Ransom Note

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 old cassettes get squeezed through the Decius filter until they come out the other side as someone else’s record wearing a new coat. Live jams, minimal tinkering, heads banging on the assumption that yours will too. Most of what’s here you’ve never heard, because most of it was never meant to leave the DJ box. Untitled. Unreleased. Numbered like ransom demands instead of songs, because the numbering is the point – roman numerals climbing toward a second vinyl mini-album, a whole Pantone chart still to get through, no plan to stop until it tips into ridiculousness. Don’t remix it with AI. Don’t expect liner notes on the next one either. Just make them, play them. Track list and read the room – it’ll come with you eventually. It always does. FULL INTERVIEW HERE: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/decius-trax-the-ransom-note-mix/

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 approached through that psychedelic lens they've become known for. It's no surprise then that they've been closely affiliated with Making Time, the Philadelphia institution helmed by Dave P, that treads similar transcendental terrain. Over the years they've notched up releases for some of our favourite labels, including Optimo Music, Live at Robert Johnson, Les Disques de la Mort and Running Back, and now they're bringing this music to life with their live band, adding vocalist Ari Ratner and bassist Matt O’Hare into the mix. Their latest offering, Rolling The Marble Wheel, comes via our sister label Human Endeavour and is Zillas at their best (not even biased...). Following the release, we asked them to contribute to our Ransom Note mix series. Dive into the Zillas world, it's a trip...

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 collected energy from the nearby star and beamed it back using microwave transmitters. The habitat's atmosphere, temperature, and water cycle were all controlled by artificial intelligence system.  It all worked seamlessly. Except until today, when the oceans stopped moving.  Olsvangèr draws for the bass weight on a new EP which features a heady assortment of rave driven breaks, crunchy house and rugged sounds for Tofistock.

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 Disco Club has always operated under a single guiding concept: “Beyond Space and Time” – a commitment to authentic underground music that transcends genre, geography and trend. Alongside these club nights in Tokyo the annual event as you’ll likely know, takes place in the Japanese countryside of Shizuoka’s Izu Peninsula/ Love International, meanwhile, as many of you will also likely know, draws a loyal family of returning artists, crews and ravers to the shores of Tisno each summer for what amounts to a celebration of sun, music and community. Different latitudes, identical heartbeats. And yes – before you ask – we did make him answer questions about rainbows… WhatsApp Image 2026-06-10 at 21.00.26 (12) We’ve known Dave Harvey a long time. Long enough that neither of us is entirely sure when it started – somewhere in the blur of the 90s, in rooms that probably no longer exist, with people we’re still lucky enough to call friends. Long before The Ransom Note had a name. Long before Team Love had a manifesto. Back when it was just about getting to the right room on the right night and staying as long as humanly possible. Dave was always there. Usually near the speakers. Watching what he’s built since then – and more importantly, how he’s built it, with the same unguarded enthusiasm he had at the very beginning – has been one of the genuine pleasures of growing up in and around this ‘scene’ together. Because the thread has always been consistent. Whether as a DJ, programmer, promoter, or raver, there are few dancefloors he hasn’t graced, and fewer still where he hasn’t left some kind of mark. Since cutting his teeth in those 90s rooms, he’s built an inimitable sound that moves freely between house, techno, breaks and electro, EBM, wonky chuggers and disco-infused oddities – often all within the same set. Here he is, doing exactly that. Captured live at Rainbow Disco Club, in case you needed any further evidence. The rest, we’ll let the colours speak for themselves. @loveintfestival @rainbowdiscoclub @futureboogie

Samson A.K. has been a heady presence amidst the underground for a long time now having cut his teeth in various guises. However, more recently he has begun boldly making music under his own name, cementing himself with a new position having released material on the likes of Berceuse Heroique, MAL Recordings and via his own newly launched imprint Ideal State.  From a musical perspective Sam tends to be drawn to the darker, more abstract fringes of electronic music. There's a lot of noise involved and at times things get tough.  This mix reflects that ethos, powering its way through a heady assortment of jackin' house, techno, bass and the spaces which sit in between. Its rough as f**k. Just how we like it.

Patricia Wolf makes music from the inside of an ecosystem. Her recent release on Music To Watch Seeds Grow By; Yarrow (the 9th edition in the series) emerged from weeks spent at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, working alongside ecologists studying plants, pollinators, and the slow pressures of a changing climate. Patricia Wolf Mock Up The album maps a Yarrow’s life from root to seed: the conditions needed to grow, the quiet underground, the moment a flower opens to something that might carry it further. Field recordings from those Colorado summers are woven through the compositions, leaving room, as Wolf puts it, for the natural sounds to come through – her way of sharing an emotional inner life when thinking about these environments. For this mix, Wolf turned her attention to morning. Imagining this year’s Watching Trees festival crowd coming down from a long night of dancing – we talked her through in the afterglow of this year’s edition. Wolf built A Wander in the Garden for that specific threshold hour – somewhere between nine and ten, when birdsong starts to reassert itself and the body wants something slow, expansive, and unhurried. The anchor track arrived first: the Cosmic Tones Research Trio’s Photosynthesis, from which everything else grew. What follows is a walk through an imaginary garden with several climates – shade beneath a linden tree, open meadow thick with yarrow and field poppy, a pine grove smelling of warm sap, an orchard of cherries and mulberries just beginning to ripen. If she had to name the plant that holds this hour best, Wolf chooses lavender: something with a direct line to the nervous system, a quiet insistence on calm. FULL INTERVIEW HERE: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/seeds-mix-11-patricia-wolfs-wander-in-the-garden/

Wigs is part of a new school of dj's pushing faster tempo's and frequencies. Releasing records and playing at some of the most interesting new parties on the circuit he has begun to make a name for himself for his euphoric, energetic sets which blur the lines between house, trance, tribal and beyond.  His latest release comes on Kasra V's label, a record which makes sense in context with Kasra also holding a penchant for the progressive era of 2000's house music which helped push and inspire his own sound. There's no punches held here. This is a fast and fiery assortment straight from the off - a promising entry to the series from a DJ popping up in all the right places.

We’re premiering the video for ‘Abiotic Factors’ – Patricia Wolf’s opening dispatch from Gothic, Colorado and the invisible forces that determine whether anything grows at all… Tia and Wil’s Music To Watch Seeds Grow By series – the ambient/new-age/planty cassette label has in nine editions, tried to make a compelling case that the best way to understand ambient is to get your hands in some soil and think about it properly. Each artist chooses a plant that inspires their music and can be sown in the month of the release. Simple. Seasonal. You may have noticed it already. For the ninth edition – the third of Season Two – they’ve brought in Portland, Oregon-based musician and field recordist Patricia Wolf, whose album Yarrow takes its name from Achillea millefolium, a flowering plant whose broad geographic range spans North America and Eurasia, which also happens to make it the perfect conceptual thread to connect Portland (where the music was written and recorded) to London (where the cassette was pressed and will land through your letterbox alongside a packet of yarrow seeds and a fact card about the plant). A transatlantic weed of the most beautiful kind. Wolf is one of the most interesting people quietly operating at the edges of sound art. Her recent arc has taken her from grief (I’ll Look For You In Others, 2022) to a kind of luminous rebirth (See-Through, 2022), then to birds – literal birds, in Iceland, for a documentary score (Hrafnamynd, 2025) – and now, with this album, to plants. Specifically, to the invisible forces that determine whether plants live or die at all. Yarrow was created in response to Wolf’s artist residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, as part of the Art-Science Exchange Project in the summer of 2024. She worked closely with ecologists Dr Paul CaraDonna, Dr Amy Iler, Dr Jane Ogilvie, Dr Nickolas Waser, Dr Mary Price, and Dr Will Petry, spending weeks embedded in long-term research on plants, pollinators, and their interactions as the climate changes. This is not, in other words, an ambient album about plants in the vague, pastoral sense. It’s an album about plants in the way a botanist might describe them: as dynamic organisms in constant, often invisible negotiation with their environment. Which brings us to ‘Abiotic Factors’, the album’s opening track and the subject of today’s premiere. Abiotic factors – for those of us who skipped that particular biology lesson – are the non-living environmental conditions that determine whether an organism can exist at all: light availability, temperature, rainfall, wind, soil composition. They are the infrastructure beneath the visible world, the silent set of forces that a plant cannot choose but must simply work with, adapt to, or perish. As a concept for an opening track, it’s contemplative and a perfect orientation into the album… which you’ll all hear in its entirety soon little seedlings. The video was shot closer to home – in Wolf’s Portland neighbourhood - through the lens of Edward Pack Davee, the filmmaker behind the Hrafnamynd documentary Wolf scored last year. Watch here: https://www.theransomnote.com/art-culture/video-premiere-patricia-wolf-abiotic-factors/

Manami is firing on all cylinders. If you’ve spent any time on a UK dancefloor over the last decade, you’ve likely crossed paths with her. Born in Japan and raised on Bristol’s foundational dub, house and bass scenes, she’s built a fierce reputation for holding down a room with unmatched energy and a distinct sense of community. From early days raving at Livity Sound, Futureboogie, Timedance and Deep Medi to co-founding Bristol's Better Days parties, her musical DNA has always balanced the deep and the progressive. Now, she’s channelling that background into a distinct sonic realignment. Her latest productions and fresh live set lean heavily into sub-heavy 140, breakbeat, jungle and footwork, all tied together with those familiar progressive sensibilities. Beyond the booth, Manami is mentoring FLINTA talent with Saffron and connecting East and South East Asian creatives through the East & Most initiative. With appearances spanning from Berlin’s Atonal to unforgettable sets at UNFOLD, DGTL, Junction 2 and Boiler Room, she remains one of the UK's most reliable, anything-goes selectors. We locked her in for a mix. Check it out now.

Hercules and Love Affair is an electronic music project created in 2004 by DJ, producer and songwriter Andy Butler. Originally formed in New York City, the act became known for blending classic disco, Chicago house, techno and synth-pop into emotionally charged dance music with an art-pop sensibility. Rather than functioning as a traditional band, Hercules and Love Affair operates as a rotating collective of vocalists, musicians and collaborators, with Butler remaining the project’s central creative force.  The project remains at the forefront of queer dance music culture in the UK and beyond and in our own opinion, remains pivotal for the fact that there has been no bowing or amenity towards fads or trends.  They returned at the tail end of 2025, now as we approach summer a new remix package has been announced which includes contributions from the likes of Ciel, Luke Solomon and Mystery Affair. However, as mentioned above, their connection to the underground and origins of the sound has afforded them the rare privilege of a remix from none other than Larry Heard under the Mr Fingers alias.  In celebration of this, here is a rare mix from Hercules and Love Affair, a homage to house music and the direction of travel as we proceed.

Cult classic given the Allison magic… There was a Young Fellow called James Allison, who said, “All this dancing has something quite wrong with it! I’ll edit three classics and turn them about, And make all the rockers get up and go out!” So he rummaged through cult cuts and album-shelf things, and polished them up till they jangled like strings, Said Ivan Smagghe. “Goodness!” said Sean Johnston, “My word!” Said Chris Stoker, “Remarkable!” James Holroyd concurred. “Make Dance Rock Again!” cried the Fellow with glee, “It’s Series the First but there’s more, you shall see!” And the dancefloor said “Blimey!” and the rock crowd said “Right!” And everyone edited long into the night. Make Dance Rock Again 001 is the first instalment in an ongoing series from James Allison, and it arrives as a statement of intent. The EP finds Allison doing what only the most quietly confident selectors pull off: taking three records – cult classics and possibly overlooked album cuts alike – and editing them into something that reveals exactly who he is when the dancefloor isn’t looking. A clear, unguarded window into a taste that exists well outside Allison’s dance music world, and the results are, as billed, certified head turners. Early support from Ivan Smagghe, Sean Johnston, James Holroyd and the late Chris Stoker (Not An Animal) suggests the series has arrived fully formed. A strong opening missive – and the first entry in something worth watching closely. Buy Here: https://jamesallison-mdra.bandcamp.com/album/make-dance-rock-again-vol-1

Your favourite DJ’s favourite punk band are back, and they’ve brought the sweat with them. There was a Young Band from the Paradise Palms, Who played with such fury it rattled your arms, They grooved like the ESG, bit like The Slits, And drove Windmill Brixton completely to bits! “O come to our Party!” cried Bikini Body, “It’s perfectly sweaty and pleasantly shoddy! The bassline is punching, the drumming is tight, And everyone’s dancing till quarter to light!” So they packed up the Palms and they played BBC, And KEXP and Radio 6 and NTS and free, And the dancefloor said “Goodness!” and the basement said “More!” And nobody quite knew what a party was for. Bikini Body return with the Weirdest Party EP, their first release on Paradise Palms Records following two records on Optimo Music – a pairing that did a lot to define both their trajectory and their restless, hybrid sound. This new set pushes further into the territory they’ve made their own: the charged, uneasy space where dancefloor pressure and punk confrontation refuse to separate. Percussive, physical and wired with attitude, the tracks draw a lineage that runs from ESG and Liquid Liquid through Bush Tetras, The Slits and X-Ray Spex, with the remixes opening things out for club systems without sanding off a single rough edge. It’s music that works equally hard in a sweaty basement and on a packed dancefloor – which, given a 13-date UK co-headline tour ending in a sold-out London show, a packed Windmill Brixton headline, and airplay across BBC Radio 1, 6 Music, KEXP and NTS, appears to be exactly where people are putting it. Weirdest Party EP is out on Paradise Palms Records on 22nd May 2026. Catch them live on our stage at Another Thought on 13th June.

Safiye has been quietly doing the work. And we mean that in every sense. Anyone who's crossed paths with her at Love International - or anywhere else, for that matter - will know there's a version of Safiye most people never fully clock. The one making sure everything runs smoothly, checking in on people, holding the energy of a room without ever needing to shout about it. Calm, kind, and completely unflappable in the way that only someone truly on top of things can afford to be. Years spent on dancefloors across the globe and through a bi-weekly show on SWU.FM have sharpened her instinct for the room, one that's taken her from Bristol's underground to the fields of Glastonbury and to the aforementioned Love International - last few tix left for that those at the back. Since 2024, she has been part of Bristol's disco powerhouse Paradisco, a permanent fixture on dancefloors in the city and beyond. As she puts it herself, it's not just showing up to a gig and pressing play - the coordination, the planning, the endless behind-the-scenes effort that nobody really sees. That's the work. And she does it with the same ease she brings to everything else. The through line in all of it is a sound that's slippery by design. House, electro, disco and acid all chosen carefully, sequenced with intention. Let’s have a chat and get it on, shall we? https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/safiye-the-shine-a-light-on-mix/

“Everyone needs a moment of silence every once in a while,” Basil seems to know this, too. Salamanda create a bed for Basil’s germination. Watching something small grow in your kitchen makes you pay close attention. The Seoul-based duo Salamanda and the next artist stepping up for Seeds understand this. Uman (Sala) and Yejin (Manda) spent a day watching a single basil plant on a windowsill, noticing how the light shifted across its leaves, water gathered at its roots, and time slipped by. What started as a simple observation turned into a meditation on the inner life of a plant and what it means to really listen to something living. Sala(Uman)_s salad Basil droops in the cold, grows too fast in the heat, and can wilt from too much attention; it needs a moment, too. Salamanda noticed that this silence is a pause for space, where the real growth happens. For them, music fills that space… Manda talks about understanding her own feelings by looking at her plants. When she feels down, the plants seem to react. They reflect something back: being present, paying attention, and giving and receiving care. This mix comes from that kind of language, asking you to keep coming back to care for the same small plant. If basil could think, what would it think of you? Get your headphones on. Listen to the way a plant listens to light… https://soundcloud.com/8salamanda8

A longstanding, driving force within the Italian underground and the wider world of contemporary psychedelic music, Lay Llamas celebrates the release of the project's new album 'Time, Islands and Thresholds' with a mesmerizing mix for our main series. Nicola Giunta has been leading the psych brigade under the Lay Llamas banner for well over a decade. Formed in 2012, the project has since released an entrancing, ever-evolving body of work across indispensable labels including Rocket Recordings and Black Sweat Records, collaborating with the likes of Goat, Clinic, Damo Suzuki (Can), and Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) along the way. With new album ‘Time, Islands and Thresholds‘, Lay Llamas heads out on a spellbinding, synapse-fried voyage that evokes hallucinatory visions in mysterious, exotic lands. Across ten tracks, hypnagogic psychedelia is masterfully laced with cosmic dub, space rock, and the kind of music you might hear on records by Eden Ahbez and Martin Denny. Describing the imagery and existential trajectory that underpins the record, Giunta references “surfers on acid, mysterious rites on deserted islands, worshippers of solar deities, night flights, animal skins, will-o’-the-wisps on hilltops, liminal spaces, passages into the underworld, psychic inner journeys; life, death and rebirth.” ‘Time, Islands and Thresholds‘ then, is a record of heady, retrofuturist iconography and into-the-void introspection. Drawing parallels with Spacemen 3, Peaking Lights and Sun Araw, it’s an album that nevertheless finds Lay Llamas plotting the project’s own psychotropic course. The album finale ‘I Was Blind (Now It’s Over)‘ is also one of the most beautifully strung out songs we’ve heard this year. To accompany the release of the album, Giunta has put together a suitably potent mix of hypnotic drum trances, heavyweight dub, snarling noir-punk and rarefied psych to liven up, expand and soothe your soul. Settle in for a special one. Interview: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/lay-llamas-the-ransom-note-mix/ Tracklist 1 - Cheval Fou - La fin de la vie, le début de la survivance 2 - Cloud Management, Vivien Goldman - Judge Judge 3 - The Serfs - Cold Hand In Mine 4 - Laika - Spooky Rhodes 5 - Geologist - Oracle Road 6 - Death and Vanilla - Intro 7 - Orange Car Crash - Straight Star 8 - Coma World - Western 9 - Des Demonas - There Are No Vampires in Africa 10 - Dave Harrington (ft. Chris Forsyth - Ryan Jewell - Spencer Zahn) - REDUX Dub 8 11 - Deradoorian - Weed Jam 12 - Montel Palmer - Mermaid Wolf Whistle

Wonky organic grooves from ALF CHAMPION and MDHNTR via Calypso records new compilation There once was a Shape who could dance, With pockets of electronica trance, It wobbled its form through the Definition, And questioned each note and condition, While singing quite badly about circumstance. “What is,” asked the Shape, “this peculiar sound? That bounces and bobs all around and around? Is it liquid or solid or something between? The strangest device I have ever seen!” Said a very confused polka-dotted hound. The Definition replied with a riddled refrain: “I am what you hear when you listen again, A thing that is not, yet somehow it is, A shape-shifting, drift-curious quiz, That dances through corridors, valleys, and rain.” And they walttzed through the Calypso till dawn broke its spell, Those two nonsensical friends, who got on quite well, For a Shape needs Definition as much as it’s true, That Definition needs Shape to be something brand new, And that, my dear reader, concludes this strange tale to tell. “What Is Your Definition” sits in that liminal space between organic groove and electronic. It’s the sound of something taking shape… which leads rather nicely onto Calypso Vol. II, a nine-year endeavour where Iñigo Vontier and Thomass Jackson assemble 16 voices across the spectrum of the experimental electronic Press play and find out what you’re listening to. Or better yet: ask what your own voice is. @calypsorecs @alf_champion @mdhntr000

From the coastline to the dance-floor. Daichi's ear was formed early. Weekends spent at Oppa-La in Enoshima absorbing whatever the room had to offer, left a mark that still runs through everything he does. From there the path naturally progressed, co-founding Vinyl Youth, a collective whose energy has carried through Korea and onto the stage at Rainbow Disco Club. His productions tell a similar story. Edits and originals landing on MM Discos, Crue-L and Not an Animal, each release finding ears far beyond Japan. This is music with a sense of place. Read more: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/daichi-the-shine-a-light-on-mix/

akarta’s Strange Fruit with the last track from their Drips EP is something super special. Pouvoi Moteur – French for “motoric power,” since you asked – is exactly what that sounds like: locked-groove krautrock discipline shot through with kosmische shimmer, the kind of track that makes the road ahead feel endless and the destination irrelevant. The ghost of Can’s engine room is all over it, that locked hypnosis that somehow never quite repeats itself, while Cluster’s smeared electronics hover at the periphery. Aryadiaz, who conceived it partly out of an obsession with factory machinery and, apparently, partly with German beer, describes the 4/4 pattern as feeling like “breaking through space and time.” We’re inclined to agree. Out now via Gentle Tuesday Recordings, with a vinyl release to follow through Loide and TipTop Records. Stunning stuff. https://strangefruit.bandcamp.com/album/drips

Adispatch from the holy island, via Alabama. Two guys from Muscle Shoals, Alabama -0 the city that quietly wrote half the soul records you’ve ever loved — making shoegaze concept albums about a tidal island off the coast of Northumberland. On paper, it shouldn’t work. In practice, Holy Island, the debut from Adam Morrow and Jamie Sego’s Sister Ray Davies, is one of the more beautifully stunning records to land this year: motorik folk, walls of fuzz, delay pedal disco, and genuine literary heft, released via the always excellent Sonic Cathedral and drawing comparisons to mid-period Flying Saucer Attack, Souvlaki-era Slowdive and a long-lost Spacemen 3 outtake. They are, by their own admission, complete beginners as DJs. We handed them the airwaves anyway. What came back is exactly what you’d expect from two people who learned to hear music through Nuggets compilations and Delia Derbyshire records, who want biblical noise and dream of piloting the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound. It’s a mix that’s charming and oddly coherent: dub basslines, psych and proto-electronic tangents, the kind of selection that could only have been assembled by people who think in pedals and reverb tails rather than BPMs. A journey with a clear first step, even if the destination remains gloriously unclear. Not a DJ mix in any conventional sense, just an excellently varied record collection let loose.

Owain K is a stalwart of the Bristol underground. For many years he has cut his teeth running parties, curating labels and producing music. A bit of an unsung hero of sorts in our eyes - his musical knowledge is vast and in this day and age he represents exactly the sort of character and dedication a DJ should have. For years he has been on a quest to explore new music, digging for hidden gems and helping to push the sound forward without gimmicks or the sort of delusional grandeur we've become accustomed to from a DJ in the social media era. His blog and record label Innate is widely acclaimed amongst those in the know and its rare we'd kindly say as such about another site. Only kidding... This mix is a serious addition to the series and showcases a deep understanding of nuance and sound as he weaves and winds between house, electro and the eclectic spaces in between.

Human Endeavour’s ‘Dancefloor Designs’ returns with two club-focused remixes from Parris and GoodMostlyBad. Launched last year as a way to reimagine previous label material for the club, the second chapter in the series revisits tracks from Nandele’s ‘Maputo’ EP and Reda Saiarh’s contribution to the label’s first ever release. First up can you feel the sun co-head Parris works his magic on Mozambican artist Nandele’s ‘Chapa 100’. Originally released at the beginning of 2024, here the track is morphed into a bright, skippy drum tool with plenty of sub bass to carry the groove. The second remix comes courtesy of Scuffed Discs and Bad Tips producer GoodMostlyBad who strips back the sassy new beat of Reda Saiarh’s ‘Kiki’ into a sleek and sophisticated acid-meets-NYC ballroom number. Human Endeavour is part of Ransom Note Records’ family of sub-labels, curated and run by former R$N Editor, DJ and Noods Radio resident Rosie Ama.

Dark Entries and Ransom Note present a defiant comeback from Gavilán Rayna Russom, featuring remixes from Russell E.L. Butler and Borusiade. Gavilán Rayna Russom built Black Meteoric Star in Berlin in 2006, less as a project than as a form of protection: a performance identity that could carry truths she wasn’t yet able to live openly, a vehicle for the intersection of electronic dance music and queer resistance. In the years since her reach has been wide, her presence felt across stages and in studios that stretched well beyond the underground, but Black Meteoric Star has always remained something distinct. An avenger. A keeper of a more radical flame. ‘5am Open Air Sunrise’ captures something very specific: that hour on the dancefloor where exhaustion dissolves into transcendence, where the body gives up resisting, and something more honest takes over. It was recorded live, which means the contributions from Russell E.L. Butler and Borusiade are less remixes than full reconstructions, each expanding the emotional landscape while preserving the original’s energy. Rayna has been clear about what’s driving the return: “Black Meteoric Star is one of those characters I created for survival. And this moment demands its return.” With a full album waiting in the wings, ssh! – this feels like an opening statement worth paying attention to. Dark Entries make for natural co-conspirators on something this uncompromising.

Seoul duo Salamanda. Uman Therma (Sala) and Yetsuby (Manda) have turned their gaze to the most unassuming of subjects: a single basil plant on a windowsill There once was a Basil who sat in the dusk, When the light had gone thin and the day shed its husk, He gazed at the glass where the garden grew small, And pondered his fate in the last of the hall. A wine of deep blue in a vessel unclear appeared on the sill as the midnight drew near, The Basil regarded it, leaf pressed to pane, And thought several thoughts that he couldn’t explain. Does he know? said the snail, who was still on the glass, That all things must come, as all things come to pass? The Basil said nothing, but widened one arm, And accepted the evening with dignified calm. In Seoul, two small people called Sala and Manda Composed from the windowsill, neither meander, They caught the blue hour and the wondering mind, The fate that all well-tended basils will find. Oh Basil, oh Basil, you left-of-centre thing, With your atoms and rituals and quiet suffering, You lived your full day from the sun to the dark, And went out, like blue wine, without even a mark. Music To Watch Seeds Grow By, returns for its eighth entry with Seoul duo Salamanda. Uman Therma (Sala) and Yetsuby (Manda) have turned their gaze to the most unassuming of subjects: a single basil plant on a windowsill, tracking its full day from morning light to whatever it is basil dreams about after dark. We’re premiering the album’s closing track, ‘the blue wine’, a final mysterious reverie in which the basil seems to contemplate its own fate, somewhere between acceptance and wonder. It is the still point at the end of the day: the light gone, the snail departed, the photosynthesis done. What remains is something like thought, or the plant equivalent of it. Manda puts it well: does the basil know what it’s for? Would it resist, accept, or even feel something close to joy? ‘the blue wine’ doesn’t answer that. It just sits with the question, which is probably the right thing to do… @8salamanda8

Simply Nothing is a dubbed-out analogue synth workout like only these two know how.  Carefully constructed percussion, with George Hume's bass sitting beneath a veil of spectral vocals courtesy of Sarah-May Brown. On the EP there's a two other original tracks plus a remix from the excellent Hybrid Man does what Hybrid Man does best, pulling the hypnotic core of the original. Simply Nothing is out now on Lunatic Music.

Giorgi Pipia is a Georgian DJ and selector originally from the western region of Georgia, now based in Tbilisi—one of Eastern Europe’s most influential underground electronic music hubs. Deeply connected to the city’s evolving club culture, he is a resident at the community-driven club Left Bank and a regular radio host on Rinse FM France, where he showcases his wide-ranging musical taste and experimental approach to DJing. Known for his curiosity and open-minded approach to sound, Giorgi Pipia builds sets that draw inspiration from multiple cultures and genres. His selections often move fluidly between techno, electro, breakbeat, and experimental electronic music, while incorporating rhythms and textures from diverse global scenes. This cross-cultural approach has become a defining element of his style, allowing him to craft sets that feel both exploratory and cohesive. We invited him to the series and the result is a long playing mix which demonstrates a deep understanding of flow.

With the current climate doing its best to grind things down, sometimes making music with your people is all you can do – and LA’s underground is responding in kind. Few collectives embody that spirit quite like the Elbow Grease and DISCOS XXX crew. SSRI – the Sound & Spirit Research Institute, a studio brainchild born from the meeting of DJ Dex aka Nomadico of Underground Resistance, Kosmik of The Black Lodge, and Dave Aju repping Elbow Grease. Three heads, one singular vision. “Omnicallora” came to life the way the best things do – organically, hardware in hand, passed around in round-robin fashion with the Suzuki Omnichord at the centre of it all. The legendary instrument’s Italo-leaning character bleeds through every bar, complete with robo-vocoder flexings, waxing lyrical about pre- and post-fader feedback, before Aju took it home to Point Winona to mix and shape it into its final form. The result is a West Coast tech stomp that wears its Italo influences with pride – undeniably fun, undeniably them. The track lands as part of Point Winona Sound Library Vol 1, the 20-track joint venture between Elbow Grease and DISCOS XXX aka DX3, gathering some of LA’s finest under one roof at the Los Feliz hilltop palace itself. Curated by the legend that is Tavish and Dave Aju, it’s a geographic statement – warehouse-wrecking and rooted-futurist in equal measure. Point Winona Sound Library Vol 1 drops March 6. Pre-order over at Bandcamp.

Music that makes you feel deeply human… There’s a version of events where Joshua Idehen is still behind a bar in the West End, coming home late, flicking through channels. But then came Dizzee Rascal on Channel U – that first-person rant, that stream of consciousness pouring into the void – and something locked into place. Nearly two decades later, the British-born Nigerian poet and spoken-word artist, now based in Stockholm, has signed to Heavenly Recordings and released one of the more quietly essential debut albums of 2026. I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try is out now. Made with his long-term creative partner Ludvig Parment (Saturday, Monday), it’s the full realisation of something that’s been building since the pair’s 2023 mixtape Learn to Swim — a record that holds you through it all: grief, euphoria, fatherhood, friendship, the liturgic pull of a club at the right moment. House beats, choral swells, Shabaka Hutchings on flute, a choir singing a melody Idehen himself composed. The kind of album that makes you want to wave your arms in the air and then call your mum. The ride here wasn’t quiet. ‘Mum Does The Washing’ began life as a Twitter thread, set to Parment’s spacious beats, went viral, earned Idehen support from Jamz Supernova, Huw Stephens and Robbie Williams (yes, really), packed out Glastonbury and Green Man, and landed him a spot on Later… with Jools Holland. Sold-out Jazz Café dates followed. A headline European and UK tour runs through spring, culminating at KOKO in London on 23rd April. To mark the album, Joshua and Ludvig have put together this mix of music to bring joy. Not one shade of it either. There’s unbridled joy (Peter, Björn & John, a Kanye recommendation from a different time), celebratory joy (“a today I don’t have to fight kind of joy,” as Ludvig puts it, via Primal Scream), defiant joy (Kendrick, for the days you will have to fight, but you’ll pull through). Soul II Soul shows up to preach and repeat. James Brown is just kind of everything. Caribou injects the dance floor with melancholy and joy at the same time, which is basically the whole project in a nutshell. And somewhere near the end, a Mesadorm song that made Joshua cry on first listen, second listen, third listen. Music that makes you feel deeply human, as you’ve never felt before. Over to them. https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/joshua-idehens-music-to-make-joy-to-ransom-note-mix/

For Phil Kieran – DJ, producer, film composer and the Belfast-based mind behind Le Carousel – it was closer to twelve years, the span it took to bring The Humans Will Destroy Us to life. The follow-up to his cult debut lands on 13th March via Phil Kieran Recordings, and it arrives fully formed: part shoegaze-inflected electronics, part Kosmische drift, part dancefloor catharsis – a record that feels like it was built for sweaty rooms and wistful 4am journeys home in equal measure. ‘The Good One’ sits near the top of that journey, all sparkling synths, gauzy vocals and hypnotic languid beats – the kind of track that calls to mind Andrew Weatherall at his most blissed-out, coaxing Primal Scream into something simultaneously weightless and urgent. It’s radio-friendly in the best possible sense: a pop song with depth behind its eyes. https://www.theransomnote.com/music/premieres/premiere-le-carousel-the-good-one/

A transmission from deep within the French underground. Sarcus Soundsystem, the trio of Ubik, Jacky Jeane and Olga B, have been quietly doing something right in Paris for a while now. Their various endeavours around the capital have drawn attention through noise, care and curiosity. A genuine investment in the spaces they use and the people who fill them. As a collective, their extended sets are built on patience and a restless instinct. Fast-moving rhythms colliding with strange, slippery melodies that work their way into your head before your feet have even caught up. This is a dancefloor with a mind of its own. Follow it somewhere. https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/sarcus-soundsystem-the-shine-a-light-on-mix

AHardway dancefloor throb injected into Strange Fruit’s shoegaze-inflected original… There was a Strange Fruit from Jakarta who said, “I shall go on Tuesday, iridescent and red! With a hypnodub shimmer and kosmische delight, I shall drip upon Wednesday and dance through the night!” The Hardway Bros heard it and let out a shout: “We’ll remix your polarness inside and about! We’ll chug through the shoegaze and acid the house, Till the SSL dubs frighten even the mouse!” So the Fruit and the Bros on a Gentle Tuesday Went sailing on Monopolar waves far away, With a Pouvoi Moteur and a Tom Furse dub too, And they dripped and they gleamed in iridescent blue. “O Fruit!” said the Bros, “O remarkable thing! You are dreamy and poppy and you know how to sing! You are krautrock and electronica, strange as can be, And we’ll live on the SSL for ever,” said he. Jakarta’s Strange Fruit occupy an unusual space: a band whose shoegaze-inflected live sound sits in a completely different world from the underground electronic circuits their members move through as producers and DJs. It’s that dual existence that makes the remix package around their forthcoming Drips EP so compelling – dispatches from a shared musical universe. For the Monopolar remix, Sean Johnston, under his Hardway Bros moniker, does what he very much does best: find the load-bearing elements of a track and build something new around them. Where the original carries its kosmische momentum intact, this version leans into the slowed-down throb, peeling back the layers and letting the groove do the work. Drips arrives via Gentle Tuesday Recordings soon. With remixes still to come from Tom Furse among others, Strange Fruit are making a quietly persuasive case for themselves as one of the more interesting propositions to emerge from Jakarta’s electronic underground. Listen below:

A cosmic transmission from Manchester-based musician and artist Ana K Miller, just shy of 2 and a half hours, weaving together psychedelia, acid, kraut, dub and techno. Full interview here: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/ana-k-miller-shine-a-light-on-mix/ Tracklist: Nathan Dawidowicz - Deep Fluff (feat. Leo Börger) Sula Bassana & The Nasoni Pop Art Experimental Band - Emmerting Spring 銀色の波 - Whispers Of Chikurin Nidiot – World of Nids Jimi Tenor Band - Shine All Night (feat. Florence Adooni) TINA – Vacation Minami Deutsch - Can't Get There (Jamie Paton Remix) Teledubgnosis – Echolocation Hawkwind - Electric Tepee Kris Baha - You Told Yourself This Would Get Worse Anatolian Weapons - Process (Original) Coil - Protection III Maart – Noma Sinusoidal – Half Closed Eyes Sula Bassana – Stella Star U-Ziq – Melancho Mr TC & Lo Kindre – The Waving Bridge The Soft Moon – Black Davy Kehoe – The Pilot (Part 1) Mr TC – Zeuglodon Pancho Piedra – Servio Dr. Strange - Tripode de Diode (Pt1 & Pt2) Blurred Boy - No Time For Tears Moody Boyz - Destination Africa (Electric Forest Version) Khidja - Never Seen The Dunes Identified Patient & Sophie du Palais - Peaceful Panic Autumns - Cruising (Black Bones & Autumns) Cabaret Nocturne - Voodoo Spunk (Original Mix) KOB 101 - Beat Depressed Zaliva-D - Long Journey O Yuki Conjugate - The Chasmic Abdulla Rashim - Path Inwards Azu Tiwaline - Ethereal Tribes Hawkwind - Death of War Black Merlin - Stalky Tarkovsky Von Grall - Vanquish the Disparities Acronym - River Red Gum Azu Tiwaline & Al Wootton - Nine Points Tres Demented - Demented (Or Just Crazy) (Original Version) Tres Demented – Brainfreeze (Carl Craig 'Sessions' Mix) Death in Vegas – Arise Dalo – Woodpecker Von Deyen / Schütz - Valley Of The Monsters

Deep in the Yorkshire woods, multi-disciplinary artist and producer Jamie House – aka Hamie Jouse – has been quietly splitting light into a thousand tiny rainbows. Best known for his hypnotic visual installations and art direction across DIY music spaces from Old Red Bus Station to Resonance, House found himself at last year’s Watching Trees festival doing something beautifully meta: filming daytime trees to project back onto their evening counterparts through a cascade of prisms. The “arty bullshit” behind it, as he puts it, was about bridging gaps of time and space and memory – creating past tense ghosts of daylight. But really, “it just looked pretty, and the trees and sun had it all covered.” Whilst setting up his spectral light show on the Bush of Ghosts stage, Tia and Wil (that’s us) caught wind of the music he was playing. What unfolded in those early morning hours was something special – patient, ambient-soundscapes with a deep understanding of the fractal nature of the forest, where every process is made up of countless sub-processes doing their best impression of one solid bit. This mix captures that philosophy; energised yet gently held, pulsing yet ambient. Mirroring both the slow, steady rhythm of plant growth and the constant, quick reactions within the cells. There are rarely right angles in the forest, just lots of individual leaves doing their thing- a benevolent collusion with the kodama, those forest sprites that House channelled through his psychogeographic, hauntological light work. From the Rhubarb Triangle of West Yorkshire, where he dabbles in ambient matters with his long time friend Aaron during hazy Sunday afternoon straggler zones, overlooking different vistas, House has created something that feels like plugging into the mainframe with beings deep in the woods, under a very full moon. Always bring a memory stick, indeed. Interview here: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/hamie-jouses-mixtape-for-benevolent-collusion-kodama/ Tracklist - Ironic Hill - Chorus Kuzich - Morning Sun John Haycock ft Rob Dunford - Dapple Shade Palta - Tabt optagelse ssssoftpatch - Bowling for Loops Agron - Should I feel bad for doing This Wizold Sage - Comfort Heater Christian Kleine - Beyond Repair (Version) Golden Bug & In Fields - Blind Ex-Terrestrial - Everybody Dreams Takao - Bird Ensemble David Versace - Heart to Heart Barker - Fluid Mechanics Shhhhh - Pond Natter 420 aka Galcher Lustwerk - Untitled 6 Motoko & Myers - Plover Zammuto - It Can Feel So Good @hamie_23

FUCK!LACRÈME are back with the second part of their unhinged trilogy. The Italian five-piece have been making a mess of Beat Machine Records in the best way possible, and Welcome To My Crib keeps that energy going. We’re premiering “Slam It” today. It’s big beat, sharp percussion, layered textures, the works. The title cut goes deep into jungle rhythms and acid breakbeats, built for dark dancefloors. Out on 20th February on Beat Machine. https://www.theransomnote.com/music/premieres/premiere-fucklacreme-slam-it-beat-machine-records/ @beatmachinerecords

Cornelius Doctor & Tushen Raï held no punches with a hard hitting acid driven EP released on their homestay record label Hard Fist at the tail end of last year. It was a nod to the Goa inspired days of old, excellent rave fodder with beeps and glitches galore. The pair are based in Lyon and have been a familiar presence amidst the underground music community in the city for a long time now, we at Ransom Note find them to be pretty great too. Anyway, this mix spans two hours and is a wild ride through fast paced leftfield dance music which pays homage to the roots of the genre in the best way possible.

Stranded's new EP 'The Dead' arrives at that hour when the city finally shuts up - all sub-bass rumble and skeletal beats, the kind of thing that sounds best through headphones on the last bus home. It's got that Bristol thing in its bones: dub's cavernous space, post-punk's wire-tight nerves, hip-hop's head-nod. Opening track "Arch Groves" sets the tone for the whole record - vocal samples drift like smoke through low-end weight and slow-burning unease, swelling and receding without ever fully resolving. The guitars don't lead so much as lurk at the edges, scraping and hovering. It's the sound of something haunted, patient, built for dark rooms and quiet contemplation. Stream it here and pre order the EP: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/premiere-stranded-arch-groves/

Deep in the woods at our very own Bush of Ghosts stage at Watching Trees, Scottish producer Brian d’Souza, aka Auntie Flo, brought his ‘Plants Can Dance’ project to life in a five-hour ambient set beneath a canopy of trees. Drawing from the playlists he’s been curating for Imperial College’s psychedelic therapy trials, d’Souza transformed the clearing into what he describes as “a sanctuary away from the main stage,” where human – and non-human – audiences alike could experience music designed to mirror the quiet intelligence of the natural world. This 90 min excerpt captures the heart of that nocturnal performance, guiding listeners through the Ascent, Peak, and Descent phases – a journey filtered from the vast database of ambient music d’Souza has amassed over five years of running Ambient Flo radio. The setting itself became integral to the experience: darkness creating a natural sensory deprivation that, as d’Souza notes, allows listeners to become “more absorbed in their other senses, including the sounds they hear.” At the core of d’Souza’s ‘Sunflowers’ next instalment for our Music To Watch Seeds series: auntieflo.bandcamp.com/album/music-to-watch-seeds-grow-by-007-brian-d-souza-sunflowers lies a profound botanical truth: sunflowers practice cooperation over competition. Recent research reveals that when these plants encounter nutrient-rich soil between neighbours, they deliberately root elsewhere to avoid conflict – a form of underground etiquette that challenges our traditional understanding of survival of the fittest. D’Souza’s album captures this behaviour sonically, using biodata from his son’s sunflower in their London garden, converted into sound through his modular synthesiser via Instruo’s Scion module. This live performance extends that concept into the forest, where ambient music fulfils its original definition – having enough space to mix with environmental sounds, creating a novel soundscape at all times. As d’Souza reflects on Peter Wohlleben’s ‘Hidden Life Of Trees’ and its description of forests as interconnected social networks, the Bush of Ghosts set becomes a meditation on what he calls “the More Than Human world” – a space where silence represents the fragility of life, and where trees, unlike festival-goers, “aren’t going to leave the dancefloor if they don’t like a track.” The result is an invitation to forge a deeper connection with the natural world, to witness how plants can indeed dance. Full interview here: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/seeds-mix-8-brian-dsouza-live-bush-of-ghosts/ @auntie-flo @watching-trees

Italian London-based producer Dario Picchi aka Soreab follows up his collaborative EP alongside Om Unit with an unremitting, hi-spec vision of techno, grime, dub, and industrial on new album 'CU' [short for 'Completely Unstable']. Pure digital age angst, scintillating torque and radical soundsystem minimalism. On album highlight 'CU3', which we're serving up as a premiere, Soreab hurtles into surgical, adrenalized, tunnel vision techno with a sound design depth. Proper concussive machine funk futurism for journeys to the void and back.

The beautifully unhinged "Kraut Cheap Tune" is like stumbling into a broken arcade in some lysergic hinterland where the machines have learned to improvise. A-Tweed strips away the usual constraints here, letting the tracks breathe and mutate across odd terrains, somewhere between krautrock's hypnotic sprawl and chiptune's glitchy nostalgia. The Rome-based producer, known for his elastic approach to tempo and texture, opens up new space on this EP for Sketchy Lines Records.  Toulouse Low Trax delivers two takes on "Junk Foot," each one pulling the original into different orbits, while Kamoun's rework of "Dixan Cheap Tuning" offers another dimension entirely. Fresh dimensions indeed – this is A-Tweed at his most exploratory, and the results are properly compelling. Out February 24th on Sketchy Lines Records: https://sketchylinesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/kraut-cheap-tune

Thomass Jackson has built a sound through bands, traditional instruments and massive raves held in Buenos Aires. From releases born in friends’ studios, world tours as a bassist for Capri on Gigolo Records, and a steady run of releases on Gomma, Correspondant, Multi Culti, La Dame Noir and Viscera Transmissions - Thomass clearly knows what he’s doing. By the late 2000s his sound blended to more psychedelic and percussive rhythms, which developed into playing across countries that include China, Lithuania, Serbia, Bolivia, Mexico and Germany to name a few - along with sharing booths with the likes of Manfredas, Jennifer Cardini, Tiger & Woods, In Flagranti, Blond:ish, Horse Meat Disco and Mike Simonetti. Based in Mexico City, Thomass Jackson delivers  a mix that contains bass-first selections, weird corners and slow hypnosis into full-body motion. Music that doesn’t chase drops and trusts the listener to stay. For The Ransom Note Mix, it felt right to hand him the controls. Press play. https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/thomass-jackson-the-ransom-note-mix/

When two generations of Lisbon’s underground collide, the result is visceral, raw, and uncompromising. Scam Dust is Tiago and Shcuro – two artists channelling decades of experience into something that sounds like Detroit techno filtered through Sheffield’s industrial grit with a distinctly Lisbon sensibility. Tiago, Lux Frágil resident and ‘DJ’s DJ’, returns from a seven-year hiatus from music. Shcuro, Paraíso co-founder of the excellent and scene documenter, breaks free from solo frustration. Living in neighbouring beach towns outside the capital – Parede and Carcavelos – they’ve made Gastric Pulse: saturated acid, industrial-tinged techno, and sonic dirt of the highest order. This is music built for systems, big systems. Music designed to make you move and break shit. Pure punk in electronic form. The title’s a joke about acid music taken literally (see also: “Enzyme Breaks,” “Pepsin Drive”), but the music isn’t playing. Felt right to ask em for a mix right? This mix captures their first session together – Bileebob, Conrad Schnitzler via Marcel Dettmann, Plastikman, Jamal Moss. Techno at the margins where things get uncomfortable. Coffee grains and Pepper X. @shcuro @simatudo

For Glasgow-based artist Susannah Stark, the walk from the city to Carbeth becomes a meditation on paying attention, on taking your time with things, on letting roots guide the way. In Stark’s work, sensitivity isn’t fragility; it’s a form of attentiveness, a willingness to be present with the human voice, with the spaces between sounds, with what emerges when you slow down enough to notice. Her approach to creating music mirrors the patient rhythm of plant growth – something we like around these parts – not forced or rushed, but allowed to unfold at its own pace. “Pay attention to the roots!” Stark says. It’s a gardener’s wisdom that applies equally to music-making. Sometimes the most beautiful things emerge when we’re open to what’s already there, quietly waiting beneath the surface. For this mix, Stark draws on her love of vocal harmony and polyphony, choral music and modular synthesis – the human voice and electronic landscapes working together like walking and listening, movement and stillness, roots and growth. Her “Minor Gestures” album on Nightschool Records explores these same territories: softness, rhythm, encounters between beings, and the different dimensions of speech and sound. @SusannahStark | @nightschool

Raw, rhythmic, intricate percussion and off-kilter melodic ideas woven into proper post-punk territory from the Bogotá producer. The opening salvo from Dance On The Volcano, the Bogotá producer’s mini-album for Natural Selections – five tracks of intricate percussion and off-kilter melodic ideas woven into proper post-punk territory. Raw, rhythmic, and unapologetically tense. Out Jan 22nd on Natural Selection. https://www.theransomnote.com/music/premieres/premiere-kabinett-warning-natural-selection/

Channeling the imposing physicality of brutalist concrete monoliths into that thing we call dystopian techno. The UFO95 flew over Brussels one night, With Absence Has Shape tucked under its light, Through brutalist towers so starkly imposing, Where concrete dreams lay decomposing. “Oh MORD!” cried the vessel, “Oh MORD!” it did say, “I’m bound for the club on the sixth of Febru-ay! With radiophonics both retro and keen, And dystopian grooves never before seen!” The Tresor did rumble, the Berghain did shake, As techno Tardises whirled in its wake, With low-end saturation and thunderous throb, It zipped and it zingled, it wobbled, it bobbed! Brussels-based electronic musician Killian Vaissade – better known as UFO95 – constructs brutalist sonic architecture from the ruins of utopian dreams. On “Absence Has Shape,” the second track from his forthcoming album A Brutalist Dystopian Society Part 2, the Tresor resident channels the imposing physicality of concrete monoliths into that thing we call dystopian techno. Brutalist structures as monuments to failed promises, their stark minimalism now haunting reminders of what never came to pass. Vaissade translates this visual language into dark, dramatic, stripped back essential techno. “Absence Has Shape” throbs with hypnotic tension, interlocking grooves and low-end density. Drawing inspiration from Function, Jeff Mills, Surgeon, and Sandwell District, UFO95’ approach is “Moroder-meets-Mills” – melding retro radiophonics that address brutality in its many forms: war, repression, corruption. A Brutalist Dystopian Society Part 2 drops on February 6th via MORD on vinyl, download, and streaming. The album follows acclaimed releases on Tresor, WSNWG, and TSSRCT (which he co-runs with Hadone), cementing Vaissade’s reputation as a masterful producer whose tracks cut through the noise. Vaissade doesn’t DJ, opting for improvised live sets, a practice that’s earned him a residency at Berlin’s legendary Tresor and slots at Berghain, Berlin Atonal, and Bassiani. Catch him on tour throughout January and February, including upcoming dates at Berghain (Jan 10), Razzmatazz Barcelona (Jan 17), and Fuse Brussels (Jan 24), with stops across Europe and the Americas.

Moon Roq is the collaboration of two musical minds: Franklin & The Iron Glove. Originally born as a carefully curated mix series, their journey has since blossomed into a project that now includes a vibrant blog and finally, a DJ duo. The sound of Moon Roq is rooted in their shared passion for infectious, hypnotic grooves, which glide through the realms of house, disco and techno. You’ll also find a deep, rhythmic sonic exploration woven throughout their performances, which also echoes across today’s mix - recorded live at The Glove That Fits in November 2024. Tuck in! https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/moon-roq-the-shine-a-light-on-mix/

Best known as one half of acclaimed Sheffield electronic duo Hiem - whose disco-infused productions have graced labels like Crosstown Rebels and Eskimo, and featured collaborations with Phil Oakey and Roots Manuva - Boswell is now stepping out under his full birth name for a bold solo venture into stranger sonic territory. "I Know What I Saw" trades "lissom disco" for the eerie glow of unexplained phenomena, weaving a compelling tale of skywatching and UFO abductions in Sheffield. Originally from North Wales and a veteran of the UK electronic scene since the early '90s rave days in Liverpool, Boswell has worn many hats 0 from his early Subboy white labels to his Bozzwell alias on Suicide Recordings, and his critically acclaimed 2010 solo album "Bits & Pieces." he's following his vision intomore atmospheric waters. Out today via Atlantis Audio, the track offers our first glimpse of Boswell's forthcoming album *Going Down Slow*, due January 19th, 2026. It's a bold shift in direction from an artist unafraid to explore the unknown, Press play and keep your eyes on the skies. Listen below: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/premieres/premiere-david-j-boswell-i-know-what-i-saw-atlantis-audio/

There’s a particular alchemy that happens when a band and producer find themselves on the same wavelength – not through careful planning, but through the natural convergence of shared musical worlds. Jakarta’s Strange Fruit and electronic artist Jonathan Kusuma have arrived at exactly that point with the Hypnodubmix of “Iridescent,” the first glimpse of the band’s forthcoming Drips EP. Strange Fruit has always inhabited dual territories. While their shoegaze-leaning live sound draws from dreamy, guitar-driven atmospheres, members Baldi Calvianca and Irza Aryadiaz have deep roots in electronic music – producing, DJing, and moving through the same underground circuits as Kusuma himself. This isn’t a band reaching outside of their comfort zone for a remix; it’s a collaboration between kindred spirits who’ve been orbiting the same musical universe all along. With releases on Cocktail d’Amore, Correspondant, and Minh, Kusuma strips “Iridescent” back to its essence and rebuilds it as something altogether more hypnotic. Pulsing basslines, dub-driven rhythms, and spectral traces of the vocals drifting through the haze. It’s patient, immersive, and designed for those late-night moments when the dancefloor becomes a meditation. With three more remixes still to come ahead of the EP’s 2026 release via Gentle Tuesday Recordings, Strange Fruit are charting a new path… Read more: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/premieres/premiere-strange-fruit-iridescent-jonathan-kusuma-hypnodubmix-gentle-tuesday-recordings/

Angela Lin, aka Angie QQ, producer and A&R behind the Sounds of Taiwan compilation, returned to Taiwan in May 2019 seeking refuge after the loss of her mother. Angela Lin，又名 Angie QQ，《台灣之聲》合輯的製作人與 A&R。2019 年 5 月失去母親後，她選擇回到台灣，尋找心靈慰藉。 What she discovered in Taroko National Park became the seed for this mix: a meditation on grief, memory, and the way certain places hold us when we need holding most. 她在太魯閣國家公園的體悟，成爲這張混音作品的起點：一段對悲傷與記憶的沉思，也是一種在最需要依靠時，被某片土地溫柔擁抱的感覺 Taroko’s hidden temples and fervent lushness offered Lin sanctuary. She describes the experience as feeling “totally alive” – each leaf, each butterfly, each beam of light made sharp from grief. High in those mountains, she felt her mother could finally see her. Later, her father revealed that Taroko was one of her mother’s favourite places in the world. Though earthquakes have since closed many of the park’s paths, this aural journey captures what it’s like to walk and meditate there: spiritual, powerful, introspective, and healing. 太魯閣隱密的廟宇與蓊鬱的山林，給了 Angie QQ 一處心靈的庇護。她形容自己在那裡感到「完全活著」——每一片葉子、每一隻蝴蝶、每一道光，都因悲傷而變得格外清晰。在高聳的群山之間，她彷彿覺得母親正在看著她，那份被看見的感覺，不只是來自母親，更像是一種對自己悲傷的覺察與釋放——她終於能正視自己的情感，並感受到母親的慈愛與支持。後來，父親告訴她，太魯閣其實是母親生前最喜愛的地方之一。儘管地震封閉公園裡許多步道，這張聲音作品呈在那裡漫步、冥想的感受：靈性、深刻、內省，並帶著療癒的力量。 Understanding how music can hold both landscape and loss, the mix moves like a meditation, like the scene in Totoro where they dance to make their garden sprout, capturing the moment when grief sharpens everything into aliveness, when even the sound of light becomes audible. 音樂可以同時承載風景與失落，這張混音作品如同一場冥想般的流動——就像《龍貓》裡，他們隨著舞蹈讓花園萌芽的場景，捕捉到悲傷將一切都銳化、化為生命力的瞬間，連光的聲音也彷彿能被聽見。 Angie QQ is a Taiwanese American cultural producer based in Los Angeles. With her label Pure Person Press, she “creates and collects records that preserve the spirit of Taiwan.” Her latest collaboration with composer Lim Giong, Sounds of Taiwan, is an ambient record that invites artists to sample Lim Giong’s personal field recordings of Taiwan – a sonic landscape of the island’s people, nature, and spirituality. Through her other company, East Never Loses,, she has transformed mahjong into a cultural movement. Whether through music or mahjong, her work seeks to connect people to Taiwanese culture. Angie QQ 是一位定居洛杉磯的台美文化創作者。她透過自己的公司 Pure Person Press，創作並蒐集保存台灣精神的唱片。最近，用和作曲家林強合作的作品《台灣之聲》，是一張環境音專輯，邀請藝術家取樣林強在台灣田野間錄下的聲音，呈現島上人文、自然與靈性的景象。透過另一家公司 East Never Loses，她把麻將變成一場文化運動。不管是透過音樂還是麻將，Angie QQ 的創作都希望把人們帶回台灣文化的懷抱。 “This mixtape was inspired by my time in Taroko National Park in May 2019. My mother had just passed 6 months ago, and to mourn, I returned to nature. Taroko has hidden temples and places of meditation tucked in all of its crevices. I was able to disappear and hide in its fervent lushness. Inside Taroko’s incredible energy, I felt totally alive. Up high in those mountains, I knew my mother could finally see me. I found out later from my father that Taroko was one of my mother’s favourite places in the world. Sadly, Taroko in recent years has been decimated by earthquakes. Many paths and roads are no longer accessible. Nature reclaims nature. I hope however, this mix offers a feeling of what it would be like to meditate and walk in Taroko: spiritual, powerful, introspective, and healing.” 這張混音作品的靈感來自我在 2019 年 5 月太魯閣國家公園的時光。那時母親剛過世六個月，為了悼念，我回到大自然的懷抱裡。太魯閣的山谷裡藏著隱密的廟宇和冥想之地，我得以在這片蓊鬱的綠意中消失、隱匿自己。在太魯閣那股令人震撼的能量裡，我感覺自己完全活著。在高聳的群山間，她彷彿覺得母親正在看著她—她終於能正視自己的情感，並感受到母親的慈愛與支持。後來父親告訴我，太魯閣其實是母親生前最愛的地方之一。可惜近年地震破壞了許多步道和道路，自然，最終還是屬於自然。我希望這張混音作品能帶給大家在那裡漫步、冥想的感受：靈性、深刻、內省，並帶著療癒的力量。 Interview: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/seeds-mix-6-angie-qq-a-meditation-through-taroko-taiwan-%e7%a9%bf%e8%b6%8a%e5%a4%aa%e9%ad%af%e9%96%a3%e7%9a%84%e5%86%a5%e6%83%b3%e4%b9%8b%e6%97%85%e5%8f%b0%e7%81%a3/

Ibiza has changed a lot. It isn't what it once was that's for sure. However, from time to time you might just catch a glimpse of what it was and what it still means to an awful lot of people. Andy is an old friend of Ransom Note and for those in the know he's a bit of an unsung hero having worked behind the scenes at various record labels you probably love. He's probably signed some of your favourite records but he wouldn't tell you that himself. Anyway, a few weeks back he sent us this mix which was a recreation of a set he played at Sundays At Pikes this summer. Pikes remains one of the last strongholds of the culture in Ibiza, a place which represents the very essence of the island and the state of mind. Think balearic dreams, sunsets and all that jazz. It's the real deal. Anyway, Andy soundtracked it and it made us smile.

Odopt is the musical partnership of Ivan Maslov, a Buenos Aires-based producer and composer, and Gregory, a DJ with two decades of experience behind the decks, now residing in Paris. Since 2015, they've dropped rugged, hardware-driven bangers, carving out a niche in the space of Electronic groove. Their music is constantly doing the rounds on dance-floors worldwide and you may have crossed paths with Odopt over their latest release on Club Blanco, which has seen ongoing support from the likes of John Talabot, Orpheu the Wizard, Secretsundaze, Chida and Alexis Le Tan to name a few, or perhaps you crossed paths with them over last year's album on Snaker. Once a live act, today Gregory's marathon DJ sets carry the duo's spirit forward, packed with exclusive tracks, secret edits and a decade’s worth of unreleased material - this mix for Ransom Note stays true to their sound, which is their first podcast in three years! Let's go! Read the article: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/odopt-the-ransom-note-mix/ @odopt

Post-punk provocateur Autumns has been catapulting angular weapons over the ramparts since 2014… Carving out a fierce reputation across labels like Downwards, Opal Tapes, iDEAL Recordings and DKA Records. Christian Donaghey’s relentless live show has seen him tour worldwide alongside Veronica Vasicka, Silent Servant, and Wire, delivering workouts that pummel those lower frequencies into submission. Now, as he joins Ransom Note with the ferocious EP ‘Through the Construction of Grace’ EP, the “lanky, ginger man from Derry” offers up a mix that captures his intuitive approach to music-making. Recorded in his bedroom, it’s a journey through the sounds that have shaped Autumns’ “awful attempts at ripping off every bit of music that I like” from DJ Hell & Alan Vega collaborations to deep Post-Punk in Dub territory. It’s confusing, distorted vocals and atonal blasts that taste like marmalade, and moves with the scrappy resourcefulness of a raccoon. Worry less. Listen intuitively. Let’s get go… INTERVIEW: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/autumns-the-ransom-note-mix/ Tracklist: The Pop Group – Blood Money (Dennis Bovell Dub Version) Le Prince Harry – Sea of Trees (Autumns Remix) Autumns – The Unfortunate Touch Internal N.Y. Rhythms – Poli Ritmo Shkema – Seilai MLiR & Velmondo – Hokhmah Civilistjavel x Mayssa Jallad – Bynana (Version) A Certain Ratio – Genotype.Phenotype Froid Dub – Tears Maker (Vacant Heads Remix) Hell & Alan Vega – Listen To The Hiss Black Bones & Autumns – Cruising SPK – Napalm (Terminal Patient) 23 Skidoo – Just Like Everybody Reducer – Sensaround Dub Autumns – Trolley Coin @autumns