Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Jetaime, staying true to our name, drop yet another large helping of sensual beats, with Volume 2 of our 'Love Session' series.

Today's lesson's in love, are provided by some of our closest friends and label regulars. Each delivering a scorchingly hot original, set to send you into sensory overload.

First up is Okain who, having brought us the incredible 'Acrobat' back in January, steps up again to reveal, what for us, is one of his finest works to date. 'Corner Boys' couldn't be more fitting for 'Love Session'. Its classic beats, sexy vocal sample and hip-grinding, oldschool bassline make it, ok not 'love', but most definitely, SEX!!

Alex steps up himself on track two, and brings us the deliciously sweet and creamy, 'Sundae'. Inventive and ever so tongue in cheek, Alex matches iconic hip-hop, with his modern Parisian beats, to create a perfect party anthem.

From the house-party, to the rave on track number three from, Varoslav. As its name suggests, 'Dancin' Like Ghosts' has a spooky and hypnotic feel. The constant pulse of delicate synths, pierced by hollow beats and piercing hats, together with its demonic vocal, make it a perfect number for those dark cellar gigs.

Finally, and rounding out the EP is Yakine, who delivers a fresh slab of Chicago-inspired house with 'U Dance'. Its killer B-Line, filtered Rhodes and spoken vocal, warms the heart as well as the feet, and make it the perfect track to round out the EP.

Overall a quite stunning collection of tracks, that we are extremely proud of. So come and join us, and get down to some serious lovin'!!

Review: REPRESS ALERT!: The fifth volume of their magnificent Super Spicy Recipe series finds the label's crew in full party effect, with the six tracks here crossing the borders from peak time dropping to essential warm up/down gear. First up, Vagabundo Club Social takes 'Beso Loco' featuring Tomjake Sax and turns up the controls to maximum fun, the Colombians throwing in tons of groove and Afro -influenced percussion, before Monsieur Van Pratt and Guatemalan singer Teff Brolo. This all-original track is leaded by the powerful soulful vocals, accompanied by a groove-infused piano which keeps the beats nicely anchored, followed by the ever dependable Reece Johnson who closes off this side. Flip it over for Bernardo Mota & Boogietraxx and the euphoric 'Keep On Doing Your Thing' before Sartorial takes proceedings into slightly jazzier territory on B2 and B3.

Review: For the latest volume in their ongoing Brazil 45s series, Mr Bongo has decided to change tack. The two tracks showcased here are from the golden age of Brazilian boogie. On the A-side you'll find Marcos Valle's "A Paraiba Nao E Chicago", a largely overlooked cut from his 1981 full-length Vontade De Rever Voce. While not as instantly as infectious as some of his better-known singles, it's still superb; a breezy, blue-eyed soul cut full of rising horns and sweet Portuguese vocals. On the B-side, you'll find Don Beto's 1978 disco-funk jam "Nao Quero Mais", a superb track that was seemingly inspired by the Doobie Brothers' "Long Train Running".

Review: Two premium Latin funk documents on one limited 45, Mr Bongo deliver once again: Marcos Valle needs no introduction to Brazilian music enthusiasts. "Mentira" is a self-cover as Valle takes his 69 classic "Mentira Carioca" and develops the dynamic with a vocal style that's highly reminiscent of Donovan. Flip for Toni Tornado's Black Rio anthem "Me Libertei". Fusing sleazy rock n roll with jazzy Latin soul, madly this is the first time it's ever graced a 45!

Review: The Valley and the Mountain aka TVTM aka Josh Dahlberg makes a bold return with 'A Number of Northwests', an EP which tells the tale of an artist in transition. Quite literally, that is, as he moved from Detroit's westside to the very far edges of the Pacific Northwest. Musical this is a stylistically diverse offering with four cuts starting with the mid-tempo smooth grooves of 'Bretton Drive' and glistening synths and pads of the cosmically minded 'Grand River Slide'. The chugging 'Ramps to Nowhere' is a dubbed out afters classic and then the one and only dusty deep house don DJ Aakmael remixes it into another cuddly classic.

Review: Pomelo is one of the longest serving pillars of the ever inventive Austrian techno/electronica community and the fact It's never had the profile of a Cheap or Mego doesn't mean it's not responsible for some of the country's most exciting and most maverick material. Austria's trademarks are a general and laudable ignorance of current fads, an irresistible groove-ability and an indefinable flair in executing their ideas and the four cuts have all three of those properties in heaps. The newest addition to the Pomelo roster is Spanish talent Vedelius, who delivers the late night burner 'The Crypt' here before turning it over for a rolling breakbeat version by Phosphene, jacking techno by Lodig/Dibek and a dubbed out electro-techno stepper by Lok44.

Review: Achingly Responsive is the label run by UK-based Vertical Cat. Amazingly, it started in 2002, but put out only two EPs in the next two years. After one in 2020, now it is back once again with some stunning new material from label head Dan Arthure which again has us swimming in deep house, acid, downtempo, dub and techno waters. His silky sounds take in the high speed techno catharsis of 'Parole', crunchier bumps of 'Luna' and warm, progressive styles of 'Papaver' while 'Moss (Electro Origins mix)' closes in dreamy deep space electro fashion.

Review: As well as serving up a mighty fine new 2 x 12" on Radio Slave's Rekid this summer, UK techno titan Mark Broom has also assumed his Visitor alias (along with Dave Hill) for this remastered reissue of their Basement Life EP on D1 Recordings out of Ireland. 'Model Two' opens up with a deeper than usual sound that is peppered with nice heady melodic phrase and smeared chords and on the flip 'The Last Time' cuts loose on a broken beat with crispy hits and lunching bass that draws you in time and time again.

Review: Hip-hop heads love nothing more than classic Blue Note material getting a modern fix up. And that's what we have here as Kay Young and Venna and Marco Bernardis join forces to work their magic on Marlena Shaw's 'Feel Like Making Love' and Donald Byrd's 'Where Are We Going?' This limited 7" is a taster from the 16-track compilation Blue Note: Reimagined II. It's packed with the neo-soul, r&B and hip hop scenes finest contemporary talents adding new magic to the still standout original source material. Like volume one, it's an absolute must-have, as is this 45rpm.

Review: He will forever be known as the frontman of Pulp, but for many music lovers Jarvis Cocker has also won our affections with his erudite selections for his BBC 6 Music show. Entitled Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service, it ran every week from 2010 to 2017 and now a selection of his personal favourites get the compilation treatment. Reflecting the mood of most Sundays, the music is soothing, soft and mellow, but always high quality. There are stunning covers or Beyonce by Anthony & the Jonsons and Gary Numan's "Cars" on steel drums, plaintive piano pieces from John Baker and a classic from Nina Simone amongst a whole treasure trove of gems.

Review: Second time around for Jean-Michel Jarre's 2022 album Oxymore, a loving tribute to French composer and 'music concrete' pioneer Pierre Henry. As the title suggests, this version features new remixes of album tracks (all of which feature sounds originally created by Henry) by a disparate group of musical talents. That makes for an interesting mix of interpretations, with armin Van Buuren's sizable trance translation of 'Epica' rubbing shoulders with a trippy, off-kilter electro take on 'Sex In The Machine' by Nina Kraviz, a moody Martin Gore interpretation of 'Brutalism', Irene Dresel's raw techno revision of 'Zeitgeist Botanica', and ambient pioneer Brian Eno putting his spin on 'Epica'.

Review: DJ, curator and producer Dave Lee (fka. Joey Negro) continues to celebrate his 30-odd year long career in music with his second curatorital comp release. The 'Produced With Love' series charts all of Lee's original productions in soulful house and disco, and this second edition includes choices songs by the likes of Destiny II, Leroy Burgess and Andreya Triana. Always collaborative and with effortless attention to funking detail, Lee brings it once again.

Review: Given that Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker's Cuba: Music and Revolution - Culture Clash in Havana is one of the standout compilations of 2021, hopes are naturally sky-high for this speedy sequel. Like its predecessor, volume 2 focuses on music and made and released on the Caribbean island between 1975 and '85, this time round largely focusing on rare fusions of salsa, Latin jazz, disco, soul and funk, mostly licensed from records that have never been available outside Cuba. It's another stunning selection all told, with highlights including the heady Cuban disco/salsa fusion of Orquesta Los Van Van, the fiery disco-funk of FA 5, the heavily percussive hedonism of Luis Carobonell and the fuzzy psychedelic rock of Grupo De Experimentacion Sonora Del ICAIC. In a word: essential.

Review: Sharon Van Etten is in a philosophical mood on her sixth album, We've Been Going About This All Wrong, offering up a series of songs concerned with considering "how we feel, mourn and reclaim our agency when we think the world may be falling apart". While her lyrical inspirations may be weighty, the American singer-songwriter has a knack of cloaking her deeply personal words - delivered emotively, as you'd expect - in beautiful arrangements. Some of these bristle with her trademark "dark drums" and breath-takingly poignant synth sounds, while others are sparse and stripped-back, with just an acoustic guitar backing Van Etten's voice. She's kept the album under wraps - refusing, surprisingly, to release any teaser singles - but it's definitely been worth the wait.

Review: It's arriving a little late, given the Summer Solstice was late-June, but when an electronic compilation is as strong as this you can forgive the little things. Fittingly, this is a very UK sounding affair, with some tracks almost feeling like Bob Moog has walked into a maypole dance in some strange corner of the British Isles where detectives go missing. On the whole, though, things are much deeper and cosmic, which is where the whole celestial link clearly comes from.

To call it all ambient would be pretty reductive, but the label is useful for much of what's here. In actual fact the collection spans strange downtempo broken beats ('And They Named Him When The Sun Stands Still'), building grooves ('Throbbing Motor Lifeforms'), hypnotic drone ('All of Us Under The Sun') and atmospheric ethereality ('Heralding the Dawn').

Review: Having previously celebrated dance and pop hits of the 1980s, the long-running Now That's What I Call Music series - itself established that decade - has turned its attention to "alternative". It's a catch-all term that basically includes anything with indie roots, meaning a mix of goth, post-punk, indie, new wave, indie-dance and skewed synth-pop that emerged from the underground rather than the A&R departments of major labels. There's plenty of big hits and iconic cuts stretched across the four discs (think The Smiths, Simple Minds, Joy Division, REM, The Jam, New Order, Pixies, Sisters of Mercy etc), alongside lesser-celebrated favourites from the likes of Pop Will Eat Itself, Tom Robinson (the decidedly Balearic 'Atmospherics', which was co-written by Peter Gabriel), Sugacubes, Kissing The Pink and Big Audio Dynamite.

Review: In 1988, on the eve of the civil war that began to tear apart Somalia in the early 1990s, an intrepid band of broadcasters and journalists secretly salvaged some 10,000 cassettes of homegrown music from the archives of Radio Hargeissa in Somaliland. Almost 30 years on, those tapes have finally been mined for Sweet As Broken Dates, a brilliant compilation that finally showcases some of the multitude of gems that were recorded and released in the country between the late '60s and early '90s. It's a brilliant collection, all told, full of exotic music that combines Western styles - soul, funk, disco, pop, reggae, boogie, psychedelic rock and even early hip-hop- with musical influences from the wider region (most notably Arabic and tropical music from islands in the Indian Ocean). In other words, it should be an essential purchase.

Review: Some sonic communities grow even in isolation, in the lonely obsessive moments in the studio as time melts away. Deep inside the Detroit Underground nests a Berlin underground, chasing those resonant shared sounds. DU Berlin draws together some of that love felt through music in the German capital. It's not the wild city of reunification or *Berlin Calling* or tourist-style movies or the easyJet set. This is the side of the city that endlessly romances machines for the sheer joy of it, as The Allegorist titles her track, "until dawn." And with some big names and emerging, ranging from mainstays to veteran agitators, the Berlin DU crew have telegraphed each other through productions and mutual inspiration. The results vibrate and rumble with sympathetic frequencies, but never limited to grayscale or dithered palettes.

Review: The latest in Heavenly's colossal milking of the late Andrew Weatherall's extensive remix career comes in the form of a CD bundle of the first two collectible vinyl compilations, the Weatherall Remixes Volumes 1 and 2. The man occasionally known as Lord Sabre provided plenty of reworks for the London-based imprint over a 30-year period, and you'll find most of his greatest here, including the legendary two-part dub of St Etienne's 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart', his peerless, 15-minute peak-time 1992 take on Flowered Up's 'Weekender', a delightfully dubbed-out, Asphodells-style rework of Gwenno from 2015, and a stunningly spaced-out dancefloor dub of Mark Lanegan's Band.

Review: Volume One of For the Love Of You was an instant hit and so it makes sense the irrepressible Athens of the North label has come back with a second volume. Once again this is a collection of soul covers featuring interpretations of Grover Washington Jr., Midnight Star, Meli'sa Morgan and Simply Red and loads more. The music is golden, the soul vibes rich, and the new styles brought to these classics is instantly appealing in a whole new way. As alwayss, this is another superb release from Athens of the North.

Review: Having delivered a string of loosely themed collections of extended mixes and 12" versions from the 1980s, the long-running NOW compilation strand has launched a new series focusing on music released in specific years across the decade. 1980, the inaugural collection, is relatively light on pop, 'alternative' and new wave extended mixes (though OMD, Spandau Ballet, Sparks and UB40 all appear), but big on soaring disco hits, crossover club classics and chart-bothering dance numbers from the dawn of the decade of Thatcher and Reagan. That means outings for the likes of Tom Browne's 'Funkin' For Jamaica', Teena Marie's exceptional 'Behind The Groove', Grace Jones' low-slung cover of Roxy Music's 'Love is the Drug', Tom Moulton's peerless version of Loleatta Holloway's 'Love Sensation', an Odyssey's addictive 'Use It Up & Wear It Out'.

Review: While the soundtracks to earlier Stranger Things seasons often included lots of original music lovingly composed and produced to sound like atmospheric synthesiser jams of the 1980s, this compilation of music from the latest season does not. Instead, it rounds up some of the classic pop music of the period used in the series. Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill', which of course returned to the top of the UK singles charts on the back of its inclusion in the series, naturally appears, alongside a mixture of big '80s pop hits (see the cuts by Journey, Kiss, Dead Or Alive and Metallica), much-loved cuts from earlier eras (the Beach Boys, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, James Taylor) and, more surprisingly, a later track from Moby.

Review: Since its inception, Shifted's Avian imprint has gone from being a murderous, straight-laced techno imprint to what has now become a source for some of the best and most multi-faceted industrial music from the European quarters. We're not sure of Verge's true identity; it could either be one of the label's existing artists, the mysterious Shifted himself, or even an artist like Blawan riding incognito (don't quote us on that, though!) Solitary and crest-fallen, this magnetic collection of tunes feed off one another with utter ease and simplicity. They're not merely a selection of sound experiments but rather a unitary cloud of sonics which leave the listener with a powerful mental image. The feeling of dusk, the water dropping off the leaves, the cold breeze of Autumn. This is a blinding foray into the darkest corners of contemporary industrial experimentation.