Background Video

Gilles Aiken is not short of space in which to express his distinctive ideas about fusing dancefloor minimalism with a global palette. While his more streamlined house and techno fare is generally released under his Edward alias, Desert Sky has carried some of his wilder ideas with stunning results. The first few releases came shrouded in mystery on a self-titled label, but since then Desert Sky has landed on Assemble Music and Baby Ford's iconic PAL SL. Aiken returns to the latter now with a hefty album project that gives Desert Sky the appropriate room to breathe, and Aiken sounds free spirited and expressive through every inch of tumbling percussion, deft handclaps, spooked out textures and more besides. It's a heady trip through dusty samples configured in fresh, invigorating ways, ranking among the strongest artistic statements Aiken has made to date thanks to its worldly inspiration and otherworldly end results.

Alfa Mist is one of the key figures in the new wave of London Jazz music and his second album 'Structuralism' is the perfect example as to why. It's an incredibly deep and emotive album with beautiful vocal features and sax and guitar solos combined with slick modern production.

On Zero Sum, we get a much greater economy of elements on the pared down dance floor ammo like 'Freaks N Prophets' & 'Chai Tea', a perfect counterpoint to beautifully realised pieces like 'Them Thangs feat Ms Fae' & 'After Dark with Nikki O' interspersed with funk-heavy workouts and sample jams like 'Easy Still', 'LvnLmtd' & the unashamedly KDJ influenced shamanism of 'WhatUthinkIDo' It's a pick 'em and stick 'em ride of individual gems and a cohesive whole too. The opposite of thrown together, this has been worked and weathered, naturally.

As a visual designer Guillaume De Ubeda has created some of the most eye-catching record sleeves to have passed through our doors, but if that wasn't enough his first album as Deep Nalstrom blew our minds as well, a record that touches on tribal rhythms with deep atmospheric ambience and post-new age flourishes. For a debut release it's impressively accomplished, so what we want to know is... just where does he find the time?!

Globetrotting Texan trio Khruangbin gave us ‘Hasta El Cielo’ in 2019, the band’s glorious dub version of their second album ‘Con Todo El Mundo’. The full album has been processed anew along with two bonus dubs by renowned Jamaican producer Scientist. The band’s exotic, spacious, psychedelic funk aligns with the dub treatment particularly well.

The return of storied Southern Gothic electronic entity Telefon Tel Aviv is as unexpected as it is impressive. From the shuddering software oscillations of the opening piece, “I dream of it often,” the classic Telefon palette of hyper-modern sound design and smoky nocturnal emotion feels vividly revitalized.An undercurrent of eerie melancholy flows through the album, manifested in shivering widescreen meditations, depressive twilit modern pop, and devotional industrial abstractions.

From Far Out Recordings’ in-house producer, Daniel Maunick’s debut solo album Macumba Quebrada conjures scenes of collective hedonism from start to finish. Spanning Afro-Brazilian spiritual dance ceremonies, late-eighties Detroit techno parties and jungle and broken beat raves in nineties London, Maunick celebrates our instinctive, age-old desire to come together and lose our sense of self.

Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble – featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children's Choir), and dancers (members of Chicago youth dance company Move Me Soul). Where Future Unfolds is a live capture of the ensemble's epic debut at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory on the West Side of Chicago. Recalling the spirits of Phil Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Eddie Gale's Black Rhythm Happening, Archie Shepp's Attica Blues, and Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the album presents an inspired, innovative & immediate intersection of gospel, jazz, activism & 808 breaks.

In the autumn of 2018, Lindstrøm composed a commissioned piece for Norway’s premiere art centre Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. Sketches from the three sold-out performances became the foundation for this new album. This is also the first time ever Lindstrøm has made an album entirely with hardware instead of computer-plugins. He utilised thirty plus synthesizers and drum-machines during his performance at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. The experience inspired him to embrace a similar set-up when making the album, starting with the title track, a 10-minutes improvisation on the Moog Memorymoog.

Alongside her work as a sonic activist and in curating and managing the NON Worldwide collective beside Angel Ho and Chino Amobi - Nkisi sees her first full album land on UIQ.‘7 Directions’ - is rooted firmly in the African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo and in particular the writings of Kongo scholar Dr Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau. Musically we think it’s Nkisi’s most singular record to date - explicitly exploring - via 7 hyper-focused hyper-modern tracks - the incredible polyrhythms of congolese percussion music.

Enzo Siragusa adds fuel to FUSE’s milestone 10-year anniversary with the release of a metamorphic album that draws influence from the London institution’s cultivated sound, as well as the capitals ‘90s rave heritage that so heavily influenced their decade-long dominance. On A Decade of Rave, Enzo presents a cross section of his sound - one that has refined this fusion of jungle roots with house, creating eight straight-talking dance floor cuts that capture the essence of FUSE raves over the years, and two ambient tracks that lean on lengthy quests behind the decks. The music spans across two years of studio sessions and exhibits Enzo and the FUSE label’s biggest work to date. Also, check out the seconf volume of this LP which arrived in the autumn!

Equal parts tuff, tail-thrashing dancehall pressure – see ‘Hell Dub’ – and art-of-darkness ambience and introspection, culminating in the slow-burning, third-eye-opening 23-minute dreamweapon, ‘Vertigo’. Part of the Young Echo crew, Ossia embodies the best tradition of Bristol underground music in that he doesn’t pay much mind to tradition, just does his own thing. Yes, Devil’s Dance shares DNA with those sullen masterpieces we will always associate with the city, from blunted 90s street-soul/hip-hop to sub-loaded dubstep – but like his forebears Ossia is ultimately a mongrel breed, drawing from his own, very contemporary and idiosyncratic well of influences: grime, jazz, steppers, dub, post-punk and industrial abrasion, concrète minimalism…

Musically, Crazy P’s breadth of studio and writing experience shines brighter than ever, and ‘Age Of The Ego’ has their unmistakeable stamp of quality, but is now augmented with a broader palate, and – like many – a feeling of upset with the state of the world.

Across twelve tracks, Paula applies warped aesthetic distortions to a broad exploration of techno. Industrial, determined and fostering a deep sense of urgency, Edge Of Everything focuses on darker manifestations of the genre. Murky acoustics and grainy synths writhe through cavernous spaces whilst marching drums enforce an unrelenting pressure.

On his second studio album, More Arriving, Sarathy Korwar blasts out his own vibrant, pluralistic missive for the world to hear. This is not necessarily a record of unity; it’s an honest reflection of Korwar’s experience of being an Indian in a divided Britain. Recorded over two and a half years in India and the UK, More Arriving draws on the nascent rap scenes of Mumbai and New Delhi, incorporating spoken word and Korwar’s own Indian classical and jazz instrumentation.

Following on from the deranged machine mulch of the Cru Servers we proudly announce the second record on the label to emerge from our native south side of Glasgow. Lo Kindre is the solo project of Irish/Luxembourgish bedroom producer, amateur footballer and award-winning bartender Daniel Magee. Crawling out from the undergrowth at the speed of a snail with dreadlocks this six track EP builds upon his previous venture for Optimo Music and manages to enchant in many of the same ways. Chlorophytum ticks all of the right boxes, sitting somewhere between a budding sci-fi homage, drum machine escapism and a fascination with the motorik styles of West Germany and the wider On-U continuum. Lo Kindre's sound has recently developed by way of countless hours spent twiddling with delay units alongside vintage Italian football commentary and murky casks of Tennents, and has culminated here in the following six tracks. The seventh 12th Isle now ecstatically morphs from our galaxy into yours.

After a brief appearance on Warp, DJ Nigga Fox returned to his own Principe imprint, this time with his debut album “Cartas Na Manga”. More subtle and deeper than his previous raucous sounds, the Portuguese beat maestro showed us another side to his artistry. From the beatless “Quebas” intro to the hypnotic Tarraxinha finale “5 Violinos” via Afro-Portuguese housey grooves “Pao De Cada Dia” and "Faz A Mimha”, this is DJ Nigga Fox at his most honest and free.

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. 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.

After 7 club-orientated releases that have found their way into a wide variation of record bags from Midland, Raresh, Ricardo Villalobos, Ryan Elliot, Craig Richards, to Patrick Topping, INSTINCT goes further into his sound over 10 tracks for the LP.

Purveyors of contemporary ambient and electronic inspired music, A Winged Victory for the Sullen make a bold return on new album “The Undivided Five”, their debut for Ninja Tune. The pair, made up of Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, have created iconic film scores and forward-thinking ambient groups, releasing a series of game- changing records for Erased Tapes and Kranky.

James Clements (ASC) debuts his first full-length album under his Comit alias, born out of his love for music that was often classed as 'IDM' during the mid-to-late 90's, and labels such as Morr Music, City Centre Offices, Merck and Hobby Industries, Broken, glitchy breakbeats weave amongst emotive and often melodic chord progressions, all stemming from James' expansive collection of analog synthesizers. It's a sound that feels distinct and very separate to James' music as ASC, whilst adding a new evolution to the genre we may have previously described as IDM.

In March 2019 we held a special in-store launch event for Jayda G’s debut album 'Significant Changes’. Quite a night it was too! The album features a collection of Jayda’s soulful house and fiery disco jams. Great stuff from Ninja Tune!

Sound design masters Benjamin Brunn and Dave Wheels of Workshop fame team up with the iconic Berlin based Sushitech for a beautiful double 12" LP release. "2000" is an electronic masterpiece, lush melodies, dubby rhythms and some mesmerising synth lines that we can all recognise from previous milestone Benjamin Brunn releases such as Song From The Beehive that was already released a decade ago together with Move D.

From freak-out to chill-out, Montreal’s favourite rave band joins NAFF with a debut double LP.

The great Rolando Simmons, who's already fed us some amazing eerie and psychedelic bouncy electronic funk, both self released and on this magical 030303 label from the Netherlands. This record travels deep into the melancholic mind of the producer, an allround, 12 track treat for every braindance fan on the planet.