Suche:back for good

Nirvana's third LP is a masterpiece of late UK sixties popsike turning into symphonic pop, but not having received proper promotion despite being equally good as, if not better than their previous releases, it also marked the end of the collaborations between Patrick Campbel-Lyons and Alex Spyropoulos back in 1969.



Nirvana presented it to Island boss Chris Blackwell under the title of Black Flower. Blackwell, however, decided to turn it down for release, but gave the masters to Campbell-Lyons and Spyropoulos so they could find a new label to release the album. That was to happen in the USA through Metromedia Records in 1969. At that time, the label's owner went through a scandal due to the payola days, which left Nirvana's third offering without any promotion - as a result of that, very few copies were pressed. There was also a UK release on PYE and it was even released by Metromedia in Japan. However, for years it remained as "the lost" Nirvana release, with the added fact that none of the released editions launched the album under its original title of Black Flower but under the rather cryptic Dedicated To Markos II (read why in the liner notes!).



Musically, this is Nirvana at their best. The tune that should have been the title track, Black Flower, is an incredible piece of symphonic psychedelia and probably the best produced Nirvana track ever. Campbell-Lyons and Spyropoulos were backed for the occasion by Spooky Tooth, who played on many tracks of the album, and big orchestral arrangements mesmerize the listener in one of the duo's darkest offerings. This song aside, the rest of the album was deemed as sounding too much like a French soundtrack by Island, which may do at some points –without that being a bad thing,– but there is a lot more to it, since Nirvana have not lost that popsike edge that characterised their sound in their two previous outings.



This is also a record that was widely acclaimed in the hip hop scene. And samplers of it have been used by several artists, most notably DJ Shadow used Love Suite in his 1996 debut album Endtroducing.



The Wah Wah edition has been remastered from the original tapes by Roger Prades @ Prades Mastering and comes with a bonus 7" EP and a four page colour insert with liner notes by Malcom Dome, plus a sheet with the lyrics of the songs. First ever official vinyl reissue since 1970 in a limited edition of 500 copies only!

This Autumn, Nicole Willis rolls out with her third album made together with The Soul Investigators "Happiness In Every Style". It is bound to send shivers through backs all around the world. As the name suggests, the new album will offer variety and tilt towards a more positive note after the murky "Tortured Soul" from two years back.

This means Nicole and the boys have made things a bit more soothing for the listener, offering upbeat modern soul and even embrace more sophisticated melodies alongside their highly evolved raw funk sound. To get a taste of this, one only has to put on "Let's Communicate" or "One In a Million" to have their hands clapping and toes tapping in no time, or respectively, witness the dance floor explode. From minor key ballads such as "Thief In The Night" to the unapologetically poppy "Angel", the new album is bound to bring to the hearts of humans in every shade and style.

Whether you know Nicole Willis from before or not does not hold any weight here. After hearing her with The Soul Investigators on this new album, you will know they are for real, and out to offer you everything you need to fill up your soul supply. With Nicole's insightful lyrics and the band's hard-hitting music you are in good care.

Started as a reggae band, Chequers were formed by the Matthias Brothers, John & Richard, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1973. Inititally releasing in the early part of the 1970s (with their first single Rudi's In Love charting in the UK) their sound then developed to also incorporate Philly soul influences in the mid-70s, then releasing a rare but solid LP 'Check Us Out', in 1976. The group eventually evolved into a seven piece funk outfit in the late 70s, playing shows to larger and larger audiences and touring throughout the UK & Europe.

1980 saw the birth of the Matthias brothers' own small independent outlet for the group, Matthias Records. The press release of the new label's first single declared that their "roots in the reggae and soul music of the last mod era" were being brought up to date, now embracing "the music of today and tomorrow...". That 45 (the cheeky pop-punk meets ska cover version of Midnight Hour, backed with the uptempo instrumental funk of Move Up) didn't necessarily come good on that promise. 3 years would then pass until this 45 showcased the throughly-updated & stellar electro-boogie sound of Hard Times and it's equally strong b-side If You Want My Love.

Following this neither Matthias Records nor Chequers as a group ever released anything further - the record's scarcity (and hideously inflated prices on today's secondhand market) hint at low sales and potential distribution problems upon it's original release, perhaps leading to the label and the group calling it a day. Conjecture aside, there's really no denying this record slaps, and with discogs prices reaching beyond ridiculous levels there is only one option - get it before it's gone!

At the beginning of the eighties reggae music became increasingly in tune with what was happening in Kingston’s dance halls… probably more so than at any time since the sound system operators had started to make their own shuffle and boogie recordings in the late fifties. The international audience and the critics were too busy looking for a new Bob Marley to appreciate what was happening downtown and failed to acknowledge that this was a return to the real, raw roots of the music. Brash, confident, young record producers who were totally in tune with the youth audience stepped forward and seized the moment…

Oswald ‘Ossie’ Thomas began his apprenticeship in the music business at the age of
fourteen and served his time as a record salesman for Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee and Winston ‘Niney The Observer’ Holness before moving on to Miss Sonia Pottinger’s Tip Top Records.

“I ended up working in three record stores on Orange Street from 1976 to 1981… Yeah man! Me deh ‘pon me bicycle till I buy my motorcycle! Them days records were coming out left, right and centre… every day!” Ossie Thomas.

It was during his time with Miss Pottinger that Ossie began to produce records for
himself and in 1979 Ossie and Phillip Morgan began the Black Solidarity label based deep in the Kingston ghetto on Delamere Avenue. Phillip initially inspired Ossie to start the label and soon Triston Palma, Phillip Frazer and “a youth named Gary Robertson” joined in although Gary later left for Canada.

The Soul Syndicate rehearsed in the Delamere Avenue area and Tony Chin gave Ossie a cut of a rhythm that he used for Triston Palma’s ‘A Class Girl’… the label’s inaugural release. The record was a sizeable success and paved the way for hit after hit after hit on Black Solidarity. Ossie worked with just about everybody who was anybody during this critical period of the music’s development including vocalists Robert Ffrench, Little John, Sugar Minott, Frankie Paul and most notably Triston Palma.

For this release we have compiled some of the version sides to those releases. Dub still being an integral part of the Reggae Sound System Sound. So sit back and listen to what Black Solidarity, one of the most important and often overlooked labels were bringing to the dance, dubwise, back in those heady 1980’s times.

With grateful thanks to: Paul Coote, Nick Hodgson & Hasse Huss

With his new album, Gecko Turner confirms that he is a standout artist in the global groove scene, a must for the outernational sounds aficionados.

Somebody From Badajoz is the fifth studio album in his much lauded discography and his first in seven years, eagerly anticipated by both his fans and himself: "this business of dedicating yourself to music and making songs... it's a long game."

With the release of his first two, remarkable, albums, Guapapasea! (2003) and Chandalismo Ilustrado (2006), Gecko started cultivating what one astute journalist defined as Afro-maduran soul—the "maduran" bit referencing Extremadura, a region in central-western Spain.

Badajoz, Gecko's birthplace, is the biggest city in the area, on the border with Portugal, by the Guadiana River. It is a place that oozes history, where there is constant movement at the border, and people's character is friendly and open-minded with foreign habits.

Gecko's Afro-maduran soul isbuilt on Afro-American music and drenched in Brazilian, African, Latin American and Jamaican sounds. There are also echoes of a youth marked in equal parts by our man's admiration for the Beatles and the flamenco that could be heard everywhere in Badajoz in the seventies. It makes for a singular sound and a musical language of its own—spicy, succulent, full of nuances, but with a very personal flavour.

The album opens with the Nigerian talking drums of Twenty-twenty Vision, (neo) soul in a magical falsetto, carried by a sumptuous orchestral arrangement with a cinematic flavour: "I'd been thinking about doing something called 'Twenty-twenty Vision' for some time, making a play on words with the vision we have of the world after the year 2020 and the medical expression, which, in ophthalmological terms, means 'normal or complete vision.' Beyond that particular song, I think that's the mood of the album: a look at society in the twenties of the 21st century and the feelings and demons it produces."

It's followed by De Balde, a very special song born from a posthumously discovered lyric by the great writer Carlos Lencero, a regular collaborator of Camarón, Pata Negra, and Remedios Amaya, and also from Badajoz. While conceived as a fandango, Gecko has moulded it into his sound in such a seamless way it now seems as if the words could only have been written to be embraced by the percussion, brass, and backing vocals heard on the album. It's the only lyric on Somebody From Badajoz not written by Turner, still it sits rather comfortably with the rest, sharing the same emotivity and sensitivity, as well as the trademark humour and irony.

Other tracks see more protagonism for the rhythm.The beat-driven Ain't No Fun Preachin' to the Choir features Gecko's vocals walking the thin line between singing and talking over a phenomenal afro-disco-funk-infused trailblazer. In Am I Sad? it's impossible to not bob your head to the queen of Papatosina's mongrel rhythm, as close to the banks of the Guadiana river as it is to the shores of the Mississippi. Qué Siesta Tan Buena, He Babeao Y To! is an ode to the snooze in true Afro-Maduran fashion. And in Come And Try, the Caribbean influence is evident—lovers' rock that invites you to dance in good company.

In these songs, and throughout the album, for that matter, the musicians accompanying Gecko, who himself plays many of the instruments as well, shine brightly. All hailing from Extremadura, Javi Mojave (percussion), Álvaro Fdez 'Dr. Robelto' (bass), and Rafa Prieto (guitar) have been carrying him with delicate forcefulness since he started out as a solo artist. At the same time, the wonderful and essential voices of Deborah Ayo, Astrid Jones, Fani Ela Nsue, and Miriam Solís give the album a sunny variety of colours. And there are many more—a sensational group of musicians contributes dazzling harmonic bursts to many of the songs. The palette of sounds is very diverse and rich in textures and nuances, including, for example, the ngoni, bells, and various repurposed kitchen utensils.

The groove is always around, moving between the magical border sound of Everybody Knows Somebody From Badajoz and Little Dose, the silky soul of The Sibariteo Appreciation Society, and the exultant celebration of End Of The World (which surprisingly sees Gecko turning to the occasional use of autotune), a piece that could be used for the final credits of a Monty Python film and, in fact, closes the album.

Gecko Turner has done it again with Somebody From Badajoz, looking to the future without losing sight of the roots. In times of upheaval all over the globe, when people are looking for purity, he delivers a formidable piece of work: risky, optimistic in spite of everything, and with a decidedly bastard sound. Let's rejoice.

After Belgian electro-samba wunderkinds Antena split at the end of 1985, singer Isabelle Antena immediately shed her cold wave crown for a sophisticated pop princess tiara. On 1986's Martin Hayles-produced En Cavale, echos of Madonna and city pop abound, with a lipstick stain of L80s Euro dance and spilled cosmopolitan's worth of bossa nova stirred in for good measure. This elegant second chapter of a French pop diva has been expanded to include Antena's shelved Island Records demo, adjacent B-sides and rarities, plus an expansive essay and previously unpublished photographs.

SEASIDE SILVER VINYL

After Belgian electro-samba wunderkinds Antena split at the end of 1985, singer Isabelle Antena immediately shed her cold wave crown for a sophisticated pop princess tiara. On 1986's Martin Hayles-produced En Cavale, echos of Madonna and city pop abound, with a lipstick stain of L80s Euro dance and spilled cosmopolitan's worth of bossa nova stirred in for good measure. This elegant second chapter of a French pop diva has been expanded to include Antena's shelved Island Records demo, adjacent B-sides and rarities, plus an expansive essay and previously unpublished photographs.

Orlando Voorn is back on Heist after his 2022 ‘Heist mastercuts’ EP and comes in with a heavy dose of soulful machine funk. ‘Heist mastercuts part 2’ has the techno & house veteran showing his eclectic style with the vocal cut ‘Soundsystem’, Midwest inspired sample jam ‘High’ and his Boo Williams collaborative drum workout ‘909’.

On the first Heist mastercuts, Orlando dove deep into his archives and presented a collection of old and new tracks, showing us that his music has aged well and reminding us that he’s a producer still on the top of his game. He kept busy in 2022 with releases on our own label Transient Nature, Kompakt, a handful of Bandcamp only tracks, and a self-released album. Somehow, he found the time to work on his follow up ep on Heist and managed to completely blow us away with the music.

The EP kicks off with Soundsystem: a masterclass in simplicity. A steady and minimalistic groove guides you through the track, where silky vocals and woozy chords take you on a trip through Orlando’s sonic universe. Orlando moves into freak mode with a trippy lead and dubbed-out keys to add some playfulness to an already outstanding track.

‘High’ is Orlando’s take on what could easily be an old Andrés track. Here, he samples a female vocal (I get high, I get high, I get high), and cleverly adds his own vocals to add depth and originality to the track. The percussion on high grooves in an effortless way and underlines the feel of this track: It’s fun, cool and incredibly funky. There’s a bit of Dam Swindle sauce on the mix to make sure this track hits the right spot on any dancefloor.

On the flip, there’s ‘Day by day’: A classic Orlando Voorn cut with a live bassline, plenty of chopped samples and a Rhodes loop that could have come straight from a B-roll of a ‘First Choice’ recording session. The b-side ends with a collab with Orlando’s close friend Emil and legendary Chicago producer Boo Williams. The producers take a monologue from Boo Williams about working the 909 and deliver a drum workout -yes with the 909- that keeps on building energy, showing exactly what Boo is talking about.

The digital package also includes an instrumental mix of Soundsytem and an alternative mix to 909, just for good measure. This is the first artist release in our 10 years of Heist anniversary year and this EP perfectly encapsulates the Heist Sound: varied, deep, soulful, and banging.

Yours sincerely,
Maarten & Lars

Yung Bae had already proven his capabilities over the past two years, but his album Ba3 really shows off his mastery in making Grade-A funk.

The intro “Back to the Classics” starts off with a vinyl crackle and a groove that acts as a warm-up to the rest of the album. We then get kick-started into the thick funk of “I Want Cha Back” with a burst of horns and bass that’s going to get any party up and dancing.

The undeniably groovy beats continue throughout the album, the only break coming in with the fittingly titled “Mellow (Interlude)” which gives some respite before kicking off into the album’s finale. The album’s closer “Pillow Talk” provides the perfect laid-back jam to serve as the comedown from the high the entire album provides.

This album is a must-listen for anyone who appreciates good funk!

After 6 years and 7 volumes, the Tramp Records crew invites you to join them on yet another enlightening journey into soulful Jazz, Folk and Funk from the 1970s.

This 8th volume contains nineteen Jazz, Soul and Folk nuggets from between the late 1960s and the late 1970s. One of the many highlights is the opening track by Bobby Cole which is most likely one of the finest independently produced vocal jazz recordings ever put on wax. So true. Oscar Brown Jr. and Mark Murphy sends its regards. But that's just the beginning. Praise Poems Vol.8 covers a wide selection of genres, from big band jazz (Helmut Pistor's Big Rock Jazz Band and Germany's own Ladykiller) to psych-pop (Portraits in Sound, Harve and Charee and Allison & Shaffer), from folk-rock (Flash, Garndarf and the incredible Fang Buzbee) to AOR (The Menagerie and Penn Central), completing the set with a handful of melancholic folk beauties, most notably Hans Hass Jr.'s mind-blowing "Welche Farbe hat der Wind".

Very few compilation series' release as many as eight volumes and those that get that far often start to run out of quality music or meander too far from their original artistic direction. That certainly is not the case with the "Praise Poems" series which leaps from strength-to-strength as our team of compilers and researchers continue to unearth lost and often overlooked music from an era long gone. Many of these records were released in small quantities as private pressings or by small regional labels. Obviously, those labels neither had the budget, expertise, nor options to promote their releases in a sweeping way. Therefore the majority of these artists failed to find the wider audience their music so richly deserved.

Tricky is back. Back with a new studio album, False Idols, and his own label (also bearing the False Idols name), but also back in a personal sense. I was lost for ages, he says. I was trying to prove something to people, trying to do something to please other people and also myself at the same time, which is never going to work. To be honest with you, Ive been floating around since Chris Blackwell and Island. My last two albums, I thought they were good, but I realise now they werent. This album is about me finding myself again.
It opens with a cover of a Van Morrison song, Somebodys Sins, which sees Tricky and vocalist Francesca Belmonte whispering Jesus died for somebodys sins, but not mine over a sparse groaning bass. The lead single Parenthesis, which features a vocals from Peter Silberman of The Antlers, has more rhythmic grunt, which gives a different dimension to the dark gothic atmosphere that pervades the record. No-one does this kind of thing better.
The resemblance to Maxinquaye is undeniable, though the material on False Idols is gentler; more mature. Many of the songs feature artists signed to Trickys new label, including 24-year Londoner Francesca Belmonte and Fifi Rong. The album also includes collaborations with Nigeria's new global star Nneka, the afore-mentioned Peter Silberman. In the months before the albums release, False Idols will also release an EP "Matter of Time" showcasing the labels roster on new non-album material produced by Tricky.
Why the name False Idols Because theres so much bollocks going on at the moment mate, Tricky fires back. People follow celebrities and read every little thing they do. Its living vicariously through someone else. Get your own life. All this stuff is false idols. In this new album Ill stand behind every track, Tricky says. I dont care whether people like it. Im doing what I want to do, which is what I did with my first record. Thats what made me who I was in the beginning. If people dont like it, it dont matter to me because Im back where I was.

DOUBLE BLACK LP : 2 x 140 G Black Vinyl , Sleeve & 2 x Heavy Weight Printed Inner with UV Gloss Finish

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

2 x Solid White LP, 5mm spine Sleeve UV Gloss Finish, 2x Heavy Weight Printed Inner Sleeve UV Gloss finish, marketing sticker.

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

Roe Deers presents his fascinating debut full-length Salt Town Boy, a leftfield collection of wild sonic tales filled with dusky moods and punk attitude. The first LP to be released on Good Skills, the label Roe Deers runs with BDHBTS co-conspirator Titas Motuzas, the album brings together tracks produced in his Vilnius studio over the past six years. It also features a series of unique storytelling vocal contributions from an international list of friends and colleagues.

Roe Deers is a Lithuanian-based project led by Liudas Lazauskas. A regular at Vilnius institution Opium and a key member of the city's fertile scene, he's long been breaking the rules of genre in his explorations of the uncharted territories of murky electronic music, releasing on labels like Omnidisc, Turbo, Nein Records and Throne Of Blood.

The Salt Town of the album's title is Druskininkai, the Lithuanian spa resort where Roe Deers grew up and first began DJing at a venue run by his parents. The breadth of styles and moods he was exposed to from an early age can be heard across these 12 intriguing tracks, which blend elements of beat science, electroclash, post punk, italo, krautrock and EBM into a deliciously intoxicating brew.

The skewed motorik pulse of opener and lead single 'Trident', featuring apocalyptic intonations by French-Canadian lyricist C.A.R., sets an offbeat, ominous tone that prevails for the rest of the album. Vocal contributions from Israeli producer Niv Ast ('Late Night Tale'), Norwegian troublemaker Sex Judas ('Rodeo King') and Berlin-based singer Aquarius Heaven ('Walking Down The Streets') each bring out the moods - vampish, febrile, industrial - that permeate Roe Deers's textured, percussive productions. At the album's centre are two tracks that point to the past and possible future of the Roe Deers project: first, 'Theme' features French post punk band Order89 in a compelling disco-noir moment that recalls his earlier club EPs; then, regular collaborator Palmes Ziedas provides Lithuanian vocals for 'Tarp Raudonu Sviesu' ('Between Red Lights'), a frenzied howl of a track that fits an entire film score into its short three minutes.

The instrumental pieces on the album have their own stories to tell, from the dusty dive bar meditation of 'Flying Carpets' to the paranoid proto-techno pulse of 'Celebrity Theme' and the 11-minute cyclical epic 'Never - Ending -'. As the last moments of cinematic closer 'Fin' play out, we realise that our trip down the twisted paths of Roe Deers's beguiling sound world is coming to an end; but we also know that to go back in again all we have to do is press play.

One amp. One mic. One person. Countless hooks. That’s the Dazy formula. Since first releasing the single Bright Lights b/w Accelerate in August 2020, Dazy mastermind James Goodson has been writing, recording, and releasing new music like a man on the hunt to find the best pop hook, and he won’t stop until he’s put all of them into his songs. Show- casing a unique set of influences, Dazy’s sound marries thumping drum machine beats, blasts of feeding back guitar, and sugar-sweet hooks into something that sounds like God- flesh covering Oasis—or maybe the other way around. With lean songwriting that recalls Teenage Fanclub but a home-re- corded production style better suited for Big Black, Goodson builds a constant churn of abrasive, consuming noise and then makes it catchier than anyone else would ever dare to.

Welcome to another fine episode of SIRS aka »Sounds in real Stereo«! After last years' arrival on LARJ with his »Arrived EP«, Berlin based versatile DJ & producer Daniel Klein is back with »Travel To HDF.Y3D« - an utopian (or more likely dystopian) ode to space travel:

The last few remaining humans are traveling with 140bpm to the most distant galaxy in the universe on a mission to seek out a new space for mankind to live after many years of exploiting good old Mother Earth. What sounds like a horror scenario if you start thinking about it, SIRS manages to wrap up in quite a positive musical message. Thus »Travel To HDF.Y3D« becomes that hopeful uplifting slightly dreamy tune we all need these days - not unlike Christian Bruhn's theme of a certain Captain called Future back in 1980 …

It's also nice to have two more versions of such a strong tune at hand: The first one is a true first one for »Cocktail D'Amore« DJ BUDINO as she comes up with her first remix and production work ever. Budino's approach is a slightly darker, maybe indeed more dystopian one. The synthesizer bass lines dominate her remix and by getting rid of the original's playful melody she creates a very special melancholic feel.

Leipzig based PANTHERA KRAUSE's take isn't quite that different from Budino's as he too focuses on the darker vibes of this journey in space. It's his added extra dose of punch that surely will keep dancers on the floor for sure.

The former »Space Ibiza« resident SIRS now takes over the controls again with »Summer Desire« which too is destined to rule dancefloors not only in Ibiza but all over the world with its lovely airy vibe.

»Travel To HDF.Y3D« returns for one last time in form of the spoken word prolog - a nice extra tool to play with.

Sophomore album from the singer who NPR are calling "the Next Queen Of Americana Folk." Boomerang Town marks a bold step forward for this country-folk-leaning singer-songwriter. It is an arresting, ambitious song-cycle that explores the generational arc of family, the stranglehold of addiction, and the fragile ties that bind us together as Americans. This is a record that understands that love and grief are two sides of the same coin. Jaimee Harris turned 30 during the pandemic. It’s a milestone that is a rite of passage even during normal times. But for this Texas-born singer-songwriter, it came in the midst of one of the strangest and most tumultuous periods in American history. When the world stopped during lockdown, Harris, like many others, found herself gazing back into the past, ruminating on the nature of her hometown and family origins, and reckoning with their imprint on her. The term ‘nostalgia’ derives from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain), and if Harris’s Boomerang Town can be regarded as a nostalgic album, it is only nostalgic in the sense that the longing for home is a desire to return to the past and heal old wounds. For Harris, the album began gestating around 2016, a time of great loss for many in the Americana community, with the songwriter losing several musicians close to her. The shift in the nation’s political landscape had ushered in a new level of polarization that saw whole swaths of cultural life being demonized. For someone who grew up in a small town outside of Waco, Harris believed the values instilled in her by her parents were not entirely in line with how many on the left were viewing — and vilifying — Christians, citing them as responsible for the new change in leadership. As a person in recovery, Harris has had to re-evaluate her own connection to faith and find strength in a higher power (“Though he’s not necessarily a blue-eyed Jesus,” she laughs), though she certainly knows what it’s like to “be told how to vote” in a Southern church setting. It was from the intersection of these social, personal, and political currents the album was born. And while much of the material on Boomerang Town was inspired by personal experience, the songs on this collection are far from autobiographical xeroxed copies. More than anything, they come from a place of emotional truth. “My goal is to just write the best possible song I can write,” Harris says, “and I wanted to have ten songs that made sense together sonically.

Freestyle drops another 12" rarity from the annals of UK funk & boogie history - this time giving the sounds of VeiraKrew's "Sexy Lady" from 1985 a fresh new cut.

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Elvis Veira was born on the Carribean island of Nevis and moved to England alongside his pianist and music teacher mother at the age of 2, quickly becoming profficient on piano, guitar & bass by the time he was in his early teens. His love for playing music and singing in choirs propelled him on this musical journey, and his late teens to 20s saw him supporting top acts such Heatwave, Wham, Second Image, Katrina and the Waves, Mezzo Forte, Chris Rea, Shakatak and many others.

In 1983 he started working under the alias VeiraKrew, and a couple of years later in 1985 laid down this 12" at Bedford's Thatch Cottage Studio on a shoe-string budget. Backed up with the title-track's killer instrumental version and the b-side "Welcome to a Dream" it was self-released by Elvis on a x1000 run (since becoming quite the collectors item, with clean copies changing hands for up to £150 a piece).

Following the release of Sexy Lady, Elvis continued playing and working as a session musician and vocalist, going on to release a further 12" in 1988 signing to Stevie V's Beatbox International label for the house-inflected track "Good Stuff". Fast forwarding to present day, Elvis has had some time away from music but is now back actively playing and producing, alongside working with the OMG (Outreach Music Group) - helping to provide support and music therapy within the NHS.

Erstpressung auf pinkem Vinyl. "Breaking The Balls Of History" ist das insgesamt zehnte Album von QUASI, das am zehnten Februar, zehn Jahre nach ihrer letzten Platte, erscheint. Drei Zehner, was sich mit den dreißig Jahren deckt, die sie zusammenspielen. Sam Coomes und Janet Weiss sind zu Ikonen des pazifischen Nordwestens geworden, und QUASI hat sich immer so beständig angefühlt - ihre dauerhafte Freundschaft so generativ, ihre Energie unendlich, jedes Album rauer und eingängiger und wilder und lustiger als das letzte. Aber wir haben uns geirrt, QUASI jemals für selbstverständlich zu halten. Eine Zeit lang dachten sie, dass das komplizierte "Mole City" von 2013 ihr letztes Album sein könnte. Sie würden mit einem großartigen Album abtreten und weiterziehen. Dann, im August 2019, krachte ein Auto in Janets Haus und brach ihr beide Beine und das Schlüsselbein. Dann kam ein tödlicher Virus über uns, und niemand wusste, wann oder ob Live-Musik, wie wir sie kannten, jemals wieder würde stattfinden können. "There's no investing in the future anymore", erkannte Janet. "The future is now. Do it now if you want to do it. Don't put it off. All those things you only realize when it's almost too late. It could be gone in a second." Während des Lockdowns standen die Straßen von Portland still, Flugzeuge verschwanden, wilde Tiere tauchten auf. Und mit der ausgelöschten Normalität kam ein unerwartetes Geschenk: ununterbrochene Zeit, Stunden am Tag, um Kunst zu machen. QUASI konnten nicht auf Tournee gehen, also hatten sie eine Idee: Sie taten so, als wären sie auf Tournee und spielten jeden Tag zusammen. Jeden Nachmittag verschanzten sich Sam und Janet in ihrem winzigen Übungsraum und kanalisierten die Verwirrung und Absurdität dieser fremden neuen Welt in Songs. Sie beschlossen, dass sie die Songs live und gemeinsam aufnehmen würden, um einen Moment einzufangen. Das unglaubliche Ergebnis dieser Sessions ist "Breaking The Balls Of History", aufgenommen in fünf Tagen und produziert von John Goodmanson. Hier sind zwei Künstler*innen in ihrer Blütezeit, jede*r ein menschlicher Fundus an musikalischem Wissen und Erfahrung, völlig unverwechselbar in ihrem Songwriting und Sound. In der QUASI-Form wird die Band alchemistisch noch größer als die Summe ihrer Teile. Mitten in einem katastrophalen sozialen und politischen Moment haben sie exquisite, melodische Songs geschaffen, die vor Wut, wildem Humor und Intelligenz nur so sprühen, angetrieben von einem großen, zerschundenen, pochenden Herzen. "A last long laugh at the edge of death", singt Sam zu Beginn des Albums, und dieser fröhliche Trotz - der genauso gut der Logbuch-Eintrag unserer Gegenwart sein könnte - gibt den Ton für die kommenden Songs an. Es klingt düster, und das ist es auch, weil es sich dem Moment stellt. Aber es ist auch eine Platte, die vor Energie, Vergnügen und Freude nur so strotzt.

RED APPLE MARBLE VINYL REPRESS.

Everything changed for The Beths when they released their debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealand’s tight-knit music scene, working full-time during the day and playing music with friends after hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their home town, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths’ second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the group’s earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends. Stokes’s writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home.

"If you're at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds,” Stokes says. “We did the same thing. When you're home, you miss everybody, and when you're away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the time.”

With songs like the rambunctious “Dying To Believe” and the tender, shoegazey “Out of Sight,” The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations/They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings on “Dying to Believe.” The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths’ view, is with abundant and unconditional love, no matter how far it has to travel. On “Out of Sight,” she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: “If your world collapses/I’ll be down in the rubble/I’d build you another,” she sings.

“It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, 'wish you were here, wish I was there,’ over and over again,” she says of the time period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths committed themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same time to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could. That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it -- a sentiment we need now more than ever.

Originally Released in 1999, this much sought after package is back with new art and a suave ass gatefold jacket! Beginning their career as a Midwestern garage band, the Dwarves made an abrupt change once they moved to San Francisco, maintaining their recklessness, but getting faster and faster. Free Cocaine traces the arc of that development, collecting singles, demo tracks, and other sessions from that time period, beginning with the Lucifer's Crank EP, and progressing onward. Most early tracks betray tremendous musical inadequacies -- at this point, the Dwarves were hardly the polished pop-punkers they would become by the time they signed to Epitaph. Nonetheless, even this raw material has plenty of catchiness, playing ability issues aside. The album also collects compilation cuts like "Lesbian Nun" from the Amrep compilation Dope, Guns, and Fucking in the Streets and singles all the way up through the late '90s on Man's Ruin. Though known primarily for their hard-living, and reckless violence at shows, with most sets clocking in under 20 minutes, the Dwarves, at this juncture, were the best in the underground rock world at what they did: cooking up fast-as-hell, catchy, raunchy hardcore punk. (allmusic). Mixing Lucifer's Crank, Toolin' For a Warm Teabag and other early Dwarves singles, EPs and unreleased tracks this is the noise rock Dwarves at their most untamed. Zero production value, maximum profanity. Hits include Eat You To Survive, Fucking Life and Dead Brides in White.

Breaking the Balls of History, recorded in five days and produced by John Goodmanson at the legendary Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline, WA. Here are two artists at their prime, each a human library of musical knowledge and experience, entirely distinctive in their songcraft and sound. In Quasi-form, the band becomes alchemically even greater than the sum of its parts: Janet’s galloping drums and Sam’s punk-symphonic Rocksichord and their intertwining vocals make something gigantic, anthemic. In the thick of a cataclysmic social and political moment, they’ve crafted exquisitely melodic songs that glitter with rage and wild humor and intelligence, driven by a big bruised pounding heart.

Solaire, Siegfried Kessler, that is the least we can say! Aged 4: learns piano. Aged 6: his first concert. After this: studies classical music like everyone else... until the jazz of Jack Diéval and Stan Kenton turned everything upside down. So it was goodbye to Bach...

...And hello to Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Ted Curson and Archie Shepp (who he would accompany over a long period). In 1969, with Yochk’o Seffer, Didier Levallet and Jean-My Truong, he formed a group which would mark history and create a sensation: Perception. If French free jazz exists, its thanks to Kessler (and company).

The following year, the pianist recorded his first album: Live at the Gill’s Club. On this one-night concert date can also be heard Barre Phillips and Steve McCall. But it was in 1971 that Kessler would record his greatest album; still in a trio setting, but this time with bassist Gus Nemeth and percussionist Stu Martin: Solaire. Five tracks of extraordinary music, moving back and forth between modal jazz and contemporary music.

Let’s begin at the end, with the title track Solaire, on which Kessler plays a melody on flute and piano which resists all onslaughts. It sends out powerful waves, Kessler’s jazz, bubbling like hot oil (Persécution, Drum), shaking modal jazz to its roots (De l’Orient à Orion) or upsetting the memory of a cantata (Bach Hcab). The piano is an instrument which can provide a tendency towards, demonstrative technique; with Kessler, it is something else: a joyful persecution!

Back in 2010 Caribou's Dan Snaith hosted a remix competition for his track 'Sun' from his then-new album Swim. The winner was an unknown producer called altrice.

Hailing from Tucson, Arizona of Iranian/Mexican descent, altrice took the bright euphoric highs of the original and crumbled them into rumbling lows, the crystalline edges becoming rough and undefined. Along with a bursting goody-bag of prizes, Snaith also provided altrice with the stems for the rest of Swim and the offer to remix the whole album track-by-track, creating 'stem'. Aside from a further dream-come-true remix of Radiohead, this is largely the last we heard from altrice in the past 12 years.

A year and a half ago though, having kept up correspondence with Snaith over the years, altrice began sending new material. With encouragement from Snaith he eventually wound up with an EP which has since become essential DJ material for Snaith and the cohort of friends he's shared it with, as well as appearing in Leon Vynehall's Radio 1 Residency, KH (Four Tet)'s recent Essential Mix and more.

With three tracks already released from the EP receiving further DJ support from Avalon Emerson, Floating Points, Yu Su, Sofia Kourtesis, Mano Le Tough and more, today the EP is released in full officially via Snaith's own Jiaolong label. compciter is a collection of music that for the first time is entirely altrice's own sound, alluring and off-kilter, a wealth of sounds and styles that are tied together by an irresistible warmth.

Speaking of the EP, altrice says:

"This EP is the result of allowing my stylistic boundaries to be nudged in a new direction, putting away a self-inflicted notion that I’m only fluent in certain subgenres of electronic music. I made some production choices that, for better or worse, will make this project stand out. I’ve been overwhelmed by the reactions in clubs and at festivals, and individuals reaching out with kind words about the music. It’s surreal."
From the huddled and obscured yet comforting vocal samples - described by Pitchfork as "a beacon of light in an uncertain landscape" - of 'bda creature' to the swinging 90s eurodance drums of 'places faces' and the way the welcoming guitar melody and soulful vocals of 'eyes' gives way to a full on bass pummel, the tracks that have been released so far from the EP are already causing a stir both on and off the dancefloor. Today, the chopped up vocals and vast roomy sound of 'yoni' along with '1609km' - which would almost be straightforward house if it didn't pull the rug out to make way for delicate piano and harmonica flourishes - complete a set that fulfils a promise 12 years in the making..

For this uniquely personal retrospective spread over twelve vinyl discs, Sven Väth takes us back to the early days of his DJ career. On What I Used To Play we meet great pioneers of electronic music, gifted percussionists, obscure wave bands, and innovative producers of a bygone 'new electronic' era. Rough beats and irresistible grooves from the identification stage of house, techno, and acid remind us not just how far electronic music has evolved over the past four decades, but how great it was to dance to EBM, techno, and house for the very first time.

If there is one protagonist of the electronic music scene who has remained curious, innovative and at the very cutting edge of music for over four decades, it's Sven Väth. His multi-layered artist albums and Sound of the Season mix compilations have been defining the genre for over two decades, and even today, he is constantly on the lookout for the next top tune to add to the highlights of his next set. At least, that's the case when he's not producing them himself as an artist or remixer. "Actually, it's always been part of my DNA to think ahead," and nothing had been further from his mind than looking back at his past, but when in spring of 2020 the international DJ circuit had to be scaled down to virtually zero, the 'restless traveler' suddenly had time. Time to stop and reflect on "how it actually was back then, at the very beginning of my career..."

"It was a great trip and with every track, beautiful memories came flooding back".
In the London apartment, he had just moved into, Sven has set up a "little music room", where he cocooned himself for several days, "to look way back for the first time and review my musical journey through the eighties, so to speak."

The interim result was six thematically oriented playlists with a grand total of 120 tracks from 'early 80s' to 'Balearic late 80s', together with excursions into afrobeat, European new wave, and EBM sounds and a few epochal techno/house tracks from the USA in between. From these 'Best of Sven Väth's favorites', the project What I Used To Play crystallized. Sven remembers how the Cocoon team reacted to his proposal: "They found the idea of making a compilation out of it MEGA from the beginning and everyone said 'Sven, go for it', but then, of course, the work really started, namely, to clear the rights and to get clean sounding masters of the up to 40-year-old tracks. There was also disappointment, of course. We couldn't clear certain titles because the rights holders in the USA had fallen out with each other or simply disappeared from the scene. In short, it wasn't easy, but now I can safely say we got the most important tracks."

Finally, after two years of research, curation, design, and administrative fine-tuning, the "little retrospective" from 1981 to 1990 is available. The exquisitely packaged, and three-kilo heavy box set is not only physically impressive, WIUTP is also the definitive record of Sven Väth's musical development. On each of the twenty-four sides of vinyl, you can trace track by track, what influenced him during which phase, and how he took off as a DJ from his parents' Queen's Pub straight into the spotlight at Dorian Gray. There and at Vogue (later OMEN), Sven became the style-defining player in the DJ booth that he still is today.




1981 - 1990: Future Sounds of Now

In the early eighties, the crowd in clubs like Vogue and Dorian Gray danced to what nowadays we call 'dance classics' - mainly disco, funk, soul, and chart pop. It was up to a new generation of DJs, including Sven Väth, the youngest protagonist in the Rhine-Main area at the time, to create their own club-ready music mix. Good new tracks and potential floor-fillers were rarities that had to be sought out and found, in order to prove oneself worthy.
Without MP3s, internet streaming, or other digital download possibilities, music didn't just gravitate to the DJ, instead, it had to be tracked down. In well-stocked record stores in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden or even in Amsterdam, London, or New York, Sven and friends sourced the material for countless magical nights. On WIUTP we can follow Sven's very personal journey through this wild, innovative era in which synth-pop, funk, hip-hop, and disco were successively replaced as 'club music' by house, techno, acid, and breakbeat. By the end of the decade, it was clear to see that these once exotic 'fringe' phenomena would soon become 'mass' phenomena.



Early 80s

Dirty Talk by the Italian-American duo Klein & M.B.O. represents the most innovative phase of the Italo-disco genre in the early eighties like no other track. Mario Boncaldo (I) and Tony Carrasco relied entirely on the original synthetic drum and percussion sounds of the Roland TR-808, coupled with the raunchy vocals of Rossana Casale and guitar accents of Davide Piatto. Of course, other tracks from this period were also influential in style, most notably Unit by Logic System, which worked as the perfect soundtrack to the laser lighting system at the legendary Dorian Gray club. With stomping beats and robotic rap interludes, Bostich by Yello also belongs on Sven's eternal playlist - after all, it caught the attention of Afrikaa Bambaataa, who invited the Swiss duo to perform at the Roxy in New York in 1983.



EBM Wave - Mid 80s

From today's point of view, the almost ten-minute-long, downtempo track Giant by Matt Johnson's band project The The, would probably not be considered an obvious club classic. However, a closer (re)listen reveals the rhythmic intricacies of the percussion overdubs by JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus) on Johnson's composition, and it becomes clear why this exceptional piece of music is one of Sven's absolute favorites. Other classics from this phase include Kaw-Liga by the mysterious The Residents, the hypnotic-synthetic Our Darkness by Anne Clark (and David Harrow), and last but not least, the somber, monotonous anthem Where Are You? by 16Bit, one of Sven Väth's projects together with Michael Münzing, Luca Anzilotti from 1986.



US House - Late 80s

You certainly can't talk about Chicago house without mentioning Frankie Knuckles. The resident DJ at the Warehouse not only gave the name to an entire genre, but also produced epochal floor fillers on the Trax label like the timeless Your Love, sung (and moaned) by Jamie Principle. Acid house protagonists Phuture also hail from Chicago, and on We Are Phuture (also released on Trax) we hear the chirping acid sounds of the legendary Roland TB-303 in full effect. Another featured classic is No UFO's by Detroit's Model 500 aka Juan Atkins, who is rightly considered the 'Godfather of Techno' even if the genre-defining track from 1985 still breathes with the spirit of hip-hop and electro from the first breakdance era.





Afrobeat

Le Serpent, by Algerian-born Abdelmadjid Guemguem, is a track that sounds completely different from everything else on WIUTP. Made in 1978, it's a monumental, rousing groove created without bass or synths, just with five congas! Even though Guem sadly passed away in 2021, his immortal, acoustic beats are understood all over the world and will continue to enrich many thousands of DJ sets for years to come. Another classic that not only Sven appreciates beyond measure is Hugh Masekela's Don't Go Lose it, Baby. In addition to being one of the most important jazz pioneers, the trumpeter and freedom fighter from Johannesburg was very experimental, integrating electronic sounds into his music in later years, in a similar vein to Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. Dutch jazz pianist Jasper van't Hof's afrobeat project Pili Pili has also aged well. The trance-like, almost sixteen-minute-long track of the same name, manages to fill a whole side on the seventh of twelve vinyl discs in the WIUTP box.



UK-US-Euro - Late 80s

Time for a change of scene, in the truest sense of the word, and from a musical perspective, this section is like landing on another planet. First up is Andrew Weatherall's classic remix of Primal Scream's Loaded, featuring the iconic Peter Fonda sample (lifted from the 1966 biker film Wild Angels) that came to personify the mood triggered by the British Second Summer of Love in the late eighties: "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do, and we wanna get loaded...". This period also saw the emergence of M/A/R/R/S whose only single, 1987's Pump Up The Volume, became a club classic with support from DJ legend CJ Mackintosh. In this most eclectic of sections, we also encounter New York house and reggae producer Bobby Konders and his seminal Nervous Acid.



Balearic - Late 80s

Those who know him, know that Sven had already lost his heart to the 'magic island' of Ibiza as a teenager, so with that in mind, the WIUTP project couldn't end without a Balearic chapter. Inspired by Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, the immortal, eponymously titled Sueño Latino belongs in there without question. Equally popular on the island was, and still is Break 4 Love by Raze, which thinking about it, would also fit perfectly into the house chapter. Last, but not least, there's an overdue reunion with Sven Väth himself, in his role as frontman of the successful Frankfurt trio OFF. Together with Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti (later of Snap!) this 'Organization For Fun' created the off-the-wall club hit Electric Salsa in 1986 which incidentally turned into an international chart smash, putting Sven in the enviable position of having to decide between pop stardom and a DJ career. Well, we all know how that decision turned out and the rest, as they say, is history. A not insignificant part of his story is What I Used To Play. Enjoy!

After a year and a half writing and recording rock music, I needed to clear my head. I listened to and made music where things generally happen gradually rather than suddenly. I would set up patches on a Monomachine or Analog Four and listen to them, hearing one sound morph into others, making changes to a patch only after having listened for quite a while, gradually adding elements, and finally manipulating the sounds on the fly. All tracks were recorded live to CD burner, with no overdubs, and executed on one or two machines.

While I was almost exclusively listening to artists such as Chris Watson, Peter Rehberg, Bernard Parmegiani, CM Von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Oren Ambarchi, Hazard, Bruce Gilbert, Klara Lewis, Ryoji Ikeda, and so on, I was also inspired by my mental image of John Lennon's tape and mellotron experiments he made at home during his time in the Beatles, as well as events like the first minute of Bowie's Station To Station, ...And The Gods Made Love by Jimi Hendrix, the synths in the song Mass Production by Iggy Pop, and the general idea of Eno's initial concept of Ambient music.

Music being a solitary sculpture in sonic space was the main motivating thought. I was looking at pictures of sculptures and trying to make music that simultaneously conveyed both movement and stillness. I refrained from sudden musical changes, especially avoiding sequences of notes and rhythms. In fact, this music was made from sequences which never exceed a single note, many of these pieces being made on a single pattern. The movement which a good sculptor conveys when the shape of his medium meets the eyes of the viewer who walks around the piece, or the sun changes its position, are the kinds of movement which it was the role of the synth patches to communicate.

I've been listening to music like this since I was 13 or so, but I felt that making it was out of my reach because of the amount of restraint I imagined it required. Once I found myself making this music, it did not feel like a matter of restraint at all. I wanted to build a certain type of building, and hear certain types of movement, and I knew when it was complete. There was no place for sequences of notes and rhythms in my plans.

I also cannot overstate the role that being in my band played. I had previously spent 12 years programming and engineering my own music, and then spent a year and a half making music where my role was basically to write songs and play guitar. When the band's recording phase was completed, I needed to go back to my adopted language. I had done enough with chords, rhythms, notes, defined sections, sharp transitions, etc.. What I needed was to create music from the ground up with nothing but sound, and have that music reflect "being" rather than "doing". It was a therapeutic way of re-balancing myself, before and during my band's mixing process.

This music seeks to just exist, and is not attempting to manipulate or grab the listener in any way. I believe it works well if one listens loud and focuses on it, but also works well at soft volumes and in the background. It can compete with silence on silence's own terms, and it can also happily wipe silence out.

There are two versions of this album. The CD version is pronounced "two" and called : I I . This is the longer version. The vinyl version is pronounced "one", and called . I : This version is shorter, but contains one vinyl-only track. The reason the vinyl is shorter is that some of the tracks have sounds that can not be pressed on vinyl.

John Frusciante

“Booze for Blues! No time to think, time to drink!”
That’s the motto of the Spanish heavy fuzz rock
and psychedelic power blues trio Blues Weiser.
They stay true to their motto on album number
three – ‘Obey The Booze’.
‘Obey The Booze’ is now available on red vinyl.
Blues Weiser unleash a vibrant blend of Fu
Manchu / Nebula fuzzy stoner blues jams, 70s Jimi
Hendrix-infused wah-wah solos, thunderous 90s
rock riffs and big grooves.
Sometimes crystal clear and laid-back and
sometimes exploding in a face melting distortion,
Blues Weiser do know how to shake grounds with
their sound; “It’s been a wild ride since we started
recording it, while trying to settle on making a
fuzzy, bluesy, psychedelic, feelgood, but at times
yet dark but honest record. Let’s have some good
time!”
For fans of Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet, Karma
To Burn, Nebula, Snail, Brant Bjork.

Carolina’ is the Brazilian virtuoso Seu Jorge's debut full-length album from 2002. Originally released under the title ‘Samba Esporte Fino’, its release and subsequent international acclaim dovetailed with Seu Jorge’s ascent into movie stardom. He is probably best known outside of Brazil for his work on Wes Anderson’s 2004 film 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’, in which he played a starring role and his Portuguese covers of David Bowie records were a highlight of the soundtrack. Having initially found fame thanks to his standout performance as Knockout Ned in the revered movie ‘City of God’. ‘Carolina’ would cement his global fame and launch an illustrious musical career that has earnt him a Grammy nomination.

Co-produced by Mario Caldatto of Beastie Boys and Planet Hemp fame, the album presented a vibrant, contemporary combination of samba and funk, backed by guitar, bass, drums, percussion, and horns. It kicks off with one of Seu's most loved tracks 'Carolina', an anthemic feel-good classic with timeless energy, ending in a sing-along crescendo. Other highlights included the Brazilian-Funk of 'Mangueira' reminiscent in places of Tim Maia with its 80s inspired vibe, and the catchy jazzy-samba of 'Tu Queria' which always ignites the dance floor.

Few acts have better captured angst and the agony of young love other than The Everly Brothers. As well as those inimitable harmonies, fantastic songs and Chet Atkins' superb production, the Everlys' success owed much to the fact that Don and Phil were barely out of their teens, and so filled every song with real feeling. Their first recordings led to a series of hits that would come to define the harmonious Rock & Roll of the period; Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Susie, All I Have To Do Is Dream, Claudette (penned by Roy Orbison), Bird Dog, Devoted To You, Let It Be Me, When Will I Be Loved, So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad), Walk Right Back, Ebony Eyes and Crying In The Rain. For their influence on The Beatles alone, the Everly Brothers are owed a huge debt of gratitude. The collection of songs found here span Country, Folk, Rock & Roll and Pop, and demonstrate just how influential Don and Phil were on popular music, beginning with those very first sessions in front of their parent's microphone.

Few acts have better captured angst and the agony of young love other than The Everly Brothers. As well as those inimitable harmonies, fantastic songs and Chet Atkins' superb production, the Everlys' success owed much to the fact that Don and Phil were barely out of their teens, and so filled every song with real feeling. Their first recordings led to a series of hits that would come to define the harmonious Rock & Roll of the period; Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Susie, All I Have To Do Is Dream, Claudette (penned by Roy Orbison), Bird Dog, Devoted To You, Let It Be Me, When Will I Be Loved, So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad), Walk Right Back, Ebony Eyes and Crying In The Rain. For their influence on The Beatles alone, the Everly Brothers are owed a huge debt of gratitude. The collection of songs found here span Country, Folk, Rock & Roll and Pop, and demonstrate just how influential Don and Phil were on popular music, beginning with those very first sessions in front of their parent's microphone.

New York heavyweights Emskee and Saint are The Good People and teamed up with French producer Shar The Analog Bastard for this superb EP released as digital only back in September 2020. Around the same time AE Productions dropped Emskee’s Wall To Wall 12” and while talking back and forth we arranged to release The Fall Back EP on AE. Unfortunately pressing vinyl became very difficult due to worldwide lockdowns so is only now ready for release even though it was sent to manufacture back in June 2021.

If you missed the digital release and if you dig real deal intelligent Hip Hop with a couple stellar MC’s over that classic SP1200 soundscape this EP is for you and if a guest verse each from the beyond legendary Masta Ace and El Da Sensei plus the not so well known but very dope Meraxx is your cup of tea look no further.

Remastered for vinyl by our mastering engineer of choice Rola and artwork by the multitalented Saint. Available on 6 track black vinyl EP supplied in full colour heavy grade card sleeve plus available from all the usual digital services to stream or download but please see The Good People and Shar’s Bandcamp pages for better file types.

Konnichiwa! The Courettes go to the land of the rising sun – and they sing in Japanese! The “hardest working band in showbiz” took another step closer to world domination traveling around the globe and landing in Japan in October for a successful tour full of packed concerts, sushi and Japanese rock ‘n’ roll! Their new upcoming 7” single is an outstanding version in Japanese of ‘Daydream’. The English version, from their latest album Back in Mono B-sides & Outtakes, is also included on the flipside. On beautiful white vinyl with red labels (just like the Japanese flag) the record is due out on January 27th on Damaged Goods Records, shipping from the UK to all corners of the western world and beyond. The original release on Japanese label Target Earth / Naris Records sold out by the third day of the Japanese tour. The mix is of course by Japanese Spector aficionado Seiki Sato, who was responsible for the Back in Mono album’s Wall of Sound extravaganza. So, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for one more spit ‘n’ snarl wall-of-sound garage gem with Martin blending class and wildness on the drums and Flavia bursting out on top - in Japanese! Kampai!

Nimrod, Green Day’s fifth studio album, was originally released on October 14 1997. The Billboard Top10 LP declared “Green Days best!” by Kerrang was driven by the hit singles “Hitchin’ A Ride”, “Redundant”, “Nice Guys Finish Last” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” the latter of which has sold 5 million copies in the US alone. The song was written as a spiteful ballad and has evolved into the soundtrack of everyone’s seminal life moments; even being featured in the Seinfeld series finale. The album has sold over 3 million copies in the US (triple platinum) and has been certified multi-platinum, platinum, or gold in several other countries, including the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia and Spain.

This 25th Anniversary Edition includes the original album, one disc of previously unreleased Nimrod demos, and a live set from Philadelphia recorded one month after Nimrod was released. The 14 track demos disc includes two unreleased Green Day tracks (“You Irritate Me” and “Tre Polka”), plus a cover of the classic Elvis Costello song “Allison” (previously unreleased). The live album was recorded at The Electric Factory in Philadelphia on November 14 1997. The 20-songset includes several songs from Nimrod, plus fan favourites from their previous albums and singles.

Re-mastered from the original master tapes.
Limited edition 2000 copies.
180 gr vinyl pressed by Optimal in Germany.
Facsimile reissue using the original photos on front and back by Herman Leonard.
Double insert using an original photo by JP Leloir.
Each record has been visually checked to prevent defects.

If naming is a form of claiming, of being claimed, how is one tethered to both the physical landscape that surrounds us, as well as our own internal emotional landscape_at times calm, at times turbulent, and ever changing? H.C. McEntire's new album Every Acre grapples with those themes_themes that encompass grief, loss, and links to land and loved ones. And naming_claiming land, claiming self, being claimed by ancestry and heritage_permeates the hauntingly beautiful landscape that is this poignant collection of songs. The songs straddle the line between music and poetry. In "New View," McEntire cites poets "Day, Ada, and Laux, Berry, and Olds"_fixtures in the world of writing, whose works are beacons of light over bleak horizons. The beginning of the song is backed by soft guitar plucks that fall on the downbeat and spangle like stars, and, throughout, guitar, bass, and drums swell together gently, mimicking ebbing and flowing tides under the moon. McEntire's voice (at once tender and fierce) intones the truth of both giving and taking, releasing and claiming: "Bend me, break me, split me right in two. Mend me, make me_I'll take more of you." Permeated by heartbeat-like drums, "Shadows" develops quiet ruminations on surrender and loss_reminiscing, moving on. This ponderous, dreamlike song asks the question of how "to make room." How does one make room, for self and for renewal and surrender, when it is so difficult to leave what you know behind? Playing with slivers of descending chromatics, along with the occasional downward-stepping bass, here McEntire yearns for home, and for nesting. Perhaps one of the more grief-stricken songs, "Rows of Clover" is a lamentation, one that touches on the loss of a "steadfast hound." The lone piano in the beginning of the song is rhythmically hymn-like. The stark verse arrangement gradually leads to a chorus that reads like a moody exhale, swollen with lush guitar strums and a Bill Withers-esque understated soul groove. But what stands out the most is an image of being "down on your knees, clawing at the garden"_the only explicit mention of a person in the song. "It ain't the easy kind of healing," sings McEntire, seemingly from further and further away as her voice echoes; and healing ta;kes time, time takes time_truths that linger painfully. "Dovetail" is a song that tells of various women. The song moves back and forth between solo piano and the addition of bass and drums under vocals. McEntire's gentle, trembling vibrato_harmonized in thirds in a celebratory manner_calls to mind a rejoicing psalm and shines through these images, leaving the listener cuttingly fraught with emotions_such as wonder, sadness, nostalgia_that can only arise with these juxtapositions. Gracious (and graceful) with its lilting melodies and lush harmonies, Every Acre ex - plores the acres of our physical and emotional homes. These songs are reaching for the kind of home that we all seek: one where we can rest and lay down (or tuck away) our burdens of loss. And maybe, moving through every acre of a world that often tries to tear our sense of identity and heritage down, McEntire sheds light on what it is to be human in this life_both stingy and gracious, both hurtful and kind.

Orange Viny

If naming is a form of claiming, of being claimed, how is one tethered to both the physical landscape that surrounds us, as well as our own internal emotional landscape_at times calm, at times turbulent, and ever changing? H.C. McEntire's new album Every Acre grapples with those themes_themes that encompass grief, loss, and links to land and loved ones. And naming_claiming land, claiming self, being claimed by ancestry and heritage_permeates the hauntingly beautiful landscape that is this poignant collection of songs. The songs straddle the line between music and poetry. In "New View," McEntire cites poets "Day, Ada, and Laux, Berry, and Olds"_fixtures in the world of writing, whose works are beacons of light over bleak horizons. The beginning of the song is backed by soft guitar plucks that fall on the downbeat and spangle like stars, and, throughout, guitar, bass, and drums swell together gently, mimicking ebbing and flowing tides under the moon. McEntire's voice (at once tender and fierce) intones the truth of both giving and taking, releasing and claiming: "Bend me, break me, split me right in two. Mend me, make me_I'll take more of you." Permeated by heartbeat-like drums, "Shadows" develops quiet ruminations on surrender and loss_reminiscing, moving on. This ponderous, dreamlike song asks the question of how "to make room." How does one make room, for self and for renewal and surrender, when it is so difficult to leave what you know behind? Playing with slivers of descending chromatics, along with the occasional downward-stepping bass, here McEntire yearns for home, and for nesting. Perhaps one of the more grief-stricken songs, "Rows of Clover" is a lamentation, one that touches on the loss of a "steadfast hound." The lone piano in the beginning of the song is rhythmically hymn-like. The stark verse arrangement gradually leads to a chorus that reads like a moody exhale, swollen with lush guitar strums and a Bill Withers-esque understated soul groove. But what stands out the most is an image of being "down on your knees, clawing at the garden"_the only explicit mention of a person in the song. "It ain't the easy kind of healing," sings McEntire, seemingly from further and further away as her voice echoes; and healing ta;kes time, time takes time_truths that linger painfully. "Dovetail" is a song that tells of various women. The song moves back and forth between solo piano and the addition of bass and drums under vocals. McEntire's gentle, trembling vibrato_harmonized in thirds in a celebratory manner_calls to mind a rejoicing psalm and shines through these images, leaving the listener cuttingly fraught with emotions_such as wonder, sadness, nostalgia_that can only arise with these juxtapositions. Gracious (and graceful) with its lilting melodies and lush harmonies, Every Acre ex - plores the acres of our physical and emotional homes. These songs are reaching for the kind of home that we all seek: one where we can rest and lay down (or tuck away) our burdens of loss. And maybe, moving through every acre of a world that often tries to tear our sense of identity and heritage down, McEntire sheds light on what it is to be human in this life_both stingy and gracious, both hurtful and kind.

If naming is a form of claiming, of being claimed, how is one tethered to both the physical landscape that surrounds us, as well as our own internal emotional landscape at times calm, at times turbulent, and ever changing? H.C. McEntire’s new album Every Acre grapples with those themes that encompass grief, loss, and links to land and loved ones. And naming claiming land, claiming self, being claimed by ancestry and heritage permeates the hauntingly beautiful landscape that is this poignant collection of songs. The songs straddle the line between music and poetry. In “New View,” McEntire cites poets “Day, Ada, and Laux, Berry, and Olds” fixtures in the world of writing, whose works are beacons of light over bleak horizons. The beginning of the song is backed by soft guitar plucks that fall on the downbeat and spangle like stars, and, throughout, guitar, bass, and drums swell together gently, mimicking ebbing and flowing tides under the moon. McEntire’s voice (at once tender and fierce) intones the truth of both giving and taking, releasing and claiming: “Bend me, break me, split me right in two. Mend me, make me I’ll take more of you.” Permeated by heartbeat-like drums, “Shadows” develops quiet ruminations on surrender and loss reminiscing, moving on. This ponderous, dreamlike song asks the question of how “to make room.” How does one make room, for self and for renewal and surrender, when it is so difficult to leave what you know behind? Playing with slivers of descending chromatics, along with the occasional downward-stepping bass, here McEntire yearns for home, and for nesting. Perhaps one of the more grief-stricken songs, “Rows of Clover” is a lamentation, one that touches on the loss of a “steadfast hound.” The lone piano in the beginning of the song is rhythmically hymn-like. The stark verse arrangement gradually leads to a chorus that reads like a moody exhale, swollen with lush guitar strums and a Bill Withers–esque understated soul groove. But what stands out the most is an image of being “down on your knees, clawing at the garden” the only explicit mention of a person in the song. “It ain’t the easy kind of healing,” sings McEntire, seemingly from further and further away as her voice echoes; and healing takes time, time takes time truths that linger painfully. “Dovetail” is a song that tells of various women. The song moves back and forth between solo piano and the addition of bass and drums under vocals. McEntire’s gentle, trembling vibrato harmonized in thirds in a celebratory manner calls to mind a rejoicing psalm and shines through these images, leaving the listener cuttingly fraught with emotions such as wonder, sadness, nostalgia that can only arise with these juxtapositions. Gracious (and graceful) with its lilting melodies and lush harmonies, Every Acre explores the acres of our physical and emotional homes. These songs are reaching for the kind of home that we all seek: one where we can rest and lay down (or tuck away) our burdens of loss. And maybe, moving through every acre of a world that often tries to tear our sense of identity and heritage down, McEntire sheds light on what it is to be human in this life both stingy and gracious, both hurtful and kind.