Italy

Norman Gervais and Charles Bals return after last year’s Transcoastal compilation with their first project for the Italian label Periodica Records and its newly founded imprint, Periodica International.The concept behind SiRENE 89 is quite particular and took six years to develop. It is presented as the live recording of one long evening, with different bands taking the stage one after another on the terrace of a Mediterranean holiday resort in 1989, inspired by the places Charles and Norm remember from their summer holidays around that time.The songs were recorded between 1982 and 1993 and gathered from small-time artists, beach-club vagabonds, local micro-labels, library records and privately released tapes. The music moves lightly between mystical ballads, digital samba and loose, sunburnt dance songs, carried by drum machines, not-quite-tuned guitars and college-band voices.The audience on the terrace remains quietly present throughout, joining the tracks into one continuous, partly improvised set. By the end, it feels less like a compilation and more like a place where you have spent the night, proving that charm can carry further than perfection.

After the success of "Bar Mediterraneo", Nu Genea return with "People Of The Moon", expanding their sound into a broader, more exploratory dimension.Sung across multiple languages (Neapolitan, Arabic, English, Spanish, and Portuguese), the album weaves together diverse influences, from Afro-Cuban rhythms and Anatolian textures to highlife, flamenco, and bossa nova, all filtered through the duo’s distinct Italian perspective."Sciallà", released in 2025, offered an early glimpse into this direction: looking up at the giant mirror ball above us, we catch reflections of our best selves, realizing that "People Of The Moon" is not an imagined cosmic species, but a dimension within us all.A quiet resilience runs throughout the record, never loud or triumphant, but rooted in persistence. This sense of motion defines "Onenon", where Tom Misch shapes a Mediterranean brit-funk groove recalling the basslines of Pino D’Angiò. In "Acelera", María José Llergo channels the urge to chase the moon as if it were an unattainable ideal, in this Andalusian-tinged track featuring her vocals (also present in "Celavì"), supported by flamenco palmas that bring a languid yet propulsive feel.With its driving momentum, "Puleza" recalls the spirit of "Nuova Napoli", enriched by vintage synths and expansive delays, while Fabiana Martone embodies another of the album’s “lunar dwellers.”

West Hill Music is a new sub-label from Periodica Records dedicated exclusively to productions curated by Mystic Jungle and conceived at West Hill Studio in Napoli, a longstanding creative hub active for more than a decade.The project aims to reclaim and reimagine the language of mid-1980s music, drawing from both American and European New Wave through a personal filter that freely and instinctively blends elements of Italo Disco, Rock and Funk. The two tracks, moving within a dance-not-dance dimension, stand as a manifesto of this sonic synthesis and a further step in defining the aesthetic vision of the producer. On "Chasing Light", the collaboration with Igor Sekulovic continues, with the guitarist also appearing here as co-writer of the track, weaving together tense guitars, driving disco-rock bass-lines and slapback reggae-style vocals. "Under Pressure", on the other side, unfolds as a late-night electronic suite: minimal, aseptic and hypnotically repetitive.