Heels & Souls Recordings’ fifth reissue sees them reach across the Atlantic to Vancouver, pressing up Pilgrims Of The Mind’s What’s Your Shrine? for the first time ever on vinyl, 25 years since its CD-only release on Map Music. A departure from the label’s previous releases, the LP is a beautiful smorgasbord of styles - progressive house, downtempo, ambient, tech house and trance all nestle together, a wiggling journey of sonic delight from the mind of Stephane Novak.

Turn the dial back to ‘97 and Vancouver's underground had a distinctive buzz to its rumblings, an amalgamation of scenes and styles gave rise to a cohort of producers that were unconstrained by genre, offering up a heady mix of sounds to expand the mind. ‘Welcome To Lotus Land’ the key 1996 compilation on Robert Shea’s seminal Vancouver Label, Map Music, championed much of this output including two cuts from POTM. Stephane then released his first and only full length album, ‘What’s Your Shrine?’ on the same label the following year.

Picking out choice moments from an album as considered and complete as this is tough. Those horizontally inclined will be drawn to the ambient dwellings of Sandcastle & Following the Sofuto Kuriimo, tracks like Nothing Can Pull Us Apart and L’Amour? Encore?! are perfectly suited to warming up limbs on the dancefloor, My Baby Likes Rum & Loosejaw prime for one in full swing. Yet to pick individual tracks misses the stunning sum of its parts that this 70+ minute cruise is, surely one of the finest albums from North America’s West Coast during its halcyon days of the ‘90s.

Digging deep in his vaults, Stephane managed to uncover the original unmastered DATs that have been given a fresh mastering by Justin Drake at the Bakehouse Studios. This beautiful, double-disc gatefold comes complete with liner notes from Ciel, words from Stephane himself, plus never-before-seen photography - the complete package this music always deserved.

20% of profits from Heels & Souls Recordings and Prime Direct Distribution will be donated to Saffron a non-profit organisation who aim to advance gender equality in the music tech sector by creating a safe space for women, non-binary people and other minority genders to learn and build confidence.

Pilgrims Of The Mind - Sandcastle

Surreal

Crimson 6

Full stream of Watching Airplanes' "Expansion X," taken from Elusive Still EP on Banlieue Records, out November 21.

Pre-order: https://banlieuerecords.bandcamp.com/album/br15-watching-airplanes-elusive-still
More: www.orbmag.com/music

@banlieuerecords
@watching-airplanes

Elusive Still

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Premiere: Watching Airplanes - Expansion X

global goon - acidchaka05

Release date
16 October 2025

AUDIO VISUAL CONCEPT ART.
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