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A.R. Kive collates the three most astonishing works from that most miraculous of duos - A.R. Kane - comprising the ‘Up Home’ EP from 1988 that signified the band’s dawning realisation of their own powers and possibilities, their legendary debut LP ‘sixty nine’ (1988) and its kaleidoscopic, prophetic double-LP follow up ‘i’ (1989).

In founder-member Rudy Tambala’s new remastering, the music on these pivotal transmissions from the birth of dream pop, have been reinvigorated and re-infused with a new power, a new depth and intimacy, a new height and immensity. Vivid, timeless and yet always timely whenever they’re recalled, these records still force any listener to realise that despite the habits of retrospective myth-making and the
safe neutering effects of ‘genre’, thirty years have in no way dimmed how resistant and dissident to critical habits of categorisation A.R. Kane always were. Never quite ‘avant-pop’ or ‘shoegaze’ or ‘post-rock’ or any of those sobriquets designed to file and categorise, A.R. Kive is a reminder that those genres had to be coined, had to be invented precisely to contain the astonishing sound of A.R. Kane, because
previous formulations couldn’t come close to their sui generis sound and suggestiveness. This is music that pointed towards futures which a whole generation of artists and sonic explorers would map out. Now beautifully repackaged, remastered and fleshed out with extensive sleeve notes and accompanying materials, ‘A.R. Kive’ reveals that 35 years on it’s still a struggle to defuse the revolutionary and inspirational possibility of A.R. Kane’s music.

A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and
Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that! We could express ourselves like that!’ moment”, recalls Tambala - and through a mix of
confidence, chutzpah, ad hoc almost-mythical live shows and sheer innocent will the duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in 1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of WHERE to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here - a
tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.
The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. Simon Reynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ that forms the first part of ‘A.R. Kive’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play.

‘sixty nine’ the group’s debut LP that emerged in 1988 had
critics and listeners struggling to fit language around A.R. Kane’s sound. As a title it was telling - the year of ‘Bitches Brew’, the year of ‘In A Silent Way’, the erotic möbius between two lovers - and as originally coined by the band themselves, ‘dream pop’ (before it became a free-floating signifier of vague import) was entirely apposite for the music A.R. Kane were making. Crafted in a dark small basement studio in which Tambala recalls the duo had “complete freedom - We wanted to go as far out as we could, and in doing so we discovered the point where it stops being music”. There was an irresistibly dreamy, somnambulant, sensual and almost surreal flow to ‘sixty nine’s sound, but also real darkness/dankness, the ruptures of the primordial and the reverberations of the subconscious, within the grooves of remarkable songs like ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Crazy Blue’. Alex’s plangent vocals floated and surged amidst exquisite peals of refracted feedback but crucially there was BASS here, lugubrious and funky and full of dread, sonic pleasure and sonic disturbance crushed together to make music with a center so deep it felt subcutaneous, music constructed from both the accidental and the deliberate, generous enough to dance with both serendipity and chaos. ‘sixty nine’ remains - especially in this remastered iteration - ravishing, revolutionary.

The final part of this ‘A.R. Kive’ contains 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental pop sensibilities over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing compositions, the album did exactly what a great double-set should do - indulge the artists sprawling pursuit of their own imaginations but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop both transcends and toys with the listeners expectations. Jason Ankeny has noted that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of ‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a three year period in which the duo had made some of the most prophetic and revelatory music of the entire decade.

After ‘i’ the duo’s output became more sporadic with Tambala and Ayuli moving in different directions both geographically and musically, with only 1994’s ‘New Clear Child’ a crystalline re-fraction of future and past echoes of jazz, folk and soul, before the duo went their separate ways. Since then, A.R. Kane’s music has endured, not thanks to the usual sepia’d false memories that seem to maintain interest in so much of the musical past, but because those who hear A.R. Kane music and are changed irrevocably, have to share that universe which A.R. Kane opened up, with anyone else who will listen. Far more than other lauded documents of the late 80s it still sounds astonishingly fresh, astonishingly livid and vivid and necessary and NOW.

Faitiche welcomes Andrew Black aka blackbody_radiation. His debut album Ultra Materials gathers six ghostly drones, created with the help of sound masking.

Andrew Black, who hails from one of the UK's post industrial North West Milltowns has a sensitive feeling for space and its acoustics. Having trained as a designer and operated within the realms of architecture and public space, it was only natural to extend his interest to manipulating field recordings.

The six pieces collected on Ultra-Materials provide an insight into Black's highly sensitive minimalism: they stand for a subtly meandering mediation on room acoustics and place, which are manipulated with the help of sound masking, among other things - that is, the addition and superimposition of artificially generated frequencies to mask unwanted sounds.

Sometimes the pieces are reminiscent of warm engine noise, sometimes one thinks of carefully captured natural phenomena. Their strength lies in their elusiveness: free of concrete attributions or musical location, they can unfold their hypnotic pull without revealing anything about their origins. Harmonics at times shimmer, at times warble and at times coexist. It is an attempt to get in touch with our listening abilities.

Stomu Yamash'ta's ultra-rare cult 1971 LP is reissued for the first time, it is a deep, cosmic, at time ambient performance recorded live and
featuring two other Japanese legends: Takehisa Kosugi from the TajMahal Travellers and jazz pianist Masahiko Satoh

Remastered from the master tapes with original gatefold artwork, obi and newintroduction by Paul Bowler. Recorded live at Yamaha Hall in Tokyo on April 18, 1971, the all- night concert was recorded in front of an invite- only audience consisting of friends and musicians. Yamash'ta had Satoh on keyboards along with Fluxus master and leader of the Taj Mahal Travellers Takehisa Kosugi on violin and Hideakira Sakurai on electric shamisen.

Edited down to fit two sides of an album that will become 'Sunrise From West
Sea', the performance is both hypnotic and ethereal. It starts with Kosugi's
distinctive electric violin and develops into a deep, spiritual free form
conversation between the four musicians, giving them all the space, they need to
freely improvise and interact with each other, mixing electronics, percussion,
electric organ and shamizen without ever clashing. The interaction alternates
between quiet, tranquil Eastern meditations and more paced parts, fuelled by
Yamash'ta's extraordinary percussion playing.
Yamash'ta never reached the creativity heard in 'Sunrise From West Sea' again.
The album was recorded during one of the most fertile periods in Japan where
such groups as Les Rallizes Denudes and Taj Mahal Travellers and jazz
musicians like Masahiko Satoh and Yamash'ta were revolutionising the Japanese
music scene.

Reissue of Veik's `From Madness To Nomadness' EP out now. Limited to 300 copies on 10" black in clear vinyl. Originally released on cassette in 2016, `From Madness to Nomadness' is the debut EP from Caen, France-based group Veik and is now being reissued on vinyl for the first time, with a limited 10" release courtesy of Fuzz Club Records. Introducing listeners to the trio's motorik, synthesised post-punk, the EP is a compilation of four tracks taken from a two-day recording session in the summer of 2016, recorded and mixed by Hugo Lamy of fellow Caen experimental duo Glass. The cover and the title of the EP are openly inspired by the `Telepathic Music' works by the French conceptual artist Robert Filiou, outlining the band's multi-disciplinary approach to music from the off. At the time drummer/vocalist Boris Collet told a local media outlet that "we wish to assume links with other artistic disciplines like photography". Concerning the reference to Robert Filiou, he added: "It is not so much the visual aspect that is important as the philosophy and the vision of the economy that he develops. The result should not be pompous or falsely intellectualizing. It is just that it seems relevant to build bridges between different fields (artistic or not). Bringing a bit of philosophy, architecture, images, sociology or geography into music can't hurt. It's not pretending to be anything else than what it is, it's still music, but I think there is a gesture and an intention to assume, no matter how you qualify it (creative, political, reflective). You have to allow yourself to do it."

180g ultra clear vinyl, download card included. Western Mystery Tradition' is the third studio album from Detroit, MI via Brooklyn, NY outfit Moonwalks and is due for via Fuzz Club. A departure from the band's DIY psych-rock roots to a more mature and polished sound, the album was produced by Mattiel's Jonah Swilley and recorded in May 2019 at Detroit's acclaimed (and rumored haunted) Masonic Temple with Bill Skibbe (Jack White, The Kills) in a lodge belonging to the Free Masons' Detroit chapter. "Western Mystery Tradition was conceived in the winter of 2019 amidst a polar vortex in Detroit, Michigan", Moonwalks recall of the record's origins: "At the time and in between touring, we lived together in a house on the west side that lacked a working stove and had no power in half of the building. The band - trapped indoors due to temperatures in the negatives and massive amounts of snow - drew inspiration from our isolated state amidst a bleak Michigan winter." Moonwalks consists of Kerrigan Pearce (drums), Jacob Dean (guitar), and Kate Gutwald (bass). Originating in Detroit's DIY scene, the trio started out playing in warehouses and makeshift venues across the city. Since then, they've gone on to tour extensively throughout North America and Europe supporting acts like The Murlocs, Metric, Julian Casablancas & The Voidz, Thee Oh Sees, The Liminanas, and The Mystery Lights to name a few

Producer Scrappy Jud Newcomb and Cleaves teamed up for the third time in early 2022 between Covid surges to record a new batch of songs, Slaid's first in five years.

Familiar themes of struggle and resilience will be a surprise to no one. As Scrappy puts it, "This album speaks to the hopeful, the hard working, the battered, confused, and the sad. But above all to the believers in the city of freedom that we heard in the stories of our youth and all those FM radio hits."

The first single, "Through the Dark," was co- written with Slaid's long- time collaborator and life- long friend, Rod Picott ("Broke Down," "Take Home Pay").

Slaid describes it simply as "a song about offering comfort in hard times."
Joseph Hudak of Rolling Stone calls Cleaves "a master storyteller, one influenced not by the shine of pop-culture but by the dirt of real life."

"More than 20 years into his career, Slaid Cleaves just keeps getting better . . .

There are few contemporaries that compare. He's become a master craftsman on the order of Guy Clark and John Prine." - Austin Chronicle

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia's thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney's underground music community. The pair's collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi's pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim's visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio's efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album's two sides draw on each artist's enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams' interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work's duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble's members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve. While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams' launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim's machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi's masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work's inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim's decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it's two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms.

Fastbacks recorded July 9 & 10, 1985 in a famous basement in Pioneer Square, Seattle on Scott McCaughey's 4-track cassette Portastudio.

It contains all the signatures of her best lyricism: delicate and precise phrasings, moments that flicker between beauty and banality, meaning that forms through the accretion of observations, memories, and unexpected adages. This is an album that is at once post-theistic and devoted to a relationship with the divine, each song blinking in and out of "the fragile plane," a place Krieger describes as "a middle ground in the universe," both abstract and peaceful, where time, bodies, and names don't exist.

Krieger initially collaborated with Luke Temple and Jeremy Harris to record her vocals and guitar to tape at Panoramic Studios in West Marin, CA. As the album continued to form, Krieger envisioned instruments - like the French and English horn (Nancy Ranger and Priscilla Reinhart), electric guitar (Jacob Drab), and pedal steel (Kevin Copeland) - as characters which would walk in and out of the soundscape. What emerged from conversations with composer Sammy Weissberg, are brass parts that have a dark, almost surreal logic: horns arise to emphasize a word or phrase, fall out completely, only to rush back with dissonant orchestrations that gesture simultaneously toward deterioration and generation.

While Krieger takes inspiration from Elliot Smith's honesty, Judee Sill's cosmic reaching, and Joni Mitchell's sharp noticing, the dream-like association, harmonic dissonance, and angular melodic ascensions in each song are singularly and delightfully Krieger's.

"I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane" is a daring collection of songs by an artist who scries with both the cold glass eye of truth and the beating heart of empathy; who portrays life in all its twisted complexities.

Belgian jazz veterans W.E.R.F. records and JazzLab are celebrating their 30th anniversary together with three unique creation projects for which they are joining forces. One of them is with percussionist Chris Joris, a veteran of Belgian jazz who is releasing a haunting new project.

Until the Darkness Fades' immediately says something about Chris Joris' career path, in which the musical and the personal invariably overlap. This percussionist has written one of the most colorful chapters of Belgian jazz. For many years he was active within various genres, but is now mostly praised as the percussionist who constantly demolished boundaries. Not only between all those oppressive genre boxes - pop, experiment, theater, world music, jazz - but also between complete worlds.

Chris Joris was playing "world jazz" long before there was that term, and he signed on for some hot-blooded jazz classics, with "Out Of The Night" perhaps the best-known example. That album was originally released in 2003, was then unavailable for years, but is back on shelves in 2023 and on vinyl for the first time. And rightfully so. Joris also eagerly seized the prospect of a new tour and a brand new album for a musical self-portrait. With "Until the Darkness Fades," he highlights different aspects of his musical identity, both expected and unexpected.

Joris composed new material, but also keeps a prominent place for free improvisation. It will be a tantalizing dichotomy full of hybrid sounds, with familiar and less familiar sounds, between romanticism and uninhibited adventure. He explores these in the presence of notable associates on violin and cello. In this way, he combines earthy percussion with the freedom of jazz and the elegance of chamber music. Discover this story of a Belgian master who is far from finished.

NEW 45 BY DEEP-FUNK PIONEER LUCKY BROWN RECORDED DURING THE NOW LEGENDARY SPACE DREAM SESSIONS!

In around 2001, Joel Ricci, the trumpet player/composer behind his former stage alias, Lucky Brown, went traveling on a worldwide "quest for funk". During that pilgrimage, he went to London England in time to attend Keb Darge's 'Legendary Deep Funk' 6-year anniversary at Madame Jojo's. While in the middle of the dancefloor, he was moved so significantly by this obscure brand of 'deep funk' Mr. Darge was unveiling, he became overcome by a mystical sense of 'coming home'. Additionally, he spent a week at Camden's Jazz Cafe to meet The Poets of Rhythm, The Breakestra, The Sugarman Three, DJ Snowboy, DJ James Trouble, and others. When Joel mentioned the nature of his quest to Neal Sugarman, he warmly invited him to come visit Brooklyn and kick it with members of Antibalas, Binky Griptite & The Mellomatics, and the Dap Kings. But before the trip back to the states, Joel spent some time in Paris playing his trumpet at a club called 'Cithea' where they would host weekly 'rare groove' jam sessions. During the jams, Parisian students of Tony Allen would overtake the stage with their instruments and their full African clothing, chant the word, 'Fela', and begin to play this intense free improvised funk and afrobeat. While traveling by train from Paris to the south of France to visit family, Joel began hearing this inspiring polyrhythm swirling in his inner ear and mixing with the "clack-clacka" of the train moving down the track. As soon as he arrived at his destination, he sat down at a piano and jotted down the polyrhythm, bass line and fundamental horn cluster on a piece of sheet music paper. The simple tune was finally rendered to tape ten years later with Lucky Brown's Crawdad Farmers aka The Funk Revolution on the Magik Carpet at drummer Olli Klomp's Lakeside log cabin in Stanwood, Washington. The tune became the title track to Lucky's first full-length on Tramp Records (Lucky Brown's Space Dream, TRLP-9011).

Space Dream is so titled in part to commemorate a soulfunk masquerade party Joel threw at a temporary all-ages Bellingham Washington music venue called 'The Pickford Dream Space'. This is Joel's stripped-down tape-only remix and re-edit which has never before appeared on 45RPM and commemorates the re-release, remaster and repackaging of upcoming Tramp LPs, "Space Dream" and "Don't Go Away", the fully realised 'director's cut' featuring Ricci's early group funk experiment: "The Funk Revolution."

Mysterious Dutch outfit Doxa Sinistra have been operating on the fringes of the industrial-experimental and sound collage tape scenes since the very early 1980s. Their output has long been coveted by fans of DIY and left-field music since their earliest transmissions, and this featured 1983 recording 'The Other Stranger' might well be one of their most known. A truly strange offering, the track is a cascading acidic and minimal stripped piece, bathed in disparate resonant sample sources that could possibly have been recorded straight from the TV set. Nobody really knows what it all means, but it doesn't matter as the end result is an engaging mesmerising hypnagogic masterpiece of sampling and rhythmic free sound. A true classic from the outer reaches of electronic music.

Midnight Drive label owner Brian Not Brian featured 'The Other Stranger' on his now infamous 'Holywell Session' cassette tape for the sadly missed Blackest Ever Black ever label in 2014, and the track was also a highlight of Boards Of Canada's cult 'Societas X Tape' for NTS in 2019. This special 7" vinyl only edition also features the more stripped back rhythm track version entitled 'Strange' on the b-side that is a slightly longer mix with a different arrangement and no samples, letting the minimalist acid and drum machine workout unfurl at its own steady woozy pace. This is the first time both versions have been remastered and have appeared together as a single and it is presented here with the blessing and involvement of Doxa Sinistra.

The Rephlex alumni and Rinse.fm resident DMX Krew channels Prince’s spirit in this new electro-pop maxi on Cold Blow.

Picking up his electro-pop and synth-funk hat from where it was laid on 2022’s Party Life LP, Ed DMX is switching gears and picking up the pace with four dance-inducing tracks. Another one of the brilliant releases that we’ve become to expect from the consistently hot Cold Blow! The titular track “Still Got It” is a brand new production with vocal and dub versions of driving bassline and Linn fills, exclaiming “I still got the music in me, and it sets me free!” amidst heartbreak. Teardrops on the dancefloor, anyone?

On the flip side, we are treated with an archive gem from the Rephlex era! The Telex-like pacey vocoder synth pop “Paranoia” was recorded around the time of “We Are DMX” album in 1999, and what a treat it is!

The closing track is the only previously released one. A dub version of “Cold Love” borrowed from the Japan-exclusive, CD-only 2005 album “Kiss Goodbye” which Cold Blow has announced to be reissued soon!

‘VOLCANO’ follows Jungle’s previous album ‘Loving In Stereo’, which proved to be a landmark moment for the acclaimed UK duo. It achieved their highest domestic UK chart position to date debuting at #3, while also achieving their best ever album chart positions in key international territories such as Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands; and in the US it catapulted to #1 on the Billboard Dance Albums chart which led to major Arena shows as guests to Billie Eilish.

The free-spirited energy that runs right through ‘VOLCANO’ reflects how organically it came together. J and T had written most of the record on tour before starting the recording process while staying in an Airbnb in Los Angeles. It was later completed back home in London at their favourite location, Studio B at Metropolis Studios. This time around, the duo wanted to include a wider variety of voices within the album. In addition to Erick The Architect, they reunited with Bas (who previously featured on the ‘Loving In Stereo’ single ‘Romeo’) for ‘Pretty Little Thing’, as well as calling on talents in the shape of Roots Manuva, Channel Tres and JNR Williams.

Odd Holiday are purveyors of a rare breed of hip hop, both anchored in golden-era lyrical dexterousness and aligned to the contemporary movement of minimal soulful production. Their music is deeply emotive, seasoned, and undeniable.
L.I.S.A is the debut release by the semi-nomadic duo consisting of Mattic, a Charlotte, NC native currently residing in France and producer Daylight Robbery! who has one foot in the burgeoning jazz scene of London, UK and the other in the boom bap foundation of Brooklyn, NY. L.I.S.A represents the meeting of two forces who are at the top of their game and supremely comfortable in their craft, merging into something which feels both timeless and brand new.

Until the End of Time is the seventh studio album, and third posthumous album by 2Pac. It follows his previous posthumous albums R U Still Down? (Remember Me) and Still I Rise. The album consists of material recorded while the rapper was on Death Row Records from 1995–1996. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart.

A majority of the music compositions were remixed from their original state. Highly anticipated, Until the End of Time was ultimately one of the best selling hip hop albums of 2001. There were only three times references to Death Row Records were not censored (“Until the End of Time” (both versions), “U Don’t Have 2 Worry”, and “All Out”). The core vocal tracks and some instrumentation was recorded during and after the All Eyez On Me and Makaveli: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory sessions.

This will be a 180 gram 4LP 20th anniversary reissue of the long out-of-print, 4x platinum, posthumous album.

The contributions of the late Detroit producer James DeWitt Yancey -better known to the world as J Dilla- to the world of hip-hop can't be overstated, and nowhere is his legacy more apparent than his work as a member of Slum Village. A founding member of the trio, (Alongside rappers T3 and Baatin) Dilla provided the group's distinctly esoteric, free-wheeling sound, built around winding basslines, quirky drumbeats, subtle low-end frequencies, and classic jazz & soul samples. Against the backdrop of Dilla's rich production, T3 and Baatin's free-flowing style of rhyming would also earn wide critical praise, leading to comparisons as the successors to A Tribe Called Quest. (A label they themselves have rejected.) After the success of Slum's 1997 studio debut, Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 1, the group went to work on their follow up. Though the project was completed in '98, label turmoil kept the project on ice until 2000. By the time Fantastic Volume II hit Dilla was well on his way to his status as a hip hop legend having produced cuts for Common, Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest and many more. Later works from Slum Village may have had more of an impact sales-wise (in the immediate) but Fantastic Vol. 2 had fans and many critics saying that Slum Village, and Dilla in particular, may single-handedly save rap music.' Perhaps that statement is hyperbole but many consider Fantastic Volume II to be Slum Village's finest work ever to this day. Ne'Astra Media Group now presents the album reissued on vinyl, for the first time in several years. Every wobbling bass note of J Dilla's production has been preserved to maintain the legacy of this hip hop rap classic and maintain the legend of one of hip-hop's greatest beatsmiths.

Made when mono was still king, Bob Dylan's self-titled 1962 debut is as understated of an entrance as any significant musician as ever made. Already well-versed in American roots music, Dylan simultaneously pays homage to tradition and extends it by putting his own stamp on classic material that metaphorically functions as the soil of our contemporary songs and styles. Free of ego, and performed with masterful conviction, Bob Dylan ranks with the debut efforts of similar artistic giants Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones.

Mastered from the original master tapes, pressed at RTI, and limited to 3,000 copies, Mobile Fidelity's restored 180g mono 45RPM 2LP version brings the contents of this seminal release as closest as they've ever come to master tape-quality in the original mono configuration. Transparent to the source, the simple sounds of Dylan's voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica take on lifelike perspective and directness – the "husk and bark" to which Robert Shelton referred in his now-legendary New York Times review of a Dylan appearance at Gerde's Folk City. MoFi has made possible an inexpensive time-traveling trip back to the Greenwich Village coffeehouses and folk clubs in which Dylan cut his teeth, albeit in much better fidelity and without any annoying background chatter. Wider grooves mean more information reaches your ears.

As the preferred mix at the time of the recording, the mono version presents Dylan as he and his producers originally intended. Since the separation of the stereo versions isn't as sharp, the mono edition places Dylan's vocals in the heart of the musical action and as one with the accompaniment. It paints listeners an incredibly accurate portrait of the attention-getting, concrete mass of sound that features no artificial panning and straight-ahead immersion into the music. This is how almost everyone first heard this timeless album – making the mono mix all the more historically valuable and truthful.

Much has been made of the commercial indifference that greeted the album upon its low-key release. Yet focusing on sales figures and the reaction of a public not yet hip to Dylan's name or music is to miss the forest for the trees. Distinguished from the era's other folk efforts by way of the determination, brazenness, and lived-through-this worldliness Dylan approaches the material and sings the songs, Dylan lays the groundwork for the path he'd soon trailblaze and everyone else would follow.

By nodding to Woody Guthrie at the same time he completely re-imagines a sobering tune such as Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," Dylan straddles the past and future. He also displays, with challenging authority and savant-like expertise, the ability to handle weighty topics such as death, sorrow, and lamentation with the vaudeville flair, bluesy mannerisms, and poignant command of an artist three times his age.



As Dylan scholar and pop-culture critic Greil Marcus observed in 2010, "Everybody knew Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio; if you knew Bob Dylan, you knew something other people didn't, something that soon enough everybody had to know. Within a year, an album could put an adjective in front of the singer's name as if it were already common coin." It all starts here.

Track List

Whispers is the first proper P.G. Six album since 2011"s Starry Mind. Time passes slowly, as they"ve been known to say out in the country, and before you know it, there"s a bunch of it behind you. After five releases in the first decade of P.G. Six, it may seem a bit of a surprise to have not heard something new in the past twelve years - but a cursory listen to Murmurs & Whispers will answer why, as the deep acoustic focus of the tracks imply an investment of the type of compassion and understanding that takes time and concentrated effort to conjure. Additionally, Pat Gubler"s always got a few pots going at once in his ever-expanding musical universe. He"s been active since the mid-90s, first with Memphis Luxure and Tower Recordings, then as P.G. Six, and as a member of Metal Mountains, Wet Tuna, Garcia Peoples and Weeping Bong Band. Additionally, some time was spent making collaborative records with Dan Melchior (in 2019) and Louise Bock (in 2021). Pat"s been playing the harp for more years than he"s been in bands, but when he realized that he was writing a set of songs centered around harp compositions, he spent some time in the woodshed with his instrument, a late 80s model Triplett Celtic 34 String Harp (which replaced a lovely Paraguayan harp he"d played for years previously). After the previous P.G. albums of electric band arrangements, he was in a place of writing songs with more silence in them. He ended up playing a lot of the parts himself on Murmurs & Whispers, adding guitar, bass, keyboards, recorder and hurdy gurdy, in addition to his harp and vocals. Clark Griffin and Wednesday Knudson, who Pat plays with in Weeping Bong Band, played and sang a bit themselves, and the record was recorded piece by piece in houses around upstate New York by Mike Fellows. Returning to the quiet acoustic sound of the first couple of P.G. Six albums, Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites (which has seen a much-needed reissue in the past year after too many years OOP) and The Well of Memory, Murmurs & Whispers is more straightforward in expressing its vision of rural celestial wonder. Bucolic and comfortably lived in, Murmurs & Whispers nonetheless projects the transcendent heart of P.G. Six once again, and as ever, it is magnificent to hear it passing through us.

Whispers is the first proper P.G. Six album since 2011"s Starry Mind. Time passes slowly, as they"ve been known to say out in the country, and before you know it, there"s a bunch of it behind you. After five releases in the first decade of P.G. Six, it may seem a bit of a surprise to have not heard something new in the past twelve years - but a cursory listen to Murmurs & Whispers will answer why, as the deep acoustic focus of the tracks imply an investment of the type of compassion and understanding that takes time and concentrated effort to conjure. Additionally, Pat Gubler"s always got a few pots going at once in his ever-expanding musical universe. He"s been active since the mid-90s, first with Memphis Luxure and Tower Recordings, then as P.G. Six, and as a member of Metal Mountains, Wet Tuna, Garcia Peoples and Weeping Bong Band. Additionally, some time was spent making collaborative records with Dan Melchior (in 2019) and Louise Bock (in 2021). Pat"s been playing the harp for more years than he"s been in bands, but when he realized that he was writing a set of songs centered around harp compositions, he spent some time in the woodshed with his instrument, a late 80s model Triplett Celtic 34 String Harp (which replaced a lovely Paraguayan harp he"d played for years previously). After the previous P.G. albums of electric band arrangements, he was in a place of writing songs with more silence in them. He ended up playing a lot of the parts himself on Murmurs & Whispers, adding guitar, bass, keyboards, recorder and hurdy gurdy, in addition to his harp and vocals. Clark Griffin and Wednesday Knudson, who Pat plays with in Weeping Bong Band, played and sang a bit themselves, and the record was recorded piece by piece in houses around upstate New York by Mike Fellows. Returning to the quiet acoustic sound of the first couple of P.G. Six albums, Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites (which has seen a much-needed reissue in the past year after too many years OOP) and The Well of Memory, Murmurs & Whispers is more straightforward in expressing its vision of rural celestial wonder. Bucolic and comfortably lived in, Murmurs & Whispers nonetheless projects the transcendent heart of P.G. Six once again, and as ever, it is magnificent to hear it passing through us.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce The Leisure Principle, a new solo LP from London-based bassist and sound artist Otto Willberg. A key player in the London underground, Willberg is often heard on acoustic and electric bass in free improv settings and bands with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort. But nothing Willberg has committed to wax so far prepares a listener for The Leisure Principle, six unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. On the opening ‘Reap What Thou Sow’, a single-note bass harmonica loop pulses along underneath a roaming bass solo, the side-chained envelope filtering (where the dynamic behaviour of the bass determines the filter for both bass and harmonica) fusing the two instruments into a single stream of burbling shifts in resonance. After several minutes of patient exploration of this low-end landscape, the music suddenly opens up in widescreen with the entrance of Sam Andreae’s graceful melodica chords, spreading out across the stereo field. From this epic opener, each of the remaining pieces goes on to explore a slightly different aspect of the terrain. On ‘Shadow Came into the Eyes as Earth Turned on its Axis’, a similarly buoyant harmonica bass line provides the foundation, but this time playing a soulful descending riff, its almost R&B feel abstracted and half-obscured by the filtering. On ‘Mollusk’, echoed bass arpeggios skitter between elegiac chords somewhat reminiscent of the opening of John Abercrombie’s ‘Timeless’, before settling into a hypnotic groove. On the record’s second half, Willberg pushes further into the possibilities of his idiosyncratic instrumentation. On ‘Wetter’, bass and harmonica come together into a monstrous, growling jaw harp; on ‘Had we but world enough and more time’, the subtly shifting pulsating patterns start to feel almost like a kind of evaporated, drum-less dub techno until an eruption of wheezing bass harmonica gives the piece a comically folkish turn. Willberg’s melodically inventive and virtuosic bass performance calls to mind any number of fusion touchstones, from Jaco Pastorius to Mark Egan’s singing tone in the early Pat Metheny Group—even Anthony Jackson’s work with Steve Kahn. But with its radically reduced instrumentation, The Leisure Principle is also an exercise in minimalism, and the absence of percussion gives even its funkiest moments a strangely abstracted quality. At times, its uncanny blend of the abstruse and the immediate suggests the fried pop experiments of David Rosenboom or the skewed but deeply musical DIY of 80s underground groups like De Fabriek. Both easy on the ear and profoundly strange, The Leisure Principle proudly takes its place among the most eccentric offerings on the Black Truffle menu.

In 1972, a foursome of design students set out to make a record. This was, in many ways, a strictly creative endeavor. The quartet — composed of Dave Pescod, Alan Lewis, Phil Rawle, and Ted Rockley — were all trained, not as musicians, but as creatives. Art school heavyweights, the four were well-versed in the methodology of intentional experimentation, in the delicate balance of pushing the limits without completely unmooring oneself from a guiding creative intention. Emboldened by a high-brow familiarity with thoughtful experimentation and all the non-conviction of non-musicians, Bowes Road Band’s stint in the world of popular music yielded a record that is as much mind-melting as it is a direct product of its time. Their sprawling LP “Back in the HCA” embodies the exigence “art for art’s sake,” but it is for art’s sake that this record, however off the deep end it seems to travel (hear: “Doctor, Doctor”), remains a unified, and stunning, body of work. The LP’s do-ityourself garage rock noisemaking meets highfalutin creative processes. “Back in the HCA” is warbling psychedelic freakout (“Two Fingers,” “Doctor, Doctor”), Donovan-esque English countryside folk stylings (“Inside My Head,” “Goodbye to Rosie”), and avant-garde jazz improvisions (“Grass is Grass,” “Tomorrow’s Truth”) in one luminous release.

Originally an 9-track LP, Jakarta, Uno Loop, and Bowes Road Band decided to mine the six most cohesive tracks for the reissue, though the extras may be released somewhere down the line. Cohesion efforts aside, “Back in the HCA” stands alone in its singular conception of a genre-bending continuum — it evades definition. That said, the LP can easily be situated in the sonic environment in which it was conceived. By the end of the 60s, England was crawling with blues-based rock outfits that were starting to venture into prog rock territory. You can hear this popular dint cast over the folkier side of the LP. But Bowes Road Band was armed with their non-musicianship: they existed completely liberated from the motivating yet ultimately paralyzing lust for stardom. Enjoying this liberation, Bowes Road Band was utterly free to make noise. This freedom meant drawn out sax interludes amidst sweetly folk stylings (“Grass is Grass”) and Shaggs-like fuzzed-out freakouts that spiral into a void (Doctor, Doctor). This freedom also meant straight-forward tuneful cuts like “Goodbye Rosie” that conspicuously introduce heavily distorted auto-organ accompaniment mid-track amidst poignant lyricism. Bowes Road Band crafts a unified sound and then cracks it open.

With a completely off-the-radar status, Bowes Road Band could only press 50 copies of the record — 10 for each of them and 10 for the school. The band’s lifespan was to end there, or so they thought. “Back in the HCA” was the accidental fruit of a Berlin flea market treasure hunt by Jannis Stürtz, DJ and co-founder of Habibi Funk and Jakarta Records. After finding and sharing the LP with a few colleagues, Stürtz managed to get in touch with the band, get ahold of the master tapes collecting dust in Ted Rockley’s attic, and start the reissuing process. The record is still adorned with its original cover art designed by Alan Pescod, both reminiscent of bygone school days and the Zoom calls of yesterday — in short, reunion. Its re-discovery was happenstance and ought to be listened to as such. That is, “Back in the HCA” was not made to be listened to on a broad scale, or, at least, was not made with this goal in mind; it is neither in its time nor of its time. Of course, the group explicitly cites the folk tunes of the English countryside, the distorted rock groups that reigned during the record’s conception, and the fringes of psychedelic music that only the uber-underground might recognize (e.g., “Dreaming of Alice”). Yet still with these obvious influences, “Back in the HCA” always existed beyond the domain of both traditional musicianship and conventional commodification. Bowes Road Band’s DIY musicality beams through in technicolor across “Back in the HCA.” The vinyl includes an 8-page booklet detailing the albums creation and interviews with the band.

Lead single “Grass is Grass,” out July 14 along with album pre-order, encapsulates the record’s range: the track unfurls into a sprawling sax-driven trip following a sundrenched, Donovan-esque intro w/ lyrics “naively about parks and gardens, not marijuana!” The keyed-down folk cut “Goodbye to Rosie” is single 2 and elevates stripped-down acoustics with golden tinges, out August 4th. Focus track “Tomorrow’s Truth” constructs the fuzzed-out underbelly of acid folk. Listen for echoes of late Beatles, Mark Fry, and Donovan (if they were armed by an unshakabele willful naiveté). Like Sgt. Pepper’s on a shoestring budget—take a trip to the underground with LP “Back in the HCA,” available everywhere physically and digitally on September 1st via Jakarta Records and Uno Loop.

Besides online promotion from label profiles, the album will be further promoted by external agencies within the UK and US.

Canary features 10 new songs written, performed, recorded, and mastered by Jefferies during the COVID-19 lockdown. Inspired by Emily Bronte's spiritual beliefs, NZ's most famous racehorse, and the haunting timbre of a meticulouslyrestored Marxophone, Jefferies mesmerizes with perhaps his finest balladry yet. "Where Did We All Go Wrong?" and "Where Do We Run To Now?" wrestle with the challenges presented by pandemic isolation and uncertainty. Jefferies deftly examines the limited choices during lockdown, employing a bit of black humor and finger pointing to stir the soul, and bringing some much-needed levity to this unprecedented time.

Wie die Zeit vergeht: 2013 - vor zehn Jahren - brachte Gregory Porter mit ”Liquid Spirit” sein Blue-NoteDebütalbum heraus, sein insgesamt drittes Album, mit dem er einen weltweiten Durchbruch feierte.
”Liquid Spirit” gewann den Grammy Award 2014 für das beste Jazz-Vokalalbum und der “sanfte Koloss”, wie ihn Spiegel-Online nannte, etablierte sich endgültig als eine der ganz großen männlichen Stimmen des Jazz. Das Album erreiche Platinstatus in Deutschland und Großbritannien, Gold in Frankreich, den Niederlanden und Österreich - inzwischen wurde es weltweit über eine Million Mal verkauft.

Für Gregory-Porter- und Vinyl-Fans präsentiert Blue Note jetzt anlässlich des 10-jährigen Jubiläums eine limitierte Vinyl-Edition, die das Originalalbum auf 2 LPs plus eine Bonus-LP mit Zusatztracks und Remixen enthält, von denen 5 Stücke zum ersten Mal auf Vinyl erscheinen.

If you dig deep enough into the underground you will find the most precious jewels and it ain't that much of an effort these days to turn on the computer and trip through the colorful World Wide Web. But beware for not all the glitter is gold. I stepped by some dark and dusty back street club in Atlanta / Georgia, USA and some enchanting music tempted me to enter. A powerful raspy voice screaming out the pain of the world no matter if it were big or small affairs. "California dreaming on such a winter's day", wow, when the MAMAS AND PAPAS sang this in a sweet folk manner it was a light and joyful anthem for all hippies and hipsters back in 1966, like a call to love. Lee Moses' version is more of a desperate cry for sunshine and freedom. And it goes on this way. His voice has this special phrase showing determination, pain but also sheer joy of life. His 1971 album is a steady groover with a steaming hot band performing , which includes a brass section of divine greatness. These devoted players build up a massive wall of groove and melody on which Lee Moses can unleash his voice like a volcanic eruption. The groove itself stays quite relaxed but definitely hypnotizing throughout the whole album and clears up your mind for the message of love Lee Moses raves about. The high skills of Lee's backing band gets showcased in a steaming instrumental version of THE FOUR TOPS' "Reach out (I'll be there)", which appeared on an early 7" first and got added here as a bonus track. They don't stop for THE BEATLES' "Day tripper" either and next to "California dreamin'" you can find another heart warming version of "Hey Joe" on the regular album. Not as extraordinary outraging as Hendrix' turn on this classic Lee and his mates make it a slightly more epic effort. All in all this is a soul album with very few covers and even more classic anthems of this genre that should actually be worshipped by lovers of the late 1960s Motown sound. Especially the bonus tracks will drive you wild. Go for it, brothers and sisters.

A year after its first edition, the Open Space series returns in order to keep exploring what ambient music might mean nowadays.

A breadth of fresh artists, some new to the label and others renowned for their more dance-centric works, the compilation aims to give each individual artist their creative freedom to explore the space.

Techno producers such as Arthur Robert or label head Len Faki himself keep the beats present but this time focus on evoking states of introspection rather than the shuffle of dancefloors.
On the other end of the spectrum, we find seasoned multi-instrumentalist Laraaji, who has been crafting deeply meditative soundscapes since the 80’s. Using the special opportunity, the label reaches outside its usual sphere, inviting artists like the modular synth expert Jeremy Wentorth or Jimmy LaValle’s band project The Album Leaf. All while still featuring some well known veteran producers the likes of John Beltran or Exos.

No matter their respective scene or background, all artists are using their unique approach to display something deeply emotive. Be it the warm, expansive electro of Future Beat Alliance or a bubbly cosmic arpride by Hamburg Duo Can Love Be Synth.

Truly living up to its name, the Open Space series aims to open up possibilities for artists to freely pursue their creativity in a completely undefined area, a space for exploration and connection.

Nach den Wiederveröffentlichungen von „Everybody Else is Doing it...“ und „No Need to Argue“, und 30 Jahre nach ihrem Debüt, veröffentlicht die Band am 27. Mai die Greatest-Hits Sammlung „Stars: The Best of 1992-2002“ auf Vinyl!

Die Cranberries erlangten in den 1990er Jahren mit Hits wie „Zombie“, „Dreams“ und „Linger“ internationalen Erfolg. Auf diesem Album befinden sich außerdem „New New York“’ und „Stars“, Songs die so zuvor noch nicht erhältlich waren.

The free folk/jazz sound of modern Los Angeles. Featuring a heavy bunch of musicians and vocalists including Moor Mother.

"Fearlessly Accessing the Divine Spirit From Here on Out" is the vinyl debut from pianist, composer, and producer Diego Gaeta. He has previously released projects as Club Diego and with the trio Human Error Club (whose members Mekala Session and Jesse Justice helped produce this record). He has quickly become a fixture in a number of Los Angeles musical environments, working with Lionmilk, The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Carlos Niño, Black Nile among others. This album is a synthesis of these many LA environments, and carries chamber, jazz, ambient, and folk influences, ultimately giving it an uncategorizable feel similar to works by Arthur Verocai or David Axelrod.

Gaeta recorded the initial ideas for the album by himself after experiencing a burst of creativity during the lockdown of 2020, in the aftermath of a season of protests in Los Angeles, on a piano at his home in El Sereno. "I was constantly not in tune with myself, always awaiting outrage and tragedy in a very unstable world. However, hitting the streets in support of various ongoing pandemic community actions felt necessary and it marked a point in time that ushered in large societal changes. The weight of that era made me feel allergic to making art at the time. All of these ideas came after that period, expressing my reflections subconsciously. I remember that the ideas came in a short amount of time, and then they developed."

Once he had created the tracks as Ableton sessions, he realized the gravity and context of how he was processing his ideas so he, as he puts it, "felt like taking them outside the hands of midi and into the hands of friends." Gaeta was able to assemble his dream band, which ended up being a 9-piece ensemble, or a nonet. "I felt that at some point I was channeling the geometrical balance of that nonet...it's almost as if I had a sextet and then the three of the sextet that's not the rhythm section were doubled. It's a really dense sextet, that's how I see it."

The recording process began the following summer in June 2021 as the musicians were all adjusting to the newfound dynamic of getting tested for COVID, waiting a few days, and then meeting up to record. "We were eating Indian food, some of us were smoking, it was a nice memory, but I felt a little stressed, because I was the bandleader, and I felt the emotional weight of my music."

The title track and single, featuring vocals by Jimetta Rose, begins with a speech by Gaeta delivered when playing with Black Nile in 2019 at the Levitt Amphitheatre in MacArthur park. Gaeta provides the following account: "Even though it was in 2019, socio-political tensions and issues were at the forefront for me at that time. I wrote a speech that was intended to be critical of the US but it ended up becoming a collage inspired by different women that had messages of freedom that spoke to me the most. I quoted Nina Simone and Georgia Anne Muldrow, it wasn't something that I read but something that she said "kicking it with consciousness and style" that phrase stuck with me, so I used it in that speech. Although critical, the speech had a positive feeling to it, and it was hopeful. I gave that speech while fireworks were going off."

Moor Mother & Zeroh are found on their respective tracks, Memory Screen & Eccolo - both delivering a distinct, commanding vocal performance. Low Leaf colors the track Soft Spot with harp, a beautiful ballad nestled in the center of the album. Other players include Gregory Uhlmann on guitar, Jon Kaye on violin, Devin Daniels on alto saxophone, Caleb Buchanan on bass, Dante Luna on vibraphone, Patrick Behnke on viola, Bryan Baker on tenor saxophone/flute, and Mekala Session on drums.

"I’d like for us tonight to embody a freedom oriented life. Freedom isn’t just a dream, it’s a place we must all arrive at together, as one by one the people of the Earth help each other to be Free of power, hate, and insecurities. Let’s kick it with consciousness and style. Can y’all dig that? YEAH. I can too. So now we’d like to present to you a spiritual transmission I like to call: 'Fearlessly Accessing the Divine Spirit of Freedom From Here On Out.' YEAH" - Diego Gaeta

Straight outta Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York City, USA, THE WORLD, Prison is a state of mind, an experience, a loose collective, a band, a jam band and a bunch of psychedelic dudes who aren"t your average bunch of jambanders. All that, all at once, ALL THE TIME. You get what you"re dealing with here? No...you don"t. The only way to REALLY get it is to go to Prison -- and if you"re not from greater NYC and haven"t showed at any of the shows, here"s your best bet: their breakout album, Upstate. And whatta breakout! So high, you can"t get under it; so wide, you can"t get over it! How wide? Every song has two titles, that"s how wide. And almost everybody sings, like, all the time. That wide. Sure, you can break down the numbers -- five guys, five songs and four sides of vinyl in one gatefold sleeve -- but that won"t get you Upstate, either. Prison is the sound of everybody in the room figuring out where to go, individually and collectively. As they go through it, the meaning changes, the destination changes, the words mean something different. It"s meaning and no meaning, rising and falling, sinking and flying on the back of something massive cacophonized by three guitars, four vocals, a bass and drums. A lot of information bouncing around and enough time to really get you out of yourself! Take a look at the titles: each one a dichotomous inquest that the assembled Prison-ers march upon with fervor, glee, vengeance -- a whole spectrum of feels and perspectives woven into the jam for you to see. The Prison population changes with the seasons, and during the season this album was recorded, Sarim Al-Rawi, Mike Fellows, Sam Jayne, Matt Lilly and Paul Major were in Prison. Sarim you might know from Liquor Store, Mike"s made a bunch of scenes and records as Mighty Flashlight, Sam, who passed away in 2020 (R.I.P., brother) was in Love as Laughter -- and Paul Major you know from Endless Boogie, who Matt had roadied for -- and despite being "just a skateboarder who loves music" with no previous experience on the drums, he and Sarim inaugurated the Prison experience, like, seven years ago. Since then, it just fell together and it keeps doing so. A free thing called Prison.

With I Will Make a Baby in this Damn Economy, Fat Tony embodies the kind of quixotic figure he would rap about; a singular entity who’s motivated, confident, and hungry; a perpetual-motion-machine locked in a staring contest with his country. It’s the latest album in his catalog produced entirely by L.A-based producer Taydex since 2020’s Wake Up. Later that same year Fat Tony released Exotica, and ever since he’s demonstrated he is in his own lane as a professional rapper with the mind of a magician, as quick to conjure an image as pull it out from under you, deftly manoeuvring through so many details and references a listener feels as if they have witnessed the work of an illusionist. He paints these canvases inside of songs that rarely spill past three minutes; they’re pocket-sized diaries replete with acute observations, character studies, microdoses of storytelling, and single-minded ruminations on a topic that bud, blossom, and fade before too long. Fat Tony & Taydex’s I Will Make a Baby in this Damn Economy cements Tony’s status as someone whose albums are not so much lyrically-lyrical as they are picaresque.
As with any Fat Tony project, the bars are tight as ever, but are so fluid for the 34-year-old it’s almost easy to take for granted the details, warmth, and humanity inside his free-associative tales of day-one friends who’ve passed, edgelord grifters who want to spit game, and nights on ketamine. Taydex’s production sprints through disparate yet simpatico styles, dipping its toes into Pi’erre Bourne-esque bass (see lead single “Spectacular”), house (“Loosen Up”), and even hyperpop. Meditations on loss and grief are woven throughout, but Tony throws a few curveballs as well: Consider “Alexis,” which sweetly reflects on a long-term platonic friendship. Taydex finds a Teddy Riley-indebted New Jack Swing groove just deep enough for the feeling to land and underlines the song’s sincere candor. This is the appeal of Fat Tony writ-large: his boisterous voice and genial personality invite you to the party, then you stick around to hear what he’s saying, which is frequently more introspective and complex than one assumes.
Written and recorded in Taydex’s new studio in North Hollywood, Tony says, “We had much more freedom and flexibility in making this album and you can hear it. It felt like a family project.” If the album is comfortable and loose, it is also dense and substantial. The album’s final two tracks contextualize the immediacy of what came before it—the mezcal with ices drank, Paul Wall swangin’ through to drop knowledge, the Polaris Prize-winning rapper Cadence Weapon providing a vibe check. “Make a Baby” accounts for Tony who’s seen everything, and knows he’s met the one to be a father with, and yet chooses to take his time to get it done. Taydex’s beat recalls turn-of-the-century R&B and the millennial promise of an endless good time. Sombre closer “Jasper, TX” is Tony coming to grips with the story of James Byrd, Jr., a Black man from East Texas dragged to his death by three white supremacists in 1998. These songs are not only trademarks of Tony’s fastidious rapping—they are deeply personal examples of his approach to artistry and life itself, where every decision is made in the shadow of history.
It’s here the mission statement of I Will Make a Baby in this Damn Economy comes into focus—you get the sense he means it, he’s ready for it, he’ll fight for it. He’s waiting to take the world at its word.

As Wreckless Eric he needs little introduction - he wrote and recorded the classic Whole Wide World and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it"s been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Eric"s version featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and the Cage The Elephant version is the new theme tune for the podcast Smartless. This new album, Leisureland, marks a return to his more ramshackle world of recording - guitars and temperamentally unpredictable analogue keyboards, beat-boxes and loops in conjunction with a real drummer, Sam Shepherd, who he met in a local coffee shop in Catskill, New York. He was delighted to find that Sam lived around the corner and could easily drop by to put drums on newly recorded tracks. The recording methodology may have been Contemporary American but the subject matter is almost entirely British. It also contains more instrumentals than any of his previous albums.

As Wreckless Eric he needs little introduction - he wrote and recorded the classic Whole Wide World and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it"s been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Eric"s version featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and the Cage The Elephant version is the new theme tune for the podcast Smartless. This new album, Leisureland, marks a return to his more ramshackle world of recording - guitars and temperamentally unpredictable analogue keyboards, beat-boxes and loops in conjunction with a real drummer, Sam Shepherd, who he met in a local coffee shop in Catskill, New York. He was delighted to find that Sam lived around the corner and could easily drop by to put drums on newly recorded tracks. The recording methodology may have been Contemporary American but the subject matter is almost entirely British. It also contains more instrumentals than any of his previous albums.

• This is an unusual album in the catalogue of Ornette Coleman, and one that passes by most critics. It is however a unique insight into the ‘free jazz’ pioneer’s way of working in the early 70s. Recorded at his large loft space in downtown New York which inspired a whole scene of experimental musicians who were locked out of playing established venues.

• The music is a romp showing Ornette playing trumpet as well as saxophone. His quartet which featured second saxophonist Dewey Redman alongside long term cohorts Ed Blackwell and Charlie Haden prove to be the perfect foil for this legendary set.

• This is the first vinyl reissue in nearly 20 years and utilises a fresh 24/96 transfer from the original production master.

"Matasuna Records" journey goes to "South Africa" for the first time to reissue two superb Afro-/Jazzfunk songs by the band "Freeway". Released in 1975 on the South African label "Flame", the album "Abahambi – Balomhlaba" was rediscovered and re-released by the good folks of "Black Pearl Records" from Berlin in 2013. The LP immediately landed on Matasuna Records' album best list and was at the top of the reissue wish list. Now that goal has come true to officially release two songs on 45, making them available as 7inch vinyl singles for the first time. Transferred from the original master tapes and remastered to sound as good as never before. An essential release!

The title track of the album "Abahambi" composed by "Sipho Gumede" and also the album opener is also the A-side of the Matasuna release. The song immediately builds up an incredible groove with the first bar and offers an atmospherically dense, 5-minute funk firework. The musicians master their instruments to perfection: be it in the collective playing as well as in the polished solo passages, where they can fully demonstrate their skills. One of the tunes that could run endlessly without ever getting boring.

On the flip side, the song "Umlazi" composed by "Enoch Mthalane" is another testament to the sophistication of their arrangements & musicality. Although this song is much slower in tempo, it is in no way inferior to the A-side in intensity. Especially the piano generates a hypnotic groove, which is skillfully continued by the guitar. Another musical treat!

The fact that the composers of the songs and musicians of the band are (or were) well-known greats of South African jazz music, but the album respectively the band name "Freeway" does not appear in any bio/discography is more than curious. Apparently it is considered proven that the band was founded by bass player "Sipho Gumede".

Born in "Durban" (South Africa), "Sipho Gumede" learned to play the guitar autodidactically until he received his first introduction to jazz from jazz guitarist "Cyril Magubane" at the age of 16. He switched to bass and then got his first professional music job as a member of the "Jazz Revellers" band. In 1970 he went to "Johannesburg" where he met, worked with and toured with some great musicians of that time. He formed several bands with some of them such as "Roots", "Spirits Rejoice" or "Sakhile". Gumede also recorded collaborative pieces with other jazz legends before recording his first solo album in 1985. In the following years he was involved in tours of North America, Europe, as well as many African countries. In 2000, Sipho moved back to "KwaZulu-Natal", where he taught music and performed for township youth. His artistic productivity did not stop there, however, and he produced a number of other albums. In total, he produced, recorded and contributed to more than 20 albums. He died in July 2004 after a short illness.

Clear Vinyl. They say there's always something special about the first time and this record is that first time for the Folk Implosion. The band left the acoustic guitars and fragmentary sketch modus operandi of their earlier cassette behind to focus on an eccentric version of home studio craft, held together by a few cheap microphones (including a Radio Shack PZM) and a Tascam cassette 4-track recorder sequestered under the eaves of a 3rd floor, Cambridge Massachusetts double-decker house apartment. Wood floors and Christmas lights were as much a part of the vibe as an Ampeg VT 40 guitar amp and a small chord organ. The duo would wait until the downstairs neighbor went to work in the morning and then would play until the tunes snapped like a high-pitched snare drum. The setup would close down just before the neighbor came home from work, keeping the peace long enough to see the project through to completion.Once tracked, the band snuck into Fort Apache studios with Tim O'Heir (producer of Sebadoh's `Bakesale' LP) early one morning, freeloading off the Sebadoh sessions that were set to get going that afternoon. Tim mixed the songs through a very hi-fi Neve board in a matter of hours with the Tascam sitting right on the giant board like a tugboat keeping time with an oil tanker. The duo hoped that the spirits of ancestors like The Troggs, Devo, Al Green, and The Bee Gees would be pleased with the scent of tribute that arose from the ashes of the pyre. Today, they are pleased to see the Slaps and the Sputniks on view again nearly 30 years later.

Joel Paterson has been a mainstay of the Chicago roots music scene for
over twenty years, playing with many bands and showcasing his unique
blend jazz, blues, rockabilly, country and western swing
'Wheelhouse Rag' is a 14- track collection of original rags and country blues on
solo, finger picking acoustic guitar.
The all- acoustic, 1920's- tinged 'Wheelhouse Rag' may at first seem like a
departure in genre for the guitarist - he is predominantly known for his
instrumental multitracked recordings reminiscent of Les Paul and Chet Atkins -
Joel learned to play guitar by ear from the records of acoustic legends such as
Blind Blake, Robert Johnson, Reverend Gary Davis, and Big Bill Broonzy. He later
expanded his repertoire to include techniques of the thumb-picking giants Merle
Travis and Chet Atkins. These influences can be heard throughout the album,
mixed in with many more twists and turns from the mind of the artist, to bring
you, 'Wheelhouse Rag:' the original fingerstyle guitar instrumentals of Joel
Paterson.
Original fingerstyle guitar rag and country blues instrumentals by in-demand
Chicago roots guitarist Joel Paterson, who has played with Cactus Blossoms, JD
McPherson, Kelley Hogan, and more, bringing his unique blend of jazz, blues,
rockabilly, and country & western style to the mix.
RIYL: Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Reverend Gary Davis, Cactus Blossoms, Pokey
LaFarge, Merle Travis
"Guitarist Paterson's free-ranging music defies easy categorization. He addresses
classic country, blues and Tin Pan Alley tunes as timeless works that reward
repeated listening." - Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune"Of all the "vintage" artists
injecting new life into bygone styles with originality and a sense of humor, Joel
Paterson just might top the list." - Dan Forte, Vintage Guitar Magazine

DeYarmond Edison war der Vorläufer von Bon Iver und Megafaun. Im Sommer 2005 verließen vier Freunde Wisconsin in Richtung North Carolina mit einem einzigen Ziel: der Folk-Rock-Flaute zu entkommen. Während eines Jahres intensiver Konzentration, des Studiums und der Verletzlichkeit taten sie genau das, indem sie an den ekstatischen Rand des New Weird America vordrangen und von allem ein bisschen ausprobierten - Grindcore und Gospel, Free Jazz und Phasenstücke, Bluegrass und Blues - und es in DeYarmond Edison packten. Der Rest ist Geschichte_ Ein Mitglied ging nach Hause, um das zu gründen, was später Bon Iver werden sollte, während drei vor Ort blieben, um Megafaun zu gründen. Epoch ist die Geschichte von DeYarmond Edison: Brad Cook, Phil Cook, Justin Vernon und Joe Westerlund, erzählt wie nie zuvor. Die Sammlung umfasst fünf LPs, vier CDs, Dutzende von ungehörten Aufnahmen und ungesehene Fotos. Begleitet wird sie von einer ausführlichen Biografie des Schriftstellers Grayson Haver Currin, der auch als ausführender Produzent der Sammlung fungiert. Alles in allem fängt Epoch die Zeit ein, bevor aus diesen vier Freunden zwei andere, aufsehenerregende Bands wurden. Es ist eine Geschichte über Gemeinschaft, Visionen, Familie und ein Quartett, das zu gut sein wollte, um zu bestehen. Es gibt Momente des Experimentierens, subtile Wendungen im Fuzz von "Epoch" und eine stampfende Herangehensweise beim Covern von "All Tomorrow's Parties", die den Grundstein dafür legten, wie Bon Iver und Megafaun die akustische Musik ein wenig umkrempeln würden. Aber ein Großteil von Epoch unterstreicht die einzigartige Sichtweise der Gruppe auf amerikanisches Songwriting, auf das Nehmen von Patchworks, das Finden der Akkorde und das Singen aus vollem Herzen. "Trials, Troubles and Tribulations" ist ein Beispiel dafür. Am bekanntesten ist es als Duett von Justin Vernon und Sharon Van Etten, das hier in ausufernder Last-Waltz-Manier wieder zum Leben erweckt wird, mit Vocals von Megafaun, Justin Vernon, Frazy Ford und Fight the Big Bull. Jede Platte ist gleichermaßen ein Crash-Kurs in allem, was dieses spezielle Stück Musikgeschichte ausmacht: Fotos aus Hinterhöfen und Kellern; Essays, die bestimmte Aufnahmen beschreiben; Farbpaletten, die Zeit und Ort widerspiegeln. Mit über sieben Stunden und 55.000 Wörtern ist Epoch eine maximalistische Sammlung. Aber man muss kein Komplettist sein, um zu verstehen, was es bedeutet, sich mit seinen besten Freunden zusammenzukauern und Dinge zu erschaffen, für diese Dinge zu träumen, zu lernen, zu kämpfen und zu wachsen.

High Roller Records, reissue 2023, black vinyl, ltd 200, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover, printed inner sleeve, poster, A5 photo, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony, original 1990 soun

High Roller Records, reissue 2023, olive/ blue mixed w/ white splatter vinyl, ltd 300, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover, printed inner sleeve, poster, A5 photo, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony, original 1990 sound

Stephen Steinbrink discovered a short YouTube video of a street magician who approaches a highschooler walking home in Barstow, California. “Here, let me show you my idea,” he says, as he places a quarter on the kid’s hand. The magician performs some relaxed flourishes, and the coin vanishes. In silence, the kid stares at his hand at the nothing where there once, indisputably, was something, until his wonder finds a single word: “Cool.” The title of Disappearing Coin, the new album from Oakland songwriter Stephen Steinbrink, comes from this short clip. “When I look at it now,” he says, “I relate to the kid, who’s obviously uneasy in his body, and going through the experience of being a teenager in the early 2000s growing up in a bleak desert town like I did. I also relate to the coin, an inanimate disc of possibility. And I relate to the magician, an absurd facilitator of sending what is tactile and concrete into the wispy conceptual realm.” “I’ve watched it probably a hundred times,” he says. “It cracked me up but also blew my mind open the feeling of wonder I experienced watching this video became a guide as I navigated new ways of staying in the realm of what’s both real and magical.” Following the 2018 release of Utopia Teased, Steinbrink completed an apprenticeship in the nearly-lost art of Stained Glass, becoming a glazier at a studio that over three years, fully restored the enormous 90-year-old windows in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. He committed to his Buddhist study, beginning lay monastic training before the process was thwarted by the pandemic. He dove deeper into music production for other artists, engineering two albums by Boy Scouts released on Anti- Records in 2018 and 2021. Steinbrink delighted in the way these pursuits pulled at the thread of ego’s tapestry and decentralized him from his craft, allowing him to embody a new role as a creative caretaker engaging in practices that felt communal and restorative. “As I slowly began writing for myself again, I tried to imbue my new songs with this sense of playfulness and wonder I felt while exploring these other interests.” He says. Feeling unlocked from the pressures of perfection that he often felt in his earlier work, creating Disappearing Coin felt buoyant and healing. “The album feels like an integration of all of my past musical selves zeroing in on the present,” Steinbrink explains, “I felt free to explore new ways of writing, through different perspectives, experimenting with fictional songwriting, visual archetypal language, and total collaboration.” This “total collaboration” was a joyous new venture after years of solo performing and recording. The album can be seen as a 42 minute session of show and tell, the manifestation of Steinbrink repeating the mantra of “Here, let me show you my idea” to himself over and over. Disappearing Coin is at once a welcome return for the veteran Steinbrink and the debut of a totally new artist, one who has found a new path to himself with new goals of openness, curiosity, and self-acceptance. “Recalls the magic pop purity of Arthur Russell...its minimalism manages to feel enlightened and transformative.” PITCHFORK // “Melodic and self-assured. Steinbrink delivers his knotted lyricism with a smooth lilt.