Well, I’m pretty stoked to say we have acquired some pretty damned fine used stuff this week, so we should be able to maintain our daily(ish) used offerings up for a good while. Some real hefty stuff in really great shape. It’s probably one of my favorite parts of this job, going through a collection and finding rare stuff you never thought you’d see. Anywho… you’ll slowly get to see it all too! In the meantime, we’re entering the final stretch of new releases for the year, I think. Some good stuff out but it’s going to start slowing down soon. Black Friday RSD is comin’ too….
As always, big thanks to everyone who’s been hitting up our webstore and placing orders! It’s getting competitive around 5pm when we post up fresh used stock. If you haven’t hit up the WEBSTORE, MAYBE YOU SHOULD! If you can’t figure out the site, or don’t like to use computers, you can always call the store and we can do an order over the phone. We’ll be at the shop 11-5 Tuesday – Friday & Saturday 11-4. Stay safe!
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…..pick of the week…..
N. Chambers: Facets (Love All Day) LP
Love All Day is pleased to present Facets, our third collaboration with renowned contemporary electronic composer, Norm Chambers (Panabrite, Jürgen Müller). As the title implies, it’s a many-dimensional work, and one born from a time of crisis in Chambers’ life. Created in the spring of 2019 while experiencing health issues that were ultimately diagnosed as being a rare form of sinus cancer, Facets reveals Chambers efforts to push himself to places he hadn’t gone before —-to try to rid himself of old habits & embrace potentially unsuccessful creative attempts, whatever the result. Faced with a sense of urgency & riding a creative wave, the tracks came together quickly as he explored new creative vistas —his familiar, bucolic landscapes now occasionally interrupted by craggy rhythms and aural horizons that fluctuate like air on desert sand. Concerned that these works would be his final statement, he quickly released them digitally as he awaited surgery & chemotherapy to treat his illness. After his near brush with death & subsequent recovery, we’re extremely grateful to have the opportunity to re-present this singular work by one of our favorite artists with deliberate intention and care as a long playing album.
File Under: Electronic
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…..new arrivals…..
Ash Ra Tempel: Gin Rose at the Royal Festival Hall (Made in Germany) LP
“Ash Ra Tempel, the veterans of the German ‘Berlin School’, gained worldwide recognition with their album releases 1971-1973.Their self-titled debut-album from1971, in the line-up Hartmut Enke (bass), Manuel Göttsching (guitar), Klaus Schulze (drums), radically deconstructed elements of rock and blues, as it was combining electronic sounds to encourage new listening habits. Whilst Göttsching and Schulze later followed their solo careers, they always stayed friends and, over the decades, showed their musical solidarity in collaborations, with innovative electronics and guitar. But it was only in 2000, when they decided for this short intermezzo to perform together again under the Ash Ra Tempel banner. Julian Cope (author of Krautrock-Sampler) had invited Göttsching to his ‘Cornucopia Festival’ in London, and the two musicians took the offer as a great opportunity for a one-time reunion concert at the Royal Festival Hall on April 2, 2000. Preparing the music for this the concert had also led to a new studio album recording entitled Friendship. Both of the recordings, the studio album as well as the live recording from the London concert ‘Gin Rosé’, had been originally released in 2000 in a small edition, which was sold out very soon. The studio-album Friendship had already been re-released in 2014 (CD). Now, and due to the many requests, here it is again — after 20 years, the re-release of the long-awaited live-album Gin Rosé. Göttsching and Schulze blend tradition and vision, and they do not simply reanimate ideas of the 1970s. The spirit of this unique liaison is reflected in every single note of this still up-to-date concert, showing these two musicians playing joyful, familiar and undeterred.”
File Under: Prog, Krautrock
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Liam Bailey: Ekundayo (Big Crown) LP
Big Crown Records is proud to present Ekundayo, Liam Bailey’s debut record on the label. This album is a long time in the making, and after listening, clearly worth the wait. It didn’t take a long time to record, but it did take years for all the stars to line up. Bailey, born and raised in Nottingham, England, the son of an English mother and Jamaican father got his early influences from his mom’s record collection. Bob Marley and Dillinger, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix would eventually shape the singer/songwriter we know today. Fast-forward to 2005, Liam is in London and doing the whatever-gig-you-can-get musician hustle with hopes of landing a record deal. And it was through this time that Liam first teamed up with Leon Michels, musician/producer luminary, and the co-founder of Brooklyn’s own Big Crown Records. Liam flew out to New York and those first sessions together produced the now classic tunes “When Will They Learn” and “I’m Gonna Miss You” which still get spins at reggae spots around the globe. That trip helped kick off what was to follow next for Liam: a slew of record releases, label deals, and working with some wildly-notable mainstream producers. Even a just-famous Amy Winehouse heard one of Liam’s apartment-made, lo-fi recordings through a friend and liked what she heard. Regardless of the audio quality, Liam’s particular sound shone through—all guitar, warm-rough and genuine soul. She signed him to her label shortly after. But, as the story can go with major labels, they already had an idea of the Liam they wanted to make, promote, and push. With the typical pay-day enticement, Liam did his best to fit into whatever shape they put him to. “‘Maybe I can make it work,’ that’s what you’re thinking,” Liam remembers, “but, you quickly find out that you can’t.” While Liam’s career went through a bunch of record industry twists and turns he and Michels stayed in touch and would regularly connect and collaborate. Finally, in 2019, the time was right to do a full-length album together. And this time, it would be free of any restricting major label presumptions and opinions. “This is the record we always wanted to make,” says Michels. Set to release in October 2020, the album is called Ekundayo. And the word’s meaning may be all you need to know to get to the essence of this project. It means “sorrow becomes joy” in Yoruba, a language spoken mostly in Western Africa. On the surface, Ekundayo is a weighty Reggae record, full of new and old textured riddims. But listen more in-depth, and you’ll find subject matter that’s more recognizable from a modern-day R&B record. An example of the former is the first single off the album. Sung to the most beautiful woman at the nightspot, “Champion” is a joyous anthem powered by a silly-thick Juno-bass throb and 808-proof drums. In short, “Champion” is dancehall-ready. But then there’s a song like “Don’t Blame NY.” Moody and sparse with a somber drive, you might have to resist the urge to compare it to a Frank Ocean-ish type vibe. Liam’s voice is in a different but fitting element here, showing stripped-back emotion and soulful restraint. Anyone who has lived and tried to thrive in New York won’t have a hard time relating to the lyrics but they may join the masses who blame the city, while Liam points the finger at himself and sings praises to The Big Apple. Credit to Leon’s hand, elements of Jamaican production are everywhere, peppered throughout the record. Like the pitch-perfect organ stabs that push through the authentically positive “White Light,” or the muted, percussive guitar strums that chug along in the back of “Fight.” In the same vein of any fantastic singer/songwriter album, Ekundayo is a reflection of who Liam Bailey is, taking on topics and approaches he never would think of just a few years ago. Some evidence: “Ugly Truth” is about reconnecting with his biological father, a subject he once thought would be too personal to address. The journey from conforming to major labels to this latest record has been a long one for Liam, and a bit of a struggle. But struggle may be the only way we truly grow and evolve. With a new clarity of purpose, sound, and life, Liam has found joy out of those struggles. And it’s called Ekundayo.
File Under: Reggae
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Black Sabbath: Paranoid: Deluxe Edition (Rhino) 5LP BOX
Wildly regarded as innovators of the musical genre which came to be known as heavy metal, legendary Birmingham-bred Black Sabbath celebrate the 50th anniversary in 2020 of their multi-million selling album Paranoid with a 5LP edition featuring the vinyl debut of two 1970 concerts. The Paranoid: Super Deluxe Edition includes the original album, in addition to a rare 1974 Quad Mix of the album folded down to stereo, plus two concerts from 1970, from Montreux and Brussels, that are pressed on vinyl for the first time. The set comes with a hardbound book with extensive liner notes featuring interviews with all four band members, rare photos, and memorabilia, a poster, as well as a replica of the tour book sold during the Paranoid tour. After the success of the band’s self-titled debut in early 1970, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward returned that fall with Paranoid. The record became the band’s first album to top the U.K. charts and has sold more than four million copies in the U.S. alone. Today, songs like “War Pigs,” “Planet Caravan,” “Iron Man,” and of course, “Paranoid,” continue to inspire a new generation of musicians around the world. Paranoid: Super Deluxe Edition’s first two LPs feature the original album plus a Quadraphonic Mix of the album. Originally released on vinyl and 8-track cartridge in 1974, but subsequently long out of print, the Quad Mix has now been made available as a fold-down to stereo mix on vinyl for this set. The collection’s final three LPs mark the official vinyl debut of two 1970 live performances. The first was recorded on August 31 in Montreux, Switzerland shortly before the release of Paranoid. It captures the band, already a tight musical unit, thundering through new songs like “Hand Of Doom” and “Iron Man” while mixing in “N.I.B.” and “Behind The Wall Of Sleep” from their debut. The second concert was recorded a few months later in Brussels during the band’s performance for Belgian television. Unofficial versions of this classic show have circulated in the past, but they’ve never sounded this good.
File Under: Metal
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Bubaza: Ice Breaker (Colemine) 7″
Bubaza is a side project featuring members of Jungle Fire and The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble. Covering ground that each of their respective bands live in: latin jazz, instrumental soul, funk, etc., but while also extending this a little more into B-boy and DJ culture with fiery drum breaks and crafting tunes meant for the funk dance floor.
File Under: Funk
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Cordovas: Destiny Hotel (ATO) LP
Cordovas’ new album Destiny Hotel is a work of wild poetry and wide-eyed abandon, set to a glorious collision of folk and country and groove-heavy rock-and-roll. In a major creative milestone for the Tennessee-based band – vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Joe Firstman, keyboardist Sevans Henderson, guitarist/vocalist Lucca Soria and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Toby Weaver – the album harnesses the freewheeling energy of their live show more fully than ever, all while lifting their songwriting to a whole new level of sophistication. The result is a batch of songs that ruminate and rhapsodize with equal intensity, inviting endless celebration on the way to transcendence. Recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Rick Parker (Lord Huron, Beck), Destiny Hotel expands on the harmony-soaked roots rock of That Santa Fe Channel, a 2018 release that earned abundant praise from outlets like Rolling Stone and NPR Music. Before heading to L.A., Cordovas spent over three months in their second homebase of Todos Santos (an artist community in Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula), sketching dozens of songs partly sparked from their voracious reading of authors like mythologist Joseph Campbell, poet/novelist Rainer Maria Rilke, and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle.
File Under: Folk, Country, Rock
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Nils Frahm: Empty (Erased Tapes) LP
To mark this year’s Piano Day and as an acknowledgement to these unprecedented circumstances we find ourselves in, Nils Frahm surprised the world with a collection of eight solo piano pieces, titled Empty, made available digitally on March 28. The highly anticipated physical editions on vinyl and CD are set for release via Erased Tapes on October 30, 2020. Conceived of just before Nils broke his thumb and composed the similarly intimate solo piano album Screws, Empty is a soothing vessel of eight simple and serene pieces originally recorded as the music to a short art film he shot with his friend and film director Benoît Toulemonde. Drifting through emotions from the stark and sobering opener ‘First Defeat’, to the gently euphoric ‘No Step On Wing’ and the contemplative but hopeful closer ‘Black Notes’, with its poignant minute of silence, Empty is a comforting score for these turbulent times.
File Under: Ambient, Classical, Piano
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Aaron Frazer: My God Has a Telephone
(Colemine) 7″
Aaron Frazer is best known as the drummer and falsetto voice behind soul mainstays Durand Jones & The Indications. The Brooklyn-based, Baltimore-raised musician also garnered attention for his gospel-inspired project, The Flying Stars of Brooklyn, NY, which released the single “My God Has a Telephone” in 2017. To celebrate the start of Aaron’s solo career, we are proud to reissue this 7″ with a new picture sleeve and rebranded as Aaron Frazer.
File Under: Funk, Soul
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Ghost Funk Orchestra: An Ode to Escapism (Karma Chief) LP
Blue w/ black swirl wax! Where will you hide when the world around you is closing in? On their latest LP, GFO invites you to close your eyes and take a dive into your subconscious. Strings and horns float around from ear to ear while their three sirens explore themes of isolation, fear of the unknown, and the fabrication of self-image. It’s a soulful psychedelic journey that picks up sonically where “A Song For Paul” left off. The drums are heavier, the arrangements are more intricate, and the vocal harmonies soar over a bed of odd time signature grooves. This is an album that’s meant to be listened to in the dark. So won’t you join them? You’re not scared…..are you?
File Under: Funk, Psych
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Hum: Inlet (Earth Analog) LP
The first new music from legendary band, Hum, in 22 years! Aside from a few shows and festival performances, Hum has been largely quiet since the release of 1998’s “Downward Is Heavenward”. Outside of “Stars” (from 1995’s “You’d Prefer An Astronaut”), the band never really trafficked in the mainstream, but during their absence Hum’s legacy and influence have only continued to grow. With “Inlet”, the band has created another epic masterpiece that further reinforces Hum’s place of honor among the shoegaze/alt-rock elite.
File Under: Indie Rock
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Lambchop: Trip (Merge) LP
Coloured vinyl version! In the fall of 2019, Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner had a unique idea: In lieu of going on what would become an economically disastrous tour, he would invite the band to Nashville to make a record as a way to provide them with similar financial support and realize something tangible in the process. Each band member was tasked with choosing one song for the band to cover, and leading the recording session to completion each day. Trip sounds like a culmination of the band’s older work and current work. There’s a looseness and freedom that recalls their older sound mixed with a group sophistication and innovation derived through the process of playing together for so long. The title Trip refers to the circumstances surrounding its creation and the endeavor of “touring” itself. “It also seems to describe a life in music and the situations we created in our life as a band over the years,” Wagner adds. “It’s been a trip…”
File Under: Folk, Indie
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Tor Lundvall: Yule (Dais) LP
Red vinyl version! New York artist Tor Lundvall’s music often evokes a sense of soft-focus autumnal melancholia but nowhere is this atmosphere more explicit and evocative than his self-released 2006 holiday album, Yule, newly reissued by Dais Records. Inspired by childhood memories of “cold, dark evenings” waiting for his mother outside shops and supermarkets while seasonal songs drifted faintly on the frozen air, the collection feels appropriately hushed and hypnagogic, half-remembered melodies heard through falling snow. Steady muted rhythmic pulses wind through wintry landscapes of icy synthetic textures, glass bells, and distant metallic echoes, occasionally framed by Lundvall’s soft, dazed vocals, narrating scenes of “slushy, illuminated train stations” and “the lonely trees of January, still entangled with blue lights long after the season has ended.” It’s a music of barren branches, crescent moons, and willowy figures shuffling and shivering on their way somewhere, viewed from a fogged window passing by, or high above. As with Lundvall’s signature oil paintings, Yule’s sonic vignettes are works of observation, poetic glimpses rendered in gradients of color and quiet. He has referred to his music in the past as “ghost ambient” and, although his songwriting here skews more foreground than background, the phrase aptly captures the haunted, half-light quality of these fragile tracks. 10 miniatures of wreathed streets and silent woods, of twinkling store windows seen from a distance, the sensation of being outside of life looking in – the sentiments that seeded Lundvall’s vision remain undimmed: “There was a special melancholic beauty about these moments that has never left me.”
File Under: Ambient
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Aquiles Navarro & Tcheser Holmes: Heritage of the Invisible II
(International Anthem) LP
Coloured wax version! “A telepathic Afro-Caribbean improvisational DUO” as they’ve dubbed themselves, Aquiles Navarro & Tcheser Holmes are also known as 2/5 of the revolutionary free jazz quintet Irreversible Entanglements. Navarro – a protégé of Carlos Garnett (whose incendiary woodwind sounds are famously heard on Miles Davis’s On The Corner and Pharaoh Sanders’s Black Unity) – is Panamanian immigrant, trumpeter, composer & community organizer (who heads his own record label, River Down Records). Holmes is a life-long drummer & percussionist, born in Brooklyn and raised into a musical Pan- African spiritual community (the Ausar Auset Society). Heritage of the Invisible II finds them exploring in their purest forms – diving deep into the abstract depths of free improvisation, discovering new dialectic survival methods, and surfacing with an ecstatic, advanced articulation of Afro-Caribbean-inflected future folk.
File Under: Jazz
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Quakers: II : The Next Wave (Stones Throw) LP
Quakers is an evolving collective consisting of music makers: Supa K (Katalyst), 7STU7 and Fuzzface (Geoff Barrow) as executive producer, along with an ever-expanding cast of MCs they invite along on the adventure. True to the group’s collaborative spirit, the three producers invite over thirty rappers from the Stones Throw stable and beyond to contribute to Quakers II: The Next Wave. The new wave of Quakers MCs includes The Koreatown Oddity, Guilty Simpson, Sampa the Great, Jonwayne, Jeremiah Jae, Chester Watson, Boog Brown, and many more. All adding their weight to the sonic arsenal. Much like Quakers’ self-titled debut, The Next Wave is loud, unapologetic and blunted. It’s also more explicitly political, with songs that speak directly to systemic corruption, racism, and the climate crisis. The artwork for The Next Wave, created by graphic novel artist Joe Currie, reflects this renewed focus on “interplanetary eco battles.” “The project has evolved organically, similar to last time,” explains Supa K, but “the world has changed and the music reflects that. We’ve all had enough of the global corruption and all those profiting from it.”
File Under: Hip Hop
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Sun Ra: Dark Myth Equation Visitation
(Strut) LP
Strut present the definitive edition of Sun Ra’s ‘Egypt 1971’ along with the original albums ‘Dark Myth Equation Visitation’, ‘Nidhamu’ and ‘Horizon’ released as individual LPs, documenting Sun Ra’s first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971.
File Under: Jazz
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Sun Ra: Horizon (Strut) LP
Strut present the definitive edition of Sun Ra’s ‘Egypt 1971’ along with the original albums ‘Dark Myth Equation Visitation’, ‘Nidhamu’ and ‘Horizon’ released as individual LPs, documenting Sun Ra’s first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971.
File Under: Jazz
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Sun Ra: Nidhamu (Strut) LP
Strut present the definitive edition of Sun Ra’s ‘Egypt 1971’ along with the original albums ‘Dark Myth Equation Visitation’, ‘Nidhamu’ and ‘Horizon’ released as individual LPs, documenting Sun Ra’s first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971.
File Under: Jazz
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Vicky Tafoya: Forever (Penrose) 7″
Penrose Records is proud to introduce the newest members of the family, the Inland Empire’s own Vicky Tafoya and the Big Beat. Born in Santa Ana and currently residing in Colton, Vicky started singing acapella doo wop in the late 80s for the So. Cal. Doo Wop Society and went on to co-found the Big Beat in 2001. Their debut single on Penrose is a moody minor chord ballad featuring a reverb laden guitar solo and beautiful girl group harmonies behind Vicky’s effortless yet haunting vocal about two people longing to be together… Forever
File Under: Funk, Soul
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…..Restocks….
Agitation Free: Malesch (MIG) LP
Agitation Free: 2nd (MIG) LP
David Bowie: Metrobolist (Parlophone) LP
N. Chambers: Air Example (Love All Day) LP
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (Acoustic Sounds Series) (Impulse) LP
Dinosaur Jr.: Without a Sound (Cherry Red) LP
Lou Donaldson: Mr. Shing-A-Ling (Tone Poet) (Blue Note) LP
Brian Eno/David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Nonesuch) LP
Dexter Gordon Quartet: Tokyo 1975 (Elemental) LP
Erik Hall: Music for 18 Musicians (Western Vinyl) LP
Joe Henderson: State of the Tenor Vol 2 (Blue Note) LP
Adrianne Lenker: Songs & Instrumentals (4AD) LP
Meat Puppets: II (MVD) LP
Metallica: …And Justice for All (Blackened) LP
Radiohead: In Rainbows (XL) LP
Stanley Turrentine: Comin’ Your Way (Tone Poet) (Blue Note) LP
Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud (Merge) LP
Wilco: Summerteeth DLX (Nonesuch) BOX
Neil Young: Return to Greendale (Reprise) LP