2020s Vinyl Sale 253 Items

Limited to 1000 copies on curacao colored vinyl. Exclusive to HHV customers.

Vacation. Not only in Italy.

A backpack trip through Australia, a campfire in the allotment.

In the car with friends through the Lunenburg Heath or just a short holiday in your head, during the rainy lunch break or with a glass of spritzer on the balcony. And that includes music, music, music! Grooves that roll into the distance like an Intercity, Rhodes chords soft as the sand on the beach and synthesizers that sparkle like the reflections on the ocean. Music as colorful as a Hawaiian shirt and as warming as the morning sun. Welcome to Erobique's second album: "Erobique No.2"

Here, even the song titles are in holiday mood:

"Ahoj!" greets the young "Springinsfeld". The "Mantas" glide elegantly around the "Acquamarina". "Salut les Copines!" we call to the neighboring boat. "Come along to the 'Ravedave!'" it echoes back happily. "Riding Low" is the motto, and the "Arpeggiator" condenses the "Synaesthesia" of the foggy senses in a wonderful way. The "Italotape" in the cassette deck plays the "Hit Song of Both of Us".

That's all so nice "Verkackt", that sounds like "Future Music"!

Carsten Meyer released his debut album "Erosound" in 1998 under the name "Erobique". Exactly 25 years later, the now 50-year-old releases his second Erobique album on his own label A-sexy.

Thirteen varied tracks and songs between holiday disco and rhythm box rave, recorded and produced with many of his friends and companions.

25 years, that's pretty much how long it took disco to go from the legendary loft parties of pioneer David Mancuso to the awe-inspiring mass spectacles of Daft Punk performances.

Or from Meyer's birth to his first long-playing record. So why only now a second album as “Erobique”?

Meyer has been improvising performances in front of a dancing audience for years. Even his hits "Easy Mobeasy" and "Urlaub in Italien" aren't actually pop songs, but rather arose from spontaneous inspiration, in an adrenaline rush, in the middle of the party, right in the moment! Sang along and faded away again. Recorded live and released as is. Just don't repeat! Every Erobique concert is an attempt to turn the unforeseen, the unexpected and accidents into a unique moment of being there. "Mistakes are king" said the witty Knarf Rellöm once - and Carsten Meyer is the king of mistakes!

How are you supposed to conjure up such moments in the studio, without a party, without the energy that spills back onto the stage at a children's birthday party for adults?

Meyer remembered another Erobique hit and changed his title accordingly:

He collaborated with an overdose of joy!

Drummer Lucas Kochbeck (The KBCs, Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band) who now also supports Carsten at his live gigs as well as neighbor and buddy Christoph M. Kaiser (former bassist with the Jeremy Days, now film music and pop strategist) layed down the Groove foundation with glowing tiles, like at the Trinity, Hamburg's legendary 80s disco.

Sophia Kennedy came over from the neighboring studio to sing and Lieven Brunckhorst dragged the entire wind section of Jan Delay's big band Disco No1 in front of the microphone.

Meyer recorded harps, xylophones and violins in his music room at the Hamburger Fischmarkt or with Tobias Levin in his Electric Avenue studio with a view of the Fleet.

Carsten went to Berlin where he met his hero Siriusmo to put some ideas through the electronic grinder. Nicola Rost of Laing stopped by and left incredibly dense choirs and wonderful songs.

Finally, all tracks were brought to Swabian Ludwigsburg where the Freundskreis DJ and disco expert Martin Welzer aka DJ Friction screwed the whole madness into an incredibly warm and dancefloor-friendly overall sound.

Back to the drawing board, like all A-sexy releases, the cover art is painted and designed by Meyer himself, after all his original career aspiration was to be a school book illustrator.

In the course of one summer, a musical chocolate box was created that will not only enrich the holiday playlist of his fans and listeners, but also made his archive of ideas and sketches, which is several quantum bytes deep, a little bit thinner. Outside of his disco fairs up and down the country, Meyer has not remained idle in the last quarter of a century:

Between 1998 and 2006 he developed hypermodern electronic soul with DJ Koze and Cosmic DJ as an international pony. Together with Jacques Palminger and Chris Dietermann, he supervised amateur songwriters in the project "Songs for Joy" at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater Berlin when they made pop music, which is how the secret hit "Wann Strahlst Du?" was created in 2007 with the great text by Barbara Stützel. In general, theatre: For the theater director Herbert Fritsch he arranged the hits by Gino Paoli and Hugo Wolff for crazy evenings at the Schauspielhaus Zurich (2016) and at the Residenztheater Munich (2015), for Stefan Pucher he shot the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen through the home organ wolf ( 2010). For the colleagues from Studio Braun, he brought the "Dorfpunks" to life at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus, and immediately afterwards he developed the authentic Neue-Welle sound for their mockumentary "Fraktus", which was released in cinemas in 2012.

So there we are with film and television music. Here, too, Meyer had a lot to do in recent years. The soundtrack for the popular TV series "Der Tatortreinigung" with Bjarne Mädel in the title role was the best. Incidentally, the "jack of all trades" (quote Peter Bursch) also released a few albums on his own label A-sexy: Rumpel-Funk as "Babyman", the finest chanson pop with Palminger and Yvon Janssen for "Yvon im Kreis der Liebe" and warm, modern Hammond jazz with the "Hamburg Spinners".

And now finally his anniversary album, the silver wedding with himself.
25 years Carsten and Erobique, together forever and happier than ever!

To the next… stop no. We don't want to wait that long!

Iranian-American singer-songwriter Rahill announces a deeply personal solo project ‘Flowers At Your Feet’ on Ninja Tune imprint Big Dada, her new label home in which she sits comfortably alongside labelmates Yaya Bey and Lyzza.

The album – which across its 14 tracks features collaborations with Beck and Jasper Marsalis (Slauson Malone) – follows Rahill’s nostalgic 2022 covers EP ‘Sun Songs’ and sees her moving along a journey of self-acceptance and self-love; reflecting on childhood and family while honouring the people and moments that defined her. The project draws on elements of trip-hop, jazz and alt-rock music, all underpinned by Rahill’s reverent and thoughtful lyricism. Recorded in phases during the lockdown, the album was created in close collaboration between Rahill and producer Alex Epton (fka Twigs, Arca) who immediately identified the strength and potential of Rahill’s pre-existing solo compositions, some of which she’d written years earlier.

Red vinyl edition, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with 1000 copies exclusive to HHV customers. Madonna is the first and only recording artist to have 50 #1 hits on any single Billboard chart. To celebrate this historic milestone, Madonna curated a new 50-track collection titled Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones which includes her favourite remixes of those chart-topping dance hits that have filled clubs worldwide for four decades as well as an abridged 16-track version, titled Finally Enough Love. This 140-gram 2LP gatefold jacket includes single covers and a track-by-track on all featured 16 number one singles.

This collection highlights You Can Dance, Madonna’s first ever remix collection. Celebrating 35 years this year, You Can Dance has sold more than five million copies worldwide and is still the second best-selling remix album of all time. The collection also pays homage to “Everybody,” Madonna’s first single. Each remix was newly remastered for the collection by Mike Dean, who produced Madonna’s two most-recent studio albums, Rebel Heart (2015) and Madame X (2019). Along with those rarities, this album also introduces the “Offer Nissim Promo Mix” of “Living For Love” as its first official release.

Limited to 300 copies coming with an worldwide exclusive 7" Flexi-Disc.

Produced by long-time collaborator Barney Lister (the pair recently won an Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for previous EP track "God's Own Children") "Try" is the opening track to Obongjayar's debut album "Some Nights I Dream of Doors" and its latest single. Steven Umoh grew up in Calabar, Nigeria. He was raised by his grandmother; his mother had moved to the UK to escape Umoh's father, who was abusive. Early in his life, he primarily listened to bootleg rap, particularly Eminem, Usher, Nelly, Snoop Dogg and Ciara. Umoh moved to live with his mother in England at the age of 17, but stayed active in the Nigerian music scene. He grew up a devoutly religious Christian, but became less so after he attended university in Norwich. In college he sang primarily in an American accent, influenced by his childhood spent listening to American hip hop music, but he transitioned to singing in his natural Nigerian-British accent before embarking on his professional career. Obongjayar's music has been called "hard to describe", incorporating elements of afrobeat, spoken word, soul, and electronic music. His lyrics incorporate spiritual overtones, although they are not readily identifiable with any specific religious tradition. A unifying feature of all of Obongjayar's music is his very deep voice, which slides between rapping, singing, and spoken word.

Limited to 300 copies.
Black Vinyl, 16 p. colour, matt printed, 12"x12" stitch bound booklet w/ photos and full lyrics, Gatefold

Limited to 100 copies on red vinyl.

In celebration of the40th anniversary of Under A Blood Red Sky(1983), the2023 Record Store Day Black Fridaysees the newly remastered release of the band's iconic live album onlimited edition red vinyl. Consisting of live recordings from three shows on the band'sWar Tour in 1983, the album helped to cement U2's reputation globally as one of the greatest live acts of all time. Featuring legendary live versions of 'Gloria', 'I Will Follow', and 'Sunday Bloody Sunday', the album remains faithful to the original track list, but is newly remastered at the renowned studioBernie Grundman Mastering.

Limited red edition of 300 copies of the 2LP version with 24 new songs

Andreas Dorau turns sixty for the first time on 19 January 2024. To mark the occasion, he is releasing his new album "Im Gebüsch". It contains 13 tracks on which various pop realities flash up like a kaleidoscope, for the first time also in English: "tourist English", as Dorau himself describes it, the record as a sightseeing tour of pop. Dorau embarks on a journey through various types of electronic music, with a cheerful sadness as his faithful companion. Guests such as the musicians Güner Künier and JJ Weihl (Discovery Zone, Fenster) and Brezel Göring (Stereo Total) were also recruited for this album. "Im Gebüsch" is modern, retro and postmodern at the same time. Only one can do that, only Andreas Dorau can do that!

Limited to approx. 500 copies for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. For those countries only available at HHV.

At the top of 2020, after a year of traversing the globe in support of 2019’s Run Fast Sleep Naked, Nick Murphy began creating music that simply felt good. Though the singer had retired his billionstreaming Chet Faker project four years prior, the new songs he was working on in his New York City studio had an energy reminiscent of his earlier work. Reviving the project “wasn’t on my radar” at the time, Murphy admits, but the next thing he knew, he had a full album. The result is Hotel Surrender, a radiant 10-track LP full of swaggering bass lines and electrifying melodies that reintroduces Chet Faker to the world – and to Murphy himself. Like his debut LP, 2014’s Built on Glass, Murphy wrote and produced Hotel Surrender solely on his own, finishing most of the songs before COVID-19 hit in March 2020. He admits that before Hotel Surrender, he had never approached his process with such ease. This time, as the album title suggests, he surrendered to the music. “There was this, like, unconsciousness—not thinking, but just feeling, letting it come out and letting it steer itself,” Murphy says. “The great lesson for me was that I could write from a place of joy. I was also just being kind to myself. None of this music was hurting, it just felt good. It made me feel better, and it helped me be better.”

Limited to 150 copies in gatefold cover, with bonus instrumental LP.

The regular album is black, the instrumentals are magenta. Mieke Miami's "Montecarlo Magic", the follow-up album to her debut "In the Forest", (2016, Sonar Kollektiv) no longer darkens through the forest, but there is truly no light constraint either. Rather a special, positive mood that radiates inward and outward, describing a state that seems to be inner contemplation and journey at the same time: Florida, California and Brandenburg nestle very close to each other here. Perhaps a river still rattles through the picture and certainly somewhere magicians*innen play with things hide: intoxicated, dreamy and certainly easy to find. Because in this world no one should look around for anything. Find what you want, says Mieke.

Right away the opener "Californio" makes me think of a stay in Los Angeles, an imagined Los Angeles, more imagined than real. Absurd: I was still invited there in February 2020. Silver Lake, in the first light of a new day. Walking along a spring morning, I hear from the garden of a hippie commune this chorus with bright bell piano, space echoes and fine refrain wafting over. "Californio ...". How close it gets to me? Very. I'd like to go back to where this music is playing and realize that this is happening just as much there, in that distant LA at a certain time, as it is in the here and now in me. Beautifully displaced simultaneity. The single "Horse", pre-released at the end of 2020, tells quite a lot about it: bass clarinet and the constant Angerauschte, loose, casual, played. An atmosphere of voices, instruments, delays and, if at all necessary, more painted than planned, the image of a (in itself) polyphonic world.

Unison different: bridges and choirs slipped from front to back, singing sometimes lead sometimes back. Generously overlapping themes, verses, choruses to song worlds. Which you can listen to like this or like that, says the artist. All get into each other, without effort and with horny opacity: Montecarlo Magic.

A confession: yes, I immediately thought, "'Californio' = Los Angeles, garden, world, music, and that hidden yet tangible new humility, hippie USA." I thought all that. But then Mieke tells me about ghost ships, souls and wanderings, and danger? No, it fits. Every dream is true, Yes and No, A and Not-A one: "So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible." '***

Soon this cover version of the Beatles will follow! Who does something like that? "Cry Baby Cry" Maybe the Fab Four in their Los Angeles days? Wiki says India. White album, Lennon on the peak. Supposedly he doesn't like the track later, here it fits. And Mieke Miami becomes, so to speak, for a very brief moment, the most humble John Lennon in the world, and then dreams on, and the band, which is actually herself, dreams itself alongside her.

A record like a garden: "The king was in the garden picking flowers for a friend who came to play." '**. So nice to hear something from John Lennon again and easy translated. Thanks Mieke.

And where I just thought myself listening to Los Angeles and India, doing something mysterious and simple, the record now leads me - via bumper cars and Abbey Road - via London to San Francisco: Swimming Pool. A street-of-Francisco feeling, with guitars and choirs - and soulful grooves that are as oppressive as they are pleasantly dirty. Nix urban soul though, but country road soul, which triggers a crazy wanderlust right now (and far beyond now). And at the same time dissolves it, because whoever listens is amazed - and understands: Brandenburg, Florida, California: It's all here. This melancholic wanderlust likes to blow away completely in the pollen of the places and regions of our desire. More than ever.

The last song: "Golden Ships" is then actually my favorite title, because then I can already start again with this magic music.

Mieke Miami - Montecarlo Magic appears in the second Corona summer on Fun in the Church. Dit fits

If you want this edition, don't wait, as we will not get many copies.

Waxwork Records is proud to present Barbie Score From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack composed by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt! The score is featured in the juggernaut film Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken.

On composing the score, Ronson says, “Greta’s Barbie overflows with emotion in a way that inspired us to no end, not just with harmony and melody but also textures, sonics and rhythms. Sometimes Greta wanted us to elicit tears, sometimes she wanted it to feel like a disco. Sometimes she loved the warmth of vintage analogue synthesizers, sometimes she wanted the richness of the orchestra. Often, she wanted both.

“The late nights and crazy hours we put into Barbie were all worth it to us, because we were so in love with this film. And we truly hope listening to our score from beginning to end will give others the same emotional, whimsical experience they had watching this magical film.”

The highly anticipated film score vividly brings Gerwig’s vision to life and adds the perfect layer to the film that immerses fans into the Barbie Universe.

Waxwork Records is thrilled to present Barbie Score From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on several beautiful colored vinyl variants to choose from that all correspond to fun elements in the film, housed in heavyweight LP jackets with overall high gloss coating, with a 12"x12" insert.

Producer, DJ, songwriter and musician Roosevelt releases his highly anticipated new album on Counter Records! "Embrace" is the follow-up to his acclaimed 2021 album, "Polydans", and is a sonically vibrant and deeply personal creative statement from the German multi-instrumentalist who is quickly building a reputation as one of the world's most innovative musical talents.

"Embrace" was written, recorded and produced entirely by Roosevelt (real name Marius Lauber). The album contains deeply personal lyrics and soulful instrumentals unlike anything previously heard from Roosevelt's previous releases. Feeling alienated from the music industry and struggling with Impostor Syndrome, Lauber took his home studio on tour to fully immerse himself in the writing process like never before.

With impromptu setups in cities around the world, Lauber has created an album that sounds intimate and big in equal measure, with kaleidoscopic synth arrangements and addictive disco basslines. The album's title comes from Lauber's realization that many of his childhood friends would have found "real jobs" by the time they were 30, while he was still on the road living the lifestyle of an artist - the title "Embrace" acts as a reference to the artist himself - a reminder to embrace life's unpredictable twists and turns.

Roosevelt's already busy 2023 follows previous high-profile collaborations with Nile Rodgers, Classixx and Washed Out, as well as major remixes for artists:inside such as Taylor Swift, Chvrches, Glass Animals and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Limited Edition of 150 copies, coming with a hologram sticker.

Quantum Web is the new album from Discovery Zone, the experimental pop project of musician and multimedia artist JJ Weihl. Dipping into a pool of musically stylistic depth and flipping themes of omnipresence in advertising and corporate culture sterility into aesthetic guideposts for her omnivorous compositions, Quantum Web represents the next evolutionary phase of Discovery Zone while arranging the past, present, and future across the infinite, invisible web that interconnects us all. First edition vinyl includes a printed inner sleeve with album lyrics. Music and lyrics performed and written by JJ Weihl Produced and arranged by JJ Weihl and E.T. Recorded and mixed by E.T. at Phantom Studios, Berlin, Germany Additional music written and recorded at The Loft, New York City, NY, at home in Berlin, Germany and at Trixx Studios, Berlin, Germany (Thanks Tim!) Mastered by Heba Kadry, New York City, NY Lacquers cut by Josh Bonati, Bonati Mastering, Brooklyn, NY

Release Date is March 8th, International Women's Day.

‘Animal’ was a word Laura Marling threw into a lyric simply to meet a rhythm. But it seemed to capture the mood of the new record, and of Lump as a whole. “There’s a little bit of a theme of hedonism on the album, of desires running wild,” she says. “And also it fed into the idea we had from the start of thinking of Lump as a kind of representation of instincts, and the world turned upside down.” It is something childlike and grotesque and filled with possibility, they say. “We created Lump as a sort of persona and an idea and a creature,” says Mike Lindsay. “Through Lump we find our inner animal, and through that animal we travel into a parallel universe.”

Lump is the product of Brit Award-winning Laura Marling and Mercury Prize-winning Mike Lindsay. Lump's second album 'Animal' will be released on 30th July 2021 on Chrysalis Records & Partisan Records."

Limited edition, 100 copies. exclusively at HHV

More than five years after "Unschuld & Verwüstung", Barbara Morgenstern returns with a new album in January 2024. It's called "In anderem Licht" and was recorded by Guy Sternberg at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin.

The chamber music double album tells of the impending climate catastrophe, the necessity of social transformation processes and the hope of liberation from the state of general paralysis: "Everything can be different", says the album opener "Die Wand" (The Wall) or in the song that gives the album its title: "Everything will hopefully be as it always has been, only in a different light" and finally: "Except the old world!". What reads somewhat didactically on paper is translated into mostly small miniatures on "In anderem Licht", from which Barbara Morgenstern and her ensemble create dramatic arcs of tension and surprising twists and turns. Strings, saxophone, double bass and drums follow Morgenstern's grand piano playing with impressive swarm intelligence. "I look around for alliances", she sings and states - struggling to find the right metaphors: "Time heals more than a thousand words". So she takes all the time in the world in her music, although she is unmistakably aware of the urgency of the questions and paradoxes raised in her songs.

In times of fiercely contested attention economies and clickbait logics that seem to permeate all areas of life, passing and emerging every second, this hour of music spread over 11 tracks is like a balm. A tender manifesto of change.

"Because I don't tell the joke to myself, but to you and me and then we're here", she sings in "Der Witz" and in the loop the music circles, like a bee that wants to settle tenderly on a flower, around a more pleasant now-state of the world, a space of possibility. Before the whole thing flies around our ears in the end and her ensemble makes the melancholy melodic arcs seem bigger and bigger with each round until they appear to us in a completely different light! When Barbara Morgenstern sings "This place will stay when we go, this place will never be the same again" in "Dein Name", it sounds as if she wants to conjure up the world for us. Or free us from a curse. "I always thought connection mattered, love for the cause, for the rest of the world!" she finally sings in "Die Liebe zur Sache", and wonders whether that still counts at all in the world out there. A justified question! Barbara Morgenstern has been one of the most independent musicians in Germany for over 20 years. From the Berlin living room scene of the 90s to the latest award-winning theatre productions with Rimini Protokoll, she has always followed her inner voice in her unbroken belief in the magic of music. John Cale, Mark Hollis, Hans Unstern, Robert Wyatt or Björk come to mind as possible kindred spirits: a certain oddness, paired with great virtuosity and a penchant for a certain minimalism, which can always be big and epic. For the moment. With this wonderfully enraptured, somnambulistic album, we can only wish Barbara Morgenstern and her courageous ensemble that they will play the big stages with it. Because as the song "Zwischen den Stühlen" (Between the Chairs) says so beautifully: "Leave me in peace, it's no use to me. I want to get out of here, between the chairs!". A documentary film by Berlin filmmaker Sabine Herpich, who has accompanied Barbara Morgenstern over the last few years and which traces the story of the creation of this extraordinary album, will also be released in 2024. The video for the first single "In anderem Licht" already shows footage from it, so this is more of a film trailer than a video. Incidentally, the cover motif of the album dates back to 1829 and was painted by Barbara Morgenstern's great-great-great-grandfather Friedrich Preller the Elder.

"In anderem Licht" will be released on 26.01.2024 via Staatsakt on LP/CD/Digital.

140g cardinal red vinyl (exclusive)

- Gatefold sleeve
- Printed inner sleeve
- Black printed jute bag
- Arlo Park's friendship bracelet
- A2 poster
- A5 print (exclusively signed)

First 7inch physical release of 2 big tunes "Omoi Omoware" and "Kodo (Heartbeat)" by XinU, who has been featured on numerous playlists since her debut with the single "Kokokara" in 2021!!

Limited to 500 red copies.

Waxwork Records is proud to present Barbie Score From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack composed by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt! The score is featured in the juggernaut film Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken.

On composing the score, Ronson says, “Greta’s Barbie overflows with emotion in a way that inspired us to no end, not just with harmony and melody but also textures, sonics and rhythms. Sometimes Greta wanted us to elicit tears, sometimes she wanted it to feel like a disco. Sometimes she loved the warmth of vintage analogue synthesizers, sometimes she wanted the richness of the orchestra. Often, she wanted both.

“The late nights and crazy hours we put into Barbie were all worth it to us, because we were so in love with this film. And we truly hope listening to our score from beginning to end will give others the same emotional, whimsical experience they had watching this magical film.”

The highly anticipated film score vividly brings Gerwig’s vision to life and adds the perfect layer to the film that immerses fans into the Barbie Universe.

Waxwork Records is thrilled to present Barbie Score From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on CD, housed in a jewel case, with a 16 page booklet.

King Pari is like potato chips, popsicles, velcro, slinkies — joyful inventions born from happy accidents. Joe Paris Christensen and Cameron Kinghorn had been playing in the same Twin Cities scenes for years, but when Joe sent Cameron a new tune he’d whipped up on a tape machine, something clicked. “This sounds like how my brain feels,” Cameron said. That session grew into the first King Pari song.

The band’s Minneapolis funk pedigree anchors their music. Both Joe and Cameron played alongside some of Prince’s closest associates, and Joe’s previous band was among the last that Prince personally invited to play at Paisley Park. They’ve also been tapped into the national funk and jazz scenes from the beginning – King Pari’s first gig was opening for Kamasi Washington, before they’d even landed on a name.

Limited to 100 white copies that are only available at HHV.

Limited edition, 100 pieces, exclusively at HHV

Comes with songbook, chronicles, photo, all hand-packed. Comes with songbook, chronicles, photo, all hand-packed.

At the end of 2008, the Cologne band Locas In Love released their third album "Winter" as a follow-up to the surprise success "Saurus" (2007). Written and recorded within two months in the summer of 2008, it was meant to be uncomplicated, fast and immediate and consequently "Winter" was the band's first completely self-produced album, produced in living rooms between Cologne's Gereonsviertel and Brooklyn, NY. The title theme still makes it the most cohesive of their albums, and it is the document of a friendship. The reason for the vinyl reissue is only secondarily the 15th anniversary of the release or the fact that the album was long out of print, but primarily the unexpected death of LD Beghtol in 2020. Locas In Love got to know the exceptional New York artist as a fan of his music (among other things as a contributor and singer of the Magnetic Fields on "69 Love Songs"). On "Winter" he appeared as a quasi-member and co-producer and can now be discovered by new music fans with his masterful song miniature "Packice", this heartbreaking mixture of winter blues and cryogenic science fiction. And so the Berlin label Staatsakt (which has just celebrated its own 20th anniversary) is now releasing the luxuriously equipped reissue. The hand-numbered limited edition with new artwork by Stefanie Schrank contains the scrapbook designed by LD Beghtol, which was also included with the first pressing, an 8-page songbook with lyrics and chords, as well as the 68-page Locas In Love Winter Chronicles, in which tour diaries and other texts from the time are summarised with a current self-interview of the band. The extensive bonus material is less about myths or detailed writing and recording processes and more about what it means to be a band, to live with each other and your own music - and to grow old.

Musically, "Winter" is the Locas In Love album that can least be attributed to a specific time or genre - it could be a forgotten private press release from the 1970s or a neo-lo-fi work from the TikTok era. If it can be located in a time at all, then it's the eponymous season. Or, as Stefanie Schrank describes it in her self-interview: "Winter the album is like winter the season, belongs to it and always comes back."

Superorganism return with their second album World Wide Pop in July, their first new music since 2018’s self-titled debut.

Blasting back with thirteen tracks that explore the infinite versus the intimate, taking in friendship, time, connectedness, and the universe; World Wide Pop contemplates the contradiction of being hopeful and curious when faced with relentless consumerism and overwhelming noise. However choosing optimism, Superorganism believe in the power of pop music and all the things it can do. World Wide Pop bridges the personal and existential whilst delivering a bag full of tunes laced with deadpan humour.

World Wide Pop also brings in an international set of collaborators including Stephen Malkmus, Chai, Pi Ja Ma, Dylan Cartlidge & legendary musician and actor Gen Hoshino.

Dauntless Kimi he' was originally released as part of the distribution project 'Sato Ato,' which took place in December last year. For this release, the chorus was added and re-mixed, resulting in a self-recorded song with a warm tone and a bright but fragile melody line.

Limited to 100 copies.

The millennium was one long bad prank / we looked at each other and knew right away: that's it." The world out there is going to the dogs. Well, not just since yesterday. And it won't be over tomorrow either. Shitty times, then. Of course, you could meet them with cynicism. Or with despair. But maybe not. Maybe we could also draw hope, precisely because it would be so much easier to lapse into doom and gloom and bitter laughter now. And maybe it's okay to need something to keep our spirits up in the midst of the apocalypse.

And that's how WIR SIND SCHÖN came to be, Jens Friebe's ninth album, which, like the previous albums, is also released on Staatsakt, punctually four years after the last one (2018's FUCK PENETRATION). It is a cheerful-melancholic, ironic-serious, nonchalant piece of music, which just has no desire for staleness and contemplation. The hymn-like, beautiful title track "Wir sind schön" (We are beautiful), which embraces kitsch with self-deprecating seriousness and is above all comforting, gets to the point: the better world out there, we can build it ourselves. Despite everything. "It's an anti-nihilist album," Friebe says. No Future is already not wrong, but not so funny anymore, if the Future really rather scorching earth in prospect. But it's not that the problematic is erased. It appears on the record in the most diverse forms: In the almost socially realistic depiction of a youth friendship destroyed by the multi-tiered education system with the beautiful title - shimmering between urban sociological treatise and fairy tale - "The Shrinking City", in the devastating protocol of failed self-care ("Das Nichtmehrkönnen") or the enigmatically gloomy fantasy "What Have We Done". But the listener never gets bogged down in these low points of mood, but is always pulled out and up into the euphoric, utopian. Or, as in the rousing protest song "Sing it to the Converted", into the militant. But what sounds at first like the sheer repetition of banal slogans, turns out in the next moment to be a reflection on the necessity of repeating banal slogans. Because, as the last few years have shown, even the seemingly self-evident must be reminded again and again. Or, as Friebe puts it, "Doesn't the priestess preach to the converted / How long would they be converted if they never heard her?"

Similarly immediately poignant and intricate at the same time is "Free": what is freedom? Neoliberal exploitation, a privilege of the better-off, as preached by certain federal finance ministers? Or naked skin in the sunlight, partying, wind in the treetops, rage unleashed? Yes, this is somehow also satire, but not only: Friebe does not leave it at simply denouncing a grievance like a tired cabaret artist. Between the shifted drums, minimalist instrumentation and velvety grooves and background vocals (as on other tracks by Elektrik Diva MALONDA and Pola Lia Schulten), the actual, truthful longing for a freedom that is not characterized by anti-social economic order and commercial exploitation also comes through.

Should we laugh or cry? Maybe just both, as on "Ende aller Feiern," a sixties-poppy, subtly queer love triangle, with probably one of the best lines ever to make it into a German-language break-up song: "Wir haben uns alles erzählt/Nur zuletzt wollt' ich nicht alles wissen/I think you noticed that/And bit me goodbye."

Standing still has never been Jens Friebe's thing, but this time it's musically a bit further from the indie rock habitus that still made up FUCK PENETRATION or NACKTE ANGST ZIEH DICH AN WIR GEHEN AUS (2014). Yes, a penchant for anthems, crooner-like and storyteller is always part of Jens Friebe, but this time Afrodiasporic musical styles play a bigger role. More soul, more grooves, a certain smoothness that suits the hope that flashes again and again between ironic distance and realistic description of the present on WIR SIND SCHÖN.

Although the real drums have been almost entirely replaced by the drum computer, Staatsakt colleague Chris Imler again has a style-defining role on this album with synths and additional percussion. On "Die Schrumpfende Stadt" (where Herman Herrmann can also be heard on bass) he programmed the beat. Mense Reents (Goldene Zitronen, Sophia Kennedy) mixed "Der Wahn" and "Ende aller Feiern". As with all albums since DAS MIT DEM AUTO IST EGAL (2007), Berend Intelmann was again responsible for the production.

WIR SIND SCHÖN is an antidote to our times, an embrace of all the ambivalences we have to endure every day and an adrenaline injection into the heart of apathy. The world is complicated, but that's okay. Because, "When our eyes get used to the dark / Look at us and you'll see: We are beautiful!"

Lyrics: Aida Baghernejad

Too Late To Start Again follows Steve MARINO’s 2019 debut, Fluff, and finds the songwriter more confident than ever before. The album tracks MARINO’s move from Bloomington, IN to Los Angeles and captures the strange combination of excitement and melancholy that can come with a fresh start. Recorded with Ben Lumsdaine and featuring guitar work from Matt Berry (the Berries, BIG Bite) and Kora Puckett (bugg, Narrow Head), Too Late To Start Again conjures up MARINO’s take on a particularly timeless strain of pop rock, providing the kind of instantly lovable earworms that will stick with you long after the record’s brisk, half-hour runtime is over.