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Originally released in 1996 as a limited fan-club pressing for Rockathon, Guided By Voices’ Tonics And Twisted Chasers has always existed as an anomaly in Robert Pollard’s vast discography. In many ways, the album serves as the tail of a creative comet that in just two years included the “classic line-up” trilogy of Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, Under the Bushes, Under the Stars and countless singles that crammed endless hooks in their grooves. In the intervening space, Tonics And Twisted Chasers has taken on a mythic status. It’s arguably Pollard’s strangest, gnarliest, most enlightened record and also the fans first chance to see the stitches that bind his galaxy of songs. It’s like peering at the caliber inside a watch, responsible for making the whole enterprise tick. This nineteen-song collaboration with guitarist Tobin Sprout could be interpreted as spontaneous sketches, late-night improvisations, ideas that blossomed later in the timeline (“Knock ’Em Flyin’” and “Key Losers”), but as with anything in Pollard’s orbit, its intention is clear when heard as a cohesive whole. The Pollard tenet that “less is more” is on full display here. The songs rarely creep past ninety seconds and coalesce much like Pollard’s collage-styled visual art. Arena anthems in miniature (“158 Years Of Beautiful Sex”) bash up against eerie piano laments (“Universal Nurse Finger”) without any time to breathe, acoustic lullabies that sound like a Midwestern summer’s twilight (“Look It’s Baseball”) segue into monochromatic post-rock (“Maxwell Jump”). The euphoric joy and obtuse melancholy in Pollard’s voice is so palpable on the album’s standout, “Dayton, Ohio 19 Something & 5” (which has since become a live staple), that it’s impossible to find a more autobiographical yarn in his catalog. The album’s closest analog is 1993’s Vampire On Titus, as it contains that album’s prickly, dark and shimmering obfuscation that only reveals its beauty after repeated listens. Tonics And Twisted Chasers maintains the lore because the melodies are so strong. Using a primitive drum machine, Radio Shack effects, minimal instrumentation and the DIY spirit that guided them in the first place, Pollard and Sprout constructed a masterpiece of pop that could only come from a basement in north Dayton, Ohio. Anyone in that hallowed era who happened upon it, kept it as a secret.

With their new album 'Rhapsody, the extraordinary vocalists fedayo Gatling, Dennis Bailey, and George Marage are able to fully explore the entire range of music that influenced them. The follow-up to their acclaimed 2021 release 'Look Up!', the record is a dive into a lesser-known but hugely important era in the evolution of gospel music.

Starting in the mid-1960s, local gospel groups and singers began incorporating elements of popular soul and funk styles and in 2006, Chicago-based reissue label Numero Group released Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal. HGT's longtime friend and mentor Eli.

"Paperboy Reed" approached the group with the idea of digging through the Numero catalog and recording some of the gospel funk material, reinterpreted in their own way from the high-energy, old-school soul of "God's Been Good to Me" to the hip-hop-inflected "Get Involved."

The Harlem Gospel Travelers story began when Gatling and Marage met while studying under Reed's tutelage. The group put out their debut LP, 'He's On Time', to rave reviews in 2019, earning them high profile fans like Elton John and landing them festival slots everywhere from Pilgrimage to Telluride Jazz. Originally a quartet, they brought in Bailey and reconfigured as a trio prior to recording Look Up!, their first album of all original material.

At a moment when the world is reconsidering the concepts of genre and category and who's allowed to participate in which traditions, HGT are squarely on the cultural pulse.

"We always found it difficult to stay in this one lane of what people think gospel is supposed to be," says Gatling. "This record allowed us to hear people that were innovators in their own time, pushing how gospel music sounded, and now we've created this project that is message-wise gospel, but the feeling and the sound can be whatever you want it to be."

With their new album 'Rhapsody, the extraordinary vocalists fedayo Gatling, Dennis Bailey, and George Marage are able to fully explore the entire range of music that influenced them. The follow-up to their acclaimed 2021 release 'Look Up!', the record is a dive into a lesser-known but hugely important era in the evolution of gospel music.

Starting in the mid-1960s, local gospel groups and singers began incorporating elements of popular soul and funk styles and in 2006, Chicago-based reissue label Numero Group released Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal. HGT's longtime friend and mentor Eli.

"Paperboy Reed" approached the group with the idea of digging through the Numero catalog and recording some of the gospel funk material, reinterpreted in their own way from the high-energy, old-school soul of "God's Been Good to Me" to the hip-hop-inflected "Get Involved."

The Harlem Gospel Travelers story began when Gatling and Marage met while studying under Reed's tutelage. The group put out their debut LP, 'He's On Time', to rave reviews in 2019, earning them high profile fans like Elton John and landing them festival slots everywhere from Pilgrimage to Telluride Jazz. Originally a quartet, they brought in Bailey and reconfigured as a trio prior to recording Look Up!, their first album of all original material.

At a moment when the world is reconsidering the concepts of genre and category and who's allowed to participate in which traditions, HGT are squarely on the cultural pulse.

"We always found it difficult to stay in this one lane of what people think gospel is supposed to be," says Gatling. "This record allowed us to hear people that were innovators in their own time, pushing how gospel music sounded, and now we've created this project that is message-wise gospel, but the feeling and the sound can be whatever you want it to be."

FOR FANS OF: Manowar, Queensryche, Kamelot, Savatage, Running Wild, Vicious Rumors
Nach der bombastisch-epischen Veröffentlichung ‚The Passion Of Dionysus‘ im vergangenen Sommer wird nun am 23. August 2024 über
Steamhammer/SPV das allererste Virgin Steele-Album in einer besonderen Edition als Digi-CD und Gatefold-Doppel-Vinyl-LP sowie in digitaler Form
neu aufgelegt.
David DeFeis hat der Wiederveröffentlichung den zusätzlichen Spitznamen ‚The Anniversary Edition‘ verliehen, denn er hat das Album – basierend auf
den originalen Mehrspurbändern – vom ersten bis zum letzten Ton komplett neu abgemischt. Er erklärt: „Ich habe der Neuauflage diesen Titel
hinzugefügt, da es tatsächlich eine besondere Wiederveröffentlichung und ein großes Fest ist. Jeder Song wurde liebevoll restauriert und mit festem
Glauben, heißem Herz und hartem Stahl neu gemischt. Erstaunlicherweise waren die originalen Mehrspurbänder größtenteils in einem unerwartet
guten Zustand, auch wenn man hier und da ein paar kreative Entscheidungen treffen musste. Diese haben die Wiederauferstehung des Albums
allerdings in keiner Weise beeinträchtigt, sondern sogar dazu geführt, dass die Scheibe und ihre Songs noch stärker und interessanter klingen. Das
ursprüngliche Feuer wurde bewahrt, die klangliche Transparenz sogar verbessert. Nun erkennt man die explosiven Leistungen aller Beteiligten noch
deutlicher, fast so, als ob man am Tag der Aufnahmen im Studio persönlich anwesend war.

After a debut LP a couple of years ago, Patrick McEachnie (Chain Whip) is back with a stunning sophomore LP. Where the first LP was Pat taking care of everything, this time it is a full band, resulting in a album of bouncy, power-poppy rippers with great hooks and pop sensibility, inspired by the less abrasive, more melodically driven side of ’70s punk. 13 brand new songs to full in love with. Summer never tasted so good

After two very intimate solos albums, pianist and singer Gregory Privat returns with PHOENIX, a luminous album celebrating the cycle of life and the constant rebirth from the ashes. A metaphor for the firebird, it's a continuation of the album SOLEY released in 2020. With double bassist Chris Jennings and drummer Tilo Bertholo, this unique trio blends spiritual jazz with urban pop, Creole songs, and electronic music.

Born in Martinique in December 1984, Gre\u0301gory Privat is the son of pianist Jose\u0301 Privat, known for his participation in the internationally recognized Caribbean group, Malavoi. Attracted by the piano at an incredibly young age, he took private lessons from the age of six and devoted himself for 10 years to a classical apprenticeship before turning to improvisation techniques and jazz.

Performers on this recording:

Gregory Privat - piano; Chris Jennings- double bass; Tilo Bertholo - drums

After the first casual meeting at Lessinia Psych Fest 2014 (Maxigross festival in the Lessini Mountains) Miles managed to come back in Italy during spring 2015 to work with the band. In march 2015 they went together in the studio house of the band in the small mountain village of Vaggimal (Verona) to improvise and record one month straight, interrupting the sessions only for a few shows between Verona and Roma. They put few microphones around a big room in the house to catch the general sound in a Daniel Lanois’s style, and they played in the dark of the night without any light to forget the individual sound of each member, focusing only on the main sound of the Music. Miles brought from LA some recordings he made with drummer Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone…) and, starting from that material, they begin to play on that. After these magical musical encounter they became close friends, sharing an house in Verona (Casa Tega), many albums, shows and life experiences, forgetting about these Vaggimal Sessions, that bring inside of itself the magic and the purity of any first meeting. These naked recordings are the only witness of this session.

You could call Wishy's story a lucky one. After prior monikers and iterations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music's semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together. On Triple Seven, Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites' musical synergy proves itself to be a rare one-the kind that sounds like someone striking gold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it's only fitting their much anticipated full length debut is titled Triple Seven, where Wishy's penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally in pillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion. By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitar lessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by trade and often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up in a scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkites instead found themselves writing melodies in their heads while driving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier, more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, their music oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock. The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes and snapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwind couple of years _ exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonic project, making sense of their musical pasts while forging a musical future alongside one another, each of them on a journey of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, Triple Seven is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discovery with the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albums that inspired it.

You could call Wishy's story a lucky one. After prior monikers and iterations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music's semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together. On Triple Seven, Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites' musical synergy proves itself to be a rare one-the kind that sounds like someone striking gold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it's only fitting their much anticipated full length debut is titled Triple Seven, where Wishy's penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally in pillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion. By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitar lessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by trade and often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up in a scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkites instead found themselves writing melodies in their heads while driving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier, more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, their music oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock. The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes and snapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwind couple of years _ exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonic project, making sense of their musical pasts while forging a musical future alongside one another, each of them on a journey of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, Triple Seven is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discovery with the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albums that inspired it.

You could call Wishy's story a lucky one. After prior monikers and iterations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music's semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together. On Triple Seven, Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites' musical synergy proves itself to be a rare one-the kind that sounds like someone striking gold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it's only fitting their much anticipated full length debut is titled Triple Seven, where Wishy's penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally in pillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion. By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitar lessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by trade and often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up in a scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkites instead found themselves writing melodies in their heads while driving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier, more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, their music oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock. The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes and snapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwind couple of years _ exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonic project, making sense of their musical pasts while forging a musical future alongside one another, each of them on a journey of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, Triple Seven is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discovery with the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albums that inspired it.

The Faint has always been perceived as a series of paradoxes: Nebraskans trafficking in electro pop anthems; a five-person outfit who insist on songwriting democracy; punk rockers laying down their guitars for a decidedly untypical kind of punk rock.

Things that don’t make sense at first often make sense later. In the creation of art, when the process is left up to the subconscious mind, when there is no preconceived concept, patterns still always emerge. Themes and recurring images, blurred in the moment, later become clear.

This is the case with The Faint’s sixth album Doom Abuse, an unexpected but also inevitable addition to their compellingly unusual catalog of music.

From 2019 to 2023 Lindsay Reamer worked as a field scientist. With a guitar and a bag of books in tow, she would leave her home in Philadelphia for the postcard scenes of the American landscape to gather data on visitation in National Parks. She counted cars and RVs, surveyed visitors, and made a temporary home for a few weeks at a time wherever she landed. All the while, she collected her own observations like specimens and slowly weaved the songs that would form her debut full-length, `Natural Science.' Recorded throughout 2023 by Lucas Knapp, `Natural Science' paints with a full spectrum. Humor rubs elbows with heartbreak. Acoustic guitars brush up against synthesizers, cradling Reamer as she sings about the American Chestnut tree extinction, employee gossip at a Day's Inn, fishing beside a power plant, turf grass farms, and waking up next to day-old take-out. The indifferent beauty of nature is held up next to the everyday as Reamer does her very best to find clues for navigating the latter by musing upon both. Following the release of her self-produced EP `Lucky' (Dear Life Records) in 2021, Reamer assembled a band with musicians from Philadelphia's vibrant music community and began working her once solo-acoustic songs into full band arrangements. After a brief flirtation with dance music which led to 2022's viral single "Touch Tank," Reamer settled into a sound that lies somewhere in the folkrock-pop matrix, explored with the humor and lightness of songwriters like Sheryl Crow or Melanie. Reamer reflects: "When I heard the songs with the band, I knew it was time to make the record. It felt like something I had been working towards my whole life. I grew up around musicians but I never thought I was good enough to be in a band or even to make my own music. My grandmother Joan gave me voice lessons after school, my mom was an opera singer, and my dad a guitar player. But it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized I could do it. It didn't matter if I could shred on the guitar or something. It was like some illusion shattered." Reamer is a sincere storyteller. The self-doubt and heartbreak expressed in songs like "Spring Song," "Sugar," or "Red Flowers" give way to the triumphant moments of self-acceptance and love in "Lucky," "Necessary," and "Figs and Peaches." `Natural Science' chronicles a path to confidence, an honest reflection of someone with the capacity to hold a deep well of emotion who also makes sure to not take it all too seriously. "Gardens on the land / Castles on the beaches / I trust my hand and / Pluck my figs and peaches," Reamer sings, as she works to reconcile the strange difficulty we have at finding happiness despite the obvious beauty all around us.

"Justin Townes Earle released Kids In The Street, his first record on New West Records, in May of 2017. The album received critical acclaim and further cemented Justin’s legacy as one of the best active songwriters in music. Songs like, “Champagne Corolla” showcased his wry sense of humor as well as his deft ability to build upon the music that came before him while at the same time creating something unique and new. Familiar, inventive, creative, and clever.

Justin would release his second album with New West Records in May of 2019. The Saint of Lost Causes was hailed as one of the best albums of 2019 by Rolling Stone Magazine with “half a dozen or so career classics.” “I was trying to look through the eyes of America,” Earle says. “Because I believe in the idea of America - that everybody’s welcome here and has a right to be here.” Earle tells these American stories in detail and without judgement. While some songs cite historic events like “Flint City Shake It,” and “Don’t Drink The Water,"" other tracks present fictionalized narratives that are no less harrowing, or true-to-life , as heard in ""Appalachian Nightmare,” “The Saint Of Lost Causes,” and “Over Alameda.""

Justin Townes Earle was always a champion of the underdog and All In features in depth looks at the hopeful, and the hopeless. Fueled by empathy, baked in the blues, Justin was never without something poignant or humorous to say. Sadly, Justin passed away in 2020 at the age of 38. ALL IN: Unreleased & Rarities (The New West Years) is a fitting tribute to Justin’s legacy. The collection features many never heard before songs, demos, and cover tunes, spanning his time as a New West Records recording artist."

"Jordan Hamilton's ""Project Freedom"" revolves around the non-traditional ways Jordan applies the Cello to play chords, layer melodies, and create songs. This is a record about breaking limitations and boundaries - a fusion of RnB, Soul, Hip-Hop, Electronic, and Jazz.

Located halfway between Detroit and Chicago, Project Freedom was written in Kalamazoo, Michigan where cellist Jordan Hamilton began his journey as a songwriter, producer, and artist. This is Cello-Beats and Folk-Soul Rhythms.

This introspective journey is narrated by Jordan's lyricism that expresses the wisdom gained through life's lessons at home, chasing dreams, living with loss, and falling in love. These are the lessons that earned him the ability to move through this world all the more free.

This is an album made to accompany you through all of life's changes."

Hardwood Vinyl. Narrow Head's highly anticipated new LP 12th House Rock arrives August 28th on Run For Cover Records. The Houston-based band's latest entry is the distillation of the greatest moments in 90's alternative and hard rock with a fresh set of ears, thirteen tracks of their signature brand of bludgeoning lullabies bursting at the seams with creative ideas, new directions and yes, massive, monolithic riffs. In between the sparkle and smash, open-hearted and emotionally naked songwriting showcases a core piece of the band's identity- showcasing 12th House Rock as one of the best releases of 2020.Delving into deep-seated themes of self loathing, desolation, self-medication, the loss of loved ones and hopeful redemption,12th House Rock is, as the title suggests, a rock-focused LP themed on transition- exploring the vast abyss of darkness just before the sun cracks upon the horizon. Using distorted guitars as their primary vehicle, Narrow Head's wall of riffs add stark contrast to their best quality- deceptively sweet pop melodies that channel the lessons of My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Helmet, Deftones and Guided by Voices all at once.

"Fucked Up formed in 2001 in Toronto, Canada. Meeting each other through the local diy hardcore punk scene they developed a cult following early on which blossomed into a long career of releasing genre expanding music.

""Another Day"" is their 7th full length album, they have released over 60 7” singles, countless hours of open-format guitar music, and toured consistently all over the world since early in their career.

Their first three LPs, “Hidden World,” “the chemistry of common life,” and “David Comes to Life” have all been canonised as classic, critically acclaimed, genre defining efforts. The three to follow, “Glass Boys,” “Dose Your Dreams,” and “One Day” have challenged expectations in scope, style, and delivery, the latter which was written and recorded within the span of 24 hours.

Alongside their LPs, the band have been releasing their more experimental “Zodiac” series since 2006. Fucked Up have released 9 12”s of compositional, genre-less, long format songs (20mins plus) corresponding to the Chinese Zodiac, diving ever deeper into narrative forms including a 4 act opera (year of the horse), a musical palindrome (“onno”).

Fucked Up has toured the world extensively and under extraordinary circumstances – a vegetable oil powered school bus through the mountains of the American West Coast, a literal slow boat to China across the sea of Japan, and of course a humble van on any highway that will have them – and bring the same idiosyncrasy to the stage that they do to their records."

In the early 1990s gangsta rap was becoming more popular. KRS-One took to the mic and continued to write socially conscious raps resulting in the hard-hitting 1992 album Sex And Violence which would be the fifth and final studio album under the Boogie Down Productions name. Produced by KRS-One, Pal Joey, Kenny Parker, D-Square, and Prince Paul, the album explores the darkest sides of the American urban landscape and psyche, with KRS as narrator, detailing all sides of the matrix. While singles like the alarming drum-driven "Duck Down" and the funky-as-hell "We In There" got most of the attention in ‘92, the deeper sequence reveals plenty of additional gems: the history lesson of the dark and dusty "Drug Dealer"; "Ruff Ruff", with scowling MC favorite Freddie Foxxx (aka Bumpy Knuckles); the grooving "Questions and Answers," and the frantic record industry track "How Not To Get Jerked." The album kicks off with an intro skit featuring KRS-One as a DJ in panic needing vinyl which at the time was a dying format while cassettes and CDs became the dominant format. Thirty-two years later vinyl DJs and Hip-Hop vinyl collectors no longer need to panic. Get On Down in partnership with Sony Music's CERTIFIED is proud to bring back to vinyl this underrated gem in the BDP catalog. Featuring one of the dopest album covers by American artist Robert Williams, Sex and Violence is pressed on colored vinyl and packaged in a gatefold jacket with full lyrics.

B2 Recordings is back with a second release that is every bit as good as the first. This one comes from Reece Johnson and is a joyous mix of uplifting disco sounds with a timeless edge. 'Comin' In Hot' is a lose-limbed opener with percussive edgy and low-slung drums topped off with dazzling chords. 'Glass Heart' then brings the funk with more expert looseness and this time some hooky and soulful vocals. 'Sup America' keeps the party rolling with instrumental disco brilliance and a Spanish vocal to add real heat while 'Feelin' The Beat' and 'Got To Be Free' close out with higher tempos but no less class.