Pop & Rock Vinyl New Releases - News

Could everything be different What if, for example, nine was actually eight Well then, 'If Nine Was Eight' is the third studio album from Ritornell - following up from 'Golden Solitude' (2009, Karaoke Kalk) and 'Aquarium Eyes' (2013, Karaoke Kalk).

Naturally, nine stays nine, that is not going to change. Gently but firmly, Richard Eigner and Roman Gerold (both born in 1983) do it nonetheless: on 'If Nine Was Eight' they create states of suspension and illusion, which not only blur the lines between pop and art but also between acoustic and electronic sounds. The ambiguous beauty of their music has been compared to a detailed botanical still life: you half expect to see movement among the leaves.

Contrabass flute, cello, piano, Rhodes, these are only some of the ingredients that make up the ten tracks on 'If Nine Was Eight'. On this album, percussionist Eigner and pianist Gerold collaborated again with a number of musicians: Jazz tubist Jon Sass, saxophonist Werner Zangerle, and Swiss avant-garde percussionist Julian Sartorius are among the contributors. Flip Philipp, member of the Wiener Symphoniker, plays marimba and vibraphone. Various flutes are added by Norbert Trawöger, a prolific mediator between old and new music. Mira Lu Kovacs (Schmieds Puls) is responsible for the lyrics of and vocals on the track 'Old People,' and Viennese artist Mimu Merz (Book of Now) is once more a part of the team. In addition, the soulful vocals on the track 'Sleeping Alone' are courtesy of Tobias Koett of the duo Ant Antic.

In Ritornell's protean live performances everything is flexible. Depending on the context, Eigner and Gerold dress their compositions in different guises: dance tunes can morph into planar-cloudy soundscapes and vice versa. Thus they demonstrate that even if nine can never be eight, at least their music is full of possibilities.

One of Sonic Youth's most beloved albums, 1987's Sister incorporated the dissonance of their earlier releases into more traditional song structures. It's an innovative and thrilling work assuredly delivered by a band at the peak of their powers.

Reissued on the band's Goofin' imprint, this 2016 pressing includes a digital download card with the vinyl edition.

"Let's get something straight. There is no album in the entire corpus of indie rock—not Loveless, not Surfer Rosa, not Psychocandy—that reaches the heights of invention, joy, and magic of Sonic Youth's sublime fifth album.... The haunted reveries of Sister remain with you for years, even if you only hear them once.... Sister is the sonic manifestation of refracted light. It's a record that changes you." — Stereogum

"""A lot of geezers my age don't work out of their comfort zone anymore because once you become legendary you don't want people challenging you.'-- Iggy PopThe existence of the sublimely secretive desert opus conceived by Iggy Pop and Joshua Homme was confirmed to an unsuspecting studio and home audience of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And now the world at large can know: March 18 will see the release of Post Pop Depression , the 17th Iggy Pop album, and a worthy addition to the 22 album legacy spawned with the immortal trilogy of The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power, spanning massively influential solo outings including 1977's opening 1-2 combo of The Idiot and Lust For Life, and 1990's gold-certified Brick By Brick. Cover features confirmed in Guardian Guide/Mojo/Shortlist/The Sun Something For The Weekend'. Currently 6Music B list and Radio X daytime rotation. Deluxe LP is a limited run of 2k with no extra music but a bigger booklet, and gatefold packaging!"

TRACKLIST

01 / A1 Running
02 / A2 Wendy Rene
03 / A3 All In
04 / A4 Boy
05 / A5 My Danish Girl
06 / A6 Forever Starts Tonight
07 / B1 I'm Com'un Home (In the Morn'un)
08 / B2 Lost Tobacco Road
09 / B3 77
10 / B4 They Don't Know
11 / B5 Let's Get Away
12 / B6 Permanent Vacation

Primarily focused on the electric guitar (but also featuring flute and a bit of trumpet) the recording is named after the Pythagorean guitar tuning it employs. The new recording is a truly solo endeavour; composed, performed, produced, engineered and mastered solely by Chatham.

Following his Guitar Trio Is My Life! and A Crimson Grail records—the latter, the extensive revisiting of his groundbreaking 'Guitar Trio' (1977) which featured the entire guitar section of Sonic Youth, and members of Swans, Tortoise, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Modern Lovers, A Silver Mt. Zion & Hüsker Dü; the former, his work for large electric guitar orchestra which premiered in Paris in 2005 (for 400 guitars) and was reworked for the Lincoln Center Out Of Doors Festival in New York City in 2009 (200 electric guitars and 16 electric basses)—Chatham felt a need to get back to basics, returning to that most intimate and direct way of experiencing music: the solo.

Going back to the model of composer as performer that was pioneered in the 1960s by artists such as Tony Conrad and Terry Riley, Chatham began to develop solos that he would play himself, choosing to incorporate the multi-second delay effect pioneered by Terry Riley with two Revox Tape Machines. Feeling that it tied in with his overall minimalist aesthetic (having studied under, and then worked with La Monte Young in the early 1970s) and that the effect (which gives the impression that choirs and choirs of instruments are playing) was fitting as a succession to his 100-guitar idea, Chatham created and layered feedback loops of varying durations using Riley's method in order to create rich, overlapping layers which in practice transcend the limitations of their start and end points, blooming into free-flowing melodies in their own right.

Part One of Pythagorean Dream is comprised of a brief trumpet intro, followed by a guitar piece which implements a finger picking technique (Chatham has long been a fan of this style; John Fahey was one of his teenage musical heroes), before moving to an eBow section, and concluding with the fast tremolo flat-picking technique used in the context of his 100 guitar pieces.

Part Two is principally about Chatham's return to the flute, the instrument which sparked his love of contemporary music; which he mastered in his adolescence prior to experiencing the early Ramones show at CBGB's which caused him to changed course and focus on the electric guitar. While composing this solo work, Chatham figured that the flute's timbre would make a suitably interesting contrast to the guitar and trumpet, which led him to pick up the instrument again. Pythagorean Dream features Chatham on C, alto & bass flutes. The recording is brought to a close with a final guitar piece.

MD Pallavi is a South-Indian singer and one of the most prominent protagonists of the traditional music scene in and around Bangalore.

Andi Otto (aka Springintgut) has collaborated with her in the past years in various theatre productions, and soon the world will hear their first track together. It's very good, and there is more to come in 2016!

Otto's composition for "Bangalore Whispers" creates the spine for Pallavi's virtuoso performance of carnatic (traditional South-Indian) syllables. The track pulses on 95 bpm with an organic cluster of piano, cello and psalterium strings, over which the vocals erupt in a mesmerizing vocal solo in the middle of the track.

The B-side "6-5-5-5" is made exclusively for this 7inch release. It builds upon a one-line-sample from a vintage Indian movie soundtrack and amplifiues this energy into a euphoric rhythm to which Otto bows the strings of a Psalterium (A beautiful east european string instrument, which Otto plays with two bows. It actually sounds similar to a sitar, when it's plucked).

Andi Otto from Hamburg, Germany, has recorded several albums under the moniker Springintgut in the past decade. For the sake of pronunciation, he will use his actual name from now on

2 track Single from Augustus Pablo released by Move & Groove/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Dave Barker released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Dave Barker released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

Get Well Soon just released their new studio album called 'Love' (via Caroline).

Jagger Botchway is most famous for his work with the Hedzoleh Soundz and Hugh Masekela. Jagger was also the driving force behind the highly sought-after Ghanaian afro-funk masterpiece Moving World by the Kelenkye Band.
Deano Sounds, along with Voodoo Funk's Frank Gossner, teamed up to release the Kelenkye Band's later material, Jungle Funk, back in 2012. Jagger went back into the studio with a group of musicians he had played with from various points in his career to record an album of unique soca and highlife sounds. What was put down on tape was a heavy mix of percussion, striking highlife guitar lines and futuristic synth stabs with soaring African voices. Deano Sounds and Jagger rescued the original multi-track DAT tapes that were
hiding in obscurity in Ghana.

Cultures of Soul invited a host of today's best remixers to give them the freedom to create their own interpretations of the material. These producers include Berlin's Africaine 808, Manchester's Ruf Dug, Switzerland's Alma Negra and New York's Names You Can Trust.

It is late 1972. Six emigres from Congo, Benin and Cameroon find themselves in Pavia, near Milan in Italy. Sharing a passion for music and dance rooted in African culture they form a band called M'Bamina ("Lightning") they and stage their dance and music show in Le Rotonde di Garlasco. Two years of hard work and gigging follow before they make their first album "African Roll", released in 1975.

Following a European tour in 1976 then find themselves performing in Cameroon for a landmark concert at the Stade de Yaounde with Claude Francois (French Pop star and the writer of the original version of Sinatras My Way) and African music legend Manu Dibango. As it often happened in the 70s when talented ambitious bands met Manu Dibango, a move to France and a record deal with Fiesta Records (Decca) soon followed.

In Paris 1977 the band find themselves opening for a James Brown's concert Au Pavillon de Paris. By now the band is a well-oiled machine they have honed their live shows and sound by distilling a pure and fresh blend of R.& B, Rumba, Afro-Cuban, Funk and traditional African. M'Bamina then hook up with French producer Philippe Brejean to record their second album "Experimental" in Sysmo studios (a hot bed of album activity and French production music at the time). The results capture the band at the peak of their powers.

The core of M'Bamina was made up of Samba Ngo (guitar and vocals), Antoine Nkouka Batenda (guitar and vocals), Bernard Bifuanibo (bass), Jean-Marie Bolangassa (percussion), Anselme Tambakassa (congas) et Ligali Ali Amidou (percussion and vocals). The band would go on to make 2 further albums before disbanding in 1985.

2 track Single from Mad Lads released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Shades released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

The Temple Funk Collective have been smashing festivals and venues up and down the country with their unique brand of party flavoured brass band bangers, when Plymouth's 14th best dj heard them do this cover of the Game of Thrones theme at Motion in Bristol he knew that if 1500 students loved it, it needed a vinyl release. With a dj friendly edit from the man himself this one is set to fly out

2 track Single from Mad Lads released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Techniques released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Techniques released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Techniques released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Techniques released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Techniques released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

2 track Single from Tommy McCook released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

Vibration Black Finger - EP (Enid Records 2016) Lascelle Lascelles (aka Lascelle Gordon) is the man behind Vibration Black Finger. One of the house DJs at London's hipper-than-hip Wag Club in the 1980s (and ocassional A Certain Ratio's tour DJ), he went on to be one of the founder members of Acid Jazz pioneers The Brand New Heavies, staying with the band for five years. His next project Heliocentric World scored a chart hit for Gilles Peterson's Talkin' Loud, then he turned up behind the drum kit for indie darlings (and NME cover stars) Campag Velocet. He's gone on to appear or record with the likes of Mr Scruff, Beth Orton, Gossip, Trevor Jackson, Peaches and others. More recently he's been working with Le Volume Courbe and touring with James Holden, as well as forming astrojazz improv collective Woven Entity with fellow percussionist Patrick Dawes. He currently co-hosts a weekly show on NTS Radio, Music to Ease Your Disease. Vibration Black Finger has been a labour of love for Lascelle. Over the last few years he's been in and out of studios with an eclectic cast of trusted collaborators including improvising vocalist Maggie Nicols, RocketNumberNine drummer Tom Page, rising star saxophonist Julie Kjaer, and Ben Cowen and Frank Byng of Snorkel. This three track EP is a taster for more VBF releases (rumours are that there's enough material for a couple of albums).

While Lascelle says that his main inspiration for the project was his love of 70s spiritual jazz, Vibration Black Finger's music also has that post punk attitude - throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. In this case, it's pretty much all stuck.

2 track Single from Vin Gordon released by Techniques/Dub Store Records

Der aus Bristol stammende und derzeit in Bern lebende Solokünstler Joe Volk war einer der ersten Musiker,
der bei Geoff Barrows (Portishead) Label Invada unter Vertrag genommen wurde. Einem größeren Publikum
ist er jedoch als Sänger, Gitarrist und (Co)-Songschreiber von Crippled Black Phoenix bekannt, wo er
zwischen 2006 und 2013 neben Justin Greaves einziges permanentes Mitglied war. Daneben trat Joe Volk
immer wieder als Songwriter für Soundtracks, Kurzfilme und Dokumentationen in Erscheinung, unter
anderem für die Oscar-nominierte Dokumentation "Exit Through The Gift Shop" über den britischen Street-Art-
Künstler Banksy. Mit "Happenings And Killings" auf Glitterhouse erscheint Volks erstes Soloalbum seit
seinem Abschied von Crippled Black Phoenix. Dafür arbeitete er eng mit den Emmy-nominierten Songwritern
und Produzenten Ben Salisbury und Geoff Barrow zusammen. Gemischt wurde das Album von Volk selbst,
allerdings in Zusammenarbeit mit Jim Barr (Portishead, Get The Blessing) und dem Musiker und Künstler
Leafcutter John. Als Gastmusiker treten Billy Fuller, Adrian Utley, Mark Ophidian, Guy Metcalfe und Luke
Harney in Erscheinung. Die Bandbreite des Albums reicht von akustischen Songs, die von analogen
elektronischen Elementen unterstützt werden, bis zu Stücken, die von Volks typischen Gesangsharmonien
und der ausgeklügelten Gitarrenarbeit geprägt sind.

Glenn Jones is a master of American Primitive Guitar, a style invented in the late 1950s by John Fahey, whose traditional fingerpicking techniques and wide-ranging influences were used to create modern original compositions. Jones, who led the post-rock ensemble Cul de Sac, brings his own made-up tunings, the use of custom-crafted partial capos, and a highly skilled picking style on both banjo and guitar, to create personal compositions that are lyrical, emotive and elegant. What sets him apart from the myriad guitarists playing today is his ability to tell stories with the guitar and banjo, and to convey a range of emotions. This process starts with the compositions themselves and carries through to his selection of recording environment and engineer.

Fleeting was recorded in a house on the banks of the Rancocas Creek in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Cozy, cluttered with artifacts of a life well-lived (by its owner Bill Bolger), the house struck the right note for Jones and his recording engineer, Laura Baird. Jones in particular likes spaces with character that are remote from the day-to-day world. Jones and Baird made no attempt to soundproof the recording environment, happy to let sounds filtering in from the outdoors to become part of the listening experience.

One of Fleeting's underlying themes is the past and the way places and people resonate in our lives. Jones reflects on the brevity — the fleetingness — of all things, while also looking towards the future. 'Spokane River Falls,' which Jones calls his 'water song,' recalls the all-but-forgotten city of Spokane, Washington, where he was born. 'Cléo Awake' and 'Cléo Asleep' share the same melodies and the same inspiration — the newborn child of Jones' friends (the conceit of 'Cléo Asleep' is that Jones plays with a mute on the banjo — called The Happy Wife Banjo Mute — so as not to disturb Cléo, no matter where in the world she is!). 'In Durance Vile,' one of the album's more dissonant, prickly tracks, was originally written to accompany three poems by the abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, whose texts Jones found 'absurd, playful . . . sometimes cruel.' Two of the album's songs are dedications to fellow guitarists (and friends) Robbie Basho and Michael Chapman.

Jones turned away from standard tuning years ago, inventing tunings as a way of escaping the known. The pieces he writes in these tunings are his way of navigating new and unfamiliar landscapes. 'But it's my hope,' he says, 'that what you hear are not the tunings and partial capos and all that, but the music — the feeling within these pieces.' Fleeting is a journey that Jones invites his listeners to take with him.

CD version in a 4 panel mini-LP style gatefold package with 4 page booklet including notes and tunings of each song. LP pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged in a heavy stock jacket with inner sleeve including notes and tunings of each song and free download card.

10 track Album from Ernest Ranglin released by Dub Store Records

10 track Album from Ernest Ranglin released by Dub Store Records

Having made a name for themselves as a cutng edge, genre-bending live and recording act on their debut, Fumaça Preta's 'Impuros Fanátcos' pushes one step further. Crossing pyschedelia, free jazz, metal, tambu, voodoo, fado and a lot more, the album is a musical cocktail and a journey of exper-imentaton. From the metculous recording of discarded metalwork in an abandoned factory in the middle of the Spanish desert, to a late night voodoo ritual in a remote village on the Venezuela/Brazil
border, to steel drums recorded in a disused military base in Czech Republic, the record has a truly unique sound and feel, whilst retaining the band's frenzied grooves at its core.
2015 was a year of change for Fumaça Preta. Rising popularity and constant touring created conficts and changes that translated directly into some of the darker, more contemplatve moments on the record. Alex Figueira took over vocals, which expanded the language, with the additon of Spanish, and
spectrum with the additon of Spanish and various melodic elements, creatng a musical depth beyond that of the frst.
'Fumaça Preta ofer a cracked Latn American psychedelia that jives to the wiggier end of Tropicalia... while drinking deep from the Buthole Surfers' manky goblet of insanity' The Quietus
'A deranged blend of heavy metal histrionics, tropicalia, psychedelia and shoutng in Portuguese.'
Financial Times 'Steaming tropical concocton.' The Wire

Another gospel barnburner from the mysterious MISTERIO label.

A new Golden Age' collection is always a special event at Ace. The success of our first Special Country Edition in the Golden Age Of American Popular Music' series virtually guaranteed that there would be a follow-up at some point. Here it is at long last, mastered from the best possible sources and with an equally strong line up of names and tracks.

Virtually all 28 of our featured artists were household names in country in their day, and the majority of them still are over 50 years
later.

There's a generous helping of uptempo hillbilly and borderline rockabilly among the straight ahead country to preserve the musical variety.

The booklet is crammed with in-depth annotation and copious illustrations with at least one image for every one of its 28 selections.

12 track Album from Derrick Harriott released by Dub Store Records

10 track Album from Willie Lindo released by Dub Store Records

2014 verabschiedete sich Dirk Darmstaedter, ehemaliger Sänger der Jeremy Days, von seinem Label
Tapete, das er 2002 mitgegründet und zu einem der erfolgreichsten deutschen Indie-Labels aufgebaut hatte.
Ziel dessen war es, sich wieder völlig auf die eigene Musik konzentrieren zu können. "Das ist einfach das
Schönste, was es für mich im Leben gibt: an Songs rumzuschrauben", so der Musiker. Und weiter: "Es ist die
Erfüllung, das wirklich Wichtige." Aus dieser Motivation heraus entstand sein Album "Before We Leave", das
im Herbst 2014 auf den Markt kam. Dessen verspielt-träumerischer Nachfolger hört auf den Titel "Beautiful
Criminals". Die Aufnahmen dafür fanden zum Großteil in seinem Up In The Attic Studio auf dem heimischen
Dachboden statt. Das Grundgerüst der Lieder kreierte er zusammen mit seinen langjährigen Wegbegleitern
Lars Plogschties an den Drums und Ben Schadow am Bass. Darmstaedter selbst ist an Gitarren, Ukulelen,
alten Analog-Synthesizern und am Mellotron zu hören. "Mir bringt Platten aufzunehmen unheimlich viel Spaß.
Das Experimentieren mit Sounds, das Ausprobieren", erzählt Darmstaedter. "Beim letzten Album ging es um
einen Bandsound. Das ist dieses Mal völlig anders. Diese Platte hat den Sound, der entsteht, wenn ich bei
mir Zuhause lange genug Zeit habe, Dinge auszuprobieren."

The return of the most important French Antillean band of the 60's and the 70's. They bring a unique mix of Biguine, funk, Latin, Compas and early Zouk. Tip!
Camille Sopran'n, who founded the band with guitarist Guy Jacquet and bassist Pierre-Edouard Décimus, personally selected this compilation from the Vikings' vast discography of about 20 albums, starting in 1967.
They obviously inherited a lot from roots music' (Gwo Ka), jazz and the beguine that had been played on the island since the late 19th century, and of which they give a dazzlingly modern version on Tou Touni'.

Their music is buffeted by the artistic winds that were sweeping the Caribbean: Rumbo Melon' is influenced by Latin music, Assez Palé' is a cover of a number by the great Haitian saxophonist and composer Nemours Jean Baptiste, who is often presented as the inventor of kompa, and Ambiance' offers a new take on Guhe Huiamo' by the Ivory Coast singer Amédée Pierre.

The return of the most important French Antillean band of the 60's and the 70's. They bring a unique mix of Biguine, funk, Latin, Compas and early Zouk. Tip!
Camille Sopran'n, who founded the band with guitarist Guy Jacquet and bassist Pierre-Edouard Décimus, personally selected this compilation from the Vikings' vast discography of about 20 albums, starting in 1967.
They obviously inherited a lot from roots music' (Gwo Ka), jazz and the beguine that had been played on the island since the late 19th century, and of which they give a dazzlingly modern version on Tou Touni'.

Their music is buffeted by the artistic winds that were sweeping the Caribbean: Rumbo Melon' is influenced by Latin music, Assez Palé' is a cover of a number by the great Haitian saxophonist and composer Nemours Jean Baptiste, who is often presented as the inventor of kompa, and Ambiance' offers a new take on Guhe Huiamo' by the Ivory Coast singer Amédée Pierre.

Nachdem unlängst der Backkatalog der französischen Dreampop-Band M83 mehr oder weniger in Gänze
wiederveröffentlicht wurde, steht 2016 mit "Junk" endlich mal wieder ein neues Album in den Regalen. Dabei
war Anthony Gonzalez, Mastermind, Songwriter und Sounddesigner von M83, nach "Hurry Up, We're
Dreaming" (2011) alles andere als untätig. Nur eben in einem anderen Metier beschäftigt. 2013 produzierte er
den Soundtrack zu den beiden Science-Fiction-Filmen "Oblivion" mit Tom Cruise in der Hauptrolle sowie für
"Divergent - Die Bestimmung", 2014 folgte die Filmmusik zu "Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter". Den
Großteil der Instrumente auf "Junk" spielte Gonzalez selbst ein. Unterstützung erhielt er dabei vom
renommierten Produzenten und Multiinstrumentalisten Justin Meldal-Johnsen, dem Saitenvirtuosen Steve
Vai, der französischen Sängerin Mai Lan, der Alt-Rock-Legende Beck sowie der Sängerin und Songwriterin
Susanne Sundfør aus Norwegen. Seinen Titel bezieht das Album aus Gonzalez' lange gehegtem Wunsch,
organisiertes Chaos zu vereinen. Das heißt eine Sammlung von Songs einzuspielen, die für sich genommen
zwar stimmig sind, aber nicht den Anspruch haben, miteinander zu funktionieren. Weiß man allerdings um
Gonzalez' Faible für die Achtziger, dann ist klar: Verschiedenheit mag bei "Junk" Trumpf sein, aber eine
verbindende Ästhetik gibt es trotzdem. Und die klingt typisch M83.