Buscar:gl

Repress incoming..!

A colossus of the funk & soul world, Adam Gibbons (aka Lack of Afro) has been releasing music for 15 years and continues to go from strength to strength. Previously signed to Freestyle Records in London and running his own label The Bastion Music Group since 2015, he has been responsible for some of the genre’s most important releases, not least his debut album Press On described by iDJ as “one of the most important albums of the modern funk era” and more recently given ‘classic’ status by Future Music Magazine.

An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, producer, DJ and composer, his music has won worldwide critical acclaim and to date has gained 115 million streams on Spotify. It has been featured on films, TV shows and adverts all over the globe, on networks including HBO, ABC, Sony Pictures, BBC, ITV, Sky TV, Fox Pictures & Warner Brothers Television, and used in multi million ad campaigns by the likes of Google, Spotify, Miller Lite and Adidas.

As a DJ and live performer, he has performed in over 20 countries worldwide and undertaken countless live sessions for radio and TV including two for the BBC at the highly revered Maida Vale Studios.

To date, he has released seven albums under the Lack of Afro moniker (most recently I’m Here Now in 2020), three as The Unity Sextet, one under LUSTRE, one under his own name, an EP with Herbal T as The Damn Straights, albums for other artists, music for several TV shows and over 60 remixes. He has also produced 13 award winning, sample packs for Loopmasters.

Akae Beka's inimitable style of rich, deep, multi-layered songwriting, uncompromising devotion to RasTafari and soulful healing melodies developed over decades performing with St. Croix based band Midnite and countless recordings. At the point of his untimely passing in 2019, he had released over 70LP's. He is without a doubt one of the most prolific reggae artists ever known.

The stellar production trinity that is Zion I Kings have been involved collectively and individually in creating some of the most highly regarded contributions to the vast Akae Beka catalogue. Beauty For Ashes was named as the best reggae album of 2014 according to iTunes. A monumental achievement for undiluted, uncompromising RasTafari roots reggae music this side of the millennium. Two of the LP's tracks, Weather the Storm and Same I Ah One, have been catapulted into global notoriety in part due to the viral success of the YouTube video of the 'Dub in the Rainforest' session organised in St. Croix by Tippy I in 2014. The video offered an unparalleled audio visual insight of the powerful, captivating, energy of Vaughn Benjamin, Pressure Buss Pipe, Ras Batch, and many of the bredrin and sisterin of St. Croix rallying around the I Grade Dub living dub experience.

Following 8 years of anxious anticipation, for the countless Akae Beka fans that are also vinyl connoisseurs, this LP is now being released on as a 12" vinyl LP courtesy of Before Zero Records. This offers the listener not only the chance to enjoy this LP in an analogue form, but also the chance to hold the artwork as a 12" square masterpiece, created by the hands of Ras Marcus, the artist who gave the powerful visual presence that became synonymous to much of the I Grade / Akae Beka works over the years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hus continues his streak of conceptual albums, "The Firm" comes in fresh off of his last LP, the Portishead inspired album titled "Portishus", which is currently sold out. Inspired by the 1997 group The Firm (Nas, AZ, Foxy Brown, Cormega, Nature) and the 1993 film "The Firm" starring Tom Cruise. The album features Canibus, Max B, SmooVth, SageInfinite, Khrysis (Jamla) + more.
TRACKLIST: 1. Ray Mcdeere (Prod. By Macapella) 2. Devasher (Prod. By Scary Hour) 3. Affirmative Action (Feat. SmooVth & SageInfinite) (Prod. By Prynce P) 4. The Moroltos (Feat. BeenOfficialLord & Apollo Ali) (Prod. By Kencussion) 5. Lambert & Locke (Feat. Ali Vegas) (Prod. By Stu Bangas) 6. Glass Castle (Prod. By Khrysis) 7. Cayman Islands (Feat. Rozewood) (Prod. By Macapella) 8. Harmony (Prod. By Sean Zeon) 9. Desperados (Feat. Canibus) (Prod. By Macapella) 10. Firm Biz (Feat. Pure) (Prod. By Stu Bangas) 11. The Wave Angels (Feat. Max B) (Prod. By Prynce P) 12. Firm Fiasco (Prod. By Blaqknight) 13. Executive Decision (Prod. By DJ Tako)

Genug von verschlossen Clubtüren und abgesagten Parties? Capitano Tito lässt dich nicht im Stich. Der neueste Stop seiner intergalaktischen Reisen ist der angesagteste Vergnügungstempel des Universums, der Centauri Nachtclub! Schüttel alles ab beim Tanz der Toy Roboter, entdecke nackte Tatsachen in der geheimen Lagune und spüre kosmische Einflüsse beim Blick durchs Glas. Und gibt es doch mal Stress in der Weltraumdisko, so sind schon die Secus im Anmarsch, denn Nachtclubmanager MXM hat alles im Griff. Diskretion ist oberstes Gebot, die Raumstation ist gegen digitale Streams abgeschirmt. Sichert euch die formschönen Vinyltickets bevor die Gästeliste voll ist.

Blue Vinyl

Leonard Cohens Hallelujah & Songs from His Albums ist das erste offizielle karriereumfassende Album des Songwriters, Musikers, Dichters, Romanautors und Künstlers Leonard Cohen. Die Anthologie featuret 17 Tracks aus der musikalischen Laufbahn des Ausnahmekünstlers. Als besonderes Highlight findet sich auf der Tracklist ein Mitschnitt seiner unvergesslichen Darbietung von "Hallelujah", die 2008 auf dem Glastonbury Festival mitgeschnitten wurde. Das Album wurde vom neuen Dokumentarfilm Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen a Journey, a Song inspiriert.

Gloria Scott was discovered by Sly Stone before
working with Ike and Tina Turner in the Ikettes and
going on to make classic, collectable soul records
in the 1970s.
Her collaboration with Barry White yielded her
acclaimed 1974 album, ‘What Am I Gonna Do’,
which included ‘(A Case Of) Too Much Love
Makin’, and also sees three tracks on this brand
new record.
Alongside the White-written / associated tracks are
five original numbers (including a co-write with PP
Arnold), and a cover of Gospel-House classic
‘Promised Land’.
An absolute must-have contemporary record from
a classic soul artist.

repress !

Interdimensional journeys lay ahead as Volruptus lands on with a 5-track tour of his alternate reality.

Androids navigate their way through deep space, determined to find more. One minute they're floating, the next, racing through a continuum at twice the speed of light. Sharp broken beats create a framework for immersive pads, glitchy inflections and acid bass to wander. Volruptus holds a state of the art lens to classic electro, exploring its form with the meticulous detail of a true audiophile. This one's for the psychonauts.

2022 repress

Roma Zuckerman returns to with his debut EP, which emerges after 2 stand-out appearances on the label compilations in 2015 and 2016. 'That Present Terminal' blends murky textures and sinister vocals across 4 delusional tracks.Glitchy percussion and scuzzy frequencies march with intent whilst uncanny voices mumble to the beat of their own insanity. Unnerving tones test our limits whilst underlying grooves offer mild relief. 'That Present Terminal' condenses a broad sonic palette into 4 truly bizarre cuts that, once tested, are hard to put down.

Originally released between 1995 and 1999 on his green imprint, 'green trax' is steve o'sullivan's signature take on minimal techno. The album on trip is a compilation of best works with several previously unreleased tracks that steve found on data tapes in his archive.

Originally from France and now based in Berlin Isolated Material has dropped a steady run of heavy hitting releases on labels including; Brokntoys, Haws, Ukonx, 909 Connection and Mind Controlled Rectifier before joining us for his debut EP on 20/20 Vision.

'Hidden Node' kicks off the wax with a jarring excursion of futuristic breaks and abrasive sound design firing on all cylinders with complex drum patterns, bleeps and glitches. 'Asynchronous Funk' sees Isolated Material serve up an abstract slice of electro funk with a solid broken beat groove peppered with unexpected moments of off-kilter magic.

On the flip side - title track 'Hidden Node' offers up a dose of Drexciyan inspired funk primed for a set on the dark side of the moon with; high octane breaks, quick fire drum programming, intricate synth patterns and ominous undertones. Wrapping up the EP 'Unmarked Sequence' is an equally potent chaser for the wide eyed deep space traveller in need of body jerking breaks.

When James Pepper met Riccardo Paffetti (Black Loops) a bromance was quick to bloom. After touring the Berlin-based Italian across Australia, the two soon realised they not only loved each others company but records too.

Following Black Loops maiden trip down under, the dudes stayed in touch and led to Pep crashing on Riccardo’s sofa bed for a week in Berlin. The duo went to work in the studio, brewing up some gems that were released on classy imprints Neovinyl Recordings and Haŵs.

It was on Paffetti’s most recent trip to Oz (well before the world shutdown) that brought about their most anticipated tracks to date. Bunkering down in a Marrickville studio, the cross-continent pairing got up close and personal with some neat hardware. Experimenting with an array of compressors, a TR8 and the Elektron Analog Four MKII ‘Three Drops’ EP was born.

The EP is a lively affair. A rampant message to club folk far and wide. Founded on lo-fi percussion, a crunchy kick and echoed key sections ‘Three Drops’ throws a flurry of punches. Varied combinations of electro, acid and techno rolling together just right. Here we have a welcome jab of adrenaline. You can almost visualise the duo grinning from ear-to-ear, as they bring in each piece of machinery.

'Three Drops’ made its live debut at Pepper’s recent Boiler Room in Sydney and has since taken the interwebs by storm. Hundred’s of ID requests later and the time is right to share this gem as the clubs open back up across the globe.

The B side and new single has arrived in ‘Arp Love’. A frantically beautiful dose of techno. Soaring risers make way for pulsating chords and shimmering TR8 patterns, as we’re led deep into a clubby rabbit hole. In signature Black Loops style, a spoken word sample on the disappointment of love breaks the piece in two.

For a burgeoning Sydney producer like Pep it must be truly amazing to co-write alongside Riccardo - an artist who’s clocked tens of millions of streams worldwide, claimed Deep House Artist of The Year (2017) via Traxsouce plus released weaponry on revered labels such as Shall Not Fade, Toy Tonics, Gruuv and Good Ratio.

We’re grateful James Pepper and Black Loops got together. These two on tracks makes sense.

Mit einer Nonchalance, die fast unheimlich selbstverständlich daherkommt, bringt jeder Song auf A Modern Act die menschliche Natur auf den Punkt. Oder eher gesagt die Naturen, Plural, da jeder Song einer bestimmten "modernen" Person, Situation oder Beziehung gewidmet ist. Ultra-spezifisch und zugleich universell, das ist die Schönheit dieses Flickenteppichs aus unverhohlenen Beobachtungen.
Die ehrlichen und schnörkellosen Klavierballaden des ersten und letzten Songs legen sich wie eine zurückhaltende Klammer um die schrilleren Geschichten, die dazwischen erzählt werden. Das heitere und dunkle Long Blonde Hair weckt offensichtlich Erinnerungen an Stars mit wasserstoffblonden Haaren, die wir alle kennen und liebevoll verachten. Indoor Miners lässt uns genüsslich langsam in unseren eigenen Abstieg taumeln. Die verführerische Kombination aus Indie-Folk und Bombast, verpackt in sich wiederholenden Arrangements, lässt Hollywood Diamonds genau nach dem klingen, was es ist: Die scharfe Kritik eines Außenseiters an einer ausbeuterischen Industrie. Typisch für Collberg überlässt er es der eigenen Fantasie, die Leerstellen zu füllen, aber das Gerüst steht.
A Modern Act ist eine Sammlung autobiografischer Vignetten und Kurzgeschichten, die verspielt in persönlichen Befangenheiten schwelgen. In einem Anflug von kreativen Bewusstsein hat Collberg seine eigene kleine Gesellschaft erschaffen. Nicht immer schmeichelhaft widmet er sich dem, was glitzert, und dem, was düster ist. Anders als bei seinen früheren Werken standen diesmal alle Texte, bevor er die Musik komponierte. A Modern Act entstand im Januar 2021 und wurde in den folgenden Monaten zusammen mit Miccel Mohr (History of Sugar, Soho Rezanejad) in Kopenhagen, Dänemark aufgenommen und produziert, wobei Daily Tolliver (Molly Burch) an der Gitarre für den Titelsong "A Modern Act" mitwirkte.

Over the course of his six-decade-long career, Dr. John embodied a near-mythic multitude of musical identities: global ambassador of New Orleans funk and jazz and R&B, visionary bluesman, rock and roll innovator, one-time top 10 hitmaker, self-anointed and massively revered high priest of psychedelic voodoo. On Things Happen That Way, the six-time Grammy-winning Rock & Roll Hall of Famer otherwise known as Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack Jr. reveals yet another dimension of his cosmically vast musicality: a lifelong affinity for classic country & western, whose songs he first encountered via the 78 rpm records frequently spun at his father’s electronics shop. Things Happen That Way arrives as the latest and final studio album from an artist who remained wholly unpredictable, alchemizing the charmed simplicity of traditional country into a wildly enchanting body of work.



Things Happen That Way marks the fulfillment of a longtime goal of the legendary singer/songwriter/pianist, who first began plotting a country inspired album decades ago. In bringing his album’s songs to life, Dr. John drew on a lineup of musicians befitting of a universally beloved luminary who worked with the likes of Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones, B.B. King, Etta James, and artists as diverse as Aretha Franklin, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton. Along with an elite cadre of New Orleans session players, the album’s personnel include icons Willie Nelson and Aaron Neville, as well as label mate singer/songwriter Katie Pruitt and country-rock powerhouse Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real. True to an artist whose music “transcended race and cultural divides”—as Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach proclaimed in presenting Dr. John his lifetime achievement award at the Americana Music Association Honors and Awards in 2013—Things Happen That Way reflects both a rich sense of history and a boundless passion for defying expectation.

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne's Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss. Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer's native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne - the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora - Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience. Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon's signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works in Volume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic "Fleuve" series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the "Navigation" works ("III" and "IV") wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet. In the world of Flore Laurentienne, complexity emerges from simplicity as the composer roams familiar environments in constant flux. Gagnon extracts beauty through repetition and constraint, utilizing the writing style of counterpoint for which one of his greatest musical inspirations, Johann Sebastian Bach, is renowned. The lilting waves of "Canon" possess the eponymous formation of melodic 'leader and follower' motif, and magnify the softness of the album's eighteen string musicians into a force of full euphoric resonance. In Volume II, Gagnon continues his expansion of classical composition archetypes to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism. Thematic conventions of wandering the pastoral sublime become altered into glimmering refractions, relaying the emotional and kinetic power of natural energies. Volume II forms an estuary where streams of auditory microcosm reach a horizon of dynamic contrast, and reflect the parallel tenors of nature and humankind.

"They push everything right to the brink and then pull back at precisely the right moment" - Pitchfork

"'Growing Up Pains (Unni's Song) gives a tantalising glimpse of where their future could lie. Matching lucid pop elements to daring innovation, ALASKALASKA allow the song to become a portal to their own potential." - Clash

"It’s impossible to walk away without the repeated promise 'I won’t let you down' in 'Growing Up Pains' stuck in your head – and it’s a mantra we should all be following as we as a species continue to fight for our future." - Beats Per Minute

ALASKALASKA announce their superb new album, Still Life, arriving October 14th on Marathon Artists (Lava La Rue, Courtney Barnett, Pond).

'Still Life' finds writers and producers Lucinda Duarte-Holman and Fraser Rieley embrace a more free-form electronica, giving a taste of what's to come with this fantastic new record produced by Jas Shaw (of Simian Mobile Disco)–full of digital sounds, drum machine and synth melodies cunningly sat beside rich, organic, acoustic instrumentation, it's a looping tug of war between existential dread and everyday simple pleasures.

Listen to / watch the video for 'Still Life' (shot by Jacek Zmarz) here: https://youtu.be/TL7s6QJ3ANc

Four seasons of dawn chorus, panoramically framed by fruit trees and more analog synths than can comfortably fit in a cow shed-come-recording studio...the scene is set for the recording of ALASKALASKA’s second album Still Life. Ordinarily located in South East London, writers and producers Fraser Rieley and Lucinda Duarte-Holman were eager to get out of the city. Taking advantage of this rustic countryside scene, they were able to capture something uniquely their own.

Following their debut album in 2019, they resurface into a new era embracing all the things that first put the band on the map, attracting the likes of Tame Impala, Hot Chip, Porches and Nilüfer Yanya for tour support slots. For Rieley and Duarte-Holman, writing began in 2019, pre-lockdown-era, although the subsequent alone together/together alone time added a new spin on ALASKALASKA's process of experimentation and fine-tuning. The band now push their foundational ideas further and explore the freedom of playing with new sounds. Duarte-Holman explains, “...with everything going on at the time, the restrictions led us to try working in a new way. The limitations were different, but meant we were able to adventure into a more electronic soundscape that we're really looking forward to expressing live."

The ‘Still Life’ LP has been pressed on recycled black vinyl to reduce the carbon intensity of the finished product.

DUBFIRE ANNOUNCES HIS DEBUT SOLO ALBUM ON HIS SCI+TEC IMPRINT
With a career spanning over 3 decades, Dubfire has achieved global success as an artist with relentless drive, talent, and intuition. Pioneering commercial notoriety came initially as one half of the Grammy award (2001) winning duo Deep Dish, before embarking on a truly groundbreaking solo career in 2007. A career filled with timeless tracks include his early works ‘Ribcage’ (2007), ‘Emissions (2007), ‘Roadkill’ (2007) and the highly acclaimed ‘Exit’ (2014) a debut collaboration with Kiss Kitten. Collaborative work highlights include Luke Slater, Moscoman, Oliver Huntemann, Chris Liebing, Tiga and co-producing two tracks on the legendary Underworld’s ‘Barking’ album. A true artist, he has always been heavily invested in exploring boundaries or audio and visual technologies, which he displayed more than ever with his HYBRID show. A two-year world tour with a goal to reinvent the concert experience in 2015, also became his muse for his retrospective album ‘A Decade Of Dubfire’. A collection of all his biggest tracks and remixes from the last decade, released in 2017. It may come as a surprise to many, with so many landmark releases, that Ali ‘Dubfire’ Shirazinia hasn't yet released a totally solo album, until now.
EVOLV is an 11-track visionary into the mind of Dubfire to be released on his long-standing label SCI+TEC. It’s concept? The journey of the ‘hybrid’ being and its evolution, which kicks off with ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Dust & Gas’ set a brooding atmosphere. The rougher percussion, and eerie lead in ‘Dark Matter’ is accompanied by a stripped back sound and glitchy vocals sitting in a spaced-out atmosphere in ‘Dust & Gas’. Its deep and minimal drum work is exceptional. ‘Escape’, a deep, dark and pulsating track that sets the tone for the body of work on the album. Coupled with ‘Elevation’ and it’s understated arpNew Release Information and crisp percussion for the second single. ‘Bottom Dweller’ give you two different versions, the original is straight forward, yet effective for a late-night head down cut, where the ‘Meltdown Mix’ takes a minimal path, and faster pace. ‘Swerve’ sees Dubfire return to that stripped back sound with heavy swinging
percussion, a landmark and much-loved element in his music. Sonically, the journey so far has been like a dystopian landscape, but ‘Decent’ brings a kaleidoscope of colour and sound before dropping into the ‘CHALLNGR’ duo. ‘CHALLNGR 1.1’ is perhaps the most contemporary track on the album. Dubfire picks up the rhythm for a full-on dancefloor focused track. It’s no-nonsense techno at its best, with heaps of pure energy. Two versions appear on the album, ‘CHALLNGR 1.2’ retains the BPM but reigns in the percussion with a snappier approach and a more euphoric warped effect. Closing out, is a special digital only track ‘The Bells Tolls’. This one drives the energy back to ground level, into a more unsettling and mysterious end to a killer 11 track debut album. The music will also be accompanied by a new audio-visual show from the revered DubLab team based in Portugal. Test shows at DGTL (Amsterdam),
Caprices (Crans-Montana) and in Sofia between 2018 and 2019 had created lots of buzz just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down for two years. But now the stage is firmly set for the new album
and live shows. As music evolves, so does Dubfire. EVOLV is a special project from this pioneering producer showing his interpretation of techno in his own unique vision.

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After smooth detours into Soul covers, French Neo-Disco, modern Sunset Disco and Brazilian AOR, in 2022 DJ Supermarkt's Too Slow to Disco series makes a joyous return to its original Westcoast AOR/Yacht roots. Celebrating the 10th TSTD compilation. Who would have thought….
The Berlin curator releases a killer 4th edition of the original compilation art form, "Too Slow to Disco", featuring forgotten and overseen gems from the mid 70s to the early 80s from a global world of smooth, brilliant lost and overproduced tracks from Finland via London and L.A. to Trinidad and beyond.
The great 'un-vanisher' of lost lazy classics, DJ Supermarkt once again unearthed some incredible music that labels, publishers (in many cases also those, who actually own the rights to those tracks…) and streaming services have often long overlooked. You're welcome, world!

CAVERNOUS GATE veröffentlichen mit "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" ihr Debütalbum. Musik und Texte des deutschen Death Doom Soloprojekts wurden von Multiinstrumentalist Sebastian "S.K." Körkemeier konzipiert, komponiert und verfasst. Sebastian hat sich in der Metal-Szene als Mitbegründer von HELRUNAR unter dem nom de guerre Alsvartr und als Live-Musiker bei Markus "Schwadorf" Stocks Black Metal Projekt SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS sowie EMPYRIUM längst einen exzellenten Ruf erworben. Sein Projekt CAVERNOUS GATE und das Album "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" sind hörbare Liebesbekundungen des vielseitigen Instrumentalisten an den Sound britischer Doom und Death Pioniere wie die ganz frühen PARADISE LOST und CATHEDRAL sowie den schwedischen Death Metal im Stile der frühen ENTOMBED und DISMEMBER. Aus der Herzensangelegenheit ist ein ebenso finsterer und melancholischer wie massiver Heavy-Monolith entstanden. Und während auf "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" Sebastians Granit gurgelnde und abgrundtiefe Growls eindeutig dominieren, bietet Jenny Kalbitz' wunderbare Frauenstimme an handverlesenen Stellen einen subtilen Kontrast. Textlich erkundet Sebastian mit "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" eine düstere Fantasiewelt des Zwielichts und ihre geisterhaften Bewohner. In seiner Lyrik "malt" der Autor gleichsam wie bei der Beschreibung von Gemälden metaphorische Traumbilder. In "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" steckt zwar auch die langjährige Erfahrung des gestandenen Metal-Musikers, doch es ist seine hörbare Liebe zu dem dunklen Heavy-Stil, die den Unterschied macht und dieses Album von der Masse ähnlicher Veröffentlichungen deutlich abhebt. CAVERNOUS GATE nehmen uns mit auf eine albtraumhafte Reise in die Abgründe des klassischen Doom Death, der jedoch auf eine zeitgemäße Weise neu interpretiert wird und nicht in schaler Nostalgie versackt. Es lohnt sich, beim "Betrachten" dieser musikalischen Bilder von unerwarteter Schönheit länger zu verweilen und die unerforschten Tiefen von Schmerz und seelenreißender Traurigkeit auf sich wirken zu lassen.

CAVERNOUS GATE veröffentlichen mit "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" ihr Debütalbum. Musik und Texte des deutschen Death Doom Soloprojekts wurden von Multiinstrumentalist Sebastian "S.K." Körkemeier konzipiert, komponiert und verfasst. Sebastian hat sich in der Metal-Szene als Mitbegründer von HELRUNAR unter dem nom de guerre Alsvartr und als Live-Musiker bei Markus "Schwadorf" Stocks Black Metal Projekt SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS sowie EMPYRIUM längst einen exzellenten Ruf erworben. Sein Projekt CAVERNOUS GATE und das Album "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" sind hörbare Liebesbekundungen des vielseitigen Instrumentalisten an den Sound britischer Doom und Death Pioniere wie die ganz frühen PARADISE LOST und CATHEDRAL sowie den schwedischen Death Metal im Stile der frühen ENTOMBED und DISMEMBER. Aus der Herzensangelegenheit ist ein ebenso finsterer und melancholischer wie massiver Heavy-Monolith entstanden. Und während auf "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" Sebastians Granit gurgelnde und abgrundtiefe Growls eindeutig dominieren, bietet Jenny Kalbitz' wunderbare Frauenstimme an handverlesenen Stellen einen subtilen Kontrast. Textlich erkundet Sebastian mit "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" eine düstere Fantasiewelt des Zwielichts und ihre geisterhaften Bewohner. In seiner Lyrik "malt" der Autor gleichsam wie bei der Beschreibung von Gemälden metaphorische Traumbilder. In "Voices from a Fathomless Realm" steckt zwar auch die langjährige Erfahrung des gestandenen Metal-Musikers, doch es ist seine hörbare Liebe zu dem dunklen Heavy-Stil, die den Unterschied macht und dieses Album von der Masse ähnlicher Veröffentlichungen deutlich abhebt. CAVERNOUS GATE nehmen uns mit auf eine albtraumhafte Reise in die Abgründe des klassischen Doom Death, der jedoch auf eine zeitgemäße Weise neu interpretiert wird und nicht in schaler Nostalgie versackt. Es lohnt sich, beim "Betrachten" dieser musikalischen Bilder von unerwarteter Schönheit länger zu verweilen und die unerforschten Tiefen von Schmerz und seelenreißender Traurigkeit auf sich wirken zu lassen.

Ranging from sanguine emotional clarity to distortion and unrest, Wow Sailor voyages through sunlight and storms in this mindful and explorative album. Happy Fear is an intricate tapestry of emotional experience, where fear and joy clash heads in the pursuit of self-understanding. Scattered field recordings of literature, ambiance and chance encounters provide atmospheric depth to enrich a resonant and meditative soundscape.

This tale begins with fond yet powerful nostalgia, before segueing into a range of hybrid instrumental explorations in which guitar, voice, violin, and trumpet blossom alongside refined electronic foundations. The album closes off with indulgent melancholia reminiscent of the opening, providing lifelike circularity to the album.

All songs remain connected; one leading into another without pause or silence. This urges the listener to digest the work in a single sitting as elements of the story seem intrinsically connected.

The first half is studded with gems of atmospheric conversation and recordings, providing a living and textured environment for the crafted synthetic sounds of Wow Sailor to evolve. Most songs are free from percussive structures, but In Her Gaze breaks the mold with clear percussive dictate. The middle and latter titles are connected by ominous frequencies that err on the darker side of curiosity - encouraging exploration into the transformative power of fear.

All in all, the work glimmers with spontaneity and diversity that resembles real-life experience. Carefully crafted sonic interplays bare semblance to the fluctuating emotional life of the ever sensitive and sentient human being.

Dugnad Rec sits at the helm of yet another wonderfully creative and philosophical work. This release gives verity to the artistic integrity, sound design, and mental exploration of the label. Wow Sailor’s work radiates an enticing, authentic, and indelible mark of individuality.

Leonard Cohens Hallelujah & Songs from His Albums ist das erste offizielle karriereumfassende Album des Songwriters, Musikers, Dichters, Romanautors und Künstlers Leonard Cohen. Die Anthologie featuret 17 Tracks aus der musikalischen Laufbahn des Ausnahmekünstlers. Als besonderes Highlight findet sich auf der Tracklist ein Mitschnitt seiner unvergesslichen Darbietung von "Hallelujah", die 2008 auf dem Glastonbury Festival mitgeschnitten wurde. Das Album wurde vom neuen Dokumentarfilm Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen a Journey, a Song inspiriert.

Premium-Edition: Buch + Doppel Coloured Vinyl 180gr in Tabaluga Grün + 2CD."Wir schauen auf dieselbe Sonne und auf denselben Mond. Wir teilen uns dieselbe Erde, sind alle im selben Boot".So lauten die beiden ersten beiden Zeilen des Refrains von "Königreich der Liebe", der ersten Single aus dem neuen Drachenabenteueralbum "Tabaluga - Die Welt ist wunderbar". Zu mitreißend-anschwellendem, vielleicht ein bisschen an Elton Johns Hymne "Circle Of Life" erinnerndem Piano-Pop zeichnen Peter Maffay und seine Duett-Partnerin Stefanie Heinzmann (die hier ausnahmsweise auf Deutsch singt) in der kraftvollen Ballade das Bild von einer besseren Welt. "Es geht nicht um Farbe deiner Haut oder um das, woran du glaubst", heißt es in dem Lied weiter, und dann: "Komm, wir bauen ein Königreich mit Liebe auf dem Thron." Mit einer stärkeren Botschaft - und einem stärkeren Song - könnten die Feierlichkeiten zum vierzigsten Geburtstag des kleinen grünen Drachen kaum eingeläutet werden. 1983 erfand Peter Maffay die kindgerecht-kluge, wenngleich etwas stoffelige Figur zusammen mit Gregor Rottschalk, Rolf Zukowski und Helme Heine. Seither hat die liebenswerte Märchengestalt auf sechs Alben, mit zahlreichen Tourneen, einem Musical, einer Zeichentrickserie und einem Kinofilm immer wieder neue Generationen von Kindern und Eltern in Entzückung versetzt, aber auch zum Nachdenken gebracht.Denn Tabaluga steht für Unterhaltung mit einer klaren, positiven Botschaft. Auf dem neuen Album, so viel sei verraten, wird der ewige Drachenjunge zusammen mit seinen Freunden und der geballten Power der regenerativen Energien gegen die Klimakatastrophe antreten. Maßgeblich verstärkt wird Tabalugas Team erstmals von Lucy, einem schlauen, gemeinsam mit dem langjährigen Partner Volkswagen, entwickelten Glühwürmchen-Charakter. Tabaluga ist also definitiv so politisch relevant wie nie, und das, unterstreicht sein Mitschöpfer, sei auch dringend geboten. "Natürlich erzählen wir eine utopisch anmutende Geschichte", sagt Peter Maffay. "Aber zu dieser Utopie sehe ich keine Alternative. Wenn wir nicht mehr an die Zukunft glauben, dann geben wir uns selbst - und unsere Kinder - auf. Wir waren noch nie so gefordert, den Zusammenhalt zu stärken, wie jetzt".Für Peter Maffay (72) krönt das neue Tabaluga-Werk ein ereignisreiches Jahr. Am 18. August ist er erstmals im TV als neuer Juror bei "The Voice of Germany" zu sehen, und einen Tag zuvor startet - mit zwei Jahren Verspätung - endlich seine große Hallentournee.

To confuse parts for the whole is inevitable with Palm. Drummer Hugo Stanley, bassist Gerasimos Livitsanos and guitarists/vocalists/high school sweethearts Eve Alpert and Kasra Kurt started making music together as teenagers, and spent much of their twenties in the kind of proximity unusual for adults, outside of touring bands and the International Space Station. For a number of years the band consumed the lives of its members to a point of exhaustion: “To be honest I think we got a little burnt out. There were times where it wasn’t clear if we’d make another record,” says Alpert. It was only after multiple freak injuries followed by a pandemic, forced a pause - from touring but also from writing, rehearsing, even seeing each other- that the four were able to regroup and see a way forward again.



On their latest effort, Nicks and Grazes, Palm embrace discordance to dazzling effect. “We wanted to reconcile two potentially opposing aesthetics,” Kurt says. “To capture the spontaneous, free energy of our live shows while integrating elements from the traditionally gridded palette of electronic music.” In order to avoid what Kurt refers to as “Palm goes electro,” the musicians spent years educating themselves on the ins and outs of production by learning Ableton while also experimenting with “the percussive, textural, and gestural potential” of their instruments. To this end, the band continued the age-old tradition of instrument-preparation, augmenting guitars with drumsticks, metal rods and, at the suggestion of Charles Bullen (This Heat, Lifetones), coiling rubber-coated gardening wire around the strings. The unruliness of the prepared guitar on songs like “Mirror Mirror” and “Eager Copy” contrasts with the steadfast reproducibility of the album’s electronic elements.



While Palm cite Japanese pop music, dub, and footwork as influences on this album’s sonic palette, they found themselves returning time and again to the artists who inspired them to start the group over a decade ago. “When we were first starting out as a band, we bonded over an appreciation of heavy, aggressive, noisy music,” Alpert reflects. “We wrote parts that were just straight-up metal.” Kurt adds, “I found myself rediscovering and re–falling in love with the visceral, jagged quality of guitars in the music of Glenn Branca, The Fall, Beefheart, and Sonic Youth, all important early Palm influences.” Returning to the fundamentals gave Palm a strong foundation upon which they could experiment freely, resulting in their most ambitious and revelatory album to date.

First album from Cologne based Jazz / Hip-Hop band for Melting Pot
Music home to artists such as FloFilz, Twit One, Summers Sons,
Pachakuti & young.vishnu, etc.

Bokoya is a four-piece jazz/hip-hop band from Cologne who plays
improvised beat music. Like a four-headed human drum machine, Bokoya improvise, shape, and develop beats in the electric field of repetition and variation. It's impossible to put a tag on Bokoya's music.

BADBADNOTGOOD, Dilla, Krautrock, Ambient and dub might work as
rough reference points for the music but don't do it justice. After a sling of releases on Wadada Records, Bokoya are now signed to Melting Pot Music where they will release their forthcoming projects.

Fünf Jahre nach der von 20 Buck Spin veröffentlichten Debüt-EP "Pulsing Dark Absorptions" erheben sich Daeva aus Philadelphia wie lodernde Flammen aus den höllischen Tiefen mit dem lange schwelenden ersten Album "Through Sheer Will And Black Magic...".

Ein feuriger Strudel aus frühem dämonischem Black Metal und zackigem Thrash Metal bildet die Grundlage des Albums, auf dem Daeva ihre Kunst wie glänzend geschmiedeten Stahl perfektioniert haben. Innerhalb dieses Wahnsinns setzt Gitarrist Steve Jansson die mit Maden übersäte Leiche des Death Metal und eine kräftige, tödliche Dosis reinen 80er-Jahre-Metal-Geistes frei. Die Reise durch dieses verbrannte Ödland wird durch die giftig-säurespritzenden Vocals des Sängers Edward Gonet geleitet.

Song für Song, Riff für Riff ist das von Arthur Rizk produzierte "Through Sheer Will And Black Magic" ein unersättlicher und unaufhaltsamer Wirbelwind aus außerweltlichen Genüssen und infernalischem Gemetzel. Wie in einem unerbittlichen Rausch stürmen Daeva die Tore des Himmels und unterwerfen die schwachen Schafen des Lichts in einem ultimativen Triumph der Hölle!

Fünf Jahre nach der von 20 Buck Spin veröffentlichten Debüt-EP "Pulsing Dark Absorptions" erheben sich Daeva aus Philadelphia wie lodernde Flammen aus den höllischen Tiefen mit dem lange schwelenden ersten Album "Through Sheer Will And Black Magic...".

Ein feuriger Strudel aus frühem dämonischem Black Metal und zackigem Thrash Metal bildet die Grundlage des Albums, auf dem Daeva ihre Kunst wie glänzend geschmiedeten Stahl perfektioniert haben. Innerhalb dieses Wahnsinns setzt Gitarrist Steve Jansson die mit Maden übersäte Leiche des Death Metal und eine kräftige, tödliche Dosis reinen 80er-Jahre-Metal-Geistes frei. Die Reise durch dieses verbrannte Ödland wird durch die giftig-säurespritzenden Vocals des Sängers Edward Gonet geleitet.

Song für Song, Riff für Riff ist das von Arthur Rizk produzierte "Through Sheer Will And Black Magic" ein unersättlicher und unaufhaltsamer Wirbelwind aus außerweltlichen Genüssen und infernalischem Gemetzel. Wie in einem unerbittlichen Rausch stürmen Daeva die Tore des Himmels und unterwerfen die schwachen Schafen des Lichts in einem ultimativen Triumph der Hölle!

Stephan Mathieu's FrequencyLib was originally released in 2001 on Mille Plateaux's Ritornell sublabel. A quintessential document of the late 1990s/early 2000s Pismo PowerBook era of digitally manipulated audio, FrequencyLib is an adept meditation on the entropic possibilities inherent in popular music. Included with this reissue is the complementary Sad Mac Studies EP - first issued in a run of 100 on Robert Meijer's boutique En/Of label. Exploring similar themes/processes as FrequencyLib, Sad Mac Studies reimagines and deconstructs the sonic world of Sesame Street.

Following on from last year’s acclaimed Sylva Sylvarum, the epic double LP from Ora Clementi (her collaborative project with James Rushford), crys cole returns to Black Truffle with Other Meetings. Originally commissioned and released on cassette by Boomkat Editions in 2021, Other Meetings is a major addition to the body of carefully hewn solo work cole has released over the last decade, offering up two side-long suites of her radically intimate approach to sound. After many years dominated by touring and travel, cole found herself in lockdown in her Berlin apartment, working in a limited space with minimal equipment. Digging through archives of recordings taken overseas and exploring the sonic potential hidden in the objects surrounding her (including a coffee pot and a vase of dying flowers), she crafted what in her liner notes she calls ‘an internal dérive, a journey that drifted through many places without a defining compass’. Totalling over 50 minutes, the two pieces unfold at an unhurried pace, each containing four individually titled subsections. Beginning with a sequence of the highly amplified small sounds characteristic of much of cole’s work, the opening moments of ‘The time between two durations of sleep’ are underpinned by a gentle rocking motion, weaving together contact mic crunch, metallic resonance, glimpses of bird song, and isolated drum machine hits, the sonic space expanding and contracting as focus moves between elements. Briefly side-lined by a tactile but unplaceable sizzling, this complex weave of voices then returns in a kind of dubbed-out ‘version’, the percussive accents echoing around the stereo space. In one of the record’s most beautiful and unexpected moments, these sounds are joined by a sparse melodic line performed on a broken 1980s digital synth, the vaguely New Age timbres being taken on a long, tonally ambiguous wander. Cole’s immersion in memories of travel comes to the fore in the final section of the first side, titled ‘Wat Paknam’ after a royal temple in Bangkok, where snatches of voices, ringing bells and distant waves of chanting blur together with synth tones into an increasingly abstracted wave of sound. The second side, ‘Slices of cake’, opens in a similarly hallucinatory outdoor space of echoing bird song and liquified traffic before abruptly zooming in on a microscopic world of subtly processed and highly amplified objects, explored with a starkness and quiet insistence that calls to mind the fringe not-quite-concrète of outsiders like Paul A.R. Timmermans or Knud Viktor, whose obsessive interrogation of dripping water might also serve as a point of reference for the following sub-section, the aptly titled ‘magischer Abfluss’ (magic drain).

While Other Meetings develops many aspects of cole’s previous work – the hyper-magnification of small gestures, the unsettling edits and fades partly inspired by hypnagogic states, the location recordings smeared into oneiric haze – it is almost as if these pieces are somehow songs, the remnants of an evaporated music of which nothing remains except isolated hits from a synthetic drum, a handful of notes, or simply a duration of emptied atmosphere. Radically reductive yet deeply musical, Other Meetings is a major work from an artist driven by an uncompromising and idiosyncratic vision.

Presented with an inner sleeve with photos and liner notes from the composer and remastered audio.

Italian duo Agents Of Time have been incredibly busy over the past few years, from releasing a string of classic singles – including their recent single for Afterlife, “The Mirage”, which earned more than five million views on Instagram – to remixing The Weeknd’s “Take My Breath”, which appeared on his recent Dawn FM (Alternative World). But the biggest news is here now – their second album, Universo, is ready. Elevating their trademark melodic techno with an exquisite pop-ness, Universo has found its ideal home with Kompakt, following their Music Made Paradise 2020 debut EP for the label. It’s a meeting of minds that makes perfect sense.

Andrea Di Ceglie and Luigi Tutolo, the two members of Agents Of Time, used their time during the pandemic to work on Universo, an album loosely conceptualised around their ‘personal universo’, a manifestation of the world Di Ceglie and Tutolo built both within and around their studio. This accounts for the sparkle and brightness of Universo – it’s full of personality, vim and vigour, the duo experimenting with their music, exploring its furthest corners. If you come to Universo expecting just another album of melodic techno, get ready to be pleasantly surprised – there’s a whole lot more going on here, and it’s all equally compelling.

After a typically poetic opening gesture – the swirling, synaesthetic, self-titled intro track – expectations are immediately blindsided with the two-step pop of “Fallin’”, sung with gentle clarity by guest Audrey Janssens, a dream of a song that harks back to the glory days of early ‘00s UK garage. “Interstellar Cowboy” is a confident, lithe, disco-fied strut; the gentle minor-key piano of “Liquid Fantasy” spirals into a gorgeously melancholy techno-pop epic, Vicky Who?’s voice rich with yearning. Janssens also reappears on the electro-swirl of “Poison”; “Dream Vision” revisits their single “The Mirage”, soft with sweeping strings, loaded with drama; “Part Of Life” sashays into view with a schaffel-stomp.

This rich variety throws the more dancefloor-focused tracks, like “Ciao”, into even starker relief – they’re more decisive, streamlined, yet rich with detail, chugging, Moroder-esque bass meeting strobe-lit synths that fire melodies out into the firmament. Universo feels texturally dense, but it still breathes, its sounds so tactile you want to reach out and grab them, its tunes so seductive you can’t get them out of your head. Universo is a fiercely beautiful album, brave in its spirit, a perfectly poised meeting-point of pop melody and stylish, lush techno: Agents Of Time in excelsis.

Das italienische Duo Agents Of Time war in den letzten Jahren unglaublich fleißig, von der Veröffentlichung einer Reihe klassischer Singles - darunter ihre jüngster Beitrag für Afterlife, "The Mirage", der mehr als fünf Millionen Aufrufe auf Instagram erhielt - bis hin zum Remix von The Weeknds "Take My Breath", der auf dessen aktuellen Album “Dawn FM (Alternative World)” erschien. Aber die bahnbrechendeste Neuigkeit ist erst jetzt endlich da - ihr zweites Album "Universo" ist fertig! “Universo" verbindet ihr Markenzeichen, melodischen Techno, mit einer besonderen Pop-Haltung und findet nach der EP "Music Made Paradise 2020" sein ideales Zuhause bei Kompakt. Eine Seelenverwandtschaft, die absolut Sinn macht.

Andrea Di Ceglie und Luigi Tutolo, die beiden Mitglieder von Agents Of Time, nutzten die Zeit während der Pandemie, um an "Universo" zu arbeiten, einem Album, das lose um ihr "persönliches Universum" herum konzipiert ist, eine Manifestation der Welt, die Di Ceglie und Tutolo in und um ihr Studio herum aufgebaut haben. Das macht den besonderen Glanz und die strahlende Helligkeit von "Universo" aus - es strotzt nur so von Persönlichkeit, Elan und Kraft, das Duo experimentiert mit Musik und erkundet auch noch deren entfernteste Ecken. Wer bei "Universo" nur ein weiteres Album mit melodischem Techno erwartet, wird angenehm überrascht sein - hier ist viel mehr los, und alles ist gleichermaßen spannend.

Nach einer poetischen Eröffnungsgeste - dem wirbelnden, synästhetischen, selbstbetitelten Intro-Track - werden mit dem 2-Step-Pop von “Fallin” alle Erwartungen sofort über den Haufen geworfen. Mit sanfter Klarheit von Gastsängerin Audrey Janssens gesungen, ist “Fallin” ein Traum von einem Song, der an die großen Zeiten von UK-Garage in den frühen 00er Jahre erinnert. "Interstellar Cowboy" ist ein selbstbewusstes, geschmeidig über den Laufsteg stolzierender Disco-Track; das sanfte Moll-Klavier von "Liquid Fantasy" entwickelt sich zu einem wunderbar melancholischen Techno-Pop-Epos, mit Vicky Who?’s Stimme voller Sehnsucht . Danach taucht auch Janssens Gesang auf dem Elektro-Wirbel von "Poison" wieder auf; "Dream Vision" greift die Single "The Mirage" auf, sanft und mit schwungvollen Streichern, voller Dramatik; "Part Of Life" dagegen ist ein echter Schaffel-Stomp.

All der Abwechslungsreichtum lässt eher tanzflächenorientierte Tracks wie "Ciao" noch deutlicher hervortreten - sie wirken noch entschlossener, stromlinienförmiger und dennoch reich an Details, pluckernde, Moroder-eske Bässe treffen auf stroboskopisch blitzende Synths, von denen aus die Melodien ins Firmament schießen. “Universo” fühlt sich textlich dicht an, aber es atmet trotzdem, seine Klänge sind so greifbar, dass man sie anfassen möchte, seine Melodien so verführerisch, dass man sie nicht mehr aus dem Kopf bekommt. “Universo” ist ein wunderschönes, mutiges Album, ein perfekter Treffpunkt von Pop-Melodien und stilvollem Techno: Agents Of Time in excelsis.

Der Grundstein für "Quiet The Room" wurde vor zwei Jahren gelegt, als Helen Ballentine einen Song gleichen Namens komponierte und aufnahm. Im Gegensatz zu den meisten anderen Songs von SKULLCRUSHER wurde dieser auf dem Klavier geschrieben, dem erklärten Instrument ihrer Kindheit. Während Ballentine im Sommer 2021 den Rest des Albums schrieb, flogen ihr Visionen aus ihrer Jugend zu, wie die Fledermäuse vom Dachboden, während sie in der schwülen, stickigen Hitze durch ihre Wohnung in Los Angeles lief. Das Bild eines Hauses entstand in Ballentines Kopf, als sie die innere Welt ihrer Songs mit den äußeren Räumen, die sie jetzt umgab, zusammenfügte. Sie dachte dabei viel an ihre Kindheit in Mount Vernon, NY, die sie als größte Inspiration für die Platte bezeichnet. "It's like layers of tracing paper, like someone is trying to make a drawing and you're seeing the entire process", sagt Ballentine über die Entstehung des Albums. Bei der Durchsicht älterer Heimvideos fielen ihr die scheinbar harmlosen Aufnahmen auf, die durch das Fenster gemacht wurden und sie am Klavier oder beim Spaziergang im Garten zeigten. Versteckte Bedeutungen, die über die Ränder der Bilder hinausgingen, eine sich abzeichnende Dunkelheit, die außerhalb des Blickfelds schwebte (ihre Eltern stritten sich, waren auf dem Weg zur Scheidung usw.). Das Haus schaffte es nicht länger, sie alle unter einem Dach zu beherbergen. Ballentine versucht nicht auf "Quiet The Room" die oft zitierte Unschuld der Kindheit einzufangen, sondern will diese in ihrer intensiven Komplexität darstellen. Das Ergebnis ist ein atemberaubendes wie leise bewegendes Werk geworden, das die Reisen widerspiegelt, die wir durch unsere körperlichen und geistigen Sphären unternehmen, um uns der Welt zu präsentieren.

"A melodic, harmony-driven slice of laid back, surfer indie-guitar." Louder Than War - "Teenage angst has paid off well, DIVES are now ready to have it all." Guitar Girl Mag - "Catchy, vigorous surf-pop." - Nothing But Hope & Passion - DIVES sind zurück! Die drei Wienerinnen präsentieren nach ihrem gefeierten Debut-Album "Teenage Years Are Over" mit dem sie in die letzten drei Jahren über 150 Shows in 13 Ländern gespielt haben ihren neuen Longplayer. Zum Herbst veröffentlichen Dora de Goederen, Viktoria Kirner und Tamara Leichtfried ihre neues Album und verlängern so ein wenig den Sommer mit einem den Soundtrack zum Draußensein, Rollschuhfahren oder Herumcruisen mit offenem Verdeck. Inklusive klugen Lyrics und Statements gegen gesellschaftlichen Bullshit, Selbstsucht und Narzissmus. DIVES sind Rock'n'Roll-Zeitreisende - spielen mal gechillten Surfpop, mal energievollen Garagerock wie aus dem 70er-Roadmovie oder der Venice Beach-Nostalgie, packen dazu aber wichtigste Messages aus dem Jetzt: gegen jegliche Diskriminierung und für Gleichberechtigung und Menschlichkeit. Klug und zugänglich, tanzbar und zeitlos. Dass man zwischenmenschliche Konflikte, Statements gegen das Patriarchat und gegen Machoattitüden in eingängige Rock'n'Roll-Songs mit Hooks und Finesse verpacken kann, haben DIVES schon in der Vergangenheit bewiesen, machen das auch nochmal eindringlich im zweiten Album "WANNA TAKE YOU THERE".

"A melodic, harmony-driven slice of laid back, surfer indie-guitar." Louder Than War - "Teenage angst has paid off well, DIVES are now ready to have it all." Guitar Girl Mag - "Catchy, vigorous surf-pop." - Nothing But Hope & Passion - DIVES sind zurück! Die drei Wienerinnen präsentieren nach ihrem gefeierten Debut-Album "Teenage Years Are Over" mit dem sie in die letzten drei Jahren über 150 Shows in 13 Ländern gespielt haben ihren neuen Longplayer. Zum Herbst veröffentlichen Dora de Goederen, Viktoria Kirner und Tamara Leichtfried ihre neues Album und verlängern so ein wenig den Sommer mit einem den Soundtrack zum Draußensein, Rollschuhfahren oder Herumcruisen mit offenem Verdeck. Inklusive klugen Lyrics und Statements gegen gesellschaftlichen Bullshit, Selbstsucht und Narzissmus. DIVES sind Rock'n'Roll-Zeitreisende - spielen mal gechillten Surfpop, mal energievollen Garagerock wie aus dem 70er-Roadmovie oder der Venice Beach-Nostalgie, packen dazu aber wichtigste Messages aus dem Jetzt: gegen jegliche Diskriminierung und für Gleichberechtigung und Menschlichkeit. Klug und zugänglich, tanzbar und zeitlos. Dass man zwischenmenschliche Konflikte, Statements gegen das Patriarchat und gegen Machoattitüden in eingängige Rock'n'Roll-Songs mit Hooks und Finesse verpacken kann, haben DIVES schon in der Vergangenheit bewiesen, machen das auch nochmal eindringlich im zweiten Album "WANNA TAKE YOU THERE".

- The Complete 1988 Film Score by John Massari - Available For The First Time On Vinyl 180 Gram Violet and Blue Vinyl (Light In The Attic Exclusive Variant) - Exclusive Liner Notes by Composer John Massari - Exclusive Liner Notes by Killer Klowns Co-Creator Stephen Chiodo - Heavyweight 12" x 12" Art Print - Old-Style Tip-On Jackets with Matte Satin Coating // KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE have finally landed at Waxwork Records! After much anticipation, we are thrilled to present the official 1988 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by John Massari for the very first time on vinyl! Would you believe someone if they told you a circus tent-shaped spaceship landed in your small town and was abducting your neighbors to store them in cotton candy cocoons? In this '80's cult classic, teens Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer) and Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder) have to fight both the diabolical bozos and the local law enforcement's disbelief to save themselves and their community! The original score to Killer Klowns From Outer Space is kicked off by the classic 80's horror movie theme track, Killer Klowns (From Outer Space) by California punk band, The Dickies. The 'nightmare merry-go-round' continues with a smattering of menacing electronic brass sections, electric guitar, bombastic drum machine beats, & harpsichord combined with sci-fi synth elements to capture the ultra-specific origins of the antagonists. Massari's score to Klowns is a retro-synth joyride from start to finish featuring immediately recognizable cues from the beloved 80's cult-classic! Waxwork Records is thrilled to present the official Killer Klowns From Outer Space double LP, released for the first time on vinyl. Complete with 180 gram "Cotton Candy" and "Popcorn" vinyl, deluxe packaging, new artwork by Ruiz Burgos, old-style tip-on jackets with matte coating, a heavyweight 12"x12" art print, and liner notes by composer Massari and Klowns co-creator Stephen Chiodo!

Mit zwei Oscars, einem Golden Globe und zwei Grammys kann James Horner eine unvergessliche Karriere vorweisen. Als Komponist einiger der größten internationalen Blockbuster, darunter Titanic, Star Trek, Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind oder Avatar, ist James Horner eine international anerkannte Filmmusikgröße, dessen Melodien viele begeistert haben. James Horner hinterließ viele Stücke, die mit Sicherheit in die Annalen eingehen werden, die die weltberühmten Prager Philharmoniker auf 'Hollywood Story' für Sie einspielen. Transparent-gelbes Doppelvinyl.

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

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

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

Kehlani is set to release the vinyl product of her latest album ‘blue water road’ on 14th October, which is available to pre-order now. “blue water road is a destination in my mind,” Kehlani explains. “I’m giving everyone access. It’s an emotional journey, a sexual journey, and a spiritual journey.

To me, the album is like a glass house. It's light, transparent, and the sun is shining right through it.” The album includes features from the likes of Justin Bieber, Ambre, thundercat. Kehlani has sold over 90K albums in the UK to date.

Mit seinem neuen Album beschreitet der Pianist Yaron Herman ganz neue Wege.

Nachdem er bereits zehn Alben veröffentlicht hat, lässt er sich ins Leere fallen und bietet erstmals ein Korpus völlig improvisierter Musik - einen verblüffenden Schnappschuss und einen lebendigen Spiegel seiner Vergangenheit. Das Klavier wird damit zum Mittelpunkt umfassenderen Nachdenkens, ein Gefährte, der dabei hilft, die Geheimnisse der Welt zu lüften. Dieser schöpferische, vielseitige und atypische Werdegang steht im Hintergrund einer begeisternden, großherzigen globalen Reflexion, die er kürzlich in einem früheren Werk durchführte.
Ohne irgendein Konzept im Hinterkopf überlässt er sich völlig dem, was die Musik zu sagen hat; er eröffnet Räume, in denen er selbst noch nicht war. Improvisieren heißt in Echtzeit Komponieren. Beim Komponieren ist die erste Geste - das, was man manchmal "Inspiration" nennt - improvisiert.
Auf diese Weise konzise und kunstvoll aufgebaute Stücke zu konstruieren, Melodien zu erfinden, die sich gemäß einer in Echtzeit entstehenden Logik entwickeln, ist ein unendlich komplexer Vorgang. Er setzt eine außergewöhnliche Erfindungs- und Konzentrationskraft voraus, einen Sinn für die Gegenwart, der mit Offenheit für die Zukunft gepaart ist, ohne die keine Entwicklung möglich ist. 'Alma' ist eine seltene Aufforderung, ein innerer Tanz, der uns sehr weit mit sich führt, eine sensorische Reise, zu der der Hörer eingeladen ist, und eine tiefe Emotion, die ihn nie loslässt.
CD und Doppel-LP (Schwarzes Vinyl)!

Dr. Feelgood ist das fünfte Studioalbum der amerikanischen Glam-Metal-Band Mötley Crüe und der Höhepunkt ihrer Karriere. Es wurde am 1. September 1989 veröffentlicht und stieg auf Platz 1 der amerikanischen Charts ein. Das Album blieb weit über 100 Wochen in der Album-Hitparade Billboard 200.

Vollgepackt mit Hits, "Dr. Feelgood" (#6), "Kickstart My Heart" (#27), "Without You" (#8), und "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)" (#17). Jetzt wieder erhältlich als CD und remasterte LP.

Mit ihrer Coverversion von ‘Word Up‘ hat die schottische Band 1994 einen Welthit gelandet, der noch heute im Radio rauf und runter läuft. Während der Pandemie hatten die Brüder Jools und Dante Gizzi die Idee, ihre Lieblingstracks im semiakustischen Gewand einzuspielen, um die Essenz der Songs mal anders herauszuarbeiten. Inkl.

Versionen ihrer ersten Single ‘Better Days‘, ‘Taking On The World‘ aus
dem gleichnamigen Debütalbum, ‘Don’t Say It’s Over‘ und
natürlich ‘Word Up‘

Mit ihrer Coverversion von ‘Word Up‘ hat die schottische Band 1994 einen Welthit gelandet, der noch heute im Radio rauf und runter läuft. Während der Pandemie hatten die Brüder Jools und Dante Gizzi die Idee, ihre Lieblingstracks im semiakustischen Gewand einzuspielen, um die Essenz der Songs mal anders herauszuarbeiten. Inkl.

Versionen ihrer ersten Single ‘Better Days‘, ‘Taking On The World‘ aus
dem gleichnamigen Debütalbum, ‘Don’t Say It’s Over‘ und
natürlich ‘Word Up‘

We are proud to present "I'm Always Right" by Imagination, an unreleased jazz rock LP from 1977. Comprised of five tracks with a playtime of roughly 30 minutes, you will hear one of the finest German late-70s rock-tinged electric jazz albums of the era. The recording is a delightful stand-out with unique compositions, aspiring solo work, and a soulful spirit throughout. Additionally, the album veritably glows with exceptional sound quality, as it has been remastered from original tapes that were cut more than four decades ago at the WDR Funkhaus, Cologne.

Here is the story of how label founder John Raincoatman became aware of these lost tapes:
"I first got in touch with members of Imagination from Düsseldorf (not to be confused with the UK disco band under the same name) in 2017 for licensing the track "Strawberry Wine" from their collectible "Shake It" album from 1980. A couple of months later, when I was speaking with Willi Hövelmann, the guitarist for Imagination, he told me about some recordings the band had made a couple of years before, when they had been invited to to the studio of the WDR, a major German broadcaster. A couple of weeks later, when Hövelmann finally sent me the files that he had requested from the WDR, I could not believe what I heard - not only that the songs were totally different from what I expected, but that they were also very very good! The music wasn't comparable to any other kind of fusion release that I knew of. These five songs were straight forward, tight and soulful electric jazz rock, a combination rarely heard from Germany from that time period."

How come Imagination - at that time a young newcomer band consisting of musicians between 19 and 22 years of age - was able to record at the well-equipped Funkhaus studio of German radio and television? Hövelmann explains: "The WDR got to know us from a newcomer band competition called "Pop am Rhein" (Pop at the Rhine) which was set up to support local bands and was promoted by several bigger newspapers. Imagination was one of the 5 contestants which were picked from 59 bands by a jury of music journalists and our band was invited to play a concert at the Philipshalle in front of about 3500 guests. Although a band called "Accept" won the contest (yes, the heavy metal band that gained international success in the following years!) and Imagination only made 3rd place, we were invited by music host and journalist Wolfgang Neumann to record in a professional studio."

Neumann's broadcasting show at the WDR was called "Rock Studio", and one of his special goals was to help push newcomer bands by giving them airplay. As a side note, Neumann actually compiled a series of three LPs on the Harvest label from 1979-1982, each of them featuring four bands. However, the earlier recordings of Imagination had only been used for broadcasting reasons, they were aired a couple of times but never made it to a vinyl or CD release.
So, on October 10th, 1977, it was time for the band to show up and prove themselves in the studio. The tracks were all recorded in one afternoon, mainly as one takes. In some cases flute, saxophone were overdubbed, as well as the vocals on "Love is Genesis", as Hövelmann remembers.

The first song, "Jazzgang" can probably be seen as Imagination's most characteristic composition out of their early period: heavy bass, saxophone leads and speedy solos by the band members. A genuine, rough, yet funky uptempo jazz rock tune. But it's "I'm Always Right", the second track on the album, that raises the bar as the key track of the release with its 10-minute length. The song starts with a great piano solo by Mario F. Demonte. In fact, "Demonte" was a pseudonym of Ratko Delorko, a classically trained piano virtuoso who is still active today as conductor, composer and performer. At that time, it was simply impossible for him to officially be part in a band like Imagination and hence the alias was invented. Anyway, the speedy intro leads to a very soulful mid-tempo jazz funk groove that offers space and time for the band members to perform a solo. First off is Uwe Ziss with sax and flute combined. The second solo belongs to Willi "Sultan" Hövelmann on electric guitar. For the furious ending the pace is set back to high speed. Delorko serves us with one of the most brilliant uptempo piano solos you may have heard in a while on a jazz record.

The next song stylistically stands out from the rest. "Biting My Time" incorporates a rhythm and blues feel with a 60s soul jazz attitude. The track was composed by Uwe Ziss who leads through the track with aspiring flute solos which feel like an easy summer breeze after the first two rock tinged tunes.

"Himalaya" sees Imagination move away from jazz quite a bit, rather approaching the psychedelic rock genre with a vibe reminiscent of the sound of the early 70s. Again starting with a piano solo by Ratko Delorko the pace is quickly at 150 bpm with the full band laying down an energetic jazz rock sound. Just after a little over one-and-a-half minutes there is a breakdown to a slower tempo with overdubbed mysterious vocals and psyche-y screams which may remind more of the legendary krautrock band Can than what is typically known as "jazz". The mood continues with tense saxophone and guitar solos, just to speed up again towards the end with furious drumming by Andreas Oelschläger.

"Love Is Genesis" concludes the release. It was composed and sung by former bassist Robert Schlickmann. Though most of the band members didn't really like the song at that time it still is a one-of-a-kind soft rock pop ballad which partly reminds of some of the vocal song tracks later to be found on the "Shake It" LP from 1980. The track manifested that Imagination were never really supposed to be solely an instrumental band.

We are now happy to have cleared the exclusive rights for this recording from the WDR and are proud to re-present this amazing collection of songs. It should appeal to fusion, jazz rock and jazz funk aficionados but also to late krautrock collectors. We are also certain that it will also please fans of the "Shake It" album, simply in terms of being such a bright and soulful debut with great music overall.

Resignieren? Teilnahmslos die Zeiten Aussitzen? Vergiss es…wir haben da etwas Besseres "On the streets, on the streets There'll be riots on the streets…When they take your rights away" Und hier kommt der Soundtrack dazu:: Riot City Radio.Nach ihrer in 2020 veröffentlichten Mini-LP "Anchors in the Storm" haben die Jungs aus Plymouth, UK während der Pandemie ihre Zeit damit verbracht ihren ersten Longplayer "TIME WILL TELL" aufzunehmen! Und die Scheibe ist einfach ein Juwel in Sachen Streepunk/ Oi! geworden und vereint abwechslungsreich die verschiedensten Einflüsse zu melodischen Hymnen mit fetten Singalong-chorals bis hin zu aggressiven Shoutern.Riot City Radio kombinieren Liebe & Hass, Zuversicht und Rebellion in ihren Texten ohne dabei jemals zu vergessen, wo sie herkommen."True Attitude" verpackt in einen mitreißenden Sound oder anders ausgedruckt: Genau DAS, was wir lieben und jede Wette…es wird Euch nicht anders ergehen!.Time will Tell bietet 12 neue Songs…manchmal schnell und wie ein Schlag in die Fresse für Alle, die es einfach verdienen (Reap what you saw/ Never forgive, never forget). Manchmal antisocial mit klarem Bekenntnis zur Szene, ihren Wurzeln und der Working Class (Punk Rock Family / Working Class Anthem/ World at your feet…starring Mark/ Booze & Glory)!

Fifth Anniversary reissue of William The
Conqueror’s debut album, ‘Proud Disturber of the
Peace’, featuring all-new mixes by Joseph Lorge
(Hiss Golden Messenger, Blake Mills, Phoebe
Bridgers et al) and new artwork by Australian
design studio Headjam.
The album includes fan favourites ‘Tend to the
Thorns’, ‘Cold Ontario’ and ‘Sunny is the Style’,
delivered with bluesy, alt-rock swagger and wry,
cerebral lyrics that find the band in the same lane
as Built to Spill, Spoon and Pavement.
Tourdates - October 12 Southampton Joiners, 13
Tunbridge Wells Forum, 14 Cambridge Portland Arms, 16
Liverpool Jimmy’s, 17 Manchester Night & Day, 18
Glasgow Attic, 19 Todmorden The Golden Lion, 20 Stoke
Sugarmill, 21 Sunderland Pop Records, 22 Scunthorpe
Café Indie, 23 London The Lexington, 25 Ashford The
Glass House, 26 Bristol Thekla, 28 Falmouth The Cornish
Bank.

“I wanna wake up brand new” Enumclaw lead-singer / guitarist Aramis Johnson sings to begin Save the Baby, their massive-sounding debut full-length, out via Luminelle Recordings. The album is a swing for greatness; a collection of life-affirming and deeply personal songs about the importance of chasing after your dreams. Enumclaw is Aramis, guitarist Nathan Cornell, drummer Ladaniel Gipson, bassist (and Aramis’ younger brother) Eli Edwards. Working alongside producer Gabe Wax (Soccer Mommy, Crumb, Fleet Foxes), Enumclaw's Save the Baby delivers an album where on each track the band plays with dynamics while taking their songwriting to the stratosphere. Save the Baby is an album about stepping into your purpose, about the determination it takes to not give up on yourself in the midst of heartbreak and setbacks. It’s not a stretch to imagine a younger version of the band getting a glimpse of the future and freaking out by knowing their destiny of making it as a rock star has landed on their doorstep. For fans of all things J Mascis / Dinosaur Jr, Built to Spill and all things 90's Pacific Northwest.

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

"Since 2004, ALTER BRIDGE has been one of the most consistent bands to successfully represent the rock and metal communities with their driving melodies, blazing guitar riffs and topical lyrics that resonate with fans around the globe. Their seventh album, Pawns & Kings, continues that trend with 10 unforgettable new additions to their catalog. Coming off the launch of what was shaping up to be one of the band’s pinnacle moments with Walk The Sky (#1 US Billboard Top Albums, #1 US Current Rock and Hard Music, #4 UK Official Charts, #1 UK Independent and Rock/Metal, #5 Official German Album Charts), everything came to a halt as the world would forever be changed due to the events of a global pandemic. The time the members of ALTER BRIDGE spent apart sparked a new fire and heaviness when the quartet comprised of Myles Kennedy on vocals/guitars, Mark Tremonti on guitars/vocals, Brian Marshall on bass and Scott Phillips on drums would reconvene for what would eventually become Pawns & Kings. Teaming with longtime producer and collaborator Michael “Elvis” Baskette, the album shines with massive, menacing arena-ready production while emerging as another sonic testament to the seasoned Kennedy/Tremonti songwriting dream-team. The band deliver three epic anthems, including two that clock in at over six minutes – the reflective and absolutely epic title track “Pawns & Kings”, grim-riffed, progressive influenced “Sin After Sin”, and the emotive eight-and-a-half minute journey “Fable Of The Silent Son.” “Silver Tongue” is backed by a punishing intro riff that gives way to one of the band’s most infectious choruses as Myles Kennedy sings, “Truth of a crime. You can’t outrun. Under the spell of my silver tongue,” while tracks like “Holiday” and “Season Of Promise” ebb and flow within the trademark multi-faceted metallic rock attack that has enchanted ALTER BRIDGE fans for a generation. Songs like “This Is War,” “Dead Among The Living” and “Last Man Standing” showcase the heavier side of a band firing on all cylinders, with soaring leads, hair-raising vocals and introspective lyricism abound. Mark Tremonti helms lead vocal duties on the uplifting track “Stay” – an interchanging of skills that first debuted on the band’s fourth album, Fortress, and continues to this day. Nearly 20 years into their celebrated career, one thing is for sure – Pawns & Kings offers a musical snapshot of a band that shows no signs of slowing down and continues to push itself creatively for the whole world to see. before peaking with a frenetic, metallic bridge-breakdown and piercing solo worthy of rock legend.

As on Under A Burning Eclipse, between each song on Sacred Rites & Black Magick is an intricately positioned interlude building the ambiance and steering the thematic intensity of the album. Beginning with echoing, clean dual acoustic guitars, introductory interlude “Hymns Of The Slumbering Race” begins the procession of grand ascension and hair raising riffage to come. “Internal Fulmination Of The Grand Deceivers” flashes STORMRULER’s brand of Imperial Black Metal Warfare, shining with heavy bass and blastbeats before cascading into icy atmosphere topped by smoke-cloaked vocals. Entrancing guitars match an ebb and flow of carefully paced interludes and merciless, speeding fury, showcasing standout leads and a blazing solo. Similar epic songwriting, lush lyricism and skillful dynamics can be witnessed on tracks such as the brooding “Entranced Within The Moon Presence”, intricate “In The Shaded Vlasian Forest” and introspective, glistening “Along The Appian Way”. “To Bear The Twin Faces Of The Dragon” stages some of the most menacing sonic escapades and memorable leads of the 20-track offering, combining chants of sorcery with searing screams and waves of crushing melody, while tracks such as “Upon Frozen Shores” weave a sonic tale of occult doom atop triumphant soundscapes, breakneck rhythms and ghostly melodic passages. Standout title offering “Sacred Rites & Black Magick” sets the supreme lyrical and musical mood of the album itself, depicting just how deftly STORMRULER conjure lucid black metal as they inject energetic, unforgettable grooves and riffs into their scorching delivery – succeeding in convincing even the newest of genre converts.

Beloved American Rock band The Early November have announced album "Twenty" set for release on 14th October on Pure Noise Records. "Twenty" effortlessly straddles the divide between then and now, its 10 songs casting a backwards glance at the days and years gone by, while also looking forward to the future. A collection of both brand new tracks and older ones written during the course of the band’s life to date, the result is something of a paradox: this both is and isn’t a new Early November record.

TOWNES VAN ZANDT STUDIO SESSIONS FROM 1974 AVAILABLE ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER In 1974, Townes Van Zandt recorded what would have been his seventh album, ‘Seven Come Eleven’. Business issues prevented its release until the recordings surfaced two decades later as ‘The Nashville Sessions’. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Van Zandt’s turbulent musical career and launch of a major catalogue reissue programme, Charly has restored and re-mastered ‘The Nashville Sessions’ to present a stunning document of the folk-blues master at his absolute peak. “These are songs that tap into the timeless myth of the American troubadour, a place where wandering souls tramp the byways of their homeland...” Restored and mastered to vinyl from the original tapes provided by producer and manager Kevin Eggers. Full colour LP sleeve with original Milton Glaser portrait cover. Fully illustrated inner with detailed sleeve notes by Uncut magazine journalist Rob Hughes. Part of Charly’s 50th anniversary programme celebrating the start of Van Zandt’s career. All original Poppy and Tomato albums which Townes Van Zandt recorded at the peak of his career will be newly re- mastered, restored and lavishly repackaged and available on CD & limited edition 180g heavyweight vinyl. The death of Townes Van Zandt in 1997 at age 52 robbed the world of a troubled genius as well as one of America’s finest songwriters. His reputation and popularity has grown greater by the year inspiring books, a documentary and renewed interest from the media, passionately loyal fans and contemporaries such as Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Emmylou Harris who have covered his songs to the upper-reaches of the American charts. “From Neil Young and Willie Nelson, Bono and Bob Dylan (who reportedly once said that Townes was “in some ways the better writer”) to Tindersticks and Mudhoney, songwriters and musicians speak of Townes with reverence.” MOJO MAGAZINE “He was the best songwriter and most riveting solo performer I’ve ever seen.” STEVE EARLE “An effortless masterclass in emotionally effecting Americana”.

Surprise Chef’s music is based on evoking mood; their vivid arrangements utilize time and space to build soundscapes that invite the listener into their world. The quintet’s distinct sound pulls from 70s film scores, the funkier side of jazz, and the samples that form the foundation of hip hop. They push the boundaries of instrumental soul and funk with their own approach honed by countless hours in the studio, studying the masters, and perhaps most importantly, the “tyranny of distance” that dictates a unique perspective to their music. Hailing from just outside of Melbourne, Australia their first two albums, All News Is Good News and Daylight Savings amassed a die-hard fanbase and brought their sound from their home studio to every corner of the globe. The band is now signed to Big Crown Records, joining a lineage of contemporary and classic sounds that have influenced Surprise Chef’s music since their formation in 2017. Surprise Chef is Lachlan Stuckey on guitar, Jethro Curtin on keys, Carl Lindeberg on bass, Andrew Congues on drums, and Hudson Whitlock—the latest member who does it all from percussion to composing to producing. Their self proclaimed "moody shades of instrumental jazz-funk" have a bit of everything: punchy drums, infectious keys, rhythm guitar you might hear on a Studio One record, and flute lines that could be from a Blue Note session. But when you step back and take in the entirety of their sound and approach, you'll hear and see a group greater than the sum of its parts. In many ways Surprise Chef embodies the idiom "the benefits of limits." They were limited in that there weren't many people making or talking about instrumental jazz/soul/funk in Southeast Australia, let alone putting out records. This left them to develop their sound and approach in a kind of creative isolation where a small circle of friends and like-minded musicians fed off each other. "Being in Australia, being so far away, we only get glimpses and glances of this music’s origins," Stuckey says. "But hearing a label like Big Crown was one of the first times we realized you could make fresh, new soul music that wasn't super retro or just nostalgic." This approach is on full display throughout their new album Education & Recreation. Tracks like “Velodrome” pair chunky drums with an earworm synth line that has all the making of something you would find on an Ultimate Breaks & Beats compilation while numbers like “Iconoclasts” show their knack for tasteful use of space. From the crushing intro of “Suburban Breeze” to the floaty mellow bop of “Spring’s Theme” Surprise Chef has weaved together an album that takes you through peaks and valleys of emotion and provides a vivid soundtrack that will pull you deeper into your imagination. There is a beauty in the vast space for interpretation of instrumental music and they are adding a modern classic to the canon with this new album. Turn on the record and enjoy the ride, wherever it may take you.

Deutsche Grammophon präsentiert eine limitierte 3 LP-Edition von Rafael Kubelíks gefeiertem SchumannSinfonienzyklus, remastered von den analogen Originalquellen und gepresst auf 180g Vinyl. Seine ersten
beiden Schumann-Aufnahmen markierten 1963 den beginn der Zusammenarbeit zwischen Rafael Kubelík
und Deutsxhe Grammophon. Es zeugt von Kubelíks menschlichen wie musikalischen Qualitäten, dass er in
kürzester Zeit ein enges Verhältnis zu den Berliner Philharmonikern aufbauen konnte. Dieser SchumannZyklus ist eine Offenbarung. Kubelík zeigt, dass die viel gescholtene Orchestrierung des Komponisten mit
einer gewissen Leichtigkeit funktionieren kann und dass diese Partituren nicht schwülstig und kantig klingen
müssen. Er bringt eine frühlingshafte Frische und Vitalität in die Musik, die er mit schön abgestimmten
Tempi vorantreibt und gleichzeitig ihre poetische Klangfülle, Freude und Noblesse offenbart. Die Berliner
Philharmoniker reagieren mit Enthusiasmus und insprierter Spielfreude. Kein Wunder, dass sich diese
beispielhaften Aufnahmen ihren Platz gegen alle folgenden Neueinspielungen behauptet haben.

OVERVIEW: Press Club return with their third studio album, Endless Motion, to be released this October. Brave, energetic and expansive, the idea of motion has always been central to the Press Club ethos. Having made music together for 12 years, the Melbourne-based punk rock four-piece reject stagnancy, constantly pushing to change and thrive in a scene that largely stays the same. Endless Motion is the ultimate artistic statement about the past three years – a collective and global struggle that has provided the material and circumstances for Press Club to emerge as one of the most exciting and relevant bands of 2022.

OVERVIEW: Press Club return with their third studio album, Endless Motion, to be released this October. Brave, energetic and expansive, the idea of motion has always been central to the Press Club ethos. Having made music together for 12 years, the Melbourne-based punk rock four-piece reject stagnancy, constantly pushing to change and thrive in a scene that largely stays the same. Endless Motion is the ultimate artistic statement about the past three years – a collective and global struggle that has provided the material and circumstances for Press Club to emerge as one of the most exciting and relevant bands of 2022.

OVERVIEW: Press Club return with their third studio album, Endless Motion, to be released this October. Brave, energetic and expansive, the idea of motion has always been central to the Press Club ethos. Having made music together for 12 years, the Melbourne-based punk rock four-piece reject stagnancy, constantly pushing to change and thrive in a scene that largely stays the same. Endless Motion is the ultimate artistic statement about the past three years – a collective and global struggle that has provided the material and circumstances for Press Club to emerge as one of the most exciting and relevant bands of 2022.

Unlearn is the long awaited fourth album of DJ and producer 2econd Class Citizen. It marks the artist's return back to the newly relaunched label Equinox Records. Their previous collaborations achieved high acclaim for their genre bending fusion of hip hop, electronica and folk music.

The new album is an exploration of an artist journeying beyond their conventional confines. It is a musical adventure peppered with vintage samples concerning the perception of reality and our struggles with conforming to a broken society.

Unlearn is the most musically accomplished work of 2econd Class Citizen to date. As one would expect the drum programming, scratching and production is on point. Several tracks feature soothingly melodic and energetic passages of jazz saxophone from Leroy Horns and electric guitar riffs provided by long term collaborator Paul Drury.

2econd Class Citizen, real name Aaron Thomason, resides in Brighton, UK. He is also a painter and visual artist fascinated with abstraction and the chaos of mixing colours. His musical approach on the new LP draws many parallels to this creative process. An original painting from the artist forms the albums striking cover.

Equinox Records is run by DJ Scientist in Germany. The Unlearn project marks the 51st release and provides the perfect launch vehicle for the dormant label to rise again. The vinyl release of Unlearn as well as the single Be Together signify the first stops in a release plan which will please fans of the label.

FEEDBACK:

"Woah! It's sounds rad! Really heavy and cinematic!"
Kid Koala

"A dark and deep dive into a world of dense and diced samples and moody muted melodies. Would sit well next to Shadow's freakier forays into fractured funk. Or Format's last psychy LP, for sure."
DJ Moneyshot of The Allergies

"I love it. The new treatments with the additional instruments sound great, especially the horns. Glad to see that Equinox is back in action. Dope cover art."
Dday One

"It sounds like 2econd Class Citizen has been at a mountaintop retreat studying and meditating and came back with some superpowers."
Buddy Peace

OVERVIEW: When an ancient monster that laid waste to planets when the dinosaurs roamed Earth is accidentally released from its underground prison, there's only one kaiju you can count on to defend us all: Mothra! Directed by Okihiro Yoneda with a story by the great GODZILLA creator Tomoyuki Tanaka, REBIRTH OF MOTHRA sees the legendary lepidopteran protect the human race from Belvera, the evil sister of Mothra's twin priestesses. She wants to destroy the world with the superspace demon beast Desghidorah, a three-headed extraterrestrial dragon. But Belvera and her monster aren't counting on the larva of Mothra joining the fight. Enter Mothra Leo! Brought into score REBIRTH OF MOTHRA was Toshiyuki Watanabe, son of the great tokusatsu and anime composer Michiaki Watanabe (YOKAI MONSTERS: 100 MONSTERS, MAZINGER Z), who lived up to his legacy by supplying a bold and thrilling orchestral score. Watanabe's music is full of ethereal beauty, with a fantastic opening title cue replete with a glorious female choir to celebrate Earth's greatest defender and full-blooded brass magnificence as Mothra and son fight against the evil Belvera and Desghidora. And of course, it wouldn't be complete without Yuji Koseki's classic Mothra's Song: Over time, oversea, like a wave - our guardian angel! (Charlie Brigden)

A1. Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet - Yesterdays
A2. Bob James - Sign Of The Times
A3. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - The Lonely Bull (El Solo Toro)
A4. Doris Day - Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)
A5. Nina Simone - Rags And Old Iron
A6. Billie Holiday - God Bless The Child
A7. Ella Fitzgerald With Paul Weston & His Orchestra - Russian Lullaby
B1. Cookin' On 3 Burners Feat. Kylie Auldist - This Girl
B2. Little Willie John - I'm Shakin'
B3. Dinah Washington With Quincy Jones & His Orchestra - Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby
B4. Harry Belfonte - Jump In The Line
B5. Frank Sinatra - High Hopes
B6. Chris Connor - Time Out For Tears
B7. Thelonious Monk - Black And Tan Fantasy
C1. Ella Fitzgerald - All Through The Night
C2. Johnny Mathis - Someone
C3. Cal Tjader - Walk On By
C4. Gil Scott-Heron - Home Is Where The Hatred Is
C5. Mongo Santamaria - Watermelon Man
C6. Peggy Lee - I'ts A Good Day
C7. Ferrante & Teicher - Theme From Exodus
D1. Quincy Jones - Soul Bossa Nova
D2. Ahmad Jamal - Angel Eyes (Live At The Alhambra)
D3. Charlie Parker & Miles Davis - A Night In Tunisia
D4. Les Brown Feat. Doris Day - You Won'T Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart)
D5. Cab Calloway - The Hi-De-Ho Man (That's Me)
D6. Glenn Miller - Doin' The Jive

Revered indie trio The Staves' debut album 'Dead & Born & Grown' is celebrating its 10th Anniversary on the 12th November 2022. To celebrate 10 years of their debut album the band will be re-pressing Dead & Born & Grown on recycled colour vinyl.

The album was produced with Glyn and Ethan Johns, who have worked with a plethora of huge artists from past and present between them, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, as well as the likes of The Vaccines, Kings of Leon and Kaiser Chiefs. The Staves are three sisters from Watford who share vocal duties in addition to some contributions on guitar and ukelele.

This special-edition recycled vinyl is made from 100% PVC recycled material, using waste material and clippings from previous pressings and are re-used. The result is that each vinyl is unique with its own colour combination therefore the colour you receive will be randomized.

Hailing from the UK, Boston Manor are rapidly becoming a global force to be reckoned with. Currently signed with respected label SharpTone Records, they have successfully built a name for themselves with their modern day emotive rock Anthems and DIY work ethic. A mainstay on the likes of SiriusXM’s Octane, BBC Radio 1, Kerrang! TV and MTV, the band has also been in constant circulation with significant coverage from Alt Press, Kerrang!, Rocksound, Upset and Revolver, culminating in their first Kerrang! Magazine front cover in 2020.
Since releasing their debut album “Be Nothing” to widespread acclaim, the band toured the world, including the Vans Warped Tour, nabbing a Kerrang! Award Nomination for “Best British Breakthrough Act”. Accepting invitations to further tour the world with the likes of Good Charlotte, A Day To Remember and Moose Blood, Boston Manor’s follow up album “ Welcome To The Neighborhood” saw the band achieve their first Top 40 UK album chart position and lead single “HALO” achieved Top 10 rotation at Active Rock radio.
In 2021, Boston Manor played the main stage at Download Festival, were direct support to headliners at Reading & Leeds Festivals on the Lock Up stage and headlined their stage at Slam Dunk Festival. They did a full USA tour with fellow UK punk band Neck Deep in the autumn, and will support them again later on in 2022 in Europe. The band also completed their own UK and US headline tours earlier this year and are currently on the festival circuit this Summer.
With the announcement of the new album, Boston Manor continued to go from strength to strength proudly waving the flag for progressive and anthemic British Rock music.

Hailing from the UK, Boston Manor are rapidly becoming a global force to be reckoned with. Currently signed with respected label SharpTone Records, they have successfully built a name for themselves with their modern day emotive rock Anthems and DIY work ethic. A mainstay on the likes of SiriusXM’s Octane, BBC Radio 1, Kerrang! TV and MTV, the band has also been in constant circulation with significant coverage from Alt Press, Kerrang!, Rocksound, Upset and Revolver, culminating in their first Kerrang! Magazine front cover in 2020.
Since releasing their debut album “Be Nothing” to widespread acclaim, the band toured the world, including the Vans Warped Tour, nabbing a Kerrang! Award Nomination for “Best British Breakthrough Act”. Accepting invitations to further tour the world with the likes of Good Charlotte, A Day To Remember and Moose Blood, Boston Manor’s follow up album “ Welcome To The Neighborhood” saw the band achieve their first Top 40 UK album chart position and lead single “HALO” achieved Top 10 rotation at Active Rock radio.
In 2021, Boston Manor played the main stage at Download Festival, were direct support to headliners at Reading & Leeds Festivals on the Lock Up stage and headlined their stage at Slam Dunk Festival. They did a full USA tour with fellow UK punk band Neck Deep in the autumn, and will support them again later on in 2022 in Europe. The band also completed their own UK and US headline tours earlier this year and are currently on the festival circuit this Summer.
With the announcement of the new album, Boston Manor continued to go from strength to strength proudly waving the flag for progressive and anthemic British Rock music.

The Happy Fits' third full-length is a massive leap forward for the New
Jersey trio, who have already built a serious following with their energetic
and electrifying pop-rock style
At once a showcase of rock-solid songcraft and gleeful experimentation, Under
the Shade of Green is a deceptively bright opus that also zooms in on the
anxieties and catastrophes of daily life while never losing its irresistibly hooky
attitude.From the punchy "Dance Alone" to the serpentine riffs of "Do Your Worst,"
Under the Shade of Green finds The Happy Fits unloading earworm after earworm
— even as darkness looms, as suggested by the album's cover of a pineapple
covered in flaming money. "It's a metaphor for what we are all seeing and not
talking about enough," Langman says reflecting on the album's overall arc." If
these songs don't make you feel alive—well, you might just want to check your
pulse.

Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, an "inland island that floats on infinite
prairie ground," Living Hour has always been a band that's thrived in
seclusion.Helping to foster a thriving local community, and taking
inspiration from the faces and places of their hometown, the band have
always been motivated by the belief that their own music only gets more
interesting when it includes other voices
For their new album, Living Hour called upon friends from near and far.
The result is "Someday Is Today", the band's third full-length effort and the muchanticipated follow- up to their 2019 "Softer Faces" LP, acclaimed by the likes of
NPR, Stereogum, Paste, Vice, Bandcamp, and more. On "Someday Is Today", the
group's sound is collaborated with a variety of drummers including Jason Tait
(The Weakerthans, Broken Social Scene) and is fleshed out further with the help
of three producers: Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Bachelor, Chastity Belt), Jonathan
Schenke (Parquet Courts, Snail Mail, The Drums), and Samur Khouja (Cate le Bon,
Deerhunter, Regina Spektor) all of whom impart their own backgrounds on the
album's finished glow.
"Someday Is Today" is Living Hour at their most pensive and longing. It was
recorded over seven straight days during the dark depths of a Manitoba winter,
with the band cocooned in the sounds they were making as the temperature hit
-30 outside the door. The album thrives by keeping just enough connection
across its varied palettes to feel like one cohesive world. Whether it's the album's
soft and gorgeous harmonies or the captured sound of wind tubes being swung
above their heads, the songs here feel bound by something bigger than
themselves; an energy that flourished in spite of it all, a human connection that
grips just strongly enough even when pushed to its frayed, unreachable extremes.

Heart to Gold is a band from Minneapolis, Minnesota. To be even more specific, they’re three guys from Fridley and Columbia Heights, two towns on the north end of the Twin Cities. These facts are important: the three members of Heart to Gold share an intimate and reciprocal relationship with their hometowns. They celebrate and support one another.

The band’s upcoming second full-length record, Tom, is a swaggering, scrappy punk rock love letter to their hometowns and all the glory, pain, conflict, and reward that come from being of a place and a community and seeing both through, even to bittersweet ends. (Plus, it’s got an I Think You Should Leave reference.) It’s named for and dedicated to their best bud, Thomas Vescio, though his is not the mug leering goofily on the record’s cover. “That’s our bass player Sidian Johnson,” says singer and guitarist Grant Whiteoak. It’s an intentional feint: “It’s kinda silly, we knew people would think, ‘Oh, that must be Tom.’ Nope.”

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

Freedy Johnston is one of those rare singer-songwriters who counts
critics among his biggest fans — and whose heroes consider him a peer.
Not bad for a self-proclaimed "geek in glasses who never left his room."
Johnston's 9th album, 'Back on the Road to You' is a record steeped in
wit, humor, pathos, love, and friendship drenched with memorable,
infectious melodies
Johnston recorded the album in Los Angeles with producer Eric Corne after
setting up house in nearby Joshua Tree. The new surroundings seem to have
imbued the album's mood and instrumentation with echoes of The Byrds,
Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. Joining Johnston in the studio
were Aimee Mann, Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles, and longtime collaborator,
Susan Cowsill, along with an all-star roots music band, including Doug Pettibone
(Lucinda Williams), Dusty Wakeman (Jim Lauderdale), Dave Raven (Shelby Lynn)
and Sasha Smith (Priscilla Ahn).In 1994 Rolling Stone named Johnston the
'Songwriter of the Year', describing him as "A master storyteller, (who) sketches
out full- blown tragedies in a few taut poetic lines." Adding, "He joins that elite
cadre of songwriters—Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Elvis Costello—whose brilliant pop
compositions turn magical with the addition of a defiantly idiosyncratic singing
voice."
'Back on the Road to You' is a return to grace for this gifted songwriter. It
embodies the sound of an American original reminding us that he is still
considered one of the best songwriters of his generation.

Freedy Johnston is one of those rare singer-songwriters who counts
critics among his biggest fans — and whose heroes consider him a peer.
Not bad for a self-proclaimed "geek in glasses who never left his room."
Johnston's 9th album, 'Back on the Road to You' is a record steeped in
wit, humor, pathos, love, and friendship drenched with memorable,
infectious melodies
Johnston recorded the album in Los Angeles with producer Eric Corne after
setting up house in nearby Joshua Tree. The new surroundings seem to have
imbued the album's mood and instrumentation with echoes of The Byrds,
Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. Joining Johnston in the studio
were Aimee Mann, Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles, and longtime collaborator,
Susan Cowsill, along with an all-star roots music band, including Doug Pettibone
(Lucinda Williams), Dusty Wakeman (Jim Lauderdale), Dave Raven (Shelby Lynn)
and Sasha Smith (Priscilla Ahn).In 1994 Rolling Stone named Johnston the
'Songwriter of the Year', describing him as "A master storyteller, (who) sketches
out full- blown tragedies in a few taut poetic lines." Adding, "He joins that elite
cadre of songwriters—Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Elvis Costello—whose brilliant pop
compositions turn magical with the addition of a defiantly idiosyncratic singing
voice."
'Back on the Road to You' is a return to grace for this gifted songwriter. It
embodies the sound of an American original reminding us that he is still
considered one of the best songwriters of his generation.

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

CITY BURIALS - KATATONIA'S 2020 STUDIO OPUS OF ABSORBING,
SOARING PROGRESSIVE ROCK & METICULOUSLY CRAFTED DOSES OF
MELANCHOLY - SINGLE LP FEATURING NEW HALF-SPEED MASTER FOR
OPTIMAL SOUND QUALITY.Formed in 1991 by Jonas Renkse & Anders
Nyström & transitioning from early pioneers of the rising black/death/
doom movement to powerhouses of the progressive metallic rock genre,
the Swedish connoisseurs of melancholy returned in 2020 with their
stellar opus, 'City Burials' - the band's eleventh studio album & first since
2016's haunting 'The Fall Of Hearts'
With the winds of a new direction steering the band on their latest journey, 'City
Burials' stood as a triumph of deep & enigmatic progressive rock – the fruits of a
rejuvenating & profound chapter in the band's legacy & a catalyst for its creators.
Compiled into one of their most important modern works & statements to date,
the finely- honed instrumentation provides a multi- textured backdrop with the
voice of Jonas Renkse guiding us through these latest trials of loss & ruin.
The chemistry between Jonas, Anders & their band mates – bassist Niklas
Sandin, drummer Daniel Moilanen & most recent recruit, guitarist Roger Öjersson
– never sounded more potent, with 'City Burials' being the first album Katatonia
made since Öjersson became a full-time member.
Inspired by an injection of fresh blood into Katatonia's creative brew, 'City Burials'
helped Katatonia reclaim part of their heavy metal roots, via several moments of
exuberant, old- school classicism, deftly woven into these new songs'
kaleidoscopic fabric, resulting in an album that propelled the band ever further
into the spotlight.
'City Burials' was produced by Nyström/ Renkse & recorded at Soundtrade
Studios, Tri-Lamb Studios & The City Of Glass, throughout October & November
2019, with engineering work handled by Karl Daniel Lidén. The album also
featured a guest appearance by Anni Bernhard, the voice behind Stockholm
based act 'Full Of Keys'. Artwork appeared courtesy of Lasse Hoile, the image
itself representing the ongoing era of the Dead End King.
This edition of 'City Burials' is presented on single black vinyl, featuring a new
half-speed vinyl master for optimal sound quality.

The latest album from Randy Randall, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist
of tireless Los Angeles experimental punk duo No Age, Sound Field Vol
2020, continues the iconoclastic weirdo ripper's series of audiovisual
urban excursions in a contemplative set of ambient compositions
exploring the abandoned expanse of pandemic-era Los Angeles
"Vol. 2020 is named as such (and not 'Vol. 2') because of the massive psychic
shift that occurred at the beginning of the global pandemic and subsequent
lockdown," says Randall. The project took root in the earliest days of lockdown, as
the absence of perennial, man- made din revealed the secret lives and hidden
contours of the world without us: The cacophony of birds on empty boulevards;
the rhythmic click cycles of unmanned escalators; PA announcements
reverberating back into themselves across abandoned transportation terminals;
nocturnal choruses of wildlife reverberating across hillsides under a planeless
sky.We listened inwards, too, recontextualizing ourselves as we reckoned with an
abrupt and collective halt never thought possible in our lifetime, as if someone
had pressed mute on the world. Little did we know what would come. With no
choice but to confront the present, we gave ourselves over to a brief moment of
fear mixed with wonderment, alone, together.

Heady with hooks and unforgettable melodies, gliding on deeply danceable grooves, always with Air Waves’ innate compassion, concision and uncanny pop sense shining throughout. A masterpiece that’s beautifully simple, instantly accessible and entirely addictive. Featuring Cass Mccombs, Skyler Skjelset (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Luke Temple, Brian Betancourt (Hospitality, Sam Evian), Rina Mushonga, Frankie Cosmos, Lispector, David Christian, Ethan Sass, and Ben Florencio. ‘The Dance’ has waited three years to see the light of day and it comes to us now, blinking, smiling in the widening light of 2022 feeling more needed and necessary but also more joyous than ever before. It’s both a snapshot of these songs as they were recorded but crucially, in the intervening time those songs have had additional arrangements crafted by Nicole, created remotely and virtually, with a few like-minded collaborators. The result is simultaneously Air Waves freshest, most spontaneous yet finessed album yet. Nicole Schneit released their first independent album in 2009 under the Air Waves moniker, a name inspired by a Guided By Voices song - subsequent albums like 2010’s ‘Dungeon Dots’ (which featured a guest vocal from fellow Brooklynite Sharon Van Etten), 2015’s ‘Parting Glances’ and 2017’s stunning ‘Warrior’ crystallised Schneit’s vision of loose-but-focused, convivial but startling pop. ‘The Dance’ continues that trajectory but finds Schneit opening up their music to a more fluid sense of space and movement, while keeping their lyrical eye between the personal and the political, from the specific to the universal with a haiku-like directness and suggestion. You won’t find a better soundtrack for the solidarity, strength, romance and movement we all need right now than ‘The Dance’ - Air Waves’ best album yet // “There is a rawness, both musical and emotional, proving that the simplest ways to communicate feelings are sometimes the most effective” Pitchfork // “More varied and ambitious than ever” Stereogum // Track List A1 The Roof (feat. Luke Temple & Rina Mushonga) A2 The Dance A3 Star Earring (feat. Lispector) A4 Alien (feat. Cass McCombs) B1 Black Metal Demon (feat. Frankie Cosmos & Merce Lemon) B2 Treehouse B3 Wait B4 The Light B5 Peer Peer

The 'Privacy Angels' dwell in a liminal zone, a folk magical world sprawling within some remote nodes of the digital universe. An a-chronic plane of contradictions in which the spiritual and the machinic exist in a contrast that, instead of leading to mutual annihilation or subjugation, produces weird forms of life and uncanny forms of beauty. Like flowers sprouting from glitching fluxes of data transmissions, in the corrupted memory of a heavenly landscape. It is the vision of Italian (though London-based) musician and multidisciplinary artist Nicola Tirabasso, channeled through his usual musical avatar VISIO, a dimension he came in contact with while retreating in his native Sibillini Mountains in Marche, central Italy. A type of forced hermitage dictated by the global pandemic and whose idyllic premises were constantly unbalanced and contaminated by the constant presence of the digital world. But again, it is by means of this contrast that art is born. While channeling the magic, the fables and even the superstitions the locals have imbued the region with, Tirabasso developed them into audial spirits of electronic abstraction. A juxtaposition of mystic retreat and information-age alienation that, for some brief, ineffable and baffling moments, seemed to make him able to hear the angels. The album itself is a collection of digitally broken folk songs and logarithmic chants of praise. Acoustic instruments are broken down, replicated and re-materialization, while computer-generated ghosts and synthetic tones are allowed to exist and resonate in ancient spaces. Most of the actual recordings have been in fact made at desecrated XVI church in a town near Montappone, not far from the birth place of XX century painter Osvaldo Licini, whose influence echoes all throughout the region. Licini’s idiosyncratic mix of primitivism, futurism and orphic realism similarly echoes all throughout the record, with VISIO even paying tribute to his painting ‘Angelo Ribelle’ in titling one of the tracks. Collaborations made in person and through file-swaps have traversed the album’s conception and enrich its palette by presenting different versions of reality. Haunter co-founder Daniele Guerrini (Heith) co-produced every track with Tirabasso and gave a fundamental contribution to the album’s final form. Elsewhere, City and Kenichi Iwasa evoke their own privacy angels and let them dance with VISIO’s. Be it, in the depths of the earth or in the dissolution of a digital cloud, it is just as possible to (un)know the divine. Genre: Electronic / Experimental Listen: Track list: 1. Moonchild 2. Extasi Exile 3. Youth Grows Forever 4. Untitled X 5. Blessed Mystery 6. Years Of Silence 7. angelo ribelle

The Deer have built a devoted audience for their uninhibited, cosmic indie folk the old-fashioned way: playing their hearts out, night after night. In addition to extensive headlining, they’ve shared stages with the likes of Big Thief and The Head and The Heart. Their label debut Do No Harm, released in 2019, marked a set of career breakthroughs, topping the KUTX chart and earning a nomination for the Austin Music Awards’ Album of the Year. When live music took global pause, The Deer had momentum to sort. The five musicians took the energy reserved for tour and brought it into the studio, a pressure cooker not only for creativity but newly, for existential reflection. The result is two full albums, the first of which, The Beautiful Undead, will be released September 9, 2022, on tastemaking indie Keeled Scales. It’s an uninhibited collection of cosmic indie-folk reflecting upon what it means to lose your sense of purpose. The Deer, amidst turbulent assessment, transformed a paralyzing void into an empowering surrender of ego a rollicking submission to the immense unpredictability of existing. It's a free-spirited album fueled by hard-earned revelation. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, the planet is getting warmer, and human extinction looms likely. The Deer handle their devastated call for change with an artful subtlety, an infectious sense of play, and a projection of internal learning onto the external world. Their genius is in creating palpable, emotional urgency not with boisterousness, but fact. Throughout The Beautiful Undead, The Deer radiate an intensity fit for the times, but not at the cost of dancing. Also Available From The Deer: Do No Harm LP / CD. Track listing: SIDE A: 1. Bellwether 2. I Wouldn’t Recognize Me 3. Baby Green 4. Columns 5. Lilacs SIDE B: 6. The Lion Or The Bear 7. Six-Pointed Star 8. Golden Broken Record 9. Up I Presume 10. Bowl

"Fasten your seat belts - THE NEW ROSES are back! After touring with world famous artists like Scorpions, Saxon, Accept and Tremonti, the quartet around Timmy Rough will release their fifth studio album, entitled Sweet Poison, via Napalm Records on October 21, 2022. Musically, the band delivers stadium rock that would make the likes of Bon Jovi proud! With their most recent previous release, Nothing But Wild, the band entered the top 10 of the German album charts, but the band isn’t letting off the gas yet. Bevor they will embark on an extensive headliner tour in autumn, they will support none other than the legendary Judas Priest in June, Foreigner and rock icons KISS on their way to the top of rock! Their newest offering, Sweet Poison, starts off with the brilliant, guitar-driven anthem “My Kinda Crazy” providing a taste of what’s to come before blasting into authentic rock-meets-Americana tracks like “Playing With Fire” and “Sweet Gloria”. Massive track and album highlight “Warpaint” stages the band’s raw power with blazing guitar riffs and powerful drumming, while “The Usual Suspects” and “1st Time For Everything” convince as smooth sing-along hymns with catchy hooks. Tracks like “Dead Of Night” emerge with gloomy power, building atop a distinct melody and leading into a strong anthemic chorus, while THE NEW ROSES offer their softer side with songs such as “All I Ever Needed” – a mighty mid-tempo rock ballad showcasing the band’s vulnerability while reviving emotionality alike some of Guns N’ Roses most touching ballads. Frontman Timmy Rough passionately serves the full range of his voice on the track, also impressively evident on lyrically tender acoustic offering “True Love”. Sweet Poison is an outstanding rock album providing hit after hit and anthem after anthem, taking 80s retro rock to an extraordinary new level. Brace yourself as THE NEW ROSES shift into high gear, taking you on a ride towards the horizon of stadium rock!!

In 1973, a fast-talking hustler by the name of Sport played a huge part in the birth of Hip-Hop. Brought to life by Lightnin’ Rod a.k.a Jalal of The Last Poets and backed by music from Kool & The Gang, Buddy Miles, Billy Preston and more, ‘Hustlers' Convention’ is a concept album documenting the rise and fall of Sport, a street gambler who ends up in jail after a shoot-out with the police. His street tales of card games, throwing dice and chasing women influenced the Wu Tang Clan, Ice T, Public Enemy, Jungle Brothers and many more while also playing a key role in establishing rap as an accepted modern musical art form. A documentary about the album and its pivotal role in the evolution of hip hop is currently being made. The film features interviews with Chuck D, Melle Mel, KRS One, Fab 5 Freddy and more. This remastered vinyl edition is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and is packaged in a facsimile gatefold sleeve and also reproduces the illustrated inner booklet from original pressings. “this is a masterpiece of jailhouse blues and cinematic street rap... it deserves its growing reputation as a lost classic.” * * * * Uncut “a cornerstone in the development of what is now a part of global culture” Fab 5 Freddy “a verbal bible” Chuck D (Public Enemy)

Unearthed by Mike Peden for BBE Music, Per Husby Septett's ‘The Peacemaker’ is a beautiful, deep and under-the-radar small big band set recorded in 1976 by the elite of Norway's jazz cognoscenti, led by pianist and band leader Per Husby. Originally issued for Husby on the Studentersamfundets Plateselskap label by the Student Society in Trondheim, Norway, this obscure jazz rarity had no budget for PR or distribution, and with just a mere 500 copies pressed sales were scarce; it soon became a collectors item in Norway and across the globe. The album creates a big-sounding dynamic mix of original compositions by Per Husby and covers, including Harold Land's modal masterpiece title cut ‘The Peacemaker’, plus a top-draw selection of tunes encompassing post bop, modal, bossa and ballads by the likes of Kenny Wheeler, Cedar Walton and Charlie Parker. Reissued with original artwork and the approval of Per Husby himself, who has also provided the sleeve notes, ‘The Peacemaker’ is now available once again for download, streaming, CD and as a double 180g LP cut at 45rpm by the Grammy-nominated Carvery studio.

"Party people hold onto your hats!" Ugly Duckling presents their fifth full-length album Moving at Breakneck Speed. After more than a decade in the music business, Young Einstein, Andy Cooper and Dizzy Dustin are well accustomed to the recording process. For their latest LP, the boys dug deep into their bag of tricks to create what they feel is their most dynamic and complete release to date. Moving at Breakneck Speed is an exciting and musically exotic adventure story that has our desperate heroes circling the globe to outrun an evil gang of super-criminals determined to put an end to UD once and for all. The record is made up of 14 power packed tracks that showcase Ugly Duckling's classic production sound as well as the flavorful and humorously soulful vocal styles of Dizzy and Andy. "By the time you work on your fifth record, you ought to know how to do it, right?" asks Andy, "I think we put all of the pieces together to make a really, really good album".

• 1980s New York was where modern dance music took its first steps; a phoenix rising out of the ashes of disco’s over-exposure and demise. The underground scene was the very opposite of the celebrity-sprinkled commercialism of Studio 54 – “Lofts & Garages” looks at how the Spring label, with its brand new 1980s subsidiary Posse, reacted to the new movement.

• As an independent New York label, it was perfectly placed to understand new trends in the clubs; it worked with some of those who would go on to define the dance music of the era, and for a glorious summer tracked the important early work of Arthur Baker, Maurice Starr and Michael Jonzun. These began their careers with productions that included Ritz, Glory and Blaze – records that sounded perfect for 12-inch singles and mixed electronic instruments with a real feel for the dancefloor.

• Label mainstays Fatback were always searching for a new groove and kept an eye on the floor. Their final single for the label, ‘Spread Love’, was remixed by Morales and Munzibai. Fatback’s Bill Curtis and Gerry Thomas also produced the sought-after boogie single ‘Get Up An’ Dance (Dance With Me)’ for Mynk.

• Others featured include one of the most distinctive voices in dance music, Fonda Rae, with her single ‘Live It Up’, released here in its rare radio edit; veteran soul man Lonnie Youngblood with his gospel-influenced ‘Sing A Song’; Detroit dance pioneers C-Brand’s ‘Wired For Sound’ and Body’s ‘Have Your Cake’, which has an early mixing credit for dance music legend Timmy Regisford.

• These records may not have all worked on the floor of the Paradise Garage, but they were part of the energy that was given off by that and the rest of New York’s vibrant post-disco era.