Suche:essé

Cinedelic Records continues on with the release of yet another Paolo Vasile gem, and that is his score to Antonio Margheriti’s 1975 poliziottesco, Controrapina (The Rip Off) starring Lee Van Cleef. This soundtrack runs the gamut from strumming guitar and vocal numbers, to straight up dancefloor heaters. This beautifully produced record incorporates smooth sax, disco strings, wah guitar, and a driving beat — all the essential elements of a first rate 70s Eurocrime soundtrack. This release will be pressed in a run of 400 copies: 400, All will also include a super cool promotional .45 caliber pistol cut-out! (Alfonso Carrillo)

Radiation Deluxe Series present a reissue of The Shangri-Las's 65!, originally released in 1965. The queens of Queens, The Shangri-Las formed in 1963 in Cambria Heights. Made up of two sets of sisters from Andrew Jackson High School, the Shangri-Las hooked up with producer George "Shadow" Morton in 1964 and signed to Lieber & Stoller's legendary Red Bird Records label. Featuring song writing credits from the Brill Building's dynamic duo of Jeff Berry and Ellie Greenwich, as well as future Band member Levon Helm, Ike Turner, and more, this is the group's second LP, and is pure NYC girl-group perfection. An absolutely essential for any fan of 1960s American pop music. 180 gram vinyl.

* Jonny L is widely and rightly regarded as one of the most talented and influential artists working in the scene today. His style is hard to define as he rarely repeats an idea or theme in any track, and this can be easily felt in this eclectic but essential selection of previously unreleased work. Each track here was made in the early years of rave, and yet each maintains the standard high quality and accomplished sound you would expect from Jonny L. This is a rare opportunity to grab hold of some of his formative work, and as an EP, it is simply outstanding and unmissable..

* Strictly limited-edition 12” vinyl in full colour sleeve
*  Hailing from the musical melting pot of Bristol, Krust earned respect through countless releases on V Recordings, his imprint Full Cycle Records, his collective with Roni Size, Reprazent and a series of cutting edge solo albums on Talkin Loud. 
* In 2020 Krust released his album ‘The Edge Of Everything’, followed by a remix project featuring the likes of Four Tet, Calibre and LCY.
* Back for his 2nd outing as part of the Legends series this strictly vinyl-only release sees two in demand cuts from Krust finally see the light of day, 'The Master' and ' Resistance '.
* The sixth part in this vinyl series, with yet more legends waiting in the wings. These are an absolute essential for vinyl collectors.

Slowdive’s 5 EP was released in 1993 and contains 4 songs, 3 of which are instrumental. Neil Halstead had a blast experimenting with electronic beats. The instrumental tracks on this EP are all accompanied by a solid beat.

Slowdive once again succeed beautifully in producing tones that leave you numb as to how you should feel. There is an unmistakably euphoric edge to it, something heavenly, something convincing, something that takes you to places where everything is more beautiful, more colorful.

5 EP captures a brief moment of Slowdive’s journey - not quite like anything they did before it and not quite like anything after it, though it does have elements of both Souvlaki and Pygmalion in there.

“In Mind”, “Good Day Sunshine”, “Missing You” & “Country Rain” are trippy, dreamy, spaced, melancholic and cinematic... Overall an essential part of the history of one of the most influential acts of the late 20th century.

This rare and sought-after EP is now finally available as a limited edition of 4000 individually numbered copies on pink & purple marbled vinyl. The jacket has a special deluxe “alubrush” finish. The package includes an insert with the Slowdive catalogue.

HIGHLIGHTS: For the first time a sample of the essential work of Mesías Maiguashca, covering a period that goes from 1967 to 1989. This release includes historical pieces of electronic music, such as "El mundo en que vivimos" (1967) or "Ayayayayay"(1971), which are early references for electronic music in Latin America. DESCRIPTION: Mesías Maiguashca is a relevant figure on the map of contemporary avant-garde composers. Born in Ecuador but currently based in Germany, he has been a composer who, since the 60s, would constantly expand his possibilities in fields such as electronic music (where he stands out as a pioneer), mixed works, expanded interdisciplinary pieces and the creation of unconventional instruments, where the encounter between his country of origin's popular folkloric tradition and the new European music has produced a universe of tension, as fascinating as it is startling. Mesías Maiguashca: Música para cinta magnética (+) instrumentos (1967-1989) presents for the first time a sample of the essential work of Maiguashca, covering a period that goes from 1967 to 1989. This is the first of a new collection, a new series of albums that seeks to document the extensive recorded work of Maiguashca, with pieces that date from the mid-60s to the present. This first release is a good introduction to understand the various aesthetic options developed by the artist throughout his career. It includes his historical pieces of electronic music, such as "El mundo en que vivimos" (1967) or "Ayayayayay"(1971), which are early references for electronic music in Latin America, and also mixed pieces, such as "Intensidad y altura" (1979) for six percussionists and magnetic tape, "The wings of perception" (1989) for a string quartet and tape, and "Nemos Orgel" (1989) for organ and magnetic tape. As the critic Fabiano Kueva has pointed out: "During six decades of musical creation, Maiguashca has outlined diverse aesthetic axes, raising questions about the aural experience and generating a sound flow, a permanent oscillation between Latin America and Europe. Therefore, the blend of Western and non-Western concepts, techniques and timbres, the literary references or the historical approach are perceived as a complex gesture that reveals the tensions, the memories, the place of the artist." Mesías Maiguashca studied at the Quito Conservatory, the Eastman School of Music (Rochester, N.Y.), the Di Tella Institute (Buenos Aires) and the Musikhochschule Köln (Cologne). He has made recordings at the WDR music studio (Cologne), Center Européen pour la Recherche Musicale (Metz), the IRCAM (Paris), the Acroe (Grenoble) and the ZKM (Karlsruhe). In 1988, together with Roland Breitenfeld, he founded the K.O.Studio Freiburg, a private initiative for the cultivation of experimental music. He has been living in Freiburg since 1996. Mesías Maiguashca: Música para cinta magnética (+) instrumentos (1967-1989) is released as a double vinyl LP, in a limited edition of 300 copies, including photos and detailed information on the pieces. Liner notes by Mesías Maiguashca and Fabiano Kueva. Mastering: Alberto Cendra at Garden Lab Audio. Desing by Martín Escalante. Project carried out thanks to the Ibermúsicas fund.

Simply calling Curtis Harding a soul man feels reductive. Harding's voice conveys pain, pleasure, longing, tenderness, sadness and strength-a full gamut of emotions. Today his voice takes on an optimistic lilt with his his new album, If Words Were Flowers. If Words Were Flowers is Harding's first new music since 2018, a follow up to his critically acclaimed 'Face Your Fears" album. It features songs like " Hopeful" , where Harding croons with devotion over a classic soul groove, textured with infectious horn playing, background singers and modern psychedelic flourishes. Harding fuels his psychedelic sound with the essence of Soul but isn't bound by it. Instead, his songs convey an eclectic blend of genres leaping from the many musical lives he has lived from following his evangelical Gospel-singing mother on tour around the country as a child to rapping in Atlanta, forming a garage band with The Black Lips' Cole Alexander to singing back-up for Cee Lo Green. Through these experiences he fully embraces life's darkest intricacies and conjures dynamic, addictive melodies.

In the words of Jerzy Mączyński, Sariani is a musical meditation exploring Indian musical culture and the widely understood concept of trance. The album has its roots in Mączyński’s growing friendship with Waclaw Zimpel, a fellow Polish avant-garde musician with experience in both experimental jazz and meditative ambient music. The pair first connected online during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Mączyński suggesting they join forces on an album-length collaborative project a few months later.

Sariani was recorded over the course of eight months at two different studios in their home city of Warsaw (one of which included access to an empty swimming pool, whose unique acoustics were utilised during the recording). Both composers recorded electronic textures, loops, and rhythms, onto which they added saxophone (Mączyński) and voice textures courtesy of fellow Polish musicians Wiktoria Jakubowska and Olga Koziel.

The album comprises six separate musical stories, each of which was inspired either by a specific “empirical experience” from Mączyński’s travels in India, or wider cultural themes relevant to the country in the 21st century. These include Mączyński’s first encounter with the Book of Rag (‘Raga or Raga’); the essence of spirituality within temple buildings (‘Temple of Jetsu’); a vivid dream featuring a superhero who calls for reflection on equality and freedom (‘Sariani’); and a life-changing trip to Mount Everest with guitarist Szymon Wójcik (‘Everest Inn’, which features recordings made by the pair at the Monkey Temple in Kathmandu).

On this essential new collection of forward-looking jazz reinterpretations, Kansas Smitty's bandleader Giacomo Smith delves deep into the catalogues of celebrated yet often overlooked artists that inspire his work with Kansas Smitty's; Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbeck, even Maurice Ravel. Created for the 'Plunderphonia' series for 7K!, itself a reinterpretation of the acclaimed !K7 DJ-Kicks series, the album owes as much to Giacomo's decade of living and playing in London as it does to the forefathers of jazz that he is paying homage to here.

This double album is a new collaboration between long-time Umor Rex artists Andreas Gerth (one half of Driftmachine) and Carl Oesterhelt (11 Pieces for Synthesizer). Both developed their shared musical cosmos during their time with the now defunct Tied +Tickled Trio. Oesterhelt is also known for his solo compositions for orchestras and for collaborations with Johannes Enders and Hans-Joachim Irmler of Faust.

As futurism seems inherent to electronic music, the backward-looking view is alien to its nature – consequently, a dialectical struggle between these principles is rarely expressed with the means of electronics. Especially today, its essence as a medium of progress stands in opposition to a sceptical position. By reconnecting us with history, The Aporias of Futurism seeks to define a critical location, that stands in opposition to the postmodern concept of interpretation, deconstruction and reformulation and the belief in progress that goes with it.

The working method for the album Andreas and Carl followed was the usual musique-concrète-technique – cut/assemble/edit/process pre-recorded sounds – but instead of deconstructing the concrete noises into an abstract sound entity, they followed a different path: the organic interweaving of orchestral structures with the electronically processed noise layers into a composition in the sense of classical modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.

Carl started with sketches recorded via a broken CD player, processed through a ring modulator, which sounded like old electronic music from the 1950s. To interact with these fragments Andreas recorded and processed a plethora of everyday noises, atmospheres, tonal fragments from the modular, industrial and shortwave radio noise, percussion in the form of door slamming, falling metal sheets, ball tracks, and so on. So, while they still played within the futuristic discipline, the reference to the past is actually unmistakable. One can hear it in the tonality of the contrasting orchestral passages, in the sound character of the processed samples and the sonic electronic layers. But it is precisely here, where a narrative tension develops. Theses and antitheses, extreme (unresolved) opposites, contrasts… essentially inner contradictions, or expressed in another word aporias… … but there is another factor at play here, something that plays a subordinate, almost ostracized role in the post-modern context: beauty (albeit the beauty of ruins) – beauty, the only refuge of the pessimist.

In the course of the process, a wide range of motifs and ideas emerged from the fog of memory. Free associations of concepts, books and authors from a wide period of time, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, William Blake, Robert Graves, ancient Rome, as well as Borges and Juan Rulfo. This flood of images is also incorporated on the album cover as a "free interpretation" of cultural objects and their relations in time.

The overarching motif of a sceptical rejection of the idea of Futurism is illustrated by a quote from Emile M. Cioran, the writer who most closely embodies the common spirit of the work presented here.

"But here comes the strangest thing: the Futurist idolizes becoming only until he has enforced that order for which he fought; then the ideal conclusion of time becomes apparent to him, the ‘always’ of utopia, which concludes and crowns the historical process. The conception of the Golden Age of Paradise par excellence, thus grips believers and unbelievers alike. But between the original paradise of the religions and the eschatological of the utopia there is the whole distance that separates a nostalgia from a hope, a repentance from a delusion, an achieved from an unrealized completion."

All music composed by Andreas Gerth and Carl Oesterhelt between Berlin and Munich, Germany in 2021. Produced and mixed by Andreas Gerth in Berlin. Mastered by John Tejada in Sherman Oaks, USA. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City.

Atomnation's 90th release is to be an album from long time associate David Douglas. He first appeared on the label in 2012 and now Escapism is a triumphant return across 10 tracks of deeply melodic and melancholic electronic music, with artwork by Menno Fokma.

David is a consistently high quality and prolific producer who has put out key albums like Moon Observations and Spectators Of The Universe, as well as vital EPs such as Mountain Pink and Royal Horticultural Society. He is an accomplished video editor who also edits documentaries while at the same time being an all encompassing producer. David finds inspiration in the majesty of the cosmos and the grandeur of nature and manages to capture the essence of that in his music.

This is an album that finds a perfect balance between heady underground sounds and more catchy pop tracks - an accomplished and adventurous album that takes you on an emotional ride through the ups and downs of everyday life, all with a delicate musical touch.

The ultimate reissue of the undisputed spearhead of Argentinian jazz-fusion. Created by Jorge López Ruiz and Pocho Lapouble, two essential figures who moulded the shape of Argentinian jazz for two decades.

"One turntable, one microphone, a mek we skank it til a morning!" Taking you back to the roots of sound-system culture: when entertainers rocked the dance until morning, with the most basic equipment. The skill and the vibe were all that mattered. "One turntable, One microphone" captures that essence. Sweet, lilting saxophone licks from Jazz futurist Marcus Joseph (Jazz re:freshed) set the scene for the gathering. Ranking Joe bawls out, "forward rub-a-dub style!" as clean, crisp piano chops out the backbeat. A rock-hard rhythm section drops in to put the bassline in your waistline. As the crowd swells, so too does the energy of the performers, with spaced out echoes creating a lush soundscape for the deejay to ride over joyfully. Ranking Joe is a foundation reggae artist from Kingston Jamaica. His first recording was on Coxsone Dodd's legendary Studio One label in 1974. He has cut hits with Sly and Robbie and Easy Star All Stars, enlivening any production with his fast, intricate and sometimes humorous lyrical flows. This latest release shows the endurance of his musical gift and reactivates the essence of golden-era Jamaican dancehall for modern ears.

Mystery Jets announce that their sixth studio album ‘A Billion Heartbeats’ will be released on 27th September on Caroline International. The band also release ‘Screwdriver’, the first single to be taken from the album.

Screwdriver is an uncompromising look at the rise of the rebranded alt-right in the UK, built around a powerfully positive message: "Fight them with love / then the world will be ours".

Lead singer Blaine Harrison says of the song, “Screwdriver is about the mechanics of intolerance. Looking back at times of economic instability in history, we see how easily deep chasms grow in society and the population seeks change wherever it is most convincingly promised. Conflict arises as cultures and belief systems clash, unwilling to accept one another’s place in society, because we are fed the rhetoric that our neighbours are those responsible for our problems: then inevitably nationalism once more raises its ugly head above the parapet. But whereas political agendas fuel divisiveness, music unites and reminds us of all that we have in common. The message of Screwdriver is not a pessimistic one - because perhaps faced with confrontation we can find understanding, and even maybe learn how to listen to, and love one another.”

Each room of the house in the video is a metaphor for the different sections of society in the UK. It wraps around the narrative of the song, that in order to overcome adversity, you have to “Fight Them With Love”. The visual showcases the song’s inherent message, clashing aggressiveness with tenderness, and culminates in showing after anger, we can always come together through love.
All great albums start from a unique perspective. But try a window on the Strand, in an abandoned office block, overlooking the kind of political upheaval London hasn’t seen in a generation. Blaine Harrison was living as a property guardian right around the corner from Trafalgar Square when he found himself witness to an entire year of protests. Every weekend from January 2017 on, people were marching for a different cause: "In the space of six months it was Black Lives Matter, the huge ‘Our NHS’ march, Unite for Europe," he recalls. "Then the solidarity sleep-out organised by Help Refugees, where we slept in Whitehall for the night... The protestors would wake me up in the morning. I’d just walk down and join in.”

Over the course of that year, Mystery Jets' sixth long-player, A Billion Heartbeats, was born. "This album wasn’t about making pointed opinions,” says Blaine. “It was about being a mirror for what’s going on, reflecting back the way people are feeling.” By turns tender and fierce, abstract and full of classic rock energy, A Billion Heartbeats achieves a balance of passion, fear and hope. Amid the colourful cavalcade of rich harmonies, heavy guitars and rallying cries, the album’s essential message - about personal responsibility, and the power in becoming engaged. In a sense, it's not just their "state of the nation” record but their “state of a generation” record too.

We increasingly hear from musicians that music should be an escape these days - that there’s enough suffering in the world, enough misery on the news, without writings songs about it too. A Billion Heartbeats makes all that sound like a bit of a cop-out. These are songs of protest that get the heart racing in joy; high on hope, and serious in their message. Proof, basically, that music speaks louder than words.

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce ViewFinder / Hide & Seek, a new release from acclaimed American experimental composer David Behrman, presenting recordings made in collaboration with Jon Gibson and Werner Durand between 1989 and 2020. Last heard from on Black Truffle as part of the collaborative art song/live electronics madness of She’s More Wild, these recordings find Behrman continuing the pioneering work in interactive electronics that have established him as one of the major living experimental composers.

Side A presents excerpts from two live realisations of Unforeseen Events (1989), the fourth in a series of pieces focussing on the interactions between instrumental performers and responsive software. Like the classic earlier works in the series, On the Other Ocean (1977), Interspecies Smalltalk (1984) and Leapday Night (1986), Unforeseen Events is an “unfinished composition” in which a computer system listens for and responds to specific pitch cues from an instrumentalist. Performed by the composer on electronics and Werner Durand on soprano saxophone in Berlin in 1989, the first realisation immediately ushers the listener into an environment of long soprano notes, lush, sustained synth harmonies, randomised percussive interjections and distantly burbling arpeggiated patterns.

The 1999 realisation recorded in New York with Jon Gibson on soprano shows how much room for the instrumentalist to affect the course of the music exists in Behrman’s interactive pieces, in which, as he notes, ‘performers have options rather than instructions’. Beginning in a roughly similar area to the version with Durand, this later recording eventually becomes substantially more active, as polyrhythmically layered arpeggios and percussive patterns respond to fast chromatic lines and dynamic phrases from the saxophone, moving Gibson in turn to respond with cycling figures and moments of extended technique that touch on the soprano languages pioneered by players like Steve Lacy and Evan Parker. Yet even at its most active, the lack of conventional forward movement in the music allows it to retain what Behrman’s friend Jacques Bekaert called its ‘fragile tranquillity’, as episodes of activity appear only as momentary disruptions of an underlying calm.

On the B side, we are treated to a new collaborative work from Behrman and Werner Durand, building on the 2002 installation work ViewFinder, in which a camera detecting physical motion triggered changes to electronic sound. The piece presented here is a long-distance studio construction, recorded by Behrman in the Hudson Valley and Durand in Berlin, offering up an expansive duet between Behrman’s lush, gliding synth tones and the alien, untempered tones of Durand’s invented and adapted wind instruments. Presented in a stunning gatefold sleeve with art from Terri Hanlon, archival photographs and new liner notes from Behrman and Durand,ViewFinder / Hide & Seek is an essential release showcasing the continuing vitality of a legendary figure in experimental music.

With a decade between releases, VILDHJARTA remain as inscrutable and as close to anonymity as a band can be. VILDHJARTA's down-tuned, staccato riffs and pulverizing grooves are the sound of music stripped to its essence. Yet, the Swedish collective’s long-awaited album, måsstaden under vatten, is far more than a recitation of djent values. Clocking in at 80 minutes, it thematically picks up where the dark Swedish fable of 2011’s Måsstaden left off and delivers on the promise that record hinted at. Tracks like the recently released “när de du älskar kommer tillbaka från de döda” (“When the Ones You Love Return From the Dead.”) suggest a newfound subtlety and sophistication amidst the bombast and beauty in the breakdown.
Since dropping a minute of new live music in 2016, the band's focus has almost entirely been on the new album with drummer and now noted producer, Buster Odeholm (Born of Osiris, Shadow of Intent, Humanity’s Last Breath) heavily involved in the production, mixing and mastering of the music. Visual artist Rickard Westman, who did art for VILDHJARTA's debut as well as their Thousands of Evils EP in 2013, has also returned to the equation to reprise his disturbing visual iconography. Says the band: “Art happens when art happens.”
The sound of music is rarely this challenging, unforgettable and worth the wait.

Long before John Brannon of Negative Approach cemented himself as a USHC icon, you
would hear rumblings about his pre-NA glam group, STATIC. Only a handful of people were
lucky/brave enough to see them live. Scenesters spoke of a tape but never seemed to have
one. Their most well-remembered song, Toothpaste and Pills, allegedly featured smashing
beer bottles against John’s mom’s basement wall as a percussion instrument. Could this be
real?

Fast forward to 2020 and a few months into the covid-19 lockdown, Brannon came across a
bunch of tapes he dug out of a box in his Mom’s closet - STATIC “DEMOS ‘78”, STATIC
“LIVE AT GROSSE POINTE SOUTH H.S.”, STATIC “LIVE AT PLEWA HALL”. Holy shit! The
legend is true! And best of all, STATIC rule!

John Brannon grew up in Grosse Pointe Park just a few blocks from the Detroit border. John
was always into music, but as soon as he heard T-Rex, The Stooges and Alice Cooper, he
was obsessed (and still is) and had to start a band to channel his obsessions. With the help
of neighborhood kid and collaborator Billy Daniels and a local drummer simply known as
“Red”, STATIC was born.

Before Negative Approach changed the face of punk and hardcore, before Laughing Hyenas
scared the world silly and blew everyone else off the stage and before Easy Action started
melting minds all over the world, there was STATIC. STATIC was real. STATIC was real as
shit.

Third Man Records is beyond ecstatic to be providing this long-missing piece of the
American Underground Music puzzle. We worked closely with John Brannon and Warren
Defever, one of Third Man Mastering’s resident wizards, to put together this essential
collection of demos and live recordings.

FEATURING REWORKINGS BY YANN TIERSEN, BILL RYDER-JONES, MALIBU, ELUVIUM and
PETER GREGSON.
140g black vinyl with lacquers cut by Alchemy, printed inner sleeve, limited to 500 copies.
Michael Price has announced a new album, The Hope of Better Weather - part reissue, part reworks - due out onThe Control Room on 15 October 2021.
The new album takes his 2012 EP, The Hope of Better Weather, originally recorded by Price alone in a room with a
piano improvising, and brings it fully to life with the addition of a series of reworkings by Yann Tiersen, Bill
Ryder-Jones, Malibu, Peter Gregson and Eluvium.
He explains, “I wasn't trying to control what anybody else was doing. Everybody that joined in with the project gives
their own little piece of freedom. I was really interested in what freedom we all give ourselves, as well as being
fascinated to see what a little germ of an idea can mean to somebody else.”
Listen to Yann Tiersen’s rework of ‘The Anatomy of Clouds’: LINK
Listen to the original version of ‘The Anatomy of Clouds’: LINK
The five pieces, alongside these new reworkings capture a stark beauty, tenderness and delicacy in their tone. But
they are also wind-like in their shifting, expansive and elemental essence - capturing an exploration of the natural
world. “Nearly 10 years ago when I recorded these improvisations, I felt like I was missing the natural world - things
like the weather, the beach at Scarborough and all those kinds of visceral things.”
When Price revisited the work in recent months - at a time when many of us found ourselves more aware of the
natural world - he reconnected with it in a way that looks to connect with his next artistic steps. “You start off with
listening to 10 year old piano recordings and then you go through the reinterpretations of people looking at that
material now through their own lens. The fixation with weather, coastlines and with people connected with nature, is
really strong all the way through this project. Coming out the other side of it, it's kind of like a Northern weather feeling
- coming out with your collar turned up with a hat on, a bit drizzly and shit outside, but with a kind of determination
that is the route forward.”
Most musicians, if they are lucky, will master one craft or field within their career. For Michael Price, he’s managed
three, with his music spanning across piano, orchestral and soundtrack work. The soundtrack work - for TV shows
such as Sherlock, Dracula, and Unforgotten, and films such as Eternal Beauty, Cheerful Weather and Just Jim - has
seen Price win an Emmy, as well as receive countless nominations (including a BAFTA nomination). His work as a
solo artist takes the form of beautiful improvised piano works, such as Diary (2017), or via lush, grand, hyper-detailed
orchestral work, as heard on critically acclaimed releases via Erased Tapes such as Entanglement (2015) and Tender
Symmetry (2018). His latest release, The Hope of Better Weather, is rooted in the piano world but also exists as a
bridge crossing into new terrain..
The process of putting together the release has been an emboldening and liberating one for Price, and he finds
himself feeling buoyant about the possibilities of what lies ahead – which includes a new solo orchestral album. “It is
super freeing and liberating,” he says. “There's these little green shoots of a freedom emerging.”

In 2020 Sunnyboys will celebrate 40 years since their inception (though a mere 12 years of actual existence) via a new release SUNNYBOYS 40 that brings together the first ever re-release of the band’s much loved 1980 eponymous debut 7” - featuring the original version of the classic Alone With You - alongside four new recordings culled from the archives of chief songwriter Jeremy Oxley.
Recorded over two days in October 1980 and released via independent Sydney label Phantom Records on December 31st the same year, the four songs featured on the EP were essentially the first songs Jeremy Oxley had presented to the band on his arrival in Sydney from Kingscliff just a few months earlier. Alongside Alone With You they included Love to Rule, What You Need & The Seeker.
The debut ‘yellow’ ep was an instant underground smash selling out its initial pressing of 1000 copies in just 2.5 weeks. A further pressing of 1000 would follow but then all further attempts of a repress were quashed when the ep master mysteriously disappeared after band signed to Mushroom Records in February 1981. The tapes having never been recovered these masters have been taken from the cleanest vinyl available and appear here for the first time ever outside the 7” ep format and that limited run of 2000.
Fast forward 40 years (as you do) and Sunnyboys are enjoying a renaissance rarely seen for any band from any era. In truth their popularity now eclipses what it did in 1980-1984 with each successive tour selling more tickets and faster than the tour previous. Why not then give the people new music?
Part 2 of Sunnyboys 40 was recorded between touring commitments in 2018 at Airlock Studios, Brisbane. Overdubs were added over the following twelve months at locations in Sydney & Brisbane and the mixing completed in the summer of 2019 by current in-demand producer Konstantine Kerstin. The idea being to tackle some material Jeremy had written for other projects post-1984 and to complete some unfinished business from back in the band’s original lifespan.

Can’t You Stop is a reworking of a song Jeremy recorded as The Fisherman in 1986. The short-lived trio were Jeremy’s immediate post-Sunnyboys band and the original version was released on the Waterfront label the same year. In this guise Can’t You Stop features an all new arrangement plus those trademark Sunnyboys harmonies.

Lovers (On Another Planet’s Hell) meantime, is a reworking of a track from the Sunnyboys third album Get Some Fun. The original version featuring a 4/4 beat often referred to as the “AC/DC beat” which never sat well with the band. The opportunity to readdress that all these years later proving irresistible. The added keyboards of Alister Spence and brass playing of Eamon Dilworth and young Nico Oxley (Peter’s son) also adding a new dimension to the original.

Strange Cohesion was actually written post-Get Some Fun in 1984 and was performed by the band regularly during their final tour. It would feature on the band’s swansong release, 1984’s Real Live but was never recorded in the studio. 40 gives the track its recorded debut and gives some small hint as to what Sunnyboys album no.4 may have sounded like.

Originally released as a solo recording back in 1991 under the banner Jeremy ‘Ponytail’ Oxley Way After Five shares perhaps the strongest relationship to the ‘40’ concept. Jeremy’s voice at times just a croak - a by-product of the life he has lead for much of last 40 years - adding further poignancy to the songs lyric; and it’s another Oxley classic.

And what better way to celebrate both the new release and the milestone anniversary than by doing what Sunnyboys do best - play live! And so Sunnyboys hit the east coast this February including first time ever shows in Torquay and for Sydney’s Twilights @ Taronga. Special guests Painters & Dockers will join Sunnyboys for the shows in Victoria while garage rockers Rocket Science will join the birthday boys in Sydney.
“We really didn’t think we would ever play again as a band. But wow, we have and we sure are having a bloody great time doing it.” - Peter Oxley

Pushing hardcore machine music into a new paradigm, with a combination of sonics and visuals that pull from the past and future in equal measure. It’s first release; a four track EP by Mani Festo (label founder) entitled ‘Higher’ captures its essence perfectly. Fusing breakbeats, soaring rave pianos, dark-side kick drums and industrial machine funk to soundtrack post-pandemic hedonism in a way that nothing else could.

The title track ‘Higher’ is a tale of long-lost raves, written during the summer of 2020. It reflects the first time in the history of electronic music that gatherings ceased to exist. The track is hopeful, but longs for the freedom of dancing in a field, something that seems like nothing more than a forgotten memory.