Christmas Sounds Of Uganda

A few months back, as our very first story actually, we reported on an ambitious Malawi-based prison project initiated by US Grammy-winning record producer Ian Brennan (who now has a total of four Grammy-nominated albums under his wing) along with his Italian wife Marilena Delli, a documentary photographer herself, who travelled to southeast Africa in the summer of 2013 for an incredible, musical human rights project at a local maximum-security facility.

Upon [...]

Wait, what have we here? An Israeli band delivering masterfully soulful covers of classic American Christmas tunes? You better believe it:

This Americana-tinged, Psycho-Punk, Power-Rockabilly band of brothers has thus far managed to elude all attempts at being pigeonholed. Their regular appearances on the Tel Aviv boardwalk have become somewhat of a cult happening on the local scene, ranging from “a transcendental experience” to “a boost of energy [...]

It was a dream come true, not just for the participating musicians, supporters and audiences in attendance, but also on a wider scale, a well overdue cultural step towards restoring peace between two politically hostile countries, namely Iran and Israel.

Following their initial encounter in the German city of Nuremberg back in 2014 and sharing a common vision, two young bands, alias the alternative Teheran-based indie-electronic outfit Langtunes and the [...]

London-based 2015 "Label Of The Year" at Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards, Strut Records is considered one of the leading reissue labels with a knack for soul, funk, world sounds, disco, post-punk and industrial music, while also releasing albums by original legends and new world music artists the likes of Mulatu Astatke, Orlando Julius or The Souljazz Orchestra.

Currently they are readying another highly intriguing project on the traditional music of [...]

In what can only be described as one of the very unfortunate and equally threatening side-effects of the current European refugee crisis, the anti-immigrant and anti-muslim incitement of the German-born Pegida movement has quickly gained ground with its polarising rhetoric, even spreading to other countries within less than a year.

'Enough of this monkey business', said the Jewish Monkeys and visited Dresden last October, while in Germany as part of their [...]

As recently reported in the Guardian, the Saharan state of Niger, famous for its Tuareg community and bringing forth world-renowned "desert blues" artists the likes of Bombino, Terakraft and Tinariwen, has now produced a crowdfunded film, based on Prince's 1984 cult classic "Purple Rain".

While Prince is not widely known in West Africa, "the electric guitar has become synonymous with Tuareg culture" and the story of a kid trying to escape his violent life [...]

A few weeks ago, Danish sampling kings Den Sorte Skole (which translates to The Black School) released their much acclaimed and long-awaited fourth longplayer "Indians & Cowboys", a riveting 77-minute, genre-transcending patchwork of obscure samples and interweaving sounds from vinyl records across the globe, made available to the general public on a 'name your price' basis via their website.

In a fundamentally significant and highly recommendable guest [...]

On a recent stroll through the worldwide web we stumbled upon the up and coming Texas three-piece Khruangbin (meaning 'airplane' in Thai). Inspired by the obscure 1960s and 70s Thai funk recordings found on the notorious Monrakplengthai blog as well as Tarantino soundtracks, surf-rock sessions and groundbreaking space jazz explorations, the trio set out to find and define its own spiritual soundscapes in a barn on the Texan countryside.

Their recently [...]

What could arguably be mistaken as Disney's latest infernal duo actually is a sizzling two-piece, but of flesh and blood. Echo & Tito hail from Tel Aviv’s vibrant musical underground scene, bringing to the table a heavy mix of ethnic backgrounds and genre-defying styles of bass music, masterfully blended with electronic dub, hiphop, trip hop and glitch elements as well as soaring vocals.

Echo, alias Echo Morgenstern, the singer/MC and Tito, alias Tom Iddan, [...]

Subject of a recent FACT magazine feature, the UK's University of Central Lancashire's Global Sound Movement team of staff and students is dedicated to "recording unique instruments from around the world and offering these sounds to composers/producers to enhance their pallet of sounds". Adding value to the overall project, they are also "committed to mapping the sonic landscapes of unique geographic locations", ultimately putting those remote spots on the [...]

Currently creating a significant stir on the international airwaves is the Tel Aviv-based Fortuna Records label. With a slew of recent vinyl re-issues promoting vibrant and somewhat forgotten grooves from all over the Middle East, the DJ crew is also deeply ingrained on the local 'party' scene in such highly relevant initiatives as the popular underground Teder.fm 'pop up radio bar'.

Their claim to fame was the 2014 breakthrough re-issue of the super [...]

London-based record label, record store, sound system, book publisher and radio broadcaster Soul Jazz Records has been digging up and re-releasing rare gems from a dizzying array of genres for the past 15 years. So if you are looking for rare grooves, obscure finds and superb re-issues, you now know, who to turn to.

Releasing this Friday, November 13th, is "Coxsone's Music", the label's stunning new, over two and a half hour collection of proto-ska, rhythm [...]