Noura Mint Seymali’s 3rd album is a thrilling explosion of contemporary Mauritanian griot music. Produced by Matthew Tinari (Noura’s drummer) and Mikey Coltun (Mdou Moctar), the album is raw and experimental; capturing with visceral clarity and adventurous sonics the intensity of her sound. Noura is again confirmed as one of the world’s most arresting voices.

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The Amsterdam-based six-piece Nusantara Beat has delivered their highly-anticipated debut album: a rich weave of Indonesian folk traditions, psychedelic rock, and vintage Indo-pop reimagined through a contemporary lens. Hypnotic grooves, radiant melodies and deep ancestral roots.

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Kimatika, the 3rd album by the Slovenian audio-visual trio Etceteral, is a visceral plunge into the raw undercurrents of futuristic jazz, motoric propulsion, free improv and elastic compositions. A growling baritone sax weaves through pulsating electronics and restless drums; the bass frequencies dense and cavernous.

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The celebrated Rwandan folk duo returns with a resonant fifth album. Combines their earthy vocals and acoustic instrumentation with atmospheric string arrangements. RRecorded 100% live and without overdubs by Grammy-award winning producer, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott). Unfiltered, intimate and deeply human.

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AMMAR 808’s deep-rooted, room-shaking 3rd album »Club Tounsi« isn’t just a powerful statement of his Tunisian identity. It’s also a joyous celebration of the dancefloor, blending Mezoued rhythms and instrumentation with an impossibly infectious blast of bass-heavy futurism.

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Recorded in situ in the highlands of Lesotho—one of the world’s most elevated and perilous nations—the group Famo Mountain crafts raw, topical music driven by visceral vocals, accordion and percussion. This sound not only echoes the rugged beauty and harsh realities of its environment but also rises above them, creating something timeless and transcendent.

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This acclaimed Japanese psych-rock trio returns with a kaleidoscopic, otherworldly new album. Their musical core of drums, bass, keyboards and grouped female vocals, is augmented by an array of Japanese folk instruments. It’s a powerful swirling sound. A ritual music for undiscovered galaxies and unimagined futures.

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A veritable supergroup consisting of Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers), Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero) and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo), Los Pirañas, the Colombian Avant-Latin experimentalists, return with their most formidable and forward-looking album yet. Daring, imaginative, eclectic and always deeply groovy, Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida is an infectious trip into the dark, pulsating heart of Bogota’s thrilling underground music scene.

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Trupa Trupa returns with the “Mourners” EP, a bold new release produced by the renowned Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Idles, Amyl and The Sniffers). Featuring five dynamic, fast-paced tracks, the EP showcases a powerful rhythm section, blending loud basslines and driving drums with psychedelic elements, rage, and unexpected stylistic twists.

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Capturing the energy and the experience of Ammar 808’s 150+ global performances, the album unfolds as a pulsing interconnected journey. Live at Another Sky Festival delivers raw, dance-inducing grooves and a deeply individual high-energy Maghreb electronica.

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The legendary Malian desert blues artist Samba Touré, has returned with a new album Baarakelaw (The Workers) – the follow up to his highly-acclaimed 2021 album Binga. The album received ecstatic, career defining reviews and led to Samba being named the “Best Artist” of 2022 at Songlines magazine. Baarakelaw is a vivid mix of traditional northern Malian Songhoy music, blues-rock tracks with psychedelic overtones, ballads and love songs.

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A poignant sequel to Some Mississippi Sunday Morning (2023), the acclaimed prison recorded gospel album that UNCUT called “an inescapably spiritual experience.” Producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami) has returned to Parchman Farm to record a new collection of raw, haunting performances from the prison’s Sunday gospel service.
Unforgettable.

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Avant-garde Colombian singer-songwriter Julián Mayorga returns with his ninth album, a clattering, absurdist slice of post-cumbia psychedelia. Chak Chak Chak Chak is a feverish mix of angular electric guitars, circuit-bent beats, found percussion and rapid-fire incantations, with influences that include Tom Zé, Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. Frenetic energy meets satirical wit. Surrealist fables entwined with defiant sonics.

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This legendary Istanbul band remains the most experimental exponent of the hotly-tipped contemporary Turkish psych-rock scene. BaBa ZuLa are revered sonic trailblazers who have built a cult following in all corners of the globe. İstanbul Sokakları (Streets of Istanbul) is a vivid sonic and political statement from a band that continues to show us the future.

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El Khat’s 3rd album mute belies its title as it careens out of the speakers with a raucous intensity. Formed in the garages and warehouses of Jaffa and now based in Berlin, the group’s ever-expanding vision makes a defiant stand against complacency, conflict and division. Skittering drums and brass, a jagged organ, hypnotic Yemeni melodies and one-of-a-kind DIY percussion and string instruments, all meld together in an infectious, heady soundscape.

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Hailing from Cyprus’s divided capital Nicosia, and led by Antonis Antoniou, the founder of Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, Buzz’ Ayaz creates a transfixing Eastern Mediterranean psychedelia. Their self-titled debut album is a fuzzed-out urban soundscape of dubby electronics, 70s-psych organ, growling bass clarinet, amplified folk instruments, ritual beats and Greek and Anatolian melodicism.

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The Bhutan Balladeers collective’s entire debut album was recorded live in a hilltop forest outside of the capital, Thimphu. The music features extended vocal tones that weave complex patterns, and melodies that are sup-ported by minimal instrumental accompaniment.

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Landless are Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch. The Irish quartet sings centuries old ballads as well as more recently penned folk songs. Sometimes unaccompanied and sometimes with subtle instrumentation, their vocally rich music is dark and patient; spellbinding and gorgeous. Produced by John “Spud” Murphy (Lankum, ØXN) and featuring Cormac MacDiarmada from Lankum (fiddle, viola, banjo).

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Gordan mirror the mysticism of legends and stories from the Balkan region, creating a music that stretches between expressiveness and abstraction; tradition and the avant-garde. The visceral vocals of Svetlana Spajic are both rooted and deeply interpretive. In turn, drummer Andi Stecher and Guido Möbius on bass and electronics, employ sonic strategies that steer the songs in inspired and unpredictable directions.

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Avalanche Kaito: the exhilarating combination of Burkina Faso born urban griot Kaito Winse and fellow experimentalists Belgian guitarist Nico Gitto and French drummer/producer Benjamin Chaval. This transnational avant-rock trio created waves with their visceral self-titled 2022 debut, bagging notable festival appearances (Supersonic, End of the Road), a KEXP session and much deserved critical and audience enthusiasm. Polyrhythmic futurism, raw epiphanies, Burkinabe parables. A rattling ritual of ecstatic noise.

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Ana Lua Caiano’s debut album melds rural Portuguese music traditions with layered vocals, synthesizers, insistent beats and field recordings. Her music is visceral and tightly focused pulling from a rich mosaic of influences that includes traditional group singing, musique concrete, songwriters from Portugal’s 70’s revolutionary period and electronic icons like Bjork and Laurie Anderson.

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Sahrawi singer-songwriter Aziza Brahim’s new album Mawja (Wave) is fashioned from a simple but powerful foundation: Saharan and Iberian percussion mixed with stately guitars and warm, enveloping bass. Co-produced by Brahim, the album is confidently eclectic. It navigates the textures of her life: the Sahara, Cuba and Spain. It even includes a drum part inspired by the Clash. Her voice is a wellspring of deep and resonant emotions.The yearning for homeland. The struggle for freedom.

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Saramaccan Sound (Suriname) are a brother duo – Dwight Sampie and Robert Jabini – who write and perform flowing acoustic songs sung in Saramaccan, the language from the Americas with the most African elements. Their debut album was recorded in situ by Grammy winner Ian Brennan along a remote riverside in the Amazon region of Suriname.

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YĪN YĪN, the highly touted Dutch quartet from Maastricht, returns with a sonically expansive third album Mount Matsu. Recorded collectively in their own studio in the Belgian countryside, the album is a kaleidoscope of sounds and influences, occupying a no man’s land between Khruangbin and Kraftwerk, surf music and Southeast Asian psychedelia, Stax soul and mutant 80s disco, City pop and Japanese instrumental folk (sōkyoku).

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Lucidvox’s new album is vast-sounding. A collection of swirling ritual missives offered up in the hope of better times. Formerly based in Russia, for their new album That’s What Remained, the all-female quartet has added additional sonic thrust (horns, keyboards, strings, atmospheric textures) to their already acclaimed and impassioned psych-rock.

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The 2nd album from Belgrade Ethno-Noise outfit Lenhart Tapes, boldly extends producer Vladimir Lenhart’s acclaimed re-tooling of submerged Balkan musics. Hypnotic Walkman jams meet industrial rhythm loops and trad-folk songs interpreted by a lineup of thrilling female vocalists. A magical, beauty-and-the-beast encounter of dirty noise and righteous folk.

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São Paulo’s Afro-Brazilian groove visionaries Bixiga 70 return with an ecstatic 5th album – Vapor – their first in four years. The sound is joyful, a series of potent horn driven melodies and infectious polyrhythms. More than a return, Vapor is a rebirth. An exuberant, full-tilt party.

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Haunting in situ recordings from Parchman Farm maximum security prison in Mississippi. Producer Ian Brennan recorded the prison’s Sunday gospel service and the results are unforgettable. Performances range from solo acapella to a floor-shaking band. The repertoire includes both traditional and newly penned spirituals. The emotions are unfiltered and deeply resonant.

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Mesmerizing field recordings from Botswana. Producer/recordist/Grammy winner Ian Brennan ventured to an end-of-the-road location to document songs sung in Taa, a rich language on the verge of extinction.

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A genre-defying Afrofuturist manifesto from Uganda. Producer, dancer and choreographer Faizal Mostrixx’s singular vision of East African electronic music is a lush sonic tapestry of polyrhythms, modern dancefloor styles, amapiano, Nile basin ceremonial chants and Pan-African field recordings.

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Their 5th album in as many years Aşk (deeper feeling of love), marks an exuberant return to the 70s Anatolian folk-rock sound that characterised Altın Gün’s first two albums. It is a record that radiates the infectious energy found in the Amsterdam-based sextet’s celebrated live performances.

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Acclaimed Istanbul-based artist Gaye Su Akyol is due to release her fourth album, ‘Anadolu Ejderi’ (“Anatolian Dragon”), on 25 November. Building upon her combo of Turkish psychedelia, empowered commentary and retro-futurist sonics, her vision is more personal and uncompromising than ever before.

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The kaleidoscopic third album from Seán Mulrooney and his Ireland meets Berlin ensemble. Ecstatic folk-psych that full embraces the natural world and living ancestry, through joyful experimentation and deeply rooted sonics. An inspired soundscape that echoes eclectic and eccentric atmospheres: traditional Irish folk, outsider pop, global sacred music and drone rock.

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The award-winning Israeli-Persian singer returns with “Roya” (fantasy in Farsi) an exhilarating blend of tradi-modern rhythms and retro-Persian sonics. Recorded in secrecy in Istanbul with her band from Tel Aviv and risk-defying Iranian musicians from Tehran. A musical portal to a place of peace, joy and unfettered freedom.

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Middle Eastern psych-rock collective Al-Qasar’s debut album is an explosive mix of heavy Arabian grooves, global psychedelia and North African trance music. Guests include Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) & Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys). The band calls it “Arabian fuzz.” Brazenly electric and deeply connected.

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A thrilling collaboration between the acclaimed Belgian composer/instrumentalist Catherine Graindorge and the ever-iconic Iggy Pop. Haunting string and electronic textures melding with Iggy’s baritone, cautionary tales. A deep dive into the heart of these unsettled times.

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Yanna Momina’s Afar Ways was recorded live in a stilt-hut on the horn of Africa when Grammy-winning producer & author, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Zomba Prison Project, Ustad Saami) visited Djibouti in the spring of 2018. The album is beautifully focused around Momina’s resonant vocals and the sparest of musical backings (acoustic guitar, handclaps, calabash).

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A Burkinabe urban griot (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels noise punk duo. A new alloy that deconstructs both traditional and futurist knowledge. This thrilling ensemble is releasing their self-titled debut album hot on the heels of their acclaimed 4-song EP Dabalomuni (January 2022), that The Wire called “freaked, juddering electronic punk.”

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Dirtmusic’s journey has been one of twists and turns. In 2018, the group was enlarged to include Murat Ertel from Baba Zula and the resultant album “Bu Bir Ruya” was recognized as a breakthrough. The group’s new 2-song single Hum Hum (+ Western Lands) retains the lineup of Ertel/Eckman/Race and pushes the moody atmospherics and political critique to the next level.

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Faizal Mostrixx is an afrofuturist Ugandan griot. An avant-garde music producer, who creates powerful and poetic narratives through multi-sensory disciplines (beats, video, dancing and choreography). Advancing bold tales of contemporary Africa through a counterculture prism, Mostrixx is one of electronica’s hottest up and coming ambassadors for a continent on the move.

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Beautifully recorded in situ in the Rif mountains in the autumn of 2019, this 110-minute double CD presents these legendary musicians expansively and unhindered. The Master Musicians are a collective of Jbala Sufi trance makers, committed to creating a contemporary representation of their centuries-old musical tradition.

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Rough-hewn and exhilarating, EL Khat’s second album “Albat Alawi Op.99” is a deep dive into leader Eyal el Wahab’s Yemenite roots and their inspired re-imaginings. A careening orchestra of percussion, horns, strings, electricity and el Wahab’s own DIY instruments. Mesmerizing retro-futurist sounds.

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YĪN YĪN’s dazzling second album dives even deeper into dancefloor propulsion and space travel atmospherics than their lauded debut The Rabbit that Hunts Tigers (2019). Funk and disco beats. Electro experimentation. Global retro vibes. A shimmering, cinematic sweep.

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Following the rave reception of their debut album “We Are,” the acclaimed Russian four-piece Lucidvox have returned 14 months later with a thunderous and lushly produced two-song digital single.

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Avalanche Kaito: a Burkinabe urban griot (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels noise punk duo (Drummer/dataist Benjamin Chaval and guitarist Nico Gitto). It’s a completely new alloy and a huge opportunity to deconstruct both traditional and futurist knowledge.

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With B FLAT A this much acclaimed quartet from Gdańsk have produced their most epic and visceral statement to date. A universe where echoes of Can, Syd Barrett and Fugazi lovingly collide.

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Hunkered down and unable to record together, in 2020 the MEKONS created this glorious digital chain letter of an album. A sprawling manifesto of connection and defiance it deftly slides through fiddle tunes, digi-dub, fireside ballads and urgent rock & roll. First time ever on LP.

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Glitterbeat Records is very excited to reissue the out-of-print debut album from Brazil’s 10-piece instrumental powerhouse: Bixiga 70. Urgent and uncompromising. An inspired soundworld where Afro-Brazilian traditions and retro and contemporary sonics seamlessly meld together.

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Kuunatic is a thrilling Tokyo based tribal-psych trio bolstered by diverse global sonics and powerful female vocals. Drawing on the members’ different musical and cultural perspectives, their music explores ritual drumming, pulsing bass lines, atmospheric keyboard sounds and Japanese traditional instruments.

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“East Pakistan Sky” is the third album from the now legendary surti master Ustad Saami. The album follows his previously acclaimed recordings – God is Not a Terrorist (2019) and Pakistan is for the Peaceful (2020) – and presents two unedited performances that fully confirm the sublime and immersive experience of Saami’s musical (and spiritual) expression.

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This much acclaimed Cyprus-based trio return with a thrilling fourth album. The record pushes their trademark Mediterranean sonics into a deep psychedelic and avant-folk direction. A danceable fever storm of stringed instruments, multi-layered singing and trombone-driven low end.

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It is very likely that those who love Yol will also fall for Âlem, another record that showcases Altın Gün’s ability to reshape Turkish folk music through their own unique filter. Âlem and Yol also share the same faith in using electronic sounds as a base and are both mixed and co-produced by Belgian synth duo, Asa Moto.

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BLK JKS are a seminal force in the South African underground. Monster grooves meet guitar and brass driven afro-rock. Echoes of spiritual jazz, post-apocalyptic funk, renegade dub and kwaito. Features Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré and Beastie Boys accomplice Money Mark on the track “Maiga.”

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Sun-baked instrumental meditations played on local string and percussion instruments. Yearning vocals and songs that evoke the mystifying realities of everyday life. Recorded live and outdoors on Grande Comore island by acclaimed producer, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Zomba Prison Project).

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The legendary Malian singer/guitarist returns with his most personal and immersive album to date. Intimately recorded with a small band, “Binga” dives deep into Samba’s Songhoy roots. Moody Sahelian atmospheres. Cautionary tales. Hopes for better days.

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Altın Gün return with a masterful album that widens their critically acclaimed exploration of Anatolian rock and Turkish psychedelic stylings to include dreamy 80’s synth-pop and dancefloor excursions. Yol (Road) brings together all vectors of the Altın Gün experience and delivers their most compelling and individual album to date.

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The Amsterdam band Altin Gün, return with a masterful single – and upcoming album – that widens their critically acclaimed exploration of Anatolian rock and Turkish psychedelic folk to include dreamy 80’s synth-pop and dancefloor excursions. The band are a renowned live act with strings of sold-out shows on three continents, who have always brought muscular grooves and vibrant melodies to their recordings.

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Liraz, the highly touted Israeli-Persian singer, returns with a buoyant and border-busting new album. Shimmering electro-pop meets pulsing dance rhythms and retro Persian sonics. Includes clandestine collaborations with Iran-based musicians and composers. The result is her private revolution, songs with a true message, music to make people dance and smile – and above all, think.

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Growing up in cosmopolitan Istanbul and listening to Anatolian music icon Selda Bağcan and Kurt Cobain in equal measure, singer/songwriter/producer Gaye Su Akyol’s thrilling combination of Turkish psych and universal rock and roll has in a short span of time made her a force to reckon with on the global music scene.

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Firmly established as an influential voice in the burgeoning Russian DIY rock scene, Lucidvox’s incendiary mixture of atmospheric psych-rock, heavy riffs and Russian folk mystery has already gained them both critical attention and audience loyalty outside of their hometown of Moscow. We Are (мы есть) is their first international album release and the next element in their rapid rise. An influential voice in the burgeoning Russian DIY rock scene. Incendiary mix of atmospheric psych-rock, heavy riffs and Russian folk mystery.

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Following his 2019, critically acclaimed debut, God Is Not a Terrorist, 49-note scale microtonal vocal master Ustad Saami returns with an epic part two. Pakistan is for the Peaceful presents an even more immersive work, comprised of just three extended tracks and again produced 100% live at the master’s rooftop home in Karachi by Grammy-winner, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Zomba Prison Project, The Good Ones) with musical accompaniment provided by Ustad’s four sons.

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Ranging from trance temple sounds to rap-like street theatre performance and ending with the mathematical richness of Carnatic music, Ben Youssef’s in situ recordings form the foundation of his potent new album: Global Control / Invisible Invasion. Futurist syncopations meet hypnotic, timeless narratives. Expansive electronics fused with on location recordings. Kaleidoscopic and exhilarating.

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This inventive duo of brothers from the Golan Heights – Hasan and Rami Nakhleh – return with an infectious re-imagining of their sound. Jammed full of pop hooks and quarter-tone melodic lines, “Migrant Birds” unleashes a disco whirlwind that pays homage to the Middle Eastern dancefloor scenes of the 80’s. Retro funky meets hi-sheen contemporary.

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The first-ever reissue of the classic 1981 debut album from this much revered Ghanaian band. Vibrantly produced by British sound explorer Brian Eno in Accra, Ghana. Highlife meets afro-funk. Spirited and horn driven. Yet another inspired morphing of soundworlds and processes and a significant touchstone for both artists.

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Raw and celebratory funeral music from northern Ghana. Hypnotic kologo excursions. Pulsing percussion. Enraptured voices. Recorded 100% live and outdoors by Grammy winner Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami). Sixth release from Glitterbeat’s acclaimed Hidden Musics series.

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Border music without borders. Sergio Mendoza (a longtime member of Calexico) grew up on both sides of the US/Mexican frontier. On the band’s 3rd album, “Curandero,” his musical melding of that experience explodes from the speakers. Boogaloo, cumbia, ranchera & rock’n’roll. Curandero has a close, intimate feel, but this wasn’t a band playing together in a room; all the musicians came in separately to track their parts. 

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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 beyond. Features acclaimed Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra and a track cut with Japanese traditional musicians.

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Fado rewired and recast. Raül Refree – one of Europe’s most innovative producers (Rosalía, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo) – meets Lina, a Portuguese singer renowned for her haunting interpretations of Amalia’s classic repertoire. Analog synths and hushed sonics. Making history by breaking the rules. Lina_Raül Refree is fado for today, a sound that goes beyond geography. It sheds the old skin for the new yet still leaves it as Portugal’s soul, it’s great, beautiful cry of emotion.

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Aziza Brahim returns with her 3rd Glitterbeat album. On the front cover of Aziza Brahim’s new album, Sahari, a young girl poses in ballet shoes and a glistening white tutu. It’s a common childhood scene, but it’s tipped upside down. She’s not privileged and the backdrop isn’t a comfortable suburban home. She’s an exile, living nowhere near her homeland, and behind her stand the tents and buildings of a refugee camp. There’s a desert on the ground and a burning sky above. Yet even in this bleakness, she has optimism. She believes in a better future. Aziza’s most adventuresome and sublime work to date.

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A dark, thundering Kinshasa meets Paris soundworld. Ecstatic vocals, broken beats, subterranean bass and full-throttle energy. This four-piece group of sonic groundbreakers have delivered a scintillating debut album. The fulfillment of their long-held dream to create an African band with the weight and sensory attack of knife-edged rock and hot-wired club beats. Features ex-members of Konono No.1, Mbongwana Star & Staff Benda Bilili. Produced by Doctor L (Tony Allen, Mbongwana Star).

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A celebrated instrumental supergroup featuring three of Bogotá’s most visionary musicians: Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers, Chúpame el dedo), Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero, Ondatropica) and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo, Chúpame el dedo). Fusing the experimental possibilities of South American rhythms and sonics (cumbia, champeta, tropicalia, salsa & more) with avant psych rock, dub minimalism and spiked jazz, Los Pirañas are retro-futurism at its finest.

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A thrilling new album from this legendary Istanbul band. BaBa ZuLa are the missing link between Turkish Psych, Krautrock & deep dub. More experimental & expansive than ever. From the 19th century to the ‘60s through to today, art is a continuum and BaBa ZuLa understand that. Derin Derin is its latest incarnation. It’s fearless music. It’s the truth. And there is hope. 

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Poland’s hotly tipped psych/experimental rock quartet delivers a potent, galvanizing album. Trupa Trupa has grown inordinately in both confidence and execution during the last half-decade. Almost every song on Of The Sun—the magnetic fifth album from the Polish quartet — lands like an anthem, with barbed hooks driven by an italicized rhythm section and a chimera of crisscrossing harmonies.

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A dark, thundering Kinshasa meets Paris soundworld. Ecstatic vocals, broken beats, subterranean bass and full-throttle buzz. Bantou Mentale’s 5- song digital EP “No Romance,” is the four piece group’s scintillating debut. A string of firecrackers exploding on the club floor at midnight. Dubbed out. Fuzzed up. Seething with hardcore spirit and tranced out spirituality.

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BaBa ZuLa, the legendary ensemble from Istanbul, have brilliantly established themselves over the past two decades as the missing link between Turkish Psych, Krautrock and dubwise stylings. The Kızıl Gözlüm EP, the first follow-up to their career spanning retrospective “XX,” finds the band more experimental and expansive than ever.

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Following their hotly tipped 2018 debut album “On” – Altın Gün returns with an exhilarating second album. “Gece” firmly establishes the band as essential interpreters of the Anatolian rock and folk legacy and as a leading voice in the emergent global psych-rock scene. Electric, filled with funk-like grooves and explosive psychedelic textures, what they play – by their own estimation – is folk music.

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Fusing the rhythms and invocations of the ancient Saharan Banga ritual with an electrical storm of contemporary sonics, Ifriqiyya Electrique’s second album ‘Laylet el Booree’ both grips and awakens. In Tunisian, Banga means “huge volume” and one cannot think of a more apt description of ‘Laylet el Booree’ than that. Maximalist and relentless. Blood, sweat and trance.

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This legendary group from Leeds, have written contemporary music history for the last 40 years as radical innovators of both first generation punk and insurgent roots music. Their new album was recorded in the desert environs of Joshua Tree, California and is drenched with widescreen, barbed-wire atmosphere and hard-earned (but ever amused) defiance. The return of one of the planet’s most essential rock & roll bands.

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On the heels of their acclaimed album Tikounen, Kel Assouf return with an even more transformative collection: Black Tenere. Produced by the band’s keyboardist Sofyann Ben Youssef, the mastermind behind the highly touted AMMAR 808, the new album strips things back to a power trio lineup and focuses on the crackling, forward-looking energy of Nigerien front man Anana Ag Haroun’s next level Kel Tamashek (Tuareg) rock songs.

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The roots of Saami’s music go back over a thousand years – but it’s message is contemporary and universal: “to sing is to listen.” Hypnotic, unvarnished recordings by one of Pakistan’s most revered and iconic classical singers. The album ‘God Is Not a Terrorist’ is produced by GRAMMY Award winner Ian Brennan and is Vol.5 of Glitterbeat’s acclaimed Hidden Musics series.

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The London based afro-dub ensemble Fofoulah, have followed-up their trailblazing debut album (“Fofoulah”) with an even more shapeshifting and adventurous recording. Creating a soundworld that is both earthy and urban, futurist and rooted – the new album “Daega Rek” (The Truth) is brought into sharp focus by the rhythms and vocals of Gambian sabar drummer Kaw Secka and the vivid production of keyboardist/saxophonist Tom Challenger.

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Gaye Su Akyol has firmly established herself as one of Turkey’s most compelling young voices and most exhilarating sonic explorers. “Istikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir,” which translates as “Consistent Fantasy is Reality,” is a deeply poetic album; a vibrant mix of raki laced balladry, futurist surf and post-punk opposition. The sound is widescreen and compelling and the themes dig straight into the heart of our inexplicable contemporary experience.

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São Paulo’s acclaimed 10-piece instrumental collective return for their 4th album. Urban Afro-Brazilian grooves, empowered horn-driven melodicism and massive dance floor inspiration. One of South America’s most exhilarating musical propositions. The new album captures the incendiary excitement of Bixiga 70 live, but the freedom of the studio brings more shade and subtlety than before.

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„I am a rebel,“ smiles the 70-year-old Stella Chiweshe. Her album „Kasahwa: Early Singles“ offers a fascinating introduction to the world of Mbira, with the term not only referring to the instrument, consisting of 22 to 28 metal keys mounted on a wooden healing tree body, but also to a musical genre – and on a much wider level, to an entire culture and deeply spiritual lifestyle, very much at the core of the young Zimbabwean nation.

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Deep TR-808 bass meets pan-Maghreb beats, timeless voices and futurist visions. The deep, rumbling growl of the gumbri, the dry, airy tenderness of the gasba, and the softly slithering zokra give a powerful North African root to the music, a thread that spins back through centuries. It’s the great reinvention of a region’s music. It’s a call to action. It’s the future, right now.

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When Malian singer and guitarist Samba Touré was planning Wande (The Beloved), his third Glitterbeat release, he had strong ideas for the way it should sound. But once the sessions were over, he knew he had something entirely different, something even more satisfying: a collection of songs where warmth filled the grooves of every song. An album that seemed like home.

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Sonido Gallo Negro (Black Rooster Sound) is a combo of nine musicians, seeking out a new and unexpected musical cosmos that goes beyond their well-honed Mexican and Latin American influences. Their navigational charts point towards an additional synchronicity of sound and imagination with the Middle East, the Hispanic old world and Africa, as embedded within the Americas.

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Dirtmusic return for their fifth album, a full-scale collaboration with Turkish-psych visionary Murat Ertel from Baba Zula. Ten years in, this singular band with a plural soul have made their finest record yet. Recorded in Istanbul, the album navigates hypnotic rhythms, cinematic atmospheres and dark political realities. Featuring Gaye Su Akyol, Ümit Adakale, Brenna MacCrimmon and Görkem Şen.

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