When José González became a household name across the world with the help of 250,000 coloured bouncing balls and a Sony Bravia television commercial featuring his spare and moving version of The Knife's song, "Heartbeats", it was the second time fame came calling and caused a truly remarkable phenomenon. While studying biochemistry at the university of Gothenburg, José's debut album "Veneer" was released in his Swedish homeland in 2003. It made him a national star. Featuring "Heartbeats" and ten other resonant, acoustic songs, "Veneer" turned José, a Gothenburg (via Argentina) native, into a Top Ten recording artist. This, his second album continues where "Veneer" left off. Another stunning collection of captivating songs.

TRACK LISTING

1: How Low
2: Down The Line
3: Killing For Love
4: In Our Nature
5: Teardrop
6: Abram
7: Time To Send Someone Away
8: The Nest
9: Fold
10: Cycling Trivialities 

Growing up as a teenager in East London, break-dancing and writing graffiti with B12’s Mike Golding, Steve Pickton’s AKA Stais musical education moved along a familiar path, from hip-hop to Electro and onto Techno. Schooling himself in music theory and purchasing a sampler Pickton set about making his own music. Releasing on a whose who of seminal UK electronic labels including A.R.T., Likemind, Otherworld and B12 under various pseudonyms Pickton’s UK take on lush Detroit melodies fused techno, funk, hip-hop, dub, blues and jazz into a dense concoction all of his own making. Re-issued for the first time since its initial release in 1993 Circuit Funk Pickton’s debut release on Peacefrog is packed full of lush Detroit melodics and future funk that still sounds unique and fresh today.

Science City is the second LP from dream pop duo Parekh & Singh. If their debut Ocean conjured a lush landscape populated by magical creatures, Science City sees our sharpsuited star-gazers materialising in another dimension - a retro-future world of doctors and scientists, quantum mechanics and plans to unlock the secrets of the “Universosphere”. Parekh’s divine vocals once again backed by vintage synths and Singh’s expertly effervescent percussion. Opener Sunbeam depicts an ‘AI being’ blinking in the sun whilst contemplating its own obsolescence. Down at the Sky is an Escher-like search for truth and Hello is described curiously as “creamy music for advanced nighttime driving on deserted streets”. The ennuidrenched Summer Skin opens a hazy portal to the bucolic, where we find our singer alone with an acoustic guitar, pondering the “momentariness of life”. Be Something’s squelchy synths and xylophone runs channel a rainy day Steely Dan. While Evening Sun soars over circuit board landscapes, with 8-bit laser gun FX pulsing by, Monkey depicts a video game set in a luminous forest biosphere. Following Surgeon’s dissection of the dark heart of the infosphere, the prog-pop splendour of 100 Shadows journeys below “our troubled surface world” to a secret kingdom of synthesisers. For all the talk of “particle physics” and “aerodynamics”, it’s love that sustains life in the dreamlike Fwd Slash. The limpid beauty of soul-pop gem Crystalline brings Science City to a suitably sublime conclusion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sunbeam
2. Down At The Sky
3. Hello
4. Summer Skin
5. Be Something
6. Evening Sun
7. Monkey
8. Forward Slash
9. Surgeon
10. One Hundred Shadows
11. Crystalline

One voice. One guitar. Ten killer songs. Recorded by the artist alone in her South London flat - with no edits, no autotune and mostly in one take - Where’s My Tribe is an album of raw and simple beauty. With song titles such as Beautiful People, Tragic Youth and Now You Are With Her, Where’s My Tribe lays bear the loneliness that lurks at the empty heart of our super-connected world, chasing friends and dragons - real and illusory - down the virtual rabbit hole. Recorded in one take at 3am, Temptation channels the exquisite torture of an illicit affair resisted, but only just. With Tragic Youth, ghosts of the past are exorcised and consigned to history - eased on their way by a voice that glides like quicksilver over an intricate tapestry of guitar rhythms. While Beautiful People reads like an outsider’s protest to the selfie generation, Far Beyond the High Street portrays a house “split into four separate homes” and Now You Are With Her is a song of heartache and longing to compete with the very best. As demonstrated by her accidental worldwide hit Wherever You Will Go, Charlene Soraia is possessed of a voice that can melt hearts. Where’s My Tribe serves as a powerful reminder that she is also a guitarist of virtuosic skill and songwriter of rare talent. Universal yet intensely personal, this is a record of our time and forever that will resonate with the lonely soul inside us all. For the visuals Charlene Soraia collaborated with The Rest, the award-winning Northampton based filmmaking duo renowned for their naturalistic takes on British youth culture (Kojey Radical, Slowthai).

The resulting 12-minute short Tribe - and the music videos cut from it for Where’s My Tribe, Tragic Youth and Now You Are With Her - respond to themes that weave through the music with a delicately nuanced portrayal of a group of friends gathering for a weekend of gaming, drink and shrooms - familiar and ultimately anti- climactic diversions from the unsettling anxieties that lurk just below the surface. A pervasive sense of isolation is nailed by one friend’s amused call-out to his mates variously texting or playing virtual football, faces lit by the glow of their smartphones; “So, who wants a chat? ... what’s happening in the living room??” Individual stories are subtly suggested in this understated portrayal of late teenage life, caught between adolescence and adulthood, hesitating between staying put and cutting loose. As Soraia’s vocal to Tragic Youth (live performance) suggests, “soon you will be called"..

TRACK LISTING

1. Where's My Tribe
2. The Journey
3. Tragic Youth
4. Likely To Kill
5. Temptation
6. Far Beyond The High Street
7. Harms
8. Beautiful People
9. Saboteur Tiger
10. Now You Are With Her

As featured in Fact magazine’s 'The greatest techno albums you’ve never heard', and originally released way back in 1994, "The Silicon Dawn" was one of the first full lengths released on Peacefrog during a period which turned out to be remarkably fruitful for techno. Tracks such as "Parallel" and "Population 2" kissed the same patch of sky as Black Dog or “Icon” -era Derek May but Dan’s unique ability to mix melodies and harmonic layers around complex percussion proved to be a compelling innovation from the techno norm. Richly harmonic, expressionist techno in the grandest Detroit style from Dan Curtin. Repressed with love from Peacefrog and sounding as good as ever.... top stuff!

Born and raised in the birthplace of House Music, Paul Johnson has released a vast amount of music for some of the most consistently underground dance labels before hooking up with Peacefrog. 12" releases on the likes of Cajual / Relief and Dance Mania led to his debut album release Bump Talkin in 1995. His remix work for Stacy Kidd, Joey Beltram, Green Velvet, Armando, CC Penniston, Ron Trent, K-Alexi, and Steve Poindexter amongst many others have made their way into all the big DJ’s boxes, many of which remain there to this day. Paul's breakthrough moment arrived in 1999 with his International hit Get Down which is still heard in clubs and on the radio to this day. Paul Johnsons second Peacefrog album originally released in 1996 is a 90’s house music masterpiece. Containing some of the classiest house to hail from the Windy City. Classics including A Little Suntin Suntin , Summer Heat and I Wonder Why will have you smiling while you’re jackin’.

Growing up in Atlanta, Chris Brann discovered house and electronic music by the somewhat longwinded way of getting sent tapes from Europe. He began assembling a home studio but it wasn't until 1994 that he began his music career in earnest and formed Wamdue Kids with DJs Deep C, and Udoh.

In 1995 they released the classic "Higher" on the Acacia label, which led to the Wamdue Kids signing to Peacefrog and the release of their seminal debut album "These Branching Moments". Following the success of this the next year Chris released his first solo album "Deep Fall", reflecting a different direction to that of his productions with Wamdue.

"Deep Fall", originally released in 1997, is a delicious collection of deep tech-house. Stand outs are the aptly named title track with beautiful synth washes and a single mournful modulated violin at its centre; and the emotional "Journey To The Centre" which is nothing short of epic.

TRACK LISTING

Deep Fall
Eyes
Calling 610
Journey To The Centre
All About The Music
Soul Star
Grey Souls
Yung Po Nee
Out

Fromtheoldtothenew was originally released in 1996 and is the second full length on Peacefrog from Steve ‘Stasis’ Pickton. Growing up as a teenager in East London, break-dancing and writing graffiti with B12’s Mike Golding, Steve Pickton’s musical education moved along a familiar path, from hip-hop to electro and onto techno. Schooling himself in music theory and purchasing a sampler, Pickton set about making his own music.

Releasing on a whose who of seminal UK electronic labels including A.R.T., Likemind, Otherworld and B12 under various pseudinums Pickton’s UK take on lush Detroit melodies fused techno, funk, hip-hop, dub, blues and jazz into a dense concoction all of his own making.

"Fromtheoldtothenew" saw Pickton slip off his earlier techno shackles and head for uncharted electrconic waters.

The echo chamber dramatics of Gun and wayward lurch of "Ale House Blues" were a long way from Detroit, while few tracks have demonstrated the sheer breadth of electronica more dramatically than "Utopia Planetia". All in all it's more jazz, less tech without losing its hard hitting impact. 

TRACK LISTING

From The Old…
Utopia Planetia
Moon Bong
Behind The Smile
Beating Skins
Ale House Blues
Samba De Fat Bloke
Moody Ol' Teacher
Gun

Little Dragon return with their new album 'Ritual Union'. Since 2009’s critically acclaimed 'Machine Dreams' the band have not sat still, touring the globe and making some high profile friends along the way. Damon Albarn invited them to collaborate on two tracks for Gorillaz 'Plastic Beach' LP, which became album highlights for the critics with Pitchfork describing the songs ‘Empire Ants’ and ‘To Binge’ as “two of the most arresting things here; they’re airy, elusive and amazingly beautiful”.

'Ritual Union' takes everything I love about Little Dragon and distils it to perfection; Yukimi Nagano’s wonderfully emotive and hooky vocals and quirky electro-acoustic backing tracks that are part live-played (drums) and part computer-created (all sorts of wonky synth sounds). Always distinctive and sounding like no one else, Little Dragon are an evolutionary branch of the 90s trip hop / downbeat sound, but one that didn't get mired in a coffee-table-chill-out-made-for-mobile-phone-adverts snooze-fest, instead opting for off the wall originality and seductive otherness.