Ransom Note

There was an Old Drive in a Case, Who held ten long years in its space; It went blink with a hum, And said, “Now I’m numb!” Then the Screen wrote “Not Found” on its face. A Man at the Claptrap HQ Said, “I know what a Man ought to do: Make some Acid that bites, Proto House for the nights, And a Sad String to see it all through.” Said a Mancunian chap, Ruf Dug, “I shall give the A1 a good tug!” It c...

A selector with fifteen years of crate-digging under his belt, fiercely devoted to the underground and always hunting for the next evolution of UK club music. Adam Curtain is a serious selector, he always has been. As the brains behind Trouble Maker, Curtain has spent well over a decade pushing and pulling at the seams of UK club music. Whether he’s steering his own imprints, releasing tracks on L...

James Allison and Tia Cousins finally make good on years of talk, turning a Planes, Trains and Automobiles sample into a fuzzed-out, bass-heavy dancefloor rush. There once was a fellow who boarded a plane, And a fellow who boarded a train, And a fellow who honked down a wrong-numbered lane – And nobody knew which was which, it was plain. “I’m the Wrong Guy!” cried one, with a wobble of hips, While...

clay. presents Surface 01, a VA compilation bringing together 15 artists, established and emerging, making what the label considers some of the most exciting electronic music right now - a testament to the countless forms of leftfield dance music coming out of the UK and beyond, and a small taste of what’s to come. “Ammonite – So” is the atmospheric conclusion to the 13-track record, brimming with...

Amélie Ravalec is a London-based Parisian film director, photographer and DJ, known for her documentaries on avant-garde and underground music and art, including Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers (2025), Art & Mind (2019), Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay (2015) and Paris/Berlin: 20 Years of Underground Techno (2012). The first episode of her series Solstice, Sumarsólstöður, won 25 awards and...

“I loved the naivety of it, and it’s about trying to bottle that feeling.” Toby Tobias has never really stopped. Since 1992, when he first got his hands on a sampler, some amen breaks and a stack of horror film samples, he’s operated under a run of aliases and studios, but Alphonse was always the one closest to the bone – a direct line back to hearing it all for the first time on Kiss FM and in th...

Berlin-based DJ and producer Anna Kost has carved out a distinctive space between techno, bass music and experimental electronics. She has released material on the likes of Soma, Faux Poly, ÆX and more having established herself as a DJ in the German capital appearing at the likes of Tresor and RSO. As a producer, she draws upon an array of influences, tending to focus on deeper, emotionally lead...

We're premiering Kerobokan, the title track off Rocco Universal's new EP - out 18 September on Cosmic Tiger, CT004, vinyl and digital. Rocco Universal is the alias of Patrizio Cavaliere, who also happens to run Cosmic Tiger itself - started as a blog in 2019, gone quiet for a while, now back as what he calls a slow-moving but trusted archive of interviews, conversations and dancefloor oddities. He...

Buenos Aires bassline, Guadalajara hypnosis – we’re premiering Pinto’s deep, stripped-back take on Javier Ferreira’s Mercury… Javier Ferreira built a bassline from mercury and light, Multi-instrument magic from Buenos Aires to the night; He broke the rhythm loose and let it drive, Through peak-time thunder, after-hours haze, A groove gone liquid in a silver blaze, Deep and functional, and somehow...

The most excellent Nandele Maguni steps up with the cHai EP on his own label. the ace-ly name Awesomakossamusic - four tracks, written, recorded, produced and mixed solo at Empty House Studios. We're premiering VIOLA, today. Not a new name round these parts, Nandele opened Rosie Ama's Human Endeavour with Incomati on the label's Trains of Thought comp back in 2022, then returned with an extended s...

CHLOÉ is a serious DJ. She always has been and we say that with the utmost respect.  For many years CHLOÉ has been a key operator amidst electronic music, steadily releasing her own material, running record labels and pushing the underground forward. Her own imprint Lumière Noire remains pivotal in the evolution of a darker, more rugged side of things drawing upon influences from Post Punk, Hous...

“Plants don’t suddenly transform from one state to another; growth is gradual, and a lot of it happens unseen.” Having spent an album taking the passion flower through birth, bloom, and death, KiF Productions turns a plant’s year into a single day. The Seeds Mix is two hours made for doing nothing in particular – garden, common land, park bench, wherever there’s room to potter, stare, and let time...

Tracklist - Jörg Kuning - Dripgroove John Tejada & Arian Levista - Word Problems Jay Haze - Boring Acid John Spring - Strange 4424 DMM Daniel Stefani - Move Me (Guido Schneider’s Dark Side of the Moon Remix) PMT - Innuendo (Principled Dub Mix) Rework - You’re So Just Just (Original Mix) Stefan Braatz - Mon Amour feat. Eric D. Clark (Instrumental) Tibi Dabo - Desert Hike Eden Burns - Telephone Terr...

Natural Selections label head strips out Jackson’s looseness and replaces it with gritty disco punk… There was a young Jackson called Thomass, Whose grooves were decidedly bonkers, He twisted his rhythms, And psychedelicisms, And built wonky house out of conkers. Carlo Sine said “I’ll take that Jam, And flip it as hard as I can,” He made it go gritty, A punk disco ditty, For sweaty rooms and also...

Chicago darkwave trio Pixel Grip have spent the past year watching Percepticide: The Death of Reality find its people. A self-released, emotionally uncompromising collision of EBM, techno, industrial pop and synthpop built around betrayal, trauma and reconstruction, it arrived as one of the most viscerally charged club records of 2025. Now they're ready to open a new chapter. Percepticide: Remixed...

Founded in Brooklyn in 2016 by longtime friends Latane Hughes and Billy Scher, Fundido are quickly becoming one of New York's most exciting prospects. With releases on the likes of DFA Records and Life and Death they have emerged globally as ones to watch. However, those on the ground in NY will have been familiar for a while with the duo having become cult favourites with appearances at the likes...

We’ve known Toby Tobias aka Alphonse for a very long time, longer than he’s been sitting on this creation with Seraphina Simone - 2017 if you’re wondering. The pair first crossed paths at Glastonbury and knocked out a set of lyrics over a single session. Life did what life does - lockdowns, a baby, other projects - and the track went through several incarnations before Toby zeroed in on what it ac...

House music is in a strange place these days. It's all a bit too fast, all a bit too euphoric, all a bit too wiggly, all a bit too rowdy. However, this mix landed in our inbox and we breathed a sigh of relief - this is what it's all about. Arrumar is a South African producer, the moniker of Mlunghisi Chauke. This past week marked the release of a new album on Polygonia's record label QEONE which f...

Stacey Pullen has been a figurehead for House music for a long time now. He remains one of the very best and most discerning in the scene having contributed some of the most important records, mixes and albums out there.  From Detroit, his origins go deep.  Throughout his career, Pullen has earned international recognition for his innovative productions and captivating DJ performances. Unlike many...

SDF returns after two years away with a low-slung stomper, mixed and retweaked by Toby Tobias… In a corner of Wales, where the sea meets the road, there’s a Policeman who’s bent over a rather small load. Adam, Oliver, Lucy, SDF by their name, caught him twice over on some CCTV frame. Toby Tobias came round with his knobs and his skill, Retweaked and resparkled, and steadied the till, while Crooked...

1-800 GIRLS has quickly paved a way for a brand of new school House music which has been heavily adopted and loved by a new generation of dancers who have found solace in high energy moments and deep grooves. Over the years, as a producer, the consistency has always been there. Whether it's from early self releases through to fresher material which has found a home on the likes of Lost Palms, Shal...

We have your nightclub. We have your DJ box. We have thirty-six tracks, and most of them have no names because names are for records that want to be found. This is Decius Trax – the loose, sweaty, pressure-relief side of a band that otherwise runs on pure discipline. The album project blends Lias’s voice into something unique; this is the other thing, the vehicle, the late-night chop shop where ol...

Psychedelia is at the core of Zillas on Acid's musical manoeuvres. The Philadelphian duo, made up of Thomas Roland and James Weissinger, have been DJing together for almost two decades, and you can tell.  There's an intuitiveness to their sets; one that comes from an extended period spent building and evolving together. Their strung out, trippy sound takes cues from post-punk and acid house approa...

The clockwork planet was a man-made world the size of a small moon. There were oceans, forests, cities, and even weather systems created by climate-control satellites. It was constantly in orbit.  Its energy came from an array of fusion reactors positioned around the habitat's central axis. Massive superconducting rings distributed power to every district, while millions of solar satellites collec...

Long before The Ransom Note had a name. Long before Team Love had a manifesto. Dave was always there. Usually near the speakers. Two festivals, one philosophy. When Love International made its pilgrimage to Rainbow Disco Club, it wasn’t simply a case of a Croatian institution touching down in Asia – it was two kindred spirits recognising themselves in each other. Born in Tokyo in 2010, Rainbow Dis...