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As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

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Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

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Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

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Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

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"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

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Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

Rance Allen, from Monroe Michigan, with older brother Tom on drums and younger brother Steve on bass recorded their first record and won a talent contest in Detroit and were subsequently signed to Stax's Gospel Truth label in 1971. After four albums Rance signed to Capitol and made his most highly acclaimed album 'Say My Friend'. It was produced by the Mizell Brothers (responsible for iconic albums on Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphrey, Gary Bartz and Johnny Hammond). 'Reason To Survive' and 'Peace Of Mind' were the two singles, and both these 7' versions have been impossible to find. Original copies are expensive and extremely sought after. Expansion can now deliver both A sides back to back remastered from the original tapes in all their glory. The full album is available on CD from Soul Brother Records.

It’s taken a long time for me to feel good about myself,” says Andreya Triana of the journey to her third album. “As a musician, as a woman, it’s difficult getting to that space. It’s really wonderful where you reach that time of having more good days than bad.” That sense of celebration is what drives ‘Life In Colour’, Andreya’s most confident, instinctive and heartfelt work to date; a record that celebrates love, freedom, independence and womanhood. “‘Life In Colour’ is about stepping into my womanhood and being like ‘OK, I know this space. Let me try some s**t. I know it’s going to be hard but I know it’s going to be OK’. I just wanted to put some good energy out there.” The first taster of that sweet release was teased with lead single ‘Woman’ - a soulful pop anthem of self-love, tracking Andreya’s life from awkward teen to mighty queen, from memories of heartache and trauma to triumph. “You know when you’re feeling so uncomfortable in yourself and you just want to be swallowed up into a hole in the ground?,” Andreya recalls of her youth. “This is about moving on from being a victim to a place of strength, to feeling like a superhero. “Anyone who has gone through difficult times like I have, should know that it’s absolutely possible to get to a good place. It doesn’t define who you are or your future. You have to fight like hell every day to move forward but anything is possible. We’re all full of so much goodness. Don’t lose sight of that.” The lyric video is a tribute to Andreya’s mother, grandmother, the strong females of her life and the many sacrifices that women make day-to-day, generation after generation.

The third album 'Life In Colour' by the MOBO nominated British soul/jazz singer Andreya Triana who's collaborated with Bonobo, Flying Lotus been endorsed by the likes of Gilles Peterson & Jamie Cullum.

Ever since jazz took its bop and free turn, each generation solved this eternal equation: how do you reconcile serious music and simple pleasure? On each of these occasions opinion was divided between orthodoxy and hedonism.

Trained in the theoretical rigours of classical music and jazz, experts on their instruments, and brought up on hip-hop culture, techno and house club scenes, Matthieu Llodra and Arthur Donnot - composers of KUMA – go against the conventional rules because they like to challenge their musical boundaries.

"Honey & Groat" is just like a bear (KUMA in Japanese, emblem of the band): behind the sweetness and apparent placidity, plenty of power. The resulting urban groove is reminiscent of 70's soul jazz with a contemporary sound: where instrumental talent meets pop simplicity.

"Good music never dies!" - This was Diane Ellis' mantra when she set out to produce this, her first record, in 1979. She recalls hearing the Rose Royce classic Love Don't Live Here Anymore on the radio and instantly thinking it would make for a great reggae cover, immediately envisioning the sound she was looking for. Drafting in the legendary Boris Gardiner and vocalist Sharon Forrester they created this timeless version of a perennial classic - now available here in it's full extended discomix glory for the first time on 12" since it's original outing, and backed with hornsman cut placing Dean Fraser's sax front row center.

The record was made when Ellis was studio manager for the world-famous Tuff Gong studios, but wanted her outing as a record producer to be a totally independent venture - gaining the great Bob Marley & the TG team's blessings in the process. And so Aquarius Studio in Half Way Tree was where it was all laid-down. Diane credits the Legendary owner and pioneering producer, Herman Chin Loy, as also being of great help on the record, providing a guiding ear throughout the process.

Despite this the evident strength of this first production, Ellis would follow up with only one other production, Junior Tucker's cover of "One of the Poorest People" (this time one recorded at Tuff Gong studios, and releasing the 56 Hope Road subsidiery). While both records performed well on local radio and charts, Diane exited the music industry shortly after. Now 43 years later, Diane is overjoyed her production is having a comeback, saying that "the support and love felt during the project can never be replicated, and I give thanks to all who supported then and now".

October Drift embark on their second album campaign after the acclaimed ‘Forever Whatever’ LP and ‘Naked’ EP in 2020. Their most successful single to date ‘Airborne Panic Attack’ was released late 2021. I Don’t Belong Anywhere, is a taut, visceral record, a step forward for the band into an even more powerful, brutal sound following their highly acclaimed debut album forever Whatever 2018. Far less introspective than their debut, I Don’t Belong Anywhere is October Drift’s totem for bringing all of us together again. “A feeling of not belonging is something everyone feels or has felt,” explains Kiran. I Don’t Belong Anywhere features previously released singles including dark grungy‘Insects’, “a coming-of-age song, about feeling life pull you in different directions”, and the biting reflection on the harsh backdrop of 21st Century living airborne Panic Attack’. The album is about connection and one that’s truly from the heart, rich with added layers of meaning it finds the band poised to explode across 2022 with their most thoughtful and exciting record yet.

Marked by resilience, maturity, and the optimistic joy of a creative resurgence, Pat Green’s Miles and Miles of You is the work of an icon reclaiming ground only he himself could have ceded. Ten fresh tracks feel like the spiritual exhale of a celebrated troubadour, taking fans on a journey to the other side of turmoil… and to a place where the old ways feel new again.

Credited as one of Texas country’s modern-era founding fathers, Green has traveled many roads in the 25 years since his debut album, Dancehall Dreamer. A Grammy nominated singer-songwriter with a restless creative spirit, his career has gone beyond the bounds of a “country star” to include the work of a painter, sculptor, philanthropist, family man and more. But one constant has remained – his vision.

Green’s 14th album overall, Miles and Miles of You is also his first in nearly seven years – since his inspiration-first writing style means he won’t force a song into existence. But that philosophy also makes it possible for a whole album to arrive in a dam-burst of expression, and Green now calls Miles and Miles of You an “effortless” project.

“It was just so smooth and natural,” he says. “I write the song when it comes, and it was like ‘Man, we’re on a roll.’”

Recorded outside Austin with producer Dwight Baker (Bob Schneider, Josh Abbott Band), more of that story is revealed with each track, as Green and his band mirrored the loose vibe of the songwriting with country balladry, dancehall energy, soul-baring reflection and at times, a swampy blues strut. “The older you get, you just have more to think about,” he says. “So that’s
what this record is – a guy with more to think about, coming through a hard time and into something as fun and beautiful as creation. I’m just gonna take the ball and run with it.”

Before 2020, Ocean Alley could have broken. The six-piece had spent two years touring relentlessly off-the-back of their breakthrough record Chiaroscuro, spending months on the road and away from their loved ones, on the brink of burnout. Then the world shut down. And although there was a universal experience of suffering and isolation during ex-tensive lockdowns, Ocean Alley found themselves gifted with a forced break - where time slowed down and they could be with their loved ones, while also finding space to recon-nect with themselves. This luxury of time allowed experimentation in new ways for the band, who since inception had always felt their way through the music with communal jam sessions. It was uncharted territory for the group who for the first time operated as a bedroom band - particularly frontman Baden Donegal who revealed that a number of tracks on their upcoming fourth album Low Altitude Living started as “shitty GarageBand demos” he recorded solo at the beginning of lockdown. When comparing the creative process of their three previous full-lengths - the ARIA-nominated Lonely Diamond (2020), their Gold-certified breakthrough Chiaroscuro (2018) and self-assured debut Lost Tropics (2016) - this in itself was the big-gest difference.y

Active since 2013, Paisley Fields is a singer, songwriter, and bandleader
splitting time between Brooklyn, New York and Nashville, Tennessee.A
touring member of the newly reformed Lavender Country, Paisley also
played keyboard on their album "Blackberry Rose"
On his new album, "Limp Wrist", he draws inspiration from queer icon Andy
Warhol and the myriad drag artists with whom he's collaborated. His years of
experience in Manhattan piano bars did not diminish his love for country music,
and he released two albums that pay homage to the music of his youth.
"Limp Wrist" is an exploration of where rural queerness intersects religion.
Paisley's family were devout Catholics, and he served as the official church
pianist in his parish throughout his teens, playing every Sunday.
The songs on the album are deeply personal, and often touch on what it was like
to grow up closeted and queer in rural Iowa in the early 2000s. "Black Hawk
County Line" tells the story of Paisley being outed by a former friend his senior
year in high school, "Dial Up Lover" is about logging on to gay AOL chat rooms to
find other queers in the area, and "Plastic Rosary" recounts the experience of
being told he'll never get into heaven while praying the rosary.
The most personal and biographical moment comes during "Iowa", which
recounts the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard, and the visceral fear he had to
wrestle with since he was already aware of how different he was.
The album ends on an uplifting note, sharing a message of friendship and hope
with "Tomorrow Finds a Way".
The stories are his, but the feelings they convey - love, loneliness, lust, fear - are
still universal.
Pressed on Red color vinyl.

Delta Spirit has been making music for nearly 17 years and with five
albums under their belt they are set to release their follow up record to
2020's What Is There - One Is One was recorded in southern Vermont and
mixed in Texas by Matt Pence (Jason Isbell, Nikki Lane, Paul Cauthen)
The album has a distinctly anthemic quality with songs like "Villians" "One Is One"
and "What's Done is Done" inducing goosebumps upon the first listen. Other
tracks like "Lottery", "Ghost of Caddo" and "Thoughts on Seneca" are more quiet in
sound and song structure but deliver heavy lyrical messages that capture the
listeners attention. One Is One is made for the headphones and the live concert
experience.Packaging: CD Digit Wallet with an insert

In 1978 five of America's finest jazz musicians, Michael Brecker, Mike Manieri, Don Grolnick, Eddie Gomez and Steve Gadd, decided
to take a break from their lucrative session careers and do the thing they loved best. The result was Steps, an acoustic jazz
supergroup in the time of fusion supergroups. Now legendary the ensemble offered melodic jazz with cutting edge solos and a
rhythm section like no other. For this performance they were joined by the astonishing Japanese guitarist Kazumi Watanabe.
Already a well-known figure at home and soon to be touring under his own name and guesting with The Brecker Brothers band and
Jaco Pastorius’ Word of Mouth ensemble.
Performed at Yubin Chokin Hall in Tokyo on December 6th 1980, broadcast by NHK-FM. Pressed on 180g Black Vinyl and presented
in a gatefold sleeve sealed with Japanese obi strip. With extensive liner notes and archival photos.
Michael Brecker - tenor sax; Don Grolnick - piano; Mike Mainieri - vibes; Eddie Gomez - bass; Steve Gadd - drums; Special guest
Kazumi Watanabe - guitar.

El-P - Fantastic Damage - 20th Anniversary Reissue. Fantastic Damage marked the beginning of El-P’s career as a solo artist, following a groundbreaking career as frontman and producer of legendary NYC underground hip hop crew, Company Flow. Fan Dam was a foundational release for his fledgling record label Definitive Jux, which would soon establish itself as an iconic juggernaut of independent rap in the wake of trailblazing solo records by El-P and label mates Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox, RJD2, Murs, and more. The template El-P established on Fantastic Damage - a singular aesthetic pairing futuristic, post B-Boy production style with insightful, provocative & often prescient subject matter - was met with accolades across the media landscape, including Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, NME, VIBE, and SPIN among many others. The impact and influence of Fantastic Damage established it as one of the most important independent releases of its era, and charted a course to be followed by generations of artists in its wake. The album has been widely unavailable since El-P put Def Jux on hiatus in 2010, making it ripe for rediscovery in the new music ecosystem due to El-P’s monumental success with Run The Jewels. Credits

Greg Puciato, the enigmatic singer known for his diverse list of projects, from the incendiary The Dillinger Escape Plan to the brutalist electro-pop outfit The Black Queen and the unabashedly thrashy Killer Be Killed, releases his debut solo album, Child Soldier: Creator of God this Autumn via Federal Prisoner. The Los Angeles-based singer premiered the single “Fire For Water” on BBC Radio 1’s Rock Show with Daniel P. Carter and followed with the debut of a video for the three-minute track via Revolver. The video was edited and directed by Puciato and fine artist Jesse Draxler, Puciato’s Federal Prisoner co-founder. Puciato played all of the instruments on the song with the exception of drums, which were done by Chris Pennie (the last original material the pair worked on together was The Dillinger Escape Plan’s 2004 Miss Machine), who also contributed additional programming. “I started writing in May or so of 2019, for what I thought would be the next Black Queen album, except that’s not at all what came out. So, just like with everything else that’s been born from necessity, it felt like the right time to create a home for anything that I do that didn’t fit neatly under any other existing roof. The misfits needed a place to go,” explains Puciato about releasing his first solo album.

Meet Me at the Gloaming is the long-awaited second album from Los Angeles indie artist A.O. Gerber. Following-on from her acclaimed 2020 album Another Place To Need, which enjoyed support from the likes of Gorilla vs Bear, NPR and The Line Of Best Fit, who gave the record a glowing 9/10 review, the new LP showcases Gerber's knack for subtly infectious indie-pop, crunching, atmospheric alternative-rock and classic acoustic songwriting. Across Meet Me at the Gloaming, A.O. Gerber carefully grapples with the constraints she was taught as a child to reach for the flourishing that comes when we look past the black and white, and into the grey gauze of the in-between. “I was thinking about how damaging it can be to exist in that binary space of good and evil,” Gerber explains. “When we see everything in either/or’s, we lose the nuance and complexity that make life rich enough to be worth living.” By interlocking memory and imagination, Gerber crafts a gleaming future, where the light and the dark don’t just coexist - they create a new colour entirely.

The Southern state’s musical giants have always had their own distinct recipe for
American roots: spiced with jazz, steeped in swamp-blues and cooked up a little
differently by every artist who performs it. As a second- generation child of the
Bayou State, Kenny Neal has taken his own inimitable guitar, gale-force harp and
roadworn voice all over the globe. But in 2022, the Grammy- nominated blues
master’s latest album, Straight From The Heart, finds him drawn by the siren call
of his hometown and musical ground zero, Baton Rouge.“This is the first album
I’ve ever recorded on my own turf, and it truly came straight from the heart,” says
Neal, who both led and produced a crack team of local musicians at his own
Brookstown Recording Studios. “All the tributaries of the blues converge here,
flowing into one rich tradition.”You’ll hear all of Neal’s travels in Straight From The
Heart, but this latest album brings it all back home in every sense. Lining up in the
studio alongside his Baton Rouge compadrés, the respect that Neal commands
on the scene also drew some special guests, including hot- tip blues sensation
Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram (who co-writes and plays stinger guitar on Mount Up
On The Wings Of The King), pop royalty Tito Jackson (on Two Timing) and two
songs with Rockin’ Dopsie Junior & The Zydeco Twisters. You’ll even hear Neal’s
supremely talented daughter Syreeta drive the vocal outro of Two Timing.“It was
like a family reunion,” says Neal of the good-natured sessions. “It was excellent
because I had all the musicians that grew up under me here in Baton Rouge. And
just being in my own studio, not worrying about the clock.”Straight From The
Heart is a fitting title for a record that salutes the many loves of Neal’s life.
There’s the brass-driven opener Blues Keep Chasing Me, which tips a hat to his
recently departed friend, Lucky Peterson. There’s the touching piano-led Someone
Somewhere, which salutes his beloved father, harp master Raful Neal, who put
him on this path. Elsewhere, Neal’s deep love for every side of his home state is
underlined by the zydeco chop of Bon Temps Rouler and New Orleans, whose
lyrics reference everything from “sippin’ on Hurricane” to “sittin’ on the Bayou
catching catfish”. Faced with such an open-hearted record, it’s impossible not to
reciprocate. And as the world opens up and Kenny Neal embraces his natural
habitat of the road, this Louisiana icon will bring a little bit of that Baton Rouge
spirit onto every stage he treads. “It don't cost nothing to share a little love and a
little respect,” he says. “And we can all rise above…”

When it came time to record 5-3-8 - the title being a reference to the
lyrical refrain that appears at a few points of the album of "Fifths, thirds,
octaves only" - Dendrons decamped to Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, and
did additional recording at Highland Recording Studio in Phoenix,
Arizona, producing the album with Tony Brant and Sonny DiPerri
A far cry away from where they started as two friends doing everything
themselves, from the recording to the booking to even the graphic design, the
band is now an eagerly collaborative project. And they're already thinking about
what's to come. "You're always gonna leave a record feeling like there is
something more to be said," Jarvie says. "I don't believe in a magnum opus. Art is
contextual, and exists for the specific time and circumstance it was created in.
Every record is a conversation with the last."

Barbara, die Frau ohne Gedächtnis, irrt durch die malerischen Straßen Hamburgs. Eine zwielichtige Hypnosesitzung und ein nichts ahnender Liebhaber bringen ans Licht, was sich hinter ihrer unschuldigen Schönheit verbirgt. Die Erlösung scheint in greifbarer Nähe, doch der Drang, weiteres Unheil anzurichten, ist unwiderstehlich... Erst der Tag entblößt das wahre Grauen: GIALLO COME IL GIORNO, das fünfte Genre-Album von MONDO SANGUE setzt dort an, wo die vielbeachtete Giallo-LP ROSSO COME LA NOTTE (2021) endete. MONDO SANGUE und ihre Leidenschaft für die Musik und das Kino der italienischen 1960/70er ziehen Kreise. Auf GIALLO COME IL GIORNO sind die Genreliebhaber und Italien(Be)kenner Bela B, Eric Pfeil, Dirk von Lowtzow und Rocko Schamoni auf schwarzem Gold vereint. Die Vinyl 10"-EPs, von Adrian Keindorf illustriert, sind inkl. farbigem Beileger, Texte und Downloadcode auf 444 Stück limitiert und handnummeriert. Über MONDO SANGUE Das Stuttgarter Duo MONDO SANGUE (Christian Bluthardt & Yvy Pop), gegründet 2015, produziert Cinematic Pop in Anlehnung an das italienische Genrekino der 1960/70er. Nach einem Ausflug in den Dschungel (L"ISOLA DEI DANNATI - Die Insel der Verdammten; Soundtrack zu einem fiktiven Kannibalenfilm, 2016), einem Ritt durch den Spaghettiwestern (NO PLACE FOR A MAN - Il Villaggio delle Donne, 2018) und einer Reise ins All mit dem Science?Fiction-Abenteuer VEGA-5 (Avventure nel Cosmo, 2020) feiern MONDO SANGUE das legendärste Italo-Genre, den Giallo, gleich zweifach: mit ROSSO COME LA NOTTE (2021) und GIALLO COME IL GIORNO (2022).

In January 2011 Sam Prekop, Archer Prewitt, John McEntire, and Eric Claridge reconvened at Chicago"s Soma Electronic Music Studios to record their latest release The Moonlight Butterfly. This thirty three minute mini-album finds the band deliverying much more long form and cinematic pieces. The new songs lean upon the band"s more experimental tendencies, taking time to stretch the forms and in someways the new material relates to the way the band re-interpretes some of their songs live. With the band making a shorter than usual record they were allowed to take more chances and ended up with a release that leans a bit more towards the instrumental. Rather than having the vocals be the sole focal point the shifts in emphasis to other instruments facilitated a more open approach. The song "Weekend" from Car Alarm was kind of an unwitting blueprint for some of the new material. Especially the new song "Inn Keeping" where a synthesizer pattern became the armature for the song, a constant to play with and against. "Inn Keeping" is also quite a breakthrough for the band, sounding unlike anything they have done before and breaking the 10 minute mark.

Folk Songs Of Black British Experience

PLEASE NOTE - LP RELEASE DATE IS 10th MARCH 2023
The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience is the
upcoming album by Cornwall-based folk singer, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist Angeline Morrison, her first record for the historic Topic
Records label
Produced by Eliza Carthy and featuring some of her beautiful, soaring
string arrangements, The Sorrow Songs was recorded in Cornwall at
Cube Studio and is a work of what she calls 're-storying'
"The traditional songs of the UK are rich with storytelling, and you can find songs
with examples of almost any kind of situation or person you can think of. But
whilst people of the African diaspora have been present in these islands since at
least Roman Times, their histories are little known - and they don't tend to appear
in the folk songs of these islands." Angeline Morrison began to wonder if she
could discover more about the lives of these ordinary and extraordinary Black
ancestors and create an album of songs in the sonic style of UK folk and
traditional music, in the hope that this silent space could then begin to be filled
with stories. With the help of Arts Council National Lottery funding, Angeline
began what became a year of research into this neglected area of Black British
history. The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience is the result.
Released to commemorate Black History Month in October, this powerful record
is intended to honour these Black ancestors who lived in these islands and to act
as a gift to the folk community.
The musicians on the album are: Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne (anglo concertina,
melodeon, vocals), Clarke Camilleri (guitar, banjo, vocals), Hamilton Gross (violin,
vocals), Rosie Crow (piano, vocals), Alex Neilson (drums, vocals), Eliza Carthy
(violin, fiddlesticks, vocals), Martin Carthy (guitar) and Angeline Morrison (vocals,
autoharp, double bass).
In July 2022, Angeline Morrison became the fourth recipient of the prestigious
Christian Raphael Prize, which generously supports the development of emerging
talent in the folk genre.

Red Hot Chili Peppers announce their brand new studio album, Return of the Dream Canteen which will be released October 14th on Warner Records. The surprise announcement was dropped at Denver’s Empower Field to rapturous response as the North American leg of their critically and commercially acclaimed global stadium tour kicked off.

The news of Return of the Dream Canteen's imminent release marks the band’s second album of 2022, hot on the heels of the platinum-selling chart topper Unlimited Love which was released in April debuting at #1 in the UK. It will also be the band's second Rick Rubin produced album of 2022, and reinforces their reputation as a band at their absolute peak, riding the crest of an undeniable creative wave.

Continuing to win over audiences across the generations, the band performed a run of sold-out UK/EU dates earlier this year, including two nights at London Stadium. "A scorching European touch-down from the California legends" – CLASH

We went in search of ourselves as the band that we have somehow always been. Just for the fun of it we jammed and learned some old songs. Before long we started the mysterious process of building new songs. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundreds of times along the way. Once we found that slip stream of sound and vision, we just kept mining. With time turned into an elastic waist band of oversized underwear, we had no reason to stop writing and rocking. It felt like a dream. When all was said and done, our moody love for each other and the magic of music had gifted us with more songs than we knew what to do with. Well we figured it out. 2 double albums released back to back. The second of which is easily as meaningful as the first or should that be reversed. 'Return of the Dream Canteen' is everything we are and ever dreamed of being. It’s packed. Made with the blood of our hearts, yours truly, the Red Hot Chili Peppers.