Chicago alt-R&B / indie-psych genre-bender Azieb returns with the emotive dance track "When I Called", her first for FPE Records, released under the FPELV banner. Azieb's deceptively placid, intimate vocal soars over and through hooks and changes around every bend, gloriously anchored with synth bass and cheekily detailed with the artiest cowbell you're likely to hear this year.

The spectacular production foregrounds the main attraction, Azieb's heart that just refuses to break. In Azieb's words, "This song is about feeling abandoned by someone I thought would help me when I needed it most. Going through that tough situation helped me realize I need to find love/healing inside myself instead of outside of myself."

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"Looking for Love" showcases the chimeric, inimitable style of emerging Panamanian producer Palka, aka Nicolas Charneau. Following well-received EPs for electrocaïne and Earthly Measures, Palka delivers a sighing, longing exhale of a track for FPE Records, all hushed vocals and off-beat beat.

Built from precious few expertly placed elements, the music conjures an interior world of intimate longing as Charneau voices a universal sentiment of desire. "I try to let it flow, I try to let it grow" - for now, the holding pattern continues.

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Sun Pump, a new trio of psychedelic warriors featuring Nate Zabriskie, Ross Oldenburg, and Kendraplex, debuts on FPE Records with "Disassembly", a creeping nighttime journey in an altered state. Put this one on your potluck playlist, right between Anton Lavey's "Honolulu Baby" and that one Tool track with the Art Bell sample.

Zabriskie pounds out a lurching rhythm on kit while Kendra and Oldenburg build a synth menace from low rumbles, metallic whooshes, and a smiling, cavorting banjo/harp kind of sound. Grunts ensue as the tide comes in, climaxing at an uneasy peak and suddenly dissipating like fog that recedes with the dawn.

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Actual Music, the duo of David Pavkovic and Tatsu Aoki, plays freely improvised bass and drum compositions. They performed frequently from 1994 to 2000 in Chicago at the Hothouse and New York City at the Knitting Factory, often expanding their sound palette with a multitude of percussion, wind and electronic instruments. They recently reunited after an eighteen-year hiatus to record a new album, Actual Music Now, released in 2023 on FPE Records.

This previously unreleased archival recording from 1997 finds them collaborating with vocalist Elijah Levi on the Ellington chestnut "A Train". Levi's soulful vocal is sublime, pristine, pure joy, while Aoki's swinging delight and Pavkovic's rolling thunder channel life from past, present and future into the room, through that lucky assembled crowd, down onto the tape and now out your earbuds.