Mega Ran and Penny the Great are both Phoenix-based artists with more than a decade’s worth of experience apiece. While they have been in each other’s orbits for some time, things finally lined up for them to work together on a project. For that project, they turned their attention to the anime series Macross, and then enlisted the help of Tampa producer SlopFunkDust to get them over the finish line and deliver their new album, Protoculture Season.

bRavenous is an artist originally from Halifax, now based in Calgary. He got started in the late ‘90s as part of the group CVG, but he’s been working as a solo artist for several years now. In March of this year, we got his latest project, Ghosts of Rockingham, an album looking back at where he came from. Now he’s right back with the follow up album, Ghosts of Rockingham Vol 2.

J.Lately is an artist from the Bay Area who has been releasing music for over a decade. He had a breakthrough in 2015, when he teamed up with Deuce Eclipse to release an EP called The Setup. He’s been working at a steady pace since then, with two albums coming last year, Winnebago and Bodega. Now he’s right back with a new album, Breakfast. With production split between long-time collaborators West Coast Trey and Space Cadet, with an additional track produced by Okeefe, the sound of Breakfast feels like a natural extension of what J.

IAMNOBODI is a producer from Berlin who has been releasing music for about the last ten years. Part of that run included a few releases on Jakarta, including the excellent 2014 album, Snapshots From Berlin. Most recently, he gave us an EP in November of last year called Compass. Now he’s right back with Compass Vol. 2. With Compass Vol. 2, IAMNOBODI is expanding upon the idea of his initial release, this time around giving us nine new tracks instead of four and labeling the release “Body Movin’ Exercises.

AJ Suede is an artist from Seattle who has been active since the mid-2010s. He has really come into his own and ramped up his production in recent years, now culminating in his busiest year yet in 2022. We already saw his debut on Fake Four, when he released Metatron’s Cube with Televangel. Then he came right back with Hundred Year Darkness, collaborating with Small Professor. Now he’s back with his third album of the year, this time a self-produced project called Oil on Canvas.

Yutaka Hirasaka is a guitarist/producer from Tokyo who has been releasing music for about the last four years. Even though he’s only been at it for a short while, he’s given us a lot of interesting projects in that time. Just this past January, we were treated to a project called In the Moment. Now he’s back with a new project, Bed Hair. The idea behind Bed Hair was that Hirasaka took a part of June of this year to wake up and immediately head to his desk and grab his guitar and tap out a few beats.

Joe Armon-Jones is a British keyboardist/producer/musician who has been very active since he started releasing music about five years ago. Since that time, he’s not only released several solo projects, he’s collaborated with the likes of Ego Ella May, Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd, and Jordan Rakei. This year, he has already given us short projects done in collaboration with Asheber and Fatima. Now he’s already back with a new EP done in collaboration with drummer/producer Mala, A Way Back.

Schaffer the Darklord is an artist from New York who has been releasing music since the mid-‘00s. He has kept busy in recent years, with a lot of collaborations, singles, and rarities collections coming to us. His last full-length album came in 2018, as part of The Department of Darkness alongside Vince Vandal. Now he is back with a proper solo album, The Derelict Craft. Much like 2013’s Sick Passenger, The Derelict Craft is also a concept album.

Back in 2011, the trio of Backburner artists known as Timbuktu, Chokeules, and Sivilion put out an EP on Halloween under the name of Swamp Thing. We didn’t know it at the time, we but we had unleashed a monster who would release a horror/sci-fi themed album every Halloween for a decade. It was a lot of fun, and there were variations and collaborators along the way to spice things up.

Emapea is a producer from Poland who started releasing music in the mid-2010s, with a great run on Cold Busted Records. Stateside, he’s probably best known for his 2020 collaboration with L.A.’s Kid Abstrakt, Jazzy Vibes. Most recently, we got an instrumental album from him released in September of last year, Bees, Trees, and Flowers. Now he is back with Random Beats (Remastered Wax Edition). Starting in 2018, Emapea has been releasing a series of beat tapes simply called Random Beats.