Beatservice Records are thrilled to present the hotly-anticipated third album from Oslo-based production maestro, Third Attempt. 'The Novel Sound' follows on from the widely acclaimed 'Beats From The Quarantine' album released in April 2021, and further compliments the young artist's deserved reputation as one of the dance underground's most exciting talents to emerge in recent years.
Third Attempt (aka Torje Fagertun Spilde) has been dazzling us with his far-reaching music since arriving in the Beatservice fold with 'Shoreline' back in 2018, and since then his ever-evolving repertoire has continued to serve up immaculate sonic surprises. The fast-rising 23-year old artist has wasted no time making his indelible mark, displaying a frenetic work rate alongside an impeccable ear for constructing compelling leftfield grooves.
'The Novel Sound' opens with the rolling deviance of 'Freak Out', where a dusty string sample makes way for vocal samples, scratches, and searing sirens permeating a bass-heavy groove, setting the tone magnificently for the music that's primed to unfold. Next, we arrive in the mid-tempo chug of 'Age Of Steam'. Evolving over a crisp, club-ready rhythm, heavy funk guitars, dancing keys and distant vocal stabs cascade over driving bass before soaring strings herald the arrival of a slick breakdown section. The icing on the cake arrives as bubbling acid joins sensational horn motifs, breaking down once again for a starry-eyed beatless passage that leaves us yearning for a reprise.
'My Girl' features amorous vocal samples hovering over an irresistible disco beat, with alluring rhythm guitars and dreamy e-piano chords setting the scene for rousing horns to blast off into blissful summer skies. Before we've found time to catch our breath, 'Nu Funk' arrives with snappy hip hop samples scratched over tight beats and a delectable bass guitar hook. The groove pauses for dubbed-out space delays to echo into the night before a singing lead guitar joins the rhythm elements to burst back into life, with flute motifs, elegant strings, and otherworldly sweeps elegantly meandering across the panorama.
Set over a groove that arrives like a cool summer breeze, 'Sunbeam Symphony' drifts over soul-soothing chords, weighted bass and slick, rolling beats. Hypnotic keys guide us into position as the drums build energy and the bass notes power us forward. Third Attempt's dextrous keyboard solo dazzles momentarily before subsiding for a dub-infused break, with spaced-out vocal chops and rising sweeps building tension before the groove resumes and the virtuoso solo once again majestically soars. Maintaining the sun-kissed meditations, 'Definite' effortlessly floats through waves of thick bass, funk guitar chops and elegantly fused samples, with seductive chords, hypnotic horns and laser-tight drums combining to create a near overpowering dream state.
The heavy trip-hop rhythms of 'Nightfall' enrapture the listener as rich chords discreetly beckon, with cascading congas, mysterious melodies and exotic refrains building before the glorious lead vocal appears like a hyper-luminous flash of light. The chords disappear into the nothingness, before the carefully selected sample of 'Working Man' drifts in to fill the empty space. Smokey drums soon arrive, joined by weighted bass, foggy chords and an enigmatic whistle lead, fusing to conjure a half-lit world lifted from the pages of an evocative film noir novel.
The enlivening tablas, glitchy effects and saucer-eyed sweeps of 'Greed' hide subliminal messages casting a knowing eye over the consumer-driven society and self-help culture that pervade our society, before we arrive at the album's charmed finale. 'Last Winter Of My Childhood' yet again manages to transport the listener into a gently hallucinatory realm, with drowsy bass notes, tripped out pads and emotive strings building to a profound and rush-inducing crescendo.
'The Novel Sound' once again sees Third Attempt dextrously merging expansive musical aesthetics that fuse trip-hop, funk, soul and disco to deliver a sound that – although endowed with vintage sensibilities – feels proudly up to date. Continuing his breathtaking development in dazzling style, the album feels destined to echo over blissed-out sunsets, back-room excursions and twilight skies for many years to come.
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Sunda Arc are brothers Nick Smart and Jordan Smart. Best known as key members of folk and jazz influenced minimalists Mammal Hands, their Sunda Arc project takes inspiration from the likes of Jon Hopkins, Rival Consoles, Moderat and Nils Frahm as well as their own music world. Their debut EP 'Flicker' was released in December 2018 and now the duo are set to release their debut LP, 'Tides' on 7th February 2020.
Named for a volcanic arc in the Indian Ocean, created by the process of massive tectonic plates colliding, Sunda Arc strives to mingle electronic and acoustic sounds until they become almost indistinguishable from each other. It's a process where they draw the acoustic properties and quirks out of electronic sounds and find the electronic potential in acoustic sounds. "Finding the ghost in the machine or blending the human elements of playing live is something we are always trying to explore in our work.
Experimentation is a large part of our process and we tend to combine carefully composed material with chaotic ideas to find the balance between the two" — Sunda Arc 'Tides', their debut album, takes its name from the idea of unseen forces that can affect our lives in myriad ways, being pushed and pulled and at the whim of powerful forces outside of our control as well as offering a nod to things such as the tides on our planet, tectonic plate movements and weather systems. There are often chaotic elements in these systems that function in a way that produce a type of controlled randomness on a large scale. This is something they try to reflect in their music by adopting some of the ways these systems work into musical sequences, and using ideas such as chaos theory to control musical parameters. "Tides is a reference to themes we were thinking a lot about during the making of this album. These include the similarities between macro and micro systems, or the circulatory and nervous systems in the body. Things that produce a type of controlled randomness on a large scale". — Sunda Arc 'Hymn', the first single from the album, uses Nick's voice sampled and played back through a keyboard to create a human yet electronic feel.
It mixes soft vocals with heavier electronic elements to create a danceable yet human sound world. 'Dawn', is best described as uplifting-techno, its use of repeated phrases building in intensity and variations to put you into a hypnotic state whilst also being industrial and danceable. 'Daemon' is one of the tracks that really resonates live. Drawing on the sound of UK dubstep it's intense but fun and the bass clarinet blends with synths at the end to create a sound almost like a vocal. 'Secret Window' brings forward another side of the band, focusing around a lo-fi recording of felted piano and bass clarinet.
These are blended with granularised and processed versions of themselves which emerge like ghosts of the instruments throughout the track. 'Cluster' is another key track. It utilises a small group of notes looped in an unusual way to create a sense of cascading patterns over a solid danceable drum groove. It emphasises soprano sax blended into the sound world half-way through to lift into the final section.
A psychedelic masterpiece from prolific producer and pioneer of the genre Jake Stephenson. Originally released on his own Ambient Space Acid records in 1994, both tracks offer an unparalleled celestial listening trip. Licensed in collaboration with the artist's family and faithfully remastered.
2022 limited edition of this Japanese no wave gem from 1982. With extended liner notes and interviews with band members about the recordings of the album, as well as unpublished photographs from 1981 by Jibiki Yuichi.
The Japanese punk rock movement known as Tokyo Rockers began in the summer of 1978. It incubated an independent music culture as well as a host of fascinating, individualistic musicians. One of the more striking units was the male-female duo Maria 023. NON played bass for them, and it was here that she first attracted attention. However, Maria 023 was short-lived, and NON would not reappear until the following year, August 1979, on stage at the legendary concert event "Drive to 80s". Her unbilled performance at the event consisted of several songs for solo bass and vocals, and her combination of intensity and a distinctly female emotionality made a striking impression. In the months that followed, NON continued to play solo and she became a pivotal presence among the female rockers on the scene at the time.
Finally she shifted from solo to group performance, and formed NON BAND. After several member changes, the line-up stabilized into a unique trio with Kinosuke Yamagishi on violin and clarinet, and Mitsuru Tamagaki on drums. It was with this line-up that the group reached a musical peak. At the same time, the Japanese punk and new wave rock scene was moving in a new direction, as a second generation of artists appeared and mushrooming independent labels began to play an increasingly important role. I myself started a label called Telegraph Records in 1981 and worked hard on record releases and building a distribution network.
Since starting the label, I had wanted to release a record by NON BAND. There were many vicissitudes before it could happen, but in February 1982 NON BAND's first album was released as a 10-inch LP on Telegraph Records, the label's fifth release. In the early Japanese indies scene, if a release sold 1000 copies it was counted as a significant success. The NON BAND album went through several repressing and sold 2000 copies. The album was a hit and the band's critical reception and popularity suddenly took off.
The shows that followed the release of the album were given a boost by the addition of two female rockers, the guitarist Kummy and keyboard player Mitsuwa. The group was reaching a real musical peak and everyone expected more great developments, but just six months after the release of the album the group would grind to a halt. Members quit the band one after another, and with no possible replacements to be found, NON herself faded away from the scene.
NON BAND's career in the early Japanese indies scene was thus short-lived. But their sole album was reissued twice on CD, and remained popular with listeners. However, the group's history was to have a second chapter.
NON ended up returning to her hometown, snowy Hirosaki in the far northern prefecture Aomori. There she raised two children and took over the running of the family business, an arts supplies store. Her thoughts turned once again towards music, and in 1999 she took up her bass again and began to sing. She invited two fabulous musicians, Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Yoshida, to Hirosaki, and performed together with them as well as solo. This marked the beginning of a new phase for her, and she played live in Tokyo and released a solo album, "ie". She got back in touch with Yamagishi and Tamagaki and reformed NON BAND. They added Emi Sasaki on accordion and began to play a handful of gigs each year, bringing a mature depth to their undiminished power and dazzling a new generation of fans. In 2012 the group released an album of recent live performances entitled " NON BAND Liven' 2009-2012". I released the album on the newly reanimated Telegraph Records.
NON still lives in the north, in Hirosaki. The city is famous for its summer Neputa festival. The first track on this album, "Duncan Dancin'" is almost a theme song for NON BAND, but its rhythm is taken from the ohayashi music that is performed in this festival, as large floats and troupes of dancers wind their way through the streets. The title refers to the legendary dancer, Isadora Duncan. The image perfectly represents NON herself: Isadora Duncan dancing to the earthy rhythms bubbling up out of the north land.
Nov 9, 2016 Jibiky Yuichi (Telegraph Factory)
In order to achieve a meticulous sound quality the reissue version is cut on 12" vinyl instead of the original 10" format. The original cover artwork has been reproduced and there are liner notes by Jibiky Yuichi with unpublished photos of NON BAND.
Repress expected. Date TBA
By 1980 when this was originally released Pharoah Sanders was solidly entrenched with his own voice on tenor. The passing of John Coltrane and Sanders's fruitful years of playing with the prolific saxophone genius resulted with an unmistakable influence on his sound and explorations of the instrument. Beginning with "Greetings to Idris" the structure of the music is one that follows tradition yet opens up for the musicians to improvise within the arrangements. "Greetings to Idris" is in reference to the featured drummer Idris Muhammad who also played with Coltrane during his late period. Naturally Sanders is featured as the main instrument and his horn can be bold and demanding of your full attention. Always interested in other instruments from other cultures, much like Trane, he incorporates the Japanese instrument the koto, a beautifully harmonic stringed instrument to counter his soft rich blowing on tenor with only wind chimes and a harmonium for a delicious peaceful bit of music on "Kazuko"(Peace Child) that has the qualities of a meditative offering. Most of the music, eight tracks, is composed and arranged by Sanders and demonstrates his leadership. There is one John Coltrane composition entitled "After The Rain" that gets the Tranesque treatment by Sanders that makes it hard for even the most discerning listener to distinguish between the original version and Sanders impression. It is a bluesy duet featuring only sax and piano and leaves you wanting to hear it over and over again because of it's simple and haunting melodies. Another song that Coltrane recorded entitled "Easy To Remember" has a gentle swing to it built around a classic quartet (drums, bass, piano, sax) like that employed by Coltrane that results in a superb standard. Sanders incorporates the use of another "foreign" instrument to jazz by working in a tabla and sitar on "Soledad " that takes center stage before Sanders joins in on the music. The result is a thing of genius as the East and West merge and interface for composition that is peaceful. Sanders music on this LP fluctuates between the tranquil sounds of his mellow horn to the outer limits where he left off with the explorations of Trane's late period. What separates this LP from others is that it is a group playing under his leadership where he gives all others close to equal billing. The uptempo, "You've Got To Have freedom" is one such song where Sanders gets out there on some of his solos but works within the group structure as the other musicians, most notably Eddie Henderson on flugelhorn, bring the music back home. There is a chorus sung much of the time throughout where the the proclamation "Ya gotta have peace and love, ya gotta have freedom" is presented in Manhattan Transfer style but with much more soul. The use of vocalists is done again on the track entitled "Think About The One." The chorus features vocalese specialist Bobby McFerrin. This LP shows the different sides of Pharoah Sanders, a man always willing to explore the music, explore his soul and share it with you. The closing track "Bedria" is a mellow exploration of the various ranges of the tenor. It is a ten minute song that displays all the grace of his being, a gentle giant who can manipulate the horn to do extraordinary things, reverberating out and back in undulating waves of harmonic bliss. Sanders on this LP is next to perfect. One of his best recording from his post Impulse career. It belongs in your jazz collection right next to John Coltrane.
6 face-melting gurners for the 21st Century’s, wilted and jilted generation.
Glasgow’s Lady Neptune follows her New Gorbals Gabber cassette E.P. with her debut vinyl release NOZ. Over the course of 23 bloody fisted minutes, Lady Neptune’s – aka Moema Meade - hyper destructed take on Gabber and Happy Hardcore breaks down the genre tropes before rebuilding them as a new pop music. If 2020’s New Gorbals Gabber showed an artist building their own language from fragments of different genres, 2022’s NOZ goes harder into the cyberpunk-ass future and takes no prisoners. Recorded and mixed at Glasgow’s legendary Green Door Studios and mastered by Rashad Becker, here Lady Neptune evolves into a monster.
With the classic weapons of Dutch Gabber – distorted 909 kick drums, bursts of noise and world-eating Rave-O- Matic hoovering synth riffs, Lady Neptune’s 6 tracks constantly threaten to careen off the speaker into the sweatiest, most gibbering, messy corners of the club. The two years since her debut has seen Meade destroying festival dancefloors, training for the full assault that is NOZ. Live performances have seen foam guns, tequila-pistols, neon stage dancers and a full, maxed-out orgy of fast-as-hell BPM, rave music burning up the cones. The experience reaps rewards from the outset on recorded form here. APOCOLYPS begins with monstrous vocals and the all-consuming kick, pulled back and taut for launch. The arsenal builds; warbling synths and high-pitched synth-strings before dropping into Bald Terror-sized hoovers and stuttering 4/4s. It quickly bleeds into MASTERER, with a looped, pitched up vocal intersecting with the synth riff. The aesthetics might be Happy Hardcore but the dynamic feels like a synthetic, evil Nu Metal-influenced Industrial music. Constantly evolving and twisting with its own natural drama, the drop at 2:15 is pure ecstatic release. fusing Meade’s inclination for pop hooks with the first out-and-out 180BPM (ish, who’s counting?) anthemic melter of the E.P., TELL ME has THE big catchy chorus, used sparingly and sung by Meade with angelic devilishness, coming at you in waves of XTC. It’s a repeater.
It’s then massive fists in the air for the ruthless Side B opener WIT. In the Welsh-Brazilian artist’s adopted home of Glasgow it translates directly as WHAT!? Itt makes sense. g. Sharp, weaponised, rhythmic punishment abounds before OH responds. Pitched up vocals and another mid-frequency synth hook wipes the slate clean. Like the best Gabber, the tension and release dynamic is used to full effect by Meade, with the thunderous low end kick -expertly tweaked in the mastering by Rashad Becker – slipping into the ghostly cavern. Industrialized 4/4 and noise-snares propel onwards to be utterly squashed by that bloody synth, stinging and horribly brilliant. Proving her genius for a ridiculous A-N-T-H-E-M, TIME 2 MAKE U FEEL GOOD closes the 23 minutes of ragged, drugged glory with a festival-slamming chorus built from the wreckage. It’s a song that does that thing we all know and love but can’t put our finger on. Sad, happy, tragedy, ecstasy, joy, horror...There’s big, minor chord changes (yes there’s some CHORDS on this slammer), the kick is submerged in layers of pads and Meade’s actual secret weapon: her vocal and knack for writing a chorus line. In the listener’s mind it’s over before it’s begun, a track destined for the big rewind.
NOZ is a breathless, E-number riddled eternal ecstasy.
Mit 'Seeing the Elephant' haben THE OFFERING ein Album geschaffen, das so reichhaltig, abenteuerlich und gefühlvoll ist wie nichts anderes, das man in nächster Zeit hören wird. 'Seeing the Elephant' entstand während des Chaos der Proteste von 2020 und der darauffolgenden kulturellen Umwälzungen und ist ein herausforderndes (und letztendlich lohnendes) Album für extreme Zeiten. Auf dem Nachfolger des hochgelobten Debüts 'Home' von THE OFFERING aus dem Jahr 2019 startet die Band mit dem frenetischen, 7-minütigen Opener 'WASP' in eine politisch aufgeladene Hochphase und steigert dann die Dynamik und den Klang, indem sie sich durch elektronisch angehauchte Tracks wie 'With Consent' und das treibende 'Rose Fire' windet und mit dem epischen Abschlusstrack 'Esther Weeps' zu etwas Schönem und Erhabenem gelangt. Sänger Alex Richichi und Gitarrist Nishad George haben mit Hilfe von Mixer Zach Weeks (Kvelertak, The Armed) in den renommierten God City Studios in Salem, Massachusetts, ein neues Gerüst aus vergangenen Arbeiten konstruiert und THE OFFERING als eine Band bewiesen, die nicht nur die Norm herausfordert, sondern sie auch verfeinern und neu definieren wird. THE OFFERING 'Seeing the Elephant' ist erhältlich als: Standard CD Jewelcase, black LP, Digitales Album
Damian Schwartz makes a welcome return to Pulp for his third full-length album, La Sal De Tu Especie. The 11 track record was written over the last three years as a way of coping with some tough experiences and features remixes
from K15 and Gifted & Blessed. It once again finds the Madrid producer serving up the sort of richly musical house that has always stood him apart.
Schwartz has been away for a while but emerged in the early 2000s with an artful take on house music. As a student of jazz, composition and bass, his intricate grooves have always been embellished with real melodic craftsmanship. In the past, they have come on this label, Esperanza and A Harmless Deed which he co-runs with Jose Cabrera. He has put out two albums before now and also works under the Epiphany alias as a producer and live act. He is a real master of his analog machinery and someone who never fails to bring fresh ideas. This superbly adventurous and widescreen new album proves that once again and shows off diverse influences such as 90s broken beat by acts like Hanna and 4 Hero, the early IDM of LFO and Aphex Twin and the Detroit house and electro styles of greats such as Juan Atkins, Teknotika, Marcellus Pittman and Kyle Hall.
It kicks off with Renacido which is a cinematic synth opener that places you into orbit. La Elipa is expansive and jazzy house with cosmic chord work over the tight, punchy kicks and Lopp then gets physical with broken beat drums and funky bass dancing around each other to uplifting effect. The superb Zwei Danke is another masterclass in off-grid beat programming and soulful machine sounds that captures the essence of early Detroit house.
It is remixed by K15, a vital London beatmaker with credits on labels like Eglo and Wild Oats. His version showcases rugged, lo-fi and dusty drums softened by heart-melting chords and angelic vocal coos.
Schwartz's 'Morro Da Urca' is a suspensory ambient interlude that makes way for the crisp electro-funk and starry-eyed pads of 'Rufo,' then 'Meco' cuts loose
with boogie bass and glistening drums and perc that voyage through a whole eco-system of bright, nebulous synths. 'Mika' is another out of this world house composition with majestic leads and pixelated pads that bring warmth and future soul. There is real electricity in the freeform keys and corrugated drums of Coney Island that will ensure any dance floor takes off.
Final remixer Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker aka GB (Gifted & Blessed) is a composer and sound artist whose music is a constant exploration of the bridge between the technological and the ancestral. He flips 'Loop' into an Afro-future jazz dance with infectious percussion and expressive chords that never rest.
La Sal De Tu Especie is a timeless fusion of jazz freedom and house grooves that takes you into a magical new dimension.
With this album I went one step further after years of mainly electronic production.
Except for a tape delay, it's all acoustic this time, piano and double bass. Hence the name of the album: "Off", all switches are off.
The focus is on my piano, a Danish small piano made by Brødr. Jørgensen from 1964. I have restored and partially prepared it, mainly with felt, recorded up close and personal. I tried to capture everything as naturally as possible to underline the character of this unique piano. Due to its organic sound and its own life, a few
distinctive pieces full of joy and warmth have emerged. Some of them are improvised, others have grown over time.
Following the release of acoustic EP Letters To Our Former Selves – Acoustic late last year, Youth Fountain is excited to be back at it with new single “Peace Offering" “This track was written in the perspective of knowing you could never truly love or be loved by anyone before being comfortable with who you are as a person,” shares Tyler Zanon “No matter what positive aspects can come out of a relationship - if the foundation isn’t there of having that bare minimum of self love, things inevitably tend to tarnish.” As Youth Fountain prepares to move forward, the future perfectly mirrors the past. What began as a solo project by guitarist/vocalist Tyler Zanon in 2013 under the name Bedroom Talk eventually blossomed into a full-blown band by 2017, with the Vancouver-based Youth Fountain (then a duo) proudly announcing their presence with the debut single “ Grinding Teeth ” and a pair of Pure Noise Records releases that expertly toed the line between pop-punk fervor and more reflective emo moments. Alternative Press hailed the band’s 2019 debut full-length, Letters To Our Former Selves , as one of the year’s very best, dubbing it the “ perfect blend of emo-tinged punk to soundtrack reflecting on every single life decision you’ve ever made ,” while North American tours with the likes of Free Throw, Can’tSwim, and Chris Farren cemented Youth Fountain’s sweat-soaked sound as something best experienced live – all while dodging a few stray elbows and overzealous crowd-surfers. Now once again, Zanon finds himself as a solo artist following the departure of co-vocalist Cody Muraro in mid-2020 – but this time, he’s exactly where he wants to be. Youth Fountain’s new release, Letters To Our Former Selves – Acoustic EP, re-introduces Zanon’s project to the world, reimagining fan favorite aterial from the 2019 LP of the same name.
Wganda Kenya was ahead of its time, anticipating current contemporary Afro-Latin-funk trends in a prescient way that has inspired a legion of fans across the globe. As part of that legacy, "Africa 5.000" (1975) has a legendary reputation as one of Discos Fuentes' best hard-to-find Afro Caribbean funk records and is a highly prized collector's piece. This LP features several classic dance floor gems as well as some lesser-known nuggets and a non-album bonus cut, plus informative notes. "Africa 5.000" (1975) has a legendary reputation as one of Colombia's best hard-to-find Afro-funk records and is a highly prized collector's piece today. The epic 'La torta' ('The Cake') kicks things off with a lively Colombian interpretation of Haitian compas. The tune is still remembered as a big picó (amplified sound system) hit at the verbenas (outdoor dance parties). 'Fiebre de lepra' ('Leprosy Fever') was also released as a 45 single and is certainly one of Wganda Kenya's wilder tracks. Funky wah-wah guitar, makossa style bass, manic organ, and feverishly insane vocals (from Wilson "Saoko" Manyoma and Joe Arroyo) indicate that Fruko and his pals were having a ball goofing around in the studio. If for no other reason, "Africa 5.000" is sought after for being the album containing Fruko and Javier García's outrageously funky and off-kilter 'Tifit hayed', which has become a tropical dance floor favorite in recent years. Again the "kitchen sink" approach is employed, including massive Latin bass lines, tasty Farfisa organ stabs, a bluesy, jazzy piano solo, and plenty of humorous vocal sound effects (including animal noises and lip burbling). However, it's the stomping break beats and cowbell counterpoint that has kept dance floors busy. Side B leaps out of the speakers with the heavy, strutting 'El caterete', which was the flip side to the 'Fiebre de lepra' single and is based on the 1970 song 'Cateretê' by Brazilian singer/songwriter Marku Ribas. Like its sibling Fuentes studio band Afrosound, Wganda Kenya was ahead of its time, anticipating current contemporary Afro-Latin-funk trends in a prescient way that has inspired a legion of fans across the globe, and this reissue of "Africa 5.000" will only serve to further cement the band's growing reputation amongst today's diggers of tropical psychedelia. First time reissue.
- A1: Opening (Lp1: Original Soundtrack)
- A2: Sky Palace
- A3: Advent
- A4: Fillmore
- A5: Beast Appears
- A6: Round Clear
- A7: Bloodpool - Kasandora
- A8: Aitos - Temple
- A9: Powerful Enemy
- A10: Pyramid - Marahna
- B1: Northwall
- B2: World Tree
- B3: Satan
- B4: Silence
- B5: Birth Of The People
- B6: Level Up
- B7: Offering
- B8: Peaceful World
- B9: Ending
- C1: Opening/Sky Palace/Advent/Fillmore (Lp2: Symphonic Suite: Actraiser 2018)
- C2: Birth Of The People/Level Up/Offering
- C3: Bloodpool - Kasandora/Beast Appears/Round Clear
- C4: Pyramid - Marahna
- D1: Aitos - Temple
- D2: Northwall
- D3: World Tree
- D4: Powerful Enemy/Satan
- D5: Silence/Peaceful World/Ending
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of ActRaiser, we have remastered the full original soundtrack composed by Yûzô Koshiro, and completed this divine tribute with the Symphonic Suite performed by New Japan BGM Philharmonic Orchestra at Ancient Festival in 2018! An unique chance to rediscover this intemporal classic with this new orchestral arrangement!
ActRaiser's original soundtrack was a true revolution at the time. Yûzô Koshiro's showed a technical prowess using the hardware's full ressources to create a majestuous score that inspired many composers.
- 1: An Mp Speaks
- 2: Monetaries
- 3: The International Narcotics Traffic
- 4: The Way Of The World
- 5: Antinature
- 6: Charles Windsor
- 7: The Vision Of Peregrine Worsthorne
- 8: The Well Of Loneliness
- 9: The Wicked Palace Revolution
- 10: God Made The Virus
- 11: The Funeral
- 12: A Child Soon In Chains
- 13: In The Dark Times
- 14: The Procession Of Popular
- 15: Capitalism
- C16: In Purgatory(Re-Recorded Version)
- 17: Comrade Era(Re-Recorded )
- 18: Something Wrong Somewhere
- 19: Red Sleeping Beauty
- 20: From The Damned
- 21: For The Fat Lady
- 22: Frans Hals
- 23: Kill Kill Kill Kill
- 24: You’re Alive
- 25: Bad Dreams
- 26: Someone Worse Off Antiamericancretin
- 27: Unfortunately
- 7: 1 In Purgatory
- 7: 2 Comrade Era
- 7: 3 Something Wrong Somewhere
Pressed on Red vinyl and presented in gloss laminated gatefold sleeve.
Double album set contains the original LP plus 13 bonus tracks taken from their first four singles and the re-recorded version of In Purgatory which originally appeared on the PINK compilation E.P “It sells or it smells” plus bonus 7” a reproduction colour vinyl copy of McCarthy’s first 7” “In Purgatory”
All three tracks have been remastered from the original master tape and presented in a wraparound sleeve, just like the incredibly rare “Wall Of Salmon” original.
Also Includes
20 page 12x12” full colour booklet containing all the lyrics and packed full with photos, many previously unpublished. Press clippings and other memorabilia. Introduction by Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers and track by track commentary by Malcolm Eden.
8 x 10 Black & White press photo
Reproduction European Tour poster “The Well Of Loneliness” Promo poster McCarthy sticker
By the time McCarthy appeared on the NME’s C86 cassette they had already been playing together for a couple of years and released two excellent singles. Their debut “In Purgatory” and the indie masterpiece “Red Sleeping Beauty” (both included on this release). The following year McCarthy released the brilliant “Frans Hals” before unleashing their debut album “I Am A Wallet”
Now recognised as an indie pop masterpiece it has gone on to achieve cult status, receiving praise from the likes of Nicky Wire (Manic Street Preachers) as one of the most important albums of the 80s. Known by today's indie acolytes as the band that spawned Tim Gane and Leititia Sadier (who of course went on to form Stereolab).
It’s a seamless album reminiscent of the Byrds. Wonderful, if slightly twee, jangly guitars with complex and rarely rhyming lyrics, Malcolm Eden’s strident left wing political views are manifest on I Am A Wallet. Cloaked in pretty guitar and propulsive drums, Eden sets about attacking the pillars of the day, MPs, Prince Charles, Fleet Street, religion, the response to AIDS and on almost every song, capitalism. The horrors and inequalities of the capitalist system are laid bare for all the see. The system which enables some to get rich at the expense of others is reviled and attacked.
After a year of releases exploring recent musics from the USA, Europe and the southern hemisphere the Horn of Plenty presents a survey of archival private, demo, and live tapes from local avant-anarcho-punks The Apostles. The tapes were (poorly) recorded in Islington & Hackney squats between 1981-1983 and they capture the fledgling band exploring various line-up’s, styles & techniques with limited means and ability. In 1983 The Apostles released their first vinyl EP and switched mainly to a more straight-ahead anarcho-punk style. They gained a strong following then called it a day in 1989. Their vinyl output is still regarded highly by fans and collectors and their ‘official’ demo tapes have become highly sought-after, particularly since being namechecked by Ty Segall in a 2014 interview. In a 2009 article charting the band’s history (frontman) Andy Martin gives these early tapes a mere footnote and states that, in his opinion, they are ‘Best Forgotten’. With respect Andy, I beg to differ. Best Forgotten shows the band grappling with the political, racial and cultural tensions of the time whilst exploring radical politics and issues around homosexuality and mental health. Their sympathies with The Angry Brigade’s ‘direct action’ ethos extended to their involvement with the squatted Centro Iberico and The Wapping Autonomy Centre where they worked closely with Crass, Poison Girls, Flux of Pink Indians and The Mob among others. Viewed retrospectively, it’s easy to draw comparisons with early Fall records, The Door and The Window etc… but also at their melodic best they echo 60’s beat groups and even 70’s blues-rock. A keen interest in tape collage (supplied here by Ian Rawes who later became established with his London Sound Survey project) and the avant garde also inform the mix. Highlights include a bleak reworking of Lemon Kittens’ Chalet D’Amour and a live version of Simon & Garfunkel's I Am A Rock segueing into their take on Alternative TV’s Splitting In Two recorded at The Recession Club in Ponsford Street, Hackney. The short-lived Recession Club, which The Apostles co-ran and where Andy Martin worked the door, also hosted the first ever Coil concert. On that night he refused entry to Death In June on account of their ‘inappropriate attire’. Best Forgotten comes in a hand stamped, stickered and assembled edition of 500 copies and includes an A3 poster and 32 page A4 zine collecting archival photos and images from The Apostles tapes & zines along with liner notes and reflections on the tracks written by Steve Underwood (Harbinger Sound), Chris Low (former Apostles drummer) and The Apostles frontman Andy Martin, who thought this whole thing was daft.
Black Vinyl[33,57 €]
Smoked Coloured Vinyl[36,09 €]
Strawberries & Cream Coloured Vinyl[28,15 €]
Raspberry Ripple Coloured Vinyl[28,15 €]
Yellow Vinyl[26,01 €]
Pink Vinyl[26,01 €]
Black Vinyl[26,01 €]
Red Vinyl[24,79 €]
Black feminist punk band Big Joanie have announced their upcoming second album 'Back Home', set for release 4th November on Daydream Library Series in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the US. The brand new album 'Back Home' follows on from last month's one-off single 'Happier Still', and the release of their 2020 single ‘Cranes in the Sky’, a cover of Solange Knowles released on Jack White’s Third Man Records. Recorded at Hermitage Works Studios in North London, 'Back Home' was produced and mixed by Margo Broom (Goat Girl, Fat White Family) and features violin courtesy of Charlotte Valentine of the experimental art rock project No Home, who recently collaborated with the LA-based artist SASAMI. 'Back Home' is a dramatic leap forward for the band; the band build on their tightly knit, lo-fi punk formula to bring forth a collage of blazing guitars, down tempo dance punk, and melancholic strings that evoke the full depth of the band’s expansive art punk vision. The album title references a search for a place to call home, whether real or metaphysical. “We were really ruminating on the idea of a home and what it means,” explains Stephanie. “It’s about the different ideas of home, whether that’s here in the UK, back in Africa or the Caribbean, or a place that doesn’t really exist; it’s neither here nor there." The band worked with multidisciplinary artist Angelica Ellis to design the striking embroidered cover art, which is a depiction of Chardine’s nephew at the barbers. The artwork is a reference to the embroidered wall hangings popular in Caribbean homes post-Windrush that were a callback to the homes they left behind. The album’s strength lies in the band’s bold and varied new sound. Album opener ‘Cactus Tree’ is an eerie, gothic folk tale that tells the story of a woman waiting for her lover while a wall of euphoric harmonies and screaming feedback roll in the background. Lead single ‘Happier Still’ is a driving, Nirvana-influenced track that grapples with the idea of wanting to push through a depressive episode. Inspired equally by the melodic rock of Hüsker Dü and the mystical sensibilities of Stevie Nicks, closer ‘Sainted’ brings the club-ready sentiment of the 2018 single ‘Fall Asleep’ to its natural conclusion. Big Joanie live dates 2022 Sun 31st July - Liverpool International Festival @ Camp & Furnace Sat 20th August - La Route Du Rock Festival St Malo, France Sun 28th August - Greenbelt Festival, Kettering, United Kingdom Could the song splits across the sides be changed to this: Side A 1.Cactus Tree 2.Taut 3.Confident Man 4.What Are You Waiting For? 5.In My Arms 6.Your Words 7.Count to Ten Side B: 1.Happier Still 2.Insecure 3.Today 4.I Will 5.In My Arms (Reprise)6.Sainted
[l] 12 IN MY ARMS [REPRISE]
Black Vinyl[33,57 €]
Smoked Coloured Vinyl[36,09 €]
Strawberries & Cream Coloured Vinyl[28,15 €]
Raspberry Ripple Coloured Vinyl[28,15 €]
Yellow Vinyl[26,01 €]
Pink Vinyl[26,01 €]
Black Vinyl[26,01 €]
Black Vinyl[23,11 €]
Black feminist punk band Big Joanie have announced their upcoming second album 'Back Home', set for release 4th November on Daydream Library Series in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the US. The brand new album 'Back Home' follows on from last month's one-off single 'Happier Still', and the release of their 2020 single ‘Cranes in the Sky’, a cover of Solange Knowles released on Jack White’s Third Man Records. Recorded at Hermitage Works Studios in North London, 'Back Home' was produced and mixed by Margo Broom (Goat Girl, Fat White Family) and features violin courtesy of Charlotte Valentine of the experimental art rock project No Home, who recently collaborated with the LA-based artist SASAMI. 'Back Home' is a dramatic leap forward for the band; the band build on their tightly knit, lo-fi punk formula to bring forth a collage of blazing guitars, down tempo dance punk, and melancholic strings that evoke the full depth of the band’s expansive art punk vision. The album title references a search for a place to call home, whether real or metaphysical. “We were really ruminating on the idea of a home and what it means,” explains Stephanie. “It’s about the different ideas of home, whether that’s here in the UK, back in Africa or the Caribbean, or a place that doesn’t really exist; it’s neither here nor there." The band worked with multidisciplinary artist Angelica Ellis to design the striking embroidered cover art, which is a depiction of Chardine’s nephew at the barbers. The artwork is a reference to the embroidered wall hangings popular in Caribbean homes post-Windrush that were a callback to the homes they left behind. The album’s strength lies in the band’s bold and varied new sound. Album opener ‘Cactus Tree’ is an eerie, gothic folk tale that tells the story of a woman waiting for her lover while a wall of euphoric harmonies and screaming feedback roll in the background. Lead single ‘Happier Still’ is a driving, Nirvana-influenced track that grapples with the idea of wanting to push through a depressive episode. Inspired equally by the melodic rock of Hüsker Dü and the mystical sensibilities of Stevie Nicks, closer ‘Sainted’ brings the club-ready sentiment of the 2018 single ‘Fall Asleep’ to its natural conclusion. Big Joanie live dates 2022 Sun 31st July - Liverpool International Festival @ Camp & Furnace Sat 20th August - La Route Du Rock Festival St Malo, France Sun 28th August - Greenbelt Festival, Kettering, United Kingdom Could the song splits across the sides be changed to this: Side A 1.Cactus Tree 2.Taut 3.Confident Man 4.What Are You Waiting For? 5.In My Arms 6.Your Words 7.Count to Ten Side B: 1.Happier Still 2.Insecure 3.Today 4.I Will 5.In My Arms (Reprise)6.Sainted
[l] 12. IN MY ARMS [REPRISE]
Deron Miller gives his life to the riff. Unrestrained by industry expectations and genre limitations, the boundlessly prolific guitarist and voice behind multiple beloved projects is best known as the founder, frontman, and songwriter in CKY. His authentic and effortlessly hooky heavy rock obsession returns with 96 BITTER BEINGS. Reinvigorated and ready to rumble all over again, Miller roars back with the same reverence for riffage that made underground hits out of CKY anthems like “Flesh Into Gear,” “Escape from Hellview,” and “Disengage the Simulator” from 1998 till 2011.
The familiar warmth, feel, groove, and unapologetic honesty which drove the song “96 Quite Bitter Beings” to 54 million streams (on Spotify alone) permeates the pair of albums unleashed by 96BB.
A successful crowdfunding campaign saw Miller, guitarist Kenneth Hunter, bassist Shaun Luera and Shaun’s brother, drummer Tim, conjure up 2018’s Camp Pain in limited release. North American and European touring followed, wrapping up shortly before the COVID-19 shutdowns.
“After CKY and a short break, I decided to continue, without changing the sound,” Miller explains. “Because that’s what I do. It’s what I love to do and what people say I do well. All of the guys who got in the band with me are great musicians. And each of them is hungry. They have priorities and ambitions about being in a rock band, no matter the grim state of pop music out there. If we can bring rock and metal back to the mainstream, in some way, that’s the dream.”
In 2022, 96 BITTER BEINGS unleash the long-awaited Synergy Restored, 11 songs of relentless power and vibe. Four-on-the-floor, fuzzy and visceral, proper rock n’ roll made by an actual band, rather than a bunch of overprocessed samples and otherwise stale shenanigans. Songs like “Vaudeville’s Revenge,” “90 Car Pile-Up,” and “Wish Me Dead” offer vivid reminders of the truth-telling prowess of guitars, bass, and drums. Miller is on fire, weaponizing the same knack for memorable musical epiphanies behind projects like Foreign Objects, World Under Blood, and CKY.
Miller co-founded Foreign Objects and later Camp Kill Yourself (a name born of his love of VHS slasher classics) in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in the ‘90s. Written by Miller, 1999’s Volume 1 appealed to metalheads, skaters, stoners, and punks. The album led to a stint on Warped Tour and a deal with Island Def Jam Music Group, which issued Infiltrate•Destroy•Rebuild• in 2002. Axl Rose chose CKY to support the ill-fated Chinese Democracy tour, and they also played with Metallica.
An Answer Can Be Found followed in 2005, producing the Billboard Mainstream Rock Top 40 single “Familiar Realm.” Extensive touring with Avenged Sevenfold and the like-minded Clutch followed. Carver City, in 2009, would prove to be Miller’s last album with the group he created and led. Across the four albums, Miller indulged his love of everything from ‘80s thrash metal to doom, as CKY blended high-octane ruckus with occasional bursts of Moog synths and cinematic storytelling.
Miller never stopped creating, with a handful of full albums written and released, a foray into horror movies, and parenting three children with his wife, scream queen actress Felissa Rose. Like Galactic Prey, the most recent Foreign Objects album, the 96BB records were recorded and produced by Miller and Hunter at Manifest Productions. Camp Pain was explicitly made for diehard fans who supported the creation of both albums through 96BB’s Indiegogo campaign. Synergy Restored was always intended for wider release, which it sees now via Nuclear Blast.
“I want my work taken seriously. I thank God every day that I was never overexposed, or even exposed enough commercially, to where I’m resigned to a specific moment,” Miller says. “I would rather have my self-respect, the respect of the audience, and a dedicated cult following.”
“Every time I go out, I see Nirvana, Metallica, and Misfits t-shirts. These kids may not know the music, but at least they are displaying a visual interest,” he adds. “Corporations spend millions of dollars promoting certain styles of music, but history proves that true rock will always sneak in.”
Originally released via Devil's Head Records in 2004, and subsequently picked up and released worldwide via PROSTHETIC RECORDS, 3750 is the first "official" full album debut from Chicopee, Massachusetts deathcore/metalcore pioneers THE ACACIA STRAIN. The initial vinyl pressings were licensed to Spare Change Records. 800 black LPs and 200 clear / numbered copies were pressed.
Originally released via Devil's Head Records in 2004, and subsequently picked up and released worldwide via PROSTHETIC RECORDS, 3750 is the first "official" full album debut from Chicopee, Massachusetts deathcore/metalcore pioneers THE ACACIA STRAIN. The initial vinyl pressings were licensed to Spare Change Records. 800 black LPs and 200 clear / numbered copies were pressed.
- A1: Shadowland
- A2: Nina Simone
- A3: F***Ing Idiots
- A4: Sitting Still
- A5: Olive Hollow
- A6: Sheep Of The Long White Cloud
- B1: The Ballad Of Clayton Looby
- B2: No More Travelling
- B3: Will It Yet Be Thus
- B4: Invisible Things
- B5: Back Room
- B6: Tudor Blues
Fronted by brothers Peter O'Doherty and Reg Mombassa, Dog Trumpet have been playing, writing and recording their
music since the early 90s. Reg and Pete were founding members of iconic Australian band Mental As Anything, who hit
the charts around the world with “Live It Up”. The band made a mark with their left field mix of music, art, video and
humour and leading eventually to ARIA awards and induction into the Hall of Fame in 2009.
• Recorded and produced by Peter at home in his 'South Road' studio, the brothers have created an inventive and original
body of work distinguished by an eccentric and offbeat harmonic warmth and melodic drive propelled by Reg's distinctive
slide guitar and Peter's elegant acoustic guitar and mandolin. Their poetic, yet at times absurdist lyrics are set against a
sonic backdrop that could loosely be described as a meld of rock and roll, psychedelic folk, country and semi-abstract
blues.
• “Shadowland” is the duo’s brand new album, recorded earlier this year, with the guys playing all the instruments
themselves. Amidst a group of songs with all sorts of subject matter (including the sheep of New Zealand, and Nina Simone)
is the very direct “F***ing Idiots”, about the human race and its continuing desire to wage wars.
• The inner sleeve features all the lyrics and wonderful paintings by both Reg and Peter.
Wellington, New Zealand four-piece Hans Pucket writes nervy but effortlessly danceable rock songs about feeling bad. Their second full-length album, No Drama, which is out November 4th via Carpark Records, gleefully captures the all-too-common twenty-something anxieties of talking too much and then being unable to find the right words to say. When frontman Oliver Devlin sings, “I’m surfing a constant wave of alarm” on the title track, it’s a compass for the other nine tracks. This is inviting and relatable music for people who, despite their best efforts, feel uncomfortable about themselves, the state of the world, and their place in it.
Both lyrically and sonically, No Drama is a departure for Hans Pucket from their 2018 debut Eczema. “I realized I didn’t want to write any more real heartbreak songs,” says Oliver Devlin. “We were and still are a live band. We're still trying to make music that’s catchy and people can dance to, but also really interesting to us: songs about growing up and finding how you exist in the world.” Songs like “My Brain Is a Vacant Space” with its blistering guitars and ebullient hooks hone in on the feeling that you have nothing to offer while “Bankrupt,” a fuzzed-out punk track, boasts lines like “I don’t know if I’ll always feel like / I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Recorded with the band’s good friend and former tour mate Jonathan Pearce of The Beths at his Auckland studio, No Drama is full of big leaps, immaculate arrangements, and a ton of immediate grooves. “We were very ambitious when we first started recording this,” says bassist Callum Devlin. “Intentionally we left heaps of space in the track so we could add strings and horns. Because we were very measured and quite deliberate with the parts we had. It was a really fun process filling in the gaps.”
No Drama came together over several years and during its creation, the band added multi-instrumentalist Callum Passels, who provided all the horn arrangements on the LP. With Pearce producing, his other Beths bandmates like Benjamin Sinclair added string arrangements while singer Elizabeth Stokes provided backing vocals.
Overall it’s a remarkably eclectic record where the smooth pop of a track like “Kiss the Moon” can coexist perfectly with the Abbey Road freakout of “Some Good News.” “We didn’t want to be afraid of our 15-year-old self's influences,” says Oliver Devlin.” We really wanted to make an album that teenage us would just be amazed by.”
The result is Hans Pucket’s most sparkling and confident collection yet. While it’s danceable and fun, it’s also a thoughtful exploration of anxiety, a call for empathy in a turbulent time, and a relatable reminder that it’s hard to figure things out.
Tape
Wellington, New Zealand four-piece Hans Pucket writes nervy but effortlessly danceable rock songs about feeling bad. Their second full-length album, No Drama, which is out November 4th via Carpark Records, gleefully captures the all-too-common twenty-something anxieties of talking too much and then being unable to find the right words to say. When frontman Oliver Devlin sings, “I’m surfing a constant wave of alarm” on the title track, it’s a compass for the other nine tracks. This is inviting and relatable music for people who, despite their best efforts, feel uncomfortable about themselves, the state of the world, and their place in it.
Both lyrically and sonically, No Drama is a departure for Hans Pucket from their 2018 debut Eczema. “I realized I didn’t want to write any more real heartbreak songs,” says Oliver Devlin. “We were and still are a live band. We're still trying to make music that’s catchy and people can dance to, but also really interesting to us: songs about growing up and finding how you exist in the world.” Songs like “My Brain Is a Vacant Space” with its blistering guitars and ebullient hooks hone in on the feeling that you have nothing to offer while “Bankrupt,” a fuzzed-out punk track, boasts lines like “I don’t know if I’ll always feel like / I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Recorded with the band’s good friend and former tour mate Jonathan Pearce of The Beths at his Auckland studio, No Drama is full of big leaps, immaculate arrangements, and a ton of immediate grooves. “We were very ambitious when we first started recording this,” says bassist Callum Devlin. “Intentionally we left heaps of space in the track so we could add strings and horns. Because we were very measured and quite deliberate with the parts we had. It was a really fun process filling in the gaps.”
No Drama came together over several years and during its creation, the band added multi-instrumentalist Callum Passels, who provided all the horn arrangements on the LP. With Pearce producing, his other Beths bandmates like Benjamin Sinclair added string arrangements while singer Elizabeth Stokes provided backing vocals.
Overall it’s a remarkably eclectic record where the smooth pop of a track like “Kiss the Moon” can coexist perfectly with the Abbey Road freakout of “Some Good News.” “We didn’t want to be afraid of our 15-year-old self's influences,” says Oliver Devlin.” We really wanted to make an album that teenage us would just be amazed by.”
The result is Hans Pucket’s most sparkling and confident collection yet. While it’s danceable and fun, it’s also a thoughtful exploration of anxiety, a call for empathy in a turbulent time, and a relatable reminder that it’s hard to figure things out.
- A1: Philipp Gorbachev - Ivan, Come On, Unlock The Box (Kraviz Edit)
- A2: K-Hand - The Box
- B1: Nikita Zabelin - Bells
- B2: Vladimir Dubyshkin - Lose Yourself
- C1: Barcode Population - Marduk
- C2: Roma Zuckerman - Geburt Part 2
- D1: Barcode Population - Internum
- D2: Nina Kraviz - I Believe I Can Fly (Klm Delayed Flight Version)
2022 Repress
Trip Recordings follows the huge success of its first three releases with a third double-vinyl album, once more curated by label owner Nina Kraviz and featuring gatefold artwork by in-house artist Tombo. The release draws on contributions from established Trip members Kraviz, Population One and Nikita Zabelin, in addition to new artists added to its expending roster including K-Hand, Philipp Gorbachev, Vladimir Dubyshkin and Roma Zuckerman.As established with the label's first three releases, TRP004 will function as a soundtrack to a scenario and its accompanying artwork from Kraviz and Tombo. The title 'Ivan, Come On! Unlock The Box!' (, ! !) is inspired by the track contributed by Philipp Gorbachev (Comeme/PG Tunes), from which Kraviz has extrapolated a story of a rule-defying Russian maverick who is 'searching for the key to the future'.Set for release in mid-November, TRP004's two twelve-inches orbit around a nucleus of talent drawn from label boss Nina Kraviz's homeland of Russia. In addition to 'I Believe I Can Fly (KLM Delayed Flight Version) - one of her own 'road tracks' produced during the producer's hectic global touring schedule - Kraviz has enlisted a quartet of her countrymen for this latest collection. Philipp Gorbachev contributes his most uncompromisingly techno track yet, while Moscow's Nikita Zabelin follows his label debut on TRP003 ('De Niro Is Concerned') with the sinister minimalism of 'Bells'. In addition, TRP003 marks the label debuts of Vladimir Dubyshkin and Roma Zuckerman, both of whom were recommended to Kraviz by Zabelin. The former - a true outsider, just 17 years of age and based in the remote Russian town of Tambov - follows an early 2015 LP for SUB-AMP Records with the disorienting off-kilter techno of 'Lose Yourself', while the latter marks his first ever release despite years of producing with the unsettling 'Geburt Part 2'.
Completing TRP004 are two defiantly individual international artists: K-HAND makes her Trip debut following a two-decade career that's seen her become on of Detroit's true underground, and relatively unsung, heroes. Her contribution, 'The Box', finds her clipping effortlessly within Trip's aesthetic, with a heady textured acid potboiler. Two more Barcode Population tracks, excavated from a mine of undiscovered Nineties-made rarities, complete the release with furiously paced techno rollers which will remain strictly vinyl-only.
Transversales Disques proudly presents Ahmad Jamal Trio, Live in Paris 1971. Never heard before ORTF recordings performed live at studio 104, Maison de la Radio, Paris. This is the first official release with the full permission and cooperation of the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) coming in a Deluxe Edition - Classic Tip-On Jacket. Including exclusive pictures. Mastered from the original master tapes.
« While be-bop musicians practise one-upmanship in terms of speed, Ahmad Jamal develops a crystal-clear touch and praises silence: "I was an angel among devils! The boppers made notes explode. I let them resonate until the end of their lives".
A reputation as an artist on the fringes perhaps explains this lack of fame he suffered at one time. But despite the great whirlwind that is his life, Ahmad Jamal declares that he is searching for peace: "The quest is that of musical and internal peace. I cannot acknowledge that I am at peace, it would be dangerous to show it. A man at peace with himself doesn't say so".
If you cannot say it, you can hear it, especially during his first concert in Paris in a trio. Here we are transported to the upper echelons of the art of the trio: the master of the piano, in studio 104 of Broadcasting House, is surrounded by brilliant accomplices, Jamil Nasser on double bass and Frank Gant on drums... » (Jérôme Badini, France Musique).
From the moment that German producer, Fejká, burst onto the scene at the age of 17, he has captivated listeners with an unrivaled ability to sit comfortably at the intersection of expression and introspection. Where night and day, dreaming and dancing, the fast and the slow, might naturally diverge, he is able to balance them delicately, creating sounds which are, in the same moment, wonderfully ethereal, but also thrillingly dynamic.
His new single Hiræth, meaning ‘long gone’, offers a soundscape full of warmth and calm, enhanced by the unique soothing quality of Kim van Loo’s distinctive vocals – a sound which Fejká accidentally discovered during their time as roommates in lockdown. The track describes a certain sense of nostalgia for a place that might never be reached, or a place that might never be returned to, with an overarching feeling of longing throughout. Working from his studio in
Stuttgart, Fejká processed synths, pads and piano with a tape machine to heighten the nostalgic ambience and, through grainy imperfections, establish a more intimate relationship with the listener. The track is restrained and subtle, yet it cycles through the ups
and downs of an ever-changing landscape keeping listeners on their toes, “Like the feeling of being taken on a journey for the last time“, says Fejká Delving into a vast range of emotions and musical approaches, Fejká’s most recent album,
Reunion, cemented the young producer’s position in the downtempo electronic scene. The album’s single, Svanur, has been streamed over 15 million times with Fejká having recently performed sold-out shows at EartH London, Cross Club Prag, Kater Blau, and Klein Istanbul.
Scottish fire-brands Bleed From Within have reached a career tipping point. Rising above the multitude of challenges the pandemic spewed up, the metal 5-piece have transformed themselves over the past two years, in a story of sheer resilience. Reaching their strongest career position yet, momentum has been snowballing since the release of 2020’s critically acclaimed record Fracture, bolstered by recent significant successes in both touring and digital streaming.
2021 saw the band dominate the UK live scene, selling out their largest ever headline tour in November, capturing hearts as support on Bullet For My Valentine’s arena tour (several critics stating they shone brightest on the line-up), slaying a Lamb Of God livestream support slot, alongside blazing performances at Download Festival + Bloodstock Festival.
Last year also delivered Bleed From Within’s most successful single release yet, track ‘I Am Damnation’, which has since racked up more than 2.8 million combined streams. It landed impressive playlisting such as Spotify ‘New Metal Tracks’ (#1), ‘Kickass Metal’, ‘Adrenaline Workout’, Apple Music ‘Breaking Metal’, YouTube Music ‘New Metal’, ‘Metal Hotlist’, ‘Today’s Metal’. Their monthly Spotify listeners have almost doubled in that time, now reaching more than half a million.
What makes Bleed From Within unique is their immense inter-personal bond, characterised by resilience and self-reliance - firm friends and colleagues, they are a close-knit unit, bound by common goals. Having existed as a band for 17 years, more than half of most of their lifetimes, they are an authentic home-grown success story, having achieved everything to-date off their own backs as a self-managed unit. Their swelling success is a testament to their talent, focus and sheer resolution, backed up by a positive mentality and drive to construct the most killer metal anthems in existence. Not forgetting their devoted global fanbase, who track their progress eagerly.
With new record ‘Shrine’ on the horizon, a key turning point moment, Bleed From Within are set to become a future kingpin of our scene and make history.
Futurismo are proud to present a deluxe remastered vinyl package of the classic 1980 album: Red Exposure by the uncompromising Chrome.
Arguably considered the San Francisco bands greatest work, Red Exposure, the fourth album to feature core members Damon Edge
and Helios Creed, was the definitive version of Chrome’s idiosyncratic approach to sound: a projected vision of near future dystopia via an undefinable guise of experimental space rock and punk-tinged alien soundscapes. Here, the band simultaneously draw from the otherworldly noises of their past records, whilst pushing their synthesizers forward into, albeit oblique, pop song structures.
Edge’s vocals are structured more like an instrument than a voice, lyrics painting images of humanities future on the edge of total destruction. As Creed’s guitar work multilayersit’s way into a completely different aural spectrum, beautiful yet violent, slashing against rhythmic pulsations, loops and experimentations, to create a sound that even today feels beyond the here and now. This distillation of the bands repertoire seemed to envision a deconstruction of rock ‘n’ roll, aimed to break past the shell of cliché that it would of course eventually come to inhabit. Which is why despite it’s age Red Exposure remains a record that still sounds like the sonic product of a far off civilisation, making this disk of new wave nihilism vital for fans of Space rock, Krautrock, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and Suicide.
The deluxe remastered version of this out of print 1980 LP is presented here in ltd edition coloured vinyl. It comes packaged in a chromed mirrorboard sleeve, contains a large screen printed poster printed with neon ink featuring unseen photographs of the band, and a bonus track.
Hot on the heels of the sold-out limited ep Was It Ever Real?, The Soft Pink Truth releases a super catchy, sexy contemporary disco banger Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?, Throughout the ten songs of the album, the provocation to go "deeper" prompts promiscuous moves across the genres of disco, minimalism, ambient, and jazz, sliding onto and off of the dancefloor, sweeping higher and lower on the scale of frequencies, engaging both philosophical texts re-set as pop lyrics and wordless glossolalia. Throughout, Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? aims for a kind of psychedelic poolside take on disco, using the steady 120 bpm rhythmic chassis of the music as a launchpad for reverie rather than big room EDM bluster. Sidestepping retro kitsch but paying homage to highly personal interpretations of disco such as Arthur Russell, Don Ray, Dr. Buzzard"s Original Savannah Band, and Mandré, or the jazz-funk of Creed Taylor and CTI Records. Its emphasis on slowly morphing deep house grooves will also appeal to fans of DJ Sprinkles, Moodymann, and Theo Parrish. At once catchy and spacey, poppy and perverse, Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? shows a restless musician trying to square the circle of dance music and meditation, repetition, and change.
Hot on the heels of the sold-out limited ep Was It Ever Real?, The Soft Pink Truth releases a super catchy, sexy contemporary disco banger Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?, Throughout the ten songs of the album, the provocation to go "deeper" prompts promiscuous moves across the genres of disco, minimalism, ambient, and jazz, sliding onto and off of the dancefloor, sweeping higher and lower on the scale of frequencies, engaging both philosophical texts re-set as pop lyrics and wordless glossolalia. Throughout, Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? aims for a kind of psychedelic poolside take on disco, using the steady 120 bpm rhythmic chassis of the music as a launchpad for reverie rather than big room EDM bluster. Sidestepping retro kitsch but paying homage to highly personal interpretations of disco such as Arthur Russell, Don Ray, Dr. Buzzard"s Original Savannah Band, and Mandré, or the jazz-funk of Creed Taylor and CTI Records. Its emphasis on slowly morphing deep house grooves will also appeal to fans of DJ Sprinkles, Moodymann, and Theo Parrish. At once catchy and spacey, poppy and perverse, Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? shows a restless musician trying to square the circle of dance music and meditation, repetition, and change.
Das neue Spoon Remix-Album "Lucifer on the Moon" ist das schwerkraftlose Pendant zu "Lucifer on the Sofa". Das zehnte Album der Band aus Austin wurde von Grund auf überarbeitet und von On-U Sound-Gründer und UK-Dub-Ikone Adrian Sherwood neu interpretiert. "Lucifer on the Moon" nahm zunächst in Form von ein paar Remixen für die Singles des aktuellen Spoon-Albums Gestalt an. Frontmann Britt Daniel gab Sherwood zwei Empfehlungen: "Vermeide Dinge, die auf Band nicht möglich wären" und "Füge hinzu, was immer du möchtest, je weniger modern, desto besser." Die Zusammenarbeit sollte nicht überraschen: Die Dub-inspirierte Produktion zieht sich durch Spoons klassische Tracks, von "Finer Feelings" bis "Inside Out". Sherwood ist ein bewährter Kollaborateur, der bereits mit Lebenslauf Partnerschaften mit bedeutenden Künstlern wie The Fall, Jah Wobble und Mark Stewart enthält. Die ersten Ergebnisse gefielen beiden Parteien und Sherwood wurde beauftragt, an weiteren Songs zu arbeiten - und dann an noch ein paar mehr. "Ich fand Gefallen an der Melodie und den Gedanken, die sie in mir auslöste", erklärt der Produzent. "Es hat sich einfach weiterentwickelt und wir hatten schließlich ein ganzes Album." "Lucifer on the Moon" stellt die Rhythmusspuren des Originals auf den Kopf und baut sie oft komplett neu um. Sherwood lieferte eine umfangreiche zusätzliche Instrumentierung über die erweiterte Familie der On-U-Session-Spieler, einschließlich des Bassisten Doug Wimbish und des Schlagzeugers Keith LeBlanc (beide spielten in den frühen 80er Jahren in der Studioband von Sugarhill Records). Er grub sich tief in die Multitracks des Albums ein und förderte vergessene Details und Elemente zutage, die in den endgültigen Album-Mixen nicht enthalten waren. Das Ergebnis hebt Spoons Signature-Sound in ein fremdes Terrain, vollgepackt mit Echos und grollenden Bässen. "Es war nicht nur eine Sache, bei der man dies und jenes auseinandernimmt, auf dem Raster bleibt und ein Delay hinzufügt", erklärt Daniel. "Er fügte den Tracks so viel mehr an Instrumenten hinzu, dass sie zu komplett anderen Versionen der Songs wurden. Nicht nur Remixe, sondern ergänzende Stücke - quasi ein Spin-Off des Albums." "Lucifer on the Sofa" wurde im Februar 2022 veröffentlicht und ist Spoons bisher rockigstes Album.
Billy Preston was an American musician, who encompassed R&B, rock, soul, funk and gospel. He worked as a top session musician during the Sixties, backing artists such as Little Richard, Sam Cooke, The Rolling Stones and the Beatles amongst others. He is even the only non-Beatle musician to be given a credit on a Beatles recording at the band’s request. His solo career took off during the first half of the Sixties, but it was his early Seventies soul work that put him on the permanent musical map.
You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down was one of Preston’s final studio albums and originally came out in 1986. “What About The Love” was released as a single. The album is available as a limited edition of 750 individually numbered copies on pink & purple marbled vinyl.
MorMor is the artist project of the multitalented writer, producer and performer Seth Nyquist. From a young age he would sit in front of the stereo in his mother’s house in Toronto, fast forward to a particular section in a recording, and immerse himself in those precious seconds. As MorMor, Seth works in not so dissimilar a fashion: He has an idea for a sound, and he works intensely until he’s created it. The first song he released was a tangy synth pop anthem called “Heaven’s Only Wishful”, which arrived in early 2018 and was met with critical acclaim. Following two acclaimed EPs—Heaven’s Only Wishful in 2018 and Some Place Else in 2019— his debut album Semblance is by turns contemplative, jittery, wistful, gentle, and generous. His distinctive voice—a svelte tenor that sits comfortably higher in pitch—leaps out of the speakers, alighting over the sturdy bass lines, guitar riffs, and drums he played himself. The album pursues difficult truths about love and growth and relationships, uncovering feelings that Seth couldn’t have revealed in any other way. Semblance offers a beguiling feeling the listener chases but never quite pins down. A record to put on again and again, reliving the moments.
For their fourth release, Selected Works are reissuing the classic South African record from the legendary Beaters, Lost Memories. Fusing R&B, Funk and Soul this collection of tight instrumentals was initially released on CBS in the late 60s. This band would later morph into the legendary South African outfit Harari. Psychedelic soul masterpiece on the CBS LAB imprint. First ever reissue only from Selected Works. Deluxe vinyl repress based on the original CBS pressing with all original artwork in Tip On Covers. Fully licensed and remastered.
ONLY 400 PRESSED. NO RETURNS, ONLY ORDER TO DEMAND. With New Confusion they've usurped their own outré paradigms yet again, resulting in a demented heat-haze panorama of delirious beat-driven abandon and elucidated neural pathways. As ever the brainchild of Texan king of outlaw brinkmanship Craig Clouse, these nine abject and glorious meditations exist in an alternate dimension whereby a loop-driven exploratory framework is joyridden with alacrity offroad by a moonshine-swigging convict, a zone whereby aural scrap metal is alchemically transformed into gleaming, abstract and intimidating structures and sculptures anew. It may not have occurred to the average head that the sound of Tropicália melting gleefully in the sun (as here essayed on 'Miami') might be to their satisfaction, nor that the image of J Dilla trapped in a K-hole with Butthole Surfers would do anything but make them mildly anxious.
Local Dub present their next offering on You&Me Records with a superb 3 tracker. They serve up a selection of retro vibes whilst keeping that signature You&Me energy amongst the EP. The tasteful vocal hooks, killer basslines and groovy drums across all of the tunes make for a mainstay in anyone's record bag.
With Canne à sucre, the Parisian Hip-Hop/beats producer delivers his 5th album. This new project maintains a strong presence in Hip-Hop while being inspired by traditional Caribbean music such as Gwoka and Bèlè.
As Valet started his musical career in 2007 with his group Electric Conversation. As a solo artist, he has worked with japanese imprint Moamoo and released electronica / deep-house record for London based Futuristica Music imprint. After A.k.w.a and Inner Journey, Canne à sucre marks the 3rd collaboration between As Valet and a night on canopy.
With each new release, As Valet offers us a new experience, drawing both from its Caribbean roots and personal influences, forming its own golden triangle : New York, LA, Fort-de-France.
Paving the way for independent artists with songs about love, loss and life, Low Island release their highly anticipated sophomore album, Life In Miniature, promising more ‘delicious alt pop’ (Clash) as the group follow in the footsteps of fellow ‘Oxford bands Glass Animals, Radiohead and Foals’ (Rolling Stone Germany).
It comes fresh off the back of their debut album, If You Could Have It All Again, which placed #17 in the Official UK Album Sales Chart and won them plaudits from Gigwise (‘truly engrossing’), Line of Best Fit (‘arena ready’), Double J, KCRW, Radio1, 6music and Zane Lowe, who described the bands ‘intellectual, soulful creativity.’ Their second album, Life In Miniature, sees Low Island continue to broaden the scope of their ambition, with a record that exquisitely balances stirring electronics, euphoric indie and infectious pop. It’s a record described by the band as a ‘timecapsule, a sonic photo album that captures three years of accelerated change that felt like a lifetime. Leaving home, falling in love, losing loved ones, trying to capture full complexity of emotion that all of those experiences engender.’
Setting that heartfelt lyricism against such a diverse range of sonic backdrops is something that Low Island have been devotedly fine-tuning over the years, firmly rooted in an independence that extends to everything from managing themselves and releasing their music on their own label, Emotional Interference. Its lead to an electrifying live show, which has seen them play festivals from Glastonbury to Lollapalooza Berlin, support synthpop legends Hot Chip and pack out their own shows everywhere from London to Berlin, Prague and Paris, prompting 6music’s Tom Robinson to prophesise that ‘we’ll have them rocking the Pyramid Stage yet, mark my words’.
Presto from San Diego has consistently stayed true to his soul and jazz-inflected formula of ethereal beats over the years. Presto's first record, the self-pressed EP "Breakin' Concrete", came in 2000 and featured the underground cut "Relax Your Mind," which DJ Mark Farina grabbed for his mix CD "Mushroom Jazz 3" (2001). More interest in the record resulted in the launch of his record label, Concrete Grooves and subsequent releases for Bastard Jazz, Miclife Japan and Names You Can Trust.
Presto resurfaced recently from the beat lab with a new unreleased 10-track instrumental album - "Basement Beats". This album was recorded in 2020 while living in New York. He wanted to give listeners a view into his daily commute in pre-pandemic NYC from the early 5am walks to Union Square to his daily E Train commute to Times Square. Two tracks from this album are presented here for Mukatsuku Records in a limited edition pressing of 400 only copies . "Official" stands out as a gritty drum loop which provides a bed for a melodic sample that sings as a soulful synth melody is played on the chorus by his daughter. "Floating" provides a smooth backdrop with programmed drums as Presto plays the wah-infused Rhodes piano along with Avatar on the bass guitar, giving a nod to their previous live fusion group Wayward Saints. The new release brings a dose of the old school as it travels into the future while comfortable in the present….
If you ever wondered what ambient music of the 21st century could sound like, then you should explore the musical spheres of "ifsonever". This colorful debut-album draws a blueprint of an urban ambient club record of a parallel universe. A collage of beautifully improvised pieces, strictly recorded in "one takes". A gripping fusion that brings together the warm analog textures of classic vintage synthesizers and electronic urban ambiences.
Trying to appreciate the recent times of silence and deceleration, Daniel Helmer aka ifsonever has quickly developed a tonal language as a solo artist. With a non-compromising approach he would visit his studio, a cozy garden shed, to record one new track a day in strictly analog fashion as "one takes". His aim for this project was to capture the innocence and instinctive creative energy of the present moment. These 9 timeless pieces invite the listener to explore hypnotic and meditative atmospheres such as on the opener "transpose" or on "jonesy dreams of birds", as well as gloomy and almost mystical sounding tracks such as "total global" or "an unexpected error has occurred". ifsonever is a wonderful amalgamation of organic, laid-back sounds and electronic, club oriented elements.
Recorded at a time when social contact was forbidden and culture was at a standstill, many professional musicians felt challenged not to feel useless when performances and sessions in public were cancelled, while the need for expression, participation and communication persisted. What happens when you've read all your books, when you're tired of looking at screens, and when you're digitally saturated? Then the unbearable lightness of being will begin. Daniel Helmer decided to let his creativity flow into a picture depicting that moment in time. He gave himself the opportunity to reflect this period through the creation of music. Not always an easy thing to do when the only social interactions would be cats passing by or the sound of children playing nearby. However that can be exactly the perfect tranquil surrounding to ground oneself in the here and now and draw inspiration from the inside. This self titled album reflects a peaceful journey from start to finish.
Two old friends have been invited to contribute overdubs in hindsight. MillianX is a film composer and noise artist, a colleague from the viennese filmacademy. Both worked together on the film score for the science fiction movie "Rubikon" while the album was in its final stages. So a collaboration was an obvious choice. The creamy arpeggiated synthline created for "jonesy dreams of birds"' was extended by Millianx with some field recordings and a big cloudy synthwave that dips into a vast sea of noise.
Guido Spannocchi is a london based jazz musician. Both knew each other for several years but never had the chance to work together. When Daniel Helmer wrote "an unknown error has occured" he imagined a saxophone layer to accompany the existing synthline. But when the two musicians finally got together to record in the legendary jazz club "Porgy & Bess", Guido just let his creativity flow and jammed freely to the track with a totally unique jazz vibe.
Between film, music & sound Daniel Helmer is continuously searching for a spot to call his own. Expanding boundaries, pursuing the unheard and breaking genre definitions are byproducts of his curiosity and his drive to avoid repetition. Daniel Helmer resides in Vienna where he studied at the local film academy. He became one of the founding members of the techno-punk band "Gudrun von Laxenburg" with album releases on the legendary Skint label, collaborated with Sam Irl on "International Major Label" as the production duo "Mantra Mantra" and released an album as "Yogtze" on Gerd Janson's imprint "Running Back Incantations", together with Feater. At the moment he is focusing on his work as a film composer and is currently working on two feature films in Austria.
"ifsonever" offers a timeless ambience to help you slow down, reflect and enjoy the beauty of nothingness. It might help us to learn and accept a state of being unutilized without feeling futile and benefit from this rare silence.
The cover artwork is a collaboration between Jazz & Milk graphic designer Tim Schmitt and photographer Frank Hulsbömer. A scan of the artist's head, hand and foot was 3D printed, photographed and transformed into an otherworldly scenery that visualizes the musical atmosphere.
Freedom is both an integral and multi-layered topic for improvised music, describing its mechanics, aesthetics, and values and often an underlying political dimension as well. In the case of free jazz specifically, the word carries additional weight given the music's deep connection to the black liberation movement of the 1960's and 70's.
The passionate and unclassifiable work of Calgary-based improviser Jairus Sharif embraces each of these definitions of freedom and others, albeit strictly on its own personal and idiosyncratic terms. Since early 2020, the 34 year-old autodidact has been generating a steady stream of homespun solo recordings that forge unprecedented connections between hip-hop abstraction, cosmic skronk, outsider jazz, and staunch post-punk DIY ethos.
Leading up to the pandemic, Sharif's immersion in spiritual and exploratory jazz had culminated in him deciding to purchase an alto saxophone. Unbeknownst to him this instrument would be a catalyst for him to discover his own ardently individualistic artistic voice.
Prior to that point, he had always been somewhat of a solitary musical traveler. In 2002, he acquired his first instrument—a pair of Technics 1200s — but struggled to find local collaborators that had equal investment in hip hop culture. Ultimately, Sharif picked up the guitar, turning to the resilient local punk community, that had also nurtured both of his mothers some time earlier.
As Black Lives Matter gained momentum in the wake of George Floyd's murder, Sharif was suddenly flooded with an acute awareness of his own identity. It compelled him to zealously plunge headlong into open-ended spontaneous solo creation. Water & Tools, his strange and stirring debut for Toronto's Telephone Explosion Records (home to full-lengths from the likes of Brodie West's Eucalyptus, Mas Aya, and Joseph Shabason), offers a glimpse into this ongoing hermetic journey.
As Sharif dedicated himself to uncovering his own deeper musical truths, he assembled a home studio in his basement, cobbling together a drum kit from bits his bandmate had left at his house pre-pandemic, chaining effects together and outfitting the entire space with microphones. Somewhere between the chaos of child's treehouse and the tidy import of a shrine, this space (pictured on the album's back cover) consecrated his own imagination. He laid it out to maximize access to any and every tool in his arsenal, providing him a freedom to explore that he had never permitted himself to consummate before.
Within this cozy private universe, his recent purchase—the saxophone—assumed new meaning. It furnished a tangible connection to the black radicalism that mobilized free jazz, but also something far more personal. From a technical standpoint, the instrument was completely unfamiliar to him, yet rather than this being a hindrance to Sharif, his inexperience opened fruitful path forward, unencumbered by preconceptions. Resolving to shirk formal training, convention, and build his own understanding of it from scratch, allowed him to access his most raw, fundamental creative impulses. The Saxophone's inseverable bond with breath compounded this effect, echoing revelatory discoveries he had been making about breathing through yoga, research, and psychotherapy. Of course, the parallels with BLM's harrowing rallying cry—“I can't breathe”—were not lost on him either.
Water & Tools is a dense, contradictory statement with a blustery surface that shelters a soulful heart. It's generous music, exuding profound vulnerability—grappling with the loss of one his mothers, Lisa—all the while brimming with electric wide-eyed wonder. Almost every one of the nine pieces seems to carry some semblance of a groove, while remaining completely untethered from pulse. For Sharif, this collection is an expression of newfound lucidity, however for the listener his sonic concoctions act as powerful psychotropics. At points, there's a timelessness that's conveyed through the music's processional, ritualistic tenor, and yet there's an endless amount of wild, futuristic detail waiting to unspool at any given moment. Similarly, while this recording emerges from Sharif's private pilgrimage and personal emancipation, he also leaves room for collaboration. Woven throughout Sharif's one-man-ensemble textures, one finds Maxmilian Turnbull (of Badge Epoque, U.S. Girls, and Cosmic Range infamy) providing sundry keyboards and treatments, as well as his mixing skills.
Whether conjuring effusive psychedelia or plumbing introspective depths, the music that Jairus Sharif produces is singular, visceral, and wondrously unpredictable. Water & Tools sketches a raw, firsthand account of his nascent explorations within his own unbridled imagination.
Red vinyl LP. Lars Finberg, confirmed genius guy and poet laureate of sunken 21st century Rock, acts as manager in perpetuity of THE INTELLIGENCE, primary vehicle for his prolific creative swirl and a project that has taken on new shapes across myriad trials and shifts. The project began in his Seattle bedroom – a lad and his Tascam cassette 8 track – with the classic Boredom & Terror and has now landed in his Los Angeles studio apartment – an urchin and his Tascam digital 12 track – with Lil’ Peril, a new album that finds Finberg 1000% back at the controls. Over the course of 11 albums (!), The Intelligence has established a backbone that boogies through revolutions, allowing each jam-crammed dispatch to feel and sound admirably unique. The angular sharp shocks heard in earlier years have steadily evolved into the ballooning grooves heard on more recent releases (including Finberg’s recent solo work). Lil’ Peril is a dreamy gamble that captures this current bubbling penchant in The Intelligence’s inaugural homemade mode. With inspirational templates as far-flung as LES PAUL, THE SPECIALS, LEE PERRY and MARY FORD, Lil’ Peril pulls off the absurd shift “from ‘No-Wave SANTANA’ to ‘SCREAMERS recorded by JON BRION’”. Playing shoulder parrot to studio engineers has no doubt informed Finberg’s approach to home recording, specifically in how much further he can go without wincing budget-minded eyes staring him down. This is immediately sensed on the opener “Maudlin Agency,” which begins with canned minimal bleep and closes with a full recreation of the “Brass Monkey” hook. These surprise-attack conclusions are a running current throughout the Lil’ Peril’s program and demonstrates that the main lesson Finberg has learned in The Intelligence is to never reel it in. Centerpiece banger “My Work Here Is Dumb” ranks among the finest Intelligence moments existent and an apex in Finberg’s songcraft, boasting a bonkers arrangement and a thematic gnaw that is both brutal and playful. The collection closes with the epic “Soundguys,” a suite cut-up that fuses CAN and STEELY DAN into one of the most dastardly tunes available for consumption in the plague age. As Finberg himself states, “They may say this is ‘lo-fi’, but I say it’s ‘no-CGI’”. “The band disintegrated, so it devolved back to the core idea: if I do every aspect, it’s indestructible.” 20 years on and Finberg has finally let everyone know what The Intelligence actually means! All those wily experiments and warm flubs have come back full circle and the shit’s pure goddamn gold. Proof positive that there is always some sort of cute trouble, farcical tragedy and Lil’ Peril at play with The Intelligence. - Mitch Cardwell, 2022. Tracklisting: 01 Maudlin Agency 02 70's 03 Keyed Beamers 04 Purification 05 My Work Here Is Dumb 06 Lil Peril 07 Frog Prints In Preset City 08 Portfolio Woes 09 Soundguys
Library Music: Volume One is a sixteen track double LP collecting the North London drone pop band’s 7” singles, one-offs and compilation tracks spanning the first 14 years of the group’s existence. It includes synth pop, indie fuzz and moody motorik workouts, alongside pastoral folk sketches, dubby electronics and the occasional drone experiment. More immediate than their stretched out and slow-burning recent album tracks, the music here is taken from limited vinyl releases, album bonus tracks and music for compilations on labels as diverse as Bezirk Tapes, Second Language, Modern Aviation, and Concrete Tapes as well as the band’s current home, Where It’s At Is Where You Are. The compilation is a happily cohesive document of an inventive band that rarely stand still for long. The band says, “We wanted to gather all our early, scattered work before we move on to our next album, to remind ourselves (and others) of some of the poppier and less characteristic things we’ve done. We’ve always felt a lot more relaxed and freer making one off things for people – it’s a chance to try things that might otherwise be daunting on a full record”. Always a prolific group this is by no means an exhaustive collection, the title giving a clue to how much more they have left to share. “We have been introduced to loads of bands that we love initially through non-album compilations – Broadcast, The Chills, Stereolab, Piano Magic, Flying Saucer Attack amongst others – we wanted to add our own to that (admittedly slightly daunting) lineage.” The Leaf Library are formed around the core group of singer Kate Gibson, former Saloon and Singing Adams guitarist Matt Ashton, guitarist SJ Nelson, drummer Lewis Young and bass player Gareth Jones. They have released three studio albums (Daylight Versions, About Minerals and The World Is A Bell) as well a number of electronic and experimental albums and EPs, remix compilations and long form tracks. They have also released five Monument CDRs; an on-going series of experimental solo and side projects on their Objects Forever imprint. The band have collaborated with musicians as diverse as Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele, singer Ed Dowie, noise group Far Rainbow and string collective Iskra Strings, and have provided music for a number of exhibitions, films and performances. A collaborative album with Japanese artist Teruyuki Kurihara is due in late 2022 on the Mille Plateaux label. Tracklisting: 01 Agnes In The Square 02 Goodbye Four Walls 03 City In Reverse 04 Walking Backwards 05 Soundings 06 Diagram Loop 07 The Greater Good 08 Losing Places (ISAN Remix) 09 A Stone In Water 10 Architect Of The Moon 11 Tired Ghost 12 The Still Point 13 Wave Of Translation 14 Badminton House 15 Tranquility Bass 16 A Gap In The Trees
After an extended hiatus punctuated by rare live performances, The Shaolin Afronauts returned on September 16th with The Fundamental Nature of Being, an epic five LP box-set release that expands the sonic vision of the ensemble to towering new heights of burning afro-funk alongside esoteric and ethereal new sonic excursions.
The Fundamental Nature of Being's expanded musical journey further explores the wide spectrum of the band's musical identity – with each of the five parts designed as both standalone records, while also offering a singular listening journey across the band's expansive musical world. This, the first part in the collection, draws on the band's rich influence of 1970s West and South African music, alongside American jazz, psych rock, soul, and cinematic soundtracks of the same era.
The Vee-Gees (previously known as the Versatile Gents) were from Greensboro, N.C. The versalite Gents started the Group in 1967 originally as "the African Americans" performed at a talent show at Gillespie Park School, Geensboro, North Carolina. Soon After Virginia Massey a Senior Music Major at A&T joined the group and the name was changed to Gin And The Gents. After one year Massey left the Band and their name was changed to The Versatile Gents. They reformed and called themselves the Vee Gees in the early 70’s. The Members are Robert Evans (Vince Evans of the NFL's brother), Nathaniel Herring, Anthony Quick, CC Stewart, Cecil Young.In their band. Carlton Morales that wrote "Vallotte" and played with Julian Lennon on guitar. Kevan Tynes on drums. Walter Carlton on bass. They recored a beautiful sweet soul side call It’s hard to say so long on Jump in 1973. They came back to the studio in 1974 and cut the incredible Talkin on Jump off records. Vee Gees Talkin is the ultimate crossover tune, Spun by some of the best deejays in the world in the last 3 decades including Arthur Fenn, Keith Money, Andy Burns, Buey, Andy Dawes, Alexander Dimitriades Bentley, Jens Chreisti, Steven Clancy and many others. We’re sure you will be singing all day “Hey brother, brother, just had a talk with the man yesterday.. what did he saaaaaay? “
SPLASH RECORDINGS DROP 4 UNRELEASED GEMS ON A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE DISC!
The recent popularity of the Undercover Agent compilation released via Suburban Base proved that there is incredible demand from jungle connoisseurs in the ground-breaking music from the Juice Records & Splash Recordings labels.
To celebrate this heritage, a special limited edition picture disc has been pressed to showcase 4 tracks that represent the labels historic discography, including some in demand unreleased exclusives.
Back in 1994 Splash Recordings released its debut single Barracuda b/w Rougher Pt 3. The A side of this picture disc see’s these 2 pioneering tracks remixed and remastered.
Rougher gets a 2022 update from X Nation, who adeptly keeps the spirit of the original which bringing a fresh twist on this classic cut. Track 2 see’s the high value Barracuda getting a full phat remaster from the original studio DAT recording.
The flip side see’s two previously unreleased versions of SPLASH005, one of the labels most sought-after singles, with these versions finally seeing the light of day. This unreleased version of Liquidizer has been hidden in archives for 27 years now. Originally recorded for DAZ & DJ’s who supported the label to test on acetate dub plates back in the day.
The Identity (DAZ VIP Version), again was created strictly for the artist to play in his sets so has also never seen an official release until now.
The artwork for this picture disc is styled around the labels original artwork, created to look like an expanded oversized version of one of the centre labels pressed onto vinyl. A great addition to any junglists record collection, will look stunning framed on your wall or spinning on your 1210’s!!
Confunktion Records very own Mr. Confuse returns with a cover version of Carmen's 80s Boogie/Electro funk classic "Time To Move" in true organic funk style. The songs kicks off with heavy funk drums, an incredible horn section, funky guitar sound and soulful vocals by Houston / Texas soul singer Alicia Cibola.
On the flip side you have the Instrumental of the track with feature of Hammond C3 player Hakan Türközü who plays the lead vocal line on his organ.
Don't miss this release on Confunktion Records as the 7 Inch vinyl version is limited to 300. Be quick on this one!
7" + Purple & Green Vinyl LP[27,94 €]
Limited Edition of 7,000 on Purple & Green Vinyl. Limited Edition of 3,000 on Purple & Green Vinyl w/ Bonus 7“. Celebrating the 15th anniversary since its original release, Dinosaur Jr. is reissuing “Beyond” on limited edition coloured vinyl with a special edition white vinyl 7”. With J Mascis on guitar & lead vocals, Lou Barlow on bass and vocals, and Murph on drums, the 2007 album was the first from original lineup Dinosaur Jr. since 1988’s “Bug," kicking off a Dinosaur Jr. reunion which has lasted longer than the band’s original run. "Less a theme park of the past and more of an actual trip there… Beyond is nostalgic for everything but the band's own glory days. If anything, it's an exercise in making their entire twenty-year output sound contemporary again.” - Zach Baron for Pitchfork // "very existence of this new album is a surprise, but the real shock is that Beyond is a flat-out great record, a startling return to form for J Mascis as a guitarist and songwriter and Dinosaur Jr. as a band… Beyond isn't merely a worthy album from a reunited band, it's simply a great record by any standard.” - Stephen Thomas Erlewine for Allmusic Guide // "There is something almost eerie about how exactly the Dinosaur Jr of 2007 sound like the Dinosaur Jr of 1988: on occasion, listening to Beyond feels discombobulating, like meeting an old school friend 20 years on…" - Alex Petridis (The Guardian).
Purple & Green Vinyl LP[24,33 €]
Limited Edition of 7,000 on Purple & Green Vinyl. Limited Edition of 3,000 on Purple & Green Vinyl w/ Bonus 7“. Celebrating the 15th anniversary since its original release, Dinosaur Jr. is reissuing “Beyond” on limited edition coloured vinyl with a special edition white vinyl 7”. With J Mascis on guitar & lead vocals, Lou Barlow on bass and vocals, and Murph on drums, the 2007 album was the first from original lineup Dinosaur Jr. since 1988’s “Bug," kicking off a Dinosaur Jr. reunion which has lasted longer than the band’s original run. "Less a theme park of the past and more of an actual trip there… Beyond is nostalgic for everything but the band's own glory days. If anything, it's an exercise in making their entire twenty-year output sound contemporary again.” - Zach Baron for Pitchfork // "very existence of this new album is a surprise, but the real shock is that Beyond is a flat-out great record, a startling return to form for J Mascis as a guitarist and songwriter and Dinosaur Jr. as a band… Beyond isn't merely a worthy album from a reunited band, it's simply a great record by any standard.” - Stephen Thomas Erlewine for Allmusic Guide // "There is something almost eerie about how exactly the Dinosaur Jr of 2007 sound like the Dinosaur Jr of 1988: on occasion, listening to Beyond feels discombobulating, like meeting an old school friend 20 years on…" - Alex Petridis (The Guardian).
First vinyl single off the debut album from La Pambelé!
Bogotá's La Pambelé steps into the ring for their debut release on Names You Can Trust, and with it, they've joined a storied history in Colombia's prized salsa tradition. This new generation of talented musicians have come out for the 1st round with fire, grit and determination. Brass, keys, percussion and lyrics blast at you from all angles, evocative of the way the orchestra's namesake, the legendary Palenque boxer, used his flashing fists within the squared circle.
Featuring a full album of original compositions that have been faithfully recorded and mixed under the guidance of Mario Galeano Toro (Frente Cumbiero) and Daniel Michel at Mambo Negro Records, the approach is a return to the roots of salsa dura that continues to thrive in Colombia's deep musical training grounds. The promising future of the genre shines in the capable hands of La Pambelé and its players, and this introduction is sure to help vault the group from up-and-comer to title contender status.
Leatherette are, by their own description, “five shy guys who sometimes get off the stage and punch people,” a quintet whose car-crash of jagged noise, twisted love and dark, anguished melody has delivered a remarkable – and eminently combustible – debut album. The group are based in Bologna, but all hail from different towns in Italy. These five young men – singer/guitarist Michele, bassist Marco, drummer Francesco, guitarist Andrea and saxophonist Jacopo – are united by a profound need to make music, to express themselves naturally and honestly. The group bonded over wildly differing influences – everything from midwestern emo gods American Football, to Berlin-era Bowie, to James Chance & The Contortions, to rap and electronic music – to create a dense, passionate, articulate sound of their own. You can file them near fiery post-punk kindreds like Shame and Squid, or unhinged 90s noisers like Unwound or Hoover, or squalling No Wavers like James Chance, but the truth is there are few bands like Leatherette that walk this Earth. Their first full-length, Fiesta follows an EP, Mixed Waste, recorded during lockdown. The songs on Fiesta precede the Covid era, though the group spent the pandemic rewriting and overhauling their maiden batch of songs at leisure. The result is an astonishing and remarkable debut: poetic, caterwauling, broken and beautiful. The album title is “a reference to the bullfights in Pamplona,” the group say. It’s no empty metaphor. “Bullfight is a strange ritual,” they elaborate. “And we’re against bullfights, but they’re fascinating in an iconographic way. And also metaphorically, violence flows on both sides, but in a feastful way. It’s similar to a concert, really – you’re expressing violent things, in a physical way. And people react to that, which is wonderful, which is fantastic.”
After selling millions of records, playing to countless fans, and fronting
some of the most influential rock bands in history, award-winning
songwriter and vocal dynamo Joe Lynn Turner speaks his mind as loudly
as possible on his eleventh full-length offering and Mascot Label Group
debut, 'Belly of the Beast'
This new solo album has is the heaviest music Joe Lynn Turner has ever
recorded. Joining forces with iconic producer Peter Tägtgren Hypocrisy, PAIN,
Lindemann, the New Jersey- born powerhouse conjures up the kind of heavy
metal that not only makes you throw your fist in the air, but also makes you think.
He states "It’s Good versus Evil. We’ve all got an Angel on one shoulder and a
Devil on the other. We’re in the Belly of the Beast, trapped in the System, and
there’s no way out of it."
We may already be this screwed, the Builders and the Butchers seem to
be suggesting throughout Dead Reckoning
High time we started shouting about it. The Builders and Butchers combine
folksy Americana with a hybrid of Celtic and Southern gothic traditions, creating a
sound that doesn 't evoke one specific location as much as a patchwork of longforgotten places. The guys keep things loose on their third album, Dead
Reckoning, whose 12 songs were recorded in a series of live takes with few
overdubs. The result isn't as lushly textured as Salvation Is a Deep Dark Well,
which found the Builders beefing up their old-time folk songs with 21st century
production, but it 's far more representative of their live show. Apart from guest
performers Amanda Lawrence and Zy Orange Lynn, both of whom add string
parts to the album, Dead Reckoning is a stripped- down effort, with acoustic
instruments taking precedence over their electric counterparts and a sense of
raw, off-the-cuff energy reigning supreme. Pressed on Turquoise Color vinyl.
Bird Moves is the jazz offspring of the German band Noetics. Originally founded as a classical formation devoted to jazz, the members quickly explored its related styles. Without genre restrictions Bird Moves are mixing Jazz with anything from Funk to Dub and had their debut release on Agogo Records.
For this single they recorded two amazing new songs. "Easebound" is a groovy-breezy laid-back tune while late night cruising, slowing down or just daydreaming. On the flip you'll get an afro-tingled mid-tempo track named "Kakra Kakra".
This double-sider is pressed on limited black and orange recycled wax.
12 track vinyl LP and 18 track CD including bonus single and demo recordings. The Daggermen all went to Rede Secondary School in Medway, Kent. It was a school for those that failed their 11 plus, or who passed it but decided to go there anyway (as Jon pretends). Being in some of the same classes we became friends and found we liked the same music; The Who, The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Beatles and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. We started going to Carnaby Street, wearing Beatle boots and generally being a bit Moddy. Dave’s older brother, James Taylor, played organ in The Prisoners and we’d listen to cassette tapes of them along with other local band, The Milkshakes as we bounced on the trampoline during P.E. After watching both bands play live in local venues such as the M.I.C. club in Chatham we formed The Daggermen, working out who was going to play which instrument as we stood next to the now demolished school sports hall. No one can quite remember who thought of the name, The Daggermen (it was me) or how comes Jon was playing bass on a guitar in the band at the very start and then Terry took over when we started gigging (it was because he had a real bass guitar and a car). But the next thing was that we were supporting The Prisoners both in Medway and places such as the 100 Club in Oxford Street. Then, one sunny day at around the age of 17, I bumped into Billy Childish walking across a field. I formally introduced myself and told him that he should definitely come and see our band that night because we were “fucking brilliant”. He did turn up and bought us a tray of whiskies whilst we were on stage, a sure sign that he had liked it. This led to him and Russ Wilkins, bass player in The Milkshakes alongside Billy, asking us if we wanted to record an E.P. for Russ’s label, Empire Records. This was our first ever recording called Introducing The Daggermen which was made in a brick arch under Rochester bridge that we rented for £2 a week to rehearse in and lovingly referred to as ‘The Hole’. We got ourselves a “manager” (our mate, Vic Templar) and started playing up and down England, drinking as much as possible in the van on the way to each gig, often paralytic by the time we went on stage. Our musical style was a sort of mixture of punk and mod and we played covers such as ‘Heatwave’ (The Who’s version) and ‘Get Ready’ by the Temptations, along with Dave and Terry’s originals. Then came a change of line up when Jon resumed his position as bass player and Terry left for America. We started wearing military jackets thanks to Jimi Hendrix and made our first long player, Dagger In My Mind (I got the title off an episode of Star Trek, although I remembered it wrong and it should have been ‘Dagger Of The Mind’). The album was produced by James Taylor and Allan Crockford of The Prisoners at Woolly Studios on the Isle of Sheppey in 1986. This line-up played together for a couple of years up and down the country (also with a few gigs in France) before we called it a day and sailed off into the future in bands such as The James Taylor Quartet, The Kravin’ “A”s, The Solarflares and Billy Childish and The Buff Medways. As energetic youths we had a lot of fun and I am very proud to have been part of The Daggermen. We hope you enjoy these recordings, now all gathered together for the first time. Sincerely yours, Wolf Howard, Cafe Mozart, Chatham CD TRACKLISTING 1 – It’s You I See 2 – What Do I Do For You 3 – There’s No Escaping 4 – I’ve Been Hurt 5 – I Have Lost Heart 6 – You Were Meant To Be 7 – Every Moment 8 – Dagger In My Mind 9 – That Girl 10 – D’you Think Of Me 11 – I Feel The Regret 12 – I’ve Been Searching 13 – Now It’s You I Need 14 – Ivor 15 – One More Letter 16 – I Wish You Were Mine 17 – Bundle 18 – No Reason LP TRACKLISTING 1 – It’s You I See 2 – What Do I Do For You 3 – There’s No Escaping 4 – I’ve Been Hurt 5 – I Have Lost Heart 6 – You Were Meant To Be 7 – Every Moment 8 – Dagger In My Mind 9 – That Girl 10 – D’you Think Of Me 11 – I Feel The Regret 12 – I’ve Been Searching
London 4 piece Crows’ second album, ‘Beware Believers’ conjures a dark and visceral post-punk that’s been hardened by years of notoriously rowdy live shows, Crows have amassed a legion of die-hard fans since they formed back in 2015 and cultivated a singular, much-adored presence in the British alternative music scene. Equal parts ferocious and hedonistic, the incoming ‘Beware Believers’ LP arrived off the back of their critically acclaimed 2019 debut ‘Silver Tongues’, international touring and festival appearances, and shared stages with the likes of IDLES, Wolf Alice, Girl Band, Metz, Slaves and Protomartyr. Following the release of their long-awaited debut album on the IDLES-run Balley Records back in 2019, Crows immediately set to work on its follow-up and by January 2020 they were already back in the studio tracking what would become the ‘Beware Believers’ LP and then Covid hit. “Once we knew Covid was here to stay, we took the first break we’ve taken since we released our first single ‘Pray’ in 2015. Being locked down for three months unable to finish the last bits of the record was very frustrating but it did mean we could come back to the album with fresh ears and make sure it sounded like it should: a true representation of Crows.” Loud, cathartic and abrasive a quintessential Crows record it certainly is. “Beware Believers has felt like a marathon, a real endurance test that’s been a long, winding road filled with highs and lows and plenty of twists and turns”, frontman James Cox says: “The majority of the themes on the album came from what was going on in the world around Summer 2019 when we started writing the album. Covid wasn't in our lives and the biggest impact was Brexit and the madness our government were putting us through. I was reading a lot of J.G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut, mad dystopian novels, whilst all this craziness was going on around us and it was a weird headspace to get into.” Tracklist: 1) Closer Still 2) Garden of England 3) Only Time 4) Slowly Separate 5) Moderation 6) Healing 7) Room 156 8) Meanwhile 9) Wild Eyed And Loathsome 10) The Servant 11) Sad Lad
LP colour is Transparent Blue. Stu Spasm (Lubricated Goat) + Russell Simins (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) + Kate Bjelland (Babes In Toyland). One off garage-sleaze rock masterpiece. Remastered. Crunt began in 1993 as a kind of indie rock supergroup and had their 1994 debut album touted by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. Crunt's members included guitarist/vocalist Stuart Gray (aka Stu Spasm) and bassist/vocalist Kat Bjelland. Gray was well-known in Australia by the start of Crunt for his past involvement in the bands Salamander Jim and the horn/guitar punk rock of Lubricated Goat, which included drummer Martin Bland who went on to play in the Monkeywrench. As for Bjelland, she was the frontwoman/guitarist for the Minnesota-based Babes in Toyland. Crunt was rounded out by drummer Russell Simins, who was the full-time sticksman for New York City's Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Each of Crunt's members were temporarily residing in Seattle when Gray conjured up the idea of starting a new group. After writing almost a dozen songs, the trio entered Seattle's Ranch studio in February of 1993 with Simins and Gray acting as the producers, and their friend John Dunleavy -- known for his work with the Supersuckers -- filling the role of engineer. A year passed before the group's self-titled album was released on February 15, 1994, on Austin, TX label Trance Syndicate, owned by Butthole Surfers' drummer King Coffey. The record was the imprint's first release from a non-Texas group. The debut of the full-length album coincided with the "Swine"/"Sexy" single on Australia's Insipid label, which was known for releasing singles by other bands such as the Cows, Urge Overkill, and the Jesus Lizard. Prior to the releases, there had been talk that the band was not going to just be a side project, but a full-time band in the same tradition as Babes in Toyland and the Blues Explosion. The trio had even planned a full-scale tour. By January of 1995, however, Crunt came to an end.
Moody Blue Vinyl. RIYL: Codeine, Mazzy Star, Bedhead, Red House Painters, Low & American Music Club. Previously unreleased 16-track recordings that predates Spain’s 1995's landmark “The Blue Moods Of Spain". Includes original studio version of "World Of Blue" featuring Petra Haden on violin. Re-mixed and re-imagined by Kramer for Shimmy-Disc. The LP “World of Blue” features Merlo Podlewski on guitar. I first met Merlo in 1994. My sister Rachel Haden, who had been working with him at the Rhino Records store in Westwood, knew I was looking for a new guitarist for my band, and introduced us. Merlo is one of those guitarists whose playing is so smooth and effortless he makes anyone feel like they can play. He had an instinctual grasp of harmony and theory, which brought a great counterpoint to the technical knowledge and finesse of lead guitarist Ken. Spain played their first official L.A. gig with Merlo at a club called Pan, which shortly thereafter changed its name to Spaceland. We opened for Beck and That Dog. We played at Spaceland a lot and at other small clubs and coffee joints like the Troy Cafe (owned by Beck’s mom), Congo Square Coffee House in Santa Monica, Alligator Lounge, and others. At a certain point that year we were ready to record our first 7” single, and I reserved some time at Poop Alley. Poop Alley didn’t seem like the ideal recording setting. The walls and floors were made of concrete, and there was no soundproofing. The mixing board was in a loft up this steep staircase with no guard rails. But it worked somehow. On the particular day we recorded basics there was a rain storm which you can clearly hear in the background. The ceiling was so high there almost wasn’t a ceiling. A steep curving staircase with no guardrail led up to a loft area where the console was located, and next to it, on a custom-built, guardrail-less ledge, a queen-sized bed where Tom slept. I paid for the session with weed I grew in my closet. We set up and it started raining. Tom put a microphone outside. After tracking was finished, Petra came over and overdubbed violin. There was a cushioned area where I remember sitting during mixdown. We stayed good friends with Tom. We recorded a couple more songs with him the following year. Tom recorded lots of bands at Poop Alley. My sisters’ band That Dog, Beck, the Rentals, Rod Poole, Tom’s band Waldo the Dog Faced Boy, and many others. There were parties in the alley. There would be a keg of beer. Everyone was well-behaved. The most dangerous it got was when Kenny asked Beck if he was a Scientologist. I remember laughter and happiness the most from those parties. Not long afterwards Tom shut down the studio. Luckily for us, the tapes still exist. On those tapes are five songs, all of which are represented here. “I Lied” and “Her Used-To-Been” were released on the 7”, the remaining three have never been released before now. I can’t remember who I sent copies of the 7” to but shortly after it came out I got a call from an A&R executive at Geffen inviting me to their offices to talk. “I love your songs,” I remember him saying to me, “but my boss David Geffen won’t let me sign you because he doesn’t know how to market you.” Eventually a label that did want to sign us got in touch with me. Restless Records, they had decent distribution, so I said to myself, “Why not?”. This eventually led to the recording that produced our debut LP “Blue Moods of Spain”. Track listing: A1. Her Used-To-Been A2. Phone Machine A3. I Lied B1. Dreaming of Love B2. World of Blue
For Fans Of Garage Punk, Power Pop, Cheap Trick, Dollyrots, Suzi Moon, Pretenders, Blondie, The Muffs, 5.6.7.8’s. One part pop, one part poison, all “poolside glitter punk,” Hayley and the Crushers offer up a tsunami of bad girl power. Anointed “the naked embodiment of power pop punk” by New Wave icon Josie Cotton (who signed the band to her Kitten Robot Records in 2021), Modern Adult Kicks is their most ambitious and self-possessed album to date. Produced by legendary LA punk producer and ex-Screamer Paul Roessler (TSOL, Josie Cotton, Richie Ramone), the album conjures up the electricity of first-car freedom, the woes of suburban isolation and the lurid pleasures of Y2K chat rooms all wrapped in the warm glow of a late-night infomercial. While the content is no doubt “adult,” there’s no shortage of kicks to be had. The California-to-Detroit transplants have injected even the most bummer of subjects (addiction, heartbreak) with a potent venom of caffeine and heart. Sure, BUST Magazine once likened the band to a bag of Sour Patch Kids, but this new album reveals fresh depths of flavor. Crafted in a post-Covid world, Modern Adult Kicks is exactly what it advertises to be: a more put-together, wiser “big sister” to the band’s sunny 2020 release, Vintage Millennial. Like finally being old enough to party with the babysitter, Kicks is a shining example of how growing up can actually rule. In the Crushers’ world, growing jaded isn’t an option and there’s never a good reason to stop dancing. Tracks 1 Taboo 2 Cul de Sac 3 She Drives 4 Broken Window 5 I Fall 6 Click and 7 Act Now 8 Lost Cause 9 California 10 Sober 11 No Substitutes 12 Overexposed
Released on gold vinyl, ‘The Coincidentalist’ and ‘Dust Bowl’ are two discs of Howe Gelb filled with randomness and happenstance, a typical treasure trove spanning all genres from alt country to Cohen-esque grandeur. They traverse, unflinchingly, his chameleon-like repertoire. This deluxe re-issue includes ‘Dust Bowl’ on vinyl for the very first time, with the records housed in a gatefold sleeve featuring updated artwork and liner notes. ‘The Coincidentalist’, originally released in 2013, features a raft of friends and collaborators including Bonnie Prince Billy, Andrew Bird, M. Ward, Steve Shelley, and Jason Lytle of Grandaddy with John Parrish on mixing duties. Ever the focal point of Giant Sand and Gelb releases, the Arizona Desert serves as a key inspiration for the record, animating the barren landscape with stories of those that have navigated them. Praise for the release was not short, with AllMusic proclaiming that it’s “one of Gelb's most realized efforts; despite its relaxed, airy presentation, it's musically and lyrically provocative, as poetic, strange, and mysterious as the desert itself." The accompanying collection ‘Dust Bowl’ is a personal sketchbook of songs, a more stripped back set than it’s counterpart. Featuring everything from the country blues of ‘Porch Banjo’ and ‘John Deere’, to off-kilter piano ballads like ‘The Old Overrated’ and ‘Reality Or Not’ and the deconstructed desert pop on ‘Forever And A Day’ and the fragile ‘Man On A String’. ‘Dust Bowl’ is an insider’s view of Howe’s songwriting craft, a unique insight into the man himself. “‘Dust Bowl’ was primarily for fans that have followed me for a while. ‘The Coincidentalist’ is for the friends of the fans.” Howe told Under The Radar. While Nightlife magazine reported that; “Without warning, the Giant Sand frontman and polymorphous countryman dropped this compilation of house recordings via Bandcamp… At a time when so much harmless, soulless folk resonates, Howe Gelb is a mandatory point of reference for any fan of the genre.”
Gelb's semi-surreal observations lace things together perfectly.” UNCUT. Filled with loud and lucky abandon; heady steady and direct singalongs for the heart in constant turmoil. Giant Sand’s esoteric journey to ‘Heartbreak Pass’ is an exotic journey through hails of Youngian guitars, off-the-cuff jazz piano rounds and beautiful alt-country yearning. While containing only new songs for this album, this feels like a greatest hits and as such is a perfect entry point for Giant Sand neophytes. Fire Records give ‘Heartbreak Pass’ a long overdue repress on white vinyl, with new liner notes and updated artwork. There’s a roll of the tongue, a couplet and some convolution underpinning Giant Sand’s 2015 opus ‘Heartbreak Pass’. So the story goes, so legend has it, a mere 30 years into their career, almost ten years ago, Giant Sand were regrouped and, for a fleeting second, someone made sense of it all (the words, the genre swapping sound, the roll call of friends and accomplices, the majesty of polar opposites attracting). On ‘Heartbreak Pass’ the result from this lengthy travelogue is a memoir filled with trinkets exchanged along the way. Sure, the Arizona desert is there, gritty and unforgiving but Howe's one-man-band is joined by a throng of well-wishers, this time around including Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Grant-Lee Phillips and Ilse DeLange (Common Linnets), The Voices Of Praise Choir, oft-time collaborator John Parish, Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, Maggie Bjorklund on pedal steel, Italian singer/songwriter Vinicio Capossela and many more. It’s an album that travels far and shows its road weariness in places but it’s a celebration in all its ragged glory. In his original sleevenotes Howe pondered the fact that “The album is roughly broken into three volumes - loud and lucky abandon; heady steady and direct (Gelb's vision of Americana); and the heart in constant turmoil and something about a transponder.” He summarised: “I can't recommend it, nor do I regret it. It's been one life split into two.”
Tracks: A1 Heaventually A2 Texting Feist A3 Hurtin' Habit A4 Transponder A5 Song So Wrong A6 Every Now And Then A7 Man On A String B1 Home Sweat Home B2 Eye Opening B3 Pen To Paper B4 House In Order B5 Gypsy Candle B6 Done
How many hardcore, let alone metal, bands exceed all previous efforts on their third LP? Some might argue that ‘Feel The Darkness’ was Poison Idea’s prime. You could present ‘Master Of Puppets’ and ‘Reign In Blood’, if you’re so inclined. Let’s face it, these are a dying breed of exceptions to the rule. And yet, like an icepick in the eye socket of logic, here stands Foreseen with ‘Untamed Force’. In the landmine ridden field that is crossover, where bands can all too easily get it so wrong, Foreseen not only survive the death sentence of their sophomore record “Grave Danger” (2017), but head out on a blunt force killing spree. ‘Untamed Force’ indeed. Rarely has a record title been more fitting. Vocalist Mirko Nummelin sounds more pissed off than ever, 12 years on. Drummer Mårten Gustafsson’s arms and feet generate enough power to make Finland energy self-sufficient. And finally, pushing the band over the edge, separating Foreseen from us feeble bastards, we have new member Ville Valavuo joining Jaakko Hietakangas to form what is arguably the scene’s deadliest six string tag-team. Foreseen’s power is untamed but at the same time borne from hard work, a love for the craft and their musical community, and absolutely no excuses. Dig in, endure, stomp out, shoot to kill. Foreseen are for headbangers who haven’t been brainwashed by click tracks and digital recordings. Foreseen are for punks who can deal with a synth intro and harmonised solos. In 2022, ‘Untamed Force’ is the guiding principle that can inspire, but not be replicated, by the Kings of Hardcore Thrash.
1. Soldier's Grave 2. Birthright 3. Tolerance of Abuse 4. Suffocating Routine 5. Oppression Fetish 6. Cold Comfort 7. Serve Your Purpose 8. Desensitized 9. Untamed Force
Bootlickers of the Patriarchy was written about Senator Susan Collins
and her infamous press conference after the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford
hearings
It's about women who succeed from undermining the success of other women or
choose to gain success from exploiting the oppression of other women. This is a
character who has taken many forms throughout history, the kind of woman who
seems perfectly content playing Gamma to the Alpha male. "Bootlicker" is my
direct challenge to the notion of 'women supporting other women,' and the
falsehoods and unrealistic expectations that comes with a statement like that." "I
wrote the song to be played in two different arrangement styles, the first half
being slow and haunting and the second going balls- to- the- wall rage. I was re
exploring a lot industrial/proto industrial music I had listened to as a teenager in
the 90s and used some elements of synth/drum machine sounds to convey all
that anger, panic and darkness." // "Well, why not do a cover of your influences as
a B- side? I was obsessed w/ the Ministry album 'With Sympathy' when writing
tracks for my upcoming album. It is the record Al Jourgenson has stated multiple
times that he's ashamed of most, which is saying a lot considering this man's
autobiography. I teamed up with my friend Heather Elle of Flossing, formerly of
post punk bands Bodega and The Wants for this collaboration. It's my first official
recorded track where I'm playing guitar, so as the saying goes, it's never too late
to pick up a new instrument and get totally lost in it."
Ireland based American songsmith Peter Broderick announces the release of Piano Works Vol. 1 (Floating in Tucker’s Basement) — a new comprehensive album of solo piano recordings out November 25. Shining a light on the artist’s ongoing piano-based compositions, this release offers an opportunity to celebrate his more intimate work. A comprehensive collection of Peter Broderick’s piano work to date, these recordings were originally captured in Berlin to accompany the 2017 sheet music book Piano Works Vol. 1. The book contains 20 pieces for solo piano and a download code to access new recordings of all 20 pieces. Up until now, the only way to hear these recordings was to purchase the sheet music book. This release sees the original recordings receiving further treatment and processing by Tucker Martine in the customised echo chamber of his studio in Portland, Oregon—the region where Broderick grew up. The clean and unaffected original recordings were intended for educational purposes, so for this release Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths suggested to ‘throw the recordings into the well’, for a more dynamic and conscious listening experience. “We gave these recordings a bit of a makeover. We sent all the tracks over to legendary engineer/producer Tucker Martine, who processed all 20 of them with unique tape and reverb treatments, utilising the echo chamber of his Portland studio, Flora Recording & Playback,” explains Broderick. Now these recordings are set to be released on doublevinyl, double CD and all digital platforms.
Debut album from Cardiff indie-pop collective Live, Do Nothing (ex-members of Rosehip Teahouse/Deadlines). Hiraeth & Loathing explores feeling disconnected from your childhood self. The record questions if there is value in re-discovering this inner child, or if we’re better off eschewing the trappings of nostalgia and living for our current reality instead. Since their debut Ep, 2018’s “Oh Dear”, a collection of scrappy indie-punk songs from the original four-piece line-up, the band has doubled in size (and is still growing!). Countless numbers of new instruments have been added to the mix, including: vibraphone, toy piano, violin, flute and saxophone. Recorded by Thomas V. Westgård at Sail Loft Studios, mixed by Bob Cooper at Chairworks Studios and mastered by Leon West at After Life Studios. Track listing: The Hardest Band In Cardiff Presents...; The Real Animals Of...; Mouse Death; All Wax No Honey; Novelty is the Best Policy; A Legendary Run; Hopelash; Delusions Of Ganja; Oso Jugoso; Too Late In The Day; Chromatic Delight
UWUW, is: Jay Anderson (Badge Epoque Ensemble, Biblical, Lammping) -
drums Ian Blurton (Ian Blurton's Future Now / Change of Heart / C'mon)
guitar and production Jason Haberman - Bass (Yaehsun / Dan Mangan )
Bass Guest Vocals by: Drew Smith and Marker Starling
After many years of playing in mutually respected bands, Jay Anderson and Ian
Blurton came together through a run of shows, backing mutual friend and singer/
songwriter, Kate Boothman as her drummer, and guitarist, respectively.
Anderson's and Blurton's connection were instant, and a plan was set to start
making music together. As ideas began to take shape, Anderson suggested
bringing in Jason Haberman, a talented bassist, who Anderson had seen play
with Toronto indie- folk band, The Wooden Sky. The trio hunkered down for two
days in Blurton's Pro Gold Studios, jamming out ideas. With the intersection of the
many different bands and genres each brought to the table, songs came together
quickly, with Blurton editing and sculpting, as they went along. Realizing they
didn't want an instrumental record, they layered on bright horns and smooth
vocals, lifting the songs from instrumental jams, to the undefinable yet distinctive
sound that is, UWUW. Saxophonist, Jay Hey, was brought in to provide horn
arrangements, along with Tom Richardson on trombone and Patrick McGroarty
on trumpet, all three contributing on every song.
Giving the songs a voice, literally, are two of Toronto's most distinctive
songwriters: Drew Smith (Bunny, The Bicycles), providing his trademark, 60s
harmony pop and lyrical prowess to Staircase and Landlord ; and Marker Starling;
adding his distinct, easy- glide, story- telling charm to Box Office Poison, and
Scattered Ashes.
Alex Chilton’s Feudalist Tarts (1985) found the Big Star/The Box Tops front man re-making himself as a southern fried hipster offering up original tunes like “Stuff” and sly soulful covers “B-A-B’Y” and “Thank You John” while adding a horn section to his road tested rhythm section. Side Two features a number of rare Chilton tracks including “Rubber Room” and “Wild Kingdom.” Chilton had hit rock bottom in his home town of Memphis after 15 years of substance abuse and hard partying. He chose New Orleans as the city where he would re-make himself. One of the benefits was exposure to all the music he would hear down there. He immediately immersed himself in the city’s laid back, stretched out grooves. The covers he chose for this record were songs he heard being played by older musicians around New Orleans. Expanded version includes a side of rare tracks. Out of print on vinyl since 1986. Includes seven original Chilton compositions. Original album release coincided with his most prolific touring schedule since his days in The Box Tops.
One of the most distinctive recordings of the early 2000s, Jon Brion's one
and only solo album Meaningless is a master course in power popinspired art rock songwriting and production
Uniting psychedelic rock, classic songwriters, tape loop soundscapes, and
chiming folk jangle, the record offers a vivid backdrop for Brion's wry
observations on love, reality, and the elusive quality of meaning €"all that plus a
mind-bending Cheap Trick cover. More than two decades later, its emotional core
remains undiminished by year's spent in the major label wringer, both before and
after its creation. Like his work with artists including Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple,
and Elliott Smith, Brion's songs offer depth and resonance, and like his
soundtrack work on films like Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, I Heart Huckabees,
and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, its scope is widescreen. Remastered
and artist approved, Meaningless can finally be heard the way Brion intended.
Since first forming in 2014, New York trio THICK have triumphed at
turning the harshest truths into wildly exhilarating punk songs
On their second album Happy Now, vocalist/guitarist Nikki Sisti, vocalist/bassist
Kate Black, and vocalist/ drummer Shari Page deliver their most complex and
confessional work yet, exploring everything from self-sabotage and insecurity to
victim-blaming and destructive relationships. Raw, irreverent, and brutally honest,
Happy Now ultimately offers both joyful catharsis and much-needed instruction
for living well in turbulent times.The follow-up to 5 Years Behind (a 2020 release
praised by Under the Rader as a "dazzling debut album…laced with anger, humor,
killer guitar riffs, and soaring punk melodies"), Happy Now finds THICK working
again with producer Joel Hamilton (Iggy Pop, Juiceboxxx) and recording at Studio
G Brooklyn. In a profound evolution of their previous work, the 11- track album
encompasses sharper arrangements and stickier hooks and a more explosive
energy — an effect often achieved through the sheer force of their three voices
singing in unstoppable unison.
'Perseverance', originally released in 2020, is a collection of songs which
didn't find their place on official albums by Peter Kernel throughout the
years, twelve demos, alternative takes and rarities that come with twelve
additional tracks available on a digital download card
One way or another these songs shaped the duo and brought them where they
are today. These tracks are like them: funny, sad, too much, not enough, flawed
and simply human!
Keiji Haino/Jim O'rourke/Oren Ambarchi
Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose” This makes the...
- 1: A Contradiction Has Started To Devour The Numerical Sequence We May Be Made Aware That Normal??? Exists Finally
- 2: Thinking Too Deeply I Skipped Over ¯¯ Three By Three
- 5: “Caught In The Dilemma Of Being Made To Choose” This Makes The Modesty Which Should Never Been Closed Off Itself Continue To Ask Itself: “Ready Or Not?” Part 1
- 6: “Caught In The Dilemma Of Being Made To Choose” This Makes The Modesty Which Should Never Been Closed Off Itself Continue To Ask Itself: “Ready Or Not?” Part 2
- 7: Overtightened The Screw Of The Password To Mystery Drowns In An Infinite Number
The renowned trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi return to Black Truffle with their 11th release, “Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose” This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: “Ready or not?” Demonstrating once again their commitment to continual experimentation in instrumentation and approach, the record begins with a long-distance collaboration made in response to a commission from New York’s Issue Project Room in 2021 during widespread lockdowns and travel limitations. A unique piece in the trio’s extensive body of work, this side-long epic finds Haino performing on metal percussion, O’Rourke on electronics and Ambarchi on gongs and bells. Initially dominated by rapid patterns on resonant, high-pitched tuned percussion, the piece sets Haino’s dynamic and dramatic performance against a calm backdrop of cycling electronics, thrumming gong strikes and hanging bell tones. The performance develops a heightened, intensely concentrated atmosphere reminiscent of Haino’s classic Tenshi No Ginjinka or his Nijiumu project; when Haino moves to clashing hand cymbals in its second half, the piece’s ritualistic energy suggests aspects of the music of Tibetan Buddhism.
The remainder of the double LP documents the trio live at Tokyo’s SuperDeluxe (the location of all but their very first recording) in a wide-ranging set recorded in December 2017. The concert opens, in another first for the trio, with Haino on drums, O’Rourke on Hammond organ and Ambarchi on his signature Leslie cabinet guitar tones. Haino’s explosively untutored approach to the drumkit will be familiar to some listeners from the radical duo iteration of Fushitsusha heard on Origin’s Hesitation. Setting flurries of rapid activity against moments of silence, his drumming here at times suggests Milford Graves in its tumbling toms and thudding kick-drum propulsion. Accompanied by O’Rourke’s organ and Ambarchi’s guitar, which in their shared use of long tones and shifting modulation speeds almost blend into a single voice, the opening sections of this performance are some of the most magical music the trio has committed to tape thus far.
After an interlude of spoken vocals in both Japanese and English, Haino makes a dramatic entrance on guitar. Against O’Rourke and Ambarchi’s increasingly intense electronic backdrop, Haino unleashes a stunning passage of slowly moving chromatic melodies and sudden shrieking explosions bathed in distortion and reverb. By the time we reach the third side, the guitar/bass/drums power trio is established and lurches into a passage of massive, lumbering rock that threatens to fall apart at every beat, O’Rourke’s strummed chordal work on six string bass creating a harmonic density equivalent to a second guitar. An abrupt edit throws the listener in media res into a frantic locked groove grounded by fuzzed out bass patterns and caveman drums. As Haino moves through a variety of approaches, from massive edifices of stuttering fuzz to ominous swarms of feedback, the trio eventually stumble into a kind of Harmolodic military tattoo, Haino’s guitar weaving and slashing across the rhythm section’s irregular accents. Moving through an epic opening duet for O’Rourke on Hammond and Haino’s wailing guitar, the fourth side eventually ramps up into a frenetic finale of mad bass riffing, crackling snare hits and guitar squall.“Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose” This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: “Ready or not?” is a testament to the continuing power and invention of this trio, who continue to seek out new terrain after over a decade working together. 2LP set presented in a lavish gatefold sleeve on heavy stock along with inner sleeves containing live pics by Tsuyoshi Kamaike. Photography by Jim O’Rourke, design by Lasse Marhaug and translation by Alan Cummings.
As three souls plunge down from the heavens, death and destruction can be felt hanging in the air like a foul stench. Red clouds swirl around a black sun that never sets and an erratic clock ticks off-tempo, moving faster and slower before rewinding and starting anew.
“Let me paint you a picture…” vocalist Mikey Arthur sings, welcoming listeners with a dramatic opening scene. It takes a skillful guide to navigate the darkest depths of hell. And, as The Gloom In The Corner depict in their second full-length album Trinity, death is merely the beginning of the series of chilling adventures
Purposefully aligning their song count with unlucky number thirteen – a reoccurring symbol in the ever-unfolding Gloom Cinematic Universe or GCU – it comes as little surprise to longtime fans that each of the Australian quartet’s enticing tracks intertwine to form an interlocking tale; this time centered around the appropriately labeled unholy trinity.
Comprised of previously deceased characters Rachel Barker, Ethan Hardy, and Clara Carne, the group’s bloody battle is woven throughout the album as the anti-heroes determinedly claw their way back to Earth from the Rabbit Hole dimension, slashing, shooting, and extinguishing anyone who dares to oppose their quest. Yet, for the Girl of Glass, Ronin, and Queen of Misanthropy, there is clearly more to the story than what can be contained within a single package.
Projecting a wide and complex web of lore, plot twists, and tongue and cheek humor, frontman Mikey Arthur, guitarist Matt Stevens, bassist Paul Musolino, and drummer Nic Haberle, have been producing highly detailed concept releases since their formation. And, consistently filling in more missing pieces of the puzzle with every body of work, the band equate each new record to a fresh season of The Umbrella Academy dropping on the streaming service of your choice. Because, just as a great TV series captivates viewers with its music and storytelling, the quartet’s work provides a complete experience designed to allow fans to check in with their favorite characters, all the while enjoying a cinematic new soundtrack.
For those just joining the GCU, as well as those looking for a quick refresh, 2016 debut album Fear Me introduced listeners to main protagonists Julian “Jay” Hardy, a Section 13 agent consumed by anger over his girlfriend Rachel’s death, and Jay’s gloom (later known as Sherlock Adaliah Bones), a demonic entity who at times takes over Jay’s body as a host vessel. 2017 EP Homecoming tells the tale of Jay’s brother Ethan, a war veteran suffering from PTSD, who upon discovering his brother’s struggle, kills himself as part of a Dante-style rescue mission to bring Rachel back to life. In 2019 EP Flesh and Bones, we’re introduced to Clara Carne, a past witness to one of Jay and Sherlock’s crimes, who instead of taking revenge, began a twisted love story with Sherlock, only to be murdered by his forced hand. And 2020’s Ultima Pluvia EP where we finally learn of Sherlock’s past as an ancient warlord under the tyrannical King Baphicho, and see Sherlock and Jay’s deaths ushered in by Section 13 opponent and New Order leader Elias DeGraver and his gloom Atticus Encey.
After 2016’s Fear Me, the band admit that their original intention was to jump straight into the events of Trinity before pivoting to create Homecoming, Flesh and Bones, and Ultima Pluvia. However, upon reflection, primary storywriter Mikey Arthur believes that pushing the timeline back actually provided greater opportunity for the group to properly flesh out the songs and plotlines for their sophomore studio record.
Indeed, while Trinity re-introduces the three central “heroes” of this new arc, it’s important to understand that while familiar, the characters are not carbon copies of who they were earlier in the story. And neither is the band who brought them to life.
Fully embracing the weird and whacky has never been a struggle for The Gloom In The Corner. Rather, it’s together with this attitude that the group come away with special moments such as the fascinating old and new dynamic between neighboring tracks “Red Clouds” – a song whose initial version predates the formation of The Gloom In The Corner as an official band – and “Gravity” in which a demo intended for future material was adjusted to fit the sonic drop.
Mirroring this evolution in the band’s musical approach, a sense of growth can also be seen projected in the characters and story that the quartet chronicle across the thirteen tracks.
Classifying their individual sound as an intricate form of “cinema or theater-core” due to the depth and breadth of their musical approach, features, samples, symphonic elements, and conceptual nature, The Gloom In The Corner continue to prove that they’re more than just a simple concept band.
In fact, similar to character theme music in movies and video games, the group seamlessly play off their diverse sonic story in a variety of ways. Continuing to breathe new life into older staples from their catalog, the quartet reworked their infamous “Oxymøron” breakdown from Fear Me into an impactful moment in Trinity’s “Nor Hell A Fury” and sprinkled audio easter eggs of this sort all throughout their new music for fans to discover.
Listeners are also brought further into the world of the GCU with the help of what The Gloom In The Corner call their “casting process.” Like picking actors for a musical, the band meticulously selected eleven different vocal features and several additional voice actors to bring the album and characters to life. Described as a 50/50 split between notable talents such as Ryo Kinoshita (Crystal Lake), Joe Badolato (Fit For An Autopsy), and Lauren Babic (Red Handed Denial), as well as talented friends and family like Elijah Witt (Cane Hill) and Mikey’s sister Amelia Duffield, each featured artist brought their own touch and realistic spark to the characters they portrayed.
For in the end, as much as Trinity and it’s cast live within the confines of their own supernatural worlds, themes such as falling out of love (Gatekeeper), battling depression (Obliteration Imminent), and standing behind women’s empowerment (Nor Hell A Fury), are ones that many can relate to or understand. And, while most individuals may avoid drowning their woes by way of transforming into full-on egotistical murderers like the Queen and King of Misanthropy and the gang, The Gloom In The Corner have illustrated that time and time again, life’s a little more fun when you can crack a smile. Taking a page from the trinity’s playbook: try to avoid the end of the world. But if you can’t…at least spend it with a killer soundtrack.
Pkew Pkew Pkew is looking on the bright side. As a band that lives and dies by touring, it’s been a while since they could say fuck it, we’re taking a year off to make something. That decision wasn’t entirely theirs, but 2020 handed them an opportuni-ty. Open Bar doesn’t navigate any of the tired pandemic tropes. Instead, Pkew is celebrating the things that make their lives awesome, even if those things suck sometimes. The band was forced to take a step back and use a slower approach. Mike Warne (guitars/vocals), Ryan McKinley (guitars/vocals), Emmett O’Reilly (bass/vocals) and David Laino (drums) bounced song ideas off Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, and went into the studio with Jon Drew, who produced their first album. “Since we didn’t have a hard deadline to finish, we felt a lot more freedom to take our time and mess around in the studio. Jon is the kind of producer that is down to try anything, so we had lots of fun playing with trumpets, old moog synths, glockenspiels,” says Warne. In a weird year, the familiar Pkew themes—navigating life’s small daily troubles with a sardonic grin and your friends by your side—are comforting, nostalgic. The result is tight, rowdy modern punk with the heart and soul of classic rock. It’s cracking a beer in the park, plugging in the AUX cord on a summer road trip, cramming into a sweaty bar with your friends and a million strangers.
Daniel Barenboim will turn 80 on November 15th. Warner Classics are celebrating the great musician, who has had tremendous success since the ‘60s both at the piano or conducting, with an album made in the mid-90s that is close to his heart and Argentinian origins, though aside of the classical repertoire. Tangos Among Friends - Mi Buenos Aires Querido (named after a tango by Carlos Gardel) proves again all the talent and swing Daniel Barenboim has, and has been a huge success since released by Teldec on CD in 1996.
“I spent the first nine years of my life in Argentina and only in Argentina. The rest of the world was far away. Everything Argentinian was close to my heart. The concepts of cosmopolitan existence or international thinking were not yet awakened. The air that I breathed was Buenos Aires, the language that I spoke was Spanish porteño and the rhythm to which I danced (figuratively speaking…) was the tango! My idol was Carlos Gardel. Nearly half a century later I came back not only to Argentina, not only to my childhood but especially to my Buenos Aires querido and many other wonderful melodies that make up this sentimental record.”
Daniel Barenboim – from album booklet
In an interview made in the 90s, Daniel Barenboim added: “In Argentina during the late 1940s there was no chasm between classical music and the tango, in the way there was a chasm between classical music and jazz. The tango is a basic part of Argentine popular culture; when you went to a restaurant or a party, that was the music you would hear. (…) Already as a child I was crazy about the tango. I still am.”
“The young Daniel found himself drawn to the bittersweet tales of passion, tragedy and nostalgia sung by Gardel, the tango singer and songwriter who exerted a major influence in popularizing the tango throughout the Western hemisphere and Europe. (…) Over the following decades Barenboim would regale friends at home or at parties with piano arrangements of tangos he heard in his youth. (…) Barenboim never thought of sharing his passion for tangos with the public until last year when he had returned to Buenos Aires for concerts with his Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra. At a reception he found himself talking tangos with a young Argentine. Learning of Barenboim’s interest in performing them, he offered to drum up a few local musicians with whom Barenboim could play tangos at home. That’s how he met Mederos and Console. “The first day we just played for fun,” Barenboim says. “Then we decided to make a recording. So we rehearsed for two days and made the record in one afternoon.” (…) Once he, Mederos and Console set out to record their tango program, Barenboim was surprised at how much of the characteristic tango rubato – a subtle alteration of rhythmic weight and accent – he still had at his fingertips, more than four decades after leaving Buenos Aires. That said, he insists on sharing credit for the success of the disc with his Argentine colleagues. “What they gave me was a pure sense of the tango, especially in the melodic freedom over a very strict rhythmic foundation. Performing tangos, you are constantly anticipating the downbeat or coming after it; this is part of the tradition. What I gave them was the necessity to rethink certain aspects – say, the volume and transparency of sound – so that playing tangos didn’t sound routine.”
– The Chicago Tribune, Oct. 1996
The mysterious afro-soul of The Shaolin Afronauts first echoed across the dance floors of Australia in early 2008, captivating audiences with a highly evolved and unique approach to avant-garde soul music matched with an improvisational pedigree that immediately set them apart from their peers. In the almost fifteen years since the ensemble's debut they have released three albums on Freestyle Records and toured across Australia and around the world.
After an extended hiatus punctuated by rare live performances, The Shaolin Afronauts return with The Fundamental Nature of Being, an epic five album release that expands the sonic vision of the ensemble to towering new heights of burning afro-funk alongside esoteric and ethereal new sonic excursions. This expanded musical journey further explores the wide spectrum of the band's musical identity – with each of the five parts designed as both standalone records, while also offering a singular listening journey across the band's expansive musical world. This third part in the collection starts to explore influences from spiritual & free jazz sounds while still retaining the band's rich pan-african groove pallette.
- The complete score by Tom Holkonborg aka Junkie XL - 180g Double LP Multicolor Vinyl: Blue and Pink & Orange and Black - 12x12 Art Print - Heavyweight Gatefold Packaging with Matte Finish // Description: Waxwork Records is excited to present GODZILLA VS KONG Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL (Army of the Dead, MAD MAX Fury Road)! Godzilla vs Kong marks the fourth in Legendary Pictures' titan universe. Godzilla & King Kong are back and they've led us to the center of our hollow Earth. In this movie, directed by Adam Wingard, tech mogul "Apex" and a band of conspiracy theorists, tech moguls, and scientists try to harness the power of the center of the earth to defeat a suddenly violent Godzilla and return King Kong to his original home. Junkie XL delivers a score that convinces you that this coalition of outcasts from across the world has to be correct. Huge orchestral arrangements perfectly match the intensity level of the multi-level coverup that hides the truth about the hollow earth theory. The composer complements awesome battles with sweet flashes of humanity from the two monsters, leaving hearts both racing and breaking for the creatures. Waxwork Records is thrilled to present the official double LP score with 180 gram "Godzilla" & "King Kong" colored vinyl, deluxe packaging, heavyweight gatefold jackets with matte coating, 12x12 art print, and more!
After an extended hiatus punctuated by rare live performances, The Shaolin Afronauts returned on September 16th this year with The Fundamental Nature of Being, an epic five LP box-set release that expands the sonic vision of the ensemble to towering new heights of burning afro-funk alongside esoteric and ethereal new sonic excursions.
The Fundamental Nature of Being's expanded musical journey further explores the wide spectrum of the band's musical identity – with each of the five parts designed as both standalone records, while also offering a singular listening journey across the band's expansive musical world. This fourth part in the collection continues to explore the ensemble's influences in the world of free jazz & spirtual jazz, and also more esoteric incidental music territory.
Trauma and tragedy transfer from one generation to the next. As difficult as it may be, we still possess the power to break the cycle and start anew. Fit For A King ponder the pain of these cycles and the possibility to end them on their seventh full-length offering, The Hell We Create Solid State. The Texas quintet—Ryan Kirby [vocals], Bobby Lynge [guitar], Daniel Gailey [guitar], Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary [bass], and Trey Celaya [drums]—explore this ebb and flow with a deft, yet delicate balance of sharp metallic intensity and soaring melodic energy. Drawing on real-life experiences, the band members collectively rallied around Ryan and his family as they endured seemingly unending turbulence… “The album is a reflection of the events that happened throughout the pandemic,” recalls Ryan. “In short, my wife and I adopted children and had to homeschool them. She almost died from a stroke. The Hell We Create is by far the deepest and most personal record we’ve ever written.” “Falling Through the Sky" represents the mental struggles I had dealt with during the pandemic, and how little my upbringing prepared me to deal with it. Between adopting two children, my wife having constant health issues, and me losing almost 70% of my income, I was an absolute wreck. I thought my religious upbringing and faith would be enough to help me when adversity struck, but when the tidal wave came, I struggled immensely. So many think just having faith is enough to pull you through anything life throws at you, but the reality is, it makes a lot of us complacent in our personal growth.
After an extended hiatus punctuated by rare live performances, The Shaolin Afronauts returned on September 16th this year with The Fundamental Nature of Being, an epic five LP box-set release that expands the sonic vision of the ensemble to towering new heights of burning afro-funk alongside esoteric and ethereal new sonic excursions.
The Fundamental Nature of Being's expanded musical journey further explores the wide spectrum of the band's musical identity – with each of the five parts designed as both standalone records, while also offering a singular listening journey across the band's expansive musical world. This fourth part in the collection continues to explore the ensemble's influences in the world of free jazz & spirtual jazz, and also more esoteric incidental music territory.
Mastered from the original analogue tape transfers by
Kevin Gray.
Expanded double LP edition featuring four rare bonus
tracks.
Printed and pressed at Pallas on 180 gram vinyl and
housed in a deluxe gatefold reverse-board jacket.
Features rare photographs and words from original pianist
Bob Hammer.
Officially licensed from Bethlehem / BMG and blessed by
the Charles Mingus estate.
1957 was a mammoth year for Mingus. He was on fire,
recording several seminal titles including ‘The Clown’,
‘Mingus Three’, ‘Tijuana Moods’, ‘East Coasting’ and ‘A
Modern Jazz Symposium Of Music And Poetry’.
Now, with the support of the Charles Mingus Estate, New
Land are proud to present, for the first time, the most
expansive LP edition of ‘A Modern Jazz Symposium Of
Music And Poetry’ to date. A wonderful set featuring an allstar band alternating throughout of Jimmy Knepper
(trombone), Shafi Hadi (tenor and alto sax), Bill Hardman
and Clarence Shaw (trumpet), Dannie Richmond (drums),
Horace Parlan and Bob Hammer (piano), with narration by
the fabulous Mel Stewart.
This is the ultimate edition, including all available outtakes
and material related to the session, the recordings have
been remastered from the original tape transfers and
lacquers cut by Kevin Gray, housed in a gatefold sleeve on
reverse-board finish and printed by Pallas.
A stunning album which is sometimes overlooked from the
vast Mingus catalogue, however it emanates from one of
his most creative periods and today stands out as a
sublime conceptual recording.
It’s a beautiful phenomenon,” says Trampled by Turtles’ Dave Simonett, before adding with characteristic sincerity: “Everybody should see it." Simonett is talking about alpenglow, the natural event that washes mountains on the horizon in smoldering red and pink light, just before the sun sets or rises. It’s a harbinger of change––the space between new and old. It’s also the name of Trampled by Turtles’ new album, the band’s tenth. “My favorite part about making music is making records,” says Simonett. “I’m really excited about this one.” Produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Alpenglow offers resounding proof that the beloved six-piece from Minnesota remain uncontested champs of understated virtuosity, literary songwriting, and a joyful hodgepodge of folk heart, rock-and-roll muscle, and string-band zen. Almost 20 years after first getting together, Trampled – that’s lead singer and songwriter Dave Simonett, bassist Tim Saxhaug, banjo player Dave Carroll, mandolinist Erik Berry, fiddle player Ryan Young, and cellist Eamonn McLain – also keep finding new ways to surprise us and one another. While many of the songs on Alpenglow grapple with change, none try to offer answers. Nothing’s neat and tidy. Instead, Trampled find endearing ways to sit in the tension, hope, and sense of loss that transitions and hard questions create. Then, just by expressing what’s there, the music offers comfort.
Recital publish an album of lost Derek Bailey sessions recorded with his friend and collaborator Charlie Morrow. In 1982, Bailey and Morrow organized a series of live concerts and studio sessions around New York. This new LP is a boiled-down rendering of the master tapes that lived dormant in Charlie’s archive, until now.
Throughout the album, Bailey and Morrow are joined by a rotating cast of New Wilderness players including frame drum percussionist Glen Velez, sound poet Steve McCaffery, publisher and artist Carol E. Tuynman, composer Patricia Burgess, and multimedia artist Michael Snow. The results are surprising and marvelous.
The energy of the live concert, which makes up the first half of the record is particularly exciting, with Morrow and McCaffery’s visceral sound poetry and Glen’s frame drum echoing off of Derek’s fret stabs, and Carol, Patricia, and Michael’s horns swirling through the air between. A very raw and intense recording.
The second side of New York 1982, is a session recorded at The Record Plant, and is clearly more ‘produced’ with panning and tape echo processing, plus experiments with water whistles and other devices.
Derek Bailey stands out for personal achievements as a guitarist and for his way of bringing together performance meetings ranging from duos to large ensembles. Working across style and genre, his music and musical unions have inspired the breakdown of boundaries, embracing all flavors of musicians as improvisers. Players focusing on the moment, “without memory.”
LP Edition of 400 copies on 175gram black vinyl, including an 8-page booklet with program notes and artwork.
Derek Bailey - Acoustic Guitars
Charlie Morrow - Trumpet, Ocarina, Voice
Glen Velez - Percussion
Patricia Burgess - Saxophone (1,3,6)
Steve McCaffery - Voice, Saxophone (1,3)
Carol E. Tuynman - Trumpet (1,3,6)
Michael Snow - Trumpet (3)
The legendary Brownsville duo of Lil Fame and Billy Danze followed up their first group single "How About Some Hardcore" with their first full-length studio album, To The Death, in the Spring of 1994, and they haven’t let up the pressure since. While some solo offerings came earlier - most notably Fame’s appearance on The Hill That’s Real compilation- the classic aggressive energy the two emcees exhibit while trading rhymes back and forth is what street-rap fans have come to know and love from the group. If you are not into the that smash-ya-face-in style, then simply put, the Mash Out Posse is not for you. The album was produced entirely by DR Period, except for track "Guns N' Roses" (produced by Silver D), and it solidified what has become a successful 30 year career for M.O.P. Fame and Danze haven’t waivered from their grimy, crimey, high-energy boom bap style to this day, and the songs on this album established that fact early on. Tracks like "Rugged Neva Smoove", “Blue Steel”, “Guns N’ Roses”, and the robbery-story driven "Heistmasters" are early indicators of the ruckus they would later bring on anthems like “Stick To Ya Gunz” and “Ante Up”.
- A1: Here If You Want Me 03 01 Min
- A2: Overtime 02 44 Min
- A3: Up To You 03 13 Min
- A4: Second Thought 03 30 Min
- A5: Anytime You Want 04 16 Min
- A6: Heavy Like Air 02 53 Min
- A7: For A Minute 02 49 Min
- A8: Mercury’s Ladder 01 34 Min
- B1: Empty Eyes 02 56 Min
- B2: Bottleneck Boys 03 30 Min
- B3: Balloon 01 43 Min
- B4: Riversong 03 45 Min
- B5: The World Can Wait 03 05 Min
- B6: Not A Blue Sky 02 50 Min
- B7: Coffee Girl 03 11 Min
- B8: ) | Death 01 36 Min
Public Possession proudly presents Aiden Ayers debut album „Venus Copper Rose“. A few words by the artist himself: „ Venus Copper Rose came to me in a dream. The three words are all the same thing, symbols of beauty and material formations of love. Together they are a VCR (videocassette recorder) - a memory machine, a portal into fantasy and myth + a transcriber of dreams. The songs on the album represent the past five years of my life. The oldest of them were written and first recorded in 2017 and the youngest barely made it to the mastering session on time. I am always writing and recording, travelling to and fro, on little islands off the coast of BC, down to the California desert, or in makeshift basement studios throughout Vancouver. Every song has grown up and been captured in a different way - the album is a wild garden of misfits, flowers and weeds. I hope that people feel nourished by this album - I believe that is the ultimate role of music, like another kind of food, light, or love. I hope these songs and this album can help people see the beauty and poetry that flows through their own lives.“
Produced by Fussell and co-founder Alana Pagnutti and
mixed by Joel Ford (Ford & Lopatin, Yes/And), ‘Honey
Harper & The Infinite Sky’ features the premiere of The
Infinite Sky, a stacked backing band consisting of longtime
bassist and contributing writer Mick Mayer, pianist John
Carroll Kirby (Solange, Steve Lacy), Spoon keyboardist
Alex Fischel, guitarist Jackson MacIntosh (Drugdealer,
Jessica Pratt), pedal-steel player Connor Gallaher (Black
Lips, Calexico), and TOPS drummer Riley Fleck.
Within the first few moments of the self-titled new album,
Honey Harper and The Infinite Sky deliver a dashed-off
statement on the trappings of country music. Despite the
high level of conceptualization that went into its creation,
the record embodies an irresistibly loose and grooveheavy sound that hits with an immediate impact. While
previous album, ‘Starmaker’, was touted as “country music
for people who don’t like country music,” ‘Honey Harper &
The Infinite Sky’ is “country music for everyone.”
At any given time, you’re likely to find Jim Lauderdale making music, whether he’s laying down a new track in the studio or working through a spontaneous melody at his home in Nashville. And if he’s not actively crafting new music, he’s certainly thinking about it. “It's a constant challenge to try to keep making better and better records, write better and better songs. I still always feel like I'm a developing artist,” he says. This may be a surprising sentiment from a man who’s won two Grammys, released 34 full-length albums, and taken home the Americana Music Association’s coveted Wagonmaster Award. But forthcoming album Game Changer is convincing evidence that the North Carolina native is only continuing to hone his craft. Operating under his own label, Sky Crunch Records, for the first time since 2016, Lauderdale recorded Game Changer at the renowned Blackbird Studios in Nashville, co-producing the release with Jay Weaver and pulling from songs he’d written over the last several years. “There's a mixture on this record of uplifting songs and, at the same time, songs of heartbreak and despair—because that's part of life as well,” he says. “In the country song world especially, that's always been part of it. That’s real life.” Lauderdale would know: He’s been a vital part of the country music ecosystem since 1991, when he released his debut album and began penning songs for an impressively long roster of country music greats. “When I was a teenager wanting to be a bluegrass banjo player, I never would have imagined that I would get to work with people like Ralph Stanley and Robert Hunter and George Jones and Elvis Costello and John Oates,” he muses. “Getting to work with them inspires me greatly to this day, and I know it always will.” From rollicking guitar riffs on “That Kind of Life (That Kind of Day)” to the slow, sweet harmonies of “I’ll Keep My Heart Open For You,” Game Changer shows off Lauderdale’s ingenuity as a singer, songwriter, and producer—while reestablishing him as one of Americana’s most steadfast champions..”
For Fans Of... Sunny and the Sunliners, Rene Y Rene, Ray Camacho. The second offering by The Revues continues to explore the intersections between Tejano music, Latin Soul, and funk. This updated take on Rene y Rene’s coveted version of “Mi Corazón Esta Llorando” is tough but with a touch of sweetness. On the flip side we get the instrumental version only with the vocal melody being swapped out for tenor and alto saxes, heightening the Tejano influence and flavor. Also Available From The Revues: Take Me For A Little While 7”. Tracks: 1. Mi Corazón Esta Llorando 2. Mi Corazón Esta Llorando
For Fans Of... Sunny and the Sunliners, Rene Y Rene, Ray Camacho. The second offering by The Revues continues to explore the intersections between Tejano music, Latin Soul, and funk. This updated take on Rene y Rene’s coveted version of “Mi Corazón Esta Llorando” is tough but with a touch of sweetness. On the flip side we get the instrumental version only with the vocal melody being swapped out for tenor and alto saxes, heightening the Tejano influence and flavor. Also Available From The Revues: Take Me For A Little While 7”. Tracks: 1. Mi Corazón Esta Llorando 2. Mi Corazón Esta Llorando
Tony Q & Barry Scran, also known as production and DJ duo 't e s t p r e s s', substitute their well-beloved moniker on Bout To Get It EP and explore a more world-building approach to their productions; featuring four patient and intricate pieces in search of new ground.
‘You Should Be Listening’ opens up the A-side with its larger-than-life and levitating textures, held in suspense by its solidified groove. ‘Bout 2 Get It’ comes in steady, and hits pace at the one minute park; the track's bassline opening and closing for maximum effect, and a tantalising vocal-loop that helps build as much suspense as it keeps the track in forward-motion.
‘Vivarium’ show’s off the pairing's knack for hybridized methods, with its UKG drum patterns and trance-tinged leads; paired with a sense of optimism and world-building, it feels like a special and versatile record; fit for multiple purposes. Finally ‘Horsepower’ shuts things down with enough energy and grace to close any set. The duo unleash a barrage of layered brakes against a silhouette of hypnotic leads and gnarly bass; embodying many of the ideas and knowledge from previous tracks, into a breathless masterstroke.
Vinyl only
Zurescen Records... A new UK based label with a focus on purely vinyl and bringing some high quality releases. To start things off Jase delivers Zure01 which consists of 2 full sides of stripped back minimal tools. On the A side 'The Shapers', a straight up dreamy journey with a tight bass and shuffling hats with plenty of energy for the dancefloor. B side 'Ectopic' is a serious tool to drop anytime, with its cheeky bass, mad modulations and twisted vocals. A record worth bagging!!
A band that broke before it really got started. With a rotating cast of musicians centred around a now sober ex-gold prospector Drew Thomson, Single Mothers has evolved into an art project and collective rather than a typical band with 20+ members in and out. Now with a new offering, Everything You Need, Thomson once again shows us why he is one of Canada's most talented songwriters and lyricists. Reinventing the band on nearly every record, the new album shows Thomson’s growth as a songwriter and ability to consistently create records that never lull and keep you on the edge of your seat and wanting more after every listen.
Low Company presents Yuta Matsumura’s Red Ribbon, a sequence of introspective, lavishly melodic dream-songs and amphibian atmospheres recorded in scattered periods over 2018-21. Having played in bands like Low Life, M.O.B. and Orion, and the duo Jay & Yuta (with Jay Cruikshank), Red Ribbon is Matsumura’s first solo outing, and represents a conscious effort to move away from guitar-based songwriting. He composed its nine tracks mostly on piano - layering vocals, bass, keyboards, flute (courtesy of Maeve Parker), violin/cello (Laurence Quinn) and clacking drumbox rhythms into dynamic, dubwise avant-pop structures which are supple and spacious but fizzing with detail and vivid inner life. The laconic 4/4 pulse, heat-warped synth-tones and haunting vaporous melodica of opener ‘Box Garden’ set the tone: its surreal psychedelic patternings barely concealing a deep sting of longing and regret. The cryptic lyrics suggest chance encounters, hidden logic, missed opportunities, fatalism, serendipity. A city submerged: everyone else paused mid-movement, while you’re allowed to swim free and fish-like through the streets, over the rooftops...‘Tangled Orchid’ is a tense night-drive through dry desert heat and into the unknown, running away from your old life, chased down by dust-devils of half-baked schemes and abandoned plans, while ‘Myth Machine’ drops the tempo and something mind-altering, guiding us on a tripped-out dub-disco scuba among alien flora and fauna, a world of impossible shapes and sensations. At which point, the mood of the album decisively shifts, firstly with ‘Sake No Otoh’, sung in Japanese by Haruka Sato: an instant-classic, breathtakingly intimate lover's lament that sounds like it got lost on its way to heaven and is now doomed to orbit the earth forever. The songs that follow continue in this more confessional, imploring mode. As if the travelling's done, the baggage has been cast off, and we’ve arrived at our destination, where the real process of rebirth and repair can begin. The music’s textures become less overtly dubby and electronic, with more of an organic, earthy, chamber-pop/avant-folk feel, at once sad and hopeful-sounding. Three songs in particular bear the influence of Eno’s 70s work (and its mutant bedsit offspring Lifetones, Flaming Tunes, etc): ‘‘E. Potential’, where baroquely chorused vocals - half-agonised, half-beatific - teeter on top of simple oscillating piano loops, and the stately, dawntreading ballads ‘Tabula Rasa’ and ‘No Sleep For Birds’. The bulk of the album was made prior to lockdowns and all of that; its themes of reset, self-examination, the need to f**k it all off and take spiritual stock, are timeless. Though they perhaps have a more bittersweet resonance now the world has returned pretty much to how it was, only worse. Track list: 1. Box Garden 2. Tangled Orchid 3. Myth Machine 4. Red Ribbon 5. Soko No Ato 6. Tabula Rasa 7. E. Potential 8. No Sleep For Birds 9. Zookeeper's Trial
- A1: St Pauli Second Line (Live)
- A2: Something's Missing (Live)
- A3: Arabesque Breakin&Apos; Suite (Live)
- A4: Theme From Beverly Hills Cop (Axel F)
- A5: Four Two Three (Live)
- A6: Silent Heroes (Live)
- B1: Carry On (Live)
- B2: Munich Psycholympics (Live)
- B3: Ghost Walk (Live)
- B4: Let The Music Play (Live)
- B5: Where Do We Go From Here (Live)
A unique longplayer by Germany's Funk champions The Mighty Mocambos: 'Scénarios' is a wild journey through iconic performances captured on 8-track tape, including celebrated versions of breakdance favourites like 'Axel F.' And 'Let The Music Play' as well as brand new original material composed especially for recordings in unusual settings.
Hamburg's deep funk chefs are known for their intuitive recordings that capture the energy of a live performance, and with this record they go all the way.
Just before the pandemic, the group recorded an in-store live session at legendary Hamburg record shop Groove City and taped an impromptu performance at JAM PDM! breakdance battle in Potsdam. Both were released on vinyl 45s, quickly sold out and became secret weapons for DJs. While most bands shifted their stage to the studio in 2020, producing an abundance of isolated lockdown-inspired material, the Mighty Mocambos – never shy of an antidote - took the mobile version of their recording studio on the road.
With no audience allowed at the Pitt Hopkins Music Session charity concert, the group used the occasion to compose meditative folk-soul instrumentals to be performed exclusively on stringed instruments. Sweaty funk does not work via video stream, but the format provided a welcome opportunity to create something entirely different. Even without electricity and drums, the cinematic "Four Two Three" and "Silent Heroes" are unmistakably recognizable as Mocambo themes.
When you follow Nina Simone's credo that an "artist's duty is to reflect the times", it became evident that once the world slowly started opening up again, further concerts would be captured on the group's portable Fostex R-8 tape machine. Luckily, restrictions fell on the very evening that the band hit the open air stage at the Import Export in Munich on September 11th 2021. The extended afrobeat-inspired jam on J.J. Cale's "Carry On" witnesses people celebrating and dancing together again for the first time after a year and the manic "Munich Psycholympics" unleashes all bottled-up energies that had being lying dormant.
The slightly kafka-esque "Ghost Walk" was taped during a soundcheck for a concert that was eventually called off for safety reasons, reflecting once more the uncertainty of the time. The last scénario sees the Mighty Mocambos returning to a packed indoor venue, playing "Let The Music Play" to a audience of b-boys and -girls – a testament to the sheer power of music. Featured as an encore here, an acoustic version of "Where Do We Go From Here?" (originally recorded with Lee Fields) closes the record and its restless voyage through unusual recording situations.
"Scénarios" differs drastically from other live albums as it does not seek to replicate existing material from studio albums. All songs were written or arranged especially for the live recordings in order to combine the group's DJ-friendly trademark sound with added vibes and momentum from the audience. Most of them were recorded while they were performed in public for the first time ever.
Comes in gatefold sleeve & includes download voucher.
d 04: Theme from Beverly Hills Cop (Axel F) Live
- A1: De'sean Jones & Ideeyah - Pressure
- A2: Donald Lee Roland Ii - Simba's Theme
- A3: Jason Hogans - Surrounded By Trees
- B1: John C & Meftah - Full
- B2: Meftah - When The Sun Falls
- B3: De'sean Jones - Psalm 23
- C1: Ian Fink - Moonlight (Duality/Detroit Live Version)
- C2: Kesswa - Chasing Delerium Feat. Nova Zai
- D1: Specter - The Upper Room
- D2: Raj Mahal - Hudsons
- E1: Raybone Jones - Green Funk
- E2: Whodat & Sophiyah.e - Don’t Know
- F1: Howard Thomas - Experiment 10
- F2: Mbthelight - Again (T’s Edit)
- F3: Sterling Toles - Janis
Growing up in Chicago, later Detroit-based music producer, Theo Parrish is internationally well known for his own inimitable downtempo house music style. The approach Parrish took to compiling DJ-Kicks was very ambitious, inviting his Detroit peers to produce a collection of brand new material, and in turn creating the first ever all exclusive entry to the esteemed series.
"Detroit creates. But rarely imitates. Why? We hear and see many from other places do that with what we originate. No need to follow. Get it straight. In the Great Lakes there are always more under the surface than those that appear to penetrate the top layer of attention and recognition. What about them that defy tradition? Those that side step the inaccurate definitions often given from outside positions? This is that evidence. Enjoy."
First official compilation by Theo Parrish
All exclusive unreleased material
Includes new music from Theo Parrish
Triple LP sampler containing 15 full length tracks
(Amsterdam | NL) Surrender to the call of NowNow Records as the imprint from Lee Ann Roberts' sets the release of its first V/A compilation. Featuring Aida Arko, Brecc, Blicz, and Geerson, NowNow Various 1 sets the space between the subtlety and soul of Hard Techno with a tasting of proper talent. Pre-orders are available starting on 30 September 2022.
The now Amsterdam-based South African artist, Robert's created NowNow Records as a destination for communities and cultures to come together in sonic bliss. NowNow Records has championed off-the-grid Techno through its inherent state of urgency since Robert's kicked off the imprint with 2021's I Want You Ep. Since, NowNow Records has been celebrated as a go-to destination for the harder edges of Techno, with releases from WarinD, OGUZ, Ana Lilia, and Benny Guzi all offering their respective takes on this unmistakably relentless sound.
After two successful years, NowNow Records' first V/A features Vienna's Aida Arko, whose A Long Night Into Dunwall kicks things off with her typically industrial, dark, and percussive groove before melding into Brecc's appropriately titled Praise the Rave. The Utrecht-based artist, known for his relentlessly energetic sets, draws from much experience with this one, and it shows! Next, Paris' enigmatic Blicz lets the music do the talking with Independance Night before fellow Frenchmen Geerson closes the affair with the bonafide banger, Domenical Mass.
The complete release is not one for the faint of heart but definitely for those looking for that moment where the music takes you travelling without ever having to leave where you are.
Vol. 17 - Special Remix EP[14,24 €]
Vol. 18[12,56 €]
Vol. 20[13,40 €]
Vol. 22[14,50 €]
Vol. 24[17,61 €]
The 21st Attack The Dancefloor is brimming with Class-A disco boogie action.
Heading things up is the brand new Jimpster remix of Mistura featuring a tongue in cheek monologue from Canadian poet Jemini. Jimpster’s Jazz'd Up mix starts off stripped right back, based around a 303 bassline, it builds and builds and builds ending with a deep powerful version that satisfies both the soul and dance floor.
Backing this side up is Birdee’s euphoric, piano stomping, hands in the air remix of the ZR classic ‘Do What You Feel’ from 1991.
On the flip is Lakeshore Commission's latest floor burner ‘In 2 The Light’ featuring Bluey from Incognito. Shuffling Philly drums, soaring strings and a phunked out bass guitar make for a late night dancefloor heater.
Finishing off the 12” is the appearance of Destiny II’s ‘Play 2 Win’ on wax for the first time. It’s a serious menagerie of driving live bass, Prelude style boogie synths & the occasional vocoder. Add in anthemic vocals courtesy of Angela Johnson and you have one of the years most played new disco songs.
A true love letter to house music, Larson presents his account of the ubiquitous dance music genre diving deep into its origins. Connecting the dots with some of the genre’s most beloved innovators such as Larry Heard, Boo Williams, Ron Trent, Chez Damier or Chris Brann, the Belgian producer pays tribute by adding his own emphases. Setting a bright mood, at times aiming for the dance floor, at others comforting the listener into a casual vibe, Larson is not seeking, but spontaneously drawing attention with his graceful sounds, stripped to the bone and built on an intuitive factor.
Larson hails from Liège, the South Belgian city known for its meat balls and the mighty river La Meuse, and works as a sound editor in movie production. Recognised by those-who-know as one of the most quintessential figures of Liège’s burgeoning underground nightlife scene, the time is now for Larson to step forward. His 2x12” debut release dubbed ‘Interlace Joy Motions’ is one for the house heads, shifting between 121 and 130 BPM and showcasing the diverse sounds the producer has in store.
Opening track Our Inner Sun has smiles written all over. A simple yet effective piano loop, warm strings and a delicately running acid baseline are all Larson needs to set the standard for the beauty that is yet to come. Effortlessly entertaining for close to seven minutes, here is the essence of timeless house music at work.
Pushing up the speed up to 129 BPM, A2 brings the brand new label’s title track, Larson’s take on the many meanings the name may represent. Designed for jubilant dance floor action, Hi Scores is punchy and elegant at the same time.
On the flip side, Slack Breeze is an eleven-minutes-long breezy electro trip paying homage to Detroit music pioneer Juan Atkins and offers two mixes, nicely manufactured as one auditive whole on the vinyl record with a useful visual marker in between. Be aware of the slight tempo drop between the bold Club mix and the more laid back Sensual mix.
In a cultured and charming manner, Lethal Dance opens the second 12”. Driven by a fab bassline and soft as silk string arrangements, here is a slow burner for moments lost track of time. High Jazz Travel on C2 continues this trip to lofty spaces, speeding up the pace but holding on to Larson’s well crafted dream universe, with its mellow aura almost turning into a debonair lullaby for grown-ups.
Adding another layer to the cake is Chris ‘Funk’ Ferreira, the C12 resident DJ and ½ Senga Ferreira. Also active as the mixing engineer of this double 12”, on the D1 the Brussels based producer takes up the role as remixer with his stomping and energy building ‘Magic Force’ version of Hi Scores, contributing the single vocal sample to the EP. Things come to an end with Souvenir d’Enfance, a playful and innocent conga driven house track, cherished as a safe and sound childhood memory, forever in our hearts just as this excellent debut by Larson.
- A1: Tnt
- A2: Swung From The Gutters
- A3: Ten-Day Interval
- B1: I Set My Face To The Hillside
- B2: The Equator
- B3: A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work
- C1: The Suspension Bridge At Iquazu Falls
- C2: Four-Day Interval
- C3: In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, & Beethoven There Were Women & Men
- D1: Almost Always Is Nearly Enough
- D2: Jetty
- D3: Everglade
TNT is the third full length studio album released by Tortoise in 1998 1998 : Tortoise"s third studio album TNT is released. In and out of print over the past decade we are happy to finally give everyone what they have been asking for - TNT on vinyl again! Pressed on high quality virgin vinyl, the two LPs are packaged in a deluxe old-style tip?on gatefold jacket fully replicating the original artwork and includes a download coupon for the first time! Tortoise"s third full-length release, TNT, was written and recorded during a 10-month interval in 1997. This longer-than-usual writing/production schedule was purposefully undertaken by the group in the hopes of crafting an expansive, diverse, yet thematically coherent offering. TNT builds upon the spare, instrumental framework of the group"s first, self-titled album, and the extended edits, melodic adventures, and klangfarben of the subsequent full-length release, Millions Now Living Will Never Die. Further to this, Tortoise"s interest in the possibilities offered by the remixing of tracks was realized within the actual production of TNT; individual elements, sections, or sometimes whole compositions mutate within the album"s shifting framework. These techniques were suitably realized thanks in part to the use of non-linear digital recording and editing methods, the first example of such work for the group
More solid UK boogie & brit-funk courtesy of Freestyle Records - this time giving the 12" reissue treatment to short-lived group Cool Runners' 1982 single Checking Out, backed up with sought-after High on a Feeling.
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As Cool Runners' Paul Tattersall recalls, "this single was a follow-up to the "Play The Game (So You Think It Funny) / Hawaiian Dream" 12" which we believe got to around number 60 in the national charts, and was at the time heavily played on the radio by DJ Greg Edwards who sadly passed away earlier this year..." Recorded mixed and mastered then licensed for release to MCA, this initial single also relased in 1982 was voiced by Tony Jackson, then part of Paul Young's backing band as his career took off in the charts. Tony formed part of a string of funk groups throughout the 70s and early 80s - Sweet Dreams, Midnight, Ritz & Indigo - and later went on to be successful as lead singer in Rage.
These tracks "Checking Out" and "High on a Feeling" on the other hand features the vocal talents of Rush Winters, who would go on to record with the likes of Carmel, Yello, D.C.Lee and others. "It received little in the way of promotion by the record company at the time", Tattersall continues "so it has produced a cult following and has become rather sought-after, as few copies were actually released at that time."
After release, Cool Runners' Paul Tattersall and Chris Rodel then played with several different bands, with Chris moving onto double bass. He still plays professionally today as an accomplished jazz bass player. Paul has run a successful musical hire company in North London, with a specialism on synths and keyboards, since the eighties - and continues to this day.
Official re-issue and re-mastered 7-Inch single for much sampled singer Johnny Osbourne. "Ice Cream Love" (based on the 'He Prayed' riddim) is the 1980 tune produced by Henry "Junjo" Lawes and recorded at Channel One studio with the Roots Radics Band. "Extra Time One" is the dub version mixed by Overton "Scientist" Brown at King Tubby's studio.
Oliver Johnson alias Dorian Concept veröffentlicht am 28. Oktober 2022 sein neues Album, „What We Do For Others“, auf Brainfeeder. Es ist das dritte Studioalbum des österreichischen Produzenten und Synthesizer-Experten, der für seine einzigartigen, wunderschön detaillierten Klangteppiche und wilden, gar euphorisierenden Live-Keyboard-Jam-Videos bekannt ist.
„What We Do For Others“ ist ein entspanntes, ruhiges, selbstbewusstes und intimes Album, das auf herrlich lockeren Arrangements und rückgekoppelten Klanglandschaften basiert und mit Fetzen seines eigenen verfremdeten Gesangs unterlegt ist, der eher als zusätzliche Instrumentierung denn als lyrische Phrasen präsentiert wird. Alle Elemente und Schichten wurden ohne Unterbrechungen aufgenommen und absichtlich nicht bearbeitet. „Ich glaube, deshalb hat diese Platte so etwas wie einen ‚Bandsound‘.“, erklärt Johnson. „Ich spiele alle Arten von Tasteninstrumenten, singe und benutze Effektgeräte, um diese freien Kompositionen zu schaffen.“ Der in Wien lebende Johnson ist ein fester Bestandteil der experimentellen Jazz-/ Elektronik-Szene, die im Umfeld von Brainfeeders Aushängeschild Flying Lotus floriert und sich diversifiziert hat. Mit frühen Veröffentlichungen auf dem Kindred Spirits-Label Nod Navigators und Affine Records spielte Johnson bei den ersten internationalen Label-Nächten von Brainfeeder im Jahr 2009 (Off-Sónar in Barcelona und die berüchtigte Hearn Street Car Park-Session in London) und bildete eine starke familiäre Bindung mit der Brainfeeder-Crew, die auf der gemeinsamen Liebe zu freaky Elektronik-Jazz-Fusion beruht. Johnson war an der Produktion von Thundercats „The Golden Age Of Apocalypse“ beteiligt, spielte die Tasten auf Flying Lotus' bahnbrechendem Album, „Cosmogramma“, und tourte mit den Live-Bands von FlyLo und The Cinematic Orchestra. Außerdem steuerte er die Tasten auf MF DOOMs „Lunchbreak“ bei, das von FlyLo und Thundercat produziert wurde. Kürzlich arbeitete er mit Kenny Beats an dessen Debütalbum, „Louie“, zusammen, wobei er bei drei Stücken die Tasten beisteuerte, und tat sich mit einem weiteren Pionier zukunftsorientierter Elektronik - Mark Pritchard - zusammen, um Musik für Damien Jalets zeitgenössische Tanzperformance, „Kites“, an der Göteborger Oper zu komponieren. Im Jahr 2020 arbeitete Oliver mit einem der weltweit führenden Ensembles für zeitgenössische Musik zusammen, dem Klangforum Wien, und komponierte ein Stück namens „Hyperopia“, das beim TRANSART Festival in Österreich aufgeführt wurde. Johnson veröffentlichte sein Debütalbum, „Joined Ends“, 2014 auf Ninja Tune, bevor er 2018 auf Brainfeeder landete, um „The Nature Of Imitation“ zu veröffentlichen: ein Album mit schwindelerregenden Partituren, kakophonischen Breakdowns und formidablen Rhythmen, von denen Pitchfork schwärmte: „Dorian Concept schafft etwas, das Elektro-Funk-Autoren der 70er und 80er Jahre wie Kraftwerk, George Clinton und Roger Troutman angedeutet haben: Computermusik, die den Funk unverhohlen imitiert, anstatt ihn nur zu faken.“.
AI-32 signals the arrival of ‘The Fifth World Recordings’, by Son of Chi (Hanyo van Oosterom) and long-term collaborator Arthur Flink. A tribute to the late Jon Hassell, who passed away in 2021, the album connects a deep running thread that goes back to the source of Chi project. Carrying on from where Hassell left off, the album takes inspiration and references from his Fourth World music concept and the ancient Hopi tradition of Native America. Illuminating the subliminal space of the arising Fifth World, Son of Chi pays respects to an inimitable force in contemporary music.
Hassell’s ‘Dream Theory in Malaya’ forms a touchstone to Hanyo van Oosterom’s musical journey, which soundtracked long, deep and reflective periods living in the cave of the Kallikatsou (Patmos, Greece) back in the early 80s. This period resulted in Hanyo’s track as Chi - ‘Hopi’ - in 1984. Hanyo met Hassell shortly after in 1987 at his “The Surgeon in the Nightsky” concert in Rotterdam - it wasn’t until twenty years later that Hanyo invited him for two magic nights of “Instant Composing Sessions” with the Numoonlab Orchestra (with a host of other artists) at the LantarenVenster, the very same stage where Hassell had performed in 1987 and also where Chi did their first live performance.
Dreamful, mysterious, prophetic, the Fifth World Recordings features the quiet yet elaborate sound of Chi awash with rich instrumentation, field recordings, and old stories by the firelight. Sketches were created with drones, loops, and soundscapes, with which Arthur Flink (also a member of the Numoonlab Orchestra) jammed on trumpet. Channelling Hassell’s idiosyncratic style, floating melodies and lyrical improvisations are parsed into the mix, where Hanyo has processed and manipulated the recordings, also referencing Hassell’s exotic scales and unique harmonics.
Additionally, the wah Bamboo flute at the closing piece is an homage to the works of Chi co-founder Jacobus Derwort (1952-2019). For this piece Hanyo used his first bamboo flute he made at the cave of the Kallikatsou in 1984. Arthur Flink answers in counterpoint with the wah trumpet, almost like the intuitive communication of the nightbirds..
As a duo they embrace both sides of the coin, drums and guitar, chaos and order, male and female, ying and yang, the angel and the devil. They are more than the sum of both counterparts though, making for a maximalist auditory experience. PIKA brings her skills of mystifying performance to the table, all free-drum bluster and vocals veering between shrine maiden and wild spirit. Kawabata's guitar-work moves from a roar to a whisper, a yell to a sob, he's working on the same canvas of extremes. The aim of their unity is to write truly celestial hymns for the outer world and odes of love for the inner cosmic context.
No strangers to one another, the pair have not only gigged together with their respective bands but also recorded together, when these two outfits temporarily fused in 2005 to become Acid Mothers Afrirampo (releasing an album of the same name). Two years later they distilled their collaboration, all other players being stripped away to leave the core of Pikacyu's manic drums and pop vocal, and Makoto's schizoid guitar conjurings. In 2011 they spent five weeks touring the US and their first album, 'OM Sweet Home: We Are Shining Stars From Darkside', which was released by the esteemed UK label of all things heavy and brilliant, Riot Season. Last year they spent two weeks touring through Europe whilst writing a new album suffused with the outreaching sound and message of their impulsive live performances. This new album is entitled 'Galaxilympics' and will be released by Upset The Rhythm on August 4th on LP and CD.
'Galaxilympics' is an album of contrasts, so much colour, so much shade! 'Space Sumo' kicks off the record in explosive style. Pikacyu's drums jitter, crash and stumble, but steadfastly refuse to groove. Makoto attacks his guitar, cloaking himself in reverb to produce a wall-of-sound, alternating between melody and noise. 'Funifunikonefuni' follows with it's frenzied take on pop music, bubbling with energy and PIKA's multiple vocal layers. 'I'll Forgive' is chant-like in its devotion to following the tumbling melody line of the song even to absurd and unpredictable dimensions. 'Pika Mako Hall' is a more serene affair, with whispered echoes and guitar drones swirling amongst bursts of rapid sequencer ambience. 'Castle Of Sand' picks up on this more spacious approach with slowly developing programmed electronics, before the title track erupts with gurgling synths, soaring guitar trails and PIKA's most searching vocal yet.
The album concludes in reflective manner with the suitably titled 'Sayonownara', a song as much in the present as it is in the act of saying farewell. It's positively elegiac with washes of cymbal and deep acres of guitar drone for the first five minutes before PIKA's drums take things up a gear and into more psychedelic out-rock terrain. This insurgence eventually peaks and the album melts away to silence. PIKACYU-MAKOTO have made an album that takes you on a trip into your very soul before emerging once more at the edge of another galaxy. 'Galaxilympics' is a triumph of opposites united, it enjoys walking out into the unknown, but it's also a portal into the very real world of two musicians who find peace and semblance through their interaction. Hymns and odes to one side, this is a giant album of future-facing song and noise, where better to find harmony enthroned
Eight years after their first collaboration, ‘The Compass Joint’, slipped out as an ultra-limited white label, Charlie Soul Clap and Tom Trago have reunited to bring us a similarly warming, sun-splashed sequel, ‘The Compass Jawn’.
Like its predecessor – a now near-mythical 12-minute epic recorded late one night in Tom’s former squat-turned-studio close to legendary Amsterdam venue Trouw, and subsequently championed by DJ Harvey – ‘The Compass Jawn’ was inspired by the pair’s mutual love of both Caribbean keyboardist and FM synthesis enthusiast Wally Badarou, and the 1980s output of Chris Blackwell’s legendary Compass Point studio in Nassau, the Bahamas.
As sequels go, ‘The Compass Jawn’ is a bit of a belter. During the recording in 2019, Tom and Charlie sought to subtly evolve the original’s memorable lead line, reaching the for Yamaha DX7’s percussion patch – something utilized many times by Badarou during the 1980s.
The resultant ‘Studio Version’ is, if anything, even more emotive and uplifting than its predecessor. Underpinned by a shuffling rhythm pattern, the track ebbs and flows brilliantly, with jaunty synth stabs, undulating melodies and sparkling keyboard riffs ushering in held-note chords and a gorgeously rushing, ever-rising lead line. Throw in some starry pads and sunset-ready synth motifs, and you have another gorgeous, life-affirming treat.
‘The Compass Jawn’ comes backed with two top-notch alternative mixes. First up is an ambient ‘Dub’ mix from Trago that strips back the beats and instead focuses on the track’s many key melodic elements. Pushed forwards by drum machine handclaps, it’s a bubbly, sun-bright revision full to bursting with twinkling electronic motifs, jammed-out motifs, hands-aloft riffs and a bleeping take on the fluid and kaleidoscopic lead line.
Rounding off the package is the duo’s original demo mix – a raw, tough, and slightly more sub-heavy affair that’s notably more percussive and sweat-soaked whilst still sporting the key lead lines and FM synth sounds that make the studio version such a memorable and mood-enhancing affair.
The Discomfort Of Evening is the incredible and original soundtrack by prolific Belgian composer Michiel de Malsche to 2020 International Booker Prize winner The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Visceral and virtuosic, Rijneveld's novel follows Jas, a girl growing up in a devout Christian family that runs a Dutch dairy farm, whose brother dies in an accident after she wishes he would die instead of her rabbit. Lost in grief, her family falls apart as she becomes consumed by increasingly dangerous fantasies.
Michiel de Malsche has captured the atmosphere and spirit of Rijneveld's book perfectly, moving through moments of confrontation and introspection, sinking into spirals of despair, stasis and subtle hope and change. Brooding ambient basslines, driven by droning murmurs, are offset with melismatic electro-acoustic pieces that embody the novel's haunting and dissonant world, whilst also incorporating manipulated field recordings such as animal sounds and a church service, allowing for a full manifestation of Jas’s world in a completely new way.
De Malsche achieves this by rallying an unusual combination of acoustic instruments (16 in total) played by top-of-their-field musicians, creating a truly unique sound world and tonal palette, including an Ondes Martenot, a 7-stringed Chinese instrument called a guqin, a marimba, a string 6-tet, a toy piano and a bass flute.
De Malsche always confronts all emotional levels of his source material head-on, making his soundtrack into much more than just a fever dream. It is a precise description of, and accompaniment to, a devastatingly impactful book.
Michiel De Malsche is a Belgian composer, multi-instrumentalist and sound designer. He studied classical composition at the conservatories of Rotterdam and Ghent. His music has been performed all over the world and he has composed and produced dozens of soundtracks for contemporary dance, theatre, movies and documentaries.
Besides his work as a contemporary classical composer, he is active as a studio musician and producer in the world of electronic music.
Nation’s Sub label Kode presents a new project between Chicago’s visionary Traxx and Athens, Greece June Records label mates Tsampikos Fronas & Trenton Chase as External/Internal…a new wave electrabeat collaboration.
This 1st 12” showcases 2 tracks with different energy and emotions drawing musical influence from the early 80s pre-proto sounds of alternative and progressive chemistry and also offbeat rhythms that creates tension of feelings in character and musical arrangements with vocals sung on both productions from Trenton Chase.
A-Side:
Trespass concludes the storm of
emotion, reaching the end.
The need to find long gone harmony
and existence. Coming to peace with
the inner self while taking a self made
path into the kosmos without pushbacks and interruption. Pure melodic freedom
B-Side:
A Conviction of Fantasy is an eruption
of emotions and confusion while trying
to maintain sanity. Avoiding truth and confessing while keeping balance is impossible. Lost in the abyss where
reality and fantasy is hard to perceive.
A new Uk based label from a small collective of close friends with a keen interest of getting fresh music out on vinyl only. To get things going Jase steps up with a 2 track 12''. 'You Wanna Get Real' ... great little stomper with raw bass , raw drums & vocal samples. On the other side 'Whispers' a minimal banger with a cheeky side to it, tidy first release from Off The Map Records.
- A1: Spotlight
- A10: Mirage (Don't Stop) (Don't Stop)
- A11: The Kill
- A12: Remember Where You Are
- A2: What's Your Pleasure?
- A3: Ooh La La
- A4: Soul Control
- A5: Save A Kiss
- A6: Adore You
- A7: In Your Eyes
- A8: Step Into My Life
- A9: Read My Lips
- B1: Please
- B2: Impossible
- B3: Eyes Closed
- B4: Overtime
- B5: Hot N Heavy
- B6: Pale Blue Light
- B7: 0208 (Feat Kindness)
- B8: Adore You (Endless Remix)
2021 has been an incredible year so far for Jessie Ware. ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ re-entered the Top 10 following a brilliant Graham Norton performance of ‘Remember Where You Are’ which has proved itself to be one of Jessie’s most connective singles to date. In addition, Jessie has two BRITs nominations, one for Female Solo artist and one for Album Of The Year – the category with a historic four women up for the award. On 28th April Jessie returns with a brand new single ‘Please’ taken from the upcoming deluxe release of ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ officially titled as ‘What’s Your Pleasure? The Platinum Pleasure Edition’. Released on 11th June, the album features 6 brand new songs and more.
Her newest track, ‘Please’ sees Jessie continue the energy of ‘What’s Your Pleasure’ in the form of a throwback to 70s and 80s dance music, and pulls it together in a wonderfully anachronistic style, all packaged with Ware’s outstanding vocals. The track fits perfectly into ‘What’s Your Pleasure - The Platinum Pleasure Edition’, Ware’s deluxe offering of her sensational 2020 record. This edition still bears the cohesive, complementary songwriting, the killer grooves and flawless production of the original version. The Platinum Pleasure Edition only serves to heighten the rich and powerful soul of last year’s release with tracks like Please, 0208 featuring synthpop visionary Kindness, the Endless Remix of ‘Adore You’ and a whole host more.
Talking about the upcoming deluxe and new single Jessie said: ”I had such an amazing response to the ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ record that I didn’t want the lights to go up and the party to be over just yet! ‘Please’ is full of optimism and ready to be played in a place where we can all be together and flirt, dance, touch and kiss. A wonderful excuse not to stop the party from ending.”
It’s safe to say that the last twelve months have been pretty stellar for Jessie Ware. June 2020 saw Jessie release ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ and gain not only her fourth UK Top 10 album of her career, but also her highest charting record when it entered straight into the UK Official Album Charts at No.3. As if this wasn’t amazing enough, she went on to release her first cookbook and continued her immensely popular podcast Table Manners and recently hit a massive milestone of 21 million individual listens, oftentimes featuring household names such as Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue, Yungblud, Robbie Williams, Alanis Morissette., Dawn French and Dolly Parton to name a few.
Last year saw the album continue to receive widespread critical acclaim, with ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ featuring heavily amongst ‘album of the year’ lists including for music critic Anthony Fantano, also known as The Needle Drop, who gave What’s Your Pleasure?’ the coveted no. 1 spot on his ‘Best Albums of 2020’ list, declaring it to be “a religious experience”. The record garnered praise from The Guardian who say it’s“Ware’s finest record yet"; Rolling Stone laude it as a “fantastic dance-pop record”; Pitchfork say “Jessie reminds us why we listen to dance music in the first place.”, GQ proclaim it as “the perfect album” and NME stated it was“pure escapism.”
The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was, which follows Thomas’ brilliant 2020 HBO special The Golden One and his Can't Believe You're Happy Here EP released earlier this year, surveys a range of emotion and offers a broad sonic palette, moving between pop punk, electro, and the obvious influence of the singer-songwriters he grew up listening to in early childhood. It conjures the ennui of Bright Eyes alongside the barefaced storytelling of John Prine, the overstuffed lists of Fred Thomas with the lackadaisical humor of Colleen Green, among many others.
Thomas attributes the dexterity of the record to Duterte, who recorded and engineered most of it in addition to serving up plenty of encouragement when Thomas got down on the process. “As a comic, I used to test out new songs during sets to see if the funny bits were hitting, but since I wrote this in isolation I ended up writing lyrics and worrying less about making jokes,” Thomas says. That said, the album’s plenty funny. Stand-out and lead single “Rigamarole” opens with a Thomas-voiced infomercial that recalls his oft-cited lookalike Jim Carrey as the Grinch, before launching into a buoyant pop song about being depressed.
Whitmer Thomas will admit that when he traveled home to small town Gulf Shores, Alabama to record his HBO stand-up special, The Golden One, he expected to be greeted as a returning hero, a conquering king, or at minimum, a guy with a moderately successful career as an entertainer in Los Angeles. “I expected a big welcome home, open arms, but when I went back I realized: nobody fucking knows me. Nobody remembers me,” Thomas says. “In the years I’d been performing that show, I’d been romanticizing my childhood in this mythologized place, but the visit made me see that I’m not really from there anymore.”
The sense of alienation compounded when Thomas recognized how few people in town remembered his mom, to whom The Golden One is dedicated and largely about. Thomas grew up watching her perform with her twin sister at the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge, where he set the special, and still counts her as one of his musical influences. His new album, The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was, isn’t overtly about his mom, her presence is deeply felt throughout. While in Gulf Shores, Thomas discovered dozens of her old recordings, all of which had been wrecked by Katrina, but upon returning to LA, Thomas paid “a fancy place in Hollywood” to fix the tapes and hired Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Bachelor, Routine) to mix them. The two struck up a collaborative friendship, and Thomas had the sound of his mom’s voice back. “I was listening to songs she recorded when she was about my age, just these heartfelt, sweet Americana songs,” he says. “I decided then that I wanted to lose the Ian Curtis voice I always sing with; I wanted to do what came naturally, because my mom always sounded like herself, even when she was singing some cheesy reggae song about, like, Jamaica.”
Thus he went into The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was knowing it was time to retire his darkwave persona, and leaning into his natural, chirpier voice, which he says sounds “like a 12-year-old’s.” It makes sense: much of the album chronicles what Thomas calls “being a kid and feeling like you have no control and overcompensating by being annoying.” “So much of the album is about witnessing drug and alcohol addiction as a kid and seeing what it does to people, but also realizing that there's nothing you can do about it,” Thomas says. It’s familiar territory (see: “Partied to Death”) but the methodology is different this time around; true to its title, The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was isn’t always looking for laughs. Thomas might’ve left his hometown behind, but his kid self is still tagging along, a Peter Pan shadow he can’t untether himself from. The first line he sings on The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was is: “There should be a room at every party where you can just sit and watch a movie.” Find a 12-year-old who wouldn’t say the same.
Heist Recordings has been pushing the envelope for house music since day one and we’re always on the lookout for artists that represent our vision on electronic music. Our next guest on the label fits that profile and more. He is the embodiment of modern-day electronic funk and a true wizard on the keys: Atlanta raised cool guy Byron the Aquarius.
Byron has a solid history on the label: He remixed Parker Madicine back in 2017 and did a mad solo on the 2019 released Dam Swindle track ‘The life behind things’. We’ve done some shows together and stayed in touch while Byron was working together with Jeff Mills on his 2020 jazz crossover record ‘Ambrosia’ on Axis. Now, after a solid string of releases on labels like Shall not Fade and Purveyor Underground, Byron is making his solo appearance on Heist. His ‘Akira’ EP goes from dark basement grooves to dreamy broken beats and features a remix by New York dance music wizard Kush Jones.
The Akira EP kicks off with ‘I love yo’. In this track, Byron decides to leave his keys at home and goes in deep with a moody club workout. ‘I love yo’ is a track that juxtaposes dreamy samples with rough percussion and vocal chops with a clear nod to the work of Mr. G. The melody is mellow, but don’t be deceived; clever drum programming and plenty of sub take this track into the club vibe just the way Byron likes it: warm, hazy and sexy AF.
Byron is not known for delivering straightforward house tunes, but when he does deliver them, he does it in style. Enter ‘Get up’; the A2 of the EP. There’s everything we love about house music: smart vocal chops, driving percussion, classic house keys and a booming sub to get you bumping to this beat.
The B-side sees Byron up the tempo and take a deep dive into bass territory with ‘Love’. In this track, there’s lush pads running over a percussive broken beat and chopped R ’n B vocals to add some serious sex appeal. It’s deceptively simple and clean but ever so catchy, which clearly shows Byron’s prowess as an electronic music producer.
Going back to classic house mode, we’ve got ‘Success’: A spoken word house track that fits right in with the classics. Byron sets the mood with some bumpy key-and synth work while brainstorming about originality and blackness throughout the track. Even though the message underneath might be a serious one, Byron succeeds in delivering this in a fun, uplifting way that never gets pretentious or divisive.
The EP finishes with a remix by New Yorker Kush Jones. This is an artist who understands how to build a groove. He could take you anywhere from house to juke, footwork and techno, which is exactly why he’s been getting so much love for his music recently. Kush is an artist who sees no boundaries in his music and still manages to create his own sonic universe. His remix of ‘I love yo’ takes a dreamy approach with soft chords running over an electronic groove with a pure and improvised feel. All elements fit together perfectly and it’s the clever ad-hoc programming and arrangement that suck you into his unbounded world from the first beat.
As always, enjoy the music and play it loud.
Yours sincerely,
Maarten & Lars
Herbert Bodzin's "Revival II" is the next exciting vinyl highlight on our young label. It features completely unreleased electronic music which was recorded between 1979 and 1982. On the album we can hear the sounds of legendary analogue machines like the ARP 2600, the Korg PS-3300, the Roland System-700 Modular synthesizer, the PPG Waveterm and the PPG Wave 2.2 as well as classic synths like the Roland Jupiter-8, the Polymoog and the Prophet-5. The album additionally features Bernd Hollendiek, as well as Bodzin's two sons, Stephan and Oliver Bodzin. Most of the music they performed was completely synthesizer based while Oliver Bodzin played drums on a few tracks. The songs are a mixture of mostly ambient, deep, psychedelic, yet experimental and futuristic sounds as well as more vibrant recordings that featured the complete band. One of these vibrant tracks is "Lifting Blue" which qualifies as a unique version of space rock. On other tracks like "Voices of the Mind" we hear deep melodies topped with dreamy vocoder voices. "Against the Wall" sounds like it could be taken off of an Italian horror movie soundtrack while the mid-tempo "Orbital" pre-dates the sounds of techno and trance. As a side note, the album may also show early musical influences of Stephan Bodzin, who became world famous in the 1990s as one of the leading techno producers. Without any doubt, "Revival II" should be an exciting lost masterpiece of German electronic (rock) music and a must have for synth music lovers - revived and finally alive!
Cassette[13,40 €]
‘Stumpwork’ is the follow-up to 2021’s ‘New Long Leg’. The
South London-based group’s first studio album, recorded in
just two weeks with producer John Parish at the iconic
Rockfield Studios, became a huge critical and commercial
success reaching #4 in the UK Album Charts and featuring in
Best Of 2021 polls across the board. Buoyed by its success,
Nick Buxton (drums), Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard
(bass) and Florence Shaw (vocals) returned to rural Wales in
late 2021, partnering once more with Parish and engineer
Joe Jones. Working from a position of trust in the same
studio and with the same team, imposter syndrome and
anxiety was replaced by a fresh freedom and openness to
explore beyond an already rangy sonic palette, a newfound
confidence in their creative vision. A longer period in the
studio afforded the time to experiment, improvise, play,
sharpen their table tennis skills.
‘Stumpwork’ was inspired by a plethora of events, concepts,
and political debacles, be they represented in the icy mess of
ambient elements reflecting a certain existential despair, or
the surprising warmth in celebrating the lives of loved ones
lost through the previous year. Surrealist lyrics are as ever at
the forefront - but there is a sensitivity now to the themes of
family, money, politics, self-deprecation, and sensuality.
Furious alt-rock anthems combine across the record with
jangle pop and ambient noise, demonstrating the wealth of
influences the band feed off and their deep musicality. With
the pressure of their debut album behind them, Dry Cleaning
have crafted an ambitious and deeply rewarding new work
that marks them out as one of the most intelligent and
exciting acts to come out of the UK.
LP pressed on white vinyl.
White Vinyl LP[29,83 €]
‘Stumpwork’ is the follow-up to 2021’s ‘New Long Leg’. The
South London-based group’s first studio album, recorded in
just two weeks with producer John Parish at the iconic
Rockfield Studios, became a huge critical and commercial
success reaching #4 in the UK Album Charts and featuring in
Best Of 2021 polls across the board. Buoyed by its success,
Nick Buxton (drums), Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard
(bass) and Florence Shaw (vocals) returned to rural Wales in
late 2021, partnering once more with Parish and engineer
Joe Jones. Working from a position of trust in the same
studio and with the same team, imposter syndrome and
anxiety was replaced by a fresh freedom and openness to
explore beyond an already rangy sonic palette, a newfound
confidence in their creative vision. A longer period in the
studio afforded the time to experiment, improvise, play,
sharpen their table tennis skills.
‘Stumpwork’ was inspired by a plethora of events, concepts,
and political debacles, be they represented in the icy mess of
ambient elements reflecting a certain existential despair, or
the surprising warmth in celebrating the lives of loved ones
lost through the previous year. Surrealist lyrics are as ever at
the forefront - but there is a sensitivity now to the themes of
family, money, politics, self-deprecation, and sensuality.
Furious alt-rock anthems combine across the record with
jangle pop and ambient noise, demonstrating the wealth of
influences the band feed off and their deep musicality. With
the pressure of their debut album behind them, Dry Cleaning
have crafted an ambitious and deeply rewarding new work
that marks them out as one of the most intelligent and
exciting acts to come out of the UK.
LP pressed on white vinyl.
- 1: Merry Christmas Baby
- 2: It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
- 3: Christmas Isn’t Canceled (Just You)
- 4: Merry Christmas (To The One I Used To Know)
- 5: Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree
- 6: Glow (Feat. Chris Stapleton)
- 7: Santa Baby
- 8: Santa, Can’t You Hear Me (Feat. Ariana Grande)
- 9: Last Christmas
- 10: Jingle Bell Rock
- 11: Blessed
- 12: Christmas Come Early
- 13: Under The Mistletoe (Feat. Brett Eldredge)
- 14: All I Want For Christmas Is You
- 15: Christmas Eve
GRAMMY-winning global superstar Kelly Clarkson has released When Christmas Comes Around…, her ninth studio album via Atlantic Records. The 15-track collection sees Clarkson reunite with long time collaborators Jason Halbert, Jesse Shatkin and more for a mix of new original songs and Christmas classics.
The album features a mix of new original songs and Christmas classics, alongside show-stopping collaborations with Ariana Grande (“Santa, Can’t You Hear Me”), Chris Stapleton (“Glow”) & Brett Eldredge (2020’s hit single “Under The Mistletoe”). When Christmas Comes Around… marks the latest album from Clarkson since 2017’s Meaning of Life and her second holiday offering following 2013’s Wrapped In Red.
Kelly Clarkson is among the most popular artists of this era with total worldwide sales of more than 25 million albums and 40 million singles. The Texas-born singer-songwriter first came to fame in 2002 as the winner of the inaugural season of American Idol. Clarkson’s debut single, “A Moment Like This,” followed and quickly went to #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, ultimately ranking as the year’s best-selling single in the U.S. Further, Clarkson is one of pop’s top singles artists, with 19 singles boasting multi-platinum, platinum and gold certifications around the world, including such global favourites as “Miss Independent” and “Because of You.” Clarkson has released eight studio albums (Thankful, Breakaway, My December, All I Ever Wanted, Stronger, Wrapped In Red, Piece By Piece, Meaning of Life), one greatest hits album, and two children’s books (New York Times Top 10 best seller River Rose and the Magical Lullaby and the follow up River Rose and the Magical Christmas). She is the recipient of an array of awards including three GRAMMY Awards, four American Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, two Academy of Country Music Awards, two American Country Awards, one Country Music Association Award, and two Daytime Emmy Awards. She is also the first artist to top each of Billboard’s pop, adult contemporary, country and dance charts.
Perpetual Doom proudly presents the new album from Austin Leonard Jones: Dead Calm. On this collection of nine new tracks, the Texas-based troubadour channels his eclectic talent into a melancholy country groove. Full of signature tumbleweed melodies and his deadpan wit, it is an essential addition to Jones’ unique and varied catalog.
Like any good country record, Dead Calm starts with a joke and ends in tears. “A werewolf walks into a bar,” Jones sings on opener “Cape Fear,” where vampires pour drinks and no one seems to escape. The town might be full of the undead, but it could be anywhere—after all, as Jones says, “It’s hard on the living in Cape Fear.” The slide guitar and faint bright keys set the tone for an album that mixes domestic sorrow with a touch of kitsch, like Conway Twitty at a seasonal Halloween outlet. “I’m the sole survivor of the all-night show,” he sings on “Back in the Black Lagoon,” “and it cost a thousand tears for every episode.” Somewhere between a funeral and a costume party, Dead Calm bursts with classic songwriting sure to get you on the dance floor and crying.
All these ghost towns, desert bars, and haunted capes emerge from the small town outside Austin where Jones wrote and recorded the album. Alongside producer Jesse Woods, he crafted a sound based on the traditional country palette of acoustic and slide guitar, organ and gentle drums. Songs like “Night Parrots” and “Demon Sands” take stock of life’s disappointments as Jones’ maudlin voice and Jesse Siebenberg’s pedal steel twist tighter around each other. “The Australia Song” puts autobiographical storytelling first, while “Exotics” laughs at our tendency to seek satisfaction in far-off places and things. It all comes together on “Its Treachery,” where Jones confronts the intimate betrayals of “a whole life not working out as planned.”
Sound familiar? Austin Leonard Jones invites you to join the club.
OVERVIEW: Field Medic’s latest album doesn’t waste any time getting to what feels like a mission statement for the record with the first lines “I want to fall off the face of the earth and probably die” on opener “Always Emptiness.” The longtime songwriting project of Kevin Patrick Sullivan - Mr. Field himself, the bay-area native who finds himself living in LA these days - has always had moments of melodrama like this, but his latest album grow your hair long if you’re wanting to see something that you can change feels as emotionally charged and poetically devastating as anything he’s ever given us. Sullivan has been turning turmoil into beautiful music for almost 10 years as Field Medic. The project that had origins in busking San Francisco streets has blossomed into a full-time touring act with a few TikTok viral moments. 2018’s full-length Fade Into the Dawn and the pandemic-era mixtape/album hybrid Floral Prince both offered a glimpse into how Sullivan’s songwriting has evolved since his earliest songs
Pressed on Limited marble colour vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with an embossed art card.
Originally released in 1997, Impossible Princess is Kylie’s sixth studio album and her second for Deconstruction/Mushroom after 1994’s Kylie Minogue. The album marks a further departure for Kylie from her PWL pop beginnings and reflects a more experimental, darker style influenced by late 1990s trip hop, Brit-pop, rock and electronica. As well as co-producing the record (with Brothers In Rhythm, Dave Ball and the Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield), Kylie wrote the majority of the lyrics, conveying an intimacy and a freedom of expression inspired by her relationships and travels around the world.
This limited anniversary edition celebrates 25 years of Impossible Princess, and is the first time the album has been officially available on LP, making it much anticipated by Kylie fans.
Pressed on Limited marble colour vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with an embossed art card.
Originally released in 1997, Impossible Princess is Kylie’s sixth studio album and her second for Deconstruction/Mushroom after 1994’s Kylie Minogue. The album marks a further departure for Kylie from her PWL pop beginnings and reflects a more experimental, darker style influenced by late 1990s trip hop, Brit-pop, rock and electronica. As well as co-producing the record (with Brothers In Rhythm, Dave Ball and the Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield), Kylie wrote the majority of the lyrics, conveying an intimacy and a freedom of expression inspired by her relationships and travels around the world.
This limited anniversary edition celebrates 25 years of Impossible Princess, and is the first time the album has been officially available on LP, making it much anticipated by Kylie fans.
We're happy to report that the music on the 'Son of a Biscuit' EP from Kuwahara aka Mick Wilson and Scott Gray is every bit as colourfully eccentric as the title it bears. 'Ginger Cut' is dubbed up cloud of sound billowing over choppy hip-hop breaks, with an old skool female MC poking her head out of it to have her say every now and again. Rich Tea's edit of the track takes it into housier territory but, like one of those old Orb ambient singles singles on Wau Mr Modo, still gives plenty of work to the studio's echo chambers. 'Jaffa Quake' goes for snazzy, jazzy overtones and off kilter breaks, 'Kustard Cream' offers up reggae skank, again served up with plenty of sonic exotica, and there's even a more relaxed, Balearic bonus mix of 'Ginger Cut'. A thoroughly nutty record, but a genius one at the same time.
Taupe's imprint Colours proudly presents another palate of delicate musical brush strokes that aims to captivate and bounce its spectator. While Taupe's refines his art, this ep has the audacity to retain itself and focus on balance and control. It's a wonderful slice of wax that has many hidden sides to it, which for that reason make it a marvelous mystery to listen to. The ep starts off with a wish-wash of stabs, creating a pressing feeling of urge and uncertainty. Whilst its progressing, things seem to shake and tumble, but never falling. The inner A-side, however, has a clear purpose! An all-present tom knocks your socks off right off the bat, followed by a moist atmosphere and an appetizing hat. While A1 aims to disorient, A2 transports you right to an intimate car-drive at 5am. Flipping the wax won't flip the theme. B1 Perpetuates the feeling of nostalgia and unknowingness by tempting and dissolving the listener with fairytale-worthy arps. Swaying from left to right, follow this dream ride! And to top off this marvelous ride, B2 gently pushes the brake in order to ascertain a comfortable speed that is exquisite for some old-skool head-bobbing. Absorb that addictive bounce!
HIGHLIGHTS FINALLY, the highly sought-after and fun 'Drácula Yeyé' by Andrés Pajares is being officially reissued on a 7" vinyl single for the first time. The version recorded by the Spanish band Doctor Explosión in the 90s helped to popularize this song that has already achieved the status of garage-yeyé holy grail. On the B side the stunning garage-beat number 'Caperucita Yeyé' brings together some of the best artists of the Spanish-sung yeyé scene of the 60s: singers Marta Baizán, Miguel Ríos and the Venezuelan garage band Los Impala. Two highly sought-after garage-yeyé songs on a double-A-side single, essential for lovers of 60s sounds. DESCRIPTION Mainly known for his career as an actor, especially during the post-dictatorship years and through his "soft-erotic" comedy films, the popular Spanish comedian Andrés Pajares also recorded several records since the mid-1960s. Among them, "Dracula Yeyé" is THE song that has conquered selected dancefloors worldwide and has been on the wants lists of 60s sounds collectors and DJs for years. A rare artifact that was originally released in 1968 and whose original copies are very scarce and currently fetch exorbitant prices in the second-hand market. The later version recorded by the Spanish band Doctor Explosión in the '90s helped to make this record better known so that has already achieved the status of Spanish garage-yeyé holy grail. The single is completed with another fun and surprising yeyé song on the B side that could well be the main track of this release since it brings together some of the best artists of the Spanish-sung yeyé scene of the 60s: singers Marta Baizán, Miguel Ríos and the Venezuelan garage band Los Impala. All of them were the uncredited artists involved in this recording that was originally released as a children's record, with the musicalized narration of the classic tale "Little Red Riding Hood" that these musicians turned into a stunning garage-beat hit. Both songs are reissued here on a 7" single for the first time.
Today Chicago-based percussionist, composer and producer Makaya McCraven announces the details of his new album In These Times, which is set for release on September 23rd via International Anthem / Nonesuch / XL Recordings. The first offering from the new album is a song tiled "Seventh String," which encapsulates the various musical dimensions present on McCraven's new album, a career-defining body of work that is a remarkable new peak for the already-soaring McCraven. In These Times is a collection of polytemporal compositions inspired as much by broader cultural struggles as McCraven's personal experience as a product of a multinational, working class musician community. It's the recording that he's been trying to create for 7+ years, as it's been consistently in process in the background while he's put forth a prolific run of releases including: In The Moment (2015), Highly Rare (2017), Where We Come From (2018), Universal Beings (2018), We're New Again (2020), Universal Beings E&F Sides (2020), and Deciphering the Message (2021). With contributions from over a dozen musicians and creative partners from his tight-knit circle of collaborators - including Jeff Parker, Junius Paul, Brandee Younger, Joel Ross, and Marquis Hill - the music was recorded in five different studios and four live performance spaces while McCraven engaged in extensive post-production work at home. Featuring orchestral, large ensemble arrangements interwoven with the signature "organic beat music" sound that's become his signature, the album is an evolution and a milestone for McCraven, the producer. But moreover, it's the strongest and clearest statement we've yet to hear from McCraven, the composer. Profiled in the New York Times, Vice, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, and NPR, among other publications, Makaya and the music he makes today is what Passion of Weiss explains, "is part of a necessary conversation about the next evolution of the Black improvised music known colloquially as 'jazz.' He's found the threads connecting the past with the present, and is either wrapping them with new colors and textures, or he's plucking them gleefully like the strings of a grand instrument." McCraven, who has been aptly called a "cultural synthesizer" and "beat scientist," has a unique gift for collapsing space, destroying borders and blending past, present, and future into poly-textural arrangements of post-genre, jazz-rooted 21st century folk music. In These Times encompasses his artistic ethos, his experiences, identity and lineage, while pushing his music to new heights.
‘Blemish’ was David Sylvian’s first solo album to be released on his own Samadhisound label following his departure from Virgin Records in 2003. This is the first official release on 180gram vinyl. Working primarily as a solo artist, Sylvian created an impromptu suite of songs for guitar, electronics and voice. The compositions were crafted from improvisational sessions by Sylvian and the acclaimed free-jazz guitarist, Derek Bailey on 3 tracks. “A Fire In A Forest” features the haunting electronic arrangements by Austrian guitarist / producer Christian Fennesz.
Ndikho Xaba was born in 1934 in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. For thirty-four years — 1964 -1998 — he lived in exile in the US, Canada and Tanzania. Originally issued by Trilyte Records out of Oakland, California, this 1970 recording is bracing, freewheeling Now Thing, suffused with SA idioms, and focussed by a political urgency wiring together US Black Power, Black Aesthetics and the anti-apartheid front-line like nothing else. You can hear Trane from the off — 'a spiritual offering to my ancestors' — and plenty of Sun Ra, with whom The Natives several times shared double-bills. (Xaba was to become close with Phil Cohran and the AACM.) Freedom is a gutbucket-soul rendition of the people's anthem; Nomusa is dedicated to Xaba's new wife, a poet and CORE activist from Chicago. The thunderous finale Makhosi features drummer Keita from the West Indies, and Baba Duru, who studied percussion in India, before winding up with Xaba blowing eerily through a horn made from a giant piece of tubular seaweed. Hats off to Matsuli for this outstanding reissue.
Shinedoe readies her fifth album ‘Freedom Riders’ on her MTM Records imprint with the release of her vinyl-focused ‘Wake Up’ EP, offering a four-track preview into the project while unveiling a selection of diverse electronic productions for home listening through to the dancefloor.
Over two decades, Dutch DJ and producer Chinedum Nwosu, aka Shinedoe, has established her presence as one of house and techno’s most loved talents, while carving a true path to her own vision. Based in Amsterdam and featuring as a key part of the city’s rich and blossoming underground scene, with performances across De Martkantine, Shelter and Thuishaven to international institutions such as Berghain to fabric, her releases on the likes of Rekids, Cocoon, Bpitch Control and her 2021 release ‘The Observer’ on Jeff Mills’ iconic Axis cemented her reputation as one of the scene’s first talents. Having launched her own label MTM Records in 2018, releasing four EPs on the label to date, October signals the arrival of the label’s first album in the form of her ten-track ‘Freedom Riders’ - an expansive and diverse project created in lockdown capturing sonics from across the spectrum - with the LP preceded by Nwosu’s four-track album sampler EP titled ‘Wake Up’.
“Freedom Riders is about living in a world where there is peace, and all our basic needs are fulfilled. Each being having the right to live in peace, be happy and to be. We are all Freedom Riders, some of us get lost and need to get back to the source.” - Shinedoe.
Opening production ‘Wake Up’ is a tension-building journey through metallic textures, warped vocals and eerie interludes, while album title cut ‘Freedom Riders’ fuses hazy atmospherics, rich chords, crisp percussion and sweeping acid lines to offer a late-night ride through smoky territories. On the flip, B1 ‘Peace’ offers an exemplary balance of light and dark with delicate yet vibrant leads guiding murky undertones and sharp percussion throughout, before closing with the hypnotic, off-kilter and mind-altering sonics of ‘Safety First’, traversing soundscapes to showcase and excellently crafted early-morning cut.
Cuts across the album continue this wide-reaching and rich variation, with the likes of ‘Shine’ and ‘Lockdown’ drawing on classic and modern house influences to offer striking additions for the dancefloor, while ‘Floor Action’ and closing track ‘See The Light’ veering into more dubby, paired back territories to offer up a sense of space and tranquillity - with the ten-track project showcasing a carefully crafted album rich in sound design showcasing one of Amsterdam’s finest talents.
DJ FEEDBACK
early support from
Laurent Garnier: Really like PEACE & SAFETY FIRST niiiiiiiiice
Marcel Dettmann: thx
Luke Slater: nice release thanks!
Ame (Innervisions): thanks
Ben Sims: safety first my fave, thx!!
Slam (Soma): Thanx
Chris Liebing (CLR): great vibe
Radio Slave (Rekids): Woah ! "Freedom Riders" is great... and just in time for the weekend ! Thankyou x
Bambounou (50 Weapons / Sound Pellegrino): There's a vibe I like it thanks
Anthony Parasole (The Corner) this is so good
Truncate: Solid cuts!
"UNITED", Tristesse Contemporaine’s new album is like a space shuttle, full of metropolitan and eccentric music makers.
Inside the shuttle: Narumi, Leo & Mike, respectively from Japan, Sweden and Jamaican-British. All "united" behind the unique Tristesse Contemporaine flag and led since the start by French label Record Makers (Kavinsky, Sebastien Tellier, Cola Boyy…).
After three rock & post-punk infused albums: "Tristesse Contemporaine" (2012), "Stay Golden" (2013) and "Stop and Start" (2017), they’re off to a new start and open a new cycle with their new opus "UNITED".
Who other than young prodigy Lewis OfMan, the one-man band behind hits like "Attitude" and renowned collaborations including Rejjie Snow or Carly Rae Jepsen, to join the joyous ride?
After hearing "Sly Fox"'s first demo in 2019, they convinced him to produce a whole album for them and became the fourth member of sorts, adding his pop sensibility, mixing genres and emotions with funky basslines, strong hooks, and digital arrangements.
A free-spirited album filled with irresistible beat-driven tunes thanks to Mike's thunderous voice, Narumi's sparkling synths and Leo's gleaming guitar, conquering new territories from reggae to 90’s breakbeat or New-York disco. A unique and united style glued together by a rare ability to switch moods and dynamics in a gleam of light, like a skilled DJ would.
'Big or profound sensations from small gestures which are carefully arranged. Using a mixture of sacred and profane, or classical and prosaic sound sources, knitted into intricate, fleet-footed compositions that virtually spring into the ear. Profondo Rosa is composer Ailin Grad’s first vinyl album following years embedded and loved in the Argentinian experimental music scene, with past treats on labels Krut, Sun Ark, Orange Milk Records and her own label Abyss, devoted to ‘connecting Latin Juke with the world’.
There’s a playfulness at the heart of Profondo Rosa that’s immediately charming, with a sense of scale and spatialisation in the sounds being toyed with, exploring the strange pleasures and satisfaction in her approach to delightful and fresh feeling sound design. Aylu is known to be as likely to deploy the sound of a finger click, a fizzy drink being cracked open, or a fly buzzing past the ear, as she is drawn to sampling gorgeous strings or instrumentation. Her debut album for Mana constantly builds territories that tug at your heartstrings and then have you grinning five seconds later. This versatility and acceleration has often resulted in her music being compared to footwork, alongside collaboration with other producers experimenting in that sphere; in 2017 she and Foodman put together a dizzying hour of sounds for NTS.
Her miniaturisation of rhythm and ringtone-like sample size could also bring to mind SND circa their warmer softer glitch Tenderlove phase, or perhaps the approach that Teenage Engineering take to designing tools for music making. Each are deriving pleasure from small and satisfying shapes, as well as advocating an object-oriented philosophy and minimalisation in their work that sidesteps a draining of colour. Sound is fun, and in Profondo Rosa it sounds like Aylu has that at the forefront of her mind.
Her hyperreal sound and its link to the languages of electroacoustic or computer music are clear, but she outmanoeuvres many of the overly-academic and formless examples of those genres. Profondo Rosa’s skeletal assembly of objects becomes tunes in an elegant, almost understated way; tactile elements quickly combine and roll into deeper and persuasively emotional places. These compositions give off an air of being very free, very experimental, despite being meticulously artful and studied arrangements on precise and nimble coordinates.'
BACK IN STOCK
Precious, timely, moody reflections on migrating from Côte d’Ivoire to Moss, in Norway, over ruff breakbeat funk supplied by the nimble bass-playing of Maimouna’s old man (from Kambo Super Sound), and the expert conga and kit-drumming of Stliletti-Ana (from Jesse, in Helsinki). Even in their delirium, b-boys and girls will savour traces of the Incredible Bongo Band, in the chorus. Over the eight minutes, and going deeper on the flip, the mix lifts off into a cosmic steppers dub, featuring Gilb-r alongside Sotofett on keyboards, with no let up for the dancefloor in energy and vibes.
Dear friends, Can you imagine a rolling recording studio? This is exactly where recordings of Himbert´s „Old Banger EP“ took place. For his debut on Brombert Records he put all his gear into an old campervan. Footloose and fancy-free Himbert produced four tracks with dry and almost tangibly sound aesthetics, that take you on a trip into a world remote from commercialized rave and club culture. The EP kicks off with „C35“, a track driven by a gritty bassline that is counteracted by an euphoric chord pattern. This combination pushes into a thrilling atmosphere that keeps you in excitement all the time. „T3“ releases tension with a swirling bass and soft sound pads and sends you on a diving trip. „MB100“ comes in entirely different. This track is a mad rush! An absurd bass-engine and pointed dub echos force up ecstasy with every single loop. Last but not least, „J5“ shows yet another side of Himbert´s sound. With airy-fairy woodblock hits and an eerily beautiful synthline this one has an almost trance-touch and leads you into full contemplation.
- A1: Rock This Mother
- A2: Talk To Me Girl
- A3: You Can Find Me
- A4: Check This Out
- A5: Jesus Going To Clean House
- A6: Hope You Understood
- A7: Is It What You Want
- A8: Love Is Everlasting
- A9: This Is Hip-Hop Art
- A10: Opposite Of Love
- A11: Do You Know What I Mean
- B1: Saving All My Love For You
- B2: Look Out Here I Come
- B3: Girl You Always Talking
- B4: Have A Great Day
- B5: Take My Hand
- B6: I Need Your Love
- B7: Your Town
- B8: Talk Around Town
- B9: Booty Head/Take A Little Walk
- B10: I Love My Mama
- B11: I Never Found Anyone Like You
Vinyl LP[23,49 €]
As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"
Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."
"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.
"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."
"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.
"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."
In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."
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Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."
His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.
"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.
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Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.
"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."
Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."
One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.
"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."
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Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."
Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.
Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."
The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.
"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.
"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."
"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.
"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."
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"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"
Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.
"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."
The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.
"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"
The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.
"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."
In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."
Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.
"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.
"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.
"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."
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Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.
Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.
On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."
For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."
Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?
"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."
Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.
Akae Beka's inimitable style of rich, deep, multi-layered songwriting, uncompromising devotion to RasTafari and soulful healing melodies developed over decades performing with St. Croix based band Midnite and countless recordings. At the point of his untimely passing in 2019, he had released over 70LP's. He is without a doubt one of the most prolific reggae artists ever known.
The stellar production trinity that is Zion I Kings have been involved collectively and individually in creating some of the most highly regarded contributions to the vast Akae Beka catalogue. Beauty For Ashes was named as the best reggae album of 2014 according to iTunes. A monumental achievement for undiluted, uncompromising RasTafari roots reggae music this side of the millennium. Two of the LP's tracks, Weather the Storm and Same I Ah One, have been catapulted into global notoriety in part due to the viral success of the YouTube video of the 'Dub in the Rainforest' session organised in St. Croix by Tippy I in 2014. The video offered an unparalleled audio visual insight of the powerful, captivating, energy of Vaughn Benjamin, Pressure Buss Pipe, Ras Batch, and many of the bredrin and sisterin of St. Croix rallying around the I Grade Dub living dub experience.
Following 8 years of anxious anticipation, for the countless Akae Beka fans that are also vinyl connoisseurs, this LP is now being released on as a 12" vinyl LP courtesy of Before Zero Records. This offers the listener not only the chance to enjoy this LP in an analogue form, but also the chance to hold the artwork as a 12" square masterpiece, created by the hands of Ras Marcus, the artist who gave the powerful visual presence that became synonymous to much of the I Grade / Akae Beka works over the years.
"Bobby Dove is a gifted artist, and a brilliant new light on the songwriting scene - A time traveler, Bobby's songs meld genres with the touch of a master - I am a fan" – Mary Gauthier.Bobby Dove has built a following across Canada and beyond Born in Montreal, Quebec, Bobby has become known as one of the country's most dedicated troubadours, crooning live audiences with heart- worn originals, and paying tribute to the golden age of Country music. Along the road, Bobby has worked with a number of legendary players, and shared stages with artists such as Mary Gauthier, Richard Thompson, Irish Mythen, The Sadies and JD Mcpherson.
Bobby Dove's new album, Hopeless Romantic, offers eleven new
original Americana/Country songs on subjects such as unrequited love, being on the road, a haunted hotel and a hard-rocking pallbearer. Co-produced with Bazil Donovan (Blue Rodeo) and Tim Vesely (Rheostatics) at The Woodshed studio in Toronto,On, the record includes some of the finest in Canadian Country music including members of Blue Rodeo Jim Cuddy, Bazil Donovan and Jimmy Bowskill (The Sheepdogs, Blue Rodeo), and Burke Carroll (Kathleen Edwards).
The Dove is currently perched in western Manitoba, supporting the launch of Hopeless Romantic, as well as releasing The Bobby Dove Show, a virtual variety show, featuring Bobby's new songs, and interviews with renowned roots/Country singer- songwriters from across Canada. Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, the show can be streamed on Bobby's social- media as well as on bobbydove.
"Dove can write rings around all but the very best of troubadours, telling stories in a compelling way…. This is very impressive indeed and I suggest you get Bobby Dove on your radar immediately." – Country Music People Magazine
At the crossroads of ritual, industrial, and electronic music, there exists a niche where many experimenters are blurring the lines between genres. Among them are the three members of Nze Nze (UVB76 and Sacred Lodge). Summoning sequenced machines, digital samplers, and multi-effects, they make instrumentals collide with guttural vocals and warrior tales from Fangs mythologies (the vernacular language of Central Africa), arranging it all to create hybrid, unclassifiable, and disorienting pieces.
The fundamentals of radical electronic music are there, but the production is on the level of the great free-jazz records, allowing it to claim a heritage far beyond modern-day offerings.
With "To the Westcoast / My Fate (Revisited)" by Ara Pacis we are proud to officially release two of the most exciting AOR tracks hailing from Germany.
Ara Pacis, a group from the island Föhr in the North Sea, was originally founded in 1971. Initially influenced by blues and classic rock by The Rolling Stones, The Who, and the like, they were also inspired by bands such as Steely Dan as well as the German/British group Lake. However, Ara Pacis created a style of their own when their privately pressed and self-distributed "To the Westcoast" LP was released in 1979. The songs were mainly characterized by two-part guitar riffs by Töns Brautlecht-Deppe and Wolfgang Schiffner, who also were the core songwriters of the band.
The freshly remastered single starts with the title track "To the Westcoast". Due to its sunny and yacht-y vibe it is easily amongst the best and most authentic tunes out of the "Westcoast rock" genre recorded in Germany. With family connections in California, lead singer Töns Brautlecht-Deppe was able to create and capture the feeling of the Pacific sea shore just perfectly.
The single is backed with a revised studio version of "My Fate". Here, lead singer Töns Brautlecht tells his story about getting into playing guitar as a young boy. The track is also featured on the album but the version we present on the 7" vinyl is an unreleased, even quite funky and more powerful take. It was recorded in 1981 at the Rüssl studio in Hamburg where Brautlecht had just started to work as an engineer.
As the "To the Westcoast" LP was released during a time when styles like New Wave, Synth Pop and Punk became popular in Germany and the interest in organic and soulful rock declined, Ara Pacis' debut remained relatively unnoticed until today and even the Krautrock collector's scene does not seem to be fully aware of this hard to find gem yet of which only 1000 copies were originally pressed. The band is still kept in good memory by their fans as a quite legendary live act and although they officially split in 1982, the group still served their fan base with revival concerts in 1990 and 2002 plus a website with full band story and lots of images from the early days.
We hope this single sheds new light on this great band. It is limited to 350 copies and released in a beautiful picture sleeve which shows the original LP artwork.
- 1: Killer Klowns (From Outer Space)
- 2: Hidden Klown Ship
- 3: Mike And Debbie's Discovery
- 4: Escape From The Klown Ship
- 5: Killer Klown March
- 6: Visit To The Drugstore
- 7: Glactic Globetheater
- 8: The Empty Forest
- 9: Knock My Block Off
- 10: Little Girl Too Klose
- 11: Top Of The World
- 12: Muscle Klown Kar March
- 13: Growing Korn
- 14: Shadow Show
- 15: Officer Mooney
- 16: Dave And The Aftermath
- 17: Ventriloquist Mooney
- 18: The Inevitable Part I
- 19: The Inevitable Part Ii
- 20: Debbi'es Been Kaught
- 21: Amusement Park / Death Pies
- 22: The Fun House Part I
- 23: The Fun House Part Ii
- 24: Escape Into Klown Kathedral
- 25: Klownfrontation
- 26: Truck Escape And Klownzila
- 27: Final Konfrontation & Reunion
- 28: Klowns Kidnap
- 1: 29Galactic Globe Theater (Extended)
- The Complete 1988 Film Score by John Massari - Available For The First Time On Vinyl 180 Gram Violet and Blue Vinyl (Light In The Attic Exclusive Variant) - Exclusive Liner Notes by Composer John Massari - Exclusive Liner Notes by Killer Klowns Co-Creator Stephen Chiodo - Heavyweight 12" x 12" Art Print - Old-Style Tip-On Jackets with Matte Satin Coating // KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE have finally landed at Waxwork Records! After much anticipation, we are thrilled to present the official 1988 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by John Massari for the very first time on vinyl! Would you believe someone if they told you a circus tent-shaped spaceship landed in your small town and was abducting your neighbors to store them in cotton candy cocoons? In this '80's cult classic, teens Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer) and Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder) have to fight both the diabolical bozos and the local law enforcement's disbelief to save themselves and their community! The original score to Killer Klowns From Outer Space is kicked off by the classic 80's horror movie theme track, Killer Klowns (From Outer Space) by California punk band, The Dickies. The 'nightmare merry-go-round' continues with a smattering of menacing electronic brass sections, electric guitar, bombastic drum machine beats, & harpsichord combined with sci-fi synth elements to capture the ultra-specific origins of the antagonists. Massari's score to Klowns is a retro-synth joyride from start to finish featuring immediately recognizable cues from the beloved 80's cult-classic! Waxwork Records is thrilled to present the official Killer Klowns From Outer Space double LP, released for the first time on vinyl. Complete with 180 gram "Cotton Candy" and "Popcorn" vinyl, deluxe packaging, new artwork by Ruiz Burgos, old-style tip-on jackets with matte coating, a heavyweight 12"x12" art print, and liner notes by composer Massari and Klowns co-creator Stephen Chiodo!
- 1: Hymns Of The Slumbering Race
- 2: Internal Fulmination Of The Grand Deceivers
- 3: Adrift Dark Halls Of Vinheim
- 4: To Bear The Twin Faces Of The Dragon
- 5: In Light Of Paleblood
- 6: Entranced Within The Moon Presence
- 7: Invocation Of The Black Sacrament
- 8: Sacred Rites & Black Magick
- 9: Oathpact
- 10: Ten Heralds, Ten Desolations
- 11: The Waters Of Iolamita
- 12: In The Shaded Vlasian Forest
- 13: Amid A Smear Of Crimson Cloud
- 14: Apparitions Across The Ravencrest
- 15: Sanguinare Vampiris
- 16: Upon Frozen Shores
- 17: Shadow Of The Golden Eagle
- 18: Along The Appian Way
- 19: By Winters Long Passed
- 20: A Malice Dead & Cold
As on Under A Burning Eclipse, between each song on Sacred Rites & Black Magick is an intricately positioned interlude building the ambiance and steering the thematic intensity of the album. Beginning with echoing, clean dual acoustic guitars, introductory interlude “Hymns Of The Slumbering Race” begins the procession of grand ascension and hair raising riffage to come. “Internal Fulmination Of The Grand Deceivers” flashes STORMRULER’s brand of Imperial Black Metal Warfare, shining with heavy bass and blastbeats before cascading into icy atmosphere topped by smoke-cloaked vocals. Entrancing guitars match an ebb and flow of carefully paced interludes and merciless, speeding fury, showcasing standout leads and a blazing solo. Similar epic songwriting, lush lyricism and skillful dynamics can be witnessed on tracks such as the brooding “Entranced Within The Moon Presence”, intricate “In The Shaded Vlasian Forest” and introspective, glistening “Along The Appian Way”. “To Bear The Twin Faces Of The Dragon” stages some of the most menacing sonic escapades and memorable leads of the 20-track offering, combining chants of sorcery with searing screams and waves of crushing melody, while tracks such as “Upon Frozen Shores” weave a sonic tale of occult doom atop triumphant soundscapes, breakneck rhythms and ghostly melodic passages. Standout title offering “Sacred Rites & Black Magick” sets the supreme lyrical and musical mood of the album itself, depicting just how deftly STORMRULER conjure lucid black metal as they inject energetic, unforgettable grooves and riffs into their scorching delivery – succeeding in convincing even the newest of genre converts.
"Fasten your seat belts - THE NEW ROSES are back! After touring with world famous artists like Scorpions, Saxon, Accept and Tremonti, the quartet around Timmy Rough will release their fifth studio album, entitled Sweet Poison, via Napalm Records on October 21, 2022. Musically, the band delivers stadium rock that would make the likes of Bon Jovi proud! With their most recent previous release, Nothing But Wild, the band entered the top 10 of the German album charts, but the band isn’t letting off the gas yet. Bevor they will embark on an extensive headliner tour in autumn, they will support none other than the legendary Judas Priest in June, Foreigner and rock icons KISS on their way to the top of rock! Their newest offering, Sweet Poison, starts off with the brilliant, guitar-driven anthem “My Kinda Crazy” providing a taste of what’s to come before blasting into authentic rock-meets-Americana tracks like “Playing With Fire” and “Sweet Gloria”. Massive track and album highlight “Warpaint” stages the band’s raw power with blazing guitar riffs and powerful drumming, while “The Usual Suspects” and “1st Time For Everything” convince as smooth sing-along hymns with catchy hooks. Tracks like “Dead Of Night” emerge with gloomy power, building atop a distinct melody and leading into a strong anthemic chorus, while THE NEW ROSES offer their softer side with songs such as “All I Ever Needed” – a mighty mid-tempo rock ballad showcasing the band’s vulnerability while reviving emotionality alike some of Guns N’ Roses most touching ballads. Frontman Timmy Rough passionately serves the full range of his voice on the track, also impressively evident on lyrically tender acoustic offering “True Love”. Sweet Poison is an outstanding rock album providing hit after hit and anthem after anthem, taking 80s retro rock to an extraordinary new level. Brace yourself as THE NEW ROSES shift into high gear, taking you on a ride towards the horizon of stadium rock!!
An Offering is a new work by Photay, under the influence of a special creative partnership with International Anthem recording artist Carlos Niño. IARC followers should know Niño, or at least one of his 3 albums we"ve released in the last 2 years (Chicago Waves, More Energy Fields, Current, and/or EXTRA PRESENCE). A simple introduction to Photay (née Evan Shornstein) would be to say: he"s made some of the best "ambient" music of the last five years.
We are proud to present "I'm Always Right" by Imagination, an unreleased jazz rock LP from 1977. Comprised of five tracks with a playtime of roughly 30 minutes, you will hear one of the finest German late-70s rock-tinged electric jazz albums of the era. The recording is a delightful stand-out with unique compositions, aspiring solo work, and a soulful spirit throughout. Additionally, the album veritably glows with exceptional sound quality, as it has been remastered from original tapes that were cut more than four decades ago at the WDR Funkhaus, Cologne.
Here is the story of how label founder John Raincoatman became aware of these lost tapes:
"I first got in touch with members of Imagination from Düsseldorf (not to be confused with the UK disco band under the same name) in 2017 for licensing the track "Strawberry Wine" from their collectible "Shake It" album from 1980. A couple of months later, when I was speaking with Willi Hövelmann, the guitarist for Imagination, he told me about some recordings the band had made a couple of years before, when they had been invited to to the studio of the WDR, a major German broadcaster. A couple of weeks later, when Hövelmann finally sent me the files that he had requested from the WDR, I could not believe what I heard - not only that the songs were totally different from what I expected, but that they were also very very good! The music wasn't comparable to any other kind of fusion release that I knew of. These five songs were straight forward, tight and soulful electric jazz rock, a combination rarely heard from Germany from that time period."
How come Imagination - at that time a young newcomer band consisting of musicians between 19 and 22 years of age - was able to record at the well-equipped Funkhaus studio of German radio and television? Hövelmann explains: "The WDR got to know us from a newcomer band competition called "Pop am Rhein" (Pop at the Rhine) which was set up to support local bands and was promoted by several bigger newspapers. Imagination was one of the 5 contestants which were picked from 59 bands by a jury of music journalists and our band was invited to play a concert at the Philipshalle in front of about 3500 guests. Although a band called "Accept" won the contest (yes, the heavy metal band that gained international success in the following years!) and Imagination only made 3rd place, we were invited by music host and journalist Wolfgang Neumann to record in a professional studio."
Neumann's broadcasting show at the WDR was called "Rock Studio", and one of his special goals was to help push newcomer bands by giving them airplay. As a side note, Neumann actually compiled a series of three LPs on the Harvest label from 1979-1982, each of them featuring four bands. However, the earlier recordings of Imagination had only been used for broadcasting reasons, they were aired a couple of times but never made it to a vinyl or CD release.
So, on October 10th, 1977, it was time for the band to show up and prove themselves in the studio. The tracks were all recorded in one afternoon, mainly as one takes. In some cases flute, saxophone were overdubbed, as well as the vocals on "Love is Genesis", as Hövelmann remembers.
The first song, "Jazzgang" can probably be seen as Imagination's most characteristic composition out of their early period: heavy bass, saxophone leads and speedy solos by the band members. A genuine, rough, yet funky uptempo jazz rock tune. But it's "I'm Always Right", the second track on the album, that raises the bar as the key track of the release with its 10-minute length. The song starts with a great piano solo by Mario F. Demonte. In fact, "Demonte" was a pseudonym of Ratko Delorko, a classically trained piano virtuoso who is still active today as conductor, composer and performer. At that time, it was simply impossible for him to officially be part in a band like Imagination and hence the alias was invented. Anyway, the speedy intro leads to a very soulful mid-tempo jazz funk groove that offers space and time for the band members to perform a solo. First off is Uwe Ziss with sax and flute combined. The second solo belongs to Willi "Sultan" Hövelmann on electric guitar. For the furious ending the pace is set back to high speed. Delorko serves us with one of the most brilliant uptempo piano solos you may have heard in a while on a jazz record.
The next song stylistically stands out from the rest. "Biting My Time" incorporates a rhythm and blues feel with a 60s soul jazz attitude. The track was composed by Uwe Ziss who leads through the track with aspiring flute solos which feel like an easy summer breeze after the first two rock tinged tunes.
"Himalaya" sees Imagination move away from jazz quite a bit, rather approaching the psychedelic rock genre with a vibe reminiscent of the sound of the early 70s. Again starting with a piano solo by Ratko Delorko the pace is quickly at 150 bpm with the full band laying down an energetic jazz rock sound. Just after a little over one-and-a-half minutes there is a breakdown to a slower tempo with overdubbed mysterious vocals and psyche-y screams which may remind more of the legendary krautrock band Can than what is typically known as "jazz". The mood continues with tense saxophone and guitar solos, just to speed up again towards the end with furious drumming by Andreas Oelschläger.
"Love Is Genesis" concludes the release. It was composed and sung by former bassist Robert Schlickmann. Though most of the band members didn't really like the song at that time it still is a one-of-a-kind soft rock pop ballad which partly reminds of some of the vocal song tracks later to be found on the "Shake It" LP from 1980. The track manifested that Imagination were never really supposed to be solely an instrumental band.
We are now happy to have cleared the exclusive rights for this recording from the WDR and are proud to re-present this amazing collection of songs. It should appeal to fusion, jazz rock and jazz funk aficionados but also to late krautrock collectors. We are also certain that it will also please fans of the "Shake It" album, simply in terms of being such a bright and soulful debut with great music overall.
- A1: Strawberry Wine 6 25
- A2: Good Advice 3 09
- A3: California 5 48
- B1: Mornin' Lights 5 10
- B2: Can't Stand Without You 9 59
- C1: Waitin' For Your Call 2 19
- C2: Clouds Flee Before The Wind 4 12
- C3: On The Way Out 4 46
- D1: Can't Stand Without You (Demo Version) 6 33
- D2: Clouds Flee Before The Wind (Demo Version) 4 53
- D3: I Want You To Stay (Demo Version) 7 12
We are proud to present the official 40-year anniversary issue of Imagination's debut album Shake It. Remastered from original tapes, this deluxe edition is a double vinyl LP with gatefold sleeve, featuring a newly available lyric insert.
Shake It covers a diverse spectrum of styles and sounds, all combining to a unique soulful amalgam that ranges from sunshine AOR funk ("Mornin' Lights") and leftfield disco ("Strawberry Wine") to psychy, epic, downtempo, vocoder grooves ("Can't Stand Without You") and more. Originally released in 1980, it fast became one of Germany's most collectible privately-pressed LPs.
Shake It was the creation of young thoroughbreds working hard on becoming professional musicians, trying to take their next big step in the music business. Starting out as a pure jazz-rock combo in the mid '70s (as we hear on the recently released lost studio tapes, I'm Always Right (The WDR Tapes 1977)) Imagination left behind their instrumental roots, incorporating new musical trends and styles.
Uwe Ziss, their saxophonist and flutist, became one of two lead singers in Imagination. He would be joined by the younger Roger Mork, a student of original guitarist Willi Hövelmann, around 1979. Roger's voice would best be heard on the aforementioned "Mornin' Lights", one of the various standout tracks on Shake It. However, there is much more that this album offers.
There are brilliant soulful soft rock ballads like "Clouds Flee Before The Wind" and "Waitin for your Call" or the catchy "California" song that switches from a dreamy Westcoast sound (as the title implies) to danceable rhythm & blues with equal ease. Last but not least, we have unearthed three unissued bonus cuts. On one, the demo take of "Clouds Flee Before The Wind", we hear, for the first time ever, the original refrain of this song, which, for some strange reason, was taken out from the final mix on Shake It.
When all eight original songs were recorded and mastered in June, at the well-equipped West Aix-La-Chapelle studio, the stage was set for Imagination's long-desired career push. They'd initially press about 2500 copies of Shake It selling it mainly, locally, directly to their hometown fanbase in Düsseldorf. Meanwhile, their manager would attempt to arrange a record deal with a music label. Unfortunately, this became more difficult than expected. Negotiations with a smaller publishing company were made by Imagination, and Shake It was repressed on Nash Records in 1981 without their consent, under the false promises of a nationwide promotional tour which would never come to fruition. At the same time, the group would face a UK band under the same name achieving mainstream success, making it difficult (not to say entirely impossible) to perform as "Imagination". Though the band would remain active after Shake It, they'd split shortly after Nash's duplicitous reissue hit store shelves.
Luckily, through time, Shake It itself has remained worthwhile, creatively, for those who stumbled upon it and financially, too, becoming quite the sought after gem in record collecting circles. This deluxe anniversary double vinyl issue makes the LP available once again at a far more reasonable price, featuring the original, illustrious, eye-catching, Roy Lichtenstein-influenced banana art, as well as previously unavailable press pictures and more.
The first progressive girl group of the French Occitan language
pop scene bring you folk funk, sun-baked bossa, Coltrane jazz and
their own brand of punky ‘Dizco Rural’ against an untouched
French Balearic backdrop spanning the late 70s and 80s.
If even the most assiduous of European record collectors consider
the Occitan language music scene to be France’s best-kept secret
then it’s as fair to say that the incredible multifaceted recordings of
langue d’oc prog girl group Lei Chapacans have spent the last four
decades hiding in plain sight. In all fairness this overlooked
treasure chest of minority language excursions into folk funk,
Balearic, bossa, John Coltrane-penned jazz, baroque psych,
Palestinian poetry, comedic synth skits (and even the rawest form
of femme-fronted multilingual punky disco) has been stowed away
in inconspicuous photographic record sleeves, falsely evoking
something closer to contemporary C&W while oft-misplaced in
record shop cassette racks alongside ‘traditional’ spoken-word and
scholastic albums.
So, for the uninitiated, don’t be too hard on yourself. The fun starts
here. For those who are familiar with the rare and sought-after
one-off solo album by Occitan singer Miquela and have craved for
more, then you’ve come to exactly the right place. Lei Chapacans
(a name that roughly translates to The Vagabonds) is the all-girl
vocal group assembled by Miquela herself just two years after her
debut release, having toured the word and snubbed major label
record deal offers with a steadfast allegiance to the protection of
the Occitan language in which this album is primarily penned and
performed (minus a small amount of German and sarcastic
English in one rebellious instance).
For European collectors with a penchant for French savoir faire,
but have further yearnings for folkloric femme funk, then it’s time
to look towards the Occitan sunset where you will meet Lolo,
Miquela, Sophie, Irena and Denise.
These amazing, and undeniably culturally important recordings
might have taken some time to find a wider audience, but for
music lovers, crate diggers and vinyl vultures alike there are still a
lot of tasty morsels out there to be scavenged and devoured, ask
any self-respecting Chapacan and they’ll concur wholeheartedly.
Ranging from sanguine emotional clarity to distortion and unrest, Wow Sailor voyages through sunlight and storms in this mindful and explorative album. Happy Fear is an intricate tapestry of emotional experience, where fear and joy clash heads in the pursuit of self-understanding. Scattered field recordings of literature, ambiance and chance encounters provide atmospheric depth to enrich a resonant and meditative soundscape.
This tale begins with fond yet powerful nostalgia, before segueing into a range of hybrid instrumental explorations in which guitar, voice, violin, and trumpet blossom alongside refined electronic foundations. The album closes off with indulgent melancholia reminiscent of the opening, providing lifelike circularity to the album.
All songs remain connected; one leading into another without pause or silence. This urges the listener to digest the work in a single sitting as elements of the story seem intrinsically connected.
The first half is studded with gems of atmospheric conversation and recordings, providing a living and textured environment for the crafted synthetic sounds of Wow Sailor to evolve. Most songs are free from percussive structures, but In Her Gaze breaks the mold with clear percussive dictate. The middle and latter titles are connected by ominous frequencies that err on the darker side of curiosity - encouraging exploration into the transformative power of fear.
All in all, the work glimmers with spontaneity and diversity that resembles real-life experience. Carefully crafted sonic interplays bare semblance to the fluctuating emotional life of the ever sensitive and sentient human being.
Dugnad Rec sits at the helm of yet another wonderfully creative and philosophical work. This release gives verity to the artistic integrity, sound design, and mental exploration of the label. Wow Sailor’s work radiates an enticing, authentic, and indelible mark of individuality.
Surprise Chef’s music is based on evoking mood; their vivid arrangements utilize time and space to build soundscapes that invite the listener into their world. The quintet’s distinct sound pulls from 70s film scores, the funkier side of jazz, and the samples that form the foundation of hip hop. They push the boundaries of instrumental soul and funk with their own approach honed by countless hours in the studio, studying the masters, and perhaps most importantly, the “tyranny of distance” that dictates a unique perspective to their music. Hailing from just outside of Melbourne, Australia their first two albums, All News Is Good News and Daylight Savings amassed a die-hard fanbase and brought their sound from their home studio to every corner of the globe. The band is now signed to Big Crown Records, joining a lineage of contemporary and classic sounds that have influenced Surprise Chef’s music since their formation in 2017. Surprise Chef is Lachlan Stuckey on guitar, Jethro Curtin on keys, Carl Lindeberg on bass, Andrew Congues on drums, and Hudson Whitlock—the latest member who does it all from percussion to composing to producing. Their self proclaimed "moody shades of instrumental jazz-funk" have a bit of everything: punchy drums, infectious keys, rhythm guitar you might hear on a Studio One record, and flute lines that could be from a Blue Note session. But when you step back and take in the entirety of their sound and approach, you'll hear and see a group greater than the sum of its parts. In many ways Surprise Chef embodies the idiom "the benefits of limits." They were limited in that there weren't many people making or talking about instrumental jazz/soul/funk in Southeast Australia, let alone putting out records. This left them to develop their sound and approach in a kind of creative isolation where a small circle of friends and like-minded musicians fed off each other. "Being in Australia, being so far away, we only get glimpses and glances of this music’s origins," Stuckey says. "But hearing a label like Big Crown was one of the first times we realized you could make fresh, new soul music that wasn't super retro or just nostalgic." This approach is on full display throughout their new album Education & Recreation. Tracks like “Velodrome” pair chunky drums with an earworm synth line that has all the making of something you would find on an Ultimate Breaks & Beats compilation while numbers like “Iconoclasts” show their knack for tasteful use of space. From the crushing intro of “Suburban Breeze” to the floaty mellow bop of “Spring’s Theme” Surprise Chef has weaved together an album that takes you through peaks and valleys of emotion and provides a vivid soundtrack that will pull you deeper into your imagination. There is a beauty in the vast space for interpretation of instrumental music and they are adding a modern classic to the canon with this new album. Turn on the record and enjoy the ride, wherever it may take you.
Upstairs, a band from Frankfurt, Germany was active from 1977 to 1983. Though considering themselves mainly a rock group, the band incorporated elements of funk, jazz rock and disco into their music. On their rare and privately released debut album "It's Hard To Get In The Showbiz" from 1980 they created something that could be called Germany's definite answer to AOR, yet still with an edgy and unique krautrock flavor.
The album starts with "Wontcha Try," a track where core songwriter, guitarist and lead singer Helmer Sauer is telling the story about being dismissed from his job: "They tried to tell me in a fucking gentle way, that the time had come to kick me…". Sauer serves more personal, hard-edged lyrics on the album as well. On "Happy Hooker," for example, he tells the story of a working girl in the red light milieu: "The job is as hard that you really can never imagine, she serves for the money, degradin' herself in a way - if you'd know how she's feelin' you wouldn't laugh at all". An empathetic view on the subject of prostitution rarely heard at that time.
But aside from the profound lyrics and songwriting, the album has a lot to offer on the groovy side of things. With catchy bass lines, rhythm guitar, Fender Rhodes, Moog synthesizer, Clavinet and swift crisp drumming "It's Hard To Get In The Showbiz" is one of the best examples of late 70s flavored funky rock from Germany. Additional to the aforementioned "Wontcha Try" another DJ delight should be "Make Your Steps On Better Lines" which showcases a superb synth line and disco funk flavors. We also get the slick mellow latinesque AOR grooves of "Get On A Plane" as well as the now-classic "You're Just Yourself", which marks the most soulful track of the LP. As followers of our label are already well aware, "You're Just Yourself" was featured on the compilation, "Boogie On The Mainline - A Collection Of Rare Disco, Funk And Boogie From Germany 1980-1987" from 2018.
The band mainly performed locally and never really had ambitions to release their music on a bigger label. Too bad that Upstairs only released this one album. Of course, the highly sought-after original pressing is almost impossible to find nowadays. Therefore, we are proud to finally make this record available again after 40 years for a reasonable, regular LP price. Only 300 copies of the carefully re-mastered repress have been produced, and included is a printed lyrics insert identical to the original.
Following on from last year’s acclaimed Sylva Sylvarum, the epic double LP from Ora Clementi (her collaborative project with James Rushford), crys cole returns to Black Truffle with Other Meetings. Originally commissioned and released on cassette by Boomkat Editions in 2021, Other Meetings is a major addition to the body of carefully hewn solo work cole has released over the last decade, offering up two side-long suites of her radically intimate approach to sound. After many years dominated by touring and travel, cole found herself in lockdown in her Berlin apartment, working in a limited space with minimal equipment. Digging through archives of recordings taken overseas and exploring the sonic potential hidden in the objects surrounding her (including a coffee pot and a vase of dying flowers), she crafted what in her liner notes she calls ‘an internal dérive, a journey that drifted through many places without a defining compass’. Totalling over 50 minutes, the two pieces unfold at an unhurried pace, each containing four individually titled subsections. Beginning with a sequence of the highly amplified small sounds characteristic of much of cole’s work, the opening moments of ‘The time between two durations of sleep’ are underpinned by a gentle rocking motion, weaving together contact mic crunch, metallic resonance, glimpses of bird song, and isolated drum machine hits, the sonic space expanding and contracting as focus moves between elements. Briefly side-lined by a tactile but unplaceable sizzling, this complex weave of voices then returns in a kind of dubbed-out ‘version’, the percussive accents echoing around the stereo space. In one of the record’s most beautiful and unexpected moments, these sounds are joined by a sparse melodic line performed on a broken 1980s digital synth, the vaguely New Age timbres being taken on a long, tonally ambiguous wander. Cole’s immersion in memories of travel comes to the fore in the final section of the first side, titled ‘Wat Paknam’ after a royal temple in Bangkok, where snatches of voices, ringing bells and distant waves of chanting blur together with synth tones into an increasingly abstracted wave of sound. The second side, ‘Slices of cake’, opens in a similarly hallucinatory outdoor space of echoing bird song and liquified traffic before abruptly zooming in on a microscopic world of subtly processed and highly amplified objects, explored with a starkness and quiet insistence that calls to mind the fringe not-quite-concrète of outsiders like Paul A.R. Timmermans or Knud Viktor, whose obsessive interrogation of dripping water might also serve as a point of reference for the following sub-section, the aptly titled ‘magischer Abfluss’ (magic drain).
While Other Meetings develops many aspects of cole’s previous work – the hyper-magnification of small gestures, the unsettling edits and fades partly inspired by hypnagogic states, the location recordings smeared into oneiric haze – it is almost as if these pieces are somehow songs, the remnants of an evaporated music of which nothing remains except isolated hits from a synthetic drum, a handful of notes, or simply a duration of emptied atmosphere. Radically reductive yet deeply musical, Other Meetings is a major work from an artist driven by an uncompromising and idiosyncratic vision.
Presented with an inner sleeve with photos and liner notes from the composer and remastered audio.
"Since 2004, ALTER BRIDGE has been one of the most consistent bands to successfully represent the rock and metal communities with their driving melodies, blazing guitar riffs and topical lyrics that resonate with fans around the globe. Their seventh album, Pawns & Kings, continues that trend with 10 unforgettable new additions to their catalog. Coming off the launch of what was shaping up to be one of the band’s pinnacle moments with Walk The Sky (#1 US Billboard Top Albums, #1 US Current Rock and Hard Music, #4 UK Official Charts, #1 UK Independent and Rock/Metal, #5 Official German Album Charts), everything came to a halt as the world would forever be changed due to the events of a global pandemic. The time the members of ALTER BRIDGE spent apart sparked a new fire and heaviness when the quartet comprised of Myles Kennedy on vocals/guitars, Mark Tremonti on guitars/vocals, Brian Marshall on bass and Scott Phillips on drums would reconvene for what would eventually become Pawns & Kings. Teaming with longtime producer and collaborator Michael “Elvis” Baskette, the album shines with massive, menacing arena-ready production while emerging as another sonic testament to the seasoned Kennedy/Tremonti songwriting dream-team. The band deliver three epic anthems, including two that clock in at over six minutes – the reflective and absolutely epic title track “Pawns & Kings”, grim-riffed, progressive influenced “Sin After Sin”, and the emotive eight-and-a-half minute journey “Fable Of The Silent Son.” “Silver Tongue” is backed by a punishing intro riff that gives way to one of the band’s most infectious choruses as Myles Kennedy sings, “Truth of a crime. You can’t outrun. Under the spell of my silver tongue,” while tracks like “Holiday” and “Season Of Promise” ebb and flow within the trademark multi-faceted metallic rock attack that has enchanted ALTER BRIDGE fans for a generation. Songs like “This Is War,” “Dead Among The Living” and “Last Man Standing” showcase the heavier side of a band firing on all cylinders, with soaring leads, hair-raising vocals and introspective lyricism abound. Mark Tremonti helms lead vocal duties on the uplifting track “Stay” – an interchanging of skills that first debuted on the band’s fourth album, Fortress, and continues to this day. Nearly 20 years into their celebrated career, one thing is for sure – Pawns & Kings offers a musical snapshot of a band that shows no signs of slowing down and continues to push itself creatively for the whole world to see. before peaking with a frenetic, metallic bridge-breakdown and piercing solo worthy of rock legend.
Trumpeter, producer and composer Rory Simmons summons his
iconoclastic musical vision on the genre-blurring Monocled Man album,
'Ex Voto'
Here, the omni-appreciative trio (Simmons, Chris Montague and Jon Scott) travel
down a groove- adjacent pathway in search of solemn industrial
soundscapes.Simmons' cultural inquisitiveness forms a treasure-trove of musical
touchstones, which he uses to sculpt a sound that's truly his own. 'Ex Voto' ('an
offer given in order to fulfil a vow') represents another idiosyncratic journey, this
time inspired by Victorian novelist Samuel Butler and his work of the same name.
The themes found in both Ex Voto and Butler's magnum opus Erewhon punctuate
the album, as the trio conjure visceral musical excitement from base ideas on
dystopia and politics.
'Ex Voto' is an opportunity for Monocled Man to tread new ground. Close
collaboration between Simmons and Scott prompted a creative shift with more
emphasis on both groove and production value. "A lot of the touchstones for the
record are cinematic, ambient, industrial soundscapes," Simmons explains. "I still
wanted it to sound English too, whilst tipping European noir."
"I wanted to make a record that was darkly cinematic and ambient but with big
washes of industrial sound," Simmons says. "I didn't want to make a record based
on how I would play it live, I wanted to make something I could sculpt, and create
something really original." Simmons continues to find new ground through his
thought-provoking, uncategorizable music.
Rory Simmons: trumpet/flugelhorn electronics/synths
Chris Montague: electric guitar acoustic guitar
Jon Scott: drums
- 1: Neat Neat Neat (207 - Remaster)
- 2: Fan Club (017 - Remaster)
- 3: I Fall (2017 - Remaster)
- 4: Born To Kill (2017 - Remaster)
- 5: Stab Yor Back (2017 - Remaster)
- 6: Feel The Pain (2017 - Remaster)
- 7: New Rose (201 - Remaster)
- 8: Fish (2017 - Remaster)
- 9: See Her Tonite (2017 - Remaster)
- 10: 1 Of The 2 (2017 - Remaster)
- 11: So Messed Up (2017 - Remaster)
- 12: I Feel Alright (2017 - Remaster
‘Damned Damned Damned’ is now available on yellow vinyl for National Album Day. The Damned blazed a trail when they became the very first British punk band to release a single (New Rose) on 22nd October 1976, which was swiftly followed by the release of the very first British punk album, their classic debut long-player Damned Damned Damned, originally released by Stiff Records on 18th February 1977. Charting at 36 in the UK upon release the album has reached legendary status over the 45 years since it's initial release. At just half an hour long, Damned Damned Damned is a stone cold classic of rock & roll fire and coupled with the band's take-no-prisoners aesthetic, the Damned left rhetoric for the theoreticians and political posing for the Clash. All the foursome wanted to do was rock. The original line-up of Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Brian James and Rat Scabies regrouped last year and will perform the album in its entirety this coming November on a one off tour.
Trouble’s 2013 comeback album (feat. Kyle Thomas on vocals) is 100% quality Doom/Heavy Metal! Trouble’s last studio offering (from 2013) has proven to be quite extraordinary. After putting out the “Simple Mind Condition” and replacing Eric Wagner with Kory Clarke, Trouble looked like they were to reinvent themselves. After trying out Kory, Bruce Franklin and Rick Wartell decided to call Kyle Thomas of Exhorder and Alabama Thunderpussy fame to reprise his role as vocalist for Trouble since he had acted as their vocalist for 4 shows during the late 90’s but had never recorded with them. With Kyle Thomas, Trouble was able to truly reinvent themselves, and in a very positive manner. Obviously the first notable topic of interest is the mentioned Kyle Thomas. As this was the first album to not feature long-time vocalist Eric Wagner (who sadly passed away in 2021). With that said, Kyle does a stellar job. He possesses an incredible vocal range, and delivers his vocals in a powerful way. Many of his vocal melody’s soar over nicely layered chords, and a lot of Kyle’s harmonies mesh nicely with the music. Kyle certainly deserves credit for stepping into the lead vocalist position and delivers a stellar performance. Musically, the album sits between Trouble’s classic doomy metal sound and their psychedelia/rock infused material. Some Trouble fans do not like that era of Trouble too much while others embrace and love it moreover Trouble’s classic releases. “The Distortion Field” manages to effectively mesh Trouble’s classic sound and their psychedelic rock nods in a very balanced way. The song writing is more straightforward as far as arrangements go, and the album is full of powerful riffs; Bruce Franklin and Rick Wartell once again prove that they are the undisputed champions of heavy doomy riffing. Their powerful lead work can be heard throughout the album, and as always adds to the Trouble vintage sound. Upon its release in 2013 everybody gave Trouble the credit they deserve, and the album aged really well.
"The anger and depression got to me, and I couldn't hold it in anymore
So, I got into a room with my demons and we just hit record," shares indie singersongwriter Leslie Mendelson. The resulting album, playfully titled, ' If You Can't
Say Anything Nice' ,' is viscerally themed, imaginatively arranged, cinematically
dynamic and textured, oozing raw elegance. " I deal with depression and anxiety,
and I've never really sang about it before. It also felt like what was going on with
society was also affecting me, in terms of gun violence, the opioid crisis, and the
all hatred in the news and media. It felt like it was time to speak out," Leslie
explains. Leslie has released two prior albums, including her Grammy Awardnominated debut, 'Swan Feathers,' one EP, and three singles. Her first album
exhibited a production sheen she opted to strip away on her sophomore album, '
Love & Murder.' Her latest, ' If You Can't Say Anything Nice ' ,' is a gutsy album that
splits the difference between her previous albums in terms of production, but
also features some garage- rock bluster. " The best time to make a rock n' roll
record is when you're broke and pissed off, " she says, with a good-natured laugh.
For the album, Leslie worked with longtime co-writer and guitarist Steve McEwan
who co-produced the album alongside bassist and engineer Lorenzo Wolff.
- A1: Splashscreen 01
- A2: Welcome To Blackreef
- A3: Menu - Break The Loop
- A4: Karl's Bay
- A5: The Revenant (By Frank Spicer)
- B1: Updaam
- B2: Colt Win
- B3: Anonymous (Aleksis Dorsey)
- B4: Invasion Started
- B5: Ubiquity (Wenjie Evans)
- B6: Julianna Win
- C1: Fristad Rock
- C2: A Band Apart (Frank Spicer)
- C3: Rocket Man
- C4: Ode To Somewhere (By Frank Spicer)
- D1: The Complex
- D2: Eternal Deathwish
- D3: Final Confrontation
- D4: Déjà Vu
The visionaries at Bethesda, Arkane and Laced are bringing the twisted ’60s soundtrack for award-winning looper-shooter DEATHLOOP to wax.
The complete 59-track soundtrack has been specially mastered for vinyl and will be pressed onto heavyweight discs. These will come in spined inner sleeves housed in a rigid board slipcase. Tracklist curation and stunning original sleeve artwork is by the team at Arkane Lyon.
This Standard Edition quadruple LP box set features traditional black discs.
Lead composer Tom Salta has built an enviable credits list, with entries in the Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy and Halo universes to his name. For DEATHLOOP’s original score, he immersed himself in the music of Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Nelson Riddle and a host of other late-’60s influences. Layers of period-appropriate organs, synths and other instruments (including Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Hammond B3) help maintain the tension as Colt picks off Eternalists from the shadows. As things get dicey, or Julianna intervenes with extreme prejudice, tracks explode into furious guitar and drum grooves that propel the zany, supernaturally enhanced gunplay.
Ross Tregenza’s multi-genre diegetic cues perfectly complement the psycho-sophisticate stylings of Blackreef’s artistically aspirational inhabitants, while songwriter Erich Talaba and singer Jeff Cummings brought to life the vicious visionary Frank Spicer with catchy in-universe songs. Music agency Sencit teamed up with powerful yet soulful vocalists for trailer and credits songs, including Bond-ish banger “Déjà Vu” (featuring FJØRA), “Pitch Black” (featuring Lady Blackbird) and “Down the Rabbit Hole” (featuring Samantha Howard & Haqq.)
Several months on from founding guitarist Scott Middleton leaving the band, Cancer Bats have announced details of their first album without him: Psychic Jailbreak. Due out on April 15 via their own Bat Skull Records in partnership with New Damage Records, the Toronto hardcore punk kings admit that they knew album number seven "had to be special" given the line-up change, with vocalist Liam Cormier explaining of the mood going into it: “Our band has never been one sole member tasked with all the writing. Over the last 15 years of releasing albums, it’s been a collaboration of the four of us forming all musical ideas. That being said, we knew that the three remaining Bats would have to prove our worth with this next album. "We wanted to show Cancer Bats fans that an exciting new future was in store for us. To say the stakes were high on this album, would be an understatement. We were all feeling a mix of excitement and nerves as we began tracking the 11 songs that would form this record.” He continues: "On the final days, while adding the last bits of 'skateboard noises' and guitar shreds, we were all feeling our confidence levels rise with each playback. This last years’ worth of long hours and many late nights writing, finally coming together as a whole and fully formed effort. We were proud as a band and felt this new offering was worthy to join in the legacy of Cancer Bats albums.
Several months on from founding guitarist Scott Middleton leaving the band, Cancer Bats have announced details of their first album without him: Psychic Jailbreak. Due out on April 15 via their own Bat Skull Records in partnership with New Damage Records, the Toronto hardcore punk kings admit that they knew album number seven "had to be special" given the line-up change, with vocalist Liam Cormier explaining of the mood going into it: “Our band has never been one sole member tasked with all the writing. Over the last 15 years of releasing albums, it’s been a collaboration of the four of us forming all musical ideas. That being said, we knew that the three remaining Bats would have to prove our worth with this next album. "We wanted to show Cancer Bats fans that an exciting new future was in store for us. To say the stakes were high on this album, would be an understatement. We were all feeling a mix of excitement and nerves as we began tracking the 11 songs that would form this record.” He continues: "On the final days, while adding the last bits of 'skateboard noises' and guitar shreds, we were all feeling our confidence levels rise with each playback. This last years’ worth of long hours and many late nights writing, finally coming together as a whole and fully formed effort. We were proud as a band and felt this new offering was worthy to join in the legacy of Cancer Bats albums.
Several months on from founding guitarist Scott Middleton leaving the band, Cancer Bats have announced details of their first album without him: Psychic Jailbreak. Due out on April 15 via their own Bat Skull Records in partnership with New Damage Records, the Toronto hardcore punk kings admit that they knew album number seven "had to be special" given the line-up change, with vocalist Liam Cormier explaining of the mood going into it: “Our band has never been one sole member tasked with all the writing. Over the last 15 years of releasing albums, it’s been a collaboration of the four of us forming all musical ideas. That being said, we knew that the three remaining Bats would have to prove our worth with this next album. "We wanted to show Cancer Bats fans that an exciting new future was in store for us. To say the stakes were high on this album, would be an understatement. We were all feeling a mix of excitement and nerves as we began tracking the 11 songs that would form this record.” He continues: "On the final days, while adding the last bits of 'skateboard noises' and guitar shreds, we were all feeling our confidence levels rise with each playback. This last years’ worth of long hours and many late nights writing, finally coming together as a whole and fully formed effort. We were proud as a band and felt this new offering was worthy to join in the legacy of Cancer Bats albums.
In the kitchen of the Byron Bay home of Winston McCall stands a
refrigerator, adorned on one side by a quote from Tom Waits: "I want
beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."This, the PARKWAY DRIVE
vocalist says, is a pretty good summation of himself
It holds true, too, as one of the guiding principles behind Darker Still, the seventh
full- length album to be born of this picturesque and serene corner of northeastern NSW, Australia, and the defining musical statement to date from one of
modern metal's most revered bands.Darker Still, McCall says, is the vision he and
his bandmates – guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick, bassist Jia O'Connor
and drummer Ben Gordon – have held in their mind's eye since a misfit group of
friends first convened in their parents' basements and backyards in 2003. The
journey to reach this moment has seen Parkway evolve from metal underdogs to
festival- headlining behemoth, off the back of close to 20 gruelling years, six
critically and commercially acclaimed studio albums (all of which achieving Gold
status in their home nation), three documentaries, one live album, and many,
many thousands of shows.
While Darker Still remains irrefutably PARKWAY DRIVE, it finds the band sonically
standing shoulder to shoulder with rock and metal's greats – Metallica, Pantera,
Machine Head, Guns N' Roses – as much as it does their metalcore
contemporaries. "I wanted a classic guitar tone for this record," explains Ling, who
credits much of his inspiration to the connection his riffs have with a crowd in a
live setting.
Emerging from the darkness of the past few years, this is the true face of
PARKWAY DRIVE: redefined and resolute, focused in mind and defiant in spirit.
Before 2020, Ocean Alley could have broken. The six-piece had spent two years touring relentlessly off-the-back of their breakthrough record Chiaroscuro, spending months on the road and away from their loved ones, on the brink of burnout. Then the world shut down. And although there was a universal experience of suffering and isolation during ex-tensive lockdowns, Ocean Alley found themselves gifted with a forced break - where time slowed down and they could be with their loved ones, while also finding space to recon-nect with themselves. This luxury of time allowed experimentation in new ways for the band, who since inception had always felt their way through the music with communal jam sessions. It was uncharted territory for the group who for the first time operated as a bedroom band - particularly frontman Baden Donegal who revealed that a number of tracks on their upcoming fourth album Low Altitude Living started as “shitty GarageBand demos” he recorded solo at the beginning of lockdown. When comparing the creative process of their three previous full-lengths - the ARIA-nominated Lonely Diamond (2020), their Gold-certified breakthrough Chiaroscuro (2018) and self-assured debut Lost Tropics (2016) - this in itself was the big-gest difference.y
Australian art-punk combo Tropical Fuck Storm continues its hot streak of brain-bending releases with Moonburn, a maxi-single cassette on Joyful Noise Recordings. Side A offers the new song, "Moonburn," a ballad in the classic TFS style written and sung by Gareth Liddiard. Fiona Kitschin steps up to the microphone on "Ann," a cover of The Stooges that swaps Ron Asheton's scorching guitar part for a deranged sound collage of guitar freakouts, siren noises, and electronics. Side B includes an acoustic take on the fan-favorite song "Aspirin (Slight Return)" and a haunting cover of Talking Heads' "Heaven."
- 1: Heaven Of Stone
- 2: Creator Of God
- 3: Fire For Water
- 4: Deep Set
- 5: Fireflies
- 6: Do You Need Me To Remind You?
- 7: Absence As A Presence(Excerpt)
- 8: Roach Hiss
- 9: Down When I’m Not
- 10: Evacuation
- 11: September City
- 12: Absence As A Presence(Studio)
- 13: Don’t Wanna Deal(Studio)
- 14: Crazy All Around(Studio)
- 15: Lying At The Bottom Of The Sky(Studio)
Re-Issue "Fuck Content" is an audio-video release composed of a performance of ten live songs off of the "Child Soldier: Creator of God" album, as well as five new studio tracks. The video release contains the footage of the live performance, footage from the recording of the new songs, as well as behind-the-scenes footage from both the studio and the live performance.
She's the natural-born rock star with the leather jacket and wicked grin, leaning
from her album sleeve to offer you a hit on her hip flask. But the real Southern
blend ain't in the bottle, it's on the songs.
Following the New Orleans flavours of her 2017 breakthrough, Let The Demons
Out, this year sees the acclaimed Brussels- born singer- songwriter dive deeper
into the American South, recording in the hill country of Mississippi, where she
shared her songs with a cast of esteemed local musicians and caught the flying
sparks. This is Mississippi Blend: an album as fiery and throat-burning as Delta
moonshine.













































































































































