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TAKAAT - 'IS NOISE VOL: 2'
Formats
PR14 - 10"
Details
NEW TO FORTE !!!!! TAKAAT (pronounced tuh-cot), meaning “noise” in the Tuareg language Tamashek, is the trio of Ahmoudou Madassane, Mikey Coltun, and Souleymane Ibrahim, also known as the rhythm section of Mdou Moctar. TAKAAT is sonic chaos, improvisation, freedom of exploration, and the punk styles of bands such as Fugazi and Unwound, all mixed together with the guitar music from the Sahel. TAKAAT started during soundchecks while on the road with Mdou Moctar when the trio indulged their shared love for amps cranked to 11 and the sound of blown out speakers. Towards the end of 2023, the three started writing music together, inspired by their shared experiences with the sounds and energy of Hausa bar bands, gritty soukous, and 2000s post-punk. The music of TAKAAT is intense, dark, and energetic. Deeply inspired by the DIY ethos of punk, Ahmoudou, Mikey, and Souleymane capture that thrill of the new and the ecstasy of togetherness in these heavy rockers. TAKAAT follows in the spirit of the independent music culture that birthed hardcore basement shows, bedroom tape labels, and generator-powered pick-up wedding bands. Tinariwen are the grandfathers of what we know today as Taureg guitar music. Started in refugee camps in Algeria and Libya in 1979, Tinariwen created a new sound of Taureg music that pushed the tradition into a new direction. Ahmoudou, Souleymane, and I all came to Tinariwen in different ways throughout our life and there is no doubt the importance the music has on all three of us. Just as much as Tinariwen pushed what Tuareg music is, that was the idea with TAKAAT is, to push the tradition even further, create something new, create something fresh that blends our love for bands like Tinariwen but also our love of heavier more chaotic bands. Is Noise Vol. 2 includes the TAKAAT versions of a couple of our favorite Tinariwen tunes. Unlike the original Tinariwen versions, these songs are unedited shredding jams recorded live to tape in Washington D.C. This is raw, this is noisy, this is TAKAAT. -Mikey Coltun 'Damn, that's very good.' - Ahmoudou Madassane
Tracks
1. Amidinin 2. Elwan 3. Imajighan Anagrou 4. Ishumar
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NAIM AMOR & KID CONGO POWERS - 'TUCSON SAFARI'
Formats
ITR386 - LP
759718538618
Details
**ON LTD ORANGE-IN-YELLOW VINYL**Naïm Amor and Kid Congo Powers met shortly before the pandemic in Tucson, Arizona. When the complete lockdowns hit everybody, Amor, like lots of other musicians, reclused himself in his studio and started experimenting with longtime ideas that were on the shelf. The initial idea was to combine rockabilly/garage-electric guitars with electronic drum machines and bass synthesizers, a vague intuition inspired by Link Wray’s guitar tones on one hand and the electronic rawness of the band Suicide on the other. After recording a couple tracks, Amor got the idea of inviting Kid Congo to collaborate in the making of some electric guitar “dialogs”. The tracks of Tucson Safari display the two different personalities and approaches of Amor and Kid Congo, both passionate electric guitar players, in the form of an exploration through composition and tone. The interwoven layers of guitars reveal the particular harmonic and melodic sense of Amor's sound “dancing” with the unmistakable slide and fuzzy tones of Kid Congo Powers.
Tracks
1. Kid's Stroll 2. Murder We Wrote 3. Stoned By The Mile 4. Ouch 5. Showdown 6. Surf Sirens 7. Remembering The Witches Valley 8. Ping Guitar Pong 9. Hypnotized 10. Tucson Safari
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SUSANNAH STARK - 'MINOR GESTURES'
Formats
LSSN102 - LP
Details
Drifting in on a stream of birdsong, synths and field recordings of rivers, Susannah Stark posits questions from the outset of Minor Gestures, her second studio album. Sung in both Gàidhlig and English, Stark is in constant dialogue with her surroundings, with history, mythology and with the listener on her second album for cult label Stroom of Brussels and Glasgow’s Night School. Recorded with an ensemble curated from the worlds of experimental and folkloric music in her adopted city, Minor Gestures is an omni-directional conversation, open-ended and infused with curiosity and sensitivity. Using primarily acoustic instruments and folk modalities, the songs here display an almost preternatural confidence as Stark shifts perspectives and narratives throughout. Minor Gestures is a body of work that celebrates standing in vulnerability and cultivating resistance to the onset of the corporatisation of daily life. Stark’s duo-linguistic approach feels like a love letter both to the Gàidhlig language and term for translation: eadar- theangachadh, 'inter-tonguing' itself as a creative act. Much of the album was composed from visual cues, and experimenting with the fundamentals of existing in bodies, in this time and place: breath, drone, whisper, song, and primal rhythms inhabiting the unknown space of the mouth. These practices suffuse Minor Gestures with a physicality and immediacy that feel akin to practice of zen meditation: in an age of constant distraction and speed, perhaps truly living, with all its corporeality and massiveness is a form of resistance? A leap forward from the more electronic and solitary practice of her previous album Time Together, Minor Gestures features collaborators Phil Cardwell, Caroline Hussey, and seasoned percussionist Laurie Pitt, who's combination of abstraction and intuitive rhythm provides a tactility to the music. Joining the ensemble more recently, Hussey’s accordion is the thread that ties the album together, offering expansive pitch bending notes and drones which the other musicians play off. “Which way does a river go?” Stark asks on opener Caochan, directly addressing the water, which itself responds in Gàidhlig. On Ceistean gun freagairtean, Stark’s voice sits above soft-blown trumpet and accordion drones, asking questions that explicitly require no answers. Instead, the questions are used as linguistic signposts of the myriad perspectives contained in the song: people wracked with existential dread, the singer’s conversation with a dead lover from a Pictish cave burial. Minor Gestures describes the worlds around it with boundless sensitivity, searching curiosity and a collective love that permeates each instrument, voice and gesture documented across the 8 recordings. Second single Trì stiùirichean makes ample use of Stark’s vocal, augmented with close harmonies that are have a faint redolence of Gàidhlig psalm singing and traditional folk music melodies. Stark’s deftness with melody and atmosphere manages to be highly evocative of both Scottish musical traditions and ambient-adjacent practices while steering a path between both. Like the subjects of the song, the musicians are travelling, interwoven, sailing close but never quite resolved. A reference to the Govan knot, here the form of the music is the message. Mu choinneamh, ri taobh features guest vocals from Cinder (Cindytalk) and is a spacious, wide-open chasm of sound which the voices of Stark and her sister Katherine hover above. On closer Minor Gestures - as on its parent album - the natural world, the mythological, narrative worlds we construct, historical worlds didactically enforced on us and the rigidity of reality - the real world - are all challenged and set free. The protagonist morphs, changes form, dissipates into the natural world, re-anthropomorphises and evaporates again. The music provokes, posits questions, gurgling synths swirl into the upper register, percussion babbles like the rivers of the album’s beginning. On Minor Gestures, Susannah Stark opens up its myriad worlds to the listener but never describes them fully. Instead the listener is invited to discover for themselves. Stark and her band have provided a sonically tactile, almost physical space for this exploration, for these questions to be asked. Which way does a river go?
Tracks
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SPLIT SYSTEM - 'ON THE EDGE / ON THE LOOSE'
Formats
LEG037 - 7"
Details
**RED VINYL* After a massive 2024 that included the release of their second album Vol.2 and a US Tour, Naarm/Melbourne punks Split System are back, kicking off the new year with a new 7” On the Edge/On the Loose. The feeling of stress and anxiety permeates through both tracks. The opener is the sleazy, hardcore-infused On the Edge, featuring a pounding rhythm that mirrors the pressure of day-to-day life and the inevitable breakdown that awaits. Next, the sub-two-minute On the Loose delivers a catchy, high-energy garage- punk thumper about moving through life feeling like you’ve got a gun to your head.
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SPLIT SYSTEM / LES LULLIES - 'CHEMICALS / A L'ETROIT'
Formats
LEG041B - 7"
LEG041 - 7"
Details
**AVAILABLE ON BLUE VINYL** Hot on the heels of a 7” in February earlier in 2025, Split System follow up with a split 7” release in tandem with French garage-punks Les Lullies – one song apiece. The Australian side features a tough-as-guts rock & roll stomper, Chemicals. Cleaning up your act and getting back on track is the current dilemma. On side two Les Lullies deliver A L'Etroit, written and recorded in a burst of urgency — fast, loud, and straight to the point.
Tracks
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STREET SWEEPER - 'DON'T WAIT'
Formats
LEG036OB - 7"
Details
**ON OX BLOOD VINYL** Originally a four piece formed In 2022 and 18 months on from their now out of print Self Titled EP, STREET SWEEPER returns as a power trio with rejuvenated spirit and a brand new four track EP. Featuring current and former members of Chubby and The Gang, Weekend, The Prize and Gutless and each born on 3 seperate continents, the band brings a raw serving of soulful rock n roll taking elements of garage, power pop and early punk and fusing it into a sound that’s uniquely its own. Recorded live in storage unit to a four track you’ll find no frills or garnishes, just the sound of a band reminding itself what it is capable of.
Tracks
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C.O.F.F.I.N - 'CHILDREN OF FINLAND FIGHTING IN NORWAY'
Formats
LEG006C - LP (COLOURED)
Details
**CHERRY VINYL** Children Of Finland Fighting In Norway aka C.O.F.F.I.N is an Australian punk band who have accepted the mental of their nation’s long legacy of greasy-haired, outback-scrounging, garage rock rumblers, blowing out eardrums and amps one stage at a time, while chiseling their name below those of Radio Birdman and The Hard-Ons in petrol station bathroom stalls across New South Wales and beyond. This latest self-titled album from C.O.F.F.I.N’s is their fourth LP overall and retains a lot of the attitude from their previous releases. It unleashes a raging rip of rock fury that blazes like a wildfire, kept alive and deadly by the bellow-like thump and growl of drummer and vocalist Ben Portnoy whirlwind conjuring percussion and libido-pumping leads and grooves of the band’s three guitarists, Abijah Rado, Arthur Flanders, and Aaron Moss.
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C.O.F.F.I.N - 'PISS~UP'
Formats
LEG044 - LP (COLOURED)
Details
SOLD OUT & FULLY ALLOCATED**TRANSLUCENT YELLOW VINYL** Seven years ago C.O.F.F.I.N would enter Pet Food Factory 2.0 to record their seminal album Piss~Up. They would be one of the first bands to record in the newly self-built studio run by Jason Whalley and would mark the beginnings of a lasting relationship between Jay and the band. Featuring Ben Ulitzka Portnoy (vocals + drums), Abijah Rado (lead guitars + lap steel), Arthur Devo Flanders (guitars), Laurence Adams (bass), Ivor Rigney (yidaki / didge), and Aaron Moss (guest guitar) - the resulting record would unveil the band’s early explorations of grief, racism, mindless destruction, violence, and confrontations with Australian archetypes of manhood. With standout tracks: White Dog, Locals Only, Between The Flags, Done By The Dogs. Rather than announcing authority on these themes, Piss~Up reflected on the band’s positions within them, the challenge of recognising their own contributions, and the wish to collectively broaden themselves for the better. Unbeknownst to them at the time, C.O.F.F.I.N was sculpting their skill of drawing in unlikely crowds and conversation. An invitation for self-reflection, the chance to chat to each other, to consider the Other. It was the band’s first 12” vinyl and was self released to a limited run of 150 copies. However, the highly anticipated re-issue is finally here through Legless Records, accompanied by the fourth and final press of the band's self-titled Children Of Finland Fighting In Norway LP re-press.
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ORCHESTRA GOLD - 'DAKAN'
Formats
OG003 - LP
657628453765
Details
With their boldest release to date, Orchestra Gold unveils Dakan — a transcendent new album exploring the intertwined forces of destiny and passion. Guided by the visionary vocals of Malian singer Mariam Diakité, [Dakan] is a sonic and spiritual journey: rooted in tradition, driven by intuition, and lit ablaze with psychedelic energy. Mariam’s lyrics draw deeply from her devotion to the baye fall tradition — a mystical branch of West African sufism that favors direct experience of the divine over doctrine. Her voice doesn’t just sing — it **channels.** "This song is an homage to my teacher in the Baye Fall tradition, Baye ass n’diaye. He taught me that religion must be rooted in the direct experience of the divine. To truly love God, we must experience God." -Mariam Diakite, singer Psychedelic rock collides with Malian soul in a sonic ritual where fate dances with free will. A bridge between worlds: malian traditional music (60's+70's) and heavy, hypnotic psychedelic rock.
Tracks
Side A:
Diyanye Ko (Passion)
Baye Ass N?Diaye
Diyanye Ko Te Sa (Desire is Unquenchable)
Abarika Kanuna (Thankyou For Love)
Side B:
Dakan (Destiny)
Djama Ko (People)
Nema (Love)
Yayoroba
Baye Ass N?Diaye (Reprise)
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Audio & Video
SŁAWOMIR ZUBRZYCKI - 'VIOLA ORGANISTA: MONOLOGUES & DIALOGUES'
Formats
LTR055 - CD
4066004773070
Details
Polish pianist, claviolinist, composer, and instrument builder SŁAWOMIR ZUBRZYCKI announces the release of his new album Viola Organista: Monologues & Dialogues, a landmark recording that brings to life one of the most enigmatic inventions in the history of music: the viola organista, a long-forgotten bowed keyboard instrument originally sketched by Leonardo da Vinci. Produced by Nils Frahm and featuring works by Dowland, Marais, J.S. Bach, and others, the album will be released on October 24 on CD and across all digital platforms. Da Vinci’s cryptic drawings from the Codice Atlantico depict a keyboard instrument whose strings are bowed by a continuous wheel system. The viola organista is not an imitation of the organ, nor a surrogate for the viola da gamba. Its sound hovers in a liminal sonic zone: a bridge between the tactile intimacy of string instruments and the structural elegance of keyboards. The instrument was never built by Leonardo, but the idea proved curiously immortal, inspiring some 200 iterations over the centuries under names such as Geigenwerk, Bogenklavier, Lyrichord, and Clavier-gamba. Only in 2013, after years of historical research and planning, did Zubrzycki succeed in building a fully functional viola organista. Unlike conventional instrument makers, who follow centuries-old traditions, Zubrzycki built his first version with little more than Renaissance sketches and a fierce belief in artistic autonomy. “If you're a violin or piano maker, you follow the laws of violin or piano making. But I needed to be somewhere in between. I had to follow my own imagination. That same imagination guided Zubrzycki from the practical task of restoring his student piano in 1980s Kraków to building the clavichord, a similarly overlooked instrument, in the 1990s. As of today, he has completed three viola organistas, each one unique, adorned with visual emblems inspired by Florentine grotesques, Leonardo’s sepia-toned sketches, and papyrus-like textures. His journey has now culminated in a collaboration with visionary producer Nils Frahm at LEITER’s Funkhaus studio in Berlin, a recording space rich in both historical resonance and sonic subtlety. “Nils doesn’t rush,” says Zubrzycki. “There’s time for everything. He listens deeply. This instrument needs that kind of space.” The result is Viola Organista: Monologues & Dialogues, an album as rare and compelling as the instrument itself.
Tracks
1. ATHANASIUS KIRCHER (1602?1680)
MODO HYPODORICO
2. JOHN DOWLAND (1563?1626)
LACHRIMAE ANTIQUAE
3. MARIN MARAIS (1656?1728)
LA R?VEUSE
4. MARIN MARAIS (1656?1728)
RONDEAU LE BIJOU
5. MARIN MARAIS (1656?1728)
LES FOLIES D?ESPAGNE
6. JAN PODBIELSKI (ca. 1650?1700)
PRAELUDIUM IN D MINOR
7. GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685?1782)
CARILLON
8. JOHANN CHRISTIAN BACH (1735?1782)
SONATA IN G MAJOR FOR 2 KEYBOARDS OP. 15 NO. 5, W. A 21: I. ALLEGRO
9. JOHANN CHRISTIAN BACH (1735?1782)
SONATA IN G MAJOR FOR 2 KEYBOARDS OP. 15 NO. 5, W. A 21: II. TEMPO DI MINUETTO
10. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685?1759)
HARPSICHORD CONCERTO NO. 4 IN A MAJOR, BWV 1055: I. ALLEGRO
11. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685?1759)
HARPSICHORD CONCERTO NO. 4 IN A MAJOR, BWV 1055: II. LARGHETTO
12. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685?1759)
HARPSICHORD CONCERTO NO. 4 IN A MAJOR, BWV 1055: III. ALLEGRO MA NON TANTO
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STIFF RICHARDS - 'GFC / EMPTY BARRELS'
Formats
LEG034 - 7"
Details
OOP in UK on Drunken Sailor, so we’ve got some over from Legless… real Australian punk rock... and rowdy it is.. Part of the amazing new wave of LOUD rock and roll from Australia.. Filmed and Recorded Live at Singing Bird Studios in Frankston Recorded & Mixed by Andrew Robinson Mastered by Mikey Young Filmed by James Morris (cook up sessions) Artwork & Layout by Ben Portnoy Cover Image by Lochie Cavigan Do you feel like your money is worthless? Don’t you wish you could punish those who made it so? Don’t you wish you could get your money back? Don’t you wish you could go back to the beginning? Do you ever feel like you’re being cheated? Don’t worry we’re here to inform you that it is about to get worse.