Daft Punk
Random Access Memories

Danalogue x Alabaster dePlume have spent the past few years traversing jazz cosmology in neighbouring orbit with one another. Now the pair come together for the first time on their debut album 'I Was Not Sleeping'.Danalogue's profile as a producer is rising fast due to the recent success of his work at the helm of Mercury nominated The Comet Is Coming, both of the critically acclaimed Snapped Ankles albums as well as recent records by Soccer96, Bo Ningen, Flamingods, Lunch Money Life and Vels Trio.Spoken-word artist, writer and saxophonist Alabaster dePlume (aka Angus Fairbairn) is familiar to most thanks to his recent album 'To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. 1.' – Bon Iver recently sampling opening track 'Visit Croatia' for their single 'PDLIF' too.The duo met at London's Total Refreshment Centre, a place that's become something of an incubator for the vibrant new London jazz scene, and also the record label with which this project has found a suitable home.In their music, Danalogue and Alabaster dePlume seek to find utopia amidst a real-world reality of austerity, divisional politics and a UK lurching towards the right wing. The title of the record addresses this explicitly."It's about accountability" explains Fairbairn. "If one day in the future someone asks me about this time now, I will have to say, 'I was not sleeping while this happened. I witness what is happening around me now, I recognise I am involved in it, I am part of it, I cannot deny it, and I am prepared to do something to make it better, and to change myself in order to do so."Much of the album came together at PRAH Studios in Margate, with the distinct aim to play outside of their comfort zones and usual instrument choices. "The approach is more as producers than in a live band setting," says Danalogue. "We pieced it together by stitching a patchwork of material, and kept building and subtracting little by little, a bit like making a sculpture."Embedded in the stitching, the spontaneity of the duo's freewheeling shines through. Opener 'The March is Unstoppable' is a portent of this; a breaksy, hip hop-inspired beat that comes washed in chiming synth lines and squelching bass. 'You're Doing Very Well' – the first track to come from their initial sessions at TRC - is another example of the duo's ability to ride a stylistic ebb and flow, working layered saxophone through delays to create a dubby ascent to the stars.There are guest appearances too. Among those are poet and Benin City vocalist Joshua Idehen, who appears on 'Broken Tooth Skyline', and TRC's Capitol K, who drops additional synth and drum machines on 'All Who Wander Are Not Lost'.

Some little scratches but an essential highlife record...

Originally released in 1986, Brother Resistance's 'Rapso Takeover' blends calypso, reggae, disco, funk and poetry to create the artist’s signature Rapso sound* "A progressive form of poetry from Trinidad and Tobago, Rapso emerged as a means by which to articulate the daily suffering symptomatic of the social unrest afflicting the nation throughout the 1970s and 80s. Brother Resistance played a significant role in the Rapso movement, deploying his music to spread messages of hope and liberation. The authorities took Brother Resistance’s rising status seriously, destroying what they could of his studios and in the process leaving only a small amount of his music in circulation. Now for the first time we can hear Brother Resistance’s finest work remastered. The music and the message live on through Rapso Take Over’s stripped back rhythms infused with steel and strings, all carried by the voice of resistance

Seekersinternational sends dub into another dimension, a place where the laws of physics appear irrelevant. Formerly solid structures are made improbable and surreal; songs become dizzying, recursive mazes. But for all this weirdness, the Canadian producer has generally hung onto dub's loved-up feel.

The ‘Abroad EP’ catalogues a period of time spent travelling Japan in the spring of 2019. Throughout the course of the month-long trip, Rudy carried around a portable recorder, capturing various sounds that caught his ear. That collection of found sounds would eventually become the foundation for the EP, each track utilizing a handful of different recordings ranging from bird calls in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park, to windchimes in the coastal town of Kawazu. The EP took a full year of patient, daily work to complete, during which time Rudy invited a diverse group of collaborators in to help finish the songs. Throughout the recording process, harp, saxophone, and violin parts were added to create a unique blend of organic and electronic sounds.

Hot Casa's latest deep dive into the Afro-funk archives takes us to the Democratic Republic of Congo at the turn of the 1970s. It was here, in a nation brimming with post-independence confidence, that a funk band called The Soul Kids briefly burned brightly. This reissue of their impossible to find debut album should be essential listening for anyone interested in West African funk. It contains a mixture of sizzling self-penned instrumentals and inspired cover versions of American funk standards, including a memorable take on Wilson Pickett's cover of Beatles classic "Hey Jude" and two fantastic versions of James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag".