Back in 2011, Ben UFO said the records that really get to him tend to have something otherworldly about them. Fifteen years on, Hessle Audio, the label he co-founded with Pearson Sound and Pangaea, is still living by that rule.

Hessle releases are rarer than GTA releases. Not quite, admittedly, but it's closer than you'd think. This is a label that releases music the way Rolls-Royce builds a Phantom: slowly, by hand, and only when every last stitch is right. It hasn't put a thing out since October 2025. So when the notification landed this week, I could finally raise the flag from half mast and bring a full year of mourning to a close.

Record of the Week: Casey Spillman - Lonely

The sound design here is ridiculously tight. Little glitches, textures, pops and sprinkles are scattered all the way through, like a distant alien flicking switches in his ship's cockpit as he steers through the vast nothingness of space. Then the bass drags you back down to Earth. It sounds like it's been ripped straight off a reggaeton sound system, and it ties all those pops and sprinkles together perfectly. Otherworldly, exactly as promised.

TOM LECHEF - Work Rate is a high-energy Speed Garage banger with no discernible brake pedal, and tracks like this are exactly what will peak the warehouses this Autumn. On the other side of the coin, Cloud 9 - Do You Want Me Baby (Osmosis Jones Remix) is more groover than sprinter, a proper funker, but it will have no trouble whatsoever getting a crowd on its feet.

Plenty more to get your ears around.

Tom (japanese.knotweed)

The good: a free magazine for grassroots venues, 50,000 copies deep
Music Venue Trust and Drowned In Sound are launching SHOWNOTES in November: 64 pages, free, and stacked in more than 500 UK venues, paid for by an MVT grant. Money and attention finally landing where the gigs actually happen, rather than next to the arena merch stand.
Read it on Mixmag

The bad: UK nightclubs are down 36% since 2020, while cocktail bars are up almost 40%
The latest NTIA and CGA monitor has late-night venues still 29% below pre-COVID levels, with only 48% of pre-pandemic venues still trading. Themed bars, meanwhile, are up 290%. Britain has apparently decided it would rather be in bed by eleven, and the 2am dancefloor is picking up the bill.
Read it on Mixmag

The ugly: avatar gigs just raised nearly £15m, dead musicians included
UK startup Unit1 is selling "vivid and lifelike" digital shows as a "low-cost" alternative to live music, and it's looking at recreating performances by dead musicians. The timing is exquisite: the cash arrives the same week figures show more than a third of UK nightclubs gone since 2020. Real venues closing, pretend musicians funded. Marvellous.
Read it on Mixmag

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Fred again.. & LATIN MAFIA @ Palacio De Los Deportes: A slightly different flavour for the newsletter this week. In case you missed it, Fred's been spending a lot of time in Latin America, making a mixtape with breakout Mexican band LATIN MAFIA. It's worth a watch for the energy alone, both on stage and in a crowd that can't stand still. And don't panic, there are some proper tunes in here, most of which you've probably never heard before.

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