The NYC based duo of Rick Brown and Che Chen, creates hypnotic, pulsing music that weaves an ecstatic line from raw electric blues, Arabic modes and entrancing folk minimalism back to the streets of New York. The third album from these acclaimed NYC mainstays adds concise rockers, fuller orchestrations and mysterious textures to the band’s long, odd/deep grooves and microtonal tunings. 

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The Abatwa (“pygmy”) tribe is identified as one of the most marginalized, voiceless and endangered populations in Africa. In fact, their name is frequently taken in vain as a generalized slur towards others unrelated to them. In fact, their name is frequently taken in vain as a generalized slur towards others unrelated to them. The album ‘Why Did We Stop Growing Tall?’ is full of rough-hewn, tribal sonics from the Rwandan borderlands.

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Adhelm’s compositions investigate the spaces where insistent nature and bleak urbanity meet. The result is a compelling admixture of resonant percussion, processed field recordings and spectral electronics. His adventurous compositional processes and experiments echo musique concrète, Cageian indeterminacy and the deep listening ethos of Pauline Oliveros.

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Spearheaded by the legendary Afrobeat/Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen, the Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra rose out of Allen’s 2014 visit to Haiti where he collaborated with some of the countries most notable singers and percussionists. Analog synthesizers and raw psychedelic guitars join the mix yielding an unheard and unholy mixture of Haitian voodoo rhythms, afrobeat drumming and Krautrock experimentation.

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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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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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Aminata Wassidjé Traoré is a rising voice in Mali. Born in Diré, near the fabled city of Timbuktu, Aminata was raised within northern Mali’s rich cultural brew. From an ethnic Songhai family, Aminata started singing as a young child.

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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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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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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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Aziza Brahim (1976) was born and raised in the Saharawi refugee camps in the Tindouf region of Algeria where her family settled in late 1975, after fleeing from the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. Growing up in the severe conditions of these desert camps, Aziza discovered music was both a source of entertainment and a natural way to express and communicate her personal emotions and thoughts of resistance.

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Formed by Osman Murat Ertel and Levent Akman in 1996, Baba Zula took Turkish psychedelic pioneers of the 1960s as their inspiration and foundation for what they called Istanbul psychedelia, the fathers of a scene that’s since grown up around them. Baba Zula have played all over the world, won awards for their work in film and theatre, and had their albums counted among the most prestigious ever released in Turkey.

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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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Lying between the mountains of northwest Tunisia and the Algerian border, the Bargou valley has developed its own culture that had never been documented until Nidhal Yahyaoui began the task. Born in the valley, he was determined that the music and traditions shouldn’t slip away into obscurity. With Targ, the album he’s made with his band Bargou 08, Yahyaoui has perfectly fused the past and the present to place Bargou on the map.

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Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba has revolutionized the sound and narrative possibilities of the ngoni, the lute-like instrument that is essential to Mali’s Griot culture. Griots are esteemed musician/storytellers whose lineage stretches back centuries. Through Bassekou’s invention of repertoire built around the melodies and rhythms of four interlocking ngonis, Bassekou has demonstrated his respect for the past by radically pulling it into the future.

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Much of the Malian music that has been released on European and American labels in the last few years shares one thing: it is mostly down tempo and reflective. The kora majesty of Toumani Diabate, the Songhi blues of the late Ali Farka Toure, the singer-songwriter tropes of Rokia Traore and the dusted, acoustic meditations of Tinariwen (on their most recent album) are a demonstration of this point. Even the later albums of the once exuberant Salif Keita have grown more melancholy and ethereal.

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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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A mysterious two-song release, licensed directly from a group of Bamako musicians who, with the exception of the Souku master Zoumana Tereta, choose to remain anonymous. In the last years, the political turmoil in Mali has caused many of the cities clubs to shutdown and dried up other sources of musician income like weddings and festivals. The situation continues to be desperate, but the music remains a powerful force: both a refuge and a medicine. 

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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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In late 2004, Bombino recorded acoustic versions of nine songs in the Ténéré desert, which became this, his first real album. He sings and plays several of his own compositions and also pays tribute to other Tuareg artists (Abdallah Oumbadougou, Hasso, Kedou). Recorded mostly around the campfire, his assembled friends join in on handclaps and undulations.

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Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul’s second album “Carry Them With Us” is an exhilarating weave of rich textural drones, trance atmospheres and instrumental folk traditions. Acclaimed Canadian sound explorer and saxophonist Colin Stetson is a featured collaborator on the record.

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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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Catherine Graindorge is a Belgian violinist, violist and composer. Produced by John Parish (PJ Harvey, Rokia Traoré), Eldorado is her second solo album and her first for Glitterbeat’s tak:til imprint. Gorgeous and haunting, Graindorge uses strings, harmonium and electronic treatments to explore intimate corners and widescreen vistas.

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This Seattle-based duo made up of Tendai Maraire and Hussein Kalonji (in Shona “Chimurenga” means revolutionary struggle). Tendai is one-half of the visionary hip-hop group Shabazz Palaces and has family roots in Zimbabwe, while guitarist Hussein partly grew up in the Congo. The music they create is timely and explosive: otherworldly hip-hop meets Shona rhythms, Congolese guitar ambiance and political resistance.

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Boston-based Chris Brokaw has made an indelible mark on rock music both on his own as well as with his iconic bands Codeine and Come, and as a collaborator with Thurston Moore, Evan Dando, Stephen O’Malley and many others.

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Chuck Johnson is a composer and musician residing in Oakland, CA. His 2017 album “Balsams” ended up on albums-of-the-year lists at UNCUT, Pitchfork and NPR. Tak:til is releasing “Balsams” for the first time ever on CD – with two additional tracks.

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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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dal:um is a duo based in Seoul, who challenge the sonic possibilities of Korea’s most well-known traditional string instruments: the Gayageum and the Geomungo. Ethereal and otherworldly this is music that treasures the space between the notes.

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Sarajevo born and raised, Damir Imamović has been steeped in the sounds of sevdah since childhood. Much has been said of his stellar family tradition – both his father and grandfather remain legends of the form. Since those early days, however, when he would ward off boredom during the siege of the city in the early 1990s by learning guitar chords in his basement shelter, Imamović has completely changed the rules of the game.

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“Dub 4 Daze” is a richly animated sonic journey that slips and slides between soulful roots (Eye Water), down-tempo brass (Top Level Dub), 3D mysticism (Jah Man Dub) and space echo abstractions (Physics of Dub). The album shows Dennis “Dubmaster” Bovell in full command of his craft.

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Originally a straight-talking, mainly acoustic trio mining blues and country for 21st century gold, the band’s first happy accident was to stumble upon Tamikrest, then Samba Touré and Ben Zabo among many others. Dirtmusic now return with a full-scale collaboration with Turkish-psych visionary Murat Ertel from Baba Zula.

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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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Rough-hewn and exhilarating, EL Khat’s second album “Aalbat 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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Glitterbeat doesn’t release many 12” singles (this is the second), but this two-song beauty is so good we couldn’t pass up the chance to put it out. El Leopardo brilliantly morph urban dub textures together with sparse Colombian percussion, spoken incantations and deep, hypnotic bass.

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Etceteral are a Slovenian experimental trio (saxophone & electronics, drums, visuals) who create a propulsive, polyrhythmic futurist jazz. It is a sound marked by abstract modular explorations, hypnotic drumming, ricocheted horn textures and crystalline production.

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An out-of-time, visceral collection of songs & sounds from Bamako-based producer Paul Chandler’s unparalleled archive. These high fidelity field recordings and eleven accompanying videos (from all corners of the country) take us deep inside the full sonic power of the Malian musical experience.

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Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul’s second album “Carry Them With Us” is an exhilarating weave of rich textural drones, trance atmospheres and instrumental folk traditions. Acclaimed Canadian sound explorer and saxophonist Colin Stetson is a featured collaborator on the record.

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The London-based quintet Fofoulah (meaning “it’s there” in Wolof) was formed in 2011 and features Tom Challenger (Red Snapper) on saxophone and keyboards, Phil Stevenson (Iness Mezel) on guitar, Johnny Brierley (Outhouse Ruhabi) on bass, Dave Smith (Robert Plant’s Sensational Space Shifters) on drums, and Kaw Secka (Irok) on Sabar drums.

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Gaye Su Akyol is at the forefront of the new Istanbul scene. Her influences range from the Turkish chanteuse Selda Bağcan to Nick Cave, surf bands and psychedelia. In Gaye Su Akyol’s universe, the past becomes folded into the present and launched into the future. Hologram Ĭmparatorluğu is heady, powerfully intoxicating and beautifully dangerous. Gorgeous, cinematic and subversive. Past, present, future. Her music, her art.

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Our first remix album with ten genre-spinning, mind-bending sonic reinventions of the Glitterbeat catalog. Remixers include: UK dub-master Dennis Bovell (Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Slits, Fela Kuti), Berlin legend Mark Ernestus (Jeri Jeri, Rhythm & Sound), Warp recording artist Nozinja (Shangaan Electro) and post-punk legend Mark Stewart (Pop Group, New Age Steppers). Vibrant future sounds.

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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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“Hanoi Masters: War is a Wound, Peace is Scar” is a haunting audio document recorded in the summer of 2014 by Grammy-award winning producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Malawi Mouse Boys, The Good Ones). The sepia-tinged songs are sung and played live and direct by elderly Vietnamese musicians using half-forgotten traditional instruments. These musicians all have deep personal connections to the upheavals of the Vietnam War and the album’s mesmerizing mood navigates the blurred line between raw beauty and sadness.

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Formed by three school friends in the Turkish capital of Ankara in 1999, Hayvanlar Alemi have established themselves at the vanguard of global psychedelic sound. Interfacing with the golden age of Turkish psychedelic rock, surf music, Cambodian pop, West African guitar motifs, Middle Eastern traditional music and the knife edge of indie rock, it was clear from the beginning that Hayvanlar Alemi was an instrumental rock band for the unfolding millennium.

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Ifriqiyya Electrique was formed in the Djerid Desert in southern Tunisia, home to the Banga ritual of Sidi Marzûq. The Banga is a key annual event in the lives of the black communities of the oasis towns of southern Tunisia, descendants of the Hausa slaves transported from sub-Saharan Africa. It is a ritual of adorcism not of exorcism: of accommodating the possessing spirit rather than expelling it.

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When speaking of his musical journey — a journey that that spans more than five decades — Jon Hassell recently noted: “without overstating it too much I don’t know who else has had the kind of experience that I’ve had in various kinds of music.” It is very hard to argue with his self- estimation. Hassell’s soundworlds have been varied and bold and their influence on contemporary musics, discernable and ongoing.

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Simultonality – in Joshua Abrams words – is an album of “pure motion.” Without sounding frenetic it is the most explosive Natural Information Society music on record, & without sounding over-determined it is Abrams’s most structured & thru-composed music yet. Much of it is also fast, a mass of densely patterned elements swiftly orbiting constantly reconfiguring centers that are variously harmonic & rhythmic, clearly stated or implied.

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With their second album Kin Sonic, Jupiter and Okwess transcend the Congo’s unexplored musical heritage and dive into a pool of modernity. We’re invited to savour his latest recipe, the Okwess (‘food’ in the Kibunda language) which is the fruit of all the encounters and influences he has absorbed during his many journeys around the world. It’s a recipe based on perfect alchemy. Featuring Damon Albarn, Warren Ellis and Robert del Naja, aka ‘3D’.

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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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Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan (Zomba Prison Project, Tinariwen, Hanoi Masters) went to Southeast Asia to record unheralded, traditional-based musicians from Cambodia, all of whom are survivors of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. The result is heartbreaking, inspiring and sublime.

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Born in Bolgatanga in rural Ghana, King Ayisoba was a prodigy on the kologo, playing locally until he’d outgrown the possibilities of the area. Moving to Accra, the country’s biggest city, he eventually released the song “I Want To See You, My Father.” There was nothing modern about it. No hiplife rap, no electronic beats. But somehow it conquered the country and brought the tradition firmly into the mainstream.

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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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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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Widely celebrated at the time of its release in 1980 – as the third installment of Brian Eno’s emerging ambient music series (Ambient 1-4) – the album also brought with it an aura of mystification. An uncharted synthesis of resonating zither textures, interlocking, hammered rhythms and 3-D sound treatments (courtesy of Eno) “Day of Radiance” seemed to push open many doors at once, ambient music being only one of them.

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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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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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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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Lobi Traoré (1961-2010) was a true African original, a guitarist of profound depth and originality, a singer and songwriter with universal appeal, and a performer who became part of the very fabric of Bamako, one of the world’s most musical cities. We are lucky to worked with the man. The recordings we made together captures the pure essence of his artistry in full flower.

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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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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.

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Think and dance. A way forward delivered with the urgency that’s become a hallmark of M.A.K.U. Soundsystem. The new album Mezcla captures the live sound of the band, that thrilling rawness where the rough edges become a vital part of the whole, plenty of freedom but with the tightness honed by night after night of gigs. And that’s exactly how Mezcla came together.

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“Mark Ernestus is the genetic engineer behind the Techno sound that has become the European heartbeat…the music remains ageless…”
The Wire/February 2010

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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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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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Noura Mint Seymali hails from a Moorish musical dynasty in Mauritania, born into a prominent family of griot and choosing from an early age to embrace the artform that is its lifeblood.  Yet traditional pedigree has proven but a stepping-stone for the work Noura and her band have embarked upon in recent years, simultaneously popularizing and reimagining Moorish music on the global stage.

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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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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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Park Jiha’s debut album “Communion” – released internationally by tak:til last year – drew well deserved attention to the young Korean instrumentalist/composer’s vivid soundworld. The widely acclaimed album graced 2018 critics lists at The WIRE, Pop Matters and The Guardian. Her new album “Philos”– which she calls an evocation of her “love for time, space and sound” –is every bit as inventive, elegant and transcendent as her debut.

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Acclaimed London-based sonic explorer Seb Rochford unleashes a startling new band and debut album. The frontier where doom rhythms rub against haunted saxophone atmospherics. A 4-time Mercury Prize nominee (Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet, Basquiat Strings) Pulled by Magnets is Seb’s most sublime and provocative musical statement to date. Forget type, genre or influence: this is the start of a brand-new trip by one of the most questing musicians at work anywhere.

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Raül Refree is one of the most acclaimed Spanish producers of the last decade. Working with ground breaking artists such as Silvia Pérez Cruz and Rosalía he has been at the forefront of the so-called “new flamenco” movement. He also collaborates with rock experimentalists like Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth – both playing in his band and co-producing Lee’s last album “Electric Trim.”

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A kaleidoscopic road trip through imaginary 60’s soundtrack music and post-folk sounds from Italy and beyond. This innovative Italian band decimates genres. While the album is mostly instrumental, there are also songs voiced in Italian, English and French. Guitar pioneer Marc Ribot makes an appearance as does Sonido Gallo Negro, Evan Lurie from the Lounge Lizards, drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb.

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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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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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Glitterbeat is proud to announce the release of “At Least Wave Your Handkerchief At Me: The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song” by Saz’iso, a group of virtuoso musicians and legendary singers assembled by veteran producer Joe Boyd (Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Cubanismo, Songhai) and his co-producers, Edit Pula and Andrea Goertler, and recorded by Grammy-winning engineer Jerry Boys (Buena Vista Social Club, Ali Farka Touré, Orchestra Baobab).

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The intertwining of diverse musical approaches, tools, histories of sounds and unbridled musical imagination and craftsmanship; these are the expansive guiding principles behind the Slovenian trio Širom. Hailing from Slovenia, Širom play vividly textured and mostly imagined folk music(s). Fusing handmade and global instruments with fearless sound exploration, the results are unbound by tradition or geography. Hypnotic, otherworldly & epic.

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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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„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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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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There’s a raw beauty in Tamikrest’s rock’n’roll. It’s there in the driving, insistent groove that powers the songs, the lean, snaking bass lines and the guitars that twine and twist around the melodies, and the utterly natural musical blending of Sahel Africa, the Maghreb, and the West – a reflection of influences as diverse as Pink Floyd, Rachid Taha, and flamenco. Yet the Sahara, and the people who live there, is always firmly at its heart.

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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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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. Based in Jajouka, Morocco, The Master Musicians are a collective of Jbala Sufi trance makers, committed to creating a contemporary representation of their centuries-old musical tradition. Deeply hypnotic and earth-shakingly intense.

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TootArd grew up understanding that borders are something imposed by governments, lines that only exist on a map. On a disc, in concert, they can go wherever their imagination carries them. They carry their citizenship inside. They are not ‘undefined’; they’ve fashioned their own identity in their music, creating a bond of the stateless that reaches from the Levant to the Tuareg – another people without a real home –  and reaches out far beyond.

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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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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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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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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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Yonatan Gat is a guitarist, producer and experimental composer based in New York City. Gat’s second album – Universalists – is a conceptual and crafted snapshot of an artist evolving and experimenting, fusing the physical garage punk and freewheeling improvisational sounds of Gat’s past with elements of avant garde composition, electronic production and the signature sound of his genre-bending inimitable guitar.

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