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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