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Analog Africa Presents Edo Funk Explosion Vol. 1, available on
2xLP/Gatefold LP with 20-page booklet / CD with 36-page booklet. It was
in Benin City, in the heart of Nigeria, that a new hybrid of intoxicating
highlife music known as Edo Funk was born.
It first emerged in the late 1970s when a group of musicians began to experiment with different ways of integrating elements from their native Edo culture
and fusing them with new sound effects coming from West Africa s night-clubs.
Unlike the rather polished 1980 s Nigerian disco productions coming out of the
international metropolis of Lagos Edo Funk was raw and reduced to its bare
minimum.
Someone was needed to channel this energy into a distinctive sound and Sir
Victor Uwaifo appeared like a mad professor with his Joromi studio. Uwaifo
took the skeletal structure of Edo music and relentless began fusing them with
synthesizers, electric guitars and 80 s effect racks which resulted in some of the
most outstanding Edo recordings ever made. An explosive spiced up brew with
an odd psychedelic note known as Edo Funk.
That’s the sound you’ll be discovering in the first volume of the Edo Funk Explosion series which focusses on the genre’s greatest originators; Osayomore
Joseph, Akaba Man, and Sir Victor Uwaifo: Osayomore Joseph was one of the
first musicians to bring the sound of the flute into the horn-dominated world
of highlife, and his skills as a performer made him a fixture on the Lagos scene.
When he returned to settle in Benin City in the mid 1970s - at the invitation of
the royal family - he devoted himself to the modernisation and electrification
of Edo music, using funk and Afro-beat as the building blocks for songs that
weren’t afraid to call out government corruption or confront the dark legacy of
Nigeria’s colonial past.
Akaba Man was the philosopher king of Edo funk. Less overtly political than Osayomore Joseph and less psychedelic than Victor Uwaifo, he found the perfect
medium for his message in the trance-like grooves of Edo funk. With pulsating
rhythms awash in cosmic synth-fields and lyrics that express a deep personal
vision, he found great success at the dawn of the 1980s as one of Benin City’s
most persuasive ambassadors of funky highlife.
Victor Uwaifo was already a star in Nigeria when he built the legendary Joromi
studios in his hometown of Benin City in 1978. Using his unique guitar style as
the mediating force between West-African highlife and the traditional rhythms
and melodies of Edo music, he had scored several hits in the early seventies,
but once he had his own sixteen-track facility he was able to pursue his obsession with the synesthetic possibilities of pure sound, adding squelchy synths,
swirling organs and studio effects to hypnotic basslines and raw grooves. Between his own records and his production for other musicians, he quickly established himself as the godfather of Edo funk.
What unites these diverse musicians is their ability to strip funk down to its
primal essence and use it as the foundation for their own excursions inward to
the heart of Edo culture and outward to the furthest limits of sonic alchemy.
The twelve tracks on Edo Funk Explosion Volume 1 pulse with raw inspiration,
mixing highlife horns, driving rhythms, day-glo keyboards and tripped-out guitars into a funk experience unlike any other.

Blue Vinyl
Lynch protégé and Twin Peaks sound designer Dean Hurley coaxes an incredible puzzlebox of atmospheres and mood pieces on this killer contribution to our Documenting Sound series, now remastered and pressed on vinyl for what is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most cinematic and neon-lit instalment in the series. Like a
smudged and overdubbed copy of the BoC Maxima tape, with added iridescence.
Across almost 40 minutes we transition from aerosolised synths to romantic chromatics, thru to Nurse WIth Wound-style severed rhythms and fading glimmers of hope, ‘Concrete Feather’ epitomises Dean Hurley’s prized knack for nuanced instrumental story-telling in the finest and most engrossing style we could imagine. Against the backdrop of the Hollywood film industry that has primed us for as long as we can all remember, the music spans a panorama of lush, mirage-like choral pads and starry flickers thru to gloaming
nightmare sequences and screwed drums, while touching on some of the dankest synth tones this side of his ‘Anthology Resource’ volumes or indeed his soundtrack work for Twin Peaks: The Return. It’s full of dread and a slowly unfolding sense of tragedy.
“Having a regular practice of recording is probably the single most important element to my craft. It’s a way of dropping indiscriminate mile markers while constantly moving forward in time without ability to pause.
Over the years, working for David Lynch taught me a great deal about this and the concept and importance of experimentation. I’ve found myself clinging to those lessons during this time and using them as tools for both productivity and balance. His notion of experimentation is a simple one, yet incredibly profound. It was one of the very first words I heard him say during our initial meeting, and I never stopped hearing the term daily over the subsequent 13 years working together. An ‘experiment’ can provide a legitimate mental back-entrance into the act of creation. It can position an approach toward discovery as opposed to effort, and eliminate the thought that one needs to ‘will’ something into existence. It also aids in calming the judgmental
side of a brain from stepping on/interfering with expression…after all, experiments are not about success or failure, they’re simply about learning. In the Lynch school of thought, multiple experiments then become firewood…and with firewood, one can not only build but actually sustain a fire…even turn it into a multipleacre blaze or more.
Dean Hurley

Re-mastering by: Ray Staff at Air Mastering, Lyndhurst Hall, London




Owning both this disc and Live at Slugs', Volume 1 is essential for hardcore Jazz fans. Part two of the Slugs' date is just as impressive and again feature three originals all penned by the group. Here we get a better example of Tolliver's compositional work with the touching Coltrane tribute Our Second Father. Again Tolliver's trumpet is simply stunning. The rhythm section of Cecil McBee and Jimmy Hopps also deserve mention as these two really drive the quartet along in a similar fashion to Garrison and Jones did with Coltrane. The McBee original Wilpan's also highlights the strength of McBee's writing and is probably the pick of the tunes here.

Where have you gone, Charles Tolliver? There was such promise in the concept of Music Inc., and in Strata East, but evidently the music world's attention was elsewhere and this tremendous live set was probably heard by only a few hundred sets of ears. On the back of the record sleeve, Tolliver undersigned his mission statement: "Music Inc. was created out of the desire to assemble men able to see the necessity for survival of a heritage and an Art in the hopes that the sacrifices and high level of communication between them will eventually reach every soul." And he isn't kidding. You won't find a much higher level of communication than he, Cecil McBee, Stanley Cowell, and Jimmy Hopps engaged in on May 1, 1970 at Slugs' in New York City. This was much more than an attempt to merely 'preserve acoustic jazz' as in the stilted Marsalis vein. This was an attempt to preserve a measure of authenticity while maintaining the notion of forward-thinking, present-tense improvised music. They deserved a greater response than the lukewarm, sparse applause they received that night, and continue to deserve a far more cognizant audience for their efforts.



Tolliver ('Drought"), McBee ("Felicite"), and Cowell ("Orientale") each contribute a track to the set; though very much distinct, each is equally strong. "Drought" is the kind of dark-hued, well-honed burner which Tolliver routinely produced in his fertile years. "Felicite" is a more contemplative affair, a deeply felt and empathically performed piece; the unit here is in particularly sublime form, merging considerable skill with a staggering depth of emotion. "Orientale" falls somewhere in between the pace of the two, with Cowell's Eastern scales establishing an austere, industrious tone throughout its seventeen-and-a-half-minute length.



Through its duration, the music on Live at Slugs' is often riveting and incessantly compelling. Hopps is a lesser-known entity to me, but the other three players featured here are some of the all-time underrated presences in the jazz pantheon, and they play nothing short of masterfully. Always a presence on his recordings, Tolliver demonstrates tremendous range, flair, and command as a trumpeter and leader. Had he not come along at a time when pure jazz was falling out of favour, I have to believe his name (along with Woody Shaw's) would be every bit as prolific as Freddie Hubbard's or Lee Morgan's; the same holds for the always brilliant and expressive McBee on bass.



I feel saddened that Music Inc. fell so far short of "eventually reaching every soul" - yet fortunate that it eventually reached mine.

With his ongoing commitment to like-minded archivist label Finders Keepers Records, industrial music pioneer Steven Stapleton further entrusts us to lift the veil and expose “the right tracks” from his uber-legendary and oft misinterpreted psych/prog/punk peculiarity shopping list known as The Nurse With Wound List.
Following the critically lauded first instalment and it’s exclusively French tracklisting both parties now combine their vinyl-vulturous penchants to bring you the next ‘Strain Crack & Break’ edition which consists of twelve lesser-known German records that played a hugely important part in the initial foundations of the list which began to unfold when Stapleton was just thirteen years old.
From the perspective of a schoolboy Amon Düül (ONE) victim, at the start of a journey that commenced before phrases like kosmische and the xeno-ignant Krautrock tag had become mag hack currency, this compendium is devoid of the tropes that united what many would accurately argue to be the greatest progressive pop bands in Europe
(namely CAN, Neu! and Kraftwerk) and rather shatters the ingredients across a ground zero landscape for both inquisitive fans and socially rehabbing musos to begin to assemble a unique self-styled identity. If Krautrock was the music that journalist told us lurked behind schlager (German pop) in the 1970s, then this record includes the music that skulked behind Krautrock and perhaps refused to polish its backhanded name belt.
Including lesser-known artists like the late Wolfgang Dauner, whose career proceeded and outlived the kosmische movement while consistently informing and outsmarting them whenever they got stuck in their metronomic ruts, or how about Fritz Müller, the man who
was to Kraftwerk what Stuart Sutcliffe was to The Beatles but had more in common with Yoko and quite rightly couldn’t give a stuff about the Fab Four’s Hamburg roots.
Elsewhere we have a plethora of German bands made for German audiences as they try and shed secondhand flower power Americanisms and feel the benefits of much harder drugs and the realisations of difficult second album budgets while Kommune 1
newsflashes wipe smiles from everybody’s faces and replace them with opioid chic or acid-sarcastic grins. Bonzo Cockettes show us their Big Muffs and drummers ask for extra mics while Conny Plank goes for parliamentary office and gives babies good firm handshakes for the camera.
‘Strain Crack & Break: Volume Two’ is the sound of Steve Stapleton’s sponge-like mind and the dividends of anyone who was brave enough to even peek inside those brick-thick gatefold covers never mind drop the needle.
Over forty years since Nurse With Wound’s first album was released, Finders Keepers Records and Steve Stapleton take connoisseurs of our kind of music back to the disused elevator shaft towards ground zero. Arriving at the same checkout from different departments, Finders Keepers and Nurse With Wound continue to sing from the same hymnal with this ongoing collaborative attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks from Steve’s list, where many overzealous erds have faltered (or simply, got the wrong end of the stick).
After ‘Strain Crack & Break: Volume One’ merely scratched the surface of this DIY dossier of elongated punk-prog peculiarities, this second lavish metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium drives a much deeper groove which, in accordance with Steve’s wishes, focusses exclusively on individual tracks of German origin - the country whose music forged the prototype of the NWW inventory in the form of his secondary school vinyl wantlist in the early 1970s, comprised of disassembled free jazz, unshowered stoner psych, hypnotic prog, deranged monk funk and fuzzed out Deutschmark bin bonzo beats.

Since the release of the first volume in 2019, we knew we couldn't stop there. In 2021 we are even more excited to present the 'Drum'n Voice Remixed 2' album by the legend Billy Cobham in collaboration with Italian producers and composers Nicolosi / Novecento. As a taster to the album we are very happy to be releasing an EP containing remixes of ‘Interactive’ from the legend Louie Vega.

Acclaimed as jazz-rock fusion's greatest drummer, Billy Cobham has dedicated his whole life to musical exploration and creative expression. Born in Panama, he has been surrounded by music. His father was a pianist, his mother was a singer and Billy started playing drums at four years old. Throughout his career he has collaborated with artists like Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Airto Moreira, George Benson and appeared on over 300 recordings, including icons like Peter Gabriel, Quincy Jones, Jack Bruce, Bob Weir, and James Brown, and to date, has produced and released more than forty albums as a leader. The first album ‘Spectrum’ is a masterpiece and still considered a reference album today.

Billy and Nicolosi composed so many songs of the highest quality and class that we immediately wanted to get to work preparing a second volume of remixes. We are really happy to present the Louie Vega remixes of ‘Interactive’ in the run up to ‘Drum’N Voice Remixed 2’ collection that's set for a release later in the year.

‘Little’ Louie Vega does not need any introduction. One half of the Masters At Work (that are back now after a long time with their new single), he is one of the most important House Music duo of the last 30 years, even receiving a nomination in the last Grammy Awards. With the collaboration of Josh Milan (aka Honeycomb and former one half of Blaze) at the keyboards, these incredible remixes of 'Interactive' make track shine thanks to a powerful blend of funky cosmic disco and a perfect killer groove that makes us dance on Brian Auger's magnificent Hammond improvisation.

RECORD STORE DAY 2021 TITLE!!!
VOLUME TWO OF THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED THE RIVER FLOWS!
A FANTASTIC SET OF SONGS CHOSEN AND SUNG BY JOHN HURLBUT, PERFECTLY
EMBELISHED AND CONSTRUCTED WITH SATISFYING GUITAR SOLOS OF GRAMMY AWARD
WINNING ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE JORMA KAUKONEN (JEFFERSON
AIRPLANE / HOT TUNA)
ONE TIME PRESSING COLLECTOR'S EDITION - ON CLEAR SPLATTER VINYL - STRICTLY
LIMITED TO ONLY 3,000 COPIES WORLWIDE!

Gold Vinyl

Dope Plates is back with the second volume of its 'Dope On Plastic' various artist EP series.

Volume 2 sees debut appearances from London's Effra, Code 906 from Russia and Scale, Rainforest and Dreadmaul all representing Germany. Label boss Soul Intent also appears on the EP with his classic Good Looking Records tribute remix of Scape's hugely popular track 'Spirit World' which featured on DOPE005 back in 2018.

• The tracks from the group’s two 1984 EPs together on a swanky 10-inch vinyl LP. Inner bag features liner notes by Kris Needs incorporating new interviews with all three Delmonas and a series of great photos by Eugene Doyen.

• Sarah Crouch, Hilary Wilkins and Louise Baker started singing together as a unique spark of spontaneous magic inextricably linked to their boyfriends in the Milkshakes, then rocking a garage-punk antidote to shiny synth-pop and brash chart stars with a direct lifeline back to rock’n’roll’s original simplicity and wildness. After Billy Childish and Bruce Brand formed the Pop Rivets in 1978, the guys hooked up with Micky Hampshire and Russell Wilkins to found the Milkshakes. Sarah shared a student house with boyfriend Micky plus Billy. After she and Hilary, then dating Russell, sang backing vocals on the Milkshakes’ rollicking Beatles-translated take on the Shirelles’ ‘Boys’, Louise’s arrival turned them into a girl group pretty much by accident.

• “I loved the music the Milkshakes were playing,” Louise recalls. “Loved the small, intimate venues and most of the bands that played with them, especially the Prisoners. I’d gone with the Milkshakes to Belgium and was somehow persuaded to get up on stage and sing something. Next thing I knew, there was some kind of plan to get the three of us in the studio.” At first the three girls were called the Milk-boilers, renaming themselves the Delmonas by the time Ace Records’ Roger Armstrong and Ted Carroll suggested recording the EPs that furnish this collection. “I think we were asked to each think of three songs and turn up,” says Louise. “I mostly listened to music from the 60s: lots of girl groups, Irma Thomas, Dusty Springfield, Bo Diddley, Velvet Underground, Kinks. Bruce had the best record collection; Mel Tormé was in there somewhere and one of my faves. Sarah came up with doing the Doors cover.”

• ‘Comin’ Home Baby’ was written as an instrumental before Bob Dorough added lyrics and Mel Tormé recorded it in 1962. The Delmonas’ finger-clicking, noir-dynamic version kicked off their first EP with authentic-sounding 60s production resonance, iced with mysterioso organ. The Cookies scored a hit with Goffin & King’s ‘Chains’ in 1962, the Beatles’ version providing the Hamburg Star-Club template for the Delmonas’ energised rendition. The first EP, “The Delmonas Volume 1”, rounded off with two songs from the Childish-Hampshire songwriting partnership: ‘Woa’ Now’ and ‘He Tells Me He Loves Me’, the latter recalling the New York Dolls covering the Shangri-Las’ ‘Give Him A Great Big Kiss’, mainly because it has similar chords.

• “The Delmonas Volume 2” opened with Sarah’s idea of covering the Doors’ hit. “We thought, ‘How would the Kinks have played it?’” she affirms. ‘Hello, I Love You’ had got the Doors into hot water with the Kinks’ publishers for its resemblance to ‘All Day And All Of The Night’. The Delmonas home in and highlight that similarity, adding bonkers psychedelic drop and evocative new coda. Their surf-tinged version of the Milkshakes’ ‘I’m The One For You’ is followed by the swampy screaming of ‘Peter Gunn Locomotion’, a cover of a 1963 single by Freddie Starr in his pre-stand-up comedian days as singer with the Midnighters. The set closed with the sultry organ-led vamp of the Milkshakes’ ‘I Want You’, the nearest the Delmonas get to the slowies Sarah helpfully points out they referred to as “shag songs”.

• All these tracks would re-appear on their “Dangerous Charms” album, along with out-takes and recordings from a BBC session, before the original trio splintered, leaving Sarah and Hilary to return for further adventures as Ludella Black and Ida Red. The eight tracks here capture a moment when three fun-loving friends got to live out some musical fantasies and had a blast doing it. 37 years later, it sounds just as contagious.

Ltd White Vinyl Gatefold edition + 32 Page Booklet + Download Code

The LP contains original compositions by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Pascal Comelade, Laurie Spiegel, Lyra Pramuk, Chassol, Nicolas Godin and Pierre Rousseau, Pedro Vian and Pierre Bastien, Visible Cloaks, Kelman Duran, Raul Refree, Lucrecia Dalt, Lafawndah.

+ a booklet with writings by contemporary thinkers like Shumon Basar, François J. Bonnet, and pictures by, Araki, Juergen Teller, Elizaveta Porodina, Dani Pujalte, P Jack Davison, Zhong Lin, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Adrià Cañameras, Javier Tles among others. Lacquer cut by Josh Bonati & Mastered by Rashad Becker

'PRSNT' is a unique global artistic project combining the input of artists across the worlds of music, video and written word which acts as a statement on how we, as consumers, engage with music in the 21st century. Vital electronic musicians including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Lafawndah, Lyra Pramuk, Lucrecia Dalt and Visible Cloaks have each contributed tracks, which are approximately 32 seconds long.

The concept was devised by Created By Us and the Barcelona-based label Modern Obscure Music. They read a study which identified that the overwhelming volume of instantly accessible information online is shortening attention spans and altering how audiences engage with music digitally. Their curiosity about the state of online consumption developed further on discovering that around a third of all listeners using digital platforms skip to the next track, within the first 30 seconds of playing.

Each musician was given a fascinating challenge to create engaging compositions with real artistic merit, inside the confines of this shortened span. Akin to Brian Eno's famous Windows 95 start-up music, the time constraints are crucial, and the compositions are deceptively complex and more substantial than expectations of their nano nature would suggest.

'PRSNT' acts as a critique of flighty feed culture, but is simultaneously constructive, providing something which is either proposed solution, or "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" resignation. Every artist has interpreted the brief differently, resulting in an intriguing blueprint for the potential future of digital music. Could abbreviated micro compositions satisfy, inspire and nourish like their longer counterparts? They certainly take up much less of listeners' busy lives, which are often spent tackling ever-increasing workloads.

In the beginning, there was just a box of tapes and “Fate’s Gentle Hand.”

It was the autumn of 2010, and an anonymous figure known only as the Head Technician, an employee of Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services (“Magnetically aligning ferrous particles since 1970”), found himself at an auction in the village of Coldred, pop. 110. He was on the hunt for tobacco pipes when he chanced across a trio of boxes listed in the auction catalog, which described their contents only as “archived magnetic recordings.” The sole bidder, he won the lot, and upon receipt of his purchase took possession of an unspecified number of mouldering cassettes and ¼" reel-to-reel tapes. The collection contained no identifying information save for a single phrase scrawled on each box: “Black Mill Sessions.” And so, armed with razors, eyedroppers, and a bevy of solid-state circuitry, the Head Technician sat down at his machines and got to work.

Whether anyone believed it or not, this was the framing device surrounding Pye Corner Audio’s Black Mill Tapes Volume I: Avant Shards, which took the mysterious tactics of artists like Boards of Canada and Burial and raised them exponentially. Much like the narrator of a 19th century novel, the anonymous Head Technician purported merely to be the messenger of secondhand sounds. These were not compositions, we were told; they were tape transfers—“transcriptions” of an unknown author, slathered

Orange Vinyl

Soul Jazz Records new ‘Cold Wave’ is a new collection of current electronic artists who have all been shaped by the early European cold wave artists of the late 70s and early 80s. This is the first release of Soul Jazz Records’ new Cold Wave overview and a second volume will be released just four weeks later. These first artists created new electronic musical landscapes as well as pursuing a stubborn D-I-Y aesthetic, often releasing material on cassette and pioneering use of lo-fi technology, primitive drum machines and home-recording
techniques. As part of this continued evolution today many of the artists featured here also self-release their own material, run labels, publish fanzines, or are part of wider musical collectives. Aside from the first electronic, no wave, and post-punk artists cited as influences – Suicide, Patrick Cowley, The Normal, Martin Hannett, Laurie Anderson, Public Image – this new generation of artists also show an exquisitely open source of electronic and disparate influences, everything from Underground Resistance to Purcell, from Scientist to New Beat and more besides. Most of the featured artists are based in Europe and include Krikor, Dissemblance and VQOA from France, De
Ambassade from the Netherlands, Moisture from Sweden, Kreidler from Germany, Celine Gillian and Carcass Identity from Belgium. One exception is FIT Siegel out of Detroit, connecting the electronic pathways of Europe to the Motor City.

"Guts finest selection from his DJ sets. Some dancefloor classics and some discoveries"

Any DJ set tells you, unconsciously or not, about its author.

Through the record choices and the way they are organized, one can feel the DJ’s state of mind and find out a bit more about the musical deposit discovered that is being shared and dug through by him or her at the moment.
The appetite for diggin’, the quest for a novelty or a forgotten rarity is what makes a DJ set a true organic living matter constantly fueled although not always, unfortunately, respected.
Time stretching. Too many DJ’s made a pact with this diabolical creature. A true digital steamroller that runs over the rhythm to fix the tempo while leaving behind an agonizing drummer whose sole crime was to have been carried away by his energy and having moved forward the BPM. At the end, everything that gave charm and life to the track, its imperfections and the peculiar fact that it makes you dance faster towards its end… all these along with all the lively movements contained within the track are reduced to nothing.

My conception of music and DJ sets is the exact opposite. Since the first volume of Straight From The Decks, my DJ sets have been redesigned, refreshed and improved. However, there was no preexisting plan, they evolved naturally following my new desires.

The famous core of my indispensable musical choices started to morph little by little into something different without losing sight of its center of gravity which remains undoubtedly afro-tropical.
No matter which track, its style and its origin, the quality of the music that is brought to my ears is always my sole and primary concern.
In this selection, you’ll find 7” vinyl records available to everyone sitting proudly next to some rarities found online and acquired through nerve-raking auctions battles. There are indeed exclusive remixes along with titles that until now were only available in their digital formats. Now for the first time they are available here in vinyl format. Obviously, if you have chosen the CD format, that precision doesn’t really matter…
Sixteen titles which have become the heart of my sets throughout this past year.
A heart which in a year will beat to a certainly different drum…
Pura Vida
Gutsto attend the next one..."

The second installment of "The Last Shall Be First.." series focusing on D-Vine Spirituals subsidiary label, JCR Records. This reissue series is packed with incredible Sacred Soul performances from Memphis, TN in the late 60's.

The third and last volume of Rave Encounter serie. This one is dedicated to acid sounds in its different forms.

On "APHEXions", the Brussels pianist with French roots Dorian Dumont - key member of the electro jazz band ECHT! - is expressing his love for one of his greatest musical heroes: Aphex Twin. Contrary to what one would expect, there are no electronics involved in this album, but he carefully transcribes a wide selection of Richard David James' music to grand piano, giving the songs a whole new dimension. Rave classics like Polynomial-C and Xtal are being stripped to the core while on tracks like Nannou, Kesson Daslef or Fingerbibb he stays truthful to the minimalistic aesthetics from the original tracks.

As an accomplished jazz pianist, he improvises on the various themes and injects it with a tinge of blues here and there. As a result, this homage record captures both the simple beauty and the unruly complexity of Aphex Twin. But above all, it sounds like refreshing new music that immediately puts Dorian Dumont on the map as a solo pianist!

High Pulp returns with a brand new instalment of covers, on Mutual Attraction Vol 2. A spiritual jazz journey, interpreting arrangements by Arthur Verocai, Cortex and Casiopea. The 8-piece fusion band pays homage to tracks and artists that have woven themselves into the DNA of their band.

The Mutual Attraction series is about paying homage and looking back to influences that have paved the way for informing the band’s sound. It was important to the band to find 3 different significant spaces to record each volume. MA Vol. 2 was recorded at a house that the group’s drummer, Bobby Granfelt holds many fond childhood memories. It is the house that his father grew up in, and a house that his grandfather built. A house that would eventually become Granfelt’s current residence and also is the band’s homebase for rehearsing and hanging out. It is a reflection of the past and the present, as are these interpretations of songs. Rich textures and cinematic grooves alongside trippy guitars, lush Rhodes keys, and soulful horns. Covering tunes that may have flown under the radar, but have impacted the group immensely.

High Pulp are an 8-piece band that emerged from the Royal Room, a legendary Seattle Jazz club where they held “Funk Church” jam sessions in 2017. Their signature sound is a Psychedelic fusion of Hip-Hop, Funk, Jazz, and Soul which come together with complex, well thought out arrangements and progressive style. After successful sessions and premieres with prestigious station KEXP, and being at the forefront of the Seattle music scene, they are now branching out and taking their sound worldwide.

Newly awarded Dub Artist of the Year 2020 by the specialized website Reggae.fr, Manudigital presents the second volume of his famous "Digital Kingston Session" on vinyl, three years after the release of volume 1 in 2018! These videos filmed in the streets of Kingston, in which the producer invites Jamaican singers from the golden age of digital Reggae to perform their classics in one take on riddims that he plays with the legendary Casio MT40 or "Sleng Teng Keyboard ”, have become a real institution! With more than 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, Manudigital continues to bring together an ever larger and more international audience.

In this volume 2 of the “Digital Kingston Session”, Manudigital gather a five-star cast with the legendary Capleton, the essential Junior Cat and more underground but no less talented artists such as Devon Morgan, Peter Metro, Jigsy King or Bunny General. As on the first volume, two bonus sessions recorded outside Jamaica complete the tracklisting: one in Brooklyn with Red Fox, the most New Yorker of Jamaican deejays, and the other in Paris with the spectacular English MC Deemas J, who has been accompanying Manudigital on stage since 2018.

A second volume of the "Digital Kingston Session" on vinyl which should delight the public, while waiting to get back to live music and sound systems!

Jazz Behind the Dikes Vol 3 is the third and final installment in the Jazz Behind The Dikes series, which highlights some of the greatest Dutch jazzmen under ideal conditions: in their own combo’s and playing the music of their own choice in complete freedom. The result is a collection of straightforward modern jazz by renowned Dutch jazz musicians such as Ron Madna Trio, Tony Vos Quartet and Frans Elsen Quartet.

This third volume of the series is available as a limited edition of 500 individually numbered copies on blue vinyl.

On May 28th , 2021, Surfdog Records will release Brian Setzer - Rockabilly Riot! Volume One - A Tribute To Sun Records on vinyl again! Out of print since 2005, this record sees Brian Setzer paying tribute to one of the greatest rockabilly labels ever, the one that arguably started it all: Sun Records.

"Why should I record a tribute to Sun Records? And at that, narrowing in on only their rockabilly years... a narrow time frame between roughly 1954 through early 1957. For that matter, what the heck is rockabilly anyway? Sure, all of us greaser, guitar slingin' hep-cats know, but (for the most part) the general population has never even heard the word. Rockabilly, the musical bastard of rhythm and blues, hillbilly, country, gospel, and maybe even a little jazz sung by wild-eyed southern white boys with too much time and too little money just lookin' for trouble. After doing much homework, I have selected 23 of what I consider Sun Records' best recordings. Some I’m sure you know (at least I hope so) and some are very obscure gems." - Brian Setzer

The recent ‘Rocka Rolla’ series was masterfully launched by the boss himself. But for this second volume, El Vidocq steps aside for his English pal Keb Darge – who earlier so brilliantly contributed to the Jukebox Music Factory catalogue with his explosive selection ‘The Rockabilly Crown Jewels’. Once again, our ever enthusiastic limey swaggers and sparkles. His newest excellent assortment explores the garage rock and surf songs of his beloved ‘60s. Less sombre than the first, this second volume includes seminal punk rock tunes (She Lied by The Rockin’ Ramrods, Thunder Reef by The Shindings), but also a few veritable titty shakers (Les De Merle and his Bulldozer, or El Scorpion by The Sherwoods). Add a touch of surf (The Road Runners’ Quasimoto and Neb’s Tune by Ahab and The Wailers) and bingo baby! You’ve got ‘Keb Darge's Supreme’. Lots of love, zero poor taste. Play it loud, friends!

Folk-minimalists announce vinyl issue for breakthrough album, Animalia.

"The semi-classical drums/sax/piano trio Mammal Hands mutate into a high-volume rave act" The Guardian

Captivating, ethereal and majestic, Mammal Hands (saxophonist Jordan Smart, pianist Nick Smart and drummer and percussionist Jesse Barrett) has carved out a refreshingly original sound from adisparatearray of influences: drawing on spiritual jazz, north Indian, folk and classical music to create something inimitably their own.

Hailing from Norwich, one of Britain's most isolated and most easterly cities, they have forged their own path away from the musical mainstream and their unique sound grew out of long improvised rehearsals. All three members contribute equally to the writing process: one that favours the creation of a powerful group dynamic over individual solos. Their recordsare entrancing and beautiful affairs,while their hypnotic live shows have seen them hailed as one of the most exciting bands in Europe as they push their unique line-up to the outer limits of its possibilities.

Over the course of three albums, Animalia, Floa and Shadow Work they have built a committed following and established themselves as one of the finest live bands in Europe. But while Floa and Shadow Work were both issued on vinyl this is the first time that Animalia has been committed to wax.

Produced by Matthew Halsall and recorded at 80 Hertz Studio, in Manchester, and engineered by George Atkins, Animalia features the band breakthrough hits Mansions of Million Years, a slow building tune that takes it's name from Egyptian mythology and draws the listener into the band's distinctive sound world. And the gorgeous hooky Kandaiki which makes stunning use of looped melodies in different time signatures, creating a wonderful interplay between the parts.

Other highlights include Snow Bough a short, melancholic, but moving, ambient composition, the Irish folk music inspired Spinning the Wheel, which also features drum beats inspired by chopped up electronic drum patterns and hip hop instrumentals. The jaunty Bustle and delightful Inuit Party and Street Sweeper. Finally the album closes with Tiny Crumb, which explores melodic ideas inspired by Alice Coltrane and Joe Henderson and builds in intensity from a quiet start to a powerful collective improvisation and heavily features Jesse's Tabla.

The album follows the recent January 2021 release of single 'O.N.E.' and the band's sixteenth studio album K.G (the second volume in the band's previous explorations into microtonal tunings), as well as Live In S.F. '16 (ATO Records), a live album recorded during the band's 2016 U.S. tour stop at San Francisco venue The Independent. As the band enter their second decade – and their frontman still only thirty years old - the creative future of the band, as showcased on L.W., promises to be bolder, madder and more imaginative than ever.

Repress off this collection of edits from 2006.
All essentials for the pub rotary deejay sets but also a great collection of tracks to have on one 12"
Features an edit of Nice N' Wild's latin freestyle heater Diamond Girl.

One third of the drone trio France and part of the La Novia collective, Yann Gourdon's practice focuses on acoustic phenomena and dynamic relationships with the environment. Having learned to play traditional music from Auvergne by listening to field recordings, Gourdon re-orientates tradition via minimalism, honing in on a place or location's unique vibratory fields, volumes and surfaces.

Tape

'Verzamelen II' is the second volume in a retrospective series in which we look back at the work of Wouter van Veldhoven (Netherlands). Throughout the past decade, the Dutch composer built an impressive catalogue of music in which tape loop and modular synthesis experiments hold a central place. Both collaborations and solo-work saw the light through some distinctive labels such as Slaapwel, The Tapeworm, Umor Rex and Digitalis among others.

With this series we want to dive into some work which slightly went under the radar. The pieces are collected from several releases and are re-mastered for the occasion. Some of them were never physically released before.

Peter Broderick and Hainbach kindly joined this trip by offering two new reworks which close this second volume.

Songs taken from ‘A head stuck in tapes’, ‘Een paar schetjes en optredens 2005-2006’ & other found unreleased tracks.

'Verzamelen II' is the second volume in a retrospective series in which we look back at the work of Wouter van Veldhoven (Netherlands). Throughout the past decade, the Dutch composer built an impressive catalogue of music in which tape loop and modular synthesis experiments hold a central place. Both collaborations and solo-work saw the light through some distinctive labels such as Slaapwel, The Tapeworm, Umor Rex and Digitalis among others.

With this series we want to dive into some work which slightly went under the radar. The pieces are collected from several releases and are re-mastered for the occasion. Some of them were never physically released before.

Peter Broderick and Hainbach kindly joined this trip by offering two new reworks which close this second volume.

Songs taken from ‘A head stuck in tapes’, ‘Een paar schetjes en optredens 2005-2006’ & other found unreleased tracks.

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

Throughout his vast career, the New York based Australian composer JG Thirlwell has adopted many masks as a means of infiltrating and subsequently subverting a wide range of pop cultural forms. His work under the Foetus moniker has taken on everything from big band to opera to noise-rock. Steroid Maximus embraced exotica and the world of soundtracks, while his Manorexia project continued his quest to the outer limits of contemporary composition and musique concrete. Thirlwell has also carved out a significant output in the field of the soundtrack via the large body of work created for the animated television shows Archer and The Venture Bros. In addition he has been commissioned to create compositions by such notables as Kronos Quartet, Bang On A Can, Alarm Will Sound, String Orchestra of Brooklyn and many others.

Now we have ‘Omniverse’, the second release under the moniker Xordox. Xordox is a synthesizer-based project, and on this evocative album we see the project branch into many new avenues. The science fiction element brushes up against crime noir, even veering into areas that could well fit in the video game soundtrack genre. With an audacious attitude and an arsenal of machines Thirlwell serves up a selection of thrilling retro-future mind capsules. This is music made from a life saturated in culture, both underground and mainstream, high and low. Tense sequencing and noir tinged keyboard lines invoke a powerful visual image of films and memory, of screens and speakers, of sound and space, all entering the cosmos and the subsequent galactic race. Thirlwell’s decades long exploration of sampling and sequencing, composing and ingesting a daunting amount of audio and visual artworks speaks volumes for the bold assimilations exposed here. ‘Between Dimensions’ lays out a tense theme which starts off like a score to a a crime thriller before morphing into a simulacra of Kraftwerk scoring a video game. The living ghosts of Giorgio Moroder and John Carpenter haunt ‘Oil Slick’ as it permeates wormholes, updating lifeforms with its stealth sequencing and tense momentum.

‘Omniverse' is a synthesised soundtrack journey, one which embraces past forms whilst reshaping them for the new unknown. ‘Omniverse' is a thrilling liquid ride through fear and hope, and like all the best of Thirlwell’s output, is simply one hell of an enjoyable journey to take.

This first volume of Wagram's Wanted: Jazz series is a high quality mix of the great Jazz artists. Including Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gilespie, Art Blakey and more!

Ibadan announces the release of volume 4 in the Leads & Bites series, presenting an exciting selection of soon-to-be timeless dance floor favorites. Up first is house DJ and producer Massiande, one of the most captivating talents from South America and notable Housewax alumnus. “Mainline” comes on strong, delivering punchy synth lines and fat beats with an undeniable Chicago spirit. Sharing the A-side is “Lens House” by The Prince of Dance aka Elbee Bad, an edgy sleeper track with eclectic rhythms and a perfect balance of all the classic elements. Kicking off the B-side are heroes of the hour S.A.T. - Sydenham, AYBEE, and Trent - with “Yaphet,” a low-key offering that gradually unfolds into the trio’s signature blissed-out, energetic vibe. MLiR and Arnau Obiols wrap it up with “Calanda,” a genre-defying foray into organic vocals and experimental sounds - nervy, mysterious, and with hints of downtempo electronica.

‘Archive Series Volume no. 5: Tallahassee Recordings’ is the lost-in-time debut
album from Iron & Wine. A collection of songs recorded three years prior to his
official Sub Pop debut, ‘The Creek Drank the Cradle’ (2002). A period before the
concept of Iron & Wine existed and principal songwriter Sam Beam was studying
at Florida State University with the intent of pursuing a career in film.
‘Archive Series Volume no. 5’ documents the very first steps on a journey that
would lead to a career as one of America’s most original and distinctive singersongwriters. ‘The Creek Drank the Cradle’ arrived like a thief in the night with its
lo-fi, hushed vocals and intimate nature, while almost inversely Tallahassee
comes with a strange sense of confidence. Perhaps an almost youthful discretion
that likely comes from being too young to know better and too naïve to give a
shit.
The recordings themselves are more polished than ‘The Creek Drank the Cradle’
and give a peak into what a studio version of that record might have offered up.
‘Archive Series Volume no. 5’ was recorded over the course of 1998-1999 when
Beam and future bandmate EJ Holowicki moved into a house together. Beam
had not been performing publicly however, he was known for playing an original
song or two in the early morning glow of a long night. Holowicki - also in the film
program and who would go onto a career as a sound designer at Skywalker
Sound - had a mobile recording device and after some prodding convinced his
friend to record these late-night meditations.
Together they would record close to twenty-four songs, ideas and sketches, with
EJ on bass and Sam on vocals, guitar, harmonica and drums. The recordings -
all captured in the house where they lived - have a ‘live in the room’ feel akin to
say Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’ or Nick Drake’s ‘Five Leaves Left’, rather than the
homespun lo-fi 4-track home recording experiment taking place at the time.
These recordings, minus one track, have never been made available and were
instead left preserved on a hard drive for the last twenty years. The one track
that floated out there, called ‘In Your Own Time’ was shared without a title to
childhood friend Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses) at some point. The song became
known as the ‘Fuck Like A Dog’ song and Ben shared it with more than a few
folks during the golden era of mix CDs. Two of those folks were Jonathan
Poneman from Sub Pop and journalist Mike McGonigal, who included it on his
best songs of 2001 mix CD, passed out to friends and acquaintances. And for
many that is where the Iron & Wine story begins, until now.
‘Archive Series Volume no. 5’ is the foreword to your favourite book that you’ve
somehow skipped over time and time again. It’s an alternative history mixed with
some revisionist history told over the course of eleven songs. It’s also the debut
record by Iron & Wine some twenty years after the fact.

Van Morrison will release ‘Latest Record Project: Volume 1’ on May 7th on Exile/BMG. His 42nd record and his most dynamic and contemporary album in years, ‘Latest Record Project: Volume 1’ is a 28-track delve into his ongoing love of blues, R&B, jazz and soul

After the exceptional first volume of ‘Rakka’, Vladislav Delay is taken by the wanderlust again for a ravishing 2nd album of elemental electronics inspired by the Finnish wilderness. RIYL Shackleton, Rian Treanor...
Where 2020’s ‘Rakka’ represented some of Sasu Ripatti aka Vladislav Delay’s most intensely noisy textures and rhythmic complexity, as inspired by walks in his native Finnish wilderness, his follow-up further draws on and refines that experience in a beautifully brutalist bouquet of brambling distortion and tempestuous pulses that speak to the chaotic power of nature’s ecological interdependence. In the process ‘Rakka II’ fulminates Delay’s reactive sound even closer to the styles of Shapednoise, but still distinguished by his signature,
freehanded style of percussive tumult that reaches beyond techno and club music into an ecstatic, holistic hybrid of power ambient, black metal, avant-dub, free jazz, and extreme dance musicks.
While still breathlessly busy and densely overgrown, ‘Rakka II’ is intended as the romantic answer to the more hostile first volume. Its seven parts balance a sense of febrile passion with hyper-disciplined logic in more explicitly emotive, optimistic gestures that emerge from its atonal murk and convulsive structures.
Boundaries of discord and harmony are smudged almost into the red, but rendered with the spatial definition that become a hallmark of Delay’s best work for over 20 years, but never heard quite so wild and lushly semi-conscious as on cuts such as the soaring and collapsing ‘Raato’, or the craggy might of ‘Raaha’, and the heart-in-mouth headiness of ‘Rapaa.

Dalhous end the 5-year silence with the long awaited follow up to 2016's House Number 44, presenting the second volume of The Composite Moods Collection. "Point Blank Range" reinterprets the established narrative with an inverse look at the proceedings. Taking the “point of view of the disease", the perspective is now turned inside out, revealing an alternate account from the eyes of the photographed subject of House Number 44. If Vol.1 was a documented presentation of another person's condition, Vol.2 takes the listener behind the facade.

From the outset, the album offers a narratively uncooperative stance, weaving together layers of anxiety and painful specificity that often overtly manifests the psychotic protagonist's stormy interior state. A clearly subjective assault, which is made evident right from opening track 'Transceivers' through to the imploding nature of 'Intramuscular Administration’, to the vulnerable, psychedelic mania of 'Open As A Glade Unfolding'. Continuing to work within the framework of a soundtrack-like structure, Dalhous ramps things up to provide the aural equivalent of sound and picture, manifesting an almost quasi-visual experience.

The entire record can be listened to as a continuous piece, each track seamlessly linked together as though part of an interconnecting nervous system. Where House Number 44 offered airy, widescreen soundscapes of detached detail, Point Blank Range presents an altogether different form. Creating airtight vacuums of agitated twitching feeling, tracks are pulled to the forefront of the stereo field, continually mutating their densely painted neurochemical hallucinations with a breadth of sound previously unheard on previous releases.

Listeners will be able to decipher nods to long standing soundtrack influences from composers such as Fabio Frizzi, with his use of strikingly bold and haunting melodies, to Tangerine Dream’s distinctively foggy atmospheres of The Keep. There are moments that evoke the nihilistic drones of Brian Gascoigne’s soundtrack to Phase IV, and the more horrific passages of metal clanging ambience from the likes of Chu Ishikawa with his scores for Shinya Tsukamoto.

After their former record label Blackest Ever Black disbanded, Dalhous found themselves out on a limb. It took 5 years to find a new home with Denovali. Given the unusually extended period between records, Dalhous had the time to dive deeper into the material, rendering a level of experimentation previously unavailable to them. Over 4 hours of material was created, a total of 1TB of data. Countless revisions to the track listing ensued with some of the unused material being reutilised in the making of the final chapter in the trilogy to form a direct companion piece.

It's only fair - in terms of universal balance - that stratospheric pop success should be countered with some gutter realism.

When you live round the Bitter Ends, a year of enforced curfew is the least of your worries.
That said, it speaks volumes that even the folder marked 'Alternative versions' is light years ahead of most of what passes for dance music in 2021.

Majestic, soaring, sonic sensations.

Dependably unbendable !

As always, limited and LOUD