Don Philippe - Velvet Breaks [Sonar Kollektiv]

Format: LP in printed sleeve.
CAT: SK540LP

Sonar Kollektiv proudly presents the new album from lo-fi veteran Don Philippe. Titled Velvet Breaks, this entirely instrumental record will be released on October 10, 2025, in both vinyl and digital formats. With its textured production, broken beats, and a very particular analog warmth, Velvet Breaks is a slow-burning, introspective work: a meditation on fragility, erosion, and beauty in decay.

Don Philippe, real name Philippe A. Kayser, brings decades of musical experience to the project. A professional drummer in the eighties and later active as a pianist and guitarist, Kayser has worked as a composer and producer from his own studio since the nineties. He is also a co-founder of the legendary German hip-hop group Freundeskreis, one of the pioneering acts that defined the sound and culture of rap in Germany.

Since 2015, Don Philippe has focused on instrumental hip-hop, with over ten solo albums released through various independent labels, building a global fanbase on streaming platforms. His music bridges the soulful subtlety of jazz with the rawness of classic boom-bap, always with a delicate and cinematic touch.

In Velvet Breaks, this mastery is fully displayed. From the dusty crunch of the drum loops to the hazy elegance of Rhodes melodies and tape-saturated fragments, the album constructs a fragile world where silence and space are as important as sound.

The record unfolds like a narrative, with each title suggesting a step in a process of disintegration: "fibers displaced," "edges," "a rupture," "tension," "entanglement"—culminating in the eponymous track "velvet is broken." No words are needed here: the beats speak for themselves, telling a story made of fragments, textures, and ghostly grooves.

With Velvet Breaks, Don Philippe delivers a deeply personal and musically rich work to his catalog: a record for long nights, solitary walks, and moments of quiet reflection. It is an ode to imperfection and emotional precision.