Attempting to recreate the golden yesterdays of Jose Padilla’s White Isle sunsets with the tunes of today…

Arto / Canto de Pajao / Music For Dreams

This lovely track, from Danish multi-instrumentalist Arto Louis Eriksen, is a percussive, tropical lullaby-like piece, produced from playful scat vocals, handclaps and slaps. Sonically situated somewhere between Bobby McFerrin and  Ayub Ogada.  

Cray76 / 1111-65 / Crowdspacer

Five years after the first instalment Joakim Bouaziz has released the second volume of his 1111 Tapes. Stripping his machinery down to just a TB-303, the digital package features a quintet of new cuts. The track 1111-65 is sublime shot of ambient acid, that builds from bottomless bass oscillations, slow graceful leviathans, like ancient signals emerging from the deep. A void that could be either the ocean floor or outer space. Hypnotic, intoxicating, alien, it hits in waves, each echoed. Reverb repeating them back, as the higher frequencies become increasingly kosmische. 

Chaz Jankel / Rhumba Jam / Claremont 56

Acclaimed, journeyed, jazzy funker Chaz Jankel joins Claremont 56 for a 12 titled Rhumba Jam. The tune, boogie-tempo’d, with a warm, soft Stop Bajon-esque groove, showcases Jankel’s significant keyboard chops. His fingers fleetly switching between Fender Rhodes and accordion-like solos. Turn it over and label founder, Paul “Mudd” Murphy serves up a slightly different shake. Bringing the bass more to the fore, while making the most of those very Balearic faux accordion licks. Both mixes are accompanied by plenty of sunshine-summoning acoustic strum. 

Marshall Jefferson / Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation / Utter

Marshall Jefferson and his biographer, Ian Snowball, produced Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation as a tool to be used in Snowball’s Shibashi Qigong sessions. Opening with chimes and harps, the track evolves over 24 minutes, picking up cowbell, congas, bass and emotive synth lines straight out of Jefferson’s `80s collaborations with Byron Stingly and Ten City. Musically, like classic deep house, but with the kick removed. The strings rising and falling, synchronising listeners’ breathing, as Jefferson’s rich, warm, reassuring vocal guides those tuned in through an exercise designed to fill their bodies with positive energy. Focussing folks’ thoughts from their toes to their solar plexus, digit by digit, limb by limb. While intended for meditation, the piece also serves jolly nicely as BGM – simply some good, good vibes to be surrounded by, and for your consciousness to slip in and out of. Joakim Bouaziz pops up again, for a trippy, trance-y, but still beatless remix, that’s a more techno / kosmische rushing river of busy analogue bubbles.  

Kuniyuki / Open Window / Mulemusiq

Open Window is a patient solo piano number. Short, seemingly improvised cascades gradually giving way to an introspective melody. Part kankyo ongaku, part Keith Jarrett on ECM. The keys hesitantly dancing, as if slowly recalling sweet, romantic memories. The playing in places leaning toward The Smiths’ Asleep, betraying the sadness beneath. In synergy with swooning string synths, summoning Joe Hisaishi’s Takeshi Kitano movie scores. During the 14-minute journey gentle, organic percussion briefly shifts gear into jazzy syncopation, before falling back to the cinematic. 

Tobira is 7-minutes of shimmering cymbals, cello-like drones and muted horns. A trumpet or reed that’s atonal but beautiful. Think Jan Garbarek. Painting pictures of an isolated, unspoiled landscape.

Placid Angles / Canada / Oath

John Beltran’s latest album, produced under the alias Placid Angles, won’t be released until the end of next January. However, the label, Oath, have announced the title track, Canada, as a teaser. Beltran, who’s been producing music since 1991, and Placid Angles his first studio moniker, describes the sound of the forthcoming long-player as a nostalgic “peak back into that wonderful era of music”… and he’s not kidding. 

The promo single’s muffled drums, muted melody and angelic, ethereal exclamations mirror, respectfully, Aphex Twin’s Xtal. Beltran, a pioneer himself, clearly reflecting on his and his contemporaries’ past. The results, euphoric, while yet, still, a little melancholic. Taking a few moments to savour, remember, the transient treasure of youth. Beltran flips a switch marked “cavernous warehouse rave echo” and the track turns joyful. Triumphant. A TB-303 squiggling sympathetically, triggering flashbacks to hedonistic highs, nights dancing with friends and strangers. I coughed up my cash in an instant. 

Sewell & The Gong / Quiet Storm (Chris Coco Remix) / DSPPR

Quiet Storm has been singled out from Sewell & The Gong’s album Patron Saint Of Elsewhere and blessed with a couple of remixes. Chris Coco’s is a highlight, taking the original’s folky kosmische guitar picking, and swapping its foot stomping beat for a gently wobbling, mind-massaging TB-303. Stoping the sighing orchestration from time to time for crowd cheers and shouts of “Can you feel it?”

Tambores En Benirras / Generadora de Rayos (100 Poems Remix) / NuNorthern Soul

NuNorthern Soul have readied a third volume of remixes, spotlighting more tracks from Tambores En Benirras’ 2023 album Ondas Horizontales. The standout comes care of Dublin’s 100 Poems, who, on Generadora de Rayos, decorates broken boom-bap beats with flickering wah-wah and delicate, cycling, highlife-derived picking. The latter a little reminiscent of Eno & Cale’s classic Spinning Away. Taking on bleepy sequences, it’s a buoyant, spirit-lifting blend, and bit of a 90s flashback. It had me searching the shelves for my copy of The Poppies’ She Is Revolution.