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Outrageous white label manoeuvres from Manchester mates AR & BS, transporting a Yacht legend to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Psychedelic sprawl, robo-drama, AOR emotion - this disc's got it all !

AR extends, expands and excels on his A-side epic, delivering a dance floor journey which moves from weirdo wonk to the hands-in-the-air heaven in a transformative ten minutes. The loose and lysergic groove of the intro builds into a How Shroom Is Now wall of sound, takes a detour into heavy hip hop headnod and settles into vocal sincerity, all before dropping that HUGE chorus. Festival tested and club ready - everyone say Armen!

On the flipside, we catch up with Stockport staple BS, who puts down the Pet Nat, swaps the grape vape for a gary and gets stuck into a serious slice of cosmic chug.

Slo-mo and sleazy, this arpeggiator heavy heater sees a crooning 80's vocal surf a mechanical groove purpose made for backwards dancers and eyeball lickers. The combination of wild emoting and synthetic drama is pretty much everything, but just wait for that breakdown.

Double A-side coz you gotta double drop your GARIES!

Rare debut LP by the eccentric Peruvian singer Jean Paul "El Troglodita", known for his wild performances and extreme way of life. Enrique Roberto Tellería made his Peruvian television debut in 1965 under the stage name Jean Paul El Troglodita and wearing an imitation leopard skin suit. He would switch from melodic calm to shouting wildly or suddenly drop to the floor on his knees and smash the furniture like crazy. At the age of 19, DisPerú signed him to the label on the strength of these early performances. His first single included a freely translated version of 'Secret Agent Man' in Spanish. He began to work on the eleven cover versions that would feature on his first LP immediately, writing all his own lyrics and accompanied by the beat band Los Steivos. Despite the predominance of English beat music in Peru, the album only included three songs directly related to the British invasion: 'Bus Stop' by The Hollies, also played in raga rock style; 'Paint it Black' by The Rolling Stones; and 'The House of the Rising Sun', which follows the arrangement recorded by The Animals. So most songs come the American songbook. Apart from 'Tema de El Troglodita' (a versión of 'Secret Agent' by The Challengers), we find the bluesy 'Mustang Sally' (Sir Mack Rice). Two other US numbers, originally performed with orchestral accompaniment, were adapted to fit the rock band format: 'Poor Side of Town' (Johnny Rivers) and 'Take Me to the Moon' (Kaye Ballard). 'El verdadero amor' ('True Love'), an uncredited version is in a similar vein. The Spanish song 'Negro es negro' (Los Bravos) and the Brazilian track 'Que todo se vaya al infierno' (Roberto Carlos) also feature on the LP. El Troglodita's association with the so-called nueva ola, indicated on the back cover, needs clarification. In Peru, nueva ola was a mixed bag rather than a specific musical style and encompassed slow rock, twist, bossa nova and all the styles that the record industry produced to tame the wild rock 'n' roll impulses of teenagers in the early sixties. The Peruvian artists that performed these inoffensive Spanish adaptations of Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka or Frankie Avalon, were presented as successful models of youth culture. This was until 1964, when the Beatles with their mop-top haircuts hit the charts, vindicating rock 'n' roll and imposing the group format over the soloist model. Meanwhile the press continued to call any youth music recorded during the rest of the decade nueva ola. Jean Paul noted these distinctions early on and distanced himself from it in several statements. He saw his performance more in a style as a solo artist as following in the footsteps of e.g. Los Saicos. His 'hippie' lifestyle got him arrested by the new de facto military government in 1968, who accused him of promoting drug consumption and corrupting the Peruvian youth. The charges were soon dropped but his reputation was tarnished, and he ended up emigrating to Central America. The album includes Spanish sung versions of British beat songs and covers of the American songbook as well as various international hits.

DJ Subaru has already made their name exciting dancers with offbeat anthems and obscurities as part of their luminous Pleasuremaxxx parties, alongside similarly inclined soirees in Leeds, London, Berlin and beyond. Making their accomplished production debut on CWPT with 'Lots of Love', DJ Subaru instinctively mines the expressive, outsider strains of disco, Italo and pop pleasures in their record bag, revealing an EP that throbs with the pleasures, pain and potential of a life in strobes and smoke.

Vocalist and muse Tiss Vampiric emerges from London’s shadowy underground to lend their voice to the brooding, disco-Gothic track, ‘My Love’. Stalking a moody paradise amongst DJ Subaru’s EBM-oriented synthesizers, their baroque lyrics conjure an atmosphere that bridges the energies of subversive pioneers such as Soft Cell and Ministry, a sensual maze where denial only leads to more devotion, as well as more dancing.

Keeping the lights dim but brightening the corners, the prolific cosmic disco pioneer Prins Thomas reinvigorates his legendary ‘Discomiks’ approach for a euphoric remix of ‘My Love’. Incorporating DJ Subaru and Tiss Vampiric into a dancefloor canon that also includes Lana Del Rey, Pet Shop Boys and the Chemical Brothers, this classic arrangement has been road-tested to build euphoria, joyfully reflecting menace from mirrorballs.

The latter portion within 'Lots of Love' leaves us entirely in DJ Subaru’s musical visions. The only voice on ‘I <3 You’ is soft and robotic, intoning the track’s simple title over a lush, caramelized groove that’s pure circuits and sentiment. In contrast, the moody pads of ‘Just Visiting’ build to a crescendo of breaks and basslines that capture more urgent early hours energy, while ‘She’ provides a beautifully naive melody and a slightly balearic touch for a wide-eyed kiss goodbye.

A home, a house, has countless frequencies. Each room, each corner feels different. Swings differently. And as you grow older, you realize which corner is yours. But yeah, it takes time…

It certainly marks the end of an era when the house one called home as a kid no longer exists. This home, it was the starting point of so many journeys. Of one big, ongoing journey. And so it feels good, soothing, reassuring to at least return to a spot nearby – to that (proverbial) hill from where you can see it. Feel the vibe that made you.

Andi Haberl’s debut solo album as Sun is sort of dedicated to that house. It’s a journey leading to that hill overlooking everything that made him. It’s not about nostalgia, not about actually returning to a specific place. Instead, it’s about finding a personal frequency, an overlapping of sounds and samples, an open space that mirrors and extends whatever frequencies felt right at different points in time.

“To me, the results feel like Gold Panda/Four Tet meets Steve Reich meets Krautrock meets film scores. I just really wanted to create moods that touch me – and ideally others, too.”

Talking about his first solo album, Haberl recalls many stages: early compositions that ended up on Alien Ensemble’s albums, early DIY/home studio/multi-instrumentalist inspirations (Le Millipede), new technologies that came and went, even a set of wildly convincing arrangements (done with Cico Beck’s crucial input) that ultimately became stepping stones for yet another round of DIY takes. “It was a long, recurring process, and the songs went through so many different versions,” he says, talking about phases of growth (“I added more and more equipment over time”) and pruning, “cleaning up my music a bit.” Tending towards instruments that open up space, and slowly falling in love with sampling, he certainly didn’t rush things once it was time for interior design decisions ;)

“During this whole process I got to learn so much about my own taste, how I prefer to listen to the pieces, which musical elements really matter to me… and what my own voice is. For example, that acoustic elements are most important to me: the banjo, piano, drums, my voice, glockenspiel, trumpet, melodica. Anything that opens up some space.”

Every journey begins with a search: “Missing” with its plucked chords opens like a sunrise over pastoral plains, gently leading the way towards the intricate, playful explosion that occurs once a certain amount of energy (“Sun”) hits dirt and other surfaces: things grow, clot and curdle into new shapes, like new buds; layers of sound move forward, drenched in Spring’s new light. Relying on samples to ask for precipitation (“Rain On Me”), robotic “Low” goes from barren to bass-heavy after its midway shift in pace, full of loops plucked from the shade.

Towards the album’s midpoint, things are suddenly reversed: “Cluster” has that backwards pull, you can’t tell what’s what, yet everything is perfectly locked in, as the pace increases once again. And before the title song shimmers with densified cheering (to eventually stand tall like early Lymbyc Systym), “Beside Me” swipes you off your feet with its booming bass drum. The beat returns once again (“Daydream”), full of searching voices underneath, and at “Dawnday,” we can finally catch a melancholy view of the house. Voices hum. It’s the score moment of the album. Everything makes sense now. A happy end of sorts?

“I want to take people on a journey. A personal journey, too, because when my parents split up and sold the house I grew up in, I felt a bit like the ground had fallen out from under my feet. But I have dedicated the album title and the accompanying piece to this house… so I can keep it in good memory.”

“I Can See Our House From Here” has been a long time coming. It’s been a long journey. Homeward-bound. Leading to a place that’s really Haberl’s – his sound. His frequencies.

Known as a long-time member of The Notwist and various other bands/projects (Alien Ensemble, AMEO, jersey, Ditty etc.), Berlin-based drummer/composer Andi Haberl has also worked with My Brightest Diamond, Till Brönner, Owen Pallet, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, to name a few. “I Can See Our House From Here” is his first solo offering.

''More Than Ever'' is another impeccable pearl of Roberto Ferrante, considered one of the most extraordinary and evocative Italo-Disco productions, one of those songs that attracted millions of followers and made everyone fall in love with the genre. GLAM's original 1985 12inch is no ordinary record. This vinyl reissue from Planet Records Classics with stunning new mastering makes it even more special. The voice of GLAM is Clio, according to followers one of the favorite singers in the distorted and mirrored world of Italo-Disco; she always has full control of the voice, therefore a perfect interpretation, full of emotion. If you listened to ''Faces'', ''Feel the Fear'' or ''Eyes'' by Clio and liked them, I'm sure you'll love this epic piece too! Thanks again to Roberto Ferrante for this new powerful mastering of ''More Than Ever'' fresher overall, performed with much more vitality and energy.

very dope.

With this EP an attempt is made at documenting the vibrant action happening during the late 1970s and early 1980s in the Pioneer Valley area of Western Massachusetts, US. The story is richer than the snapshot we present here, and a more detailed account is to be found in the accompanying book that can be purchased separately.

The Five Colleges in Hampshire County congregated a vast student population that inevitably interacted with the towns in the area. Bars, music and record stores, live music and a lot of experimentation and free thinking. Hampshire College, especially, promoted new approaches to teaching, subjects that might be considered radical by some even today, although a more favourable context would now surely exist for openly debating such topics as American Indians, Kayak Design, Black Oral Tradition, Food Management, etc. And the music? The immediate "punk effect" motivated the creation of numerous bands, many short lived, others evolving into New Wave / Power Pop territory, eventually crossing into Post-Punk experimentation. What is captured in "Noho EP" is a more electronic disposition, favoured by the existence of EMS gear and other equipment at Hampshire College and University of Massachusetts. We chose to focus on a group of musicians who, for a time, played together in different combinations under the loose umbrella of the Tekno Tunes label and the structure around it.

These musicians come from very different backgrounds and the nucleus portrayed here consisted of Christopher Vine, Elliott Sharp, James Whittemore and Nicholas Brown.

Of the several line-up changes The Scientific Americans went through, it was actually only the duo of Chris Vine and Jim Whittemore who recorded "Among Bodge Watt". Never before released, it is a companion piece to their track "El Salvador" available on the 1981 ROIR tape-album "Load & Go!". The Sci Ams were founders of the Tekno Tunes label and also created the Tekno Tours "concert promotion agency", under which name they exposed local audiences to bands such as The Stranglers, The Slits, Pylon, Pere Ubu, The Psychedelic Furs, The Bush Tetras, Steel Pulse, etc. Their own sound kept progressing but at its best there's a solid dub undercurrent, pretty obvious in "Among Bodge Watt".

Human Error was born out of a collective jam by Chris Vine, Elliott Sharp, Jim Whittemore and Nick Brown. Elliott Sharp had moved to Northampton in August of 1978 and naturally became involved in the local music scene, hooking up first with Whittemore at a hi-fi audio store where he worked at the time. Basement jams followed stimulating conversations, and other musicians joined the sessions. "Clandestinator" sounds gorgeously loose, an effortless groove coming from a quasi-dub set-up. Nothing here seems calculated, the music just flows, contagious and irregular as the handclaps in the mix.

The Higher Primates later evolved into a "proper" band but started as Nick Brown's solo project. The Primates only ever released a (now sought-after) 7" single in 1980 (on the Tekno Tunes label, precisely). Both tracks on "Noho EP" were recorded the following year and never released until now. "Auto Music in the Disco Dub Style" is self-explanatory, with a steady, mid-tempo TR808 beat running through, supporting synth squelches, echoes and reverbs, a fat bassline, dissonant melodic lines and odd vocal snippets. Kind of a DJ tool when the concept was barely in place. The more uptempo "Teresa Variations" adds a Fender Jazz bass and Selmer sax to the electronics. It actually sounds more "Disco", even with the robotic, unintelligible vocals. On top of this, the vibe is sealed by the overall Radiophonic Workshop analogue strangeness applied to a dance beat.

2024 Repress!

The eye of the storm: welcome to Tornado Wallace's debut album! The accumulation of about four years of work, with tracks written in Berlin and Melbourne, 'Lonely Planet' is nothing like you may have expected from the Australian expat. No stranger to fans and followers of ESP Institute, Beats in Space and Music From Memory's sister Label Second Circle, Tornado Wallace's strain of releases so far merged functionality with a musical playfulness that led him to find himself as one of the producer's behind José Padilla's International Feel album. Here, he leaves the needs of the dance floor behind in order to create a magical mystery tour de trance into his and our inner jungle. How about some references New Age sounds meet new wave melodies, Grace Jones runs into the Dire Straits at Compass Point, while a Korg Mini Pops and a Roland CR78 make amends for Sly & Robbie's absence, Michael Mann pictures Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', Robert Rauschenberg tries his luck at naturalism and an imagined Wally Badarou echoes through all of it. Sandwiched between the title track and the yearning beauty of the album's final point 'Healing Feeling', you get all of that as well as collaborations with and contributions of NO ZU, David Hischfelder and the voice of Sui Zhen on 'Today', who would easily make Anna Domino take her proverbial hat off. Tornado Wallace created an album that supersedes the requirements and expectations of a debut. Like a lost Island Records or a never released Made to Measure album, 'Lonely Planet' soundtracks notions and ideas that recall the nostalgic future in the past as much as it looks ahead.

Suffering can be a borderline experience, opening doors to the divine. Canadian black-metal-outfit GIVRE has dedicated its fourth album to this concept, well known throughout Christian history: On "Le Cloitre" (engl. "The Cloister") the band continues its exploration of the atoning side of pain and the austere aspects of faith through music that goes all the way from elegiac elegance to disturbing outbursts. Even the band deals with Christianity, through a historic lense, they should not be understood as religious band in any way!

The group was founded back in 2010 in Rouyn-Noranda by David Caron-Proulx (Composition, guitars, keys), Jean-Lou David (research, vocals), and Mathieu Garon (bass) when they were just 16 years old. They self-produced a demo album, then moved away from their hometowns. David is now a composer for film and mixed media and Jean-Lou is a writer and historian. In October 2020, ten years after their first collaborative endeavors, they reunited and recorded two more albums: "Le Pressoir mystique" and "Destin Messianique".

The creation of "Le Cloitre" was a lengthy process. While most recordings were made right after "Destin Messianique" in 2021, extensive work was done over an extended period of time to add layers and perfect the album's concept. Each of the six songs corresponds to a holy woman from Christian history. The lyrics are taken directly from their writings or hagiography (an idealized biography), delving into their connection to the divine through suffering. The words are sometimes rearranged, but they are all direct citations without anything new added to them, from the symbolic poetry of Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179) to the disturbing and factual depictions of Marthe Robin (1902-1981).

The compositions vary to reflect these different perspectives: sometimes dark and eerie, other times blissful or sorrowful. Therefore, a crucial addition to the album's atmosphere was the inclusion of female vocal performances. Additionally, samples from the French film "Le dialogue des Carmelites" from 1959 are incorporated. Excerpts of a piece by Hildegard von Bingen are used in the song dedicated to her. The album was recorded in the band members'home studios. Mixing and mastering were done by long-time-collaborator Gael Poisson-Lemay (Gris, Sombre Forets, Miserere Luminis), who also contributed guitars to the song about Marthe Robin. Vinyl mastering was done by Greg Chandler (Esoteric) at Priory Recording Studios.

Love Love host a collaborative release by two of the freshest contemporary Avon producers, Best Pest and Kursa. Kursa (also one half of S.Murk) has built a notable following in the UK as well as in the USA, playing out often at big stateside events with his own style of tight, maximalist bass music - think Tipper, Eprom, Noisia etc… Ben Pest is no stranger to Love Love with 2 previous solo releases under his belt, best known for his crunchy techno & electro and ripping hardware live-sets. Here they come together for a 5 track genre-hopping EP, each flexing their respective production sensibilities, splicing elements of dubstep, grime, hardcore & garage together, along with a healthy dose of multi-dimensional sound design, to make some of the noisiest modern dance music going.

Early support from: Clouds, Giant Swan, Rob Hall, A Made Up Sound, Om Unit, Nikki Nair, Luke Sanger, Deft, Warlock, Second Storey...

Potapanje Brodova, Hrvatski for “sinking ships”, is a follow-up to Robert’s intricate 2020 album Finomehanika “wherein piano, field recordings and synths are made indistinguishable from one another”, as described by The Wire.

The A-side on Potapanje Brodova is compiled and reworked from a soundtrack for an installation of the same name in Rijeka in 2005, about the Croatian port city’s post-war industrial collapse. The original hour-long soundtrack played on a loop during the month-long exhibition, and today resides on a USB stick housed in a rusty steel case with silver ship engraving—a limited edition of 1 copy that is now the property of Rijeka's Museum of Contemporary Arts.

The B-side offers a monumental 25-minute prepared piano improv piece recorded in 2004, followed by Hodnik, a track from Finomehanika sessions.

Both Tymon Dogg and Richard Dudanski had musical roots playing in The 101'ers with future Clash singer/guitarist Joe Strummer. All three shared a deep love for southern Spain, due perhaps to the influence of the Romero sisters, Paloma (later "Palmolive" of The Slits) and the artist Esperanza, who were among the first Spanish punk refugees in London. Tymon's career began with beguiling interactions with Apple Records, The Moody Blues and future Led Zeppelin members John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page before he discovered his true musical self as a punk / folk experimentalist, opening shows for the likes of The Slits, Raincoats and Pop Group and becoming the longest-running musical foil in Strummer's career, continuing into The Clash and Mescaleros. Similarly, Richard played in Basement 5, Public Image Ltd, The Raincoats and others before following Esperanza back to Granada...which subsequently became second home to Tymon and Joe. Spain is not without its own punk heroes, and chief among them was Granada's Antonio Arias, another pal of Joe's and leader of Spain's musical heroes, Lagartija Nick, which also included Dacoits members Juan Codorniu and JJ Machuca. Antonio sings the albums two Spanish-language songs. while Tymon sings the other nine...and there's an instrumental, "Mongols", which the band considered too epic as a stand-alone instrumental to mess with! Tymon sings three songs from his past: "The Wheel Of Life And Death" has been heard before as a live bonus track on the expanded reissue of "Battle Of Wills", "Conscience Money" was heard in a very different version on the impossible-to-find "Made Of Light" album, and an embryonic take of "Something To Prove" turned up the even rarer 1989 solo album, "Relentless". If you imagine the playful elasticity of "Sandinista!" recast into a more straightforward record, with Tymon taking the lead on something more than that album's "Lose This Skin", you're halfway there. Guests include Killing Joke bassist / famed producer Youth and Dr Robert from The Blow Monkeys

Pressed on limited edition purple rain vinyl. Wrote and produced by Colemine label owner, Terry Cole. Band consists of two members from The Jive Turkeys. The last recordings made at the basement Regent Drive studio in Middletown, OH finally making it to a dirty 45! The Tee See Connection is comprised of members of The Jive Turkeys (Rob Houk - drums, Matt Amburgy - keys, Terry Cole - bass). The A-side, "Skyline Chili Churner" is an organ burner with funky bass and blown out breakbeat style drums while the B-side is straight up boom bap with Matt Amburgy cookin' hard on the keys. Drums and all parts ripe for sampling!

As mood changers go, this track is up there with the best. Last year whilst DJing with miche at Shapes festival in the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, a breathtaking yet ominous Alpine sky suddenly became a picture postcard moment. The clouds parted and a double rainbow formed, as miche dropped Studio Rio's bossa nova remake of Bill Withers’ all-time classic 'Lovely Day'. From there, the dancefloor shifted gears and morphed into full-swing feel-good vibes, in a beautiful, spontaneous moment nobody could have planned for.

Mr Bongo now proudly presents a reissue of this brilliant, bossa-channelling Bill Withers reinterpretation from Studio Rio’s 2014 release ‘The Brazil Connection’. Masterminded by the German Grammy award-winning Berman Brothers, the project was born out of their deep love of Brazilian music. “Our goal was to bring the Brazilian joie de vivre to iconic performances by well-known artists. What would these classic songs sound like had they been recorded in the studios of Rio de Janeiro in the first place, with the best Brazilian musicians and arrangers?” the brothers reflect.

Capturing the life force of Brazil, the beating heart that is its music, they set out to find the musicians who would fit best with their concept. Landing in Rio in 2013 a series of coincidences led to them being introduced to their idols Marcos Valle and Roberto Menescal, who both agreed to come on board. The Berman Brothers also wanted to find some of the musicians who recorded with one of Brazil’s most influential composers Tom Jobim. “Fifty years after Jobim made the music that really defines bossa nova, we found that many of his sidemen were still active, including Paulo Braga of Jobim’s famed rhythm section. It was magic; everything just fell into place.”

There's no question that the original of ‘Lovely Day’ is up there as one of the most feel-good, spirit-lifting anthems of all time. Here the brothers, with the help of a whole host of Brazil’s finest musicians, rework Bill’s soul-fuelled groove into a bossa nova slice of sunshine. With the blessing of Bill and Sony, they were given access to the original multitracks so they could incorporate Bill’s vocals perfectly into the new arrangement.

Joy-injected horns and bouncing double bass blend with the smile-inducing samba flavour of Pretinho da Serrinha’s cavaquinho playing. Tying it all together Torcuato Marinao who worked with the likes of Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, completes the line-up as arranger of the songs.

The perfect end-of-the-night track, mood lifter or soul warmer, remakes don’t get much better than this.

Bringing together over 50 of Jamaica's greatest session musicians, whose work spans from the birth of reggae in the late 1960s until today, Roots Architects is the largest gathering of Jamaican musical talent on one all-instrumental album. Never before have so many veterans, who helped create the immortal rhythms that made reggae internationally successful, been assembled to play on new material without vocals. This album aims to celebrate and pay tribute to the unsung heroes of reggae music: the rhythm builders or Roots Architects.

The project is the brainchild of Swiss keyboardist and producer Mathias Liengme. In 2013, he travelled to Kingston, Jamaica, to produce The Inspirators project, an all-star album gathering Leroy ”Horse-mouth” Wallace, Lloyd Parks, Earl ”Chinna” Smith and Sangie Davis, the four of them acting both as musicians and vocalists. This first experience in Kingston studio life paved the way to what would become the Roots Architects project. In February and March 2017 Mathias Liengme travelled for the fifth time to Kingston to record as many of reggae’s greatest living veteran musicians as he could. With the help of a few of these Architects like Robbie Lyn, Fil Callender or Dalton Browne, he managed to gather over 50 session musicians aged 60 to 85 on nine instrumental songs.

Roots Architects are legends back together in Kingston studios doing what they do best: creating in-strumental music all together!

"After releasing their debut album (I’m) Stranded to both critical and commercial success, The Saints followed up with the 1978 album Eternally Yours. The set features some of their most popular tracks to this day, including “Know Your Product”, “Private Affair”, and “This Perfect Day”. Eternally Yours is available as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on pink coloured vinyl and includes an insert.

Steph Richards has already made quite a name for herself in the worlds of avant garde music and creative jazz - She has recorded for Relative Pitch and Northern Spy, worked with Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton and Ravi Coltrane and studied with Wadada Leo Smith - As co-producer of the FONT Music Festival, Richards worked for years alongside fellow trumpeter Dave Douglas. Her records have been praised for displaying her evident virtuosity and inventiveness, the New York Times calling Richards "boldly inventive." NPR's Nate Chinen says Richards is "ingenious" and Downbeat insisted that she is "the latest figure of note" in jazz while All About Jazz cuts to the chase, saying simply, that Richards "kicks ass." It's an impressive history and litany of praise for a young trumpeter, but with her latest full-length for Northern Spy, Power Vibe, Richards pushes even further, marrying avant garde and cinematic moods with a kind of infectious and patently pleasing tunefulness that is certain to expand her dedicated audience even further. The addition of "sensory electronics" -- subtle but compelling textures and tactile rhythms which are physically triggered by drum-mounted sensors -- compels fascination here, interweaving a kind of aural hyper-lucidity throughout the record. Though boldly original, this music strides surefootedly alongside the work of contemporaries like Nicole Mitchell and Rob Mazurek and the late jaimie branch

Nina Simone’s big break consisted of the recording made during her September 12, 1959 concert at New York’s Town Hall. The 1960 LP Nina Simone at Newport (recorded live at the Newport Jazz Festival on June 30, 1960, and included here in its entirety) was an attempt to repeat the success of that live album. It presents strong performances by Nina of “Trouble in Mind” and “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” among others. Simone is accompanied by her regular rhythm section, consisting of Al Schackman on guitar, Chris White on bass, and Rob Hamilton on drums.

Keplar presents the first-ever vinyl edition of the 2003 album »From Tokyo to Naiagara« by Tujiko Noriko. This reissue with new artwork by Joji Koyama is an abridged version of the album as Tomlab label owner Tom Steinle and producer Aki Onda had originally intended to publish it alongside the original CD version. Written by the France-based Tujiko while she still lived in Japan, »From Tokyo to Naiagara« followed up on her two seminal Mego albums and marked a turning point in both the artist’s career and personal life: While she was preparing to leave Japan behind, she succinctly connected the dots between her experiments in pop music and her interest for more abstract sounds. Tujiko worked primarily with a Yamaha synthesizer and an MPC sampler while also incorporating contributions by other musicians such as Onda, Riow Arai and Sakana Hosomi into the pieces. Sometimes approaching an IDM and clicks’n’cuts-style production or working with trip-hop and hip-hop beats while using conventional song structures in the most unconventional of ways, the album showcases her multifaceted influences and skills as a singer and musician to full effect.

Tujiko fondly remembers the time when she made the album. »I had a lot of time for myself back then and I didn’t even feel like I was very busy,« she says today. She describes producing it in close collaboration with Onda, who would relocate to New York City shortly after, as »quite Tokyo and very local.« They explored parts of the city that they hadn’t yet been to for a photography project (finding, among other things, a coin laundry called Naiagara—a transliteration of Niagara). This left its mark on a record that mixes melancholia with joy. The driving opener »Narita Made,« named after one of Tokyo’s airports, already makes this clear: Tujiko’s wistful vocals and lyrics like »I miss you terribly« emphasises the sense of bittersweetness that forms the common thread for a sonically diverse and stylistically open-ended album—this music is looking back while moving forward. It is probably no surprise that its reissue too evokes tender memories of Onda and Steinle in Tujiko, while also reminding her of what lies ahead. »I have so much more to do and not enough time for that,« she muses, before quickly adding: »But I also feel less alone having that album again.«

Influenced in equal parts by the experience of strolling through previously unknown Tokyoite back alleys and thinking about the paths not (yet) taken, »From Tokyo to Naiagara« is precisely that: the perfect travel companion for a journey that leads its listeners from past to future.

The Morning Papers Have Given Us the Vapours was made with the black watch bandmates and producers/engineers Rob Campanella (Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Tyde, The Warlocks) and Andy Creighton (The World Record, Parson Red Heads). Ben Eshbach, formerly of The Sugarplastic, arranged the strings. Kesha Rose guests on lead vocals on the second single, Oh Do Shut Up. And the great Lindsay Murray once again lends her beautiful backing vox to a number of tracks.

the black watch songwriter/frontman John Andrew Fredrick wrote the ten songs on this, his Los Angeles-based band's latest album, entirely unselfconsciously, with no set goal in mind other than to revel in the joy of songwriting, and, eventually, the luxury of recording his music with his more-than-accomplished band. The Morning Papers Have Given Us the Vapours, produced separately and together by Rob Campanella and Andy Creighton evinces the black watch's often stunning ability to, as Andy Gill once observed in The Independent, "find chaos in the calm, melody in the miasma."

Fredrick, who has also published four comedic novels and a book on the early films of Wes Anderson, jovially describes himself as "a recovering Anglophile--one who'll never, one hopes, fully recover." From his home studio in the Angeleno Heights district of L.A., he waxes eloquent about how being branded, as it were, as a too-ardent lover of British music, film, and literature has left him as bemused as has the tag "prolific" that is often affixed to reviews of his work.

"I just don't think it's all that interesting to note that we've made so many records. Looked at one way, it's a sort of deflection from talking about the timbre if not the quality of the individual songs. Though I know it can be intimidating for fans who've just discovered us--a sort of 'My goodness, where do I start with this band that has put out LPs since 1988?' I get it. I do. I picture someone standing at our slot at a bin at a record store becoming overwhelmed at the prospect of picking the 'wrong' title. And then walking away and not picking up anything from us!" Fredrick laughs. "What can you do indeed?"

He started his career as a songwriter as a result of an American Football injury that left him bedridden in the home he grew up in in Santa Barbara, California. The year The Beatles immortal double-album came out at Christmastime he broke his leg so badly that he had to be home-schooled for an entire year. His parents, ex-teachers themselves, refused to let him watch telly for more than an hour a day. He propped a Silvertone acoustic on top of the massive cast that screamed all the way up to his thigh from his toes, and began to write little melodies and lyrics that, doubtless, did not in the least mask his love for the Fabs, The White Album in especial.

And he read and read and read--histories of the American Revolution and Civil War, mostly, and as many Dickens novels as his mum and dad could bring him. "That year," Fredrick observes, "surely made me who I am today. Proof that intensely unfortunate-seeming events can prove most fortunate. As a sport-mad kid, it made me absolutely mental that I was exiled from the activities I loved most and the school teams I played on. What a blessing undisguised that injury was! Not that I'd like to experience anything like it ever again, mind you."

Fredrick can even recall a few of the melodies he wrote as boy ("Utterly trite, of course, completely jejune"); and in a way, The Morning Papers Have Given Us the Vapours showcases a kind of get-back-to-where-you-once-belonged sensibility. "I didn't intend, this time, to make an album per se. I write both songs and fiction in order to find out what happens, to find out what I might want to say," he notes. "Rob often asks me what a particular song is about; and I often reply that I either don't know, or would prefer that others say. Same thing goes for when people ask me where they should start with our discography. I never know what to say. Our LP from 2011, Led Zeppelin Five (remastered in 2021 for its tenth anniversary), has been our best seller, I think--but that may be because some stoned Zepheads thought their gods had perhaps put out a record they'd missed!"

Despite being deadly serious about music-making, TBW's been known to either whimsically or perversely title their albums. Examples: Jiggery-Pokery (an allusion to John Lennon assessing George Martin's productions), After the Gold Room (a pun on the Neil Young classic plus a local eastside L.A. watering hole), Sugarplum Fairy, Sugarplum Fairy (echoing Lennon's famous count-off to A Day in the Life), Fromthing Somethat (a garbled spoonerism/lyric while doing a vocal), Brilliant Failures (the 2020 release that, along with Fromthing Somethat, was named Album of the Year by venerable indie rock magazine The Big Takeover), and the aforementioned LZ5.

For the new LP, the band recruited longtime friends and allies Ben Eshbach (the Emmy-Award-winning frontman of The Sugarplastic) and Lindsay Murray (Gretchens Wheel) to compose and arrange strings and sing heaps of lovely backing vocals, respectively.

And the result? A collection of songs that Fredrick, in his quite-but-not-quite self-deprecatory way, might call another set of brilliant failures. "Every song, every LP we do, is a failure of sorts--no matter how powerful or beautiful or pleasing-to-us it turns out," John concludes. "I have often said that my aim is to write songs as good as anything on The Beatles... and I will never achieve my goal. And thus I'll have to keep at it, keep trying. And chin-chin to that!"

And now your attention's been brought to a band (or you've heard of them or heard a track or two down the years) that has been pegged by The L.A. Weekly as "a national treasure" as well as "the most criminally-neglected indie pop group imaginable."

So here's to the prospect of that ostensible neglect becoming as much of a thing of the past as John Andrew Fredrick's year-long stint in bed.