Bourj Hammoud Groove shines a spotlight on the music of Armenian-Lebanese pioneer Ara Kekedjian, who was a defining voice in Beirut’s Estradayin pop scene. Fusing disco rhythms, shimmering synth-pop and Armenian melodic sensibilities, Kekedjian created music that was rooted in his community but also sounds somehow universal. Named after Beirut’s vibrant Armenian district, this compilation brings together his most essential recordings and is accompanied by an insightful booklet with liner notes by Darone Sassounian and rare archival photos. It’s a top-tier bit of archival curation that celebrates a musical legacy that bridges cultural history with danceable grooves.
Following up on the success of Moog Edits, “Moog Edits 2 – 10 Dokuz” takes the listener deeper into the sonic world of Turkish psych-funk and disco-folk. This new album is a continuation of the journey, bridging the gap between tradition and modernity with its seamless fusion of moog organ, modular synthesizer, bass guitar, electric saz and rhythmic percussions. Where the first album painted a rich landscape of Turkish psychedelia, 10 Dokuz introduces more intricate layers of rhythm and sound. Drawing inspiration from Ottoman and Turkish music, this record delves into the complex and often mesmerizing world of “aksak” rhythms—specifically the 9/8 meter (sounds are 4/4 + 5/4 beats or easily 2+2+2+3 beats). 10 Dokuz means that “Ten and Nine” which means 19, first 10 tracks 2/4, 4/4, 8/8 and 3/4 rhythms, the last 9 tracks are 9/8 rhythms which is mostly using Ottoman and Balkan areas. The combination of synthesizers, analog effects, and traditional instruments such as darbuka, and electro baglama creates about 70 minutes a vivid auditory landscape.
Ajomasé is the groundbreaking debut album by legendary Nigerian percussionist Gasper Lawal. Originally released in 1980 on his own label CAP, Strut are proud to now bring this unique album back to the racks. Lawal’s style was forged through decades of high-level percussion work with the likes of Stephen Stills, Barbra Streisand, George Clinton & Funkadelic, Manfred Mann, Alexis Korner, Vangelis and Ginger Baker’s Air Force band. Dissatisfied with existing genre labels and production norms, Lawal began recording his own album in 1976 at Vangelis’ own studio in London’s Marble Arch before switching to long, drawn-out night shifts at Surrey Sound Studios, using downtime between The Police’s sessions for Outlandos D’Amour. Lawal meticulously self-produced, composed, and overdubbed the album over four years, assembling an elite group of musicians from both Nigeria and the UK. The instruments used were often hand-built, including a powerful one-of-a-kind drum carved deep in the Nigerian bush. “This music is not about trends, about what is commercial or a “sound” of a particular moment,” explains Lawal, “it is about music to be felt, that gives pleasure. It is nurturing and meditative.”
PRAED return to Discrepant with the album ‘The Dictionary of Lost Meanings’. Known for their signature blend of Egyptian Shaabi, free jazz and improvisation, the Lebanese duo behind PRAED – Raed Yassin and Paed Conca – now assemble a full orchestra for the second time taking the music to a deeper, rooted level. The duo revisit their unique blend of Arabic heritage and free jazz sensibilities with an album that keeps pushing further into strange and unexpected directions.
Strut presents Mulatu Plays Mulatu, the first major studio album in over 10 years from the father of Ethio-jazz, Mulatu Astatke. Featuring masterful new arrangements of some of his classic compositions, Mulatu Plays Mulatu finds Mulatu revisiting the sounds that helped to change the face of Ethiopian music during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The album was recorded between London and Addis Ababa, working with his long-standing UK band, a tight, intuitive ensemble honed through years of live performance, alongside cultural musicians resident at his Jazz Village club in Addis. Mulatu Plays Mulatu realises Mulatu’s long-term vision of Ethio-jazz, intricately balancing Western jazz arrangements with the rich sounds of traditional Ethiopian instruments including the krar, masenqo, washint, kebero and begena. Throughout the album, he reshapes familiar material with rich textures, expanded improvisations and a deepened rhythmic complexity, creating a body of work that feels as vital and contemporary as it does steeped in tradition. Familiar compositions like ‘Yekermo Sew’, ‘Netsanet’ and the celebratory ‘Kulun’ are reinvented here as elegant big band performances.
Club Coco: New Dimensions in Latin Music compilation, curated by Coco María, marks the first release on her own label and serves as a sonic portrait of what Latin music can become when it’s guided by intuition rather than labels. Eleven tracks open the windows and cross continents as effortlessly as changing a song. Here, Neapolitan synthesizers coexist with digital cumbias, voices whisper from within the groove, and rhythms invite movement – without urgency or pretense. This selection isn’t defined by a genre but by a feeling: that of someone dancing with an open heart and keen ears. Each track is a postcard from a corner of the world, and also a love letter to rhythm and the emotions it stirs. From Bogotá to Naples, passing through Lima, Amsterdam, and New York, this compilation offers a journey where past and future brush against each other in the present moment. Club Coco doesn’t aim to define a sonic truth, but to invite listeners to discover new ways of hearing and feeling.
J.E. Movement’s groundbreaking ‘Ma Dea Luv’. Toward the end of the 1980s South Africa’s recording industry was booming. Searching for a sound that could cross over to all in the country’s segregated society while also eyeing international success, a new duo emerged that quickly rendered its ‘bubblegum’ predecessors obsolete. Drawing on international trends and crafting lyrics for local ears, J.E. Movement – a duo made up of James Nyingwa and Elliot Faku – exploded onto the local scene with their debut album, ‘Ma Dea Luv’. The future had arrived. The six tracks on J.E. Movement’s 1988 debut give firm nods to UK Street Soul, New Jack Swing and Stock Aitken Waterman’s ‘Hit Factory’ sound and infuse them with an African rhythmic flair and homegrown lyrical sentiment.
By the end of the 1970s Linval Thompson had cut out a successful dual career for himself as both singer and producer. Naturally he moved in the dub field as well, getting further use out of rhythms he used in his other works. Dub had begun strictly as an album format with limited pressing runs for scene insiders, but it had swiftly gained the interest of the rank and file reggae buffs. ‘Negrea Love Dub’, originally released in 1978, is a cornerstone in the reggae dub scene. The sound of the ten dubs featured here is hypnotic and its effects are euphoric to say the least.
“This spring, I released my new album Ninety Nine Eyes. Since then, I’ve been working independently to build a tour that brings this music to life on stage — across a wide stretch of Europe, from the Balkans to Amsterdam, and onward through cities like Warsaw, Skopje, and Rome.
This journey has been fully self-initiated: reaching out to venues, confirming shows, navigating logistics — all in the spirit of keeping the music alive and shared. But none of this would exist without the incredible help of a group of local promoters who believe deeply in this music. We’re building this tour step by step, city by city — and their trust and dedication are the backbone of this road.
To sustain this momentum, I need a small push of support to help cover basic travel needs and flight tickets for the upcoming legs of the tour.
Now, I’m turning to you for support to raise 1000–1200 euros to cover essential costs: international flights and basic logistics for the upcoming leg of the tour. To make this happen, I’m opening up a very personal part of my archive:
I’m offering the first three unreleased tracks that shaped the sound of Ninety Nine Eyes — the moment when my music started to shift and evolve after Mulid El-Magnoun. These tracks are not available anywhere else.
Alongside that, I’m sharing a small collection of hand-sewed fabric eyes — each one stitched by my partner and the art director of the project, Alaa Eideh. These are not just artworks — they are extensions of the journey we’ve both taken with this album.
If Ninety Nine Eyes spoke to you — or if you believe in the road that music can carve across borders — your support means everything.”
Egyptian composer YUNIS’ Ninety Nine Eyes is a work that exists outside time—equally at home in the temples of antiquity and the neon-lit voids of speculative futures. This double-sided LP (Part I and Part II, 15:14 / 16:03) merges ceremonial percussion, interstellar synthwaves, and wordless incantations into a 31-minute ritual for the infinite. Born from a three-year metamorphosis between studio and stage, and rooted in a Takhmira (a Zar ritual poem), Ninety Nine Eyes channels the archetypal quest—a search for the “land where light is seated.” Its soundscapes evoke the grandeur of forgotten civilizations and the hum of celestial machinery: droning mizmar lines and drowning tombak and duff rhythms dissolve into maximalist synth storms; choirs of phantom voices rise like starlight through the static of ages. Structured like a Sufi Hadra, the LP’s undulating peaks pull at old ways of communing with the divine—Part I builds tension, a breath before the storm, while Part II erupts into unfettered synth-drenched trance, gates flung open—only the listener can close the circle through their own interpretation.
A veritable supergroup consisting of Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers), Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero) and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo), Los Pirañas, the Colombian Avant-Latin experimentalists, return with their most formidable and forward-looking album yet. Improvised live in the studio, with each member contributing ideas and interpretive strategies, the result is a masterclass in spontaneous, collective composition. Daring, imaginative, eclectic and always deeply groovy, ‘Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida’ is an infectious trip into the dark, pulsating heart of Bogota’s thrilling underground music scene.
Sharif Abu Ammar (b. 1968) is a sonic agitator, cultural theorist and elusive musician who emerged from the late ‘80s transnational acid house circuits. Blurring the lines between history, memory, secrecy, and the future, he was raised between the shadow of colonial histories and the neon glare of global capitalism. His work fuses decolonial critique and the commodification of underground music, subverting both the hedonism of the scene and the exotifying gaze of the West.
These are “Demo” tracks from the album “Anadolu Funk”. Reflecting the rich musical heritage of Anatolia, this track combines traditional melodies with contemporary funk rhythms, and the use of traditional instruments such as the bağlama, lively bass lines, and farfisa organ riffs, creating a unique fusion with a modern sound. This tracks again captures that nostalgic atmosphere by using instruments and recording techniques reminiscent of that period. Instruments such as Fender Jazz Bass, Ludwig Super Classic Drums are included.
Humphrey Aniakor started Duomo Sounds after a trip to Milan. The idea was to produce a new sound for the emerging generation. A sleek funky but refined, Nigerian disco sound. This compilation captures all of that intention with a broad array of artists. The music is sometimes sung in local Nigerian languages and sometimes in English but always with an African Accent. Modern grooves for an African market. After several months spent hanging out at studios in Los Angeles and New York, observing the musicians, producers and engineers at work. He went to nightclubs to study what kind of sonic textures made the crowd move. And when he felt he had gotten the hang of it, he returned to Nigeria to set up his record label. A label that would showcase the au courant, cosmopolitan face of the Nigeria’s emerging young generation. That would encompass the boundlessness of imagination, focus, persistence and craftsmanship. That would deliver music that touched the soul.
Baba Zula, the legendary Istanbul band, remains the most experimental exponent of the hotly-tipped contemporary Turkish psych-rock scene. BaBa ZuLa are revered sonic trailblazers who have built a cult following in all corners of the globe and have counted members of Einstürzende Neubauten, Can and Nick Cave the Bad Seeds as their fans. Pulsing, hypnotic tracks powered by Turkish percussion, glitched electronics, deep bass, electric saz and dual male/female vocals. İstanbul Sokakları (Streets of Istanbul) is a vivid sonic and political statement from a band that continues to show us the future.
In the Summer of 2023, Unknown To Known recorded their first studio album onboard a ‘Lightship’ in the docklands of East London. Sculpted through long form improvisations, this music reflects their personal transformations as well as the rapidly evolving world in which we live. With its gradually unveiling intricacies and soundscapes rich in colour and depth, we sincerely hope this album can provide some moments of calm and joy. Moody, gliding, ranging improvisations, fronted by the closely-knit harmonies and melodies of woodwind duo Idris Rahman and Tamar Osbourne, and under-pinned by the propulsive, layered rhythms of Yusuf Ahmed’s drums and Jihad Darwish’s sitar and bass.
Mariano Melo, also known as Marian Sarine, is a Brazilian multi-instrumentalist based in Sao Paulo, specialising in percussion and drums. His latest album, Asas Terenas, is his first under this name and started with organ recordings made with Felipe Pato in late 2019 and was completed with additional instruments added in the years that followed. ‘Asas Terenas’ features a mix of rhythmic improvisations built on modal scales, combining dynamic interplay between notes and percussion. Drawing inspiration from artists like Charanjit Singh, who merged traditional North-Indian ragas with electronic music, and African organists like Hailu Mergia, it combines old and new sounds, merging spiritual elements with energetic rhythms. As Sarine himself says, Asas Terenas is a sonic mixture that moves the feet and lifts the soul, creating an experience that is both pristine in sound and transcendental on the dancefloor.
El Khat’s 3rd album ‘Mute’ belies its title as it careens out of the speakers with a raucous intensity. Formed in the garages and warehouses of Jaffa and now based in Berlin, the group’s ever-expanding vision makes a defiant stand against complacency, conflict and division. Skittering drums and brass, a jagged organ, hypnotic Yemeni melodies and one-of-a-kind DIY percussion and string instruments, all meld together in an infectious, heady soundscape. Sometimes wildly raw, sometimes lush and enveloping. Always uncompromised and adventurous.
Big tune from Cameroonian outfit, ESA, originally released on an LP in 1986. For the first time ‘A Muto’ by Esa is given an official reissue. Not only does this mark a first as a stand along single, but the reissue contains previously unheard Instrumental, Dub and Keys Versions alongside an Acapella.
Strut introduces a pioneering new compilation ‘A Dancefloor In Ndola,’ curated by revered East African DJ, Kampire. This release marks an evolution in Strut’s approach to compilations, showcasing emerging DJ talent from across the world and embracing an innovative approach to musical discovery from the next wave of selectors. Forging her reputation through memorable sets for the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda over the last decade, Kampire now tours worldwide and is celebrated for her brilliantly curated sets spanning the full range of African music styles from the ‘70s and ‘80s to the present day. Although born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, Kampire spent her formative years in Ndola, Zambia. ‘A Dancefloor In Ndola’ is inspired by artists and songs that formed part of her soundtrack during that time. The compilation flows through different East African and South African genres from Congolese rumba and soukous to 1980s township bubblegum and the rich guitar-led sounds of Zambian kalindula.
The Hipodrome Of Music 