EM Japan 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Roland P. Young's 80th year on the planet is marked by a celebration of his EM Records label with a sixth album from the great talent. It's an album that has 113 new tunes that cover a diverse array of sounds that are joyful and celebratory odes to life. The artist grew up in Kansas City and then had time in San Francisco and New York before he started to release his self-produced solo music in 1980. Along the way, he picked up influences as diverse as soulful and spiritual multi-world avant-music and took cues from bits of ambient, jazz, soul, new age and electronic music.

Review: Osaka's Koshiro "YPY" Hino built his reputation on a series of fearlessly experimental cassette releases, before breaking cover to deliver a 12" of frazzled techno on Nous last year. Zurhyrethm marks his long-form vinyl debut, and contains eight suitably experimental tracks stretched across two slabs of wax. While there are clear tropical influences, a humid feel and nods towards the visceral pleasures of ambient, Hino's greatest strength is his eccentric drum programming. Zurhyrethm's dense - but often subtly mixed - percussive backing dominates throughout, with nods to African and South American rhythms, Sweet Exorcist's C.C.CD-era "clonk techno" (look it up), and the metallic clanking of classic industrial music.