Buscar:marginal man

Incredible jazz / prog / folk score to groundbreaking tattoo film by maverick filmmaker. Unreleased until now, so don’t go saying it’s a reissue because it isn’t, but I’m sure some people will because they always do.

John Samson (1946 - 2004) was a truly great documentary maker. He must be as I’ve been obsessed with his work for many years. Educated first at Glasgow School Of Art (circa 1963) and then finally in the art of film making at The National Film And Television School in Beaconsfield - he headed there in its opening year of 1971 having made a short film that got him a scholarship.

It was at the NFTS that Samson met Mike Wallington, who was to become his right hand man and eventual producer; together as a quite brilliant team they made a handful of inspiring, entertaining and hugely prescient films about important, overlooked, unseen and marginal fringes in society. Tattoo (1975) Exploring the rather clandestine world of tattooing in the UK. Dressing For Pleasure (1977) Exploring the rather clandestine world of festish in the UK. Brittania (1979) A film about railway enthusiasts and a steam train restoration.

Arrows (1979) The life of dart player Eric Bristow. Drag Ball (1981) An unreleased film about the annual Porchester Hall Drag Ball. The Skin Horse (1983) BAFTA winning film about The Outsiders Club, a dating agency for disabled people. The subject matter in all films was always unusual for the time, and Samson managed to navigate his way with compassion, interest and subtlety, immersing himself in the chosen scene and producing moving, fascinating and sometimes darkly amusing situations. His documentaries also do not rely on traditional voiceovers, with stories, facts and narrative threads being dictated by the subjects.

I’ve tried for a long time to find the music for a couple of his early films (there was actually an original 7” for Arrows) - so far this is the only unreleased soundtrack I have found. This one was written by Steve Jolliffe, who met Samson at the NFTS. Joliffe was the resident composer and had a room at the college complex where he could work on scores for the fledgling film makers. Jolliffe was and still is a multi-instrumentalist and prolific composer who had met Edgar Froese at the Berlin Konservatorium in the late 1960s and played in an early incarnation of Tangerine Dream. He toured with blues rock outfit Steamhammer, before hanging out at the NFTS, making this recording (and many others) and eventually rejoining Tangerine Dream in the late 1970s. Jolliffe still writes, records and releases today and once i had made contact with him we traced the original Tattoo master tape to a box at his brother’s house. Musically it’s charming, slightly folky, a touch baroque, there’s a whiff of prog too, and it perfectly suited this early documentary about the art and desire of tattoos. I only wish it was longer. But the film is only 16 minutes long. Seek it out if you can. Try and find all the Samson films, they really are a joy.

As well as featuring intimate footage of tattooed people, the film also includes a rare and very early interview with Alan Oversby (better known as Mr Sebastian), a seminal character in the development of tattoos and body modifications worldwide - it was he who eventually was to tattoo and pierce Genesis P-Orridge.

The images for this vinyl release were all found in Mike Wallington’s Tattoo documentary research folder from 1974, and were photos sent in to Mike and John by people who wanted to feature in the film. Most answered an advert in Time Out, and others included people from my home town of Aldershot where tattooist Bill Skuse and his wife, Rusty (the most tattooed woman in Britain at the time, and featured in the film) were based. His parlour was situated at the back of the arcade where we all used to lose all our pocket money in the slot machines.
The Musicians:
Steve Jolliffe - keyboards, flute, sax Geoff Jolliffe - bass guitar Julian Furniss - guitar Mick Kirby - drums

A wild and funky collection of Afro grooves that was ahead of its time in 1977 and has become a collector’s item in recent years, especially due to the growing international interest in Colombian picó sound system culture. Fruko and his studio bands Wganda Kenya and Kammpala Grupo treat us to a diverse set of African and Caribbean styles, laced with crazy synths, psychedelic guitar and infectious pan-African polyrhythms. By the time Discos Fuentes released the album “Wganda Kenya Kammpala Grupo” in 1977, Wganda Kenya’s discography was expanding with many 45 singles and appearances in various artists collections. The group’s 1975 debut record “África 5.000” was a full length LP in the U.S. and a various artists compilation in Colombia, which was followed by the self-titled long player the following year. However, Kammpala Grupo, which shared the album’s title and was credited to three songs on the record, had never appeared before, yet was basically the same studio group as Wganda Kenya. Most likely the creation of this short-lived studio band was just a ploy by the label to make it seem like there were more groups playing the type of exotic afro tracks favored by the picotero DJs of Colombia’s Caribbean coast (especially in Barranquilla and Cartagena). 1974 Discos Fuentes’ management had sent musician, band leader and producer Julio Ernesto “Fruko” Estrada to the coast on an A&R mission to discover what people were dancing to in the verbenas (communal open air neighborhood parties) run by the owners of picó sound systems (decorated mobile DJ rigs). Always game for an adventure, Fruko was tasked with bringing some popular examples of these esoteric, hard-to-find African, French and Dutch Antillean records back to Medellín to serve as inspiration (or to outright copy) so that the label could enter into the growing regional market and spread its popularity to the interior of Colombia and other Latin American countries via its own studio creation, Wganda Kenya. Fuentes was always returning to exploit the rich African-rooted culture of the coast as it had with the cumbia and other regional genres before, so in a way it was not surprising that they were attuned to this particular niche phenomenon from a marginalized sector of the population. The most popular genres with the champeta dancers in the 70’s and 80’s were styles like Congolese rumba, highlife, afrobeat, juju, mbaqanga and soukous as well as the music of Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Curaçao and Dominica, all of which were fiercely guarded by the DJs who had managed to acquire them often through extreme means of travel, barter and intense digging. The record kicks off with the joyful ‘El Gallo Africano’ which features exquisite interplay between Sepúlveda’s highlife style guitar and an authentic-sounding African style saxophone, perhaps played by Carlos Piña. In reality it was ‘Go Call Police Chief’ by prolific Nigerian highlife guitarist Chief Oliver Sunday Akanite, aka Oliver De Coque. Next up is Kammpala Grupo’s ‘La Yuca Rayá’ (‘Grated Yuca’), written by Isaac Villanueva in a style he termed son haitiano which sounds much more like Zimbabwe Shona mbira music. Wganda Kenya’s ‘Caimito’ (star apple, a type of tropical fruit), on the other hand, is actually a cover of a relatively well-known Haitian merengue song. Kammpala Grupo then takes us from the French Antilles to the multi-cultural discotheques of Paris, where a cover version of Black Soul’s Afro-boogie anthem ‘Black Soul Music’ is retooled and renamed ‘King Kong’, perhaps in a nod to the 1976 remake of the monster flick of the same name. Side two introduces us to the infectious merengue rebita of Angola via ‘La riphyta’ with “Paparí”, aka Mariano Sepúlveda, doing the vocals and faithfully replicating the Angolan guitar style. ‘La Trompeta Loca’ (‘The Crazy Trumpet’), probably the nuttiest track on the album, is an ingenious cover of ‘Ye Gbawa Oo Baba (Tribute To Nigeria)’ by Joe Mensah of Ghana. As with all their covers of African tunes, this rendition tightens up the original with some pop sheen, more consistent drumming and higher production values, remaking it into a powerful slow-burning dance floor filler. This is followed by one of the most powerfully original songs to come out of the entire Wganda Kenya project, Mike Char’s reggae anthem ‘El Nativo’ with Joe Arroyo on vocals. The record ends on a more authentically Caribbean sounding note with the instrumental ‘El testamento’, a cheerful islands banger with bright brass, syncopated calypso beats and chunky cuatro guitar (or ukulele). The original was in the mento genre and titled ‘Sweet meat’, written and recorded by Jamaican trumpeter Bobby Ellis. First time reissue. 180g vinyl.

Up next, Marginal Returns is happy to finally unveil Gwenan’s debut EP. Already familiar to many via her DJ sets at various notable events over the past years - from festival main-stage techno to backroom boutique ambient - 2023 finally raises the curtain on Gwenan’s studio output.

Activation Energy presents an elegant, particular and personable take on rhythmic electronic music, taking in A1’s downtempo, dub shrouded ‘Rhythm Delay’, the sneakily effective plucked lilt of A2 ‘Foundation’, the contemplative, emotive glide of B1 ‘Control Change’ and B2 ‘Attention Movement’s brooding syncopation.

• The premium cuts by the legend that is Link Wray remastered on limited coloured vinyl with free CD
• Stunning artwork by Sophie Lo
• Liner notes by Author Nina Antonia.

It will surely come as no surprise that Quentin Tarantino picked up on Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’ and ‘Ace of Spades’ for the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’. The brooding guitar man; born in North Carolina in 1929, as Fred Lincoln Wray Jnr, hails from pulp territory - the mythic Americana of rock n’ roll. Wray’s mother, from whom he inherited his striking appearance, was a Shawnee Indian, his father was a street corner preacher and grandpa did some jail time. Whilst having contracted tuberculosis when serving in the Korean war affected Wray’s vocals, his guitar playing mostly did the singing for him, but he wasn’t always volatile - ‘Lillian’ and ‘Alone’ revealing the heart beneath the tough exterior. Fiercely independent, when the rock n’ roll boom burst, Wray fashioned a 3-track home studio from a chicken shack and largely extricated himself from the music business although he would continue to record and play, stating ‘Money don’t rule me, record companies don’t own me.’ Nothing owned Link Wray but he owned rock n roll. Though the era of monochrome had ended, Link cast a long shadow, drawing admiration from the likes of Neil Young, Keith Moon and Pete Townshend who noted of Wray ‘He is the king, if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and ‘Rumble’, I would never have picked up a guitar.’ Though often marginalised throughout his career, Wray was like the night, an unquantifiable influence on successive generations of guitarists who sought to scorch rather than soothe. In November 2005, Bob Dylan was just about to step out on stage at the Royal Hall Albert, when he learned that Link had struck his final chord. In tribute to the great man, Dylan commenced his set with ‘Rumble.’

Following two manifesto-albums, which quickly became an influence of marginal musics in France, Olivier Demeaux & Armelle Oberlé asked artists whose directions they share to revisit some of the flagship titles of their catalog.
We thus find there the priest of the English pysché Sonic Boom, the cantor of slow techno Toloose Low Trax, the experimenter of the modular_synths Le Crabe or Zohar, UVB76, PlimPlim and many others.

Felix Laband’s The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story.

Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband’s first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015. It is heralded by the single “Derek and Me”, and is being pressed on vinyl for distribution globally.

In The Soft White Hand Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records – Thin Shoes in June (2001), 4/4 Down the Stairs (2002), Dark Days Exit (2005) and especially Deaf Safari which reached deep into the South Africa scene and its political culture to inspire its vocal and music sampling. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album’s creation – an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like “Death of a Migrant” – is perceptible in Laband’s desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life.

“For this album, my source material became almost autobiographical as opposed to African statements I’ve worked with previously,” says the artist. “I have sampled a lot from documentaries from the 80s crack epidemic in impoverished African American communities and believe my work speaks unapologetically for the lost and marginalised, for those who are the forgotten casualties of the war on drugs. In the past, I have had my issues with substance abuse, and I know first-hand about the nightmares and fears, what it feels like to be isolated and abandoned.”

Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like “5 Seconds Ago”, “They Call Me Shorty” and in the strange and meditative “Dreams of Loneliness”. “I’ve been building this weird, autobiographical story using other people talking. It’s kind of humorous but it is also sad and beautiful,” says Laband.

Yet, as in all of Laband’s recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in “Prelude” or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in “Derek and Me”. The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song “Fanta and Felix” imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband.

Laband’s eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in “We Know Major Tom’s a Junkie” is another thrilling aspect of the new record. “I’ve been properly exploring classical music on this album,” explains Laband, “taking melodies from classical compositions and reinterpreting them”. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer’s AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations.

The Soft White Hand is Laband’s most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. A song that summons the sunrise and all the hope of a new day could also be about the final dipping down of the sun that portends a troubled night ahead. Interludes are invitations to expand outwards or shift inwards. Mistakes and “weird fuckups” in the sound are cherished as convincing statements against what Laband calls the “grossness” of perfect sound in modern music.

For this world-leading electronic artist, the boundaries are unfixed. He is inspired by the German Dada artist, Hannah Höch, who memorably declared: “I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.” His music consequently reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband’s considerable visual art output as seen recently in several solo exhibitions such as that held in the No End Gallery in Johannesburg in 2019 and in the works he produced during his 2018 Nirox Foundation Artists Residency. “My music is always about collage, as is my art,’’ he affirms. “Everything I do is collage. It is a medium I find very interesting because you are taking history and distorting it and changing its meaning and turning it upside down and back to front.” In her book Recollections of My Non-Existence, Rebecca Solnit calls collage “literally a border art”; it is “an art of what happens when two things confront each other or spill onto each other”.

With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one. He is also affirming his belief that an album of music should be more than a collection of unrelated tracks, but should unfold a fully integrated, cohesive story as in the song cycles of the great classical composers. In doing so, he claims his position as one of the most significant artists working today.

Artist Statement – Felix Laband – August 2022

When the Khmer Rouge took their captives for processing, they identified their class enemies by looking at their hands. If they were sunburned, rough and calloused, they were those of a peasant, a proletarian to be spared. But if they were soft and white, then they were those of a city-dweller, an intellectual or bourgeois, an adversary to be liquidated.

In calling this album The Soft White Hand, I was reflecting on the Cambodian genocide and how it resonates in contemporary South Africa. The apartheid era is over, and gone with it is white political domination. Yet economic and social privilege is still held in soft white hands. But those who grasp it know just how tenuous is their hold, how it singles them out, and my music reflects their subconscious fears, the stress and guilt of clinging on to what others envy and desire.

The soft white hand of the title suggests to me a further image, one that relates to all of postcolonial Africa. In my mind’s eye, I see the soft, duplicitous handshake of the smooth representatives of the superpowers making deals and promising gifts that benefit only them, and not their African dupes.
Yet, soaring above the wailing of sirens sampled from the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, my music is also about love gained and passion lost. It is about the tender caress of a soft white hand that conducts you into a place of dreams to be enfolded by nocturnal melodies.

Isokratisses (Greek for "women who sing the "iso" or "drone") is a vocal ensemble comprised of eight women who carry the ancient tradition of polyphonic songs from Epirus: a region in northern Greece and southern Albania. Born and reared in the Greek speaking villages around Deropoli and Politsani in Albania, the women of Isokratisses have sung these songs since childhood. The group ranges in age from 19 to 56 with some sisters in the group as well as an aunt. They were nurtured by this archaic music, listening and singing it with their family and friends. The songs were passed down from generation to generation. The group started its artistic activity in 2015, after the singer Anna Katsi took the initiative to encourage the younger members to perform regularly. The communal nature of polyphonic singing is a way of revitalizing an art that has declined in recent years and to reassert the primacy of female voices in the southern Balkans. Singing these songs builds an invisible bridge that connects the present with the past, the memories of childhood travel with the immediacy of daily life. On Oct 14, 2022, Third Man Records will release a full album of these solo polyphonic songs, with Grammy-winning producer Christopher King. "It is social music, woven into the fabric of poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised communities. Many of the songs are variations of mirologia (songs of fate, songs of morning) that used to be sung throughout the southern Balkans but have largely disappeared on an informal cultural level except for Epirus. Structurally, the songs are pentatonic (five notes with no semitones) and are composed of three or four distinct melodic voices that weave together in an organic yet unexpected way. The remaining members of the group provide the iso or “drone” that is the low tonic note of the melody." - Chris King.

The Body has been an iconic force in heavy music for over 2 de- cades with a long history of collaborations. Recent collaborators include BUMMER, Full of Hell, Thou, Uniform. Lee Buford from The Body is also in Manslaughter 777 and Sightless Pit. BIG| BRAVE have a singular voice in heavy music, honed over 5 albums The Body and BIG|BRAVE are both bands possessed with an unequaled ability to convey overwhelming weight with simplicity, repetition, and detailed sonic atmospheres; artists who continue to alter the definition of what it means to be a heavy band. The Body are consistently prolific while increasingly ambitious as untethered producers and collaborators. BIG|BRAVE shape sound with dense waves of guitar and feedback, minimalist and hypnotic crashes, and emotionally exacting vocal melodies. In collaboration, The Body and BIG|BRAVE shift the gravity of their compositions to woven layers of percussion and unspooling guitars that sprawl through stark frameworks of earthy folk. Their debut collaborative album Leaving None But Small Birds distills the two ensembles" pioneering approach to heavy music into psalms for the forgotten, threnodies of lost love, and odes to vengeance. Typical to The Body"s creative process, Leaving None But Small Birds was composed almost entirely in the studio at Machine With Magnets with engineer/producer Seth Manchester. The Body and BIG|BRAVE aimed to challenge themselves to craft a fully realized and cohesive work that strayed outside the boundaries of the music they make individually. The Body"s Lee Buford set up the initial challenge: collaborating to make an album that evoked the country and folk roots of The Band. BIG|BRAVE"s Robin Wattie compiled lyrics and melodic lines from across Appalachian, Canadian, and English hymns and folk songs. Select phrases were then reworked and precisely arranged to center the experiences of marginalized characters, victims of hardship, and those yearning for love within each story. The despair and empowerment of these traditional tunes draw remarkable parallels with each group"s focus on championing people often cast aside in history. The Body and BIG|BRAVE, following a folk tradition, make each song their own through shifts in perspective and a synthesis of passages from kindred tales. BIG|BRAVE"s roots as a minimalist folk band and The Body"s love of old-time, country blues, and folk music enable the quintet to strike a formidable balance between sorrowful lamentation and uplifting resolve to weighty effect. Leaving None But Small Birds thatches together two monumental innovative forces that render the emotionally profound with lucid, devastating vitality

A revelatory collection of recordings from Japanese free-sound quintet Gu-N. Formed in 1994 by Fumio Kosakai (Incapacitants, Hijokaidan, C.C.C.C.) and Hidenobu Kaneda (Yuragi), alongside Ikuro Takahashi (Fushitsusha, Kousokuya, LSD March), Ryuichi Nagakubo (C.C.C.C., Yuragi), and Morihide Sawada (Yura Yura Teikoku, Marble Sheep), Gu-N played regularly at Plan-B in Tokyo, but released little during their relatively short time together. Hazy and hypnotic, their laminar improvisations, four of which appear on this untitled album, are compelling, oneiric visions for the ear.

In his liner notes for the album, Michel Henritzi writes that these Gu-N recordings situate the group within a broader trajectory of free improvisation and collective sound within Japan – Taj Mahal Travellers, East Bionic Symphonia, Marginal Consort, each of whom sprung, in many ways, from the radical vision and creativity of Takehisa Kosugi. But there’s a unique spirit here that aligns Gu-N with these predecessors, while also marking out singular territory.

Kosakai’s background in noise, via his participation in Hijokaidan and Incapacitants, can be heard in the unrelenting oscillations and heavyweight drones that purr throughout each of these four tracks. Both Kosakai and Nagakubo were members of C.C.C.C., perhaps the clearest precursors to Gu-N in their psychedelic density, though Gu-N trade in C.C.C.C.’s volcanic energy for a more tempered, sensuous exploration of tone and time.

There’s also a brutish element to Gu-N’s improvisations – see the saturated spectrum, rumbling and phasing throughout the album, and the crushing, almost Amon Düül-esque drum tattoos that Takahashi pounds out on the second track (recorded in 1998), punctuating the music from deep inside its hallucinatory murk. Elsewhere, as on the third track (one of three recorded in 1994), Kosakai’s cello scrapes out armfuls of buzz-tone as Sawada’s bouzouki trills out, elastic and vibrant, across spindrift electronics and lung-spun winds.

What’s most impressive here, though, is the way each player, formidable musicians in their own right, defers to the might of the communal and the collective. The quintet broke up in 1998, leaving behind scant recorded evidence – just one, self-titled CD, on Pataphysique, released in 1995. This LP is a most welcome addition to the small but blissful body of recorded work made public by this mysterious quintet of spirit channelers.

Fuchs is a band that never was. It vanished as quickly as it appeared in the picture, much like the animal that can be seen on this album and after whom it was named. In 2005, Kante singer and guitarist Peter Thiessen travelled to Weilheim to visit Markus and Micha Acher in their studio, where they were joined, among others, by Notwist-affiliated musicians like Cico Beck, Robert Klinger, Carl Oesterhelt and Stefan Schreiber. Spirits were high, but schedules were full: after a week of improvised sessions, everyone went their own way. The recordings gathered dust until Markus Acher found them again in 2021 while cleaning out his studio. After carefully re-evaluating the rough mixes, the musicians decided to finally release them. The resulting album comprises six tracks that musically draw on jazz, aesthetically lean on dub techniques and ideologically pick up on krautrock: there’s no solos to be heard on this record, just a few equally skilled and open-minded musicians listening to each other carefully, providing each other with space in which to unfold. »Fuchs« is a document of egos dissolving in a collective spirit.

Thiessen and the Acher brothers met in the 1990s and bonded not only over their shared background in hardcore music and the DIY ethos in which it was rooted, but also over their love for jazz. »If you look at those two things combined, you will eventually become convinced that you don’t have to be formally trained to make music that at least resembles jazz«, says Thiessen today. He invited Micha Acher to join his band Kante on flügelhorn in 2004 for a tour that saw the expanded group play unusual encores after the official concert was over. »Micha had taught us some dixie pieces, so night after night we would play a freestyle dixieland ska set in front of the remaining audience!« Naturally, the Acher brothers didn’t have to ask twice when they invited him for a visit in Weilheim to further explore their mutual interests in a studio setting. »I got on my way immediately and took two or three loose ideas, a tape echo and a guitar on whose headplate you could create fantastic sounds with me«, says Thiessen.

Between immersing themselves in books by the photographer Leonore Mau, cooking together and drinking the occasional fruit schnapps, the trio went into the studio. Says Thiessen, »Micha brought his flügelhorn and some wonderful ideas with him, Markus an Indian harmonium and a plan, Carl Oesterhelt came with a glockenspiel and a Chinese zither and a bunch of amazing jazz musicians joined in, too.« He considers the resulting recording sessions to be a kind of attempt at musically translating their conversations during those days. They discussed different approaches to jazz, whether sampling and musical miscitations can unlock ecstatic potentials and the possible parallels between syncretistic religions and pop music. »There’s traces of glossolalia, it's like a blurry séance«, adds Thiessen in regard to the sessions.

It is especially this spirit that managed to live on even though the recordings themselves were abandoned. »What we all liked most when listening back to the recordings is probably their marginal and fragmentary character, the empty spaces—the moments in which the virtuoso solo never comes, in which the centre remains empty.« The six pieces on »Fuchs« are chock-full of exactly these moments. When at one instant, the players seem to disperse and improvise freely, they always meet again on common ground a short time later, continuing on their way together. There are no conventions or even previous agreements that guide them, just a shared will to explore a vast range of curious sounds and unusual rhythms together as a truly unified constellation of very different musicians. Fuchs is a band that never was. Its ideas still reverberate vividly even 17 years later.

Leyla McCalla finds inspiration from her past and present. Whether it is her Haitian heritage or her adopted home of New Orleans, she - a bilingual multi-instrumentalist and alumna of Grammy award-winning African-American string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops - has risen to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and experience.McCalla has produced a multi-disciplinary music, dance and theatre work, Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever, which follows her personal journey as she uncovers the history of Radio Haiti, the first radio station in Haiti to report news in Haitian Kreyol - the voice of the people. Through this juxtaposition of voices - the personal and political, the anecdotal and the journalistic - McCalla gives expression to the enduring spirit of Haiti's marginalized poor in the face of several centuries of political oppression. Performances of the theatre work are currently scheduled in New Orleans and Philadelphia with more to be announced in soon.The process of creating Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever included listening to countless archival recordings of interviews by Radio Haiti's journalists, and McCalla specifically wrote "Fort Dimanche" after listening to a testimonial interview that Michele Montas - the prominent former journalist and station director at Radio Haiti - had conducted with a survivor of Duvalier's political prison. In the interview, the man outlined his living conditions, the daily terror and torture that these political prisoners were subjected to and the events that led to his arrest.This album is a soundtrack of sorts to the theatre piece, featuring the songs that Leyla McCalla wrote and performs in this work.

After the impact of Exist in Ramallah festival back in 2019, and how relationships between the artists got established and the attendees contribution that helped to shape the identity and the vision of the project itself. Exist decided to take the next step and expand the project with a label that is runned between Amman based and festival founder Odai Masri and Amsterdam based and label co-founder Chafik Chennouf with the same ethics that the festival is standing for. Some of the main principles Exist upholds include resistance to homophobia, and the ongoing colonization of various parts of the world by state actors or multi-national oligarchs. In turn, we think that this colonization leaves no one free, and that it especially targets communities (human and non-human) that are most marginalized by capital and historical racial and ethnic structures. The first release 'Marks of Existence' is a collection of mind-melds with some of the scene's most continuously exciting and refreshing artists: Drew McDowall, Muqata'a, CASKO, Adel Poursamadi & Tegh. The Scottish, NYC-based experimental musician, Drew McDowall, has been subverting the formula for many years now, having clocked up storied work with Coil and Psychic TV back in the day. His track 'Conceal the Wound' is a stunning, exquisitely chiselled piece of synth music. It's like waking from a dream, only to return to its febrile clutches. Ramallah's Muqata'a came through flawless with his cut 'Administrative Detention', a blast of chaotic chopped breaks and lurching neo-beat tape MPC programming. The breakcore influence in combination with referencing crimes against humanity makes the tune an intense headmelter. The ideal soundtrack for unorganized resistance from a firsthand perspective. ‘The Price You Pay To Be Unattached Flesh’ sees CASKO push the hi-tech dirt of his Opal Tapes, Leyla Records and Voidance releases down darker ginnels to claustrophobic, anxiety-raising effect in a collection of brilliantly neon explosions of colour and exuberance floating on a sleazy and slow beat with bags of North-African swagger. Experimental electronic musicians from Iran have marked their prints on the face of the universal experimental music scene for some time now, though the manner in which their status went from "non-existent" to "present" and from "silent" to "noisy" might somehow seem "unpredictable" to the naked eye. Tegh, known for his work on Opal Tapes joined forces with Adel Poursamadi to come up with a beautifully bittersweet synthetic orchestration in a staggering fashion to close this EP with.

A desperate, desert-baked Midnight Highway of Lost Souls, Cuckolds, Wastrels, blistering Righteous Anthems and delirious Apocalyptic Fever-Dreams. This sublime collection of knowns and unknowns, battered Nashville legends and forgotten backwoods-poets features tales of Grisly Barroom Homicides, Jilted Lustmords, Grim Divorcees in Bedlam and Fiery Suburban Infanticides. Often originally waxed and distributed in unrewarding amounts, these Troubled Troubadours sing of Cowardice, Infidelity, Spurned Lover's Suicide Pacts, Tortured Jailbirds, Vengeful Inebriates and dubious Parenting Skills.
Years in the making – ‘Hillbillies In Hell’ (Volume XII) presents 16 timeless tribulations - Sinful Seductresses, Grinding Poverty, Nihilistic Murderous Horrors, Satan's Eternal Maze of Hardships and Temptations and God's blazing Light of Redemption.
A dank yet at times uplifting stash of marginal 45s - some of these sides are impossibly rare and are reissued here for the very first time. All for your prurient listening pleasure…

. Elton Britt - Lost Highway
, Porter Wagoner - Fairchild
, Justin Tubb - The Great River Road Mystery
, Sanford Clark - It's Nothing To Me
, Johnny Paycheck - You'll Recover In Time
, Stonewall Jackson - Somebody's Always Leaving
, Porter Wagoner And Dolly Parton - The Party
, Buddy Starcher - When Payday Comes
, Tommy Curtis And Bill Taylor - Devil's Stumbling Block
, Jody Reynolds - Devil Girl
, Henson Cargill - Going Backwards
, Lorrie Collins - Another Man Done Gone
, Bobby Braddock - Revelation
, Stonewall Jackson And The Brentwood Children's Choir - That's All This Old World Needs
, The Speer Family - You Can't Run Away From God
, The Singing Rambos - When Payday Comes",Witness...

Various Artists ‘In Bed With Marina’
Classic Indie/Chamber-Pop
2LP MA90 (Marina Records) £15.50
Deal: B/C: 4015698905656

THIS ONE MISSED THE DEADLINE FOR THE OFFICIAL RSD LISTINGS BUT WILL BE AN **UNOFFICIAL RSD DROP 2 ** RELEASE...LIMITED +NON-RETURNABLE..

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, this classic Marina compilation from 1996 makes its first appearance on vinyl. Packaged in a deluxe gatefold cover, In Bed With Marina features track-by-track notes, lots of photographs, two vinyl-only bonus cuts and a gorgeous poster.
Enjoy 24 stunning tracks on two groovy LPs incl. many unreleased cuts and exclusive contributions by Edwyn Collins, Shack, Teenage Fanclub, The Pearlfishers, Cowboy Mouth, The Bathers, Harpers Bizarre, Sugartown, Paul Quinn & The Independent Group, Jazzateers, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Malcolm Ross, The Secret Goldfish, and many others.

There’s something new under the sun. If you look at it closely,
something new is only (and always) created at crossroads –
when different and signi¦cant traditions are connected and
combined. On their own, these traditions have often existed
for a while. However, in this new form they have never
appeared together. The latest manifestation of something
new can now be found on the album “No Future Dubs”, the
interpretations of “No Future Days” – the most recent album
by German band Messer – by Finnish producer and old
friend of the group Kimmo Saastamoinen aka Toto Belmont.
The intentional traditions that merge on this grand and
digni¦ed album are post-punk, dub and techno. A new
chapter in the culturally constant narrative of dub is written
here. Through their past and parallel activities in hardcore
and post-punk bands, Messer drummer Philipp Wulf met and
befriended Kimmo, originally a drummer too. In their
continuous dialogue discussing their musical journey, Philipp
and Kimmo over the years more and more immersed
themselves in the aesthetic possibilities of dub and reggae.
Indeed, lots of musicians do not listen to the type of music at
home that they write and play in their respective projects
(Take me as an example: House is the music that I produce
and put on as a DJ. On my own, I listen to various stuff,
music by Monk and Messer for example). The same applies
to the protagonists involved here. By discussing dub und
through Toto Belmont’s steadily increasing producingexpertise, the idea of creating dub versions of selected
Messer tracks was born. The Messer album “No Future
Days”, released in 2020, proved to contain the perfect raw
material as the songs on this album are already produced in
a much more transparent way than on previous LPs – and
are hence more suitable for dub. Still, it’s a giant leap from
the originals to the dubs. These add a third dimension to the
described character of the post-punk/dub amalgam: techno.
The result is a sound that hasn’t existed before, especially
not with German lyrics (which scarcely, however, carry
meaning or messages here. Hendrik Otremba’s voice is used
more like an instrument, as if he was the ghostly ¦gure which
he often sings about and which now §oats and screams
through the sound space). The history of mutual contact and
in§uence of (post-)punk and dub (reggae), which Messer
have kept on writing, is glorious and reaches back far in
musical history. Still, it has always been a rather marginal
chapter not only in punk but also in dub history. But already
in the beginnings of punk (the British version, less the
American one), the presence and in§uence of reggae was
obvious in many places as both are united in their resolute
attitude as rebel music. This is how the two genres
recognized each other – especially the punks regarded
reggae as rebellious. As is known, already Johnny Rotten
mainly listened to dub in private. By using the name John
Lydon, he then – together with bass player Jah Wobble –
established the group PiL as one of the most exemplary
bands at the crossroads of dub and punk. The Slits, Pop
Group, Killing Joke, The Ruts and last but not least The Clash
along with the Mick Jones offshoot Big Audio Dynamite –
the thriving British music scene in the early 80s was full of
dub-in§uenced acts. The echoes meandered everywhere. In
the USA, it took longer until the in§uence of dub became
noticeable and it has never been as distinctive as in the UK.
The history of US hardcore, however, cannot be told without
bands like Bad Brains from Washington D.C. who on their
albums occasionally inserted conscious reggae and dub
tracks between breakneck hardcore tracks. Another
important group is Blind Idiot God who similarly included
dub tracks on their LPs – the contrast between densely
droning rock tunes and widely breathing dub versions can be
experienced very vividly here. In the 90s, dub’s in§uence on
post-punk decreased while turning up even more distinctively
somewhere else: Techno was in many respects susceptible
to dub, to say nothing of the music from the so-called British
hardcore continuum (jungle, drum & bass etc.), which directlydeveloped from dub and reggae. But also “pure” techno –
meaning techno without breakbeats – discovered its a¨nity
for the possibilities of dub at an early stage, in England for
instance in projects like Left¦eld or The Orb. In addition, the
project Rhythm & Sound was established in Berlin with close
ties to the Hardwax record store. With regard to this project,
you can’t really say where dub ends and where techno begins
(or vice versa) because of the interconnection of the two
genres here – everything is based on the steppers pulse
which links the two styles like a common DNA. With dub
techno a new genre was created. Until the present day, there
are producers who don’t produce anything else and DJs who
don’t put on any other music. The Messer dubs are
characterized by a grand majestic manner and force that
presumably someone like Mad Professor is able to produce
and that is also inherent in many Scandinavian productions
of the last 15 years; a crystal-clear aesthetic which locates
itself far away from Kingston or Brixton, but features a pulse
referring clearly to Berlin and Helsinki. The songs appear in a
completely new and deconstructed form, the instruments are
exclusively used as particles and raw material, not as riffs;
merely glaring guitar textures ¦ll the wide dub space. There
are many new elements that were added by Toto Belmont,
especially synthesizer sounds and drums. The ¦nal result
creates an enormous aesthetic power and dignity, and an
atmosphere you don’t want to leave anymore. “No Future” is
a well-chosen title as a reference to the protagonists’ punk
association; as a main thrust of the album, however, a
comma between these two words is imaginable as well.

South has been added to the BBC 6 Music playlist. South London's Wu-Lu shares his latest track 'South' featuring Lex Amor, accompanied by the video directed by Danisha Anderson. The single is available to download and stream on all available platforms via Ra-Ra Rok Records. A track largely based on growing up in inner-city London, it's a first-hand account of witnessing everything you know about your city being broken down, about gentrification and relationships deteriorating as you get older. "It's a feeling that your area is losing all the things that make it what it is: the smell, the look, the taste, and most importantly, the people," Wu-Lu remarks. "Once someone gets a whiff of money then things start to change. But big changes bring unrealistic outcomes for those who can't afford the new way of living." Using his voice to speak up for the silenced and the marginalised through his music means he's able to communicate his message in a powerful and expressive way, as displayed in his latest track. Written long before the Black Lives Matter movement took momentum, 'South' was an outlet for him to convey the thoughts and feelings that he always had, with the message only becoming clearer and more prominent with the movement gathering pace very recently. Cultivating a new sound that lies between the interplay of underground punk and alternative hip-hop, Wu-Lu is stepping out on his own terms with his voice louder than ever. "I use my platform to try and express as many sides of the voice as I can." Growing up in a musical family, the multi-hyphenate artist has a unique ability to straddle seemingly disparate worlds of music unlike anyone else. Having spent years experimenting with lo-fi, psychedelic guitar and off-kilter hip-hop he is now pushing forward into the world of underground punk with an unparalleled confidence. His undisputed roots in the city's scene are highlighted through affiliations with musical movement Touching Bass, and co-signs from fellow stalwarts Black Midi, Sorry and Show Me The Body to name a few. With an innate ability to deliver his unique point of view through an ever-evolving and always refreshing sound, Wu-Lu continues to show just why he should be at the forefront of the UK music scene whilst remaining refreshingly underground and relatable.

Tala Vala combine experimental recording methods bridging marginalised genres, synths, brass and strings, jagged guitars and primal percussion.

John Roffe-Ridgard is a producer and former touring musician and Ben Locket is a composer for TV and Film.

The pair began making music in 2017 and self-released their first EP on a limited vinyl run. Mixed by Jake Jackson at Masterchord studios, the records were sold exclusively through Sounds of the Universe and Bandcamp.
Enthused by the interest in the record and selling out the run, the pair set about recording a full-length album expanding on the ideas of the fist ep. The album was again performed and produced by Ben and John using mainly analogue processes, where possible utilising 24 track tape and mixed by Jake. The self-titled record was self-released on vinyl and made it into the Stranger Than Paradise top 10 albums of the year.
Album number two began as a soundtrack project in early 2019, it was abandoned as they became disillusioned with the boundaries the film was imposing. The only remaining music from the soundtrack session is the opening cue which can be heard as the last track of what became Modern Hysteric, album two.
The new album was worked on throughout 2019 and mixed in early 2020 again sticking to mainly analogue processes, avoiding any audio plugins and computer editing. Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White) guest drums on two of the tracks ( Reoccurring Weather & Haxen ) bringing his instantly recognisable style to the Tala Vala sound. In addition to the string quartet and brass sections, a kora player and the manipulated voice of soprano singer, Grace Davidson can also be heard throughout the album.

Modern Hysteric will be released in early 2021 on the bands’ newly set up Number Witch Records distributed via Forte music.

Clear Vinyl


It is the year 2020, a year that addresses our awareness of diversity, tolerance and sustainability in an assorted, socio-cultural way. We translate this demand into music. "Nuthin' But A She Thang" focuses on a marginalised view of instrumental beat music.

This sampler, reflects a cross-section of the international female producer scene: 14 female artists, 8 countries, 4 continents, one language - music! The 14 instrumentals take the listener on a musical journey, which creates a tension between classic sample sound and modern current productions.

The many facets of female beat producing are presented by exclusive contributions by Ainie (DE) o Aygyul (AT) o Courtney Hawkins (US) o Da Chick (PT) o Georgia Anne Muldrow (US) o Gnarly (UK) o Jillesque (US) o Josi Miller (DE) o Julie Schatz (US) o Lisa Vazquez (US) o Sadiva (AUS) o Saltyyyy V (DE) o SOWALL (KOR) o USAGI (JP). Together with Stylefile as a cooperation-partner, we were able to persuade none other than HERA (DE). She implanted an even more artistic approach and added an exclusive artprint to this piece of music.

Our latest Release DDCT003 is in the end not only a musical project, it is a statement, it is an attitude.

'Prole Art Threat' is producer Anthoney Hart's second LP for Planet Mu under his East Man alias, after 2018's well received debut 'Red White & Zero'. It brings together a set of MCs from all over London, Darkos and Eklipse from East London and Lyrical Strally from near Feltham who were on the first album, Ny Ny and Mic Ty also from East London, Streema and 'Vision Crew' member Whack Eye from Lewisham plus Fernando Kep, an MC from the burgeoning Brazil grime scene. They work across a cohesive set of tight riddims forged from thoughtful amalgams of grime, dancehall and drum & bass. The album takes its name from a Fall song/mission statement of the same title, the band being self-consciously working class and led by a brilliant autodidact in Mark E Smith. East Man relates that the title is to be taken as “a reflection of working-class creativity and how the establishment marginalise us and (perhaps on a subconscious level) see us as a threat.” Les Back, author of 'The Art of Listening' and 'Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics and Culture (with Vron Ware)' contributes liner notes to the record: East Man understands the force and the democracy of the mic. Listening to Prole Art Threat is like being at a dance. As the mic is passed between each of the MCs, a different tale is ‘elevated... off the map’ as Ny Ny puts it. We hear instalmentsfrom Forest Gate, Lee, Lewisham and Manor Park as these ‘lyrical gaffers’ and ’top boys and girls’ tell tough stories of life under the scrutiny of the ‘Feds’ in a brutal and divided city. The bars and rhymes document what it means to live here; from the double standards applied to the sexuality of young girls and boys to the corrosive violence of everyday life. All this is dissected without compromise. This is not just aLondon story though, the inclusion of Fernando Kep from the burgeoning Grime scene in Brazil is evidence of the outernational reach of the music. The tracks on East Man’s album explode the wilful ignorance of those who see ‘the working class’ in contemporary London as code for whiteness. This is the sound of a proletarian urban multiculture, made from Caribbean and African influences, sound system culture, pirate radio and the inexorable rhythms of Grime, Drum & Bass, Techno and Dancehall. It is the stirring of the "white" & "black" working classes who are living together and coming together on their own terms in sound. ‘Making music because you love it... what the fuck else could you do?’ as East Man says. The tracks and voices you are holding in your hands are, as a result urgent, vital, as hard nails and twice as sharp.

La Danza del Agua" (The Dance of Water) is an eclectic musical journey through Latin American experimentalism - a sort of unofficial companion to the Anthologies of Atypical Portuguese Music volumes but focussing on South American music themes instead.
Originally released as two volumes on digital and tape versions on Papaki Records (2017, Argentina), this new concise edition presents 12 of the original 38 artists. Not to be seen as exhaustive document representing the wide styles of the even wider continent, it hopes to showcase some of its more marginal music with artists from a variety of countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia & Venezuela.

As such, this compilation shines a wider light on new and exciting sounds from the vast continent with a wide range of styles such as digital cumbias, sound experimentation, freak folk, noise, exotica, danceable beats and much more, mixed together to give life to the continuing strange world of contemporary South American experimental music.

A logical continuation of our New Weird South American explorations after releasing works from Meridian Brothers, Romperayo, Chupame El Dedo and a tape batch on Sucata sister label featuring Panchasila, Los Siquicos Litoraleños, Bardo Todol, Tomás Tello and more.

Following an accomplished EP on Perc Trax & a feature on Parallels and Influence Part II, Manni Dee returns to Leyla contributing his third EP to the labels impressive discography.

Your Public Image commences with Insurrection Erection, featuring vocals by Joke Lanz of Sudden Infant (Harbinger Sound, Raubbau). The vocal contributions harness a feeling of widespread disharmony, punctuating the bullish drums and assertive atmosphere with eruptions of frustration and expressions of malcontent. While the field recorded vocals made by Lanz feature as an empowered voice and a call for upheaval, the screams and shrieks from Lanz operate as the marginalised voice of the oppressed, sharply slicing through musical elements only to disappear and become submerged.

The A2 skips along with broken beats in very British fashion, reminiscent of Manni's earlier work on Black Sun Records, with added ingenuity and percussive flare.

The application of vocals, which has become a key characteristic of Dee's recent work, is creatively exhibited on the B1 Combination Acts; a track that displays a deft percussive density unique to Dee's style, adding a frenetic touch to a steadfast substructure. The tempo ramps up on the EP closer, satirically & appropriately titled The Jingoism Stench. The distorted & frantic yet nimble foundation propels the track forward, with reverberated contact mic and vocal recordings bouncing off the stolid walls of rhythmic pressure.

An acute understanding and implementation of rhythm and sound design results in provocative dancefloor material that blurs the lines between industrial traditions and (post) punk artistry. Dee continues to flourish as one of the most innovative and exciting voices in techno today.