New Specter on Sound Signature More

After releasing heavyweights like Patrice Scott and Dego, Forbidden Dance Records continues its story with a new release from Chicago don Specter with a 4-track EP. More

A1 - Peace Of Mind
A2 - Front & Center
B1 - Cold Sweat
B2 - Cold Sweat (Byron The Aquarius Remix)

Tetrode Music head honcho and Sound Signature affiliate, Specter, lines up the next Second Hand Records NYC release and it’s that deep, soulful goodness you need in your life.

'Peace of Mind' hits right from the needle drop. Made for the dancers! Listen to this on a real sound system for that enhanced feeling.

'Front & Center' keeps the energy flowing, mixing deep chords over dark warehouse bass lines. Big leagues tune!

'Cold Sweat' would fit snuggly against any Larry Heard record, or maybe its just that Chi-town flavor soul music we love! Byron The Aquarius adds another layer of flavor to this already killer cut. Deeeeeeep! More

Chicago based Tetrode mastermind Specter takes up the torch with a (too) long awaited solo EP on Into The Deep records. As a true soldier of the underground, Andres has been designing his sound for two decades, bridging the gap between Chicago and Detroit. A spectacular EP exploring jazz, raw, deep and spacey territories from one master of the genre: that's what Dreamscape is all about. More

Repress of the first downbeat release by Specter. 4 hipnotic deep house tracks with influence of Mr Fingers. Atmospheric and erotic midtempo house tracks that represents perfectly the sound of Downbeat More

Serious basement bidness to close out the year for Sound Signature. The Specter of Christmas Now returns with a coal bag of dirty acid jams and warped rhythms. That's exactly what we asked Santa for anyway....
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A comrade from Chicago passed me a cd with some serious tracks on it. All of them I recognized except this one. A sked him about it, said it was his and the rest is here for you to Enjoy More

Chicago’s Specter (Tetrode music) is welcomed into the Sistrum family with the Bionic Being EP, featuring three cuts of raw depth and sonic purity.

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Sounds Familiar is celebrating a decade in dance music by releasing 3 LP's throughout 2023. Titled "Familiar Sounds", after vol 1 released in April 23 which featured the likes of Dego Kamma & Masalo, Aleqs Notal Feat Anu, Kai Alcé, Retromigration and Hugo LX, the second volume of the trilogy will be out on September 1st.


Collecting six new tracks that join the dots between elastic acid house and candle-lit piano jazz, Familiar Sounds Volume 2, features Kaidi Tatham, Carista, Gigi Testa, Zopelar, Alex From Tokyo and K15, on a 12" that reaches into all corners of the roster's electronic jazz-influenced sound.

The album begins with Kaidi Tatham's upstart summer anthem 'Misguided Youts'. Built on a piano vamp and an infectious horn line, the track eases into a consummate piece of future fusion, stirring the melting pot of London's jazz and broken beat heritage into the kind of soulful jam that has rightly earned him his legendary reputation.

Things take a deep dive on track two with Carista tweaking the dials to deliver a slice of rubbery four-to-the-floor dancefloor business. Rattling snap-back snares give her track 'Love Me Right' a kind of early hours dynamism, the dream-like vocal sample drifting across a room of loose and swaying bodies.

Gigi Testa rounds out the A-side with shuffling outernational house track 'Summer Snow'. Integrating his passion for global rhythms, the Rush Hour affiliate and Organica record shop owner channels the shimmering opulence of the Amalfi coast on what is an indulgent boat party of lush pads and sun-dappled melodies.

Opening the B-side, Zopelar delivers the jazzy, disco-infused house of 'Arapuca'. There's a skittish energy to Zopelar's latest offering, which wriggles and jives between muted trumpet improvisations, George Duke's 'A Brazilian Love Affair' and the kind of in-the pocket synth work he is known to have among his arsenal of musical skills.

Up next, Alex From Tokyo weaves in the striped back influence of his former Berlin home into the techno-pop landscape of his Japanese upbringing, heading in to go out on the cosmic club cut 'Wa Galaxy'.

Closing out the LP is DJ, producer and man of many monikers, K15. Putting on his jazz hat perhaps most associated with his work as Culross Close, 'Autumn' is a solo piano ballad that brings the exuberance of high summer to a reflective end, demonstrating just how varied and open-minded the world of Sounds Familiar is.

Familiar Sounds Vol. 2 follows the release of Vol. 1 earlier this year and ahead of the final instalment in December 2023. Keeping it in the family, all three volumes will feature spot-varnished artwork and creative direction by Sounds Familiar logo creator and long-time collaborator Tyler Askew.
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Restock.

Sounds Familiar, with its ‘Music First’ approach will be celebrating it’s 10 year milestone with a series of club nights worldwide complimented by several collaborations, most notably a special music project –

‘Familiar Sounds’

Familiar Sounds consists of 3 albums, each with 6 exclusive tracks curated especially for this occasion by the Sounds Familiar artists. Vinyl and digital formats will be released throughout 2023.

Artwork and creative direction courtesy of OG Tyler Askew, the SF’s logo creator who has been working with the brand since its inception.

Crafted and distributed by SF’s partner Mother Tongue the first of the 3 volumes drop on the 21st April exactly 10 years since the Sounds Familiar launch in 2013.

Familiar Sounds Volume 1 features music from Dego, Kamma & Masalo, Aleqs Notal Ft. Anu, Kai Alcé Retromigration and Hugo LX

The second and third album will be available in July and October 2023. More

Cast your mind back to February 2020 for a moment, when Berlin-based French-Irish sound artist Zoë Mc Pherson released their last album "States of Fugue". The world seemed less tangled somehow, and yet Mc Pherson's precision-engineered fusion of exploratory sound design and visceral club pressure seemed to hint at a cataclysmic event none of us were really expecting. Only a few weeks after its release the world changed forever, and the majority of us were grounded - forced to consider our lives and the movement (or lack thereof) surrounding us. The philosophy of this extended time period is welded into the bones of "Pitch Blender", Mc Pherson's supple third album. They have learned plenty in the last two years, and infuse all of that anxiety and spiky emotionality into a spread of tracks that sound as powerful in headphones as they do over a well-tweaked soundsystem, soldering vocals, environmental recordings and instrumental flourishes to unpredictably pneumatic, cybernetic beats.

Anyone that's caught one of Mc Pherson's energetic live performances over the last few months will have an idea of what "Pitch Blender" is made of. They're an artist who's somehow able to match the raw energy of post-punk and no-wave music with the brain-altering potential of the best experimental club tracks, vocalizing an incongruous post-lockdown reality over beats that sound as if they're in a permanent state of flux. 'On Fire' splutters to life in a frenetic patter of drums that blur into oddly soothing hoover sounds, snaking lysergically towards a drop that's teased constantly, and never comes. We're forced to wait until 'The Spark' for that, fighting through choppy, pitch-mangled guitar and rolling beats until a gruesome kick drum forces its way through the psilocybin mists and heaving Bristol-inspired bass clonks. Backed up with just the inverted traces of recognizable breaks, this vigorous pulse lies at the heart of "Pitch Blender", the driving force that powers Mc Pherson's sound even when it's only hinted at.

'Blender' is the moment where Mc Pherson show their full hand, using crackling sound effects, ghost vocals and uneven rhythms to build a textural landscape that's so evocative you can almost taste it. Squealing modular synth effects sound like gameshow buzzers being triggered in another dimension and propel the track forward - it's club music, just about, but Mc Pherson's motivation is world-building, and their world is colorful, abstract, and dizzyingly surreal. "Obsolete user," their voice echoes over driving airlock kicks. But they take a swift left turn with 'Lamella', reducing the kinetic club rhythms to a longing simmer and letting loose with powerful vocals, intoning with robotic, gender-fluxed intensity. On 'Wait', New York City's clacking crosswalk signal - already an effective club track on its own - is transformed into a reminder to slow down, juxtaposed with booming sub-heavy kicks, acidic synths and effervescent percussion that rattles in time with the vibrations. It's foley rave, built for pure psychedelic intensity to blur the line between real life and sonic fiction.

One of the album's most galvanic tracks, 'Power Dynamics' curves a double-time rhythm around breathless HQ sound design squiggles until it hits a polyrhythmic crescendo, striking a queasy balance between rave hedonism and ritualistic hand drum energy. It all builds towards eerie closing track 'Outside' that acts as an important wind down, spotlighting Mc Pherson's ability to operate outside of the rhythmic spectrum, using cinematic scrapes and flickering neon synths to create music that's tense but never terrifying. The track feels like the end credits of a particularly bewildering movie - something between the cyberpunk dystopia of "Ghost in the Shell" and the vivid, sky-scraping beauty of "Koyaanisqatsi". Mc Pherson has managed something special with "Pitch Blender": mashing together genres with rare focus, and sharpening their engineering skills to a fine point, they've concocted an antidote to contemporary malaise - a wakeup call that's begging us to loosen our limbs and move. More

Sounds Familiar returns with the latest instalment of 7InchNails - its home-grown series of 45s, filled with unique jams from some of the most exciting producers around.

Following on from releases by Kaidi Tatham and Dego, up steps London-based DJ and producer K15 for two timeless and sophisticated pieces of future jazz. On the A side, ‘Demo Of Heart’ opens with a dazzling keyboard riff, recalling the sunset vibe of fusion giants like George Duke, Herbie Hancock or Azymuth’s Jose Roberto Bertrami, before breaking out into a syncopated, serpentine jam that feels just about ready to melt into the horizon.
On the B Side, K15 brings a Latin heat to the table, with clipped and skittish percussion dancing around a set of lush chords that open into a lysergic stepper, buoyed, as the title ‘Tomorrow’s Promise’ suggests, by a sense of hope and moving on. More

Sounds Familiar returns for the second release on its newly inaugurated 7 Inch Nails label with two tracks of simmering London boogie heat from UK-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Dego. Following long-time collaborator Kaidi Tatham in releasing his first 7” on the label, Dego keeps things cool on ‘Drop it now! Pick it up!’ - all shuffling drums, sparse synths and boogie-funk swagger. On the flip, Dego picks up the tempo for deep house roller ‘Too Humid’, dancing a liquid baseline between clipped synth stabs in a nod to the warmer times ahead.

7 Inch Nails was launched by Sounds Familiar in early 2021 to showcase new music from its impressive roster of artists, aimed at expanding boundaries and opening musical horizons through the limitations of the 7” format. More