[engl] Five-piece band from Brittany writing pop songs about love, fear and solidarity.

[engl] In SM (for sado-masochistic times if ever there was one), Api Uiz brings together polyrhythmic drums and bass, incisive guitar, and computer sounds between stripped down minimalism and abstract mass. Punk noises betray romantic aspirations that are appeased by the swaying rhythms of pseudo funk. At other times, while the recycled sounds of the synth challenge the rhythm section by distilling downright precarious tempos, the guitar lingers with delight on simple, repetitive patterns, before stalling like a discreet rumba musician. In the end, the compositions can fall into the old-fashioned music of horror films, make forays into new wave, or let themselves go into the tumult.

[engl] Atamina, or actually we should say Dr. Professor Atamina, is one of the protagonists of the new wave of Kologo Power, a music scene that hails from Ghana’s North East Region, that spread all over Ghana after King Ayisoba’s number one kologo hit song “I Want To See You My Father”, and is now conquering the whole world. Atamina is the smart guy, with tongue-in-cheek social-critical lyrics, pulling away the carpet under the feet of West Africa’s new developing bourgeoisies. There is a strong link to the Delta blues with its story-telling but Atamina might as well be called the Sleaford Mods of West Africa with his stripped beats and obnoxious rants. Listen to the song “When Two Elephants Fight”; Atamina is moving from one leg to the other, playing circles around his listeners, and the djembe drum is following in perfect tred. It makes Atamina sound like he is dancing with an elephant that took footwork lessons from Mohammed Ali. Then listen to “No One Wants To Die”, a song that pulls you inside with it’s hypnotic rhythm and riff and then boxes you on the ears with it’s message. This is Atamina at whole-length; the doctor is coming to treat you, but he sure isn’t a gentle healer. Atamina is part of the scene around King Ayisoba, often warming up the audience when King Ayisoba is on tour in Ghana, and working a great job doing so. On the This Is Kologo Power! compilation (MR 16) he featured with King Ayisoba, but on Sycophantic Friends he is mastering the job on his own. He is one of the big stars in the Bolgatanga area and growing fast in the big cities down south since he has no problem bringing his message across in English. And that gives this release an extra boost for the rest of the world. Atamina has something to say and wants people to act. A few countries in Africa started banning plastic bags, Atamina is forcing Ghana, and the rest of the world in it’s slipstream, to ban plastic, since it is ruining our bodies and environment (Rubber Song). Addressing the problem and providing the solution, joyfully obstinate, with a wink and a nudge; that’s the kologo doctor and may the whole world experience his treatment.

[engl] Island post-punk from the south of Poland. The tour includes: unlimited cellar snorkeling, coffee on Enewetak and Bikini atolls, free time in the central depression. The cruise crew includes: ?ukasz Plata (Ukryte Zalety Systemu, Przepych), Artur Soszynski (Ukryte Zalety Systemu) and Hubert Kostkiewicz (Kurws), powered by vocalist Agata Horwat. The whole is tied together with a dub brace by master of the console Szymon Szwarc (Jesie?, Rozwód). „Koniec sosu tysi?ca wysp” (The End of the Thousand Island Sauce) is an angular, overstimulated, rhythmically organized yet freedom-hungry punkoid in the vein of no wave or Minutemen, with a face that resembles absolutely no one.

[engl] In 2018 Ayuune Sule’s first full length album “We Have One Destiny” appeared on Makkum Records and Rebel Up Records. A solo tour in Europe followed in 2018 and 2019, when Ayuune Sule toured extensively from Denmark to The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Belgium and Bulgaria and became one of the biggest Kologo stars known. Back in Ghana he started recording his new album, featuring artists like Prince Buju and the legendary Bonjo Lyabinghi Noah from UK’s outernational dub masters African Head Charge. The new album “Putoo Katare Yire” is a true explosion of high energy and catchy songs, Kologo driven, traditionally rooted yet aiming for the future. True Soul and Kologo Power coming from Ghana’s Ayuune Sule, truly irresistible and touching.

[engl] Coolhaven’s 10 inch vinyl release ‘RODE PRUIK’, with covers of de Rondo’s and combined with a 24 page comic book-style artwork by De Rondos’ Johannes van de Weert. At this special release Coolhaven perform covers of both De Rondos and Tandstickorshocks, next to other obscure material. Johannes made an appearance in his own right alongside his old Rondos bandmates (and those from Tandstickorshocks), as ‘Rode Pruik’ is a reworking of old hits from both bands. According to Coolhaven’s Lukas Simonis, “The reworking is done with a Gabber feel, which suited those songs like a glove”. The comic is a trip guided by Johannes his new alter ego ‘Biggo’ around avant garde history, politics and underground related to the history of Rotterdam and De Rondo’s in it’s timeframe, developing itself to the contemporary situation and Coolhaven’s Rotterdam. Coolhaven is “a flexible group that flows in a realistic-capitalistic manner if needed and dries up where fluid is redundant.” Johannes van de Weert was a cartoonist in the Rotterdam punk and squatter movements of the 1980s next to being the vocalist of the influential Rotterdam-based punk band De Rondos (1977 – 1980). He started self-publishing comic booklets in the late 1970s and famously created the ‘Redrat’ character for the fanzine ‘Raket’ in 1980, which soon became an icon for the squatter’s movement.

[engl] The latest release from Duds is a deepening of the sinister sonic territory they have been exploring, in various forms, since they formed. Bass lines and percussion lope through the undergrowth while jagged guitars pierce the ears. Then there’s the brass section, which works less as a means of driving home a song’s point, than as a warning that whatever comes next is unlikely to be anything you expect. Lyrics are still somewhat hard to make out, emerging from the rhythmic chaos at intervals, as though you were listening to the recording of an Old Testament prophet, preaching from the ruins of the twenty first century. I don’t know what kind of band Duds are supposed to be. There are labels you could apply to them, terms like ‘wave’ and ‘punk’ with various prefixes designed to qualify the fact that they don’t really sound like anyone else. Immediate makes that fact all the more obvious and all the more compelling.

[engl] Formed in 2007 in Lisbon (Portugal), dSCi are a band with a curriculum as intense as their music, a unique blend of noise-rock, post-rock, post-punk and free-jazz that can be described as urgent, energetic and fierce or as once someone put it: “like a mix of Black Flag and Soft Machine”.?After having celebrated their 15th anniversary in May, dUASsEMIcOLCHEIASiNVERTIDAS – dSCi are preparing the release of their new record “?“, which will soon be out through Associação Terapêutica do Ruído – ATR (their siamese entity which is dedicated to promoting DIY concerts and to releasing and distributing records), together with the labels Bar Marfil Records, Experimentáculo Records, Gaffer Records, Lepers Produtcions, Neonparalleli, Red Wig, TECNOFOSSIL and Wallace Records.?The 5-track EP includes the vocal participations of G.W. Sok (the ex-singer of The Ex and many other bands and projects).

[engl] Howie Reeve is back with 14 new songs, this time with contributions by Richie Dempsey, Seth Bennett, Cod O’Donnell, Elena Vasquez, Cathy Heyden, Pia Boone, Semay Wu, Lorenzo Prati Dominid Harris and Andy Kerr, making this his his most diverse and best (yet) long player. Beautiful packaging, comes with double sided lyric insert.

[engl] Singular interplay between voice and acoustic bass, purposefully growing into his own spiel, celebrating the grassy sidewalk cracks, the generousity of human spirit yet lamenting the strains of sadistic entitlement in our current states.

[engl] HUFFDUFF from Hamburg present with their new album “AI” a statistically evaluated concept album for humans as a target group! Six new songs and two reinterpretations of songs from the debut album “HF/DF”, eight stories about power, powerlessness, worried employees, price-conscious consumers, humans, machines, empowerment and relaxation techniques, each of them a blast! HUFFDUFF’s psychokinetic post-punk noise rock with the music-historically proven instruments guitar (Abacha Tunde Jr.), bass (V. Sputnikova), drums (Mr. Fust), larynx, tongue and vocal cords (Durian Gray) is already shredding through the ashes of tomorrow’s world!

[engl] The worst madness to be wise in a mad word’?chant?Hyperculte?in their second album?‘Massif Occidental’, true musical liberty cry, happy and wild . The duo, formed by the cream of?Genevan?experimental scene?(Simone Aubert?in drums, guitar and singing and?Vincent Bertholet?in double-bass and singing) follows its crazy procession in a chaotic word to carry us away in its disco, pop, kraut, punk AND?post rock trance. Sharped rhythmic, composition inventiveness, poetic and committed lyrics, the eight?songs of the album, written from musical improvisations, from pieces of literary texts and politic slogans, give evidence of the decided and sharped look of the two musicians about our time. The instruments and voices (a worked feminine singing and a masculine scansion more brutal and spoke) full of various effects and distortions, discuss, play and answer each other.? Recorded in?Hambourg, in?Felix Kubin’s, To Rococo Rot’s, Faust’s, etc studio which gives all the songs a sharped electro-pop touch, the album sounds like shot at glory, a poetic resistance appeal for an ‘army of dreamers‘. Between idealism and pessimism, joy and urgency,?Hyperculte?confirms their debuts and shows their own madness with a ‘Massif Occidental’ firmly invincible.

[engl] Hussain Safir, born in 1954, at Ait Sedrat Djebel Soufla, Assif'N'Dad's live in the Dades valley in Imzoudar village, like Lahcen Akil, in Tamlalt, is a self taught musician, composer and poetry writter. He sing in Tachelhit, the Amazigh, or Berber of south-east Morocco. Hussain Safir is a specialist about Tamawayt , Ahidous and Ahwach, dance and poetry.

[engl] Evolution? Revolution? Devolution? There is no certainty about the vector of Kurws’ music. The way from the debut Dziura w Getcie to Alarm leads from a primitive sophistication to sophisticated primitiveness. It is a comic, from which the bubbles are being wiped out with each subsequent page, making it more abstract for some and a lot more concrete for others. More important than a genre or clear explanations here are the nerve, adventurousness and controlled instability of the line. It is these that complement the rest and create images and notions. Kurws speak little, but they throw the news of the world into the cogs of their machine made of nerves conjoined with instruments. In one gesture they reflect reality, challenge it and dodge. ‘Alarm’ is Kurws wrestling with their limitations. Doing splits in asynchronous performance, in expanding their patience and organising silence. There are escapements with the use of many layers, recording tracks with a tape recorder, taking advantage of tape’s physical imperfections. Kurws train in composition, improvisation and – which is relatively new – in casting spells on coincidence, riskily falling out of structures, evading their own habits. They form, lose and cover their tracks. Can you dance to this material? Of course you can, but it is not going to be either the well-remembered Tanz mit Kommune 1 or a clumsy dance with Colossus on clay legs. This time it is a dance on a volcano. Pascal Quignard has concluded that there is no sleep for hearing. This is why various devices to wake you up appeal to your ears. Sight can be turned away or covered by eyelids. You cannot switch hearing off, though. Kurws exploit this passivity of the ear to the fullest, yet doing so in defiance of the oppression encoded in the music. They use sonic violence in service for peace. They generate tension which releases and diffuses greater tensions. They are like the madman raving in the street that you listen to only to recognise your own fears, neuroses and frustrations. ‘Alarm’ is an alarming album for alarming times. You need to decide yourselves whether it is a fire alarm, a nuke alarm or no more (and no less) than a common alarm clock. Karol Paczkowski

[engl] Now this is wild! The mix of experimental instrumental punk, avant-garde, free jazz and improv from Poland is wonderfully aggressive. (The) Kurws formed in May 2008 as an unexpected result of a ping pong session. Since then they have pursued their own search, not so much in defined genres, but within the very foundations of rock, expression, and sound. It is a workshop where improvisation penetrates through composed material, a congealed form of the creation process. Armed with repetitions, recombinations, variations and contrasts, they frolic with memory and expectations. Post punk, krautrock, rock in opposition, funk, no wave – they present modes of playing, motives, and riffs we have heard time and time again in a totally different context, dissected from their original environment, placed side by side, used in a brand new manner, deconstructed and distilled.

[engl] In times when we are united by much, but still divided by more, music can get flayed for being reactionary, opportunistic or undeclared. Meanwhile, the Kurws, on their fourth album, put things clearly, namely head-on. “Fascia” is an album founded as much by the culture of anxiety as by their personal dreads. The affirmation and the fear of ambiguity are two heads of the same desire – and two driving forces behind these collected exercises in not giving up.

[engl] La Plie is a trio including Wilf Plum (Dog Faced Hermans, Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp) offering 12 instrumental tracks between experimental free-rock, playful minimalism, post-punk and dub. Enjoyable and entertaining with its varied sounds.

[engl] Lahcen Akil comes from the Moroccan Atlas Mountains and began writing songs at an early age. On a self-made lute he plays music that is very traditionally influenced, without any pronounced "Western" influences, here again with a smaller cast than on the predecessor 'Lahcen Akil And The Chaabi Brothers' a few years. He is accompanied primarily by percussion and occasionally vocals. Akil recorded this album in Tamlalte, Haut-Atlas marocain.

[engl] Two atonally lurching and wobbling basses intertwine, overloaded with distortion. Drums and vocals, combined in one person, beat around wildly and jump courageously into the deep bass frequencies. Absurd noise between joy of playing, hysteria, invitation to a deadly duel and fits of laughter. The trio LE SINGE BLANC from Metz is ready to jump in your face with “bouncy psyche noise”. One crazy impact follows the next; they swapped the built-in shock absorbers for a trampoline in France. If you think about LIGHTNING BOLT, your synapses will probably pop out automatically, but you're getting closer to it. “Arrebato” is equal parts reckless and self-indulgent. (OX 169)

[engl] After 2006, when The Noble Folly of rock’n’roll saw the light of day, we all thought that this cd, volume three of the series Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’roll, was Trespassers W’s swansong. Individual members chose their own path and singer Cor Gout intensified his career as a writer of poetry, short stories, essays and (in 2021) a novel. Being the musician that he is, he surrounded some of his books with music: Muziek in zwart wit (Music in black and white) illustrated the interviews with Dutch jazz-musicians from the thirties, forties and fifties with songs, performed bij John and Annelies van Markwijk, Ab Bol, former Trespassers W-drummer Peter Bos and Cor Gout, that had made these old jazz-celebrities famous. His short stories and poems about his home town The Hague were extended with songs, poems and cabaret, performed by John van Markwijk, Peter Bos and Cor Gout under the moniker of Gekruld Haags (Curly Hague).* But blood appeared to be thicker than water, and in 2014 Trespassers W rose from its ashes with the one-sided lp One Sided Love Affair (2014), followed by the 7” Stowaway ep (2016) and the cd Ferrageau, an epic poem written by Cor Gout and put to music by Lukas Simonis and Frans Friederich, which Trespassers W released under the name of Trireem (2020). And, believe it or not, in our awkward corona days they managed to record a new lp/cd – in the Trespassers W-tradition a concept lp/cd –, called Koala and other metamorphoses. Let’s conclude this press release by establishing that since 2006 Trespassers W metamorphosed several times, but in these recreations de band never disappeared. On the contrary: it changed back into the elusive band it always had been.

[engl] Contains the songs "Wander Through The Time Of Hearts,""Boxer," and "Lavender Light." "Boxer" is from the album Dark Light but has never been available on vinyl outside this 7". The beautiful artwork was created by Carolyn Berk - singer/songwriter from Lovers.

[engl] For the last ten years, Mélanie Virot and Maël Salètes have combined the pedal harp and the electric guitar to create the music of L’Étrangleuse, drawing inspiration from the traditional music of a country that doesn’t exist. Tirelessly trapping the magic of almost nothing with two instruments that per se seem to have nothing in common, they increasingly tour in unexpected places. From this confrontation, a sort of chamber post-rock has emerged, a contemplative punk hymn to African music from the Arctic circle, a modal soundtrack and outwith the modes of a long waking dream. Seven years after their first album and three years after “Memories To Come” (produced by John Parish), the duo has conceived a third disc, “Dans Le Lieu Du Non-Où” (“In The Place Of No-Where”), completely sung in French and recorded at home. From dances of enchantment to end-of-the-world ballads, their new repertoire gives pride of place to the rotations of the jeli n’goni (Malian lute), while the harp borrows saturation and breaks from the electric guitar. The raw and natural sound offers a total immersion in what the group generates best on stage, where the duo is now accompanied by a percussionist.