Well! I’ve decided to try something different with the audio links in news letter today. Instead of Soundcloud/Youtube, I’m giving Spotify a try. They seem to have a lot more stuff than Soundcloud and or Youtube. So, we’ll see how this works, if you have any input, love it, hate it, didn’t know there were audio links, let me know. Anyway, Warm Jets will be in tomorrow. And Shooting Guns are awesome as always. Come for a dig.
….. picks of the week…..
Brian Eno: Here Come the Warm Jets (Astralwerks) LP
***HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION*** In tomorrow... Brian Eno presents deluxe gatefold, 2LP heavyweight vinyl editions of his classic releases Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Another Green World and Before and after Science. Each album is now spread over two 180-gram vinyl discs, which play at 45 RPM and have been mastered at half-speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, ensuring these seminal works sound better than ever before. Each album also contains an Obi, download voucher and Abbey Road Half Speed Master certificate. With experimentalism, conceptual art theory and use of the accidental as a foundation, these albums broke through the boundaries of popular music at the time. Elements of prog/psych/art rock, avant garde and 50s rock ‘n’ roll were combined with an array of cultural and philosophical ideas to create fresh sounding music, that was both visionary and captivating. Alongside George Martin and The Beatles’ work on Sgt. Pepper’s, Eno is arguably the other most pre-eminent practitioner of ‘studio as instrument’ ever. His unconventional recording techniques have resulted in a canon of work that places him alongside other iconic producers like Brian Wilson, Lee Scratch Perry and Phil Spector. As these albums progress chronologically, a nascent form of music begins to emerge. The ideas we hear in this early work continue to reveal themselves in Eno’s later ambient and electronic experiments. 1974 debut Here Come The Warm Jets’ hybrid of glam, prog and art rock continued in a vein similar to Eno’s previous albums with Roxy Music, but further upped the experimental ante. In developing the album’s words and music, Eno used unusual methods, including dancing for his band members – having them play accordingly, and singing nonsense syllables to himself, then forming those into actual words, phrases and meaning – a technique revisited across all these albums. The lyrics on Here Come The Warm Jets are macabre with an underlying sense of humor. They are mostly free-associative and have no particular meaning – another recurring method. Eno enlisted sixteen guest musicians to play on the album, including Robert Fripp and John Wetton of King Crimson, Simon King from Hawkwind, Bill MacCormick of Matching Mole and Quiet Sun, Paul Rudolph of Pink Fairies, Phil Manzanera and Andy MacKay from Roxy Music and Chris Spedding. Eno selected them on the basis that he thought they were incompatible with each other musically. He stated that he “got them together merely because I wanted to see what happens when you combine different identities with the knowledge that there might be accidents, accidents which will be more interesting than what I had intended.”
File Under: Rock, Classics, Essential Grooves, Glam, Pop
Listen Here
Shooting Guns: Flavor Country (Riding Easy) LP
While Canadian sextet Shooting Guns is known (and oft-nominated) for their film soundtrack work (like Netflix hit WolfCop), Flavour Country is the band’s fastest, heaviest and most visceral material—a collection of anthems to jettison from this universe into the multiverse. The album features some of the band’s most atmospheric sounds: there are slight hints of Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Western twang amidst the looping Meddle-era Pink Floyd heavy psych and driving drone reminiscent of Bobby Beausoleil’s belladonna laced soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising. But for the most part, the band is out for blood, regardless of tempo. Album opener “Ride Free” kicks off with a blistering wall of guitars, blaring and rattling out of the gate like mutant progeny to fellow Canadian biker-rock heroes Steppenwolf duly firing all of the guns, exploding into space and returning to hunt down every last one of us. It accelerates from there: “French Safe” sounds like an unhinged battalion of musicians driving full throttle like a scene from a George Miller Road Warrior movie. Biting, lengthier tracks like “Simian Shelf” and the title track occupy the heavy end of the psychedelic spectrum, haunting the foggy moor between early, bluesy Sabbath-styled doom riffery and heavy pulse-riding kraut-rock.
File Under: Metal, Stoner, Rawk
Listen Here
…..new arrivals…..
Blackout: Horse (Riding Easy) LP
Ask any New Yorker what makes them special and they’ll all tell you something different. But there’s something very particular about a city so condensed with a vast range of humanity all facing myriad daily challenges that gives its rock music a brash, direct aggression unlike other places. Case in point, NYC trio Blackouts take on doom and stoner rock is filled with a gritty, mechanistic heft unlike bands of their ilk from anywhere else. Subsumed within the greasy grooves of The Horse there are echoes of NYC heavy legends like Helmet, Cro-Mags, Judge, Prong and others not as intentional homage, but rather a vibe that permeates and inadvertently gives its bands a unique power that few can match. After a brief hiatus between the March 2015 release of their self-titled sophomore album on Riding Easy Records, Blackout has regrouped and (ahem) gotten back on The Horse for an 8-song blast of riffs that does not fuck around. On one fateful day in July 2016, with a handful of mushrooms and a bottle of tequila, vocalist/guitarist Christian Gordy set out to write an entire new Blackout record. Following the departure of original drummer Taryn Waldman earlier that year, the bands fate was uncertain. But, Gordy’s writing foray resulted in a wellspring of inspiration and by happenstance he contacted drummer Adam Taylor who had just parted with his band Ghost Punch. Within two months of banging out riffs with bassist Justin Sherrell, Blackout was back in action. The Horse was recorded over 4 days in September 2016 at Spaceman Sound in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, which the band describes as a whirlwind session laced with loads of buds, Petey’s burgers and lipstick. Or, described by blackout themselves: What you have before you now is a messy plate of meat, slathered in weird sauces. A haunted steak from Centaurus A to sink your tingling fangs into. Sit back, crack a semi cold one, maybe get some snacks and turn this motherfucker up to 8.
File Under: Indie Rock, Pop
Listen Here
Change of Heart: Smile (Label Obscura) LP
Label Obscura is proud to announce the reissue of one of the most important Toronto independent rock albums of the nineties. This Summer, Change Of Heart’s seminal 1992 album Smile will finally see its first release on vinyl, as a double LP. Originally released twenty-five years ago this summer by Cargo Records, Smile is a sprawling, twenty-one song album which was recorded in early January, 1992 at Toronto’s Reaction Studios. Said album was originally envisioned to be released as a double record, much like many of the classic records that influenced its creation, including the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime and Husker Du’s Zen Arcade, but due to budgets constraints at Cargo it was only ever released on compact disc and cassette. Re-assembled and remastered from the original master tapes by album producer Michael-Philip Wojewoda, Smile will be available as as a limited edition on coloured vinyl, limited to 300 copies.
File Under: Rock, Alternative, CanCon
Listen Here
OST: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (Hollywood) LP
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is filled with great action, humor and performances, but it is also infused with a new mixed tape and soundtrack, a dynamic that resonated deeply with audiences in the first film as evidenced by the success of the soundtrack album. The Grammy-nominated Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, becoming the first soundtrack album consisting entirely of previously released songs to top the chart. The album has also been certified Platinum by the R.I.A.A. Once again, music plays an important role in the telling of the story in Volume 2. Set to the all-new sonic backdrop, Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues the team’s adventures as they traverse the outer reaches of the cosmos. The Guardians must fight to keep their newfound family together as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill’s true parentage. Old foes become new allies and fan-favorite characters from the classic comics will come to our heroes’ aid as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand. Director James Gunn explains, “We had Awesome Mix Volume 1 last time, and this time we have Awesome Mix Volume 2. It was so important that it’s actually part of the film’s title this time around. As most people know, Quill’s mom made the first tape for a slightly younger boy, and she made the second tape for a slightly older boy. So, in many ways the songs reflect the story. The songs are a little bit deeper in some ways; a little bit less pop in some ways. Some of the choices are a bit more eclectic; some of the choices are a bit more popular. But we have a real amazing group of songs that, like in the first movie, I wrote into the script. They are a part of the storytelling. Each song is very specific to the scene where it’s placed.” On the importance of the score, which often gets overlooked in a film heavy with popular songs, Gunn adds, “The one thing that is underappreciated is how important Tyler Bates’ score is to the first film. We still use the score from the first movie while shooting this film and it doesn’t get the respect it deserves because it gets so overshadowed by the soundtrack. There’s some beautiful score on that first soundtrack, and I know that the music we’ve written for the second film is even better than what we did for the first film. Tyler Bates has absolutely outdone himself, and we’re giving something very special to people with the music in this film, both the pop songs and the actual score.”
File Under: OST, Classics
Listen Here
Preoccupations: Cassette (Flemish Eye) LP
In late 2013, Preoccupations – then known as Viet Cong – released a small-run Cassette EP only available on tour. Over the course of a year, Matt Flegel and Scott Munro worked in their basement studio with a mess of old and run down equipment to build a set of fresh material. Joined by bandmates Daniel Christiansen and Michael Wallace, the band completed work on a debut Cassette. What emerged from the studio was a mixture of sharply-angled rhythm workouts and euphoric ‘60s garage pop-esque melodies, balanced with a penchant for drone-y, VU-styled downer moments, and became a hard-to-find classic. Preoccupations’s first ever release, Cassette, is now being reissued on 12″ vinyl.
File Under: Indie Rock
Listen Here
Shindig! #69 Mag
Shindig issue no. 69 contains features on a.o. Steve Marriott, Television Personalities, Paul Weller and Jimi Hendrix. Of course you also get the usual sections such as Shindiggin’, What’s hot on the Shindig! turntable, Thoughts & Words, letters and emails, It’s A Happening Thing, and much more.
File Under: Reading
Omar Souleyman: To Syria, With Love (Mad Decent) LP
Syrian musician Omar Souleyman’s new album, To Syria, With Love, is set for release June 2 via Mad Decent. The follow up to 2015’s Bahdeni Nami marks Souley man’s third full-length studio record. In support of the new release, Souleyman will tour the U.S. in May, playing select dates including New York, Los Angeles, Detroit and Salt Lake City as well as festival performances at Form Arcosanti in Arizona and MoogFest in North Carolina. To Syria, With Love is a departure musically and lyrically from his previous material, with focus on more elaborate keyboard and techno elements. Completely setting politics aside, Souleyman consciously shares this personal ode to his native country with an emphasis on his emotional connection to the land and people but not without heartache in view of the nation’s current state. “It’s been six years I’ve been away, and I’m tired of looking for home and asking about my loved ones. My soul is wounded and it’s like having dust in my eyes,” Souleyman says.
File Under: Dabke, Electronic, Syria
Listen Here
Television: Live at the Old Waldorf (Rhino) LP
The second release in the RSD Vinyl Club series. This special RSD Vinyl Club title will be released on 2 x 140g black vinyl. An American rock band, formed in New York City in 1973, Television was part of the early 1970s New York underground rock scene. Live At The Old Waldorf (San Francisco 6/29/78) was originally given the Rhino Handmade treatment back in 2003 on CD only in an edition of 5,000 units. That release sold out in days. The 180g 2LP white vinyl set of 3,000 units for RSD 2011 also sold out. This title is very popular and in high demand on the Internet. This is a one time RSD Vinyl Club pressing, with a minimum of 2000 pieces required to press. This is a one time RSD Vinyl Club pressing with a minimum of 2000 pieces required to press.
File Under: Art Rock, Punk
Listen Here
Various: Transparent Days: West Coast Nuggets (Rhino) LP
The crucible of the 1960’s rock revolution lay squarely on the Pacific rim of the Americas. From Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest down through the San Francisco Bay area and the massive suburban sprawl of California’s southland, literally thousands of life-changing discs spewed forth from the smallest garage to the most state-of-the-art studio facility. It was truly rock music’s renaissance period, and the recorded evidence still has the capacity to thrill and enthral. This carefully curated selection of curios from the Warner Brothers family of catalogues is a celebration of the arcane and the acknowledged, the unheard and the unsurpassed, all with a direct tie to the West Coast. As a wise man once said: “It’s a nugget if you dug it!”
File Under: Psych
Listen Here
…..Restocks…..
Arcade Fire: Funeral (Merge) LP
Arcade Fire: Neon Bible (Merge) LP
Broadcast: Future Crayon (Warp) LP
Broadcast: Haha Sound (Warp) LP
Broadcast: Tender Buttons (Warp) LP
Nuno Canavarro: Plux Quba (Drag City) LP
Cigarettes After Sex: s/t (Partisan) LP
Daft Punk: Random Access Memories (Columbia) LP
Daft Punk: Tron: Legacy (Disney) LP
Lee Fields: Special Night (Big Crown) LP
Lee Fields: My World (Truth & Soul) LP
Lee Fields: Faithful Man (Truth & Soul) LP
Future Islands: Far Field (4AD) LP
Led Zeppelin: I (Warner) LP
Led Zeppelin: II (Warner) LP
Led Zeppelin: III (Warner) LP
Led Zeppelin: IV (Warner) LP
Madlib/Freddie Gibbs: Pinata (Madlib) LP
Metallica: s/t (Elektra) LP
Mr. Bungle: Disco Volante (Music on Vinyl) LP
Night Beats: s/t (Trouble in Mind) LP
Outkast: ATLiens (Arista) LP
Replacements: Twin/Tone Years (Rhino) Box
Replacements: Sire Years (Rhino) Box
Spacemen 3: Sound of Confusion (Fire) LP
Spoon: Hot Thoughts (Matador) LP
Stars of the Lid: Tired Sounds of (Kranky) LP
Waxahatchee: Out in the Storm (Merge) LP
White Stripes: Get Behind Me Satan (Third Man) LP