Brainfeeder Vinyl & CDs

Review: Some 14 years in the making, Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1 comprises 52 tracks of music composed, arranged and produced by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson; with contributions from 50+ friends including Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, Carlos NiNo, Austin Peralta, Bennie Maupin, Gabe Noel, Jamael Dean, and more. If that wasn't monumental enough, just know that this lengthy classical-experimental-jazz album is certainly Miguel's intended magnum opus, having been written and recorded entirely as a result of his own uncompromised, self-funded efforts. Such an extensive time period reflects an album of longstanding personal growth for the artist; an attitude of continual evolution and innocence, of constantly coming of age and reinventing oneself.

Review: Nothing by Louis Cole, a collaboration with the Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley, blends classical orchestration with dance music, pop, and jazz, showcasing Cole's unique and ultra-flexible production style. The album features 17 tracks, 15 of which are brand new, avoiding orchestral renditions of his hits and instead presenting fresh compositions. The lead single, 'Things Will Fall Apart,' highlights Cole's feather-light vocals over an exciting orchestration of funk percussion, strings, horns and barbershop backup vocals. Recorded during live performances, Nothing captures the energy and emotion of Cole's multi-date sold-out European tour with the Metropole Orkest. The project emphasises Cole's desire to create music with deep emotional impact while remaining straightforward and accessible. Cole meticulously mixed the album himself, ensuring his pure vision was realised.

Review: IDM powerhouse and still-fresh Brainfeeder signee Hakushi Hasegawa returns with Mahogakko, the latest mindmelter to paint the perpetually morphogenic work of art that is their... ahem... music. Once again, this is a broad set of bad-apple, black MIDI-influenced compositions, all of which push the sonic limit to the floating point of timeline-breaking cacophony, verging on sugar-rushing ideasthetic noise. Imagine an alternate universe of techno-faeries all aflutter in some forest grotto out of conscious sight; despite meaning well and maintaining a vivid glee, this pixie-hive's demeanour defaults to a wild, puckish, erratic and swarming fever, to the point of grave danger for the human visitant. We hold this image firmly in mind, as it concurs with the news of Hasegawa's recent grand gestural face reveal, after which interpretations of their music will never be the same. A thoroughly dynamic record, Hasegawa is unafraid of the contrast between loud and quiet, in a totally singular fashion that bucks the expectation usually laid at the feet of electronica artists. Every sound here, from 'Boy's Texture' to 'Forbidden Thing (Kimmotsu)', is as machine-elven, fidgeting and hyperrealistic as would be expected, yet also unexpected, of today's zeitgeist, that of TikTok-dancing phantasmagorias and disgust-threshold broaching cute slime aesthetics. Everything is so crisp and glossy that the sonic metal deployed in its making sound to have far surpassed their liquidus points, not long before having been strained into a kind of magick philtrum set aside for the braving of fatal fairy realms and fatal fairy realms alone.

Review: Brainfeeder looks back to Japanese hybridist Hakushi Hasegawa's first album Air Ni Ni here and reissues it on limited grey marbled vinyl. Although on the surface it might be thought of as pop, get in between the beats and you will find a challenging record that fused everything from bubblegum pop to breakcore, prog jazz to video games and much more besides. The record first came in 2019 and remains astonishingly diverse and new in the way it mashes up traditional genre boundaries and draws on alt-rock. Fans of label head Flying Lotus are sure to love it as is anyone who heard it first tie round.

Review: Japanese Wunderkind Hakushi Hasegawa made their Brainfeeder debut back in 2023, dropping the incredible Somoku Hudo after a slating of similarly super jazzbreaks released independently until that magical moment. Having not yet made their mark with a wider international audience, it was up to impresario FlyLo and co. to 'break' Hasegawa, resulting first in an infamous Fuji Rock festival appearance and now a resultant repress of the initially digital mini-album. Somoku Hudo is a surreally intense jubilant jaunt through hallmarks of J-pop, neo-jungle and cutecore, ever veering on the chromatic and rhythmically errant. A crude comparison would be if Mario Kart met Tennyson met Sunik Kim, though even this is just a first-listen comparison; an auditory encounter with the Real, if you will, it's difficult to capture Hasegawa's music totally in words except for its seeming invitation to make references to other sources - which, huzzah, indicates new experimental electronic ground has been trodden!

Review: Seven years since its initial release, this is the deluxe repressing of 'Choose Your Weapon' by Australian jazz/funk band Hiatus Kaiyote. The Grammy-nominated four-piece's second LP returns to stereos with this 18-track, 70-minute odyssey that takes listeners on a journey through the group's self-created ecosystem, populated with songs each embodying its own mini-cinematic sonic soundscape. Pressed on gorgeous photoluminescent vinyl, paired with a bonus 7" featuring a Roman Soto Cello rework of side B's 'Breathing Underwater' and a genius club mix of 'Making Friends with Studio Owl', the second half of the interlude from the original - a highpoint in sound.

Review: The music of Australian Jazz-Funk outlet Hiatus Kaiyote has a style that can't be easily pinpointed, striking the perfect note merging poetry and polyrhythms. Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, Tupac Shakur, Flying Lotus are all listed as influences, but really the soundscape falls closest to future nu-jazz, if such a thing could even exist. This deluxe pressing of the group's 2012 debut LP 'Tawk Tomahawk' is celebrating a decade with a transparent red repressing, packaged with an exclusive 7" featuring a collaboration with none other than Q-Tip, as well as a fresh-to-death, fast-paced remix of 'Boom Child' from Clever Austin.

Review: Melbourne-based band Hiatus Kaiyote share their latest album Love Heart Cheat Code via Brainfeeder. Hot on the heels of run-up singles 'Make Friends', the album continues Kaiyote's virtuosic phatjazz meanderings, and thematically revolves around ideas of true friendship and breezy love relationships, with the aforementioned lead single following lead singer Nai Palm hearing the following statement: "you don't make friends, you recognise them". Turning the feeling of love into a resounding simile - the giddy feeling of entering a cheat code into the game of life - the album goes on to deploy its clear-eyed soul and jazz for a fierce statement into such hot topics as gender neutrality and commodification.

Review: Australian collective Hiatus Kaiyote's trademark sound has long been rotted in jazz-funk, but as fourth album Love Heart Cheat Code proves, there's always been much more to it than that. Produced by Brazilian maestro Mario Caldato Jr - best known for his work with the Beastie Boys, Seu Jorge and Jack Johnson - the album delivers a forward-thinking and undeniably attractive take on future soul variously informed by jazz-funk, broken beat, modern r&b, neo-soul and sun-soaked downtempo grooves. The results are uniformly impressive, with our picks of a very strong bunch including the sparkling and up-lifting 'Everything's Beautiful', the spaced-out Fugees flex of 'Love Heart Cheat Code' and the squally guitars and blue-eyed soul insanity of 'Cinnamon Temple'.

Review: Hiatus Kaiyote are amazing - plain and simple. The Melbourne-based group have risen to well-deserved stardom with their expertly crafted, multi-layered slow jams backing the sensational vocal stylings of lead singer Nai Palm. Since their 2013 debut 'Tawk Tomahawk', the group has been sampled by The Carters, Drake and Anderson .Paak, undoubtedly for their smooth genre-bending and soulful sound reminiscent of Erykah Badu - who has since become a big fan. The two singles, 'Make Friends' and 'Everything's Beautiful' are rich in depth and have some of Palm's best vocal performances to date - they belt out some crazy riffs on the latter track, a cut oozing in groove. Pressed on indie exclusive marbled disc, so support independent vinyl companies and get a beautiful pressing in return.

Review: Legendary Norwegian eight-piece Jaga Jazzist are back with a new album that takes a plunge into myriad musical worlds. Post-rock, jazz and psychedelia influences all abound across the four lengthy pieces that make up the Brainfeeder released LP. It was recorded in just two weeks of focussed sessions with plenty of impromptu jams and never too much over-analysis, but plenty of experimentation. It is the band's first self-produced album and overflows with musical stories form the off with synth heavy pieces and afro tinged drum rhythms. Bandleader Lars says: "I felt that this album is a small symphony, each part containing its own rooms to explore."

Review: When Nostalchic was first released in 2013, Lapalux was already well established as a central figure in the booming LA beat scene orbiting around Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label. Given how entrenched in the 2010s that whole movement was, the music itself has matured beautifully over the past decade to become a heartfelt benchmark in a sub-genre that thrived on innovation and unexpected swerves. It helps that there are some choice detuned synth lines which fold time across the ages on the likes of 'Guuurl', proving Lapalux was always about the feels more than the shock and awe of the beats. Having only a modest run the first time around, now the album has been repressed for the first time as a limited edition on clear vinyl.

Review: Austin Peralta's 2011 album Endless Planets has never before been available on vinyl and now gets pressed up as a special Deluxe Edition by Brainfeeder. Peralta really crafted something special here when the label made its first moves into the world of jazz. He is a prodigious piano-playing talent who uses that as a vehicle for his inquisitive futurism while never forgetting the heritage of original jazz. In this special version, four previously unreleased tracks are unveiled. Among them is a live rendition of 'DMT Song' from FlyLo's 2012 album 'Until the Quiet Comes,' which Austin collaborated on. Wonderful stuff.

Review: It's notoriously difficult to make albums of emotive, musically complex, club-friendly music, but Felix Clary Weatherall achieved it with his 2018 full-length debut as Ross From Friends, Family Portrait. This belated sequel hits all the right notes, too, skipping between heart-aching post-two-step deepness ('The Daisy'), lilting breakbeat-house warmth ('Revellers'), spaced-out, sample-heavy downtempo soul ('A Brand New Start'), tipsy, fuzz-fuelled outsider house oddness (the swelling 'Grub'), sunrise-ready ambient ('Morning Sun in a Dusty Room') and classic 1990s IDM-inspired electronica sweetness ('Thresho 1.0'). In other words, it's that rarest of beasts: a second album that's genuinely superior to its predecessor.

Review: Kit Sebastian's upcoming album, New Internationale, set for release via Brainfeeder, marks a major step forward for the duo of Kit Martin and Merve Erdem. The lead single, 'Metropolis', blends Azerbaijani musical influences with Western funk grooves, using vintage synths and intricate choral textures. The track's samba-driven finale, complete with dual drum kits and processed horns and strings, creates a layered, cinematic soundscape. Lyrically, "Metropolis" explores the immigrant experience, delving into themes of identity, belonging, and artistic compromise in an unfamiliar world. Written while on tour, New Internationale features a rich tapestry of global instrumentsifrom Turkish clarinet to zither and harpsichordiwoven into a seamless mix of Anatolian psych, French pop, and Tropicalia. The album reflects Merve's personal journey navigating her Turkish heritage and Kit's eclectic musical influences, culminating in their most orchestrated work yet. It's a vivid exploration of multicultural identity, using lush, borderless soundscapes that bridge genres and histories, while pushing the boundaries of modern psychedelia and global fusion.

Review: Flying Lotus collaborator Thundercat returns to Brainfeeder with his first full album since 2013's superb Apocalypse. Presented over four coloured pieces of 10" vinyl, Drunk is a thrill-a-minute, mix-tape style trip through the multi-instrumentalist and beat-maker's various inspirations (think skewed hip-hop, jazz, soul, funk, left-of-centre electronica, and so on), all of which have been fused and mutated to fit his unique musical perspective. His high standing within the leffield hip-hop community has allowed Thundercat to snag some impressive guest stars, too, including Kendrick Lamarr, blue-eyed soul legend Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Pharell and jazz man Kamasi Washington. Old pal Fly-Lo also lends a hand.

Review: Thundercat's last album, 2017's "Drunk", is undeniably one of the greatest full-lengths of the past few years - a dizzyingly varied and mind-altering affair that mixed and matched styles to create thrilling new fusions of past and present sounds. He's at it again on this delayed follow-up "It Is What It Is", which was co-produced by Flying Lotus and includes an impressive cast-list of guests and collaborators (think Kamasi Washington, Ty Dolla Sign, Steve Arrington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Lil B and Louis Cole for starters). Musically it's impossible to pigeonhole - think rubbery 80s funk meets spiritual jazz meets reggae meets hip-hop meets experimental beats meets... you get the idea - and that makes for inspiring listening. Whether it's quite as good as "Drunk" is debatable, but it's certainly superb.

Review: Virtuoso bassist & singer Thundercat releases a very special deluxe edition of his album Apocalypse, ten years on from its original release in 2013. Packed with gems including the certified classics 'Heartbreaks + Setbacks', 'Lotus and the Jondy', 'Tron Song' and the all-out cosmic funk bullet 'Oh Sheit, It's X', Thundercat brings a fusion of pop, soul, electronica, prog rock and funk into an unexplored dimension, with his signature basslines gliding sky high to meet Executive Producer Flying Lotus' astral touch. The new edition also contains two previously unreleased tracks, 'Before I loved myself 'I' pooped my ankles (true)' recorded with Austin Peralta and Taylor Graves, and 'Paris' (with Mono/Poly). The deluxe LP also features special rainbow holographic artwork housed inside a transparent PVC outer slipcase complete with 'x-ray' holographic skull print.

Review: Thundercat hasn't released any new music in some three years. This first new tune in a while comes alongside fellow cult favourite Tame Impala and is a limited edition, single-sided cheetah screenprint 7". The song is a perfect coming together of the two with lyrics musing on a doom relationship and real melodic synchronicity elevating the tune. A slew of new and much anticipated new live dates follows the release of this tasty new single and will see Thundercat play with the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Strokes.

Review: Already out in the ether since the summer, Kamasi's sprawling three-part jazz opus finally sees the light of vinyl day. Presented on heavyweight vinyl with his striking signature artwork, its delivery befits the album's rave reviews on its original arrival. Highlights, in case you haven't heard it yet, are the awe-inspiring switch from fusion to swing on "The Next Step" the album's overall sparing inclusion of vocal that make "The Rhythm Changes" really stand out and sparkle and the attention to detail on the narrative structure on reprise notes such as "Re Run Home". A must-have for any jazz/Brainfeeder fan.