Emotional Rescue turn their attention to Rare Silk and their sublime cult classic "Storm". It's one of those rare tracks with a wonderful otherworldly quality that manages to be smooth and accessible, and somehow not like anything you've ever heard before. It must be somewhere in the mix, between the dreamy harmonized vocals, lush instrumentation and curious sense of space. The original on the A side is a treat enough, but then throw in a mercurial dubbed out version by Arp on the flip and you've got yourself a 10 inch portal to a most delightful dimension.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Much sought after repress of this delightful tune from 1985. A bit new age, a bit balearic, and well jazz-y this could be one of your new favourite Sunday afternoon listens. Looks pretty cool too...

TRACK LISTING

Storm
Storm (Arp Duppy Chip Mix)

Hand the king of re-edits Late Nite Tuff Guy the keys to an unreleased Silk recording from the ‘70s hey days and you’ve got yourself a recipe for greatness. A’s and Bees line up their second heavyweight 12 inch pressing, with two exhilarating edits from LNTG alongside the first ever release of the original recording. As ever 50% of the profits from this release will be donated towards the British Beekeepers Association.

It's rare to crack the vaults on a recording that’s as good as this, that never saw the light of day. Courtesy of ‘70s Philly International wonders Silk, most famed for their soul sensation ‘I Can't Stop (Turning You On)’ that was sampled by LF System for their 8 week strong number 1 release, ‘Somethin' 'Bout The Way’ has all the elements of a smash hit. As catchy as they come, singalong sensibilities and musicianship of the highest order with vocal harmonies to match, it’s genuinely astonishing that this never got released. Who better to tweak this into an all-out disco stomper, than re-edit royalty Late Nite Tuff Guy. His Disco Dub teases in, loops up and adds extra punch to all the elements that make the original such a standout track, before letting loose those joyous vocals. Big room, full body, DJ friendly business this!

On the B side, the original mix gets it’s first ever release, with LNTG providing a shorter edit of his full throttle re-work to round off the package.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Late Nite Tuff Guy Disco Dub
B1. Original
B2. Late Nite Tuff Guy Short Edit

Most recently, Silk Sonic graced the cover of Rolling Stone’s September issue, where fans got an inside look at Mars and .Paak’s deep friendship and quest for the perfect “feel good” record. The duo coasted into the release of “Skate” on the wave of success from their debut single “Leave the Door Open,” which earned them Best Group at the 2021 BET Awards. It became the group’s first #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100, spending two non-consecutive weeks at #1 and 18 consecutive weeks in the top 10. They released the live version “Leave The Door Open (Live)” and serenaded audiences three times over at the GRAMMY® Awards, iHeartRadio Music Awards, and the BET Awards.

Silk Sonic introduced “Leave The Door Open” alongside an official music video directed by Mars and Florent Déchard with over 346 million views and counting. The track was followed by a hugely popular social media campaign, #LetSilkSonicThrive and was immediately welcomed by unprecedented critical acclaim. “What’s new, smooth as silk on the ears, and features two stars of R&B?” wrote Billboard, praising Silk Sonic as “a groovy duo” and the single as “lounge at its heart.” Consequence of Sound enthused, “Mars has a voice like a liquid whip, while .Paak raps and sings through a foggy haze. They sound like smoke on the water.”

ABOUT SILK SONIC:

The seeds of the collaboration were planted in 2017 when Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars toured together on the European leg of his 24K Magic World Tour. One late-night jam session on the road unlocked immediate chemistry. Just before the world slipped into quarantine, Bruno called Anderson: “Remember that idea we had back in 2017? Let’s do it.” One studio session grew into to a months-long collaboration, culminating the “setlist of doom.” Legendary Bootsy Collins christened Silk Sonic and came in as the “special guest host” for An Evening With Silk Sonic, their debut album.

Silk Sonic was finally set free on March 5th, 2021. Within less than a month, their debut single “Leave The Door Open” cracked over 230 million streams, and currently sits at 1.2 billion streams with over 346 million official video views. It reeled in rave reviews, including Variety who noted it “could be a Best R&B Song GRAMMY® winner from 1974.” After petitioning the GRAMMY® Awards to #LetSilkSonicThrive, they made their debut performance with “Leave The Door Open” and served up a powerful tribute to Little Richard.

TRACK LISTING

1. Silk Sonic Intro
2. Leave The Door Open
3. Track 3
4. Track 4
5. Track 5
6. Track 6
7. Track 7
8. Skate
9. Track 9

Wet Silk was a rare digression into house music by the legendary star-crossed duo of Lamar Thomas and Judy Taylor. For this sonic liaison, Thomas brought along his high school friend, disco impresario Patrick Adams to co-produce, and the resulting “Let Me Do You Baby” is a slow and seductive sunset soirée with champagne and caviare. The track is skillfully arranged with slippery 808 programming, serpentine guitar, and silky pads, all sliding around Thomas and Lamar’s playfully suggestive vocals. For the first 12” release of this hypnotic track, Mixed Signals have paired it with two other delicious Thom/Tay productions, the rare and dubby house mix of Shelly Pearse’s “If You Want My Love”, and the instrumental end-of-the-nighter “I’ll Be Waiting”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wet Silk - Let Me Do You Baby
2. Shelly Pearse - If You Want My Love (House Mix)
3. Thomas & Taylor - I'll Be Waiting (instrumental)

Pre-order this EP to be in with a chance of winning an exclusive signed test-pressing.

With their first two singles under their belts – "Generation Game", the fastest selling 7" for the award-winning label, and "Burn The Heather" – plus a raft of Ones To Watch accolades for 2021, there is much anticipation for what lies next for the band.

In early 2020, "Generation Game" announced the band as artists shaping powerful narratives around a fast-fragmenting society. With the lyric “what will the US do?” they served up a painfully prescient prediction of American unrest.

Follow-up single "Burn The Heather" made a left-hand turn for the more punk-funk, sneering at culture wars and the damaging impact of a class divide.

New single "Cain’s Heresy" shakes with the propulsion of a nimble rhythm section, full of bite and scorn, simultaneously swinging angrily at a negligent political class ("The death of four souls is less than a kick in the teeth, for them"), the threat of misinformation ("Poisonous ideals on the screen breed a vicious way of thinking, off the screen") and the noxious follow-the-leader march of celebrity culture ("They’re servants to fame"). The EP title “Silk For The Starving” in itself probes at a society that routinely neglects the needs of the have-nots.

The Lounge Society sing about what they know then. Make no mistake, this is the sound of young England: articulate, enraged and energised. And – perhaps crucially - highly danceable too. It should give hope to anyone who has lost faith in the future, because here the future is in safe hands.

TRACK LISTING

Burn The Heather
Television
Cain’s Heresy
Valley Bottom Fever

Silk Road Assassins, a trio consisting of Tom E Vercetti, Chemist and Lovedr0id, return to Planet Mu with their debut full-length "State Of Ruin" two years after their first EP "Reflection Spaces". The trio recorded over two years, working together to start with, then across different studios and via the internet when their lives became more separated. They also finessed the album at Abbey Road studios, making use of some short time to add in extra layers. The three producers day jobs are in production music, music designed and created specifically for film and games, and this album uses these skills to explore the musical forms that they love. The album explores how trap and grime's minimalist form can be built and curved into musical architecture: elegant, opaque and layered, turning the sound into lush, melodic world-building.

The work gone into the album is revealed on repeated listens, every sound on this record feels built to sit within its delicate ecosystem. The fundamentals of the music are given their own sense of purpose: hand claps spray, bells tumble, guitars splinter and lush melodies waft over and fill the track's spaces like light, glinting across snapping, crisp rhythms and deep bass tones. The album also features two Planet Mu alumini, Kuedo who features on "Split Matter" brings some of his bitter-sweet shimmering melodies and on "Shadow Realm" Russian producers WWWINGS give the music a violent metallic edge, providing the record with an epic and unexpected twist towards the end. Silk Road Assassins music is built to last, and a pleasure to indulge in. 

TRACK LISTING

1/Overgrown
2/Split Matter (ft. Kuedo)
3/Armament
4/Vessel
5/Familiars
6/Bloom
7/Pulling The String
8/Bowman
9/Shadow Realm (ft. WWWINGS)
10/Taste Of Metal (Instrumental)
11/Saint
12/Feeling Blu
13/Thorns
14/Blink

Enigmatic electronic producer, Scaramanga Silk, issues his debut album five years early! He originally intended for "Designer Scribble" to come out in the year 2021 as he felt the material was ‘too futuristic’ for the current climate. Luckily, Microspiral managed to convince him to bring the release date forward to the present day.
Hailing from an electronic core, the artist is clearly a product of the rave era but with a forward looking and experimental twist that encompasses other influences such as funk, techno, ambient, drum & bass, jazz, dub, r&b and more. When all these elements combine the resulting concoctions are heritage hybrids with a modern leftfield take. Up to this point, Mr Silk has released a handful of productions, singles, eps and remixes.
"Designer Scribble" kicks off with the sound system smasher, "Barakatuk", a percussion heavy, Latin groover with killer warped basslines before dropping into "Macrynimyze", a cut best described as ‘slow drum & bass’. In the past, funk breakbeats were sped up for ravers. Now, those drum & bass breaks are slowed down to create something altogether new. The melancholy, "Alonely" goes half-tempo with electro 808 beats fused with slurring bass, soundtrack strings and heart-wrenching piano – think Zero 7 meets Laurent Garnier. "Return To The One" could be a slow drum & bass ode to the works of PFM and Burial with its cascading melodies and haunting vocals while "Life In The Faslow Lane" is a proper party-tune – a slice of ‘hyper hip-hop’ where a dual-tempo approach combines with trance riffs, arcade machine hooks and exotic rhythms. "Blind Truth" is a total rule breaker with shifting time signatures, changing rhythmic styles and a fusion of jazz, drum & bass, r&b and electro that keeps you guessing. Low Poet surfaces for the sci-fi hip-hop number "Speak Without Tongues" – a reflection on past-present-future communication. "The Voyage Beyond Andromeda" Suite concludes the album as an epic 21 minute futurist concept piece across three tracks. ‘Soaring Above’ is vintage ambient space music but from a techno perspective with industrial loops, rave sub-bass and galactic atmosperics. This is the sort of thing John Serrie, The KLF and Bee Mask would deliver if stranded on a spaceship together. They Have Taken Control’ resurrects the 1993 ‘jungle-tekno’ sound of Basement Records with tuff breakbeats over four-to-the-floor kicks. Watch out for the Reese bassline, lasers and distortion attack! To close, B-Fink arrives on the hypnotically beautiful ‘accelerating ambience’ of "Day Of A New Dawn". And the gifted Konx-Om-Pax (Planet Mu) supplies the cover artwork. Across ten tracks, Scaramanga Silk offers up a unique album that takes in history, mangles it through the machines and turns out intriguing abstractions that sound original and fresh. You won’t hear another record like this before 2021! 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Barakatuk
A2. Macrynimyze
A3. Alonely
B1. Return To The One
B2. Life In The Faslow Lane
B3. Blind Truth
C1. Speak Without Tongues [With Low Poet]
C2. ‘The Voyage Beyond Andromeda’ Suite (Part 1) Soaring Above
D1. ‘The Voyage Beyond Andromeda’ Suite (Part 2) They Have Taken Control
D2. ‘The Voyage Beyond Andromeda’ Suite (Part 2) Day Of A New Dawn

After three thick years of performances, passport abuse, and pumping, pleasure-principle EPs, Damon Palermo, AKA classic house torchbearer Magic Touch, presents his pinnacle statement to date: 'Palermo House Gang'. Joining forces with a vast cast of collaborators sourced from his intercontinental travels - Octo Octa, Newbody, Benny Badge, The Horses, Sarah Bates, Sorcerer, Ash Williams - Palermo swings and sweats through funky new wave club mixes, freestyle R&B, mesh-top house, freeform hardware workouts and decadent disco for a sprawling celebration of communal motion and dancefloor idealism.

Sustained heavy touring often grizzles musicians into cynical survivalists but it seems to have had the opposite effect on Palermo - these are his most generous, playful and sensual tracks to date. Let go, lighten up, join the Gang.

Scotland-born Parisian Paradise 100 (aka DJ Africa, aka Graham Peel) has been percolating stripped-back, bouncy-castle house constructs onto the web for a few years but never locked them in wax until now. High time. Following his minimalist dictum “more than three tracks on a song is just indulgence,” his debut EP’s four cuts share a sleek, spare design, jigsawing slinky bass, classic keys, lean drum programming and flashes of synth mirage into fluid, aerodynamic patterns. Touches of melodic acid and crossover new wave color the mood an exotic, hedonistic hue (further evinced by titles like “The Loin King” and “French Kissing in the House of Love”). His own vision of the project is appropriately fantastical: “The image in my mind is of tropical forests at night, torchlight, distant sounds of tribal ritual dance and ghosts.” Regal music for pleasure domes.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Loin King
2. Pneus
3. French Kissing In The House Of Love
4. Incroyablement Prop

Like the satisfying first sip of soda water spritz, Roland Tings’s debut EP 'Milky Way' bubbles, barms and beads through your body. Roland Tings is Rohan Newman, a Melbourne producer who, like recent rubies Holy Balm, Forces and Canyons, proves there’s just more and more greatness behind the great and powerful Oz. Melodic acid trips soak in swish-ticky booms, like a rubber ball in space with endless bump and bounce. Sweet off his Japanese jaunt, speeding things down with Sapphire Slows shows, Newman’s taste is pure effervescence and buoyancy. But he’s got a percussive stickiness as well, a vim / vigor that raps and rips through Trax touchups and echo-plexes. Not the nineties but the “none-ties” - no glimmer glam, sampladelic vocal vacations or happy house heartbeats. He ends the creamy Milky Way with a brilliantly wonky theme that springs like a wind-up toy gone loose. Roland Tings, Dings and Zings.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Milky Way
A2. Loose Jaw
B1. Polo Sport
B2. Roland's Beats

Octo Octa adds the melancholy to LA Vampires infinite fadness on "Freedom 2K", their reachin’ / preachin’ 50/50 collaboration on 100% Silk. Here La Vamps has traded her cheap'n’chic booty-budget grooves for sleek'n’chic haunted house. With lyrical references to Minnie Riperton, Arthur Russell, and Evelyn 'Champagne' King, vocalist Amanda Brown reappropriates realms of romance, skewing them into fresh sonic moods. Her wash'n'rinse sing / speak is backed by Nick Malkin’s keys-like-skippin’-stones, Britt Brown’s Tex-Mix dub-bumps, and Brian Foote’s sense and sexpertise, which are all just spit and shine for Octo Octa’s moonlit piano naïve melodies. Gloss and glow design by aesthetic-elevator Bobby Houlihan, with silver and pink toned drop-of-androgeny photography by Ashley Anthony, will push your candy buttons. "Freedom 2K" provides dance-or-be-danced-on anthems for the 21st Century, with a diagonal devotion to our generation’s gay nineties. 'We were living in a fantasy' - George Michael, "Freedom 90".

TRACK LISTING

A1. His Love
A2. Wherever, Boy
A3. Found You
B1. Freedom 2K
B2. Unity
B3. Freedom 2K (Malvoeaux Mix)

Catwalk calls from a Creole Camelot; Sir Stephen’s more Boy London than Boy Bayou. Like the well-lit fitting room of a United Colors of Benetton store in Milan, “By Design” is consumer-cool counter culture, if the counter’s a denim bar that only takes gold Amex. Like the pool on the roof of a luxury hotel in Tokyo, “By Design” is Starck-er than stark, wetter than wild, and deeper in the shallow end. Like a Kuwakuba runway during Paris fall fashion week, “By Design” is baggy on Agynes, mixxy on Moss, jammin’ on Gemma. It’s so down it’s beat, so after-hours its early afternoon, so oversized there’s room for two. Made by design with the finest materials - rayon and on, cashmere and cream, and 100% silky Silk. Yeah, boy. Well, that's what 100% Silk say, we think this sounds like a quartet of Inner City Detroit house B-side dubs. Kevin Saunderson gon' get paid.

Silk Flowers are a synth-driven music trio based in New York.

Their songs balance parts of pop and noise with melodies that evoke emotion from the listener.

Countering typical notions of electronic music as a purely recorded listening experience, Silk Flowers write their songs for live performance, creating a visceral dynamic event that fluctuates between gleeful dance music and rough-edged dissonance.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chance
2. Frozen Moments
3. Covered Lamp
4. Fruit Of The Vine
5. Small Fortune
6. Band Of Color
7. Present Dreams
8. Thin Air
9. A Brush Through The Dust