Buscar:grove

With over 40 musicians across 28 tracks, Essentials Spring 2023 might be our most treasured one yet. Featuring a who's who of some of our favorite musicians in the community, we present a 2xLP to keep everyone vibrant and alive as the seasons change and days start to warm. Essentials Spring 2023 features recent Chillhop beat tape alumni like El Train, Evil Needle, illiterate, and Mr. Slipz, while also showcasing songs from familiars like Oatmello, SwuM, Toonorth, Blue Wednesday, HM Surf, The Doppelgangaz, and dozens of others.

This album features over 70 minutes of chillhop, jazzhop, lofi hip-hop, downtempo R&B, lounge jazz, soulful beats, boom bap, old school. However you might like to classify this. Study beats? Sure. Beats to go on a road trip to? Absolutely. Gaming beats, coding beats, beats to daydream to? You betcha. The essentials return for 2023, adding to the ever growing collection of limited edition seasonal releases on vinyl!

Carole Porter grew up around Manny Campbell, acclaimed producer of Nu'Rons fame and one of those characters that kept feeding jobs to Joe Tarsia contributing to the greatness of his Sigma Sound Studios.

Carolynn was also vocalist in his jazz band from 1966 to 1969 that included jazz legends John 'Papa' DeFrancesco (father of Joey DeFrancesco), and Grover Washington Jr. She never commercially recorded anything else, continued to gig until she settled into marriage/family life. These masters were retrieved from the original reel tapes now preserved at the University of Pennsylvania. We are proud to finally release this song (and a few others over the next months) thanks to that immense character of Manny Campbell and the younger members of his family.

For over two decades Jonathan Katsav has used his Crave project to fray rap at its fringes, using Memphis and Houston's low-and-slow legacy to inform sounds that have as much in common with Merzbow as they do Tommy Wright III. Working under a variety of different monikers such as Lieu Noir, Sniper Bait and Soul Collector, the French producer is most prolific as Crave, and "Inner War Delirium" is a substantial and broadly cinematic addition to his canon. Katsav approaches each track as if it's a scene from a movie, using real life experiences to explore separate characters and contrasting emotions. Using different narrators and disparate vocal styles, he navigates grim, blown-out landscapes, driving neon drenched trap synths and horror choirs against overdriven kicks and waterlogged industrial atmospheres. Mangled field recordings, squealing static and gurgling synthesized bass opens 'PHYLLIS', goading the cautious with serrated, carnival synths and cacophonous vocals that sway lugubriously between rap and grindcore. The relationship between dark and light, death and rebirth, is at the heart of "Inner War Delirium", rippling through every track's oozing amalgamation of inebriated hip-hop and buzzsaw noise. Katsav's sounds are an attempt to subject us to the physicality of his own life's puzzle, and he cuts them into vignettes like a director. On the album's final track, listeners are swiped from in front of the speakers and bundled into the trunk of a car, rain rattling on the metal and the album playing on in the distance. It's a way for the producer to turn the camera back on the audience and ask them to consider their own complicated reality - it's Crave's story, but everyone's a part of it.

Label head honcho Alix Perez teams up with fellow New Zealand based producer DJ Headland on their mini LP 'Hellion'. Delivering eight heavyweight cuts that have been doing damage on sound systems across the world.

Much of Radio Red, the first full length album Laura Groves has released under her own name, was written, produced and recorded by Groves in her studio, watched over by two radio transmitting towers. “I became very drawn to them and they became like symbols to me; they were always awake, sending their messages, the red lights always came on at night and watched over whatever was going on in my life.” The album deals with themes of communication - missed and intercepted signals, chance meetings, synchronicities, the channels through which we try to express our true feelings, the outside interference that can get in the way and the joy of letting go and allowing the messages to flow freely.

Self-recording and production is a core part of Laura’s songwriting process. “I remember years ago getting hold of some basic recording software and being instantly drawn in. The idea of being able to layer up my voice was a dream, like building an orchestra out of what I had at home.” The passion for home-recording, using the resources available at the time, working through limitations and capturing textures through layering, forms the foundation of Groves’ experimental and off-centre pop music and electrified folk music. The sound world of Radio Red is made up of echoes, and snapshots of half-remembered pop songs, piano ballads, chopped up TV theme tunes, ambient synthesised sounds and electronic music; tuning in between channels without fully belonging to any one of them, with the comfort, familiarity and strangeness that can come with hearing voices on the radio.

Orpheu the Wizard has a magic touch at finding records that fall between the gaps in music - oddities, curios, the weird, the wonderful. But that's just half the trick. It takes a sensitive and selective ear to construct a coherent, accessible narrative from them. So you get DJs who can play for the crowd and "selectors" adept at mining the black gold. In Orpheu, you've got yourself someone who can do both. On a festival main stage, he can keep it weird enough for the heads. In an audiophile setting, he'll keep the flow.

These skill sets come into play on the fifth The Sound of Love International compilation. Jumping between genres, decades, continents, the truly rare, and many B-side cuts that passed you by. But never eclecticism for its own sake; this collection makes sense. Orpheu never loses sight of the listener - he's a friendly and knowledgeable guide to the cosmic outer reaches.

He opens his account with the warm, psychedelic electronics of Drawing Future Life, with ‘1969’. Tucked away on the B-side of an LP of ambient/trance hailing from Fukuoka, this is a very pretty piece of music on a truly rare piece of wax. Then, leapfrogging a couple of decades and timezones, we have Rutuu Poiss' "IHATSIN." Off-kilter, experimental sounds with an endearing melodic hook, followed up by the with lethargic ambient breakbeat of Digital Distortion's "Mellow Bug".

On the B-side, things start to get lively. French Audacity featuring Valerie's "That Fine One" is Gallic garage that has simultaneously got it hugely wrong and mas­sively right. Owing as much to new wave as New York house, this is propulsive and quirky dance music at its finest. Next, we're on a ferry over the channel for DJ Spike and "Gaps In Space." Up-tempo electro with a fondness for sampled vocal cut-ups, like its predecessor.

lnterdance's "Kurz" (another B-side) is the perfect segway - house from 1990 with that sweet, slightly goofy naivete. Things move toward the gnarly with Bad Behaviour and "Living on Smoke," a lesser-known cut on the legendary Atmosphere records. The tempo edges upward on "Systematic Input" by Frequency, hectic hardcore techno that still retains a lightness of touch.

"Lushes" by Diffusion spins us off into space, filigree techno with an emotive trance edge. The chiming intro of "Blue to Be Happy" by MFA lulls us into a sense of false security before massively putting the boot in with a pounding kick drum, bassline, and arpeggiation. From there, it's a sharp left turn into the urban psychedelic dub of R.I.P's "E.O Pan" on cult label Digi Dub.

Sticking with UK sound system music but taking it down a notch, Orpheu closes proceedings with a leftfield reggae excursion from the master of the mixing desk, Mad Professor’s"Oh Hell".

It's a compilation as varied as the many moods and grooves of Love International itself - from sun-dappled olive groves to moments deep in the strobes. This is serious music for party freaks or party music for serious freaks. Tisno is calling.

The beatmaker Moar finally presents on record a project that started to exist live more than 10 years ago. It took a world-wide pendency to finally take the time to settle down in the studio and put on tape the beatmaker's Mellow & Jazzy beats, accompanied by the excellent jazz guitarist Rémi Schnell and Jean-Louis Potin (Moar's father) who has been accompanying him since his first EP on saxophone.
In the end, an instrumental album oriented jazzy beat & chill with the soft jazz-soul ambiences of a George Benson (here Rémi on guitar !!) accompanied by a Grover Washington (here Moar's father !). 14 sweets to listen to without moderation.

Eponymous collaboration between Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay - their first
since 2018's 'The Hawksworth Grove Sessions' and their debut for Topic
Records
Postponed for two years due to the small matter of a global pandemic, finally, as
some semblance of normality took shape, in February 2022, the duo headed into
Giant Wafer Studios, mid-Wales, with very little rehearsal time and recorded the
entire album live, with no edits or overdubs over three days.
Jim Ghedi and Toby Hay are both prolific, praised and established artists in their
own right. Hailing from South Yorkshire, Ghedi's previous work has often been
instrumental, exploring the natural world and his relationship to it, as seen on
2018's A Hymn For Ancient Land but also developing into using his voice,
songwriting and traditional material on his more recent album, In The Furrows Of
Common Place. Toby Hay, hailing from the Cambrian mountains, professes
likewise, that the landscape serves as eternal muse and the spiritual groundwork
of his entrancing guitar playing which has dazzled critics and listeners alike
throughout his career. All of this makes their collaboration with the world's oldest
independent label and custodians of UK folk music, Topic Records, a natural
home for this exceptional record.
The album arrtwork includes beautiful liner notes by Andrew Male, senior
associate editor of Mojo magazine; film, radio and TV writer for Sight and Sound
and Sunday Times Culture.

Pointillist club rhythms and dense, porous dub clouds encircle the Wrecked Lightship as Laurie Osborne and Adam Winchester set sail for phantom islands once more. The nocturnal boatswains chart a course guided by pronounced percussive impulses, using physicality to navigate the looming atmospheric pressure that has become their signature style.

Opening tracks ‘Arial’ and ‘Third Law’ speak to the roots of Osborne and Winchester’s respective work as Appleblim and Wedge, dealing in dancefloor abstractions where techno, electro and dubstep once stood, but there’s much more at play than simple genre tags could ever express. ‘Third Law’s electro-static interference calls back to Winchester’s work in Dot Product, while the twitchy urgency and gnarly bass echoes Osborne’s ALSO project with Second Storey.

Wrecked Lightship is an anchorless concern, free to drift into experimental waters if the currents surge that way, and so ‘Kill Mirror’ and ‘Hydrotower’ head away from forthright structures to play around with sound design and full-frequency manipulation. It’s too kinetic and jagged to be considered ambient, even if it willfully shirks the dancefloor. But for every starboard swerve there’s a prevailing wind, and the likes of finely-tuned club weapon ‘Take It Back’ whip ahead with laser-eyed focus.

Nailing their split interests between immediacy and the avant-garde to the mast, Wrecked Lightship deepen the reach of their project on their second album. Whatever shape a specific track might take, Oceans & Seas serves as a paean to the art of sonic manipulation and spatial processing.

Written and produced by Adam Winchester and Laurence Osborne
Artwork by Chloe Grove
Layout by Takashi Makabe
Text by Oliver Warwick
Mastered and cut by Simon at The Exchange

• A globe spanning (France, Italy, Germany, USA, Belarus, Sweden, Russia, Australia, Canada) covers album of the late great Marc Bolan songs starting with the earliest cover in 1965 • Covering a huge range of genres and styles • A response to the U.S Hit album Angel Headed Hipster which opened up the songs of Bolan to a new American audience by using big names and TV advertising…this concentrates on quality recordings by lesser known artists • Presented in deluxe gatefold sleeve. • Reviews in Record Collector, Vive le rock R2, Shindig, Classic Rock.

Bristol's new wave dance floor instrumentalists announce their new album 'Ruins Everything' releasing on Worm Discs. Snazzback’s
electrifying chemistry has wowed audiences at Ronnie Scott’s, festivals such as Glastonbury, Boomtown & Shambala and gained support from BBC Radio heavyweights including Gilles Peterson, Jamz Supernova and Jamie Cullum. Snazzback's music is a collage, collectively constructed, torn up and glued back together in unexpected ways, bringing a renewed, daring energy to UK dance music.
The 7-piece embrace their experimental beginnings to create a sound
fusing abstract beats with spiralling improvisation. Their music is soaked in influences including interlocking West African rhythms, rootsy Brazilian flavours, sprawling soundscapes, deep dubstep
basslines and flickering arpeggiators. A collaborative instinct runs through the group, and an eclectic choice of vocalists keeps their
compositions shimmering with new possibilities.

Three years after the release of ARTEMIS’ critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, the ensemble returns with a marvelous follow-up that highlights the improvisational strength of its members as well as their respective gifts as composers. In Real Time showcases a new lineup of the collective with founding members pianist Renee Rosnes, drummer Allison Miller, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, and bassist Noriko Ueda joined by newcomers tenor saxophonist Nicole Grover and multi-reedist Alexa Tarantino. The 8-song set presents compelling new band member originals along with choice covers of pieces by Lyle Mays (“Slink”) and Wayne Shorter (“Penelope”).

The Offspring is a punk rock band from Garden Grove, California, formed in 1984. The band's current lineup consists of lead vocalist Dexter Holland, guitarist Noodles, drummer Pete Parada and bassist Todd Morse. Over the course of their 36-year career, they have released nine studio albums.

The Offspring is often credited—alongside fellow California punk bands Green Day, Rancid, Bad Religion, NOFX, Pennywise and Jawbreaker—for reviving mainstream interest in punk rock in the 1990s. They have sold over 40 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling punk rock bands in history. The Offspring achieved its first commercial success with their third studio album, Smash (1994), which has sold over eleven million copies worldwide, setting a record for most albums sold on an independent record label, and was the first album released on Epitaph to obtain gold and platinum status. After switching record labels from Epitaph to Columbia in 1996, the Offspring continued their commercial success with its next six studio albums: Ixnay on the Hombre (1997), Americana (1998), Conspiracy of One (2000), Splinter (2003), Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace (2008) and Days Go By (2012); the first four were certified platinum, multi-platinum, platinum and gold status by the RIAA respectively.

The legendary So-Cal punk group The Offspring are back with their 10th album and first new offering since 2008. After releasing two standalone tracks in 2020 - the over-the-top cover of Joe Exotic's (of Tiger King infamy) "Hey Kitty Kitty" and a rendition of Darlene Love's classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" - the band is ready to plant their punk rock flag in the sand once again with their blistering new album Let the Bad Times Roll.

With the help of producer Bob Rock, Dexter Holland describes the album as "the most cathartic thing we've done. The messages might be dark, but at the end what's left is that communication is important, working through feelings is important and most of all, hope is important." 

Then let the bad times roll for now, in the hopes that good times lie ahead.

The Offspring is a punk rock band from Garden Grove, California, formed in 1984. The band's current lineup consists of lead vocalist Dexter Holland, guitarist Noodles, drummer Pete Parada and bassist Todd Morse. Over the course of their 36-year career, they have released nine studio albums.

The Offspring is often credited—alongside fellow California punk bands Green Day, Rancid, Bad Religion, NOFX, Pennywise and Jawbreaker—for reviving mainstream interest in punk rock in the 1990s. They have sold over 40 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling punk rock bands in history. The Offspring achieved its first commercial success with their third studio album, Smash (1994), which has sold over eleven million copies worldwide, setting a record for most albums sold on an independent record label, and was the first album released on Epitaph to obtain gold and platinum status. After switching record labels from Epitaph to Columbia in 1996, the Offspring continued their commercial success with its next six studio albums: Ixnay on the Hombre (1997), Americana (1998), Conspiracy of One (2000), Splinter (2003), Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace (2008) and Days Go By (2012); the first four were certified platinum, multi-platinum, platinum and gold status by the RIAA respectively.

The legendary So-Cal punk group The Offspring are back with their 10th album and first new offering since 2008. After releasing two standalone tracks in 2020 - the over-the-top cover of Joe Exotic's (of Tiger King infamy) "Hey Kitty Kitty" and a rendition of Darlene Love's classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" - the band is ready to plant their punk rock flag in the sand once again with their blistering new album Let the Bad Times Roll.

With the help of producer Bob Rock, Dexter Holland describes the album as "the most cathartic thing we've done. The messages might be dark, but at the end what's left is that communication is important, working through feelings is important and most of all, hope is important." 

Then let the bad times roll for now, in the hopes that good times lie ahead.

Back in print, note new price. San Diego's own The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble’s sophomore LP on Colemine Records! Cinematic soul is the order of the day from this west coast group. Covering a lot of soulful territory here: deep funk, soul jazz, breakbeats, and more!

Tartelet Records is thrilled to present the debut album from Doc Sleep – 10 tracks of exquisitely rendered melodies and rhythms shaped with grit and beauty in equal measure. Birds (in my mind anyway) is a widescreen vision of electronica as a medium to express your personal situation and respond to your environment – a rave adjacent art form free from the perceived rules of the dancefloor. To date, Melissa Maristuen known as Doc Sleep has established herself in the context of the club – first engaging with the culture in San Francisco before moving to Berlin. She helps run the Room 4 Resistance party, DJs on Refuge Worldwide, co- owns the Jacktone label and has released on Detour, Dark Entries and her own label. But in making Birds (in my mind anyway) she set herself an ultimatum.

“At the time of recording this album, my life, all my routines and priorities had to change – music was no exception. I decided if I couldn't be happy making an album free of the dancefloor, I was finally going to be done with music. Instead, I found a musical voice free of tempo and textural restriction. Eventually, I had a sound, and once I had the sound, the album came pretty quickly. It was a very different process writing music for no one...except myself.”

If the impression given is one of a consistent style across the album, think again. Doc Sleep moves freely between tempos and themes, even if there are some recurring qualities binding the music together. She weaves fluttering arps with poise, lending them an almost choral quality which gives the album a very human touch. But they’re equally emotionally ambiguous or pockmarked with sonic interference – reflections of the collisions and conflicts
that typify the human experience.

Every inch of the album is a personal touch – the title was pulled from Doc Sleep’s mother’s response to hearing the album, while her friend Kiernan Laveaux offered a beautiful text which appears on the back. Those closest to her all fed into the artwork process, which captures the curious dichotomy between urban brutalism and botanical finery often found in the parks of Berlin – a vital place of respite when she was making the album.

Superb spiritual jazz meets classical choir from 1982.

The William Penn Jazz Ensemble was formed by American composer and flutist Leslie Burrs. Throughout the 1970s, Leslie performed with several major jazz and funk artists, including Grover Washington Jr., Kool & The Gang, and most notably, with Del Jones for the now cult album Positive Vibes.

Carvings, recorded in 1982, holds a special place in Leslie's career. This album showcases Leslie's musical versatility and features clear influences of both jazz and classical music. The Ensemble's uncommon association of African American and white members at the time results in a unique fusion of cultural influences that is reflected in the music.

The musical journey is both profound and spiritual, taking listeners on an experience that is both deep and meaningful.

4 big ol’ chunks of heavy house music are the order of the day from New York producer Ralph Session’s how new EP for Black Jukebox. Combining his skills as a musician and seasoned DJ along with the technical know-how from his work as an audio engineer, the result is a collection of beautifully crafted, hard-hitting house cutz.

‘That Raw’ features a breathy spoken-word vocal from DJ Amir—one half of the legendary duo Kon & Amir—that laces the soulful, deep production with a hypnotic atmosphere. Thick bass bubbles beneath soaring strings and meandering synth arpeggios to give the track a set-building, big-room feel. ‘Do It’ rocks jaunty snatches of piano and sax over its peppy, skippy beat, with a little New Jersey feel in its incessant, phat-bottomed grove. ‘If You Want’ takes us into a deeper direction with its hazy pad work and dubby touches, with a slinky, rubbery bass groove that throbs hard beneath it all. Turn it up loud and feel it envelop you with its wide-open atmospherics. ‘Raw Sax’ rounds off with a dusty, skipping drum track shuffling around dreamy filtering synths, dubbed-out stab patterns and of course a sultry sax line.

To commemorate Snow Patrol's 25th anniversary year Jeepster will be making their second album 'When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up' available on vinyl for the very first time. Specially remastered for the format the initial pressing of the LP will include a bonus gold coloured 7' featuring two never before released songs.

Snow Patrol released their second record, 'When Its All Over We Still Have To Clear Up' through Jeepster Recordings on 12th March 2001. The album was the follow up to their critically acclaimed debut 'Songs For Polar Bears' which was released in 1998. The rest, as they say, is history...

There’s a line on Honey, the latest album from Nashville-via-NYC songwriter Samia, about Aspen Grove, a collection of 40,000 trees in the plains of North America, all connected by a single expansive root system. There’s no stronger metaphor for the audience the 25-year-old empathy engine has been generating since she began releasing music seven years ago. Her songs, her fans, her friends: one enormous, interconnected ecosystem. Honey, comprised of eleven new moments of catharsis, is by and for that organism. Set for release on January 23rd 2023 via Grand Jury Music, the album was recorded at North Carolina studio Betty’s –- owned and operated by Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sandborn and Amelia Meath, frequent touring partners of Samia’s. It was produced by Caleb Wright, part of the team that helmed Samia’s breakthrough 2020 debut The Baby, and a founding member of one of Samia’s favorite bands, The Happy Children. It features some of her nearest and dearest friends: Christian Lee Hutson, Briston Maroney, Jake Luppen, Raffaella. Its songs were surreptitiously road tested for her devotees while opening for Lucy Dacus, Courtney Barnett, and more. The end result is what Samia calls simply “a real community record.”