Various Artists - Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy Presents Balearic Breakfast Vol:5 Various Artists

Take a look at the sonic landscape of club culture today and Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy stands out as one of the pioneers on many fronts. Whether she’s dropping Cosmedelica remixes on her Love Dancin’ sound system at We Out Here festival, hosting listening sessions for her hugely influential Classic Album Sundays, or telling ‘Turntable Tales’ for BBC’s Radio 4, she has created new avenues for experiencing music and thinking deeply about how it affects us and our communities.

So here we are at Volume 5 of this series that once again captures Colleen’s unique take on Balearic. ‘Anger is Divisive’ runs the spoken word sample weaved into the pastoral ambience of ‘Quiet Storm’ from Sewell and the Gong’s Patron Saint Of Elsewhere on Chris Coco’s DSPPR label from 2025. It’s a fitting opening to a collection put together with and for love.

Born from the same lockdown isolation as Balearic Breakfast, ‘Fruits of Life’ from Sakura Murakami’s 2020 album Hot Liquor offers a Tiki flavoured cocktail of tropical psychedelia. Digging deeper into her crates, Colleen then uncovers Flayer’s ‘Wanna Get Back Your Love’, a slow and sleazy piece of cosmic soul from Italy in 1983.

Richard Earnshaw’s ‘Rise’, featuring Roy Ayers and spoken word artist Ursula Rucker, was hidden away on his only album from 2019. This slow jazz infused groover proves to be the perfect segue record as the collection hits the dancefloor with the Spiritual Life style deepness of ‘Ore Yeye O’ by Moroccan house producer Cee ElAssaad and vocalist QVLN (Quetzal Guerrero).

We then return to spoken word with Joshua Idehen’s diasporic club anthem ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’. You’re in it deep now, head down next to the speakers as The Seven Ups bring you ‘A Cosmic Scale’, a heavy slab of psych rock meets afrobeat by way of Melbourne. We then take a trip over to Sheffield where Richard Barratt under his Crooked Man alias reunites with his dance music subverters All Seeing I for a wonderfully skewed mutant disco classic.

Bringing things down gently with the sun kissed ‘80s soul of Lovetempo ft Wattison’s ‘Wanna Be With You’ (ft. Mattison) out of Brooklyn, Colleen eases into the perfect exit to her eclectic journey with Santana drummer Michael Shrieve joined by Kevin Shrieve and the great Klaus Schulze for the Berlin new age cosmic epic from 1984 ‘Transfer Station Blue’.

Music for the head and feet brought to you with love by one of our masters of sonics and selection.

As with each of the previous Balearic Breakfast albums, many of the tracks featured have never been available on vinyl before and the ones that have been usually go for eye watering sums of money on Discogs. Please be aware that these albums sell out quickly.