King Tubby was a Mister Fix-it before he became the world’s most acclaimed dub engineer. He fixed televisions, toasters, hairdryers and radios. Because he was so skilled in repairing electronics, he could also wind filter coils, design EQs, build large amplifiers for sound systems and create his own mixing desk. In the seventies, dub reggae was the result of Jamaica’s revolt in sound engineering. The groundbreaking musical style was driven by the rebellion against the normality of things. Dub reggae put Jamaica on the world map for its music and historical approach to sound production; the small island making a big impact on the use of studio technology.

Every now and then, Vladimir Ivkovic shows us around in his library and shares some of his finds. Enjoy the selection, but please be quiet.

The Sahara desert, the biggest sand desert on our planet, stretches all the way from the Atlantic Ocean along the Western part of Africa to the Red Sea by the shores of East Africa. As deserted as she might seem when staring at the light colored patch on Google Maps, for centuries her dunes have been and still are home to countless of tribes; soil that has proven to be solid ground for conflict but even more so fertile for music. It is this unique mixture of traditional customs, the heartache of a region, and shredding guitar riffs that gives Desert Blues the allure it has now. With bands like Tinariwen and Imarhan taking the Western world by storm, it seems only fair to take a closer look at this mysteriously familiar sound.

Emerging from the cosmic experimentations of krautrock, kinetic energy and the “I don’t care” attitude that is punk, Germany’s underground landscape in the late 70s was increasingly filling itself with acts that put out a range of highly avant-garde, quirky and autonomous sounds. A big factor in all of this was the DIY mentality and a wave of post-modernism that had infiltrated media culture at the time. This freshly built playground now offered up the possibility that everybody could make (cool) music; the stranger the sounds, the more far-fetched the ideas and themes, the better.

As the fervent quest for the obscure continues, somehow music from the Arab world has managed to remain largely niche. There are a few people pushing the sound. The Habibi Funk outfit are perhaps the most well known and the Ma3azef show on NTS is definitely worthy of your time. Still, Arabic music has yet to be embraced in the way music from many other areas of the world have been. Many playlists claiming to be focused on the Middle East as a whole end up being almost entirely Turkish (or even veering off towards Iran and India). There is a lot of great Turkish stuff and perhaps that’s part of why the Arabic stuff gets overlooked but there’s more to it than that. Quite simply, searching for Arabic music is far more difficult because the alphabet is different. This might seem trite but it is definitely an obstacle.

Most people familiar with the underground electronic music scene might know Lena Platonos through the Red Axes Remixes EP that got released in 2015 on Dark Entries Records. For Greeks like myself, her name might remind you of Edo Lillipoupoli (Lillipoupoli Here, Minos 1980), a kid’s radio show that aired from 1976–1980, for which Lena Platonos composed some of the music. It’s only later, to my surprise, that I realized not only did Platonos compose music for my then favorite radio show but also some of the most progressive and cutting-edge electronica to ever come out of Greece.

For the month of June, George Hysteric steers his monthly playlist contribution in a different direction, to his pre-dance music days.

I was back in Brazil digging last year when a street vendor caught my eye. He was selling a super sick pile of 7”s that’s pretty hard to find these days. Naturally I went through it and at the end of the batch I came across a name: Dietrich Perreira Melo. Upon listening to the record on my portable player, my ears were blown away.

Dutch music. Not usually a word combination that conjures up the wildest expectations. But dig a little deeper and you’ll be in for many surprises. From ambient, rhythmic workouts to poetic synthwave, the Dutch musical landscape has produced many strange sounds that had flown under the radar. While it’s in our nature to avert nationalistic tendencies on a broader societal level, for now I suggest we go full Dutch and embrace our nationality with pride. No cheese, windmills and other clichés this time. Enter Dutch Sounds From Beyond – Part 2.

When the stars are aligned, and space and time are favourable, Traxx appears and blesses us with tracks he associates with our chosen name. Here are some offbeat oddities of the bizarre and irregular sounds of rare vinyl and cassettes from his personal collection.