MMNLS2E20.Jan
Fila brasilia | Dj sprinkles | Crooked man | girls of the internet
20206 - Work got busy. The bots threatened to take over the world. Trump did more and more stupid shit. (FUCK ICE) My travel for work pulled me across time zones more than I’d planned, and January happened the way January does, long, grey, rainy, cold, and gone before you’ve properly settled into it.
Going to try a new mini content franchise dedicated to record stores. Some from my hometown, some from places I visit. There is an Instagram, and I will write and share more photos here. First up, Toronto (was just there this month). One day, I would love to be able to support myself by visiting and writing about records and the stores they were found in - imagine that!
The other project updates are now at the end of the newsletter.
MM.DiggingIn.Ep1.Toronto.
High Notes, Coffee & Vinyl, Toronto
To set the scene, it is -5 degrees Celsius. It is the coldest I have ever felt it. That is -20 in UK flavor: any skin that is not covered freezes and hurts. But saying that I am wandering the streets of Toronto checking out some of the stores it has to offer, Sonic Boom was fun (soctt pilgrim) Rotate This was wonderful if a little generic (I did get a grail in there though) Invisible City (top 5 stores, will get a feature for sure) Anyway 3 hours in, Cold as all hell. I find discs and coffee, cross the street, and enter the main floor: beautiful wall of classics, new and old; Owner Djing some jazz; espresso machine going; pastries on display. and stairs downstairs. That seems like the main approach, so I head down.
A family browsing there. Mum and Dad each lost deep in their own sections, their little boy running circles around the store, up and down off the couch, making me laugh in that way only kids can. Mum and Dad were constantly distracted and a little frustrated he wouldn’t sit still. Dad pulled out a Brandi album, called out “check it, 2001, that is 25 years old,” and mum just shouted back “grab it, grab it, grab it now.” A wonderful spontaneous yes moment.
I spend a good 40 minutes under the custom neon sculpture in the hip-hop section, the disco, the funk, and the jazz bargain bins.
Upstairs there’s proper coffee and more spaces to hang out. newer albums on the wall, and some classics in the bins. It felt like such a real part of the local community, not just a store. Families browsing post-brunch. super knowledgeable owner (Chris?) chatted with me until I had to head back out. Will be back next time to hang out more.
Google Map
Website
Instagram
Discogs
---
On to the albums - Four albums and a book this month that are worth 100% of your full attention. I am trying to keep the recommendation numbers small - There are so many great lists, great substacks, that offer so many great relases but I can’t always keep up - So for my audience, I want to be really curated.
Just the top 4 or 5
Not that you asked, but my top 5 music newsletters.
Josh Mason-Quinn Who is moving somewhere soul to Substack
Always reliable first floor. Shawn Reynaldo - buy the book, read his conversation with Sam Valenti IV from the latest issue on the ghostly substack
Which leads to Sam Valenti IV weekly herb sundays - mixes, and the best conversations that are possibly one of the only important reads for me on a Sunday
Joe - unmissable Bassmidtopsandtherest
and lastly Stephan Kunze and ZenSounds
So 4 albums, never background music. The kind of records that deserve a sit down on a Sunday morning, coffee on, stereo tubes all warmed up, fire on, phone down, dig in.
Crooked Man - Crooked Style
Released January 2026 on Vicious Charm Recordings. Such an incredible record. Can’t get enough of this one
Richard Barratt, Sheffield. One half of Sweet Exorcist with Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard H. Kirk, architects of bleep techno, first CD on Warp in 1991. But fast forward to 202,6 this is his third Crooked Man album, first for Vicious Charm after two on DFA Records. Visual Charm is the new label from Midfield General, see the special here.
Crooked Stile has that loose-limbed swagger that only works when someone really truly feels how funk, house, and disco and their shared DNA rather than as Genres you would find at HMV. There’s real northern humour in this record. Grooves feel lived in, scuffed, like vinyl pulled from a well-loved crate in a charity shop, a grail that kind of got lost. rather than something designed for algorithmic perfection. What I like most is its confidence in simple funk. In a moment where dance music is tryuing too hard to get relevance, Crooked Style gets on with the job of making your hips move.
Fila Brazillia - Maim That Tune
Originally released 1995 on Pork Recordings, I got the 30th Anniversary remaster 2025 on Growing Bin Records*
Steve Cobby and David McSherry. Hull, UK. Founded in 1990. Their second album after Old Codes, New Chaos. Remastered by Sergey Luginin for its thirtieth birthday and pressed on a bright Pantone orange vinyl matching the original CD. Fila Brazillia were always better at restraint than owning the moment, so many people missed them; they never had the PR machine. Pork was so quiet compared to Mowax or Warp or Ninja, but Maim That Tune leans into that. Beats are deliberately bruised, not really broken, but they carry a kind of soft menace. There is space and humour between elements, it breathes like it’s thinking about its next pint, should I get up, should I just stay here.. It sounds like the forest at night when the rain has stopped, but the trees are still warm.
And that Bill Hicks monologue……..👀
DJ Sprinkles - RA.1000
https://ra.co/podcast/1013
Resident Advisor podcast series / Released August 2025
OK not an album but Terre Thaemlitz’s first mix in around fifteen years, marking Resident Advisor’s thousandth podcast. I did the whole RA 1000 thing previously. But after a trip to Echoes in Space (yes I will feature that one soon) I re-discovered Terre and DJ Sprinkles, and at the beginning of this month dug hard back into their discography - so much connected to the Tokyo scene, and on some hard to find CD’s.
This mix arrives as a meditation on Gaza, life in 2025 and rejecting the usual pretend it is all fine narrative of dance music. This is not a victory lap mix. It’s a lesson. Deep house has always been a form of care, a way of holding time for disenfranchised groups, black kids not allowed into the right clubs, LBGTQ kids finding space, British youth with nowhere to go. The selections move patiently, emotionally, refusing to do the spectacle. Terre Thaemlitz has always used dance music as a vehicle for politics, intimacy, and refusal, and RA.1000 keeps that true to nature. It’s club music but its also works hard at home, making me stay present with the hurt of today. Radical feeling through gentleness.
Girls of the Internet - Secular Music Vol. 1
Released November 2025 on House of the Internet. If you missed last year, get it. It is still heavy in rotation.
Tom Kerridge’s multi-limbed live music project from St. Albans, UK. First installment in a triptych, following 2024’s When I Was Lost, I Found Myself and 2019’s Girls FM (BBC 6 Music Album of the Year). Features Dani Siciliano, Sió, i am an island, James Alexander Bright, and The Gospel of Thomas.
Secular Music sits in that soulful house lineage that exemplifies warmth, songwriting, and community over maximalism. It even has singing, and I like it. There’s such a sense of generosity to it, musically and emotionally. The vocals I mentioned are really human rather than “singing” from lyrics; the tracks feel relaxed and not really forced. Music for Sunday morning, that knows it was born on the dance floor, or maybe the other way around.
It really feels unforced. No big hooks or tracks. Just a steady sense that this music was made by people who love house music culture and want to add something to it. The amazing confidence of the album is to repeat itself, 8 tracks, what I would call Radio Edits (you know the shorter version), and then the same tracks, Dub mixes - extended to allow some depth - Favorite track the acid one.
and a book
There’s a particular thrill in reading about house music when you know the writer feels it too. Chicago House Music: Culture and Community by Marguerite Harrold is exactly that kind of book. Its a gathering of interviews, and voices that still echo across Chicago in basements, clubs, and heard in DJ sets today. The book traces house music’s origins back to the Black and gay underground scene of the late seventies, where DJs like Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy were shamen, turning turbulence into exuberance and liberatiion on the dance floor. What the book makes clear from the first page is that house is not just a genre; it is an answer to exclusion, and loneliness, a collective prayer through rhythm and beats.
What sets this book apart is the way it talks about the people who lived through it not just those who ‘made it famous.’ Interspersed with interviews and firsthand accounts, wonderful interviews with Lady D, Avery R. Young, Czboogie, and Edgar “Artek” Sinio . Stories from the booth, the dance floors, and the moments between sets at dawn. There’s a tenderness in these memoirs, a sense that each person’s memory is a pulse of house itself.
Harrold’s writing reminds us that Chicago house became a global phenomenon precisely because it began as a space of solace and belonging: a sanctuary where outsiders could dance freely, love openly, and reimagine what it meant to move together. If you’ve ever felt the emotional pull of deep house at sunrise, this book will resonate as both a history and shared celebration.
2026 H1 project updates
MMLL (the bigger publishing project) is still stuck in major de-prioritization (I’m still looking for angels/investors to support independent music publishing - looking for someone to pay advances for issue 1 of a thing, so please do get in touch)
MMR is in full flow, a new side business with physical products. Artisanal incense is handmade and paired with classic albums. Music rituals for deep listening. I had a pop-up at Passenger Seat Records which went really well with Winyls (a vinyl + wine thing) and sold a few at the event.
Some Black Friday deals on now - 30% offMMDI went on Instagram to post some stores from my recent Toronto trip.
Starting something new this year: featuring a record shop each month. Not the hot new releases or what’s trending. Celebrating the spaces themselves - the culture, the atmosphere, the experience of being there rather than what you can buy.
---
MMhealing sounds might be back on - new location, in talks.
This particular experimental project will evolve over time. I will try some new tunes, play with formats, and rediscover old albums, too. I may also try some themes and specific vibes, but definitely no requests.
Peace, more soon.