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Soul Jazz Records’ feature-length documentary/CD/Book ‘Studio One Story’ is being re-released on 1 August 2011, and is also available for the first time as a stand alone DVD. The DVD is being issued as a prelude to the forthcoming deluxe-hardback book ‘Original Cover Art of Studio One Records’ released this autumn by Soul Jazz Records as well as a new Studio One album compilation on Soul Jazz to coincide with the new book.

Studio One Story is a documentary this is both a staggering slice of musical history and a definitive guide to Studio One, Jamaica’s greatest ever record company, and its legendary founder, Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd. ‘Studio One Story’ was filmed in 2002, two years before the death of the legendary Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd, a man famously reticent of being interviewed - until the making of this film. Described by Chris Blackwell as the Motown of Jamaica, or ‘The University of Reggae’, Studio One is where the careers of literally hundreds of reggae artists began: Bob Marley and the Wailers, Alton Ellis, The Heptones, Ken Boothe, The Skatalites, Burning Spear and Sugar Minott, to name but a few! Studio One is the ‘foundation’ label of Jamaican Reggae and Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd is seen by many as its father.

One and a half years in the making, Studio One Story is a truly unique documentary in which the late Clement Dodd gave unprecedented personal access to tell the previously untold story of how he and the many artists and musicians at Studio One literally shaped the rise of Reggae music from the 1950s onwards through to the late 1970s. This is the true story of reggae music and its Jamaican roots told from the inside: From the rise of Kington’s sound systems in the 1940s and 1950s, through to the evolution of a Jamaican music industry (and Studio One’s dominance) in the 1960s and the worldwide success of reggae in the 1970s.

The 4 hour documentary (including over an hour of extras) was filmed on location in Kingston, Jamaica and features interviews with Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, Ken Boothe, Sugar Minott, Denis Alcapone, The Ethiopians, Sylvan Morris, Johnny Moore, Lone Ranger, King Stitt and many others. The DVD also includes rare footage of The Skatalites, Jackie Mittoo, Count Ossie, Marcia Griffiths and others. As well as the stand-alone DVD, Soul Jazz Records are reissuing the original (DVD +CD+Book) original box set.

IF YOU ARE ORDERING THIS PLEASE CHECK IF YOU NEED NTSC (AMERICA, JAPAN, ETC) OR PAL (EUROPE, AUSTRALIA, ETC).
THE DVD HAS FRENCH AND ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

NB.MP3 Release is for the audio CD only.

REVIEWS ‘Studio One was Jamaica’s Motown. This documentary brings it brilliantly to life.’ The Telegraph ‘The history of Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd’s legendary Jamaica studio is fantastically told through interviews, copious amounts of music and historical footage and more.’ Uncut ‘Studio One Story is no mere historical document; it is a map that will lead you directly to a massive seam, endlessly mineable, of musical gold’ The Observer ‘A fascinating documentary’ The Telegraph ‘Compulsive viewing for anyone with an interest in Reggae’ The Wire

Soul Jazz Records’ new 10th anniversary edition of their long-out-of-print Punk 45: There Is No Such Thing As Society. This is a one-off limited-edition heavyweight specialedition cyan coloured vinyl pressing + download code. The album charts the rise of underground punk and post-punk in the UK from 1977-81. This album is fully remastered and relicensed and includes five new tracks from 23 Skidoo, Notsensibles, Pretty Boy Floyd, The Astronauts and The Impossible Dreamers.


The album is a collection of seminal, classic, obscure and rare punk and post-punk singles from the likes of The Mekons, Johnny Moped, The Killjoys, The Rings and many more which all chart the rise of independent music and Do It Yourself culture that exploded in the wake of punk and during the years of Britain under Margaret Thatcher. The album comes complete with text, biographies on each of the bands, exclusive photos and original record artwork and is newly available as a limited-edition super-loud, super-heavy double gatefold-sleeve vinyl edition complete with full sleeve-notes plus download.

For 46 minutes Alex Zhang Hungtai punctures our perception of linearity, working like a conductor, encouraging percussive flurries to trip and fall over each other, sometimes tempered by contact mic feedback to help skewer the chronology. He’s assisted by three additional percussionists - Wet Hair’s Ryan Garbes and Shawn Reed, and Leonard King - while Signal Decay’s Nick Yeck-Stauffer plays trumpet, with each extra voice blurred into the middle distance, curling like pipe smoke into convulsive whorls.

The piece is frankly astonishing in its grasp of the maelstrom. Initially tentative, searching, with higher register hits like moths butting lone lightbulbs in an abandoned apartment block, the distant, plangent peal of twin brass wafts between rooms to impart a distinctly floating, OOBE- like feel for space. The brass recedes while the drums’ low end thickens and roils like a gamelan tempest, blurring impressions of knackered buildings or the temple rituals of ancient epochs, with sounds wafting in from other rooms to mess with the stereo field like ghosts of worshippers doing their thing. Remarkably, it conjures a fever dream miasma of ricocheting, thunderous polymetric clatter and proprioceptive fuckry without ever losing its head.

Hungtai’s canny use of contact mic feedback drone and cymbal saw gives the whole thing a sense of gauzy delirium that unites the grouches like mildewed grout and cobwebs, coarsely gelling the elements in a way that resonates with Pauline Oliveros and co’s Deep Listening band acousmagique as much as Basil Kirchin’s keeling ‘World Within World’ classic, the ghosts of Sun Ra’s ‘Nuclear War’, the possessed atmosphere of the cabin where Harley Gaber recorded ‘Wind Rises in the North’, and no doubt Harry Bertoia’s massive metallic sculptures, agitated at midnight.

Humid, menacing, and wraithlike, the album’s’ sense of keening chronics belies a visionary hand at the tiller, here tightened by Rashad Becker’s mastering, which faithfully brings to light, and shadow, the depth of perception and wild but concentrated energies at play, sealing in place a truly staggering session for adventurous ears, cineastes and Lynchian acolytes alike.

Repress.

Studio One's music in the 1970's took the label to new heights. The new style of Disco Mix brought many areas of Reggae together ­ Roots, Lovers, Disco and Dub all came together in extended form, re-versioning classic hits, experimenting with new studio technology, over-dubbing, syn-drums and more producing what many fans describe as the most creative and innovative phase in the history of the legendary Studio One Records.

This Studio One Disco Mix album includes many sought after classic tunes only ever released in very small quantities (on Studio One's very first 12" records as well as it's infamous Music Lab 10"s out of New York) and consequently many of these track s have been unavailable since their day of release. Studio One Disco Mix features many of the classic Studio One artists such as Alton Ellis, Sugar Minott, Jackie Mittoo and Willie Williams (with his classic re-versioning of his own "Armigideon Time") alongside less well artists such as Doreen Schaeffer, Judah Eskender Tafari and George Dudley and many more.

Felix Machtelinckx is a singer, composer, producer and lyricist from Belgium. Featuring an array of film scores, dance soundtracks, pop, folk and electronic music, Felix's music resonates with a familiar, almost nostalgic patina, applied with a distinctly crooked touch. Through artistic collaboration, coaching and production, Felix has cut a dash in the pop and indie cult scenes of Belgium, especially with his band Tin Fingers, who are feted as one of the most promising indie acts of the moment. Night Scenes, Felix’s solo debut is, in contrast to his other work, more humble and less traditional, roughly hewn from a series of ambient soundscapes, earthy textures and playful structures. Felix’s voice, normally the flagship of his music, becomes more of a distant memory, an indistinct emotion feathered throughout the music. Many lyrics are improvised, sometimes unintelligible, conjuring haunted, uncertain undertones. Similarly, the album is innately peripatetic to the core, being created, written and recorded in Lithuania, Belgium, France, mastered in the US, and finally released in the UK. In the first instance, some of the tracks were created for the contemporary dance piece Doggy Rugburn by Brandon Lagaert of Kaiho and Peeping Tom; others were created enigmatically for a film that never surfaced; while the remainder are the product of more personal work and research. As Felix began to collect and review these disparate parts, the concept of a unified album began to evolve. With 'night' featuring as a suitably dark leitmotif, or backdrop to a series of emotionally fraught 'scenes', each track depicts a form of trauma, locked within the confines of the mind. Felix observes: "Imagine yourself in a dusty old room unable to sleep. Emotions, fears and other demons haunt your mind. This in-between state makes your mind reach for other worlds. This is Night Scenes." For the most part, Night Scenes was created using a variety of old, and rare, analogue equipment. With almost no digital editing, the record was primarily mixed through a vintage cassette desk, giving it a nostalgic character with a noisy undertone. Felix fully embraced the synergy of his emotional themes and retrograde gear, enthusing: "A lot of textures were created on an old Soviet synthesizer that causes a blackout when you hit the lowest note on the keyboard. The dysfunctionality of the synths was often used to create rhythm and texture." This unnerving ability Night Scenes has to comfort and confound the listener is summed up by Jordan Hudson, House Of Media producer, and music podcaster, when he concludes: "Some songs on the album have this sort of fleeting comfort and tonality, which dissolves into a subtle rhythmic/structural or modulated disarray the moment I settle into them - this really fits with my experience of the night .. This record is a winner, and will be something I'll listen to a lot from here on

From out of nowhere - if nowhere is the febrile, warped and twilit imagination of Julia McFarlane - comes Whoopee, the second album by J.McFarlane’s Reality Guest. Whoopee is an esoteric, kaleidoscopic movie in music form directed by Julia McFarlane and co-conspirator Thomas Kernot. Full of life, breakbeats and smokey vignettes on the fragile nature of interpersonal relationships, Whoopee is a stylistic evolution from everything McFarlane has done before. Surreal, beautiful in parts and replete with the aching wisdom McFarlane’s songwriting has always promised, this Reality Guest pulls back the curtain on a whole scene of naked truth. Recorded in Melbourne in bursts since the release of 2019’s Ta Da, Whoopee features a new sound palette and band member in Kernot. The duo dive deep into electronic pop tropes, mining digital synths, samples, breakbeats and deep bass grooves, largely dispensing with live instrumentation. If Ta Da took twists and turns with your expectations, offering a Dada-ist, monochromatic take on pop music, Whoopee is McFarlane’s subterranean love-sick pinks, reds, greens, purples and blues. Becoming something of a tradition, the album starts with an instrumental intro pilfered from a 90s’ spy film or cinema intro music, puffing up the listener for the heart-squeezing bathos of Full Stops. Over a bleary backdrop of walking bass lines, jazz- inflected keys and smoked-out atmosphere, McFarlane’s poetry narrates the fragile state of a relationship: “You put a full stop where I thought there’d be a comma, I want the story to continue even with all the drama.” Over a palpable pain, the narrator is revelling in the drama of a relationship, addicted to tumult and heightened emotion. On Sensory, a space age bachelor lounge pad ballad, the converse state of the previous song is explored, here the narrator is battling the numbness of being out of the drama, stuck in a sensory-deprivation tank, anaesthesized and battling to emerge from the fog. Wrong Planet explores an otherworldly pop music, hewing a bright hook out of a sense of confusion. A bona-fide, sing-along chorus bursts out of the narrator musing on the absurdity of existing in this reality. It speaks of one of Julia McFarlane’s main talents, her knack of inspecting human relationships and states with a clear perspective, like an alien visiting Earth and realising everything we are is really, really strange. Whoopee is both more accessible than previous Reality Guest work and somehow more obfuscated. Where the production on Ta Da was dry, sharp and strange, this Reality Guest is blurred, almost smeared with the effluvium of 90s+00s culture and existence. Through it all, it’s hard to deny the undeniable pull of the songs. Precious Boy carries on the lounge theme with a whole sampler of cut up sounds fading in and out of the haze as McFarlane’s voice is right up to the speaker cooing and free- associating, maybe in love or maybe in confusion... maybe they’re the same thing? Sometimes the listener is invited to just bathe in the tone of the vocal, as on Apocalypse, where the texture and timbre of the vocal is luxurious, bathing in piano tinkles and double bass throb. On lead single Slinky, a cut up beat reminiscent of Washingtonian Go-Go drum patterns leads, the song slipping through your fingers, elusive and presenting sound as pure pleasure. Closer Caviar jumps back into the broken breakbeats of a surreal funk, fuelled by the sensory pleasure of the music, a hedonistic whirl in rapture, the narrator now living life to the fullest in all its giddy heights and deep troughs. This is the album’s main character fully-actualised and in the terrible, beautiful moment.

Happy we can introduce a new addition to our catalog THINNER005, an EP called

“ & . . “

as the title tells, it’s a joint release by our friends, KOOLMFL, Sonic Weapon &. . Lemmi Ash

“& . . “ EP includes three club tracks, which been power played by Powder over these years in many different moment.

Each track can add a distinctive touch to the night, as like completing your cocktail with lemon and/or lime.

_

KOOLMFL, fka K-LINE and Sonic Weapon is our regular suspects from Nagoya, motor city of JAPAN.

Some may know them putting out a shared EP “G” before on Thinner Groove and now they back to it again.

atonbow by KOOLMFL features words of a space traveller in state of peaceful sorrow, seemingly communicating their honest thought to the loved one who might not be hearing, Can you hear me ? … Hi astronaut, at least we can :)

KOOL’s clicky drum work pass the words to the floor, and the party breaks down with sudden synth and take all of us home.

,

On track HOMIE, Sonic Weapon shows his signature fast boogie style again in a new approach with much dubbed out, ear pleasing, filtering, minimalistic, and stylistic way. The texture keeps changing but keeping the groove.

Feels like the beauty of watching a bridge getting slowly collapsing after somehow you made it to the other side.

& . .



We also want to introduce Lemmi Ash, a Swedish duo formed by Samo DJ and Martinou, newly joining the TG spectrum,

The duo previously had a release from ESP institute and each of them countless solo appearance on various releases . . .

Nonetheless, they a good long time friend and perfect fit for this release.

The duo features comfy calming ear tickling electronic sound with some kiddish, animalistic, or primitive humor in their own balance. This track Presence grooves with a leaning forward racing gamey phrase drifting around the mini synth explosion, feels like a joyful cruise during regardless the intense highway.

Reggae and Jamaican music have long embraced a symbiotic relationship with the movies. Rooting back to the island's golden era, countless arrangements have either been direct covers, or inspired by, the musicality and mood found in both cinema and television. These reinterpretations would become part of the backbone of the instrumental sound that accompanied the Jamaican record industry's acceleration from the mid-60s and beyond. Talented young musicians, rising from Alpha Boys School and the early studios of Coxsone, Duke Reid and others, found a showcase for their unique playing style on hundreds of different recordings, while appealing to the country's own love affair with Westerns, James Bond canon, and other rebellious themes and motifs that were projected from Hollywood during this time.

In this same tradition, in a new interval, arrives the debut release of Anant Pradhan and Larry McDonald, the latter a master percussionist with direct participation in some of Jamaica's earliest recordings. McDonald, although often uncredited, was a legitimate influence in helping to bridge the Afro-Caribbean sound from calypso into ska and later reggae with his iconic style on hand drums and percussion. A kindred spirit of McDonald, despite 50 years separating them, Anant Pradhan is a bonafide member of the next generation. Although this is his first "solo" record, the talented saxophonist has already played on dozens of incredible sessions for the likes of Victor Axelrod, The Inversions, Andy Bassford, Channel Tubes, Ralph Weeks and Combo Lulo. As an official member of the current touring group of the legendary Skatalites, Pradhan has honed his musicianship under some of the greats of reggae music. His particular soulful, instrumental arrangements are an homage to that influential era of Jamaican music. Pradhan and his band's performance retain the skill and innovation of the old vanguard, and like the generations before, capture a magic that may only be possible when cinema goes reggae.

A cult favorite from A Nightmare Before Christmas, Danny Elfman's "Sally's Song" was immortalized in Tim Burton's 1993 classic stop-motion film. It's immediately recognizable in all its haunting charm, and now, Pradhan and McDonald have managed to transform it into an irrefutable reggae classic, reinvented with its melancholic lead sax and bombastic percussion. The prolific Henry Mancini is already entrenched in the Jamaican canon, yet nobody has knowingly attempted to recreate one of his most magical numbers, "Meglio Stasera" aka "It Had Better Be Tonight," that of the riveting one-take scene in 1963's The Pink Panther. The galloping percussion of the original is transposed through a cloud of smoke, slow and low in a roots style at the hands of McDonald. Pradhan's sax leads the way over the locked-in rhythm section, both deep and cheeky all at once. These first two productions of Anant Pradhan and Larry McDonald are a deserving entry into the canon of reggae covers, and are equally adept to be heard on the screen and or at the dance alike.

Colouring, das Pseudonym des Sängers und Musikers Jack Kenworthy, kündigt das neue Album 'Love To You, Mate' an, das am 23. Februar über Bella Union veröffentlicht wird.

Das Leben des Songwriters und Produzenten aus Nottingham wurde 2021, wenige Monate vor der Veröffentlichung seines Debütalbums 'Wake', auf den Kopf gestellt, als bei seinem Schwager Krebs diagnostiziert wurde. Was folgte, war ein intimes Jahr des Zusammenseins mit der Familie, in dessen Folge Kenworthy das Projekt eigentlich schon komplett beenden wollte, von Freund und Produzent Gianluca Buccellati (Arlo Parks, Lana Del Rey) dann aber doch zum Weitermachen überredet wurde.

Colouring ist jetzt schon seit einiger Zeit ein Soloprojekt, das neben den Post-Britpop-Größen der 00er-Jahre von The Blue Nile beeinflusst ist, aber auch elektronische und rhythmische Einflüsse von Radiohead und James Blake aufnimmt. So auch die neuen elf Songs, die auch schlurfende Breakbeats, Arpeggio-Gitarrenmelodien und düstere Pianoparts enthalten. “I've always been on the side of making up scenarios rather than being really honest about my life within my music”, fügt Jack hinzu. “This is the first time I've been able to do that. I've been less scared of it because it's not my story. It’s a shared one.”

Klanglich überfrachtet Kenworthy das Album jedoch nicht mit Traurigkeit. Gerade die letzten beiden Songs, 'For Life' und 'Big Boots', sind fröhlichere Stücke, die das Leben und den Zusammenhalt der Freundschaft feiern. “Love To You, Mate is a love letter to my wife, family and Greg for what they all did; a photograph of that time”, erzählt der Songwriter. “I really feel we've made this music together.”

- Ltd. Col. LP: (Clear Vinyl)

Das erste Live-Album von Van Halen - das Doppel-Platin-Album Live von 1993: Right Here, Right Now - feierte sein Vinyl-Debüt am Record Store Day als 4-LP-Set in limitierter Auflage. Aufgenommen im Mai 1992, als die Band ihre große Welttournee zur Unterstützung ihres klassischen, mit dreifachem Platin ausgezeichneten Albums For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge beendete, liefern Sänger Sammy Hagar, Gitarrist Eddie Van Halen, Schlagzeuger Alex Van Halen und Bassist Michael Anthony über zwei Stunden lang die typischen Van Halen-Hits.

Boys Like Girls have enjoyed a meteoric rise after forming as teenagers in 2004. The b& was forged from the very beginning in the damp basements, garages, & VFW halls of the Massachusetts coastline over tattered lyric books, guitars, drums, & a collective dream. A half-billion Spotify streams later it‘s clear this was a fairy tale in its first act. Their self-titled debut album 2006 is nearing Multi-Platinum RIAA certification, while its chart-topping successor Love Drunk 2009 bowed at #1 on the Top Rock Albums Chart & Top 10 on the Billboard 200. A slew of successful singles abounded, including Platinum-certified hits “The Great Escape” & “Love Drunk,” as well as Gold-certified hits “Hero/Heroine” & “Thunder.” There was the Platinum-certified, BMI award-winning Hot 100 duet with Taylor Swift: “Two Is Better Than One.""""
By 2012 lead singer & songwriter Martin Johnson was beginning to feel the universe pulling him into a new arena, where he crafted hits for Swift, Ariana Grande, Pentatonix, & more. That led to a years-long hiatus for Boys Like Girls. But in 2016, the b& would return to the road for the 10th Anniversary tour of their debut record. While fans across America were ecstatic for the reunion they’d been waiting for, internally it felt more like a farewell. But it wasn't. In 2019, Boys Like Girls plotted another return to the road Down Under. Those plans were delayed due to the global events of 2020. After making good on their promise to return in 2022 & punctuating the tour by playing both weekends at the lauded Las Vegas When We Were Young Festival, Boys Like Girls meant more than ever not only to the band’s members, but to the fans as well.
Rock Sound Cover band / confirmed for Slam Dunk UK Festival 2024 / support from Kerrang! and NME "

Boys Like Girls have enjoyed a meteoric rise after forming as teenagers in 2004. The b& was forged from the very beginning in the damp basements, garages, & VFW halls of the Massachusetts coastline over tattered lyric books, guitars, drums, & a collective dream. A half-billion Spotify streams later it‘s clear this was a fairy tale in its first act. Their self-titled debut album 2006 is nearing Multi-Platinum RIAA certification, while its chart-topping successor Love Drunk 2009 bowed at #1 on the Top Rock Albums Chart & Top 10 on the Billboard 200. A slew of successful singles abounded, including Platinum-certified hits “The Great Escape” & “Love Drunk,” as well as Gold-certified hits “Hero/Heroine” & “Thunder.” There was the Platinum-certified, BMI award-winning Hot 100 duet with Taylor Swift: “Two Is Better Than One.""""
By 2012 lead singer & songwriter Martin Johnson was beginning to feel the universe pulling him into a new arena, where he crafted hits for Swift, Ariana Grande, Pentatonix, & more. That led to a years-long hiatus for Boys Like Girls. But in 2016, the b& would return to the road for the 10th Anniversary tour of their debut record. While fans across America were ecstatic for the reunion they’d been waiting for, internally it felt more like a farewell. But it wasn't. In 2019, Boys Like Girls plotted another return to the road Down Under. Those plans were delayed due to the global events of 2020. After making good on their promise to return in 2022 & punctuating the tour by playing both weekends at the lauded Las Vegas When We Were Young Festival, Boys Like Girls meant more than ever not only to the band’s members, but to the fans as well.
Rock Sound Cover band / confirmed for Slam Dunk UK Festival 2024 / support from Kerrang! and NME "

This vinyl re-pressing of Martin Carthy's Debut album is released to commemorate Topic's 85th anniversary in 2024 - Limited edition of 1000 copies - Black vinyl, standard weight with black, polylined inner sleeves. In the early 1960s, the approach Martin Carthy took to folk music was nothing short of revolutionary, albeit a relatively quiet revolution befitting of his humble nature. You wouldn't find Carthy's music clambering up the singles charts; his was not a face adorning the teen magazines. Instead, his influence was felt at a grass-roots level. He plied his trade in the folk clubs, which is where the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon sought him out, enamoured of his traditional repertoire and keen to learn songs like 'Scarborough Fair' and 'Lord Franklin' directly from him before adapting them for their own purposes.

His debut eponymous album, re-released here, on vinyl by Topic Records as part of their ongoing Topic Treasures series, is a snapshot of the work he was doing at the time.

Originally finding its way into the world in 1965, courtesy of Fontana Records, Martin Carthy pulled together 14 songs from his burgeoning repertoire. Produced by Terry at the Philips Recording Studios in Marble Arch, the album was a must-learn checklist for budding guitarists and folk club orgas, and, to this day, remains an essential listen for anyone attempting to find their way into traditional English folk music. Most people turn up for 'Scarborough Fair', very few leave without getting hooked on 'High Germany', 'Sovay' and 'Ye Mariners All'.

The album also introduces Carthy's earliest collaborations with Dave Swarbrick, an enduring and much-copied partnership that lasted, off and on, until Swarbs death in 2016, and became a blueprint for how guitar and fiddle duos ought to sound. While Carthy had been building up his solo repertoire over the previous five or six years, several of the duo arrangements on this album ('Lovely Joan', 'A Begging I Will Go', 'Broomfield Hill') were thrown together in the studio, adding a fizz and freshness to the recordings. This became the pair's standard way of working. "We used to rehearse on stage, in front of the audience," he explains today.

In the years since, Martin Carthy has become the veteran of over 40 studio albums and a veritable beacon for musicians and music lovers seeking "the real stuff." Pressed to name his favourite, he needs no time to think it over. "I always stand by the first album," he says of his 1965 debut. "I love it. There are some things on it I think I couldn't have done better. There was a clarity of purpose."

And, with this re-release, we can be sure that newcomers get to hear that sense of purpose in the best possible quality, as clearly as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and a generation of folk lovers did six decades ago.

I am thrilled to share with you the upcoming release of Live Life and Tell Stories, the new album by Figub Brazlevic & John Robinson set to release in the spring of 2023. This album is a celebration of John Robinson's love for storytelling, which has been evident since he was a young child, and his passion for hearing epic storytelling from many of his favorite emcees of the golden era of hip hop.

The connection between Figub Brazlevic and John Robinson is far from a fly-by-night or simply another international internet collaboration. The two met in 2009 during Robinson’s first time touring in Germany, and shortly after, Figub remixed J.R.’s group Scienz Of Life’s Leviathan album for the love and respect of the music. The remixes, which have yet to be released, impressed J.R. and his SOL crew, and he knew he would work together in the future with Figub. That time has come, and the message is clear: Live Life and Tell Stories is a seamless blend of Robinson’s thought-provoking narratives and Brazlevic’s abstract jazzy boombap soundscapes.

This album promises to take listeners on a sonic journey of dope grooves and ill storytelling, where Robinson's unique storytelling abilities are masterfully interwoven with Brazlevic's jazzy, boombap beats. From start to finish, Live Life and Tell Stories is sure to captivate audiences and keep them grooving to its infectious beats.

In an era where the music industry is dominated by short-lived trends, it is refreshing to see two seasoned artists come together to create music that is both timeless and meaningful. This album is a perfect example of what can happen when artists come together to create something truly unique, and I can't wait for its release in the spring of 2023.

So mark your calendars, because Live Life and Tell Stories is set to release in the spring of 2023. This is an album you won't want to miss, so be sure to push play and let Figub Brazlevic & John Robinson take you on a sonic journey of dope grooves and ill storytelling. Let's go!

On Everything Harmony, the fourth full-length studio release from New York's The Lemon Twigs, the prodigiously talented brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario offer 13 original servings of beauty that showcase an emotional depth and musical sophistication far beyond their years as a band, let alone as young men. Everything Harmony successfully blends the brothers' distinct personalities while giving voice to their eclectic influences. Opening the album with the unassuming acoustic folk of plaintive "When Winter Comes Around," which echoes the sophisticated grandeur of classic Simon & Garfunkel recordings, they immediately switch things up to the sunny classic pop motif of "In My Head." "Corner of My Eye" channels an Art Garfunkel-like vocal melody over a moody, vibraphone-tinged backing track suggesting the chamber pop of Brian Wilson. While they had no grand concept for Everything Harmony, both the D'Addarios felt a "palpable mood of defeat" prevailed while writing and recording it. "New To Me" was inspired by their shared experience with loved ones suffering from Alzheimer's, "What You Were Doing" is dressed in the tortured jangle of vintage Big Star, while "Born To Be Lonely," written after watching John Cassavetes' Opening Night, deals with what Brian calls "the fragility that often comes with age." Everything Harmony is a unified song cycle born of shared blood and common purpose. With two musical heads being better than one, there's no shortage of ideas to draw on. Their only impediments are time and the challenge of keeping up with their own prolific musical inspiration. "We share an intuition and tend to be influenced by one another," says Brian, "so the lyrical ideas on this record tend to complement each other. Writing has never been the issue for us. It's completing, editing and compiling that takes the time. We're trapped in a web of songs!"

The Body & Dis Fig are a natural pair. Each has pioneered instantly recognizable worlds of sound all their own that defy any traditional categorizations or boundaries. The Body, Lee Buford and Chip King, continually challenge any conventional conception of metal, collaborating with myriad artists and from the folk-leanings of their work with BIG|BRAVE to their groundbreaking work with the Assembly of Light Choir to the intensity of their collaborations with OAA or Thou. Dis Fig, aka Felicia Chen, pushes electronic music into dark extremes, from warped DJ sets to avant production, from being a member of Tianzhuo Chen’s performance-art series TRANCE to being the vocalist with The Bug. The Body and Dis Fig find kinship in reimagining what it means to make “heavy music”. Their debut Orchards of a Futile Heaven is the perfect synthesis of two forces, twisting melodicism and intoxicating rhythms, layering a dense miasma of distortion with intense beats and a soaring voice clawing its way towards absolution.

Orchards of a Futile Heaven’s walls of sputtering texture and tectonic booms are soaked in the reverence and melancholy of sacred spaces brought to life by palpable intensity by Chen’s voice. Crafted during a time of personal fragility, the album’s devastating force lies beyond any of the expected noise and abrasive textures typically associated with both The Body & Dis Fig. Suffused with a raw vulnerability and a longing for catharsis, Chen’s voice searches for escape in the midst of oppressive atmospheres as if determined to find relief from guilt. “Eternal Hours” patiently unfurls waves of surprising sounds, whispered undulations that are punctuated by sudden crashes, all beneath Chen’s haunting harmonies. “Dissent, Shame” evokes grief and shame with a minimalist drone dirge that gradually builds to an enchanting choral passage. King’s guitar on “Holy Lance” matches the uncanny drone of Chen’s accordion in an all-consuming blast, Chen’s voice transforming the moment from anguish to defiance and empowerment. The album’s arc finishes with “Coils of Kaa” acting as a kind of propulsive exorcism, breaking through a suffocating air before the funeral procession of “Back to the Water” lays the album to rest.

While sampling has long been essential to each, The Body & Dis Fig deftly meld their differing approaches to sampling and creating extreme sounds until the boundaries are entirely blurred. The two found kinship in their desire to find new avenues to make heavy music that looked beyond tropes of metal and electronic music by merging the two. “I always wanted the heavier stuff but I also didn’t really like heavier guitar music,” says Buford. “None of it really felt quite heavy enough to me. A human can’t be as heavy as a machine.” Chen counters, “I love the balance. You could never connect to just a machine as well as you could a human. Which is why the combination is so potent for me. I don’t want to hide. I think nothing connects you more empathetically than another human's voice.”

Orchards of a Futile Heaven affirms The Body & Dis Fig as skilled sound sculptors who have an exceptional ability to make deeply affecting music, bracing as it is touching, harrowing as it is awe-inspiring. Together, the two have harnessed their expansive artistry to make music that is profoundly emotional, and staggering in its beauty.

Les Disques du Crepuscule presents a unique anthology by artful Brussels postpunk-funk band Marine, fondly remembered for their dazzling debut single ‘Life In Reverse’ in 1981, and now back with a clutch of brand new studio tracks.

The cover art is by LDDC art director Benoit Hennebert and based on the ‘Same Beat’ single sleeve from 1982. The vinyl edition s of TWI 143 is limited to 500 copies pressed on blue vinyl and includes a digital link. All tracks are newly remastered in 2023.

Formed in late 1980 around charismatic frontman Marc Desmare together with musicians from infamous punk band Mad Virgins, Marine made an early splash supporting Orange Juice and Josef K at the legendary Plan K venue, Postcard Records afterwards keeping tabs on the Sound of Young Brussels.
Snapped up instead by chic boutique label Les Disques du Crepuscule, Marine released their infectious debut single ‘Life In Reverse’ in April 1981, attracting rave reviews in the Belgian and UK press, reaching the giddy heights of #6 on the NME indie chart, and even being invited to record a radio session for John Peel - a world first for a Belgian band.

Soon favourable comparisons were being drawn with The Pop Group, A Certain Ratio, Defunkt, James White and Fire Engines, some pundits even sensing a new Haircut 100. ‘We’re not a fashion band,’ insisted Marc in UK rock weekly Sounds, ‘and it’s not really dance music. But all the same I’m glad people dance to it.’

Alas, artistic differences caused the fast-rising group to part ways in a London studio, when half the band quit to form pop-funk sophisticates Allez Allez. With new Marines on board, Marc and bassist Paul Delnoy went on to release two further singles (‘How to Keep Cool’ and ‘Same Beat’), gigged extensively around France and the Low Countries, and played a headline show at The Venue in London. ‘Fine, disciplined and gleeful rhythm workers,’ enthused Chris Bohn in NME. ‘A happy, contagiously clean aural equivalent to a Serge Clerc cartoon.’

Alas by the summer of 1982 Marine were all washed up, with Marc going on direct films and documentaries as Marco Laguna. Four decades later, finally heeding desperate pleas from Crepuscule that his sensational first band never cut an album, Marc has written and recorded another 6 remarkably authentic sounding Marine songs with help from like-minded friends in Brussels and Paris, once more drawing on a heady mix of supercool funkabilly, jazz and soundtrack influences.

‘It was an incredibly strange experience to revisit my past,’ says Marc, ‘but definitely fun. I’m glad, and I’m proud!’

DOG BEACH is Merryn Jeann’s first full length album, produced by Rob Ellis, comparing her directely with his previous collaborators.

Rob Ellis is a record producer, composer, arranger and musician who has been acting for about 40 years and during which he's had the honor to work with such notable artists as PJ Harvey, Marianne Faithfull, Scott Walker, Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Brian Eno, Thom Yorke, Anna Calvi, ...

About working with Merryn : "In every instrumental phrase that she arrived at and each line of her vocal delivery Merryn's enthusiasm and very individual creativity comes across brilliantly I think... whilst still managing to retain an expression of deeply felt heart and soul... a rare combination in my experience, and a match for any of my aforementionel, much admired collaborators."

"The days in the studio were endlessly creative and playful... and subsequently very exhilarating... by the end it felt like we had really gone through something extremely special, and I believe the resulting LP strongly reflects that." Rob Ellis

Album was recorded over 5 weeks in England, including musicians such as Jim Barr (Portishead), Ben Christophers (Bat For Lashes) or Patrick J. Pearson (Daughter, LYR) but also Christelle Canot aka Confuse, half of IN CASE OF FIRE recently signed to Steve Budd’s prestigious record producer agency.

Merryn Jeann is a Naarm/Melbourne and Bundjalung Country/Byron Bay Shire based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She has crafted a genre-bending, dreamy world of soundscapes that bear an enticing musical wisdom.

Sitting somewhere between Caroline Polachek, Cat Power, Weyes Blood, Feist, and Kelsey Lu, Merryn Jeann’s sound is fueled by authenticity. Her raw and honest self packaged into intricate and reflective morsels, many of which are yet to be revealed.

She played Glastonburry at the beginning of her career with the band TORA.

UK and international promo by Whiteboard PR.

A second LP will be recorded in 2025 again with Rob Ellis at the production.

Side projects : OSOO with Kyson & Chris Hill, IN CASE OF FIRE

French pianist Dorian Dumont is an exceptionally gifted, Brussels-based jazzman and member of electronic experimentalists, ECHT! In 2021, he released his debut solo album 'APHEXionS' - a challenging exercise of solo piano focussed entirely on the music of one of the most influential and important artists in contemporary electronic music, Richard James, aka Aphex Twin. Dumont's sophomore album, 'to the APhEX', released 23rd February via W.E.R.F. Records, continues that fascination with his musical hero and acts as a musical love letter of sorts - a groundbreaking experience, where the enchanting world of classical piano collides with the electronic brilliance of Aphex Twin. Richard James' music serves as a starting point for Dumont's musical developments which are sometimes composed and often improvised, letting him find his playing field around the concepts and the poetics of the genius of electro music. Contrary to what one would expect, there are no electronics involved but Dumont carefully transcribes a wide selection of Aphex Twin's music to the grand piano, giving the songs a whole new dimension. Dumont starts from the melody lines and rhythmic structures found in the original tracks but builds on them, deconstructing pieces and adding his own improvisations. Lovingly recreated, the songs take on a completely new dimension, and it exposes both the genius and musicality of Aphex Twin and Dumont himself. "Aphex Twin is a fascinating artist and character. At first, I started transcribing his pieces just to understand them. I then sat on my acoustic piano for the pleasure of hearing these pieces that I loved so much only to realize that in the end I was improvising, I was playing. In short: I was having fun. That's how this project was born: through pleasure and games. The challenge then was to develop the concept of this project to find my own playground and my own responses around the musical principles of Mr. Richard James, in order to make this project a celebration on my own terms."

Always curious about new sounds and cultivating eclecticism, 'to the APhEX' stays truthful to the minimalistic aesthetics from the original tracks. From the unruly, emotionally stirring '180db_ 130' to the simple beauty of 'Windowlicker', Dumont is part of a new generation of musicians who have no intention of sticking to the rules. Dumont dances across the keys, perfectly capturing the mood and feeling of Aphex Twin, where classical meets electronic. Elsewhere, 'PAPAT4 155[pineal mix]' is stripped to the core showcasing Dumont's ingenuity, while 'Avril 14th' and album finale '#3 (Rhubarb)', unfolds with delicate piano, evoking a sense of tranquil introspection.
Born in Montpellier where he studied classical piano at the Conservatory, in 2005, Dumont achieved the highest distinctions in piano and chamber music. With a broadening interest in jazz and improvised music, he moved to Brussels in 2008 and after studying in the Jazz sections at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels then at the Koninklijk Conservatorium van Brussel, he obtained his master's degree in 2013. In recent years, he has played an integral part of the critically acclaimed four-piece 'ECHT!' which breaks the boundaries between jazz, electronic music and hip-hop. In addition, Dumont also participates in numerous other projects across various genres including 'Edges' with Guillaume Vierset, Jim Black, and Anders Christensen or 'Easy Pieces' with Ben Sauzereau and Hendrik Lasure. He also collaborates with bands including Juicy, Vaague, Kuna Maze, and Pol Belardi's Force, among others.


[a] A1. 180db_ [130]


[d] A4. PAPAT4 [155][pineal mix]

A very "MGMT MGMT album" which the band describes as "a group of songs about love and change, first and foremost." Descriptors from the band include: bold, flavorful, playful, sincere, optimistic, perceptive. Loss Of Life was produced by MGMT and Patrick Wimberly (Solange, Lil Yachty, MGMT), with mixing and additional production by Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Interpol, Spoon). The album includes the first ever MGMT song with a feature, courtesy Christine and the Queens. The album artwork has been licensed from John Baldessari's estate and is an artwork titled Noses & Ears, Etc. (Part Two). Formed in 2002, MGMT released their era-defining debut album Oracular Spectacular in 2007. One of the most influential albums of the '00’s - it went on to sell over 2 million copies worldwide and was certified Gold or Platinum in over 10 major territories, including double platinum in UK, Platinum in Australia, Gold in France and Platinum in the USA. It gave the world evergreen hits such as “Kids”, “Electric Feel” and “Time to Pretend” which have inspired, and continue to inspire new generations of artists and music fans alike to this day - those three songs combined have been streamed over 2 billion times on audio streaming platforms since released. Always taking an unexpected creative turn at every new record, but always maintaining their cultural and commercial relevance over the subsequent 15 years, MGMT later released three further studio albums: “Congratulations” (2010), “MGMT” (2013) and “Little Dark Age” (2018).