Ha! So if you get this via email, I totally goofed and didn’t update this little intro, but no one reads it anyway right? Or do you? ha. Anyway… not as big a week as most have been lately but still some great stuff. Not one, not two, but THREE Broadcast reissues of their BBC session and tour only CD releases. An archival Sonic Youth release! Yet another Acoustic Sounds Series John Coltrane, with Duke Ellington. And Edmonton’s Kimberlite Records has dropped of the newest Aladean Kheroufi single!
Also, they’ve announced the Record Store Day exclusives list. You can find the list HERE or the Canadian list HERE , but it’s also worth noting, that we deal with tons of suppliers so we also can sometimes get some of the UK & European releases. Needless to say we’ll be ordering all the stuff we would stock if it was just a regular release, but if there’s something on the list you hope to find in our shop on that day, be sure to let us know ASAP so we can be sure to order it for you. Don’t worry, we’ll order a ton of Viktor Vaughn, Art Pepper, Karen Dalton, Voivoid. As usual, unfortunately, just because we order 20 doesn’t mean we’ll get 20. So keep an eye out closer to the date to see what we’ll actually have in. Oh and it’s important to note as well, no more Remote RSD, this year, in store only.. good thing we’ve all been practicing standing in line for the last 2 years.
And while there are no longer any health restrictions we are currently operating….
– in-store shopping/pick ups – 11 – 6 pm Monday – Friday, 11 am – 4 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…..
Broadcast: BBC Maida Vale Sessions (Warp) LP The Maida Vale Sessions compiles four of Broadcast’s live performances at the famed West London studios between October 1996 and August 2003, charting the band from their first year together to near-international recognition as their sound continued mutating. Even in their embryonic state, Broadcast appear fully formed on their first session for John Peel in 1996, performing three early singles along with a near-complete sketch of ‘City In Progress’ four years before its proper release. Less than a year later, Broadcast were already toying with the public’s perception of them in their 1997 Evening Session. Known for her cool, withdrawn delivery and hesitancy towards live performances, Keenan brings a sweeter, more confident warmth to the live version of ‘Come On Let’s Go’ alongside three propulsive performances of the band’s work between their Work and Non Work and The Noise Made by People eras. The latter sessions, recorded in 2000 and 2003, audibly track their psychedelic pop transitioning into exhilarating, noisy decay as the group pared down to the core duo of James Cargill and Trish Keenan. ‘Pendulum’ and “Colour Me In” come off even more brassy and commanding here than on HaHa Sound, while their cover of Nico’s ‘Sixty Forty’ ends the collection on a shoegazing high, signalling the experimenting to come with Tender Buttons. More than cementing their chameleonic sound though, this compilation stands as both a career-spanning look and introduction to Broadcast’s powers as a live act.
File Under: Electronic, Indie Rock, Kris’s Picks, Piyush’s Picks Buy Here
Sonic Youth: In/Out/In (Three Lobed) LP/CS In mulling over their career, it’s staggering to realize that Sonic Youth not only delivered a healthy slab of releases as a unit but also have a myriad of shelved material still waiting for broader ears. While the group’s current Bandcamp abode lays out a generous amount of it, a bunch more has yet to surface. And it’s a massive mountain to chip away at in the sense of the group output alone; individual members’ projects are a whole other game, needless to say. “In/Out/In” ably delivers a new slab of mostly-unheard Sonic righteousness, with a scope on the post 2000-era band in especially zoned/exploratory regions. The 80’s and 90’s continually saw Sonic Youth reminding everyone that their jams ran free alongside song craft and visible development album to album; there were Peel excursions, dipping toes into soundtrack work starting with 1986’s “Made In USA”, and of course great impromptu expansive takes of tried and true previous material onstage. The millennial establishment of home turf studio spaces in NYC then NJ greatly egged on forays into improvisation and composition on their own clock as evidenced in “Goodbye 20th Century” and the plethora of SYR releases that trickled out side by side between major release albums. At this juncture they had already created a cultural template for a whole new breed of rock heads who, in turn, entered a feedback loop to SY itself, which cultivated more of its own new moves informed by the very fandom they had for their acolytes all the while pushing the band outward to uncharted fields. Jim O’Rourke’s residency had already influenced the band’s material in part into denser, longer, meditative paths. Mark Ibold’s entry for their swan song “The Eternal” also allowed for more of this exploration with Kim Gordon having more room to commit to third guitar. However “The Eternal” also took more cues from Ibold’s bottom-end swing and perhaps dialed back the expansiveness of the “NYC Ghosts and Flowers” and “Sonic Nurse” era a notch in a cool way, making it one of the best group efforts for me, anyway. Perhaps this fueled some of these tracks here, in an already comfortable zone with a new lineup and new drive to take sideroads to even more outer realms. “In/Out/In” reveals their last decade to be still heavy on the roll-tape and bug-out Sonic Youth. Not all recorded in one session but rather spread out over 2000-2010, the sequencing here is especially well thought out. Opening with the 2008 “Basement Contender” we get a super-unfiltered glimpse of the band at Kim and Thurston’s Northampton house creating a gentle springboard of Venusian choogle, with phased Lee lappings at cascading Thurston figures forming a simmering soundtrack. “Machine” offers another instrumental track from “The Eternal” sessions and is a steamy exercise in stop-start rhythmic grunt amidst a jungle of chiming and upward spiraling chord progressions. We’ve also got the extended score offering “Social Static” from the Chris Habib/Spencer Tunick film of the same name, draping white sheets of noise over your head then descending into a gauzy maw of car-alarm guitars and ambient-yet-disruptive turbulence that eventually subsides into a smoky coda. Two more tracks round out the set both culled from a Three Lobed box set of various artists from 2011 called “Not the Spaces You Know, But Between Them”: “In & Out” quietly resembles Can in a cave with dripping stalactites of Kim’s wordless tone rumble and was recorded at a soundcheck in Pomona California and their home Hoboken turf in 2010. “Out & In” from 2000 was done in their late downtown NYC studio and serves to close out this LP’s last 12 minutes as a reminder of what they got up to with O’Rourke there. More gentle time shift chord framework erupts into molten fury three minutes in, before mutating into the sonic equivalent of a slowly collapsing star. Casting an audio net over the entire instrumental/outtake oeuvre of Sonic Youth’s long history isn’t something easily committed to a single release without a doubt. Hearing these tracks in comparison to, say, 1986’s “Made In USA” material shows the massive leaps they took over the years. Whereas ’86 showed them freshly discovering their go-with-the-flow instrumental abilities for a soundtrack, their last decade showed them complementing the ambience with assured twists and turns that only came to be through their inimitable and rooted telepathy. That, plus the freedom to compose in more comfortable environs other than dank Ludlow Street rental spaces (hard to believe “Daydream Nation” was created in a claustrophobic practice basement) most assuredly was a component in their continued paths of discovery. Shifting on the drop of a dime from quiet/deep forays into full on noised-out Autobahn stomps with Steve Shelley at the wheel, they painted detailed and varied brush strokes and continually created organic sounds that undoubtedly carried the signature sound of the band, while ringing loud with their continual drive to free themselves from just that. Enjoy this capsule.
Wesley Bright: Come Right Back (Colemine) 7″ Ohio’s sweetest soul singer Mr. Wesley Bright has returned with a new ear-worm called “Come Right Back”. This family man, entrepreneur, and beekeeper came down to Loveland and to produce some tracks with Leroi Conroy in a more minimal, hard hitting manner. The track started off with a Wu-Tang reference and then eventually evolved into a massive 7 minute soul jam featuring strings and horns arranged by Wesley himself.
Broadcast: Microtronic – Vol. 1 & 2 (Warp) LP Microtronics Volumes 1 & 2’s initial availability alone makes it some of the group’s most curious releases, released first as tour-only 3” CDs in 2003 and 2005 before being offered exclusively via mail order. True to its name, Microtronics offers miniatures of Broadcast’s experimental spirit, the majority of the 21 tracks coming in under 2 minutes. Thankfully, its brief runtime doesn’t restrict any of the group’s sprawling ambition. If anything, those hoping for a consistent through-line from track to track or some semblance of a particular Broadcast era might want to tread carefully with this one. ‘Microtronics 1’ opens the set with jazz percussion underpinning skittering synths before making a hard pivot into a distorted, driving beat on ‘2’. From there, Microtronics is a frenetic free-for-all of creative ideas, building instrumental sketches of the group’s signature psychedelic pop before dissolving them in brief baths of unsettling noise, ambient passages, glitchy beatwork or free jazz-adjacent explorations depending on where the groups exuberant minds drift to next. Microtronics Volumes 1 & 2 drifts furthest from anything sounding like the band’s other work, ultimately makes for a fascinating addition to any completist collection. Capturing the band between two of their most beloved records, Microtronics fashions a scattershot bridge between the band’s final releases out of lighthearted sonic exercises and inspired glimpses into the creative minds of Broadcast.
Broadcast: Mother Is the Milky Way (Warp) LP Released as a tour only CD limited to 750 copies supporting their collaborative album with the Focus Group in 2009, Mother Is The Milky Way takes on a retrospective weight as Broadcast’s true final release before Trish Keenan’s passing in 2011. The release contains some of Broadcast’s warmest, most personal recordings as a group. Trish Keenan was known for her dreamily distant delivery on Broadcast’s records, but before connecting with James Cargill, Keenan was a part of another duo in Birmingham: the more folk-leaning Hayward Winters. While virtually nothing from that project made it onto the internet aside from a few mentions in interviews, it provides some explanation for how naturally Broadcast slipped into sample-heavy psych folk for Mother. The EP properly opens on ‘In Here The World Begins’, unfurling woozily but proving to be the closest Keenan and Cargill come to a standard issue Broadcast song here. Highlight ‘Elegant Elephant’ is more telling of the project’s aim, crafting a pastoral folk song in what sounds like the belly of a beast, soothed only by the reverberations of Keenan’s voice inside. Sketches of songs quickly give way to tripped out field recordings, woodwind interludes, and excited chatter underpinning Keenan’s singing, giving Mother a certain wide-eyed, psychedelic Alice in Wonderland-esque whimsy. Considering Keenan was a known lover of the children’s book, it’s hard not see Mother as a bittersweet, unintentional tribute to Keenan’s life, but far more enjoyable to just enjoy the ride down one last rabbit hole from Broadcast.
Alex Cameron: Oxy Music (Secretly Canadian) LP Alex Cameron has always been a great storyteller, finding his ways into the depths of the places where not many others are looking, and Oxy Music continues on that trajectory. It’s filled with stories of people who fall outside the system and exist in the grey areas of life. In its design – its music, lyrics and tracklist – lies the journey a person can take, if the circumstances present themselves – down the road of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. Initially inspired by Nico Walker’s Cherry, Cameron was spurred into yet another commentary on American Life, this time about the opioid crisis that has taken over the country. He says about Oxy Music: “The album is a story, a work of fiction, mostly from the perspective of a man. Starved of meaningful purpose, confused about the state of the world, and in dire need of a reason to live – a person can, and according to the latest statistics, increasingly will, turn to opioids. This is one of those people.” While Oxy Music could be dark, it’s instead brighter and more buoyant than much of Cameron’s previous work, a shift in mood first seen across 2019’s Miami Memory. It’s told from a place of optimism and through the lens of Cameron, in the way that only he can tell it.
Jarvis Cocker: Jarvis (Rough Trade) LP Jarvis Cocker’s 2006 solo debut finds the ex-Pulp frontman returning to the well-honed Britpop sound of his lauded former band after a brief stint heading up the Relaxed Muscle techno project. While Jarvis lacks the cinematic expanse of Pulp’s swansong, We Love Life, and the darkly brooding atmosphere of This Is Hardcore, it hews fairly closely to the pop-savvy rock sound of His ‘N’ Hers and Different Class. Cocker’s deep croon and witty social observations are fully on display here, whether he’s singing about an inappropriate lover (“Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time”), not so subtly alluding to murder (the deceptively gentle “I Will Kill Again”), or being assaulted by portly kids (the punked-up “Fat Children”). Joining Cocker are Pulp alum Mark Webber (guitar) and Steve Mackey (bass), along with six-stringer (and revered singer-songwriter) Richard Hawley. Although Jarvis may not eclipse past Pulp glories, it certainly honors their roguish spirit, and serves as an excellent showcase for Cocker’s cheeky charm.
Cro-Mags: Hard Times in the Age of Quarrel Vol. 1 Cro-Mags: Hard Times in the Age of Quarrel Vol. 2 (Back on Black) LP Killer live album from one of the most legendry hard-core bands! Two blistering live sets that feature 36 tracks (across both volumes) and Include We Gotta Know, World Peace, Show No Mercy, Apocalypse Now, Signs Of The Times, Age Of Quarrel, Hard Times and Death Camps.
Dip: Sticking With It (Dualtone) LP On their Dualtone Records debut Sticking With It, Seattle-based seven-piece The Dip deliver the kind of unbridled rhythm-and-blues that hits on every emotional level. Inciting everything from raw catharsis to heavy-hearted reckoning to wildly exuberant joy, the self-produced album marks a major creative breakthrough for the band. To that end, Sticking With It fully channels the vitality of the freewheeling live show that’s earned them an ardent following over the last decade, matching their sophisticated musicianship with a fantastically loose energy. When met with The Dip’s reflection on matters both timely (the crush of late capitalism, the glaring need for true community) and irrefutably timeless (the vast complexities of love and loss), the resulting body of work captures the mood of the current moment while offering immediate escape into a more elevated state of mind.
Duster: Stratosphere (Numero) CS Best listened to from inside the womb, Duster’s 1998’s debut Stratosphere simultaneously capped off and reinvented the slow core’s first wave. A four track dreamscape that will wake the neighbors and then lull them back to sleep. Hazy, arpeggiated guitars layer over a deliberate drummer with no real place to be, as semi-inaudible vocals warn of millennial malaise and subtly encourage the listener to “rock out, rock out, rock out, rock out.”
Duster: Contemporary Movement (Numero) CS A muffled cry into the technological darkness, Contemporary Movement slid into the world right as the MP3 was seeping out of college dorms. A 39-minute drift into the void, drenched in Cold War-era reverb and then submerged in four track hiss for good measure. Duster constructed a Brutalist masterpiece on the outskirts of a suburban mall, as if to say, “We were here.”
Earthless: From The Ages (Nuclear Blast) LP 2013 album from the award-winning San Diego power rock band. From The Ages is their first studio album since the release of 2007’s critically acclaimed Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky. Earthless prides itself on creating energetic, free thinking instrumental music inspired by an eclectic mix of German Krautrock and Japanese heavy Blues-Rock. The Californian trio has dedicated itself to mastery of the mind-bending jam session, evoking the spirits of Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath in equal measure. Earthless’ sound has been called ”A sonic kaleidoscope of lava and lightning,” earning it the title of ”California’s loudest band.”
Duke Ellington & John Coltrane: s/t (Verve) LP Released in 1962, the titanic Duke Ellington & John Coltrane is a must-have historical document that captures the only meeting between the greatest figure in all of jazz history and one of the most significant revolutionary figures of the 1960s and beyond. Ellington sets the mood and both soloists complement each other brilliantly throughout. The legendary session is both warm and exciting and offers up plenty of surprises for fans of both Ellington and Coltrane, particularly in terms of texture, tenderness, and cohesiveness. 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.
Kazi & Madlib: Blackmarket Seminar (Tuff Kong) LP Kazi’s Blackmarket Seminar was entirely produced by Madlib and boasts guest features from MED, Wildchild, Declaime (Dudley Perkins) and Oh No. The album was recorded in 1996 and has been newly re-remastered for vinyl 2LP. Kazi says, “We recorded this album in the wee hours at CDP studios back in ‘96. It was pretty much me, Madlib and Declaime in the lab when this album was recorded. I learned so much from Lib cadence, rhyme patterns, timing and how to dig for records. What some people don’t know is this cat actually took the time to show me how to make beats. I must say working with Lib was an amazing experience. The “Blackmarket Seminar” is a very raw and dark album. We came up with “Black Market” because at the time we were doing Hip Hop that nobody else was doing and to us you could only get it on the “Black Market”. When you first play the album you’ll hear characters on a skit in search of the black market seminar. We really tried to make it seem like the characters were outside walking around looking for it.”
Aladean Kheroufi: Love!… (Is The Answer) (Kimberlite) 7″ There was a night that sticks out in my mind as I’m writing this. Aladean was over at my place, we were listening to soul records and having some drinks. From beer and Barbara Lynn to tequila and Thomas East if my memory serves… but that’s unreliable at best. Specifics of the night are blurry, but what really stuck with me since then was the running topic that carried the conversation for the entire evening: a profound passion for love songs. This record leads with Love!… (Is The Answer), a ballad in line with Aladean’s espoused ideology. Velvet vocals, a playful swing to the drums, and intimate exchanges between guitar and keyboard tease at yearnings which harmonizing backing vocals satisfy with exultation. This isn’t a simple love song proclaiming romantic feelings for just one person, this is a grand gesture that declares love for everyone. This is therapy, philosophy, and a recipe to get through hard times. This is help we all need. Were the leading side to be foreplay, then the other will bring you to an earned climax. Every Girl hits with a force that will shake you and sets a rhythmic pace that may break you. Reminiscent of Mr. Mayfield’s Move On Up, horns punctuate percussion and bass that are only just barely constrained. This is an expression of pure joy and an exploration of the heart’s governance. These two sides serve both as a testament to the glory of love, and as physical representation of a true labor of love. Cutting through the profundity though, our biggest hope is that you just love this music.
John Carroll Kirby: Cyptozoo OST (Stones Throw) LP John Carroll Kirby brings his talents as a composer and producer to film scoring. His vivid imagination, dreamy compositions, and knack for storytelling with instrumental music make for a perfect match with comic book writer, artist and filmmaker Dash Shaw’s vibrant, fantastical animated feature. Kirby’s score is at once deeply evocative and mysterious, evoking nostalgia, wide-eyed innocence, and ethereal otherworldliness. As with all of Kirby’s music, the score resists easy genre classification, melding together sounds from New Age, exotica, library music, and the sweeter side of electronic music.
Lemonheads: It’s A Shame About Ray (Fire) LP Lemonheads’ seminal album It’s A Shame About Ray, lovingly reissued for it’s 30th Anniversary. The long overdue reissue includes a slew of extra material, including an unreleased ‘My Drug Buddy’ KCRW session track from 1992 featuring Juliana Hatfield, B-sides from singles ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’ and ‘Confetti’, a track from the ‘Mrs. Robinson / Being Round’ EP, alongside demos that will be released for the first time on vinyl. This reissue celebrates their prestigious fifth album, these deluxe bookback editions feature new liner notes and unseen photos. Described by music journalist and author Everett True as “A 30-minute insight into what it’s like to live hard and fast and loose and happy with like-minded buddies, fuelled by a shared love for similar bands and drugs and booze and freedom.”. ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’ had a considerable impact back in those heady, carefree days of ’92, the record perfectly captures Dando’s ability to effortlessly encapsulate teenage longing and lust over the course of a two-minute pop song. Singles such as ‘My Drug Buddy’ and the breezy perfect pop of the title track might stand out (plus the add-on of ‘Mrs. Robinson’ which later copies included), but the album’s real strength lies in the tracks in-between; the truly fantastic ‘Confetti’ (written about Evan’s parents’ divorce), and the eye-wateringly casual acoustic cover of ‘Frank Mills’ (from the “hippie” musical Hair), a version that seems to resonate with every ounce of pathos and emotion felt for the lost 1960s generation. To hear Evan Dando sing lines like ‘I love him/but it embarrasses me/To walk down the street with him/He lives in Brooklyn somewhere/And he wears his white crash helmet’ is to truly appreciate how wonderful and tantalising pop music can be. Then, there’s the rush of insurgency and brattishness on the wonderfully truncated ‘Bit Part’; the topsy-turvy ‘Ceiling Fan In My Spoon’… this was male teenage skinny-tie pop music on a level of brilliance with The Kinks, early Undertones, Wipers.
Moldy Peaches: Origin Story 1994-1999 (ORG) LP Adam Green and Kimya Dawson originally crossed paths at an open mic night in Mount Kisco, New York in the early 90s. From there they went on to record a surplus of home recordings with various friends under the moniker The Moldy Peaches, and eventually became staples in the NYC anti-folk scene of the late 90’s/early 2000’s. After releasing several albums that gained traction in the U.S. and UK, the group broke into the mainstream when their song “Anyone Else But You” appeared in the hit indie film Juno (2007). Origin Story: 1994-1999 is a collection of songs, unreleased demos, live tracks, and poems from the early years of The Moldy Peaches, and outline the tale of how the band came to be. Liner notes written by Adam and Kimya detail the stories behind each track and rare photos included in the packaging help to illustrate the life and times of the duo when they were young. Audio remastered by Sarah Register, packaging designed by Kelly Cousins.
Moon Duo: Mazes (Sacred Bones) LP Available again! Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips) and Sanae Yamada have been burning up the scene with their propulsive beats and compelling acid washed shows. Certainly the most pop-oriented batch of songs the band has ever delivered, 2011’s Mazes reveals a more accessible vocal delivery and song structure that is sure to appeal to a wide audience not necessarily well-versed in the psych underground. The concepts of minimalism, expansion through repetition and sensory distortion are all still here and the dynamic interplay between Ripley’s guitar and Sanae’s keyboard continue to push this band and genre into uncharted territory. A benchmark follow-up to their critically acclaimed previous LP, Escape and prior release for Sacred Bones, Killing Time.
Lee Perry: Africa’s Blood (Music on Vinyl) LP Upon release in 1971, Africa’s Blood was the first record Lee “Scratch” Perry released under his own name, although his band The Upsetters do appear on most of the tracks. If any album serves as a good peak into what was happening in Jamaican music in the early 70s, Africa’s Blood is the way to go. There’s an undeniable influence from American contemporary R&B, but still Perry’s signature dub and reggae fusion shines through. 180g vinyl LP.
Tanya Tagaq: Tongues (Six Shooter) LP You don’t think about what’s underfoot until it stirs. Tanya Tagaq, an experimental, improvisational, exceptional artist, has felt the land beneath her shake. To survive, you have to know what you’re doing. To survive, you have to trust in the body. Tagaq’s power, her voice, still comes from this place, where to defy nature is doom. Tongues, Tagaq’s new album, enters deep chasms and dangerous spaces. Produced by Saul Williams and mixed by Gonjasufi, Tagaq’s Tongues speaks not to horrors and crisis, as previous Tagaq albums wordlessly, powerfully encircled, but directly of these things. Tongues is Tagaq at her most explicit and specific. Delicate, poetic passages from Split Tooth, Tagaq’s bestselling, award winning mythobiography, crash against an industrial, electronic exoskeleton.
Various: Songs for Tres (Sacred Bones) LP On the tribute album Songs for Tres, Psychic Ills band members come together to commemorate the late Tres Warren who passed away just as the world turned upside down in March of 2020. Isolated, feeling helpless and lost by the death of her musical soul mate and collaborator of 18 years, bassist Elizabeth Hart found making music to be her only outlet in a time where people were unable to be physically together to mourn. So, she reached out to Adam Amram, Jon Catfish DeLorme and Brent Cordero, the main players in the Ills line up since the release of their last full length album Inner Journey Out (2016), to ask if they would embark on this cathartic journey with her. This was a different kind of production endeavor for Hart driven solely by “the aching need and urgency” to do something to honor her friend. Keeping the project in the Ills family, Hart produced the album alongside Iván Diaz Mathé, the long-time Psychic Ills sound engineer. The album consists of five original tracks and four cover songs. Initially, learning the covers was just a method for the musicians to “break the ice” and play together again for the first time without their band leader. However, those tracks became just as important to include as the originals because of their essential role in the process of coming together to make the album. The cover songs were chosen because of their unique connections to the band’s memories of Warren. Dennis Wilson’s “Rainbows” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Station Man” come from two of Warren’s favorite albums, Pacific Ocean Blue and Kiln House. The band also recorded Blaze Foley’s “Clay Pigeons” and Powell St. John’s “Right Track Now.” The idea for the latter was suggested by Amram. Warren once sent him a clip of Roky Erikson singing a moving rendition of that song in the film Demon Angel and it had stuck with him ever since. Hart wrote “I’ll Walk With You” on the day of Warrens’ passing, at the time not knowing what it meant. When she got the call with the heartbreaking news, it became clear to her what the song was about. Relying on a gently lilting string arrangement to set the tone, this duet features Mazzy Star vocalist Hope Sandoval alongside Hart. Sandoval previously collaborated with Psychic Ills accompanying Warren on “I Don’t Mind” (2016). The ideas for “Home” and “Walk Around,” two other songs on the album by Hart, started simply with an acoustic guitar and lyrics, a hopeful exercise to connect with her lost friend. Brent Cordero’s instrumental “Whole Lotta Piece of Mind” is nothing short of a transcendental experience. By running his pedal steel through a Leslie speaker, Jon Catfish DeLorme crafts the unique tone showcased on “Wonderful Feeling,” a moving example of studio experimentation combined with old school techniques. DeLorme describes it as “an attempt to highlight the musical experience I shared with Tres both sonically and thematically. What resulted is the unguarded exaltation I feel lucky to have shared with my fellow bandmates.” Adam Amram’s “Into the Sea” was composed spontaneously the week Warren passed. The melodic tune has a hopeful lightness and Amram describes it simply as “a song to my brother”. Their connection shines through.
Various: Tanamur City: Indonesian AOR, City Pop & Boogie 1979-1991 (Cultures of Soul) LP Cultures of Soul continues their global exploration across space and time to discover the funkiest pockets of music culture the world has to offer! This time they make a pitstop in Jakarta, in the years between 1979 and 1991 – the peak of the New Order. Not the British electronic post-punk band that enjoyed great success during this same period but the revolutionary government of President Suharto, which could be characterized as a “dictatorship”… along with all the political repressiveness that entails. However, at the same time, Suharto’s full-throated advocacy of foreign trade resulted in a new economic buoyancy, an expansion of tourism and culture industries, and a flourishing of the entertainment sector. Suharto aggressively courted western corporations to do business in Indonesia, which led to the need for more and more entertainment to distract the expatriates after hours. Jakarta became a wonderland of colorful discotheques, nightclubs and restaurants that merged traditional Indonesian ambience with the sexy ultramodern pulse of the disco beat. While imported disco records dominate playlists, a local music scene has developed in parallel, with indigenous artists like Chaseiro, Rafika Duri, The Rollies and Lydia Kandou embracing the use of synthesizers and drum machines, modern studio production and influences from western pop, rock, funk, boogie, disco, jazz, yacht rock as well as Japanese “City Pop.” And from all this they are forging a distinctive Indonesian dance-pop sound that will largely remain hidden from the rest of the world… until now. Compiled by Munir Septiandry of the influential Indonesian DJ collective Midnight Runners, Tanamur City collects some of the high points of the latter part of this era, conjuring up a world of humid nights in packed discos, no-holds-barred genre blending, fun, fashion and funkiness of a kind never before seen in Southeast Asia… and seen rarely since.
Yikes! Another heavy week. So many gems in this week! I couldn’t just choose one, so there’s four picks this week. First, the newest LP from the unstoppable International Anthem, possibly their mellowest offering yet from Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer. Good Morning Tapes‘ newest offering by Pataphysical is superb. M by Yves Jates comes out of nowhere, and Piotr Kurek delivers a brilliantly quirky album of chamber electronics. And for other sweet slabs, there’s the newest Shinichi Atobe, a less than legit, but much needed reissue of Jorge Ben’s Forca Bruta, a bunch of killer library slabs from Be With, more killer jazz from Souffle Continu and a couple more Blue Notes. Now Again is giving the royal treatment to the Tribe Records catalog, the Melvins’ Five Legged Dog gets a massive 4LP release and Numero has issued a killer collection of the V4 Visions catalog. Dig in!
Also, they’ve announced the Record Store Day exclusives list. You can find the list HERE or the Canadian list HERE , but it’s also worth noting, that we deal with tons of suppliers so we also can sometimes get some of the UK & European releases. Needless to say we’ll be ordering all the stuff we would stock if it was just a regular release, but if there’s something on the list you hope to find in our shop on that day, be sure to let us know ASAP so we can be sure to order it for you. Don’t worry, we’ll order a ton of Viktor Vaughn, Art Pepper, Karen Dalton, Voivoid. As usual, unfortunately, just because we order 20 doesn’t mean we’ll get 20. So keep an eye out closer to the date to see what we’ll actually have in. Oh and it’s important to note as well, no more Remote RSD, this year, in store only.. good thing we’ve all been practicing standing in line for the last 2 years.
Well there may not be any health restrictions anymore, but we are still operating as below..
– in-store shopping/pick ups – 11 – 6 pm Monday – Friday, 11 am – 4 pm Saturday (if you don’t want to come into the store for a pick up, call and/or use the back door) – Max 4 people in the store at a time – We’d prefer if you’d wear a mask – Sanitize your hands (we’ll have some)
…..picks of the week…..
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer: Recordings From the Aland Islands (International Anthem) LP In 2017 Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer traveled together to the Åland Islands (an archipelago that is host to around 6,500 islands) in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. They headed to the islands with the intention of helping two friends (mother/daughter duo Jannika/Sage Reed) barn raise a small inn named Hotel Svala in Kumlinge (a municipality consisting of a small group of islands and a population of about 320). The idea was that, once completed, Svala would host artist residencies and workshop programs, creating a direct link between the islands and the USA. The concept of recording music there came about as Honer & Chiu learned more and more about the islands. They were taken by the serene and strange quality of the place. The sun doesn’t set in the summer (and barely rises in the winter). The network of miniature islands is traversed by ferry which, according to Chiu, “casts a surreal horizontal movement through space and time, with islands shifting into and out of periphery, totally still and calm, yet always in motion.” In 2019 they were awarded a grant from the Department of Culture to return and perform a concert at the Kumlinge Kyrka, a 14th century medieval church adorned with incredible frescos. The concert was recorded and became source material – along with improvisations on viola and electronics, pipe organ, pump organ, piano, synthesizers, field recordings and voice memos, all captured across both their trips at various locations on the archipelago – from which they meticulously crafted a post-script in the form of ‘Recordings from the Åland Islands’. Easing listeners into the feeling of the place, the album’s opening track “In Åland Air” is a dream-like haze that slows time, invoking the feeling of descending by plane onto the archipelago, a place Chiu recalls as “lush with a gentle, brackish breeze…” On “Snåcko,” a track named for the island next to Kumlinge, the music becomes a transportive portrait, painting in sound “the romantic and gentle atmosphere of the forests in Åland — a place where your eyes slowly adjust to the rainbow-colored moss covering granite boulders. Walking around, you find the forest floor blossoming with blueberries, currants, and flowers…” The longest and darkest movement in the collection, “Archipelago,” encapsulates “the experience of being surrounded in the vast network of islands” with a dense cloud of slowly modulating string layers, improvised by Honer in an empty swimming pool at Svala. “The heaviness of the track,” says Honer, “is a reference to the deep darkness experienced during the Nordic winter days.” But the plaintive atmosphere of that penultimate piece is succeeded with the triumphant final movement of the album, “Under the Midnight Sun,” which bellows forth like a vibrant chorus of melodious sighs, echoing classic sounds from Jon Hassell’s ‘Vernal Equinox’, or Franco Battiato’s ‘Clic’, or Brian Eno’s ‘Another Green World’. Just as two eyes, two ears, and two halves of a brain work together to create a memory, on their duo debut, Honer and Chiu’s collective pallet produces a vivid three-dimensional hyperreality of painterly tones and textures – bright and kaleidoscopic, but with a deeply warm, earthen resonance. The music evokes a powerful sense of place, transporting and immersing listeners in the other-world of the Åland Islands. And though they achieve this in beautifully natural, organic manner, Chiu & Honer agree this album is quite unlike anything they’ve made before, and likely unlike anything they’ll make in the future.
File Under: Ambient, Electronic, Fourth World, Kris’s Picks Buy Here
Pataphysical: Hapticality (Good Morning Tapes) LP ‘Hapticality’ is a gently febrile session weft from whimful sketches plotted out between 2013-2021, and like their much lauded ‘Periphera’ LP, Andrés Saenz De Sicilia, Camilo Tirado and Matt Linares hustle a dream sequence of FM synth fronds laced with field recordings and analogue textures that effortlessly wrap us up in their sound, calling to mind the post-new age ambient and jazz inflected interzones of CV & JAB as much as 0PN’s hypnagogic wooze or BoC’s pastoral vignettes. Where the moniker Pataphysical could have bogged down other operators, the trio deftly work under that mantle with a mix of sublime, world building lushness and unanticipated turns that slowly bifurcate and reweave the listener’s lines of thought into theirs. With time slipping guile they lead from the contemplative oasis of ’Sonora’ to a perfectly unanticipated arrival of a Welsh narrator on the pastoral ‘Moonlit Picnic’, with the dematerialised dub of ‘Integument’ drifting into their most immersively descriptive sound design on the album’s title cut, and Gabriel Chips’ extended reed tekkers blossoming into 4th world whorls on ‘Break Lament’ to sound something like Tara Clerkin Trio on mushies. Hard to deny that Pataphysical’s brand of sensory seduction is at its most intoxicating here, subtly quilting a more grown-up alternative to the pillowy mass of modern ambient music in a way that’s richly imaginative and satisfying, making for one of our favourite Good Morning Tapes releases of the last couple of years.
File Under: Ambient, Electronic, Kris’s Picks Buy Here
Yves Jates: M (Maga Circe Musica) LP Alicia Carrera and Donato Dozzy’s Maga Circe Musica imprint follows last year’s ace Dozzy and Daniele di Gregorio album with a hallucinogenic slush of Tangerine Dream-esque electronics, dubbed soundscapes and grim, low-light ambience from Yves Jates. His discrete consolidations of electronic and classical forms hit the spot if you’re into anything from Emeralds through to Ora Clementi, Madalyn Merkey and Topdown Dialectic. Better known as a motion designer who’s produced high profile work under the name Yko, Jates crawls into darker corners on his debut album, mysteriously titled “M”. Each track is described as a musical moment and sounds as if Jates is traversing rocky musical terrain, fluxing fluidly from proggy, kosmische psychedelics, into throbbing, dubwise dark ambient and organ drone. As far as first releases go, ‘M’ is neatly accomplished in a way that speaks to its creator’s classical pathos and feel for electronic ephemerality. With a minimalist palette of shimmering synth and organ tones he creates imaginary spaces with a wholly absorbing sense of light and shadow and natural reverbs that effortlessly suspend disbelief. Hand in hand, electronic and classical structures melt into one another across eight iridescent movements variously conveying moods ranging from neurotic to psychedelic, each puckered into chamber-like scenes that feel like AI renders of renaissance imagery. His canvas appears 3D and billowing omnidirectional, craftily lit from angles that encourage listeners to ponder them from all sides, and which lure us into beautifully ethereal headspaces. From the pizzicato spirals of ‘Moment 1’ thru the swaying low register pulse of ‘Moment 8’ he elegantly weaves between hypnotic optimism and reflective states of mind, with passages of sky-kissing bliss turning inward to cloud chamber rumination and more intently future-primitivist metallic plucks, each puckered into concise timeframes that keep the feels shaded in shadowy gradients to a real highlight in the lushly off-colour harmonics of ‘Moment 7’, while the album takes a stark left turn at ‘Moment 3’, descending into fog and murk and accentuating an atmosphere that somehow connects to Topdown Dialectic’s blunted minimalist dub. It’s a varied, cinematic album that treats its wide frame of reference with a lava-like fluidity, offering a set of fractal euphoria and vibe-drenched mysticism.
File Under: Ambient, Electronic, Kris’s Picks Buy Here
Piotr Kurek: World Speaks (Edicoes CN) LP Stunningly weird chamber music from contemporary outlier Piotr Kurek, featuring his vocal incantations accompanied by organ and fine reed instruments, with results that remind us of Wojciech Rusin’s brilllliant ‘The Funnel’ album fused with the wormlike mind-expansions of Rashad Becker’s Traditional Music Of Notional Species albums for PAN, and a sort of alternate reality/medieval ECM soundbath arranged by James Ferarro. Yeah, it’s our kinda shit. For years, Warsaw-based multi-instrumentalist Kurek has used Thomas Cole’s paintings as desktop wallpaper on his laptop. Cole was celebrated for his elaborate, classically-inspired landscapes, imaginging the outstretched American wilderness in the romantic tones of ancient Greece or Rome. Kurek’s music on “World Speaks” seeks to make similar stylistic contortions, grabbing familiar sounds – organ, voice, reed instruments – and using digital modulations to re-contextualize our assumptions about the direction of each piece. He describes each composition as a painting, approaching his process with purpose and skill as he stitches the ancient and modern into Escher-esque illusions. Kurek here gives voice to his machines’ memory banks of deconstructed choral tongues in lathered rearrangements of lilting ululation, each matched by weird electronics and percolated organ notes. The results are far more precise and pointillist than the smeared and languorous tones of his previous theatrical soundtrack ‘A Sacrifice Shall Be Made’ (2020), and certainly a lot calmer than his formative breakcore releases as Ślepcy for the likes of DJ Scud’s Ambush, each pointing to a composer who is quietly coming into his own thru rustic yet future-facing elisions of folk, electronic and classical paradigms. Key to the appeal of Kurek’s music is a fine grasp of wavering distance, finding and working around the sweetspot where perceptions of harmony and dissonance smudge and create deliciously strange new sensations at the border of the sacred and profane. His seven pieces cause an air of surreality over the proceedings, oscillating the purely microtonal vocal drones of ‘Chordists’ with slightly dadaist scatting, daydream organ pipe melodies and jazz/classical woodwind in ‘A Source of All Scenery’, where the bobbling phonemes of ’Soloists’ and frolicking vignette of ‘Key & Stop’ follow. Perhaps the most curious of the lot is its title tune’s lattice of layered harmonic juxtapositions, and likewise the cochlea tweaking final of ‘Orgue’, where the voices resonate Rashad Becker’s conception of a traditional music for notional species, hinting that the “world” of Kurek’s title isn’t necessarily one we know, but one that exists in a sort of shared, rarified imagination. Unsettlingly brilliant.
File Under: Electronic, Chamber, Kris’s Picks Buy Here
…..new arrivals…..
Acavernus & Yantra: Gnose (Buh) LP Buh Records presents Gnose, the joint full-length by the solo acts of Paula Rebellato (Rakta) and Douglas Leal (Deafkids), members of two of the most thriving and groundbreaking bands coming out of Brazil to the world lately. Produced between 2019 and 2020 in São Paulo, Brazil, some of the compositions were first conceived for a live performance in late 2019 and then expanded into a full-length album, part recorded in studio and part at home during the first months of the pandemic. Inspired by the ritualistic potentials of music, Gnose offers a vertical and circular narrative throughout its seven themes, exploring atmospheres that may contribute to experiences of displacement and inner silence. The fusion of traditional and acoustic instruments with electronic and processed sounds highlights the strong characteristics of both projects, melted into a journey within timeless soundscapes. Paula Rebellato is an artist based in São Paulo, Brazil. Her journey with music and sound started at young age and became a more consistent path when she co-founded the genre-bending group Rakta. Paula’s solo project Acavernus, active since 2013, incorporates sound, visual and written language. Inspired by sounds and atmospheres that evokes strangeness and beauty, she dives into memories and encounters that leads to her own center of intuitive and instinctive expressions, always trying to work and explore different tools and materials for composing. Her work with the voice, processed by different effect pedals, takes the listener to both comfortable and uncomfortable places. Yantra is the solo project by Douglas Leal, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and founding member of the Brazilian psychedelic punk trio Deafkids. Douglas’s solo project emerged in 2015 as a psychedelic and meditative audio-visual outlet for experimental/home-recordings but has since evolved into self-released tapes and collaborative recordings, live soundtrack for yoga and meditation sessions and improvisation sets with many different artists from São Paulo. Inspired by the modal music from different cultures around the world and using the electric guitar as the main instrument for his excursions into drones, ragas, and maqams, over time Douglas began to explore the use of acoustic sounds such as native wind instruments, the Greek bouzouki, the Turkish ney, mouth harps etc., expanding the project’s color palette into unknown musical paths. Artwork by Douglas Leal. Edition of 300.
Shinichi Atobe: Love of Plastic (DDS) LP Eeeeeesh, Shinichi Atobe’s sixth album for DDS, another deployment of effortless and entirely inimitable club classics that connect the dots between effervescent dub house, deep techno and swirling beatdown, selected and compiled from a package of new productions sent from Japan with nothing but cryptic track titles for guidance. Love of Plastic – we talking aesthetic here pal? bit like comme de garçons’ genius, subversive amplification of synthetics in perfume? Something like Mark Fell’s assertion that “House music is best when it does not aim to copy ‘real’ music”? Impossible to tell – and honestly part of the thrill is in not really fully grasping Atobe’s praxis. What we can say is that with every album there’s a shift – sometimes barely perceptible – in spirit and focus. On this one everything’s gone a bit heavier – bit deeper – once again refracted through Rashad Becker’s mastering prism. You really could be listening to music recorded decades, years or a few weeks ago – we’ll probably never know. But with the simplicity comes a kind of impenetrable code too. That fleeting diva vocal sample 4 minutes into ‘Love of plastic 6’ – what’s it doing there? why does it work so well? Perhaps the reason Shinichi’s music resonates with so many is the impregnable sense of optimism buried in his DNA – there’s a breeze of warm air that takes over whenever his music is played, a promise of better days, blue skies, tingling skin, sultry evenings – all that hammy stuff. But also, entirely undeniable. Play this one and tell us you don’t feel it? Spring’s almost in the air.
Band of Horses: Things Are Great (BMG) LP Coloured wax! Band of Horses return with their sixth album and first in over half a decade! Things Are Great marks a return to their earlier work and the kind of raw ethos that lies at the heart of Band of Horses. Founder Ben Bridwell produced or co-produced all 10 tracks – most of which were written pre-pandemic. Past collaborators Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips), Dave Sardy and engineer Wolfgang “Wolfie” Zimmerman also all make contributions here. Bridwell comments on lead single “Crutch”: “I feel like a variety of my songs, ‘Crutch’ begins with one thing from my actual life. Clearly ‘Crutch’ means a number of the issues that I used to be depending on. My relationship for one. I feel I wished to say, ‘I’ve bought a crush on you,’ and I believed it was humorous how relationships additionally really feel like crutches. I really feel like everyone has had a time when nothing goes proper and you continue to have to hold on. I feel that feeling hits you on this track even in case you don’t know what the specifics are.”
Ros Bandt and Lime: Soft and Fragile (Efficient Space) LP Efficient Space presents Soft and Fragile by Ros Bandt and LIME (Live Improvised Music Events), originally released by Move Records in 1983. A pioneering figure in Australian music, Bandt is known for her work with sound sculpture, electronics, acoustic ecology, and invented instruments, as well as her writings and teaching. Soft and Fragile comprises a series of structured improvisations performed on custom-built bells and gongs. On the side-long “Ocean Bells”, Bandt performs on her “flagong”, a three-tiered vertical glass marimba that she made in 1978, inspired by the “cloud chamber bowls” of maverick instrument builder and microtonal composer Harry Partch. Over a long tape loop made up of slowed down sounds from the same instrument, she delicately strikes the glass bells with mallets, allowing individual pitches to ring out and decay with the aquatic wavering quality that suggested the piece’s title, eventually building into flowing melodic sequences. Structured as a series of events determined by the length of the performer’s breath, this gently undulating music invites listeners to lose themselves in delicate microtonal fluctuations and subtle yet expressive phrasing. For “Shifts”, Bandt is joined by Julie Doyle, Gavan McCarthy, and Carolyn Robb on a collectively composed work for clay bells. Atop a steady pulse, melodic and rhythmic cells expand and contract, shifting between LIME’s four members. LIME also perform the closing “Annapurna”, where timbres sourced from glass, clay and metal are freely threaded through a pulsating tape backdrop generated from loops of the ensemble chanting. While Bandt’s ideas and techniques draw on aspects of the invented instrument tradition of Partch and Bertoia, Stockhausen’s intuitive music, and the cyclical structures of American minimalism and Javanese gamelan, the floating world of Soft and Fragile also resonates with the work of new age outlier Stephan Micus and contemporary practitioners such as Tomoko Sauvage. In Bandt’s own words, this is “elegant and sensual music where the body and mind have the time to reflect and catch up with the moment as it passes — It is a music intended for respite.” Presented in a redesigned sleeve showcasing the performers and their instruments, the reissue reproduces the extensive original liner notes.
Jorge Ben: Forca Bruta (Future Shock) LP LP reissue from this 1970 album, originally out on Phillips. Totally brilliant. A unique blend of samba and soul, that apparently transformed Brazilian music from the release of this record onwards. Trio Mocoto joins Jorge Ben on this album, and it’s their percussive sound, Jorge’s voice and the light string arrangements that create pure magic… Highly recommended!
Peter Brotzmann/Milford Graves/William Parker: Historic Musci Past Tense Future (Black Editions) LP Black Editions presents Historic Music Past Tense Future, the first ever album to feature the meeting of Peter Brötzmann, Milford Graves, and William Parker. Three of the towering figures in the history of free jazz forge an incredibly vital free music born from lifetimes of uncompromising, ceaseless artistry. Historic Music Past Tense Future is the inaugural release by Black Editions Archive and the first in a series of records that will present previously unreleased works featuring Milford Graves.
Sammy Burdson: Background Action (Conroy) (Be With) LP Be With Records present a reissue of Sammy Burdson’s Background Action, originally released in 1975. Classic library breaks and beats set of super-heavyweight espionage-funk. Rare and sought-after for many years now, this is one of those cult library LPs that rarely turns up on even the deepest dig. Sammy Burdson was one of the many, many aliases of the mighty Austrian composer, arranger and conductor, Gerhard Narholz. Founder of adored library label Sonoton in 1965, and a classically trained composer, his work runs from easy listening through pop, jazz and electronic, to avant-garde. Background Action’s first side is all Blaxploitation wah-wah, funky clav and heavy, heavy drums. It’s top-quality takes on the sort of hard-knocking psychedelic sleuth-funk that the library labels gave us in spades. However, the real killers are over on side B. Styles upon styles upon styles. The trio of swish “Water Pollution” variations are pure gold. The two-part mid-tempo b-boy drumathon “News Background” is nothing short of epic whilst the sensational “Kabul Trip A” and “Kabul Trip B” are two different takes on some tough funk, street jazz style with some dope organ, bass and drum sounds. In short, this is a must for both DJs and producers. The British library label with those instantly recognizable “orangey-red” sleeves, Conroy began releasing production music in 1965. A sub-label of Berry Music Co, its catalog typified the library industry’s strange mixture of tradition and experimentation from the start. Conroy’s early releases included work by big band stalwarts like Eddie Warner as well as early electronic recordings by the likes of Belgian experimental pioneer Arséne Souffriau. With Berry Music Co working as a distribution partner to the German library label Sonoton, it was through the Conroy that a great deal of German library music found its way into the UK market. Conroy stopped putting out new music in the 1980s, but its history and its catalog offer an excellent window into the trends and eccentricities of a highly unique industry at the height of its international appeal. Mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis from audio from the original tapes. Richard Robinson reproduced the original Conroy sleeve.
Capon/Mate/Morris/Rahoerson: s/t (Souffle Continu) LP Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Jean-Charles Capon/Philippe Maté/Lawrence “Butch” Morris/Serge Rahoerson, originally released in 1977. “In November 1976, Jef Gilson’s phone rang. What a surprise! It was Serge Rahoerson, one of the musicians he had met in Madagascar at the end of the ’60s and who had played on his first album Malagasy (FFL 066CD/LP). Rahoerson announced that he was in Paris for a few days. Immediately, Jef wanted to organize a recording session, starting the next day. He thought of a trio including Serge, Eddy Louiss on organ and cellist Jean-Charles Capon, who had also been on one of the trips to Tananarive and so had also known Rahoerson there. Unfortunately, Eddy Louiss had to drop out at the last minute: he was delayed by a session with Claude Nougaro. Jean-Charles Capon had also become a sought-after studio musician since his trip to Madagascar in 1969. He appeared on several key albums on the Saravah label including the now famous Comme À La Radio by Brigitte Fontaine, Un Beau Matin by Areski and Chorus by Michel Roques, without mentioning the album by his own Baroque Jazz Trio. He was also to be found with Jef Gilson for his album on Vogue with the ex-drummer from Miles Davis’ first great quintet, Philly Joe Jones, or also in the orchestra led by Jean-Claude Vannier for the album Nino Ferrer & Leggs . . . Jean-Charles Capon and Serge Rahoerson found themselves thus in the studio, with Jef at the controls . . . A saxophonist by training, Jef remembered that Serge was also capable of great things behind a drum kit: he was the improvised drummer on their cover of ‘The Creator Has A Master Plan’ on the album Malagasy… The great memories came flooding back (the nod on the title ‘Orly – Ivato’), and the old magic worked again. Brought in momentarily from Europamerica, Gilson’s new big band, in which JC Capon also played, the saxophonists Philippe Maté, from France and the American Butch Morris were invited to record their parts later and Gilson mixed it all as if it had been one single session. The album would not appear until 1977, on Palm, Jef’s own label, and was dedicated to the memory of Georges Rahoerson, Serge’s father, who had also played on the album Malagasy and who had died prematurely at the age of 51 in 1974…” –Jérôme “Kalcha” Simonneau. Licensed from Palm / Geneviève Quievreux. Remastered from the master tapes. Includes four-page booklet with rare and unpublished photos.
caroline: s/t (Rough Trade) LP UK eight-piece Caroline’s eponymous debut album often cascades with force like an avalanche, squalling and rumbling on the edge of all-out collapse. At other points they slip back into impossibly fragile moments of quiet – a simple bassline or a rattle of snare the only sound amid a dark sea of silence. Caroline know exactly the right balance between restraint and release. These songs are expansive and emotive pieces, their rich palette drawing on a mixture of choral singing, Midwestern emo and O’Malley and Llewellyn’s roots in Appalachian folk. “Sometimes things sound much better when there’s empty space,” says Llewellyn. “Sometimes you might populate [a song] with too many things and forget that an element on its own is enough.” Elsewhere on the record the band have employed a collage-like technique, combining snippets of lo-fi recordings from a myriad of different locations – a barn in France, the members’ bedrooms and living rooms, the atmospheric swimming pool in which they also filmed sublime live sessions for “Dark Blue” and “Skydiving Onto the Library Roof” – with more traditional group sessions at the Total Refreshment Centre and their studio in Peckham. The growth that began as a scrappy guitar band above a pub many years ago is still continuing. Caroline’s astounding debut album is merely the first step.
Clara Mondshine: Memorymetropolis (Survival Research) LP Survival Research present a reissue of ‘s Memorymetropolis, originally released in 1983. Walter Bachauer has been an active part of Berlin’s but all in all Germany’s electronic and progressive music scene as long as he lived with his greatest achievements being the Meta Music festivals in Berlin in 1974, 1976, and 1978 while he worked as a line producer at RiasBerlin, the city’s biggest radio station. In the early to mid-80s he got back to compose and play music under the pseudonym Clara Mondshine and this is his second out of three albums from 1983, Memorymetropolis. Easy listening melodies come in smaller doses here despite his fondness for the pop-oriented side of the so-called Berlin School electronics and the overall time in which he operated this project.
Cosmic Jokers: s/t (Die Kosmischen Kuriere) LP Die Kosmischen Kuriere reissue the legendary debut album of the krautrock all-star band from 1974. Produced at Dierks Studios with the collaboration of Dieter Dierks. What an amazing improvement in the sound of this 48-year-old recording. Remastered from the original analog tapes. Released on the original Die Kosmische Kuriere label. Contributors: Manuel Göttsching, Klaus Schulze, Jürgen Dollase, Harald Großkopf, Dieter Dierks, a.o.
File Under: Prog, Psych, Koscmische, Krautrock Buy Here
Current 93: The Moons at Your Door (The Spheres) LP Opaque white LP in black gatefold sleeve bearing outer and inner artwork by David Tibet, including back cover art unique to the vinyl version. Gnostic cartoon supergroup Current 93 present their 93rd (!) album, The Moons At Your Door. The work consists of two long tracks, “The Moons At Your Door” and “There Is A GraveYard That Dwells In Man,” and reveals, yet again, an unexpected sidereal shift in C93’s vision and voice. This album follows the January 2016 publication of David Tibet’s The Moons At Your Door: An Anthology of Strange Tales, of whom this album is the sister.
Ted Curson: Pop Wine (Souffle Continu) LP Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Ted Curson’s Pop Wine, originally released in 1971. Originally from Philadelphia, invited to New York by Miles Davis, playing at Antibes in 1960 with Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy, here is trumpeter Ted Curson in 1971… in Paris. With him, a legendary trio: Georges Arvanitas (piano), Jacky Samson (double bass) and Charles Saudrais (drums). A new transatlantic alliance in the service of jazz of all kinds: classic, modal, fusion and even free… Pop Wine is — between Coltrane and Miles with a nod to roots in the club the Caveau de la Huchette — an explosive cocktail but which leaves no stains! In 1960, trumpeter Ted Curson played with Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy on stage at the Antibes jazz festival. Eleven years later he was in Paris to record one of the gems of his discography, with a hard-hitting French trio: Georges Arvanitas (piano), Jacky Samson (double bass) and Charles Saudrais (drums). Arvanitas was also someone who had travelled widely. Originally from Marseille, he had accompanied visiting American musicians in Paris before moving to the States. It was when he came back that the charismatic trio was created with Samson and Saudrais and who recorded, in 1970 on Futura, the unforgettable In Concert and then, the following year, Pop Wine with Ted Curson. Pop Wine: don’t be fooled into thinking you are going to hear jazz musicians trying to play pop after uncorking too many bottles. For, although the album occasionally tends toward fusion, it is first and foremost a wonderful jazz recording; and a recording with enough fizz to make your head spin. There are five tracks in total: “Quartier Latin” is reminiscent a little of Olé Coltrane (Curson, like the saxophonist, is originally from Philadelphia), “Flip Top” where the trumpet and piano play out a chase scene through the streets of Paris, Pop Wine where funk and cool jazz meet on the barricades of black and white, “L.S.D. Takes A Holiday” which breaks out in a style close to free jazz, and finally “Lonely One”, with the impression that ends this unclassifiable album. Unclassifiable, unless we decide to elevate Pop Wine to the rank of a great vintage. Carefully remastered from the master tapes. Licensed from Futura / Marge. 180 gram vinyl.
Debit: The Long Count (Modern Love) LP Modern Love debut from Delia Beatriz aka Debit; a study of Mayan wind instruments from the late post classical period, rebuilt as synth instruments and deployed with ultimate heft and wooooze. Delia Beatriz’s musical output straddles two distinct artistic poles; her debut solo album, 2017’s acclaimed “Animus”, oozed from sensual, beatless soundscapes to high-octane club music, while her 2019-released ‘System’ harnessed tribal guarachero elements while simultaneously scraping ideas from industrial techno. On ‘The Long Count’, the Mexican-American producer has inked her most rigorous statement to date, sublimating opaque ancestral knowledge into vaporous AI-stirred fog banks, activating an ancient rite that reaches into tomorrow. It’s audacious electro-acoustic archaeology that sounds disorientating, anachronistic and arcane. ‘The Long Count’ is rooted in research Beatriz made into Mayan wind instruments – whistles, ocarinas, flutes and trumpets – using the archive of the Mayan Studies Institute at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the oldest and largest collection of its kind. Developing a set of digital instruments that could be played using different types of temperaments and scales, Delia processed these sounds using machine learning techniques to shuttle the distant past into our extant artistic universe, peering into Mexico’s pre-colonial history and weaving those ideas into complex tonalities gleaned from musique concrète and contemporary electro-acoustic music. Beatriz describes the Mayan instrumentation as ancestral technology, part of a world that’s not so much been forgotten, but purposefully erased. And although it’s impossible to know exactly how Mayan music may have sounded, it’s feasible to converse with history using modern technology to conduct a ceremony of remembrance. Featuring soundscapes that are haunted by indistinct, shared memories and centuries of pent-up emotion, the material here is as intentional, direct and meticulously crafted as the work of Deathprod or Thomas Köner; Debit’s microtonal compositions are psychedelic to their core, shapeshifting through dimensions and painting complex mental images while retaining a stylistic focus and lucidity that’s all too rare. Although ‘The Long Count’ was nurtured by machines, human experience is coded into its DNA – an ancient-future heirloom that whispers through countless generations.
Demdike Stare: The Call (DDS) CS Demdike Stare zoom into the late 90’s sweetspot where jungle producers swang into UKG and R&B with a high grade mixtape spliced together with typical, obsessive knowledge and swerve – trust it’s one of their best. Mining one of their essential touchstones, ‘The Call’ highlights the ’97-’99 period in the UK when the likes of Steve Gurley, Anthill Mob and Sky Joose were key players in the phase shift from ruff to sweet club styles around needlepoint 2-step drum programming. Also spotlighting the irrevocable influence of US R&B at the time, the mix homes in on one of the hardcore ‘nuum’s most fascinating innovations, when original, leading producers reclaimed their music from the sweatier excesses of jungle/D&B, and ushered it back to sexier, slinkier styles primed for dressing up and showing off – not gurning your tits off and brukking the fuck out. Stitched together with subtle, patented sleight-of-hand edits and dial strafe smudges, the mix exerts exquisite control for one hour of dainty rudeboy shuffle and woodblock parry in honour of their innovative heroes. Without overstating it, they trace UKG’s flex from bumpty speed garage soul inflicted with syrupy R&B, to its four-to-da-floor variants, and the sparkier punctuation of 2-step, proper, emphasising the sound’s rhythmic and textural sensuality with triple deep and eternal cuts that find the sound crystallizing from a delicious flux of puckered US garage-house and R&B-soul aspects, and updating the memory banks of original UK rave. Like the post-factum UKG archaeology of Finn and Oneman, Demdike’s picks are educated and educational, but never academic – presenting an ideal primer on the way styles shifted quickly back then, exemplifying how the tussle of energies between the house traction of Grant Nelson, Dem 2’s dissection of Timbaland/The Neptunes’ mainstream R&B, and the restless bad foot of rave were factored by the adroit chops of early jungle DJs on radio stations such as Freak FM and Jason Kaye’s Sun City mixes.
Robert Glasper: Black Radio III (Loma Vista) LP Four-time Grammy Award-winning artist and producer Robert Glasper delivers his highly anticipated third installment to the Black Radio album series! Black Radio III, much like both of its predecessors (2012’s Black Radio and 2013’s Black Radio 2), is a cultural moment that celebrates black love and resilience, features an eclectic group of talented collaborators, and is composed by Glasper who the New York Times proclaims is “probably the most prominent jazz musician of his generation”. An innovative and essential addition to Glasper’s seminal Black Radio series! With lyrics that express gratitude and evoke a rise-up spirit, lead single “Shine” (feat. Inglewood, CA natives, D Smoke and Tiffany Gouché) serves as Glasper’s first since a strong 2021 Grammy showing, nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album and taking home Best R&B Song for “Better Than I Imagined” (feat. H.E.R.). Robert says, “I was so happy to collaborate with D Smoke on this song. He’s definitely one of the leading voices in today’s new generation of hip hop. He has his feet planted in the soil of real music and comes from a family of amazing musicians and artists. That being said, also shout out to Tiffany Gouché, his cousin who’s on the song as well. We want to see everybody shine.”
Kim Gordon/Loren Connors: At Issue (Alara Music) LP “A unique live performance at Issue Project Room gathered the former Sonic Youth member and artist Kim Gordon and the legendary minimal blues master and artist Loren Connors in 2014. Alara Music is proud to release a testimonial of this unique duet as a limited vinyl record. In December 2014, the Issue Project Room venue in New York City offered the first-time duo with the legendary Brooklyn-based guitarist Loren Connors and the rock icon Kim Gordon. From this almost 1 ½ hour set, Kim and Loren decided to archive their favorite movement on a physical record which is a 12″ vinyl now available from the French label Alara. Through this long, improvised session, Kim and Loren do dialogue and browse between installations of deep soundscapes at the limit of drone, and distorted, abrasive sonic attacks wrapped in reverberated harmonics. In this unprecedented exchange between two legends, the languages are as borrowed from one to the other: Kim Gordon plays on the land of the first inventions of Loren in rumbling/growling ‘unaccompanying’ strings pinch, when Loren Connors envelops the entire hall of distorted harmonics that Kim would not have denied in her loudest attacks within her solo or group experiences from decades. Just through the story of each of the protagonists and thanks to the quality of the recording and the mastering that bring the intensity of this meeting to life as if we were physically attending to the show, this album is a unique opportunity to witness the exceptional meeting between two legends of sonic and experimental music.”
Grant Green: The Latin Bit (Blue Note) LP Grant Green had already recorded a prolific 10 sessions of classic hard bop and soul jazz for Blue Note over a 2-year span by the time he arrived at Van Gelder Studio in 1962 to record his album The Latin Bit. The concept of the album was a departure for Green with the guitarist exploring Latin and Brazilian influences with a band featuring Johnny Acea on piano, Wendell Marshall on bass, Willie Bobo on drums, Carlos “Patato” Valdes on conga, and Garvin Masseaux on chekere. As Nat Hentoff wrote in the album’s liner notes: “It is because of Green’s remarkably consistent ease in many varieties of material, that this album of jazz with a Latin tinge becomes so seamless a blending of Latin idioms and blues-laced, modern mainstream swinging.” The highly enjoyable set includes joyful takes of “Mambo Inn” and “My Little Suede Shoes,” as well as a lyrical and beguiling version of “Besame Mucho.” Blue Note Records’ acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series continues in 2022. Launched in 2019 in honor of the label’s 80th Anniversary, the Tone Poet series is produced by Joe Harley (from Music Matters) and features all-analog, 180g audiophile vinyl reissues that are mastered from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio. Tone Poet vinyl is manufactured at RTI in Camarillo, CA, and packaged in deluxe Stoughton Printing “Old Style” gatefold Tip-On jackets. The titles were once again handpicked by Harley and cover the crème de la crème of the Blue Note catalog along with underrated classics, modern era standouts, and albums from other labels under the Blue Note umbrella including Pacific Jazz and United Artists Records. Every aspect of these Blue Note/Tone Poet releases is done to the highest-possible standard. It means that you will never find a superior version.
Doug Hammond & David Durrah: Reflections in the Sea of Nurnen (Now Again) LP “Originally planned for issue on Strata-East, Hammond took his collaboration with Durrah to Detroit and issued his masterpiece. Lacquered by Bernie Grundman. Now-Again presents the defi¬nitive Tribe Records reissues. Deep, spiritual jazz of the highest order. The Tribe label, one of the brightest lights of America’s 1970s jazz underground, receives the Now-Again reissue treatment. This is your chance to indulge in the music and story of one of the most meaningful, local movements of the 20th Century Black American experience, one that expanded outwards towards the cosmos. In the words of the collective themselves, ‘Music is the healing force of the universe.’ Included in an extensive, oversized booklet, Larry Gabriel and Jeff ‘Chairman’ Mao take us through the history of the Tribe, in a compelling story that delves not just into the history of the label and its principals, but into the story of Black American empowerment in the latter half of the 20th Century. The booklet features never-before-seen archival photos and rare ephemera from Tribe’s mid-1970s heyday.”
Harry Pussy: Superstar (Palilalia) LP “Somewhere between the first and second Harry Pussy singles, Adris and I worked up a set’s worth of 30-second ‘songs.’ I doubt we ever played the whole thing live, but we did record it over a couple of nights at Rat’s studio around the corner from our Michigan Ave apartment on Miami Beach. Our occasional bandmate, Ian Steinberg, a teenage accordionist whose mom dropped him off for the session, showed up on the second night to contribute vocals and fuzz accordion on several tracks. Of all the songs recorded, only ‘HP Superstar’ was ever released, on 1995’s What Was Music? compilation, though ‘No Hey’, ‘Youth Problem’ and ‘Prelude’ appeared in other versions elsewhere. Live renditions of some of this set are also captured on the ‘Live in Chapel Hill, 1993’ single.” –Bill Orcutt “Almost as if The Germs had the diligence of Minutemen. Sounds like a crazy idea, but this record is nuts!” –Byron Coley Adris Hoyos: drums & vox; Bill Orcutt: guitar & vox; Ian Steinberg: accordion & vox (1-21, 31-32) 1-21 recorded at Sync Studios, Miami Beach 1993 by Rat Bastard. 22-29 recorded live in Chapel Hill, NC, 1993. 30-33 recorded in rehearsal at the Alliance Cinema, Miami Beach. Some tracks previously released on Superstar 7″, Live in Chapel Hill 7″, and What Was Music? CD (Siltbreeze). Expanded 12″ gatefold LP version of the last year’s surprise hit EP – – 33 songs, includes ten unreleased tracks, live versions, rehearsal recordings, cover songs, accordion mixes, extended edits and studio outtakes.
Keiko Higuchi: Vertical Language (Black Editions) LP Heavy tip-on jacket with matte pigment stamping and insert. Based in Tokyo, Keiko Higuchi is a vocalist and instrumentalist internationally renowned both for her solo performances and extensive collaborations in the world of underground improvisation, jazz, and the avant-garde. On Vertical Language, Higuchi has created an evocative and hauntingly beautiful album that unfurls in equal parts light and darkness, form, and emptiness. On solo voice and piano as well as in duets with bassist Louis Inage, Higuchi performs a collection of songs and improvisations that take unexpected paths; her voice and piano starkly, soulfully emerge. They gradually take form as sparse notes resonate and build into intense layers of sound. The music is unvarnished and deeply personal — it embraces traditional Japanese and spiritual music as well as even jazz and bossa nova, but never completely turns itself over to their familiar forms. More than simply an album title, Vertical Language refers to the distinctive musical approach that Higuchi has developed over the past twenty years. Her music is centered on the breath and pulse — rather than set “horizontal” musical rhythms or structures. It illuminates the connection between the artist’s body and sound. In her music, piano chords and voice sound out in an instant and expand, floating off in new directions. The music embraces silence and negative space or the Japanese concept of “Ma”, as well as the small “imperfections” that any moment or sound might contain. Each moment in her music is as much imbued with what came before as what will come next — each note expands in space and can never be seen from just one perspective. In her music, Higuchi is constantly taking us to a place that neither she or we can quite yet see.
Bobbi Humphrey: Fancy Dancer (Blue Note) LP Blue Note Records has announced the continuation of the Classic Vinyl Reissue Series which presents 180g vinyl LP reissues in standard packaging mastered by Kevin Gray and manufactured at Optimal. The pressings are all-analog whenever an analog source is available, with Gray mastering directly from the original master tapes. While the first 16 titles of the series focused on the best-known Blue Note classics from the 1950s and 60s, the new run of titles curated by Don Was and Cem Kurosman broadens its scope to span the many eras and styles of the legendary label’s eight-decade history presented by themes: Bebop, Hard Bop, Soul Jazz, Post-Bop, Avant-Garde, The 70s, The Rebirth, and Hidden Gems. Bobbi Humphrey was one of the most prominent stars on the Blue Note roster of the 1970s. The flutist debuted on the label in 1971 with Flute In¸ the first in a run of six creative and highly enjoyable albums. On her breakout 1973 album Blacks and Blues, Humphrey hooked up with the forward-thinking producer Larry Mizell to create a jazz-funk classic that expanded her audience. It proved to be a winning combination, and the two joined forces again on Satin Doll the following year. Their third and final collaboration would be on the great 1975 album Fancy Dancer. Humphrey’s alluring flute dances through vibrant and ingenious arrangements by Larry and Fonce Mizell that skillfully wove together a broad range of influences from across the spectrum of black music. The set featured standout tracks like the Latin grooves of “Uno Esta,” the laid-back jam “You Make Me Feel So Good,” and the album’s expansive closer “Please Set Me At Ease,” which the innovative hip hop beatmaker Madlib memorably remade on his 2003 Blue Note remix album Shades Of Blue.
Jenny Hval: Classic Objects (4AD) LP Classic Objects is a map of places; past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Jenny Hval’s band used to play in, public places the Norwegian musician missed throughout lockdown, imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things. Classic Objects is Hval’s version of a pop album. Every song has a verse and a chorus. There are interchangeable moments of complexity, interesting melodies throughout, and a feeling of elevation and clarity in the choruses. Heba Kadry mixed it to sound as though it’s played through “a stereo in a mysterious room.” Classic Objects, however, is not about these things. But when Hval started writing stories that eventually became this record, the pandemic hit and she remembered these specific times in her life, these phases of feeling completely stripped of value. Hval elaborates: “This made me want to write simple stories. My problem was that I found that the music component in the writing process made the words stray from their path and even jump into the absurd. I think it is just bound to happen when there is music involved. After all, a song isn’t just words, it has a melody, and the reason we have melodies is to step into the dark and jump off cliffs.”
Jonnine: Blue Hills (Boomkat Editions) LP The first Documenting Sound release to appear on vinyl (we’re just doing a handful of them on wax) is this obsession-forming fever-dream recorded in Kallista, Dandenong Ranges / Autumn 2020 by Jonnine Standish of HTRK, newly mastered and featuring completely genius new meta-artwork/painting by Gian Manik. Anyway, you either altready know how good this one is, or else yr about to find out… The other week we dreamt that we asked Jonnine aka Jonnine Standish of f#cking HTRK to make some music for a tape series. She ended up sending us what was essentially a 9 track album of new songs featuring Jonnine on bass guitar, a Mopho synth, a wave drum and an electric wind instrument, plus her vocals, clicks and garden chimes, and contributions from Conrad Standish (of CS + Kreme) and mixing by Tarquin Manek. Oh wait… We approach all of Jonnine’s music with caution cos – hooks – she warned us about them. When her last record ‘Super Natural’ was released last year the ohrwurm wasn’t for leaving us in peace, for real it was almost too much – and this time, if you can believe it – it’s worse. You get 9 songs – 9 – songs – there are chorus pedals and strings and endless atmospheres. The opener is a dream, blurred vision – heartache. The title track – pan flutes – this is basically The Cure’s ‘Dressing Up’ remade. Except Jonnine has never heard ’The Top’. It’s all v weird and auspicious, a complete heartmelt. Also, somehow, real?
Rinsyoe Kida, Akira Ishikaw & His Count Buffalos: Drum & Tsugaru Jamisen (Cinedelic) LP Reissue, originally released in 1973. A unique Japanese funk masterpiece in which Rinsyoe Kida, Tsugaru’s shamisen maestro, and Akira Ishikawa, one of Japan’s most loved and celebrated leading drummers, as well as experimenter and brilliant composer, performed together. The ancient sound of the shamisen ride on the finest funk and the intense groove of Ishikawa. An extraordinary audiophile-quality recordings. OBI; includes a four-page insert with English texts.
Thomas Leer: Contradictions (Spittle) LP Spittle Records present a reissue of Thomas Leer’s Contradictions, originally released in 1982. The Scottish musician, born in 1953 in Port Glasgow, is one of the most eclectic artists of the so-called minimal wave scene. Alongside German singer Claudia Brücken (vocalist of the hit-makers Propaganda) he formed Act a short-lived synthpop group signed to ZTT Records in the late ’80s. Licensed by Cherry Red in 1982, the double album Contradictions is the third effort in Leer high and rising career. After the seminal debut on Industrial Records with Robert Rental — The Bridge (1979) — Leer ventured on a solo career with the brave synth wave of Letter From America and his personal masterpiece Contradictions. The latter is such an enigmatic piece of work, with alien melodies as in the case of the “Soul Gypsy” infectious white funk. The whole album was recorded in his living room at home onto 4-track using borrowed equipment (Korg synth, Ult Sound drum computer, guitars) from his friend Morgan Fisher. Featuring Leer’s haunting, uncertain vocal — recorded quietly, so as not to wake his girlfriend in their bedsit! — crooning over a minimal bass pulse and discreet whines and washes of primitive Wasp synthesizer, it retains its peculiar lo-fi magic four decades on.
Madlib: Sound Ancestors (Madlib Invazion) CS Cassette version. “Music by Madlib arranged by Kieren Hebden. Gil Evans to Miles Davis… Holger Czukay to the ensemble known as Can… Jean Claude Vannier to Serge Gainsbourg on Histoire de Melody Nelson. That’s the only way to explain the specificity of Four Tet and Madlib’s collaboration, in this special album that showcases a two-decade long friendship that has resulted in an album that follows Madlib’s classics like Quasimoto’s The Unseen, Madvillainy and his Pinata and Bandana albums with Freddie Gibbs. ‘A few months ago I completed work on an album with my friend Madlib that we’d been making for the last few years. He is always making loads of music in all sorts of styles and I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album. Not made into beats for vocalists to use but instead arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish. I put this concept to him when we were hanging out eating some nice food one day and we decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate and combine. I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years stretch and during that time I put together this album with all the parts that fitted with my vision.’ –Kieren Hebden AKA Four Tet”
Harold McKinney: Voices & Rhythms of the Creative Profile (Now Again) LP “The influential Detroit pianist’s sole 1970s album. Remastered and lacquered by Bernie Grundman. Now-Again presents the defi¬nitive Tribe Records reissues. Deep, spiritual jazz of the highest order. The Tribe label, one of the brightest lights of America’s 1970s jazz underground, receives the Now-Again reissue treatment. This is your chance to indulge in the music and story of one of the most meaningful, local movements of the 20th Century Black American experience, one that expanded outwards towards the cosmos. In the words of the collective themselves, ‘Music is the healing force of the universe.’ Included in an extensive, oversized booklet, Larry Gabriel and Jeff ‘Chairman’ Mao take us through the history of the Tribe, in a compelling story that delves not just into the history of the label and its principals, but into the story of Black American empowerment in the latter half of the 20th Century. The booklet features never-before-seen archival photos and rare ephemera from Tribe’s mid-1970s heyday.”
Melvins: Five Legged Dog (Ipecac) LP Coloured wax! The Melvins deliver their most ambitious project yet with Five Legged Dog, a 36-song newly recorded, acoustic offering featuring a career-spanning collection of songs, from 1987’s Gluey Porch Treatments to 2017’s A Walk With Love & Death, the entire gamut of the legendary band’s catalogue is represented. “I knew I wanted to do something ridiculously big,” explains Buzz Osborne of the band’s first ever acoustic offering. “36 songs reimagined by us acoustically is certainly ridiculous but it works. The magic of the songs is still there regardless of it being acoustic. Since we weren’t touring we had the time to do something of this size. I’m very excited about this record. Dale and Steven did a fantastic job on this. I think it’s a very special record. I can’t think of anyone else who’s done something like this.” The band previews the impressive release with lead track “Night Goat.” Dale Crover noted: “I think people will be surprised that we can do an acoustic version of a song like ‘Night Goat’ without losing any of the heaviness. We also worked hard on the vocal arrangements. People are going to freak out!” Five Legged Dog also features acoustic versions of several rarities from the influential band’s overflowing discography including a cover of Redd Kross’ “Charlie” (from the limited-edition “Escape From LA” single), “Outside Chance,” a Turtles’ cover from the “Slithering Slaughter” single and new interpretations of The Rolling Stones “Sway,” Brainiac’s “Flypaper,” and Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talking” (popularized by Harry Nilsson). Butthole Surfer Jeff Pinkus lends his vocals (and banjo) to “Don’t Forget to Breathe” and “Everybody’s Talking.”
Merzbow: Flare Blues (Room 40) LP In a thorough dismantling and recontextualisation of his own work, Merzbow sets fire to his mid 90’s ‘Flare Gun’ & ‘White Blues’ EP’s with utterly compelling, visceral, and surprisingly diverse results. Essentially going toe-to-toe with his mid 90’s self, Masami Akita eviscerates the originals in a bath of tear-out textural tornadoes that only just betray their origins in raw samples of blues rock bands. Tapping into that long-standing double refraction of influence between Afro-American blues (and subsequently jazz, disco, house and techno) and its acolytes from blighty, Merzbow pushes everything into the red with nuclear levels of ferocity, unleashing torrents of detuned theremin and electronics around the blistered samples in a face-melting style that so many have imitated but have rarely imbued with such spirit and imagination. The first half of ‘Flare Gun Extra’ parts returns to his headspace and tekkers in the period following his formative classic ‘Venereology’, adapting extreme forms of compression, distortion and dynamic mixing with a manacled grip and expressive sensitivity that’s there if you cares to give it some attention, with particularly powerful results in the freewheeling bombast of ‘Flare Gun II’. We hear decimated traces of rock riffs shredded up with staggering futurist alacrity in ‘White Blues Part I’, saving a rather unexpected swerve into mind-spanking bluesy guitar psychedelia on the 2nd part that sounds like Hendrix taking an acid bath after his London stint, before ’Deathmetal’ joins the dots far north to perhaps express how the quintessence of blues shored up, petrified in the black country and was dashed on granite Scandinavian cliffs and Japanese islands from the most obtuse angles. Pure energy and chaos this one.
Monic: Trawler Tapes (Downwards) LP Simon Shreeve’s doomiest moniker Mønic follows those killer Burial and Regis reworks from a few years back and adds to his Downwards stripes with a necessary vinyl edition packing both volumes of his recent ‘Trawler Tapes’ series originally issued digitally with his Osiris Music UK label, highly recommended to disciples of Kevin Drumm’s ‘Imperial Distortion’, The Conet Project, Thomas Köner or SAW II. Made on the English south coast and first issued into the strange high summer of 2020 lockdown, the ‘Trawler Tapes’ depicts Mønic more strung out and glowering than we’ve ever heard. In its unfathomably deep sunk, reverberating drones and keeling atmospheric pressure, it’s truly a musick that evokes a sense of absence, even tragedy and loss, drawing upon various aspects of dark ambient isolationism and thru to more sublime, meditative zones for a sort of dissociative expression of soul that lives up to comparisons with modern greats, from Thomas Köner to Kevin Drumm. Where much of Shreeve’s work since D&B/dubstep unit Kryptic Minds thru to his CUB collabs with Regis have been concerned with physicality, his Mønic project inverts that urge for a musick ov liminality. However there’s a fine connection between those polls in Mønic’s use of the full frequency spectrum here, from deeply layered subs to its fine-grained high register timbres, with cavernous space in between. In both volume 1’s ‘H-NET’ set and volume 2’s ’T-NET’ parts, he oscillates a suggestive shadowplay, drifting from Davey Jones’ locker tones to more static, indoor subtleties redolent of Kevin Drumm’s ‘Imperial Distortion’ classic, and thru to midwinter tundra scapes and what feels like lingering Lynchian afterimages, ultimately shoring up with scant glimpses of percussion in ’T-NET 4’, A must for the darkside dwellers.
Michel Portal: Alors!!! (Souffle Continu) LP Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Michel Portal’s Alors !!!, originally released in 1970. Could the missing link between Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler be the Michel Portal of 1970? After having worked alongside François Tusques defending a free jazz “made in France”, you find him here, heading up an international quintet of which each member is on fire: John Surman, Barre Phillips, Stu Martin, and Jean-Pierre Drouet. The quintet had full leeway to break out the free-form in long ambient tracks to compose this Alors!!! which leaves listeners with just one word to say: More! Do we still need to present Michel Portal?… Clarinetist destined for the classical and contemporary world after his passage in the Paris Conservatory, he decided to try his hand at jazz, with an incendiary flamboyance. After his first experience with André Hodeir and Pierre Michelot, he would break all the codes with François Tusques (Free Jazz, in 1965) before starting the emblematic Michel Portal Unit. It is the Portal of those years that Alors!!! offers you the chance to listen to again. “There are periods of insolence,” the musician declared and the year 1970 was one all on its own. Heading up an impetuous international troupe, a quintet consisting of John Surman (saxophones, bass clarinet), Barre Phillips (double-bass), Stu Martin (drums) and Jean-Pierre Drouet (percussion), Portal moves from alto sax to clarinet in the compositions shared with his partners. From the off, the group sparks an explosion with the sound of “OO Bam Ba Deep” battered by the horns and percussion. Next up is the fabulous free jazz of “Yes, Oh Yes, You Wonderous Sun Kissed Maiden!” and the fantastic disjointed march of “Ça Boom?” which shakes up the musicians every which way. The quintet imagined that listeners would need to catch their breath, and thoughtfully added: “Billie The Kid” and “Undercurrent”, marvelous moments of ambient mystery. Audacious from beginning to end, including the sleeve — the bird-man and his quintet brain designed by Avoine — the album is a fabulous object, to which the label Futura gave wings at the time. And as it is being reissued today there is just one word to use: the French translation of the title, “So!!!” Carefully remastered from the master tapes. Licensed from Futura / Marge. 180 gram vinyl.
Phil Ranelin: The Time Is Now! (Now Again) LP “The Tribe co-founder’s debut, lacquered directly from his master tapes in an all-analog transfer by Bernie Grundman. The definitive reissue of this spiritual jazz album which set the stage for his Vibes from the Tribe. The Tribe label, one of the brightest lights of America’s 1970s jazz underground, receives the Now-Again reissue treatment. This is your chance to indulge in the music and story of one of the most meaningful, local movements of the 20th Century Black American experience, one that expanded outwards towards the cosmos. In the words of the collective themselves, ‘Music is the healing force of the universe.’ Included in an extensive, oversized booklet, Larry Gabriel and Jeff ‘Chairman’ Mao take us through the history of the Tribe, in a compelling story that delves not just into the history of the label and its principals, but into the story of Black American empowerment in the latter half of the 20th Century. The booklet features never-before-seen archival photos and rare ephemera from Tribe’s mid-1970s heyday.”
Ravi Shankar: Chants of India (BMG) LP For the first time on vinyl, Ravi Shankar’s 1997 collaboration with George Harrison! Recorded in the south Indian city of Chennai – then known as Madras – as well as Friar Park, Harrison’s home in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, Chants of India marked a landmark departure for Shankar. Though of course known around the world for his extraordinary work in Hindustani classical music, the album sees Shankar creating a collection of traditional Vedic and other Hindu sacred prayers set to music, offering his hope for peace and harmony among nature and all creatures. The renowned sitar master is joined by a number of leading Indian musicians, performing on such traditional instruments such as tabla, santoor, veena, bansuri flute, tanpura, and mridangam, as well as violin, cello, and harp, with his daughter, Anoushka Shankar, conducting and Harrison, contributing at Shankar’s personal request, on acoustic guitar, autoharp, bass, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, and backing vocals.
Tape Loop Orchestra: Liminal Lungs (Tape Loop Orchestra) LP Stunning choral smoke from the ever wonderful Tape Loop Orchestra, here shedding the blissed drone energies of his best known material in favour of a more lucid expression of ideas constructed almost entirely from the human voice and bass pulses. If you were into that amazing Antonina Nowacka album earlier this year, or indeed Kara-Lis Coverdale’s peerless sacred variations, this one comes highly recommended. ‘Liminal Lungs’ finds Andrew Hargreaves shedding his pedals and effects in favour of a more sober take on fizzing bliss, using a palette of sung notes re-shaped into a virtual choir and fed almost imperceptibly thru his tape loop matrix. In the process, he offers a study in the semiotics of emotion; stripping back to a ghostly chorale where the composer is present but elusive, conducting his voices in an imaginary space that comes to life thru a kind of compositional alchemy. The results call to mind aspects of Akira Rabelais’ work with processed sound echoes as much as Luc Ferrari’s concrète abstractions or Alvin Lucier’s room recordings, ushering and inhabiting the liminal space of the title with an exceedingly subtle grasp of mysteriousness as the work’s spatial qualities come into play. As it goes on, Hargreaves creates a growing sense of displacement from the original recordings with bass pulses that reverberate the synthesised space, probing the grey area between perception and reality, conjuring an event the listener can’t be sure ever really took place.
Jacques Thollot: Watch Devil Go (Souffle Continu) LP Souffle Continu Records present aa reissue of Jacques Thollot’s Watch Devil Go, originally released in 1975. “To write these few lines, we spoke to saxophonist François Jeanneau, an old friend of Jacques Thollot who also played on several of his albums, including the Watch Devil Go which interests us here . . . A noted studio had reserved three days for a Thollot recording session. The first morning was devoted to sound checks and putting some order in the score sheets which Jacques would hand out in a somewhat anarchic manner. Then everyone went for lunch. When the musicians returned to the studio, Thollot had disappeared. He wasn’t seen again for the three days. When he reappeared, he had already forgotten why he had left. The music of Jacques Thollot is in the image of its’ author: it takes you somewhere, suddenly escapes and disappears, returning in an unexpected place as if nothing had happened. Four years after a first album on the Futura label in 1971, Jacques Thollot returned, this time on the Palm label of Jef Gilson, still with just as much surrealist poetry in his jazz. In thirty-five minutes and a few seconds, the French composer and drummer, who had been on the scene since he was thirteen, established himself as a link between Arnold Schoenberg and Don Cherry. Resistant to any imposed framework and always excessive, Thollot allows himself to do anything and everything: suspended time of an extraordinary delicacy, a stealthy explosion of the brass section, hallucinatory improvisation of the synthesizers, tight writing, teetering on the classical, and in the middle of all that, a hit; the title-track — that Madlib would one day end up hearing and sampling. Watch Devil Go was in the right place in the Palm catalog, which welcomed the cream of the French avant-garde in the ’70s. But it is also the story of a long friendship between two men. Jacques Thollot and Jef Gilson had known and respected one another for a long time. Though barely sixteen years old, Thollot was already on drums on the first albums by Gilson starting in 1963 and would play in his big band (alongside François Jeanneau once again), Europamerica, until the end of the ’70s. In a career lasting half a century and centered on freedom Jacques Thollot played with the most important experimental musicians and they all heard in him a pulsation coming from another world.” –Jérôme “Kalcha” Simonneau. Licensed from Palm / Geneviève Quievreux. Remastered from the master tapes. Includes eight-page booklet with rare and unpublished photos.
Piero Umiliani: Atmosphers (Musica Per Immagini) LP Musica Per Immagini present a first time reissue of Piero Umiliani’s Atmospheres, originally released in 1979. Atmospheres is one of his most interesting Umiliani albums, published in a limited edition in the mid-seventies. A period of musical confusion even though not for him, who had always been eclectic. The charming soundtracks for Luigi Scattini’s documentaries were already behind him, as was the great orchestral jazz production: his career had already been long and full of professional satisfactions. The present time for the composer when recording Atmospheres consisted of the scores for a number of Italian comedies and, most all, a set of sonorizations. These appeared projected into the future, thanks to their avant-garde attitude and the electronic sounds which seemed to arrive from a parallel universe. The sixteen tracks of Atmospheres belong to this group of works which were not tied to specific cinema projects, where the composer’s incredible imprint is at its height. In all this creative freedom it is clear how the titles of several pieces pointed to specific thematic suggestions, so that they could instantly be adopted by producers and documentary film editors. A choice that is not accidental. Just like that of Musica Per Immagini which continues to select hidden treasures from the rich catalog of the maestro. Remastered from the original tapes.
Klaus Weiss Rhythm and Sounds: Sound Inventions (Be With) LP Be With Records present a reissue of Klaus Weiss Rhythm And Sounds’ Sound Inventions, originally released in 1979. From the notoriously strong mind of Niagara drummer/library-funk overlord Klaus Weiss, Sound Inventions is loaded with tripped out studio funk-freakery, mad samples, and swaggering abstract funk grooves. From dramatic deep disco with dark Italo/Moroder leanings to heavy German funk breaks, this is absolutely sensational. Absolute synth-and-string-drenched magic. Born in 1942 in Gevelsberg, Germany, Klaus Weiss began his career as a jazz drummer at sixteen (with a group called the Jazzopators) before working with the internationally successful ’60s groups the Klaus Doldinger Quartet and the Erwin Lehn Big Band. In 1965 he formed his own trio, the first of many groups to bear his name, and as his renown as a bandleader grew over the next decade it naturally led to working in production music. About as cult as it gets when it comes to library music legends (German or otherwise), he produced essential records on German library labels Coloursound, Selected Sound, and Sonoton, as well as making two essential entries in the Conroy catalog. Collections of music in the trademark Klaus Weiss sound of electronics unsurprisingly built on top of sometimes funky, sometimes frenetic, but always hard-hitting drums. Sound Inventions is one of those library records with a hefty track list, 22 in total, but they’re all pretty stunning. That’s not something you can often say and picking out the highlights is almost impossible. If pushed, go towards the tough teutonic funk of “Drumcrazy”, the by turns juddering and sweeping majesty of the title track “Sound Inventions”, the aquatic serenity of “Glide”, the elegant strut of “Greenwich Street”, the muted, eerie cosmic-funk of “Air Space”, the squelchy acid-clavs of “Rhythm Function”, the calming, melodic “Waves”, the stuttering proto-Timbaland sensation that is “Rainbows” and the percussive funk-fueled workout of “A Few Cuts”. Founded in the late ’60s by German composer and musician Klaus Netzle, Selected Sound began as a production music company specializing in jazz, orchestral and electronic recordings. You can’t miss those early LPs in their iconic glossy metallic copper sleeves with minimal German typography. Mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis from audio from the original tapes. Richard Robinson reproduced the original Selected Sound sleeve.
Yanya, Nilufer: Painless (ATO) LP Nilüfer Yanya runs head first into the depths of emotional vulnerability on her anticipated sophomore record Painless. Recorded between a basement studio in Stoke Newington and Riverfish Music in Penzance, the record is a more sonically direct effort, narrowing her previously broad palette to a handful of robust ideas. Yanya on lead single “Stabilise”: “…the central theme in the song is no one is coming to save you ever. It’s set in depths of reality in every day life where we are the only one’s truly capable of salvaging or losing ourselves.”
Various: Dramatic Tempi/Background Rhythms (Be With) LP Be With Records present a reissue of Dramatic Tempi / Larry Robbins Background Rhythms, originally released in 1975. Classic library breaks and beats set of heavy drums and louche funk. The first side, “Dramatic Tempi”, is made up of four tracks each from Sammy Burdson and Klaus Weiss. Sammy Burdson was one of the many, many aliases of the mighty Austrian composer, arranger and conductor, Gerhard Narholz. Klaus Weiss produced essential records on German library labels Coloursound, Selected Sound, and Sonoton, as well as making two essential entries in the Conroy catalog. The second side is both titled and also credited to Larry Robbins Background Rhythms. Who Larry was is unknown, but it’s not too much of a stretch to think it might be another incarnation of Gerhard Narholz. First up from “Dramatic Tempi” are the phased, gargantuan hip-hop beats of Sammy Burdson’s impeccable “Pop Waves”. The magnificently titled “Cyclodrom” is a beast of booming bass and wah wah guitars over frenetic funk drums. “Devils Drive” is dramatic, blaxploitation street funk with rolling, pounding drums. “Crime Ways” is an acid-squelch, slow-pace neck-snapper. Klaus Weiss starts by asking “Is It Hip” with clean, skipping drums, booming bass, and proto-hip-hop bells, layered beneath laconic and melodic guitar shredding. “The Camp”, propelled by jazzy guitar à la Joe Pass over fast drum and conga breaks, gives way to the dark guitars and cymbal crashes of “Tomorrow”. It sounds like an early New Order jam session. Closing out a pretty startling side of library greatness, “Rhythm Trip” presents early stuttering funk before easin’ on in to a jazzy, soulful groove; all breezy guitar and warm keys. Larry Robbins Background Rhythms is a lighter, poppier affair, but it’s not without its drum-heavy bangers. “Vox Pop” and “Pop Phase” each have clean, open-ish drum breaks, ripe for sampling or more daring DJ sets. “Pop Twang” is a short and sweet beat-heavy number that gives way to the fantastically out-there “Canned Pop”. The final seven tracks are a set of 1-to-2 minute “Percussion Takes”. The British library label with those instantly recognizable “orangey-red” sleeves, Conroy began releasing production music in 1965. A sub-label of Berry Music Co, its catalog typified the library industry’s strange mixture of tradition and experimentation from the start. Conroy’s early releases included work by big band stalwarts like Eddie Warner as well as early electronic recordings by the likes of Belgian experimental pioneer Arséne Souffriau. Mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis from audio from the original tapes. Richard Robinson reproduced the original Conroy sleeve.
Various: Life is Boring So Why Not Steal This Record (Radiation) LP First ever vinyl reissue for this seminal compilation of early California hardcore punk, originally issued on the New Underground label in 1983. Featuring such names as the Germs, Minutemen, Sin 34, Shattered Faith along with more obscure, experimental ones as Doo-Dooettes, Modern Torture, and Tone Deaf. Also features Redd Kross, Modern Warfare, Anti, Mood Of Defiance, Hari-Kari, Artistic Decline, Invisible Chains, Slivers, Vox Pop, Marshall Mellow, Carl Stone, Zurich 1916, and Debt Of Nature. Artwork by Raymond Pettibon. Includes double-sided insert with liner notes by Susan Swear. Fully remastered. Red vinyl.
Various: Life is Beautiful So Why Not Eat Health Foods (Radiation) LP First ever vinyl reissue for this seminal compilation of early California hardcore punk, originally issued on the New Underground label in 1983. Featuring such names as the Germs, M.I.A., China White, Shattered Faith along with more obscure ones as Marshall Mellow, Ill Will, Powertrip. Also features Bags, Anti, Minutemen, Bpeople, Mood Of Defiance, Invisible Chains, Zurich 1916, and Vox Pop. Artwork by Raymond Pettibon. Includes double-sided insert with liner notes by Susan Swear. Fully remastered audio. Orange vinyl.
Various: Life is Ugly So Why Not Kill Yourself (Radiation) LP First ever vinyl reissue for this seminal compilation of early California hardcore punk, originally issued on the New Underground label in 1982. Featuring such names as the Descendents, Minutemen, Anti, Saccharine Trust, Redd Cross along with more obscure ones as Civil Dismay, Ill Will, or Zurich 1916. Also features China White, Mood Of Defiance, 100 Flowers, Urinals, and Plebs. Includes double-sided insert with notes by Susan Swear. Fully remastered. Yellow vinyl.
Various: Mainstream Funk (WeWantSound) LP Wewantsounds continues its collaboration with Bob Shad’s venerable jazz label Mainstream Records, and present a selection of 12 turntable-friendly tracks recorded between 1971 and 1975 and showcasing the label’s superb blend of spiritual jazz, funk, and soul.Mainstream Records is one of the key independent jazz labels of the early 70s, together with Flying Dutchman, Strata East, CTI, and Black Jazz. Founded by legendary label man Bob Shad (who had been head of A&R at Mercury Records and set EmArcy in the ’50s), the label concentrated on psychedelia in the ’60s before switching back to Shad’s jazz roots in the early ’70s, signing a new crop of jazzmen fed on John Coltrane and Miles’ electric experiments. Thus, was born the cult Mainstream “300 Series” with its distinctive artwork and outstanding music from which this selection is largely drawn. Giving their chance to many young jazz players and a few old friends, Shad recorded some of the most exciting jazz of the early ’70s, mixing spiritual influences with funk and soul. It is interesting to note the Mainstream sessions included many of the hottest session players of that time such as Ron Carter, Eddie Henderson, Airto, Mtume, Earl Palmer, Mickey Roker, Merl Saunders, Cedar Walton, to name but a few. Shad also had a long-standing association with jazz divas showcased here with the opening track by Sarah Vaughan, a funkified version of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” recorded the same year as the original in 1971. Mainstream Funk also includes a selection of superb tracks by young Turks who’d cut their teeth as sidemen for Blue Note and Prestige in the late ’60s and were given a chance to record their own music on Mainstream. Buddy Terry’s “Quiet Afternoon’, Dave Hubbard’s “Family Affair”, and LaMont Johnson’s “M’Bassa” are prime examples showcasing the label’s desire to give these talented newcomers a chance to shine. Seasoned musicians from the Bebop scene were also welcome, such as trumpetists Blue Mitchell — who’d released a string of great albums for Riverside and Blue Note in the late ’50s and ’60s — and Johnny Coles who’d played with Gil Evans, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock. Shad also released pure soul music on the label such as Sugar Billy’s “Super Duper Love” which was released on his Fast Track sub-label in 1974, arranged by Jimmy Roach and featuring Marcus Belgrave in the line-up. Also features Prophecy, John White, Mike Longo, Barry Miles, and Pete Yellin.
Various: Tokyo Glow (WeWantSounds) LP Following the recent success of the Tokyo Dreaming (WWSCD 040CD/WWSLP 040LP), Wewantsounds comes with another compelling set, this time compiled by city pop expert DJ Notoya who has dug the rich Nippon Columbia catalog to bring a breezy selection of funky gems. Nippon has amassed an incredible back catalog over the decades. Particularly strong in the ’70s and ’80s, the label was one of the main purveyors of great music at a time when Japan was entering its greatest economic boom and labels had budgets at hand to create the highest quality music. As Notoya explains in the liner notes “Back in the day, the record companies had big budgets and could afford to have many great musicians playing on one record, plus strings and horn sections, top drummers and keyboardists. It all made for a very rich sound, which is generally very different to today’s music.” Keen to emulate the music created in the US by their American counterparts, Japanese musicians came with their own blend of funk, boogie and soul that has come to be known as city pop. The selection on Tokyo Glow is full of such gems and starts with “Kimugare” a relaxed, mid-tempo track by Kumi Nakamura, famous actress who only recorded one album in 1980 for Columbia. The set continues and flows effortlessly with the sunshine grooves of Miyuki Maki, Hatsumi Shibata and cult keyboard player Hiroshi Sato before the pace starts going faster and funkier with New Generation Company, Kengo Kurozumi — with his superb boogie, “Juggler” — and one of the queens of the genre, Hitomi “Penny” Tohyama with “Tuxedo Connection”. Tokyo-based DJ Notoya is from a new breed of Japanese DJs there focusing on nippon music and is an expert on funk, modern soul, and boogie from the Island. With Tokyo Glow, Notoya says he “focused more on the slightly more underground tracks from the era, rather than the bigger, well-known releases. For me that was a more fun and satisfying approach.” Another fine example on the set is the mid-tempo groove of “I Wander All Alone Part III” by New Generation Company, an aggregate group of some of the best Japanese session musicians led by arranger Katz Hoshi and including Hiroyuki Namba, Kazuo Shiina, and Yutaka Uehara. Tokyo Glow showcases the diversity and specificity of Japanese city pop during the late ’70s and ’80s. Also features Haruyoshi Yamashina, Sumiko Yamagata, Makoto Iwabuchi, Arakawa Band, Kiyohiko Ozaki, Ken Nishizaki, Jadoes, Midori Hara, Mizuki Koyama, Haruo Chikada & Vibra-Tones, and Mitsuko Horie.
Various: V4 Visions: Of Love & Androids (Numero) LP In the midst of the UK house rave-olution of the early-’90s, London’s V4 Visions imprint documented the confluence of street soul, deep house, swingbeat, and jungle sounds emanating from the clubs and pirate radio signals. Over the course of half a decade, V4’s unparalleled 12” output referenced every significant Black British music scene; from lovers rock to jazz-funk, sound system reggae to hip hop, new jack swing to garage, from artists Ashaye, Julie Stapleton, Maureen Mason, Rohan Delano, The Wades, and Endangered Species. This 18-track double LP is the first critical overview of the label, with extensive notes by Simon Reynolds, era-defining photographs, and fresh remasters, all housed in a glorious foil-stamped gatefold tip-on sleeve. Is this a dream?
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