“They were so solid. They meant what they said, they did what they did… here’s two guys, a guitar player and a harmonica player, and they could make it sound like a whole orchestra.” – Taj Mahal
“It was perfect. What else can you say?” – Ry Cooder
Nearly sixty years after they first played together, Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, longtime friends and collaborators, reunite with an album of music from two Piedmont blues masters who have inspired them all their lives: GET ON BOARD: THE SONGS OF SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE MCGHEE, on Nonesuch Records.
With Taj Mahal on vocals, harmonica, guitar, and piano and Cooder on vocals, guitar, mandolin, and banjo – joined by Joachim Cooder on drums and bass – the duo recorded eleven songs drawn from recordings and live performances by Terry and McGhee, who they both first heard as teenagers in California.
Explaining where Terry and McGhee took him musically, Cooder says, “Down the road, away from Santa Monica. Where everything was good. ‘I have got to get out of here,’ was all I could think. What do you do, fourteen, eighteen years old? I was trapped. But that first record, Get on Board, the 10” on Folkways, was so wonderful, I could understand the guitar playing.”
Taj Mahal adds, “I started hearing them when I was about nineteen, and I wanted to go to these coffee houses, ‘cause I heard that these old guys were playing. I knew that there was a river out there somewhere that I could get into, and once I got in it, I’d be all right. They brought the whole package for me.”
Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder originally joined forces in 1965, forming The Rising Sons when Cooder was just seventeen. The band was signed to Columbia Records but an album was not released and the group disbanded a year later. The 1960s recording sessions, widely bootlegged, were finally issued officially in 1992. GET ON BOARD is Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder’s first recording together since then.
Harmonica player Sonny Terry and guitarist Brownie McGhee, both originally from the southeastern United States, had active solo careers as well as collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of their time. But they were best known for their forty-five-year partnership, which began in 1939 and included mesmerising live performances around the world and numerous acclaimed recordings.
Their Piedmont blues style became popular during the folk music revival of the 1940s and ’50s, centered in New York City’s flourishing club scene for jazz, boogie-woogie, blues and folk music. Terry and McGhee traveled in the same circles as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, and Josh White, among others in a rich mix of writers, actors and musicians. As a new generation emerging in the 1960’s drew inspiration from folk and blues, Terry and McGhee toured the world as the foremost exponents of the acoustic music of the Piedmont. They were named National Heritage Fellows in 1982 in recognition of their distinctive musical contributions and accomplishments.
“You got the south on steroids, when you got the music of the south, the culture of the south, the beauty of the south, through Brownie and Sonny,” Taj Mahal says. He describes McGhee as a “solid rhythm player. To really play behind the harp like that. He would set stuff up. He wasn’t making many notes. Sonny had all the notes, running around. But Brownie, he laid it down.” Cooder adds: “This thing of squeezing the thumb and first finger and a little bit of the second finger, which I still do. I’d forgotten where it came from. That’s what Brownie did. I saw him do that and said, ‘I think I can do that.’”
Taj Mahal calls Terry “a wizard harmonica player”. Cooder says, “Sonny had incredible rhythm for one thing. Making sounds with his voice and the harmonica so you couldn’t tell quite which was which. He was good at that.”
“We’ve been doing this a while,” Cooder says. “Perhaps we’ve earned the right to bring it back. Taj Mahal concludes. “We’re now the guys that we aspired toward when we were starting out. Here we are now… old timers. What a great opportunity, to really come full circle.”
Suche:som sam
Improvisation and experimentation are at the core of Robocobra
Quartet’s DNA, almost intentionally at odds with their roots as a
post punk band.
Including members with no musical training alongside European
music conservatoire innovators, the result is a groove-driven but
cerebral blast, invoking the likes of Fugazi, Talking Heads and
contemporaries such as Squid and Black Country, New Road.
The eclectic free nature of their live shows allows them to
channel hop from moments of joy and playfulness to periods of
intense fury, creating a unique sound that has earned them
invitations to Montreux Jazz Festival and Latitude.
Robocobra Quartet have a rule: No Guitars Allowed. Their
unique sound, concocted and self-produced in Belfast, Northern
Ireland, sees that ‘middle’ space filled by other instruments such
as saxophones, samplers, keyboards and sound effects,
swirling around the melodic basslines and powerful drum
rhythms which prop up the core of each of their songs.
On top of this music sits a single vocal from behind the drum kit
amid a fury of rhythm, sometimes marrying perfectly with the
pulse of the drums and occasionally at complete odds with it.
Live dates / tour to be announced.
“I genuinely don’t think there is another band like ‘em, anywhere
in these islands” - Tom Robinson
“Free-floating musical explorers” - Hannah Peel
“Fugazi meets Mingus.” - Drowned in Sound
“Exploratory pioneers.” - BBC Radio 3 Late Junction
“A cunning marriage of jazz, spoken word and punk” - The
Quietus
Roger Eno ist ein britischer Komponist und Musiker, dessen unverwechselbarer Stil als Aufnahmekünstler Kultstatus erlangt hat. Letztes Jahr gab er sein Debüt bei der Deutschen Grammophon mit Mixing Colours, seinem ersten Duo-Album mit seinem Bruder Brian, das mit großem Erfolg veröffentlicht wurde. Nun erscheint Rogers neuestes Soloalbum, The Turning Year, am 22. April 2022 beim Yellow Label.
The Turning Year erlaubt es dem Hörer, durch Roger Enos Spiegel zu blicken, gefüllt mit Einblicken in pastorale Szenen und frei fließenden, berührenden Kompositionen. Diese Stücke werden von Eno als Pianist exquisit umgesetzt und von einigen der besten Orchesterspieler Berlins begleitet. Mit einer Mischung aus neuen Kompositionen und bereits vorhandener Musik bietet das Album eine umfassende Präsentation des Solowerks des Komponisten. ”The Turning Year ist wie eine Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten oder
Fotografien einzelner Szenen, von denen jede ihren eigenen Charakter hat, aber irgendwie eng mit den anderen zusammenhängt”, erklärt Eno. ”Beim Anhören musste ich darüber nachdenken, wie wir unser
Leben in Facetten leben, wie wir flüchtige Blicke erhaschen, wie wir durch unser Leben gehen, wie wir die Jahreswende wahrnehmen.”
After a first amazing LP released in 2020, Mama put once again UF095 in charge, but this time, she said: « You’ve got 10 tracks to blow our mind sweetie. Use your difference to make the difference ». Same high-potential kid, no different outcome. And same singularity! Ride with UF095 and learn some good shit about weird techno, IDM and early gabber ! MTY006 brings you through one deep introspection looking for your own uniqueness: please explore yourself.
For this new Mama told ya’s LP, the fury(ous) artwork has been commissioned to french digital artist sltcamille. Her ability to tell melancholic fantasy stories let us all stand in awe. Diplomatie Studio took care of the design, mastering was entrusted to Sixbitdeep - no difference here.
No doubt that with this second Album released on the label, UFO95 shows once again that he has something more. A little ounce of digression that makes him very unmistakable.
I came across the music of IYv shortly after I encountered the dark ambient project Skeldos. Both are projects by the same musician. The IYv debut release (and only so far) “Upės” I had missed when it was released on tape. But I had been listening to it a lot when I was away during the winter of 2020 at a small house at a lake. There was a bluetooth speaker in the house so I could listen to the music there. The beauty of this music really resonated with me. Some time later after the musician contacted me (there are no coincidences) to order the Ô Paradis & Nový Svět LP I released on Vrystaete I dared to ask him if he would be into doing a vinyl version of this long sold out tape release. I was very happy he and his partner in crime involved in this project liked the idea. About IYv… it is a project by Vytenis (Skeldos) and Inga (Rūkana) from Lithuania and “Upės” (meaning “Rivers”) was released by themselves in 2017 in a small edition of 72 copies. While Skeldos is more towards the dark ambient sort of thing with hints of (post-)industrial music, IYv is much more on the melancholy side of things… accordion, electronica and Lithuanian vocals make up for a beautiful post-folklore album… The musicians themselves described the album in a perfect way… so I will not try myself to capture the mood and spirit of the music: “Upės” is an album about travelling. About the hearing of birds, close to the rock chains, which twists on the surface of mountains, through marks of our memory just like the rivers. The album was recorded in seclusion: in a log barn and wooden summerhouse. It’s decorated with deliberately left spontaneous inaccuracies and coherent crookedness. Nostalgic loops of ambient music tells a natural story about the composers: approaching gritty earth, enjoying crackling fire in the night, enduring live rain and swimming through the river streams. LP, 150 copies with screen printed artwork,
- A1: A Low-Toned Meadow
- A2: Snow Falling On Black Water
- A3: Death Would Find My Halls & Flood Them
- A4: Unable
- B1: Urn
- B2: Dreaming Splendid Spaces
- B3: If I Were A Garden
- B4: Underwater Sleep Orchestra
- C1: Her Tiny Ears & Paws
- C2: Resembling A Ruin
- C3: The Elsewhere Sleep
- D1: About The Weather
- D2: The Wreckage
- D3: The Other Elsewhere
LP, 150 copies with screen printed artwork Behind Teahouse Radio is Pär Boström… a Swedish ambient musician, visual artist, label/publishing house owner. Together with his sister (also musical partner in crime) he runs the label/publishing house Hypnagoga Press. Most of his music projects are released on this label. But his work has also already found its way to well known labels such as Cyclic Law and Cryo Chamber. Teahouse Radio is one of the many projects by Pär Boström and most lo-fi and to my ears the most melancholy… and thus fitting Vrystaete very well… In 2018 the debut album (and only album so far) “Her Quiet Garden” was released on CD in an edition of 100 copies on Hypnagoga Press. Here (and below) you have a really nice video on the process of the music and artwork being created… The songs themselves were composed from 2004 onwards with intervals and recorded in a few days during late summer 2016. This 2LP vinyl edition of “Her Quiet Garden” captures the delicate, fragile and minimalist soundscapes very well… and features three additional pieces from the same sessions which were never released before… Expect acoustic instruments that are blended with electronic equipment, forming a sombre ambient music of tinkling tape loops and humming pedal drones… like Gurdjieff meets Eno in some sort of way… And… it is also a very personal album and any listener who sits back and pays true attention will witness and experience this. This is what the musician himself says about the album: An album about summer houses and winter towers, about the changing of weather. How one feeling changes to another. The loss of a loved cat. A real garden becoming an imaginary garden. Depression as a pond. Years of therapy and music as the main counterpoint. About escapism. Psychoses. A giant who walked in and out of the world, decorating it nicely. An aural tale. Half in water, another half in the northern woods. Childhood through nostalgic binoculars. A wardrobe to another place, a gentle knock on the door in the oak tree.
Animalia presents the first in a series of 2 x 12" compilations... For volume one, comes Microevolutions... An homage to the label's continued growth and evolution, a label dedicated to authentic celebrations of talented local artists. Here, Animalia returns to its roots with a release compiled by the members of Menage (plus special guests Ebbs n Flow), all compiled in the northern suburbs of Naarm (Melbourne). The compilation showcases the various moods and facets that make up the deep yet somehow undefinable Animalia sound. From deep techno to UK garage and everything in between, Microevolutions is an earnest reflection of the diversity of sound that makes Animalia so special.
- A1: Careful What You Wish For
- A2: Ayor
- A3: Nature Is A Language
- B1: Fire Of The Green Dragon
- B2: Algerian Basses
- B3: Copacaballa
- C1: Paint Me As A Dead Soul
- C2: Backwards
- C3: Princess Margaret's Man In The D'jamalfna
- D1: Ayor (Live Pornmod)
- D2: Ambient Basses (Hijack Mix 1)
- D3: Wur Click Wur Ruff 1994
- E1: Backwards Dist Vox
- E2: Drone Geff Master
- E3: Carny Master
- F1: Drone Skellies
- F2: Choir Droney Skellies
- F3: Backwards (Live Wip)
"“The New Backwards” was conceived by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn’t seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber “Ape of Naples” from 2005, COIL’s initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.
Significantly different to its sister release, this album collects the brilliantly chaotic and outrageously rhythmic material from the original sessions for the album that was begun as early as 1993 and had originally been conceptualised as the follow-up to “Love’s Secret Domain”. These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate’s former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London’s Swanyard, remixed and restructured with the help of long-term friend Danny Hyde in Thailand, this collection has its own unique flow and an atmosphere not found on any other COIL release.
Both “AYOR” and “Backwards” had by the time the album was first released already become favourites in COIL’s manic live performances. Some of the other tracks had only leaked in demo versions and are here presented updated and polished as Christopherson and Hyde intended them to be heard. It is interesting to consider Balance’s vocal contributions, too. Whilst on the albums COIL did release at the time this material was first put aside (“Black Light District” and “ElpH”) his voice is all but absent, his vocal performances and his lyric writing here are arguably more closely indebted to the previous “Love’s Secret Domain” era, especially the epic “Copacaballa” is noteworthy in that respect.
The New Backwards” effectively became the final official COIL studio release of all new material whilst Peter was still alive and is here presented for the first time fully supervised by Danny Hyde, its co-creator.
The stunning cover uses a detail from artist Ian Johnstone’s “Cubic Raven” painting, licensed from the estate of IJ..
It is high time to rediscover this timeless album with the Infinite Fog release boasting eight further tracks of previously unheard material from the same sessions, rough working stages and surprising remixes which will surely delight the dedicated COIL archaeologists, as they shine yet another light on the creative process and on what could have been.
Recorded at Swanyard, London and at Nothing Studios, New Orleans, 1996.
Thanks to everyone there, especially Trent Reznor who made it all possible.
Written & Produced by Coil & Danny Hyde.
Remixed by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde, Bangkok 2007.
For that session Coil were: Peter Christopherson, Jhonn Balance & Drew McDowall.
Mastered by Jessica Thompson.
Front artwork by Ian Johnstone.
Artwork licensed from The Estate of Ian Johnstone.
Layout Cold Graves and Oleg Galay."
The Covid Pandemic hit Germany in March 2020 and by the 15th of March all of the public life was shut down. It was the same day where my son Rio was born.
For me, this early stage of the pandemic had something very intimate and private, since I was forced to stay at home with my young family for weeks. In Mai 2020 I started to leave the house, for other occasions then just going to the shop or taking a walk and that was the time I started working on “Hotel Solaris”. It was an intense creative rush: in 8 weeks the album was written, performed and produced in one flow. I had two days every week, where I could go to the studio for 4 hours and that time the album was done. It had a corpus in a sense that I
knew I wanted a faster or a slower track at points, but the whole hotel idea came when I saw photos of the old Hotel Arkada on the Croatian island Hvar, that my extremely talented friend Marcella Zanki shot on her holidays.
They show a well preserved socialist-brutalist hotel architecture in the middle of the beautiful Adriatic and for me it was like looking at pictures from a timeless place, without knowing where and when it exactly was, totally surreal.
I liked that idea of a hote that stands as an escape symbol from the real world, which was something everyone needed when the pandemic was building stronger and stronger. I decided to call it Hotel Solaris, inspired by the novel from Stanislav Lem, where Solaris is a planet covered by an ocean which triggers our subconscious mind to
become reality. It all fit at the end and “Hotel Solaris” was done.
The classic second Big Thief LP originally released in 2017, limited repress at a decent price! Gatefold LP & download code, don’t miss out.
The trails that Brooklyn's Big Thief -- Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals), Buck Meek (guitar), Max Oleartchik (bass), and James Krivchenia (drums) -- take us down on Capacity, the band's highly anticipated second record out 6/9 on Saddle Creek, are overgrown with the wilderness of pumping souls. After last year's stunning Masterpiece, Capacity was recorded in a snowy winter nest in upstate New York at Outlier Studio with producer Andrew Sarlo. The album jumps right into lives marked up and nipped in surprisingly swift fashion. They are peopled and unpeopled, spooked and soothed, regenerating back into a state where they can once again be vulnerable. Lenker's songs introduce us to a gallery of multifacted women and deal with the complicated matters of identity — at once dangerous and curious, though never unbelievable. Lenker shows us the gentle side of being ripped open. Tricked into love, done in and then witnessing the second act of pulling oneself back together to prepare for it to all happen again, but this time to a sturdier soul, one who is going to take the punches better than ever before and deal some jabs and roundhouses of their own. The album is thick with raw, un-doctored beauty: most of the songs on Capacity were played for the first time in the studio and were recorded the same day. There is a darker darkness and a lighter light on this album,' Lenker explains. The songs search for a deeper level of self-acceptance, to embrace the world within and without. I think Masterpiece began that process, as a reaction from inside the pain, whereas I feel Capacity examines the pain from the outside.'
- A1: Sampuesana - Los Dinners
- A2: La Borrachita - Junior Y Su Equipo
- A3: Paga La Cuenta Sinverguenza - Manzanita
- A4: Infinito - Hugo Blanco Y Su Arpa Viajera
- B1: El Jardinero - Manzanita Y Su Conjunto
- B2: Feito Parrandero - Los Feos
- B3: Bien Bailadido - Junior Y Su Equipo
- B4: Saturno 2000 - Los Santos
- C1: La Danza Del Mono - Lucho Gavilanes
- C2: Capricho Egipcio - Conjunto Tiupico Contreras
- C3: El Chacarero - Los Gatos Blancos
- C4: Pa Oriente Me Voy - Los Atomos De Paramonga
- D1: Alegrate - Junior Y Su Equipo
- D2: Todo Lo Tengo De Ti Menos Tu Amor - Grupo Celeste
- D3: La Fuga Del Bandido - Los Ecos
Analog Africa delves deep into the scene of the Mexican's sonideros (sound-system operators) to present the "Rebajada" movement they've created using locally made pitch controls, speakers and sound effects.
"In 2010, I had asked Eamon Ore-Giron - aka DJ Lengua - if he would be interested in compiling a Latin project for Analog Africa, and if so, if he had a theme in mind. He replied, “Have you ever heard of rebajada?“ The question mark above my head, together with the wall of China, must have been the only other object visible from out of space because Eamon, probably noticing I got paralysed, continued, “Rebajada in Spanish means “to reduce, to lower”. It’s basically Mexican sonideros (soundsystem operators) slowing down the beat of a Cumbia to create a much more tangible music to dance to. I’ll send you a mix I made last year and let me know what you think.“ And so he did.
That mix was called Rebajada Mota Mix and I began listening to it on a loop. Although I was not immediately hooked it was intriguing from the get-go, and so I kept listening until magic began unfolding. Slowed down music allows you enough time to hear right through it, revealing itself in ways I had rarely experienced before. Everything became more transparent and I was noticing sounds normally only perceptible by bats. A near psychedelic experience. That mysterious mix included a few Ecuadorian songs by Junior y su Equipo - aka Polibio Mayorga (a cult figure in the sonidero scene), a couple of Mexican tunes, one Colombian, and various Peruvian songs, undoubtedly the driving force behind this project.
The sonidero who brought Peruvian and Ecuadorian music to Mexico was the legendary Pablo Perea from Sonido Arco-Iris, and although his fingerprints are all over the compilation Saturno 2000, this selection of songs in rebajada is exclusive to DJ Lengua. With the exception of a few classics from Polibio Mayorga and La Sampuesana – the queen of all rebajadas – most of these songs were probably never performed as such before, let alone released.
So how did rebajada come to be? In a nutshell; Rebajada started with two families of brothers – the Pereas and the Ortegas – who travelled all over Latin America and returned to Mexico with heavy loads of records which they would sell to the various sonideros always on the lookout for new tunes. Colombian beats especially seemed to fit almost perfectly with the Mexican dance steps – but they were just a bit too fast. As a result some sonideros began experimenting with equipment, and Marco Antonio Cedillo of Sonido Imperial created a revolutionary pitching system that could slow records down to an extent other players could only dream about. And so rebajada was born . . . or so we thought.
At the same time in north of the country, in Monterrey, sonidero Gabriel Dueñez almost got electrocuted by a short circuit that nearly set his record player on fire. As a result the platter started spinning in slow motion for the rest of the party, turning Cumbia into a different affair altogether. The youngsters went crazy for it and started harassing the sonidero with requests to record cassettes for them. Reluctant at first, Dueñez finally began recording a series of pirated cassettes called “Rebajada” which included mainly Colombian cumbia and porro in slow-mo exclusively. Those tapes took the city by storm and turned rebajada into a celebrated and defiant movement of the youth.
Of course it would not be a Mexican urban legend if it didn’t include dramaturgical elements, and so for nearly 30 years, until this day and probably for ever, both cities have been arguing and claiming ownership the creation of rebajada for themselves. But sonidera Joyce Musicolor, who never has time for such trivial arguments, got straight to the point: “Rebajada, and the equipment to perform it, is from here Mexico City but it was Monterrey that popularised it.“
"Half a Klip" is a Vinyl Reissue of Kool G Rap's first solo release It was originally released in 2007: As is to be expected, G Rap fills out the lyrics sheet here with banana clips and stacks of body bags -- certainly not a disappointment (he played a big part in inventing this agenda after all), though the MC's steady, workmanlike approach and topical sameness leaves a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of his producers. t's open to debate as to whether there has ever been a rapper more influential, yet somehow less celebrated, than Kool G Rap. From his seminal work on Marley Marl's Juice Crew productions and Cold Chillin' Records, to the major contributions he gave to the blueprint of gangster storytelling in rap, the Kool Genius has remained relevant and consistent despite heaps of record label drama and the ever-diminishing attention span of the listening public. It's unlikely that the new Chinga Chang Records EP Half A Klip will do much to elevate G Rap's legacy, but there are still shining moments to remind us why the legendary MC is more than deserving of the little reverence he receives.IThus, the EP's best moments come when he is united with a strong hand behind the boards. Marley Marl's sinister keys and kettle drum composition for "With A Bullet" (inexplicably buried at track eight on this 11-track offering) is probably the best canvas for Rap's gangster mentality. DJ Premier contributes a strong track (merely serviceable by Premier standards, but a standout here) and the lesser-known Domingo also seems to be able to give G Rap room to run. Unfortunately, the rest is just middling with one true mistake, Critical Child's dismal "Turn It Out", which sounds like a cast-off from a Jim Jones studio session. In any event, this collection of new and unreleased material is not the next Road to the Riches. On the bright side, the MC behind Road to the Riches is still here (in every sense) and still doing it 20 years later.
This album doesn't blurt it out: There is no loud "Ta-Dah!", no exclamation mark. "The ghost that carried us away" flatters in a rather unobtrusive way. However, it has encircled you after the third song at the latest. Fragile hymns of nonchalant casualness, created by the 24-year-old Sindri Már Sigfússon. Guitars, piano, his almost bashful and yet so present voice. "Nature, mortality, love", these are the topics of his debut album. Even the one who listens only briefly, is able to make them out within the sounds. "Do you remember how the things look when you were young."
Reykjavik again. Iceland, the musical heartland. On top of that, there is a violinist with her voice in the clouds: Gudbjörg Hlin Gudmundsdóttir (violine, vocals, harmonica). There further are musicians Sindri shared his hometown and his passion: Orn (guitar, lapsteel) who forms together with Sindri and Gudbjörg the inner triangle of Seabear. Or Eiki, Orvar, Gudni and Dóri. One plays the flugelhorn, the slide-guitar or upright-bass. One belong to the live line-up of Sigur Rós (Eiki). Another is part of the sensational múm (Orvar). Some are stage members of Benni Hemm Hemm's Band - the other Icelandic artist on morr music. Sindri Már Sigfusson has invited them into his small studio, placed them in front of the only microphone, let them think about his musical thoughts. He likes the notion and the feeling of LoFi, Sindri says. Only for the recording of the drums three microphones were used. The result is reminiscent of the reduced stereo recordings of the 1960ies.
Libraries is the most direct promise that pop music is able to make. Tiny and gigantic, unobtrusive and exciting at the same time. A song like a blink into the most beautiful sunrise. A tumbling piano, swinging drums. Melodies, melancholy: "My little bird flew away from me". Or "hands remember", the singing being close to one's ear. "The voice of an old friend", a murmur, two violins. There is later "summer bird diamond", birds twitter to the accords of an old banjo, a glockenspiel. It is almost a radio play, chamber folk. And "seashell" at last, a pocket symphony, arranged around jumping drums. Sufjan Stevens would have done it in a very similar way.
Danish singer-songwriter Soren Munk releases his debut solo album Purr Show on 15 April 2022 via Navarino Records.Soren also travels the world as a cameraman for Channel 4 News, and the album was written and recorded in between trips to cover some of the major global events of recent times, from the war in Mali to the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan
Soren also co- wrote the much- loved theme tune to the hit animated TV series Charlie and Lola – which is currently trending on TikTok with millions of views.Despite the nature of his news work, the songwriting on Purr Show has a more private focus, dealing in intimate but ambiguous moments of love and loss.
Melodic and intense, the album has elements of Dream Pop, Slowcore and classic songwriting, while the blend of electric guitars, analogue synths and vocals draws on the work of artists that combine restraint and power, such as Neil Young, Low, Big Star and Elliot Smith. Soren worked with Andy Ramsay from Stereolab to record the album, and Jimmie Robertson (Depeche Mode, Arctic Monkeys) during the mixing Soren explains, “I wanted to create slow pop songs. Romantic and melodic but with an edge of strangeness that makes them harder to pin down. That's the music I respond to – things that are assertive but fragile at the same time. Where every element counts.”Soren drew together a strong lineup of musicians and collaborators, including guitarists Garo Nahoulakian (Emiliana Torrini, Gaz Coombes, Piney Gir) and Nick 'Growler' Fowler (Gaz Coombes, Luke Haines); a Danish rhythm section of drummer Nikolaj Bjerre (Lamb) and bassist Andreas Jensen (Dub Pistols); and
pianist Tom Dyson (co-writer of the Charlie and Lola theme). Soren's vocals are often combined on the songs with the soft alto of backing singer Emma Faulkner, creating a sense of something confidential, like snatches of pillow talk.
Ironman is the debut solo album by Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah, released in 1996. Produced by Wu-Tang Clan mastermind RZA, the album’s music and lyrics draw prominently on Blaxploitation films and soul samples. Many music critics have praised the album for Ghostface Killah’s imaginative lyricism and RZA’s production style, with some revering it as one of the greatest Wu-Tang solo albums of all time. The album contains Ghostface Killah’s highly praised unique up-tempo, stream-of-consciousness rhyming style, which he would go on to further utilize on his highly acclaimed second studio album Supreme Clientele. Ironman debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, and is certified platinum.
Although a solo album, Ironman features many Wu-Tang collaborations, with furthermore Raekwon and Cappadonna. In addition, the album features the hit “All That I Got Is You” featuring Mary J. Blige.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest hip hop debuts of the 90’s, Ironman is available as a limited anniversary edition of 4000 individually numbered copies on translucent blue (LP1) and translucent red (LP2) coloured vinyl.
Having been previously released digitally and on CD back in 2009. We decided RSD 2022 was a great opportunity to release this seminal album on Red Transparent vinyl for the first time.
‘Don’t You Remember The Future’ is the debut artist album from Jamie Jones, peering into the coming apocalypse with a body-shaking, teeth-grinding, tripped out fusion of sound on Crosstown Rebels.
There are some talents that remain inconspicuous and then there are some you can’t ignore. Jamie Jones is the latter, quickly rising to superstar status in underground dance circles over recent years. Releases on Crosstown Rebels Hot Creations, Defected, Cocoon, Get Physical and BPitch have catapulted him to become a cult figure and he is widely admired for his true originality. From his debut single ‘Amazon’, to his albums' anthem ‘Summertime’, his unique sound has won him worldwide audiences and this album has been widely anticipated as one to change the face of current house music.
With ‘Don’t You Remember The Future’ Jamie Jones delivers an album of “intergalactic techno house, where old school prince meets cybertron.” A seamlessly blended up-tempo mix filled with eerie and energetic moments. Featuring ten brand new tracks from Jamie Jones, alongside this years dance floor anthem ‘Summertime’ and the current ‘Galactic Space Bar’ - which features the vocals of Egyptian Lover - the album’s twelve tracks are stitched together in an entangled web of beats and bleeps, available digitally as separate edits.
Cosmic cuts such as ‘Mars’ and ‘Deep In The Ghetto’ create a new dimension through soaring synths and idiosyncratic samples while the sonic dance floor weapons ‘Half Human’ and ‘This Is How’ release the lethal disco master within Jamie Jones. The jacking, peak time moments of ‘Summertime’ and ‘Sand Dunes’ produce a current take on the early acid house sound and each step of this peculiar story solidifies the strange notion of being within an undiscovered time and place. ‘Don’t You Remember The Future’ features the guest vocals of a variety of musical souls, checking off some of Jones’ remote influences and revealing the greater versatility of this skillful artist. Norwegian oddball duo Ost & Kjex feature on the anthem, ‘Summertime’.
The seductively charged ‘Absolute Zero’ unmasks the talent of London based DJ, producer and vocalist Alison Mars (AKA Alison Marks), resulting in a beautifully epic and mysterious after hours track, and the toxic ‘Galactic Space Bar’ features live vocals from one of the creators of the electro scene, The Egyptian Lover, an old hero to Jamie Jones through early rap cuts like ‘Egypt, Egypt’ and ‘I Need a Freak .’ ‘Don’t You Remember The Future’ vinyl release is the album that brought the future into the present."
Nick Walters returns to his D.O.T. Records imprint with a suite of forward thinking, cosmic, electronic-jazz experiments, inspired by NASA & the concept of gravitational singularity. Each track on “Singularity”, his first home studio produced album, is built around an audio sample recorded by NASA in space, then expertly transported back to earth by Walters via some magical trumpet and synth work on his newly purchased Juno-106. The album features key contributions from Ruby Rushton drummer Tim Carnegie, 22a Music’s Tenderlonious on flute and some sublime guitar work from Thibaut Remy.
The Ricardo Villalobos / Samuel Rohrer partnership has yielded increasingly interesting results over the past few years, with the former’s remixes of the latter’s trio Ambiq being supplemented by further reinterpretations of Rohrer’s solo work and live meetings at select events like Berlin’s Funkhaus and Radialsystem V. As should be the case with any strong collaboration, this partnership has been based on mutual challenge rather than compromise,
seeing each participant shuttle key technical and emotive aspects of the other’s work to previously unexpected places.
Those who have been closely following this relationship will notice a definite sense of continuity between previous outings and the new collaborative release entitled MICROGESTURES. As with those earlier Villalobos / Rohrer pairings, these four new pieces are defined by a special quality of being many things that once: that is to say, depending on the listener’s own level of focus, these can feel very tightly constructed and disciplined, or playful and freely wandering. That the tracks are equally engaging regardless of one’s chosen listening “mode” is a testament to the level of thought put into them; you could almost imagining the creators poring over some elaborate sketched set of architectural blueprints rather than coolly monitoring the usual multi-track editing software.
Altogether the music here is firmly a-melodic and percussive, but within these deliberate limitations there is still a greater variety of individual sounds than most would bother with. Each track is its own observatory of microgestures clustering together into a dense communicative fog or a sort of robotic sound swarm. Yet while all
these tracks are variations on that theme, each one has its own character and, consequently, its own rewards in terms of the exact sectors of the imagination that it activates.
Take for example “Cochlea” and its twin “Helix,” on which the magnetizing, busy layers of percussion are tempered with mischievously disruptive blossomings of digital noise, as well as sampled radio communications (which again bring us back to the idea of listeners’ attentiveness changing the meaning of this music - these
curious transmissions can either be taken as a purely aesthetic element or as something to be actively decoded).
Club-oriented elements are also not absent from this suite, particularly on “Incus” with its traditional sequenced baseline, crisp synthetic trap and hats, and dizzily sliding set of bell-like tones laid on top.?
Yet this track, too, is powered as much by its restless desire to deviate as by its rhythmic consistency: throughout the eleven-minute running time, a mass of ambiguous and restless machine sounds build a parallel narrative, and will maybe prompt the occasional glance over the shoulder as they seem to be taking on their own life. “Lobule” rounds out the program with the most rhythmically eventful sound set off the five.
What this all adds up to is a confident music which builds that quality from its faith in possibilities rather than firm conclusions: it’s an inspiring addition to both the musical landscape and reality in general
The Hill District were a group of working musicians assembled by bassist Walter “Sonny” Hughes who following one afternoon rehearsal session together the very same evening recorded their only ever 45 outing the somewhat elusive and now sort after amongst group harmony collectors “Your Scared Of Falling In Love”. The other group members were Sonny’s brother Richard Hughes (Lead Guitar), Anthony Law (Keyboards), William M. Standard Jr (Piano), Mark Smith (Drums) and Daniel S. Lee Jr (Lead Vocals). The groups name was taken from a grouping of African American neighbourhoods in the city of Pittsburgh P.A. locally referred to as ‘The Hill’. The recording session was held under the direction of record producer and song writer James Richard Calloway (A.K.A) Rich Calloway. Calloway would go on to release “Your Scared Of Falling In Love” on his own ‘C-Way Records’ label featuring a instrumental version on the flipside. Rich Calloway hailed from Uniontown P.A. with Uniontown being known affectionately by the local black community as ‘Oniontown’ the name which Calloway adopted for his publishing company. Unfortunately for the Hill District the final mastering of their song left something be desired (a scenario we’ve now rectified with our release) and as a result local Pittsburgh Disc jockeys refused to plug their song leaving their one and only 45 outing to fade into obscurity with the group members going their own separate ways to continue their careers as session musicians with other ensembles. Producer and lyricist Rich Calloway also continued with his own C-way Productions company later composing both sides of The Cleveland Ohio group ‘The Entertains’1975 outing for Steel Town records “Love Will Turn It Around/Why Couldn’t I Believe Them”. Calloway was no stranger to Cleveland having been earlier employed by Way Out Records owner Lester Johnson to compose the lyrics to Jesse Fisher’s “Your Not Loving A Beginner”, the songs arrangement’s being originally laid down by members of the Way Out group The Soul Notes, William Bell (A.K.A Bill Spoon), John Washington and Ricki Dannison under the working title of “I’ve Been Waiting For Your Love”. Prior to the Hill’s District release Rich Calloway had penned and released a 45 single on another local Pittsburgh artist Richie Merrett. The 1973 outing You’ll Always Have Yesterday Standing By” b/w “I Gave It Up” (C-Way 103). Merritt a professional singer who performed with several groups including The Electron’s on their 1968 outing “Turn On Your Lovelight (Shock 209) recorded his first solo outing on the Nashville Deltron label “Can I Get A Rebate/It’s Never Too Late” which he later released again on his own R.A.M label followed by two early 90’s outings, the modern soul favourite’s “Where Did I Go Wrong” and “You Got Problems”. Richie still performs today doing one off shows in between his solo performances aboard 7 Day Cruise ships travelling between Los Angeles and Sant Cabos, Mexico. “You’ll Always Have Yesterday Standing By” was later produced by Walt Maddox under the shortened title of “Yesterday’s Standing By” on his own group ‘These Gents’.
Therefore Soul Junction brings you two 70’s soul/Lowrider in demanders back to back for your delectation.




















