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Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Reunited after some fourteen years, following the historic success of their first collaboration Raising Sand (2007), which reached #2 on the UK album chart, generated multi-platinum sales, and earned six Grammy Awards including Album and Record of the Year.
Like its predecessor, Raise The Roof was produced by T Bone Burnett, who worked with Plant and Krauss to expand their collaboration in thrilling new directions, accompanied by drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarists Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell, and Buddy Miller, bassists Dennis Crouch and Viktor Krauss, along with pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl among others.
The album features twelve new recordings of songs by legends and unsung heroes including Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, The Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch and more. Other highlights include a Plant-Burnett original, “High and Lonesome,” and the Lucinda Williams classic “Can’t Let Go,”.

Reunited after some fourteen years, following the historic success of their first collaboration Raising Sand (2007), which reached #2 on the UK album chart, generated multi-platinum sales, and earned six Grammy Awards including Album and Record of the Year.
Like its predecessor, Raise The Roof was produced by T Bone Burnett, who worked with Plant and Krauss to expand their collaboration in thrilling new directions, accompanied by drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarists Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell, and Buddy Miller, bassists Dennis Crouch and Viktor Krauss, along with pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl among others.
The album features twelve new recordings of songs by legends and unsung heroes including Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, The Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch and more. Other highlights include a Plant-Burnett original, “High and Lonesome,” and the Lucinda Williams classic “Can’t Let Go,”.

Have we ever needed great storytellers so badly? Voices to snap us out of our collective grey funk, to pull us out of our narrow, hemmed-in worlds and to lighten our days and enlighten us with their perspectives, Immersing us in their worldview and history. People who can make us laugh, cry, gasp or nod sagely, to see our world anew and not feel so alone. We need stories, vignettes, new windows to look out of, and narrators to help those new visions make sense.

In short, we need Scott Lavene. Born and raised in Essex, but a man of the world who has wandered far and wide, Lavene’s a storyteller who can capture all the madness, joy and frustration of life while singing about worms writhing in the ground. Lavene’s been in bands since his teens, but only really located the voice that makes his new album Milk City Sweethearts so remarkable – that combination of wry observation, humble wisdom, unguarded vulnerability and unpredictable humour – in a music workshop for alcoholics and addicts, long after he’d bid farewell to childhood dreams of pop stardom, and the ghosts and demons that accompany those dreams.

He released an album as Big Top Heartbreak, 2016’s Deadbeat Ballads, and followed it with his first album under his own name, 2019’s droll and marvellous Broke. “I was signed to a little label in Bristol, but then they went skint,” he remembers. This time, however, the disappointment didn’t shake his confidence or his resolve. “I started writing prose, like ‘flash fiction’, and I’ve begun a novel,” he says. “And I’ve started some creative writing workshops for people who’ve come out of my situation.”

Amid all this activity, the songs that became Milk City Sweethearts began to take shape. Lavene noticed the border between his prose and his songwriting beginning to become porous, and the album feels like a clutch of excellent short stories set to music. Without a label, he recorded the album at home, and assembled it in a week in his mum’s garage during lockdown’s heavy manners. It’s a warm, witty, charismatic record with a dark heart at the centre, Lavene sounding dislocated and therefore able to write his everyday stories with a left-handed brilliance and blunt honesty that keeps them so fresh, like classic Kinks, or David Bowie if he’d never had to go to space to feel otherworldly. His songs are talking blues, set to loose and minimal and excellent art-rock with a pop sensibility, the honk of Roxy sax and the guttural weird-funk of Ian Dury’s Blockheads haunting their grooves.

Have we ever needed great storytellers so badly? Voices to snap us out of our collective grey funk, to pull us out of our narrow, hemmed-in worlds and to lighten our days and enlighten us with their perspectives, Immersing us in their worldview and history. People who can make us laugh, cry, gasp or nod sagely, to see our world anew and not feel so alone. We need stories, vignettes, new windows to look out of, and narrators to help those new visions make sense.

In short, we need Scott Lavene. Born and raised in Essex, but a man of the world who has wandered far and wide, Lavene’s a storyteller who can capture all the madness, joy and frustration of life while singing about worms writhing in the ground. Lavene’s been in bands since his teens, but only really located the voice that makes his new album Milk City Sweethearts so remarkable – that combination of wry observation, humble wisdom, unguarded vulnerability and unpredictable humour – in a music workshop for alcoholics and addicts, long after he’d bid farewell to childhood dreams of pop stardom, and the ghosts and demons that accompany those dreams.

He released an album as Big Top Heartbreak, 2016’s Deadbeat Ballads, and followed it with his first album under his own name, 2019’s droll and marvellous Broke. “I was signed to a little label in Bristol, but then they went skint,” he remembers. This time, however, the disappointment didn’t shake his confidence or his resolve. “I started writing prose, like ‘flash fiction’, and I’ve begun a novel,” he says. “And I’ve started some creative writing workshops for people who’ve come out of my situation.”

Amid all this activity, the songs that became Milk City Sweethearts began to take shape. Lavene noticed the border between his prose and his songwriting beginning to become porous, and the album feels like a clutch of excellent short stories set to music. Without a label, he recorded the album at home, and assembled it in a week in his mum’s garage during lockdown’s heavy manners. It’s a warm, witty, charismatic record with a dark heart at the centre, Lavene sounding dislocated and therefore able to write his everyday stories with a left-handed brilliance and blunt honesty that keeps them so fresh, like classic Kinks, or David Bowie if he’d never had to go to space to feel otherworldly. His songs are talking blues, set to loose and minimal and excellent art-rock with a pop sensibility, the honk of Roxy sax and the guttural weird-funk of Ian Dury’s Blockheads haunting their grooves.

IDLES return with their new album, ‘CRAWLER’, an album of reflection and healing
amid a worldwide pandemic that stretched the planet’s collective mental and physical
health to the breaking point.
 Frontman Joe Talbot says: “We want people who’ve gone through trauma,
heartbreak, and loss to feel like they’re not alone, and also how it is possible to
reclaim joy from those experiences.” IDLES albums have always been anchored by
these overarching themes, but the ability of the band to juxtapose beauty and rage
with humour and drama has never felt more satisfying than on ‘CRAWLER’.
 These stories are vividly brought to life through IDLES’ most soul-stirring music to
date, recorded with co-producers Kenny Beats (Vince Staples, Freddie Gibbs) and
IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen.
 Previous album ‘Ultra Mono’ was Number 1 album in the UK, with over 35k sales
week one.
 Huge 2022 January UK tour including five Brixton Academy dates, three at Glasgow
Barrowlands, two at Manchester Warehouse and more. Over 20k UK tickets sold in
the first hour of release.
 Three high budget music videos, written and directed by LOOSE (Lucy Hickling,
Stink Films).
 CD in digipak packaging.
 Deluxe LP mastered at half-speed (45rpm), pressed on deluxe heavyweight 180g
black double vinyl and housed in a gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeves.
 Eco-Mix coloured vinyl LP housed in a single-sleeve jacket and printed inner sleeve.
Eco-Mix vinyl production uses leftover wax that’s already in the factory, meaning
each record is different and the colour is completely random and unique.
 Standard black vinyl LP housed in a single-sleeve jacket and printed inner sleeve.

Far View’ is a compilation of tracks from Joel Vandroogenbroeck’s series of library
music releases for the Coloursound label, a uniquely trippy catalogue of music
vignettes long overdue for their day in the library music sun, remastered from the
original analogue reels.
 The late Joel Vandroogenbroeck was among the rare breed of musicians who defy
all categorization, using music conventions to explore the far reaches of human and
cosmic consciousness. After passing through the jazz and rock worlds from the
1950s through the ‘70s, Joel found new outlets for his expansive vision in the ‘80s
with the Swiss library music label Coloursound. ‘Far View’ draws tracks from these
releases, which form a unique entry in the genre of library music. For the uninitiated,
this is just one way to begin a brilliant musical trip through Vandroogenbroeck’s
undersung career.
 A musical prodigy from youth, Joel arrived at Brussels’ classical Music Conservatory
in the early ‘50s, but his studies were curtailed by the revelation of jazz. Soon, Joel
was touring in groups around Europe and beyond with luminaries like Eje Thelin,
Stan Getz, Bob Brookmeyer and Zoot Sims. As time passed, his musical
consciousness continued to expand: time spent in Africa sparked a deep exploration
of the music of the Middle East. The new rock sounds from England, like The Beatles
and Jimi Hendrix, were mind-blowing. And from Germany came the krautrockers,
with something completely else again.
 Vibing on the eclectic energies of the day, Vandroogenbroeck formed Brainticket,
whose approach to composition fused jazz, rock and a mélange of global musical
traditions, combining a Western rhythm section and analogue synthesizers with an
astonishing array of acoustic instruments; ethnic flutes, sitar, harp, kalimba and all
manner of percussion. Steeped in diverse approaches of playing and listening,
Brainticket drew from prog rock and psych, traditional sounds and minimalist music,
all of which passed through their hands like the tributaries that formed the basis of
what would soon be known as New Age music.
 In the late 1970s, Vandroogenbroeck began composing for sound libraries, with
recordings to be used as underlay music in films, radio and television. Gunter
Greffenius’ Coloursound Library was formed in 1979 with an inclusive vision of
music, including experimental, progressive rock, and some of the earliest examples
of ambient music - styles not well represented in other libraries. Coloursound gave
Joel the freedom to create music in any style or genre, and over the next decadeplus, he embarked on a musical journey that is unmatched anywhere in the world of
library music. Working under the pseudonyms VDB, his output on Coloursound is
some of his most sublime and otherworldly - ranging from dark electronics to
imagined music of the ancient past to ethereal ambient sounds of the future, which
makes sense, as Joel’s records were always ahead and in and out of their time.
 Joel VandroogenbroeckJ passed away in in December 2019, while work was being
done assembling this collection. Curated by David Hollander, whose ‘Unusual
Sounds’ album and book of the same name delightfully explore the library music
world, ‘Far View’ draws from ten of Joel’s Coloursound albums with lovely cohesion.
Featuring brilliantly remastered sound, liner notes from David Hollander, album art
designed by Robert Beatty and reproductions of the Coloursound album jackets, ‘Far
View’ is an entry point to Joel Vandroogenbroek’s mind-bending body of work - sonic
soma to expand your consciousness and vibrate with the cosmos.

There are records with empathy, records which are your friends and then there's the others... There might be little difference between them, a certain "je ne sais quoi", an "almost nothing but still something" which makes the difference between almost pointless and vital records. Despite, or rather thanks to his cynical despair, Matt Elliott's music never holds up a moralizing mirror to us - on the contrary, it creates a compassionate dialogue with listeners like the rhythm of two steps that synchronize to become as one. In 2016, Matt Elliot brought out his seventh solo album The Calm Before whose obscure title is neither exactly threatening nor comforting... the calm before what? Before the storm for sure but maybe also before the great record, the immediate classic we felt might be coming for a long time in the dual discography of the Bristol-born artist working under his own name and his electronic alias Third Eye Foundation. The elegant details and perspectives of Little Lost Soul (2000) already hinted at the upcoming masterpiece from the English singer-songwriter. The Mess We Made (2003) was Matt Elliott's first solo album and portrayed a universe in a kind of flight towards Balkan horizons made up of visceral despair. With the Songs trilogy, he put aside the electronic side of his work to continue working with a minimalist, stark and lucid style of writing. The Broken Man (2012) was full of tears and long laments sometimes carried by Katia Labèque's piano on a record which painted new shades of grey. On this record Matt began working with the producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist David Chalmin (La Terre Invisible) who has kept on collaborating with the Bristol-born singer since then. Their partnership continued on Only Myocardial Infection Can Break Your Heart (2013) and The Calm Before (2016). Stéphane Grégoire is the head of the Ici D'Ailleurs label which has accompanied Matt Elliott since 2005 and perhaps he describes this album the best: "This new record by Matt is without a doubt his best album to date, a record that takes him into another dimension where he fully asserts himself as a songwriter and singer of the calibre of artists like Bill Callahan, Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash." Matt Elliott's other records all seemed like empathic links between each other. Farewell To All We Know is an instant classic based on the sensitive piano and superb arrangements of David Chalmin, the sensitive cello of Gaspar Claus, the subtle bass of Jeff Hallam (who has also played with Dominique A and John Parish). There is a clear form of alchemy in all of this and still we find Matt Elliott's usual atmospheres and scenery, the same Eastern European folk music, long songs that take time to settle over time. Everything is the same but also is transfigured. By making his music stark and purifying and redefining the subject matter, Matt Elliott's work became so much more delicate. However this work is never frail nor really turned in on himself and thus becomes like a vital tune that vibrates and unfolds. The opening song Farewell To All We Know seems torn between the fear of what tomorrow may bring, inevitability and hope for the future in a permanent and progressive dramatic tension expressed by his Spanish guitar, the impressionist style piano and Matt's voice teetering on the edge of whispers. A funereal tribute to endless twilights and the dawns we all dream of seeing. There are touches of Leonard Cohen from Songs from a Room or Thanks For The Dance in The Day After That with Gaspar Claus's counterpoint cello. There is no spirit of resignation in Matt Elliott's work - life's path has to be followed against all odds. We have to follow the river's flow to reach the immense ocean and its infinite freedom. The haunted instrumental Guidance Is Internal harks back to the atmospheres of Howling Songs (2008) with its guitar parts full of scansions and muted threats. The music is transcendental but never seems afraid of the risk of falling. This is also what Bye Now tells us with its quasi-obsolete simplicity and sunburst melancholy reminiscent of the work of Luiz Bonfá, Bill Evans on Peace Piece or laidback crooners of the 50s. In Farewell To All We Know, Matt Elliott incessantly alternates between the dual desires to face up to the world or to protect himself from it. Hating The Player, Hating The Game is a lucid statement about the dullness of our daily lives sometimes, our right to get out of the game and no longer want to be part of it. Matt Elliott is tender but spares no one, particularly himself. Aboulia speaks of the tiredness of living and of looming death while Crisis Apparition says that there is always a time for reconstruction after chaos. This is like initially wearying wandering in the ruins of Aleppo with the slow dilution of the melody into a hallucinated drone. However the smell of great fires always fades and the earth always regenerates. Matt Elliott seems to suggest that the survival instinct is stronger than any cold winds could ever be. Matt Elliott never sings of certainties and prefers possibilities. Possibly the worst is over? Maybe... Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again. Farewell To All We Know shows us the distance that still needs to be walked and he walks next to you - right next to you, he is the friend who doesn't spare you the truth like all true friends really do.

Both noted for strikingly forward-thinking bodies of solo work dating back to the 1990s, the duo of Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi - collaborators for the better part of a decade - reemerge with 'Palimpsests’, their first outing with Shelter Press. Built from deconstructed layers of texture, tone, and arrhythmic percussiveness, the album’s 2 sides distill 6 years of work into 9 splintered, airy reimaginings of minimalism - each surprising, creatively rigorous, and startlingly beautiful - that rest at the outer reaches of contemporary electroacoustic practice and musique concrète.

Based in Berlin and Milan respectively, Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi have individually carved singular paths across numerous disciplines within experimental music for more than 20 years, each deploying sampling, synthesis, and acoustic sources to weave their own, distinct worlds of sonorous abstraction. Brought together by years of friendship and a shared devotion to layered texture and complex, fractured structure, the pair first joined their creative energies in 2013, a collaboration that culminated as the LP, ‘Holiday For Sampler’, issued by Planam.

'Palimpsests’, the duo’s second outing, draws its material from a series of improvisations made by the Pekler and Ielasi in Milan during 2015. Over the ensuing six years, those recordings would undergo various transformations - cut, reworked, sampled, and added to by each artist, working at geographic distance between Berlin, Kyoto and Monza - before culminating, like the album’s title suggests, as a unique manifestation of musical palimpsest; “an object reused and altered, while still bearing visible traces of its earlier form”.

With each of the album’s compositions nodding toward a city with which Pekler and Ielasi hold biographical connections, 'Palimpsests’ constructs sound as poetic metaphor; a series of ghosts - traces of memory, image, and action - cut and reassembled, in cycling permutations, before been set into action at a glacial pace with layered, transparent forms.

Defined by remarkable restraint and pointillistic precision, across the album’s two sides Pekler and Ielasi weave the fractured remnants of their sessions - reduced to glitches and warbling fragments of texture and tonality - into pulsing expanses of spatial ambiance that defy imagism, blur the boundaries between the synthetic and organic - reducing their sources to a series of unknowns - recast the boundaries of electroacoustic practice on markedly singular terms.

Shelter Press is thrilled to present 'Palimpsests’, another brilliant outing from the duo of Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies on black vinyl, with artworks on printed inner and outer sleeves by Traianos Pakioufakis.

WAR’s head-nodding mix of music and message started a revolution 50 years ago that continues to win over the hearts and hips of fans around the world. “Greatest Hits 2.0” will be available 29th October and is a new, career-spanning collection that expands on WAR’s platinum-certified 1976 greatest hits album, featuring the legendary songs “Spill The Wine,” “Low Rider,” “Galaxy,” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

WAR’s “Greatest Hits 2.0” 2LP contains 20 tracks, 2CD contains 24 tracks recorded between 1970 and 1994, including the gold-certified singles “Slipping Into Darkness,” “The World Is A Ghetto,” “The Cisco Kid,” and “Summer.” Another gold single, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” stayed on the charts for 31 weeks and became the soundtrack to the US-Soviet space mission where astronauts and cosmonauts linked up in the spirit of friendship. In the modern era, it has been streamed more than 100 million times. Also included is the #1 R&B smash “Low Rider,” which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014.

In the collection’s liner notes, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano says GREATEST HITS 2.0 does more than capture WAR at its creative and commercial peaks. He writes: “All the big hits are here, of course, in chronological order from the Eric Burdon days up through cuts from 1982’s underrated Outlaw…But what I love about this collection is that it’s a symphonic suite for a perfect Southern California Sunday afternoon, the kind the rest of the world wants to experience but can only dream about. You can envision it by playing these albums from start to finish.”

Paz en La Tierra is a result of a search by the Meridian Brothers & Conjunto Media Luna of the heart of something that can be called a 'power format' of Colombian Caribbean music; Accordion , Guacharaca, Caja, Congas, Electric bass, and vocals.

Departing from this idea, and casually working with the music of a documentary on the famous singer Diomedes Diaz, Iván Medellín (accordionist of Conjunto media luna), and Eblis Álvarez from the Meridian Brothers, embarked on a new work building a sound exclusively on the traditional format, searching for several spaces between the lines in the universe of accordion in Colombian music.

The duo departed from the basic: the line of vallenato, the most famous in the country but not the only one, the line of sabanero music more of the lands of Sucre and Córdoba inclined towards cumbia, bullerengue, son vallenato among other airs fed the group's ideas. The Barranquilla center deserves a separate mention, due to its cosmopolitan approach, using all kinds of influences, from the Caribbean islands to ancient rhythms or even modern rock and funk, also used as an inspiration for this record.

In the process, new ways of melody appeared and new ways of expression emerged. Although the rhythms used in the record are rooted in the traditional, the duo glitched those rhythms turning them into new directions in the style, using exclusively the past references to transmute the sound into something that looks inside a parallel future.

Using several theatrical situations, alterations in musical structures, and slight deformations of the traditional harmony (a tonal center and its dominant) the result of "Paz en la Tierra" is enigmatic and charming, and at the same time directed towards the dance floor keeping the past alive and flourishing the essence of the tradition.

New York United is an experimental group at the musical intersection of a classic New York avant-garde scene and forward-looking electronic production. Comprised of multi-instrumentalist and 577-cofounder Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Flute,Trumpet, Clarinet), electronic producer Tobias Wilner from Blue Foundation (Synthesizers, Percussion, Vocals, Piano, Guitar), Wu-Tang Clan bass playerDjibrilToure and 577’s Federico Ughi (Drums), their sound reflects their decades of collaboration. This second volume follows their celebrated debut, the eponymous New York United (2019), and matches its characteristically dreamlike effect, while maintaining a steady, rhythmic momentum. Like the first volume, this album was initially recorded in an improvised studio performance, and manipulated by Wilner in post-recording production, lending a uniquely ambient, electronic effect to otherwise spontaneous composition between musicians. Inescapably connected to its namesake city, the project is a testament to the transformative energy that sustains New York, dissolving individual boundaries into a collective sense of itself

On 18th April, 1980, after decades of anti colonial struggle, the Zimbabweian flag was finally raised at midnight at the Rufaro Stadium in Harare. Not long after, the words "Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Marley and The Wailers!" rang out, and Zimbabwe's independent future began.

In the years that followed, Africa was to produce it's own reggae superstars, as the likes of Alpha Blondy, Majek Fashek and Lucky Dube swept across the continent and beyond, and there's no doubting Bob Marley's explosive impact on this particular narrative.

Marley's unswerving commitment to liberation and unity ranged from the sweeping spiritual sentiments of iconic hits such One Love and Redemption Song to the galvanising, focused tone of 1979's 'Zimbabwe', and his status as global superstar ensured that his (self funded) part in the countries' epochal celebrations meant that the history of reggae in Africa would always be viewed through the prism of his influence ( Wiki/African Reggae : "In 1980, world-famous Jamaican reggae musician Bob Marley performed in Harare, Zimbabwe, and that concert is often credited as marking the beginning of reggae in Africa")

But in fact, the recorded history of reggae produced in Africa stretches back over a decade before Marley's arrival on the continent, and showcases broad pan - diasporic interflows between the Carribean and Africa, with the UK and the US communities playing influential supporting roles, all helping shape the evolution and development of the genre in Africa from late 60's inception to Marley's arrival in 1980, and then well beyond.

Reggae Africa : Roots and Culture, 1972 - 1981 tries to capture a sense of that evolution, starting in 1972 as Mebussa's ultra rare 'Good Bye Friends' effortlessly captures triangular, transatlantic cultural interflows, with the short lived Nigerian group's bitter sweet chords echoing classic US soul, but laid over a gritty, skanking Jimmy Cliff - esque proto reggae rhythm.

Trying to work out the precise provenance of Black Reggae's 'Darling I'm So Proud of You' (1975) isn't easy, but involves Paris based / African focused label Fiesta, some proper OG co-branding exercise with Bols Brandy ( "Bols Brandy presents Black Reggae") - and deeply infectious, lilting Rocksteady.

By 1976, glorious Nigerian sister duo Lijadu Sisters are echoing the chunky roots of a Dennis Brown or U Roy on 'Bobby', and in 1977, bespoke Nigerian drummer Georges Happi is introing 'Hello Friends' with the soon to be universal signature reggae tom roll intro, before veering leftfield with snatches of spoken Afro - English vocal in between the hooky choruses.

Nigerian giant Chrissy Essien's 'I'll Be You Man' (1979) combines floaty Lovers vibes with catchy ska shuffle, and in the same year, Cameroonian afro-funk/disco heavyweight Pasteur Lappe' drifts seamlessly into skanking, Lovers infected reggae on 'Babbette D.O. ( Rastawoman )' (before a sprawling electric guitar solo reminds us how unselfconsiously eclectic so much African music of the era was.)

And finally bookending the compilation, in chronological terms, fellow Cameroonian Tala AM also swaps his funk and soul for the rootsy and infectious 'Hop Sy Trong' (1981), again highlighting the diverse and eclectic approach to this timeless Carribean musical genre taken by African musicians in the years before that Bob Marley year zero event in Zimbabwe.

Malamanya burst onto the recording scene with their self-titled debut in 2017, a bonafide tribute to the traditional sounds of Afro-Latin music in Cuba and the Caribbean, and perhaps more notably, that tradition's evolution into New York City's quintessential '70s street sound,la salsa. At first glance, you might wonder how this 9-piece orchestra out of Minneapolis of all places would manage to tap into such a sound, but the group's pedigree and vintage recording chops tell the real story. Tracked and mixed inpuroanalog at bass player and engineer Tony Schreiner's Brown Bag Studios, and featuring a multi-national mix of players from around the world, the group's first two original compositions make for an impressive debut on Names You Can Trust. Led by the fiery female voice of Cuban immigrant Zusel Balbìn, "La Tormenta" is one of the finest examples of modern-daysalsa durato come out in recent years. The recipe here includes huge orchestration complete with dual trombones and a rhythm section entirely in step with the group's impressive following ofsalseros —and the flavor is nothing butauthentico. The B-Side "Frio" features the group's complimentary lead male voice incantadorandcongueroLuis Ortego Castrellon. It's a double shot of peak dance floor design, and a prime example of the group's growing international appeal, wherever the taste for the sauce is desired.

Recommended If You Like: Elliott Smith, Hand Habits, Chris Cohen, Sam Evian, Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Magnetic Fields. Press Quotes/Selling Points: "Stewart Bronaugh sings cool and steady about his close experiences with death, what it means to endure your losses, and the gift of being able to recognize the most real love in your life." Angel Olsen. "Spiral Groove" delivers us singer-songwriter Stewart Bronaugh at the height of his artistic powers both visually and sonically. This album is studded with stories of mortality, challenges of addiction and sobriety, and the romance of a lifetime. Recovering from a seizure, Bronaugh’s sudden awareness of the limits of his own body was a “psychedelic experience” that shifted his perspective wildly. No longer “bulletproof, ” Bronaugh splits himself wide open on Spiral Groove, encapsulating all of our existential questions into tidy love songs. You’ll find pianos, string quartets, slide guitar, buzzing synth lines, and plenty of room to breathe. Each song is like a painting you can disappear into, a somber and hopeful spell for life after the end of the world

Recommended If You Like: Elliott Smith, Hand Habits, Chris Cohen, Sam Evian, Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Magnetic Fields. Press Quotes/Selling Points: "Stewart Bronaugh sings cool and steady about his close experiences with death, what it means to endure your losses, and the gift of being able to recognize the most real love in your life." Angel Olsen. "Spiral Groove" delivers us singer-songwriter Stewart Bronaugh at the height of his artistic powers both visually and sonically. This album is studded with stories of mortality, challenges of addiction and sobriety, and the romance of a lifetime. Recovering from a seizure, Bronaugh’s sudden awareness of the limits of his own body was a “psychedelic experience” that shifted his perspective wildly. No longer “bulletproof, ” Bronaugh splits himself wide open on Spiral Groove, encapsulating all of our existential questions into tidy love songs. You’ll find pianos, string quartets, slide guitar, buzzing synth lines, and plenty of room to breathe. Each song is like a painting you can disappear into, a somber and hopeful spell for life after the end of the world

Originally released on Colpix Records in 1963, this striking release consists of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers performing selected music from the Broadway musical Golden Boy. Arranged by three master musicians, Wayne Shorter, Curtis Fuller and Cedar Walton, the music is performed by an amazing all-star line up featuring Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan - trumpet, Curtis Fuller - trombone, Julius Watkins - French horn, Bill Barber - tuba, James Spaulding - alto sax, Wayne Shorter - tenor sax, Charles Davis - baritone sax, Cedar Walton - piano, Reggie Workman - bass, and of course Blakey "the Boss" on drums.

Originally released in 1971. "What's Going On is not only Marvin Gaye's masterpiece, it's the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music, delivered by one of its finest voices, a man finally free to speak his mind and so move from R&B sex symbol to true recording artist. With What's Going On, Gaye meditated on what had happened to the American dream of the past -- as it related to urban decay, environmental woes, military turbulence, police brutality, unemployment, and poverty. These feelings had been bubbling up between 1967 and 1970, during which he felt increasingly caged by Motown's behind-the-times hit machine and restrained from expressing himself seriously through his music. Finally, late in 1970, Gaye decided to record a song that the Four Tops' Obie Benson had brought him, 'What's Going On.' When Berry Gordy decided not to issue the single, deeming it uncommercial, Gaye refused to record any more material until he relented. Confirmed by its tremendous commercial success in January 1971, he recorded the rest of the album over ten days in March, and Motown released it in late May. Besides cementing Marvin Gaye as one of the most important artists in pop music, What's Going On was far and away the best full-length to issue from the singles-dominated Motown factory, and arguably the best soul album of all time." John Bush, AllMusic