Ransom Note

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: