Finally some upgrades around the shop…. not sure if you’ll notice, but we sure have already. Also, thanks to these changes, lots of fresh/easily browsed clearance stuff is out for the deal diggers. Some killer slabs in this week… a bunch of killer jazz reissues. Finally, Robert AA Lowe’s killer Candyman OST. The new Kendrick is finally out. Japanese Star Wars OSTs, and some other fine slabs! Come on down for a dig!
Oh… possibly closed on Monday for the long weekend… call before coming down.
Current operations…..
– in-store shopping/pick ups – 11 – 6 pm Monday – Friday, 11 am – 5 pm Saturday
(if you don’t want to come into the store for a pick up, call and/or use the back door)
– We will be wearing masks, if you want to, great! If not, that’s also fine, but please be respectful of other people’s space and decisions.
– Sanitize your hands (we’ll have some)
…..picks of the week…..
Kosmogon: Mässan (Tonbad Grammofon) LP
Mässan is the debut album from Swedish instrumentalists Kosmogon, a compelling duo featuring classically trained pianist Sophie Linder and musical collaborator Nicklas Barker, best known as composer, guitarist, Mellotronist, and singer in Swedish progressive rock band Anekdoten. The two have come together with an eclectic range of organic keyboards, including the Arp Odyssey, a real Mellotron, a Farfisa organ, and a Logan string machine to create a tapestry of contemplative minimalist pastoral soundscapes and hallucinogenic visions, redolent of early electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel’s Manuel Göttsching. Two evocative pieces, Mässan (25.00) and Somnus (22.49), are spread across two vinyl sides incorporating grand themes, suited to the format. Mässan was recorded in the autumn of 2020 in their cottage in the Swedish countryside. It’s an homage to Sweden’s breathtaking nature in six parts, symbolizing different phases of evening, night, and early morning in the forest. Somnus was composed as an improvisation around the same time as Mässan, using not one but two Mellotrons and several echo units, edited and compiled at home in Stockholm in early 2021. The creative impetus came from Linder’s reintroduction into playing and composing after a break of 20 years. Inspired by electronic innovators such as Eliane Radigue, Wendy Carlos & Ralph Lundsten, she found herself opening new doors with opportunities presented by Nicklas’s home studio set-up which ultimately led to this inspired collaboration.
File Under: Ambient, Prog, Kris’s Picks
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JJULIUS: Vol. 2 (DFA) LP
“I’ll never forget the first time I heard JJulius. I was stumbling down the waxed marble steps of the Sunset Marquis, sipping in vain from my empty flask, when David Bowie pulled up in a tangerine Hummer H3 he “borrowed” from one of those Kraftwerk guys, either Hans or Franz. Michael Stipe was sitting shotgun (this was his pre-fame, big sideburn phase), so I told him to move it or lose it – we had plans to pick up Queen Latifah on the way to soundcheck and there was no way the Queen’s first impression of me was going to involve playing second fiddle to Mikey. “I get nauseous in the back”. he argued, but I still had a few pills in my pocket that my friend Dave gave to me the night before, so I offered them to Stipe as a “macrobiotic dramanine alternative”. He quietly declined and shuffled past the center console onto the bench seat in the back. Some years later, Dave started calling himself Oderus Urungus and formed the shock-metal group GWAR. “How do you drive this thing?” is a funny thing for anyone to say while driving the car you’re in, but David made those words sound like a new hit single. I was going to ask him to play something fresh and exciting to help rattle the prior night’s dice out of my skull, but I recognized all the tapes crammed between the seats: Grace Jones, more Grace Jones, Sepultura, The Cardigans, and lo and behold, someone (or some thing) called JJulius. I slapped it in the deck and it started mid-song, at an uncomfortably high volume with zero bass correction. David was on his cellular, shouting at who I still believe to be Lou Reed, and their conversation quickly turned to the music in the Hummer – JJulius always commanded an audience like that. He’s pulling onto a jammed-up 101 without looking, arguing with Lou whether it’s “Jay Jay Ulius” or “Juh-Julius” or “Julius (the second J is silent)”. In that moment, it was all they cared about, these two salty geniuses recognizing that same spark of aesthetic immaculity they thought could only come from Brazil, or Japan, or themselves. I’ve witnessed boats sinking and babies being born without epidural blocks to the sounds of JJulius and like the shark that I am, if I stop moving, I just might start to cry.”
File Under: LoFi, Electronic, Post Punk, Ian’s Picks
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Royksopp: Melody AM (Wall of Sound) LP
The debut album from Norwegian pair Röyksopp remains a hit of crossover electronic music. By blending rich downtempo with hints of house, big beat, ambient, and trip hop, the duo scored plenty of hit singles, including ‘Eple’, ‘So Easy’, and ‘Poor Leno’. Often on ‘Melody A.M.’, they come across like a more radio-friendly version of Boards of Canada, or Air with more of an emphasis on rhythm and beats.
File Under: Electronic, Piyush’s Picks
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…..new arrivals…..
Chet Baker: Sings Again (Music on Vinyl) LP
American trumpeter Chet Baker was a major innovator in cool jazz, leading him to be nicknamed “the prince of cool”. He earned much attention and praise through the Fifties, particularly for albums featuring his vocals. This included his 1954 album Chet Baker Sings and its follow-up Chet Baker Sings Again in 1985. The latter he released on the Dutch jazz label Timeless Records. He recorded the album with bassist Ricardo Del Fra, drummer John Engels and pianist Michel Graillier. Chet Baker Sings Again is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on pink coloured vinyl.
File Under: Jazz
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Nicklas Barker: Epektasis (Tonbad Grammofon) LP
Nicklas Barker (Anekdoten, Kosmogon & My Brother The Wind) plunges into minimalistic, ambient dark waters with “Epektasis”, six meditations of shimmering, minimal, electronic soundscapes, recorded over two weeks in September 2021 in Stockholm and the mountain village of Åre using two Mellotrons and an ARP Odyssey synthesizer. A palette of vintage keyboards and percussion through four looping devices, culminating in the summoning of celestial voices with meditative drones, in soothing infinite mysticism. Nicklas explains the genesis of the project: ”This music is rooted in the works of post-war, experimental, minimalist and electronic music composers such as La Monte Young, Eliane Radigue, Tony Conrad and Paulina Oliveros. All of whom have had an enormous impact on me through the years.” “Epektasis” is the second release by Tonbad Grammofon, after last year’s atmospheric Kosmogon – “Mässan”. The label was founded by Nicklas Barker and Sophie Linder and is dedicated to contemporary electronic, ambient, experimental and psychedelic music.
File Under: Ambient, Prog, Kris’s Picks
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Digable Planets: Blowout Comb (Modern Classics) LP
The album is named for the combs used to maintain an Afro hairstyle, and that’s significant. The group’s Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler said it summed up what they wanted to do with it: “It means the utilization of the natural, a natural style,” he has said. Like with 1993’s debut Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), ‘utilizing the natural’ meant creating hip hop that blended jazz with the formidable rap skills of the aforementioned Butterfly, Craig ‘Doodlebug’ Irving and Mary Ann ‘Ladybug Mecca’ Vieira. Unlike that debut, it meant broadening to include guests such as Gang Starr’s Guru, Jeru the Damaja, and Jazzy Joyce. Following the gold-selling commercial success of their debut, they here set out to prove their artistic prowess. This is intelligent, alternative hip hop that sounded like party music. Its lyrics are dense with wit, social commentary and politics – and its original inner sleeve was modeled on the newspaper of the Black Panther movement. Its instrumentation includes sax, vibraphone and flute. Its samples – gathered from global cratedigging trips while touring the first album around the world – included Grant Green, Eddie Harris, Shuggie Otis and jazz-funk pioneer Roy Ayers (whose “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby” became “Borough Check” here). And yet at the same time its beats are infectious and its spirit undeniable. This is an album firmly rooted in Brooklyn. “Growing up hearing and cherishing this album, it created a textured soundscape of a mythical world of rhymes, jazz, breakbeats, culture, art and urban ambiance,” says DJ and fan Mick Boogie in the liner notes. “When I moved to Brooklyn years later, I found that the world I imagined while listening to this classic LP actually really existed…” Though Digable Planets have reunited on occasion since – and though their influence endures in every top-shelf rap act with a jazzy sensibility – the trio parted ways after Blowout Comb, citing that old favorite “creative differences”. Sometimes, the most volatile combinations create the best art.
File Under: Hip Hop
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Hampshire & Foat: The Upturned Glass (Blue Crystal) LP
Mercury Prize nominee Warren Hampshire (The Bees) and Prolific British Jazzer Greg Foat return with their 5th Concept Album. An instrumental Suite based on a day in their home town of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Featuring local musicians and field recordings of bird song and pubs, this album captures the essence of life in this seaside town.
File Under: Jazz
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PJ Harvey & John Parish: A Woman A Man Walked By (Island) LP
A Woman A Man Walked By is the second album collaboration between PJ Harvey and John Parish, originally released on Island Records in 2009. Their first, Dance Hall at Louse Point, was released on the label in 1996. A Woman A Man Walked By was self-produced by the duo and mixed by Flood, with whom Parish and Harvey last worked together on Harvey’s 2007 album White Chalk. Parish composed all of the music and plays all of the instruments while Harvey composed all of the lyrics and contributes all of the album’s vocal performances. Like much of Harvey and Parish’s work, together or as individuals, A Woman A Man Walked By is atmospheric and angular, primal yet precise, and ultimately rewarding. The album was a UK Top 30 success and was favorably received by the critics. It was described by UK-based journalist John Harris, as “…mischievous, deadly serious, elegant and poetic, and possessed of a brutal power – it is doubtful that you will hear a record as brimming with creative brio and musical invention this year…” Elsewhere, The Guardian’s 4-star review suggested “It all hangs together brilliantly, suggesting the mutual understanding of two artists at the peak of their powers,” while Billboard noted that “Such a musical mind-meld, so expressive of both artists’ perspective, is rare.” The Observer declared the contents to be “Unexpectedly captivating… sheer, throat-grabbing charisma.” In 2020, UMC/Island announced a comprehensive reissue campaign which will see PJ Harvey’s back catalogue, plus her two albums in collaboration with John Parish, released on vinyl across 2020 and 2021. For the first time, each of Harvey’s accompanying album demos will also be available on vinyl. The campaign began with the reissue of Harvey’s 1992 debut, Dry, in July 2020. This catalog project celebrates every aspect of Harvey’s recording career and provides a comprehensive look at the evolution of a singular and extraordinary artist. This 180g LP reissue is faithful to the original recording with the vinyl cutting by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering, overseen by John Parish.
File Under: Rock
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Joe Hisasishi: My Neighbor Totoro: Soundtrack (Studio Ghibli) LP
Soundtrack in which you can feel warmth and enjoy Joe Hisaishi’s music to your heart’s content. Includes ’’Sanpo’’ and ‘’My Neighbor Totoro.’’
File Under: OST
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Early James: Strange Time to Be Alive (Easy Eye Sound) LP
Alabama’s native son, Early James, returns with his sophomore album, Strange Time To Be Alive. The lyrical wordsmith conjures the ghosts of great southern gothic writers from Eudora Welty to William Faulkner, while channeling the haunted spirits of Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandt. The album evokes a timeless amalgam of forsaken blues, wistful folk, and Tin Pan Alley crooning, anchored by the singer’s unmistakable voice that sways from gravel-filled shouts to pained, forlorn whispers.
File Under: Folk, Blues
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Ryo Kawasaki: Juice (Mr. Bongo) LP
Classic jazz-funk fusion from the late, great Japanese guitarist Ryo Kawasaki. Recorded in New York, and originally released in 1976, ‘Juice’ presents Ryo at the height of his powers. Born in Japan in 1947, Ryo had a long and stellar career recording and releasing music up until his passing on 13 April 2020, in Tallinn, Estonia. Ryo is one of the pioneers of the jazz fusion genre, with the Japanese jazz fusion / funk sound becoming extremely influential within the 80s UK club scene and amongst its DJs. His track ‘Trinkets & Things’ became a bonafide underground classic. In the US he worked with some of the greats of jazz, such as Elvin Jones, Chico Hamilton and Bobbi Humphrey, to name but a few. A forward-thinking and ever-evolving musician, Ryo collaborated with the Roland Corporation and Korg on the ‘guitar synthesizer’ and later wrote music software for computers. Later in life he relocated to Estonia and worked there, as well as Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic states. ‘Juice’ has become a much-loved album for crate diggers and jazz-funk enthusiasts, with its tracks frequently being sampled and re-imagined in hip-hop. The smokey, beat-down, spiritual funk jam ‘Bamboo Child’ has been flipped by Diamond D, Puff Daddy, and Kool G Rap. The album was released in 1976 on RCA Records and features the musicians’ drummer Jimmy Young, rhythm guitarist Hugh McCracken, and bassist Stu Woods amongst other luminaries. A solid album throughout that incorporates a heavy dose of tripped-out synths alongside the emerging disco sound of the time. Tracks such as the opener ‘Raisins’, with its drum beat intro and bubbling bass-line, rivals The Headhunters at their finest. A superb album from an underground legend.
File Under: Jazz, Japan
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Kendrick Lamar: Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers (Aftermath) LP
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers serves as Compton-born rap superstar Kendrick Lamar’s first new album since 2017’s critically acclaimed DAMN and his fourth album to hit No. 1 on the US album chart. The double album features a number of special guests, including Sampha on “Father Time,” Summer Walker and Ghostface Killah on “Purple Hearts,” Kodak Black on “Silent Hill,” fellow pgLang signee Tanna Leone on “Mr. Morale,” and Portishead frontperson Beth Gibbons on “Mother I Sober.” It boasts production from Duval Timothy, Boi-1da, Sounwave, Bekon, and more. Lamar also assisted on a number of tracks, with his production credit listed as OKLAMA. Legendary producer The Alchemist lends his skill to “Mr. Morale,” providing the synth and electro-funk inspired beat. Kendrick touches on many controversial, timely themes throughout the record, including on “Auntie Diaries,” where he tells the tale of his aunt’s transition and his response to it. On “Mother I Sober,” he examines accusations of abuse and pain that lingers from such situations, rapping, “Family ties, they accused my cousin, did he touch you Kendrick?/ Never lied, but no one believed me.” On “Savior,” he dives headfirst into the messy politics of COVID-19, spitting, “Seen a Christian say the vaccine muck of the beast/ Then he caught COVID and prayed the Pfizer for relief/ Then I caught COVID and started to question Kyrie/ Will I stay organic or hurt in this bed for two weeks?” In a five-star review, NME called the album a “cathartic, soul-baring autobiography” that “serves up vignettes about what it’s like to be a Black adult whose trauma still haunts them. In laying his soul bare, he hopes we realise how we can set ourselves free from generational curses too. This album is as much about struggle as it is freedom, and what a beautiful sentiment that is.”
File Under: Hip Hop
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Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe: Candyman OST (Waxwork) LP
In partnership with Universal Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and Monkeypaw Productions, Waxwork Records is thrilled to present CANDYMAN Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. Directed by Nia DaCosta (next year’s The Marvels) from a screenplay by Oscar® winner Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld and DaCosta, Candyman, currently in theaters nationwide, is a fresh take on the blood-chilling urban legend and a contemporary incarnation of the 1992 cult horror classic. About Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (b.1975) is an artist, curator and composer who works primarily with, but not limited to, voice and modular synthesizer for sound in the realm of spontaneous music. Along with analog video synthesis works, he has brought forth an A/V proposal that has been a focus of live performance and installation / exhibition. The marriage of synthesis and the voice has allowed for a heightened physicality in the way of ecstatic music, both in a live setting and recorded. The sensitivity of analogue modular synthesis echoes the organic nature of vocal expression, which in this case is meant to put forth a trancelike state. Lowe’s works on paper tend towards human relations to the natural/magical world and the repetition of motifs. Waxwork Records is proud to present the soundtrack to Candyman in multiple formats, including vinyl, CD and digital. The deluxe 2xLP vinyl release features 180-gram colored vinyl, old-style tip-on gatefold jackets with satin coating and a built-in booklet page, liner notes by composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, a 12-page art gallery exhibition catalogue, artwork by Sherwin Ovid and Julian Williams and puppetry art by Manual Cinema.
File Under: OST, Electronic
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Main Source: Breaking Atoms (Mr. Bongo) LP
Thirty years after its original release, Main Source’s debut album Breaking Atoms has lost none of its capacity to surprise or delight. It remains a prime example of a classically styled hip-hop LP – two DJs, one MC, 11 tracks, no flab or filler. It wasn’t a slow burner – it was adored on release and hasn’t left the top ten of any serious rap fan ever since. What makes it so special? Perhaps it’s in the group’s ear for a hook and sample, with Large Professor mounting a whole, celebrated career off the back of this gem. Perhaps it’s in the way he manages to balance bragging with more political, thematic tracks such as ‘Just a Friendly Game of Baseball’ and ‘Peace is not the Word to Play’ without ever coming across as preachy. Few albums of this length are able to spawn four singles – all of them must-haves – while still having material galore on the album that could have been pressed as a 12”. ‘Snake Eyes’ ‘Vamos a Rapiar’ and ‘He Got So Much Soul (He Don’t Need No Music) could have been singles in their own rights, an embarrassment of riches. Sample-wise, it’s all about the skillfully woven mixture of the obvious and the obscure, with a tapestry of samples approach that’s just not legally possible anymore. So while you might recognise a snatch of Donald Byrd’s ‘Think Twice’ on the timeless ‘Looking at the Front Door’, it’s layered with elements from Ken Lazarus, Detroit Emeralds, The Third Guitar and more. It’s an approach that pays constant dividends and rewards repeated listens. Presented in its original format, this is the essence of Breaking Atoms, one of the best albums in the long history of this genre.
File Under: Hip Hop
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Moby: s/t (DEF) LP
1992’s Moby (titled The Story So Far in the UK) is the debut album from multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated electronica artist Moby issued without his cooperation by Instinct Records. “…the best thing for me to do is view it as more a retrospective and get on with my life,” he said at the time. He has since changed his tune calling the Moby album and its follow-up Ambient “odd time capsules. The basic problem was that I had never wanted to put an album like this out. It was just a compilation with a few unreleased demos. Dance albums had always failed, I thought, because they didn’t work over the full length of the record. Mostly they were singles collections which was exactly what I didn’t want to do. At the time, the first Prodigy album (Experience) impressed me because they’d managed to create a full listening experience which encompassed various styles. This was the kind of vision I had for my debut album. But Instinct insisted on putting Moby out. Which kind of upset me a lot.”
File Under: Electronic
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Moby: Play (DEF) LP
Originally issued in 1999, the monumental Play served as multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated artist Moby’s fifth studio album overall and breakthrough to a worldwide mainstream audience. Moving over 12 million copies to date on the strength of signature singles like “Honey,” “Run On,” “Bodyrock,” “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?”, “Natural Blues,” “Porcelain,” “South Side” and “Find My Baby,” Play stands as Moby’s highwater mark and the biggest-selling album of its genre.
File Under: Electronic
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Yoshiaki Ochi: Natural Sonic (Silent River Runs Deep) LP
The first vinyl reissue of the legendary environmental / ambient album from 1990!! Remastered for vinyl by Kuniyuki Takahashi. Hit the driftwood, hit the surface of the water, all the earth becomes his instrument. In 1990, a work by a rare percussionist from the leading Japanese environmental music label “NEWSIC” was recorded for the first time as an LP. “When I listen to Ochichi’s Natural Sonic, I remember the time I went to St. GIGA’s studio in front of Kobe at that time. This album was secretly played for days. And after more than 30 years, the Tokyo-born “Earth Survey” will finally be released to the world. Yuki Tokushima (composer/music producer), Yoshihiro Ochi, who has been in the limelight with the compositions and performances of the Miyake Lifetime Collection, producing music for TV and radio, participating in the live performances of artists including GONTITI, holding workshops, etc. Playing taiko while traveling, playing the natural things we encounter, and the colorful live tones collected. It blends gently with the computer sounds, repeating a pleasant resonance. Massage of sounds and rhythms that work like magic. The popular title of the label “NEWSIC” is “Motocho” – Suzuki’s sound track, followed by the long-awaited analog record press!
File Under: Ambient, Japan
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Oscar Peterson Trio: We Get Requests (Verve) LP
Issued on Verve in 1964, We Get Requests is a sterling example of the Oscar Peterson Trio’s remarkable two-sided appeal. Technically, the album is filled with above average melodic development and a solid rhythmic blend, while the repertoire is as crowd-pleasing as ever. The celebrated trio, which famously features pianist Oscar Peterson, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen, treats the listener to a tasteful mix of pop tunes, standards and originals and reminds us throughout why they’re hailed as one of the best in the business. This all-analog 180g vinyl LP reissue was mastered from the original analog tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, pressed at QRP, and comes housed in a Stoughton tip-on gatefold jacket.
File Under: Jazz
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Roxy Music: Avalon (Republic) LP
Roxy Music, the art rock band synonymous with both style and substance, intoxicated with its cool cocktail of fashion, romance, nostalgia and futurism. Their album covers are also legendary and became an integral part of what Roxy Music represented: cinematic imagery set to startling, otherworldly music. For all their imitators and admirers, no one has ever successfully cloned the unique and indefinable fusion of elements that made Roxy Music icons. The most commercially successful Roxy Music album and also their last, Avalon, was originally issued in 1982, charting at No. 1 and lingering on the UK album charts for over a year, with three singles including the Top 5 “More Than This.” The album art features Ferry’s girlfriend and soon to be wife Lucy Helmore as the cover girl. This vinyl reissue is mastered at half-speed and cut by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. It also features revised artwork with a gloss laminated finish.
File Under: Rock
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Scone Cash Players: Blast Furnace (Colemine) LP
Deep from the rusted steel mills of Youngstown, Ohio Colemine brings you the melting debut of the Scone Cash Players. Scone entered the studio on Dunham Street Brooklyn wearing a blue Adidas jump suit. The studio had just opened. At the helm was his old compadres from The Dap-kings. Namely Tommy Brenneck, Eric Kalb, Homer Steinweiss and Ian Hendrickson-Smith. They make up the “Bliss Machine” behind Scones’s groove. It was a truly rare moment to catch these masters of music and taste in between tours of Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Tommy put the mics around. Scone powered up the organ. The analog tape machine turned and turned. These songs were recorded. We worked all day and all night. Tears were shed. Three days of life were taken to make this album. We will never get them back. They were distilled to 40 minutes of pure emotion. It’s a tale of woe. It’s a tale of leaving art for responsibility. It’s a farewell to an era. It’s an orchestral journey that the Hammond B3 organ wasn’t accustomed to. You can’t compare this album to any other organ record!
File Under: Funk, Soul
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Wayne Shorter: Adam’s Apple (Blue Note) LP
Wayne Shorter had already set a high bar over the course of his first several Blue Note albums, which included all-time jazz classics including Night Dreamer, JuJu, and Speak No Evil, but 1966’s Adam’s Apple featuring Herbie Hancock on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Joe Chambers on drums immediately joined the ranks of the saxophonist’s greatest recordings and remains a pinnacle artistic statement of Blue Note’s fertile post-bop era. Shorter composed five of the session’s six tracks including the grooving title track, which surely had producer Alfred Lion dancing around Rudy Van Gelder’s studio. Other highlights of this sublime set include Jimmy Rowles’ arresting “502 Blues (Drinkin’ And Drivin’),” Shorter’s bossa-inflected “El Gaucho,” the tender ballad “Teru,” and the first recording of his timeless composition “Footprints,” which Shorter would record again later that year with the Miles Davis Quintet for the album Miles Smiles. The album closes with the evocative composition “Chief Crazy Horse” featuring Shorter’s trademark harmonic twists and a churning solo spotlight by Chambers.
File Under: Jazz
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Stereolab: Pulse of the Early Brain (Switched On Vol. 5) (Duophonic) LP
The fifth and final volume in the classic Switched On series which compiles non-album tracks and sought after deep cuts by the group Stereolab. This volume is unique in that it does not hone in one particular period but gathers together unavailable tracks across the band’s career, from early EP Low-Fi, to the brain-scrambling mid-90’s Nurse With Wound remixes to unreleased installation tracks for sculptor Charles Long, culminating in a live version of fan favourite “Cybele’s Reverie” captured at the Hollywood Bowl.
File Under: Electronic, Rock
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Stevia (Susumu Yokota): Fruits of the Room (Glossy Mistakes) LP
In 1997 and 1998, the late great Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota released two of the most eclectic albums of his decades-long career, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace. Recorded under his Stevia alias for Tokyo Techno pioneer DJ Miku’s Newstage Records/NS-COM, they were Yokota-san’s homage to the foundational days of club music in Japan. This year, Glossy Mistakes are proud to present the first official vinyl editions of Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, originally released on CD during the golden days of the format. Packaged in reimagined cover artwork created by the celebrated Japanese visual artist Masaho Anotani, these two albums perfectly capture the diversity at the heart of Yokota-san’s oeuvre. Across Fruits of The Room, he takes us on an expansive odyssey through his personal visions for deep house, street soul, jungle/drum & bass, digital dub and the slipstream moments between genres. A totally inspired dancefloor exploration. When Yokota-san wrote and produced the music on Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace in 1997, he was reflecting on the broader culture that surrounded dance music in Japan in the early to mid-nineties. It was an era when the psychedelic culture of late sixties America, the afterglow of UK acid house/rave, the new age movement and cyberpunk dovetailed together. Within DJ Miku and Yokota-san’s social circles, the thinking of Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs electrified the air. By 1996, the moment, brilliant and blinding as it was, was over. “We all felt that the rave scene fizzled out,” DJ Miku says. As he puts it, there was a collective feeling around him that it had all become too much. From the calm that followed, DJ Miku, Yokota-san and their open-eared peers made the decision to switch tracks and start from scratch. DJ Miku believes that with his Stevia releases, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, Yokota-san wanted to express the sweet and sour nature of the passing of those wild early days and his wish for true peace. “At the time, we saw eye-to-eye, with an implicit understanding of each other,” he explains. “Even now, twenty-five years later, I am confident it was like that.”
File Under: Electronic, Japan
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Sun Ra: Ra to the Rescue (Modern Harmonic) LP
One of the rarer albums in the Sun Ra canon, RTTR originally entered our orbit in 1983, mystifying listeners and confounding Ra fanatics with the minimal info on the Saturn pressing. Recorded at several locations over several years (including legendary avant-garde arts enclave, the Squat Theater in NYC), the tracks here include everything from Ra’s sci-fi synthesizer insanity, Marshall Allen’s skronking sax, an excellent Arkestra vocal track “They Plan To Leave,” and so much more. Reissued for the first time, and pressed on colored vinyl!
File Under: Jazz
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Sun Ra: Lanquidity (Strut) LP
Not sure why this wasn’t up on the site until now…. Recorded overnight at Bob Bank’s Blank Tapes on 17th July 1978 after the Arkestra had appeared on Saturday Night Live, the album is unique in the Ra catalogue. “Most critics felt that it was more of a fusion-inspired record,” explains Michael Ray. “As the name suggests, the album is liquid and languid.” Bob Blank continues, “Musically, it was very ad hoc and freeform. There were horn charts but most tracks came out of improvised jams. Sun Ra just did his thing.” Comprising five effortlessly fluid pieces, the album eases in with Lanquidity. Danny Ray Thompson remembers, “This was one of Sun Ra’s on-the-spot compositions. It is almost like an Ancient Egyptian Stargazing Ceremony, mapping out the stars and the planets.” Where Pathways Meet is “Sun Ra’s funky version of an Egyptian march. Pharaoh is sending his troops off to fight and this is his pep-talk!” continues Thompson. “The music seems to take different pathways but still converges.” The loping groove of That’s How I Feel, features the reflective trumpet lines of Eddie Gale with solos by John Gilmore and Marshall Allen: “Marshall comes in with that snake charming oboe.” Says Thompson. The funky Twin Stars Of Thence weaves around Richard Williams celebrated elastic bassline while the haunting closer, There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of), is pure “space music.” The poet Mama Nzinga described it as ‘The essence of light. Spirit takes a ride inside the deep dark space of just being.”
File Under: Jazz
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Yukihiro Takahashi: Neuromantic (Great Tracks) LP
Neuromantic is Takahashi’s first solo release for ALFA and his third solo album overall. In addition to Japanese musicians Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Kenji Omura, the album also features Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay (Roxy Music), and Tony Mansfield whom he recorded with during a long stay in London. This record builds on the techno sound of YMO’s BGM (released the same year), infusing Takahashi’s unique romantic aesthetic and is considered one of his masterpieces. The sixth track, “Drip Dry Eyes” is a self-cover of a song that he wrote for ALFA artist artist Sandii. Yukihiro Takahashi explains, “The early 80’s was one of the busiest periods of my music life…When I think back now, I think that my recording style and production process that I continue to this day may have been solidified then, during the early 80’s.” The new reissue of Neuromatic is part of ALFA’s ongoing reissue series featuring many of Yukihiro’s early 80s solo albums from his first hit record Murdered by Music (1980) to his last record from his ALFA era Poisson D’Avril (1985 soundtrack to the film of the same name).
File Under: Electronic, Pop, Japan
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Masahiko Togashi: Speed and Space – The Concept of Space in Music (Cinedelic) LP
Reissue, originally released in 1969. Recorded in November 1969 at Teichiku Kaikan Studio, Tokyo, Speed & Space: The Concept of Space in Music is one of those landmark works in which Masahiko Togashi is accompanied by talented musicians who possess a unique style and innovative approach. The album is an exploration of Togashi’s notion of the “Time Law” and can be seen as a study of how texture, rhythm, and differing rates of change effect our perception of the passage of time in music. Sounding quite obscure and contemplative, the brief introductory theme signed as “Presage” prepares the listener for powerful and scathing free jazz. In a pace of increasing intensity, “Panorama” remits you to the liberating ways of an absorbing percussion where the more muscular interventions are interspersed with moments of enormous sensitivity. Grounded by Togashi’s varied percussion, the disconcerting piano of Masahiko Sato and the vigorous bass of Yoshio Ikeda mark the guidelines of this long abstract exercise. An energetic improvisation, this theme of nearly 15 minutes flows into a grand finale with the involvement of all the musicians. “Expectation” closes the A side in a short but intense reverie of percussion, bass, and flute, guided by an improvisation free of harmonic prejudices. At the piano (and gong), Masahiko Sato assumes a mediation function, granting some harmony traits to the, almost always, abstract and corrosive concepts of this collective. Bassist Yoshio Ikeda (recorded with trumpeter Terumasa Hino and pianist Aki Takase) imprints a decisive mark to the robust rhythm-section as to the overall sound of this date. Mototeru Takagi helps impart a tonal diversity and a colorful exoticism through his forays into the tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. Of sharp forms dominated by technique and irreverence, side B continues with the title track, divided in two distinct but equally penetrating parts. With a depth marked by Togashi’s percussion, “Speed & Space # 1” unfolds on a fast tune over 11 minutes of a harsh and incisive improvisation. The interaction of an irreverent rhythm section finds its complement in the disturbing screams of a delirious saxophone. Shorter, the second part gives voice to a minimalist concept in which the central role of Togashi finds an interesting matching in Masahiko Sato’s piano as well in the saxophone and flute of Mototeru Takagi. Fully licensed and remastered from the original tapes. Includes OBI and insert.
File Under: Jazz
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Tru-Tones: Power Struggle (Not Dark Yet) LP
Power Struggle offers the listener an opportunity to hear the Tru-Tones in their prime. The band’s expansion into disco resulted in a couple of killer tracks in ‘Let’s Party’ and ’Dancing’ (a true dance floor winner), that are embedded within a slab of incredible reggae and funky calypso numbers. A prime example of how to fuse sounds together to create a cohesive and consistent listening experience, Power Struggle is strong from start to finish. Highly recommended.
File Under: Disco, Regge, Funk
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John Williams: Star Wars: A New Hope (Walt Disney Japan) LP
The soundtrack to ‘’Star Wars: A New Hope’’ has been made into a record as the first Star Wars ‘’Record Day’’ target product! Released in the Japanese version of the original jacket. 2LP. The recorded sound source adopts the 192kHz / 24bit master announced in 2018. Limited edition
File Under: OST, Japan
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John Williams: Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (Walt Disney Japan) LP
The soundtrack to ‘’Star Wars / The Empire Strikes Back’’ has been recorded as Star Wars’ first ‘’Record Day’’ target product! Released in the Japanese version of the original jacket. 2LP. The recorded sound source adopts the 192kHz / 24bit master announced in 2018. Limited edition
File Under: OST, Japan
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John Williams: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Walt Disney Japan) LP
The soundtrack to ‘’Star Wars / Return of the Jedi’’ has been made into a record as the first Star Wars ‘’Record Day’’ target product! Released in the Japanese version of the original jacket. 1LP. The recorded sound source adopts the 192kHz / 24bit master announced in 2018. Limited edition
File Under: OST, Japan
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Josh Willis: Banana Jamz (Cartridge Thunder) LP
New music from Donkey Kong Country. 20+ tracks from the original 1994 Super Nintendo release. Over 40 minutes of music based on the incredibly memorable Donkey Kong Country soundtrack for the Super NES. Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Country properties are © Nintendo. Cartridge Thunder Ltd. and its artists are in no way affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected to Nintendo with respect to this album. Musical compositions are © 1994 Nintendo and are used with permission. Mechanical licensing facilitated by Easy Song Licensing.
File Under: OST, Video Game
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Larry Young: Unity (Blue Note) LP
Until the emergence of Larry Young, Blue Note’s Hammond B3 organ tradition was firmly rooted in Soul Jazz, having been established by B3 trailblazer Jimmy Smith and soulful players the likes of Big John Patton and Baby Face Willette. However, Young brought an entirely new perspective to the instrument by placing it in a more adventurous post-bop context, an innovative approach that recontextualized its possibilities. Young had introduced these inclinations on his excellent 1964 Blue Note debut Into Somethin’, but with his 1965 album Unity he created a singular masterpiece with a cast of modernist jazz visionaries: trumpeter Woody Shaw, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, and drummer Elvin Jones. The apt album title expressed the undeniable synergy this unique quartet achieved. “Although everybody on the date is very much an individualist, they were all in the same frame of mood. It was evident from the start that everything was fitting together,” Young stated in the album’s liner notes. The program consisted of three distinctive originals by Shaw (“Zoltan,” “The Moontrane,” and “Beyond All Limits”), Henderson’s bluesy, hard-swinging “If,” and memorable versions of “Monk’s Dream” by Thelonious Monk and the standard “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise.”
File Under: Jazz
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Various: Earl’s Closet: The Lost Archive of Earl McGrath 1970-1980 (Light in the Attic) LP
Earl McGrath was the ultimate ’70s jet setter, an art collector and comic bon vivant who stumbled into the record business between legendary parties in New York and LA and discovered Daryl Hall and John Oates and then Jim Carroll. Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun gave Earl his own label, Clean Records, in 1970; Mick Jagger hired him to run Rolling Stones Records in 1977. Friend to Joan Didion, Andy Warhol, and a galaxy of luminaries, Earl was an inveterate tastemaker. Actor Harrison Ford, who before Star Wars fame was Earl’s handyman and pot dealer, called him “the last of a breed, one of the last great gentlemen and bohemians.” After Earl died in 2016, journalist Joe Hagan, author of the critically-acclaimed Sticky Fingers, the biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, discovered a trove of rare and unheard tapes in Earl’s apartment in New York—literally inside his closet. “I asked for a step ladder and the first box I pulled off the shelf was a master tape of Some Girls, the Stones album,” says Hagan. Now Light in the Attic Records proudly presents Earl’s Closet, a double album of the treasures discovered inside, including unheard music by Daryl Hall and John Oates, David Johansen, Terry Allen, Delbert McClinton, Warhol “Superstar” Ultra Violet, Detroit sax legend Norma Jean Bell, Jim Carroll and an eclectic cast of undiscovered artists who once vied for fame and glory—folk, rock, country, funk and R&B gems that virtually no one has heard in decades. Whether it’s the almost-famous power pop of Shadow from Detroit, or the Delfonics-style soul of the Blood Brothers Six, Earl’s Closet retraces the dreams of artists who once sent demos to Earl McGrath. Longtime Light in the Attic-affiliated reissue producer Pat Thomas assisted Hagan in tracking down the artists and finalizing the paperwork. At once an archival mixtape, a secret history and a journey into the heart of an era, Earl’s Closet features a deep booklet of documents, images and ephemera from Earl’s archive, expansive liner notes by Joe Hagan, who tracked down and interviewed the artists, and astonishing photographs by Earl’s late wife, the Italian countess Camilla Pecci-Blunt McGrath.
File Under: Rock
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Various: Eccentric Disco (Numero) LP
Ten Numero-minted, dance floor ready dive bombers from disco’s all-too-brief heyday, previously swept under rug by the whitewashed glitz and glam of the era. Chugging grooves, bubbling synths, soaring strings, and sonorous voices are guaranteed to light up your night, on living room rugs and dance floors alike.
File Under: Disco
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Various: Pierre Barouh & the Saravah Sound: Jazz, Samba and Other Hallucinatory Grooves (Wewantsound) LP
Wewantsounds present the first retrospective on vinyl of Saravah Records, one of the most influential French labels founded in Paris by singer, songwriter, and producer Pierre Barouh in 1966. Featuring Brigitte Fontaine, Jacques Higelin, Alfred Panou, and many rare tracks reissued on vinyl for the first time, the set gives a glimpse of the free-form, groovy sound of the label between 1965 and 1976. Supervised by Pierre Barouh’s son and Saravah historian, Benjamin Barouh. Pierre Barouh became an icon with the Claude Lelouch film Un Homme et Une Femme in 1966 that made him a star. Indeed, in 1965 while in Brazil, on the insistence of Vinicius de Moraes, he recorded French version of “Samba de Bênção” with Baden Powell on a revox, retitled “Samba Saravah” and played it to his friend Lelouch who fell in love with the song and decided to use it in the film. The film and the score became huge hits. Barouh then decided to develop Saravah Publishing into a label and a recording studio with his old friend and associate Fernand Boruso to develop projects in a truly independent and original way. Through their film connections, came Brigitte Fontaine and Jacques Higelin and recorded “Cet Enfant Que Je T’avais Fait” for the 1968 film Les Encerclés. Saravah signed them on the spot and the song, arranged by Jean Claude Vannier, which would become a cult classic and appeared on Fontaine’s breakthrough debut LP Brigitte Fontaine Est… Folle (1968). Fontaine would go on to record several albums for Saravah — often with her partner Areski Belkacem — including Comme A La Radio in 1969 with Art Ensemble of Chicago. The latter are also featured on “Mystifying Mama” by Marva Broome and “Je Suis Un Sauvage” by Alfred Panou, an African actor and singer who’d worked with Jean-Luc Godard. Pierre Barouh pioneered music from Africa and Latin America as he’d spent time in Brazil (in 1969 he directed Saravah a documentary about the Rio music scene). He released two albums by Gabonese artist Pierre Akendengue, whose “Orema Ka-ka-ka” from the 1976 album Africa Obota is featured here. Through Boruso, Saravah also released a handful of jazz albums including the Pianos Puzzle series from which come Rene Urtreger’s “Tchac Poum Poum”, Georges Arvanitas’s “Trane’s Call”, and Maurice Vander’s “Sicilienne”. The label also ventured in fascinating recordings mixing jazz, experimental music, and pop by Baroque Jazz Trio, Michel Roques, or Cohelmec Ensemble. The set also features rare singles by Beartrice Arnac (then Boruso’s girlfriend) with the jazzy “Le Bruit et le Bruit” and Jacques Higelin’s “Je Jouais le Piano”, one of the first songs recorded for the label and which has never been reissued since. The set ends with a haunting duet between Pierre Barouh and Baden Powell, recorded in 1965 during the same Rio session as Samba Saravah. Also features E.D.F.. Includes liner notes (English/French) by Benjamin plus an exclusive interview of Barouh’s partner Fernand Boruso by Jacques Denis.
File Under: French, Psych
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Various: Sharayet El Disco: Egyptian Disco & Boogie Cassette Tracks 1982-1992 (Wewantsound) LP
Wewantsounds release Sharayet El Disco a selection of Egyptian ’80s disco and boogie tracks curated by Egyptian DJ Disco Arabesquo from his vast collection of cassettes. Most tracks have never been released on any other format and are making their vinyl debut with this set. A journey through the funky sound of ’80s Egypt, Sharayet El Disco (which can be translated by “Disco Cassettes”) features Simone, Ammar El Sherei, and more obscure names from Cairo’s cassette culture. Sharayet El Disco is part of an important mission for Moataz Rageb aka Disco Arabesquo. The Amsterdam-based Egyptian DJ has been collecting cassettes from Arab-speaking countries and its diaspora for many years and has amassed a vast collection of Egyptian music concentrating on the ’80s, the sound he grew up listening to. His goal has been to search for these rare sounds and make them known to a new vinyl-hungry audience. During this decade, the rich Egyptian music industry, which had seen such stars as Oum Kalthoum, Abdel Halim Hafez, and Warda take the Arab world by storm in the ’60s and ’70s, was going through a new phase and the cassette format was the cause. This radical change enabled many young musicians and producers to spread their music directly to consumers duplicating cassettes themselves. A new vibrant music scene erupted in Cairo blending their sound with trends coming from the US and Europe including, of course, disco, soul, and funk. The cream from this scene was soon picked up by the most daring labels, including Mohsen Gaber’s Alam El Phan, Sout El Hob, and Americana. Sharayet El Disco gives you a glimpse of these great tracks which — for most of them — were only ever released on cassette. The set is a unique insight into the diversity of the Egyptian disco sound, from the pulsating disco of “Hezeny” by Hany Shenouda’s Al Massrieen band to the boogie of Simone’s “Merci”, via Firkit El Asdekaa’s tongue-in-cheek “Eklib el Sheriet” (“turn the cassette to the other side”), produced by legendary Egyptian musician Ammar El Sherei. The music is both inventive and funky and played with both Western and Arab instruments proving that quality of Egyptian music. Audio remastered for vinyl by David Hachour/Colorsound Studio in Paris. LP artwork by young Egyptian graphic designer Heba Tarek. Includes two-page insert featuring artwork of the original cassettes plus insightful liner notes by Moataz Rageb. Also features Afaf Rady, Dr. Ezat Abou Ouf & el four M, FIrkIt el Ensan, Eman el Bahr Darwish, Firkit Americana Show, and Lebleba.
File Under: Disco, Funk, Egypt
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…..restocks…..
Alfa Mist: Antiophon (Black Acre) LP
Alfa Mist: Structuralism (Black Acre) LP
Chet Baker: In Paris Vol. 1 (Sam) LP
Chet Baker: In Paris Vol. 2 (Sam) LP
Bjork: Greatest Hits (One Little Indian) LP
Black Country New Road: Ants From Up Here (Ninja Tune) LP
Black Country New Road: For the First Time (Ninja Tune) LP
Bon Iver: 22, A Million (Jagjaguwar) LP
Broadcast: Tender Buttons (Warp) LP
Donald Byrd: In Paris Vol. 1 (Sam) LP
Cocteau Twins: Garlands (4AD) LP
Cocteau Twins: Heaven or Las Vegas (4AD) LP
Lana Del Rey: Lust for Life (Interscope) LP
Brian Eno: Discreet Music (Astralwerks) LP
Blaze Foley: Clay Pigeons (Lost Art) LP
Hole: Celebrity Skin (Music on Vinyl) LP
Iggy & The Stooges: Raw Power (Legacy) LP
JJ Doom: Key to the Kuffs (Lex) LP
Kikagaku Moyo: Masana Temples (Guruguru Brain) LP
Kikagaku Moyo: Kumoyo Island (Guruguru Brain) LP
Kendrick Lamar: DAMN (Aftermath) LP
Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By (Bulk) LP
MF Doom: MM… Food (Rhymesayers) LP
Modest Mouse: Good News for People Who Love Bad News (Epic) LP
Ennio Morricone: Crime (Klimt) LP
Ennio Morricone: Dissonance (Klimt) LP
Mountain Goats: Bleed Out (Merge) LP
N.W.A.: Straight Outta Compton (Universal) LP
New Order: Brotherhood (Rhino) LP
Pavement: Spit on a Stranger (Matador) LP
St. Germain: Tourist (Universal) LP
Taylor Swift: Reputation (Republic) LP
Unwound: New Plastic Ideas (Numero) LP
Venom: Welcome to Hell (BMG) LP
Viagra Boys: Cave World (Year0001) LP
Various: WaJazz – Japanese Jazz Spectacle Vol. I (180g) LP
.Various: Wamono A to Z Vol. III (180g) LP