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There’s liberation on the dance floor in the songs of Matthew Urango – glimpses of revolution that glimmer beneath the disco ball. “I want my music to bring people together,” says the Californian pop innovator, best known as Cola Boyy. “Because standing together is our best chance at fighting this shit show.” The shit show in question is a broken, brutal system the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist has witnessed up-close. Urango was born with spina bifida and scoliosis in Oxnard, California: a town in which almost 30,000 are estimated to live in poverty. Prosthetic Boombox, his eagerly awaited debut album, might at first glance seem a joyous confetti-burst of pop eclecticism, engineered to sound like “scanning between stations on a car radio, landing on all these different sounds and styles” as Urango puts it. Dig deeper, though, and you’ll discover a simmering sense of rebellion. “The working class are injured, struggling to pay rent and struggling to put food on the table,” he says. “I want to represent that.” Prosthetic Boombox
achieves that goal in a thrilling flurry of inventive indie, funk and soul: take Urango’s car radio analogy, place it in a time-travelling Delorean with Prince in the passenger seat, and you’re half-way there.

Look no closer than Prosthetic Boombox’s euphoric opener, the Avalanches-assisted ‘Don’t Forget Your Neighbourhood.’ The track – which Urango says mixes “the Beach Boys, French disco, house keys and ragtime piano, kinda like the Cheers soundtrack!” – ends with lyrics urging listeners to “fight for your town with your fist closed, strike it and make it more than just a memory.” It’s a reminder that the working classes need to “turn our fists against our oppressors instead of each other,” he explains. After that emphatic introduction comes a horn-laced funk wig-out titled ‘Mailbox’ – a song that gives Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia a run for its Studio 54-themed money, featuring rising Londoner JGrrey. Elsewhere, ‘Song for the Mister’ ventures into smooth R&B territory, before ‘Roses’ – a collaboration with Myd of Ed Banger fame – offers a bouquet of bustling disco guitars and infinite bisous of Connan Mockasin’s band drops in on the immaculate ‘Go the Mile’. Urango saves his most introspective moment for the album’s starry closer. ‘Kid Born in Space’, a cosmic collaboration with MGMT frontman Andrew VanWyngarden, sees the artist reflect on what he once had to overcome as a disabled person of colour. “I see them looking down on my dreams of being,” he sings tenderly. “I hear them making fun of my voice, but I keep on moving forward, I refuse to live in anyone else’s shadow.” Prosthetic Boombox, on this subject, is more than an album title – it’s a statement of intent.

“The message of my music is that our class is exploited, oppressed and murdered on the daily. That’s not right, and the system that enables that deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth,” he says. “The only way that happens is if we’re united. That’s the point of my music – to relate to people and unite them.” And what unites more than raucous, irresistibly danceable pop? Prosthetic Boombox is a riot of joyous grooves and catchy hooks for good reason. “I want to reach and spread my message to as many people as possible. You can’t do that if you’re some obscure motherfucker, you know?” he laughs. Don’t bet on him being an “obscure motherfucker” for long.

Certain Sound Records are pleased to announce the release of the brand-new album from Montener The Menace – Anyone Home?

Anyone Home is the hotly anticipated follow-up to “I Have a Hidden Hobby” and is comprised of 14 superb tracks featuring an ensemble of legendary figures from both the US and UK Hip Hop scenes with appearances by Masta Ace, Rah Digga, Craig G, Keith Murray, Edo.G, Micall Parknsun, Cracker John, AG & Guilty Simpson to name just a few.

Production is handled by such heavyweights as Domingo, Roccwell, Keynotez and all cuts are provided by the legendary JabbaThaKut.

The album campaign was launched with the release of 3 excellent singles – High Noon, The Struggle and Take it Back all of which were met with extremely positive reviews from blogs and magazines alike, in addition to this acclaim the tracks have received airplay on a global scale via stations such as Shade45 and Itch FM.

Montener showcases his massive progression as an artist since his previous release with great confidence while still maintaining his trademark sense of humour that fans have come to love and adore. He demonstrates great diversity throughout by being able to touch on some difficult subjects such as suicide and mental health and parenthood as well as his more traditional upbeat content.

“Its gonna make a great impact on the scene, just what we need, when we need it most.” – Skinnyman

The third release from Fred Laird was recorded during the period June 2020 and January 2021 on 24trk home studio recording. It is also the first album recorded purely as a solo artist with the occasional guest and draws more from a roots style music (trad it isn’t) than previous more psychedelic releases.
‘Inspiration for the album came from listening to the self-recorded primal music of Hasil Adkins and the first solo Link Wray album for Polydor. The idea of these guys just doing what they wanted back of beyond seemed more akin to me sat in a box room during lockdown feeding off a diet of Billy Chong Kung Fu horror flicks, David Lynch, Noir crime movies, Jean Cocteau and the works of Yukio Mishima.
Musically the sound draws from early Bad Seeds or Crime and the City Solution, Gallon Drunk, Bohren and Der Club of Gore, The Cramps, Hasil Adkins and various other trash inspired twilight creatures. I also wanted to try and create that spooky organ sound that dominates the midnight movie classic ‘Carnival Of Souls’, so there’s quite a lot of organ and piano going on. I also got my hands on a baritone guitar to give the songs more of a deep growly twang!
Vocals are provided by Daisy Atkinson for the Jean Cocteau dedication ‘Orphee’ which is the nearest thing to a pop song on the album and the echoey almost Sister Lover’s sound of the title track. I got sick of my own shit voice and I just thought a female voice would give it a more fragile ethereal vibe.
Mike Blatchford provides formidable saxophone to the album’s last three tracks which were recorded on his mobile phone 300 miles away and synched into the music. The big blasted swing blues of ‘The Big Duvall’ is a dedication to Andy Duvall of Carlton Melton – a big guy who needed a big song. Who knows how big the song could have been in a proper studio. I could have dedicated it to John Wayne but Wayne couldn’t chop down trees with his bare hands like Andy can….’

‘Ruminations feels like a direct line into the spirit of Right Now. Oberst reckons with having the fabric of his life ripped apart by a disease of the flesh he couldn’t control or understand. Perhaps that sounds familiar? He paints a startling picture of how surreal life becomes when backlit by illness… these songs are heartrendingly beautiful, filled with the beauty of day-drunkenness and Proustian flights into memory and waking up in the afternoon and realizing that, however imperfect the day is, it’s a day.’
– GQ (2020)

Conor Oberst’s critically acclaimed 2016 solo album, Ruminations, will be released in a double-LP expanded edition – featuring five bonus tracks, four previously unreleased, as well as an etching on side D – on Record Store Day, June 12; it will be made available widely in all formats on July 23. The five bonus tracks were recorded during the Ruminations sessions; while full band versions of them were released on the 2017 companion album Salutations, these solo acoustic recordings are now included for the first time on Ruminations.

Ruminations was recorded in the winter of 2016, when Oberst found himself hibernating in his hometown of Omaha after living in New York City for more than a decade. He emerged with the unexpectedly raw, unadorned album, which NPR called one of his ‘most personal records… a collection of brave, dark songs… unmistakably moving and contain[ing] some of Oberst's best lyrics and imagery.’ The Sunday Times further said it was his ‘rawest album yet. Political and very, very personal’, calling Oberst ‘one of the best songwriters around’, and including the album in its list of best of the year.

“I wasn't expecting to write a record,” said Oberst in 2016. “I honestly wasn’t expecting to do much of anything. Winter in Omaha can have a paralyzing effect on a person but in this case it worked in my favour. I was just staying up late every night playing piano and watching the snow pile up outside the window. Next thing I knew I had burned through all the firewood in the garage and had more than enough songs for a record. I recorded them quick to get them down but then it just felt right to leave them alone.”

In the Nebraska studio he built with his Bright Eyes bandmate and longtime friend Mike Mogis, Oberst recorded all the songs in the span of forty-eight hours. The results are almost sketch-like in their sparseness, and they ultimately became the songs that comprise Ruminations. These tracks do not have the multi-layered instrumentation of the most recent Bright Eyes and solo albums: This is Oberst alone with his guitar, piano, and harmonica; the songs connect with some of the rough magic and anxious poetry that first brought him to the attention of the world.

Dissolution Sessions' is the first release by art punk rockers The Imbeciles since their well received eponymously named debut album earlier this year. The six-track EP
features a new band line up - and a different sound. 'We've slimmed down from a meandering, vegan, six member prog rock combo, to a tight-knit, guitar-led, steakeating 4-piece,' says lead Imbecile, Butch Dante. 'The guitar sound is fuzzy punk beast-master AF, and we like it.'
The band had originally gone into the studio earlier this year to record a radio session for 6Music. That ended up being cancelled because of the pandemic crisis. 'We
were there anyway so we started riffing on some new songs and everything came together real fast,' continues Butch. The result is three new songs and three new
versions of tracks that first appeared on the album. 'The music is still weird; but everything just gets to the point faster,' he adds. "You can hear that energy in 'Yes I
Am'; it's the sound of a band having fun being creative again after a difficult year.'
That particular new track is a Foo fighters/STP/Stooges-style banger, but played on Imbeciles terms - one note leads and guitar scrapes, with off beat stabs and a pop
punk drum track that pulls the whole together. And the overall vibe of the EP is a NSFW hybrid of 1979 London punk (Skids and Ruts), with second guitar stolen from
eighties Echo and Bunnymen and a leavening of Bauhaus art rock.
'Sunday Leaguer' was inspired by Butch's love of English football. The song is both a banging punk celebration of the beautiful game, and a lament to the gaping hole left
in peoples' lives when Coronavirus forced the cancellation of all football in March. As well as the Premier League, MotD and other football staples, the song also
celebrates the unsung legends of amateur Sunday League football. Dante, a Crystal Palace fan, enlists Palace's Holmesdale Fanatics on the track, who are heard chanting
'Eagles', while the video for the song pays tribute to the club's mascot, Keya, who sadly passed away this summer.
Charlie Conkers makes his debut on the EP as the band's drummer. 'He's young, good looking, and talented. It's quite annoying, actually,' Butch says. New lead guitarist
Stan Moseley makes a sideways move into the band from his previous role as The Imbecile's chief engineer and co-producer - the producer role now being occupied by
music legend, Youth, with whom the band has just started working on a new album, to be released in 2021.
'Having Youth involved as producer and co-writer is the most dope thing that has ever happened to the band,' says lead singer and bass player Kip Larson. 'Everyone is in
a super positive, hyper creative place right now and we can't wait to see what we come up with.'
So what about the name, Dissolution Sessions? Was it a nod to the pandemic, or a reference to the band breaking up and reforming again with its new members?
Neither, according to Butch. 'Kip was super hung over at the session. too many Dos Equis, yo. Hence: Dissolution Sessions.'

Having already unearthed three collections of archival ‘70s recordings by Catherine Christer Hennix, Blank Forms continues their annual illumination of the visionary Swedish composer’s music by turning to more recent work with this first-time vinyl edition of Hennix’s “Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis,” a 2014 piece first released as a CD in 2016 (Important Records).

The double album captures the April 22, 2014 premiere of Hennix’s composition by by the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, her expanded just intonation ensemble, featuring a brass section of Amir ElSaffar, Paul Schwingenschlögl, Hilary Jeffery, Elena Kakaliagou, and Robin Hayward; live electronics by Stefan Tiedje and Marcus Pal; and voice by Amirtha Kidambi, Imam Ahmet Muhsin Tüzer, and Hennix herself. Intended to reveal the blues’ origins in the eastern musical traditions of raga and makam, “Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis” has its roots in Hennix’s 2013 realization of an “Illuminatory Sound Environment,” a concept developed in 1978 by anti-artist Henry Flynt on the basis of Hennix’s own “The Electric Harpsichord.”

As Hennix explains in Other Matters, Blank Forms’ 2019 collection of her writings:

“Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis presents fragments of ‘raga-like’ frequency constellations following distinct cycles and permuting their order, creating a simultaneity of ‘multi-universes.’ When two such ‘universes’ come in proximity of each other and begin unfolding simultaneously along distinct cycles, there is a kaleidoscopic exfoliation of frequencies as one universe is becoming two, but not separated—the effect of cosmosis is entrained, binding two or more frequency universes into proximity where their modal properties interact and blend, creating in the process entirely new microtonal constellations in an omnidirectional simultaneous cosmic order with phenomenologically ‘transfinite’ Poincaré cycles (cyclic returns to initial conditions).”

As with Hennix’s best work, the organic unfolding of this quivering drone belies a precision that opens onto the infinitesimal. Upon its mesmerizing ebb and flow, the vocalists incant a devotional poem written in Arabic by Hennix and featuring quotations from the Quran. Also reproduced on the album’s gatefold jacket, Hennix’s reduction of the sacred text to its most elegant formulation invites the contemplator to bring their inner knowledge to the composition for use as a prompt for meditation. Yet the piece offers depth to even the most secular listener willing to immerse themselves in music brimming with such serene intensity.

Catherine Christer Hennix (b. 1948) started her creative life playing drums with her older brother Peter, growing up in Sweden where she heard jazz luminaries, such as John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor perform from 1960 to 1967. Directly after high school, Hennix went to work at Stockholm’s pioneering Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), where she developed early tape music, incorporating computer generated speech done at the Royal Technological University (KTH), where she was an undergraduate student. After traveling to New York In 1968, she met artists Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles who invited her to stay at the Something Else Press Town House where she had the opportunity to meet, among others, composers John Cage, James Tenney, and Phil Corner. During the following years she developed fruitful collaborative relationships with many composers in the burgeoning American avant-garde, including, most significantly, Henry Flynt and La Monte Young. Young introduced Hennix to Hindustani raga master Pandit Pran Nath and she would later study intensively under him as his first European disciple. While Hennix continued to make music performing alongside Arthur Russell, Marc Johnson, Henry Flynt, and Arthur Rhames, she also served as a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at SUNY New Paltz and as a visiting Professor of Logic (at Marvin Minsky’s invitation) at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In recent years Hennix has led the just-intonation ensemble the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, which has featured musicians Amelia Cuni, Amirtha Kidambi, Chiyoku Szlavnics, Hilary Jeffrey, Amir El-Saffar, Benjamin Duboc and Rozemarie Heggen. She currently resides in Istanbul, Turkey pursuing studies in classical Arabic and Turkish makam.

Since making her debut with the 2011 album Weightless, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Becca Stevens has tested the limits of musical identity, mining everything from jazz to Irish folk to indie-rock in her striving for complete and authentic expression. In her latest musical endeavor—the five-track EP WONDERBLOOM and a soon-to-follow full-length of the same name—the North Carolina-bred, Brooklyn-based artist again defies all expectation, this time dreaming up a groove-heavy, dance-ready sound infused with elements of pop and funk and R&B. But despite its brighter textures and uptempo rhythms, WONDERBLOOM finds Stevens achieving a profound complexity in her lyrics, ultimately redefining what’s possible in creating music that elevates and edifies. Centered on the captivating vocal presence she’s showcased as a member of David Crosby’s Lighthouse Band, WONDERBLOOM telegraphs an unabashed joy that Stevens partly attributes to the project’s production. In a bold new turn for her musical career, Stevens co-produced and co-engineered WONDERBLOOM alongside Nic Hard (Snarky Puppy, Ghost-Note, The Church), overseeing every aspect of the recording and claiming a sense of agency that had long eluded her in the studio. “Nic and I were truly working as equals and trusting each other to get the job done, and it was an incredibly empowering experience for me,” she says. In another major departure, Stevens purposely brought a communal sensibility to the making of WONDERBLOOM —an undertaking that resulted in more than 40 musicians contributing to the album, including Vulfpeck guitarist Cory Wong, Jacob Collier, and all of her Lighthouse bandmates (i.e., keyboardist Michelle Willis, Snarky Puppy bandleader Michael League, and David Crosby himself).

Land of the Free? with revered classic songs like the incendiary “F*ck
Authority,” was a wake -up call from Pennywise, aimed at the slumbering
masses of America, an attempt to shake people out of their lethargy and
prod them into thinking about the world.
Originally released in June 2001, the band’s six studio album tackled the political and social issues of the day, from police corruption and mass shootings to
elections, topics that 20 years later are just as relevant.
Pennywise have made a name for themselves over the past 33 years as a politically minded, melodic hardcore /punk band that has sold millions of albums
and become one of the most successful independent acts of all time.
Formed in 1988, the band played backyard parties in their hometown of Hermosa Beach, California, without having any aspirations other than playing as
many songs as they could before the police showed up. Hermosa Beach and
the surrounding neighborhoods are a prominent place in popular culture, with
groups like Black Flag, The Circle Jerks and Descendents merging a fast rebellious sound with the surrounding aggressive surf and skate culture.
Inspired by their predecessors, Pennywise were at the forefront of a second
wave of American punk rock that would catapult the movement from a tightknit subculture into a worldwide movement.

The first release in what will be an ongoing three-part series, Part I features nine tracks for bass guitar and tenor saxophone. Part II, an exploration of a slightly larger, more sonically diverse musical world will feature string quartet and voice. Finally, Part III will collaborate with choreographer Siobhan McKenna, who alongside Nick will develop a percussive movement work that seamlessly intertwines with the musical work.

“My aim is to create music that is sonically and musically atypical whilst still belonging to an accessible contemporary scene. Each project, album or ‘part’ will set out to explore a single ensemble or group of instruments. In the case of Part I, that ensemble is hollow body bass guitar and tenor saxophone. “ - Indigo (Nick Roder)

The Indigo project itself was inspired by Saxophone & Bass Guitar by Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, which prompted Nick to write an album of music for the same type of ensemble. Having only just purchased a bass guitar for a different project, the instrument was still very new to him.

“I was curious to see what I would write with my self-imposed rule of not being able to overdub material, and further, how my limitations as a relatively green bass guitarist would influence the writing of the material. A strong focus on harmonic movement and melodic material was where I eventually found my happy place.”

The result is a phenomenal debut. Burrowing into the space between it’s sparse instrumentation and dulcet tones, Part I is the realisation of a minimalist and concise vision of what a symbiotic relationship between two instruments can yield.

About Indigo
Indigo is the moniker and ongoing project of Melbourne-based composer and arranger, Nick Roder. The Indigo project was conceptualised in 2020 and focuses on deep sonic exploration of little-heard ensembles in a contemporary space.

Since 2018, Nick has been composing soundtracks for video games including The Invisible Hand, Roadwarden, N1NE: Splintered Mind, This Dead Winter and Miska. Nick has also played in art-rock ensemble, Tulalah, exploring sonic textures, combining contemporary jazz/rock with chamber sounds. The modular ensemble released The Flood (Equinox Recordings, 2015) and The Question (Independent, 2017).

Bella Union announce the release of Piroshka’s stunning second album,
‘Love Drips And Gathers’. The album builds on the acclaim of the band’s
2018 debut LP ‘Brickbat’ and the reputations of former members of Lush,
Moose, Elastica and Modern English.
Piroshka emerged in 2018, four individuals with distinct musical identities but
also overlapping histories - a combination that might have unsettled, or even
overwhelmed, some bands. But in their case, the bond only got stronger.
After ‘Brickbat’ explored social and political divisions by way of what MOJO
described as “Forceful, driving garage songs and dream-pop epics,” ‘Love
Drips And Gathers’ follows a more introspective line - the ties that bind us, as
lovers, parents, children, friends - to a suitably subtler, more ethereal sound,
whilst still revelling in energy and drama.
“If ‘Brickbat’ was our Britpop album, then ‘Love Drips And Gathers’ is
shoegaze!” reckons vocalist/guitarist Miki Berenyi, formerly of Lush, a band
that effortlessly bridged the two genres like no other. “It wasn’t intentional; we
just wanted a different focus. I’ve always seen debut albums as capturing a
band’s first moments, when you really have momentum, and then the second
album is the chance for a more thoughtful approach.”
Bassist Mick Conroy (Modern English) agrees. “‘Brickbat’ was a classic first
album; noisy and raucous. On ‘Love Drips And Gathers’, we’ve calmed down
and explored sounds, and space.”
The way ‘Love Drips And Gathers’ changes shape and dynamic is less a
reprise of Nineties Brit indie than a transformation into a more shivery, Euromantic version with glistening electronic filigrees. The opening ‘Hastings’ sets
the tone. Luminous drops of guitar underpin Miki’s becalmed vocal before
drums, bass and a Mellotron add pace while the decorative coda features
their old pal Terry Edwards on flugelhorn.
‘Love Drips And Gathers’ - named after a line in a Dylan Thomas poem - was
inspired by love, family, belonging, memory. Miki and Moose split the eight
lyrics, with some poignant overlaps here too. Miki’s ‘Loveable’ looks to
Moose; Moose’s ‘The Knife-Thrower’s Daughter’ looks to Miki but also their
daughter Stella and his sister Anna; an empathic, touching embrace of the
women in his life.
Staying within the family, Moose eulogises his late mother (the idyllic
childhood seaside trip of ‘Hastings 1973’) and father (the more conflicted
‘Scratching At The Lid’). On ‘V.O.’, Miki pays fond tribute to Vaughan Oliver,
4AD’s legendary in-house art director who died suddenly in December 2019
and who had a particularly close relationship with Lush during their time on
the label (like ‘Brickbat’, ‘Love Drips And Gathers’’ beautiful and enigmatic
artwork is by Vaughan’s former design partner Chris Bigg).
LP pressed on clear vinyl.

Whispers And Sighs is the final studio album by the late David Olney,
beloved folk songwriter’s songwriter, in collaboration with Anana Kaye, a
young Eastern European powerhouse taking Americana by storm.
If the futile longing to reach back through memory and grasp what is in the
past could be set to music, it would sound like Whispers and Sighs. Over the
course of 13 tracks, David Olney and Anana Kaye manage to craft a journey that
amounts to far more than just another Americana album.
And while it’s hard to escape the seeming cosmic significance of the album as
posthumous Olney release, at no point does this create the air of morbidity;
rather, it lends the project a bittersweet ambiance. Within Whispers And Sighs
is an undeniable reminder that David Olney’s extraordinary legacy can never
fade, while Anana Kaye’s star grows deservedly brighter by the day.

After a very short break Daje Funk are back with a super fresh redesign. The label is also fully embracing the move from their previous 10” format to 12” with the obvious bonus that they are now able to cram just that little bit of extra music onto their releases.

Their latest release, the Slam Dunk EP, is their 9th since the label arrived and it’s been a memorable journey so far. Keeping things decidedly funk with a modern dancefloor twist for their latest instalment they have assembled and all-star cast of producers with Dutch edits wizard, Ronny Hammond, England’s Shit Hot Soundsystem and Uptown Funk and Italian producer Coldbeard all taking turns to vie for dancefloor gold.

Together they have turned in one mighty slab of black wax.

The EP opens with Ronny Hammond’s ‘Keep On Groovin’ and it’s a very serious club track. For those of you with long memories and deep collections the original used here was sampled for Screen II’s Hey Mr DJ, a 90’s house classic on Cleveland City and it feels just as essential right now in 2021 as it did in both the 70’s when the original arrived and in the 90’s. Keep On Groovin’ is a proper funk bomb and Ronny has taken it to town with the addition of a powerhouse bassline, ass shakin’ drums and cheeky ear worm vocal samples. Indeed there is no chance that you will be able to sit still when this one drops. Expect it to cause serious dancefloor mischief over the coming summer months.

Shit Hot Soundsystem is up next with ‘Woah’ with label co-boss De Gama adding some extra scalpel action. Another track with classic subject matter, this often sampled track has rarely sounded as good as on this monstrous funky outing. It still sounds as fresh and exciting as the first time you heard those vibrant and vital synths and beautifully layered vocals. ‘Woah’ is both immediate and essential and will be soundtracking parties for years to come.

Over on the flip Uptown Funk’s ‘South Side Boogie’ also has De Gama on edit duty and here things head off downtown 70’s funk style. Brass stabs, wah guitar, and spicy synth licks all combine for a track which has plenty of joyous zest as it combines disco edges with a funk packed groove combing to deliver serious club heat.

Seeing the EP out is Coldbeard and he takes up deeper still with a bubbling groove which captivates from the first notes of the dynamo synth bass before adding in electric guitar licks and a rhythm line to die for. A Funky Situation is a perfect example of how to build a track piece by piece until it becomes utterly essential. Once you have heard that Rhodes and the vocal stabs working together you just know that this one will need to be played religiously.

Four utterly essential tracks which perfectly bridge the gap from the 70’s to 2021. Nine releases deep Daje Funk delivers yet again on its mission to make funk as utterly essential in clubs again nearly 4 decades after it’s glorious genres beginnings.

"The Shape Of Jazz To Come" - Ornette Coleman (as); Don Cherry (crt); Charlie Haden (b); Billy Higgins (dr)

It was John Lewis, pianist of the Modern Jazz Quartet, who brought Ornette Coleman to the renowned Atlantic label, having heard him play in Los Angeles. »Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz …« he reportedly said. The present initial Atlantic album was released just in time to coincide with the New York debut of the Coleman Quartet in November 1959. Lewis was sure that Coleman would open up new paths for jazz, and his opinion is reflected in the title of the album – "The Shape Of Jazz To Come". After the rather worn-out hard bop routine of the past years, this music was like a breath of fresh air. The fast numbers ("Eventuality", "Chronology") remind one of wildly hyped-up bebop. Other numbers ("Congeniality", "Focus On Sanity") juggle with catchy, almost folk like short motifs. This album contains two of Coleman’s most beautiful compositions: "Peace" and "Lonely Woman", which was later given lyrics and often heard in its vocal version. The Mulligan-Baker Quartet provided the model for the pianoless quartet – and when the band swings along once in a while with a moderato tempo, it is truly reminiscent of cool jazz. Be that as it may, the two wind instrumentalists just love the frenetic 'cry' and the intentionally 'imprecise' interplay. Clearly defined stanzas or traditional harmonic forms were not for them. The jazz musicologist Peter N. Wilson wrote: »A record, which is not unjustifiably so entitled« about this LP which was given 5 stars by the magazine Rolling Stone.

This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. More information under pure-analogue

All royalties and mechanical rights have been paid.

Recording: May 1959 at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, CA, by Bones Howe

Production: Nesuhi Ertegun

Makèz have come a long way since they first sneaked into Amsterdam’s studio 80 at the age of 17 to hand over their demos to Dam Swindle. Those demos led to their debut EP ‘Different planets’ on Heist in 2019 which gained major support from artists like Seth Troxler and Chez Damier. Quickly after, they signed two records on New York based label Let’s Play House. Fast forward two years, and here we are: the release of their debut album “City of all”.

"City of all” shows an admirable level of sophistication and matureness and effortlessly bridges genres across its 13 tracks. You can feel the amount of thought that has been put into this record, with songs happily blending into each other as Makèz submerge themselves in their concept of accidental encounters, inclusiveness and what it means to live in a city like Amsterdam.

On “City of all”, Makèz bring together all the musical influences they’ve picked up in their life as music fans, clubbers and art students. The jazz-funk of opening track “The entrance” feels breezy, casual almost, like the freeform rhythms that are played in a jazz club during soundcheck. That energy also oozes from “Not so different”, which features the smooth vocals of LYMA. There’s a hint of the house-meets-R’n B vibe that made Anderson .Paak the star that he is now. The song is brilliantly funky and shows the songwriting and arrangement talent of Makèz, who cleverly use pop & soul cues to create one of the album’s highlights.

What follows is 4 cuts ranging from the syncopated Balearic funk of “Orbit”, the strings of album title track “City of all”, the organ-led jam “Gonna getya" and the downbeat “Sonder”. Allysha Joy -best known for performing in Melbourne Hip Hop collective 30/70 - is featured on the deep and jazzy cut “Looking up”. If Makèz and Allysha are all looking up, it’s clear they’re seeing the same thing. These kindred spirits perfectly complement each other on this track, where the deep bass, warm harmonies and jazzy percussion prove to be a perfect foundation for Allysha’s rhymes.

Is it an album all about jazz and soulful tracks to listen to at home? Far from that. There’s a nice bit of dance floor-oriented tracks, where the distorted filter funk of “Roselane” featuring Fouk proves to be a highlight along with what is arguably the heaviest cut of the album: “Bent with funk”.

In an EP context, these house tracks would surely do their work, but they really come to life in this album format. No compromise has been made to storytelling and the house tracks all play their part while still standing their ground as powerful club tracks. It’s the expert production and smart arrangement that gives this album its casually funky feel. On “City of all”, Makèz showcase their remarkable talent for writing an album that goes to so many different places, but most of all, just really feels like home.

Enjoy the music,
Maarten & Lars

Reissue for John Joseph’s own all-star group 2017 debut album

At its purest, there is little that can match the visceral thrill and empowering spirit of hardcore. As front-man of New York City hardcore kings Cro-Mags, this is something John Joseph knows very well, and with Up In Arms, he and his Bloodclot compatriots deliver a furious collection that hits hard on every level. "In this band we're doing what each of us have always done: give it our all," he states plainly. "We work hard, and we have a lot to say. Look around the planet - people are fed up with the corrupt ruling class. They destroy the planet and kill millions for profit, and the formula for our response is simple: Anger + applied knowledge = results. Don't just bitch. Change it."

The results reflect the roots and passions of the individual members. Danzig/Murphy's Law guitarist Todd Youth was the first piece of the puzzle. "We've always talked about doing this record together, Todd had songs written and I had notebooks full of lyrics. In late September 2015, I went out to LA to do a triathlon and injured my calf muscle, so I couldn't race, and Todd said he could get some studio time. So, we went in and cut the demo. While there are things we may perceive as a negative in our lives, in fact the universe has a bigger plan, and that experience ultimately resulted in the record." Having been friends with Queens Of The Stone Age and Danzig powerhouse drummer Joey Castillo for three decades, the two musicians had long admired each other's work, and their collaboration has been a long time coming. Following Castillo's suggestion of bringing in Nick Oliveri (Queens Of The Stone Age/The Dwarves) to handle bass duties, the lineup was complete. The songs that comprise Up In Arms manifested after the quartet plugged in and let the music speak for them. "We didn't decide to try to play anything, these are the songs that happened when we started jamming, and I love this band because there are no egos involved. Our goal is to make the best music possible, period. I love it when those guys contribute with melodies, etc., and I've even helped with some of the arrangements. Because we all think alike, our lyrics deal with the issues of the day, and that makes for better songs."

Every track on Up In Arms lives up to the rallying cry of the album's title - the bursts of high energy hardcore act as the perfect accompaniment to Joseph setting his sights on injustice and the seemingly endless flaws of the contemporary world. The breakneck thrashing of "Slow Kill Genocide" is an anthem for everyone sickened by those responsible for "killing the planet and all its inhabitants through industry and war. They're fucking maniacs and must be stopped." The suitably titled "Manic" attacks with bared fangs, Joseph making it clear that you can only push someone so far before they will react with violence - a call to arms for the disenfranchised who want tomorrow's world to be better than today's. Tracked at NRG in Los Angeles, the raw, old-school production that leaps out from the speaker comes courtesy of producer Zeuss (Hatebreed, Revocation), and the record was mixed by Kyle McAulay at NRG. From the moment the opening title track explodes to life, it's clear that everyone involved is having a blast and playing from the heart, and that this is no frills / no bullshit music at its most passionate - every song evoking mental images of utter chaos in a heaving mosh pit.

For anyone approaching the album for the first time, Joseph has only this to say: "Turn the volume way the fuck up!" And with plans to tour everywhere, Bloodclot will be getting in a lot of faces in 2017 and beyond. "We are already writing material and the next album is in the works. But, for now, all we want is to hit the stage to support 'Up in Arms', and every single night leave every ounce of ourselves up there."

Hitting number two in the UK album chart and with over a billion streams, in Dissimulation KSI creates space for both his public persona and the personal: big hit features with the likes of Rick Ross and Lil Baby (Down Like That) and AJ Tracey (Tides) sit alongside more intimate, honest tracks. No stranger to defying expectations, Dissimulation received critical acclaim. Clash labelled it “an excellent body of work”; “he’s absolutely smashed it” proclaimed Metro.

It’s no surprise that KSI has been seen on the cover of The Sunday Times Magazine and Music Week; The Observer Magazine, Viper and Notion. Other labels and artists want a piece of the KSI pie too: just look to the success of his features on S1mba’s Loose and Nathan Dawe’s BRIT nominated Lighter. 



With his second album on the horizon, a 2021 tour which sold out in seconds, the launch of his own label and a single with Craig David (Really Love), Anne-Marie (Don’t Play) and YUNGBLUD (Patience), KSI is proving that music is very much his domain. 



KSI brings with him the unrelenting work ethic and infectious energy which YouTube instilled in him. Despite his debut’s success, he’s certain Dissimulation just scratched the surface: the next record, he’s clear, will showcase his artistry’s further progression again. Given FAULT Magazine described KSI as “one of 2019’s biggest success stories - “an emergent hip-hop star” said The i - all eyes will be on his follow up. KSI’s task - writes The Observer - is “not just to make “YouTube rap” but the real thing”. Their verdict? “Mission accomplished.”

A little over a year ago, Nathan Williams found himself back in San Diego, writing what would eventually become Hideaway, his seventh album as Wavves, in a little shed behind his parents’ house. It was also the place where he made some of his earliest albums, before he became known for his uncanny ability to write songs that sneered at the world while evoking pathos, sympathy, and a deep understanding of how sometimes we’re our own worst enemies, and that can be okay. Williams’ return to his childhood home was not just a symbolic attempt at jumpstarting creativity. It came as a result of a series of major life changes. A decade ago, Williams released King of the Beach on the maverick indie label Fat Possum. The album was a cocky collection of pop punk gems that catapulted him into the public consciousness, eventually prompting a jump from Fat Possum into the major label system, where he released two albums before becoming disillusioned by the lack of creative agency available to him. In 2017, Williams self-released You’re Welcome on his label, Ghost Ramp. Now, Williams has returned to Fat Possum with a barbed collection of anxious anthems that grapple with the looming sense of doom and despair that comes with getting older in an increasingly chaotic world. “He’ll always skew toward the Bart Simpson character,” says Matthew Johnson, founder of Fat Possum. “But that does not mean that he doesn’t have some commentary, and once in awhile, it’s totally spot on.” Across its brief but impactful nine tracks, Hideaway is about what happens when you get old enough to take stock of the world around you and realize that no one is going to save you but yourself, and even that might be a tall order. The album features Williams’ most universal and urgent songs yet. “Honeycomb” lopes along sunnily, as Williams sings affecting lines like “I feel like I’m dying, it’s cool, it’s great, just pretend I’m okay.” His directness is shocking, and proof that Williams is the kind of songwriter who can capture pain and uncertainty with resonant brutal force. “It’s real peaks and valleys with me,” Williams says. “I can be super optimistic and I can feel really good, and then I can hit a skid and it’s like an earthquake hits my life, and everything just falls apart. Some of it is my own doing, of course.” It’s this self awareness that permeates each of Hideaway’s songs, marking them each as mature reckonings with who he is. After realizing the material he’d been working on in the hideaway was starting to take shape, Williams, along with bandmates Stephen Pope and Alex Gates workshopped the songs in a series of now-abandoned studio sessions, before linking up with musician and producer Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio to help fully realize their new songs.

Fake It Till We Die is the eleventh studio album by Dutch singer Anouk. It was released only seven months after its predecessor Queen for a Day. Although Anouk is primarily known for her rock songs, this album features mostly soul and funk oriented tracks. The preceding singles “Down Daddy Down” and “Burn” are a great example of Anouk’s expansion to these genres. Other strong tracks on the album are “I Just Met a Man”, “Blue Motel”, “Waste Your Water” and much more. Fake It Till We Die is quite a cohesive and very well done soul record, perfectly showcasing Anouk’s incredible voice.

The album is available on coloured vinyl for the first time. This edition includes a printed innersleeve with song lyrics and is available as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on pink vinyl.

A limited edition of 500 copies on white vinyl. First ever reissue of Alternative TV's "Action Time Vision", compiled in 1980 and featuring the group's 7"es from 1977 to 1979. Including bonus track "You Bastard" and new liner notes by ATV singer Mark Perry, the founding editor of punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue.

What Mark Perry says:
"It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Punk turned my world upside down! In July 1976, after hearing and seeing the Ramones, I went from just another music fan, avid reader of the NME and Melody Maker, to become editor of punk's premier fanzine, Sniffin' Glue. It was almost an instant success and by December 1976, through our no nonsense approach, our position as the 'punk Bible' was assured. But it was never enough for me. As I saw the initial punk explosion subside into a succession of third-rate copycats, I wanted to have a go myself.

My first attempt at forming a band was in late '76. We called ourselves the 'New Beatles' and it ended after a couple of rehearsals. It wasn't until I met guitarist Alex Fergusson, a mate of Sounds writer Sandy Robertson, in early 1977, that I started putting together some more interesting ideas for a band. I worked on a bunch of lyrics and, pretty quickly, Alex had put tunes to them. Eventually calling ourselves Alternative TV, we had our first rehearsals at Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Studios in March '77.

That initial line-up was just me singing and Alex on guitar, with Genesis P-Orridge helping out on some bass and drums. We did ask Gen to join fulltime, but he decided against it and stuck with Throbbing Gristle. After more rehearsals, we played our first gig at the Nottingham Punk Festival in May 1977, joined by Mick Smith on bass and John Towe (ex-Generation X) on drums.

I started thinking about doing a record almost from the start because, by this time, I was running the Step Forward record label with Miles Copeland, who was also to become the band's manager. It seemed like a natural move to put out my own record, but it instead ended up on Deptford Fun City, another of Miles' labels. Before that actually happened, we made a slight detour by recording a demo for EMI. They didn't want to sign us, but we did end up with the tapes…"

Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide To Jazz’s writer Brian Morton and by Paris’ prestigious Jazz Magazine.
6 bonus tracks (Green Vinyl) “The question of whether Etta James became a pop singer, a jazz singer, or a blues singer needn’t detain you long. She was all of those, as At Last bears out, and more besides. James touched on gospel, doo-wop and rhythm’n’blues
with equal facility. “Dance With Me, Henry” was a hit, but renamed “The Wallflower” and covered by Georgia Gibbs. Because James had a composition credit, it made her some money, but she didn’t like to be bested. She made sure that the next time it would be her name on the label.“ Penguin Guide to Jazz “At Last!, her debut LP, made for the celebrated Chicago label Chess, certainly is one of her most memorable. It’s impossible to not be moved by the power of her voice, beginning with the opening notes of “Anything to Say You’re Mine”.
Every phrase, every word is attacked with an energy that commands respect. But beware, this young woman (she was only 22 at the time) could also take on the sweetest forms of a melancholy ballad, such as “Stormy Weather”, and manage to achieve tenderness. At Last! is one of the key soul music albums of the early 1960’s.” Jazz Magazine ETTA JAMES, lead vocals; The Riley Hampton Orchestra. Arranged and conducted by Riley Hampton. Recorded in Chicago, Illinois, 1960 and 1961. Original sessions produced by Phil and Leonard Chess.

Blue Vinyl

The 10-track release, Collection Agency, is Curren$y’s first project of 2021. The album marks his 11th solo studio album, and 90th overall project. Even more impressively, the quality has remained consistent throughout his prolific career. The Louisiana rapper links up with several notable producers on the project including DJ.Fresh, Harry Fraud, Rsonist of The Heatmakerz, Trauma Tone, Purps, & Black Metaphor. We also see an appearance by longtime friend and collaborator, Larry June. At just under 24 minutes, Curren$y delivers another unforgettable round of smooth joints and cruising music.

Album Description BROS VOL 2 takes you on a technicolor journey via your ear drums. The eclectic flavours of VOL1 are taken to new heights. The musical scope is wider, and the worldly sonics more exotic. The power pop refrains sink their hooks deeper, the sly musical jokes sell out harder and the hard charging grooves really pack a wallop. BROS make music that is fun and colourful, the way it's supposed to be. Bio After boldly displaying their full musical range on the 2016 debut album Vol. 1, BROS—aka The Sheepdogs’ Ewan and Shamus Currie—return with Vol. 2, an endlessly surprising new 13-track collection that’s something akin to a party thrown by your friends with the best record collection. Recorded over a two-year span with producer/engineer Thomas D’Arcy in Toronto, BROS sought to expand their scope on Vol. 2 by inviting a host of collaborators, from a horn section and tabla drummer, to Sheepdogs guitarist Jimmy Bowskill (on a range of instruments he doesn’t normally play) and even their father Neil Currie on piano. The results contain something for everyone, from the Tropicalia-inspired “Sunflower” and the smooth jazz of “Clams Casino,” to the lowdown funk of “Never Gonna Stop” and the vintage AM radio homages “Crazy Schemes” and “You Love This Song.” With Vol. 2, the combination of visually evocative instrumentals and finely crafted Pop and Soul nuggets is now undeniably BROS’ trademark sound, one that’s utterly distinct from The Sheepdogs’ arena-ready, guitar-fuelled rock. As a pure studio creation, the album not only displays the Curries’ dynamic creative bond, but also their playful sense of humour and easy-going relationship, something that can’t often be said of fraternal musical partnerships. So as we all wait patiently to return to bars and concert halls, BROS Vol. 2 is here to provide the perfect soundtrack for whatever you happen to get up to within your bubble, just as long as the intention is to have some fun. For Fans of: The Sheepdogs, Dan Auerbach, The Doobie Brothers, The Allman Brothers Band, Eric Clapton, The Band, The Black Crowes

COS might not be the first genre defying progressive music group you’ve heard who share both wordless onomatopoeic vocals and a snappy three letter title (complete with philosophical leanings and alchemic penchants) but on listening to this first ever custom Cos compendium you might have just discovered a new favourite!

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that COS share close spiritual, stylistic or social connections to the aforementioned bands, as one of the few long-withstanding single-syllable ensembles to remain utterly idiosyncratic and incomparable within their hyper-focussed and impenetrable creative bubble. But as a 1970s group that effortlessly MIX head-nod prog, synth-driven jazz, cinematic sound-designs, dislocated disco, arkestral operatics and high-brow conceptual anti-pop grooves, it’s easier to remember the name COS than thumb the vast amount of genre-dividers in your local record shop which COS COULD occupy. With the crème de la crème of Belgian jazz/prog/psych/funk within their ranks, their combined idea-to-ability ratio litters the Cos-ography with concepts that aficionados, future fans, collaborators and critics still haven’t began to unravel.

With their earliest roots in the compact jazz group Brussels Art Quintet the group spent their sapling years creating art-school prog under the name Classroom, this flourishing collective, cultivated by multi-instrumentalist mainstay Daniel Schell, would soon shed its leaves, dropping band-members and typographics reducing its moniker to simply COS (a multi-purpose, globally recognised word, with links to Alchemy and philosophy, with a hard phonetic delivery to suit the groups heavier rhythmic approach). In it’s new skin COS also shed all forms of orthodox language to find its true exclusive voice. Fronted, in the conventional sense, by the daughter of author and part-time jazz player Jean De Trazegnies, the bands wordless singer changed her name to Pascale SON, to accentuate the French word for “sound”. Drawing comparisons with sound poets like Polish jazz legend Urszula Dudziak or Hungarian Katalin Ladik, but retaining the crystalline femininity (and funk) of Flora Purim, while effectively sharing an imaginary lyric book of non-words with Damo Suzuki, Magma or a future Liz Fraser... To use the word “unique” would, by COS academic standards, be lazy journalism.

Tones 1.0 is a record specifically made for the purpose of melodic scratching, although it is not limited to just that; it can be also used as a production tool.

Think of Tones 1.0 as a synthesized toolkit that blurs the lines between live performance and production.



Side A consists of 16 locked modulating tones (8 bass tones and 8 lead tones) that have been recorded from various analog synthesizers. They were recorded live while manipulating cut-off frequencies, resonance and LFOs to a click track at 133.33 BPM. This gives the tones extra rich sonics and more depth while being scratched. Each bass tone is recorded at middle C (C3) while each lead tone has been recorded an octave higher (C4).



Side B consists of musical phrases, chords, drums, experimental tones and skip-proof atonal scratch sounds, all of which have been recorded at 133.3 BPM.



You’ll find a rich tapestry of ideas to choose from ranging from funk basslines/chords and licks, soul chords and licks, drums, atonal scratch sounds and experimental tones that create futuristic atmospheres. Major and minor 7th chords follow the circle of 5ths so that they are all relative to each other, perfect for creating music quickly. Once you’ve created a beat/sketch you can then jump to the skip-proof atonal scratch sounds and solo over the top. Enjoy.

For more than five decades, John McLaughlin has deployed his peerless guitar technique, compositional gifts, and imagination in service of a deeply personal higher calling, forging a vast legacy unmatched in improvised music. Now as the world reels from the toll of the ongoing viral-induced global lockdown, McLaughlin reflects on both the perils and potential of this challenging moment with ‘Liberation Time’. Characterised by both joy and reflection, ‘Liberation Time’ finds McLaughlin harnessing his frustrations and redirecting that energy. “The result,” he explains in a candid liner note, “was an explosion of music in my mind.”. Unusual for McLaughlin’s recent projects, ‘Liberation Time’ is not the work of one fixed ensemble. With physical proximity no longer a prerequisite, McLaughlin drew upon decades of experience as a bandleader to select musicians best suited to each composition. “That is a choice that can only be made correctly if you know how the musicians play,” he explains. “Not just how well they play technically, but how they play intuitively. Only then can you make the right decisions.” “As the Spirit Sings” introduces the album by contrasting churning rhythmic tension (stoked by drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and bassist Sam Burgess) with McLaughlin’s soaring guitar figure - all underpinned by Gary Husband’s subtle,expansive piano. Knotty post-bop figures form the basis of “Right Here, Right Now, Right On,” one of the most jazz-inflected performances McLaughlin has laid down in some time, featuring Nicolas Viccaro (drums), Jerome Regard (bass), Julian Siegel (tenor saxophone), and Oz Ezzeldin (piano). It is impossible to ignore the profound brotherhood that exists between the members of 4th Dimension - McLaughlin’s current ensemble, which includes Husband along with Etienne Mbappe (bass) and Ranjit Barot (drums). They are featured on the soulful “Lockdown Blues,” a playful refraction examination of blues tropes first released last summer to benefit the Jazz Foundation of America.

"Certain loud guitar rock records serve as brain erasers, a form of shock therapy zapping through aural inputs and (to mix metaphors) cleaning the proverbial clock. Lightning Bolt is one such thing." - LA Times Since their first moment it seems like they've been as electric as their name suggests. Lightning Bolt, their first album, captures that energy in a raw form. Famously lo-fi, this is the album that's been described as most feeling like being at one of their shows. It's difficult to listen and not want to jump with the crowd it feels like must be huddled around the amp producing an incredible wave of noise, astonishingly coming from just two musicians. You can hear the threads of their later work; use of repetition, a sense of grinding and building, noise melting to guitar solos. This album is loud, and the riffs repeated become mesmerizing as they warp slowly thru the songs. Long saught after, this record has not been available new on vinyl since it's first pressing. This edition includes songs which have never before been released on vinyl. A must have for any Lightning Bolt fan, or really anyone who loves noise.

The album is described this way by producer Ripley Johnson: "The band was aiming to capture a timeless, natural sound, not quite of the present, past, or future, but phasing in between the consciousness of now and the stoned dream-state of the eternal. Sort of a back porch jam just as the shrooms are starting to kick in. Handmade and human, but also cosmic and transcendental. The goal is to let the music speak for itself and hopefully find a weird and wonderful audience somewhere out there."That description feels right for an album which seems perfect for those soft ephemeral moments, and that softly wraps you in the feeling of walking at twilight. Mellow but upbeat the album it's easy to imagine the leaves changing colors. It's psych rock, and dificult to describe without getting poetic; dreamy and insular, it's easy to get lost in this album. Produced and recorded by Ripley Johnson (Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips), and mixed by Chris Cohen (Captured Tracks, Deerhoof), the album finds its niche in the hazy sonic landscape of private press country and psych records, and alongside artists like Relatively Clean Rivers, Jim Sullivan, Kenny Knight, and countless other explorers of the pastoral underground. New project produced by Ripley Johnson of Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo fame, fans of either are sure to love this one

From Yasmine's rare 2nd album "A Scent Of Flowers", which was released in just Netherland and left behind the one of the masterpieces ofA90s R&B "Wanna Dance" that has been compiled into numerous mixtapes and dance hit compilations, the popular cover songs Roy Ayers "Everybody Loves The Sunshine" and Ray Charles "Let Me Take Over" are finally single-cut with a superb cover that reproduces freshly with R&B manners!

One of the beautiful qualities of the Bellingham music community was the fact that many different groups of various genres could coexist and even perform comfortably throughout the half-dozen venues in this little Northwest college town in the most northwest corner of the most northwest state in the lower 48.

The original roots soulfunk juggernaut of Joel Ricci's "The Lucky Seven" known in their town as "The Leaders of the Funk Revolution," attracted a certain cadre of party goer, as did Dan Lowinger's rugged rockabilly quartet "The Foot Stompin' Trio". At Footstompin gigs, Lowinger would be found deftly chicken pickin' that honky tonk tele' and was known to impress the audience so much with his licks, they would throw buckets of beer on him as a show of their love and appreciation. It was only a matter of time before Dan and Joel were lucky enough to get the chance to perform together and toured the States for a few years together with a fiery ska/reggae/rocksteady powerhouse also out of the Bellingham area, "The Yogoman Burning Band". Dan and Joel recorded many demos together and contributed original material to the Burning Band, but the proto-rock of "Please Some", is pure Royal Dees. This tune, composed and recorded by Ricci, was actually conceived as a submission to Tramp Records and remained unfinished for many years while also suffering from the degradation of the original cassette it was recorded on. The Duo re-recorded again 4 years later when they were both living in Portland, Oregon and that version lives today as side D's "alternate take" which Ricci found in his cassette archive over the summer. This version also came with it's own set of audio issues, notwithstanding the botched ending, which we have retained here for you as the loose and roots funky vibe of the whole take justifies it's inclusion.

Finally, Joel and Dan's friend and comrade Doug Krebs, who happened to also be a well-loved member of that same Bellingham music community, especially as the go-to sound and mastering engineer, came through in spades to rescue the two pieces and prepare them for proper release on this, the one and only Royal Dees release to see the light of day on the bold and inimitable Tramp Records.

Director David Lynch once said "I long for a kind of quiet where I can just drift and dream. I always say getting inspiration is like fishing. If you're quiet and sitting there and you have the right bait, you're going to catch a fish eventually. Ideas are sort of like that. You never know when they're going to hit you." Inspired by this quote in both name and spirit, Hollie Kenniff's The Quiet Drift is an ambient gallery of cloudlike synths, seraphic strings, echoing guitars, and other celestial textures guided to cohesion by Hollie's own wordless singing. Though the album certainly creates (and originates from) the kind of space where Lynch's proverbial "fish" can be caught, The Quiet Drift is a fitting title for Hollie's own history, both recent and distant. During the course of the album's creation, Hollie and her family moved cross-country from an island in Washington state, to an island in Maine before ultimately relocating to Canada. "As a child I visited Ontario year-round," she explains in her own words. She continues "More than any other landscape, I think the lake, rivers, and woods there left the most enduring impression on me. The landscape and pace of life of these places will always stay with me." But the reverberant spaces Hollie crafts need no physical headquarters. Instead of conjuring views of nature at the ground level, her sound more readily evokes a top-down perspective, with the distinct features of the land shrinking underfoot as the listener becomes untethered from geography altogether. The Quiet Drift belongs more to the liminal spaces between life and afterlife, memory and fantasy, landscape and dreamscape, than any mappable locale. Describing her formative years, Hollie says "As a dual US/Canadian citizen who spent my childhood in a rural town-- one that I haven't returned to in many years - I have a sense of not entirely belonging anywhere. When I was a teenager my close friends were male musicians, so I was also an outsider to the degree that they were wild and anarchic in a way that I wasn't. I was a quiet book reader and avid music listener who enjoyed being around a creative group. I was also a radio DJ for alternative and punk music throughout high school." In this light, The Quiet Drift attests that creativity is placeless, and calls into question the stereotype of artists as scene-centric city dwellers. Having come of age in the absence of metropolitan sensory overload, Hollie learned to spot the muse in nature, and within herself, instead of the echo chamber of a frenzied peer group. On The Quiet Drift Hollie Kenniff wholly escapes from such pop-culture feedback loops into transcendent, shimmering realms, and she brings the listener along with her. In this age in which we have all been called to reevaluate our relationship to indoor spaces, and seek refuge in the great outdoors, The Quiet Drift provides an apt soundtrack for such rebalancing.

Before there was Rimarimba, Suffolk-born, Felixstowe-based musician and home recording enthusiast Robert Cox assembled a cast of friends, some musicians and some not so much, for an experiment in group exploration and ecstatic expression under the name The Same. Sonically and gravitationally defined by Cox's collaboration with guitarist Andy Thomas (a partnership which formed in 1976 to record as General Motors), Sync or Swim, The Same's one and only album, also featured keyboards by Florence Atkinson and Paul Ridout, and vocals by Robert's sister Rebecca. Originally released in small cassette and vinyl quantities on Unlikely Records, Cox's imprint and a meeting point for many other musicians found at the fringe, the back cover of the original album jacket is as much a map of the personnel, place, and process fundamental to Sync or Swim as it is a table of contents for DIY music-making at the beginning of the 80s: "Recorded in peaceful Wiltshire between September 18th and October 6th 1981 (using a miscellany of home made devices) onto a Teac A-3300SX via a Teac A-3440. No noise reduction systems were used." Cox's own definition of British psychedelia is "folk music meeting technology and going bonkers." It's by this definition that Sync or Swim takes unexpected forms, from tape-speed tomfoolery, concrète sound collage and analog delayed marimbas, to the colorful spectrum of interwoven guitar play between Cox and Thomas reminiscent of Ghanaian Highlife but more accurately indebted to Jerry Garcia. On the album's culminating final track, "E Scapes," all of these elements are brought together in twenty-minute journey through layers of chiming guitar loops and spritely solos, keyed percussion, and tape experiments, all played as though the sun were rising over the standing stones of Salisbury Plain. Cox would later go to similarly greath lengths with certain solo sound endeavors, but the confluence of musicians on "E Scapes" pushes the piece to exceptional, unforgettable heights. Transferred and remastered from the original tapes, The Same's Sync or Swim arrives on LP July 16th, 2021 on Freedom To Spend, just in time for the album's 40th anniversary.

7" of this funk classic re-issued for the first time from recently discovered Master Tapes.

Funky Soul (originally titled "Going To See The Man") was a routine crowd pleaser during live shows that even had its own dance "rock the ship." This was the part two of the song. It was part one that was created in the studio as a riff off of part two. The raw energy of this song when performed live created hysteria and drove spectators into a frenzy. It didn't take long for word to get around and catch the attention of the famous WYLD DJ Larry McKinley. McKinley wanted to capture this magic onto record and helped arrange the session at Cosimo Matassa's studio. He drove Isaac Hayes down from Memphis to New Orleans in 1968 and organized Issac Hayes to arrange the horn section on this record while he was working with the Okeh label and developing an emerging artist named Margie Joseph. It was during this time that Margie recorded two singles Why Does A Man Have To Lie/See (Okeh, 4-7304) and Show Me/A Matter Of Life Or Death (Okeh, 4-7313).

David Batiste & The Gladiators were a band David Batiste and several of his brothers formed while they were in High School in New Orleans back in 1961. The band won a talent show in 1965 at Harlem's famous Apollo Theater and are the pioneers of what is now known as "Funk." David Batiste & The Gladiators were legendary mainstays of every bar in New Orleans that every band was hustling trying to get booked at.

It's no wonder that this song was famously complied on BBE Records and Ubiquity in the 1990's, rediscovered and performed by Miles Tackett & The Breakestra in the early 2000's. Those compilations contained audio sourced only from the vinyl record originally pressed up twice in the early 1970s and sought after by collectors and DJs for years and years. This version is from a direct master tape transfer from recently discovered NOLA tapes. But wait… The party's just started. An entire album's worth of 1960s previously unreleased David Batiste & The Gladiators material from recently discovered master tapes is in the works and forthcoming on Family Groove Records.

Clear Vinyl

Eugene Synegal's early career as a teenager was the guitarist of Sam & The Soul Machine before moving to Los Angeles to join the group Sage and later in the 1970s recording on Lee Dorsey's Night People and The Neville Brothers records.

These previously unreleased recordings were birthed in the early 1970s, sometime during Eugene's trips back and forth between Los Angeles and New Orleans. A couple years after these recordings were immortalized onto 1/4" reel-to-reel tape an unusual crime scene involving Eugene and his girlfriend reads as if it was a chapter taken directly out of a pulp fiction novel. An Australian socialite named Patrica Galea, remained unsolved for 30 years. The robbers took $400, two diamond rings, a $1,400 cigarette lighter and two mink coats. They failed to collect Galea's $6,402 which was hidden in her freezer. This money was sent from Australia and was being used to fund Eugene's album as well as starting a new music publishing company in Hollywood. This was the life of Eugene. Playboy extraordinaire, jet-setter and guitar chops that would turn the head of Hendrix!! Around 2006 the owner of the West Hollywood apartment expressed a desire to learn more about its history and met with detectives who were unable to locate the file since it was buried in the cold cases section. The files were found, the case was reopened, solved and two men were arrested in 2007.

These recently unearthed 1970s recordings by Eugene are a reflection of his pure soul as well as a blend of psychedelia and funk that the band Sage was experimenting with in Los Angeles during that time period.

From a historical sense, these two recordings are significant because it bridges the historical and influential New Orleans music scene during the early 70's with the psychedelic rock and folk scene that was emerging just walking distance from the West Hollywood apartment that Eugene was living in with Galea during that time.

Eugene's unique guitar style paired with a deep-rooted gospel sensibility is a window into the artistry and songwriting capability of this incredibly talented man.

As one half of Red Axes, Dori Sadovnik could perhaps already stake a claim as one of the most prolific men in electronic music. A natural artist, Sadovnik is the sort of musician who never stops recording, a creator ahead of a consumer, well-adapted to a frenetic lifestyle.

This particular impulse has been funneled into a project known as Kapitan, an already expansive collection of tracks clocking in anywhere between 130 and 150 beats-per-minute.

As for a home, it just so happened that DJ Tennis, friend, collaborator and founder of Life and Death, was processing similar instincts, borne out of his love and association with the nineties heyday of IDM, pioneered by labels such as Warp and Rephlex.

“I don't really know what led me there but I had a feeling that I needed to be in the mountains”, explains Sadnovik. “I'm not a nature guy, nor do I feel particularly spiritual, but I was always struck by the harmony of it all. Everything is in the mix.”

This all-encompassing, blissful philosophy is deeply felt throughout this journey, a fluid blend of analogue and digital sounds rendered as organic as the landscape that inspires the album. Interlocking rhythms evolve into unexpected chamber pieces and bubbling acid lines blossom into rave psychedelia on opening tracks such as ‘Weird Day’ and ‘Flowers’, progressing to the sound of ‘Takak’, which inspires meditations on enormous bass weight, as mantras creep in from the surrounding forest of sound.

In the album’s second-half, this sincere sense of awe expands further still. Centrepiece tracks ‘In The Valley’ inspires a true sense of wonder and transcendence, complex rhythms blending with wide-eyed reverence. ‘Smile’ is trippy and innocent while ‘Elleven’ crackles with whispering energy over whiplash breakbeats. Concluding with ‘Heart’, Sadnovik reduces the pace to a stepping, heavy rhythm, commanding a deep sense of respect for the untamed wilderness that has served as such a unique muse.

We’ve all been fans of each other from the start, says Jimmie Dale Gilmore, “but the thing that’s always struck me about The Flatlanders is that, first and foremost, it’s a band rooted in friendship. Beyond the music, we just connect with each other in these deep and personal ways, and that’s been a lifelong treasure.” Take a listen to Treasure of Love, The Flatlanders’ first new album in more than a decade, and it’s clear that those bonds are deeper and stronger now than ever before. Completed during COVID-19 lockdowns with the help of longtime friend and collaborator Lloyd Maines, the record finds the iconic Texas trio of Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock in classic form, serving up a rollicking collection of twang-fueled, harmony-laden performances full of wry humor and raw heartbreak. While a few of the songs here are never-before-heard originals, the vast majority of the tracklist consists of vintage tunes the band picked up during their 50-year career, some stretching as far back as the group’s earliest performances in the honkytonks around Lubbock, TX, where you might have spotted Willie Nelson or Townes Van Zandt in the audience on any given night.

DEATH's legendary 1987 debut Scream Bloody Gore is more than just an untouchable album - upon its release, it was positively genre-creating. Scream Bloody Gore founded the quintessential death metal sound, with more tormented riffs, screams, and leads than the world had ever imagined, and established Chuck Schuldiner's inimitable phrasing and songwriting style as the most singular voice in the burgeoning genre. Today, the album is viewed unanimously as one of the all-time most important cornerstones of death metal. As the final chapter in Relapse's comprehensive DEATH reissue series, Scream Bloody Gore will now receive the deluxe reissue treatment on a wide variety of formats including 2CD, Limited Edition 3CD, LP, Deluxe 2xLP Boxset, and cassette versions. Like the preceding DEATH reissues, the deluxe reissue of Scream Bloody Gore has been meticulously remastered from the original tapes by Alan Douches (Death, Mastodon, Nile) and includes a plethora of bonus content, including previously unreleased recordings and rehearsal demos, super-expanded packaging, and brand-new extensive liner notes from former DEATH drummer / Autopsy founder Chris Reifert, Sepultura's Max Cavalera, and original Scream Bloody Gore producer Randy Burns.

“Montreal’s genre-defying post-rock combo BIG|BRAVE could very well be the most noteworthy recent heavy curiosity to come out of the city in recent years.” - NOISEY

“…combines elements of Björk, Neurosis and Sunn O))) into a cohesive whole; but this whole is an ever evolving and challenging sonic mass.
- THE QUIETUS

Minimalism and instinct, structure/freedom and meticulous timing form the cornerstones of their precise, rhythmical sound.
Lyrically, the album explores the weight of race and gender, endurance and navigating other people’s behaviours, observation and protest. The band further comment “this album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while finding individual worth within this reality.”
This time featuring the core trio Robin Wattie, Mathieu Ball and Tasy Hudson, for their most collaborative record they’ve made so far. The band elaborate “having cut our teeth in very different musical backgrounds respectively, our intuitions vary, which has an interesting effect on our individual approaches and ears.”
For this record, BIG | BRAVE once again made the trek down to Rhode Island to record with Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. They remark “we fully trust his instinct as an engineer and his creative output, getting to experiment with textures, concepts, layers, and with pretty much every single recorded sound, the process of making records with Seth is an absolute journey and pleasure.”
With the initial seeds planted in 2012, with no other goal than simply experimenting with the instruments in their possession, Robin Wattie and Mathieu Ball started writing subtle ambient/minimalistic folk songs together. When long time friend Louis Alexandre Beauregard joined on drums, the goal still remained to play as tranquil as possible. After an incident where Wattie’s acoustic guitar broke, and having borrowed a friend’s electric as a replacement, larger amps that Ball had in storage from previous bands started to get incorporated to the outfit. Now with amplitude as a compositional tool, BB never lost interest in the power of minimalism and fragility. It became clear that loud volume would become just as effective as the lowest possible ones and the juxtaposition of both would become something BB still uses as their main MO to this day.
After self-releasing Feral Verdure in 2014, the band had the opportunity to open for Thee Silver Mt Zion in Montreal QC. After which, Efrim Manuel Menuck found something meaningful in the members and the band and invited them to open on future shows with Mt Zion and with Godspeed! You Black Emperor.
In 2015, the band entered the studio with Menuck and recorded “Au De La”. With no home for the record, they decided to take a chance in writing to Southern Lord. As luck would have it, Greg Anderson happened upon their email among hundreds and responded. Since then, the band has had a home with Southern Lord Records. (Along with Au De La, Southern Lord has released Ardor in 2017, A Gaze Among Them in 2019 and VITAL in 2021).
After Beauregard’s departure in 2018, the band traveled down to Rhode Island with Loel Campbell on drums to make a first record with Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. After the album’s release, with Campbell unable to tour, Tasy Hudson joined the ranks and the band spent most of the year touring their 2019 album “A Gaze Among Them”.
In 2020, the core trio of Ball, Wattie and Hudson once again made the trek down to Machines with Magnets to record their 5th LP “VITAL”.
Since their inception, the band has had many honours and privileges of touring a number of times in North America and Europe with bands such as Sunn O))), MY DISCO, The Body, Thou, Primitive Man and Thee Silver Mt Zion.

Rock ‘n’ roll is often hard to define, or even to find, in these
fractured musical times. But to paraphrase an old saying,
you know it when you hear it. And you always hear it with
The Wallflowers. For the past 30 years, the Jakob Dylanled act has stood as one of rock’s most dynamic and
purposeful bands - a unit dedicated to and continually
honing a sound that meshes timeless songwriting and
storytelling with a hard-hitting and decidedly modern
musical attack.
That signature style has been present through the
decades, baked into the grooves of smash hits like 1996’s
‘Bringing Down the Horse’ as well as more recent and
exploratory fare like 2012’s ‘Glad All Over’.
But while it’s been nine long years since we’ve heard from
the group with whom he first made his mark, The
Wallflowers are silent no more. And Dylan always knew
they’d return. “The Wallflowers is much of my life’s work,”
he says simply. That life’s work continues with ‘Exit
Wounds’, the brand-new Wallflowers studio offering. The
collection marks the first new Wallflowers material since
‘Glad All Over’.
‘Exit Wounds’ is an ode to people - individual and
collective - that have, to put it mildly, been through some
stuff. “I think everybody - no matter what side of the aisle
you’re on - wherever we’re going to next, we’re all taking a
lot of exit wounds with us,” Dylan says. “Nobody is the
same as they were four years ago. That, to me, is what
‘Exit Wounds’ signifies. And it’s not meant to be negative at
all. It just means that wherever you’re headed, even if it’s
to a better place, you leave people and things behind, and
you think about those people and those things and you
carry them with you. Those are your exit wounds. And right
now, we’re all swimming in them.”

Roma Zuckerman is in fact the trippiest artist on the label and he is back with a new solo release 'stage of loyalty'. Nobody ever knows what is on his mind when recording his next 13 minute long composition at home in Krasnoyarsk but his signature slow mo murkiness and Roma-like mental groove are unmistakable. 'Stage of loyalty' does just that but also contains minimalist techno tracks and a wonderful italo-esque sounding anthem ,,I like you" that could easily soundtrack a movie where everything is going to be just alright! Artwork by Daria Galeeva.