Holy Tongue
III

Tenka aka Meitei and Berlin-based, Japanese scent designer, Ryoko have combined to make a scent that complements this new album from Tenka. It is well worth finding it if you can. The album itself is his first since his trilogy series and once again establishes him as a leading voice in the contemporary electronic scene of Japan. Hydration finds him looking to "work without the boundaries of theme, storytelling or audience expectations" and spent many hours in nearby mountain forests to find inspiration. That plays out with colour, sound, smell, humidity, touch, atmosphere and taste all colouring the grooves.

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Eastenderz welcomes French party starters Oden & Fatzo and Thurman for a double dose of debuts on the label, with this funk-fuelled, punchy, summertime house four tracker. Part feel-good, part hazy deepness, part heads down heat, there’s a cut here for every occasion, giving a glimpse into why these two acts are on the trajectory they are.Essential business as always from Eastenderz.

Bokeh Versons lasso a dusky set of surf guitar-meets-bossa nova-in-dub styles from Martin Werner’s Répéter - think John Wayne lost in a Brazilian desert with Mike Cooper and Sun Araw‘Bad Twang’ follows on from 2017’s ‘In Fine Style’ LP with a more conceptual lean, employing his self-taught surf guitar tekkers with a DIY conflation of compatible styles whose sum outweighs their components. His conception of cowboy exotica or rancher dub practically imagines the soundtrack to a Tarantino or Jodorowsky flick set in some parched, purgatorial landscape where various genres criss-cross the desert in heat hazy licks and languorous grooves, shimmering like elusive fata morganas.