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Highly anticipated new album (the 11th) of the African Reggae Voice. Militant and sharp in his texts, powerful and unstoppable in his groove.

Recorded between Abidjan, Bamako and Paris. Co-produced by jamaican veteran Tyrone Downie (Bob Marley), and French musicians Guillaume Stepper (Sly & Robbie) and Mael Donion (City Kay).

With featurings by Amadou & Mariam, Grand Corps Malade, Winston McAnuff and Dub Inc. Sung in french, english, dioula and bambara. One of this year World Music major piece.

Post-rock band Ativin (Secretly Canadian, Polyvinyl) returns from a 19-year hiatus with Austere, the group’s most expansive and cinematic work to date and first album for Fonoradar (EU)/Joyful Noise Recordings (US). Eschewing the explosive and aggressive playing that characterizes their earlier work, Austere finds the guitar duo of Daniel Burton (Early Day Miners) and Chris Carothers (Hunting People, Grizzly Daughter) enlisting Chris Brokaw (Codeine, Come) on drums for a more stripped down and skeletal sound. The result is a work of beauty that will undoubtedly evoke a wide range of emotions in those who hear it. Recommend If You Like: Slint, Tortoise, Low, Codeine, Early Day Miners, Pedro The Lion * First Ativin record in 19 years * Recorded by Steve Albini * Secretly Canadian and Polyvinyl alumni

Endless Skyways is Bobby Lee’s third full album and second release on Tompkins Square. Returning to the full band sound of his debut, the name Endless Skyways is borrowed from a line in Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land, one of the cornerstones of American music. That song’s mix of the terrestrial (“ribbons of highway”) and celestial consciousness encapsulates Lee’s brand of widescreen cosmic americana; a duality also evident in the album’s split between deep-fried rural rock and ambient country. Dusty boots but third eye open.

São Vicente Di Longe is Cesaria Evora's eighth album and features multiple guest appearances, including Pedro Guerra, Caetano Veloso, Chucho Valdés, and North American blues superstar Bonnie Raitt.

The album includes more Latin-tinged songs, including "Tiempo Y Silencio" where Cesaria sings in Spanish, and nostalgic torch songs, such as "Linda Mimosa" and "Negue," which finds Cesaria accompanied by the piano. The tracks are recorded with a wide range of instruments like strings, horns, guitars, percussion and even a gospel choir (on "Bondade e Maldade").

São Vicente Di Longe is available on vinyl for the first time as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on orange and black marbled vinyl and includes a 4-page booklet with photos and lyrics.

The drowsiest and earliest inklings of the slowcore movement can be traced to Codeine’s 1991 debut. Combining the Louisville scene’s relaxed tempo with doom metal’s distorted slurry, the album is a
depressing masterpiece of hushed vocals, noisy guitar and punishing drums.

The drowsiest and earliest inklings of the slowcore movement can be traced to Codeine’s 1991 debut. Combining the Louisville scene’s relaxed tempo with doom metal’s distorted slurry, the album is a
depressing masterpiece of hushed vocals, noisy guitar and punishing drums.

A white ship sailing in a sea of blackness, Codeine’s swan song arrived in 1994 amid grunge’s ascension to alt radio’s godhead status.
John Engle’s guitar alternates between crystalline and sludge, and Stephen Immerwhar’s distorted bass floats on top of punishing drums from newcomer Doug Scharin (Rex, June of 44), resulting in nine perfect meditations on the loneliness and uncertainty of early adulthood.

A white ship sailing in a sea of blackness, Codeine’s swan song arrived in 1994 amid grunge’s ascension to alt radio’s godhead status.
John Engle’s guitar alternates between crystalline and sludge, and Stephen Immerwhar’s distorted bass floats on top of punishing drums from newcomer Doug Scharin (Rex, June of 44), resulting in nine perfect meditations on the loneliness and uncertainty of early adulthood.

Formed in 2004 in York, UK, Deitus create sonic terror through the medium of Black Metal with no limits and no compromises. The band have released two highly acclaimed studio albums to date (‘Acta Non Verba’, 2016 and ‘Via Dolorosa’, 2018).

The band recently completed their third full-length album, ‘Irreversible’, released through Candlelight Records, which will only serve to inflict the sinister and vicious art of Deitus to an even wider audience.

‘Irreversible’ will consolidate Deitus as masters of their craft whilst at the same time introducing a much more diverse sound overall, with tracks such as ‘Voyeur’, which features a collaboration with an independent female singer songwriter, along with their first ever music video.

Formed in 2004 in York, UK, Deitus create sonic terror through the medium of Black Metal with no limits and no compromises. The band have released two highly acclaimed studio albums to date (‘Acta Non Verba’, 2016 and ‘Via Dolorosa’, 2018).

The band recently completed their third full-length album, ‘Irreversible’, released through Candlelight Records, which will only serve to inflict the sinister and vicious art of Deitus to an even wider audience.

‘Irreversible’ will consolidate Deitus as masters of their craft whilst at the same time introducing a much more diverse sound overall, with tracks such as ‘Voyeur’, which features a collaboration with an independent female singer songwriter, along with their first ever music video.

Graham Lambkin (of Shadow Ring fame) returns with a long awaited epic double LP, Aphorisms, his first major solo outing since Community (Kye, 2016). Recorded mostly during the early winter months of 2022, in post-pandemic New York and post-Brexit London, Aphorisms assembles the sonic detritus of daily life into hauntingly intimate aural soundscapes. Made between Lambkin's residence in East London and Blank Forms in New York, Aphorisms superimposes the two spaces onto one another creating an imaginary stage where his musical dramas unfold. A transatlantic mediation on the rooms where Lambkin has lived and worked, Aphorisms summons up hallucinatory vistas by way of the composer’s collage technique, layering field recordings, piano, guitar, percussion, vocal fragments, and repurposed elements on top of one another in double, triple, and quadruple exposures. Like the Shadow Ring’s Lindus (Swill Radio, 2001) recorded between Folkestone and Miami Aphorisms ruminates on estrangement and displacement, catching Lambkin as he returns to London after two decades of living in the States, in his words, “leaving home to return home.” Aphorisms continues Lambkin’s synthetic-naturalist approach to sound-making, twisting disparate and unique elements together to create the sensation of a coherent sonic space. At the heart of his practice is the illusion of form, whereby Lambkin combines sonic elements, documenting the moment that they coalesce into music only to disintegrate back into incidental sound. The album is centered around two pianos, one in New York and one in London, sounding together as if through the ether, creating a spectral atmosphere that Lambkin fills with melodic snippets, fragments of songs, spoken-word musings, and guttural barks or “the animal purity of voice,” as he has it. The superimposition of the two spaces is maximized in the album's closing titular track, where, much like on earlier works such as Salmon Run (Kye, 2007) and Softly Softly Copy Copy (Kye, 2009) fragments of familiar melodies float through the mix as though being played from afar. Aphorisms is Lambkin at his best, extending methodologies only hinted at previously and taking his now-idiosyncratic mission statement to a new chapter.

Triple LP box-set on coloured 180g vinyl. Includes 62x62cm poster. Artwork and remaster exclusive to Fuzz Club Bootlegs. This King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard’s ‘Live In Sydney' bootleg album was recorded when the prolific Australian group descended on The Enmore Theatre in Sydney, Australia on April 22nd 2021.

Comprised entirely of King Gizzard’s microtonal material, the resulting 16-track triple LP draws heavily from their recent ‘K.G.’ and ‘L.W.’ records as well as 2017’s ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’. This bootleg is remastered exclusively for Fuzz Club and arrives as a triple LP box set with new and exclusive artwork by Elzo Durt. Each box-set also includes a 62cm x 62cm poster.

Triple LP box-set on coloured 180g vinyl. Includes 62x62cm poster. Artwork and remaster exclusive to Fuzz Club Bootlegs. This King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard’s ‘Live In Milwaukee’ bootleg album was recorded when the prolific Australian group descended on the Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee, WI, USA on August 23rd.

The resulting 19-track triple LP sees King Gizz storm through tracks from ‘Nonagon Infinity’, ‘Murder of the Universe’, ‘Fishing for Fishies’, ‘Gumboot Soup’ and ‘Chunky Shrapnel’. This bootleg is remastered exclusively for Fuzz Club and arrives as a triple LP box set with new and exclusive artwork by Elzo Durt. Each box-set also includes a 62cm x 62cm poster

This King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard ‘Live In Austin’ bootleg album is comprised of two performances recorded at the 2014 and 2016 LEVITATION festivals in Austin, Texas. Capturing a historic moment for King Gizz, the 2014 set was the band’s first-ever North American show and includes raw early versions of fan favourites from the ‘I’m In Your Mind Fuzz’, ‘Oddments’ and ‘Float Along - Fill Your Lungs’ LPs.

The 2016 show on discs 2 and 3 captures their return to Austin two years later hot off the heels of the release of ‘Nonagon Infinity’, and also sees them storm through Gizz bangers from ‘Paper Mache Dream Balloon’, ‘Quarters’ and ‘12 Bar Bruise’. This bootleg is remastered exclusively for Fuzz Club and arrives as a triple LP box set with new and exclusive artwork by Elzo Durt. Each box-set also includes a 62cm x 62cm poster

Challenging the critics that put them in a box, PVRIS defied genre and past expectations with songs like the fearless and valiant ‘GODDESS’,
the effervescent ‘ANYWHERE BUT HERE’ and the Mike Shinoda-produced anthem, ‘TAKE MY NIRVANA’. With a huge year ahead playing Sad Summer Festival with Taking Back Sunday, rooms
with POPPY, and UK arenas with Fall Out Boy, PVRIS are ready to burn down the everything you think you know and unleash the album of the Summer.

Rozi Plain’s 2019 ‘What A Boost’ is reissued on eco vinyl via Memphis Industries. The reissue is timely, following on from the breakthrough success of her 2023 album, ‘Prize’. ‘What A Boost’ was self-produced with the help of a long list of musical friends including Kate Stables, Jamie Whitby Coles, Neil Smith (all This Is The Kit), Chris Cohen, Joel Wästberg (Sir Was) and Sam Amidon.

Released in April 2015 on Lost Map, and featuring contributions from Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, among others, her last album, ‘Friend’, was a deeply meaningful and wonderfully measured ode to memory, place, companionship and music’s remarkable power as an emotional salve.

‘Dear Departed’, the second album from Sam Burton, arose from a time of rebirth. In the last few years, Burton basically started over. There’s a freedom in leaving everything behind, and Burton embarked on a wandering phase. He went and stayed at a friends’ family home in a rural region further north in California, where he holed up in a cabin and helped the grandmother farm to earn his keep. He crashed with friends all around Los Angeles, until he found himself a new gig and a new apartment of his own. Along the way, he was writing songs.

‘Dear Departed’ was produced by Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty, Margo Price), and recorded at Wilson’s Topanga Canyon studio with some of the best studio players in LA.

10th Anniversary Edition features: Transparent Green vinyl. Gatefold vinyl including lyrics. 18"x24" Strange Pleasures poster. Download code, including bonus track "We Have the Future on Tape". Digipak CD with lyric booklet. In celebration of STRANGE PLEASURES turning 10, Still Corners are releasing a very special remastered 10-year anniversary edition on transparent green vinyl. The album has been remastered by John Davis at Metropolis London, described by Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) as ‘a master of his craft’. The anniversary edition includes all the album’s lyrics (for the first time) on a gatefold album sleeve, Strange Pleasures poster, digital download, including a bonus download ‘We Have the Future on Tape’. Originally released on Sub Pop, STRANGE PLEASURES has developed cult status since its release in 2013. Opening song, ‘The Trip’, captured people’s hearts with one YouTube video acting as a virtual community for like-minded fans around the world. ‘Fireflies’ (Pitchfork, Best New Track), ‘Strange Pleasures’, ‘Beginning to Blue’ and ‘The Trip’ have been used across film and television since the album’s release.

Self-described as ‘Cult post-something organ jams for fans of Young Marble Giants / Dead Moon / the Stranglers’, they still only record to 4-track and still only do seven song records, pushing the old Hohner into every corner of the experimental pop landscape.

Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was a folk singer from Japan. She was a representative of the Ainu culture on the Hokkaido Island in the north of Japan. Ihunke' is her first album which was recorded with the Ainu musician and dub producer Oki Kano in 2000. It was released on CD in Japan only and is finally available on vinyl (2LP + linernotes, DL included). Ihunke' is following last year's single Iuta Upopo' (Pingipung 58, incl. M.RUX Remix) which had been received with overwhelming enthusiasm and was quickly sold out. The 16 Ainu songs on Ihunke' are delicate, natural gems. They are built on Oki Kano's Tonkori patterns (a 5-string harp), over which Umeko Ando develops her repetitive, mantric vocals, often in a call-response manner. Oki Kano is one of very few professional Tonkori players who performs worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band. The songs possess a mystical energy - when crows call accurately with Ando's brittle voice in the first song, it seems like natural powers join in with her music. Her voice sounds like animals of the sky and the forest. Oki Kano: It was a lot of fun to record with Umeko Ando. Many Ainu hesitate to break from tradition - if Umeko hadn't been so flexible to work with the younger generation and recording technology, this album would never have happened. Our sessions were intense, and we were proud and happy about making such beautiful music.' Upcoming in autumn: remixes of Ihunke' by Tolouse Lowtrax, M.Rux, DJ Ground, El Buho Mark Peters, Gama, Andi Otto, and Dreems.

Historical background: Only recently (in 2008) have the Ainu officially been acknowledged as indigenous people who are culturally independent from Japan. This record is an example of how their music has been passed on through generations in the underground Ainu communities while it was oppressed by the Japanese hegemony. It deserves a huge audience.

- THE RISE OF ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1988-90

Late 80s South African dance floor winners only! Selected by DJ Okapi and Antal, the compilation holds tracks by Jivaro, The Hard Workers, Ayobayo Band, S.Y.B. & many more. This is the sharp electronic music that fuelled the local Pantsula dances during the 80s and 90s . A must have for fans of Bubblegum and Kwaito music. TOP TIP!
The 12 tracks selected for Pantsula! come from a very unique, very different time and place. They represent the birth of electronic dance music in South Africa, through the songs of one particular independent label from the time: Music Team. The sound represents the culmination of the bubblegum era, when South Africa's disco artists outgrew their American influences and forged an increasingly electronic and 'local' pop sound.

Evolving over time since long before the 80s, the distinctly South African subculture of Pantsula is more closely associated with an attitude, a style and a signature dance, rather than any specific sound. In the late 1980s and early 90s, Pantsula was also the name given to a new type of dance music taking over the streets of South Africa, influenced by earlier bubblegum and the rise of Shangaan Disco, but with a far broader appeal and a harder, purely electronic sound.

“Orlando Furioso is a haunting, one-of-a-kind statement, from an important new voice in improvised music.” - Steve Lehman

“…imagining instruments that haven’t been invented yet: space harps, cosmic gamelan, Venusian banjo. It’s the purest distillation of Atria’s musical language, simultaneously grounded and unearthly.” - Stewart Smith for The Wire (November 2022)

“Making liberal use of microtonal harmony and hypnotic, ostinato rhythms – as well as the occasional stylistic smash-cut, reminiscent of John Zorn – Orlando Furioso announced itself on Wednesday as a punchy, creative force on the New York scene. (…) Atria’s rhythms had a welcoming, social propulsion, and the microtonality of his writing for keyboard proposed an individual – even insular – language.” - Seth Colter Walls for The New York Times.

Early European composers felt that their work reflected in its structure the divine nature of the material world. Via tuning, form, and contrapuntal alchemy, these musicians sought to illuminate and edify the complex and perfect order of existence. The music recorded here also reflects the contours of an ordered world, but it is no place any of us has ever visited. By assembling far-flung building blocks from the detritus of a 21st-century musical vocabulary, Orlando Furioso brings the listener into a bizarre new cosmos. The result is deeply expressive music that speaks not with the voice of a narrator or memoirist, but with that of a cartographer.

Like a science-fiction Dante, the listener is taken on a tour of many diverse and colorful provinces of an alien world. Though each composition references its own set of real-world musical locales (from the Andes to Indonesia to Italy to New Orleans), they are bound by stylistic consistency into a coherent, continuous geography. Permeating this world is an uncompromising commitment to microtonal harmony, rhythmic intensity, and an ability to deploy the esoteric (Nicola Vicentino's notorious 31-tone temperament) and the head-smackingly obvious (a surprise djent breakdown) with equal conviction. Though Vicente's compositions are steering the ship, serious recognition is due to all the players on the record for their ability to meet these demands.

Our omnivorous musical diets offer real abundance. They enrich our craft by providing access to limitless approaches from which to choose - more masters to study, traditions to absorb, and techniques to hone than is possible in multiple lifetimes. They can also inflict heavy and often contradictory burdens of influence. When every corner of the map has been charted, it becomes difficult to find a new direction in which to travel. One solution I hope to see more often is the one pursued on this record: breaking down distinct musical worlds into component parts and reassembling them into a language. When completed with precision and with no stone left unturned, the seams between the pieces vanish and the listener is deposited somewhere beautiful and strange, left to assign their sensations meanings of their own. - Mat Muntz

Orlando Furioso is led by Vicente and features David Acevedo, David Leon, Andrew Boudreau, Alec Goldfarb, Daniel Hass, Simón Willson, and Niña Tormenta. Orlando Furioso celebrated its release at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, NY, as a part of Wet Ink Ensemble's 24th Season opening concert, a performance which The New York Times heralded as "virtuosic", "punchy, creative" and "even revelatory."

Winner of the Deutscher Jazz Preis: Best International Debut Album 2023

Whitelands follow their acclaimed single ‘Setting Sun’ – which saw the London-based band added to the BBC Radio 6 Music playlist – with their first ever vinyl release, an EP of reworkings, which is released as a limited edition orange vinyl 10” on June 23.Simply titled Remixes, the EP features two reworkings of ‘Setting Sun’ by dreampop legends A.R. Kane – the short Initiation Dub and the epic Hero Remix, which comes in three parts, titled Departure, Initiation and Return and takes the song to some unexpected and exciting new places.“Whitelands came up in conversation three times in a week,” explains A.R. Kane’s Rudy Tambala of how he got to know the band and came to remix them. “Two times is coincidence, three times is a conspiracy, so I reached out to them on social media, and we started chatting. They’re cool, like baby Kanes. ‘Setting Sun’ was close to my heart, reminding me of ‘Fools Gold’ meets Slowdive versus Frank Ocean. Anyway, I heard several approaches in my head, so I thought, ‘Fuck it, let’s do ’em all’. “I knew I wanted to take a prog approach: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, Sasha’s Involver2, Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Frank Ocean’s Blond, etc. Even my own sixty nine. It’s that seamless drift from one part into the next, stretching the idea until it ruptures, creating space for a new way of perceiving; this has the first inklings of hive mind, telepathy, in a musical form; you dissolve into it as it dissolves into you. A fundamental dreampop construction and aim, whereby subject and object become one. Ahem. “As the extended mix took shape it suggested to me the three components of The Hero’s Journey, hence the titles. The three-minute pop song was determined by the technical limitations of the 7” vinyl single. Digital has obliterated that. The perfect dreampop song has no time limit. ‘Setting Sun’ A.R. Kane Hero Remix is timely.” Alongside Rudy’s reworkings is an equally dazzling drum’n’bass take on last year’s single ‘How It Feels’ by the band’s guitarist Michael in his howdogirlssleep guise.

Released in July 1994 by Atlantic Records, Cracked Rear View is Hootie & the Blowfish's most successful album, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard 200 five times during the course of 1995. It was also the best-selling album of 1995 in the United States, selling 7 million copies, and since then has gone on to sell more than 10.2 million copies, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.

AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine says Hootie & the Blowfish, on Cracked Rear View, "...deliver the goods, turning out an album of solid, rootsy folk-rock songs that have simple, powerful hooks."

The album played a pivotal role in shaping the career of its lead vocalist, Darius Rucker, who transitioned to country music in the mid-2000s as a solo artist. Cracked Rear View was an instant sensation, with chart-topping hits such as "Hold My Hand," "Let Her Cry," and "Only Wanna Be with You." The album has a distinctive sound, blending rock, pop, and a hint of folk, using Rucker's soulful, raspy baritone as its emotional core, and his heartfelt delivery to win over audiences.

This Analogue Productions (Atlantic Series) reissue of Cracked Rear View has the essential elements that make it a standout for your collection. We turned to Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound in Nashville for an exemplary cut direct from the master tape. Pressing on 180-gram vinyl is by Quality Record Pressings, and the album is housed in tip-on old style gatefold double pocket jackets with film lamination by Stoughton Printing.

Cracked Rear View's emotional depth and Rucker's distinctive voice left an indelible mark on the music industry, making Hootie & the Blowfish's debut album a timeless piece of musical history.

Stunning private press album from 1975 by Louisville guitar-driven psych-rockers.

A blend of West Coast styled psychedelia with acid dual guitar and gentle dreamy passages.

Officially reissued for the first time by Guerssen in 2009, here’s a new, improved repress sourced from recently discovered master tapes.

Magical UK folk-rock with psychedelic / West Coast influences. It was originally self-released by Mandy Morton in 1978, after the two Spriguns albums for Decca. “Magic Lady” was dedicated to Sandy Denny, who had just passed away that same year. It was available on black vinyl with a few copies (20 aprox) pressed on blue color. Both versions are very hard to find today.

Terrific songwriting, superb musicianship and beautiful vocals. Recorded at Spaceward Studios, produced by Mike Kemp in conjunction with Mandy, mastered at Abbey Road and featuring guest appearances by Tim Hart (Steeleye Span) and Graeme Taylor (Gryphon, Albion Band).

For the past 30-plus years, Paul Oakenfold has remained in the vanguard of the global electronic music community. With more than 110 million streams collectively, over 5 million albums sold worldwide, three GRAMMY nominations and more awards and accolades than you can count, Oakenfold is one of the industry’s most revered and most successful artists—ever. Hailed as the “Godfather of electronic music,” he’s been voted the world’s best DJ twice by DJ Mag, named the most influential DJ of all time by the London Evening Standard and recognized as the world’s most successful DJ by Guinness World Records. His hands-on involvement in the foundational establishment, international popularization and ongoing evolution of modern dance music spans nearly four decades.

Oakenfold’s discography includes three full-length studio albums, countless live/compilation albums, singles and remixes, and +20 DJ mix albums. He has written and produced for major stars like Cher, The Happy Mondays, U2, and Madonna and also counts +100 remixes for +100 artists, including The Rolling Stones, Justin Timberlake, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and Elvis Presley.

This release is a 1st time vinyl pressing of his 1 million selling classic debut - Bunkka. The original vinyl release from 2002 featured remixes, whereas this version contains the original album mixes. It has been remastered + pressed on 180g heavyweight double vinyl. The inner sleeves packaging includes extra iconic ‘robogirls' imagery designed by Michael Nash Accociates + photographer Matthew Donaldson that was originally used on the single packshots from the album campaign. A galaxy of music stars, including Nelly Furtado, Perry Farrell, Ice Cube, and Tricky as featured artists. It also contains his 3 biggest selling tracks: Starry Eyed Surprise with Shifty Shellshock from Crazy Town, “Ready Steady Go,” with vocals by So Solid Crew’s Asher D. + “Southern Sun” with Carla Werner. Furtado and Tricky guest on album closer “The Harder They Come,” while Farrell sings on “Time of Your Life.” Ice Cube chimes in on “Get Em Up,” followed by former Grant Lee Buffalo frontman Grant Lee Philips on “Motion”. Author Hunter S. Thompson, and vocalists Emiliana Torrini and Tiff Lacey also make appearances on “Bunkka.” 21 years old & till sounding fresh, it’s now become a timeless classic.


Paul’s biography ‘Ready Steady Go!’ will also be out this year.

William Penn & His Pals (also known as William Penn Fyve) were the ultimate 60s garage band from the Bay Area. Their line-up featured Mike Shapiro on lead guitar (author of the garage, acid-punk anthem "Swami") and Gregg Rolie (of Santana/Journey fame) on organ / vocals. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead was also the drummer for a brief period.



Here’s the first ever vinyl release of their complete recordings, including their fuzzed-out “Swami” / “Blow My Mind” 45 of Pebbles fame plus prime cut ‘66 unissued recordings. A feat of garage-punk and teen-beat.

Ever since he made his first trip to Japan to DJ, Optimo Music founder JD Twitch has been bewitched by Japanese music, and particularly the vibrant, imaginative, and often far-sighted sounds which emerged from the island nation during the 1980s. Now he’s put years of digging in Japanese record shops to good use on Polyphonic Cosmos, the latest release on his compilation-focused Cease & Desist imprint.

Subtitled ‘A Beginners Guide to Japan In The ‘80s’, the collection offers a personal selection of Japanese gems recorded and released between 1981 and ’86 – a period when advances in recording and musical technology offered the nation’s artists and producers a whole new tool kit to employ. When combined with the unique musical culture of Japan, where local traditions are frequently fused with Western styles to create timeless, off-kilter aural fusions, this embrace of locally pioneered music technology had spectacular, often unusual results.

Eight years in the making, Polyphonic Cosmos provides an endlessly entertaining musical snapshot of Japanese music of the early-to-mid ‘80s with all of the open-minded eclecticism and sonic twists that you would expect from the Glasgow-based DJ.

Compare and contrast, for example, the gently breezy, morning-fresh folk-plus-electronics bliss of ‘ばら二曲 Baranikyoku (Fellini&Rota)’ by World Standard – the most familiar alias of long-serving musician/producer Sohichiro Suzuki – and the hallucinatory, slow-motion tribal rhythms, post-punk rhythms and tape delay-laden electronics of Imitation’s ‘Exotic Dance’. Or, for that matter, the tipsy mid-‘80s electronic reggae of Pecker’s ‘Sha La La’, the grungy but melodic post-punk strut of ‘You Go On Natural’ by Earthling (a track Twitch accurately describes as “sheer unrelenting groove”), and the unearthly, swirling sonics, new age instrumentation and flotation tank vocals of prolific (and seemingly mysterious) act Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s ‘Rimme Kohkyogaku Meiki’.

It’s a credit to JD Twitch’s curatorial skills that the quality never dips, and sonic surprises lurk around every corner. Consider for a moment the hard to describe, far-sighted audio immersion of D-Day’s ‘Ki-Ra’ – all languid post-pop guitar, enveloping chords, spoken word vocals, shuffling 808 beats and marimba melodies – and the two contributions from video games soundtrack specialist (and driving instrumental synth-pop specialist) Hiroyuki Namba.

The collection naturally includes some selections that have long been favourites in Twitch’s DJ sets – see Masumi Hara’s ‘Your Dream’ – as well as a handful of tracks from artists who may be more recognisable to those with only rudimentary knowledge of Japanese musical culture. The great Yasuaki Shimizu, whose work as Mariah has become far better known in recent years thanks to reissues of some of his most magical albums, is represented via ‘The Crow’, a picturesque chunk of horizontal, hard-to-define jazz-not-jazz smokiness, while the collection fittingly concludes with a sublimely funky, oddball electronic workout from Yellow Magic Orchestra legend Ryuichi Sakamoto (the frankly incredible ‘Wongga Dance Song’).

Matt Anniss

Recorded between 1966 and 1968, newly fully remastered. Artist and songwriter (for Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson, Marcia Griffiths and many more) Andy first found fame as the lead vocalist of The Paragons before launching his solo career at Studio One. His peak as a solo artist came in the late '60s when he recorded a string of singles for the Studio One label. In 1970, these singles were compiled on the Song Book album.

Vocal harmony on three tracks are performed by Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh of The Wailers, and backing comes from Studio One band the Soul Vendors, whose members included Jackie Mittoo and Roland Alphonso.

Includes all the hits such as 'Unchained', 'Feeling Soul', 'I've got to go back home', 'My time' plus many more.

Fonseca is the son of a Senegalese mother and a father from Cape Verde. Hence the Portuguese sounding name: Louis Vera Da Fonseca.

In the 1950s, he founded the group Les Anges Noirs (The Black Angels) in Brussels, named after the Brussels club in the Boomkwekerijstraat, which quickly became very popular in Belgium, Africa, and the West Indies. The famous Manu Dibango was even musical director and pianist there for a period. Manu Dibango would later become one of the emblematic figures of African music. Soon Fonseca was nicknamed “the King of Afro-Cuban rhythm”.

After several great successes from the early sixties to 1968, Fonseca suddenly disappeared from the music scene in the late 60's. Whether he died in 1970, as can be read on some sites, cannot be said with certainty.

The self-titled album Fonseca Et Ses Anges Noirs is available as a limited edition of 500 individually numbered copies on translucent red coloured vinyl and includes an insert.

Jerry Jeff Walker was an American country music and folk singer-songwriter. He was a leading figure in the progressive country and outlaw country music movement, best known for having written the 1968 song "Mr. Bojangles". The late '60s and early '70s were an interesting time during which a number of enduring singer-songwriter albums were released, and this album is a prime example.

Originally released in 1969, Five Years Gone is a forward-looking album rooted in late-'60s folk and folk-rock rather than popular country. The poetic, yet sometimes inscrutable, lyrics owe more to Bob Dylan than any Nashville tradition. For this album, Jerry Jeff Walker was joined by some Nashville heavyweights, including Weldon Myrick, Hargus "Pig" Robbins, and Charlie McCoy.

Five Years Gone is available as a limited edition of 750 individually numbered copies on gold coloured vinyl, including a 4-page booklet.