Johannes Contag's Sleepytime cycle of albums and performances reaches a new stage with "Sleepytime Vol 2: Schlafwandler". Completing the arc of alpha-wave inducing ambiences of his first release "you are feeling sleepy", Johannes' latest offering explores the idea of aural sleepwalking. His latent...
The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band Hailing from the slums and ghettos of Auckland (the Prague of the South), The Benka Boradovsky Bordello band is a highly theatrical musical group specialising in music of Eastern European, Gypsy and Jewish flavour, along with some Western European influences. With...
What do you get if you mix a pound of Fela Kuti's Afrika 70, two cupfuls of The Meters, 250g of thinly sliced early James Brown and a level dessert spoon of psychedelic rock? - you get the heaving, convulsing powerhouse of soul music that is The Hot Grits. For over five years, this 11 piece band...
Soul Jazz Records new ‘Apala: Apala Groups in Nigeria 1964–69’ is the first ever collection of Apala music ever to be released outside of Nigeria. The album focusses on a wide selection of recordings made in Nigeria in the 1960s, a time when Apala music was at the height of its popularity. Apala is...
After the acclaimed “Wenu Wenu” & “Bahdeni Nami” released in 2015 and the success of “To Syria With Love” (2017) followed by collaborations with Björk and Four Tet, Omar Souleyman presents his fourth and new studio album “Shlon”. The album's romantic poetry is the work of Moussa Al Mardood – a...
Tamikrest return with a vivid, irrepressible rock and roll statement. Their most powerful album since 2013’s wildly acclaimed Chatma, Tamotaït finds the band not only turning up the volume, but also sharpening their meditative atmospherics and ruminations on the state of the Sahara and the world...
For the fifth entry in our Collector`s Series we enlist the skills of Japan-based musical connoisseurs, Ken Hidaka, Max Essa, and Dr. Rob. Their compilation Oto No Wa sets out to map the evolution of chilled Japanese sounds across 3 decades, collecting 14 tracks, produced by a wide range of...
There are a few things you can't ignore if you follow music seriously. One is jazz and the other is the influence of Africa on the entire cosmos of popular culture. Fela Kuti once said: “99.9% of the information you get about Africa is wrong” and I can not deny the fact that I have no concrete...
One of the leading producers and instrumentalists in Brazilian music, Alexandre Kassin has produced roughly 100 records for singers, including Marisa Monte and Bebel Gilberto, recorded with Sean O’Hagan (Stereolab, High Llamas) and made a full album based on Nintendo Game Boy sounds. He has played...
The Good Is A Big God, by singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Domenico Lancellotti, features contributions from Nina Miranda, Moreno Veloso, Pedro Sá and Sean O’Hagan. Son of composer Ivor Lancellotti, Domenico has collaborated with various MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) names such as...
The future is right now. We have driverless cars, robots taking over jobs, and commercial space travel is on the event horizon. Somehow, humanity has slipped into a science fiction life. But you can’t have a future without a past, something AMMAR 808 knows very well. On his debut release, Maghreb...
Something is stirring in downtown Tucson. That’s no great surprise perhaps: Calexico have been sending out missives from the desert for 20 years now, Giant Sand for even longer than that, and the Green on Red revival is surely overdue. These three giants of American popular music ask questions of...
ll around Kidal, the Malian desert stretches in every direction. Endless horizons of rock and sand, barren and parched. This is the southwestern edge of the Sahara, the home of the Tuareg people, and the town of Kidal is one of their main cultural centres. Fought over, conquered and re-conquered,...
Founded in 2006 by Vincent Bertholet (Hyperculte), the Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp is a large-scale project. Designed as a real orchestra, the size of the ensemble has varied over time. Now with 12 members, 14 in the past or 6 at the beginning, the ensemble has scoured the stages of...
ONO means six in Māori. It is also the title of a concept album project that begins in Aotearoa New Zealand and travels the world. Each song showcases the voice, language and culture of six Indigenous wāhine from lands where Moana & the Tribe has performed. The Māori lyrics written by Te Manahau...
How often do we consider light? We revel in the soft wonder of a sunrise or the majesty of a glorious sunset, but all through the day its quality and texture is continually changing, second by second, in ways we rarely register. That beauty is the inspiration for The Gleam, the third album from...
MOTOMAMI is the new album from Grammy Award winning recording artist, producer, and songwriter Rosalía. The album features the previously released songs “LA FAMA (feat. The Weeknd)”, “SAOKO”, and much, much more. Rosalía’s MOTOMAMI has been declared as “One of the Most Anticipated Albums of 2022”...
Strut present Mabanzo – the debut solo album by Congolese vocalist, Juanita Euka. A familiar face to many from London’s vibrant live music scene over the last decade, Juanita has fronted London Afrobeat Collective’s dynamic live shows, the fusions and cross-pollinations of Animanz and maverick...
Les Disques Bongo Joe, continuing their work on Sao Tome and Principe with curator DJ Tom B., are pleased to announce the release of an anthology of the group África Negra. This first volume includes 12 of their key tracks, remastered for the occasion and selected only from those officially...
The Slovenian “imaginary folk” trio's most epic and transportive album yet. Powered by acoustic and often handmade instruments, these expansive compositions echo the borderless, collective spirit of groups like Don Cherry's Organic Music Society and Art Ensemble of Chicago _“Episodic, dreamlike...
