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Stein Torleif Bjella live with Kringkastingsorkesteret at Store Studio

African, funky, sarcastic, bewitching, green, ecstatic: these words collide to describe Vaudou Game and all of them are true.

Noussin is the fourth album of the french Afro Funk band. Forced into lockdown, like much of the planet, Peter Solo and his Vaudou Game had no choice but to retreat into the studio. A reunion to once again invoke the spiritual forces of the Voodoo Deities. A reunion that was Initially imagined for an EP…yet these spiritual forces behind that imagination yearned for something more, and as we all know, these forces are impossible to push away once they have decided to stay.

Under the strain enforced by the current socioeconomic climate, as much as by the environmental peril that faces us all today - they diverted the course of the groove towards daring new vibrations. Without extinguishing or diminishing its highly communicative power, they released Vaudou Game from its origins of pure Afro-Funk to gradually engage into compositions which crystallized themselves into tones resembling more rock than funk.

On this fourth album, with an entirely revisited line-up, Peter Solo separates for the first time in his career from his brassy guard, leaving saxophone, trumpet and trombone outside to invite an arsenal of keyboards to define, with him, this new voodoo sound. A sound, as usual, built on vintage and precise analogical material - grime even on the white side of the tape, a blunt instrument used to blanket anything that strived to shine too much in the mix.

Graced with tapered guitars stringing out rhythmic bumps or withdrawing a few beats to indulge in infectious solos, this album is boisterously alive with vintage 70's Funk, infused with a few digressions into other ethers of the funk timeline, nicking different sounds and frequencies to render the black and white keys of an inspired keyboard to reach new euphoric levels of melodic acidity.

Tearing off the enigmatic mask to reveal his true face: on a few titles, Peter Solo ventures outside of his sacred voodoo range to reconnect with his London years, these titles feature small nods to the time he spent in “The Smoke” where the incantations of British music culture were written within him.

Noussin which means “Stay strong” in Mina, a dialect spoken in the south-west of Togo. Noussin, a message of hope as much as a call to come together to weather the turmoil and to come out better on the other side. Don’t let them grind you down…Noussin!

The Journey is the autobiographical account of Folamour's last two years, spent between airports and stages, London, France and the rest of the world, between crowds and solitudes, between highs and lows. The album, due out in June, is composed of metropolises and no-man's-land, inspired by moments that surprised and touched the artist. To express all these emotions, Folamour puts aside samples and computers to concentrate on writing lyrics, recording strings and brass, drums and vocals in order to be as close as possible to the moment. No limits of format, nor of genre, the total freedom to choose the tool adapted to the picture. This album is the sum of chance and encounters, an initiatory rite, as much in form as in content, the tale of a life with all that it can contain of joys and trials, as much in its writing and production as in its message, "The Journey" mixes contemporary sadness, isolation of artists, but also wonder at the simple pleasures of life and the discoveries it brings with it, it is neither a joyful nor a sad and disillusioned tale, it is the sum of all that and the rest too. Cover album adapted from a painting by Tomás Sánchez "Meditador en la laguna" from 1995. Edited by Koria

As a New Era beckons globally, Manchester’s primo Manctalo merchants – Red Laser Records – quietly unveil their latest clutch of specialist space-age kinetics. A fifth-kind encounter enabling users to bridge the continuum of dance & interaction between our Earth-dwelling selves and the inter-dimensional overlords.

Containing three brand new movements in machine music from our treasured production stable of Kid Machine, Bob SwanS and Il Bosco; it also houses an honorary appearance from revered Danish spearhead Flemming Dalum, who serves up a particle-splitting redux of a lesser-known proto-techno nugget from Belgium. Dalum’s been traversing the star-clusters on his own intrepid missions for a while, so we’re mega buzzed to have him back on the RL mothership.

Stretford based synthesizer technician, Bob SwanS has been drafted in specifically by RL head Il Bosco for his advanced skills on the patch bays. “Aphelion Run Theme”, the point of which an object’s orbit is furthest from the Sun, vividly detailing in sound the journey our collective consciousness must undergo in order to reach the Highest Elders. We highly recommend utilising this track alongside Dr. Greer’s outstanding work with extra terrestrials.

KID Machine’s celebratory, vocoder-led Manctalo message: “It’s The K.I.D” is a sonic motif to our interplanetary relatives; this cybernetic b-boy’s way of spray painting the Red Laser logo over Proxima Centauri B’s subway network in neon-blue, pyroxene paint.

Bosco lets loose with one of his most impassioned creations to date too. “We Almost Lost Oddbins” previously titled: “Save Our Scene”, a universe-wide cry for help recorded when worldwide limitations on dancing and human co-exchange were at their most aggressive; its nonetheless positive outlook inviting us all to look both inward and outward for solutions in the New Normal.

Encased within a striking monolith art print, depicting the mystic energies of ancient galaxies it heralds the now widely-accepted belief that we are in no way alone in this universe and that channels of communication between more advanced civilisations than ours have already begun…

These tracks were recorded early-to-mid `74, almost a year after the band had formed and almost 2 1/2 years before the release of the first Saints` single in 1976. The recording was made in Ed Kuepper`s parents` garage, except for "Misunderstood" which was recorded at Queensland University, direct onto a mono cassette-deck and features the second line-up of the band. Before this the Saints were a 3-piece, with Ivor Hay on piano and no drummer. It captures the band near the beginning of its first phase, as opposed to the EMI release which was at the end, and without getting into a debate about aesthetics, this one`s probably better. In a different universe this would have been the first Saints LP.

Weaving its way through the tapestry of influences from Lonnie Liston Smith, Softmachine and Ravi Shankar, the title track takes a more contemporary approach merging U.K. urban / spoken word, with a meandering melancholic melody, driving home the message that it’s a 'Matter of Urgency’.

Opening the recording, 'Jazz Emergency' has a laid back vibe, coasting on a hypnotic bass line, with layered wailing trilled horns, creating a blanket of tenor sax, delayed Rhodes and pianos over and around.

Crooked Urge (Part 1 & 2) (Trk: A2, B1) came about from a first time session with drummer Sergiu Fanica, Ozan and pianist Aziz. Although a jam, the band were keen to share the spirit of this recording!

The track 'Matter of Urgency' is a call to the inner self, to take care of the world around us and to pave a better world for the generations ahead. It is an enchanting fusion of wailing horns with spoken word poetry over the top.

'Sound of Pulsar' is another spaced out journey that came about from a jam night in the studio, bass line looped and off into the musical cosmos...

Once again we thank all the amazing musicians and friends sharing their creativity on this album and to those who inspire us to create!

The battle against the plague has raged hard for over a year. Around the globe, dancefloors are empty, layers of dust and broken bottles strewn across them…the glowsticks have long faded to black. But the Cologne mothership KOMPAKT has managed to prevail, bringing inspiration and hope through the message of music to a decaying humanity.

The Reawakening is finally in sight. It is only fitting that New York’s Steve Moore (of Zombi, Gianni Rossi and Lovelock fame) makes his return to KOMPAKT now with this foursome. Especially as his last release for us, “Frame Digging” (KOM 415) directly preceded the start of the pandemic.

AUTO SEQUENCE START – the time arrived for us to press the reset button. The cycle has completed.

Der Kampf gegen die Seuche tobt nun bereits seit über einem Jahr. Rund um den Globus sind die Tanzflächen leer, Schichten von Staub haben sich darüber gelegt, zerbrochenen Flaschen liegen herum ... auch die Leuchtstäbe sind längst erloschen. Doch das Kölner Mutterschiff KOMPAKT hört nicht auf, der darbenden Menschheit Inspiration und Hoffnung durch die Botschaft der Musik zu bringen.

Das Wiedererwachen ist in Sichtweite. Umso passender, dass der New Yorker Steve Moore (bekannt durch Zombi, Gianni Rossi und Lovelock) nun mit dieser 4 Track Maxi sein KOMPAKT-Comeback feiert. Denn seine letzte Veröffentlichung für uns, "Frame Digging" (KOM 415), war direkt vor Beginn der Pandemie erschienen.

AUTO SEQUENCE START - die Zeit ist gekommen, den Reset-Knopf zu drücken. Der Kreis schließt sich.

In 2018 one of metal’s most defining and revolutionary vocalists, WARREL DANE, celebrated his highly anticipated inaugural solo effort, “Praises To The War Machine”, which saw him further honing his craft to perfection. Dane, who first shattered the boundaries of conventionality with the legendary Sanctuary and Nevermore, proved that he is one of metal’s most diverse frontmen with this solo effort as he unleashes a barrage of introspective and personal lyrics that are heartfelt and extremely powerful. All of this emotion backed with his soaring angelic and dynamic vocals provides all of the necessary elements for a savagely captivating, melodic assault that quickly hooks you in. Before beginning this new venture Dane went out and surrounded himself with some of the best musicians that he could find. This search ultimately resulted in landing the renowned Peter Wichers (ex-Soilwork) on guitars and bass, Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork) on drums and Matt Wicklund (ex-Himsa) on guitars. The effort was also recorded and mixed by Wichers (coproducer Soilwork) and features guest musicians Jeff Loomis (Nevermore) and James Murphy (Obituary, Testament, etc.). Additionally this 2021 extended version reissues contains four live tracks from the album on side C featuring singer/songwriter Jonny Smokes which also will be available on all digital platforms. “Praises To The War Machine” is an absolute must for all Nevermore fans. Prepare yourself for the sheer beauty and elegance that awaits.

A message from the unknown.. limited to 200 copies

Listening to Græns album ”Musique Pour L’Esprit En Expansion” is an awakening experience. This record pours new poison over rock music, a genre which the bands founder Axel (Graveyard, Big Kiss etc) has a lot of experience from and, in his own words “a love/hate relation to”. That objective and sober perspective on the genre may be the main reason for the loosely assembled set of influences, put together by Axel, Lisen Rylander Löve (Midarcondo, Union Carbide Productions, Amason etc) and Rickard “Bobban” Johansson (Den Stora Vilan, Hills etc.), three experienced and wide eared musicians with a fearless approach to their main instruments and music in general.

With song titles like “Björkarnas Sus” (Whiz of the Birch trees) and “Commodification blues”, ”Musique Pour L’Esprit En Expansion” mixes nature romanticism with raw political comments about consumption. The sound moves from Stooges La Blues-land to Swedish progg with each instrumentalists shining through in grand style! Axel describes the less song-oriented tracks as “directed improvisation” – it’s loose but not eclectic.

Whatever sense you are using to catch this music, Græns message of cosmic unity and creative freedom will carry through to you!

Recorded in 1961, but not released until 1967, The Witch Doctor features one of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers’ all-time great line-ups: Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Bobby Timmons on piano, and Jymie Merritt on bass. Shorter and Morgan each contribute two tunes, with Timmons penning one. Highlights include Morgan’s spectacular 6/8 modal piece “Afrique” and Shorter’s minor masterpiece “Those Who Sit And Wait.” Bobby Timmons brings the deep soul goods on his composition “A Little Busy,” and the album closes with a fleet-footed romp through Clifford Jordan’s tune “Lost and Found.” Blue Note Records’ Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series is produced by Joe Harley and features all-analog, mastered-from-the-original-master-tapes, 180g audiophile vinyl reissues in deluxe gatefold packaging. Mastering is by Kevin Gray (Cohearent Audio) and vinyl is manufactured at Record Technology Incorporated (RTI).

Stand Atlantic are a female fronted band from Sydney, Australia. Their fresh blend of melodic hooks and power-driven instrumentals allow them to sit atop of the genre. With their honest lyrical nature and relentless ability to move an audience live, the band are being tipped to be the next to break through the Australian scene. At the end of 2016 Stand Atlantic entered Electric Sun studio to record their new EP 'Sidewinder' with producer Stevie Wright (With Confidence). The EP shows the band mixing accessible song writing and exceptional musicianship, balancing out both the 'pop' and 'rock' aspects of their sound.

BLUE NOTE TONE-POET-LP-SERIE (STAFFEL 22)
CURTIS AMY & DUPREE BOLTON - Katanga! (1963)
ART BLAKEY & THE JAZZ MESSENGERS - The Witch Doctor (1967)
- audiophiles, rein analoges Mastering von den Original-Analogbändern
- Pressung in 180g-Vinyl
- extra-dicke, laminierte Tip-on-Sleeves
- wattierte Innenhüllen

England, 1884 - a world on the brink of change. On the morning of her 16th birthday, Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) wakes to find that her mother (Helena Bonham Carter) has disappeared, leaving behind an odd assortment of gifts but no apparent clue as to where she’s gone or why. After a free-spirited childhood, Enola suddenly finds herself under the care of her brothers Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), both set on sending her away to a finishing school for “proper” young ladies. Refusing to follow their wishes, Enola escapes to search for her mother in London. But when her journey finds her entangled in a mystery surrounding a young runaway Lord (Louis Partridge), Enola becomes a super-sleuth in her own right, outwitting her famous brother as she unravels a conspiracy that threatens to set back the course of history.

Enola Holmes was released on September 23, 2020. The film received positive reviews from critics, who praised Brown’s performance. Daniel Pemberton composed the film’s score. Pemberton described it as “unashamedly melodic and emotional orchestral music” with some “messy quirky oddness thrown in as well”.




RELEASE: 4-6-2021




• 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• PVC PROTECTIVE SLEEVE
• CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED 2020 MOVIE ABOUT THE TEENAGE SISTER OF THE ALREADY-FAMOUS SHERLOCK HOLMES
• STARRING MILLIE BOBBY BROWN (STRANGER THINGS “ELEVEN”), HENRY CAVILL, SAM CLAFLIN & HELENA BONHAM CARTER
• MUSIC BY DANIEL PEMBERTON
• INCLUDES INSERT WITH PICTURES AND LINER NOTES BY DIRECTOR HARRY BRADBEER (KILLING EVE)
• LIMITED EDITION OF 500 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED COPIES ON SOLID TURQUOISE VINYL

This is a limited edition contains of 500 individually numbered copies on solid turquoise vinyl. The package includes an insert with pictures and liner notes by director Harry Bradbeer (Killing Eve).

Ulf Lohmann, the newcomer of the year. From the deepest suburbs of Cologne, he spreads his musical message around The world. Resistance is futile. His music disarms even the unarmed. Innocence has become sound - unswervingly pure and beautiful. Like the electronic immaculate conception Truthful as love itself . So, leave the container and enter into the paradise of active oblivion. Shut up, you real world! Here comes Ulf Lohmann, here comes Pop Ambient 2001.
STERBENS-SCHÖNER POP AMBIENT & EIN KLEINER MINIMAL HIT MACHEN ULF ZUR ECHTEN ENTDECKUNG. HAMMER !

It’s been just over one year since Michael The Lion x Amy Douglas and John Morales’ life-affirming remix 12" hit the airwaves. Released in March of 2020, the music offered a glimmer of light in the darkest of times, but of course, we had to postpone our celebratory dance.

As Summer approaches and our optimism renews, it feels as if just perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel - just maybe we’ve found a way. In light of seeing & feeling that light, we’re honored to welcome Ron Basejam of Crazy P, Chicago’s own and B.B.E regular, Jamie 3:26, and the Toronto natives, The Patchouli Brothers to Soul Clap Records for ‘Remixed’ by Michael The Lion x Amy Douglas.

Comet Records presents the Tony Allen & Afrika 70 reissue series with the classic late seventies first four solo albums of Tony Allen remastered and restored: Jealousy, Progress, No Accomodation for Lagos & No Discrimination, all coming in an heavy Deluxe Tip-On Jacket.
1978's No Accommodation for Lagos, Tony Allen's third solo album, is an effortless Afrobeat masterpiece. The Afrika 70 band floats through two of Tony's heaviest and most churning compositions.
With this album, we start to hear Tony Allen's unique style of Afro-Funk that he would explore for decades to come as a solo artist - it is groove-focused, a rolling meditation on rhythm.
The first track, "No Accommodation for Lagos" is one of Tony's most pointed and churning songs, recorded in a chaotic period following the army raid of Fela's compound. There is a seriousness to the funk, a real burning purpose in the performance of every instrument, from the horns to the shekere. Tony's performance is supercharged - he clearly showed up to the studio that day with a fire in his heart. The followup track, "African Message," is an Afrobeat compositional staple. Tony sits back in the cut through most of the supremely funky track until about seven minutes in, when he steps into the spotlight to express himself fully - his emotions, his frustrations, his convictions - in a fiery duet between his drumkit and his voice. The percussionists coalesce around him in support, lifting Tony up as he gives it his all.
Tony Allen was a musical and compositional visionary, and this album finds him beginning to explore that vision outside of Fela's immense gravitational pull. They are the start of a new era in Tony's fruitful career as a solo artist, opening the floodgates for his distinctive Afro-Funk sound and laying the foundation for the next generation of Afrobeat musicians to come.

Sinéad O’Connor marks a long-awaited return with a stunning version
of ‘Trouble Of The World’, a traditional song made famous by exalted gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, available as a 7” single backed with an a cappella version on Heavenly Recordings.

It follows somewhat belatedly the-ever-more pertinent ‘Trouble Soon Be Over’, her contribution to 2015’s ‘Tribute To Blind Willie Johnson’ compilation and once more exudes the heart and soul of this extraordinary performer.

Sympathetic to its origins, the heartfelt, evocative tones propel this impassioned rendition to the present its poignancy highlighted by a remarkable artist who leaves her own indelible mark on this topical realisation whilst realigning with a positive viewpoint.

In her own words, she explains; “for me the song isn’t about death or dying. More akin, a message of certainty that the human race is on a journey toward making this world paradise and that we will get there.”

The inspirational lyrical narrative that underpins ‘Trouble Of The World’ bears more relevance than ever today in the context of the death of George Floyd and the highlighting of the persistent racist undercurrents that trouble mixed societies across the globe.

The song sees Sinead joining forces with renowned producer David Holmes and, recorded in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the easing of the lockdown, it shares an uncanny albeit eerie symmetry with our new trouble of the world backdrop and once again Sinéad awakes our souls to the ironies and similarities of our collective past and present. The pair have created a sonic tonic and shout out to the powers that be as a voice of the people still questioning all-toofrequent events such as witnessed over the past few months that ensue decades since the nascent birth of the civil rights movement in the United States.

Embodying a voice with beauty and innocence, a spirit part punk, part mystic with a combined fearlessness and gentle authenticity - unique, uncompromising, a pioneer, a visionary, just some of the descriptions that perhaps merely touch the surface of Sinéad O’Connor.

Louisahhh releases her debut LP The Practice of Freedom, via HE.SHE.THEY. The Practice of Freedom heralds the evolution of Louisahhh as she delivers her most exposing work yet, conceived as an exploration of the unorthodox archetype of “feminist submissive,” based on the mantra “sin is not being true to yourself.” Like her uncompromising musical heroes Karen O, Siouxsie Sioux and Shirley Manson before her, Louisahhh’s bold, raw, anti-establishment message on The Practice of Freedom will mark her as punk’s essential new heroine at the forefront of the new dawn of musical feminism.

The Practice of Freedom was born from experiences of loss and love, told through a journey of brutally beautiful electronics, electro and techno colliding with industrial, rock and alternative sounds. On the polysexual polymath label HE.SHE.THEY.’s inaugural album release, Louisahhh captures a record of our times, covering themes ranging from eroticism and empowerment to addiction and apocalypse, and influences ranging from Nine Inch Nails to Patti Smith to Judith Butler. The album, produced by American musician, music video director and photographer Vice Cooler, hears ideas and lyrics by Louisahhh re-contextualised into revolutionary experimental sounds, formed through the pair’s shared love of American alternative rock. Louisahhh’s music fights for and provides a voice for others, rooted equally in the intensity of the dancefloor and the mosh pit.

Raymond Charles Robinson was not just a legend, “the genius”, a “force of nature” and “a presence”. He was also pure energy, the source of a radiant glow that dazzled everyone who ever came near him. His passion for music, women, and rhythm, coupled with his love of life and laughter, were ingredients that made his work a monument of 20th century culture. He left essential traces – in jazz, blues, soul and R&B – because music is something inseparable and Ray lived its rhythms from the inside.

Born in poverty, raised in America’s racist South, blind at seven and an orphan at 15, Ray had all it took to be a success… Those attributes, plus a few titles in his case that he’d recorded for Swing Time, made such an impression on Ahmet Ertegun that he signed Ray to Atlantic in 1952. The next ten years forged the legend of Ray Charles. And now, six decades later, the tracks on this album are still hits hummed by all generations.

Wetzt die Äxte, Speere und Schwerter – monumentaler Black Metal ist mit STORMRULER auf dem
Vormasch! Schärft die Klingen und macht euch bereit für die Schlacht mit den US-Black-Metal- Senkrechstartern STORMRULER! Das Zwei-Mann-Projekt aus St. Louis, bestehend aus Gitarristen/Sänger Jason
Asberry und Schlagzeuger Jesse Schobel, erzeugt eine eiskalte Black-Metal-Atmosphäre, inspiriert aus
zeitgenössischem Metal und düsteren Erzählungen von Krieg, High-Fantasy und Geschichte. Auf STORMRULERs fulminantem Debütalbum Under The Burning Eclipse, welches 2021 über Napalm Records erscheint, gibt die Band genau das zum Besten: Auf 19 Tracks, erzählt das Album erschütternde Geschichten
von Krieg, Tod, Sieg und Niederlage und liefert ein unvergleichliches, höllisches Hörerlebnis, in welchem
sich bedrohliche Ambient-Parts und lodernde Black Metal-Riffs die Türklinke in die Hand geben. Under
The Burning Eclipse von STORMRULER ist ein musikalisch vollendetes Debütalbum voller fantasiehafter,
düsterer Fabeln, die Fans von extremem Metal nicht verpassen wollen!

The same crew as the boundary pulsing improvisation record Bent
Arcana has made a trajectory shift and picked up Ben Boye along
the path. The aptly-named Moon-Drenched is the second installment
from these sessions and keeps a heavy-lidded late night perspective
on things as it eases from the somewhat familiar liminal twilight
of skittering hues of black-blue and snaking street groove, to
fizzing off into the ether in pursuit of lunar prism beams heretofore
unseen. The more rhythmically dialed bits here have a lysergic halo of
strangeness to them, and the wispy bits between are spun of iridescent
gossamer. It sounds like a frizzled message from a future just filthy
with guitar hoots echoing off of neon-splattered high rises, oil-slicked
waterways and skittering digital beasts. For Castle Face’s money this
is the strangest slice of this last bunch of John Dwyer and his crew’s
improvisations.

Easy Lifes hoch antizipiertes Debütalbum „Life’s A Beach” ist ab sofort als Vinyl Album und CD erhältlich!
Noch letztes Jahr auf Platz #2 BBC-„Sound of 2020“ gestartet, macht die sympathische britische Band mit
„Life’s A Beach“ ihr erstes offizielles Albumstatement. Es umfasst 12 erstaunliche Tracks und beinhaltet
die Hits „nightmares“, „daydreams“ und „skeletons“. Das Album bietet eine Vielseitigkeit von Sounds an
und bedient sich an Genres wie Indie-Pop, Hip-Hop und Electronic/Dance und wurde u.a. vom Grammynominierten Produzenten BEKON produziert.

The trio of fiddle player Erlend Apneseth with guitarist Stephan Meidell and drummer Oyvind Hegg-Lunde follows up their Nordic Prize-nominated album of 2019, ‘Salika, Molika’, with a remarkable suite of tunes inspired by the rhythms and physicality of the human body in motion.
Originally commissioned by FRIKAR Dance Company to accompany the performance of a new work, ‘Skaut’, dealing with the covering of the body in different cultures, the music of ‘Lokk’ takes the trio further than ever before into completely fresh areas of electro-acoustic improvisation.
The sounds of their original instruments are integrated with electronic beats and treated textures to form a kind of enhanced digital-folk style whose influences stretch from traditional south Asian ragas to contemporary dance culture from around the globe.
The result is intense, and intensely rhythmic, music where the normally separate realms of the cerebral and the corporeal can appear to fuse into one irresistible groove.
As the trio rocks on - in a dream of perfect interplay between instruments and players, soloists and ensemble - deep, trembling sub-bass intersects with ethereal ambient soundscapes. Elsewhere, the twittering of birdsong - from both real bird-calls and the uncanny imitation of them by Apneseth’s Hardanger fiddle - meets archival recordings of Norwegian herdswomen.
“Our musical idea for this project was to unite different extremes, connections that felt “forbidden” in one form or another”, says Stephan Meidell. “For example, by using the sampled recording of traditional herd-calling, blended together with aesthetics from more contemporary music styles. This exploration has led us further into a rhythmic and danceable landscape than in previous releases. We also wanted to use this opportunity to deliberately make more dance-related music. As regards the original commission, were pretty free to do what we wanted, but there was one specific dance in mind, ‘Valdresspringar’, for which Erlend wrote the melody. It’s a traditional, asymmetrical dance and has a very particular form. The melody is on the track called ‘Springar’, which we then messed around with.”
This “messing around with” element is key to the sound of ‘Lokk’, whose playful experimentation over the nine separate tracks creates a beguiling, constantly surprising sense of adventure and intrigue that both draws the listener in, and then keeps them on their toes as to where the next stage of the journey will take them. It also becomes inescapably obvious that this is a group of three equals.
The contributions of Stephan Meidell and Oyvind Hegg-Lunde, as musicians, co-composers and producers, appear every bit as important as that of Erlend Apneseth, who performs superbly throughout. “Even though the trio carries Erlend’s name, it’s a band in every sense of the word”, says Stephan Meidell. “We make the music together, where everyone brings their ideas and we build on each other’s input and output. This is not our “coming out” as a band, but the group is sometimes interpreted as having a hierarchical structure, as a soloist and accompaniment.”
As is evident from the trio’s live performances, where each member seamlessly integrates the acoustic and the electronic elements in their respective sounds through constant monitoring and tweaking, Apneseth, Meidell and Hegg-Lunde are also pioneers,
creating real-time effects that in the past were only available through post-production or the intervention of a sympathetic engineer and a truck-load of kit. ‘Lokk’ translates this fleet-footed improvisational approach, and the players’ lightning-speed reaction times, back into the environment of the recording studio, where the music composed for the original FRIKAR dance piece was further embellished and adapted. Played live, it will continue to change again, as improvised music always does.

After decades on the road and the never-ending hustle of life as an artist, Lou Barlow has tapped into a new confidence in the chaos. In 2021, the concept of balance feels particularly intimidating. Now more than ever, it's clear life isn't just leveling out a pair of responsibilities. Instead, we're chasing after a flock of different ideals with a butterfly net. On Barlow's new solo album, Reason to Live, he has come to an understanding of that swirl rather than trying to contain it. As a long-time indie legend, Barlow has found a life akin to a middle-class musician. In recent years, he's moved from Los Angeles back to Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and three kids. And yet rather than settle into a comfortable malaise or yearn for the open road, Barlow's strengthened urgency finds a way to merge the two instincts. Reason to Live is shambolic and grand yet intimate and doting, warmly acoustic and crackling with grit. "I had been struggling for a way to connect both my home life and my recorded life, but this record is the first time I've integrated that," Barlow says. By folding the many facets of his life into one package, Reason to Live radiates with a renewed balance and calm. That comfort in complexity shines through even in the recording process, with select songs having origins in decades past and others written in the early stages of 2020. The multitude of whirring messages of Reason to Live are united by Barlow's roiling multilayered arrangements and the understanding that change is inevitable - and that it can bring you a new reason to live in the darkest times. "This album is me really opening up, and the album follows that through its many different themes," he says. "Some of my other work could be almost claustrophobic in its insistence on being all tied together but there's space for people to live inside these songs." After albums with Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr., Folk Implosion, and under his own name, listeners may have felt they knew the construction of a Barlow song, even that they knew Barlow himself. "People have this vision of me as this heartbroken, depressed guy, but this record feels so true to who I am, to this rich life I now have full of people I love," he says. "The songs culminated over the last five years to show that music has returned to its central comforting role in my life. Now I'm home."

Soft-spoken with the look of a slightly disaffected 1950s matinee idol, Aaron Frazer possesses a unique voice that's both contemporary and timeless. On Introducing... -- his debut solo album produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, co-released on Easy Eye Sound and Dead Oceans -- Aaron melds mid-`60s soul with Auerbach's particular sensibilities (`Over You'), songs with a message in the key of Gil Scott-Heron (`Bad News'), and uplifting tales of love told through a blend of disco, gospel, and doo-wop (`Have Mercy'). The Brooklyn-based, Baltimore-raised songwriter first came into the international spotlight as multi-instrumentalist and colead singer of Durand Jones & The Indications, but he's more than a revivalist act. "I didn't want Introducing... to be an exact recreation of an era or a style," Frazer says. "I'm excited to keep breaking some of the expectations around what exactly I'm supposed to be artistically and musically, or what this scene as a whole can be." On Introducing..., Aaron expertly calibrates consciousness-raising and the desire to be enveloped by love. Where previous records were written in a partial state of turmoil, Aaron's debut LP shows maturation and range. Introducing... is both loving and gracious, critical without losing hope, and a showcase of a young artist on a seriously soulful ascent.

Drab Majesty's first ever release was the 2012 self-released cassette tape "Unarian Dances". Originally limited to 100 copies, tracks from this tape would eventually make their way onto the Completely Careless CD collection as bonus cuts. Now, along with the "Unknown to the I" 12" also released on March 26, these songs are finally made available on vinyl in 45 RPM 12" format, bringing all early Drab Majesty material from the Careless era (2012-2015) to vinyl. Mastered by Josh Bonati with beautiful new packaging by Nathaniel Young.



Drab Majesty is the project of Deb DeMure, the androgynous alter-ego of L.A.- based musician Andrew Clinco and partner Mona D. With its combination of reverb-drenched guitars, synth bass lines, commanding vocals, and rhythmic drum machine beats, this project is a stark departure from Clinco’s previous stints as drummer in Marriages and Black Mare. Dubbed “Tragic Wave” and “Mid-Fi” by DeMure, Drab Majesty eloquently blends classic 80s New Wave and hints of early 4AD with a futuristic originality.



Atalented multi-instrumentalist, DeMure composes all of the elements of DrabMajesty. However, rather than taking personal credit for the music, DeMure insists that the inspiration for the songs is received from an other-worldly source and that Deb is merely a vessel through which outside ideas flow inward. But Drab Majesty is more than just a musical project — it’s a methodical experiment in the identity of creativity. The character Deb DeMure is an enigma that eludes all expectations of gender and ego. When DeMure’s imposing 6’ 4” figure assumes the stage, Deb’s playful, harlequin-esque appearance, tempered by an ominous body language, and clashing with the dreamy, ethereal melodies comes across as a web of contrasts. The result is a perfect balance between seemingly conflicting messages, between the high and the low, the drab and the divine.

Die Geschichte von Sons Of Raphael ist eine, die am Rande der Mythologie und des Wahnsinns schwankt; eine kaum zu glaubende Mischung aus dem Erhabenen und dem Zufälligen. Es ist eine Geschichte von Engeln und Teufeln, davon, aus einer 250 Jahre alten Kapelle geworfen und in einer irischen Bingohalle willkommen geheißen zu werden. Wie zwei moderne Dandys am Bug eines Klipperschiffs navigiert das West-Londoner Duo durch die Irrungen und Wirrungen der Geschichte und ist nun mit seinem ersten Testament in der Hand an Land gesprungen: „Full-Throated Messianic Homage“. Ein Album, das sieben Jahre in der Mache war, aber - wie die Band selbst sagt - ’mit 2000 Jahren angesammeltem Leid darin’. Eine vierstimmige Hymne auf Leben, Tod, Sünde, Liebe und Auferstehung: Lieder für die Toten, um die Lebenden zu retten.

Drab Majesty's first release for Dais Records was the "Unknown to the I" cassette in 2015, which featured the title track that would later appear on his debut album "Careless" that summer. The additional early cuts "Saturn Inc." and "Ultra Violet" have previously only been available on digital or as CD bonus tracks. Now, along with the "Unarian Dances" 12" also released on March 26, these songs are finally made available on vinyl in 45 RPM 12" format, bringing all early Drab Majesty material from the Careless era (2012-2015) to vinyl. Mastered by Josh Bonati with beautiful new packaging by Nathaniel Young.



Drab Majesty is the project of Deb DeMure, the androgynous alter-ego of L.A.-based musician Andrew Clinco and partner Mona D. With its combination of reverb-drenched guitars, synth bass lines, commanding vocals, and rhythmic drum machine beats, this project is a stark departure from Clinco’s previous stints as drummer in Marriages and Black Mare. Dubbed “Tragic Wave” and “Mid-Fi” by DeMure, Drab Majesty eloquently blends classic 80s New Wave and hints of early 4AD with a futuristic originality.



Atalented multi-instrumentalist, DeMure composes all of the elements of DrabMajesty. However, rather than taking personal credit for the music, DeMure insists that the inspiration for the songs is received from an other-worldly source and that Deb is merely a vessel through which outside ideas flow inward. But Drab Majesty is more than just a musical project — it’s a methodical experiment in the identity of creativity. The character Deb DeMure is an enigma that eludes all expectations of gender and ego. When DeMure’s imposing 6’ 4” figure assumes the stage, Deb’s playful, harlequin-esque appearance, tempered by an ominous body language, and clashing with the dreamy, ethereal melodies comes across as a web of contrasts. The result is a perfect balance between seemingly conflicting messages, between the high and the low, the drab and the divine.

After releasing their outstanding 17th album 'Abolition of The Royal Familia' earlier this year, The Orb are back with further guest appearances on their remix album 'Abolition Of The Royal Familia - Guillotine Mixes' (April 2021). Including mixes from David Harrow, Moody Boyz, Youth, Violeta Vicci, Andy Falconer and more.

MONSTER MAGNET’s A Better Dystopia dominates with a psychotic selection of proto-metal and psych-rock obscurities! "Take a trip inside the mind of psychedelic rock legend Dave Wyndorf with MONSTER MAGNET’s A Better Dystopia – a delightfully psychotic selection of proto-metal and late-era psych songs that fit the band like a glove! With wonderfully obscure song choices and excellent sequencing, the mighty Magnet pay homage to some of their favorite songs of all time, crafting another exciting and unique listening experience alike what they’ve become famous for. While the album marks a new frontier for MONSTER MAGNET as their first covers record, this is not your typical set of standards released to pass time. Wyndorf is at the top of his game on A Better Dystopia – howling, crooning, speaking… whatever it takes to get the emotional message of these very special tunes across, delivering each lyric in his own inimitable style. Musicians Phil Caivano, Bob Pantela, Garrett Sweeney and Alec Morton own the sound on A Better Dystopia – vintage and old school, dense and heavy, with searing fuzz leads and pounding bass and drums all played in a deft style that's almost been lost in modern music..

Blackaby - aka London songwriter and multi-instrumentalist William Blackaby - offers-up his first two EPs - 'What's On The TV?' and 'Everything's Delicious' - on limited edition, random coloured recycled 12" vinyl, out 21st May 2021. Blackaby’s 2020 debut EP ‘What’s On The TV?’, released via Hand In Hive, served as a look back at the songwriter’s childhood, recounting hazy playground memories and his messy, formative teenage years. His second collection, ‘Everything’s Delicious’, is described by Blackaby as “another brief flirt with memory lane - not walking down it as much as peering from a safe distance”. In a poem written to accompany the new EP, William writes: “All grown up and what now? Let Time-Out decide. Is that a thin patch? Another day done and dinner’s on. What have I done? Left a mark or a stain?”

Schlendergang und Sprint. Verweilen und Aufbruch. Melancholisch reminiszierend, aber den Blick stets vorwärtsgewandt - schon seit ihrer Gründung ziehen sich duale Gegensätze wie ein roter Faden durch das Schaffen der Hamburger Indie/Dreampop-Band Scotch & Water und genau in diesem Spannungsfeld schwingt auch ihr Debütalbum "Sirens". Das vierköpfige Ensemble spielt darauf gekonnt mit Schritttempo und Perspektiven seiner Hörer:innen und verspricht damit gleichermaßen Anklang bei Vinyl-Liebhabern erster Stunde, Zeugen des New-Wave- Revivals der frühen 2000er sowie Kindern des neuen Jahrtausends zu finden. Dabei verweben Scotch & Water zuversichtlich Einflüsse von Fleetwood Mac über Arcade Fire bis hin zu Bon Iver oder The War on Drugs zu facettenreichen und komplexen Klangwelten. Eine Zuversicht, die die vier selbstbewusst aus der Geschwindigkeit der Achtungserfolge ihres erst dreijährigen Bestehens schöpfen. Die vier funktionieren wunderbar in diesem Tempo, bremsen ihren Laufschritt dann aber doch zunächst, um auf diesen imposanten Start mit einem bestechenden Debütalbum zu antworten. Durchdacht, facettenreich und komplex präsentieren sich Scotch & Water auf "Sirens" denn nicht nur Albumtitel, sondern auch der Sound sind aufmerksamkeitserregend, lautstark.

Deep spiritual jazz recorded in Germany, performed by Jamaican born saxophone player Fitz Gore and his international group The Talismen, featuring a.o. bassist Gérard Ebbo from Morocco and drummer Philippe Zobda-Quitman from Martinique. This is the first reissue of their second album, released in 1976 by the small private label GorBra from Bonn, including "Delilah" and "Requiem For Julian Cannonball Adderley". The rare LP comes in a newly mastered version with original cover design and sleeve notes. Fitz Gore's music is full of tremendous tension and movement between deep seriousness, inwardness and humility; it affects your life, it liberates and heals.

Original sleeve notes from 1976:

"Soundmagnificat" is the successor to "Soundnitia" (GorBra Records F 665 532), the first release from the Talismen, an international group with Jamaican Tenor saxophonist Fitz Gore (born1935) as founder, spiritual and musical leader, main soloist. "Soundnitia" contained concert performances of June, 1975, including compositions by John Coltrane, Horace Silver and one by Gérard "Prof. Dr. Splüm" Ebbo, bassist of the Talismen.

This second offering from the Talismen is more varied. It has four tracks recorded at four different occasions. It presents Fitz Gore as a singer, a composer, as well as, a tenor saxophonist. The opener, Requiem for Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, is a moving tribute to a great American artist, the late alto saxophonist "Cannonball" Adderley. On this track, Hungarian drummer Janos Sudy is heard with the Talismen, for the first time. The playing by the quartet on this slow lament very adequately illustrates the mood of the composition

For the next piece, a concert performance, Gore selected a gem from the American Negro Song Tradition and he displays a mighty, masculine and soulful voice in Steal Away. An example of a modern artist using an old traditional to express his own inner feelings. Delilah is taken from another concert performance, the same concert as the music on "Soundnitia". It has extensive playing by Gore, a bass solo by Gérard Ebbo, leading into some exciting conga playing by Lamont Hampton.

The final track, A Sinner Kissed An Angel, was recorded by another tenor player, Wardell Gray, in 1950, but this version is all Gore's. After the piano introduction, Gore delivers the melody with authority and with an expressive use especially of the high register of his instrument. In his improvisation, Gore's playing becomes more dissonant. Some of his playing here causes me to think of the way the late Albert Ayler sounded on his first recordings done in Sweden, in the beginning of the 60s. No drums here, but nice accompaniment and solo work of Jochen Paul on vibes.

I met Fitz Gore in Copenhagen in the fall of 1975. We were both listening to the trumpet playing of Harry "Sweets" Edison at the now defunct Café Montmartre. Prior to that time, I did not know Gore and his music, but listening to his playing on this album and the earlier one, has once more widened my musical horizon. His music has struck some chords within me. "Music is communication", John Coltrane once said. I feel sure that as you listen to the music of Fitz Gore and his Talismen, you will get the message.

In these notes, I have mentioned a couple of jazz artists and another one ought to be named primarily, because he has meant a lot to Gore: Sonny Rollins. The two met in Paris in 1966. Gore says of Rollins: "He openend my eyes ...big man … phenomenon … my man". As Sonny Rollins's artistry, the music of Fitz Gore holds many aspects, some being aggressive and even hysterical, others being those of beauty and peace. As life itself … (Roland Baggenaes, June 1976)

The music of Fitz Gore, rooted in the blues, is full of tremendous tension and movement between deep seriousness, inwardness, humility and humor, hardness and tenderness; it affects your life, it liberates and heals - a hopeful, a truly groundbreaking, a timeless, a new music - Newsic!
(Gisela Braasch, 1976)

In memory of Fitz Gore.
Mastered 2020 by Roskow Kretschmann at Audiomoto,
kindly supported by Tom Sky. Vinyl cut at SST.
Producer for reissue: Ekkehart Fleischhammer,
reproduction of original cover design by Gisela Gore:
Patrick Haase aka rab.bit.

Originally released as a 12” single in 1982, ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ was the final record from Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist and producer Freddie Thompson’s Panaché band. Built around a fully cleared sampled bassline from ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ plays out like a summertime stroll through New York in the early 80s. The streets are full of excitement, but as the lyrics, written by vocalist Denise Williams (not to be confused with Deniece Williams of ‘Let’s Hear It For The Boy’ fame) make it clear, they’re dangerous as well.

Thirty-nine years later, Isle of Jura is proud to present the first official 12” reissue of ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’. A cult classic from the disco-rap era, the reissue includes the original vocal and instrumental versions of ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ plus a Jura Soundsystem special version with additional live percussion.

Originally made up of Freddie, his wife, the singer Debra Thompson and keyboardist Douglas Glover, Panaché formed at the behest of a local disco DJ, Carl Nelson. In the wake of Chic’s early singles, Carl felt a French name would give Freddie a competitive edge. “He explained it to us that it was a French word for style and elegance. Panaché, a step above chic,” Freddie reflects.

Business minded, Freddie formed his own label, Roché Records and joined SIRMA - The Small Independent Music Manufacturers Association. “It was very hard for the independent manufacturers to get airplay and distribution at the time, so we all came together,” he remembers. Through SIRMA, Freddie met Joe and Sylvia Robinson from Sugar Hill Records, who several years later, let him sample ‘The Message’ for ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’.

In 1979, Panaché scored some radioplay when they covered ‘Not On The Outside’ by ‘60s D.C R&B group The Moments. Emboldened, they brought onboard backing vocalists and recorded their only album. This Is Panache saw the band blurring the boundaries between soul, jazz-funk and disco and become a sought after collectible.

By 1982, Debra had stepped back, and one of Panaché’s backing singers was center stage, Denise Williams. “Denise was good with writing poetry,” says Freddie. "She had one called ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’. It was about the unrest that was going on in the city at the time. I thought I could do something with that.”

After releasing ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ in 1982, Panaché quietly moved from center stage to behind the scenes. Over the last thirty-nine years, Freddie has continued to work in the music industry as a session musician and producer. “As soon as we stopped trying to become stars as Panaché, we became busy working in the industry,” Freddie laughs.

Orange and black. Fire and ebony. Fury and pride. Wearing its signature colors proudly and raising its exclamation point high, Impulse! Records was the go-to label for music that harnessed the searching and political stand-taking of the Sixties. Launched in 1961, Impulse grew to become an inherent part of the era’s velocity as well as its volume, pulling jazz into the age of Black Power, Afrocentricity, and Spiritual Expansion. In its balance of tradition and transition, it bridged the golden age of jazz, that brief window from the late Fifties to the Seventies when players representing every jazz era were alive and active—from Louis Armstrong to Albert Ayler, from the legends of lore to a new generation of energy players. Impulse treated all its musicians as innovators, revolutionaries even—from swing and bebop, to free and Afrofuturist. The performances on Impulse Records: Music, Message and the Moment draw their staying power from a wide embrace of styles and sounds, as well as a tight focus on a historic moment when the promise of change was in the air and the message of racial harmony was in the music. Today that music has lost none of its relevance: the promise still deferred, the message still on time.

Concrete presents old archives from Francesco Baudazzi (Violet Poison). Music he did between 2013 and 2014, influenced by his previous releases like "Non Sequitur" (Haunted Air) and "Awakening Messiah" (Bed Of Nails). Four experimental tracks with dark and strong rhythm, Raw and early proto-techno with a cyberpunk attitude. From the droney psichedelia of "Psychic Totem" to the cyberpunk proto-body-music of "Disarticolazione Cranica", from the obsessive monotonia of "LSD Take One" to the ultradark Techno of "Ultrakinesis". Enjoy this Industrial/Proto-Techno journey.

SCAR OF THE SUN aus Griechenland erheben ihre Stimme gegen soziale Ungerechtigkeit und verbinden
Wissenschaft mit energiegeladenem Modern Metal!
Auf Inertia vermitteln SCAR OF THE SUN ihre leidenschaftlichen Botschaften über große Herausforderungen und soziales Bewusstsein kombiniert mit wissenschaftlicher Thematik. Auf diese Weise besingen sie
eine der schwersten gesellschaftlichen Bürden: finanzieller Gewinn gedeiht auf Kosten der Menschlichkeit
und der Lebensgrundlagen von Individuen. Das instrumentale Intro „Hydrogen” heizt die Stimmung an,
bevor der Titeltrack „Inertia“ die musikalisch harte Seite des Albums präsentiert – die stürmischen und von
donnernden Drums getragenen Strophen münden in einen unbestreitbar eingängigen Refrain. Mit seinen
messerscharfen Riffs reflektiert „I Am The Circle“ kompromisslos und aufrichtig über die härtesten Aspekte des Musikerdaseins, während die „Quantum Leap Zero“-Trilogie sehr intensiv von den dramatischen
Ereignissen erzählt, die 2015 in Griechenland stattfanden: von Unterdrückung, Aufstieg und Revolution
sowie von der finalen Niederlage.
Inertia endet mit „Anastasis“ (griechisch für ”Auferstehung”), das vom furchtbaren Schmerz erzählt, einen
geliebten Menschen zu verlieren. Mit dem finalen Song fassen SCAR OF THE SUN diesen Schmerz
gekonnt in Worte und verwandeln die spürbare Verzweiflung in gefühlvolle Musik.

Strut present the definitive edition of a 1977 classic, Plunky & Oneness OfJuju's 'Make A Change' album featuring the international hit 'Every WayBut Loose' and five previously unheard studio takes. Recorded at Omega studios in Maryland, the album marked a transition forthe band with lead vocalist Jackie Eka-Ete recording her last sessions withPlunky and Virtania Tillery taking over lead vocal duties. "'Make A Change'was always designed as a slightly more commercial entry in our discography," says Plunky. "We approached the sessions in the same way that we had approached all of our music since the early '70s. We played extended jams because we would always find something within those explorations. The songs had enough organic qualities to be considered R&B and enough rhythm to be Afro funk." After catching fire in Washington DC clubs through local record pools, the dancefloor favourite 'Every Way But Loose' famously became an anthem for Larry Levan at New York's Paradise Garage, kick-starting international success for the track. Other album cuts like funk workout 'Higher' and the wistful stepper 'Always Have To Say Goodbye' have remained staples among soulful DJs worldwide. "The songs and lyrics on this album have come back around full circle," continues Plunky. "With songs like '(Family Tree) Make A Change' and 'Every Way But Loose', we don't have tochange one word for them to be relevant all these years later. The positive messages are universal and timeless." This definitive edition of 'Make A Change' features the full original album alongside five previously unheard studio takes, all remastered by TheCarvery from the original tapes. Bonus tracks include extended studio versions of 'Every Way But Loose' and 'Always Have To Say Goodbye'and a previously unheard version of 'Time'. Package features brand newliner notes by bandleader Plunky Branch.

4LP box set including Angel Olsen’s latest two albums, ‘All
Mirrors’ and ‘Whole New Mess’, as well as an LP of bonus
audio. Also includes 40-page book including photo shoot
outtakes, pictures from the recording of these albums,
handwritten lyrics and items of meaning to Angel.
Originally conceived as a double album, ‘All Mirrors’ and
‘Whole New Mess’ were distinct parts of a larger whole, twin
stars that each expressed something bigger and bolder than
Angel Olsen had ever made. Released in 2019, ‘All Mirrors’
is massive in scope and sound, tracing Olsen’s ascent into
the unknown, to a place of true self-acceptance, no matter
how dark, or difficult, or seemingly lonely. ‘All Mirrors’ is
colossal, moving, dramatic in an Old Hollywood manner.
Recorded before ‘All Mirrors’ but released after, ‘Whole New
Mess’ is the bones and beginnings of the songs that would
rewrite Olsen’s story. This is Angel Olsen in her classic style:
stark solo performances, echoes and open spaces, her voice
both whispered and enormous. ‘All Mirrors’ and ‘Whole New
Mess’ presented the two glorious extremes of an artist who,
in these songs, became new by embracing herself entirely.
Now, with ‘Song of the Lark… And Other Far Memories’,
these twin stars become a constellation with the full extent of
the songs’ iterations: all the alternate takes, B-sides, remixes
and re-imaginings are here, together. Alongside, a 40-page
book collection tells a similar story, not just through outtakes
and unseen photos but through the smaller, evocative
details: handwritten lyrics, a favourite necklace, a beaded
chandelier. As if it could be more plainly stated (there’s
nothing more), Angel adds one cover here: a loving,
assertive rendition of Roxy Music’s ‘More Than This’.
It is a definitive collection, not just of these songs but of their
revelations and their writer, from their simplest origins to their
mightiest realizations.

South London’s Oscar Jerome announced his highly-anticipated debut album ‘Breathe Deep’, due for release on July 10th 2020 via Caroline International.

A staple of the capital’s burgeoning jazz scene – previously collaborating with everyone from Shabaka Hutchings to Moses Boyd and Yussef Dayes – the ‘Breathe Deep’ LP sees Oscar bring in an army of collaborators that he says have been an integral part of his journey so far. Other guests include friends in Ezra Collective, Sons of Kemet and Maisha, as well as the critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas. The record arrives off the back of a fast-growing catalogue that’s seen the Norwich-born guitarist and vocalist pick up frequent support and playlisting from the likes of 6 Music, Radio 1 and 1Xtra and embark on packed-out tours around the US, UK, Europe and Australia (including a tour with American jazz maestro Kamasi Washington and his biggest headliner to date at London’s Heaven).

Talking about his debut album, Oscar says: “‘Breathe Deep’ is a pretty broad presentation of who I am musically and my journey to get to this point. On a personal level, it’s a reflection of the effort put in during that path of self-bettering, both emotionally and in life more broadly. It’s about preparing oneself for failure and growing from that. Taking a moment to step back and see where things are going and where one has been. It also addresses the resilience of people, which is reflected in the more political moments on the album. The world is a messed up place but people still find ways of preparing themselves for it.”

Straight Outta Caledonia is the first commercially available “Greatest Hits” of the outsider songwriter Jackie Leven, an artist
who has largely remained in obscurity in his native Scotland despite being one of the greatest wordsmiths – and singers – it ever
produced. A well-travelled musician who began making psychedelic, progressive music in the late 60s before emerging as an
epic storyteller full of pathos, humour and humanity in the 90s, Leven lived and wrote like many of the fragile, gregarious
characters of his songs; large, full of life and empathy. Leven passed away in 2011 after recording 30+ albums under different
guises or with his briefly successful New Wave band Doll by Doll. Straight Outta Caledonia is a compilation collated by Night
School Records on its Archival label School Daze that seeks to introduce Leven’s music to new generations.
In an age of isolation, alienation and loss of visceral experience, Jackie Leven’s music can be massive and welcoming. It feels
connected to some universal humanity and vibrates with vitality. His songs are often full of tragedy and comedy simultaneously,
cutting straight to the heart, often plugging directly into the nervous system of the listener. His lyrics are rich, dense with imagery
that can veer from apocalyptic to the comically banal in a sentence, with a songwriting panache that can be heavy handed to
almost bursting point before skewering the song with a clownish, warm punchline. His productions ranged from Bob Dylan’s
Rolling Thunder Revue style rock band orchestrations with strings and organ as on the epic Ancient Misty Morning or they could
be pared down to the purest form of folk song as on Poortoun: Leven on stage alone with an acoustic guitar, albeit played with a
mastery of the instrument that he often only hinted at. Musically his sound can bend traditional structures or stay completely
confined within them yet still forever push towards an ecstatic release, as on the cinematic Snow In Central Park.
The most exciting, jaw-droppingly effective tool at Leven’s disposal was his voice. A multi-octave instrument that, though
damaged during a savage assault in Fife, he used with flair; he had both a brazen disregard for the rules and a deep humility, all
of which is evidenced with every phrasing. A baritone that could flit up through the register – always touched by his gentle
Kirkcaldy accent – it’s the prime delivery method for his songs. Leven’s voice enabled him to inhabit the characters in his songs to
an uncanny degree, a skill that in turn enables the listener to empathise with them and, subsequently, the singer. It’s most evident
in stand out song The Sexual Loneliness Of Jesus Christ, a breathtaking re-telling of the life of its protagonist, not as a pure,
sinless messiah but as a sexually frustrated, solitary man condemned to an existential loneliness no one else will ever feel. In
many ways the track is the archetypal Jackie Leven song. Produced by Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, what strikes the ear first –
after the samples of unemployed workers in Glasgow following the closing of the Clyde shipyards – is the audacious, rhythmic
tremolo effect Leven employs through the verses before the production opens up to allow Leven’s vocal to lift into a soar, a
freeing glide powered both by the force of the singer’s chutzpah and the inherent, doomed destiny of the protagonist. With any
other singer such subject matter could come across as gauche or worse, pretentiously sonorous, but Jackie Leven’s genius was
such that he could be this cinematic and brazen while touching something elemental and true in the beholder. It’s a skill evident in
every song on Straight Outta Caledonia, the trademark of a songwriter who revelled and excelled in intensity with a lightness of
touch.
In his lifetime, Jackie Leven toured, wrote and recorded at a ferocious rate. He recorded under aliases to avoid record contract
restrictions, played house shows in Europe after or instead of official concerts, events which were often spoken word story telling
masterclasses as well as performances of his often bewilderingly dense songbook. His music has traditionally been catalogued
as “folk” music and has been largely banished to a small, dedicated group of international fans and apostles both private and well
known, like author Ian Rankin or Glenn Matlock. Since his passing in 2011 however, there has been a growing recognition
amongst a newer generation, with artists like James Yorkston or Molly Nilsson publicly stating the influence of the unsung
troubadour on their own craft. Jackie Leven’s fairytales for hard men are often forensic deconstructions of masculinity, sad and
ecstatic, light and shadow, always endlessly rich, a resource as bountiful as Leven himself’s human spirit undoubtedly was.

black vinyl in mirrorboard gatefold jacket with die-cut! Much like the New Orleans-born artist who created it, Second Line is an unapologetic genre bender that pushes boundaries, expands possibilities, and shatters expectations. It's more than just an album: Second Line is a cohesive sensory experience that questions traditional ideas of sound, production, and visual aesthetics as they relate to music. Its interlocking parts tell an epic story about the quest for artistic expression, with Dawn describing her project as "a movement to bring pioneering Black women in electronic music to the forefront." She elaborates: "You never see women appreciated as producers and artists alike _ especially Black women in the electronic space. The time is now for us to start recognizing their talent, not only in electronic music but in all genres. I wanna be the reason why a young Black girl from the South can be whoever she wants to be musically, visually, and artistically." Second Line cuts to the chase with its opening suite of dancefloor bangers, immediately displaying Dawn's mastery of layered production and melodic hooks. Second Line treats Louisiana Creole culture, New Orleans bounce, and Southern Swag as elemental, allowing Dawn to weave in and out of house, footwork, R&B, and more. As she says, "I am the genre." The story of Second Line centers on Dawn's persona King Creole, assassin of stereotypes, a Black girl from the South at a crossroads in her artistic career. To move forward, she decides to look back, but where previous album New Breed took influence from her father, Second Line is illuminated by Dawn's mother. Her proud repeated proclamation of "I'm a Creole Girl" introduces the ecstatic dancehall pop of "Jacuzzi," and later, on the cinematic album centerpiece "Mornin | Streetlights," she answers Dawn's question of how many times she has been in love. Intimate conversations like this between the two are interlaced throughout Second Line, giving credence to how the protagonist came to be, and direction to build a lane forward. It's no surprise that King Creole's story parallels Dawn Richard's. As a founding member of Danity Kane, and later with Diddy's Dirty Money, Dawn was able to explore the ins and outs of commercial pop music. As a solo artist, she opted to selfrelease her music. Over the span of five critically acclaimed full-length albums, Dawn has made the message clear that she will not bow down or bend to industry norms. All the while, she's built her resume with enough extracurriculars to make your head spin: Cheerleader for the New Orleans Hornets? Check. Animator for Adult Swim? Check. Owner-operator of a vegan pop-up food truck? Check. Martial arts expert? Check! Second Line embodies the heritage of soul music and the roots of New Orleans, all surrounded by the influences of electronic futurism. "The definition of a Second Line in New Orleans is a celebration of someone's homecoming," says Dawn. "In death and in life, we celebrate the impact of a person's legacy through dance and music. I'm celebrating the death of old views in the industry. The death of boxes and limits. I'm celebrating the homecoming of the Future. The homecoming to the new wave of artists. The emergence of all the King Creoles to come." Dawn Richard is bold, confident, purposeful, and a King throughout Second Line. Are you ready to dance?

everything one needs to know about this album: a misshapen,
CHUD-like figure wanders in a graveyard bearing a cross,
while a mutated fish flops in a polluted ditch and a clutch
of factories belch their smoke above it all. The message of
the illustration is not to frighten or warn, but to celebrate
and admire.
Originally released in January of 1984, Disease Is Relative
is an unapologetic and wholesale embrace of death,
disease, and dystopia, with liberal doses of absurdism
and an unrelenting devotion to anything unexpected,
chromatic, or evil sounding. Sporting influences as
diverse as no wave, death rock, funk, post-punk, hardcore,
metal, and prog rock, this music somehow happened in the
midst of a first wave hardcore scene, before there was a
“post-” to be “post” of. Less surprising is that this happened
in Cleveland, which also inspired a desire to recreate the
feeling of the city’s post-industrial desolation in sound.
There’s also some epic screaming and crazy guitar playing.
The album features three songwriters (brothers Andrew
& Chris Marec, Robert Griffin), who also divide guitar,
bass, and vocals equally between themselves here.
Drummer Bruce Allen is the secret weapon, and provides
a clue to what a young Bill Bruford might have done in a
band like this. And yet, beyond all odds, the end result is
cohesive, cathartic, and utterly idiomatic. The distinct vibe
of the album, and its sheer quantity of killer riffs, songs
and performances have made it an album that people have
championed over time, while others have come to know it
through the interwebs as a result.

everything one needs to know about this album: a misshapen,
CHUD-like figure wanders in a graveyard bearing a cross,
while a mutated fish flops in a polluted ditch and a clutch
of factories belch their smoke above it all. The message of
the illustration is not to frighten or warn, but to celebrate
and admire.
Originally released in January of 1984, Disease Is Relative
is an unapologetic and wholesale embrace of death,
disease, and dystopia, with liberal doses of absurdism
and an unrelenting devotion to anything unexpected,
chromatic, or evil sounding. Sporting influences as
diverse as no wave, death rock, funk, post-punk, hardcore,
metal, and prog rock, this music somehow happened in the
midst of a first wave hardcore scene, before there was a
“post-” to be “post” of. Less surprising is that this happened
in Cleveland, which also inspired a desire to recreate the
feeling of the city’s post-industrial desolation in sound.
There’s also some epic screaming and crazy guitar playing.
The album features three songwriters (brothers Andrew
& Chris Marec, Robert Griffin), who also divide guitar,
bass, and vocals equally between themselves here.
Drummer Bruce Allen is the secret weapon, and provides
a clue to what a young Bill Bruford might have done in a
band like this. And yet, beyond all odds, the end result is
cohesive, cathartic, and utterly idiomatic. The distinct vibe
of the album, and its sheer quantity of killer riffs, songs
and performances have made it an album that people have
championed over time, while others have come to know it
through the interwebs as a result.

If some of these titles look familiar, it’s because they’re among the most majestic roots and culture songs ever recorded, and by singers whose credentials are beyond question. All tracks feature the original artists and even the actual seventies’ vocal in some cases, but the rhythms have been recreated with today’s sound-systems in mind and are heard at their very best when roaring out of giant speaker boxes, greeted by a forest of raisedhands and with a deejay at the mic.

Producers Mafia & Fluxy include reggae legends Bunny “Striker” Lee and Fat Man among their mentors, and their mastery both in the studio and on stage is unrivalled outside of Jamaica. The way these two brothers play dub will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up whilst the messages in songs like Every Tongue Shall Tell, Declaration Of Rights, No Peace and Fittest Of The Fittest are relevant as ever but then the music on this album isn’t dated, and is reggae, roots and culture for the ages.

Legendary drummer, Mick Fleetwood enlisted an all-star cast for a one-of-a-kind concert honouring the early years of Fleetwood Mac and its founder, Peter Green which was held on 25th February 2020 at the London, Palladium. The bill included Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, John Mayall, Christine McVie, Zak Starkey, Steven Tyler, Bill Wyman, Noel Gallagher, Pete Townshend, Neil Finn, Kirk Hammett and Jeremy Spencer. Legendary producer Glyn Johns joined as the executive sound producer and the house band featured Fleetwood himself along with Andy Fairweather Low, Dave Bronze, Rick Vito, Jonny Lang and Ricky Peterson.

Fleetwood, who curated the list of artists performing, said: “The concert is a celebration of those early blues days where we all began, and it’s important to recognize the profound impact Peter and the early Fleetwood Mac had on the world of music. Peter was my greatest mentor and it gives me such joy to pay tribute to his incredible talent. I am honoured to be sharing the stage with some of the many artists Peter has inspired over the years and who share my great respect for this remarkable musician. ‘Then Play On’...”

Legendary drummer, Mick Fleetwood enlisted an all-star cast for a one-of-a-kind concert honouring the early years of Fleetwood Mac and its founder, Peter Green which was held on 25th February 2020 at the London, Palladium. The bill included Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, John Mayall, Christine McVie, Zak Starkey, Steven Tyler, Bill Wyman, Noel Gallagher, Pete Townshend, Neil Finn, Kirk Hammett and Jeremy Spencer. Legendary producer Glyn Johns joined as the executive sound producer and the house band featured Fleetwood himself along with Andy Fairweather Low, Dave Bronze, Rick Vito, Jonny Lang and Ricky Peterson.

Fleetwood, who curated the list of artists performing, said: “The concert is a celebration of those early blues days where we all began, and it’s important to recognize the profound impact Peter and the early Fleetwood Mac had on the world of music. Peter was my greatest mentor and it gives me such joy to pay tribute to his incredible talent. I am honoured to be sharing the stage with some of the many artists Peter has inspired over the years and who share my great respect for this remarkable musician. ‘Then Play On’...”

Dead-eyed post-punk from Olympia’s reigning noise-niks. Repetition rejects the major label signing spree of the mid-’90s entirely, training its hulking focus on haircut hardcore, white belt Jiujitsu, and frenzied feedback. The soundtrack to a fantasy Halloween candy heist, now on vinyl for the first time since 1996.

Dead-eyed post-punk from Olympia’s reigning noise-niks. Repetition rejects the major label signing spree of the mid-’90s entirely, training its hulking focus on haircut hardcore, white belt Jiujitsu, and frenzied feedback. The soundtrack to a fantasy Halloween candy heist, now on vinyl for the first time since 1996.

Deluxe 3LP mit 34 neu gemasterten Tracks und einem 60-seitigen Buch mit ausführlichen Linernotes, Interviews, bisher ungesehenen Archivphotos und den Texten (samt Übersetzung) in einem ,Tip On"-Schuber und drei ,Tip On"-Sleeves. Linernotes von Kevin ,Sipreano" Howes. Bisher fast nicht an die Öffentlichkeit gedrungen, kaum dokumentiert, aber im Kern ungeheuer revolutionär, nehmen die Aufnahmen verschiedenster Gemeinden amerikanischer Ureinwohner endlich in Form von ,Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966-1985" den Platz ein, den sie verdienen. Eine Anthologie von Musik, die einst fast ausgestorben, aber nun für alle zu hören, ist ohne Frage eins der ambitioniertesten Projekte in der 12-järhigen Geschichte von Light In The Attic. ,Native Norht America (Vol. 1)" versammelt Musik der eingeborenen Völker Kanadas und der nördlichen USA, die in den turbulenten Jahrzehnten zwischen 1966 und 1985 aufgenommen wurde. Die Musik spiegelt die Zusammenführung globaler Popkultur und die Neuerweckung der eingeborenen Spiritualität und Ausdruckskraft wider. Der größte Teil dieses Materials war über Jahrzehnte lang durch fehlende Distributionskanäle und wenig Präsenz in den Massenmedien in Vergessenheit geraten - bis jetzt! Hier versammelt sich Garage Rock vom Polarkreis aus der Nunavik Region des nördlichen Quebec, melancholischer Yup'ik Folk aus Alaska und flüsternder Country Blues aus dem Wagmatcook First Nation Reservat in Nova Scotia. Man vernimmt Echos von NEIL YOUNG, VELVET UNDERGROUND, LEONARD COHEN, CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL, JOHNNY CASH und anderen in den Songs, die jedoch mit eingeborenem Bewusstsein, Erzählkultur, Poesie, Geschichte und Zeremonie angereichert werden. Die Compilation ist gewidmet dem legendären Métis Singer/Songwriter und Dichter WILLIE DUNN, der auf der Anthologie auftritt, während der Zusammenstellung des Albums jedoch verstarb. ,Native North America (Vol. 1)" ist nur der Anfang; eine Zusammenstellung von Folk, Rock und Country aus den südlichen 48 Staaten der USA und Mexiko wird momentan in der Light In The Attic Goldmine ausgegraben.

don Grammar’s success and longevity as a band has traced the British pop graph for over a decade now. The new album embodies a new clarity of purpose centred around frontwoman Hannah Reid, who crafts a message of femininity and power on the new material. Their debut double platinum selling record 'If You Wait' garnered huge success on its release in 2013, which was followed up by their #1 record 'Truth Is A Beautiful Thing' in 2017. To date the band have sold over 3 million records and 1 million tickets globally, whilst their music has been streamed 1 billion times. Having garnered numerous BRIT nominations and awarded a prestigious Ivor Novello, London Grammar remain rooted as one of the most exceptional and successful artists of a generation.

super deluxe box set/20 page hardback book featuring artwork, unseen photos and an exclusive lithograph art print on 300 GSM card. Inside you’ll find the album on CD, 12” 180g transparent white vinyl plus a special blue 10”.

Just like Freddy Krueger, Final Dream resurrects from the past to haunt your nights and deliver to the masses his threatening message. Author of a mighty album and three collector EP's on experimental techno label Audio Illusion Recordings from 1995 to 2002, British Electro veteran Phil Klein aka Bass Junkie returns with a vengeance under his most frightening alias. 19 years after his last transmission, he serves up a new four tracker full of his infectious strain of corrosive and weird electro.

The A-side opens with the mental "Dark Flow", a pounding tune based upon hammering beats surrounded by sinister strings and a gloomy atmosphere. The title track "Project Fear" coming next goes deeper into the realm, merging lethal frequencies to demonic beats.

The flipside introduces "Force Majeure", a milestone of an instant classic made of robotic drums sequences fused into subtle acid lines while "The Devil's Playground" concludes the 12" with 7 minutes of brain manipulations. Present "Project Fear EP" appears as an opened window to the future, an invitation to foresee what Evil is cooking for you in his laboratory. Just a reminder that there's no way to hide, accept your fate, nothing can stop the darkness!

Surrender is the debut full length from DJ, producer, and songwriter Endgame. Stepping out for the first time as a vocalist, and lyricist, Surrender is his most ambitious and vulnerable work to date; a striking statement of intent, with moments of beauty and brutality. Endgame has carved an iconoclastic niche in club culture. Breaking into the scene as co-founder of the legendary collective Bala Club, and resident of the radical club-night Endless. Whilst continuing almost a decade hosting his infamous NTS radio show (and now label) Precious Metals, he has forged a path against the tide of formulaic club music. A visionary DJ and producer, Surrender sees Endgame continue this trajectory, with a project that both amplifies the ferocious club constructions he's known for, whilst making space to open up wounded memories and with sombre unfeigned requiems. Having previously released records on Hyperdub, PTP, Golden Mist and Infinite Machine, Endgame's first release on his own Precious Metals imprint, is him at his most reflective. Surrender is a deeply personal record, about loss and finding meaning in despair. Death is a prevailing theme, with the passing of his father a totemic subject. The recollection of his father's torturous final moments leaves him to mournfully contemplate temporality. Using this sense of anguish, he blurs reality-creating a world where angels and demons are among us in a decaying cityscape; akin to the work of Todd McFarlane. The opener Faithless, propels us into this world, with the slow build of industrial precision amidst the sombre build of harsh melodic synths. We descend deeper into this vision with Barbed Heart, featuring a defining vocal from scene staple and long time collaborator Yayoyanoh, as 808's and skittering hi hats ricochet off one another beneath his bass driven vocal. No Heroes continues our journey into the unknown with a chaotic rush of acidic riffs, pounding percussion, and a reference to the brutalist anthem from hardcore punk band Converge (where the track borrows its name). Requiem acts as the turning point of the record as Endgame steps into the foreground as a vocalist. As the name suggests, this lament is a sombre reflection of grief; its minimalist instrumental allows Endgame's haunted verse to rise into the foreground, like an apparition amidst the smoke in the depths of a dimly lit club. The dark clouds fade into the distance in Exhumed, as the elegant melancholic vocal of Bala Club affiliate and gifted vocalist Organ Tapes reflects off Endgame's sanguine verses bringing hope into the heartfelt instrumental filled with melodic flourishes and bass-bin rattling subs. The thematic haze thickens in Abyss, as the pulsating and doom laden instrumental interweaves with Endgame's sepulchral vocal. Like a message from the void, his words act as an agnostic hymn that pulls apart his sense of self. The contrast of his plaintive verse with the intensity of the instrumental creates a contrast that is symbolic of the record itself, a duality that presents moments of soft reflection against a severe sonic palette to create moments of transcendence.

Limited edition of 12′ vinyl release. Presents its sixth vinyl release with an interesting collaboration between a contemporary project such as Dot Product, the tandem formed by Adam Winchester and Christopher Jarman, and the Japanese legend of experimental rock and noise Kazuyuki Kishino. Known as KK Null, this artist had a first stage as a guitarist in several bands, it is worth remembering that at that time he collaborated with Merzbow in several albums and that years later he changed the guitar for electronic devices. 404 Not Found opens side A with a first cut by the English duo. Error Message combines grainy, strummed textures with a humanized sonic profile in which a beautiful melody makes its way in the face of bleak adversity. The second cut of this side is by KK Null, in this track the Japanese artist shows a high dose of metallic sounds that travel at the free will of the author to end up yielding in front of a complex and disorderly structured rhythm. Unlike side A, side B of this EP shows a work created jointly by Dot Product and KK Null. Pause Frames is an industrial cut, with hard percussion and numerous sound patterns such as pads, strong resonances and highly saturated components. 10-4-10-409-Conflict is the fourth and final track on the release, again employing a hard-hitting rhythm with a series of crunchy textures and a harmonic conjugation of dissonant chords. Picture: Stefan Alt / Salt (Ant-Zen) Mastered: Daniele Antezza / Dadub Written: Kazuyuki Kishino, Adam Winchester and Chris Jarman

With his new solo album Djourou, Malian composer Ballake Sissoko
connects with artists from distant horizons.
“Djourou is the cord that connects me to other people,” says Ballake Sissoko with characteristic simplicity. It is a magnificent distillation of that same art: the art of being yourself and being with others. It combines pieces in which Ballake converses, all alone, with his kora, and others in which he takes palpable pleasure in dialoguing with musicians whose contributions come across like declarations of love.
Ballake links with the singer Camille, the band Feu!Chatterton, famous French MC Oxmo Puccino, the clarinetist Patrick Messina, the singer Piers Faccini, Salif Ke ta’s sacred voice, the gifted kora-player Sona Jobarteh, alongside cellist and longtime musical partner, Vincent Segal.
Ballake is an improviser and prodigy who is still reinventing himself and who takes his art to explore other worlds. Djourou presents the Malian kora player’s music in all its multi-faceted forms: intimate and universal, singular and plural, solo or in conversation.
Ballake Sissoko on the Cover of Songlines in February 2021

· First release of the Jagjaguwar 25th anniversary celebration happening in 2021. · Features production and composition accompaniment from Bon Iver, Mary Lattimore, Angel Bat Dawid, Gia Margaret, and Sam Gendel. · Limited edition Opaque Green vinyl. Over the last 12 years, Ross Gay's poems have given us indelible images and phrases of radical empathy and unabated gratitude; about community, collaboration, connectedness and hard work. They have crept into our hearts and made a home of all of us. And so we are launching our 25th Anniversary celebration with `Dilate Your Heart', our first spoken word album since titan Robert Creeley's self-titled release twenty years ago. "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" is given a gorgeous, slowly creeping bed of vines by Bon Iver, as Gay's unadorned voices speaks a lifetimes of Thank You's. On "Burial," harpist and composer Mary Lattimore's lunar landscape follows Gay's voice into space, telling of our endless energy exchange with nature. Chicago's Angel Bat Dawid dances with the frenetic, joyous scene Gay leads us through on "To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian," in which a group of Philadelphia strangers scramble together to harvest the fruit of the titular urban fig tree. Songwriter Gia Margaret provides a mystical, amniotic environment for Gay's "Poem To My Child If Ever You Shall Be," a love letter to an imagined future child, treating Gay's voice like a message in a bottle to a far off idea made only of love and potential. Sam Gendel, a secret weapon collaborator, affects Gay's voice on "Sorrow Is Not My Name" to something glassy and almost singsongy. Throughout, Gay recites his poems with bright aliveness, his voice as warm and easy when he speaks about death as when he speaks about mercy, or love.

Good vs. Evil is the third studio album by American rapper KXNG CROOKED (formerly known as Crooked I). The album was released on November 11, 2016 and features cameo appearances from notable rappers such as Eminem, RZA, Xzibit, Tech N9ne among other guests The album was well received by critics, who praised its direction, dark beats and narrative skills.
After the most controversial Presidential election in this country’s history, one that has not only created further divisiveness amongst the people residing in it, but one that now includes handful of cities across our nation protesting in the streets it has become evident we are living in a complicated and dangerous time. The societal divide widens so deeply with every passing day that it seems as if at any moment the pendulum could shift. KXNG CROOKED's Good Vs Evil could not appear at a more needed time.

Split in two volumes, here is the sum of James Brown's early five year period 1956 - 1960, when JB (and his Famous Flames) was obsessively searching for his own sound. Selected from a bunch of 19 two-sided singles, and including super hits such as "Please, Please, Please", "Try Me" and "I'll go crazy", this collection represents James Brown's fundamental groundwork for the coming Soul Music revolution.

Across The Globe is the new series of releases from Low Key Source which sees established producers team up with vocalists and MC’s from Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

Volume 1 showcases the beats of Detroit’s Apollo Brown known for his production through Mello Music Group which has seen him work with the likes of Oddisee, Guilty Simpson, Skyzoo, Ras Kass, OC, Sean Price, Boog Brown, Big Pooh and most recently Planet Asia on their new album “Anchoives”.

“Reminiscing” sees the UK’s Jehst team up with Children Of Zeus vocalist Tyler Daley and has them reflecting about back in the day and giving a special mention to the passing of UK Producer Mark B. It’s special boom-bap throwback sound with sweeping strings captures perfectly the message of what life was once like being free from responsibilities.

The English city of Nottingham is represented on the posse cut “Time’s Different” showcasing the lyrical skills of up and comers Juga-Naut and Vandal Savage alongside veteran Cappo. It’s hard hitting snare snaps into a crispy beat which instantly takes you into headnod mode.

Apollo Brown never fails to execute his signature robust Hip Hop production as heard on "World Revolves" where Dialectrix spits fire with a rhythmical flow that resembles the way a sparrow would slice across the air - in short bursts left and right, up and down with ease. Rounding out the EP is Brisbane’s Lazy Grey with “First Come First Served”. Another sharp serving of distinct Apollo Brown production paired with Grey's own verbal dexterity.

With the renowned illustrator and designer Dan Lish holding down the artwork for each volume in this series, “Across The Globe” is a limited edition release every good music lover needs in their collection.

“I wanted to try and showcase as many people as I knew on this mix. My idea of Late Night Tales was to distil a series of relaxing moments; the whole conceptual sonic of relax- ation. So, I was trying to think of all the collaborators and friends that I knew, who’d recorded stuff with this horizontal vibe. Plus, I was also trying to help my friends' stuff get into the world. I know the story of Khruangbin blowing up after appearing on the series (in fact, I think that's how I discovered them). So, the main idea was to create a certain atmosphere, but also to help some of my favourite collaborators and bud- dies to give their songs a little push out into the world. Hope you like it” Jordan Rakei
Due for release on 9th April, Late Night Tales celebrate their 20th anniversary with the release of multi-instru- mentalist, vocalist and producer Jordan Rakei’s majestic compilation. The 28-year-old modern soul icon effortlessly stamps his own jazz and hip-hop driven sound all over this gorgeous array of handpicked tracks. A beautifully layered blend that is mirrored in the music he’s made, itcomes as no surprise that such a supremely gifted songwriter should deliver a mix that is all about the song.
Rakei, born in New Zealand, but raised in Australia, moved to the UK in 2015; he released his debut album, Cloak, with Oz label Soul Has No Tempo, but his two subsequentLPs, Wallflower and Origin, came out on Ninja Tune, the former#2 in Album Of The Year for Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide poll, while Origin was nominated for Best Album at the AIM Awards. Jordan had this to say on his upcoming mix:
As Jordan says,there’s so much more to the song selection on Late Night Tales’latest outing than a random collection of artists. Many have some sort of personal connection, so just as Bonobo provided a platform for the breakout of Khruangbin on a previous LNT, this may have the same ef- fect for Rakei’s friends. After a soothing opener from Fink, good friend and big influence Alfa Mist (part of the Are We Live collective) delivers ‘Mulago.’ “I want to champion their sound and show the world how good he is, and I thought it’d be fitting to start the mix with family,” says Jordan.
Next up is Charlotte Day Wilson with ‘Mountains,’ followed by ‘Count A Heart’ from Moreton, an exclusive collab- oration with Jordan, who grew up on the same street in Brisbane, Australia. “She was the first artist I ever collabo- rated with, and one of the first artists to be involved in mycareer,” he explains. Elsewhere we hear Scottish producer and multi-instrumentalist C Duncan’s haunting ‘He Came from the Sun,’ Barcelona collective Oso Leone deliver a dreamy ‘Virtual U’ and Bill Lauren’s ‘Singularity,’ which evokes a striking sense of time and place.
Snowpoet’s ethereal ‘Evitenity’ is a “long mediative nar- rative over a beautiful soundscape,” which at times seems chaotic, nicely juxtaposed with undeniable beauty, and Maro’s kooky songwriting shines on ‘Always And Forever.’ Long-time buddy Armon-Jones contributes ‘Idiom,’ and Jordan’s exclusive cover version is a two-for-one, Radio- head’s ‘Codex’ merging with ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Home’ by Jeff Buckley and another exclusive,original com- position by Jordan, ‘Imagination.’ The latter works as a piece with the spoken (Spanish) word voiced by movie director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, Birdman, and The Reve- nant,) who is a big fan of Jordan’s. “He messaged me when I went to L.A and asked to come to my show. I was in such shock and we hung out after. I thought it would be nice to get him to do this in his native tongue, because I don’t think that’s been done yet on the series.” It certainly is a familyaffair. Not theblood is thicker than water kind, but certainly musical kindred spirits.

The distances and limitations resulting from the lockdown become the starting point for Sara to communicate a message to everyone through the groove and the lyrics of her first track “The Heart Knows”, played by C. Robert Walker. Inspired by the Underground sound and with Soul, Deep and Afro influences, "The Heart Knows" is a project conceived to offer different atmospheres in a single release, from the Soulful House of the "Vocal Mix", to the more "Deep" one of the rinidadian Deep remix. , then passing through a more “Shelter” mood in the remix of Neapolitan Soul & Luciano Gioia.

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.

Luca Yupanqui was not yet born when she recorded her debut album. The music on the aptly titled Sounds of the Unborn is the expression of life in its cosmic state _ pre-mind, pre-speculation, pre-influence, and pre-human. It is the first album created by a person while they were still inside the womb, the expression of a soul that hasn't yet seen the light of day nor taken a single breath of air. It is a message that comes from a different realm, a sublayer of our existence. Sounds of the Unborn was made with biosonic MIDI technology, which translated Luca's in utero movements into sound. With the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee Scratch Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé, Luca's prenatal essence was captured in audio. They designed a ritual, a kind of joint meditation for the three of them, with the MIDI devices hooked to Elizabeth's stomach, transcribing its vibrations into Iván's synthesizers. They let the free-form meditations flow without much interference, just falling deeper into trance and feeling the unity. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge. Elizabeth and Iván then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, respecting the sounds as they were produced, trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca's message to exist in its raw form. This cosmic soul summoning created new sounds, striking into uncharted territory for Elizabeth and Iván as musicians. A new language was being created, a new form of communication. It was a music without intellect or intentionality behind it, with no preconception or attempt to create any specific sound or melody. Every note on Sounds of the Unborn occurred naturally. It is human nature to wonder what life is like inside another human being's consciousness. How does it feel? What does it sound like? All these questions became stronger and more important to Elizabeth and Iván while they were waiting for Luca to come into the world. At a certain point the questions turned into, What would she say if she could speak? How would she react to the outer world? And ultimately, What kind of music would she play if she was able to? This album is an attempt to answer those questions. RIYL: Brian Eno, Mort Garson, Kaitlyn Aurelia-Smith

The shadow that Gary Bartz casts over the last six decades of progressive Black music, and his continued dedication to same, makes him a logical and very welcome contributor to the Jazz Is Dead label. An alto saxophonist steeped in the history and tradition of his instrument who is also restlessly experimental and not prone to purism of any kind, he enjoys both the respect and admiration of his peers and the hero worship of several generations after him - including Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, which inevitably led to Gary Bartz JID 006. A look at his body of work reveals dalliances with bebop, hard bop, free jazz, spiritual jazz, soul jazz, jazz-funk, fusion and acid jazz, all while resolutely remaining unmistakably Gary Bartz. There's early work with Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner in Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop, work with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, a stint in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and also one with Miles. There's his groundbreaking and highly influential Ntu Troop albums of the early '70s and his jazz-funk work including two classic albums with the Mizell Brothers, one of which supplied A Tribe Called Quest with a sample that was smooth like butter. And while on the subject of samples, the Bartz catalog has provided hip-hop and other genres with a rich source of them, and artists who have gone to his well when producing beats also include Black Sheep, Jurassic 5, Casual, RPM, Warren G, Photek, Statik Selektah, Chi-Ali, 3rd Bass, Showbiz, ZTrip, Young Disciples, and many others.

Luca Yupanqui was not yet born when she recorded her debut album. The music on the aptly titled Sounds of the Unborn is the expression of life in its cosmic state _ pre-mind, pre-speculation, pre-influence, and pre-human. It is the first album created by a person while they were still inside the womb, the expression of a soul that hasn't yet seen the light of day nor taken a single breath of air. It is a message that comes from a different realm, a sublayer of our existence. Sounds of the Unborn was made with biosonic MIDI technology, which translated Luca's in utero movements into sound. With the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee Scratch Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé, Luca's prenatal essence was captured in audio. They designed a ritual, a kind of joint meditation for the three of them, with the MIDI devices hooked to Elizabeth's stomach, transcribing its vibrations into Iván's synthesizers. They let the free-form meditations flow without much interference, just falling deeper into trance and feeling the unity. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge. Elizabeth and Iván then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, respecting the sounds as they were produced, trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca's message to exist in its raw form. This cosmic soul summoning created new sounds, striking into uncharted territory for Elizabeth and Iván as musicians. A new language was being created, a new form of communication. It was a music without intellect or intentionality behind it, with no preconception or attempt to create any specific sound or melody. Every note on Sounds of the Unborn occurred naturally. It is human nature to wonder what life is like inside another human being's consciousness. How does it feel? What does it sound like? All these questions became stronger and more important to Elizabeth and Iván while they were waiting for Luca to come into the world. At a certain point the questions turned into, What would she say if she could speak? How would she react to the outer world? And ultimately, What kind of music would she play if she was able to? This album is an attempt to answer those questions. RIYL: Brian Eno, Mort Garson, Kaitlyn Aurelia-Smith

John William Coltrane belongs to those rare musicians who transform the stylistic universe of their generation. Coltrane was a genius, and without his contribution, jazz in the Sixties wouldn’t have enjoyed its freedom. He transfigured not only melody, and harmony, but revolutionised the entire spirit of jazz. Like a painter seeking to reproduce the richness of his mind on a canvas of only two dimensions, Coltrane restituted a personal mental universe in his music and never duplicated forms and patterns already used. The microcosm of jazz in the Fifties didn’t find Coltrane convincing at first, but his relentless effort and visceral desire to convey his own truth catapulted him to the summits and made him the undisputed leader of modern jazz. Coltrane’s music is a personal message, so I sit down and listen.

In 2018, Sean Worsey, a successful lawyer in California, began to receive some rather surprising emails. These were not from prospective clients, or about current cases he was working on, but rather queries from record collectors. They wanted more details about a pair of obscure, largely forgotten records he’d made in the mid 1980s as part of a virtually unknown band called Passion Theatre. To say he was surprised is an understatement. “People from around the world were emailing, calling and messaging us about the music, particularly a track called ‘Vacation Day’,” he says. “Our records were rare and gaining in value, mainly because there were not many manufactured at the time. By 2019, several individuals in the music industry had emailed me about licensing tracks.”

We eventually agreed with Sean to include ‘Vacation Day’, on Charles Bals’ second compilation, Retour Au Club Meduse. Impressed with the quality of the compilation Sean approached us again to discuss whether we would be interested in reissuing both of his old EP’s in full, an idea he’d been considering for a few months already. We jumped at the idea of course and have spent the last few months putting the reissue project together. The original studio tapes were long gone but a friend of Sean’s had some mint vinyl copies which we had shipped over from California to use as the master source, restored and mastered superbly by Technology Works in London. The striking original artwork from the two EP’s has been faithfully reworked into a gatefold double vinyl LP by designer Asger Behncke Jacobsen and features extensive interview/sleeve notes by Matt Anniss.

In the words of Sean Worsey - “One of the nicest things about the renewed interest in our music is that we can now enjoy it for what it is – back then we were a bit too worried about succeeding.”

Bad Colours is the moniker of London-born, Maryland-raised, Brooklyn-based DJ and producer Ibe Soliman. With influences of garage from both sides of the Atlantic as well as funk, post-disco, proto-house and rap samples; his debut album 'PINK' is set for release by Bastard Jazz on 26th February 2021.

The drive to record an album came about while isolating at home in Flatbush during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by some rough ideas and samples that friends sent him, Ibe focussed his attention on making music. From time well spent soaking up and storing sounds from clubs around the world, Ibe found, now with the time to dedicate towards it, the tracks flooding out. Taking cues from early Trax records and Larry Heard, the UKG musicality of MJ Cole, Todd Edwards' vocal sampling techniques, the brashness of Bmore, and an encyclopedia of disco, funk and soul knowledge; Ibe got to work and quickly compiled more than enough tracks for a full-length release.

Flowing from the album intro 'PINK!', first single 'Cookin' vibes over a Chris Faust sample and saxophone from south California virtuoso Carras Paton. 'Feelin' Like' was originally built around a short vocal sample by Jarv Dee, but grew to include additional lyrics on black power from the Seattle rapper after he heard it: "Dancey stuff with a message" says Ibe.

Slow jam 'Heyyy', with its preemptive lyrical synths, bridges to the album's next single 'Get You Off'. Ibe had been listening to a lot of Marvin Gaye - particularly 'I Want You' - during lockdown, getting into the production and vocals. After writing the "I just wanna get you off" hooks, he handed the track over to talented singer, actor and playwright Marcus Harmon who wrote the verses and provided the stunning vocal performance.

Keeping the sensual vibe, 'Skin To Skin' samples vocals from 'Private Play' by Wash 'N' Set, also produced by Ibe, with the Chris Isaak-esque guitar lines by Lex from Foreign Tapes. Made late at night, CMYK reminded Ibe of driving at night in the rain in NYC, where the colors bleed together on the wet road while 'Boss', the first track made for the album, is based around a Sunny Jones sample. The closing track 'Feel' was made at the peak of Black Lives Matter protests. "I just wanted something hard sounding," says Ibe.

Known for his residencies at some of New York's top venues, Ibe has been rocking crowds as a DJ for over a decade, and has shared the decks with the likes of James Murphy, Mark Ronson, and Q-Tip. He's performed alongside Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Pusha T, and Young Thug, to name a few. In high demand as a private party curator, he's helped set the tone for Jeff Koons, FKA Twigs, Justin Timberlake, Travis Scott, and Usher. When Ibe's not behind the decks, he's in the lab, where he's produced for Kendrick Lamar, Faith Evans, Keyshia Cole, and Rick Ross, among others.

Photographs & Memories is part of a series of 1972 – 1974 Catalogue Reissues of the Legendary Jim Croce, which are now back in print on CD & 180g Black Vinyl. The set of reissues includes 3 Top 10 Gold Certified Studio Albums & Top 5 Platinum Certified Greatest Hits Release, featuring 10 Billboard Hot 100 singles, including 8 Top 40, 5 Top 10, and 2 Number 1 Classics. Released in 1974, just 1 year after his untimely death, Photographs & Memories: His Greatest Hits, reached #2 in the charts and is certified PLATINUM. It features the #1 Hits “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time In A Bottle” plus Top 10 Hits “I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song” and “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” and more.

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.