Ostinato Records

05/09/2025

808 Xamar: Exiled Digital Somali Sounds from 1990s Saudi Arabia.

A rare digital relic from the 90s. The story of one woman's journey, smuggled as a stowaway en route to Saudi Arabia fleeing Somalia's civil war. An illicit recording one night in Jeddah. Banaadiri rhythms on 808s, synthesizer fueled hypnosis, early computer software edits. Among the first recordings created when Somalia’s rich music scene was forced underground and scattered across a vast diaspora.

Available only on Bandcamp.

26/03/2025

“Put another way, the times are a-changin'.

In fact, Synthesizing the Silk Roads makes the case they always were.”

A Soviet-era Central Asian pop music anthology shines a light on the region's ethnic diversity and music that transcends genres from Korean brass bands to Uyghur garage rock to Crimean jazz.

05/03/2025

A Central Asian Soviet-era pop music anthology shines a light on the region's ethnic diversity and music that transcends genres from Korean Brass Bands to Uyghur garage rock to Crimean jazz.

01/03/2025

Natalia Nurumkhamedova, the lady on the back cover, holding the Synthesizing the Silk Roads record 🙌

28/02/2025

1 of 2 mini documentaries on NPR about Synthesizing the Silk Roads! A deep dive.

The discovery of one old record is breathing new life into a genre of Soviet-era music that hasn't been widely heard overseas for decades.

13/10/2024

A new album of rare grooves from Soviet Central Asia reveals an era when the region was a crucible for musical fusion.

19/09/2024

Monocle’s Fernando Augusto Pacheco speaks with the founder of Ostinato Records Vik Sohonie, who just released a new compilation entitled ‘Synthesizing the…

02/09/2024

“A wonderful achievement of preservation and presentation that will satisfy anyone’s lust for the driving, retro-cool timbres of 1980s electronica.” — Bandcamp Album of the Day!

Ostinato Records showcases the wide breadth of Uzbekistani electronic music in the 1980s.

30/08/2024

And it’s OUT NOW! ostlp.lnk.to/silkroads

Synthesizing the Silk Roads, a deep dive into Soviet Central Asian disco, jazz, funk, and other genre defying styles.

Available in a trifold 2LP package on black and electric raspberry vinyl, digital and streaming.

Drop the needle, and you’re not just hearing rare Soviet dance music. You’re journeying the Silk Roads, revisiting raucous USSR disco nights, and immersing in grooves that inspired Soviet youth to envision a different future, ultimately unraveling the Iron Curtain from within.

If you haven’t picked up your copy already, there are a handful of limited edition color LPs left, but the black vinyl is there for one and all!

Of course, be sure to support your local record shop!

Listen loudly and irresponsibly!

27/08/2024

The third and final single from Synthesizing the Silk Roads comes from diva Natalia Nurumkhamedova. “Nashi Ssori (Our Quarrels)” is streaming now. The comp is out this Friday!

12/08/2024

The story of how so many of the records we used for this comp came about is fascinating, a forgotten tale of WW2. When the N***s invaded the Soviet Union, leaders in Moscow evacuated 16 million people from the front lines to — you guessed it — Soviet Central Asia, and in particular Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Among those onboard the trains bound east were doctors, engineers, playwrights, poets, but also, crucially, gramophone engineers who knew their way around vinyl manufacturing. When the war ended in 1945, they set up the Tashkent vinyl plant, part of a network of plants across the Soviet Union that by the 1980s were pumping out 200 million LPs, some bootlegs but also many Soviet originals. Dead stock from the Tashkent plant, shut down in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, forms the foundation of Synthesizing the Silk Roads.

(The electric raspberry color vinyl is almost sold out. The album’s out August 30 and everything you need is at our Bandcamp.)

02/08/2024

The second single from Synthesizing the Silk Roads is a true disco jam. Taken from a live recording, “Bu Nima Bu” should jam any dancefloor, especially with its military-punk call and response. The band, Original (yes that’s the name!), was a cult outfit in Uzbekistan and its leader, Davron Gaipov, was a proper disco divo. He was thrown into a Siberian gulag for hosting too many raucous underground parties fueled by drugs and alcohol. Upon his release from his tundra prison, he recorded all 3 of Original band’s tracks on the compilation, showcasing the resilience of artists in the USSR. There’s two versions of Bu Nima Bu on the comp—a live version and a studio version. We’ll leave it to you to decide which one is more of a banger. The live version of Bu Nima Bu is now streaming on all platforms. The first photo is a 45 cover from the band, and the first 45 we picked up from Central Asia years ago that made us decided we gotta make this comp happen. BU NIMA BU!