There are records that feel like documents and there are records that feel like contraband. Live in Detroit 1986 sits firmly in the latter… a tape smuggled out of the room, dubbed and redubbed into soft focus until the hiss becomes a third rhythm section. Captured less than a year after Fela Kuti’s release from prison, at Detroit’s Fox Theatre during his first U.S. tour, the set lands with a charged, itinerant electricity: part exorcism, part declaration.

Brazilian guitarist Fabiano Do Nascimento and Los Angeles producer Eddie Ruscha (aka E Ruscha V and Secret Circuit) team up for the gorgeously ambient and adventurous Aquáticos, released earlier this year on the ever-reliable Music From Memory label. Pairing Nascimento’s 7 and 10-string nylon guitars with Ruscha’s modular synths, drum machines, and vintage keyboards, the duo create meditative, electro-acoustic sounds with an alchemical fluidity.

May 1980, London: Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson drops Bass Culture on Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, the first of two LPs he’d release that year. Jamaica-born and Brixton-raised, the album finds Johnson distilling Babylon’s heavy hand into deep, subterranean basslines laced with incendiary street-level missives — “muzik of blood, black reared pain, rooted heart geared, all tensed up.”

Occasionally, a song breaks forth from the void and strikes you like a bolt of lightning. That’s how it feels listening to “Rockcurry,” from the late dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry and electronic duo Mouse on Mars (Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma)’s forthcoming Spatial, No Problem, out on the June 5th on Domino Record Co. It feels a little like plugging a fork into the electrical socket. Shock. Boom. A whole new world.

CPN Hollywell has a voice like a cat’s tongue, raspy but soft, with the rough-edged blues-i-ness of Greg Cartwright, the anthemic rock burr of Royal Headache’s Shogun Wall, the frenetic garage-roots energies of Thee Retail Simps. His band, out of New Orleans, plays a cracked, county-tinged punk rock, crusted in fuzz and zinging with frantic slides.

Like an unwavering sonic horizon, Orange delivers a vibrant and jangly collection of songs that weren’t just merely worth the wait, but feel like just the right amalgamation of musician Tim Presley’s prolific career to date. The first White Fence record in over seven years, the chiming guitars and Ty Segall back behind the drum kit and console convey a warbly and mysteriously optimistic guiding light. Hence the record’s namesake, the record offers a clear-eyed and bullish vibrancy in contrast to the downright foggy greys and blues of yesteryear.

Though there are antecedents to Dark’s sound—think Cream or Jefferson Airplane at their haziest—there’s something singular about Dark. Opener “Darkside” is lithe but muscular, and like early Sabbath, there’s a jazziness to it that suggests an alternate universe where Impulse put out the first heavy metal records.

New Orleans — birthplace of the syncopated rhythm splinter known as the second-line. Cut to 1974. Drummer and composer David Lee Jr. quietly releases his lone solo LP, the Afro‑futurist Evolution, privately pressed to just 400 copies on his own Supernal Records imprint. A percussive spiritual meditation in motion, the record folds intricate polyrhythms into hypnotic, repetitive loops that sound as urgent and on-point today as they did half a century ago. Four hundred copies. Infinite resonance.