Control originally appeared in 1981 during an especially productive era in Conrad Schnitzler’s career. Inspired by his friend Peter Baumann (like Schnitzler, a former member of Tangerine Dream), he experimented with different sound generators, and attempted to incorporate traditional harmonic elements into his work. When the LP was originally issued, it simply consisted of two sidelong pieces, but subsequent reissues have divided the album into short tracks. Most of the pieces sound different from one another, with some being meandering drones, and others sounding much busier and more exciting. The most memorable ones demonstrate Schnitzler’s curious, playful side, with “Control 4” having sprite-like high-pitched melodic tones, and “Control 6” containing…
Category: *editions*
Marc Almond has personally curated this celebratory 2CD expanded re-issue of his lesser known 2016 electro-pop album. Lesser known simply because, hitherto, it has only had a limited vinyl release in Germany.
Silver City, now a definitive 20 track techno-pop opus, was written and produced by Marc with celebrated cult German electronic music production duo Starcluster and is Marc Almond’s “most synth laden body of work since Soft Cell” (Electricity Club, 2016). It is indeed, a sheer joy to hear Marc Almond’s deft and distinctive vocals alongside a vast array of vintage analogue synthesisers in this resplendently authentic, retro-futuristic setting; an album that provides an eloquent refracted echo of his formative synth-pop work in revered…
Few bands feel as tied to their hometown mythology as The Flaming Lips, so it makes perfect sense that their full-album performance of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots would eventually circle back to Oklahoma City. Recorded on August 30, 2024 at the Zoo Amphitheater, this release captures a band revisiting its early-2000s peak with both affection and a steadier, lived-in sense of timing.
After an introduction by the mayor of OKC thanking the band for their contribution to the city, the Lips launch into “Fight Test,” which establishes the tone immediately. The rhythm section sits heavier than on the studio version, and Steven Drozd’s keyboard work gives the song a low, steady hum that pushes the chorus forward. “One More Robot / Sympathy 3000-21” follows with a gentle lift…
Emma Tricca’s Prisms of Winter is an intimate recording — a collection of twelve stripped‑down live recordings that feel less like a performance and more like a whispered conversation between artist and listener. Recorded in London’s backrooms and scattered studios, the album is suffused with a quiet magic, and the kind of intimacy that makes you lean in closer, as though Tricca were singing directly into your ear.
This is Tricca at her most vulnerable and poetic. By paring back the arrangements, she exposes the bare bones of her songs — the words, the voice, the guitar — and in doing so, reveals their timeless strength. The immediacy of the recordings creates a sense of closeness, as if each track were a secret shared in confidence.
Vazz formed in Glasgow during the early ’80s, and initially consisted of vocalist/lyricist Anna Howson and multi-instrumentalist Hugh Small. With Howson’s ethereal harmonies floating over Small’s sparse drum machines and mysterious guitar hooks, the duo’s music fell somewhere between coldwave, post-punk, and dream pop. The five-song mini-album Your Lungs and Your Tongues (released in 1986 by Cathexis Recordings, also home to records by Fini Tribe and Pink Industry) was one of a handful of vinyl releases the pair made before splitting up near the end of the decade. As Small resurfaced during the 2010s with solo piano and ambient compositions, Vazz’s scant ’80s discography was rediscovered and revived in several different configurations…
The 12″ single redefined music and the way we move to it, something that’s celebrated on the fantastic new four-CD collection from Cherry Red Records, Extended Stimulation: 12″ Pop Adventures on the Dancefloor 1983-1988. While 12″ vinyl is generally associated with disco, electronic, and hip-hop, this box set explores just how revolutionary it could be for traditional pop music, featuring tracks from the likes of New Order, Simply Red, the Human League, Duran Duran, Talk Talk, Pet Shop Boys, and many others.
However, these may not be the songs as most people remember them. That’s because everything here is either a remix (or extended mix) of some kind, originally released on 12″ vinyl. A little history lesson may be in order. Before the 12″…
Tucked into the Caribbean Sea are the islands of Guadeloupe, Dominica, and Saint Lucia. Guadeloupe is an overseas department of France, while Dominica and Saint Lucia are independent nations. All three boast volcanic beaches, high mountain peaks, and lush tropical landscapes — coral reefs, palm trees, and sapphire blue waves make them instantly mesmerizing. The island’s cultural histories, shaped by the displacement of native Arawak peoples, centuries of colonial conflict between Spain, France, and Britain, and the enslavement of West Africans, continue to shape their musical output. Today, modern mixtapes (largely circulating on YouTube) pulse with intercontinental influences such as Angolan kuduro, Portugal’s batida, and trap, to name a few.
There’s a reason that To Live and Shave in L.A. (TLASILA)’s The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg opens up with samples of free jazz. Shave mastermind Tom Smith is explicitly trying to connect his work with the music he loves — the record’s liner notes contain a Nurse With Wound-like list of those influences. That list is multidisciplinary, covering his love of usual suspects like “Poe, Baudelaire, Joyce, Man Ray,” but also “Theremin and all Russian avant-gardists,” “Lee Marvin,” “all atomic test footage,” “global student revolt and the inevitable erotic aftermath,” “Fluxus (in doses),” not to mention digressions on Funkadelic, Hendrix, the “titanic Electric Eels,” and provocative music-nerd statements like “Stooges purists prefer Asheton, but…
In November 2025, producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin’s Resonance Records released two unissued live recordings by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Vibrations in the Village: Live at the Village Gate is the first, captured live in 1963. The tapes were cut for a documentary soundtrack about Kirk’s life, which was never made. The tapes survived for more than 60 years in the care of engineer Ivan Berger. When Feldman received them, he initially contacted saxophonist James Carter who, impressed, made the case for release. Feldman then contacted Kirk’s indomitable widow Dorthaan Kirk (whose wonderful liner essay here is titled “My Life with Rahsaan”); she enthusiastically approved.
Recorded over two nights in November 1963, Kirk used three different pianists:…
In November 2025, producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin’s Resonance Records released two unissued live recordings by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Seek & Listen: Live at the Penthouse is the second. A double disc, it was recorded in 1967. Kirk’s band included pianist Ron Burton, bassist Steve Novosel, and drummer Jimmy Hopps in 11 selections. The set opens at the tail-end of the rowdy “The Jump Thing,” then gives way to Burt Bacharach’s and Hal David’s “Alfie.” Burton embellishes Kirk’s gorgeous tenor lines with graceful elegance as the rhythm section walks behind him. “Mingus-Griff Song” is an original. At over 12 minutes, this band fires on all cylinders. Whether Kirk is playing tenor, manzello, stritch, flutes, or whistles, his creative intensity is total. Tenor sings…
Métier describes Ian Pace’s collection of piano works by Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) as a “landmark” recording, and for once the term’s justified. Pace has achieved something remarkable in presenting four CDs of material by the British composer, the pianist’s commanding performances weighing in at almost five hours and complemented by a 52-page booklet featuring in-depth commentaries by Finnissy (a programme note from 2005) and Pace (texts from 2025 based on notes written in 2016). Dominating the collection is Finnissy’s second epic cycle for piano, the four-book Verdi Transcriptions, with the second complete recording of English Country-Tunes (after the composer’s own version) and works inspired by music of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…
…include a new bonus track titled “Into Desert”
Whether they realise it or not, millions of people know the music of Soichi Terada. After all, the Tokyo producer’s childlike melodies have bleeped out of consoles across the world as the soundtrack to the Ape Escape games. Until then, Terada seemed to be playing a game of his own, one that could be called Deep House Simulator.
From the early ’90s onwards, Terada’s Far East Recordings has specialised in Eastern impressions of Western deep house. On Sounds from the Far East, Hunee compiles the best of Terada’s tracks for Rush Hour, alongside a few from his compatriot Shinichiro Yokota.
Parts of Sounds from the Far East are like the aural equivalent of Amerikamura, the Osaka…
Gravity is a pivotal album from Monolake’s nearly 30-year career. It’s the first to feature Robert Henke more or less on his own, following the departure of Gerhard Behles.
It also finds Henke transitioning into the sound and style that makes Monolake one of the most legendary techno artists of the 21st Century. Now, thanks to this essential vinyl reissue from Field Records, you finally have a chance to hear it in deep, rich, sparkling high fidelity.
Henke’s third LP as Monolake is an anomaly. A good chunk of the underground electronic music from this time focuses on the conceptual and cerebral, with genres like microhouse and glitch filling raves and art galleries alike. Even more belongs to the burgeoning minimal…
a sad song for A. brings together Stefano Gentile, Giulia Dal Vecchio, Gigi Masin, Fabio Orsi, Anacleto Vitolo, and the multimedia project Hiseka to explore emotional states through music, text and photography. Originating from an informal conversation about anxiety, the project evolved into a creative dialogue in which inner experience became shared expression.
Structured around four stages we may recognise – Panic, Anxiety, Light and Dream – each contributor shaped one phase in their own language. Gentile provided imagery, Dal Vecchio translated feelings into words, and the musicians responded with original works reflecting each emotional shift. The result is a thoughtful constellation of perspectives that invites listeners to…
…Tsapiky! is named for a musical style that’s been popular in recent decades in the Africa-facing southern corner of Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean. It’s the preferred soundtrack for extended celebrations that people there throw around transitional events.
If you’re getting married or buried, it’s common to have a band hoist some loudspeakers onto the roof of your truck and get the outdoor party rolling. Heard for the first time, it sounds a bit like Congolese soukous being played through a megaphone. It has that style’s open-ended dance grooves and sprightly melodies, but it’s decidedly lower budget. A typical tsapiky band will have a drum kit, a bassist laying down bulbous, intermittent pulses and an electric…
There’s J.D. Salinger, there’s Thomas Pynchon, and then there’s Takashi Mizutani, founder, singer and guitarist of Japanese psychedelic rock giants Les Rallizes Dénudés. How and why could someone so obviously gifted, perhaps even touched by the divine, remove themselves from a world that not only inspires their art but adores it? This question plagued some of the most dedicated and maniacal record collectors in the world, the deepest heads with the most fried and obscure psych rock platters, until 2021 when The Last One Musique and Temporal Drift opened the floodgates and let the music stream forth. It’s curious to think that if Mizutani had emerged from hiding before his death in 2019, perhaps he might have enjoyed the exposure, much in the way…