The electronic music producers Arnau Obiols & KAYYAK have a new release on the mighty German label Compost Records and their inspired ability to blend West African inspirations, disco and psychedelia into loose dancefloor anthems continues. With outstanding remixes from Medlar & Dele Sosimi, Prins Thomas and Chicago’s Rahaan also in the package, this is seriously good party business. Read / Listen.

Wildly talented, the Berlin based drummer and composer, Janek van Laak, has a fascinating new album out today on Sonar Kollektiv that straddles a multitude of genres. The spirit of punk and the theatrics of cabaret in his DNA (literally), Janek has pulled in friends and players, collaboration the key to helping him express the many creative roads his mind is travelling on. Touches of future-funk, jazz in all its finery, Afro-Latin rhythms, psychedelia, soundtracks, post-punk edges. It’s all there, and more. Read / Listen

There have been reissues before but this newly remastered version of Fumio Itabashi’s 1981 solo piano masterpiece “Watarase” on WEWANTSOUNDS really hits the spot. The title is a spiritually charged classic but the rest of the album’s mix of standards and original compositions are much more than filler. Itabashi’s inventive and unique playing style and emotional openness make this an absolute jewel in the jazz canon. Read / Listen

The artwork on this debut album by Champagne Dub seems an appropriately disconcerting image for the kind of ‘dub’ contained. Apocalyptic at times, raw, improvised and very leftfield, the misfit band pulled together by Maxwell Hallett aka Betamax (Soccer96, The Comet Is Coming etc) have delivered a heavyweight dub patchwork that is brimming with post-punk energy and wild cosmic agitation. Ruth Goller, Clive Bell, Ed Briggs (laser bagpipes) and the masked Peruvian performance artist and vocalist, Mr Noodles, have brought flammables to the party. Read / Listen

There can’t be many (or any) European compilations that take a deep dive into the Dominican Republic’s musical heritage but thankfully, Belgian vinyl digger Xavier Daive has spent many years in DR searching through long forgotten record shelves and boxes to bring us this fine collection of the second wave of merengue típico released a few days ago on the excellent Bongo Joe Records. Fast and frenetic party music propelled by hyperspeed accordion and fizzing guiras, “Merengue Típico 'Nueva Generación!” is a superb overview of this wildly popular Latin Caribbean genre. We asked our friend and DR native Mauro Ferreiro for his thoughts. Read / Listen

Initially released in 1985 and only one year away from his passing, this expanded and remastered version of Beat guru, inventor and pioneering multi-disciplinary artist Brion Gysin’s ‘Junk’ finally sees a vinyl reissue after 40 years. Produced by the ace French producer Ramuntcho Matta and featuring the cream of the French underground at the time, plus jazz-experimentalist Don Cherry and Senegalese drum legend Abdoulaye Prosper Niang, the record is both deadly No Wave-y funky and definitely a bit strange. The song ‘Kick (Discomix)’ is worth the price of admission alone. Read / Listen.

The Swedish quartet Dina Ögon seemed to appear from nowhere a few years ago with two perfectly realised albums that merged their wide influences into some kind of perfect ‘pop’ hybrid. Not chart fodder pop but the old-fashioned kind that harnesses extraordinary songwriting with amazing individual performances that deserve to crossover everywhere. Anna Ahnlund’s voice alone demands that you listen, instantly recognisable as something very special. Sung in Swedish, their perfectly constructed songs contain traces of Brazilian and West Coast soul music, Scandinavian folk, deep funk, and other influences that combine to create their wondrous sound. The new album ‘Orion’ takes another step forward without losing a drop of their magic serum. Read / Listen.