Search:lewis of man

For over fifteen years, New England’s When The Deadbolt
Breaks have lurked in the dark corners of underground
metal. With a doom style both psychedelic and unsettling,
their music has been tagged as many different things; heavy,
daunting, overwhelming and unnerving, while the band
shows singer / guitarist Aaron Lewis’s gritty vision of life on
the subcultural fringes of New England society.
 Following five highly acclaimed studio records, a split and a
remix album to date, When The Deadbolt Breaks release
their brand new album, ‘As Hope Valley Burns’.
 The band have carved a niche for themselves within the
interplay of extreme genres. Having played the SXSW, New
England Stoner & Doom Fest to name just a few, they are as
well no less at home in doom and grind than they are in
pummelling sludge or ambient soundscaping, casting forth
triumphant riffs or proffering murder-dirge nods at a volume
level that can only be considered violent.
 When The Deadbolt Breaks have always struck a balance
between the ugly and beauty; long and heavy compositions
wade through detuned, discordant and murky sludge metal
before shifting into melodic ambient space rock territories,
and back again.
 “This album is a unique one for When The Deadbolt Breaks.
We have pushed our boundaries sonically,” band
mastermind Lewis reveals. “The heavy is heavier, and the
mellow, spacial parts are even more so. Akin to our first few
records, we have returned to more aggressive drumming,
and psychedelic spaces, yet this record has a certain depth
and maturity to it that was missing in the past.”
 For fans of Eyehategod, Soilent Green, Nine Inch Nails,
Crowbar, Acid Bath, Stabbing Westward, Skeletonwitch.
 LP pressed on grey vinyl.

All (label, artist and distribution) proceeds of this next record will go to UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agencys' emergency interventions in Ukraine.

Third and closing chapter of the Oyster Tribe series, the revised single edition of Brent Lewis ‘1739’ oozes a mix of breezy outback dreamtime, red earth funk and sun-baked drum virtuosity. Originally issued in 2004 as part of his self-released ‘Drumsex’ album, Lewis’ mystique-imbued tune sculpts a tripped-out hybrid jam out of spoon percs and folk-infused broken beat; and who better than OZ home-boys FIO and Fantastic Man to add their masters' spin to that totemic chugger.

Whilst FIO cranks the BPMs a notch further and beefs up the bass to turn the OG mix into a serious contender for countryside banger of the year, Fantastic Man plays havoc with the whole of Lewis track’s DNA sequence, slicing, dicing and re-hashing its bits and bobs over and over again to form a Southerner variant of the Frankenstein creature, all sight set on busting dancefloors by the dozen.

Each LP sleeve is delivered as a bespoke limited edition, hand-printed and customised by the man himself. Features Jehst, Taja, Jaz Kahina, Vandal Savage, Junior Disprol and Cappo. The return of the “Zack de la Rocha of Ashby de la Zouch”, back in tandem with Chicago producer Spectacular Diagnostics World status 2020-21; a write-off, one to be struck from the record, ‘NULL AND VOID’ if you will. This hasn’t stopped Kid Acne kicking on and bringing what he calls “the difficult fifth album” to the Lewis Recordings megaplex. Full of Yorkshire say-so, his inimitable strain of hip-hop delivers the mind-bending with everyman knowhow, fearlessly “taking out pop chart sucker rappers with a blow dart”. Spectacular Diagnostics (Westside Gunn, Vic Spencer, Conway the Machine, Nolan the Ninja) is back on the boards for Kid Acne’s latest magical mystery tour, strengthening regional alliances with UK heavyweights Cappo, Jehst and Vandal Savage as well as introducing one-to-watch Taja. Driven by the wise man’s testament that thou shalt never use the internet again, Acne shakes off screen burn and heads back to the great (socially distanced) outdoors with a fresh batch of wavy, chaos theorising boom-bap.

Taken from Skinshape’s ‘Umoja’ album with a remix from Manny Talvez & Alae. Both tracks produced and recorded by Skinshape. The ‘Sua Alma’ original version was created to represent the 'diaspora' aspect of Skinshape’s ‘Umoja’ album released in 2020. Most of the album is quite Afro-centric, and for ‘Sua Alma’ he wanted to incorporate a slightly Latin feel. It’s a collaboration with D'Alma who is a Portuguese singer living in London at the time. It’s also an attempt to create something more dancefloor-orientated track. It also features a 4-part Ghanaian percussion section. The ‘Sua Alma Remix’ was remixed by friends Manny and Alae, who used to share Skinshape’s previous studio 'The Arch’. Manny was also playing percussion on some of the ‘Umoja’ album tracks and Alae has been on hand as a keyboard player for Skinshape on one or two occasions.

WHEN TWO LONDON HIP-HOP HEAVYWEIGHTS JOIN FORCES, IT’S GOING TO BE “STYLE SO INCREDIBLE” THE ENIGMA HOWARD STEVENS PRODUCES A HARD HITTING SLAB OF B-BOY
ROCKING HIP-HOP FEATURING THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN SOUND, LEWIS PARKER.

CONSCIOUS STREET LYRICS FLOW EFFORTLESSLY OVER THE UPTEMPO CLASSICALLY STYLED BEAT, WITH A FURIOUS FUNKY SCRATCH CHORUS & REMIX FROM PRODUCER/DJ JUICE. ADD A HOT VIDEO DIRECTED BY RINGZ OV SATURN AND THE
WHOLE HIP HOP PACKAGE IS IN ORDER.

Mimsy describes himself as someone with many interests and few skills, and sure, you can put it that way. But more precisely, he is a seeker and finder who has always felt more at home in the intermediary spaces. Since his first releases on Karaoke Kalk under the names Saucer, Motel and Wunder in 1997, he has mostly been active as Wechsel Garland, working with samples beyond recognition and thus blurring the lines between his own songwriting and the musical material he uses.

In 2011, he ended the project with the album »Dreams Become Things« and is now opening a new chapter as Mimsy with »Ormeology.« The album was ten years in the making and saw the producer work with sounds, voices and text fragments that were gathered over time. The twelve pieces—based on guitar pickings, looped textural sounds, rhythm boxes and shimmering organ sounds—install themselves in the unconscious through sound, melody and subtle rhythmic shifts to send the listener’s perception on a journey into the unknown.

The name Mimsy is a nonce word coined by Lewis Carroll in his famous nonsense poem »Jabberwocky,« a combination of »miserable« and »flimsy,« while the term »Ormeology« refers to the Italian film »Le Orme« (»Footprints on the Moon«), in which the main character is haunted by memories of a fictional film of the same name. While this alone creates a rich thematic frame of references for the album, it does not at all define its themes. Instead, the references are reflected in the methods with which the pieces on »Ormeology« were designed—sound and language orbit freely around one another, images within images are being layered, following their path unconsciously. In »Sans mobile apparent,« the lyrics get to the heart of this: »die Widersprüche aushalten / die Folien übereinanderlegen« (»enduring the contradictions / laying the foils on top of each other.«) Creative frictions emerge not out of binary decision-making patterns, but from additive layering.

Mimsy followed traces forth and back through time and space, collaborating for a few tracks with set designer and musician Lydia Schmidt and letting Wolfram Wire record various lyrics based on automatic writing that were gathered by Mimsy. Furthermore, he asked the photo blogger Lilia Katherine from Brazil and the Canada-based Andrea Hernandez to translate and record his lyrics in their own respective languages. Human global coincidences resulted in collaborations which are presented as discrete and thus make the album as a whole and even more complex meditation on the interplay of the concrete and the abstract. This is best exemplified by the song »Ginster,« throughout which Schmidt and Mimsy’s voices overlap more and more until they enter a sort of call and response pattern, although they never seem to address each other directly.

»Ormeology« is an album that whirrs and flickers, seeking to mediate between the tangible world and the intangible by blurring the boundaries between words and sounds and space. It is an archipelago that is in many ways connected to what surrounds it, while at the same time opening up a space of its own.

As funny as it may sound, Anaïs Mitchell has spent the past 15 years in some kind of hell. OK, not actual hell, but the multi-faceted world of Hadestown, a musical project she began in Vermont in 2006 that has grown into a Tony®- and Grammy®-award-winning Broadway phenomenon with touring editions now delighting audiences as far away as South Korea.

“I experienced so much joy working on Hadestown, but it just kept ramping up and up and requiring more and more attention,” Mitchell admits. “I had to become so single-minded and really put blinders on to my other creative life.” As it did for many artists, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly offered Mitchell a blank slate to reconnect with her own music. The result is a new self-titled album made with close collaborators from Bon Iver, The National and her own band Bonny Light Horseman, Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s Young Man in America.

“I was nine months pregnant when the pandemic reached New York, so we made an 11th hour decision to leave and have the baby in Vermont,” Mitchell recalls. “We left the city and had the baby a week later, and then like everyone, we were in the midst of this unprecedented stillness. It felt like I could see behind me: oh, there’s New York City. There’s Hadestown. There’s my life with just one kid. A certain kind of stress and expectations. In Vermont, we moved onto my family farm and lived in my grandparents’ old house, with a new baby. I’d look at pictures on my phone from a few months earlier and wonder, whose life was that? This record, and the songs that are on it, came out of that time. I got into a flow again that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.”

Dubbed by NPR as “one of the greatest songwriters of her generation,” Mitchell is a master of the worlds of narrative folksong, poetry and balladry. Those talents are evident from the first moments of the new album, as Mitchell narrates what she calls “an unbearably romantic” trip over the Brooklyn Bridge colored by Bon Iver member Michael Lewis’ heartstring-tugging saxophone accompaniment. “Having left New York, I was able to write a love letter to it in a way I never could when I was living there,” she says. “It was like, fuck it. This is how I feel. There is nothing more beautiful than riding over one of the New York bridges at night next to someone who inspires you.”

Produced by Mitchell’s Bonny Light Horseman bandmate Josh Kaufman, the album proceeds to chronicle Mitchell’s reconnection with the Vermont roots that have been so formative in her life and music. “Bright Star” finds her making peace with the idea of being at peace in the familiar setting of her grandparents’ house, while “Revenant” was inspired by paging through a box of journals and letters belonging to herself and her grandmother — “a very pandemic activity,” she says. “That house is literally my happy place. I can picture myself as a kid, in this house, laying on the carpet with a sunbeam coming through the sliding glass door. There’s something about it that is really connected in my mind to my childhood and a very free, imaginative, creative time. “Revenant” has a lot to do with that house and reconnecting with my childhood self.”

Mitchell concedes that she tends “to be someone who thinks it has to be hard in order for it to be good or beautiful,” but that feeling has changed, partly thanks to her deep connection with musicians she’s met through the 37d03d collective established by The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. During the pandemic, some of those artists participated in a “song a day” writing group — an idea Mitchell says is usually “totally opposite of how I roll. But it really helped me to gain access to some kind of trust and intuition and flow. I began a bunch of these songs while doing that.”

“It unlocked something that allowed me to finish a bunch of songs I’d been sitting on, and feeling a bit paralyzed about how to finish them,” she continues. “Because no one was touring, it’s not like I was playing them for anyone before we were in the studio. In other times, I’ve trotted things out in advance. Here, it was like, here’s all these brand new songs. Let’s discover what they can be. That was really exciting.”

That discovery process took flight at Dreamland Recording Studios outside Woodstock, N.Y., which Mitchell describes as “this weird, janky, beautiful church - it’s my favorite studio in the world.” Kaufman, Lewis and Big Red Machine drummer JT Bates formed a core band around Mitchell, while Aaron Dessner and Thomas Bartlett joined the sessions mid-week on guitar and piano, respectively.

After the appropriate COVID tests came back negative, “it was a pretty extraordinary feeling to hug, kiss and share the same space playing together,” Mitchell says. “We went into that world for a week and didn’t leave the studio for any reason. I felt very safe with all those guys. It was warm and joyful.”

Mitchell says this environment brought out unexpected details in the material, which was recorded almost entirely live together in the room. “Sometimes we tried separating things out, like vocals, but we always ended up back in the room together,” she says. Indeed, after spending the better part of a day recording overdubbed versions of “Little Big Girl” that nobody loved, the musicians gave up and tracked it again live. “We got so frustrated that we went in and I was like, I’m just going to sing this as hard as I fucking can. It felt like that’s what the song wanted to be,” Mitchell says. “It felt like all those songs wanted to be recorded as live as possible.” The exception to the rule was Nico Muhly's arrangements for strings and flute, which were added from New York City afterward.

Mitchell will debut the new material during various headline tours in the U.S. and Europe in 2022, at which she’ll be accompanied by players from the album. On stage, she can’t wait to further hone the sights, sounds and scenes that bring the songs to such vivid life. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write in the voice of other characters, especially with Hadestown. It’s fun for me, but these songs are not that,” she says. “Weirdly, they’re all me. The narrator is me. That’s why it felt right to self-title the album. It felt like after so many years of working on telling other stories, now here are some of mine.”

As funny as it may sound, Anaïs Mitchell has spent the past 15 years in some kind of hell. OK, not actual hell, but the multi-faceted world of Hadestown, a musical project she began in Vermont in 2006 that has grown into a Tony®- and Grammy®-award-winning Broadway phenomenon with touring editions now delighting audiences as far away as South Korea.

“I experienced so much joy working on Hadestown, but it just kept ramping up and up and requiring more and more attention,” Mitchell admits. “I had to become so single-minded and really put blinders on to my other creative life.” As it did for many artists, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly offered Mitchell a blank slate to reconnect with her own music. The result is a new self-titled album made with close collaborators from Bon Iver, The National and her own band Bonny Light Horseman, Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s Young Man in America.

“I was nine months pregnant when the pandemic reached New York, so we made an 11th hour decision to leave and have the baby in Vermont,” Mitchell recalls. “We left the city and had the baby a week later, and then like everyone, we were in the midst of this unprecedented stillness. It felt like I could see behind me: oh, there’s New York City. There’s Hadestown. There’s my life with just one kid. A certain kind of stress and expectations. In Vermont, we moved onto my family farm and lived in my grandparents’ old house, with a new baby. I’d look at pictures on my phone from a few months earlier and wonder, whose life was that? This record, and the songs that are on it, came out of that time. I got into a flow again that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.”

Dubbed by NPR as “one of the greatest songwriters of her generation,” Mitchell is a master of the worlds of narrative folksong, poetry and balladry. Those talents are evident from the first moments of the new album, as Mitchell narrates what she calls “an unbearably romantic” trip over the Brooklyn Bridge colored by Bon Iver member Michael Lewis’ heartstring-tugging saxophone accompaniment. “Having left New York, I was able to write a love letter to it in a way I never could when I was living there,” she says. “It was like, fuck it. This is how I feel. There is nothing more beautiful than riding over one of the New York bridges at night next to someone who inspires you.”

Produced by Mitchell’s Bonny Light Horseman bandmate Josh Kaufman, the album proceeds to chronicle Mitchell’s reconnection with the Vermont roots that have been so formative in her life and music. “Bright Star” finds her making peace with the idea of being at peace in the familiar setting of her grandparents’ house, while “Revenant” was inspired by paging through a box of journals and letters belonging to herself and her grandmother — “a very pandemic activity,” she says. “That house is literally my happy place. I can picture myself as a kid, in this house, laying on the carpet with a sunbeam coming through the sliding glass door. There’s something about it that is really connected in my mind to my childhood and a very free, imaginative, creative time. “Revenant” has a lot to do with that house and reconnecting with my childhood self.”

Mitchell concedes that she tends “to be someone who thinks it has to be hard in order for it to be good or beautiful,” but that feeling has changed, partly thanks to her deep connection with musicians she’s met through the 37d03d collective established by The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. During the pandemic, some of those artists participated in a “song a day” writing group — an idea Mitchell says is usually “totally opposite of how I roll. But it really helped me to gain access to some kind of trust and intuition and flow. I began a bunch of these songs while doing that.”

“It unlocked something that allowed me to finish a bunch of songs I’d been sitting on, and feeling a bit paralyzed about how to finish them,” she continues. “Because no one was touring, it’s not like I was playing them for anyone before we were in the studio. In other times, I’ve trotted things out in advance. Here, it was like, here’s all these brand new songs. Let’s discover what they can be. That was really exciting.”

That discovery process took flight at Dreamland Recording Studios outside Woodstock, N.Y., which Mitchell describes as “this weird, janky, beautiful church - it’s my favorite studio in the world.” Kaufman, Lewis and Big Red Machine drummer JT Bates formed a core band around Mitchell, while Aaron Dessner and Thomas Bartlett joined the sessions mid-week on guitar and piano, respectively.

After the appropriate COVID tests came back negative, “it was a pretty extraordinary feeling to hug, kiss and share the same space playing together,” Mitchell says. “We went into that world for a week and didn’t leave the studio for any reason. I felt very safe with all those guys. It was warm and joyful.”

Mitchell says this environment brought out unexpected details in the material, which was recorded almost entirely live together in the room. “Sometimes we tried separating things out, like vocals, but we always ended up back in the room together,” she says. Indeed, after spending the better part of a day recording overdubbed versions of “Little Big Girl” that nobody loved, the musicians gave up and tracked it again live. “We got so frustrated that we went in and I was like, I’m just going to sing this as hard as I fucking can. It felt like that’s what the song wanted to be,” Mitchell says. “It felt like all those songs wanted to be recorded as live as possible.” The exception to the rule was Nico Muhly's arrangements for strings and flute, which were added from New York City afterward.

Mitchell will debut the new material during various headline tours in the U.S. and Europe in 2022, at which she’ll be accompanied by players from the album. On stage, she can’t wait to further hone the sights, sounds and scenes that bring the songs to such vivid life. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write in the voice of other characters, especially with Hadestown. It’s fun for me, but these songs are not that,” she says. “Weirdly, they’re all me. The narrator is me. That’s why it felt right to self-title the album. It felt like after so many years of working on telling other stories, now here are some of mine.”

First released by Britain’s then foremost folk label, Transatlantic Records in 1970, Storyteller’s first album is a forgotten gem of Psychedelic Folk Prog Rock. Warm and silky production courtesy of Andrew Bown and Peter Frampton, fabulous dual vocals and a wistful arrangement of top-drawer UK Folk Prog, make Storyteller a diamond worth digging into. Around 1969, after being a part of the band The Other Two on Decca Records, working with people like Chuck Berry, Duane Eddy and Jerry Lee Lewis, and touring with Chuck Berry and The Animals, Caroline Attard joined a new band that was being formed; Storyteller. A quintet who followed their own inclination, ignoring current fashions and just doing what seemed to come naturally, Storyteller is a crate-digger’s delight. Up there with Fairport Convention, Jefferson Airplane and Steeleye Span, Storyteller were steeped in folklore tales such as on ‘Ballad Of The Three Laps’, bringing the true spirit of folk alive in their own unique way. With songs written primarily by Roger Moon, and Terry Durham as muse of inspiration with his paintings and wonderful Yorkshire stories, Storyteller’s debut has the authentic and honest vibe of the real McCoy. No longer confined to being coveted by collectors and those in the know, this lush remastered reissue via Svart Records comes on gatefold vinyl with updated liner notes and interview. If you treasure Folk, Prog and Psychedelic Rock, make sure this is a tale you don’t miss out on!

Remastered 15 year Anniversary edition of Jenny
Lewis’s first solo album from 2006. The album
comes with all-new gatefold packaging featuring
never-before-seen photos by Autumn de Wilde.
 Known and loved by many as the frontwoman of
Rilo Kiley, Jenny’s vocal and songwriting gifts have
continued to blossom at a rapid rate since that
band’s first album in 2000. This may be her solo
debut but there’s nothing virginal about it.
 The album was lovingly crafted together during
short spurts of recording activity in the San
Fernando valley, Portland, Oregon and Lincoln,
Nebraska - due to the shared production duties of
celebrated finger-picking guitar prodigy M. Ward
and Nebraska’s resident production genius Mike
Mogis.
 The magnificent backing vocals come courtesy of
gospel singers Chandra and Leigh Watson (the
Watson Twins). Talented friends were roped in
between tours and recording sessions and standout track a cover of the Travelling Wilbury’s ‘handle
with care’ - with its phenomenal sing-a-long
crescendo features vocals shared equally by
Jenny, M. Ward, Conor Oberst and Ben Gibbard.

"Everyone has their own memories and associations with the great songs of the classic films of the 80s and 90s! AT THE MOVIES put the Corona-related time in quarantine to good use and put their soft spot into action, creating unique new interpretations of these classic Soundtrack hymns. The initial spark for this project was ignited by Chris Laney (PRETTY MAIDS), who chatted about the idea with his musician colleagues Allan Sørensen (PRETTY MAIDS, ROYAL HUNT) and Morten Sandager (PRETTY MAIDS, MERCENARY) as well as Björn ""Speed"" Strid (THE NIGHT FLIGHT ORCHESTRA, SOILWORK) and AT THE MOVIES was born. Metal-Heavyweights such as Pontus Norgren (HAMERFALL), Pontus Egberg (KING DIAMOND, WOLF) and Linnéa Vikström Egg (KAMELOT, THERION) as well as illustrious guests such as Ronnie Atkins (PRETTY MAIDS), Jacob Hansen (producer of VOLBEAT, PRIMAL FEAR) and Bruce Kulick (ex-KISS) completed the project, from which the albums ""The Soundtrack Of Your Life"" with Vol.1 (eighties) and Vol.2 (nineties) emerged. Featured are evergreens such “No Easy Way Out”, “Maniac”, “St. Elmo's Fire "", ""The Power Of Love "", ""The Heat Is On"", ""The Neverending Story"", ""The One And Only "", ""(I Just) Died In Your Arms"", ""(You Drive Me) Crazy"", ""Heaven Is A Place On Earth "", ""Crush "", ""I've Been Thinking About You"" and ""Venus""- all catchy tunes that you know and love, in a new, exciting and fascinating metal outfit. "

Comprised of the legendary former Judas Priest guitarist KK Downing and vocalist Tim “Ripper” Owens, KK’s Priest took the planet by storm with their first album "Sermons Of The Sinner".

Highly praised by Priest fans, Heavy Metal enthusiasts and the Metal press alike (Loudwire, Metal Sucks, Spin, Metal Injection and many more) while charting all around the world, “Sermons Of The Sinner” is incontestably our hard rock highlight of the year.

"In Vivo" is the result of the photographic work of Klavdij Sluban at the Fleury-Mérogis Young Offender Institution (France) from 1995 to 2016 Beds in addition to his work from Izalco prison, located in El Salvador, from 2008 [visiting rooms] connected to the music of Gareth Davis.

Gareth Davis is an artist, composer and musician living in Amsterdam. He plays clarinet(s), the result of a somewhat impulsive purchase whilst window shopping in Covent Garden, London, around ten years before the turn of the century. The serendipitous location of a rather wonderful (and equally important, rather cheap) second hand record shop less than 10m from the bus stop required for seven years of schooling, combined with delivering newspapers on a daily basis, lead to a somewhat eclectic, dusty and generally unclassified taste in music.

The result. Activity covering sonic art and contemporary classical music through rock, improvisation and noise with collaborations that have included the premiering of new written pieces by composers such as Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger, Toshio Hosokawa and Jonathan Harvey, soloist with orchestras including the SWR Symphonieorchester, Warsaw Philharmonic and Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, performances with groups and performers ranging from the Neue Vocalsolisten and Arditti Quartet through to improvisers Elliott Sharp and Frances Marie Uitti, electronic artists Robin Rimbaud and Merzbow and multimedia work with artists including Christian Marclay and Peter Greenaway.

"In Vivo" is his second solo release after to have recorded a bunch of collaborative albums with artists such as Scanner, Machinefabriek, Steven R. Smith, Kleefstra Brothers, Frances-Marie Uitti, Merzbow, Adain Baker, Duane Pitre and more...

Klavdij Sluban, winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography 2009, of the Leica Prize (2004) and of the Niépce Prize (2000), main French prize in photography, is a French photographer of Slovenian origin born in Paris in 1963.

He develops a rigorous and coherent body of work, nourished by literature, never inspired by immediate and sensational current affairs, making him one of the most interesting photographers of his generation. The Balkans, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean, Central America, Russia, China and the Antarctic (first artistic mission in the Kerguelen islands) can be read as many successive steps of an in-depth study of a patient proximity to the encountered real.

His images have been shown in such leading institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Photography of Tokyo, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Rencontres d’Arles, the Museum of Photography in Helsinki, the Fine Arts Museum in Canton, the Musée Beaubourg, the Museum of Texas Tech University. His many books include East to East (published simultaneously by Actes Sud, Dewi Lewis, Petliti, Braus, Apeiron & Lunwerg with a text by Erri de Luca), Entre Parenthèses, (Photo Poche, Actes Sud), Transverses, (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) and Balkans -Transit, with a text by François Maspero (Seuil). Since 1995, Sluban has been photographing teenagers in jails. In each prison he organizes workshops with the young offenders to share his passion. First originated in France, in the prison of Fleury-Mérogis with support of Henri Cartier-Bresson during 7 years, as well as Marc Riboud and William Klein punctually. This commitment was pursued in the disciplinary camps of Eastern Europe –Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldavia, Latvia – and in the disciplinary centres of Moscow and St Petersburg as well as in Ireland. From 2007 to 2012, Sluban has been working in Central America with imprisoned youngsters belonging to maras (gangs) in Guatemala and Salvador. In 2015, he started photographing imprisoned teenagers in Brazil. In 2013, the musée Niépce showed a retrospective of K.Sluban’s work, After Darkness, 1995-2012. In 2015/16, he was awarded the Villa Kujoyama Residence in Kyoto, Japan. K.Sluban is member of national and international jurys, such as prix Niépce, prix de la Jeune Photographie de Niort, prix Leica, All About Photo…

Following their recent Difference and Repetition, A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze 2LP/CD this limited 7'' edition features The Tears of Nietszche on side A with Richard Pinhas as guest musician and Vecteur d'abolition on side B with the voice of Gilles Deleuze.

Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of a discography rich with 10 albums. The band is now composed of Jacques Barbéri (also a science fiction author), Laurent Pernice (ex-member of the French industrial band Nox) and Philippe Perreaudin (also coordinator of several compilations and reissues: Legendary Pink Dots, Un Département, Nino Ferrer Revisited, Ptôse, Hardy FoxŠ). Literature, and particularly science fiction, is a leitmotiv in the band's work. Antoine Volodine, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll or J. G. Ballard have been invoked many times. In recent years, Palo Alto has multiplied musical collaborations with, among others, The Residents, Ptôse, Klimperei, Tuxedomoon... From industrial music to inextricable electronic ramifications, by making a detour through improvisation, the musical universe of Palo Alto is multifaceted.

BARBARA LEWIS had already enjoyed a career of hits and million-seeling records for Atlantic before recording her ‘Many Grooves’ album for Enterprise in 1970. It was to be her final album before bowing out of the limelight. Fortunately it gave us the sublime “The Stars”, a crossover masterpiece that remains one of her most cherished moments.

In March 2020 Elton was forced to pause his record breaking Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour due to the unfolding COVID pandemic. As the world began to shut down, different projects presented themselves with artists Elton had enjoyed getting to know through his Apple Music show Rocket Hour. This was the beginning of one of Elton's boldest and most interesting records to date that he has billed ‘The Lockdown Sessions’. This album saw Elton coming full circle and returning to his roots as a session musician. While it was no easy feat recording during a pandemic, a completely new way of working for Elton, he leaned into the challenge with some magnificent results.

Kicking off with current single ‘Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)’with Dua Lipa, the album takes the listener on a heady journey through many different genres, all held together with expert finesse and understanding by one of the greatest champions of music of our time. Much more than a mere collaboration album, ‘The Lockdown Sessions’ is a dazzlingly diverse collection of 16 tracks with 10 brand new unreleased tracks that celebrates togetherness and sees Elton collaborating with an unparalleled range of artists only he could draw together. The enduring influence of his musical milestone with one of the most ambitious projects ever conceived. An unprecedented 20+ artists feature spanning an unbelievably vast range of genres, generations, cultures, continents and more, each contributing a unique style to the album that is sure to hold its place amongst one of pop and rock’s greatest songbooks. ‘The Lockdown Sessions’ sees Elton collaborate with GRAMMY Award winning producer Andrew Watt on five of the tracks.

In Elton’s words: “The last thing I expected to do during lockdown was make an album. But, as the pandemic went on, one‐off projects kept cropping up. Some of the recording sessions had to be done remotely, via Zoom, which I’d obviously never done before. Some of the sessions were recorded under very stringent safety regulations: working with another artist, but separated by glass screens. But all the tracks I worked on were really interesting and diverse, stuff that was completely different to anything I’m known for, stuff that took me out of my comfort zone into completely new territory. And I realised there was something weirdly familiar about working like this. At the start of my career, in the late 60s, I worked as a session musician. Working with different artists during lockdown reminded me of that. I’d come full circle: I was a session musician again. And it was still a blast.”

An unparalleled career that has forever changed the cultural landscape, Elton John’s collaborations with Bernie Taupin and others continue to shape the cultural landscape, break records, top charts and win new fans across the generations. We’ve had the book, the film, the farewell tour, the fashion collections and the greatest hits. And now with ‘The Lockdown Sessions’ available on digital formats, fans can enter Elton’s new world which is no doubt another fitting addition to his oeuvre.

In 1971, Bulbous Creation poured what little personal surplus they had into a full day of recording at Cavern Studios, tracking enough material for a full length album. The band wouldn’t stay together long enough to save up for a custom pressing on Rock. Singer/guitarist Paul Parkinson was deeply individualistic, and left to perform his songs as he thought they should be, as a solo act. He preferred coffee shops to concert halls, and would stick to his craft another 20 years before hanging it up. Drummer Horstmann followed suit. Jim “Bugs” Wine and guitarist Alan Lewis soldiered on, shortening their name to the more sensible Creation and adding vocalist Wayne Austin, dynamic drummer Tommy Ward, and guitarist Roger Sewell. The Bulbous Creation LP was nearly doomed to oblivion, but for the efforts of Rich Haupt, who issued an unauthorized eight song LP in 1995 on his Rockadelic imprint. Lewis died in 1998 of esophageal cancer. When Paul Parkinson died of leukemia in 2001, a lone copy turned up amongst his possessions, with piece of mind that someone, somewhere, was listening.”

MILKY CLEAR VINYL.

''The lightness of the C86 Sarah Records guitars come with the significant counterweight of more ominous Factory Records basslines.The lyrics and vocals are stark, sandpapery and sardonic, akin to Jonathan Richman, Kiwi Jr and, Bodega.'' Ducks Ltd. - EP Review - God Is In The TV
Toronto’s Ducks Ltd. (formerly Ducks Unlimited), the bright jangle-pop duo of Tom McGreevy (lead vocal, guitar, bass, keyboards) and Evan Lewis (guitar, bass, drum programming), accomplish the impossible. The pair craft songs that play to very specific inspirations without drowning underneath them—immediately evidenced on their critically acclaimed EP, Get Bleak, and sharpened on Modern Fiction, their debut LP. “The Servants, The Clean, The Chills, The Bats, Television Personalities, Felt,” Evan rattles off. “Look Blue Go Purple is one I reference a lot with our production.” Echoes of ‘80s indiepop abound, but they never overwhelm. This is not a nostalgic record, after all, nor is it a derivative one. Instead, across 10 cheery-sounding songs, Ducks Ltd. explore contemporary society in decline, examining large scale human disaster through personal turmoil (hence the title, taken from a university course called Gnosticism and Nihilism in Modern Fiction, influenced by Graham Greene novels. Bookish indie fans, look no further.)

Writing the album was intimate. Tom drafted the nucleus of a song on an unplugged electric guitar and brought it over to Evan’s apartment, where the pair sat in his bedroom, placing percussive beats from a drum machine under nascent melodies, passing a bass back and forth, adding organs and bridges where necessary. “It’s computer music trying extremely hard not to sound like computer music,” Tom jokes. Fearful that limited and expensive studio time would kneecap the project creatively, eroding their charming naivete, the pair re-recorded the album in a storage space owned by Evan’s boss. Ornamentation through collaboration followed: there’s Aaron Goldstein on Pedal Steel in the Go-Betweens’ “Cattle and Cane”-channeling interlude “Patience Wearing Thin,” Eliza Niemi on cello (“18 Cigarettes,” a song loosely inspired by a 1997 Oasis performance of “Don’t Go Away”), and backing harmonies from Carpark labelmates The Beths (on an ode to friendship at a distance, “How Lonely Are You?,” “Always There,” and on the sped-up Syd Barrett stylings of “Under The Rolling Moon.”) While in his native Australia due to covid-19, Evan worked closely with producer James Cecil (The Goon Sax, Architecture in Helsinki) on Modern Fiction’s finishing touches—at one point, in the mountains of the Macedon Ranges in Victoria, recorded a string quartet (featured on “Fit to Burst,” “Always There,” “Sullen Leering Hope,” “Twere Ever Thus,” “Grand Final Day.”)

It’s danceable, depressive fun, with some relief: in “Always There” and “Sullen Leering Hope,” Modern Fiction’s faithful heart. “There’s a tendency in my writing, because of my world view, to be very bleak.” Tom explains. “A quality I don’t always see in myself and really appreciate in others is the courage to go on.” And yet, the record manages resiliency—enough for pop fans to fall in love with.

MILKY CLEAR VINYL.

''The lightness of the C86 Sarah Records guitars come with the significant counterweight of more ominous Factory Records basslines.The lyrics and vocals are stark, sandpapery and sardonic, akin to Jonathan Richman, Kiwi Jr and, Bodega.'' Ducks Ltd. - EP Review - God Is In The TV
Toronto’s Ducks Ltd. (formerly Ducks Unlimited), the bright jangle-pop duo of Tom McGreevy (lead vocal, guitar, bass, keyboards) and Evan Lewis (guitar, bass, drum programming), accomplish the impossible. The pair craft songs that play to very specific inspirations without drowning underneath them—immediately evidenced on their critically acclaimed EP, Get Bleak, and sharpened on Modern Fiction, their debut LP. “The Servants, The Clean, The Chills, The Bats, Television Personalities, Felt,” Evan rattles off. “Look Blue Go Purple is one I reference a lot with our production.” Echoes of ‘80s indiepop abound, but they never overwhelm. This is not a nostalgic record, after all, nor is it a derivative one. Instead, across 10 cheery-sounding songs, Ducks Ltd. explore contemporary society in decline, examining large scale human disaster through personal turmoil (hence the title, taken from a university course called Gnosticism and Nihilism in Modern Fiction, influenced by Graham Greene novels. Bookish indie fans, look no further.)

Writing the album was intimate. Tom drafted the nucleus of a song on an unplugged electric guitar and brought it over to Evan’s apartment, where the pair sat in his bedroom, placing percussive beats from a drum machine under nascent melodies, passing a bass back and forth, adding organs and bridges where necessary. “It’s computer music trying extremely hard not to sound like computer music,” Tom jokes. Fearful that limited and expensive studio time would kneecap the project creatively, eroding their charming naivete, the pair re-recorded the album in a storage space owned by Evan’s boss. Ornamentation through collaboration followed: there’s Aaron Goldstein on Pedal Steel in the Go-Betweens’ “Cattle and Cane”-channeling interlude “Patience Wearing Thin,” Eliza Niemi on cello (“18 Cigarettes,” a song loosely inspired by a 1997 Oasis performance of “Don’t Go Away”), and backing harmonies from Carpark labelmates The Beths (on an ode to friendship at a distance, “How Lonely Are You?,” “Always There,” and on the sped-up Syd Barrett stylings of “Under The Rolling Moon.”) While in his native Australia due to covid-19, Evan worked closely with producer James Cecil (The Goon Sax, Architecture in Helsinki) on Modern Fiction’s finishing touches—at one point, in the mountains of the Macedon Ranges in Victoria, recorded a string quartet (featured on “Fit to Burst,” “Always There,” “Sullen Leering Hope,” “Twere Ever Thus,” “Grand Final Day.”)

It’s danceable, depressive fun, with some relief: in “Always There” and “Sullen Leering Hope,” Modern Fiction’s faithful heart. “There’s a tendency in my writing, because of my world view, to be very bleak.” Tom explains. “A quality I don’t always see in myself and really appreciate in others is the courage to go on.” And yet, the record manages resiliency—enough for pop fans to fall in love with.

The popular #Ibiza compilation series returns on July 2nd with its fifth installment, #Ibiza 2021. The album brings together tracks and remixes from some of the world’s biggest names in dance music, including Claptone, Chicane, Sammy Porter, David Morales, Secondcity and Mark Knight. The collection also presents the hottest breakout tracks set to grace the island this year, including Gettoblaster’s recent Beatport number 1 ‘H O U S E’, and Jodie Harsh’s current UK radio hit ‘My House’. Radio promo: Jodie Harsh - My House: Playlisted on BBC Radio 1 (B-List) / No.1 in UK Upfront Club Chart. Other promo: Claptone - Zero: One of the biggest DJ names in Ibiza with his Masquerade parties at Pacha, Claptone moves up to No.41 in this year’s Top 100 DJ’s global rank. Zero is the first single from his upcoming third album.

The Toolroom Family is happy to announce the release of KC Lights' brand new single 'Cold Light' that lands as the highly anticipated follow up to his global hit 'Girl’ which, in spite of the global shutdowns of clubs and festivals last year went on to be the ‘stay at home’ summer anthem for 2020.

‘Girl’ dominated the airwaves with BBC Radio 1 daytime playlist inclusions, KISS FM, Capital Dance, Sirius XM in the US and specialist playlists all over the world. It has now amassed over 5m streams on Spotify alone and still going strong.

As we move further into 2021, timed right on the back of some of his most recent stellar remixes for James Hype, Topic, Blinkie, Lost Kings and Nightlapse, KC Lights returns to lift our bleak spirits with the aptly named ‘Cold Light’.

He has collaborated with UK singer, songwriter Leo Stannard, who is being hailed as one of the most talented and exciting songwriter / vocalists to emerge in recent years, which is quite impressive during these times of quarantines and lockdowns. Most recently, Leo featured on CamelPhat’s track ‘Blackbirds’ which is featured on the Camels album, ‘Dark Matter.” He may also be recognized for his work with Maverick Sabre, Tom Odell, Rae Morris, Lewis Mokler and many more.

‘Cold Light’ is signature KC Lights with a stripped back groove and tribal drums complimented by Leo’s sublime vocal which takes the track to a whole new level! It’s feels like another anthem in making from this emerging star and with a club mix and a 6am remix, it really is the perfect tune to take us into the promise of lighter and warmer months ahead.

The UK’s love affair with American soul music blossomed in the
mid 1960s, with the launch of the Tamla-Motown record label in
Britain. But by the end of the decade this passion took on a
distinctly homegrown twist with a new movement that grew out
of the North of England and Midlands’ underground soul and
R&B scene. It was here at dancehalls and clubs such as
Manchester’s Twisted Wheel and the Wigan Casino that
devotees danced the night away to uptempo, joyous US soul
records that always came with a heavy beat. Pretty soon the
movement had a name: Northern Soul. This collection is the
next best thing and it is all on vinyl, exactly how the movement’s
fans originally heard them

Double Ultra Clear LP, Gatefold Jacket, Insert, Printed Inner Sleeves
A graduate from the prestigious Berklee College of Music, Ashe has been lauded by the likes of The FADER who raved about her ‘effortless voice’; People called her music, ‘deeply emotional yet so fun,’ Consequence of Sound
described her songs as, ‘accessible yet emotional’ and NME declared she’s ‘a
formidable new force in the pop world,’ among other accolades. Ashe’s touring resume includes performances at Coachella with Big Gigantic, and opening
slots for The Chainsmokers, LAUV, Louis The Child, Lewis Capaldi and more.
On TikTok Ashe gained 1 million followers, hitting over 2.5 billion video views
and 2.5 million videos created. On Instagram she has over 950K followers and
growing, approaching 520K followers on Twitter, and over 7.3 million monthly
listeners on Spotify. Her double EP Moral of the Story Chapters 1 & 2 is out now.
In 2020, Ashe also released the single ‘Save Myself,’ which garnered over a
million streams a week last summer, while the official music video saw #SaveMyselfMV trend on Twitter worldwide after its debut, including the U.S. at #5.
She recently contributed an original song, ‘The Same,’ to the new film and
soundtrack, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, her second placement in the
wildly popular Netflix franchise.
Ashe made her stunning late-night TV debut alongside Niall Horan on The Late
Late Show with James Corden, taped at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall and
her daytime debut on Ellen at the top of 2021. ‘Till Forever Falls Apart’ is the
first hint of more exciting new music which Ashe and FINNEAS recently performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Ashe’s debut album Ashlyn includes 14 songs
which she describes as ‘...deeply reflective and honest, full of stories of my
experiences with fear and pain and turning those hard things into joy and independence.
I’m an experiential writer and there was no way I was going to make an album
that didn’t address my personal journey, from my brother’s death this last year
to my own experiences with emotional abuse. I think you have to be vulnerable
to create something really great and I believe I did that. Writing this album was
also an opportunity to show that I’m not just a songwriter and a singer but a
producer and a musician with a very clear vision for my art.
Joni Mitchell refers to herself like a bee, gathering stories like pollen and trying
to make honey from it, ‘whether or not the flavor suits people is something
beyond my control.’ I really tried to take that approach to writing this album,
making something I loved above everything else. I couldn’t be more proud of
Ashlyn and I hope many people happen to love it too.”

It may be his fifth album, but Saturday Night, Sunday Morning marks the start of chapter two for Jake Bugg. Arguably his most complete and coherent record to date, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning manages to combine a love of ABBA, the Beach Boys, Supertramp and the Bee Gees, with a contemporary pop sound: one that’s already spawned his most ubiquitous song in years via euphoric lead single, All I Need. “I knew what I was looking for this time around,” the 27-year-old says, firmly. “And I feel like I accomplished it.” It’s almost 10 years since a two-fingered Bugg burst onto the scene with his eponymous debut, one that topped the UK album charts and saw the then 18-year-old from Nottingham fêted as the next Bob Dylan. A Rick Rubin-produced follow up, Shangri La, quickly followed. But progress stalled with Bugg’s third, largely self-produced, record, On My One, in 2016. “I was having a hard time on that third record,” Bugg admits, five years removed. “The support from the industry wasn’t what it was. All those people telling you how great you are weren’t there anymore. It does feel like the rug’s been swept from under your feet.” What that record provided, however – along with its comparatively stripped-back follow up, Hearts That Strain (2017) – was a much-needed course corrector: one that set Bugg on the upward trajectory he finds himself on today. “When I came to terms with that was when I left the ego at the door,” he says. “It didn’t work out. But it led here. And this is probably my strongest record." It’s testament to Bugg’s rediscovered confidence that Saturday Night, Sunday Morning – a nod to the debut novel by Nottingham author Alan Sillitoe – sees him working with some of his highest profile collaborators to date, most notably American songwriters Andrew Watt and Ali Tamposi, best known for their work with pop heavyweights Post Malone, Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, Camila Cabello. “I was looking for how I can incorporate my sound for a more modern era. And I kind of struck gold working with Andrew Watt and Ali Tamposi,” Bugg says. Convening in LA, the first track the trio wrote together is the jealousy-inflected About Last Night, a song about the “insecurities you go through as a young person in a relationship with someone.” “It’s got such dark undertones, which I love,” Bugg says, of a song that showcases a newly discovered, Beach Boys-esque falsetto. “But it’s also very, very pop. That’s what I’ve always loved. With ABBA, with Supertramp. I love pop music. But when you can get it to be dark, I love it even more.” It’s a trick the trio repeated again on Scene, Bugg’s personal favourite from the album and a song that best encapsulates the combination of old and new: Watt’s George Harrison-esquire guitar brushing up against contemporary melodic choices by Tamposi. “I love writing with her,” Bugg says of the Havana hitmaker. “She brought that women’s perspective. And I knew that I’d got that balance of what I wanted. That old school chorus with contemporary verses. That to me was my favourite song when I wrote it, and it still is.” Perhaps the biggest example of Bugg’s newfound ego-less approach to writing, however, came in the shape of Downtown, a song that grew from an idea by Jamie Hartman (Celeste, Lewis Capaldi, Rag'n'Bone Man), and sees Bugg deploy the higher range of his voice to ethereal, ’60s Bee Gees effect. “Usually, the initial spark of an idea comes from me. And when it doesn't, it sometimes loses my attention,” Bugg admits. On Downtown, however, he relished his role as arranger: “Because there were a lot of moving parts and chords, it was almost like a puzzle,” he says. “I’d never approached a song like that before. “What I’ve been enjoying on this record is the collaborative process,” he continues. Working with people, writing with people. Because I’ve realised all I really want to achieve is to be the best writer I can possibly be. And I think by working with other people, it allows you to learn a lot as well.” It’s a theory Bugg has put to the test during lockdown, when he was approached by his manager about writing the soundtrack to an upcoming documentary, The Happiest Man In The World, about Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho. “It’s kind of a completely different experimental outlet,” Bugg explains of his first ever score. “I approach my own work quite professionally. But with this I can just switch off and go into a different world. And it’s been brilliant – I’ve had to learn different styles of guitar: bossa nova, samba. It’s a bit Vangelis, who’s probably my favourite artist – which may surprise people.” Possibly. But you get the impression that surprising is what Bugg likes to do. “I don’t like to be stuck doing the same thing,” he admits. “And that’s what this record Saturday Night, Sunday Morning was. I wanted to push myself. I’m always learning new influences. I’m careful not to get stuck on the same thing. “It’s not going to be right every time. It’s not going to be good every time,” he continues. “But if that’s the process it takes to get to this record, where people are loving the songs again, then that’s the journey we have to take.” For Jake Bugg, chapter two starts now. New album ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’ is out August 20th on RCA Records

’Angelo lost his shit over it. Aaliyah’s 3rd favourite track of all time is on it. David Bowie rocked up with it to a TV interview, declaring it “the most exciting sound of contemporary soul music”.

In 1996, Lewis Taylor released his self-titled masterpiece. A true modern classic, it’s an album that was years ahead of its time. Forget 25 years ago, it could easily have been made in 2021. An effortless blend of neo-soul, sophisticated pop, smart grooves and laid-back white funk, it enjoyed rapturous reviews from critics and music legends alike. But the album never managed to make an impact and given what was likely a token vinyl release at the time, the original records have long since been near-impossible to find. Lewis Taylor’s Lewis Taylor remains a holy relic for some and criminally unknown to most.

Lewis Taylor’s impeccable influences created a dazzling sonic palette: the LP as a whole suggests the visionary brilliance of Prince; the vocal stylings evoke the yearning power of Marvin Gaye; the effortless guitar playing shares the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix; the haunting tones conjure Tricky; the innovative production and engineering invite comparisons to studio mavericks like Todd Rundgren and Brian Eno; the multi-layered, complex harmonies flash on Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson; the dark, drama is reminiscent of both Scott Walker and Stevie Wonder; the complex arrangements create textures and moods with the feel of Shuggie Otis on Inspiration Information; the bold experimentation is akin to progressive artists like Faust and Tangerine Dream; the atmosphere is in conversation with Jeff Buckley’s Grace… and we could go on. That might all sound like marketing hyperbole, but not as far as Be With is concerned. It is a genuine wonder how an album this good could’ve passed so many people by.

But despite all the reference points, the similarities are really only skin-deep because the album sounds truly original. It occupies its own distinct, strange universe that feels dark and brooding one moment, bright and joyous the next. Ultimately, Taylor sounds like Taylor.

Although you wouldn’t know it from the credits, the album wasn’t the work of Lewis alone. Sabina Smyth gets an executive producer credit on the original sleeve, but in fact she worked with Lewis on the production and arrangements, did a lot of the backing vocals and she co-wrote Track, Song, Lucky and Damn with Lewis.

Lewis clarified all this in a Soul Jones interview with Dan Dodds in 2016. He explains how not giving Sabina the credit she was due at the time was an unfortunate consequence of where his head was at and he’s now trying to set the record straight.

Together they created an exquisite and sensually-charged record, with a freshness to the writing that makes the songs catchy, melodic-yet-deep and sometimes even funky. The music is predominantly guitar-led and a mixture of organs and synths, live drum loops and electronic percussion make for a sort of modern soul backing orchestra.

On the surface the album is gorgeously laidback, but beneath the lush, sometimes slick, production there’s a murkiness in the seriously gritty funk/hip-hop instrumentation. Lewis Taylor can be a claustrophobic listen. Even its one-word, often seemingly throw-away track titles add to the sense of unease. In its most positive moments, there’s still a sense that things aren’t quite right. The magic comes from this compelling tension.

The languid, strutting “Lucky” is a sensational opening statement. Sinuous electric guitar winds around the shaking percussion with a killer bass line rattling your bones, and Lewis’s voice is sublime. Its six-and-a-half unhurried minutes manage to distill the work of Marvin, Al Green and Bobby Womack because yes, it’s *that* good. Up next is the tough, dusty drum and jazzy, unsettling psych-guitar workout of “Bittersweet”. Aaliyah described it the “perfect song”, which says it all. By turns loping and soaring, tightly coiled and blasting free, 25 years on its discordant, swaggering majesty still sounds like future R&B.

The swinging, blue-eyed funk of “Whoever” oozes sophisticated sunshine soul for hazy days before “Track” sweeps in. The music tries to lift us up, beyond the reach of the vocals trying to drag us back down as Taylor sings “my mood is black as the darkest cloud”. The spare, dubby electro-soul of “Song” closes out the first half of the album with barely contained dread as it creeps towards the lush, synth-heavy coda.

The smouldering “Betterlove” eases us into the second half, coming on like a languorous response to the call of “Brown Sugar”, before sliding into the shuffling, softly-rocking “How”. Somehow the remarkable “Right” manages to both warm things up and smooth things out even more. Taut yet luxurious, it’s definitely not wrong.

“Damn” was to have been the album’s title track and you might also be able to hear its influence on D’Angelo’s Voodoo, maybe most obviously in the chaotic closing moments of “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”. Building to a screeching wall of noise that suddenly cuts dead, “Damn” sounds like the natural end to the album, with the celestial a cappella “Spirit” serving as a heavenly reprise.

When it came to the sleeve, art director Cally Callomon heard Taylor’s music as “sideways off-camera glances at a plethora of influences he had” and wanted to interpret that visually: “I went off into night-time London to see if I could find his song titles in off-beam low-fidelity photographs. I even found a shop called Lewis Taylor”. With a slide for each of the album’s ten tracks, nine of them are on the inner sleeve and the slide for “Damn” makes the front cover. It should’ve been the album’s title, but concerns over distribution in the US scuppered this.

One of UK soul’s most fascinating artists, Andrew Lewis Taylor is an enigmatic figure and a hugely under-appreciated talent. A prodigious multi-instrumentalist who got his start touring with heavy blues/psych outfit the Edgar Broughton Band, he released two albums of psychedelic-rock as Sheriff Jack before Island signed him on the strength of a demo alone. But Taylor was destined to be one of those artists unable (or unwilling) to be pigeonholed and despite the best efforts of Island’s publicity department the music never sold in the quantities it needed to or deserved to. Island eventually let him go in the early 2000s and in June 2006, Lewis Taylor retired from music.

Typical for the mid-90s, this CD-length album was squeezed onto a single LP for its original vinyl release. Simon Francis’s fresh vinyl mastering now spreads out the ten tracks over a double LP so nothing is compromised. And as usual, the records have been cut by Pete Norman and pressed at Record Industry. The original artwork has been restored at Be With HQ and subtly re-worked to work as a double.

This sprawling psychedelic soul opus really is a forgotten should-be-classic. We know that there are those of you who know, and as for the rest of you, we’re a bit jealous that you’re getting to hear Lewis Taylor for the first time.

Limited Coke Bottle Green vinyl, 250 copies only for the UK. Any future pressing will be on black vinyl. Massage feature Alex Naidus from Pains At Being Pure At Heart. Recorded by Lewis Pesacov (Fool’s Gold, Foreign Born, Peel’d). Massage was supposed to be low-stakes, no big deal "anti-ambition," as Andrew Romano, guitarist and vocalist, put it. The L.A.based jangle-pop group's first album, 2018's Oh Boy, was a sweet and simple weekend warrior's affair, or more specifically, an every-other-Monday one, as the band members gathered to bash out songs that offered messy but heartfelt tribute to their chosen heroes: The Feelies, the Go-Betweens, Twerps, Flying Nun. For Romano, not taking things too seriously is a dead-serious affair: “Nothing kills the kind of music we want to make faster than the sense that a band is trying too hard,” he says. The kind of music Massage makes sunny, bittersweet, tender is less a proper genre than a minor zip code nested within guitar pop. Take a little "There She Goes" by the La's, some "If You Need Someone" by the Field Mice; the honey-drizzled guitars from The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love," a Jesus & Mary Chain backbeat, and you're almost all the way there. Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop whatever you call it, pushing too hard scares the spirit right out of this sweet, diffident music, and Massage have a touch so light the songs seem to form spontaneously, like wry smiles. Still, on their sophomore effort, Still Life, they manage to take a quantum leap forward in songwriting, production, and depth, all somehow without seeming to try. These 12 deft songs are full of late-summer sunlight and deep shadows, pained grins and shared jokes, shy declarations of love and quietly nursed heartbreak. Still Life resurrects a brief, romantic moment in the late-'80s, right after post-punk and immediately before alt-rock, when it seemed like any scrappy indie band might stumble across a hit. When Andrew Romano and Alex Naidus first met in 2007, Naidus had just joined a band with his friends Kip Berman and Peggy Wang that was about to stumble into many of them. When Naidus finally left Pains for L.A. in 2013, two hit albums and a few world tours later, he started playing with Romano to recapture the no-stakes, suburban-garage joy of making music for its own sake. It was "friendship incarnate," Naidus remembers. The other members came from within the friend circle Gabrielle Ferrer (keyboard/vocals) is Romano's sister-in-law, Michael Felix (drums) is one of Naidus’ best friends, and David Rager (bass) is a childhood friend of Felix’s. When Felix moved to Mexico City in early 2020, Naidus’ wife, Natalie de Almeida, stepped in. The result is the finest batch of songs they've ever produced. From Naidus' velvet-lined JAMC tribute "Half A Feeling" to Ferrer's Let It Be-era Replacements-tinged lament "The Double" to Romano's "In Gray & Blue," these are gold-standard indie-pop gems from emerging masters of the form. Still Life glows with the sincerity and unfakeable warmth of the era they so lovingly channel. Like the best Gin Blossoms chorus you still remember, the songs on Still Life stir big, pure emotions, but beneath them, uneasy truths about adulthood linger, just below the surface. Maybe the exact mix of ringing guitars and two-part harmonies can chase those feelings away, or redeem them, for at least a minute or three. Massage won't stop trying.

The Debut Album From The Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost - Mark Morriss
( The Bluetones ) Billy Reeves ( theaudience ) Crayola Lectern ( Lost
Horizons / Departure Lounge ) Mark Peters ( Engineers ) Co-produced by
Richard Archer of Hard-Fi Feat. Simon Raymonde ( The Cocteau Twins ) &
Thomas Anderson ( Gazpacho )
In 2001 Billy Reeves, fresh from introducing the world to Sophie Ellis-Bextor
(via their band theaudience) was smashed to bits by joyriders whilst in his Morris Minor - resulting in a two-week coma and a year in and out of hospital. In
2017 his brother gave him two mini-discs that had been saved from the wreckage, including demos of songs he had forgotten - due to crash-related amnesia.
Mark Morriss of chart-topping Hounslow janglers The Bluetones agreed to sing
them, so with the assistance of Richard Archer (Hard-Fi), along with Crayola
Lectern (Zofff / Departure Lounge), and Mark Peters (Engineers), these songs
would form the debut long player from The Helicopter of The Holy Ghost.
The original concept for the material was probably while Billy was signed to
Sony, which pointed toward a more commercial sound, however Crayola Lectern’s involvement on piano help send the recordings into a more ‘Canterbury’
direction, taking influence from Caravan, Robert Wyatt & the like.
Featuring a groovy guest line-up including Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins,
Dale Davis from Amy Winehouse’s band, Andy Lewis from Paul Weller’s group,
Smiley from Joe Strummer’s Mescalaros and Thomas Anderson of fellow Kscope
signees Gazpacho, the wide-ranging influence herein is evident throughout a
very sweet, gentle, calming album of originality and versatility.
The Vinyl LP edition of this album will be especially printed in an eco-friendly
manner, with no shrinkwrap being used, the record itself pressed on 100% recycled records and the board made up of FSC certified climate-friendly recycled
material. The whole package itself will be Climate neutral, having all its carbon
offset with ClimatePartner.

Multi-platinum rock band STAIND are back with their first album in nine years, Live: It’s Been Awhile, May 7 via Yap’em / Alchemy Recordings. The band is comprised of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Aaron Lewis, lead guitarist Mike Mushok, bassist and backing vocalist Johnny April, and drummer Sal Giancarelli. Over the course of their career, the band has released seven studio albums and eight Top 10 singles, selling over 15 million albums worldwide. Break The Cycle, released in 2001 and RIAA certified 5x platinum, featured the smash single, “It’s Been Awhile,” one of the most played songs in modern rock radio history, spending 20 weeks at Number 1. In 2019 after a five-year hiatus, STAIND reunited for some unforgettable festival performances, and a hometown reunion show at Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, CT where their upcoming album, Live: It’s Been Awhile was recorded.

In 1979 as a 15-year-old Eddie Piller was perfectly placed to be at the epicentre of the Mod revival. An inquisitive passion
for music, a family connection to Mod royalty The Small Faces, and an attitude that saw him travelling his home city, then
the country and then the world to take in the sounds that were emerging. In the years since, Piller has been a legendary
figure within the music industry setting up and continuing to own the ground-breaking Acid Jazz label, signing multiplatinum artists such as Jamiroquai and The Brand New Heavies collaborating on compilations with Martin Freeman and as
an award winning broadcaster even setting up his own Totally Wired Radio station. In The Mod Revival he looks back at the
movement that set him on his way.
• Mod is a sixties youth movement original built on sharp clothes, American soul music and nights on the town, that has never
really died. The originals added young British groups to their likes and then moved on, but their influence echoed on
through the 1970s in Northern Soul clubs, and in the sixties influenced bands of the pub rock era. When punk arrived, it was
supposed to sweep away the past, but instead the Sex Pistols were covering the Small Faces. The Clash brought in Mod DJ
Guy Stevens to produce London’s Calling, The Buzzcocks sounded closer to the Hollies than The Ramones and in The Jam’s
Paul Weller there was a musical and sartorial nod to the past of The Who, The Beatles and pop art arrows.
• Weller had spent the 1970s becoming obsessed by mod and saw punk as having a similar youthful energy to the era he had
missed by being born a decade too late. For others Weller’s style proved an inspiration, and as the Jam broke through in late
1978, they saw a wave of bands follow in their wake, and they themselves influenced others to form their own groups. But
there were other things. In bleak late 70s Britain the glorious optimism of the 1960s looked bright and shiny, and as it was
only a decade or so in the past, it was easy to pick up original records, clothes and books for pennies, and as you bought
these you met other like-minded souls who did the same. For those a little too young for punk, it was a community of gigs,
scooters, clothes, bands and records, and for many it developed on through.
• Eddie never stopped being a mod and has a unique perspective having now lived through four decades of being intimately
involved in the music that has emerged from the mod scene. In this part two double vinyl edition (Part 1 and its CD
equivalent reached #14 in the UK compilations charts) Ed guides us through some of his favourite music from the scene. He
guides us through a plethora of bands whose influences include The Who, The Kinks and the Jam, to sixties soul and R&B,
those with an eye on psychedelia. The records have a vitality and a certain stylish swagger to them, that marks them out as
mod. In the deluxe booklet, Piller has written a 5000 word note describing what it meant to him and has granted access to
his own scrapbooksfrom his many years of gig-going from which pages and memorabilia are reproduced.
• Eddie Piller’s Mod Revival is a personal appraisal from the founder of The Modcast, on what the mod explosion of the late
70s and 80s means to him…

Lloyd Altamont Thomas Robinson recorded many songs as a singer first for Studio One in 1963 and later for many labels and Jamaican producers including Duke Reid,

Lloyd Daley, Sir JJ and more. Robinson was part of the duo Lloyd and Devon, whom had quite a few good songs under their belt including a hit for Derrick Morgan's Hop label,

"Red Bum Ball.". With Glen Brown, under the name Lloyd & Glen, he wrote and recorded many outstanding Rocksteady & early Reggae tracks, some quite heavily influenced by

Black Soul including the two sublime tracks featured here. He went on to record the big dancehall hit “Cuss Cuss” in 1984 on the Harry J. label.


Glenmore Lloyd Brown, began his career as a vocalist in Sonny Bradshaw’s jazz group before recording duets with Hopeton Lewis, Dave Barker, and Lloyd Robinson.

Later, Brown became the founder and owner of the Reggae/Dub labels Pantomine and South East Music. A sought after producer he worked with many with many

Reggae greats including U Roy, Gregory Isaacs, Big Youth, I-Roy, Prince Jazzbo, Johnny Clarke, Lloyd Parks, and Little Roy.

The heavy rhythms of his Dub productions resulted in his being known as "The rhythm master".



As “Lloyd & Glen”, they composed, sang and recorded together about 15 tracks, ranging from Ska to Rocksteady to Soul on a variety of labels between 1966 and 1968.



Most of these songs are outstanding, many are just sublime with a strong American Soul influence.

Pianist McCoy Tyner was an acknowledged force of nature. On the aptly-named Expansions, Tyner fronts a remarkable band consisting of Woody Shaw on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Gary Bartz on alto saxophone, Ron Carter on cello, Herbie Lewis on bass, and Freddie Waits on drums. Stand-out tracks in a program of four Tyner originals and one standard include the timeless masterpiece “Peresina” and the immersive opening track “Vision.” Blue Note Records’ Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series is produced by Joe Harley and features all-analog, mastered-from-the-original-master-tapes, 180g audiophile vinyl reissues in deluxe gatefold packaging. Mastering is by Kevin Gray (Cohearent Audio) and vinyl is manufactured at Record Technology Incorporated (RTI).

The track is already on the ‘Filoxiny’ album so Skinshape extended the mix and backed it with a dub version for the flip. Skinshape is the project of British musician William Dorey. The sound has roots in many genres but in particular 1960s Funk, Soul, Reggae, Psychedelic Rock, Afrobeat and Folk. Aside from the Skinshape project Dorey was bassist for the band Palace from 2014-2017 and also runs a reggae label called Horus Records based in North London. About I Didn’t Know from Dorey himself: “This is the most 'pop' song I've possibly ever made, and possibly the most 'modern' sounding. It is about being in a difficult relationship and not knowing how to deal with it and making mistakes as a result. I wrote and recorded most of the song around the drum pattern, and created some (terrible sounding) digital orchestral parts temporarily whilst I created the body of the song. I recorded the strings and horns in the last part of the recording process before doing the final mixes. The horns were recorded separately with the help of my long-time friend (since school) and master arranger Jon Moody (of the group Franc Moody).”

Yellow Vinyl

Includes postcard and poster.
Part of the Optic Sevens 3.0 Reissue Series.
Formed in Olympia, Washington in 1982 by Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis and Bret Lunsford. This 4 track single was originally released in 1987 on 53rd & 3rd records and appears here for the first time on 7”

We're back with our 5th release! This time it's the certified dancefloor weapon by Alonzo Turner ‘Whoever Said It?’ Released on a 7 inch with a part 1 & 2, this record has been played on dancefloors worldwide by such players as Rahaan, Sadar Bahar and more, with those selectors favouring the part 2 in the most euphoric moments with that incredible vocal half way through. The record has remained hard to come by for most so we are thrilled to have this one out there as an affordable and great sounding reissue.

Remastered as always by Frank at The Carvery and this time released with a vibrant company sleeve and a baby yellow label on the 7 to match the original.

"Alonzo Turner was born in Northern California in 1955 and was introduced to music by his church, of which his father was pastor. As a young adult, Turner moves to West Hollywood and at 23, he starts to manage a local rock band while working day and night to write what will turn out to be his first and only release, ‘Whoever Said It’.

The song catches the attention of Dave Crawford, A former producer at Atlantic. Like most stuff on Crawford’s label, LA Records, the single never makes it to the charts but helps Turner make a name for himself in L.A. and Orange County where he performs often. There is only speculation about what happened to ‘You’ve Got Something’, the LP on which the song was meant to appear, but five years later Alonzo ends up writing an eponymous piece for Norma Lewis (Shakatak, Charade) on her debut album ‘It’s Gonna Happen’.

In 1984, struggling to make ends meet from his music career, Turner takes a part time job at a record store, while also pushing garments to an elite clientele in Beverly Hills, even selling clothes to one of Michael Jackson’s designers. In 1991, aged 38, Alonzo Turner will pass away from illness.

Written by a loner who lived in a modest flat filled with antiques and expensive art pieces, ‘Whoever Said It’ is a testament to the idea that love does exist beyond our imagination. While asking who is to blame for spreading the opposite theory, Turner makes this simple yet compelling argument to debunk it: emotions are a motor of action, they literally set us in motion and therefore reality derives its very momentum from them."

"Terrific!"- Steve Lamacq, BBC 6 Music. Double header 7" from NY production duo The Still Brothers. 'Wake Up' Mixed by Skinshape. The Still Brothers are Andrew LeCoche (Ula Ruth) and Evan Heinze (The Shacks). 'Wake Up' was created in a New York winter on a cloudy day. The song's bones were sculpted in the classic Still Brothers' fashion making use of a collection of favourite sounds. It came to life when Brazilian friend and collaborator Marina B heard the track in her sleep and thought of the song's lyrics as she woke up. It might take you to that place in-between dreams and the waking life, where you are pulled in and out of a state of slumber. It incidentally speaks to the abrupt change that was about to fall upon the world in early 2020. Between the singing in Portuguese and the sounds of subway doors, the song is just alienating enough to make anyone these days to feel right at home. 'Wake Up' was mixed by Will Dorey aka Skinshape and mastered by Alex DeTurk. The cover art was designed by Sofia Ohanna. Inspired by subway preachers, jazz funerals and Hip-Hop 'The Deep' serves as an introduction to the dazzling skills of New York production duo The Still Brothers. Their debut track breaks open with a reverend crying out about the transgressions we have committed against each other. He then observes that so many of us are throwing up our hands in an act of surrendering. A poignant sentiment in these troubling times and one that will resonate throughout the world.

With a history 50+ years in the making, Tower of Power has been a funk
institution since 1968, knocking out hits like “What is Hip,” “So Very Hard
to Go,” “This Time It’s Real” and “You’re Still a Young Man” while lending
their soulful sound to collaborations with Santana, the Grateful Dead, Elton
John, Huey Lewis, Justin Timberlake and everyone in-between.
50 Years of Funk & Soul - Live at the Fox Theater captures their storied career
with no-holds-barred victory lap concerts in Oakland, CA, performing their full
spectrum of life-affirming funk and soul hits to sold out audiences in 2018.
Available as a 3-LP set, 2-CD/1-DVD package, standalone DVD and digital audio configuration, these historic performances include alumni special guests
Chester Thompson, Lenny Pickett, Francis ‘Rocco’ Prestia, Bruce Conte and Ray
Greene. PBS will celebrate the 50th anniversary with a 60 minute airing of the
performance beginning February 27.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the official soundtrack to the 2020 Netflix original film of the same name about “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey. The album features score music by critically-acclaimed saxophonist, instrumentalist, composer, bandleader and educator Branford Marsalis, as well as newly-recorded covers of both popular Ma Rainey tracks and blues and jazz standards from the era. The multi-GRAMMY Award® winner brings over four decades of experience across stylistic boundaries to the project, imbuing the film with an authentic 1920s Chicago soundscape. The film was directed by George C. Wolfe and stars Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. It is lauded by critics and moviegoers alike, and it is expected that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will be a favorite at many 2021 award ceremonies. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is available to watch on Netflix now.

Re-mastering by: Ray Staff at Air Mastering, Lyndhurst Hall, London

Handscapes is a double live album by The Piano Choir featuring Stanley Cowell, Nat Jones, Hugh Lawson, Webster Lewis, Harold Mabern, Danny Mixon, and Sonelius Smith recorded in 1972.

At the time of release Ebony reviewer Phyl Garland said "One needn't be a "piano freak" to appreciate a truly new recording. First of all imagine seven gifted and talented pianists sitting down to seven grand pianos (with electric piano, organ, harpsichord, a few tambourines for spice) and proceeding to tear up these instruments - musically, that is. ...the torrrent of sound springing from their 70 fingers is so powerful and majestic as to be unlike anything one has ever heard."

In his review for AllMusic, Michael G. Nastos simply states "Brilliant"