Ransom Note

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 solo EP of his own, Maputo, in 2024.

Maguni has been dragging Mozambique's underground into rooms that didn't know they even needed it till they found it ever since: Cotch International, a spot on Tresor's roster, records built from psychedelia, hip-hop and rhythm that defies any real categorisation or genre box. cHai goes further back. Chai's an administrative post in Cabo Delgado's Macomia District - the place where the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule began on 25 September 1964. No history lesson though: Maguni runs it through analogue machines and raw, unpolished textures until it sounds like it's arriving from the future, not the past.

VIOLA is rhythm first, textures close behind - the same push-pull between ancestral and synthetic that runs through the record. 

Get it on, let's go:

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, House, Electroclash and beyond. Her own sets are packed of similar sounds, often weaving and wandering between the spaces which sit on the periphery of the genres, pairing the similarities from each.  

Over the years CHLOÉ has performed at just about every trendy 'nightclub' out there. But that's never really been the point. For her it always has been and always will be about the music, the scenes which surround it are simply the accessory to the crime.

“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 pass without checking it. No lifecycle to hang it on this time, just a day. Dawn eases into focus for the first hour, dusk pulls everything inward and quiet for the second.

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Sound-wise, it’s the same juxtaposition that ran through Passiflora – birdsong, wind, bells and found nature sitting right up against synthetic tone, warmer where it can be. KiF have form for throwing in fake, synthesised birdsong purely to mess with the spotters, so don’t take anything chirping out of the speakers entirely at face value. As the mix moves from day to night, the sound follows: brighter and busier in the early stretch, sliding towards darker, slower and more dreamlike as the light drops, the shift gradual rather than a hard cut.

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It’s not made in a vacuum either. Simon Armstrong from Errant slipped them a couple of tracks that ended up soundtracking dusk. Rob at Be With handed over a Hatchback cut before it even hit his own label. Gardens In The Sky drifted in via a mix from our very own Tia Cousins for Test Pressing. It is less a finished object, more the latest exchange in an ongoing conversation between friends who keep sending each other music.

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Our old friend Keith McIvor haunts this one too, gently. His lockdown-era Tranquillity Mixes are where KiF first heard Inoyama Land, who show up in the dawn section, and a Saturday morning set at Watching Trees’ Bush of Ghosts this year fed straight into the whole thing taking shape.
Asked what plant they’d be, Will and Tom eventually landed on a coppiced hazel in a holloway – practical, long-lived, on good terms with humans, and sat under centuries of falling leaves (“plenty of samples,” as they point out) – two hours of KiF thinking like that particular tree.
Sit down, shut up, watch the light move.

Full interview here: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/seeds-mix-12-kif-productions-dawn-to-dusk-mixtape/

Music To Watch Seeds Grow By 010: KiF Productions (Passiflora) here: https://kifproductions.bandcamp.com/album/010-kif-productions-passiflora

Tracklist:

(Dawn)

The Habbiyya – Two Shakuhachis

Iasos – Undulating Bell Harmonics

Harold Budd – It’s Steeper Near The Roses (For David Sylvian)

Raul Lovisoni & Francesco Messina – Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo

Laaraji – Essence (Excerpt)

Inoyami Land – Bananatron

Spacetime Continuum – Ping Pong

MDA Analog – Rainful Memories

Hatchback – And The Walls Became The World Around Us

M&M – Garden In The Sky

Dieter – Ecstasy

Roedelius – Tempera

(Dusk)

Bruce Haack – 17 Gifts For Free Children

Deux Filles – Birds

Old Jared – IV. Forest Pond

Priscilla Ermel – Gestos De Equilibrio (Excerpt)

Another Fine Day – Life Before Land

Paz Sounds – Trees & Birds

Hampshire & Foat – Lullaby

Jonny Nash – Smoke Rings

Green-House – Soft Coral

The Black Dog – Chesh

Ashra – Deep Distance

Underworld – To Heal

Virginia Astley – Out On The Lawn I Lie In Bed

Orchestra Of The Swan – An Ending (Ascent)[Arr. For Violin, Harp & Orchestra by David Le Page]

Brian Eno – Strange Quiet

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 Terror (Original Mix)
Will Hofbauer - Mudpuller (Eden Burns Whistle Beatz Remix Dub)
Psychederek - Thinkin’ Bout U, Pt. 3 (Mars)
Jon Dasilva & Skyskrapa Feat. Donald Waugh - Sun Brings Joy (Triangulation Dub)
Queen Atom - Tributemaki
Hilel Lev - Kino
DJ Chrysalis - A Place Like A Place
Benoit & Sergio - Walk And Talk (Original Mix)
Elmass - Shank 03
Urban Sound Lab Presents Miss Yankey - One Less (Main Send)

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 Milan.

Natural Selections cried “Ten! We’ll never see grooves like these again!”
So they pressed it on wax, Paid the Submarea tax,
And Portobello Mafia rode out of its den.


Thomass Jackson has been hovering around the Natural Selections orbit for a while now — guest mix here, remix there — but somehow never quite landed on the catalogue proper. That changes today.

Portobello Mafia is his first official release on the imprint and it sounds exactly like you’d want it to: wonky, playful, slightly psychedelic house music that tilts just far enough off-axis to keep you guessing. Both originals do that thing where the groove feels wrong until it feels completely right.

We’re premiering Carlo Sine’s remix of “Jam” today, which takes the EP somewhere else entirely. The label head strips out the looseness and replaces it with grit – punk disco built for the part of the night when the small talk stops and everyone just gets on with it.

Portobello Mafia EP is out August 13. Stream below.