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CLAREMONT 56

Bison

Travellers - 2026 Remaster

Originally released in 2014, 'Travellers', the acclaimed album from Bison, returns in a newly remastered edition as a limited double vinyl LP.

Created by an exceptional cast of collaborators including Paul Mudd Murphy, Ben Smith, Ursa Klose, and the late Holger Czukay of the legendary German group Can, 'Travellers' occupies a unique space between experimental electronics, psychedelic soundscapes, and leftfield dance music.

The album also features reinterpretations by Conrad McDonnell of the influential DJ and production duo Idjut Boys, helping to cement its reputation among adventurous listeners and collectors alike.

Over the years, 'Travellers' has quietly become a cult favourite. Long unavailable on vinyl, original copies have become highly sought after and increasingly expensive on the second-hand market, earning the record a near-mythical status among collectors and fans.

Fully remastered from the original recordings, this new edition of 'Travellers' brings renewed depth, clarity, and presence to an album that has quietly earned cult status over the past decade, while preserving the atmosphere and character that made it so distinctive.

More than ten years after its original release, 'Travellers' returns not as a nostalgic artefact, but as a vital and enduring work whose reputation has continued to grow through word of mouth, discovery, and devotion from collectors and listeners around the world. Travellers remains a document of a unique moment in time, a collection of friendships, ideas and happy accidents that somehow found their way onto tape.

TRACK LISTING

1. Way To La (Day)
2. Way To La (Night)
3. Travellers
4. Mandy
5. Familiar Stranger (Day)
6. Familiar Stranger (Night)
7. New Moon Boy (Day)
8. New Moon Boy (Night)
9. Mandy (Power Boy Mix)

Mudd

Mahalo / Mata Ne

Claremont 56 founder Paul ‘Mudd’ Murphy has been in a rich vein of creative form of late. Having released his first solo album in 18 years in 2024, the effervescent and picture-perfect 'In The Garden of Mindfulness', Murphy is well on his way to finishing solo LP number three – a set you’ll be able to hear in full later in 2025. To get us in the mood, he’s offering up a two-track taster featuring instrumental takes on cuts that will appear as full-vocal songs on the final album. Both were written with, and feature instrumentation by, regular collaborator Michele Chiavarini, an Italian musician, producer, composer, and arranger who has long been part of the Claremont 56 family.

Up first is ‘Mahalo (12" Instrumental Mix)’, a languid and emotion-rich groover built around a smooth, mid-tempo jazz-funk-goes-disco groove – think crispy drums, delay-laden hand percussion and rubbery bass guitar – and all manner of ear-catching musical details. As the track unfolds, you can expect to hear lilting strings, warming electric piano chords, mazy synth solos, heady horn-style blasts and glistening, eyes-closed guitar licks. It’s a genuinely superb slab of musically rich dancefloor warmth. The track that follows, ‘Mata Ne’, is an altogether dreamier and more dub-influenced affair. Featuring some sublime piano playing from Chiavarini, it sees Murphy layer simmering strings, cascading guitar licks, spacey synths and blissed-out melodic motifs atop the kind of chunky, dubby groove that has long been one of his aural trademarks. Offering positivity and melancholia in equal measure, ‘Mata Ne’ is Mudd at his most musically majestic. His forthcoming album will be worth waiting for.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: It's mid summer, so of course the hammock dwellers at Claremont 56 kick into 5th gear (more like cruise control - Ed). Label veteran and UK legend Paul Murphy is quite to contribute some beach side splash and calamari-scented grooves to while away the moments in your favourite sedentary position.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Mahalo (instrumental Mix)
B1. Mata Ne (instrumental Mix)

Over the years, Claremont 56 has played host to some memorable collaborative projects, most notably Bison, an unlikely super-group whose members included Holgar Czukay, Ursula Kloss, Liquid Liquid’s Sal Principato, Ben Smith and label boss Paul ‘Mudd’ Murphy. Now Murphy is at the helm of another collaborative outfit, Hillside, whose seductive debut single contains two deliciously pie eyed instrumental workouts. Hillside is very much a family affair, with Murphy joining forces with two old friends: bassist/guitarist Alex Searle and percussionist Patrick Dawes. The trio has a collaborative history that stretches right back to Murphy’s time in Akwaaba in the mid nineties. For their debut outing, Hillside has also welcomed a very special guest musician: award-winning jazz violinist and long-time Bert Jasch collaborator Mike Piggott. As opening gambits go, “Hidden Port” is an emphatic statement of intent.

The audio equivalent of sailing slowly around a cluster of sun-baked islands in search of shelter from an approaching storm, the track sees Searle wrap bluesy, Peter Green style guitar passages around a shuffling, Latin-tinged groove rich in Dawes’ distinctive percussion patterns and Murphy’s languid electric piano and synthesizer lines. As the track progresses, Piggott steps up to make his mark, with his undulating electric violin lines complimenting Hillside’s impeccable instrumentation while adding extra emotional weight to proceedings. It’s a stunning beginning to the Hillside story. Piggott also makes a big impression on accompanying cut “The King’s Tun”, delivering fluid and energy-packed solos that weave in and out of a bright and breezy instrumental track rich in jangling acoustic guitars, subtly spacey electronics, fireside-warm bass and more sparse-but-intricate percussion courtesy of the effervescent Dawes. Searle’s eyes-closed, rock style guitar solos cap another memorable excursion from Claremont 56’s latest in-house band

TRACK LISTING

A. Hidden Port
B. The Kings Tun

Claremont 56’s latest release is very much a family affair. It sees Idjut Boy Conrad McDonnell - a regular remixer of Claremont 56 releases since the label’s inception - serve up two spaced-out, dub-wise revisions of a little known cut by Bison, the imprint’s very own “super-group”. The 12” has extra emotional resonance for Bison’s Paul ‘Mudd’ Murphy and Ben Smith, as it marks the band’s first release since the passing of fellow founder members Holger Czukay and Ursula Kloss.

Clutching his cherished space echo and tape delay units, McDonnell has delivered two tasty new dubs of “Salmon Spungcake”, a spacey, gently throbbing Bison cut that he co-wrote, produced and mixed for Claremont 56’s 10th Anniversary box-set in 2017. While the original version shied away from the dancefloor in favour of creating a hazy, horizontal mood, McDonnell’s “Zip It Shrimpy Mix” re-invents the cut as a hypnotic dub disco shaker rich in weighty bass, layered hand percussion, locked-in kick drums and spaced-out vocal snippets. In true dub fashion, flashes of the band’s original instrumentation - effects-laden guitars, hazy electronics and meandering, deep space chords - float in and out of the mix at irregular intervals. It’s the kind of remix you want to get lost in while wearily shuffling at 5am in a dark, sweaty basement.

The glassy-eyed, head-in-the-clouds fun continues on the “I Think I’ve Got Gout Mix”, an even more spaced-out affair that recalls some of the other inspired dancefloor dubs McDonnell has produced alongside Idjut Boys partner Dan Tyler. Stripped back, heavy, percussive and driven forward by sturdy kick-drums and the track’s rich, warm bassline, this is a deep space dub disco tailor-made for space cadets and intoxicated sunrise dancers.

TRACK LISTING

A. Salmon Spungcake (Zip It Shrimpy Mix By Conrad McDonnell)
B. Salmon Spungcake (I Think I've Got Gout Mix By Conrad McDonnell)

Jack Cutter

Serpent Strut / Gift Of Our Fathers

Jack Cutter is a songwriter and guitarist based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. He started with a $5 banjo just after finishing high school. In University, during the late 60’s, he performed with bar bands in Buffalo, New York. After completing University and a year as an Aerospace Engineer, he decided that attack helicopters were not really what the world needed and so he headed off to California in pursuit of music and mystic times.

Fast forward to Fall 2014: Jack is playing his quintessential tune, ‘Gift of Our Fathers’ in the SF BART subway to an onslaught of morning commuters when he was spotted by 40 Thieves. Eureka! Love at first sight and in the next few months, two of Jack’s original acoustic pieces were given the 40 Thieves treatment.

Enter David Sanderson aka David Harks, a singer, songwriter, producer and label curator from East Sussex. “Having fallen in love with the cosmic boogie (of 40 Thieves classic ‘Backward Love’) I really felt I would love nothing more than to write a tune with them. Layne got back in touch with a track he was working on entitled Serpent Strut with Jack Cutter and we worked via email over a few months to brew up that misty soul.”

Deep, stony, psychedelic, drawing from the well of Hawkwind, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Baffo Banfi and Tolkien-tinged acoustic Led Zep, the proof of concept is now complete and in the capable and loving hands of Claremont 56.


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