Ruthven - aka Sean Nelson - has always had a certain fervour associated with him. He first broke in 2017 as a founding member of Paul Institute, the label founded by A.K and Jai Paul, while also working as a member of the London Fire Brigade. In the long hours awaiting call-outs, when the truck was fully serviced and his breathing equipment was ready for the next job, Ruthven wrote the foundations of his debut album, Rough & Ready, which includes the previously released “123 Days”, “Don’t Keep It To Yourself”, and “Have You Decided?”. The resulting 12-track record marks Ruthven’s arrival as a true artist in his own right. Rough & Ready leans into classic songwriting while maintaining lush instrumentation, creating a portal that traverses decades. With appearances from A.K. Paul and Francis Anthony 'Eg' White, Rough & Ready is a bold statement of Ruthven's artistry.

Speaking on Rough & Ready, Ruthven says:
“A central theme to the album is playfulness. So many genres inspired me in making this album. It’s partly jazz-influenced but I was profoundly inspired by Prince. That era, including yacht rock artists like Michael McDonald and Steely Dan, deeply influenced me. I admired their songwriting and musicianship, which seemed universally recognised as exceptional. Being a former wedding band musician, I always wondered how their music had a timelessness to it, and that’s what I tried to capture here.

While still a firefighter, I created many early sketches for what would become Rough & Ready. Some songs on the album, like “Don’t Keep It to Yourself,” were initially an upbeat funk tune, but it has evolved. Unfortunately, I lost much of my early material, pushing me to create even stronger work. I found working with Anup (A.K. Paul) was helpful. We would crack up in the studio over some of our decisions, the musical segues, and flourishes. That infectious fun energy became a core component of the album, a reminder that music should always be fun.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cautious
2. Indulge
3. Don’t Keep It To Yourself
4. Itch
5. Thru The Walls
6. Afterglow
7. 123 Days
8. POV
9. Space = Time = Money
10. I Can’t Go There
11. The Window
12. Drive It

Made in the wake of the end of a long relationship, this album is an intimate record that sees Fabiana Palladino confront complex questions about love, loneliness and normativity in relationships. The result is a 10-track full-length of shapeshifting sonics that draws inspiration from the big R&B, Soul, Pop and Disco studio productions of the 80s and 90s and filters them through a modern lens. Written and self-produced by Palladino, the album features performances from renowned musicians and close friends including Paul Institute co-founder Jai Paul, her father and legendary session bassist Pino Palladino, brother and Yussef Dayes bassist Rocco Palladino, renowned drummer Steve Ferrone and strings from Rob Moose.

Speaking on the new music Fabiana Palladino says:
“A central theme of the album is aloneness. Whether it’s a song where I’m searching for connection with someone else, or trying to embrace the aloneness, it tends to come back to me, who I am when I’m alone, what I feel when I really look inwards. I’d say it’s a pretty introspective record overall. The songs are often about trying to go deeper into yourself, exploring your true feelings and how they then relate to and affect your relationships with others.

“Stay With Me Through The Night” is the first song I wrote for the album. It was at the end of a tricky period where I hadn’t written music for nearly two years, and it came out in a bit of a flood, I barely even remember where or how I wrote it, but I knew it was going to be an important song for me. It ended up being the centrepiece of the album, a song that encapsulates a lot of the feeling and emotion of the rest of the record and musically it brings old together with new, which became a theme across the record…a way of combining my influences with a modern perspective.

Rhythmically the feeling of the song comes from funk and disco, I was thinking about the piano playing of Patrice Rushen and Michael McDonald, Chaka Khan’s ‘What Cha’ Gonna Do For Me’, Bernard Edwards bass playing on Chic’s ‘Good Times’, and The Bee Gees ‘Spirits Having Flown’ but we tried to take the track somewhere else in other aspects of the production to bring out the big feelings in the song. It situates us in the emotional world that I tried to create for the rest of the album.”

Fabiana Palladino first broke out in 2017 as one of Paul Institute’s founding artists after her shadowy R&B-influenced spectral pop reached Jai Paul, who founded the label alongside his brother A.K. Paul. Releasing three singles in four years, she caught the ear of critics - Pitchfork likened “Mystery” to “a scratch track from a big-budget 80s studio that’s been smuggled out on reel-to-reel tape” – but Palladino’s output remained slight. The intervening years have seen her working as an in-demand session musician for the likes of Jessie Ware, Sampha, SBTRKT and Laura Groves while intensely striving for pop perfection in her own music. Last year, she formed part of Jai Paul’s band for his live debut (which she also supported solo) on his hugely celebrated comeback tour.

TRACK LISTING

1. Closer
2. Can You Look In The Mirror?
3. I Can’t Dream Anymore
4. Give Me A Sign
5. I Care
6. Stay With Me Through The Night
7. Shoulda
8. Deeper
9. In The Fire
10. Forever

After heavy-duty releases on self-administered imprints Low End Activism and Sneaker Social Club, as well as London’s beloved graffiti-laden mutant-bass stronghold Seagrave (RIP), the almighty Low End Activist makes a welcome debut with the ESP Institute. No stranger to mining distant regions the hardcore continuum and the residue of soundsystem culture at large, his relentless traversing and assembling of UK-specific rhythms demonstrates there is no end in sight when it comes to evolving the region’s musical gene pool. The 5-track 'Gossip Is The Devil’s Radio' strings together a smear of dystopian instrumentation - ghostly pads wrapped in melancholy, percussion that marries bleep with low resolution shrapnel, and vocal fragments that resemble a control tower’s two-way radio on the fritz - all imperfectly focused through a damaged lens of dancehall. We’re drawn to a dull moan that pervades throughout the record, reminiscent of the nihilistic moments in Abigail Meade’s score to 'Full Metal Jacket' where the sonics resemble a slow churn of molten steel occasionally punctuated and pierced by crystalline shards. The depth between the bone dry immediate foreground and distant wet background creates an exquisite sense of longing which isn’t inherently dark or menacing, but seductively bleak. As voyeurs, we may certainly appreciate the aesthetic LEA portrays, but we can’t fully comprehend the sense of escapism rooted within this music without having come of age in the damp and restless confines of England on the cusp of Thatcher’s abuse. Its a reminder that the light at the end of a tunnel, while it may be dim and grey, is still a light after-all, and the only way out is through.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Tectonic power that bangs and rumbles in all the right places. Summoning up ghosts of rave's past and present, and shaking warehouses to their very foundations.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Gossip Is The Devil's Radio 
A2. Good Question 
B1. Strings Of Sorrow 
B2. Perpetual Conflict 
B3. G.E.L. 

Prodigal son of the ESP Institute, Juan Ramos, rises from the cesspool of a world gone mad with 'Agua Del Cenote', his fifth release with the label. Whilst many artists are following their inner light to bring us some much needed joy amidst these rotten times, Juan (being the little shit that he is) follows an inner demon and delivers listeners and dancers a demented clusterfuck of sadistic chaos. The title track opens with what sounds like a butane torch and we metaphorically freebase into oblivion. Our perception of reality unravels, writhing in abrasive textures smeared across a low-slung, mid-tempo erotic thump. Everything feels blurry and distant, as if we’re swimming through an underground aquatic tunnel, in a panic, searching for an invisible band of spirits whose tune summons us into certain annihilation. Following this is a remix from a decorated lord of 20th Century electronics, Harald Grosskopf AKA The Synthesist. Harald wipes away grit and lethargy to reveal elements hidden deep within the mix as well as softens Juan’s sense of terror by building up to an optimistic layer of added synth. We’d love to offer some relief with the balance of the EP, however, the remaining two tracks paint complimentary hues in the same cerebral palette. 'Let It Go (Freaks Only)' veers closely to House in terms of tempo and gestalt, utilizing a vocal sample from Third Generation (Kerri Chandler) and a healthy dose of sub bass, but Juan hardly apologizes for his masochistic tendencies and certainly never relents into an uplifting mood. Closing the EP, Juan serves an antidote of sorts with 'Cuko', as if suggesting a way out of the swamp, but leaves it up to the listener’s intuition to not only see the carrot, but actually follow it into the light, thus completing the quest.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Deep mushroom chug from Juan Ramos perfectly in sync with the bumper harvest we've been experiencing. Facing your inner demons in the 5th dimension - this will empower and untangle your chakras!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Agua Del Cenote
A2. Agua Del Cenote (Harald Grosskopf Synthesist Mix)
B1. Let It Loose (Freaks Only)
B2. Cuko

Dispatches From Elsewhere (Music From The Jejune Institute) is a meticulously crafted electronic score, composed for the AMC show by Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross & Claudia Sarne. “Music From The Jejune Institute” and “Music From The Elsewhere Society” both represent opposing factions in the series. The score is pressed on black vinyl and housed in a deluxe spined sleeve with printed insert and download card included. Atticus Ross is an English musician and producer who has been living and working in Los Angeles since 2000. His move from records to include working in film started in 2010 with The Book of Eli and The Social Network. Along the way he has won a number of awards including the Grammy, the Oscar, the Golden Globe, the Critics’ Choice and the Ariel. He is also a member of the band Nine Inch Nails.

Leopold Ross is an English composer whose scoring career began with the Hughes Brothers The Book of Eli. He has gone on to score numerous films and TV shows, working with many notable directors including Michael Mann (Blackhat), Harmony Korine (Caput) and more. Claudia Sarne is an English musician, composer and songwriter who lives and works in Los Angeles. Her music is featured on work with leading contemporary female artists such as Tierney Gearon and Polly Borland. She collaborates extensively with Atticus Ross and Leopold Ross. Created by and starring Jason Segel, “Dispatches From Elsewhere” is an original anthology series centered around four ordinary people who feel there’s something missing in their lives, but they can’t quite put their finger on what it is. This diverse foursome is brought together by chance – or perhaps it’s by design – when they stumble onto a puzzle hiding just behind the veil of everyday life.

TRACK LISTING

1. Data Analysis
2. Chocolate Milk
3. Fredwynn Knows
4. Macguffin
5. Those Dark Horses
6. Disillusion
7. The Architect
8. This Is Existing
9. Breaking And Entering
10. Hooded Gathering

With half the band having left their native Texas for New York, Readjusting the Locks is the first Institute album written across the country. Despite the distance it sounds every bit as cohesive as if they were all still hanging out every night in the same Austin dives. The newly NYC-based Moses Brown and Arak Avakian flew to Houston in October 2018, where they joined Barry Elkanick and Adam Cahoon to demo the entirety of the new album in a single day. In December, the band got back together in Brooklyn to record with their longtime producer Ben Greenberg (Uniform).

Where the previous Institute albums often wandered into the experimental, Readjusting the Locks strives to be economical, its 13 tracks clocking in at a tight 29 minutes. The band has seamlessly incorporated more ’77 rock n’ roll into their sound, some songs feeling like they could’ve been a Stiff Records single. This sound is emphasized by Greenberg’s expert production — crisp but still blown out and dirty. Lyrically, Readjusting the Locks moves away from the traditionally personal words of frontman Moses Brown. Rather than attacking the internal workings of his brain or its socialization, as on previous records, this album attempts to address the societal atmosphere in which his agita exists.

Blaming Neoliberalism and the irresponsible notions of utopia fostered under it, Brown argues that in recent decades the Western world’s assumption that humanity would continue to prosper into the future has, on the contrary, created a disastrous political vacuum. This has allowed banks, corporations, and their politicians to aimlessly advance the Neoliberal agenda into an inconceivably dangerous place. He argues that we are deadlocked in a permanent existential crisis, stuck in an unhumanitarian and environmentally destructive system so all-consuming that we will not find a clear alternative. Without a true plan for a sustainable future those in power will continue to offer humanity new policies, technologies, and politicians that promise change but are only capable of “readjusting the locks” on our incomprehensible existential predicament.

TRACK LISTING

1. M.P.S. (2:15)
2. Mon Cherie (1:53)
3. Let Me Be (2:02)
4. Indoctrination Set (1:45)
5. Roll Music (2:30)
6. Can’t See Nothin’ (1:14)
7. Shangri-La (2:56)
8. St John’s Wort (1:23)
9. Dazzle Paint (2:36)
10. Anxiety (1:53)
11. Utopia Sound (1:26)
12. Fooled Again (2:38)
13. Deadlock (4:28)

For the uninitiated (which included me until about 7 minutes ago), Paul Institute is the boutique label, cultural hub and sonic exchange run by synth soul genius Jai Paul, who we all know from his mega smash "Jasmine". Intent on causing a counter frenzy, Jai (or Paul) has dropped not one...not two...not three, but FOUR new label release AT THE SAME MF TIME! Wayward newcomer Reinen cordially invites you to revel in a ballroom time trap, with the bombastic head spinner "Masquerade". A trigonal tale inspired by Red Curtain Cinema & Gothic Romance; Reinen sways and bends the boundaries of theatre, fantasia and soundscape in a combustible marriage of baroque synths, electric operatics and pulsating groove. A unique alliance with shapeshifter A. K. Paul dares to immerse and paint scenes of worlds uncharted.
File next to: Annie Lennox, Tears for Fears, Grace Jones, Kate Bush

TRACK LISTING

A. Masquerade
B. Masquerade (Instrumental) 

For the uninitiated (which included me until about 7 minutes ago), Paul Institute is the boutique label, cultural hub and sonic exchange run by synth soul genius Jai Paul, who we all know from his mega smash "Jasmine". Intent on causing a counter frenzy, Jai (or Paul) has dropped not one...not two...not three, but FOUR new label release AT THE SAME MF TIME! The second release in the series comes from a new artist to the Paul Institute, Hira, who was first introduced to the world with his embryonic Eve EP. Red Light Drive is a cyberpunk symphony set in that night club in Strange Days. That bass sound is a copper/silver ’99 hayabusa ripping a tunnel and those harmonies are every colour in Cyber City Oedo 808. File next to: Prince, The Neptunes, Frank Ocean

TRACK LISTING

A. Red Light Drive
B. Red Light Drive (Instrumental)

For the uninitiated (which included me until about 7 minutes ago), Paul Institute is the boutique label, cultural hub and sonic exchange run by synth soul genius Jai Paul, who we all know from his mega smash "Jasmine". Intent on causing a counter frenzy, Jai (or Paul) has dropped not one...not two...not three, but FOUR new label release AT THE SAME MF TIME! Ruthven returns to the label following last year's heavyweight funk jam "Evil". With a sense of greater maturity in his songwriting, Hypothalamus is an epic and impassioned song about an impending break-up. Ruthven shares the Paul brothers' penchant for experimentation and an appreciation for classic pop, manifest here in production which features brooding synth riffs and an altitudinous electric guitar solo from A. K. Paul. File next to: Prince, D’Angelo, Peter Gabriel

TRACK LISTING

A. Hypothalamus
B. Hypothalamus (Instrumental) 

For the uninitiated (which included me until about 7 minutes ago), Paul Institute is the boutique label, cultural hub and sonic exchange run by synth soul genius Jai Paul, who we all know from his mega smash "Jasmine". Intent on causing a counter frenzy, Jai (or Paul) has dropped not one...not two...not three, but FOUR new label release AT THE SAME MF TIME! Coming at them in catalogue order, "Shimmer", is Fabiana Palladino’s first self-produced track, following on from 2017’s celestial collaboration with Jai Paul, "Mystery". Driven on by a stadium-inspired rhythm section, spectral sequences and huge pop progressions, "Shimmer" is an anthem written for anyone who feels like they’re being underestimated - a reminder to stand up for yourself! File next to: Sheila E, Kate Bush, Jessie Ware - instrumental on the flip.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Huge, pulsing DX7 stormer from Fabiana Palladino here, throbbing basses and digital pads duck around the beautifully sung vocal syrup. Swooning synthwave through the medium of stad-rock progressions. This is definitely one to grab while you can. Killer track.

TRACK LISTING

A. Shimmer
B. Shimmer(Instrumental) 

The riot grrrls have grown up. And their music just gets sassier. Former Melody Maker journo Ngaire Ruth sums up The Wimmins’ Institute to a T: “The Raincoats meets Throwing Muses, with an individual down-to-earth humour that shows these women live their ordinary lives with extraordinary flair, wickedness and good grace.” (Louderthanwar.com) By this she refers to their songs about caesarean sections, mansplaining, and mother-in-laws. Wry humour in awesome punk-pop.

This all-woman supergroup has only been together as a band since April 2015, however they are all ͚old hands͛: Jen Denitto and Deb Van Der Geugten were in seminal riot grrrl band Linus in the 90s, and Cassie Fox and Melissa Reardon are also in Thee Faction, the notorious ͚socialist R’n’B band who wowed this summer’s Leftfield stage at Glastonbury. Charley Stone (of Salad, Gay Dad, Ye Nuns amongst many others) produced the album at Dean Street studios in Soho, and frequently joins the women on stage as guest lead guitarist. Cheerfully DIY, the Wimmins posted a few CDs out to the media, and have had a flood of glowing reviews back. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Boy Rules
2. (Don’t Call Me) Sugar
3. Darling Heart
4. Your Mum (Hates Me)
5. Bye Bye
6. Juno
7. Bicycle
8. Mansplaining
9. Let It Go On Another Planet