Ransom Note

Wonky organic grooves from Alf Champion and MDHNTR via Calypso records new compilation

There once was a Shape who could dance, With pockets of electronica trance, It wobbled its form through the Definition, And questioned each note and condition, While singing quite badly about circumstance.

“What is,” asked the Shape, “this peculiar sound? That bounces and bobs all around and around? Is it liquid or solid or something between? The strangest device I have ever seen!” Said a very confused polka-dotted hound.

The Definition replied with a riddled refrain: “I am what you hear when you listen again, A thing that is not, yet somehow it is, A shape-shifting, drift-curious quiz, That dances through corridors, valleys, and rain.”

And they walttzed through the Calypso till dawn broke its spell, Those two nonsensical friends, who got on quite well, For a Shape needs Definition as much as it’s true, That Definition needs Shape to be something brand new, And that, my dear reader, concludes this strange tale to tell.



“What Is Your Definition” sits in that liminal space between organic groove and electronic. It’s the sound of something taking shape… which leads rather nicely onto Calypso Vol. II, a nine-year endeavour where Iñigo Vontier and Thomass Jackson assemble 16 voices across the spectrum of the experimental electronic

Press play and find out what you’re listening to. Or better yet: ask what your own voice is.

From the coastline to the dance-floor.

Daichi's ear was formed early. Weekends spent at Oppa-La in Enoshima absorbing whatever the room had to offer, left a mark that still runs through everything he does. From there the path naturally progressed, co-founding Vinyl Youth, a collective whose energy has carried through Korea and onto the stage at Rainbow Disco Club.

His productions tell a similar story. Edits and originals landing on MM Discos, Crue-L and Not an Animal, each release finding ears far beyond Japan.

This is music with a sense of place.

Read more: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/daichi-the-shine-a-light-on-mix/

akarta’s Strange Fruit with the last track from their Drips EP is something super special. Pouvoi Moteur – French for “motoric power,” since you asked – is exactly what that sounds like: locked-groove krautrock discipline shot through with kosmische shimmer, the kind of track that makes the road ahead feel endless and the destination irrelevant.

The ghost of Can’s engine room is all over it, that locked hypnosis that somehow never quite repeats itself, while Cluster’s smeared electronics hover at the periphery. Aryadiaz, who conceived it partly out of an obsession with factory machinery and, apparently, partly with German beer, describes the 4/4 pattern as feeling like “breaking through space and time.” We’re inclined to agree.

Out now via Gentle Tuesday Recordings, with a vinyl release to follow through Loide and TipTop Records. Stunning stuff.

https://strangefruit.bandcamp.com/album/drips

Adispatch from the holy island, via Alabama.

Two guys from Muscle Shoals, Alabama -0 the city that quietly wrote half the soul records you’ve ever loved — making shoegaze concept albums about a tidal island off the coast of Northumberland. On paper, it shouldn’t work. In practice, Holy Island, the debut from Adam Morrow and Jamie Sego’s Sister Ray Davies, is one of the more beautifully stunning records to land this year: motorik folk, walls of fuzz, delay pedal disco, and genuine literary heft, released via the always excellent Sonic Cathedral and drawing comparisons to mid-period Flying Saucer Attack, Souvlaki-era Slowdive and a long-lost Spacemen 3 outtake.


They are, by their own admission, complete beginners as DJs. We handed them the airwaves anyway.
What came back is exactly what you’d expect from two people who learned to hear music through Nuggets compilations and Delia Derbyshire records, who want biblical noise and dream of piloting the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound. It’s a mix that’s charming and oddly coherent: dub basslines, psych and proto-electronic tangents, the kind of selection that could only have been assembled by people who think in pedals and reverb tails rather than BPMs. A journey with a clear first step, even if the destination remains gloriously unclear.

Not a DJ mix in any conventional sense, just an excellently varied record collection let loose.

Owain K is a stalwart of the Bristol underground.

For many years he has cut his teeth running parties, curating labels and producing music. A bit of an unsung hero of sorts in our eyes - his musical knowledge is vast and in this day and age he represents exactly the sort of character and dedication a DJ should have.

For years he has been on a quest to explore new music, digging for hidden gems and helping to push the sound forward without gimmicks or the sort of delusional grandeur we've become accustomed to from a DJ in the social media era.

His blog and record label Innate is widely acclaimed amongst those in the know and its rare we'd kindly say as such about another site. Only kidding...

This mix is a serious addition to the series and showcases a deep understanding of nuance and sound as he weaves and winds between house, electro and the eclectic spaces in between.