quête:constantine

At the beginning of the eighties reggae music became increasingly in tune with what was happening in Kingston’s dance halls… probably more so than at any time since the sound system operators had started to make their own shuffle and boogie recordings in the late fifties. The international audience and the critics were too busy looking for a new Bob Marley to appreciate what was happening downtown and failed to acknowledge that this was a return to the real, raw roots of the music. Brash, confident, young record producers who were totally in tune with the youth audience stepped forward and seized the moment…

Oswald ‘Ossie’ Thomas began his apprenticeship in the music business at the age of fourteen and served his time as a record salesman for Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee and Winston ‘Niney The Observer’ Holness before moving on to Miss Sonia Pottinger’s Tip Top Records.

“I ended up working in three record stores on Orange Street from 1976 to 1981… Yeah man! Me deh ‘pon me bicycle till I buy my motorcycle! Them days records were coming out left, right and centre… every day!” Ossie Thomas

It was during his time with Miss Pottinger that Ossie began to produce records for himself and in 1979 Ossie and Phillip Morgan began the Black Solidarity label based deep in the Kingston ghetto on Delamere Avenue. Phillip initially inspired Ossie to start the label and soon Triston Palma, Phillip Frazer and “a youth named Gary Robertson” joined in although Gary later left for Canada.

The Soul Syndicate rehearsed in the Delamere Avenue area and Tony Chin gave Ossie a cut of a rhythm that he used for Triston Palma’s ‘A Class Girl’… the label’s inaugural release. The record was a sizeable success and paved the way for hit after hit after hit on Black Solidarity. Ossie worked with just about everybody who was anybody during this critical period of the music’s development including vocalists Robert Ffrench, Little John, Sugar Minott, Frankie Paul and most notably Triston Palma.

“But Delamere must be considered as a music street sheltering as it does such artists as Junior Byles, Don Angelo, Triston Palma, Phillip Frazer and producer Ossie of the Black Solidarity label…” Beth Lesser
And the man who had made his name in the business selling other people’s records now became one of the most important and influential record producers of the era.
With grateful thanks to: Paul Coote, Nick Hodgson & Hasse Huss

Color Vinyl
Brian Borcherdt (aka Dusted) is the founding member of Holy Fuck as well as LIDS which includes members of Metz and Constantines, and has a single due out this year on Sub Pop. 

The new album is the follow up to the acclaimed 2018 release BlackOut Summer and will provide a welcome musical shot in the arm for fans who have anxiously waited three years for new music from Dusted.
‘The album's process began with Borcherdt finding a long forgotten favourite song, coming back to him in a dream. ‘’That same morning, I found a demo of it, along with countless others, on an old laptop,’’ said Borcherdt. ‘’It was a joyful moment, hearing long lost songs as if I was never part of them. I was a third-party listener thus allowing them to be innocent and unjudged. I added a handful of the favourites to a current set list, which became the inspiration to go into the studio, to lay everything down, live off the floor, simply to preserve them, to keep them from being forgotten again.'
Dusted’s 2012 album ‘’Total Dust’’ was selected for the Polaris Prize Long List in 2013. The support from filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee earned Dusted two songs in his most recent film Demolition and a cameo role in Wild. With Holy Fuck, Borcherdt has been making music for 15 years and has released 5 albums. Holy Fuck has seen their music played on major TV shows like Breaking Bad and Mr Robot as well as ranking over 200K monthly listeners on Spotify and accumulating over 5 million career streams to date. Borcherdt has been releasing solo music since 2002. Previously to Holy Fuck, he was part of By Divine Right whose past band members count Feist and Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning. 

‘’Borcherdt has found a worthy foil who can help him steer clear of sad-bastard solipsism, introducing luminous textures that lend these recordings a greater sense of space and levity.’’ - Stuart Berman, Pitchfork

Black Vinyl
Brian Borcherdt (aka Dusted) is the founding member of Holy Fuck as well as LIDS which includes members of Metz and Constantines, and has a single due out this year on Sub Pop. 

The new album is the follow up to the acclaimed 2018 release BlackOut Summer and will provide a welcome musical shot in the arm for fans who have anxiously waited three years for new music from Dusted.
‘The album's process began with Borcherdt finding a long forgotten favourite song, coming back to him in a dream. ‘’That same morning, I found a demo of it, along with countless others, on an old laptop,’’ said Borcherdt. ‘’It was a joyful moment, hearing long lost songs as if I was never part of them. I was a third-party listener thus allowing them to be innocent and unjudged. I added a handful of the favourites to a current set list, which became the inspiration to go into the studio, to lay everything down, live off the floor, simply to preserve them, to keep them from being forgotten again.'
Dusted’s 2012 album ‘’Total Dust’’ was selected for the Polaris Prize Long List in 2013. The support from filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee earned Dusted two songs in his most recent film Demolition and a cameo role in Wild. With Holy Fuck, Borcherdt has been making music for 15 years and has released 5 albums. Holy Fuck has seen their music played on major TV shows like Breaking Bad and Mr Robot as well as ranking over 200K monthly listeners on Spotify and accumulating over 5 million career streams to date. Borcherdt has been releasing solo music since 2002. Previously to Holy Fuck, he was part of By Divine Right whose past band members count Feist and Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning. 

‘’Borcherdt has found a worthy foil who can help him steer clear of sad-bastard solipsism, introducing luminous textures that lend these recordings a greater sense of space and levity.’’ - Stuart Berman, Pitchfork

The wheels rattle into the thrilling unknown on The Coral’s first new music since 2018, finding the unsurpassed, metamorphic gonzo-pop five-piece in the company of crooks, sell-by-date candyfloss and plastic skeletons as they release Faceless Angel. Of misplaced memories from a place and time that might never have been, the track precedes a new and vividly evocative body of work from the legendary Merseyside band in the form of their TENTH and first, ever double-album: Coral Island.

Squinting into the neon-lit penny arcades and draining an after hours glass with the displaced and dispossessed once the power is pulled, The Coral’s latest caper concerns listeners with the light, shade, thrills and profound melancholy of coastal palaces packed with fun and fright. Both now and then, or perhaps never as fiction encroaches on reality, the feverous anticipation of a night amongst the screams, fights and romance of the fair become part of life on the newly-built Coral Island.

Welcoming travellers one trepidous step at a time, Faceless Angel sits amongst a series of promised audio visual portraits of and inspired by the Island’s inhabitants. Conceived and created by artist, Edwin Burdis, the single’s video was filmed ‘on’ Coral Island itself, a sprawling diorama purpose-built inside a deserted Chinese restaurant in Cardiff. It’s the band and fans’ first venture onto the surreal land mass, populated by surreal sculptural forms, charity shop-finds, looming mountains and gathering storm clouds. Filmed in debt to the traditional model-based filmmaking methods of greats like George Lucas or Ray Harryhausen, Burdis navigated Coral Island at waist-height and via camera-friendly pathways to gather 360 degree footage from inside and outside his and The Coral’s fascinating, fabricated world. The expansive and ambitious installation also provides the album artwork for Coral Island as well as designs for Faceless Angel and future singles.

Indebted in part to the classic pre-Beatles rock and roll era of Duane Eddy and Chuck Berry alongside the clattering of a weary ghost train’s rusted wheels on worn steel, Faceless Angel’s title evokes DC Comics ominous occult detective series, Hellblazer and the broken character of the strip’s protagonist, John Constantine.

The wheels rattle into the thrilling unknown on The Coral’s first new music since 2018, finding the unsurpassed, metamorphic gonzo-pop five-piece in the company of crooks, sell-by-date candyfloss and plastic skeletons as they release Faceless Angel. Of misplaced memories from a place and time that might never have been, the track precedes a new and vividly evocative body of work from the legendary Merseyside band in the form of their TENTH and first, ever double-album: Coral Island.

Squinting into the neon-lit penny arcades and draining an after hours glass with the displaced and dispossessed once the power is pulled, The Coral’s latest caper concerns listeners with the light, shade, thrills and profound melancholy of coastal palaces packed with fun and fright. Both now and then, or perhaps never as fiction encroaches on reality, the feverous anticipation of a night amongst the screams, fights and romance of the fair become part of life on the newly-built Coral Island.

Welcoming travellers one trepidous step at a time, Faceless Angel sits amongst a series of promised audio visual portraits of and inspired by the Island’s inhabitants. Conceived and created by artist, Edwin Burdis, the single’s video was filmed ‘on’ Coral Island itself, a sprawling diorama purpose-built inside a deserted Chinese restaurant in Cardiff. It’s the band and fans’ first venture onto the surreal land mass, populated by surreal sculptural forms, charity shop-finds, looming mountains and gathering storm clouds. Filmed in debt to the traditional model-based filmmaking methods of greats like George Lucas or Ray Harryhausen, Burdis navigated Coral Island at waist-height and via camera-friendly pathways to gather 360 degree footage from inside and outside his and The Coral’s fascinating, fabricated world. The expansive and ambitious installation also provides the album artwork for Coral Island as well as designs for Faceless Angel and future singles.

Indebted in part to the classic pre-Beatles rock and roll era of Duane Eddy and Chuck Berry alongside the clattering of a weary ghost train’s rusted wheels on worn steel, Faceless Angel’s title evokes DC Comics ominous occult detective series, Hellblazer and the broken character of the strip’s protagonist, John Constantine.

Purple Vinyl

Even if you're well-acquainted with composer and multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher's richly varied output, his gentle fifth solo album, Refections of the Invisible World may come as a surprise. Psychedelic lyricism has always been a fundamental aspect of his sonic signature, but his second collaboration with producer Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys, Jessy Lanza, Morgan Geist) finds the Toronto native luxuriating in expansive atmospherics for its full duration.
That's not to downplay the eclecticism he finds within this ethereal landscape. Each track tills its own discrete sonic acreage, and while every one emanates from a clear focal point, the spontaneous impulse that drives Fisher's more audibly improvisational music always remains close at hand. Some pieces unfold rippling aquatic vistas or delight in prismatic guitar arpeggiation, elsewhere his plaintive, blues- infected tenor saxophone wafts like some strange jazz apparition, or becomes a chorus of cosmic murmurs. The presence of electronics is undeniable, but equally irrefutable is the organic instrumental sources of these disparate hues. In fact he's discovered a rare balance: no matter how effects-saturated, every gesture on the record feels palpably sculpted by Fisher's hands and breath. As such, Refections of the Invisible World carries a sense of intimacy at the heart of its diffuse, dream-like sonics.
Fisher has a been a major presence in Canada's music community for more than twenty years—particularly in more experimental and improvisational circles. Nothing short of a guitar virtuoso, he also wields saxophone, drums, and various other instruments with similarly refined musicality, vivid textural imagination, and sometimes feral abandon. His one-man-band tape Garden of Unknowning for Manchester's Tombed Visions, showcase all of this as he spars with different iterations of himself. The Quietus' cassette critic Tristan Bath extolled it as "miraculous," adding that "it’s a visceral experience soaking up this record, and it’s all down to Fisher’s utterly innate sense of musicality." He subsequently cited it in his 2018 contributor's year-end chart for the Wire.
In 2014 his partnership with Nick Millevoi's trio Many Arms on Suspended Defnition (Tzadik) prompted Spin's Brad Cohan to remark "Many Arms have dug even deeper into math-metal wizardry, bolstering their already imposing lineup with gale-force blowing guest saxophonist Colin Fisher, thus blasting their outré sonic blitz into a fire-breathing free jazz otherworld." Fisher later engaged the band's bassist, Johnny DeBlase, to team up with him and Kid Millions (Oneida, Man Forever) as Monas. As an ongoing collaborator to introspective dance music auteur Caribou, Fisher frst appeared in offshoot project Caribou Vibration Ensemble, and subsequently on acclaimed albums Swim and Suddenly. He's also made two duo albums with celebrated Nova Scotian jaw harp innovator chik white for Dylan and Lisa Nyoukis' Chocolate Monk label. In addition to performing alongside the likes of Jaime Branch, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Laraaji, Gerry Hemmingway, and Fred Frith, he has contributed to recordings by the Constantines (Sub Pop), Bernice (Arts & Crafts), Rhys Chatham (Table of the Elements), Born Ruffans (Warp), Anthony Braxton and AIMToronto Orchestra (Spool), and many more.

'Dark Hands, Thunderbolts' is Devon punk-roots trail-blazers, Crazy Arm's fourth album for Xtra Mile Recordings, and comes cold on the calves of 2013's 'The Southern Wild'. A return to the rowdy guitars, epic choruses and Americana twang of their first two albums, this collection of songs finds the band in a reflective but no less indignant mood. Despite spending only three weeks in the studio, it took the band four years to complete. 1ST SINGLE: Brave Starts Here - 20th November 2020 The lead track from the album, 'Brave Starts Here', will be available to stream/download from 20th November (with an accompanying video from film-maker, Russell Cleave). Rigorously road-tested, 'Brave Starts Here' is a breathless ode to heartbreak, loneliness, ageing and self-determination, occupying that sweet spot between bluegrass and punk rock. It's also a tribute to their good friends and label-mates, Larry & His Flask. 2ND SINGLE: The Golden Hind - 11th December 2020 Second single to be lifted from the album and is an acerbic take on the band’s Brexit majority hometown. Punk rock riffola, Appalachian harmonies, syncopated rhythms and anthemic singalongs. 3RD SINGLE: Fear Up - 15th January 2021 The third single out before the album’s release ‘Fear Up’ betrays the band's oft-mentioned fondness for Ennio Morricone, Murder By Death and Constantines with a strong cinematic influence fused with their trademark riffs and choruses. FOCUS TRACK FOR ALBUM RELEASE: Blessed & Cursed - 29th January 2021

'Dark Hands, Thunderbolts' is Devon punk-roots trail-blazers, Crazy Arm's fourth album for Xtra Mile Recordings, and comes cold on the calves of 2013's 'The Southern Wild'. A return to the rowdy guitars, epic choruses and Americana twang of their first two albums, this collection of songs finds the band in a reflective but no less indignant mood. Despite spending only three weeks in the studio, it took the band four years to complete. 1ST SINGLE: Brave Starts Here - 20th November 2020 The lead track from the album, 'Brave Starts Here', will be available to stream/download from 20th November (with an accompanying video from film-maker, Russell Cleave). Rigorously road-tested, 'Brave Starts Here' is a breathless ode to heartbreak, loneliness, ageing and self-determination, occupying that sweet spot between bluegrass and punk rock. It's also a tribute to their good friends and label-mates, Larry & His Flask. 2ND SINGLE: The Golden Hind - 11th December 2020 Second single to be lifted from the album and is an acerbic take on the band’s Brexit majority hometown. Punk rock riffola, Appalachian harmonies, syncopated rhythms and anthemic singalongs. 3RD SINGLE: Fear Up - 15th January 2021 The third single out before the album’s release ‘Fear Up’ betrays the band's oft-mentioned fondness for Ennio Morricone, Murder By Death and Constantines with a strong cinematic influence fused with their trademark riffs and choruses. FOCUS TRACK FOR ALBUM RELEASE: Blessed & Cursed - 29th January 2021

Sarah Benabdallah and Alexis Lebon are a very 21st century musical coupling, absorbing their metropolitan surroundings while tapping into a rich cultural heritage, not unlike fellow countrymen PNL or the Dutch band Altin Gün. A Paris-based duo set for greatness they might be, but it’s fair to say Mauvais Oeil are operating under a misnomer: while their name means “evil eye” in French, you’ll only experience enlightenment when you lay eyes (and ears) upon them. Mauvais Oeil are set to release their debut EP Nuits de velours, a magical melting pot of musical shibboleths and contemporary grooves. On opener “Mes nuits de velours”, we’re transported in the land of 1001 Arabian Nights, with the music every bit as smooth and alluring as the subject matter. “Afrita” is a trance-inflected musical acclamation evoking all
the madness and gayety of a midsummer souk. Sung entirely in Arabic with delightful blasts of strings, it’s a North African-influenced banger with a delicate wistfulness. “Asha” meanwhile is in a reference to Asha Vahishta, the middle-eastern concept of truth
according to the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. Sung again in Arabic, it features catchy Phrygian guitar manoeuvres played over ambient analogue keyboard strokes. The E.P. is completed by “Constantine”, a song of longing, dedicated to the home of Sarah’s forebears. Having met in the arty northern faubourgs of Paris, Sarah and Alexis soon developed a musical telepathy and a shared sonic agenda, mining their own histories for the profound
cultural roots that underscore Mauvais Oeil, while absorbing the ubiquitous sounds of the suburbs, where Turkish, Armenian and Ethiopian music ring out. The band’s moving and melancholic chansons are delivered with a delightful French pop sensibility, making Mauvais Oeil one of the most exciting and musically diverse prospects in 2019.

Only 150 worldwide

After more than 10 years in the game and a string of successful
EPs to his name, Idriss D releases his first proper album on his
own Memento Records. At first conceived as a succession of
singles for his Dib 00' series (the first two being Constantine
and Alger), the project then became more of a collection of
dance floor tracks influenced by what he likes to play in his DJ
sets. The title Amalgamation' comes from the desire of
bringing together his life experiences over the last few years,
both music-wise and from a marketing and management angle,
this time exclusively focusing on himself and gathering all the
inputs in one single piece of work. Transition''s atmospheric
vibe and ethereal sounds open the LP with a blast of hazy
vocals and noises, followed by the percussive and trippy Casa
Baratas', a nod to the early 90s Acid House movement.
Karma''s pounding kick drum and stripped down arrangement
are a true example of Minimalistic Techno at its wildest. The
more personal RIP Ouarda' was composed in memory of his
grandmother who passed away: dark and hypnotic, it stands
out as one of the most experimental on the album. Title track
Amalgamation''s landscape of lush eerie synths makes it a
blissful comedown number, while Parall-el''s bouncing rhythm
speeds up the pace to high effect. Strong Hayet' is dedicated
to his mum, a source of continuos strength in Idriss' life,
both in good and difficult times: the heavy bass line and almost
obsessive looping vocals and hi-hats are icy and dramatic.
Barn''s pitch shifts and manic vocal samples swing through a
maze of rim shots and toms, its stomping groove and pulsing
beats closing off the album with a bang.