Cerca:life

Art-house kosmische from the battered basements of pre-9/11 New York. Polyrhythmic screamo for underemployed Gen-Xers and trust fund weed dealers alike. La Mia Vita Violenta, Blonde Redhead’s 1995 sophomore effort, in print as a definitive single LP for the first time since… ever.

“These songs combine a raw need, a ready access to neediness, with seemingly incongruous cinematic changes reminiscent of ‘60s Italian pop music and movie scores. They switch between emotional grandeur and eye scratching immediacy.” —Arto Lindsay

What started as an underground techno label in the early 90's, Juice Records typified the head in the clouds ambition of the techno generation by both sound and action. Anything was possible and similar minds would be reached through the vinyl medium. By the mid 90's, Juice Records established itself as a southern beacon to the techno and house music movement.

… but many people would have little knowledge of where the label sits in todays music sphere. Juice Records, wether by choice or default have remained free from the uber industry of dance music but continue to represent with our Adelaide based music activities.

What started as casual discussions about Antony's studio activities with label owner, Donato, soon progressed to talk of an album. A couple of years and many iterations would follow till the vision was clear. Juice 020 highlights the musical existence that Antony commits too. It goes beyond the drum machine and synthesiser sounds the label would be known for and embraces a wider spectrum with use of a Yamaha baby grand, Fender Rhodes, Washburn bass and Yamaha Electone E-75.

With a definitive genre hard to pin on the album, Juice 020 remains very much a traditional Juice Record. It is a clear example of what Adelaide happenings have been missed by the global industry while it plays with a techno formula that goes beyond our underground imaginings.

During the production of two singles (This being the first) unfortunately William Stuckey passed away, below are some words from my partner in the project Brian Sears regarding our work with him pm his LP.

Brian Sears - I'm not one that likes to write but I wanted to say a few things about William Stuckey. William Stuckey passed away last in August 2021 at age 73, and is an artist that I've been working with since last summer. He was a key fixture in the Little Rock music scene and most notably was one of the driving forces behind the legendary True Soul label. Lee Anthony, the owner of True Soul Records, once told me that William Stuckey was the most talented musician he had ever worked with, and if you know anything about that label or Lee Anthony, that's quite a compliment.


When I reached out to William last summer about re-releasing his material, he ignored my calls and messages. Fortunately, I was able to reach his son, Erreyon who was kind enough to listen to me. I've worked a lot of terrible sales gigs in my past and "getting to the point" is sometimes a hard thing to achieve, especially when you're trying to talk about the music business and music that's 50 years old. But the point was simple, his music matters and deserved to be preserved. This resonated with William and Erreyon and they gave Euan Fryer and myself a chance.There was a memorable handoff of the master tapes in a parking lot and from that point forward I knew William Stuckey trusted me. Trust is something he had to do a lot in his life due to the fact that he was visually impaired and I'm thankful he trusted us. As I wrote before, there was a long process of transferring the tapes, but it was successful, and the album has never sounded so good. William had incredible hearing and was able to pick out details most might not detect. He was gifted and that shined through his own playing and voice through copious recordings. Speaking with him after he finally heard the newly remastered album, the way he had intended for it to sound, is something I'll never forget. Moments like that are really the reason why I feel so compelled to work with older musicians that didn't get a fair shake the first time.

Meeting William Stuckey face to face earlier this summer was one of the highlights of my year. We laughed and hung out at his place where he had lived for the past 50 years. I told him his music was internationally known and the re-release was well received. He was humble and felt like a long lost friend that I hadn't seen in a long time. I'll never forget that. I told him I wanted to take some photos, and I'm so glad I did.We had a good time and it was a beautiful summer night and as I left his place his neighbours noticed me walking to my car and wanted to chat, so we talked briefly and it ultimately lead to one of them getting into their car and cranking "The First Time" on the stereo system in their driveway. I wasn't sure if Stuckey could hear it from his house, but part of me knew he probably could and hearing his song echo in the background as I drove off and thinking about Stuckey and the time we shared and his music being appreciated by so many, even in that moment, is a wonderful memory. I'd like to think he was smiling.His music and legacy will live on forever.
Rest in peace to a great one.

Events currently taking place throughout the world only serve to stoke a fire under the likes of Pillow Queens, who find themselves continually inspired by a Dublin that is no stranger to fighting social injustice. Street artists, fashion designers, musicians, film makers and more comprise a scene which routinely champions queerness and marginalized groups, and engages with and activates young people in response to the likes of the city’s ongoing housing and mental health crises. Pillow Queens’ songs of togetherness and unity ring out louder than ever before.

In their short lifespan as a band they've released two demo EPs, performed on a successful string of UK & Irish dates & festival appearances, had playlisting from BBC 6 Music, and found themselves opening for the likes of American Football and Pussy Riot, as well as stadium performances opening for IDLES and Future Islands.

With all this under their belt, the band began working with Mercury Prize nominated producer Tommy McLaughlin for their single 'Gay Girls' – which received a nomination for the RTE Choice Music Prize song of the year, as well as International pickup from NPR’s World Cafe and KEXP. The song also found its way into the heart of actor Cillian Murphy and his BBC6 mixtape show.

2019 saw Pillow Queens venture into mainland Europe, as they lit up the Eurosonic festival and completed a string of tour dates opening for Soak. The tour was a messy and joyous affair captured beautifully in the DIY video for the bands summer single 'HowDoILook'.

In Waiting is Pillow Queens’ debut album, the result of four years of brotherly love in a sisterly unit from Ireland’s most urgent, yearning, rock band. Crafted from our lives, and honed in a studio in rural Donegal in the northwest of Ireland, this is a record by queens in waiting and kings in the making. It’s an album about love; self-love, queer love, the anxiety-inducing fault lines of romantic love, and the love for a city and a country that simultaneously has your back and is on your back.

“So much has happened since last year.” After the release of his 2020 debut album Armlock, School of X was hurtled into a new life. Having spent most of the past ten years touring and working on music non-stop, SXSW was cancelled just as he was about to make his first trip to the states under his own name and this life was suddenly put on hold for Rasmus Littauer, the man behind the School of X moniker.

While School of X’s self-produced indie-pop has always been revealing and reflective, “these sudden changes thrust me deep into my emotions.” Littauer took off to his childhood home in the countryside to write, capturing these swelling emotions and reflecting on his childhood. And then there was the news of a little one on the way, bringing his thoughts to his soon-to-be son. “I was facing a lot of


things from my life that I want to do differently for him.” Did he want him to grow up in the city or the countryside? What did he want to teach him about politics? Sexuality?

The result is School of X’s sophomore album, to be released in ‘21 via Tambourhinoceros. “It’s about trying to find the meaning in things. Juggling with the different parts of life that make it a full life. Asking why do I do what I do?” Following his ‘20 debut album Armlock, his ‘19 EP Destiny and his ‘17 EP Faded. Dream, School of X’s new album will be a more varied display of styles and emotions. “It makes it easier to create if there are no boundaries,” says Littauer.

Blind, Chicago soul singer Willie Williams was first discovered performing in clubs in and around the Windy City. He was signed to ABC records by their A&R Director for the Midwest Johnny Pate a former Jazz bassist, independent producer, arranger and songwriter in his own right. Pate was a friend and colleague of fellow musician, songwriter and founding member of one of ABC’s prolific vocal groups The Trends, Tom Dorsey. Pate and Dorsey would contribute heavily as writers and producer throughout Willie’s recording career, beginning with his first ABC 45 release in 1966 “Have You Ever Been Played For A Fool/With All My Soul”. The release’s b-side became a popular radio play at the time with Willie becoming known as Willie “Soul” Williams for a while. Two further ABC releases were to follow “It Doesn’t Pay/Just Because” (1967) and “I’m Through With You/Strung Out” (1968).

Willie’s next 45 release although recorded in Chicago under Johnny Pate’s supervision found it’s way to another major label, RCA, although credited as a GWP Production (Gerrard W. Purcell). The 45 in question being the excellent Tom Dorsey penned songs “Just To Be Loved By You/Name It” released during 1969.

Two Willie Williams 45 releases did appear on the Gamma label but I’m unsure if one or both of these are by the same Willie Williams in question.

Throughout his recording career Willie continued to work the clubs with his own band which was led by his bass guitarist and confidant Bradley (Brad) Bobo a man who featured as a session musician on many recording sessions including the creation of The Notation’s album of the same name for Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom subsidiary label Gemigo.

On the 22nd of December 1970 a recording session was held in RCA’s Studio B, on North Wacker Drive, Chicago with sound engineer Russ Vestuto. The session was financed by Tom Dorsey who amongst other song writing gratuities had been paid handsomely for the 3 songs “Love Machine”, “My Baby’s Love” and “How Are You Fixed For Love” which he had wrote and contributed to the blue-eyed hit group, The O’Kaysion’s “Girl Watcher” ABC album. The result of this session yielded four Willie Williams tracks. Brad Bobo played bass guitar on the session, the composer of the four songs Tom Dorsey supplied the arrangements and Tom’s wife Carolyn (also a former group members of The Trends) joined both he and Brad on backing vocals.

The four songs were then offered to Eddie Thomas who chose two of them to release on a 45 single. The two songs being “Must Mean Love” which was later renamed “The Baa Baa Song “and “Psyched Out” which Eddie then released on his own Lakeside label, thus leaving the two other songs to remain unissued in the can.

Willie has now sadly passed away but in his later life once the opportunity’s for performing artists began to dwindle he chose a different path in his life, gaining a Doctors degree, he went on to become a College Lecturer. Tom Dorsey too turned his back on the music industry apart from his publishing company to concentrate on his family life as well as founding a very successful business involving one of his other great life passions, photography. Luckily for us he never lost the master tape of Willie’s sessions and after several years of tentative enquiries he graciously relented to my request to put them out. So now before you we have the two excellent previously unissued Willie Williams songs that Eddie Thomas passed on, the delightfully soulful “Give It All I Got” backed with the funky, social conscience themed “Do You Understand”, lost early 1970’s Chicago Soul at its finest.

Ancient Africa represents Nat Birchall’s official follow-up to last year’s universally acclaimed Mysticism of Sound.

Nat once again plays all the instruments here, tenor and soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, bass, drums and percussion. But this time around the Korg synth is replaced by piano as

Nat wanted to utilise a more “classic” Jazz sound to express his musical visions. He has also arranged the songs for multiple horns, with melodies and harmonies played by up to five different instruments to achieve a fuller and often glorious sound.

An exception to this is Mirror Mind, a ‘duet’ featuring tenor saxophone and piano, hence the title.

With most of his compositions Nat tends to come up with titles depending on the thoughts or images the music manifests within him as he listens back to the recording.

The title track conjures up images of an African sunrise, the horns perhaps invoking the sun as it begins to illuminate the land which was the origin of the human story on Earth.

“Africa is the root of everything, and is the source of civilization, art, music, you name it.”

Paladins is so titled for the African heroes of the past and the present, in all walks of life, social, political, the arts etc.

“Anyone who fights against oppression, whether it be through activism or art, not only in Africa but throughout the whole diaspora, is a Paladin in my book.”



Song for John Blanke is named for the African trumpeter who played in the court of Henry VIII. The horn line sounding

a little like a fanfare, but in a lower register than the Tudor trumpets might have played for the court of the king!

Malidoma is named in honour of the African writer Malidoma Patrice Some. His excellent book ‘Of Water and The Spirit’ is a deeply

moving and illuminating narrative of his life’s journey. From his abduction by Jesuit priests at an early age from his village in Burkina Faso to

his being reunited with his people and subsequent assignment to spread his people’s ancient knowledge to the Western world.

The final song, Ancestral Dance, is a musical reminder to both celebrate life as and when the occasion demands, but also to not forget where we came from, as individuals and as a species.

one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden is the name of the second album by Canadian songwriter Alexandra Levy, publicly known by the moniker Ada Lea. On one hand, it’s a collection of walking-paced, cathartic pop/folk songs, on the other it’s a

book of heart-twisting, rear-view stories of city life. Ada Lea has followed up the creative, indie-rock songcraft of her debut what we say in private with surprising arrangements and new perspectives. The album is set in Montreal and each song exists as a dot on a personal history map of the city where Levy grew up. Due on September 24th from Saddle Creek and Next Door Records in Canada, the physical record will be released alongside a map of song locations and a songbook with chords and lyrics, inspired by Levy’s love of real book standards.

Levy penned and demoed this batch of songs in an artist residency in Banff, Alberta. After sorting and editing she made her way to Los Angeles to record with producer/engineer Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers) who had previously worked on 2020’s woman, here E.P. After a long walk to the studio each morning, Levy spent her session days diving into the arrangements, playfully letting everything fall in place with complete trust for her collaborators. She notes “Marshall’s expertise and experience with drumming and songwriting was the perfect blend for what the songs needed. He was able to support me in a harmonic, lyrical, and rhythmic sense.” Other contributors that left a notable fingerprint on the soundscape include drummer Tasy Hudson, guitarist Harrison Whitford (of Phoebe Bridgers band), and mixing engineer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett). Many songs came together with a blend of studio tracks and elements from the pre-recorded demos.

The resulting sounds range from classic, soft-rock beauty to intimate finger-picked folk passages and night-drive art-pop. And the textures are frequently surprising due to the collage of lo-fi and hi-fi sounds that tastefully decorate the album without ever clouding the heart-center of the song. Tracks like “damn” and “oranges” feel timeless with their AM gold groove and 70’s studio sheen, while songs like “my love 4 u is real '', “salt spring” and “can’t stop me from dying” sound completely modern in their use of electronics, sound effects, and pitched vocals. In their subtle, sonic variety, all of the album’s songs flow together with ease into one big, romantic dream for Levy’s silken vocals to float above.

Inspired by personal experience, daydreams, and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, the lyrics of one hand... center storytelling on a bigger scale. The experience and emotions of a year are communicated through Levy’s vignettes of city life. Her prose is centered in its setting of the St Denis area of Montreal as it draws up memories from local haunts like Fameux, La Rockette, and Quai des Brumes in rearview reverie. Levy creates a balance through the album’s year by splitting her songs evenly into four seasons. Opening track “damn”, as a song of winter, kicks off the narrative with the events of a cursed New Year’s Eve party. Immediately this timeline becomes jumbled into a Proustian haziness. The listener is then led through the heat-stricken, brain fog of Summer song, “can’t stop me from dying” and then into the autumnal romanticism of “oranges” before returning back to New Year’s on “partner,” which Levy describes as “a woozy late-night taxi blues reflection on moments when timing can be so right, yet so wrong…”. These collected stories as a whole chart the unavoidable growth that comes with experience. “All is forgiven in time. All is forgotten in time. And when the music stopped, I heard an answer” (from “my love 4 u is real”).

Whether to consider these songs fiction or memoir remains unknown. On one hand, Levy says “Why would I try to write a story that’s not my own? What good would that do?” but on the other hand, she is quick to note the ways that language fails to describe reality, and how difficult this makes it to tell an actually true story. The poetic misuse of the word “sewing” in the album’s title serves as a nod to the limitations words provide. What does it mean to sew the garden? And how can we appreciate its carefully knit blooms when the rearview mirror is so full of car exhaust?

one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden is the name of the second album by Canadian songwriter Alexandra Levy, publicly known by the moniker Ada Lea. On one hand, it’s a collection of walking-paced, cathartic pop/folk songs, on the other it’s a

book of heart-twisting, rear-view stories of city life. Ada Lea has followed up the creative, indie-rock songcraft of her debut what we say in private with surprising arrangements and new perspectives. The album is set in Montreal and each song exists as a dot on a personal history map of the city where Levy grew up. Due on September 24th from Saddle Creek and Next Door Records in Canada, the physical record will be released alongside a map of song locations and a songbook with chords and lyrics, inspired by Levy’s love of real book standards.

Levy penned and demoed this batch of songs in an artist residency in Banff, Alberta. After sorting and editing she made her way to Los Angeles to record with producer/engineer Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers) who had previously worked on 2020’s woman, here E.P. After a long walk to the studio each morning, Levy spent her session days diving into the arrangements, playfully letting everything fall in place with complete trust for her collaborators. She notes “Marshall’s expertise and experience with drumming and songwriting was the perfect blend for what the songs needed. He was able to support me in a harmonic, lyrical, and rhythmic sense.” Other contributors that left a notable fingerprint on the soundscape include drummer Tasy Hudson, guitarist Harrison Whitford (of Phoebe Bridgers band), and mixing engineer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett). Many songs came together with a blend of studio tracks and elements from the pre-recorded demos.

The resulting sounds range from classic, soft-rock beauty to intimate finger-picked folk passages and night-drive art-pop. And the textures are frequently surprising due to the collage of lo-fi and hi-fi sounds that tastefully decorate the album without ever clouding the heart-center of the song. Tracks like “damn” and “oranges” feel timeless with their AM gold groove and 70’s studio sheen, while songs like “my love 4 u is real '', “salt spring” and “can’t stop me from dying” sound completely modern in their use of electronics, sound effects, and pitched vocals. In their subtle, sonic variety, all of the album’s songs flow together with ease into one big, romantic dream for Levy’s silken vocals to float above.

Inspired by personal experience, daydreams, and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, the lyrics of one hand... center storytelling on a bigger scale. The experience and emotions of a year are communicated through Levy’s vignettes of city life. Her prose is centered in its setting of the St Denis area of Montreal as it draws up memories from local haunts like Fameux, La Rockette, and Quai des Brumes in rearview reverie. Levy creates a balance through the album’s year by splitting her songs evenly into four seasons. Opening track “damn”, as a song of winter, kicks off the narrative with the events of a cursed New Year’s Eve party. Immediately this timeline becomes jumbled into a Proustian haziness. The listener is then led through the heat-stricken, brain fog of Summer song, “can’t stop me from dying” and then into the autumnal romanticism of “oranges” before returning back to New Year’s on “partner,” which Levy describes as “a woozy late-night taxi blues reflection on moments when timing can be so right, yet so wrong…”. These collected stories as a whole chart the unavoidable growth that comes with experience. “All is forgiven in time. All is forgotten in time. And when the music stopped, I heard an answer” (from “my love 4 u is real”).

Whether to consider these songs fiction or memoir remains unknown. On one hand, Levy says “Why would I try to write a story that’s not my own? What good would that do?” but on the other hand, she is quick to note the ways that language fails to describe reality, and how difficult this makes it to tell an actually true story. The poetic misuse of the word “sewing” in the album’s title serves as a nod to the limitations words provide. What does it mean to sew the garden? And how can we appreciate its carefully knit blooms when the rearview mirror is so full of car exhaust?

Robbie Williams will be reissuing his first two multi-million selling solo albums ‘Life Thru A Lens’ and ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’ on vinyl for the very first time. To be released on 24 September, both titles have been newly mastered at Abbey Road Studios, are pressed on 180 gram heavyweight vinyl and housed in gatefold sleeves, reproducing the original distinctive artwork. Both titles come with Download codes. Originally released in October 1997, ‘Life Thru A Lens’ was Robbie’s debut solo album. It entered the chart at number 11 but had to wait almost six months before it reached number one. It eventually spent 147 weeks on the Top 100 and has been certified 8x Platinum by the BPI for UK sales in excess of 2 million copies. It includes the hit singles ‘Old Before I Die’ (No. 2), ‘Lazy Days’ (No. 8), ‘South Of The Border’ (No. 14), ‘Let Me Entertain You’ (No. 3) and ‘Angels’ (No. 4), the latter his biggest selling single to date, and voted the best song of the last twenty-five years at the 2005 BRIT Awards. Now certified 10 x Platinum by the BPI, with UK sales in excess of 2.5 million, ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’ was originally released in October 1998 when it entered the chart at number one. It returned to the summit the following January and once again a month later. It includes the hit singles ‘Millennium’ (No. 1), ‘No Regrets’ (No. 4), ‘Strong’ (No. 4) and ‘She’s The One’ (No. 1). ‘No Regrets’ features backing vocals from Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant and The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, while album track ‘Win Some Lose Some’ includes the ‘Telephone Voice’ of All Saints’ Nicole Appleton.

“Speight’s music takes the best elements of folk and pop music and puts them together to create a raw and infectious sound.” – The Telegraph“Enchanting debut (album).” – The Times“Gorgeous acoustic flecked hymns, trenchant rockers, off-the-cuff folk pieces, Tom Speight can draw his muse anywhere.” – CLASH“Few artists can make heartbreak feel like both a blast and a wretch.” – Atwood
Tom Speight has made the album that 2021 deserves. A celebration of living life to the max, Everything’s Waiting For You is a timely reminder to approach every day as an adventure, and an invitation to ride alongside the singer/songwriter as he travels the world wide-eyed. Recorded with producer Chris Bond in Devon and featuring contributions from regular collaborators Lydia Clowes and Turin Brakes’ Olly Knights, Everything’s Waiting For You is a bigger, bolder and poppier album, with sunny song titles, boisterous guitars, shimmering electronics and lashings of beautiful backing vocals are among the album’s calling cards.

The Velvet Underground is regarded as one of the most influential bands in rock history.

Their first 4 albums were included in Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Ranked 19th greatest artist by the same magazine and the 24th greatest artist in a poll by VH1.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Critic Robert Christgau considers them "the number three band of the '60s, after the Beatles and James Brown and His Famous Flames".

AllMusic wrote that "Few rock groups can claim to have broken so much new territory, and maintain such consistent brilliance on record, as the Velvet Underground during their brief lifespan ... the Velvets' innovations – which blended the energy of rock with the sonic adventurism of the avant-garde, and introduced a new degree of social realism and sexual kinkiness into rock lyrics – were too abrasive for the mainstream to handle."

The second release on JD Twitch’s archival label.

“By 1993 I was saturated in Acid. Over saturated!. Since 1987 there had been an endless explosion of records from across the planet using the 303 and it seemed like the sonic possibilities offered by this little silver box had hit a dead end.

And then in 1993, from Germany, came the Blue label with mind-blowing releases by Air Liquide and friends. It felt like a new paradigm, paying homage to Germany’s Kosmische Musik past while paying respect to the Chicago Acid House originators while simultaneously looking ahead to a new form of transcendental music.

And then – BOOM! – the H.E.A.D. “EFS” double album drops. What is this music? Was it beamed in from the future? It ticked every box I loved. Endlessly hypnotic and expertly programmed with an effortless groove that sounds as if Jaki Liebezeit’s syncopations have been absorbed by the machines. It is Acid in ways my ears hadn’t heard before, the little silver box tweaked in new, exhilarating directions.

Made by future Optimo ally Khan, alongside uber talent, Kerosene and recorded in a Brooklyn kitchen, this double disc set became an eternal home listening and back room favourite. It is also a club favourite too, perhaps even more so now than it was then. It is endlessly mixable and playable at multiple speeds. A genuine classic long overdue a second life”.

This fully remastered 2021 edition of this 1993 gem comes with new artwork on a super fat double vinyl pressing.

This summer, Saft welcomes Dubbyman after a three-year hiatus from releasing music. He serves up a gorgeous new EP in the SAFTX series that features a remix from Detroit mainstay FIT Siegel.

Dubbyman is a master of the deep. As a DJ and producer, he explores warm and heady soundscapes that are rooted in house and techno but decorated with much more. His musical synths and compelling rhythms have resulted in countless vital EPs on labels like Ferrispark, Soul People Music and the Deep Explorer label he co-runs. Now, after a break, he is back and in brilliant form.

Opener 'En La Ciudad' is an effortlessly loose and languid house track. The hip-swinging claps and funk bass riffs bring a sunset vibe, with wordless vocals from Carlito Brigante Rojo and dreamy pads really soothing the soul. Remixing is legendary FIT Sound label head, FXHE associate and pillar of the Motor City scene FIT Siegel. His famously no-nonsense approach results in a track here that is laced up with smoky soul. The dusty beats roll deep, the twisted synth work brings light and lush pads soften the whole groove with a real sense of heart.

"Up Again" strikes another perfectly seductive pose with its jazzy keys, soulful vocals, and rough-edged beats that make you want to dance. It's a tune packed with feelings and irresistible funk, and is sure to be the soundtrack to many outdoor parties this summer. The Deep Explorer Mix is a little more direct, with dynamic house drums, sunkissed motifs and warm pads taking you straight to the Mediterranean. Last of all, "Tropic" featuring Arturo Sanchidrian on bass is a downtempo classic, with beachy vibes, gently breaking synth waves and soft-focus melodies sinking you deep into a
reverie.

This is an EP of life-affirming, heart-warming house sounds that take you to a better place.

Nearing 100,000 UK sales for their breakthrough album ‘The Race
For Space’, indie phenomenon Public Service Broadcasting return
with their fourth album, ‘Bright Magic’, the follow up to 2017’s ‘Every
Valley’, which entered the chart at Number 4 on release.  Inspired by the Rory McLean book ‘Berlin: Imagine A City’ and named
after a collection of short stories by Alfred Döblin, the record
celebrates one of the greatest cultural capitals of the world, Berlin.  Written and recorded entirely at Hansa Studios in Berlin, the album is
split into three parts - Building A City / Building A Myth / Bright Magic
– and Side B of the album is a homage to Side B of David Bowie’s
‘Low’. Side A of the record includes the singles ‘People, Let’s Dance’
and ‘Blue Heaven’.  The album features guest appearances from Berlin legend Blixa
Bargeld (The Bad Seeds, Einsturzende Neubauten), Andreya
Casablanca of Berlin band Gurr and Berlin Based artist EERA.  Hansa is world renowned as the studio responsible for classic albums
including ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie, ‘The Idiot‘ and ‘Lust For
Life’ by Iggy Pop and Depeche Mode’s third, fourth and fifth albums
‘Construction Time Again’, ‘Some Great Reward’ and ‘Black
Celebration’.  The artwork is designed by Berlin artist Torsten Posselt, who has a
long relationship with the Erased Tapes label, designing art for the
likes of Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds and Rival Consoles, among
others.

Lava Love is the new album by Zoe’s Shanghai. Led by singer Zoé Renié Harris, the band has
made a splash into the crowded neo-soul scene with their debut EP A Mirage (Meant To Last
Forever) released in 2019 - a deeply evocative sound and Zoe’s extraordinary voice gained them
immediately the spotlight as ones to watch (“a worthy torchbearer for heady and hearty soul music”-
Earmilk).
Following a successful string of EPs and singles, the Barcelona & Paris-based four-piece band is
now ready to share with the world their first full-length album.
Lava Love was recorded in an old stable in the French region of Auvergne - known for its mountain
ranges and dormant volcanoes, this region could not have been a more apt setting.
Lava and love portray in fact a dynamic flow of memory and meaning pouring out of Zoe’s
Shanghai’s heart. In and out of the metaphor, Lava and love can be powerful, frightening, beautiful,
dangerous and at the same time are essential elements that create fertile change and growth.
Through the 11 songs, the band evoke memories and pose questions - inner dialogues, life stories,
encounters and relationships – the album depicts a kaleidoscope of moods and feelings, prompting
the listener to open to the conversation: while each song presents a microcosm on its own, the album
manifests itself in the shared musical experience - immersive music to listen to and enjoy with your
loved ones.
Produced with Oli Barton-Wood (Nubiyan Twist, Joe Armon-Jones, Nilufer Yanya), the sound of
Lava Love brings together hypnotic melodies, groovy rhythms and thoughtful lyrics - fusing the
essence of multiple music styles and forging Zoe’s Shanghai unique contemporary soul.
The album follows the critically acclaimed EP ‘A Mirage’, which garnered the support of Gilles
Peterson & Huey Morgan (BBC 6 Music), Jamz Supernova (BBC Radio 1Xtra), Worldwide FM and
Earmilk to name a few.

For Wilkes-Barre’s One Step Closer - the concept of home is complicated. “I’ve never felt so distant in my life,” vocalist Ryan Savitski screams on the lead single “Pringle Street,” a place in his hometown that binds the album’s lyrics to both a precise location and feeling of displacement. On their first ever full-length album and debut for Run For Cover This Place You Know, the band offers a modern comingof-age story about growing up and grasping both the known and the unknown.

One Step Closer started in 2016 and in their short five years, Savitski, along with drummer Tommy Norton, bassist Brian Talipan and guitarists Ross Thompson & Grady Allen have come into their own as a modern hardcore mainstay. Their 2019 EP ‘From Me To You’ countered existing trends in exchange for a more melodic sound in the vein of bands like Turning Point and Title Fight. They went on to open for Have Heart at the band’s now legendary reunion shows that summer, and joined bands like Knuckle Puck and Turnstile on tour before pausing to write their debut album.

This Place You Know grapples with the weight of themes like isolation, depression, and loss - all amplified by driving bass lines, emphatic guitar riffs and unwavering drumming performed by the band. From the first moments of album opener “I Feel So,” the stakes are made clear by the anchoring lyric ‘this place you know, sometimes it hides the truth and lets people go” - One Step Closer is attempting to resolve the unresolvable anguish of moving on from everything you once knew.

- Debut full-length & first RFC release for One Step Closer
- Previous touring & show history with Have Heart, Turnstile, Knucklepuck, Fiddlehead
- US & international touring to follow album release in fall
- Music videos for “Pringle Street,” “Chrysanthemum” & “Time Spent, Too Long”

Keeping the faith and facing the future, Times Are Changing puts a full stop on pandemic talk for unstoppable indie-pop four-piece Lottery Winners, as the four-piece release the fizzing anthem into a newly optimistic world. The first single from their newly


announced, upcoming, second studio album, Something To Leave The House For, the band has penned the soundtrack to hugging old friends, the rebirth of live music and those summer festivals just around the around the corner.

For front man and songwriter, Thom Rylance, working through the darkness of Covid meant surviving Covid, tying the threads of an unravelling mental state into a new body of work now emerging as bright, arms-aloft bursts of positivity. His famed ‘note to self’, the emotive An Open Letter To Creatives and the band’s sensational, viral collaboration with Nickelback with the Rock Star Sea Shanty were just two moments of levity in a time dominated by the dark clouds forming overhead. Now he and the band are moving on and moving up.

“If something so bleak and harrowing can hit us all, totally out of the blue, and change our lives, then by definition that must mean that something beautiful can too.” says bassist and vocalist, Katie Lloyd (bass and vocals) as Lottery Winners start the next leg of their adventure with Times Are Changing, reflective, ready to party and no less ambitious than before.

Their mammoth, 14-track new album, Something To Leave The House For, follows their 2020, self-titled UK Album Chart Top 30 debut with a Fri 24 September 2021 release via Modern Sky UK, promises to document the tumultuous times and the path back from despair. In true Lottery Winners style, every truth and life lesson is dressed in glass-half-full, wildly optimistic, radio-friendly pop, hip-swinging beats and bittersweet tenderness.

The Men’s hugely influential album Leave Home came out during an exciting time in New York City. DIY lofts and shitty bars littered downtown Manhattan and North Brooklyn. The Acheron had just opened its doors. Kill Your Idols had broken up. Toxic State Records was just getting started with Crazy Spirit, Dawn of Humans, Hank Wood and Perdition EP’s. The city was alive with punk and noise and filth. And right at that time, The Men were the show to be at.

Every gig was dripping with sweat. Hallways and sidewalks were packed between sets. Chaos reigned in the pit. The Men hit like a bag of hard cement, a hardcore band with a familiar sound but with an aura of absolute chaos and intensity, like everything was on the brink of going off the rails at every moment of their set, a downhill freight train with no brakes. During these shows one’s focus could shoot back and forth between the intimidatingly angry-eyed, bald-headed Chris Hansell (who went on to front Warthog) and the long haired hippie punks Mark Perro, Nick Chiericozzi and Rich Samis, that made up the surrounding band.

Just one of the many juxtapositions the band embraced. If The Men were a chapter in Michael Azzerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, the early EP’s and cassettes would obviously be Minor Threat and Black Flag, while Leave Home would likely be… Sonic Youth. It was just before they made the full jump into each record being a smorgasbord of underground genres, from dream pop to folk;

before they had tracks called “Country Song,” for example. But it was a preview of what was to come. Leave Home was a pivot from pure hardcore punk (some might even call it mysterious guy hardcore), as the band got lost in the groove in a way one couldn’t on a straight up punk record. That groove was so strong on “If You Leave…,” “(),” and “Bataille,” while they spaced out on “Shitting With The Shaw,” and stayed as aggro as ever on “LADOCH.” But of course, Leave Home had a re-recording of their hardest track to date, “Think,” making it clear that they were still the moshers we all had come to know and love. If The Men raised their flag as an important New York punk band with Immaculada, they started waving it in the freakiest way with Leave Home.There is no doubt that Leave Home was one of the most influential records of the last decade.

You can hear their mark everywhere from Ty Segal and The Oh Sees to Milk Music and Hank Wood. Few bands have traversed as many genres as The Men and even fewer have done it so well. It is a testament to the band’s undying authenticity and adventurism that the record sounds as timeless and urgent now as it did when it blew the doors of New York punk off its hinges ten years ago, leaving a giant hole for bands of all kinds to come racing through.

Digitmovies is proud to release on LP the OST by Ennio Morricone: "Noi lazzaroni" (aka "We Rascals”). Ennio Morricone has composed a very "rural" score with the sounds, that represent the life of the protagonist. Although integrated within modern society, the soul of this man is always directed to his past, to his land, to the teachings of his father which he could never leave behind. This adherence to the homeland is expressed through deliberately wild and almost enraged vocal performances of Edda Dell'Orso. Ennio Morricone has composed music which reflects the bucolic atmosphere of this tale through a series of archaically flavoured themes played by instruments like recorder and mandolin. Among the recurrent themes there are a mysterious motif, dramatic music for dissonant strings and a lounge theme with the typical Morricone sound. The main theme is reprised for recorder and guitar and there is Baroque music for the puppet theater played by woodwinds and percussions. Our LP contains two bonus tracks, unreleased alternate takes of the original album versions which will surely be quite attractive for fans and scholars of the music of Ennio Morricone.

The 'Stages of Grief' series made up one of the inaugural releases on the newly launched Vaknar label, back in 2018.

3 years later, the series comes to an end via its third and final iteration, ‘Acceptance’, which is presented via 2 parts, containing compositions by both, old and new label affiliates and friends.



As the curtains draw on one stage, a new light might be shining somewhere else, and we are reminded that with every ending, there is always a beginning. Thus, hopefully this final segment will let us review these arduous and tumultuous previous months through a forward seeking gaze, accepting the weight of the past, while embracing the virtues of tomorrow.

This is part two of ‘Acceptance’.

Elite Beat is a musical collective from Portland, Oregon with a history spanning back to 2006.

'Selected Rhythms' captures the finest moments from all three of their ultra limited cassette series 'Casual Rhythms'.

Packed full of DIY dub mixing, cosmic orchestration and raw, percussion driven polyrhythms, the recordings have been remastered and put to vinyl for the first time with sections from Casual Rhythms Vol. 1 being re-shaped into previously unavailable single tracks.


Recording plays a big role in the Elite Beat creative process. The studio as an instrument. Much of the Elite Beat music is mixed in an all-hands-on-deck dub style approach - live with an analog mixer and loads of FX being thrown and dubbed in real time. The sound is genre-less rhythm music with an emphasis on live playing, free form expression and technique that borrows from soundsystem culture. Inspiration can be heard from all parts of time and place. Some Ethio Jazz, Black Ark psychedelia, Exotica, Malian blues, even Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love. Each member an accomplished musician in their own right, Elite Beat thrive on collaboration. 2018 saw the release of their astral-Saharan jams with celebrated Taureg guitarist Mdou Moctar.

The players get together every Wednesday evening, sometimes to chat, sometimes to play. The 'record' button gets pressed when they find what they are searching for. For this crew it's all about 'Casual Rhythms / Harmonious Lifestyles' - if things don't fall under that mantra, then it's got to go. 'Less is more' for Elite Beat and their cosmic sounds.

180g Heavyweight Black vinyl. Mansur Brown is a 24 year old Artist,
Producer and Multi-Instrumentalist, from Brixton, London.

Mansur released his debut Album “Shiroi” in 2018, followed by EP “Tesuto” in 2020. Mansur’s forthcoming album entitled “Heiwa” is due for release in September 2021, and will be the debut record released on Mansur’s own record label, Amai Records.

“Heiwa”, which means ‘Peace’, is an album about “the journey of life and all the emotions that are faced throughout life in the quest to attain true peace of mind and happiness within.”

Mansur’s sound rolls out across “Heiwa” like an expansive film score backdrop to the conflict between city and nature and the cycle of life, and spans genres of R&B, Hip-Hop, Ambient, Rock and Electronica.
Radio play from Benji B and Bradley Zero (BBC R1), Soulection DJs,
Giles Peterson (6 Music)

Album launch at Wilton Music Hall - August 26th

93 minute collection of the electronic, ambient, prog, and kosmische side of the 80's-90's Paul Chain catalogue. Paul Chain is widely revered in the Doom Metal underground, and rightly so, but this collection aims to highlight the many 'other' sides to his work. Anyone interested in NWW list or Mutant Sounds should investigate. Officially licensed collection bringing these gems to back to vinyl for the first time in 30 years.

Numbered edition of 300 copies.

Early support by: Laurent Garnier, AME, Marco Bailey, Jennifer Cardini, Terrence Fixmer, Kyle Geiger, Marcel Dettmann, Apparat, Richie Hawtin, Vril, Charlotte De Witte, Sasha, Benjamin Demage any many more..



Fresh off of a remix for Grimes’ “My Name is Dark”, producer Julien Bracht has been powering through CV19 studio seclusion on full-power, with a distinct vision for brighter days ahead. Bracht’s new album, “Now Forever One,” an emblem of dark analog synthwave, is set to drop June 11. Bracht’s first solo album under his own namesake is cut with surgical precision for the shoegazing astral sound travellers who long to break out of their pandemic quarantines, and reconvene for techno-induced ascension. The album’s first single, “Melancholia,” and it’s accompanying video, is already breaking hearts and charts. An exquisite sonic hybrid of communal revelry and profound introspection, “Now Forever One,” focuses Bracht’s multilayered craftsmanship on resolving this era’s angst with sensory exploration and optimism.



As a lifelong drummer, Bracht’s insatiable musical energy lead him to bang out his first 3 EPs within one year of first being signed in 2011-12. In 2015 he founded the band Lea Porcelain with Markus Nikolaus in London. Their hypnotic post-rock debut release in 2017, “Hymns to the Night,” gained instant acclaim from UK tastemakers Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq and Zane Lowe, to name a few. The lads broke back onto the international stage with dates on several major festivals around Europe, including the Leeds/Reading Festival, Great Escape Brighton and Latitude. Rich output combined with the inclusion of live drums in his solo live sets quickly gained Bracht recognition and slots on the global tour circuit.

“Now Forever One” forges Julien Bracht’s transition from techno djing, while continuing the explorations of texture and timbre over functional song structures from Lea Porcelain, to a more open-ended search for the aural sublime — the substrate on which music, life and light glide to create momentary nodes of meaning in an increasingly meaningless sociopolitical atmosphere. These are crucial themes to Bracht’s process and approach. “The intention in my music is to strengthen people’s awareness and minds… I want us all to gather in spirit and stick together.”

The album exemplifies Bracht’s hunt for elemental juxtaposition with the warm Prophet 6’s sawtooth howls and bright pads against chillingly indifferent pulsing basslines and percussion. Clocking in at just under 65 minutes, “Now Forever One’s” tracks are sequenced to take the listener through the full emotional arch of a 15-hour rave, with an emphasis on those moments of collective epiphany where heaving techno floors become the perfect microcosm for an idealistic and interconnected future. Interspersed with improvisational one-takes, the album submerges the listener in polyrhythmic meditations, of which “Streets” and “Nocturne” are standout examples, and soars on the vaulted synth melodies of future dance floor favourites “Melancholia” and “Dreams of Euphoria.” Sascha Ring of Apparat & Moderat puts it perfectly: “I played “Melancholia” the night I got it at Mutek Festival in Mexico City, and instantly knew it’ll shine on a big floor at the right time. It’s just the right balance of majestic melodic deepness.” The sounds are both triumphant and exploratory.

Greater than the sum of its parts, Bracht’s latest release hints at the artist’s emerging potential for nailing our moment’s zeitgeist; learning to live smaller while constantly seeking higher heights. Inhabiting the fertile ground between solitary rumination and dance-floor convenance, the launch of “Now Forever One’s” lunar expedition into the techno oblivion of pandemic lockdown is oddly fitting.

Born in Brixton, a child of the Windrush Generation, Letts’ slippery and unorthodox career is somewhat hard to define, without taking a few detours around London, New York and Jamaica. He began his working life managing the dauntingly hip Acme Attractions on Chelsea’s Kings Road, where he made a mark with his attitude, dress and, especially, the pounding dub reggae that vibrated the shop’s walls. His first gig as a DJ at the short-lived Roxy in Neal Street, became mythical for turning a generation of punks on to reggae. They in turn hipped him to their DIY ethos resulting in his reinvention as a filmmaker. This led to a shed-load of music videos (Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Clash, Bob Marley) not

to mention documentaries on the likes of Gil Scott-Heron, George Clinton and Sun Ra.



In the ’80s, he was part of Mick Jones’ new venture, Big Audio Dynamite and his innovative use of samples were a core part of their sound. Listeners of his weekly 6 Music radio show are taken on a musical safari that moves seamlessly between time, space and genre. It’s not called Culture Clash Radio for nothing. So this latest bulletin from Letts HQ is merely one angle of a multifaceted personality, his take on the JA tradition of the cover version.



The history of Caribbean music owes a debt to R&B as many of the early island releases were cover versions of US 45s. Ska’s breakthrough commercially, Millie Small’s ‘My Boy Lollipop’, was originally recorded by Barbie Gaye in ’50s New York. Cover versions became quite a thing in Jamaica and Don, following in that tradition, has dug deep with a selection of interesting dubbed out covers including thirteen exclusives.



“A disciple of sound system, raised on reggae n’ bass culture my go to sound was dub. Besides being spacious and sonically adventurous at the same time, its most appealing aspect was the space it left to put yourself ‘in the mix’ underpinned by Jamaica’s gift to the world - bass. But that’s only half the story as the duality of my existence meant I was also checking what the Caucasian crew were up to not to mention the explosion of black music coming in from the States. That’s why this version excursion crosses time space and genre, from The Beach Boys to The Beatles, Nina Simone to Marvin Gaye, The Bee Gees to Kool & The Gang, The Clash to Joy Division and beyond. You’d think it impossible to draw a line between ‘em but not in my world. Fortunately, the ‘cover version’ has played an integral part in the evolution of Jamaican music and dub covers were just a natural extension.”



There’s a diverse mix of classic and new, with legendary figures like John Holt, The Tamlins and Cornell Campbell, mixed in with British veterans Mad Professor and the irrepressible Dennis Bovell, while (relatively) young striplings Kiko Bun, Emily Capell and Prince Fatty deliver the goods, with laidback Texan groovers Khruangbin also offering an exclusive bass heavy-delight.



The song choices are diverse, from French dubsters’ OBF’s renditions of ‘Sixteen Tons’, the miners’ paean popularised by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the 1950s, to Ash Walker’s refix of Omar’s ‘There’s Nothing Like This’ and ‘All I Do Is Think About You’, immortalised by the ill-fated Tammi Terrell and preserved here by Quantic (the latter two both exclusives). Being a Rebel Dread compilation, there’s a cover (by Wrongtom Meets The Rockers) of The Clash’s ‘Lost In The Supermarket’ while Don’s exclusive, naturally, is a rendition of Big Audio Dynamite’s debut hit, ‘E = MC2’.



“Truth be told I’ve wanted to work with the Late Night Tales crew from the get go. We’re talking nearly two decades such was the allure of their musical aesthetic typified by curators like Nightmares on Wax, The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Trentemoller, Khruangbin and countless others. Now being as old as rock n’ roll (born in ‘56) and having nearly 20 years of Culture Clash Radio under my belt I figured I was tooled up to musically juggle with the best of ‘em. But I wanted to carve out a space that was distinctly my own - something that reflected my musical journey and the culture clash that’s made me the man I am today.”

Essential Aliensis the 10th Helvetia album. Helvetia is the solo project of Jason Albertini from Duster. Helvetia resides in Portland, Oregon but was formed in Seattle, Washington in 2005 after Duster first went on hiatus. The songs onEssential Aliens were recorded over the last year, in Jason's basement. Since the band's inception, Jason has continued to employ a rotating cast of band members and collaborators, which now includes Steve Gere and Samantha Stidham. Steve and Jason also played in Built To Spill together from 2012 until 2018. In 2019 Duster started playing shows and recording again. During this time Jason started writing what would becomeThis Devastating Map. Released at the beginning of August last year, Post-Trash called it"a constantly shifting project that takes experimental lo-fi into brilliantly colored psych directions with a concise glow."Then the pandemic took hold. With normal life at a standstill and unable to hang with his bandmates, Jason focused his energy on his daughter's homeschooling schedule, and recording. He focused on finishing one song a day and was soon honing in on a new album. Essential Aliensdistills and simplifies the Helvetia sound. Reverb and delay are absent, replaced by warm fuzz and intimate room sounds. Progressions morph with stoner repetition and end in head scratch. Drums distort, muted bass lines prop up acoustic guitars blown out on a cassette four-track. Cheap electric guitars are barely in tune and recorded direct, almost painfully in your face. The songs are short blasts of psychedelic chill, unrooted by genre, a rummage around an alien radio dial. These are simple songs about keeping yourself from falling apart, to remind you that you can be strong. The visual elements for the album come from a recurring dream, which centers around a period in Jason's childhood when he lived in Basel, Switzerland, and believed that he lived with a ghost. In the dream, Jason's life becomes turned upside down because of a series of unexplainable events that turn out to be orchestrated by the ghost, and he wakes up convinced that he is a ghost as well. These are simple songs about keeping yourself from falling apart. To remind you that you can be strong. This is a weird blues.

Take One is the cinematic debut release from the minds of Hampshire born emcee Deeflux and seminal producer Kraze. Created through a chaotic and turbulent life journey, the project was born out of the collective need to change direction musically by both artists.
The results are an accomplished and often brutally honest prose, overlaid across a wide range of soundscapes sca-ling the spectrum of alternative rap music. Themed around cinema, each track tells a story like a window into the ar-tists lives covering a range of topics and emotions with Deeflux’s trademark labyrinthine wordplay weaving effortlessly over Kraze’s diverse production.
The LP, originally intended as a mixtape and picked up and pressed by Broke Records was fraught with tragedy. From faulty metal work, lost livelihoods and the eventual loss of all stock it sadly never saw the proposed release until now. Certain Sound received a phone call out of the blue after the stock was
re discovered and have re packaged with the full intended “Directors Cut” as downloadable content in a limited run of coloured and heavy weight black vinyl.
Take your seats and enjoy the show! Artist Bio - Deeflux
Deeflux comes from a diverse musical background. After falling in love with heavy metal at 6 years old he spent his early years as a song writer and guitarist in ska, punk and metal bands before re discovering hip-hop in college where he used the college computers to start his journey beat making.
Finding his voice at 18 he began to craft his style. Influenced by his home town stable of graffiti writers, MCs and beatmakers. he went from working with Reklews (BLAH) to collaborating worldwide on projects such as Oddio Kin.
He has a number of physical releases with his group C O R N E R S (Deeflux, Beit Nun and Benny Diction), live group Natural Selection and last year released 52 singles with his long running DJ Miracle (Boot Records).

Kraze is somewhat of a musical prodigy. In his early teens he was at the epicentre of the first wave of grime and Began DJing on pirate radio & producing music. He eventually landed an artist development deal with EMI & later Sony/ATV.
He was responsible for Devlin’s standout London City and earned two cuts on
his Bud, Sweat and Beers album. During his time with EMI & Sony, he worked with producers such as Naughty-boy, Mojam & Stargate and a variety of artists before eventually leaving the industry to pursue other opportuni-ties. Take One will be his first solo release.

Mission Escape: signal incoming...Escaping Earth - file loaded...press enter --> program launched! When things become too much, escaping might help. Take a seat and join the ride with CYRK's first full length musical player on CHILDHOOD. After having released outstanding records on labels such as Running Back, Rawax, Burial Soil, Vakant, Avoidant, Dred, Science Cult, Lone Romantic and their own Time Zero imprint, the seminal Berlin machine funk duo launched their analog spaceship studio once again to tell their most advanced and versatile intergalactic tale to date. Escaping Earth is a story that comes in 8 episodes and showcases Sam and Pascals mastered skills in detailed sound design and arrangement, while always keeping a focus on powerful dancefloor oriented electro grooves. Ranging from Detroit influenced bassline bouncers to slower acid variations, this album will let you dive deeply into CYRK's beautiful musical language and range: a soulful journey from the light to the darkness and back. Above all, this album is at all times pure analog electronic funk and won't let you go from beginning to end. Sometimes escaping helps. This musical story will make you travel the stars with ease. The album is pressed DJ friendly on 2 x 12" vinyl and includes a download copy. A limited edition of 100 numbered copies comes in double colored (red/green) records and will be exclusively sold via CHILDHOOD's bandcamp page as well as the CLONE store. Vinyl to be released on September 13th 2021, followed by the digital release on September 24th 2021.

4LP & 2CD Genesis Hits package to coincide with the bands UK tour in September 2021 with 3 sold out shows at London’s 02 Arena. This will be Genesis’s first tour in over 13 years with the classic line up of Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks & Phil Collins. They have sold around 100 million albums worldwide with over 20 top 40 UK hits with songs such as Follow You Follow Me, Turn It On Again, Mama, I Can’t Dance and many more. Genesis have won awards over the years at the American Music Awards, Grammy Awards, Ivor Novello Awards and a Lifetime Achievement at the Progressive Music Awards. The track list is made up of the songs the band have been performing in rehearsals and will make up the majority of the setlist during the gigs, the title of the release is the same as the tour. 4LP set is to be housed in a hardback gatefold book-style package, this will include classic images of the band, rare and unseen images from their archive & images of the rehearsal and the stage used for the gigs.

There’s a fundamental truth that Los Angeles musician and songwriter Lexi Vega embraces on Mini Trees’ debut album Always In Motion - time keeps moving forward, for better or worse. The consequences of this perpetual motion spark this latest collection of relatable indie-pop songs that acknowledge our collective anxiety about life’s improbability

Dirty Dynamite is the seventeenth studio album from Swiss melodic hard rock/heavy metal band Krokus. The album was well received by critics, partly due to the surprising element of their Beatles cover of “Help”. The band origins from the seventies, and have since sold over 15 million records, toured the world and received gold and platinum discs in the US and Canada. The legendary English journalist Malcolm Dome quite rightly said: “If you look at the long-term output of this band, Krokus is clearly one of the best hard rock bands of the last 40 years”.

Dirty Dynamite is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on transparent red vinyl. The records are housed in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics.”

"On October 15, 1965, tenor saxophone master and composer Wayne Shorter recorded The All Seeing Eye, a brilliant and ambitiously multi-layered album for Blue Note. Shorter’s goal for the album was to use “a wider range of colors and textures” while continuing his explorations of “life and the universe and God.” Joining Shorter in his quest are Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Grachan Moncur III on trombone, James Spaulding on alto saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Joe Chambers on drums, and, on one track, Wayne’s brother Alan Shorter on flugelhorn.
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)."

3rd tape in this proper skuzzy series on the Group A related 'NO RECORDING'. On point for those who like the grimy things in life. TIP!

"Vol.3 is an Exquisite Corpse issue!"
The feeling of social isolation during the lockdown in the winter of '20/21 led us to work collectively and collaboratively. We explored the possibilities within the limitation of the concept of NO Recording project and adapted the method of Exquisite corpse.
Featured artists: Cienfuegos, group A, Horoscope, Isabella, Joachim Nordwall, Nick Klein, Tot Onyx, Wilted Woman

The album was recorded over a series of nights in Sept. 2019 in NYC at Sony Hall with a live audience The album also contains new recorded material.
The release date is set for September 10th because on September 14th the worldwide tour will start in US and will last until 2022.

Back in stock

'Island Impressions' depicts the moments and visions of Australian house producer Sonny Ism's year living on an Island in Stockholms Archipelago during the Covid 19 Pandemic. Littered with Kitchy melancholic vocal house tracks to alternative ambient electronica, Island Impressions is a journey of movement and documented moodswings in the underground house music genre.

Far Out Recordings presents the peerless and criminally undervalued Quartin catalogue, beginning with the reissue of Jose Mauro’s forgotten masterpiece Obnoxius. Over the course of the 60s, Roberto Quartin released more than 20 albums in Brazil on his label Forma, by artists including the likes of Eumir Deodato and Quateto Em Cy. Selling the rights of Forma to Polygram in 1969, Quartin struck out for pastures new at the dawn of the 1970s with the launch of his self-titled label. Significant works and high-water marks for Brazilian music overall followed in that decade’s first year, with Victor Assis Brasil Plays Antonio Carlos Jobim and the aforementioned Obnoxius. These singular gems in Brazilian music, difficult to categorise yet compellingly haunting, have for too long gone unheard.

Today, very little is known about Jose Mauro and as a result those searching for some kind of insight on the man behind the music must attempt to glean what they can from the music itself. One rumour claims he died in a car accident shortly before the album’s release, a fact that could have lent his brief musical career a touch of mythology were it not for how scant the details concerning any other aspects of his life are. The political turmoil from which the album emerged is significant also; recorded during an era of oppressive state censorship, the album, like all the Quartin catalogue, is the result of steadfast defiance in the face of a crushing military dictatorship. While many musicians of the era fled the country, preferring their prospects in the affluent, liberated USA, rebellious, young musicians like Mauro chose to stay and reflect their anger at the authorities through thinly veiled protest songs such as the stirring ‘Apocalipse’. Herein lies the basis for a more dramatic theory; that Mauro was in fact abducted by the military! Whatever the truth, the mystery remains unsolved, and all that remains is his bewitching music, all of which is composed by Mauro and Ana Maria Bahiana. Production on the record was cancelled after Mauro’s death and it was never sold commercially until its rerelease decades later. What appeal does Mauro’s music hold to today’s listeners, forty-something years removed from its conception? Simply put, there is very little else that sounds much like it all. Take the title track of ‘Obnoxius’. A wholly singular piece of music, blending string-drenched melancholia with orchestral pomp, sunny psychedelic strumming with propulsive percussion, topped off with Mauro’s yearning vocals. The result is indicative of Mauro’s unique blend of sounds from Latin Jazz and samba to psychedelic folk and baroque orchestration.

Today, Obnoxius retains its strange, otherworldly appeal – A firm favourite amongst a small circle of deep diggers including Madlib, Gilles Peterson, Floating Points. Jose Mauro’s mournful and melancholic vocals create a dark, brooding atmosphere that stands in contrast to the usual joyfulness and high-spirited rhythm of the more prominent Brazilian music of the era. Despite this air of foreboding, Mauro’s confident baritones, chord patterns and sumptuous arrangements have the ability to induce in the listener an almost trance-like state of ecstasy. Mauro’s long hidden masterpiece, a complex and uniquely stunning work is being offered the chance to be heard by the wider audience it has always deserved. A second Jose Mauro release, A Viagem Des Horas, compiling more incredible tracks unreleased in Mauro’s lifetime, will follow, alongside other unreleased jewels from the Quartin catalogue, from the likes of Piri and Victor Assis Brasil…

Spectra! represents a lone, anomaly release by illusive producer and recording artist J. Walker of Perth, Western Australia. Recorded and produced in 2016, Spectra! comprises a collection of 12 instrumental works composed in response to an imagined brief investigating the refined shades and pigments of colour.
Whilst stylistically somewhat comparable to library music recordings from Europe released throughout the 1980’s, Walker’s compositions never step too closely toward facsimile. Instead, they maintain a unique sense of identity, one closer akin to a born-too-late contemporary interpretation of the sentimentality and lost moods that allowed library music it’s point of difference and charm in the first place. Unlike many modern artists who flirt with the past, Walker isn’t concerned with carbon copying the sound palate and tape hiss of yesterday. In these works, antecedent emotional and harmonic bodies are given new life and form by means of modern studio hardware, musical equipment and compositional techniques. Recommended for fans of the Coloursound Library and Joël Vaandroogenbroeck.

Power punks, Hot Milk, have announced their second EP, ‘I JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I’M DEAD” via Music For Nations.

It follows the success of the band’s first EP, 2019’s ‘Are You Feeling Alive?’, a fizzy collection of gutsy emo-pop which established them as one of the most exciting new bands in the UK. Their 2019 was a whirlwind year that saw them tour with Foo Fighters, Deaf Havana and You Me At Six, as well as playing some of the UK’s biggest festival stages.

The band were formed in 2018 by vocalist and guitarist duo, Han Mee and Jim Shaw, two friends who met working behind the scenes in the Manchester music scene. Yet they yearned to be in a band themselves. “We got to the point where we were why not? What else have you got to lose?” says Jim. “We thought, we can go for this or we can get to 60 and know we didn’t do right by ourselves.”

Debut EP, ‘Are You Feeling Alive?’, which was penned during a drunken songwriting session, was an effervescent refusal to settle for second best in life. “We’ve both realised that life you don’t get another face,” Han continues. “You get one face and then you’re done, and you will never exist ever again.”

That sense of not letting life slip through your fingers is at the core of Hot Milk’s punk-indebted ethos. And having taken a leap of faith to grasp their platform, the band, completed by bassist Tom Paton and drummer Harry Deller, aren’t about to let it go to waste. “Art is about your interpretation of your own experience,” adds Jim. “The first EP was written five years ago. We’ve grown up and realised who we are and what the world is like right now.”

‘I JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I’M DEAD’, which was produced by Jim Shaw, is another vivacious call to arms, rammed with sharp hooks and huge, catchy choruses, to encourage everyone, everywhere, to follow their dreams. But elsewhere, the lyrics are more personal, with the band bottling the anxieties and frustrations of their everyday lives. ‘Woozy’ openly tackles depression, ‘Good Life’ takes on societal corruption and the distribution of wealth, while elsewhere the band address the pursuit of happiness in a modern world.

“These songs are honest,” says Han. “I have nothing to hide. Everyone’s on antidepressants these days. It’s the world we live in, it makes people sad. Capitalism. Is it broken? 100 per cent. I’m angry that the fact that we’re sold a world that actually doesn’t make your inner peace happy. Humans need love and community and a lot of the time, there is no love and the community has dissolved.”

“The anger resides in us at the unfairness of the world,” adds Jim. “Online communities are all about flexing and battling your peers to look or sound a certain way that is better than everyone else. It’s constant and it’s dangerous. You’re teaching kids that to be content, you have to be best. It’s a question again. Are you really living?”

“We’re angry, both politically and existentially in terms of the system we now live in. But also, we’re angry at the fact that we’re sad quite a lot,” continues Han. “But we’re trying to not just sit there and take it. We’re trying to fix it, by building a family through this band.”

Walk into any Hot Milk show and you will feel that sense of community. Through their honest lyrics and inclusive approach, the band say their aim is to create an “aggressively space safe” where fans are empowered to be themselves, “authentically and unapologetically”, as well as opening up a dialogue for people to talk. That will become clear later this year when the band get their chance to air the new material. This summer, they will return to Reading and Leeds Festivals, this time to play the main stage, as well as embarking on a headline UK tour in September. And believe, when the times comes to finally get back into those sweaty pits, these new songs will provide the perfect, life-affirming soundtrack.

“Life is fragile,” says Jim. “You can’t take things with you, but you can make the best memories. That’s the most important thing in life. Your currency is your memory.” “What you can take with you is something that absolutely makes the blood pump round your veins and gives you goosebumps,” agrees Han. “That’s what this band is to us. It’s our passion. That’s what this EP is about.”

Spirits Having Fun records are ones made from and for shows and spaces—arrangements rooted in a deeply collaborative process, that come to life through intuitive and locked-in live improvisation. Following their 2019 debut Auto-Portrait, Two finds the New York and Chicago based four-piece continuing to challenge ideas of what a rock band can be, pulling apart their musical experiences and reimagining them as kinetic compositions, equally studied but palpably organic.

Two is constructed around gut feelings and strong grooves, elastic rhythms and playful pacing. Its twelve songs expand, contract, and make sharp turns between melodies under singer-guitarist Katie McShane’s meditative lyrics. “Broken Cloud,” which was also released last year on a compilation in support of Chicago Community Jail Support, offers a glimpse into her reflections on the natural world: "A city grew out of the ground / to a mountain it's only a blur."

True to its name, the internal logic of the band is also just a lot of fun, built on trust and deep-rooted musical relationships. Before there was Spirits Having Fun, McShane, bassist Jesse Heasly, guitarist-vocalist Andrew Clinkman, and drummer Phil Sudderberg had performed together in various arrangements over the years. McShane, Heasly and Clinkman met in a specific corner of the Boston underground in 2013, a time when a scene had coalesced around students from local music conservatories frequently collaborating with punk bands and noise artists, exchanging ideas and warping musical worldviews. Heasly and Clinkman played together in Cowboy Band, making mutant, free jazz-inspired takes on old country tunes. When Clinkman moved to Chicago, Heasly and McShane played in experimental groups like EKP and Listening Woman; in Chicago, Clinkman met Sudderberg playing in projects like jazz scene fixture Ken Vandermark’s high-powered band Marker.

Spirits first came together as an attempt at a long-distance collaboration among friends in 2016, driven by the simple feeling of missing each other; they’d meet up for marathon weekends here and there to practice, playing small loops through dive bars and art spaces around the Midwest—just enough for McShane and Heasly to afford plane tickets back home. Being split between Chicago and New York forced the project into a deliberate pace. “We tried to take it slow and let it be what it was,” said McShane. That sense of patience unexpectedly prepared them for March of 2020, when their planned tours and the release of Two were indefinitely delayed.

Two was mostly recorded in the summer of 2019 with the help of omnipresent Chicago engineer Dave Vettraino and DPCD’s Alec Watson, whose contributions on organ, synths, and piano are laced throughout the record. The album reflects a synthesis of solitary and communal songwriting processes—each song drawing on fragments written by individuals, which McShane threaded together and shaped through her distinct compositional lens, making the songs whole before returning to them to the band to mature collectively. When composing, McShane writes first on the keyboard before adapting parts for guitars played by herself and Clinkman. Their dueling approaches to guitar are complementary: McShane, being a newer guitarist, brings a freshness to the project (“I'm just discovering the whole time,” she says) while Clinkman has been playing since childhood.

“There's a lot more collaboration on this record,” says Clinkman, “in terms of all of us letting stuff bloom a little bit more.” The record’s first single, “Hold The Phone” is a good example of this process—it started with a playful intro riff from Clinkman, a melody and bridge added by McShane, a wobbly outro groove added by Heasly, which Sudderberg brought to life. Another single, the dynamic “See a Sky,” written primarily by Heasly, underscores the rhythm section chemistry at play across the record, the song ebbing and flowing around Heasly and Sudderberg’s eclectic percussive palettes.

“Entropy Transfer Partners” is the only song on the record with lyrics by Clinkman, and the album’s most politically direct—a call for solidarity in the face of systemic failures, an acknowledgment of the shared material devastation caused by our country’s ongoing healthcare and housing crises: “These are not things we're experiencing individually. We struggle through them collectively. And we could actually declare, all of us, that it doesn't have to be this way, and fight and organize to ameliorate some of those conditions.” (“We won't work to create the shit you monetize, to run our lives,” they sing.)

From front to back, Two is an absorbing listen simply for its impressive range. But as the members explain themselves, the complexity of the record is about more than its intricate riffs, or how often they count out an odd time signature, but how they reject the notion of boxing the songs in, letting the melodies take on lives of their own. “Making music that feels alive is important to us,” says Clinkman. “Music feels most powerful to me when it deepens our sensation of feeling alive and connected to other humans. It’s so easy to feel worn down and isolated; that your life’s value is fixed to your productivity at your job, or the things that you have or don’t have. Making music that feels joyful and fun seems like one effective antidote to that feeling.”

The longstanding DJ comes through with a brand new album for the modern times, keeping the tradition alive through a stacked tracklist of heavy hitters. With an extension of the popular posse cut, “Rolling 25 Deep,” DJ Kay Slay ups the ante with an 18 minute anthem, “Rolling 50 Deep,” featuring the likes of Benny The Butcher, Bun B, Styles P, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon and more. He further adds to his track record of pairing together artists for hit records with cuts from Ghostface Killah & Busta Rhymes, Conway the Machine & Sheek Louch, and Juicy J & Jim Jones.

Kamana is a multiformat release inspired by and channeling the culture and traditions of the Aeta, an indigenous group from the Zambales region in the Philippines. One of the oldest inhabitants of the region the Aetas are also some of the most fascinating and ancient nomadic and hunter gathering cultures. The release goes from the realms of the
real to the imaginary, from transcription to syncretism, from concrete to abstract. An (un)real Sonic Exorcism filled with Ancestral Frequencies, Haunted Ghosts and other animistic spirits roaming the Pinatubo forests.
The release features a series of materials released in different formats from the Field recording digital only release, an LP and CD release to a special 7inch vinyl featuring an Interview with a bat hunter.
“Kamana is a long due homage to the Aeta community that hosted me a few years back, fascinated by the endurance of these people and their connection to their land, devastated by the eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in 1991, they continued to go back to their ancestral lands surviving on basic agriculture and hunting bats and wild pigs. Living with them for weeks, I managed to capture some essential field recordings and sounds that form and com- pose the basis for this release, from the more reprocessed and interpreted LP release to the pure field recording documentation of the digital release. It is meant to be accessible to all and provide a window to the livelihoods of these unique communities. For this reason, this release serves as both an archival document and a syncretic one, trying to channel memories and feelings of living in these jungles whilst listening to their stories as well as witnessing their lifestyles.”
Carlos Casas, 2021

Diana Ross sings “Thank You” to the world. “This collection of songs is my gift to you with appreciation and love. I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to record this glorious music at this time,” said Ms. Ross. Her new album, “Thank You” is scheduled for release this fall through Decca Records / Universal Music Group. The title track and first single,” Thank You,” will be available for streaming and download on June 17.

Recorded in her home studio, “Thank You" offers a powerful, inclusive musical message of love and togetherness. With its songs of happiness, appreciation and joy, it wholeheartedly acknowledges that we are in this all together. Her family, friends and loyal and loving audiences all around the globe have been an integral part of her wonderful life’s story. In this special moment, it is time to step into the light.

Ms. Ross co-wrote and collaborated on the 13 songs along with award-winning songwriters and producers including: Jack Antonoff, Troy Miller, Triangle Park, Spike Stent, Prince Charlez, Amy Wadge, Neff-U, Freddie Wexler, Jimmy Napes, Tayla Parx, Fred White, and Nathanial Ledgewick.

Let us come together in harmony and gratitude with Diana Ross now and for the future. “I dedicate this songbook of love to all of you, the listeners. As you hear my voice you hear my heart. "Let Love Lead the Way”

Portuguese experimental trio 10 000 Russos are gearing up for the release of their fifth album ‘Superinertia’, which is due out September 10th on Fuzz Club Records. Following on from 2019’s ‘Kompromat’ LP and tour dates around the UK, Europe and Mexico in support, the Porto-based band describe ‘Superinertia’ as a record addressing the “state of inertia that humans live in the West nowadays. It isn’t a record about the past or future. It’s about now.” For all that ‘Superinertia’ might take aim at a world without motion, however, the same cannot be said of 10 000 Russos themselves.

On the one hand, since their 2013 debut LP and the three that have followed on Fuzz Club since (2015’s self-titled, 2017’s ‘Distress Distress’ and ‘Kompromat’), 10 000 Russos’ music has always been about as kinetic as it gets: a truly unrelenting and motorik sonic force. On the other hand, ‘Superinertia’ also sees the band itself move into whole new musical territories – aided especially by the recent addition of synth player Nils Meisel to the line-up (who replaces former bassist André Couto.)

“The synths really opened up the sound of the band and gave more routes for the music to journey down. The most important thing on this album was to not repeat ourselves. A new arc in our sound is coming to life”, drummer and vocalist João Pimenta explains. On said arc, the Russos sound is expanded to include moments that invoke Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris, Texas’ soundtrack (‘Mexicali/Calexico’), dancey outbursts that transport you to the 90s Summer of Love (‘Super Inertia’), the closest thing Russos have ever done to a pop song (‘A House Full of Garbage’) and even a touch of banjo (albeit one that sounds like a country band on amphetamines playing over a feedback-blasted Stooges beat.)

“10 000 Russos are bizarre and excellent in equal measure.” - The Quietus

“Songs drip with heavy echo, relentless beats and bass and a sense of charging into the ultimate infinite.” - Bandcamp Daily

“Something unholy has indeed been summoned out of the ground, and it is a power trio from the Iberian Peninsula.” - Clash Magazine

Portuguese experimental trio 10 000 Russos are gearing up for the release of their fifth album ‘Superinertia’, which is due out September 10th on Fuzz Club Records. Following on from 2019’s ‘Kompromat’ LP and tour dates around the UK, Europe and Mexico in support, the Porto-based band describe ‘Superinertia’ as a record addressing the “state of inertia that humans live in the West nowadays. It isn’t a record about the past or future. It’s about now.” For all that ‘Superinertia’ might take aim at a world without motion, however, the same cannot be said of 10 000 Russos themselves.

On the one hand, since their 2013 debut LP and the three that have followed on Fuzz Club since (2015’s self-titled, 2017’s ‘Distress Distress’ and ‘Kompromat’), 10 000 Russos’ music has always been about as kinetic as it gets: a truly unrelenting and motorik sonic force. On the other hand, ‘Superinertia’ also sees the band itself move into whole new musical territories – aided especially by the recent addition of synth player Nils Meisel to the line-up (who replaces former bassist André Couto.)

“The synths really opened up the sound of the band and gave more routes for the music to journey down. The most important thing on this album was to not repeat ourselves. A new arc in our sound is coming to life”, drummer and vocalist João Pimenta explains. On said arc, the Russos sound is expanded to include moments that invoke Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris, Texas’ soundtrack (‘Mexicali/Calexico’), dancey outbursts that transport you to the 90s Summer of Love (‘Super Inertia’), the closest thing Russos have ever done to a pop song (‘A House Full of Garbage’) and even a touch of banjo (albeit one that sounds like a country band on amphetamines playing over a feedback-blasted Stooges beat.)

“10 000 Russos are bizarre and excellent in equal measure.” - The Quietus

“Songs drip with heavy echo, relentless beats and bass and a sense of charging into the ultimate infinite.” - Bandcamp Daily

“Something unholy has indeed been summoned out of the ground, and it is a power trio from the Iberian Peninsula.” - Clash Magazine

Two worlds collide to offer a brand new project. The lo-fi rock from Emilie Zoé and Nicolas Pittet blends perfectly with the sounds of the machines and samples of the leader of The Young Gods, Franz Treichler. The sound triangulates and takes the shape of an /A\. Zoé is an artist who converts the ghosts of everyday life into electric fulgurations on the extreme fringes of pop and rock; Pittet is her drummer, but above all he’s an all-round musician, as comfortable backing Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s primal dub as he is

fiddling with electronics (e.g. his project Kera); and of course, Treichler is the well-known leader of The Young Gods, and band that’s been setting the bar since 1986 when it comes to transforming rock by infiltrating its genome into machines.

This diversity of backgrounds, tastes and experiences might at first sight have appeared as a reason to stay apart from each other, but instead it’s proved to be a vector of mutual attraction. What /A\ offers contains no foreign matter: Treichler, Pittet and Zoé’s aesthetics are intertwined through subterranean links that strike by their clarity, like the pieces of a puzzle that is both unexpected and surprising.

It’s through this profound entanglement that the pieces, one after the other, succeed in materialising hitherto unseen faces. They create something new: Hotel Stellar delivers an otherworldly blues, a slow snake that oscillates between the abyss and redemption; We Travel the Light, with its guitars measured in megatons, invents the notion of a steamroller possessed by insane joy; Count to Ten is a wash of restrained melancholy infused with almost Birkin-like touches, which, as the minutes go by, bristles with scratches and sandy echoes, like synthetic dub; The Leaves is yet another strange beast which could be considered as the evolution of a trip hop theme that would have been left to mature for a few decades in the noblest of drums. “It’s red, it’s hot” says Zoé when asked to analyse the record. “You can feel like there’re waves coming at you, but you never really know when.”

‘K Bay’, out on Domino Recordings, is the first new solo
material from Matthew E. White in six years.
Matthew E. White describes the album as a “love affair
with music.” It’s a record thrillingly engaged with an
eclectic range of contemporary and 20th Century popular
music. The daring production mines and foregrounds longsimmering but previously veiled influences from the realms
of hip-hop, electronic pop and dancehall but all filtered
through White’s self-described outsider perspective.
‘K Bay’ is an homage to Kensington Bay, his home studio
where he records his personal projects and is his
sanctuary of creativity (White’s second studio,
Spacebomb, is where he works on collaborative projects
and has recorded and produced records by Foxygen,
Natalie Prass and Flo Morrissey).
More than love, romance, or self-reliance, this is the
animating ideal of ‘K Bay’ - that we can forever strive for
something better, no matter how flawed or blessed we
have already been. A decade ago, Matthew E. White made
a classic beauty no one expected; on ‘K Bay’, he has
made a masterpiece by harnessing what he’s learned from
that community and life itself in entirely unexpected,
electrifying, and reaffirming ways.

Big Daddy Wilson, the well-respected North Carolina-born bluesman, who
made his name on the European scene with acclaimed albums like Love Is
The Key (2009) Thumb A Ride (2011), I’m Your Man (2013), Time (2015) and
2017’s Neck Bone Stew has walked a winding road to finally come to record
these Hard Time Blues.
With the release of Deep In My Soul in 2019, Daddy Wilson felt his music and
career had come full-circle in style. “I see it as a journey,” he said of his incredible backstory.
“It’s the journey of a man who found himself deep in this beautiful music called
the blues and finally, after 25 years, made it back home... But the road did not
end there, and Wilson’s new album is taking things even a few steps further:
“Hard Time Blues - Is a reflection of the time we are living in right now and all
the anxieties that life brings....Corona, Poverty, Injustice and other hardships.
It also embraces the different styles of Big Daddy Wilson, Blues, Soul, R & B,
Country and Gospel .
Like Willie Dixon says:” Blues is the Root, everything else is the fruit.” My intent
with this album was to show a more modern side of Big Daddy Wilson. To reach
out a bit more, to use the Soul and R & B that has influenced me throughout
the years. But I still wanted to be true to the blues and my spiritual roots.
The song “ HARD TIME BLUES” came to me by way of Eric Bibb and Glen Scott.
A beautiful blues song, spiced with the spirit of Soul and R & B and blessed with
the Mojo of Glen Scott. This song is also blessed with the Troubadour spirit: the
story telling of the great Eric Bibb.
This album is full of LOVE, FAITH and HOPE, this is my TESTIMONY. So I thought
it be fitting to call the album” HARD TIME BLUES”.
I just want to reach out to as many people as I can, with this message: put a
little Love in your heart.....we need each other.” Big Daddy Wilson

This LP was originally released in the summer of 1989 with Doug Raney
at age 33. He released during his rather short life (1956 - 2016) 17 leader
albums for SteepleChase including this 13th piano-less horn-featured
recording which won accolades from critics all over the world.
“Doug Raney is an elegant player even when he’s attacking, as he does here on
most of the content...Certainly recommended if you enjoy your jazz slightly in
advance of bebop, but with all of that basic feel still there.” - Martin Richards,
Jazz Journal International “No doubt, another in the string of successful Raney
releases.” - Paul B. Matthews, Cadence
Personnel: Doug Raney (guitar), Bernt Rosengren (tenor saxophone), Tomas
Franck (tenor and soprano saxophone), Jesper Lundgaard (bass), Jukkis Uotila
(drums)

Following the critically acclaimed Vinyan cassette, Kāthā is Siamese Twins’ second curated pan-Asian compilation selected to form a continuous and coherent whole, whose strong transcendental ambience comes tinged with Eastern psychedelia. Kāthā is the Khmer and Thai name used for chanted sacred mantras and magical incantations that offer protection, charm, or certain influence in life. Its origins stem from "Gāthā", a Sanskrit term referring to any poetic metre commonly used in legends - verses recited (usually mentally) in rhythm with the breath as part of mindfulness practice or meditation. A hypnotic sound bath in which tribally-rooted ambient morphs into one entity. Drones, live instruments and esoteric textures are transformed into a contemporary Kāthā interpretation.

One of life's most difficult arts is learning to let go. You can try to cling to control in the face of a turbulent world, but the only constant we can count on is change—the tendrils of cleansing fire wiping away the old, new life springing forth from the dust and ash. So what's the point? Give yourself over to the depths. Surrender to the flow.

G.S. Schray's new solo album The Changing Account is an appropriate soundtrack for learning to cope with a world we can't count on. Each piece is full of elliptical melodies that swirl with the unstable logic of dreams. Flurries of piano, guitar lines, and other more alien instrumentation shimmer delicately, but before they coalesce into familiar shapes or rhythms they change, then change, then change again. Listening is a bit like falling asleep on a long road—with each passing song you're waking up somewhere new, trying to get your bearings in another strange world. How did I get here? Where are we going? It doesn't matter. Close your eyes, drift away again.

Amateur Dramatics is Awkward Corners AKA Chris Menist's second LP in the space of a year. In 2020 – a time when the global pandemic gave artists more time and space to think about their music – Chris took his collaborations and compositions to a different level. Having already collaborated remotely with Sarathy Korwar, as well as Kitty Whitelaw through Karthik from Flamingods' Isolate/Create/Collaborate community, Chris turned his thoughts towards a new project. Amateur Dramatics is influenced by the events of early 2021 and alludes to the general atmosphere of political life in the UK right now where we are chivvied along by people who seem woefully unqualified to be commanding authority. Musically, the LP builds on foundations of the meditative, devotional electronic aspects of previous LP Dislocation Songs but this time frames it more in a jazz context with significant collaborations with Collocutor and Maisha's Tamar Osborn on four tracks.Vocals (from Kitty Whitelaw) feature on an Awkward Corners track for the first time, as well as double bass provided by David Leahy.The result is a thoughtful and deep listening 40 minute listening experience.

Frontman, Johnny Delaware lives in a wide-eyed perspective baptized in
the setting of a John Mellencamp song - “You have to be awake in this life”.
Before his stint with Charleston based SUSTO, Johnny found himself as a solo
artist from a small town in South Dakota. Eventually, life would take him to
Albuquerque, NM, Nashville, TN, Austin, TX, and Charleston, SC where he met
guitarist and collaborator Clay Houle. Both teamed up to write and conceptualize what has become The Artisanals. It is the culmination of the collective’s
years of unique individual experiences writing, recording, touring, and living
life.
The bands new album Zia is released in Europe via Rocksnob on 3rd September, 2021. This time out they worked with producer Drew Vandenberg (Toro y
Moi, of Montreal, Kishi Bashi) at Chase Park Transduction, Athens, GA. The first
single ‘Violet Light’ has been praised by Rolling Stone as having been “built to
preach the gospel of rock n’ roll.”
The Artisanals hold iconic predecessors Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Jackson Browne close to their chest

Produced by Benny Yurco (Michael Nau, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals), mixed by Dan Molad (Lucius, Emily King) and recorded live at Little Jamaica Recordings in Burlington, VT, Liz Cooper’s highly anticipated sophomore album Hot Sass marks multiple departures—from her nine-year home of Nashville, from her band addendum of the Stampede, and from the genre-based expectations she’s accumulated throughout her career. With these twelve new songs, Cooper comes into her own—both musically and as a person—embracing a newfound sense of independence, honesty, maturity and creativity. In addition to Cooper and Yurco, Hot Sass also features Cooper’s longtime bandmates and collaborators Joe Bisirri (bass), Ryan Usher (drums, percussion) and Michael Libramento (guitar, synthesizer). Reflecting on the album, Cooper shares, “It’s me learning about what kind of woman I am and it’s not pretty all the time…I’m still processing these songs. Still reflecting. And I think that’s the thing—Hot Sass is just a stamp in time of what was happening in my life. I just want to continue making art that displays myself, the moments, and the people around me.” The new record follows Cooper’s 2018 full-length debut album, Window Flowers, which was released to widespread critical acclaim. Of the album, NPR Music praised, “a gorgeously arranged and performed bouquet of psychedelia-tinged folk-rock,” while Rolling Stone hailed, “Cooper pushes her strand of folk rock deep into psychedelic territory by merging her idiosyncratic vocal style with swirling, droning guitar effects and lacerating solos that feel dusted with otherworldly magic,” and Paste declared, “If we’re lucky, we are going to hear a lot more artists in the future like Liz Cooper.” Originally from Baltimore and now based in Brooklyn, Cooper has continued to tour consistently since her debut, performing alongside artists such as Dr. Dog, Shakey Graves, Bermuda Triangle, Lord Huron and Phosphorescent as well as special festival performances at Austin City Limits, Newport Folk Festival, BottleRock Music Festival, Lockn’ and more.

Priya Ragu’s story is just as fascinating as her music. She was born and raised in Switzerland following her parents' escape from the Sri Lankan civil war in the early eighties. As she grew older, the Swiss and Sri Lankan cultures began to clash. Although they are now fully supportive of their daughter, Priya’s parents were initially strict, she wasn’t encouraged to listen to Western music or hang out at the mall after school. However, her musical ambitions soon began to take root.

At the age of 16, she performed Alicia Keys’ ‘Fallin’’ to her brother, who insisted she perform at a show he was doing with his rap group. Her father discovered their plans and stopped her from performing, but Priya wasn’t deterred. She instead made her ambitions more covert, sneaking out to jam sessions and open mic nights, before decided to fully pursue her ambitions by moving to America with the help of her friend, the rapper Oddisee. Working remotely with Japhna, the pair created several tracks which would provide the launchpad for where she is today.
‘damnshestamil’ Priya Ragu’s debut mixtape is a result of her highly productive creative partnership with her producer and brother Japhna Gold, featuring all Priya’s singles to date, including the international sensation ‘Chicken Lemon Rice’, ‘Good Love 2.0’, ‘Forgot About’ as well as her most recent single ‘Kamali’ which launched with a BBC Radio 1 ‘first play’ – with Annie Mac, and most recently A-Listed with the BBC Asian Network – showing no signs of slowing down.
Priya has coined the term ‘Raguwavy’ for her vibrant sound which defies standard genre definitions. It signposts the next era of forward-thinking R&B and electro-pop by tapping into the sonic accents of her Sri Lankan roots.
The current single ‘Kamali’ was inspired by a short BAFTA nominated film of the same name. It explores the story of Suganthi a single mother living in a small village in India, who was raised in a culture in which gender roles are clearly structured and as a result she stayed at home until she was old enough to marry. Suffering through abuse– she escaped to create a better future for herself and her daughter – Kamali. Musically and visually Priya connected to the story of Kamali and brought her world to life through song, placing emphasis on the important of motherhood and the circle of life.
As the road to the mixtape approaches - Priya fulfilled a lifetime ambition when she played a sold-out show as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Later Latitude Festival in July, and scheduled to perform at All Points East in August, where she begins to peel back the layers of her first body of work, to a live audience.
She will end the year on a high by embarking upon her long awaited debut UK & European headline tour. Consisting of nine shows spanning six countries, the tour includes a London show at the Jazz Café which is now sold out and will culminate with a homecoming show in Zurich a week later.

Comet Records presents the Tony Allen & Afrika 70 reissue series with the classic late seventies first four solo albums of Tony Allen remastered and restored: Jealousy, Progress, No Accomodation for Lagos & No Discrimination, all coming in an heavy Deluxe Tip-On Jacket.
Tony's solo album, No Discrimination, marks an important turning point in Tony Allen's musical life. Tony had recently left Fela's band, which was clearly an emotional yet necessary change as Allen sings of love and brotherhood throughout his fourth solo album. No Discrimination, both in composition and sound, is a blueprint for the future of Afrobeat, decades ahead of its time. The songs are a mixture of old and new - fusing the classic Afrobeat compositional style with modern production and ideas. Classic tunes like "No Discrimination" and "Ariya" pushed boundaries for what Afrobeat could be, which a wave of Afrobeat bands would pick up on decades later.
With No Discrimination, Tony begins to move Afrobeat into the future, which he would continue doing for the rest of his career.
Tony Allen was a musical and compositional visionary, and this album finds him beginning to explore that vision outside of Fela's immense gravitational pull. They are the start of a new era in Tony's fruitful career as a solo artist, opening the floodgates for his distinctive Afro-Funk sound and laying the foundation for the next generation of Afrobeat musicians to come.

When his mother brought Stanley Turrentine’s Salt Song LP back from a trip to Canada, Julien Lourau, then a teenager, was impressed by the scope of the sound and the groove of the saxophone. He was also charmed by the lush arrangements and funky sound of the record, typical of releases on the CTI label. Created by producer Creed Taylor, CTI left an imprint in the minds of 70s jazz fans much like Blue Note did in the 60s, and it even ended up releasing work by artists who started out on this mythical label such as Stanley Turrentine and Freddie Hubbard. The two even shared the same sound engineer, the great Rudy van Gelder.
Yet CTI, though highly prolific during its 15 years of activity, has not benefitted from the same aura as its predecessor. “To breathe life into this album, I listened to a wealth of CTI releases and discovered some I had never heard before. I noticed, oddly, that many of today’s musicians know very little about CTI - a label unfairly considered as minor.”

The choice of tracks was determined by Julien’s personal tastes, always keeping in mind a desire to help people discover them yet focusing on the joy of actually playing them too.

"The album is made up of 9 pieces. Mathieu Débordes got everything down to the nearest note before we even attempted to play them. CTI didn’t hold back in fuelling their compositions with brass and violins, but I erased this aspect and pared things down to a bass, drums and two keyboards."
English drummer Jim Hart, someone Julien worked with during his London years, propels the group - from hard-bop polyrhythms with “drum & bass” inflections to a reworking of classic Red Clay.

Sylvain Daniel on the bass and Arnaud Roulin on the analogue keys are two musicians close to the saxophonist, and that he met when they were students in 1999 while organising a master class at the Conservatoire de Nantes. Since then, they have become his esteemed companions.

The collaboration with young pianist Léo Jassef began on this recording, where he also plays the Prophet 5. The dynamic and overlap of the many keyboards played by Arnaud and Léo bring the record a richness of timbre and harmony that the strings and brass provided on the CTI recordings.
For the final track on the record, Julien called upon his friend of 30 years, guitarist Bojan Z, for a fresh, Gospel take on Love and Peace, a track recorded by Quincy Jones in 1969, which here, is dedicated to Bojan’s recently departed brother.

“When it comes down to it, this album really is as I had imagined it, with, luckily, a few unexpected turns. I created a playlist I then claimed as my own. But in the end, I must admit that I would have loved to have composed some of these tracks.”

Hammer Films has long held a special place in the hearts of horror fans, defining the British genre during the 1950’s with classics such as Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein. Composer James Bernard scored both and went on to compose the music to a host of horror films for Hammer during the Sixties and Seventies. His distinctive clashing harmonies, often doubling the musical theme a tone higher, raise the on-screen action to a frenzied pitch, terrifying 20th Century cinema goers to the degree that his scores have become synonymous with the titular monsters.

180g vinyl record. only 300 copies - all hand numbered.

pressed in two verison - 200 black and 100 transparet with one white line ("crack" as the name of the TV series).

The first 100 copies have the Urbanski signature on the back cover.

This is another, after "Ultraviolet" collaboration project of the AXN Polska, U Know Me Records and the artist - Wojtek Urbański. The soundtrack for the Rysa series with Wojtek's original music will premiere on the 9th April.

"The music for the Rysa series is a combination of the world of electronics, modernity with traditional instruments and folk accents. On one side we have synthesizers, deep bass and wide spaces, characteristic of electronic music and close to my musical style. In opposition to these elements, however, I used traditional instruments such as hurdy-gurdy, pipes, flutes and strings" says Wojtek Urbański.

"I wanted the duality of this music to reflect the struggles and double life of the main character of the series. She lives in a certain suspension, between the 'day' world which she knows and remembers, but also the 'night' world which happens beyond her consciousness. Through music, I tried to convey the character of both these worlds, touching very dark and heavy emotions in one of them. I have invited an expert of traditional music, Sebastian Wielądek (hurdy-gurdy, pipes, flutes) and the outstanding violinists Stanisław Słowiński and Agnieszka Świgut to record these works. " adds Urbański

180g vinyl record. only 300 copies - all hand numbered.

pressed in two verison - 200 black and 100 transparet with one white line ("crack" as the name of the TV series).

The first 100 copies have the Urbanski signature on the back cover.

This is another, after "Ultraviolet" collaboration project of the AXN Polska, U Know Me Records and the artist - Wojtek Urbański. The soundtrack for the Rysa series with Wojtek's original music will premiere on the 9th April.

"The music for the Rysa series is a combination of the world of electronics, modernity with traditional instruments and folk accents. On one side we have synthesizers, deep bass and wide spaces, characteristic of electronic music and close to my musical style. In opposition to these elements, however, I used traditional instruments such as hurdy-gurdy, pipes, flutes and strings" says Wojtek Urbański.

"I wanted the duality of this music to reflect the struggles and double life of the main character of the series. She lives in a certain suspension, between the 'day' world which she knows and remembers, but also the 'night' world which happens beyond her consciousness. Through music, I tried to convey the character of both these worlds, touching very dark and heavy emotions in one of them. I have invited an expert of traditional music, Sebastian Wielądek (hurdy-gurdy, pipes, flutes) and the outstanding violinists Stanisław Słowiński and Agnieszka Świgut to record these works. " adds Urbański

When it comes to modern heavy metal there are few bands operating at the same level as Portrait. For a decade and a half the Swedish unit have been forging their own path, and in the process infusing life into a longstanding, well-established genre and taking it in new directions. Following up 2017’s acclaimed Burn The World, they return with the mighty At One With None. While Portrait fans will immediately recognize it as the work of their heroes they are not simply rehashing old ideas and treading where they have before.

3 + 3 is the eleventh studio album by American musical group The Isley Brothers, released under T-Neck/Epic Records. It marked the first time the group officially included six members instead of three: older brothers Ronald, Rudolph and O’Kelly Isley were joined by younger brothers Ernie and Marvin as well as their brother-in-law Chris Jasper. The album was very successful, which can be attributed to the successful singles “That Lady”, “What It Comes Down To” and “Summer Breeze”. 3 + 3 ultimately became the band’s first platinum album. The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and was also ranked #464 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020

THE NIGHT FLIGHT ORCHESTRA is back! The band that formed as an idea of friends from several well known rock/metal bands (SOILWORK, ARCH ENEMY, MEAN STREAK) back almost a decade ago and has been dropping jaws ever since. With 5 albums already under their belt, 2 nominations for the Swedish Grammies, countless live shows and praises from fans and media alike, TNFO have steadily upped their game when it comes to paying tribute to a decade that influences all sorts of people and even industries to this day - the 80s. With hits like ‘Domino’, ‘Lovers In The Rain’, ‘West Ruth Ave’, ‘Divinyls’ or ‘This Time’, the band manages to maintain a variety of vibes and emotions within every album. From hard rockers, poppy digressions to progressive epics, disco-esque songs and almost cheesy yet loveable ballads.

Enter 2020, TNFO had just released their recent record, ‘Aeromantic’, and kicked off their European tour in support of it, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Björn Strid, the AOR dictator helming this exceptional collective called NFO, recalls “We made it one week into the tour after some absolutely amazing shows and then it all went south and we had to go home. Just about everyone on the tour got sick when they came home, with varied conditions.”
The band didn’t step back and accept the situation but decided to do what they do best instead: “It was pretty clear after some months into the Covid madness, that it was here to stay and that we weren’t gonna be able to tour for quite some time. So we made the best out of it. The remedy was simply to hit the studio again as soon as everybody was well again. It ended up being an incredibly creative 1,5 years and so many amazing songs came out of it.”

That being said, the second part of the ‘Aeromantic’ saga really captures what this band is all about: being in motion and romanticizing traveling, sometimes even with a broken heart - accompanied by the good things in life. Namely with songs like ‘White Jeans’, yet another jaw dropping classic rock gem about hot young love, cramped with nostalgia, or ‘Change’, which encompasses all the vibes you know from your favorite decade: Urgency, emotion, warmth and excitement. But also groovy danceable songs like ‘Chardonnay Nights’, a groovy, dreamy, yet uplifting homage to parties and hot love, or ‘Burn For Me’, a true feel good anthem for the summer - driving people to dance in the streets, all worries aside, to a brighter future.

On the other hand there are tracks like the almost progressive ‘Amber Through A Window’. A little throwback (at least titular) to the NFO’s epic 2017 album ‘Amber Galactic’: “Amber is with us wherever we go and I think she’ll keep coming back. She’s our mascot of escapism. The song was very interesting to compose. It takes you on quite a journey with key changes and goes from minor to major when you least expect it and throws you between different set of emotions. At the same time it feels pretty direct and operates like a mini epos. Really happy with how it turned out“, cites Strid.

Besides all this, the band has also stepped up their game when it comes to music videos for their timeless anthems. “White Jeans” for instance features Swedish TV personality Fredrik Lexfors and is a sweet little homage to the LGBTQIA+ community. “Fredrik is a good friend of mine and has loads of experience in the musical/theatre world and is super creative. He created this character called ”Kantorn” (The Cantor) some years ago and became a hit on YouTube. He has a very twisted and unique way of singing and acting, which is very funny. He was a part of Sweden’s Got Talent TV Show and went really far and became a crowd favorite. Fredrik has a lot of friends in the LGBTQIA+ community and I also have quite a few. We saw it as a joyful tribute and we’ve only gotten really good response. It’s of course also humorous but has a very nice balance and a very positive message.”

The bold and jovial video for “Burn For Me” on the other hand maybe among the biggest and best productions, the NFO ever recorded for the depths of the internet: “I’ve had this idea to film a ”Dancing in the Streets” video, where curious people come out of the woodworks and join the party in the streets. It’s a very classic 80’s scenario and very common in videos back then. Sort of the video to IRENE CARA’s ”Fame”. You don’t see it very often these days. We felt that it was needed and after “Burn For Me” was done I immediately envisoned it being the perfect ”post corona dancing celebration in the streets-song”.”

Those two videos are by far not everything the band will have to offer visually, but we won’t tell any more just for now. To be continued…

With all that new greatness up their sleeves, NFO are ready to take the world by storm – again! Even though coming up with a setlist for their scheduled tour starting in September may prove to become problematic according to the AOR Dictator: “Making a setlist might end up being a nightmare haha… I would be up for doing only songs off »Aeromantic I« and »Aeromantic II« since that’s really where we’re at right now, but I think most of our the Midnight Flyers would like to hear some old stuff, too. Maybe we could get away with it as long as we play “West Ruth Ave” as the ending song and create the good old conga train?”

Charlie Parr’s album, ‘Last of the Better Days Ahead’, is a collection of
powerful new songs about how one looks back on a life lived, as well as
forward on what’s still to come.
Its spare production foregrounds Parr’s poetic lyricism, his expressive, gritty
voice ringing clear over deft acoustic guitar playing that references folk and
blues motifs in Parr’s own exploratory, idiosyncratic style.
When it comes to what it all means, Parr says it best: “Last of the Better Days
Ahead is a way for me to refer to the times I’m living in. I’m getting on in years,
experiencing a shift in perspective that was once described by my mom as ‘a
time when we turn from gazing into the future to gazing back at the past, as
if we’re adrift in the current, slowly turning around.’ Some songs came from
meditations on the fact that the portion of our brain devoted to memory is also
the portion responsible for imagination, and what that entails for the collected
experiences that we refer to as our lives.
Other songs are cultivated primarily from the imagination, but also contain
memories of what may be a real landscape, or at least one inspired by vivid dreaming. The album represents one full rotation of the boat in which we
are adrift looking ahead for a last look at the better days to come, then being
turned around to see the leading edge of the past as it fades into the foggy
dreamscape of our real and imagined histories.”
“Like John Hartford jamming with St Francis of Assisi, Parr strikes a fine balance between immense generosity toward humanity and barely contained
outrage towards humanity’s tendency towards coldness and conformity.” 8/10
Uncut
“Hypnotic stories of low-key endurance and universal questions, like Raymond
Carver’s fiction set to a louch, crystal-clear soundtrack” **** Mojo

Un Singe En Hiver (“A Monkey in Winter”) starred the greatest name of the
time in French Cinema, Jean Gabin and a “rising newcomer”,
Jean-Paul Belmondo.
This is popular early 60s mainstream French cinema, with a certain ‘quality’
that would not be to the taste of the nouvelle vague aficionados. In fact this
film is nothing less than the reflection of a certain Gaullist spirit of rebellion,
fiercely individualistic and disabused of all ideologies.
The music of Michel Magne outlines the nostalgic wanders of Albert Quentin
(Jean Gabin) who after an adventurous youth on the Yang-Tse-Kiang now lives
a quiet life with Suzanne (Suzanne Flon) whom he met at the Bourboule and
manages the Stella hotel at Tigreville (actually Villerville in the Normand Calvados) and takes care of Gabriel Fouquet (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a young adman
whose heart was broken in Madrid.
The genius of Magne is found in his evocations of Spain and China not as they
were at the time but as the two main characters picture them with the help
of not just a few drinks. Here is a jolly good record you will want to go back to
every time the right-minded ones try to mess with your basic rights.

Fresh one on Music With Soul - a channel for hot 7"s that always fly out here. TIP!

"Two and a half frenetic minutes that sound like Aphex Twin and The Incredible Bongo Band dancing Capoeira in the early hours of an illegal rave, somewhere in the deep amazon forest. After the success of his first solo 45, Alex Figueira comes back to the aesthetics of the early Fumaça Preta, with an utterly bonkers 45 that can only be described as an “in-your-face acid macumba techno breakbeat funk freakout”.

The flip side contains a haunting Psychedelic ballad, with the sweet vocals of Maddie Ruthless, from NY’s leading Lovers Reggae sensation, The Far East. Equally trippy and beautiful, the soothing sounds of the Wurlitzer piano and the electric sitar will be bouncing in your head for hours after first listen. The kind of song that finds collectors dropping eye-popping sums, decades after the original release. Guarantee your retirement now by getting a few copies! The song “Maracas” is the main theme of the movie “Maracas, tambourines and other hellish things” directed by fellow record nerds Matteo Fava and Dave Potsma. They managed to convince Figueira to play the main character, and later on, to do the complete music score. The movie tells the story of a struggling underground musician / part time record store clerk, whose music career is basically going nowhere until an improbable encounter gives his life a dramatic turn. They asked Figueira to give them something with “a fresh tropicalized take on Blacksploitation”. One might argue, after listening to the insanity carved on the grooves of this piece of vinyl, that he certainly did deliver.

The characteristic mix of synthesizers and heavy percussion used by Figueira in almost all his projects, gains here a somewhat freer dimension, embracing the chaos openly, without ever neglecting the groove, nor the ancestry axis. Values that are at the core of the label. Even while laying down all the instruments himself, Figueira has managed to capture the same out of control tropical psychedelic spirit of his former band, Fumaça Preta. Fans of the group’s outfit will certainly be rejoiced by this new release.

The flip carries “Grasping & Wishing”, an evocative Psych ballad that retains the same tripped-out flair of the A side, while slowing down the tempo considerably with a decidedly african 6/8 beat. Sung by New Orleans’ own “Rocksteady Queen”, Maddie Ruthless, stepping out of her classic Reggae background, to grace the track with her beautiful voice, permeating the issues of belonging, doubt and introspective reflection portrayed in the lyrics, with a thin layer of exquisite fragility that will comfort your ears.

The production includes a significant number of sound effects, ranging from different types of percussion performed with liquids to bamboo flutes of different sizes and several layers of multiprocessed electric Sitar tracks. Listen carefully and you will discover new sonic nounces every time you put the record on."

Martin Scorsese’s Motion Picture "Goodfellas" needs little introduction. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and the ultimate mob movie. The soundtrack features artists Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, The Shangri-las and many more. It is a very rare find on vinyl, having only being pressed in a couple of small runs in the early 1990s. This 1LP release will be the first global pressing and will be available on blue vinyl.

In 1970, Kevin and David met whilst they were working in the Labour Exchange Office on Aytoun St, Manchester. Both played guitar and had been searching for other musicians who played atmospheric music. Kevin had been playing in small clubs in Manchester and David performed in a few local bands. One evening, they jammed together at Kevin’s family home, and quickly realized that their playing blended together to form the basis of the sound they had been looking for. In the late ‘70s, the music scene in Manchester was bursting with new bands and music.

However, Kevin and David had little in common with the local acts, being disciples of a more meditative approach. They followed a path of their own, reaching for an otherworldly sound that they heard from artists like John Martyn, David Crosby, Erik Satie, Terry Riley, Eberhard Weber, Alice Coltrane, and Ralph Towner. They experimented combining their acoustic guitars and David’s bass with various effects pedals and techniques to try and achieve a warm and expansive sound that rides the line between ambient, jazz, and psychedelic folk Music.

Towards 1981, they had written eleven songs and accompanied a few with Moog synthesizer laid down by Rob Baxter. All were recorded on cassette decks in their simple home studios. They named this collection of music “Light Patterns”, after a poem Kevin had written. With Light Patterns complete, they set out to find a label to represent their music. They started playing a few gigs in Manchester; Band On The Wall, the Gallery, and other venues, such as Rotters which local promoter Alan Wise had organized. They set up with small amps along with their effects and played as though they were back at home. As Kevin remarks, “It was unusual, to say the least, to play such venues in a low volume chilled out way. However, people listened, often in shocked curiosity, and some even asked for tapes.”

Peter Jenner, of Blackhill Enterprises, eventually picked up the album for his new label, “Sheet”. Peter had managed lots of experimental bands and solo artists, including Pink Floyd in their early Syd Barrett days. He always favored outsiders! The tapes were taken to Strawberry Recording Studios in Manchester, who were surprised when Kevin and David walked in with just a couple of home-produced cassette tapes. Fortunately, they liked them and agreed to master the album. It was then sent to Portland Recording Studios in London for final mastering to vinyl. George Peckham, aka “Porky”, did the pressing with a personal message in the deadwax; “Kaftans, Candles and be Cool Man”. The artwork for the album cover was done by the late Barney Bubbles, a truly visionary artist.

After the album’s release, the pair continued to play together regularly until David moved away from the city. Kevin still resides near Manchester in the rolling hills outside of the city. He continues to experiment with dreamy music in his loft, and we are set to share a selection of his ethereal archival and current compositions in the coming months. David lives a quiet life in a small coastal town in the South, he likes to sail and is an avid cricket fan. We’re excited to make Light Patterns accessible again for the first time in nearly 40 years, remastered from the original tapes. As the original press release said, “Put the album on, lie back and enter the land of no floors”.

Colkin, who is based in Wuppertal, is one of those guys who pushes things forward in the subcultural field and follows words with deeds. Together with Nico aka dont-call-him-molly and his other partners, he has been running the mauke_club in Wuppertal for several years. An ultimate melting point for dance culture, scene connoisseurs - as well as newcomers who want to be smoothly introduced into the things we love. Not to forget his considerable discography.

Besides the fact that he is a fine guy and we have been in exchange with him for a long time, we appreciate his taste in music very much. This seems to be mutual, as the ep he recorded fits us like a glove. Three what we find to be great, timeless house productions that forget the Covid circumstances for a brief moment and bring the dance floor to life with your eyes closed. These tracks will accompany us until the clubs reopen, That's for sure!

We are also pleased that Javonntte and melchiorsultana have been musical influences on these productions, which were recorded in Paris during Colkin's stay there. This obviously had a considerable influence on the naming. Whether in Paris, Wuppertal or Düsseldorf - we are actually looking forward to our fifth release with Colkin!

Keplar re-issues the fourth album 'Chessa' by Dan Abrams' project Shuttle358 on vinyl for the first time. The double LP edition includes 3 previously unreleased tracks from the same recording sessions back in 2004, as well as an extended artwork with unseen photographs by Dan Abrams.

While undoubtedly associated with the microsound and 'clicks & cuts' movement around the turn of the millennium, on 'Chessa' Shuttle358 left behind the classical rhythmic patterns of the genre and shifted further towards warmer territories, meandering between modern digital minimalism and the soft tones of ambient music. Counter to his microsound synthesis approach on Frame (2000), Abrams created Chessa by writing software that manipulated samples from his unreleased songs, guitar pieces, and vintage japanese films sampled from video tape. In particular, a special granulating technique was written and performed at intentionally low sample rates that gave the uniquely fragile, yet dense sound to the album. Over fourteen tracks Abrams arranges slowly evolving sonic entities of unfading elegance. Strayed and hazy melodies pulse and cascade, elongated but brittle harmonies shimmer and disappear, echoing far-off in the rounded corners of the mind. The patient and detailed way Abrams combines the broken with the beautiful in creating organic collages of sound that retain the euphonic essence of a song, makes this piece of work so powerful and timeless, sounding just as relevant today, as it did 17 years ago.

Under modern scrutiny in Abrams latest studio, he refocused the original recordings to emphasize the elements most important to the original vision. The final mastering and vinyl preparation was done in collaboration with Stephan Mathieu, vinyl was cut by LUPO.

From the original press release in 2004 by Taylor Deupree:

Without a doubt Shuttle358 has become one of the most admired artists to emerge from modern electronic music’s sea of musicians. From the humble beginnings of a demo CD in 12k’s mailbox to 4 critically acclaimed CDs, Dan Abrams is, to some, the one credited for bringing a warmth and human touch back into what has often been considered a very cold, sterile genre. It began with 1999’s Optimal.lp (12k1005), a groundbreaking debut release that immediately defined the Shuttle358 sound; a hybridization of the then-emerging “microsound” genre with Eno’s true ambient explorations. In 2000 Abrams outdid himself with Frame (12k1011) by honing his sound design and exploring production techniques at rates that made his “now” quite brief and creating what was to become one of the most sought-after CDs in the 12k catalog.

Chessa is the third release from Abrams’ Shuttle358 moniker on 12k and he continues to do what he does best: attempt to move microsound away from the world of theory and towards absolute real life. Like his photographs, Chessa is music about, and to be listened to in, unexpected places. It is a narrative, a simple slice of life that plays out through the incidental photography of the cover artwork. To achieve this Abrams fuses irregular granular sound particles, like the movements of everyday life, with a deliberate melodic base that captures emotion and simplicity.

Let’s get back to the program. Picking up from where things were left off in July 2020…

Whilst most electronic producers of the dance-floor persuasion dabbled with conducting micro-symphonies for their micro-herbs, locked inside their micro-mansions, Dreems has dusted off his dance-floor accreditations and got back to work creating some serious indoor waves for Le Temps Perdu.

The Blue Water EP has all the stuff that encapsulates the label - raw, fun, powerful and free, yet deep, loving, warm and friendly. The music carries on from the previous Shark Water and Blue Hole EPs, calling all sea monsters with Die Orangen Remix of Shark Water, later emerging in calm waters for mermaid pleasing Iñigo Vontier Remix of The Dolphin Communion, and finally swimming into the salty, acidic tones of the Blue Hole (Break Mix).

Dear water-lily enthusiast, you need fear not, there is a hearty nod to the plant-life in Something Else for Spring that grows and sprouts new life with each turning phrase and finally blossoms with a sprinkle of joy. Label head-gardener V gives it the extra push put on the dance floor with his tougher take.

You grab a copy of the vinyl at some bricks and mortar stores if you are fond of wearing your scuba suit whilst browsing the shelves, otherwise head to the regular online outlets to get this small slice of history. It contains, we feel, the best of the past 2 EPs.

A double album of sumptuous, expansive downbeat luxury written by Pete Woosh - one half of the celebrated duo Digs & Woosh and Nottingham's DIY collective - with Andy Riley (Toka Project, Inland Knights) during the illness which would eventually claim Pete's life. Given the background of its creation, it's a blissfully peaceful and optimistic sounding collection.

The chilled disco/house hypnotism of 'Keep Yr Shape' and 'For Your Love', all slinky, hazy vocals and headnodding back room hedonism, are obvious highlights, but more reflective moments like 'Piano Fades' make this into a varied and enduring 'proper album' listen rather a mere collection of tracks.

All profits will go to the Spirit Wrestlers foundation, founded in honour of Pete's memory and devoted to good causes in his hometown of Nottingham.

What’s Amore? Amore is a lifestyle, it’s a feeling, it’s an attitude. Amore is cruising down sunset boulevard in a pink Cadillac. Amore is drinking Long Island ice tea at a baby shower. Amore is high octane. High risk. High reward. That’s Amore!

Re-mastering by: Kevin Gray

This is a reissue of a now out-of-print album from live trio date by the legendary LA-based pianist, composer and multi-bandleader, Horace Tapscott. Pianist Horace Tapscott is always at his best when he is leading a trio. Born in 1934 in Houston, Texas, Horace came from a musical family centered around his mother, Mary Malone Tapscott, who worked professionally as a singer and pianist. When Horace was nine, the family moved to Los Angeles. As a teenager in the late 1940's, Horace was surrounded by the music of Central Avenue: Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, were among the many cats on the set. Around this time, Horace also began to take music lessons from teachers Dr. Samuel R. Browne and Lloyd Reese, whose other students included Eric Dolphy and Frank Morgan. Horace's musical studies included trombone in addition to piano.

In 1952, Horace graduated from Jefferson High, got married to Cecilia Payne and went into the Air Force. Horace played in an Air Force Band while he was stationed in Wyoming for his term of duty. After mustering out, he returned to Los Angeles where he worked around on various gigs until he joined the Lionel Hampton Big Band as a trombonist.

In 1959, Horace finally went with the Hampton Big Band to New York, where his friend Eric Dolphy introduced him to John Coltrane. A tough winter, a lack of gigs, and too many nights on the floor of a friend's art gallery finally sent Horace packing for sunny Southern California, where a life with wife and family awaited his return.

The sixties saw Horace emerge as a die-hard leader of the Avant Garde. Horace began to gain public notice playing with his own group, that included alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe, bassist David Bryant, and drummer Everett Brown II. Horace also appeared on records for the first time.

Horace was always outspoken about racism, politics, stereotypes, and social ethics. His forward-minded vocal presence on and off the microphone is as much a part of his art as his piano playing. As a result, he was labeled a "dissident," categorized as an "employment risk," and black-listed from the music industry establishment in the early 1970's. None of this slowed Horace down. He began gigging sporadically at Parks and Recreation events and for churches around Watts. This "dark period," with his only regular gig at his friend Doug Weston's Troubadour on Los Angeles' "Restaurant Row", was also a time of intense creativity.

Around 1977, Horace reorganized the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra with the help of several old friends and many new faces. The Arkestra performances involve singing, dancing, and poetry in addition to the music. Soon after the new group's debut, Horace came to the attention of producer Tom Albach who contracted Horace to record a number of albums for Nimbus Records. Albach also helped introduce Horace to an international audience by arranging several European tours.

The 80's saw Horace emerge as one of jazz's premiere solo pianists. He recorded several solo piano albums for Nimbus.