https://disciples.ffm.to/heavycombination

A crucial introduction to the 'King of Kikuyu Benga' and the first career-spanning retrospective of the incredible catalogue of the late, great Joseph Kamaru.

17 tracks that run the gamut from vibrant dancefloor chants with high life-esque guitars, to afro funk, drum machine and keyboard driven disco grooves, and folk style laments. The music is raw, immediate, danceable, and packed full of memorable hooks. The incisive lyrics range from protest songs to relationship advice. Joseph Kamaru was an incredibly popular figure in his native Kenya, connecting with everyone from high-powered politicians to the rural and urban working class, and his music deserves a much wider international audience.

Compiled in partnership with Joseph Kamaru's grandson, the sound artist KMRU.

The tracks have been carefully remastered from original tape transfers by Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin.

Sleeve designed by Karolina Kołodziej using original archive material from the Kamaru family vaults.

Extensive liner notes include essays by Kenyan academic Maina wa Mũtonya, music journalist Megan Iacobini de Fazio, and KMRU himself.

Joseph Kamaru - Kenya Kũrũngara (Remastered) - from Heavy Combination 1966 - 2007

The Sound In My Mind

le flip du dipsomane

Cyprien Gaillard - Retinal Rivalry
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 157
Release Date: 17 October 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/RetinalRivalry

Retinal Rivalry is the soundtrack to Cyprien Gaillard’s new stereoscopic film, Retinal Rivalry (2024). It is an entrancing journey through Germany’s urban landscape and its layers of historical and social significance. Building on his previous exploration of the sculptural qualities of three-dimensional moving images, the work extends beyond the confines of the screen. By harnessing cutting-edge technology to its full potential, Gaillard offers an expanded, sharpened and deeply affecting novel view of the world around us.

Retinal Rivalry is named after the visual perception phenomenon that occurs when the brain receives two conflicting images at the same time. Instead of blending into one 3D image, the neural system alternates between prioritising one image while suppressing the other, causing confusion and discomfort for the viewer.

Gaillard’s film engages with these complexities of visual processing and the limitations of technology, collating visual information through exceptional, often tongue-in-cheek, shots that intertwine the inside and outside, the contained and dispersed, and the natural and built.

His camera adopts unusual viewpoints, shifting from smooth aerial perspectives to a rodent’s low gaze to the dizzying darting in and out on the bulbous nose of a sculpture, or a long shot of a train moving through a landscape, drawing us into a layered experience that teeters between a bad trip and unexpected beauty providing solace.

The film’s score draws from diverse sonic elements, bolstering its exploration of dissonance and synchrony. Indonesian instrumental music is reworked and combined with field recordings of heavy machinery rumbling and strangely melodic retching. The soundtrack also incorporates the opening lines to Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), along with its accompanying overture by German band Popol Vuh. 

The soundscape of Retinal Rivalry contrasts its images—what we see is often at odds with what we hear. Only one section lets sound and image converge: a fractured leg pumps the pedal of an interactive organ to play a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach that repeatedly falters.

The film Retinal Rivalry will be on view at Haus der Kunst in Munich from October 17, 2025, to March 8, 2026.

Cyprien Gaillard - Retinal Rivalry (PAN 157)

Mallorca-based maestro @defled supplies an hour of contemporary ambient explorations

₀₃₈ 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗱



@dorisdana
@oscilla-sound

Ghostly whispers and crisp soundscapes drift through low-slung dustiness on doris dana's 'wild at heart' EP - the latest in Oscilla Sound's Liminal series, a hazy transmission from the borderlands of memory and dream.

pre-order

premiere: doris dana - holes [label: Liminal / Oscilla Sound]

Jonnnah - Blue Star

A live stochastic experiment 
with four of Cherry Audio's 
Mercury-8 Jupiter synthesisers.

Lysithea

Floating

My thanks to thatmannpeter, the most bodacious cyber punk artist in the whole of Scotland...nay, the world! His moreish art can be viewed here: www.instagram.com/thatmannpeter/

The Sound In My Mind

Drew McDowall