listen records

As usual, following last weeks jam packed list, this week’s is a little on the light side, but also as usual, a few of the few things are killer. And with all that rain, it’s not like you can get out in the yard so you might as well get some new wax.

…..pick of the week…..

Constantines: Shine A Light (You’ve Changed) LP
If you don’t own this record, you should! “Originally released by Three Gut Records (Canada) and Sub Pop Records (the rest of the world) in 2003 and since named one of the top 200 records of the 2000s by Pitchfork and often cited as one of the best Canadian records ever, this legendary album has been out of print on LP since 2007. We’re proud to make this LP available again, featuring a newly cut vinyl master and packaged with a special bonus 7-inch containing 3 B-sides recorded at the same time as Shine a Light. The original gate-fold artwork has been re-photographed to show its age and the past 11 years of neglect in dank basements. The first pressing of the The Constantines’ self-titled (and Juno Award-nominated) debut (released on Three Gut Records in 2001 and re-released outside of Canada on Sub Pop in 2004) was fittingly packaged so that, upon opening the red cardstock booklet, you’d find a single strike-anywhere match. In an effort to not ruin the beauty and poignancy of a thing through over-explanation, suffice it to say that if your relationship with rock and roll is not fundamentally a quest for fire (elemental, transformative, consuming), you’ve missed the point. This from Magnet magazine: “They’re young offenders with sharpened teeth who make grinding, literate punk with the elasti-to-explosive guitars heard on Fugazi’s “Smallpox Champion,” the stark lyrical economy of a Vonnegut-penned newspaper obituary…” And: “The Constantines are old souls in young bodies–guys in their early 20s who sound like Joe Strummer backed by Fugazi–making music that wakes the sleeping and the dead.”

File Under: Rock, CanCon, Classics
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…..new arrivals…..

Bohren & Der Club of Gore: Piano Nights (Pias) LP
There’s something terrifyingly beautiful about Bohren & Der Club Of Gore’s music, most obviously the sheer unhurried lethargy of it. Each piece moves slower than hell, meditating at the sort of pace the 20th century’s communication explosion almost killed off. Each Bohren release evokes the sedate momentum of ancient sea travel, snailing forward through barren landscapes, perhaps unknowingly in circles, constantly tempting one to ask, “have we been here before?” The story of the band’s progress has been as persistently sedate as the music itself, with the now-signature sound of Christoph Clöser’s tenor sax not actually entering the group until some eight years after their formation and two monolithic albums of guitar-led imaginary midnight movie soundtracks in 1994 and 1995. The group’s loosely-definable second phase following the departure of Reiner Henseleit and his guitar and the introduction of Clöser and his sax seemingly came to something of a conclusion with the ‘Beileid’ mini-album in 2011, with Mike Patton even joining them to croon across an unrecognizable cover of ‘Catch My Heart’ by 80s German metallers Warlock. An approximation of light had begun to appear behind the curtains of the long-abandoned jazz club where Bohren & Der Club Of Gore have been living for two decades now, with semblances of major keys and the distant-memory of the bright outside world languidly returning since 2008’s Dolores. Their progress having slowed to a near-standstill, the group take a sideways step with Piano Nights and continue their slow march towards the eternal embrace of the grave, albeit with something of a resigned grin of acceptance across their faces.

Miles Davis: Bootleg Series 3 At the Fillmore (Music on Vinyl) 6LP Box

180 Gram audiophile vinyl, box set, including 12″ page booklet, printed innersleeves, available on vinyl for the first time!! These are four historic performances from the Fillmore East and West in 1970, at a time when Miles Davis was single-handedly bringing Jazz into the commercial Rock era. In their unedited form, all selections are previously unissued. The searing white heat of these concerts, originally issued in severely edited form, are now made whole. This set includes several bonus tracks like Wayne Shorter’s ‘Paraphernalia’ and ‘Footprints’, an early version of ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down’ plus a rare encore performance of Bitches Brew’s ‘Spanish Key’.

File Under: Jazz

Lee Fields: Emma Jean (Truth & Soul) CD
Soul legend Lee Fields has re-teamed with The Expressions for new album Emma Jean. Coming at a time when many new artists are trying to emulate the soul and swagger of the 1960s, Mr. Fields showers us with authenticity on the 11-track set, highlighted by first single “Magnolia,” a refreshed cover of the J.J. Cale track that embodies the late, great American singer-songwriter and the Tulsa Sound he helped create. Since releasing his first album in 1969, Fields has continued to make music for the last 45 years. And having been on the road, touring non-stop for the better part of the last decade, it’s evident that Fields has hit an elevated stride both as a recording artist and live performer. Emma Jean is the follow up to Fields’ widely praised first two Truth & Soul albums – 2009’s My World and 2012’s Faithful Man. Lee Fields & The Expressions have forged a distinct soulful sound and a grown style with this album. They’ve pushed their sound in new directions, moving from being content as contemporary soul music royalty and instead delving into and exploring its next steps. There’s a sharper wisdom in the songwriting – from the having loved, lost, and learned vibe of “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” backed by crooning guitar and wailing horns, to the sophisticated arrangements and studio acumen that’s pared with Lee’s straightforward sincerity in “Just Can’t Win.” Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys wrote “Paralyzed,” and having Emma Jean mixed and partially recorded at his Nashville studio, country soul and bluesy rock are immediately noticeable. It brings a different kind of strut to the album, but Fields – born and raised in North Carolina – is right at home with the Southern soul sound. In fact, it feels like a natural progression: an organic, refreshingly pure next step. Like past releases from this matchless pairing of Fields’ warm-and-raw growl and The Expressions’ switched-on and sharp musicianship, Emma Jean takes soul music in a familiar but updated direction. “He’s 63 years old,” notes the album’s producer and co-owner of Truth & Soul Leon Michels, “he’s so focused, and has been working non-stop – he’s singing the best he ever has.”File Under: Soul, Funk
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Fucked Up: Glass Boys (Arts & Crafts) LP/CD

Regular version in tomorrow, Slow Version, hopefully next week? Fucked Up is a punk band. They were a punk band when they started in Toronto more than a decade ago, and they’ve remained a punk band even as they’ve ascended to career heights that their younger selves never could’ve imagined. But how do you remain a punk band when you’re on magazine covers, or sharing stadium stages with the Foo Fighters? How do you stay true to your 15-year-old self when you’ve got a career to maintain, and families to support? Those are the questions that Fucked Up asks on Glass Boys. And they ask those questions in the form of a blazing, titanic, ultimately triumphant rock album. The last two Fucked Up albums were sweeping, defining, monolithic gestures. On 2008’s The Chemistry Of Common Life, they tested hardcore’s capacity for stylistic innovation, for 7-minute songs and unconventional arrangements, and they won Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize in the process. With 2011’s David Comes To Life, they offered up a full-blown rock opera, coming with one larger-than-life hook after another, and that made them even bigger, and further away from the Toronto hardcore scene that nurtured them. Glass Boys isn’t a retrenchment or a back-to-basics move; it’s too ambitious and complex for that. But after those last two albums, it’s tight and concise and direct, an album of real and direct sentiment rather than artifice. Musically, Glass Boys carries echoes of some of the more ragged and adventurous bands from America’s punk past (Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr.), but it also has some of the anthemic charge of the Who and the guttural intensity of Negative Approach. Singer Damian Abraham still growls like a demon, but he’s found more range and depth in his bark. Drummer Jonah Falco does something innovative on the LP, adding two separate drum tracks, one of them in half-time, adding a psychedelic, disorienting feel. The triple-guitar battalion of Mike Haliechuk, Ben Cook, and Josh Zucker still builds symphonies out of feedback and power-chords, but this time around, there’s less emphasis on world-crushing riffs and more on world-creating textures. Bassist Sandy Miranda is now even more a part of that storm, her instrument blurring in with that overwhelming guitar roar. And if the album’s lyrics concern the quest to stay true to your younger self, the music pulls off the trick beautifully. “Echo Boomer,” like “Son The Father” and “Let Her Rest” before it, makes for a powerful album opener, a surge of catharsis that gives a strong idea of what’s to come. “Sun Glass” builds from acoustic strumming to bleary pummel and stays pretty the whole time. “DET” has one of those world-annihilating choruses that demands a full-room singalong. And the album-closing title track is a blast of epic catharsis as grand and forceful as anything this band has ever done. After two monumental concept-driven concept albums, Fucked Up have made another heart-expanding, life-affirming piece of work, and this time, they’ve done it by shooting straight from the heart.

File Under: Punk, Hardcore, CanCon
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Philip Glass: Glassworks (Music on Vinyl) LP
Glassworks is the most pleasant craftwork ever from the great minimalist exploiter. Six warm pieces in a successful attempt to create a more pop-oriented work. The Philip Glass ensemble performs with an amiably soft-edged minimalist sound, in an almost new-agey vein. Glass anticipated resistance toward the funding of his more expensive projects, so he created a  more  accessible, and marketable recording. And with success. More then 200.000 albums were sold in five years. Glassworks is another Music On Vinyl Classical release by this fantastic composer.

File Under: Minimalism, Classical

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Mars Volta: Deloused in the Comatorium (Music on Vinyl) LP

180 gram audiophile vinyl, Printed innersleeves, Includes : 60 x60 cm poster, First pressing of 3500 numbered copies on gold coloured vinyl. De-Loused in the Comatorium is the debut full-length studio album by American progressive rock band The Mars Volta and was originally released in 2003. Based on a short story written by lead singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala and sound manipulation artist Jeremy Michael Ward, the concept album is an hour-long tale of Cerpin Taxt, a man who enters a week-long coma after overdosing on a mixture of morphine and rat poison. The title of the album is taken from the lyrics of the song ‘Eunuch Provocateur’, which is included on the band’s debut EP, Tremulant. The cover artwork is by Storm Thorgerson, who also designed the artwork for the album Frances the Mute. The album is co-produced by Rick Rubin and The Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. As Eva Gardner, the original bassist, parted ways with the band, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea is featured at bass guitar player on the album. The vinyl edition of the album was only released in the US in limited quantities and is a much wanted vinyl piece. Music On Vinyl is proud to reissue the album and to celebrate its release the first 3.500 copies are individually numbered and pressed on gold vinyl.

File Under: Rock, Prog, Gold Wax
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Oasis: Definitely Maybe (Big Brother) LP 
Remastered in 2014 by Ian Cooper at Metropolis Mastering, London for the Album’s 20th Anniversary. Includes High Quality MP3 Download Code for ALL of the Bonus Content from the Special Edition CD (Volumes 1, 2 & 3). In their 14-year recording career Oasis sold over 70 million albums worldwide, had 22 consecutive UK Top 10 singles, 7 No. 1 studio albums, but, more than that, they helped define a generation. Now Big Brother Recordings is set to reissue the band’s classic albums in chronological order as part of the new Chasing The Sun series. Each album has been remastered and available with rare and exclusive bonus content. With 2014 marking the 20th anniversary of its original release, Definitely Maybe will be the first release in the series. (What’s The Story?) Morning Glory and Be Here Now will follow later this year. Definitely Maybe was originally released in August 1994 and was an immediate critical and commercial smash. The fastest selling debut album ever (at the time), it went seven-times platinum in the UK (over 2 million copies), and sold 5 million worldwide. Containing the classic debut single “Supersonic,” and subsequent singles “Shakermaker,” “Live Forever,” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” Definitely Maybe frequently appears on ‘best album of all time’ polls, including being listed as one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time and a No. 1 placing in a 2008 Q Magazine/HMV poll of the ‘Greatest British Albums.’ Remastered in 2014 by Ian Cooper at Metropolis Mastering, London, the new 20th anniversary vinyl edition is manufactured on a heavyweight 2LP-set and contains a high quality MP3 download code including ALL the bonus content (B-sides, rare and unreleased Oasis tracks from the Definitely Maybe era, plus their huge Christmas single from 1994, “Whatever”) featured on the Special Edition CD (volumes 1, 2 and 3).File Under: Rock, Brit Rock
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OST: Coraline (Mondo) LP
Original music by Bruno Coulais. Illustration and design by Michael DePippo. 2XLP in deluxe gatefold jacket pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Limited edition pressed on black vinyl and randomly-inserted Black & White Swirl vinyl.File Under: OST, Mondo
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OST: Dune (Music on Vinyl) LP
This soundtrack contains probably the best track Brian Eno every released, just so you know. The American science fiction action film Dune is based on the 1965 Frank Herbert same titled novel. The instrumental soundtrack was recorded by popular rock band Toto (minus lead singer Bobby Kimball), accompanied by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Volksoper Choir. It marks Toto’s first and only film score. One track for the movie called ‘Prophecy Theme’ was composed by Brian Eno. Originally released in 1984, the soundtrack album contained select cues in their original film order, plus two pieces of dialogue from the movie that served as bookends for two tracks (‘Prologue’ and ‘The Floating Fat Man (The Baron)’). 30 years after its original release, Dune is released on 180 gram audiophile vinyl by Music On Vinyl.File Under: OST, Eno, Ambient
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OST: Paranorman (Mondo) LP
Original music by Jon Brion. Design & Layout by DKNG Studios. 2XLP in deluxe gatefold jacket pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Limited edition pressed on black vinyl and randomly-inserted Highlighter Yellow vinyl, with Bone Haze.

File Under: OST, Mondo

Fatima Al Qadiri: Asiatisch (Hyperdub)  LP

Fatima Al Qadiri is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Kuwait. In just a few years, she has quickly built a reputation as a conceptual artist, exploring themes informed both by her own background and global pop culture, through a number of highly acclaimed EPs, multimedia projects and writings. She is also a founding member of the production team Future Brown. Fatima’s debut album is called ‘Asiatisch’, and as the track titles suggest, the record provides a simulated road trip through an imagined China. Musically, the album is an homage to that quietly influential sub-strain of grime, often loosely termed ‘sinogrime’ due to its preoccupation with Asian motifs and melodies, pioneered by the likes of Wiley and Jammer at the beginning of the 2000s in East London. ‘Asiatisch’ is a provocation which asks more questions than it answers. The title is the German word for Asian. Unlike its title, however, the music on ‘Asiatisch’ revolves around the fantasies of East Asia as refracted through pulpy Western pop culture, in particular Hollywood, literary fiction, music, cartoons and advertising. Fatima asks what is meant by the term ‘Asian’ in a digital age of viral interchange and the hi-speed trading of cultural bytes; the concept of ‘shanzhai’ proves pivotal, a term whose meaning stems from a wild, out of control zone of banditry, but which has come to be used to refer to the Chinese counterfeiting of Western brands and goods. While a number of producers have made takes on ‘sinogrime’ over the last few years, ‘Asiatisch’ is really the first record that attempts to articulate this weird complex of sonic interchanges between the West and China. With the exception of the opening track, ‘Shanzhai’, a haunting cover of ‘Nothing Compares to You’ with nonsensical Mandarin lyrics, and the shimmering ‘Loading Beijing’, ‘Wudang’ and ‘Jade Stairs’ which sample and distort classical Chinese poetry staging an epic confrontation between China’s ancient soul and the onslaught of the industrial factory machine, most of the tracks blend mallets, bells, gongs, flutes, steel drums and choral atmospherics with the searing synth-brass and the skittering drums of grime, playing melodies that are inflected as much by classic R&B as to synthetic versions of traditional Chinese music.

File Under: Pop, Electronic, Sinogrime, Hyperdub
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Swans: To Be Kind (Young God) 3LP
Hardly in stock, no holds, first come first served on this batch… More in soon. A NOTE FROM MICHAEL GIRA: Hello There, We (Swans) have recently completed our new album. It is called To Be Kind. The release date is set for May 13, 2014. It will be available as a triple vinyl album, a double CD, and a 2XCD Deluxe Edition that will include a live DVD. It will also be available digitally. The album was produced by me, and it was recorded by the venerable John Congleton at Sonic Ranch, outside El Paso Texas, and further recordings and mixing were accomplished at John’s studio in Dallas, Texas. A good portion of the material for this album was developed live during the Swans tours of 2012/13. Much of the music was otherwise conjured in the studio environment. The Swans are: Michael Gira, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Phil Puleo, Thor Harris, Christopher Pravdica. Special Guests for this record include: Little Annie (Annie sang a duet with me on the song Some Things We Do, the strings for which were ecstatically arranged and played by Julia Kent); St. Vincent (Annie Clark sang numerous, multi-tracked vocals throughout the record); Cold Specks (Al contributed numerous multi-tracked vocals to the song ‘Bring the Sun’); Bill Rieflin (honorary Swan Bill played instruments ranging from additional drums, to synthesizers, to piano, to electric guitar and so on. He has been a frequent contributor to Swans and Angels of Light and is currently playing with King Crimson).. The Swans will be ON TOUR in Canada this summer!! Quotes about their previous album, ‘The Seer’ (2012); “…the sound of a celestial sledgehammer descending” – Time Magazine // “…Swans make their grandest statement yet” – Rolling StoneFile Under: Rock, No-Wave, Drone
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…..restocks…..

American Analog Set: Know By Heart (Barsuk) LP
American Football: s/t (Polyvinyl) LP
Geoff Barrow: Drokk (Invada) LP
James Blake: s/t (Atlas) LP
Dinosaur Jr: Visitors (Numero) 5×7″ Box
Elliott Brood: Tin Type (Paper Bag) LP
Father John Misty: Fear Fun (Sub Pop) LP
Fleet Foxes: s/t (Sub Pop) LP
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop) LP
Harmonia: Music Von Harmonia (Lilith) LP
Hawkwind: Space Ritual (Rock Classics) LP
Sharon Jones: Naturally (Daptone) LP
Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Arista) LP
Rolling Stones: 12×5 (Abkco) LP
Sharon Van Etten: Are We There (Jagjaguwar) LP
Bry Webb: Free Will (Idee Fixe) LP
Various: Inner City Beat (Soul Jazz) LP