Experimental music history is still, in large part, a Euro-American project. Rare are the efforts that highlight Latin American pioneers like Beatriz Ferreyra or Jocy de Oliveira, and rarer still are histories of electronic scenes with a pop, new age edge. A La Altura: Visionary Mexican Music 1977-1999 excavates the ambient underground of Mexico City, tracing a vibrant, largely overlooked circuit of independent cassette culture, dubbed tapes, and street stalls. Compiled by Carlos Icaza and Mark McNeill after a decade of research into the city’s cassette history, it offers a long-overdue portrait of Mexico’s experimental music underground.
Category: Compilation
Dur-Dur Band :: Volume 3 (1988) & Volume 4 (1989)
The latest archival installment from the Somalian hotel band shows an unwieldy group streamlining their sound in the studio, dialing up the hooks, battening down the rhythms and keeping the grooves on point. Taking inspiration from Motown and disco as much as reggae and Afrobeat, the Dur-Dur Band kept the wild 70s alive even as the ugly 80s were taking over.
Future Sounds Of Jazz Vol. 16
Future Sounds of Jazz Vol. 16 is both a forecast and a wormhole. Across two discs, Michael Reinboth and Michael Rütten move through jazz, dub, electronic music, improvisation, and psychedelia with the intuitive logic of a late-night DJ set. The result is a strange, elastic universe of DJ Oil, Bitchin Bajas, Booker Stardrum, Nico Zam, Ilhan Ersahin, and Momoko Gill—and a reminder that the future of jazz remains gloriously undefined.
Nigeria 80: The Explosive Sound World of 1980s Nigeria
The ’70s didn’t end. They just got more elastic. Strut’s Nigeria 80 catches Nigerian popular music in that beautiful, unruly stretch between Afrobeat’s explosion and whatever came next—juju, funk, highlife, reggae, proto-hip-hop, and plenty of glorious cross-pollination along the way.
V/A :: Pop Ambient 2026
Drifting in on a familiar frequency, Volume 26 of Kompakt’s annual ambient dispatch feels nocturnal, gently untethered, and softly out of focus. An hour-plus slow exhale, the compilation—like the series itself—lingers in the in-between, favoring atmosphere over immediacy without drifting into aimless abstraction. While open to the casual, passing tourist, these sets thrive in their subtle currents, revealing deeper layers to those who appreciate the power of the pause.
Greg Belson’s Divine Funk: Rare American Gospel Soul And Funk
Hit me! Get sanctified, testify, and let it all hang out across a dozen raw Holy Ghost-infused funk and soul jammers where the spirit locks deep in the pocket. Putting in the work, DJ and record collector Greg Belson is the selector, unearthing heavyweight rarities from his personal crates. Originally released in 2021, Divine Funk is back in print as of last year via Cultures of Soul.
Music from Saharan WhatsApp
A spiritual successor to 2011’s Music from Saharan Cellphones, 2022’s Music from Saharan WhatsApp feels less like a sequel than a signal flare from the dunes. Where the first compilation culled music from the memory cards of thumb-worn Nokias, this latest dispatch taps the communication du jour, gathering eleven obscurities as they flicker and forward across the digital ether.
Joropop: Psych Pop & Folk in Venezuela, 1968-1976
The Madrid-based Munster Records and its sister label Vampisoul have become house favorites over the last few years. The latter released one of our favorite reissues of the year in Cartao Postal, the 1971 MPB masterclass from Brazilian singer Evinha, and Munster Records is keeping that momentum strong with Joropop: Psych Pop & Folk in Venezuela, 1968-1976, a compilation that hasn’t strayed far from the speakers since its summer release.
1981 :: A Post-Punk Compilation
Long live the old, weird internet. Out of all the genres, post-punk has always felt like the hardest to pin down. What the hell was / is it? I’m not sure I could tell you. But I can tell you that the Musicophilia blog’s massive 1981 box set of mixes is perhaps the best representation of the wild burst of creativity that was happening in the underground at the time. While the original mp3 downloads of the box set have since been replaced at Musicophilia with streaming options, we have uploaded the original files for posterity …
Various Artists :: Maybe I’m Dreaming
With twenty selections culled from private press relics only, Maybe I’m Dreaming is a grab bag that feels as congruous as it does eclectic. From the Anthology Recordings diggers who brought you essential previous compilations like Sad About The Times, this collection is a self-described conscious detour, pairing synth-driven gems and reggae rhythms with rootsy AOR folk rock. Like a mixtape from a reliable old friend, Maybe I’m Dreaming feels curated with purpose and delivered with a panoramic reach.
Various Artists :: Save the Waves: People for Public Media
In June, the House of Representatives voted to eliminate all $1.1 billion in Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the next two years. Mike Horn, who records as the cosmic ambient Seawind of Battery, is fighting back, raising money to support public radio and TV through this 19-track compilation. It’s a worthy cause, and you could justify the purchase strictly on philanthropic grounds. However, Save the Waves is also an excellent compendium of the current state of ambient, (mostly) instrumental psychedelia, topped up with contributions by Takoma-style pickers, experimental droners, slowcore dreamers and improvising guitar heroes. Don’t buy it because you should. Buy it because you want to.
Antilles Series :: Volumes 1/2 & Beyond
Summertime, summer sounds. Since 2015 the Villard De Lans, France based label Heavenly Sweetness has been dropping semi-regular sonic island soaks into the digital sphere and beyond via their ongoing Antilles Series. Curating from a wide swath of French Caribbean gems, the series saw the release of its seventh installment this April via a reissue of Luc-Hubert Séjor’s 1979 polyrhythmic LP, Mizik Filamonik – Spiritual Sound. The Séjor release also serves as a welcome return to the series, its first post-Covid, following 2019’s Chinal Ka 1973 -1995. Dive in, the water’s warm.
Ayo Ke Disco: Boogie, Pop & Funk from the South China Sea (1974-88)
A vibrant fusion of sounds comes blasting off the grooves of Ayo Ke Disco: Boogie, Pop & Funk from the South China Sea (1974-88), the recently released compilation from the inimitable Soundway Records. Curated by the label’s own longtime general manager Alice Whittington (aka DJ Norsicaa) and informed by her Malaysian heritage and collection of Asian records, the disc surveys the 70s and 80s discotheque scenes of South-East Asia, boasting disco, synth, and psychedelic-infused funk from Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Virtual Dreams II :: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999
Circumventing the music collector mania of Japan at the height of the acid house fever of the 1990s, these minimal tracks, based on sharp silken hi-hats and psychedelic space-age phasers, add a new twist to the history of the Detroit genre at the same time that they sound as contemporary as any new work by Actress, Jon Hopkins, or Pantha du Prince.
Someone Like Me :: A Compilation
Efficient Space, the label that heroically issued this compilation, defines the songs it gathered as “confessional loner folk, devotional song, civil rights activism.” I would suggest it is much more. Like Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk before it, Someone Like Me offers a glimpse into the transcendental sprouts in the salt of the earth, this time by way of alien americana and abstract, out-of-time lo-fi.