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Experimental enigma 1127 fuses grime and hard techno into early 20th Century Egyptian music on his outstanding second album for Cairo’s Nashazphone label, building a wall of floury, computerised noise that relentlessly pushes the dancefloor into the backroom, and the backroom towards the rally. Breathtaking, mind-altering gear, essential listening for fans of Mutamassik, Autechre, Kelman Duran, Nkisi, even James Ferraro.

The fifteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, ض (ḍād) is one of only six letters that were added to the Phoenician alphabet to construct the language. It exists only in Arabic, and is notoriously difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce. As such, it's a fitting title for 1127's mystifying second album, a profound expression that challenges us to look beyond the aesthetic and unravel a knotty collage of influences and innovation.

On his acclaimed 2019 debut ’Tqaseem Mqamat El Haram’, 1127 delivered a shock to experimental electronic club musicks that snagged everyone from Rat Heart to Rabit and Elvin Brandhi with fractal decimations of Egyptian rave and street noise. On this new one, he simmers it down through reticulated junglist and trap modes, whilst crucially retaining a hallucinatory sense of chaos reflective of modern day Giza. With contributions from a whole bunch of collaborators including Minusdesire, Caironomixx, Emna Mâaref - plus many others, he deploys fractured melodies, voices and robust club structures at once distinctly recalling Mutamassik’s millennium-era fusions, with a crucial quota of controlled madness that 1127 can safely call his own.

There are traces of Autechre's latter-day autogenic reveries on 'hyperfals(E)xoteric@iro', sweeping up thunderous, asynchronous percussion in brisk sonic winds, folding in oud-like electronic plucks to illuminate unconventional commonalities and shared narratives between future / primitive practice. On '1446' he uses a heavy-footed drum battery, burying drill-warped subs and almost invisible vocals in a disheveled mix, shepherding us towards 'iii اعيش في جلباب ابي Lenn', a disco-baked headmelter that takes the language of French touch and uses it to carve new shapes into deconstructed Egyptian pop. On the Caretaker-referencing ‘complexity induced amnesia’, he creates a smoky aura, dissolving the rhythm and trace vocals into unstable FX-corroded loops, designed to melt the memory banks.

With thanks to Rashad Becker’s faithful vinyl master that presents the music with all its burred edges, pressure drops, and textures in tact, ‘ض’ is an absolute must check for anyone bitten by the unstoppable sprawl and refraction of traditional club and experimental musicks into new dimensions.

Satoshi and Nao performed their live “Diskordant” using their analog machines and object-activated sounds in front of the New York crowd. These sounds are transformed and improvised through reconstruction and sample synthesis.

We have gathered again to present you a full body of work by Austin Bascom who goes under the moniker Abacus. The gentleman has created a lot of unique works for the people to enjoy starting from the 90’s and till this day. Recently the artist had a string of fantastic releases in our current years of 2020+ as well. This time he was kind enough to dedicate his time and effort to the dome of Sakskøbing. We witness the four deep cuts of house music in the way how deep house needs to be done in our honest opinion. Start of from “Chi-Town Stories” and the stories it brings to the ears and the mindset, straight after witnessing “Chillin’ Woman” with amazing vocals by Mz. Mosea which has been recorded in 1994, then bringing in the “Mourning Sun” and to conclude wrapping yourself under a warm blanket of “Hyggë”. I hope this work of soul and passion will bring you nice feelings as it did to us. Don’t forget to tell your loved ones that you love them. Thank you, Abacus for the emotion you have given to all of us listeners and music lovers.

Absis returns to Hivern Discs with his Fenix EP. Six cuts that dive deep into Salva's more abstract and slow side keeping his signature reverberating drums and droning landscapes. Comes with poster that will be printed, together with the sleeve, at L'Anacronica in Barcelona, with letterpress on a shiny silver cardboard.

London-based four-piece Adult Jazz announce their first full-length album in a decade, So Sorry So Slow, out 26 April 2024 via Spare Thought. Alongside the announcement comes lovesick new single ‘Suffer One’ featuring Owen Pallett, a cautious excavation of self and sexuality, clambering across a gorgeously shapeshifting, filmic five-minutes.

Containing some of the band’s most abrasive but gentle, beautiful and melismatic work to date, So Sorry So Slow has many defining characteristics: romance, panic, devotion and remorse, threaded together by an intentionally laser-focused love. It’s deeply personal, bruised and candid in its expressions of tenderness, and deeply pained in its concurrent reflections of ecological regret. Across its hour-long runtime, a delicate, frenetic energy and glacial heaviness coexist, the band pitting those paces against one another. In their richly experimental timbre, dancing strings and fluttering falsettos prang against a bed of brass drones like a wounded bird.

“We started writing in 2017 and began recording in 2018,” says vocalist Harry Burgess. “We genuinely thought it might be finished in 2018! But things kept developing and, having resolutely not struck while the iron was hot, there was no real external push to rush things after that, so we just kept letting things shift and unfold until it felt right. Listening back to my voice notes it’s nice to notice that there are fragments of ideas from the whole period 2017-2023 which have shaped the record.”

Recorded in bursts at studios across London and in the band members’ flats, at Konk, on the Isle of Wight and in Sussex, So Sorry is unambiguous in its evolution. Sonically, there are sparks of the arrhythmic brightness that afforded the band’s critically acclaimed debut album Gist Is its cult adoration, for fans of Arthur Russell and Meredith Monk, but with a blossoming, melancholic darkness often overhead. Piano sprees and luscious string sections appear like low-hanging stars on a night-time drive, whilst plunging vocal distortions and humming brass loops resurrect heavy limbs in a bad dream.

“I usually have objects as kind of totems for ideas,” explains Burgess. “The album initially started out to do with performance… [the totem] was a head mic, one of the subtle skin-tone ones, discreet on the forehead of a West End star. A number of the first songs in their original forms were almost musical theatre piano ballads. I think that was really a device to write about my life as the ‘main character’ (pre internet-speak reframing): regrets about romance, relationships - unsustainable relationships with the self and others.”

“However, once we started writing, the ideas about unsustainable personal relationships, loving unevenly and heartbreak conflated with a more expressly ecological regret. Like contending with big feelings of loss, endings, beauty, desolation, and with how much joy the earth contains in it. Feeling so much gratitude bound up in waves of sadness. Maybe witnessing a slow-motion goodbye to all that, or its last gasps. I love the earth and the life it supports so much. I love how ecosystems fit together - even the brutal stuff. It may be basic to say, but now is the time to be laser focused on that love. I was thinking about human centrality on earth, us as the ‘main character’, the way that is served by faith and romanticism, and the subsequent disingenuous understandings of our position in the ecosystem, as only stewards somehow, rather than subjects. The totems at this point: a herald’s horn, lorry inner tubes, archaeological tools. I guess from doom, industry, history respectively.”

“Now I would say the record is about gripping. Totems being: crampons, rope, drips, desalination equipment, accruing various survival tech. I think gripping sums up both of the threads. There’s the emotionally correct clinging to the earth that is the substrate of everything we value, or the delusional clinging to our imagined dominant position. But also the practical, technological aspects of creating a sustainable relationship, of remaining here. Then I think of romance again.”

So Sorry So Slow comes out 26th April 2024 on Spare Thought, mixed by Fabian Prynn at 4AD Studios and mastered by Alex Wharton at Abbey Road.

Adult Jazz is Harry Burgess, Tim Slater, Steven Wells and Tom Howe.

(Japanese pressing, Official reissue) Brilliant synth prog weirdness from the late 1970s Tokyo. Recorded by the guitarist Akio Niitsu who was compared, not without reason, to Manuel Göttsching. Niitsu has a fairly small discography of only three full-length albums, but his second one - “Pet Step” - was on Tomita’s label and supposedly with the involvement of Haruomi Hosono (this is according to Chee Shimizu who lists it in his “Obscure Music”).

Akio Niitsu's first album, "i/o(i･o)" released in 1978, was produced in a homemade studio that had been converted from a storeroom in his home, and he spent three years doing everything from composition to engineering by himself, using overdubbed guitar recordings. 's first analog re-release has been decided.As a guitar multi-recording album, the idea was realized six years earlier than the album "e2-e4" released in 1984 by Manuel Göttsching, the central figure of "Ash La Tempel", but it was too early. A hidden experimental/ambient gem!The paradoxical sound that makes you feel as if you are lost deep in a labyrinthine forest, combined with Tadanori Yokoo's artwork, is a piece that allows you to enjoy Akio Niitsu's worldview with your ears and eyes.

In The Red Records is proud to announce a previously unreleased new album by Brooklyn-born master of minimalism Alan Vega, Insurrection. The eleven songs here showcase the unparalleled vision and uncompromising force from one of the most influential artists of all time.

Alan Vega was born in Brooklyn in 1938. He co-founded the legendary New York City punk band Suicide with Martin Rev in 1970. Suicide’s groundbreaking 1977 debut is considered one of the most influential albums of all time. Vega considered his solo records the audio counterpoint to his visual art that reflected the world around him while simultaneously exploring universal themes. It makes his work as relevant today as it was when he created them. It was during his highly experimental period beginning in the late ’80s that he began working with Liz Lamere, who became the most crucial collaborator of his solo career until his death in 2016.

Lamere, along with Jared Artaud, resurrected these newly unearthed collection of lost recordings, which they co-produced and mixed. Lamere and Artaud spearhead the Vega Vault project, which aims to bring rare, unreleased and back catalog work spanning Alan Vega and Suicide’s career to the public for the first time.

On Insurrection, Lamere says: “Insurrection was created in the time period around 1997/98, after Mutator and prior to Vega’s 1999 release of 2007 and captures the intense energy of NYC in the ’90s rife with crime, killing, hate, fascism, racism, and moral bankruptcy. You can hear the tortured souls floating through this album. Post-Gulf War angst still enveloped Alan. He was having premonitions about a major terror attack in the US, well before 9/11. The upcoming birth of his son raised further awareness of the state of our world. All these emotions are mirrored in the sounds he magnetized. And true to Vega form, there remains hope and empowerment coursing through the tracks. In the almost three decades of going into the studio with Vega, we recorded significantly more material than the seven albums released. Vega’s intention was to experiment with sound which would become the canvas for the poetry that reflected his vision of the universe. Because the goal wasn’t to make albums, he had no timeline or constraints and would freely follow new paths uncovered along the way.”