Search:georgia

Athens, Georgia's Telemarket emerges with force and finesse on its debut full length, Ad Nauseum, due out August 25th on Elephant 6 label affiliate Cloud Recordings and Science Project Records. The record by tums navigates loops of existential quandary, heartache, and hilarity in a world gone awry. Running at 34 minutes and 34 seconds, this thirteen track odyssey discovers itself through bouts of exuberant feedback and snappy hooks, and ultimately finds resolution surrounded by good friends in its musical home of Athens. Among these friends is John Fernandes of Cloud Recordings, a former member of projects Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory System and longtime Elephant 6 collaborator, who teamed up with Telemarket to release and distribute the group's LP. Ad Nauseum features artwork from late Georgia artist Patrick Dean, to whom the record is dedicated. Dean’s piece ‘Welcome to Athens, Y'all” was featured on Athens GA publication Flagpoles cover in August of 1999, and now adjourns the Telemarket cover reflecting the themes of repetition, redundancy, and relief. Telemarket provides a distorted vessel for the shape-shifting songeraft of vocalist / guitarist Adam Wayton, and features collaborations with many of his talented Athens friends. Wayton together with guitarist and engineer Will Wise hunkered down in their Odd Street home studio (originally built by a former Widespread Panic fiddle player) for much of 2021-2022 a piece of time many would just as soon forget and managed to create something memorable together in Ad Nauseum

If you dig deep enough into the underground you will find the most precious jewels and it ain't that much of an effort these days to turn on the computer and trip through the colorful World Wide Web. But beware for not all the glitter is gold. I stepped by some dark and dusty back street club in Atlanta / Georgia, USA and some enchanting music tempted me to enter. A powerful raspy voice screaming out the pain of the world no matter if it were big or small affairs. "California dreaming on such a winter's day", wow, when the MAMAS AND PAPAS sang this in a sweet folk manner it was a light and joyful anthem for all hippies and hipsters back in 1966, like a call to love. Lee Moses' version is more of a desperate cry for sunshine and freedom. And it goes on this way. His voice has this special phrase showing determination, pain but also sheer joy of life. His 1971 album is a steady groover with a steaming hot band performing , which includes a brass section of divine greatness. These devoted players build up a massive wall of groove and melody on which Lee Moses can unleash his voice like a volcanic eruption. The groove itself stays quite relaxed but definitely hypnotizing throughout the whole album and clears up your mind for the message of love Lee Moses raves about. The high skills of Lee's backing band gets showcased in a steaming instrumental version of THE FOUR TOPS' "Reach out (I'll be there)", which appeared on an early 7" first and got added here as a bonus track. They don't stop for THE BEATLES' "Day tripper" either and next to "California dreamin'" you can find another heart warming version of "Hey Joe" on the regular album. Not as extraordinary outraging as Hendrix' turn on this classic Lee and his mates make it a slightly more epic effort. All in all this is a soul album with very few covers and even more classic anthems of this genre that should actually be worshipped by lovers of the late 1960s Motown sound. Especially the bonus tracks will drive you wild. Go for it, brothers and sisters.

The free folk/jazz sound of modern Los Angeles. Featuring a heavy bunch of musicians and vocalists including Moor Mother.

"Fearlessly Accessing the Divine Spirit From Here on Out" is the vinyl debut from pianist, composer, and producer Diego Gaeta. He has previously released projects as Club Diego and with the trio Human Error Club (whose members Mekala Session and Jesse Justice helped produce this record). He has quickly become a fixture in a number of Los Angeles musical environments, working with Lionmilk, The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Carlos Niño, Black Nile among others. This album is a synthesis of these many LA environments, and carries chamber, jazz, ambient, and folk influences, ultimately giving it an uncategorizable feel similar to works by Arthur Verocai or David Axelrod.

Gaeta recorded the initial ideas for the album by himself after experiencing a burst of creativity during the lockdown of 2020, in the aftermath of a season of protests in Los Angeles, on a piano at his home in El Sereno. "I was constantly not in tune with myself, always awaiting outrage and tragedy in a very unstable world. However, hitting the streets in support of various ongoing pandemic community actions felt necessary and it marked a point in time that ushered in large societal changes. The weight of that era made me feel allergic to making art at the time. All of these ideas came after that period, expressing my reflections subconsciously. I remember that the ideas came in a short amount of time, and then they developed."

Once he had created the tracks as Ableton sessions, he realized the gravity and context of how he was processing his ideas so he, as he puts it, "felt like taking them outside the hands of midi and into the hands of friends." Gaeta was able to assemble his dream band, which ended up being a 9-piece ensemble, or a nonet. "I felt that at some point I was channeling the geometrical balance of that nonet...it's almost as if I had a sextet and then the three of the sextet that's not the rhythm section were doubled. It's a really dense sextet, that's how I see it."

The recording process began the following summer in June 2021 as the musicians were all adjusting to the newfound dynamic of getting tested for COVID, waiting a few days, and then meeting up to record. "We were eating Indian food, some of us were smoking, it was a nice memory, but I felt a little stressed, because I was the bandleader, and I felt the emotional weight of my music."

The title track and single, featuring vocals by Jimetta Rose, begins with a speech by Gaeta delivered when playing with Black Nile in 2019 at the Levitt Amphitheatre in MacArthur park. Gaeta provides the following account: "Even though it was in 2019, socio-political tensions and issues were at the forefront for me at that time. I wrote a speech that was intended to be critical of the US but it ended up becoming a collage inspired by different women that had messages of freedom that spoke to me the most. I quoted Nina Simone and Georgia Anne Muldrow, it wasn't something that I read but something that she said "kicking it with consciousness and style" that phrase stuck with me, so I used it in that speech. Although critical, the speech had a positive feeling to it, and it was hopeful. I gave that speech while fireworks were going off."

Moor Mother & Zeroh are found on their respective tracks, Memory Screen & Eccolo - both delivering a distinct, commanding vocal performance. Low Leaf colors the track Soft Spot with harp, a beautiful ballad nestled in the center of the album. Other players include Gregory Uhlmann on guitar, Jon Kaye on violin, Devin Daniels on alto saxophone, Caleb Buchanan on bass, Dante Luna on vibraphone, Patrick Behnke on viola, Bryan Baker on tenor saxophone/flute, and Mekala Session on drums.

"I’d like for us tonight to embody a freedom oriented life. Freedom isn’t just a dream, it’s a place we must all arrive at together, as one by one the people of the Earth help each other to be Free of power, hate, and insecurities. Let’s kick it with consciousness and style. Can y’all dig that? YEAH. I can too. So now we’d like to present to you a spiritual transmission I like to call: 'Fearlessly Accessing the Divine Spirit of Freedom From Here On Out.' YEAH" - Diego Gaeta

LaVette! hits all the marks
Together with Jay-Vee Records, Bettye has the freedom to explore new territory.
Produced by Steve Jordan, LaVette! features 11 songs written by Georgia- born
musician Randall Bramblett, who has been releasing solo albums since 1975.
"Randall is the best writer that I have heard in the last 30 years," says Bettye. "He
writes songs that are little soliloquies, they're like little stories about a moment, or
a thing."
Featuring Anthony Hamilton, John Mayer, Jon Batiste, Steve Winwood, Pedrito
Martinez and Ray Parker Jr.
The vinyl features an extra track, "What You Didn't Say".

Lisa Batiashvili gathers all the places and memories that have been important in her life and career together with some of the world’s most beautiful music. A journey from her native Georgia to Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Hollywood that features ground-breaking collaborations with artists as diverse as Miloš, Katie Melua and Till Brönner. City Lights shares the beautiful melodies from Cinema Paradiso and Chaplin’s own compositions with all time classics from Piazzolla, J.S. Bach and the late Michel Legrand - all in new arrangements by Nikoloz Rachveli - and last, but not least a new song by Katie Melua about the magic of London. This Special Edition of Lisa Batiashvili’s City Lights combines the most popular music from her latest album on a 10 inch vinyl. Including a brand new track: Desafinando recorded with the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra in July 2021.

"Phoenix" is the highly-anticipated, expansive next album in the musical evolution of alto saxophonist and composer Lakecia Benjamin, and first for Whirlwind. The album was produced by the multi- Grammy- award winning Terri Lyne Carrington and featuring a star- studded line up of specially curated guests; Dianne Reeves, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Patrice Rushen, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis and Wayne Shorter. The band comprises trumpeter Josh Evans, Victor Gould on keys, Orange Rodriguez on synths, drummer Enoch (EJ) Strickland, percussionist Nêgah Santos and bassist Ivan Taylor. Trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., Rhodes organist Anastassiya Petrova and bassist Jahmal Nichols all join for one track each.

"Phoenix" is the highly-anticipated, expansive next album in the musical evolution of alto saxophonist and composer Lakecia Benjamin, and first for Whirlwind. The album was produced by the multi- Grammy- award winning Terri Lyne Carrington and featuring a star- studded line up of specially curated guests; Dianne Reeves, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Patrice Rushen, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis and Wayne Shorter. The band comprises trumpeter Josh Evans, Victor Gould on keys, Orange Rodriguez on synths, drummer Enoch (EJ) Strickland, percussionist Nêgah Santos and bassist Ivan Taylor. Trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., Rhodes organist Anastassiya Petrova and bassist Jahmal Nichols all join for one track each.

Ska icon Prince Buster changed the face of Jamaican popular music by helping give birth to the form in the late 1950s by blending Caribbean cadences with a rhythm-and-blues backbeat, its rhythmic emphasis shifted to the afterbeat rather than the fore. National Ska: Pain In My Belly is a killer various artists compilation that Buster produced in 1964 for Blue Beat Records in Britain, its blistering contents featuring Toots and the Maytals, Eric ‘Monty’ Morris, and the Prince himself, as well as the pivotal musicians Don Drummond and Tommy McCook, who would shortly form the Skatalites. Essential listening for all true ska devotees!

DIM WATTS is the latest outlet for veteran Athens, Georgia songwriter,
Jim Willingham - Fronting previous groups like the psyche pop of Ham1
and banjo driven, kudzu folk of Old Smokey, Willingham has backed
modern folk outsiders like Vic Chesnutt
He returns to sharply crafted 4- piece folk pop, produced with Dim Watts &
engineer, Jesse Mangum.

From teddy grahams to pussy hats, California forest fires to cash cabs, the stuff of American nostalgia and horror adorns a personal reckoning on Christina Schneider’s triumphant third album as Locate S,1. With a name culled from a Daschel Hammitt noir novel, Wicked Jaw pulls from wildly disparate references and textures to survey the history of American pop music. Like Pat Benatar soundtracking an Adam Curtis documentary, the album trades in dramatic juxtapositions across its kaleidoscopic ten tracks. Only Schneider could pull off singing a line like “season finale 2020 death machine” as a soothing lullaby, but jarring contrasts echo the tumultuous personal journey woven throughout. “I was in hell ... and loving it,” Schneider said of her childhood, describing a murky cocktail of sentimentality and despair. “It’s like when you escape the matrix and then you remember your wonderful time in the matrix.” The Athens, Georgia based songwriter, producer, and virtuosic pop connoisseur authored the album over two years while beginning treatment for childhood sexual abuse by a relative. “I was using these songs as an expression valve for all of these

Lori McKenna titled her album 1988 after the year she married her husband, Gene, yet the 10 songs within also serve as a love letter to lifelong friendships, people she’s lost, and her family. Recorded with producer Dave Cobb in Savannah, Georgia, 1988 naturally has its nostalgic moments, even if not every ending is a happy one. With more of an electric edge than her past projects, 1988 feels in step with classic ‘90s albums by Sheryl Crow or Gin Blossoms, where the lyrics pulled you in as much as the melody or production. Playing together on acoustic guitars while facing one another in the studio, McKenna and Cobb tracked the album live, giving it a feeling of immediacy and authenticity.

Before there was Saturday Night Fever there was underground disco. DJs across America went out and found the music to play; dancers went out and found the clubs. At this point, in the early seventies, the disco was the venue and not a genre of music.

By the time Nik Cohn’s short story Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night was published by New York magazine in June 1976, disco was the biggest genre of music on the charts and was about to get bigger still, becoming an all-enveloping cultural phenomenon. Cohn sold the film rights to Robert Stigwood, and his classic club yarn became Saturday Night Fever.

“Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night” is the soundtrack to Cohn’s story, where disco began; a 1975 score for the underground clubs of Brooklyn and Queens that played R&B, soul and Latin beats to people who lived for the weekend.

Bob Stanley has put this collection together, sourcing what was actually played in Brooklyn discos in 1974 and 1975. Only a few specific records were mentioned in Cohn’s feature, but two of them – Ben E King’s ‘Supernatural Thing Part 1’ and Harold Melvin’s ‘Wake Up Everybody’ - were cosmically great and both are included here, alongside underground favourites like Moment Of Truth’s Four Tops-like ‘Helplessly’ and Gloria Scott’s Barry White-produced modern soul classic ‘Just As Long As We’re Together’. Ivano Fossati’s incredible ‘Night Of The Wolf’ has fans in northern soul, disco and prog circles.

Without Cohn’s original story, it’s quite possible that disco would have remained an underground phenomenon – “Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night” paints a scene in full flower. Saturday Night Fever would eventually, if unintentionally, wreck the underground nature of this scene, and clubs like Studio 54 would destroy the democracy of the party, but for two or three years the scene was largely undocumented and magical. This album is the sound of disco before it was captured.

Zweite Chancen in der Musik - wie auch im Leben - sind selten. In einem geschlossenen Ökosystem, das darauf ausgelegt ist, erste Chancen zu verhindern, gibt es so gut wie nie eine zweite Chance. Vielleicht weiß das im Jahr 2023 niemand mehr zu schätzen als die Mitglieder von Royal Thunder.

Nach dem Verlust eines wichtigen Mitglieds und dem völligen Zusammenbruch unter der Last des Exzesses hat sich das gefeierte Trio aus Georgia wieder zusammengefunden und meldet sich mit ihrem ersten Album seit sechs Jahren zurück. 'Rebuilding The Mountain' enthält 10 raue und wunderbar melodische Tracks.

Zweite Chancen in der Musik - wie auch im Leben - sind selten. In einem geschlossenen Ökosystem, das darauf ausgelegt ist, erste Chancen zu verhindern, gibt es so gut wie nie eine zweite Chance. Vielleicht weiß das im Jahr 2023 niemand mehr zu schätzen als die Mitglieder von Royal Thunder.

Nach dem Verlust eines wichtigen Mitglieds und dem völligen Zusammenbruch unter der Last des Exzesses hat sich das gefeierte Trio aus Georgia wieder zusammengefunden und meldet sich mit ihrem ersten Album seit sechs Jahren zurück. 'Rebuilding The Mountain' enthält 10 raue und wunderbar melodische Tracks.

Zweite Chancen in der Musik - wie auch im Leben - sind selten. In einem geschlossenen Ökosystem, das darauf ausgelegt ist, erste Chancen zu verhindern, gibt es so gut wie nie eine zweite Chance. Vielleicht weiß das im Jahr 2023 niemand mehr zu schätzen als die Mitglieder von Royal Thunder.

Nach dem Verlust eines wichtigen Mitglieds und dem völligen Zusammenbruch unter der Last des Exzesses hat sich das gefeierte Trio aus Georgia wieder zusammengefunden und meldet sich mit ihrem ersten Album seit sechs Jahren zurück. 'Rebuilding The Mountain' enthält 10 raue und wunderbar melodische Tracks.

Since we've known him, Robert Lloyd has made quite clear his enormous affection for the songs and sounds of Freakwater, the duo of Janet Beveridge-Bean and Catherine Irwin who've been wrongly denied their place as rightful and willful progenitors of alt-country's 'movement', which (frankly) is to their credit. Their genius in offering absolute authentic to the sound old-time Appalachian folk music with a modern façade that in no way negates tradition (one of their albums is titled Feels Like The Third Time) is unparalleled within the genre, and Freakwater remain under-appreciated. After the start of Covid, Robert dared approach Janet with the idea of recording together. Over the course of the long pandemic, songs were bandied about for months, and when recording was finally practical, a band was assembled with dates set up for a recording session in Valencia, Spain. Robert and Janet were joined by Robert's long-time ally, Pete Byrchmore, the musical foil for Robert's solo album on Virgin and a former Nightingale, Mark Bedford, the bassist for Madness and Terry Edwards' Near Jazz Experience, and Pablo Roda, Spanish mystery drummer, couldn't have worked out more perfectly. Tracks were selected without regard for collective presentation, just the goal of walking out of the studio with an album of perfect gems. Forget Lee & Nancy or George & Tammy, Rob and Janet have an immediate chemistry that only sounds long-lived - and too uniquely them to merit any comparison. The title track, Black Cat, Dark Horse is the sole Lloyd / Bean / Byrchmore composition and one of the record 's highlights. Jim Elkington, collaborator with Jeff Tweedy and Richard Thompson, contributes Heavy Reckonings and a song written with Janet, The True Lovers' Knot And The Lie, while Robert adds reworkings from past releases - Sweet Georgia Black and Black Country (with Pete) - not to mention the unreleased Eggs And Bacon. Janet brought One Shot and the unheard Freakwater song Arc Of A Smile. Covers of tunes from Dion and The Monkees and a magnificent Jon Langford song, "Tears Like Stars" round out the album. We daresay the album is among the finest you'll hear in 2023. That it doesn't fit perfectly into any preconceived genre is a testament to its quality. "Songcraft" is a word used infrequently today, yet Black Cat, Dark Horse will show that good songs endure. We're proud that Robert and Janet will find some new admirers through this album's release. The Michael Cumming / Stewart Lee film King Rocker made a case for Robert Lloyd-as-losthero; this album furthers that idea and shows a compelling side of Janet's talent and abilities which will be a surprise to her fans and serve as an entry point to exploring her many other compelling projects.

Gacha Bakradze releases his third album on Lapsus entitled "Pancakes", and while the name may appear conventional at first glance, it actually contains esoteric philosophical concepts.

The Georgian producer perceives the making of pancakes -a transformative and healing parental activity that he loves to partake in with his son- as a metaphor for alteration, metamorphosis and change. A reflection that also accentuates the importance of balance during each process of preparing a simple recipe, which in turn highlights key human attributes such as patience, attention to detail and willingness to adapt to shifting circumstances.

On a sonic level, Gacha’s new album embodies precisely that: the contextual reworking of his music, while maintaining the essence of his previous work. "Pancakes" provides the typically melancholic yet vibrant genetics already recognisable in his music, but also embraces new genres, including his unique and personal take on hyper-pop and trance. It is an album of contrasting elements, where bucolic interludes make way for heavier tracks that are more suited to a club environment, an aural universe that hybridises IDM, electro, bass music and cutting edge techno, and once again demonstrates that trying to pigeonhole Gacha Bakradze's sound is a somewhat fruitless task.

Long out of print (10 years!), this new edition of Soul Jazz Records' classic Delta Swamp Rock, features a killer all-star line-up of seminal artists who all first blended rock, soul and country together to create a stunning new sound of southern American music in the 1970s.

Featuring the Allman Brothers, Dan Penn, Leon Russell, Tony Joe White, Johnny Cash, Bobbie Gentry, Big Star, Link Wray, Area Code 615 and loads more!

This album comes as a superb limited-edition gold vinyl double vinyl release complete with extensive original sleevenotes, interviews and exclusive photography, all spread over a 12-page full-size magazine and two bespoke inner sleeves. The works!

Delta Swamp Rock is an interstate southern road-trip through the United States of America where country, rock and soul met at the crossroads - an exploration of the musical and cultural links between the cities of Memphis, Muscle Shoals and Nashville in the 1960s and 70s.

At the start of the 1970s, a new type of music emerged out of the southern states of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida. Southern rock, the creation of young blue-collar white Americans, blended rock, soul, country and blues music together to present a new vision of the south – a post-civil rights southern identity complete with a celebration of the regions natural landscape and its way of life.

The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd epitomised the definitive southern rock groups – a mixture of blues-rock and country with a southern rebelliousness and attitude. Unfortunately both The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd were to be struck by tragedy, which would affect the movement’s rise and fall.

The backstory to southern rock is the fact that a number of the people involved in its creation had been central to the production of southern soul music in the 1960s mainly in Memphis, Tennessee, and the small town of Muscle Shoals (population around 10,000) deep within the bible-belt, liquor-free, deeply segregated state of Alabama, creating 100s of R&B hits on an almost daily basis.

Here in Muscle Shoals, with its proximity to Memphis and Nashville, an all-white group of in-house musicians, (famously referred to by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the song ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ as the ‘Swampers’), created countless classic soul records for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Clarence Carter and more during the 1960s.

This album charts the rise and fall of southern rock from its funky swamp roots in southern soul to its phenomenal success in the first-half of the 1970s, including its influence on Nashville’s ‘outlaw’ country and tracing it right back to the arrival of rock and roll in the 1950s - the first meeting of black and white American music at the crossroads.

This blue coloured vinyl is exclusive to Indie stores, very probably including a DLC as extra bonus. The classic third album from the Black Lips, originally released in 2005 and now back on vinyl and part of a series of Fire re-issues celebrating 20 years of the legendary garage rock gurus from Atlanta, Georgia. 16 tracks of grimy and chaotic punk, scuzzy and raw, and catchy as hell. The band at their trashy best, more melodic but every bit as psychotic. If The Royal Trux had listened to the Troggs instead of the Rolling Stones, they might have recorded this album. This baby is a masterpiece. Unapologetic southern-fried twang, crunching through the gears in a blitz of grimy bravado. Their music twitches with an engaging, wired vigour." **** Uncut - "Their strongest effort to date." All Music

Baby Rose makes healing music for the aimless and heartbroken. The Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter and producer's uniquely rich voice naturally lends itself to her powerful, smoke-filled ballads lamenting lost loves and broken futures. "I make music to help myself get through things," she says. The piercing honesty and vulnerability she brings to her lyrics in turn helps others process their feelings and find a place of healing. For Rose, it's a journey that's still ongoing. "If I'm going to leave anything behind, it's going to be getting people back to themselves," she says. "As I get back to myself, it's a constant reset: Remember who you are, remember who you want to be." You can hear the impact of this approach in Baby Rose's upcoming second album, Through and Through. Take the hypnotic "Fight Club." Over the track's simmering baseline and crashing cymbals, she declares, "I don't need no one else to show me the way." She describes the song as a "breaking of the shell. It encourages me to just go for it and not care about what anyone else thinks." Therein lies Baby Rose's strength: a determination to live, love, and create on her own terms. "I'm not just a singer with a unique voice," she says. "I'm somebody that has something to say." In the years since releasing her last album, To Myself, Rose has been painstakingly piecing together its sequel. Started almost immediately after its release, her new body of work finds her in a state of musical and personal transition. It's a subtle merging of new sounds_stirring rock, upbeat r&b, psychedelic funk, pop, and soulful ballads_, all mastered through analog tape to make the music feel warmer and all-encompassing. It's also a journey inward as she battles past fear and self-doubt to finally discover_and love_who she is, where she is. Finishing an album with such peace and firm resolution is a first for Rose, but she makes it clear: She's nowhere near done writing her story. "I think as long as I'm being raw and trying to push past my comfort zone, it will feel rewarding," she says. "I don't want to be the type that doesn't take risks because I'm afraid. I have to trust that as long as the music is honest and innovative, it'll be timeless."

Many people consider the Tbilisi scene (thanks to the artists that turns around Khidi club) as one of the most advanced and influential in the entire world. Giorgi Kolbaia (aka Downwell) & Giorgi Kharanauli are a good example of those talented georgian artists. They have made partnership as Initial Light to present a more relaxed work in relation to their solo acts stuff, “40 Degrees In The Air” is a blend of Italo, breaks, synthwave and modern ebm / new beat keeping a common pleasant industrial taste in the 6 tracks included in their vinyl debut.

Nach der Veröffentlichung des von der Kritik hochgelobten Konzertfilms, „Live At Bush Hall“, haben Black Country, New Road heute das entsprechende Live-Album zum Konzert angekündigt, das das Set ihrer drei aufeinanderfolgenden, ausverkauften Shows in der historischen Bush Hall im Dezember 2022 enthält.
Anfang 2022 veröffentlichten Black Country, New Road ihr chartsstürmendes neues Album, „Ants From Up There“, das in Deutschland sensationell auf #10 der Albumcharts und in England sogar auf #3 (ihre zweites Top-5Album Veröffentlichung in UK innerhalb von 12 Monaten, nach ihrem für den Mercury Prize nominierten Debüt „For The First Time“), das von Fans und Kritiker:innen gleichermaßen gelobt wurde, zahlreiche 5-Sterne-Rezensionen erhielt und auf Jahresendlisten auf der ganzen Welt auftauchte, einschließlich der Wahl zur Nummer 1 durch Fans auf r/indieheads, Rate Your Music und Nummer 3 durch Pitchfork-Leser:innen. Und das, obwohl das Album nur wenige Tage nach der Bekanntgabe des Ausstiegs von Frontmann Isaac Wood aus der Band veröffentlicht wurde. Nach dem Erfolg von „Ants From Up There“ und mit einem vollen Tourneeplan im Jahr 2023 vor Augen, beschlossen die verbliebenen Mitglieder Lewis Evans, May Kershaw, Georgia Ellery, Luke Mark, Tyler Hyde und Charlie Wayne, die nun zu sechst sind, komplett neues Material zu schreiben und aufzuführen. Sie spielten auf Festivals vor großen Zuschauer:innenzahlen, darunter triumphale Auftritte auf dem Primavera, dem Green Man und dem Fuji Rock, und traten in eine neue musikalische Phase ein, in der sie Songs, die erst wenige Wochen alt waren, weiterentwickelten. Außerdem tourten sie mit Black Midi durch die USA und spielten zwei ausverkaufte Konzerte in New York. Die Band hat sich dafür entschieden, die Idee einer Frontperson komplett aufzugeben und teilt sich stattdessen die Gesangsaufgaben mit Tyler Hyde, die bei einer Reihe von Tracks den Gesang übernimmt, darunter „Up Song“, der die Freundschaft und den Erfolg der Band mit dem Text „Look at what we did together, BC,NR friends forever“ feiert. An anderer Stelle übernimmt May den Gesang bei „The Boy“ und „Turbines/ Pigs“, einem umgehenden Fan-Liebling und einem der verletzlichsten Stücke der Band bis heute. Lewis hingegen singt bei „Across The Pond Friend“ und „The Wrong Trousers“. Mit diesem Schritt hat sich der Sound der Band weiter verändert, so dass weitere Einflüsse und Vielfalt in ihr Songwriting einfließen konnten. Als sich die Songs während des stetigen Tourens weiterentwickelten, beschlossen sie, konventionelle nächste Schritte zu vermeiden. Die Leute, die auf neues Material warten, bekommen acht neue, hervorragende Songs zu hören, aber nicht so, wie sie es vielleicht erwartet hätten. „Wir wollten kein Studioalbum machen.“, sagt BC, NR-Pianistin May Kershaw. „Wir haben die neuen Stücke speziell für Live-Auftritte geschrieben und dachten, es wäre eine gute Idee, eine Performance zu veröffentlichen.“
Das Ergebnis ist eine gefilmte und aufgenommene Live-Performance, bei der Greg Barnes Regie führte und John Parish, ein langjähriger Kollaborateur von PJ Harvey, die Musik abmischte, die an drei Abenden in der Londoner Bush Hall stattfand. „Es geht darum, den Moment einzufangen.“, sagt der Saxophonist und jetzige Teilzeit-Sänger Lewis Evans. „Eine kleine Zeitkapsel dieser acht Monate, in denen wir diese Songs auf Tour gespielt haben.“

Beautiful, soulful jazz record by Jimetta Rose and The Voices of Creation, a Los Angeles-based community choir, a mainstay of the local scene. Highly recommended!!

The Voices of Creation are a community-based choir led by vocalist, songwriter, arranger, producer and mainstay of the Los Angeles scene Jimetta Rose. Made up of a multigenerational group of mainly non-professional singers backed by some of the city’s finest musicians,their music marries hip strains of gospel with layers of jazz, soul and funk. While aspects of their music might recall Kamasi Washington, The Staple Singers or Sly Stone, Jimetta’s unique vision has resulted in new spiritually-charged forms of music whose whole-hearted embrace of love, joy and peace act as sonic healing balms for the soul.

For Jimetta - whose resume includes collaborations with Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Angel Bat Dawid, Shafiq Husayn, MED and Blu - the very act of creation was part of a healing process: “I was very low at the time and I wrote most of the songs going through hardship. But I found comfort in the songs and a way to adjust my mindset to where things got better. So I thought ‘if this music works for me, maybe it will work for other people’ I believe that every person has their own voice and their own note and that we can use our voices to heal ourselves. That’s the intention behind creating the project.”

After putting out a call on social media for people interested in joining her choir she was met with a sea of replies. Members were chosen in less-than conventional fashion: “I recruited people based on their interest in healing themselves and others, not necessarily on their musical experience or being seasoned performers” she says. Among those accepted into the ever-evolving collective, which was begun initially as a community choir, were the likes of Sly Stone’s daughter Novena Carmel, better known as a radio DJ for KCRW’s flagship breakfast show. Jimetta’s upbringing in the Pentecostal church, where she was a youth choir director, fed into her otherwise intuitive teachings of her songs and arrangements to the inexperienced members with help from the group’s seasoned organ player/co-musical director Jack Maeby.

Produced by Mario Caldato Jr. (Beastie Boys, Seu Jorge) and his wife Samantha Caldato the results show the incredible sense of togetherness and communal spirit that the group had built up over time in the rehearsal sessions. The six tracks of their debut album, a mixture of originals and rearranged covers, are performed in a wide-eyed mix of styles that reflect Jimetta’s vision for borderless music: “It’s new black classical music,” she explains. “It’s all the hodgepodge of being an African American but also with creativity and vision for the future. It has a taste of what is to come and what we can do. What we have gone through and who we are now.”

The group’s propensity for warm and buoyant sonics finds representation on album opener Let The Sunshine In, a sparkling rework of the Sons and Daughters of Lite’s deep jazz classic. Their version finds the group’s dynamic group harmonies offset with Allakoi Peete’s nimble afro-percussive touches and plenty of soul- drenched keys courtesy of pianist Quran Shaheed and organ player Jack Maeby. A similarly uplifting take on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s choral jazz classic Spirits Up Above follows, with Maeby’s groove-laden organ lines inspiring some gorgeous group harmonies as well as prime solo turns from the likes of Kellye Hawkins, Zavier Wise, Tamara Blue, and Khalila Gardner.

Another Sons and Daughters of Lite cover follows as Jimetta leads the choir in the groove-drenched ode to self-affirmation Operation Feed Yourself. Written as a series of mantras for everyday living, the Jimetta-penned composition How Good It Is harnesses the full transformative power of music to generate a stirring and joyful ode to positivity - it’s chanted declarations bringing out some of the group’s most deeply-felt and affecting vocal performances over some superlative piano and organ accompaniment with a surprise feature vocal from Novena Carmel.

Jimetta’s talent for re-imagining songs in her own light is highlighted in Answer The Call, her vivid re-telling of Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop: “When I listened to the original song, the Mom in the story was really going through it. I thought of how I could turn this into a song that can encompass the glorification of all mothers and I thought of the Egyptian cosmic goddess Nut. To that mother we’re all the seeds planted in the garden. Answering the call in your life is literally that. Finding out exactly what you’re here for through your heart.”

The album finishes with the standout original gospel number Ain’t Life Grand. Over swaying organs and clapped percussion Jimetta’s lyrical mantras serve to emphasise the good feelings that come to those with a grateful heart. Good feeling is an apt descriptor for the mood of the album as a whole. Its shining positivity provides a welcome ray of light in an increasingly dark world. “It’s a shortcut if you will to the better feelings” Jimetta says. “The hope that we need to keep pressing forward. We are saturated and inundated with images of chaos and destruction, death and hatred. There’s so much we can witness. So, I want to make sure that there is a representation sonically of the other parts that are still there to witness so that we can continue to build those things. So that the systems we support actually reflect what we want to experience. So it’s like: “Don’t give up and Let The Sunshine Into You” and then find out what your purpose is and answer the call.”

The “Heaven” EP features producer-extraordinaire Leonard Charles at the helm, collaborating with prodigious artists from New Zealand (his home country) and the USA, to create an wildly eclectic E.P. project with the common underlying thread of basement funk knitting it together. This presentation of funk is truly a legitimate foundation for the heads that need it: built upon solid soul/jazz chord progressions and played on original musical equipment/gear from the 80’s and 90’s. The record features an exclusive remix of the song “Nine Lives” that he co-wrote with boogie/funk legend Leroy Burgess, and additionally features stellar collaborations with Guilty Simpson, Zyah Belle, Reality Jonez and A.C. Freezy. Jeremy ‘Leonard Charles’ Toy is a producer / artist / musician from Auckland New Zealand who has played on records for Mark De Clive Lowe, Recloose, Julien Dyne and Ladyhawke. He has performed music with Randy Crawford, Hugh Masakela, Kimbra, Maynard Ferguson, Ronald LaPread (the Commodores) and has collaborated with Grandmaster Caz, Guilty Simpson (The Leonard Simpson Duo), Georgia-Anne Muldrow, Dudley Perkins and Wildchild. He has released music on his own imprint, From The Crate Records and Jakarta Records, Hit + Run, Wonderful Noise, Hobo Camp and now CQQL Records.

Dwight Trible announces new album “Ancient Future” out 17th March via Gearbox Records + Shares new single “Truth” Album features special guests Kamasi Washington, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Greg Paul, Megashia Jackson, G. E. Stinson, André Gouché, John Beasley, and Rene Fisher Today, the inimitable jazz vocalist, activist, and nominal godfather of the LA jazz scene, Dwight Trible, returns with the announcement of his new album “Ancient Future”. Out 17th March via London jazz aficionados and analog specialists Gearbox Records, the new record follows his critically acclaimed album “Mothership”, which was released in 2019 and saw him collaborate with the likes of Kamasi Washington, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Miguel Atwood-Fergus, and more. On “Ancient Future”, Trible collaborates once again with Kamasi Washington (saxophone), as well as lauded LA multi-instrumentalist, Georgia Anne Muldrow (vocals), who is signed to Brianfeeder and has previously worked with the likes of Madlib, Denzel Curry, Mos Def, Blood Orange, and Brittany Howard. Elsewhere, the record also features Grammy nominated pianist, John Beasley; Kamaal Williams touring drummer Greg Paul; gospel bassist André Gouché; percussionist and backing vocalist, Megashia Jackson; LA guitarist G. E. Stinson; and percussionist Rene Fisher.

(C40 Cassette) Georgian artist Rezo Glonti's debut on Muscut is the label's first take on far Eastern Europe. "Subtropics" was made during sea voyages between subtropical ports.Delicate sound design and ambient experimentations manifest themselves as an audio excursion of the Black Sea region. Currently, Tbilisi-based Glonti has several albums and EPs under the name and the moniker "Aux Field".

I Can Only Be Me ist das jüngste Kapitel einer
unvergleichlichen posthumen Karriere und ein
bahnbrechendes neues Album in Zusammenarbeit mit
dem London Symphony Orchestra. Eva Cassidys
Original-Gesangspartien wurden isoliert und von neuen
Arrangements begleitet, die von dem Oscar-nominierten
Christopher Willis und dem Grammy-Gewinner William
Ross geschrieben wurden. Durch den Einsatz neuester
Technologien im Bereich des maschinellen Lernens wurde
die bestehende Gesangsstimme sorgfältig restauriert und
verbessert, um ein bisher nicht gekanntes Maß an
Klarheit und Tiefe zu erreichen. Das Ergebnis ist ein
gefühlvolles, atmosphärisches Album, vertraut und doch
anders, mit üppigen Klanglandschaften, die den
unverfälschten Gesang begleiten.

Trench Dogs melden sich mit ihrem neuen Studioalbum 'Stockholmiana' zurück. Energiegeladener Rock'n'Roll mit Einflüssen von Punk- und Glam-Rock der 70er Jahre sind Programm. Klingt wie The Quireboys, Dogs d'amour, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Faster Pussycat, Hanoi Rocks, Sweet oder L.A Guns!

Mastered by Tohru Kotetsu and pressed at RTI, this 45rpm LP will live up to and surpass your most demanding judgments. Midnight Sugar is one of the most sough-after titles from the acclaimed Three Blind Mice catalogue.

On “Midnight Sugar” the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio plays two of Tsuyoshi’s own blues improvisations followed by jazz ballads that became standards for the Trio. The combination of these titles is nothing but exceptional.

The Yamamoto Trio’s Midnight Sugar was recorded March 1, 1974 at Aoi Studio, Tokyo. It earned the Best Engineering Award and Jazz Disc Award of Swing Journal in 1974. It is Yamamoto’s unmistakable skill and his jazz feeling which adds that certain touch of liveliness and spontaneity and makes Midnight Sugar a unique experience. This Piano Trio will mesmerize you with this great collection of standards, superb musicianship and awesome sonics. You are sure to listen to this one over and over.

After releasing 2020's critically acclaimed debut album 'Who Are the
Girls?', collaborating and touring with Bring Me The Horizon, cited by Tom Morello as one of his favourite bands and being named as "the most vital rock band in Britain right now" by Rolling Stone UK, Amy Love and Georgia South return with sophomore record 'Supernova'
From being "shunned" when they arrived on the scene, Nova Twins are leading a game all of their own. Now, there are no rules.

Money Man (Born: Tysen Jay Bolding), famous with the name, Big Money, was born in New York, but raised in Decatur, Georgia. He attempted to break into the music industry in the early 2010’s but paused to focus on his finances. The rapper emerged in 2016 with three mixtapes featuring the likes of Young Thug, Akon, Gucci Mane and others that earned him a significant following. Over the next few years, this momentum continued with the release of seven more successful mixtapes. Money Man found Top 40 chart success in 2019 with “Paranoia,” followed by more album chart presence with “State of Emergency” and “Blockchain.” “BIG MONEY” features guest artists G Herbo, Nardo Wick, Benny the Butcher, BJ Jroc, Peezy, and Juney Knotzz.

On June 30, 1986, the same day that Diamanda Galás"s The Divine Punishment was released, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Georgia"s so-called sodomy law in Bowers v. Hardwick, criminalizing consensual sex between men. At the time, about 15,000 people were known to have died of AIDS in the U.S. alone, with little government acknowledgement besides suggestions to quarantine homosexuals on island colonies. By the end of 2021, the number of AIDS deaths globally would exceed 36 million. The first album in her Masque of the Red Death trilogy, The Divine Punishment is one of the most jarring works of art produced in response to the AIDS epidemic, and a milestone in Diamanda Galás"s artistry and activism. Galás uses her famous voice both as an orational instrument and as well as a physical representation of AIDS and those it afflicts.

First time on LP, and a CD reissue for this classic "mash up made in heaven" where classic soul meets 21st century recording technology. The voice of Ray Charles, from unreleased archive material, is matched with brand new recordings by the Count Basie Orchestra. This 2006 album was a worldwide best seller on initial release, and this new reissue package brings it to vinyl for the first time.

"2018 Tbilisi Georgia. The energy captured materialized into the beats, melodies, and grooves across this album.
2022 the energy extended, echoes from the rawness, and its intention can be perceived all around the globe. With no program to stop.
Reasons enough to repress this record thanking hard to all those who have taken part in this incredible story which still has to be written.
As we are saying.
One of you."

A raw project by highly skilled musicians that explore modern grooves and brain-melting jazz chops. Led by Georgian producer Mishulino, who was also involved with the 2021 broken beat future-classic Turbulance project with Kid Sublime. On keys is former child prodigy Bjazz11, who already played with legends like Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke from an early age. On drums is Mike Mitchell aka Blaque Dynamite, another young legend who performed with Kamasi Washington, Mononeon, Erykah Badu, Thundercat, and many others. This record shows these topnotch players jamming it out with full freedom to express

Triathalon's new album Spin is cavernous, warm to the touch — aglow in
Rhodes pianos, Wurlitzers, and fuzzed out guitars.
The New York based trio recorded Spin live, with mixing by Gabe Wax
(Adrianne Lenker, Fleet Foxes) and mastering by Zeroh (Pink Siifu,
Eyedress)
It was written, produced and recorded by the band themselves. The album is an
inherently transformative record — the product of years of work, both on the self
and as a collective, a band. Spin is cavernous, warm to the touch, aglow in
Rhodes pianos, Wurlitzers, and fuzzed out guitars.
Triathalon will hit the road on a month- long North American tour at the end of
August with stops in 27 cities including Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Chicago,
Philadelphia and more.
Forming in Savannah, the band—which began as the solo project of Adam Intrator
before Chad Chilton and Hunter Jayne joined in 2011—relocated to New York City
after performing together for nearly a decade in Georgia. Their new music is a
snapshot of Triathalon's evolution and growth — tracing a journey of sonic selfreflection, of being lost in your thoughts and watching the world around you
change.
"brooding, romantic, lush — and deeply sensual" Billboard

Triathalon's new album Spin is cavernous, warm to the touch — aglow in
Rhodes pianos, Wurlitzers, and fuzzed out guitars.
The New York based trio recorded Spin live, with mixing by Gabe Wax
(Adrianne Lenker, Fleet Foxes) and mastering by Zeroh (Pink Siifu,
Eyedress)
It was written, produced and recorded by the band themselves. The album is an
inherently transformative record — the product of years of work, both on the self
and as a collective, a band. Spin is cavernous, warm to the touch, aglow in
Rhodes pianos, Wurlitzers, and fuzzed out guitars.
Triathalon will hit the road on a month- long North American tour at the end of
August with stops in 27 cities including Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Chicago,
Philadelphia and more.
Forming in Savannah, the band—which began as the solo project of Adam Intrator
before Chad Chilton and Hunter Jayne joined in 2011—relocated to New York City
after performing together for nearly a decade in Georgia. Their new music is a
snapshot of Triathalon's evolution and growth — tracing a journey of sonic selfreflection, of being lost in your thoughts and watching the world around you
change.
"brooding, romantic, lush — and deeply sensual" Billboard

After a long break Vodkast Records is back with a vinyl only release, a four track EP by one of the finest creators of electronic music in Georgia - Saphileaum. Kaftan takes us on a cosmic journey starting with the atmospheric Dino and a downtempo percussive Observatory. Side B continues with an uplifting slow groove of En and adventurous Ziggurat.

Sought-after disco funk recorded in Miami, 1981, available officially for the first time on reissue 45. Strength, Trust, Unity and Determination hailed from Augusta, Georgia. Bandleader and trumpeter Robert Blount played in The J.B's touring line-up for a brief time in the 70s and later started S.T.U.D. Band, forming a septet to gig and record in Miami, Florida.

Michele Manzo - musician and producer who boasts international collaborations with Omar Lye-Fook, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Declaime - is the man behind the second release of Angis Music, italian label curated by DJ Samuele Pagliai. The EP presents 3 different scenarios resulting from a spontaneous live session, which reflects the multiple influences and symphonic approach of an artist with various styles. This work, inspired by the science fiction novels of William Gibson - godfather of the cyberpunk genre - opens with the song "Burning Chrome", conceived as a nighttime escape taking you at lightening speed through the alleys of a city that is galaxies away. Continuing on to the B side we have "Chiba City Park", where the broken beat and abstract harmonies create an ambience similar to that of those in Neuromancer. Finally, "Nebula's Grace" is a cosmic jam where time slowly floats away in dub echoes and disappears into the depth of space.

Deestricted strikes again with its third vinyl EP with a trippy excursion into Georgian landscapes and sounds. Techno beats in favor of oppressed cultures, bring new light and freedom for all

If you're among the legions of Widespread Panic fans, you already know
that the band is legendary for never playing the same show twice or the
same song the same way twice - What makes this performance that
much more special is the inspiring presence of founding member
Michael Houser (whose nickname Panic inspired the band's name), who
died of pancreatic cancer less than two years later
As much as anything, this is a celebration of Houser's life and the sheer joy he
brought to a band that became one of the biggest draws on the international
concert circuit and created a vibe that makes the Panic experience unique in the
pop rock world.
But anybody who knows anything about them knows that Widespread Panic is so
much more than just a jam-happy rock band. From the time Houser and John Bell
(JB) began playing duets around Athens, Georgia, in the early 80's, their repertoire
ranged from early covers of the Grateful Dead and Bob Marley to a host of
original songs (among them Space Wrangler , included here) that demonstrate, as
The Village Voice wrote, a willingness to dip their collective toe into just about any
genre. This is classic Widespread Panic, including David Schools on bass, John
Hermann on keys, Todd Nance on drums and Domingo Ortiz on percussion.
One look at this show and it'll quickly become obvious there was something
strange going on in the house that night. Yes, it was Halloween, 2000, and the
rabid fans went beyond even their usual hard-core delirium. This was one time the
audience almost threatened to steal the show!
-Terry Lickona (Producer Austin City Limits).

The latest full-length from Larkin Poe, Blood Harmony is a whole-hearted invitation into a world they know intimately, a Southern landscape so precisely conjured you can feel the sticky humidity of the warm summer air. In bringing their homeland to such rich and dazzling life, Georgia-bred multi-instrumentalist sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell fortify their storytelling with a rock and blues-heavy sound that hits right in the heart, at turns stormy and sorrowful and wildly exhilarating.

Sunshine Only Sometimes: Archives Vol. 2, 1972–1975 continues Anthology Recordings’ excavation, and exploration, of southern singer, songwriter, and psychedelic serviceman Robert Lester Folsom’s bountiful archives. Recorded across Georgia in various bedrooms, a barn, and a motel room with a reel-to-reel and a revolving cast of whip smart studio musicians in the first half of a dazed and confused decade, Sunshine Only Sometimes furthers Folsom’s place in the canon of long lost but eventually found independently spirited, high-flying American folk rock. When Anthology’s reissue of Music and Dreams, the sole contemporaneous album released in 1976 by Folsom, surfaced in 2010, little else was known of Folsom’s nearly five-decade deep archive of unreleased demos and fully formed studio recordings.

Michele Manzo is an esteemed producer, musician and DJ who has collaborated with a fine list of globally recognised talents such as Omar Lye-Fook, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Declaime, and Yancey Boys, amongst many others. His new EP on Detroit don Wajeed's Dirt Tech Rack label showcases his original house style with opener 'Around Brasilia' bring that South American flair. The bird claps, shuffling samba beats and lively percussion all bring the heat. Wajeed then remixes it into a tougher, more drum lead rhythm. The flip side offers the deep but metallic percussive workout that is 'A Minha Vida' and the soul drenched grooves of 'Brilhante's Anthem.'

Four of DFTD’s latest releases have arrived on wax for the very first time. The A-side begins with Darius Syrossian & George Smeddles’ collaboration ‘Back In The Dance’. This uplifting dancefloor-ready groove with ‘90s influences marked a solid return to the floor after a long lockdown, and quickly became a favourite of top selectors. Next up on the A-side is the Transcriptions Mix of youANDme’s raw DFTD debut: ‘Moment’. Released in collaboration with Georgian singer-songwriter Kristina Sheli, this record cemented their status as contemporary powerhouses of the Berlin club scene. The B-side opens with OFFAIAH’s ‘Up All Night’, a fiery track that makes the perfect addition to any house set; the Las Vegas based artist continues to demonstrate his taste for catchy hooks and intense builds. The B-side continues with a record that has consistently dominated dancefloors throughout summer ’22, Marco Faraone’s powered-up remix of R.E.A.D’s ‘Where’s My Phone?’ featuring Sailor Jane, which closes out the package.

South-east Turkey born DJ, sound artist and producer Banu uses music as a political tool. For her, the strong message carried through sound is a vehicle to express emotions as well as a means of fighting against oppression. Using participation, social design, ecology, feminist and queer theory to create multimedia installations with sound as a main element, Banu‘s practice is closer to contemporary art and activist spaces than the club realm.

Banu‘s debut album TransSoundScapes is an exercise in female solidarity between her as a migrant woman and her sisters from the trans community, where an artist from one marginalised group is showing support towards her trans sisters, using her platform to help them amplify their voices and building a bridge towards a mutual understanding of femininity.

Conceptually, TransSoundScapes comes in continuation of Banu‘s previous research-based work, using music as a positive tool for change while working with various marginalised communities. The album originated from the very real experience of being confronted with verbal harassment in Berlin on a daily basis, particularly aimed at her transfeminine friends and companions. As a queer woman of Turkish and Kurdish origin, Banu did not only observe the verbal aggression directed at her friends, but also understood most of the insults shouted in languages such as Arabic. Seeing how she got signifi cantly more verbal violence directed at them when in company of trans people made a lasting impression on her, so she wanted to try and use her relative privilege to amplify transfeminine voices through her music.

Coming from a very conservative family, making music has been her lifelong dream. It was the moment she had the opportunity to work with the iconic Arp 2600 synthesiser (a younger sibling to Eliane Radigue‘s infamous 2500 machine) that all her disparate interests came into place to create an empowering soundscape with the aid of analogue drum machines. TransSoundScapes has a very full, porous sound, where every element that comes into play sounds soft yet clear. Across the 7 tracks, Banu conjures pounding subterraneous bassy techno („Surgery“), slithering tentacular EBM („First Time“) and pulsating cavernous soundscapes („Harem“), where oversized dancefl oor elements are woven with poetic spoken word passages, resulting in sensusous yet political anthems. Banu artfully merges loosely related genres such as techno, electro, dub and sound poems into a sound that is at once deeply personal and extremely compelling.

All of the tracks are collaborative efforts, Banu seeing the process as an exchange of care and shared experiences, while integrating research into her writing process. The lyrics in „Transition (part 1+2)‘‘ are an adaptation of Sara Ahmed’s “Living a Feminist Life”, while „Surgery“ was born out of series of interviews with trans people, channeling the metallic sounds of a surgery room to refer to society‘s perception of transness as a medical condition. Tracks like „First Time feat. Patricia“, „Harem feat. Prince Emrah“ or „We feat. Aérea Negrot“ document her encounters with various trans women, centering their life experiences while also developing a deep dialogue through the process of making music together.

The darkest and perhaps the most emblematic track is ‚‘Bianka (In Memory Of)‘‘, dedicated to the late Bianka Shigurova, a 22-year old Georgian actress found dead in her apartment. It was her Tbilisi photographer friend George Nebriedze who told her Bianka‘s tragic story, whose death is suspected to be an assasination due to transphobia. Banu chose one of Nebriedze‘s analogue photos of Bianka as the album‘s cover art.

Rezo Glonti (aka Aux Field), Georgian sound artist and electronic music producer debuts on the label One Instrument with an album entirely made with the Teenage Engineering OP-1.
He mostly works within the field of experimental music and places a strong emphasis on the incorporation of texture and space into his compositions.

On his new album “1 For One” Rezo Glonti created all the layers of the pieces in one take. As always, Glonti’s playing is deceptively elegant, raw but precise, attuned to resonance, radiance, and negative space. The record spans a range of emotions and moods and the result acts like a decaying memory, brief shining moments of clarity fighting against something unclear and untethered.

The various combination of layers perform with both a distinguished efficacy and unhurried dreamy drift—charged and beautiful, pulsating and pleasing. The production is subtle and tasteful.

Ginger Wildheart & The Sinners’ self-titled debut album is an energetic album that celebrates rock’n’roll and as Ginger explains it is in “the spirit of the music that we all collectively love, from childhood to the present day. The latest single, "Six Years Gone" by Georgia Satellites is the first song Ginger wanted to play with the band back when this was just an idea. “I became a bit obsessed with the song while in LA for Lemmy’s funeral, and carried it around in my heart from then until we all congregated at the studio.” Ginger Wildheart & The Sinners were formed in August 2019 when Ginger joined forces with Neil Ivison and Nick Lyndon from the band Stone Mountain Sinners. The line up was completed with drummer Shane Dixon (Tri-City Fanfare) and as Ginger explains “Me and The Sinners met for the very first time in the studio, in preparation for recording an album together. We figured out that if we can’t get along with each other then the music would be ultimately worthless. So we went to the pub and got drunk together. The next morning the music started flowing with ease. This is the sound of friendship.”

It has only been four catalogue numbers in the past since.....

Generali Minerali (Tbisili/Georgia) cooperated with RNBWS and made a fuzz. This time he’s on a solo path, or - according to the title - maybe alongside Kim Jong-un?

“Batteries aren’t low” gets to the heart of Generali’s sense for sounds: Softly billowing Electro, a vocal sample which kinda sounds like P. Diddy and harmonies that could well have been on “Selected Ambient Works II”. Come on, let’s go!
Point before line calculation or cryptic code? We don’t know for sure, but “5-5-6:5-6-5“ remains true to the ambient focus of the a-side. Retro 90s vibe, cosmic, prancing and floating - like stumbling into the chill out area for the first time on a muzzy Sunday morning.

“I got it” comes in significantly more abstract. Harmonies give way to industrial sounds, without vanishing entirely. Electric boogie with litte acid nuances - beautiful prelude to the b-side!
In terms of acid, „Smooth D“ puts a few blotters on top. A combination of psych sounds, dirty raw drums and trippy sequences. Two tickets for the 90s time capsule, please.

From the folk punk roots of Carry Me, through the anthemic One Way, Fifteen Years and Top 20 hits Hope Street, Just The One and Beautiful Day - more recent tracks such as Truth Is, The Cholera Well and The Recruiting Sgt show the Levellers' mix of scathing political comment and positive DIY attitude to life hasn't dissipated over the years.

Most exciting of all, there are brand new recordings of the Levellers collaborating with contemporary artists re-working some of their classic material. Imelda May is the Queen of all time on Beautiful Day, while Bellowhead and the legendary Billy Bragg help out on Just The One and Hope Street respectively.

Finally, lifelong Levellers fan Frank Turner joined the band in the studio - breathing new life into Julie - bringing us back full circle for another generation of the disenfranchised to discover the Levellers for the first time.

LESKY and Waywell unite again. The German Lofi heavyweight and
the UK guitarist are back with the sequel to their 2021 EP Whitecaps”.
A perfect soundtrack to pool parties, imaginary beach cruises and late-night bonfires. Their album is called “Mesame”, which is Georgian for “the third”.
The title draws on the Indian concept of the third eye chakra that provides higher consciousness and perception beyond ordinary sight and refers to the psychedelic influences surrounding the album sound. “Mesame” will be released September 9th digitally and on LP, consisting of 6 brand new tracks and all tracks from the “Whitecaps” EP. The album artwork created Tim Paschedag.
The two expats LESKY and Waywell met in Tbilisi, Georgia where they
shared a studio space. Waywell’s deeply soothing guitar riffs and LESKY’s crisp production make for a perfect hybrid sound of cosmic lofi paired with a subliminal yacht rock vibe, called Lofi Yacht Pop. LESKY was born in Leipzig but moved to Georgia beginning of 2021 to pursue music full-time.
Creating his own soundscape fusing mellow neo soul keys, trap infused drums and samples flipped beyond recognition, he has released three EPs and the full-length album “Meraki” on Melting Pot Music. Furthermore several projects on renowned labels like Blue Note Records/Astralwerks and Lofi Girl. Waywell has been self-releasing singles and one EP since 2017.

Das Londoner Duo Jockstrap (Georgia Ellery und Taylor Skye) wird sein lange erwartetes Debütalbum "I Love You Jennifer B" am 9. September via Rough Trade Records veröffentlichen. Jockstrap haben die bevorstehende Veröffentlichung bereits mit ihren Singles "50/50" und "Concrete Over Water" angedeutet. Beide wurden von BBC Radio 6 Music auf Rotation genommen und von der nationalen und internationalen Presse hoch gelobt. Das kosmische Begleitvideo zu "Concrete Over Water" wurde bei einer exklusiven Vorführung im The Castle Cinema, Hackney, uraufgeführt, gefolgt von einer weiteren von Jockstraps kultigen Partys im The Glove That Fits. Georgia Ellery und Taylor Skye von Jockstrap kommentierten die Albumveröffentlichung wie folgt: "I Love You Jennifer B ist eine Sammlung von Jockstrap-Tracks, die seit 3 Jahren in der Mache sind. Alles darauf klingt ziemlich einzigartig, also hoffen wir, dass für jeden ein Track dabei ist; also etwas, das dich anspricht und sagt "Ich bin ein Banger"." Skye fügte über "Glasgow" (ihre neue Single) hinzu: ""Glasgow" ist unser coming of age, moving forward, long-distance, travelling, beautiful bosk, wonderful thicket song." Und Ellery sagte über das Thema des Songs: "Glasgow ist eine tolle Stadt, vielleicht meine Lieblingsstadt in Großbritannien! Der einzige Nachteil ist, dass es die ganze Zeit so verdammt kalt ist." Wenn Georgia Ellery und Taylor Skye als Jockstrap Musik machen, gibt es für den Prozess und das Ergebnis nur eine Definition: pure moderne Pop-Alchemie. Mit ihrem Debütalbum"I Love You Jennifer B" werden sich Jockstrap als eine der vitalsten jungen Gruppen etablieren, die seit Jahren aus Londons Schmelztiegel der Musikkulturen hervorgegangen sind.

Das Londoner Duo Jockstrap (Georgia Ellery und Taylor Skye) wird sein lange erwartetes Debütalbum "I Love You Jennifer B" am 9. September via Rough Trade Records veröffentlichen. Jockstrap haben die bevorstehende Veröffentlichung bereits mit ihren Singles "50/50" und "Concrete Over Water" angedeutet. Beide wurden von BBC Radio 6 Music auf Rotation genommen und von der nationalen und internationalen Presse hoch gelobt. Das kosmische Begleitvideo zu "Concrete Over Water" wurde bei einer exklusiven Vorführung im The Castle Cinema, Hackney, uraufgeführt, gefolgt von einer weiteren von Jockstraps kultigen Partys im The Glove That Fits. Georgia Ellery und Taylor Skye von Jockstrap kommentierten die Albumveröffentlichung wie folgt: "I Love You Jennifer B ist eine Sammlung von Jockstrap-Tracks, die seit 3 Jahren in der Mache sind. Alles darauf klingt ziemlich einzigartig, also hoffen wir, dass für jeden ein Track dabei ist; also etwas, das dich anspricht und sagt "Ich bin ein Banger"." Skye fügte über "Glasgow" (ihre neue Single) hinzu: ""Glasgow" ist unser coming of age, moving forward, long-distance, travelling, beautiful bosk, wonderful thicket song." Und Ellery sagte über das Thema des Songs: "Glasgow ist eine tolle Stadt, vielleicht meine Lieblingsstadt in Großbritannien! Der einzige Nachteil ist, dass es die ganze Zeit so verdammt kalt ist." Wenn Georgia Ellery und Taylor Skye als Jockstrap Musik machen, gibt es für den Prozess und das Ergebnis nur eine Definition: pure moderne Pop-Alchemie. Mit ihrem Debütalbum"I Love You Jennifer B" werden sich Jockstrap als eine der vitalsten jungen Gruppen etablieren, die seit Jahren aus Londons Schmelztiegel der Musikkulturen hervorgegangen sind.

Jetzt nachgepresst! - Eines der ersten Dub Alben überhaupt aus dem Jahre 1972. Mit wegweisenden Versionen zu seinerzeit aktuellen Hits: zu Dennis Browns "Money In My Pocket", The Abyssinians "Satta A Massa Gana" - das Joe Gibbs auch für den Peter Tosh Song "Here Comes The Judge" nutzte (die überfällige Abrechnung mit den europäischen Kolonialmächten), sowie Burning Spears "He Prayed", Big Youths "Joe Frazier" uvm.

(Remastered 2022)

Das Album „A Single Man“ von Elton John wird am 2. September wiederveröffentlicht.

Das Album war eines der am heißesten erwarteten Alben in der Karriere von Elton John und brachte zwei von Eltons beliebtesten Hits hervor, ”Part-Time Love” und den ergreifenden, fast instrumentalen
Song ”Song For Guy”. Es ist auch das Album auf dem Elton zum ersten Mal ohne den Produzenten Gus Dudgeon arbeitete und zum ersten Mal mit Bernie Taupin zusammenarbeitet.

Da Album wurde originalgetreu neu verpackt und ist jetzt auf 1LP als 2022 remastered Ausgabe erhältlich.

Since releasing their first album There Is a Bomb in Gilead in 2012, the
road-worn Birmingham, Alabama band has built a reputation as being
what NPR calls 'punks revved up by the hot-damn hallelujah of Southern
rock' who carry on 'the Friday-night custom of burning down the house,' a
raw live sound that they captured with Texas punk producer Tim Kerr on
studio albums Dereconstructed (2014) and Youth Detention (2017)
before recording a full-on live album at their favorite hometown dive, Live
at the Nick (2019)
While the Glory Fires have spent a decade propagating what the New York Times
calls 'pandemonium with a conscience,' they've long talked about wanting to
make a classic record'not a transparent document of their playing live with the
occasional embellishment'but a record. So, that's what they did. They contacted
Athens, Georgia's David Barbe, whose work with the Drive-By Truckers, Sugar, Son
Volt, Vic Chesnutt and countless other artists has earned him a legendary
reputation amongst Southern independent rockers, and they agreed to set about
bringing this vision to fruition. While tackling such lofty political, historical and
philosophical concepts, the album is also the band's most intimate, vulnerable
and spiritual to date. The perspective is both outward- and inward-facing, Bains
never taking on the persona or experience of others, but rather writing about the
way his own limited experience and perspective of the band's place can lift the
veils of false narratives, and uncover 'piles of winding stories' through time. In an
age characterized by individualism, and at a time when the past seems to be the
sole domain of the status quo, Old-Time Folks illustrates the deep, thick, tangled
roots of liberation, collectivism, mutuality and solidarity in the Deep South, and
where they are flowering and bringing forth fruit today.Packaging: CD Old- Style
Stoughton-Tip on Jacket

William Orbit returns with his first new album in over eight years. Entitled ‘The Painter’ it is unmistakeably William Orbit and features vocal collaborations from an array of artists including Katie Melua, Beth Orton, Georgia, Polly Scattergood, Ali Love and more.ja

Limited to: 300 copies.

Lera Lynn blurs the boundaries between genres, carving out a sound inspired by art-pop, indie-folk and the outer edges of American roots music. She’s a singer. She’s a songwriter. She’s a road warrior. She’s a multi-instrumentalist and producer. She’s a mother.

Texas born, Nashville resident Lera Lynn is just as comfortable creating an album entirely by herself, as she is collaborating with her heroes. In 2018, she worked with T Bone Burnett and Rosanne Cash on tracks that were not only picked up by the TV show True Detective, but Lynn was cast as a recurring character who performs in a dive bar frequented by the main characters.

However, nothing could have prepared Lynn for the lessons learned during motherhood. She welcomed her first son during the early months of the pandemic and began writing down her insights, chronicling this newfound experience of shifting priorities, strange endings, and new beginnings. Inside, she was battling postpartum depression. Outside, a bigger picture began taking shape: a feeling of interconnectedness, of cyclic renewal, of the knowledge that every beginning is an end and every end is a beginning. Those realizations coalesced into Something More Than Love, a record filled with synthesizers, lush soundscapes, the pop-noire punch of Lynn's voice, and the most dynamic melodies of her career.

Inspired by the cyclical patterns that shape our place in the world, Something More Than Love was co-produced and largely performed by Lynn and her partner, Todd Lombardo (Kacey Musgraves/Donovan Woods/Kathleen Edwards). They'd met years earlier, not long after Lynn relocated to Nashville from her college town (and musical launchpad) of Athens, Georgia. "My first time ever co-writing a song was in Nashville with Todd," she says of the ACM-nominated multi-instrumentalist. The two became fast friends and, eventually, partners; their creative chemistry giving way to romance and a growing family. That partnership reached a new milestone in 2021, with the newfound parents sharpening their creative instincts and expanding their palette for Lynn's sixth album.

"A lot of people were making records during the pandemic," Lynn notes, "and all they had was time. But it was the opposite experience for us. We created this whole record while still in the fog of early parenthood, and we didn't have the luxury of waiting for lightning to strike. We had to be focused and intentional."

Striking a balance between intimate self-reflection and universal insight, Something More Than Love poses big questions over even bigger-sounding music, with tempos and layered arrangements that find Lynn at her most dynamic. Illusion opens the album with spacey synthesizers before snapping into a taut, 1980s-influenced groove, combing reverb and rhythm into a song that swoons one minute and struts the next. I'm Your Kamikaze — a deconstructed burst of indie garage-rock, heavy on melody and percussive pulse — unfolds like a salute to self-sacrifice, with Lynn dedicating her own existence to ensuring her child's flourishing. What Is This Body? finds her reassessing her ideas of physical identity and womanhood, while the album's gorgeous title track makes room for slow-burn strings and a meteoric chorus.

Together, those songs turn Lera Lynn's experience with absolute surrender — surrendering oneself to the trials and triumphs of motherhood — into a universal record about the experiences that bind us together. This isn't just Lynn's story. It's the story of a life cycle that repeats itself over and over, every termination point becoming a starting line, every death matched by a rebirth, every edge giving way to the circular slope of the ouroboros.

Sleepers Poets Scientists is an Umbrella for female composers and music producers. Vol. 2 compiles 8 Georgian composers: Anushka Chkheidze, Natalie Beridze, sTia, Tamo Nasidze, Tamta Gqarliani, ELY ANN, Nasi Chavchavadze and Nina Simonishvili, all of whom are CES graduates of Music Production course led by Natalie Beridze, one of the most successful Georgian producers on the scene of Georgian electronic music.

The retro cover is a nod to the famous group shot from the 1927 Solvay conference, which brought together physicists like Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Marie Curie, and others. With this in mind, the name Sleepers, Poets, Scientists rings like a call to action for today's brightest minds, to wake up and save our chaotic, troubled world.

The Institute is happy to present a newcomer in its ranks: Lasha Chkhaidze, one of the 13 members of collective "If Strangers." Georgia is home to melancholia and many exciting musicians, something we have shown in many of our previous releases. Lasha’s first album is part of this theme.

These six tracks gently pull you into a subtle and immersive journey. Listen and soon you find yourself pulled into the beauty of sadness - surrounded by these carefully crafted soundscapes which offer a perfect opportunity for a moment of introspection. The young Georgian delivers ambient and piano at its finest on this first LP.

As the legend says, Agartha is a lost kingdom, located in the earth’s core.
Only the bravest found courage to go to the journey to find it.
As you go deeper, the road gets darker, scarier… The journey to Agartha symbolizes the journey to the untraveled parts of human consciousness, which often frightens us, but as we observe and heal our dark parts we no longer need to compress and hide them. Facing our main fears will make our road mor adventurous, and one day the whole journey will become a tale. Tale of a man who found the lost kingdom of Agartha.

Felicia Atkinson’s music always puts the listener somewhere in particular. There are two categories of place that are important to »Image Langage«: the house and the landscape. Inside and outside, different ways of orienting a body towards the world. They are in dialogue, insofar as in the places Atkinson made this record—Leman Lake, during a residency at La Becque in Switzerland, and at her home on the wild coast of Normandy—the landscape is what is waiting for you when you leave the house, and vice-versa. Each threatens—or is it offers, kindly, even promises? —to dissolve the other. Recognizing the normalization of home studios these days, she revisited twentieth-century women artists who variously chose, and were chosen by, their homes as a place to work: the desert retreats of Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keefe, the life and death of Sylvia Plath. Building a record is like building a house: a structure in which one can encounter oneself, each room a song with its own function in the project of everyday life.

At times listening to »Image Langage« is immediate, something like visiting a house by the sea, sharing the same ground, being invited to witness Atkinson’s acts of seeing, hearing, and reading in a sonic double of the places they occurred. In an aching moment of clarity in »The Lake is Speaking,« a pair of voices emerge out of the primordial murk of piano and organ, accompanying the listener to the edge of a reflective pool that makes a mirror of the cosmos. "I open my feet to fresh dirt, and the wet grass. I hold your hand. You hold his hand. In the distance without any distance. The comets, the stars." At other times, listening to »Image Langage« is more like being in a theatre, the composition a tangle of flickering forms and media that illuminate as best they can the darkness from which we experience it. On »Pieces of Sylvia,« a noirish orchestra drones and clatters beneath and around a montage of vocal images, stretching the listener across time, space, subjectivities. Atkinson says that "Image Langage" is like the fake title of a fake Godard film. There is indeed something cinematic about Atkinson’s work—not cinematic in the sense that it sounds like the score for someone else’s film, but cinematic in the sense that it produces its own images and langage and narratives, a kind of deliberate, dimensional world-building in sound.

»Image Langage« is built from instruments recorded as if field recordings, sound-images of instruments conjured from a keyboard, instruments Atkinson treats like characters, what she calls “a fantasy of an orchestra that doesn’t exist.” And then, speaking of Godard, there are the monologues, operating as both experimental-cinematic device and a literary style of narration. Voice can be a writerly anchor or a wisp of a textural presence. Atkinson’s capacious and slippery speech plunges into and out of the compositional depths, shifting shapes, channelling the voices of any number of beings, subjectivities, or elements of her surroundings—not unlike her midi keyboard, able to speak as a vast array of instruments.

»Image Langage« is an environmental record, in the vastest sense of the world. It is about getting lost in places imagined and real; it registers, too, the dizzying feeling of moving between such sites. It puts forth a concept of self that is hopelessly entangled with the rest of the world, born of both the ache of distance and the warmth of proximity.

For Félicia Atkinson, human voices inhabit an ecology alongside and within many other things that don’t speak, in the conventional sense: landscapes, images, books, memories, ideas. The French electro-acoustic composer and visual artist makes music that animates these other possible voices in conversation with her own, collaging field recording, MIDI instrumentation, and snippets of essayistic langage in both French and English. Her own voice, always shifting to make space, might whisper from the corner or assume another character’s tone. Atkinson uses composing as a way to process imaginative and creative life, frequently engaging with the work of visual artists, filmmakers, and novelists. Her layered compositions tell stories that alternately stretch and fold time and place, stories in which she is the narrator but not the protagonist.

Tiptoe between the toadstools of Liverpool’s city parks, and amongst the foliage you might find a Strawberry Guy, contemplating his next chord-progression. Composing hi-fi symphonies from within his humble abode, the Welsh-born songwriter is ready to share the fruits of his labour with debut album Sun Outside My Window. A timeless vista of ethereal balladry looking towards 19th Century musical maestros and works of art, it brings new meaning to the term ‘Modern Classic’ and is the most optimistic of lockdown records yet.
“It’s about seeing the simple things in life and them making you happy,” tells Alex Stephens, the Guy behind the Strawberry. “I remember this day when I was really down… looking out the window, the sun beaming in was beautiful, it made me want to go outside – it was simple but made me so happy in that instance.”
A one-man impressionist, painting majestic soundscapes, Strawberry Guy blends truthful lyrics with lush arrangements to conjure new emotive worlds. Inspired by composers of the Romantic period, or Debussy, Ravel, and other classical artists of the 1800s, his wonderland moves like a Monet painting where arpeggios dance between meadows of dazzling dynamics and dramatic key changes. As former keyboard player of The Orielles and Trudy and The Romance, the light through his floor to ceiling windows has caused a dramatic Greenhouse Effect and now ripening on solo terms, his innocent uploads of ‘Without You’ and ‘F-Song’ comfort 2 million Spotify listeners a month. ‘Mrs Magic’ has received 40 million streams, landing at #13 in its chart and countless fan-created videos have appeared on YouTube. “Throughout history composers have tried to capture emotion, painting their own impressionist pictures with musical brush strokes… I guess I’m just trying to do the same and people enjoy that,” he suggests modestly.
Named by musical friends Her’s after his impeccable taste in milkshakes, Strawberry Guy upturns ‘bedroom artist’ perception, as each idea is crafted into a widescreen wonder where vocals tag-team instrumentals and countermelodies flourish within the Georgian walls of his Liverpool flat’s small space. “I want it to sound like I’ve squeezed an 80-piece orchestra into my room, and for listeners to wonder how all those strings got there,” he says. “Working on the 4-part harmonies, the orchestra became real; I began believing in myself.”
Imitating nature’s effect on emotion, like 70s songwriters, or the fantastical soundtracks accompanying vibrant scenes in the Japanese animated Studio Ghibli films and video games, landscape is brought to the fore. Monet’s picturesque Meadow at Giverny features as the album’s accompanying artwork – perhaps a reminder of the rural Welsh countryside views through his childhood home’s window; “I was inspired by how calm and peaceful the image felt. Its painted lines show real-life scenes in a magical way, which to me reflects my music.”
Just as the first Strawberry Guy EP Taking My Time To Be offered a slowing down for the soul, Sun Outside My Window is musically unhurried, written and recorded over 2 years. “Recording as a lone berry meant I could run with my emotions in the moment and deliver something true; it would have been an entirely different album had it been recorded in a studio,” he says.
Modern Classic? Only time will tell. For now this Guy’s happy-sad world is here to get the juices flowing and with, pandemic permitting, a US tour in 2022, life looks a whole lot sweeter. Until then, take it slow, be at one with the wilderness and remember, when life gives you lemons, swap them for Strawberries.

Soul icon Otis Redding made immeasurable contributions to the form. As a singer-

songwriter, producer, arranger and talent scout, Redding was responsible for some of the

music’s biggest and most lasting hits during the 1960s, though his death in an airplane crash

in 1967 brought his life and career to a tragically premature end. He was born Otis Redding

Junior in 1941 in the small town of Dawson, Georgia, the son of a sharecropper and preacher,

and moved to the city of Macon at the age of two, where he learned to sing at the Vineville

Baptist Church. After singing in the high school band, he performed weekly gospel songs on

radio station WIBB, winning local talent contests after being inspired by Little Richard and

Sam Cooke. Since his father became ill with tuberculosis, Redding began supporting the

family at the age of 15, working as a gas station attendant, a digger of water wells, and

occasionally by playing piano with pianist Gladys Williams at the Hillview Springs Social

Club. Then, in 1958, Redding had a repeat prize run at a talent contest held by broadcaster

Hamp Swain, bringing him first into a group called Pat T Cake and the Mighty Panthers, and

later into Little Richard’s band (during a time when Richard switched rock and roll for

gospel). Moving to Los Angeles in late 1960, debut single “She’s All Right” was issued on

the Trans World label (a subsidiary of Al Kavelin’s Lute Records), credited to The Shooters

featuring Otis; following the birth of their first child and his subsequent marriage to Zelma

Atwood, Redding recorded the popular “Shout Bamalam” for Macon’s Confederate Records

(who swiftly reissued it on the Orbit label since some radio stations objected to the original

label’s confederate flag logo, during a time of terrible racial segregation in the South).

Redding cut the movingly emotive “These Arms Of Mine” at Stax studios in Memphis in

1962, backed by Booker T and the MGs, which surfaced on the subsidiary Volt label in

October, reaching the charts some six months later (and eventually selling a reported 800,000

copies). Subsequent singles “What My Heart Needs” and “Pain In My Heart”/“Something Is

Worrying Me,” recorded in September 1963, formed the bulk of debut album, Pain In My

Heart, which was padded out by standard cover tunes of songs such as “I Need Your Lovin’,”

Ben E King’s “Stand By Me” and Little Richard’s “Lucille.” The album, which surfaced at

the start of 1964, reached the top 20 of the US R&B chart and also hit the Billboard Hot 100;

this edition has an alternate track listing that includes the Trans World debut single tracks

“She’s All Right” and “Getting’ Hip,” as well as “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” the B-side to

“That’s What My Heart Needs.” Carefully remastered, spinning at 45 rpm for enhanced qudio quality.

LGR015 sees Locked Groove teaming up with Gacha Bakradze for “3 Variations Sur Un Thème”.

After linking up online in 2020, Gacha and Tim decided to join forces and make something they believe is truly special.

Gacha Bakradze hails from Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. He has deservedly earned plaudits after releases on Apollo, Cin Cin, Die Orakel, Fever AM and Lapsus. Gacha regularly redefines his musical ideology; always bestowing it with mood based authenticity and excitement through rhythms and harmonies.

Just like Locked Groove, his musical output is diverse and always evolving, which makes them great collaborators.

Like the EP title suggests, the 3 tracks are loosely based on the same theme but explore different sonic landscapes.

Variation 1 opens the EP with skittish percussion and melodies weaving in and out. Variation 2 pushes the tempo to 150+ BPM with synth sounds reminiscing of rave years gone by. Variation 3 dials things back and provides a more subdued yet euphoric addition to the EP.

For the remix they’ve enlisted Deniro. The Dutch producer, known for his precise use of melody and rhythm delivers a soulful and timeless rendition of Variation 1.

The EP is due 10 June on all digital platforms and will also be available on vinyl from 20th May.

Artwork by Ollie George with photos by Locked Groove.

Indie-pop singer-songwriter, composer and producer Australia’s Ben Lee releases his 14th solo studio album “I’m Fun!”. The new album features guests Zooey Deschanel, Christian Lee Hutson, Money Mark, Megan Washington, Georgia Maq, Eric D Johnson.

On the album, Ben Lee says “This album, this moment in my career, is all about balancing some hard-earned wisdom from a 30-year long career with the vigor and energy of youth. That’s why it was as important to me to collab with artists like Jon Brion and Money Mark who I’ve both known for over 2 decades, as much as people like Shamir and Georgia Maq who are young and lit up with creative adrenaline. I like being a generational bridge between freaky artists. They are my tribe!”
Even before the launch of his solo career, Ben attracted attention in his teens as a member of the Sydney band Noise Addict. Following the band’s demise in the mid-90s, he began issuing a string of acclaimed solo albums while taking part in several side projects, including The Bens (Ben Folds, Ben Kweller, Ben Lee).

In his 30-year music career, Ben Lee has been gloriously prolific and unpredictable. The 4x ARIA award winning artist boasts an enviable catalogue including ‘Grandpa Would’ 1995, ‘Something To Remember Me By’ [1997], ‘Breathing Tornados’[1998], 2x ARIA Platinum album ‘Awake In New Sleep’[2005], ‘Ripe’ [2007], ‘The Rebirth of Venus’[2009], ‘Deeper Into Dream’ [2011] which have collectively spawned a multitude of chart hits, including “Cigarettes Will Kill You”, “Gamble Everything For Love”, “We're All in This Together” and “Catch My Disease”

"Blues styles have been used and adapted extensively throughout country music’s recorded history. In fact along with elements of Southern rock, the core of Country Music Hall of Fame member Hank Williams Jr.’s sound has always been the blues, and his latest album, Rich White Honky Blues, is a sonic testimony to that. Having used these same blues elements on his early albums, this raw and gritty new studio album returns to those roots. The project came together this past summer over three hot days in Nashville, Tennessee inside producer Dan Auerbach’s legendary studio, Easy Eye Sound. The vibrant and raucous album was recorded live with some of the finest blues session players in the country with Kenny Brown (guitar), Eric Deaton (bass) and Kinney Kimbrough (drums) all joining Bocephus and Auerbach in the studio. Never one to rest on his laurels, even after 56 studio albums and induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the acclaimed singer/songwriter and musician is still finding new creative ground to explore. 
"

A totally obscure release from Youngstown, Ohio's Tony Lavorgna and his late 70's early 1980's band: The St. Thomas Quartet. Like many private press album's it's an ad for their set list, recorded on the cusp of cassettes and definitely pre-cd so strictly vinyl it is. A mixed bag of tunes and influences but two of the tunes absolutely leap into your ears.

A Hammond led Soul Jazz version of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" at nearly ten minutes that seems to just get more drivingly funky and intense and David Thomas on the B3 is absolutely inspired on this monster of a track. It makes you wonder why on earth more Hammond players didn't make a feature of this tune?

The other inspired choice is War's "The World Is A Ghetto" which just has to be one of the funkiest versions of this much covered tune. Some soulful sax from leader Lavorgna signposts the way for the rest of the bands soulful and jazzy contributions with again Hammond man David Thomas underpinning with his funk drenched riffs.

Tony Lavorgna is a one off too, his life story is available in Comic Book form under the title "Bebopman" by American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar.

French vocalist, beatboxer, songwriter and producer Sly Johnson unveils 55.4, his much- anticipated fourth studio album, released on BBE Music. Hailing from Paris, Sylvère Johnson (Sly Johnson) is a major force on the French Hip-Hop, Soul and Jazz scenes, both as a solo artist and as a member of super-group SAIAN SUPA CREW for over a decade, where he was known by the moniker Sly The Mic Buddah. When the crew broke up in 2007, Johnson began to carve out an impressive career, releasing on Blue Note and Universal Jazz, as well as collaborating with Larry Gold, Roddy Rod, T3 & Elzhi from Slum Village, Georgia Ann Muldrow, Dudley Perkins, FINALE, Erik Truffaz, and legendary French rapper Oxmo Puccino among many others. Written and recorded during the first COVID lockdowns between March and May 2020, Sly Johnson’s fourth album blends Soul and Hip-Hop, twinning vocal arrangements reminiscent of Prince and D’Angelo with loose, supple, beats and jazzy chords. Most of the musical heavy lifting is done by Johnson himself, but the album features bass by Laurent Salzard, guitar by Ralph Lavital and Anthony Jambon, keys by Nicholas Vella & Laurent Coulondre and a spellbinding guest vocal by Jona Oak. Why 55.4? “It took 55 days of creation to make the songs of this 4th solo album” says Sly.