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Der international gefeierte Schlagzeuger und Produzent Makaya McCraven meldet sich mit einem besonderen Projekt zurück: Vier neue EPs - Techno Logic, The People"s Mixtape, Hidden Out! und PopUp Shop, die gebündelt als Doppel-LP und Doppel-CD unter dem Titel Off the Record (via XL Recordings) veröffentlicht wird. Es sind McCravens erste Studioarbeiten seit In These Times (2022), mit denen er zu seiner charakteristischen Mischung aus Live-Improvisation und Studio-Nachbearbeitung zurückkehrt. Schon jetzt geben die Singles "Imafan", "Away", "Technology" und "Choo Choo" einen Vorgeschmack auf das Projekt. Die vier EPs greifen auf verschiedene Live-Momente der letzten zehn Jahre zurück: Aufnahmen aus London, Berlin und New York (Techno Logic), ein Jubiläumskonzert in Brooklyn (The People"s Mixtape), eine Residenz im Chicagoer Hideout (Hidden Out!) sowie McCravens Los-Angeles-Debüt 2015 (PopUp Shop). "In einer Zeit, in der vieles virtuell und ungreifbar ist, bleibt es etwas Besonderes, wenn Menschen in einem Raum zusammenkommen und Musik teilen", sagt McCraven. "Diese Energie möchte ich festhalten - roh, menschlich, spontan." Mit Off the Record beweist der als "kultureller Synthesizer" und "Beat Scientist" bezeichnete Musiker erneut, warum er zu den prägenden Stimmen einer neuen Generation zählt, die den Jazz ins 21. Jahrhundert führt.

Moving Day captures André 3000 in a very important time. Before New Blue Sun was recorded, filmmaker Dexter Navy films André in Venice Beach, California. The day happened to be when André was moving out of his home and into a new place. The score for Moving Day is a weaving of field recordings from the date of filming, an impromptu Q&A by Navy to André, and post studio recording performed forward then backward while watching the film. The additional track ‘Tunnels of Egypt’ is an unreleased New Blue Sun sessions recording. A x3 trk, 31 min piece of work on Ltd Black LP Vinyl. Marketing activity.

Inspiriert vom Leben und Mythos des Schauspielers Dennis Hopper haben Mike Scott und The Waterboys - die schottische Rockband bekannt für ihre Hits 'The Whole Of The Moon' und 'The Big Music' - dieses umfangreiche Album als Hommage an eine der faszinierendsten Persönlichkeiten der amerikanischen Popkultur geschaffen. Das Album mit ausschließlich eigenen Songs ist sehr konzeptionell angelegt und bringt hochkarätige Künstler wie Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple und Steve Earle zusammen, um Hoppers Leben musikalisch zu durchdringen, einschließlich eines Songs für jede seiner Ehefrauen.

- Die Verpackung enthält Fotos aus dem Archiv von Dennis Hopper

- Col. 2LP: (Burnt Colored Vinyl in Gatefold-Hülle mit bedruckten Innentaschen)

Inspiriert vom Leben und Mythos des Schauspielers Dennis Hopper haben Mike Scott und The Waterboys - die schottische Rockband bekannt für ihre Hits 'The Whole Of The Moon' und 'The Big Music' - dieses umfangreiche Album als Hommage an eine der faszinierendsten Persönlichkeiten der amerikanischen Popkultur geschaffen. Das Album mit ausschließlich eigenen Songs ist sehr konzeptionell angelegt und bringt hochkarätige Künstler wie Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple und Steve Earle zusammen, um Hoppers Leben musikalisch zu durchdringen, einschließlich eines Songs für jede seiner Ehefrauen.

- Die Verpackung enthält Fotos aus dem Archiv von Dennis Hopper

- Ltd. Col. 2LP: (Psychedelic Waves Colored Vinyl in Gatefold-Hülle mit bedruckten Innentaschen)

Mutant, in partnership with Studio Ponoc, are proud to present the soundtrack to their latest animated film The Imaginary, now streaming on Netflix worldwide.

From the studio that brought you Mary and The Witch’s Flower (2017) and Modest Heroes (2019) comes a new sweeping and epic animated feature film based on the novel by A.F. Harrold. Studio Ponoc’s The Imaginary tells the story of Rudger, the made-up and invisible friend of young Amanda, through his eyes as he traverses the magical liminal spaces that Imaginaries inhabit, the dangers they face, and their adventures.

The original score is full of genre swings and poignant beauty. Bouncing from imaginary Yeti attacks, to Venetian Banquets, and Submarine battles, all while deftly navigating joy, and grief and everything in between - Kenji Tamai & agehasprings take us all on a journey that helps us find our imaginations again.

The anthemic closing track of the film, "Nothing's Impossible", written and performed by A Great Big World featuring Rachel Platten. We are proud to present it for the first time in any physical form.

This limited edition release features original artwork by Tom Whalen (continuing his Studio Ponoc series from Mary and the Witch's Flower), and pressed on 2x 140 gram "Zin-Zan Eyes" color vinyl

The Ruins' eponymous EP (also known as the “gray record”) was originally released in the late spring of 1984 and in fact represents a significant moment in the Italian independent music scene of the early 1980s. The then contemporary burgeoning wave of entertainment music contaminated by experimental accents and conveyed essentially by electronic instruments saw the Ruins at the forefront. The band, essentially a duo, formed in Mestre (Venice) in 1978, had already carved out a window of national attention within the Italian new wave in 1981 with their first single “Short wave” and their participation in one of the very first (if not the very first) Italian new wave compilations entitled “Samples Only.”

Following this, between 1982 and 1983, there had been an important interlude in the evolution of the RUINS sound with the foundation of the quintet project (of which SPITTLE/DepenDance recently published an essential anthology titled “BRAIN FLAKES”). At the end of 1983, having concluded the group experience with the consequent and inevitable return to the original duo dimension the musical style further evolved putting even more emphasis on the unique blend of electronic sounds and almost black /soul influences of the new compositions that would later be collected in 1984 in the original version of E.P.

The duo's sound at that particular time was characterized by the innovative use of synthesizers and drum machines for unconventional song structures, which at the same time also encapsulated Ciranna and Pizzin's experimental ethos, thus allowing them to follow a parallel trajectory capable of maintaining a certain distance - while remaining somewhat related to - from the contemporary mainstream pop and the so-called ITALO disco strand.

Ultimately, this 1984 EP by the Ruins - of which Spittle DepenDance now offers a valuable reissue enriched with additional material from the period that has remained completely unreleased until now - is a testament to the band's innovative spirit and its role in shaping the Italian new wave scene, landing moreover to international acclaim and acclaim even over the following decades. With its mix of electronic experimentation and dark pop sensibility, it remains essential listening for fans of avant-garde pop music.

Drag City is excited to present the first ever vinyl pressing of guitarist Lee Underwood"s under-sung 1988 acoustic guitar opus, California Sigh. Guitarist Lee Underwood"s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley"s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music - but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus California Sigh has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! This first time vinyl-edition reveals Lee"s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths and co-production from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence. In the years following the release of California Sigh, Lee wrote and recorded two solo piano CDs, Phantom Light and Gathering Light. Additionally, he wrote Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered, a memoir of their time together, as well as three books of poems, Timewinds (2010), Diamondfire (2016) and Into Light (Poetic Matrix Press, 2021). He continues to live in Northern California.

A heavyweight astral shower of rhythm and vibes, Ash Walker’s third album ‘Aquamarine’ is set for release on
19th July via Night Time Stories / Late night Tales
An avid collector of jazz, blues, soul, funk, reggae, and all things in-between; Ash has DJed far and wide... from the infamous
Royal Mail squat party to the canals of Venice, spinning vinyl in Brixton with The Specials to scattering dub across San Francisco and LA.

Although it felt like the world had stopped spinning, at times, it was during these days, months, and years of uncertainty that many of Venice’s “Stained Glass” songs were conceived. Each member of Venice was quietly and privately cataloguing their artistic interpretation of this new reality and uncertainty by recording or writing down little snippets of ideas, like guitar riffs, melodies, or lyrics…all of these came about while looking at life through a new lens.

They set up the writing circle using an electronic drum kit, small tube amps, direct acoustic guitars and bass and the sm58 stage microphones for vocals. This small and simple setup allowed the band to work on ideas at low-volume levels by using headphones or low-level playback through studio monitors without bothering the neighbors with live drums. “Lunches made by Michael’s wife, Danielle, and visits from their dog Sachi, kept us grounded and let us stay in the creative bubble without leaving that space”, says bassist, Mark Harris. Michael and drummer, Andre Kemp, who co-produced Stained Glass, would later re-record the drum tracks with real drums in a friend’s studio.

“The beauty of this approach on Stained Glass was that one person’s idea would be presented to the other 5 musicians and each guy added a different color to that idea”, says Michael. “Whether it was an unexpected drum beat, or a moving guitar line, those simple ideas turned into pieces of art, colored by the different musical and lyrical contributions. That only happens when you are working that idea out, together, and playing as one unit”.

That was the main inspiration for the album title; like a kaleidoscope, each guy's experience and taste in music was bringing a different color to the songs, but together their contributions made one piece of art, one song. Michael concludes, “if you zoom out, each song becomes its own color and all those songs or colors come together to form one big piece of art, one big piece of ‘Stained Glass’”.

Four years on from his explorative third full-length ‘Aquamarine,’ Londoner Ash Walker returns with an equally ambitious follow-up, set for release via Night Time Stories on 30th June. Alongside a plethora of award-winning collaborators and combining a dizzy- ing array of sounds, ‘Astronaut’ hears Walker push his astral shower of rhythm and vibes to new heights. If 'Aquamarine’ was the take-off of his audial spaceship, ‘Astronaut’ is the cosmic voyage reaching terminal velocity; a rocket-powered masterclass spanning jazz, blues, soul, funk, and reggae.
An avid record collector, Walker has DJed far and wide... from the infamous Royal Mail squat party to the canals of Venice, spinning vinyl in Brixton with The Specials to scattering dub across San Francisco and LA. His own production output is similarly explor- atory: his journeys have taken him far and wide, from tunnels under the river Thames to recording local percussionists in the Atlas mountains of Morocco. Inspired by a deep dive of sounds from artists includ- ing Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, King Tubby, Bo Diddley, 4Hero, J Dilla, Pete Rock, Curtis Mayfield, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich; his first two albums, ‘Augmented 7th’ (2015) and ‘Echo Chamber’ (2016) gained attention from the likes of BBC 6 Music DJs Gilles Peterson, Don Letts and Gideon Coe.

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Drumming Up Trouble, the first release of previously unissued music by Alvin Curran on the label. Collecting works recorded between 2018-2021 and a side-long epic dating back to the early 80s, as the title suggests, Drumming Up Trouble focuses on a hitherto almost unknown aspect of Curran’s encyclopaedic and omnivorous musical world: his experiments with sampled and synthesised percussion. As Curran’s wonderful, wildly sweeping liner notes make clear, his fascination with drumming belongs to the radical investigation of music’s fundamental elements that has marked his output since the beginnings of MEV, who aimed (as he says in a recent interview) to return ‘in some collective way to a non-existent start time in the history of human music’. Whatever kind of music our proto-human ancestors played, he writes, ‘drums were front and centre in the mix. Drums rule!’

In a paradox typical of Curran’s approach, Drumming Up Trouble interrogates this most ancient dimension of music with contemporary technology. On the first side, we hear recent pieces performed using the sampling software and full-size MIDI keyboard setup Curran has refined since the 1980s. Two of them are wild real-time improvisations, primarily utilising an enormous bank of hip-hop samples. Building from polyrhythmic layers of drum machine fragments to wild cacophonies of clashing vocal samples, scratching, and frantic pitch shifting, these energetic and at times hilarious pieces occupy a space somewhere between John Oswald’s Plunderphonics, Pat Thomas and Matt Wand in the Tony Oxley Quartet, and the propulsive Kudoro/Grime fusion of Lisbon’s Príncipe label. They are improvisations are accompanied by two austere, minimal compositions realised in collaboration with Angelo Maria Fallo: ‘End Zone’ for orchestral bass drum and high oscillator, and ‘Rollings’, where a snare roll is gradually stretched and filtered by digital means into ‘floating electronic gossamer’.

The incredible breadth of Curran’s output makes it pretty unlikely that a listener familiar with his work would be surprised to find it branching out in a new direction. But no degree of familiarity with his work can really prepare for side B’s epic and bizarre ‘Field it More’. It’s perhaps best to let the maestro describe this unhinged and infectious offering in his own words: ‘It features an 8 bar funky minimal riff à la James Brown, played on synth and an-out-of-tune piano, synced to a pre-paid patch on the Roland drum machine. Over this is laid a heavily processed track of the voices of dancer Yoshiko Chuma and movie-maker Jacob Burckhardt discussing an upcoming performance of theirs at the Venice film festival, capped by a track of my playing an increasingly out of control blues over the top of all of the above’. Only Pekka Airaksinen’s Buddhas of the Golden Light comes to mind as a reference point that might even vaguely compare to this wild home-brew of drum-machine funk, mad improvisation and squelching electronics, which eventually dissolved into a massive, layered cluster. Ancient and modern, synthetic and human, hysterical and rigorous, Drumming up Trouble is 100% Curran.

West London's post-punk scene is showcased with an EP built on the raw energy of like-minded collective spirits of the time by the short-lived Hamburger All-Stars.

Primarily revolving around the ideas of Justin Adams, a recent arrival in London with his band, The Syndromes, they soon found themselves recording at Street Level Studios - a basement squat in then run-down Little Venice. With producers Kif-Kif Le Batteur (Here And Now / Planet Gong) and Grant "Showbiz" Cunliffe (Blue Midnight / The Fall), their open-minded techniques allowed Adams to develop his increasing interest in the "studio as instrument" principles he loved from the likes of Brian Eno and Lee Perry.

Not a band as such, but friends and musicians from other bands all contributing including The Impossible Dreamers, Alternative TV, Gong and more, this "All-Stars" collective would later go on to be part of, form or affiliated in The Invaders Of The Heart, The Pretenders, Moodswings and Mutoid Waste.

Appearing on just 2 releases, the now rare split 7" and LP for the aptly named 100 Things To Do / Fuck Off Records, the songs initial vocals soon shift into funk and dub improvisations. One Million Hamburgers, Swinging London Pt 2 and Studded Leather Jacket almost fall away into atmospherics, with guitar, bass, percussion and horns augmented by Dr Rhythm machine, shortwave radio and heavy doses of Space Echo that capture the period's rawness and naivety to perfection.

Cuernavaca / Stateville / Frankincense And Myrrh / Apsara / Ancestral / Spin / Zincali


Approaching his eighty-fifth birthday, sharp and lean, Phil Cohran lives a couple of blocks from the lake on the north side of Chicago. His modest apartment is filled with a palpable richness. His cornet and trumpets, zithers, French horn, harp and frankiphones (an electric kalimba of his own invention); his beloved telescope; African art; a mural of the Chinese monastery where Muslim monks bestowed on him the name Kelan ('holy scripture'); hand-printed posters from the culture wars of 1960s Chicago; all reflect a life dedicated not just to music, but also to science and astronomy, to history and activism. In its range of subject matter the track-list of Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble embodies this invigorating and all-embracing curiosity: a Mexican hill-town filled with perfume and flowers... an Illinois state prison where Cohran taught inmates in the 1960s... heavenly dancers in the temples of Cambodia... a tribute to a sixteenth-century Venetian musicologist. Welcome to the musical world of Kelan Philip Cohran.
Cohran was born in Mississippi and grew up in St Louis. In the immediate post-war years St Louis was a jazz heartland, home of stalwarts like Clark Terry and Oliver Nelson (both of whom he played with), not to mention a genius called Miles Davis. In 1950 Cohran moved to another heartland, Kansas City, where he played trumpet in one of the hardest swinging swing-groups, led by Jay McShann (who famously had given Charlie Parker his first job). With McShann he spent 'the best year of my life', touring as far as Mexico and playing proto-rock'n'roll in Texas with the likes of Big Mama Thornton on vocals. Back in St Louis Cohran led his own group, the Rajas Of Swing, whose show involved wearing red jackets, grey slacks, blue suede shoes and turbans.
Then in the mid-50s he moved to Chicago. He had a small group with a friend, the legendary tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, whose regular gig was to play at Sarah Vaughan's weekly 'birthday' parties, an excuse for the Sassy One to splash the cash and have some fun. ('What, Sarah Vaughan would sing with you and John Gilmore' 'No way, Sarah didn't sing, she was too busy partying.') And in 1959, through Gilmore, he was invited to join Sun Ra's Arkestra, at a crucial period in the evolution of that extraordinary group. Effortlessly wrapping traditions as divergent as boogie-woogie and electronica in an Afro-centric, intergalactic mythology of his own making, Sun Ra casts a huge shadow across conventional narratives of jazz history. 'With Sunny', Cohran simply says, 'I found my own voice'.
You can hear the emergence of this voice on the LP Angels And Demons At Play, recorded in 1960 - Sun Ra's masterpiece from the period. On the track Music From The World Tomorrow, against the urgent whipped and chopped percussion of the Arkestra, it is Cohran's zither, initially bowed and then plucked and strummed, which is the track's magic ingredient. More profoundly it was Sun Ra's example - his defiant self-confidence and sense of purpose - that set Cohran on his own (to quote another Ra composition) 'pathway to unknown worlds'. Indeed this spirit of self-belief led Cohran to turn down the invitation to accompany the Arkestra when Sun Ra moved east in 1961.
Staying in Chicago, Cohran founded the Affro-Arts Theater and performed with the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, recording the group for his own Zulu Records imprint. (Co-members went on to become Earth Wind & Fire; Cohran taught the group's leader Maurice White the mysteries of the frankiphone). The AACM, a musicians' collective of immense influence and importance, had its first meeting in Cohran's front room. With Oscar Brown Jr and Gene Page he wrote and performed in a show celebrating the nineteenth-century Afro-American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar. He taught music tirelessly in schools and prisons. His studies into music theory and history led him to the discovery of a key book in his life, Gioseffo Zarlino's treatise on harmony, published in Venice in1558. Astronomy is another passion and another area of expertise. One of the gems of the Cohran discography is African Skies, with its lovely harp playing, commissioned by the Chicago Planetarium in 1993.
In Chicago he also raised a large family. Many of his children have gone on to become professional musicians; eight of them are the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. For each of them, their first teacher was their father, who famously insisted on giving them music lessons not just for several hours after school, but for several hours before school as well. Their father's music was all around them as children; they all vividly remember lying in bed at night not being able to sleep because their father was rehearsing with the Jazz Workshop downstairs.
For the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the voyage to where they are now - whether tearing up festivals from Glastonbury to Melbourne, or touring with Gorillaz, or recording their first album on Honest Jon's - has involved a necessary stepping away from their father's shadow. Phil Cohran is the first to recognise this, happily allowing their sound - heavy on the funk, with the urgency of hip hop never far away - to blossom.
But likewise this album is for all of them a natural step. Recorded in Chicago in June 2011, the idea was beautifully simple - 'my music and their band' as Phil puts it, 'we don't have to rattle on more than that'. Only to point out perhaps that here - in the majestic surge of Zincali, for instance, or in the sheer verve and bounce of Cuernevaca - is music not just filled with the warmth of home. This is music that plumbs the depths and rings with joy.

'Cuernevaca is a town in the mountains south of Mexico City. I was there in 1950 when I was on the road with Jay McShann's band. It's a place close to paradise, a city filled with the fragrance of flowers. I always wanted to go back... In 1974 I taught workshops at the prison in Stateville, the Big House where Al Capone spent time. There's a huge wall around the prison, and once I took Hypnotic there - ha - to see what the future holds for them... Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, sent a caravan of gifts to King Solomon - a caravan that took more than a day to pass one point - and the main gifts were Frankincense And Myrrh... I wrote Apsara in 1967, when Jackie Kennedy was in the news with her visit to the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Apsara were celestial beings, dancers who brought forth the civilization of ancient Cambodia, by dancing in the holy nectar called Amrita... Ancestral is a meditation drone written for my Friday-night residence at the Ethiopian Diamond Restaurant in Chicago's Rogers Park... Spin is the latest of these compositions. Everything in the cosmos spins, from the smallest objects we can see in a microscope to the largest galaxies. Spin is the motion of all things whether it looks like it or not... Zincali is a name Spanish gypsies call themselves. 'Zin', East Africa; 'cali', the people. One of the offshoots in my research into Moorish Spain has led me to Gioseffo Zarlino, the sixteenth-century master of music at St Mark's in Venice. It's said that Bach lost his sight reading Zarlino's treatise on counterpoint. His greatest composition is his setting of the Song of Songs - 'Nigra Sum', 'I am black'. This is my tribute to Zarlino and to the zincali.'

LEGENDARY SESSION ! FIRST TIME EVER ON VINYL AND CUT DIRECTLY FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES WITH NO DIGITAL PROCESS WHATSOEVER!!!

TIP ON SLEEVE PRINTED JUST LIKE THE OLD NIMBUS LP’s FROM THE 70’s and 80’s… BRAND NEW ARTWORK FROM ORIGINAL SESSION PHOTOS AND LINER NOTES BY Mark Weber

At long last…On Vinyl…From original tapes. 3/5ths of the Quintet that recorded "‘the Giant is Awakened’ LP in 1969…this album sat unreleased for 20+ years before it saw a small run on cd (with poor mastering the early 2000’s), now, 40 years after it was recorded, finally released in the original format it was intended for….This LP sounds fresh and amazing…if you’ve only heard the cd, you’ve not truly heard this lost gem in its full glory. edition of 500




Born in Mississippi in 1937 and beginning to play the saxophone at 14, Billie Harris relocated to Los Angeles in 1965 after a 4 year stint in the Air Force, becoming one of the great, unsung forces of underground jazz in the city for many years (he later relocated to the Mojave Desert, where, at last record, he still plays in a church band). A Venice Beach street musician and longtime member of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra - you can hear him playing on Live at I.U.C.C. and Flight 17, as well as Jesse Sharps Quintet & P.A.P.A.’s Sharps and Flats (reissued in 2018) - he was also director of the AZZ IZZ jazz club in Venice Beach during the 70s.




On April 29 and May 3, 1980, Harris entered the studio, backed by Horace Tapscott on piano, David Bryant on bass, Daa’oud Woods on percussion, and Everett Brown Jr on drums, recording, over those two days what was to be his only outing as a leader. Once heard, the tragic lack of further material can’t be ignored. It is a truly stunning piece of work, even more surprising for the fact that it sat unreleased for over 20 years, only to be released as a small, poorly mastered edition on CD during the early 2000’s. Now, finally appearing very first time on the format and label for which it was intended, 40 years after it was recorded, we can hear this lost gem in all its glory.




Harris was 43 years old at the time of the Nimbus West sessions that resulted in I Want Some Water, and the power and experience of his playing, honed over three decades, shows in full force. The band is equally imbued with power, sensitivity, and experience. Tapscott, Bryant, and Brown’s working partnership goes back to 1969, when they recorded Tapscott’s debut as a leader, The Giant Is Awakened. In quintet’s hands, channeling the heavy modal relationships pioneered by Coltrane, heavy spiritual groove lock and unfurl, threaded by the release via incredibly forward-thinking improvisation.




Like so much of the work that came out of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra scene, I Want Some Water has a giant sound, each track long in length, building slowly over time toward towering heights that leave the listener immersed in one of the greatest treasures of spiritual jazz that almost nobody ever heard. Rhythmic, rollicking, and tonally inspired, the joyous interplay of the band goes deep, locked in, and challenging the predictable path, while making nods to numerous, discreet traditions of music.




As far as reissues go, Nimbus’ first ever vinyl pressing of Harris’ I Want Some Water is about as good as it gets. Not only does it deliver some of the best music we’ve heard all year, but it takes huge steps toward allowing a crucial artist to be celebrated in a way that he’s always deserved.

Cut directly from the original master tapes, featuring brand new artwork from the original sessions and liner notes from Mark Weber, and issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, it’s an absolute must that can’t be missed.

LP SKY BLUE VINYL/LOSER-EDITION

Vinyl includes mp3 coupon. Shabazz Palaces' Black Up, the group's Sub Pop debut, was recently hailed as one of the best albums of the decade by outlets like Pitchfork, Gorilla Vs Bear, and Variety. Pitchfork summed it up thusly: "Black Up is drowned in murky instrumentals and bombastic, introspective rhymes. The sounds flirt with jazz but also root themselves in a firm understanding of silence, or the sparse magic of simplicity. The songs teem with unexpected climaxes...From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision." That "impossible vision" has continued to confound and engage Shabazz Palaces fans over the course of four acclaimed albums and two EPs. Each release feels like an evolution, letting the music speak for itself, while slowly revealing more about its creator. With The Don of Diamond Dreams, the group's fifth album, that spirit remains, this time embracing modernism in hip-hop and rap. Featuring 10 tracks in 43 minutes, the album features the highlights "Fast Learner (ft. Purple Tape Nate)," "Chocolate Souffle," "Bad Bitch Walking (ft. Stas THEE Boss), and "Thanking The Girls." It also features contributions from singer/keyboardist Darrius Willrich, Seattle's OCnotes (who collaborated with Shabazz leader Ishmael Butler on the Knife Knights project), Los Angeles musician Carlos Overall, and bassist Evan Flory-Barnes. The Don of Diamond Dreams was recorded throughout 2019 and produced by Shabazz Palaces at Protect and Exalt: A Black Space in Seattle, mixed and engineered by Erik Blood at Studio 4 Labs in Venice, California, and mastered by Scott Sedillo at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Los Angeles.