Moritz, using Reichian de-synced double-tracking, and discreet effects. Also two ten-minute dubs: a deadly, signature Berlin steppers, plus its version; and an echoing, mystical drum session, recorded live on stage in Bishkek. And a side-long, dream-like summation: the locomotive, oceanic, clangorous, dread Facets.
Ravishing, rooted, searching music; beautifully presented. More

A re-work by Mark Ernestus of the opener of Honest Jons' new LP by the Obadikah brass band, from Lagos. Consummate Berlin dub science by the maestro. Beautifully textured, shuffling Lagos funk, on home-made percussion… militant, parping horns... and a walloping, filthy-stinking kick-drum like the bucking, hairy hind-most of the Devil himself. The Dub is Warrior Charge, 2016.

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This is lovely. Brand-new, rambunctious, rootsy, spiritual brass-band music from Lagos, with singing, drums and home-made percussion.
Obadikah is a group of old friends who play together in the Cherubim & Seraphim and Baptist churches of the Ikeja and Isale Eko districts. A couple of them were founder-members of the Eko Brass Band; they’ve played with pretty much all the key Nigerian reggae artists.
The tunes are mostly traditional Yoruban melodies, often sung at bed-time. The songs are mostly original, sung in Yoruba (though Jomido is an Egun song from the Badagry area of Lagos state).
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A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon. Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone. A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongside Shuji Terayama; a sitar-led psychedelic wig-out runs into a killer excursion in modal, spiritual jazz. Existentialism and noir, mystery and allure, hurt and hauteur. With excellent notes by Alan Cummings and the fabulous photographs of Hitoshi Jin Tamura. Hotly recommended. More

A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon. Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone. A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongside Shuji Terayama; a sitar-led psychedelic wig-out runs into a killer excursion in modal, spiritual jazz. Existentialism and noir, mystery and allure, hurt and hauteur. With excellent notes by Alan Cummings and the fabulous photographs of Hitoshi Jin Tamura. Hotly recommended. More