11/2025 – Shufu Studio

So we have been doing these monthly playlists for quite some time now. Those who have been following us know by now that eclecticism is not a side effect of our process, but its very engine. Often, we impose a narrative framework to make sense of this delightful musical chaos. However, every once in a while, we compile a list that appears, at first glance, to be an exercise in pure entropy – a selection that defies geography, aesthetic, and era.

This is one of those months.

It’s not that the tracks don’t work together, or that the sequencing lacks intention. On the contrary, we believe this playlist tells a compelling story that unfolds beyond any single genre, country, language, or even discipline. Quite on par with our studio’s stated mission. Still, rather than trusting our curatorial intuition alone, we decided this month to interrogate it. What happens if we actively search for hidden structures, historical coincidences and cultural echoes within a playlist that resists easy categorization?

So we did what we do best: we went digging. We explored the anecdotes, liner notes, interviews, historical records and cultural contexts surrounding these musical artifacts.

Strange patterns began to emerge. On a surface level, we noticed a coincidence of nomenclature: an unusual number of artists formed of three-letter acronyms (PGR, EAV, FPM). But as we fug deeper more compelling patterns quickly revealed themselves, particularly around ideas of spirituality, fire, destruction, and resurrection.

Perhaps it’s the season, or perhaps it’s simply what the material demanded of us. Either way, the spiritual dimension is hard to ignore. Some tracks address faith directly, such as Clarence Clarity’s provocatively titled “1-800-WORSHIP”. Others function as devotional acts in themselves, like the ritual chant of “Mahākāla” performed by the Tibetan Monastery of Gyütö – music that exists outside the logic of the marketplace altogether. Yet what recurs most insistently across this playlist is not belief alone, but transformation. And transformation, more often than not, requires a form of destruction.

Here are a few highlights from our excavation:

We begin with the concept of fire as a cleansing agent, embodied by the late Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. In “Kill Them Dreams Money Worshippers” Perry delivers his anti-materialist sermon with characteristic eccentricity.

This track, released when Perry was 83, is informed by a history of flame. 45 years earlier, In 1973, this legend of Dub music built a studio in his backyard, the Black Ark, to have more control over his productions. Over the following years, the Black Ark became the site of some of the most influential recordings in reggae history. Perry was infamous for his working methods: isolating himself for days when mixing, taking no visitors or calls, barely eating or sleeping.

By the end of the 1970s, Perry decided to end it all – quite literally. He burned the Black Ark to the ground and left Jamaica. Decades later, in a grim echo, his Swiss studio burned down as well, this time without his intervention. For Perry, the studio was never just a workplace; it was a spiritual shrine. He has described the original fire as a necessary act of cleansing, a purge of bad spirits.

Another fire, far more destructive by any measure, occurred earlier this year in Los Angeles. In response, the experimental label Leaving Records assembled a benefit compilation to support artists affected by the disaster. From that release comes “Rondo in E Flat” . Reggie Watts is in peak form here, utilizing his vast vocal range, relentless rhythmic propulsion, stream-of-consciousness lyricism and a self-aware embrace of absurdity.

From destruction, resurrection follows.

In 2007, British singer Sam Brown lost her singing voice and stopped performing altogether. More than fifteen years later, she returned with a new album, reconstructing her voice using modern tools like Melodyne to build sung melodies from spoken fragments. A technological revival of a lost instrument.

Elsewhere, resurrection takes more oblique forms. Ilinx build the sonic world of “Flipperen” from the sounds of pinball machines, a near-extinct relic of the past. FPM conjure up the forgotten work of Bob Arkin, sampling a track from his 1974 album “The Resurrection Of Cyranocchio” (we shit you not!). PGR marks another kind of transformation altogether. Known for his staunch pro-communist stance, pioneer of Italian punk rock, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti’s renewed Catholic faith marks a radical spiritual pivot. Naming the band Per Grazia Ricevuta (For a Received Grace), Ferretti framed this late-career turn not as contradiction, but as revelation.

Across centuries, styles, and geographies, from Gesualdo’s chromatic madrigals to contemporary electronic experiments, this playlist seems preoccupied with what survives collapse. With music as ritual, as purification, as a means of reassembly. This month’s playlist may appear scattered at first glance. But look closely enough, and it begins to resemble a single, fractured narrative: one where belief is tested, structures burn, voices fall silent and still somehow, sound prevails.

As always, we hope you enjoy the results of this month’s research. We’d love to hear what resonated with you, or what connections we might have missed.

Reach us at: research@shufu.studio