Record of the Week
Seu Jorge is back! Mario Caldato Jr will explain:
"This record was born when I recorded Jorge playing a simple version of “Girl You Move Me” by Cane and Able on a nylon guitar. His performance was very sensitive and dynamic, which moved me deeply. Around that time, I had just met Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and seen him perform with Arthur Verocai during Verocai’s very first orchestral concert in Los Angeles, a simply brilliant experience. I then had the idea to call Miguel and suggested we try something on Jorge’s “Girl You Move Me”
demo. I shared some ideas with Miguel, and he totally got it, bringing a beautiful arrangement that transcended the song to a very lush and sophisticated dimension. That moment planted the seed for this orchestral adventure, which began in 2009.
We were amazed by how organic this experiment sounded and felt, we instantly wanted to record more songs. A few years later in 2013, with Jorge’s band in town, we recorded ‘Vento de Maio’ and ‘Far from the Sea’. Once again, Miguel brought his magic, and suddenly we had three beautiful recordings in hand and the beginning of a possible album.
From there on, everything unfolded naturally. Samantha and I had been speaking about creating a“home made label”, where music, friendship, and collaboration would guide the process. Seu Jorge was a part of that from the beginning, making ‘The Other Side’ a seed of Amor in Sound. We loved the idea of releasing this project together, and Jorge embraced it with the same excitement. Moving at our own pace, we finally recorded the rest of the album in 2018 at my newly built homestudio. The songs were chosen with care and performed live by Jorge’s incredible rhythm section, which plays a very important part in the musical arrangement and feel of this project. Jorge has a lot of trust and pride in his musicians, allowing them to express themselves freely. Each musician is a talent on their own and brings a special flavor to every song, this was their album as well.
It was a week of pure joy for me and all of us, recording and capturing this magical spirit and vibration."
It was then completed by Miguel’s magnificent orchestral arrangements. When the time came to mix,
everything felt very natural, it was easy to balance, the album revealed itself, and came together
magnificently. It’s a timeless record to me.
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A key producer and DJ on the French house scene, Folamour crosses paths with saxophonist and composer Léon Phal, a leading figure in the renewal of European jazz. At the origin of this EP lies their meeting, driven by a shared love of groove and celebration. While Folamour seeks to root his music more deeply in live performance by surrounding himself with musicians,
Léon Phal steers his jazz toward a more dancefloor-oriented energy and a more club-focused vision. The collaboration feels natural, as both artists share common roots: funk, groove, dance, and a certain sense of generosity on stage. Recorded under the Mediterranean winter sun, these two tracks offer a comforting and joyful club moment, enriched with vocals, drums, and brass. In the spirit of the golden era of early 2000s vocal house, Folamour and Léon Phal pair each track with a distinctive voice: the radiant energy of Brazilian singer Flavia Coelho and the soulful, vibrant voice of Wolfgang Valbrun.
From these shores was born an EP: Danse Méditerranée.
Rapidly gaining momentum, Drumcode’s new DC4 series returns to serve up a collaborative feast for its fourth edition.
Since debuting in summer 2025, DC4 has done exactly what it says on the tin: serving up four elite tracks that deserve the spot to shine.
You know you’re going to get A+ quality when you cue up a Victor Ruiz & Alex Stein collaboration. The Brazilians have a long history of studio jaunts and they deliver the goods via ‘Core’, a brilliant brain-scrambling outing with a strong dramatic arc.
Charles D & Weska follow up last year’s ‘The Answer’ on 1001 Recordings with ‘Can’t Get Enough’ feat. Bexxie. With a foot in prog and techno alike, this is driven by low-slung grooves and Bexxie’s sexy vox, packing an exhilarating energy throughout.
Enter two Drumcode debutants – SCRIPT & OKAYVAL. The former is a fast-rising American artist who is coming off collaborating with Brazilian superstar ALOK, while the latter is a Colombian born, US-based artist whose earned gigs at EDC Vegas and Tomorrowland this year. ‘LIKE THAT’ is a high-energy jam marked by tight rolling percussion and a sharp vocal loop designed for peak-time impact.
Another pair of fresh faces land on the comp as Martin Costas & Gabriel Gil drop ‘It’s All Around’. Lock in for a pulsating slice of prog driven by hypnotic rhythms and lush melodic textures. A versatile cut fit for a variety of party situations.
Carl Craig follows 2025's Desire soundtrack with the Meditations LP. Available in full on digital platforms for the first time, Mediations is comprised of six beatless compositions of modular synthesis that bridge his Detroit techno origins and the Synth Ensemble and Versus concert pieces Craig has explored in more recent years.
Meditations offers the opportunity to luxuriate in Craig’s many sonic identities. Eschewing traditional rhythm and structure, each of these six installations moves at a unique pace, transitioning from surrealist oscillations and near-choral ambient passages to subtle undercurrents of jazz and bristling, alien electronics.
Patient, spacious and hypnotic in form, Meditations is a unique and essential trip through the practices of one of electronic music’s true innovators.
Drumcode’s hottest rising star KASIA continues her outstanding 2026 with new single ‘Simulate’.
The Poland-born, Miami-based artist is rapidly becoming one of the most prolific artists on Adam Beyer’s labels. In the last six months alone, she’s dropped the thrilling ‘PSYCHO’ with Charles D and Sarah De Warren – one of Drumcode’s 2025 highlights – plus a strong collaboration with SOLANCE titled ‘Inferno’ on Truesoul. Already in 2026, she’s delivered the goods again, linking with another exciting rising talent KAF3R for the slick ‘Let’s Get It’ which appeared on DC4 Vol.3 in February.
On the touring front, KASIA’s going from strength to strength in 2026; Ultra Music Festival, Drumcode Mallorca and Arc Music Festival are just some of the highlights to come over the coming months.
Her latest studio offering ‘Simulate’ builds on the momentum beautifully and reinforce her distinct sound signature. This is big-boned dance music with a foot in techno, prog and house alike, accentuated by soaring melodic flourishes. On-point!
Xylitol - Blumenfantasie
Xylitol, a.k.a. producer and DJ Catherine Backhouse, shifts up the refinement and musical breadth for her second album Blumenfantasie, the follow-up to her Planet Mu debut Anemones.
While Anemones pulled together her formative influences of early jungle, garage and kosmische musik, interspersed with elements of early central and eastern european electro to draw connections and contrasts between dance music and vintage electronics, in Blumenfantasie mitteleuropean melancholy comes to the fore, particularly drawing on the work of Sarajevo-born minimal synth composer Miaux, whom she recognises as “a kindred spirit in terms of her directness and melancholy, as well as her lightness of touch.” She cites her as her “single biggest inspiration in the shift between Anemones and Blumenfantasie and I think the shift of mood and palette is quite apparent, even if our music is very different in how it presents.”
A fitting analogy of the album’s feel can be found in the origin of its title:
“When I stayed in Berlin earlier this year to play for the Planet Mu 30th Anniversary show I had a vivid flashback to my last stay in the city some 20 years earlier. I was out raving every night with a friend who was squatting in a disused flower shop; the trip was a kind of therapeutic letting go but the memory fragment that stood out to me was the GDR era signage above the front window in brown tiles embossed in beige reading ‘Blumenfantasie’ in that kind of classic 1970s psychedelic font.”
In her new album these crossing timelines, collisions of memory and aesthetics tessellate precariously together.
With Blumenfantasie, Xylitol wanted “to make space and for the music to float and propel at once”, finding routes through the pointillistic figures, cascading synths and the meditative stillness of kosmische musik and bolder breakbeat programming. She reaches this delicate balance through careful subtraction, hoping “to convey a sense of intimacy and sadness but without sentimentality” which she manages with a feel and sound that's raw and intuitive.
Blumenfantasie rolls through detailed jungle workouts that flutter and bleep, through beatless ambience, taking a rare dip below 160 bpm for the elegiac Mirjana, the album’s most explicit nod to Krautrock with a drum break chopped up from Amon Duul II’s anthemic ‘Archangel’s Thunderbird’, through to a bare bones grime rhythm that calls to mind the missing link between industrial pioneers Nurse With Wound and Wiley's Eskibeat.
For Blumenfantasie, Catherine cast her net to draw in experimental audiovisual duo Sculpture and Reading based post-rock band The Leaf Library as collaborators, pulling the former’s whirling eddies of musique concrete into a slice of sublime aquatic jungle, and the latter’s radiophonic folksong into a dark and disorientating breakbeat workout equally indebted to Source Direct as to Broadcast.
Blumenfantasie moves with a confident, self-effacing fluidity which has been informed by DJ Bunnyhausen’s more regular DJ gigs. She speculates “if this album feels more cohesive than its predecessor it's likely because I've been DJing a lot more, with Worthing Techno Militia, with central and eastern european electronica collective Slav to the Rhythm, as well as being part of Italo Disco crew Flex. Moving between these zones seemed to open up hidden pathways between the disparate musical trajectories they represent.”
While Anemones contrasted the rough and the delicate, its successor is an album built for the head, hips and heart, with painterly sounds and a sense of intimacy that encourages deep listening while keeping its eyes on the strobelight and its feet on the dancefloor.
“The soft twang of a nylon guitar. A hauntingly beautiful voice cutting through the haze of a bygone recording. The sound of waves crashing, washing away the pretty tune. Dominique Fils-Aimé paints a surreal image of a “sea of clouds below our feet”. Chanting can be heard from below as the celestial bodies descend. The sound of hand drums grows louder as an ethereal drone fades.
One day, in her family home, Dominique stumbled upon an old cassette from the 70s. The sound of her mother’s voice on the tape moved her. She had no idea her mother was such a talented vocalist. That same recording is the opening song for Dominique’s latest album “My World is the Sun”. The decision to open with this classically informed guitar piece sets a formal backdrop where Dominique creates stylistic contrasts. The album unfolds like a narrative—morphing with the many moods we experience in a day. Expressive melodies evolve intuitively, breaking away from formulaic arrangements. Dominique closes the album by recording her own version of the opening song, completing a natural cycle. Returning to the intimate space from where the album began emphasizes the importance of returning to a space of contentment within ourselves. Seeking and building peace for ourselves and others is a value that Dominique’s mother held dear. “My World Is The Sun” pays homage to this value.
Inspired by the instinct of a loving mother, each song on “My World is the Sun” is like a child and each child is accepted as they are. This acceptance provides a safe space for Dominique’s creativity to run free. Finding the beauty in imperfection, Dominique gives the world her creative and spiritual process in its entirety—with all the quirks, chuckles and deep breaths.
Mossdeb Sounds pushes deeper into its Afro-Tech lane with a fresh two-tracker from label head Bubba Brothers—the Portuguese artist whose momentum is building fast across dancefloors and playlists alike. Balancing percussive heat with a club-ready sense of restraint, this release lands right in the sweet spot for DJs who like their tech house driving, but with a melodic glow that lingers long after the drop.
Across both cuts, Bubba Brothers leans into what’s become his signature: tightly programmed drums, rolling low-end and those unmistakable Afro-tinged rhythms that keep the groove breathing. The first track comes in with assertive, peak-time energy—punchy, upfront and engineered for hands-in-the-air moments—while the second takes a more hypnotic route, pairing a warmer musical touch with a late-night tension that steadily locks the room.
It’s also shaping up to be a defining year for Bubba Brothers: new residencies on the calendar and the launch of his own event concept, Loko by Bubba Brothers, cementing his vision beyond the studio. With previous releases on Golden, Wh0, and Alleanza already earning strong support from press and international artists, this next chapter feels like a natural step up—bigger, sharper, and fully aligned with the Mossdeb Sounds identity.
This is Mossdeb Sounds.
Mr Bongo presents Volume 8 of their cherished Record Club series. Curated in-house by the Bongo team, these compilations are a chance for the esteemed label to share some of their favourite tracks, hard-fought finds, and unsung gems from the global stage. In the cross-genre spirit of the series, Volume 8 draws from the worlds of soul, boogie, disco-reggae, jazz-funk, Latin and Brazilian music. Capturing that far-reaching focus, this three track sampler brings together a dancefloor heater from Ubunto, an exclusive Kenny Dope edit of The Sylvers and a cosmic fusion of disco and reggae from Tapper Zukie.
First up, we travel to Salvador with a blistering dancefloor-focused cut from Ubunto - a DJ and producer with over 10 years in Brazil’s electronic music scene. Putting an electronic tropical twist on a Brazilian classic, Ubunto reinterprets Dorival Caymmi’s sublime folky MPB song ‘O Vento’ from 1959, into a modern-day dancer. A brilliant reimagination that still manages to hold on to the original song's essence, helped by the formidable female vocal force of As Ganhadeiras de Itapuã, who originate from the same neighbourhood as Ubunto.
Next, for around 15 years Mr Bongo have been working with the iconic Sylvers family, in particular, their leader Leon Sylvers. After a lot of searching, they discovered the original two-inch master tapes from the first two Sylvers albums and delivered them to the one and only Kenny Dope. Kenny has tastefully reworked ‘Wish That I Could Talk To You’; fattening up the drums whilst bringing more drama to the horns and strings. The song now feels more contemporary, yet still stays true to its roots. Complete genius!
Last up, Tapper Zukie is a Record Club series favourite, with his productions also featuring on Volumes 1 and 7. ‘Visions Of Love’ is a truly unique track, not sitting fully in any genre; it has a pulsating, cosmic disco-reggae crossover energy and was released on Tapper’s own Stars imprint. An under-the-radar jewel.
Traversing time, genre, and location, these three gems are just a small snapshot of the breadth and brilliance you’ll discover on Mr Bongo Record Club Volume 8.