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Opaque pink vinyl LP. For fans of: Tirzah, Caroline Polachek, Erika de Casier, Oklou, Smerz. Between the ages of 2 and 18, Cora Gilroy-Ware lived in a haunted place. On the outside, this small edge of Connecticut coastline was a quintessential New England town. Yet beneath its quaint surface was a netherworld that got steadily darker over the course of those sixteen years. From a serious drug problem to environmental pollution leading to deadly illnesses, frequent suicides and an above average number of fatal accidents, something about this place was cursed. Amid this world Cora was an outsider, someone who preferred pop and RnB to the music of her peers, who mostly subscribed to the dregs of a Deadhead culture that was more nihilistic than utopian. Still, she found herself on weekends drinking in the woods with the rest of them, playing along until it was time to leave. Christmas breaks and summer months were spent across the Atlantic in a completely antithetical environment. In London, the city of her birth, Cora spent her teen years taking the bus home at dawn after raves under the railroad arches, or riding the tube to her cousin’s house in Camden. For a long time, Cora’s life was composed of these two strands—ghostly East Coast suburbia and inner-city London—which she was forced to fold in and out of one another like a two-strand French braid. She quickly learned to adapt and be whoever the particular moment demanded. Her outsider status was intensified by the fact that, being of mixed Afro-Caribbean and European descent, her family didn’t look like the others in Connecticut. In the 2000s, this meant Cora had to contend with a deeply ingrained kind of folk-racism, both conscious and unconsciously expressed. Nobody talked about these things back then, and she internalized a lot of shame. The ability to shape-shift became integral to Cora’s artistic practice. Her survival mechanism at school was to carve out her own worlds through visual art and dance. Music was less of a creative outlet than a way of life, something like a form of religion for her family, who all played instruments and saw music as the form to which all art aspires. She studied violin and learned enough guitar chords to write her first songs. Cora always wanted to be a performer, but, having moved around constantly, craved stability and independence. Eager to make her own way in the world, she began to write about painting and sculpture, which eventually led to time spent working in Naples, Italy and a day job teaching the History of Art at university level. It wasn’t until 2018 that Cora first shared her first songs with the wider world. Having collaborated and played live with Jam City (Jack Latham, who has co-produced each of her releases), she finally embarked on a solo career, which for her felt inevitable, only a matter of time. Following four acclaimed EPs—Toxic Femininity (2018), Lashes in a Landfill (2019), Dreamcatcher (2020) and Maiden No More (2021), this year will see the release of her debut album The Golden Ass. For her artist name she chose, “Fauness”: a play on the Latin faunus, a woodland god with the body of a man and the horns, ears, and legs of a goat. The feminine equivalent—fauness—is a modern invention, made up by rococo sculptors in 18th century France. Cora was drawn to this pseudonym because of its temporal layers and amalgamation of beauty and beast, which, for her, captures something of her complex personal story. an utterly individual voice in underground pop music" - The FADER // "a sparkling sweet pop ride" – NYLON // “It is hard to write a perfect pop song. It’s even harder to make it look as easy as London artist Fauness” - GUARDIAN GUIDE // Tracks 01. Lonely 02. Mystery 03. Peaches 04. Hours 05. Siena 06. Grape & Grain 07. Laura 08. High 09. Cinnamon 10. Girl In The Moon

The expansive & emotive, 'Screamnasium' is O R k's most essential album
to date - Spontaneous yet intricately crafted, it is perhaps the most
concise statement of the band's sonic aims yet. With the quartet having
formed a strong creative bond over the course of three previous studio
albums & with countless miles clocked up on tour, the highly anticipated
follow up to 2019's acclaimed 'Ramagehead' has finally arrived
The pent up, derailed energies of O.R.k. have found a release with their gutsy &
striking new album 'Screamnasium'.Setting the pace, lead single/ album opener
'As I Leave' delivers the distilled O.R.k. spirit directly to the listener. Lef's powerful
vocals, Carmelo Pipitone's energetic riffing, Pat Mastelotto's inventive rhythmic
accompaniment & Colin Edwin's distinctive bass tones all infuse 'Screamnasium'
with a refreshed intensity & a new luminosity. Energy levels are maintained
throughout the 42-minute runtime as O.R.k. state the case for optimism, tolerance
& inclusivity - these are hopeful anthems for an increasingly uncertain world.
A highlight is 'Consquence', where Lef spars with Grammy winning vocal phenom
Elisa, best known outside her native Italy for her collaboration with the legendary
Ennio Morricone on Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' soundtrack.
Album closer 'Someone Waits' features virtuoso cellist Jo Quail who provides
seductive, intertwining melodies which contrast the huge riffs underpinning
Screamnasium's sound.
The creative duo of Grammy winning art director Adam Jones (of Tool) & Marvel/
DC Comics illustrator Denis Rodier have handled the artwork & layout to create an
iconic album artwork with remarkable visual imagery, while mixing & Mastering
duties have been undertaken by Machine (Lamb of God, King Crimson, Clutch).
Encompassing a wide breadth of emotional landscapes, 'Screamnasium' is the
perfect catharsis for our troubled times.

Jet Set is a collection of 15 carefully crafted guitar-driven songs that
prove to be the most diverse and inventive of Los Straitjackets' oeuvre
The album was recorded at The Pow Wow Fun Room studios in Los Angeles with
producer and friend Janne Haavisto (of Laika and the Cosmonauts) and includes
a few guest appearances by The Basic Cable Horns (from the Conan show) and
Finnish actress and musician Irina Bjorklund. Jet Set delivers the high-energy rock
and roll instrumental music fans have come to expect from Los Straitjackets.
This 10th anniversary edition of Los Straitjackets' long-out-of-print 2012 classic is
pressed on sky blue vinyl

The renowned trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi return to Black Truffle with their 11th release, “Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose” This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: “Ready or not?” Demonstrating once again their commitment to continual experimentation in instrumentation and approach, the record begins with a long-distance collaboration made in response to a commission from New York’s Issue Project Room in 2021 during widespread lockdowns and travel limitations. A unique piece in the trio’s extensive body of work, this side-long epic finds Haino performing on metal percussion, O’Rourke on electronics and Ambarchi on gongs and bells. Initially dominated by rapid patterns on resonant, high-pitched tuned percussion, the piece sets Haino’s dynamic and dramatic performance against a calm backdrop of cycling electronics, thrumming gong strikes and hanging bell tones. The performance develops a heightened, intensely concentrated atmosphere reminiscent of Haino’s classic Tenshi No Ginjinka or his Nijiumu project; when Haino moves to clashing hand cymbals in its second half, the piece’s ritualistic energy suggests aspects of the music of Tibetan Buddhism.

The remainder of the double LP documents the trio live at Tokyo’s SuperDeluxe (the location of all but their very first recording) in a wide-ranging set recorded in December 2017. The concert opens, in another first for the trio, with Haino on drums, O’Rourke on Hammond organ and Ambarchi on his signature Leslie cabinet guitar tones. Haino’s explosively untutored approach to the drumkit will be familiar to some listeners from the radical duo iteration of Fushitsusha heard on Origin’s Hesitation. Setting flurries of rapid activity against moments of silence, his drumming here at times suggests Milford Graves in its tumbling toms and thudding kick-drum propulsion. Accompanied by O’Rourke’s organ and Ambarchi’s guitar, which in their shared use of long tones and shifting modulation speeds almost blend into a single voice, the opening sections of this performance are some of the most magical music the trio has committed to tape thus far.

After an interlude of spoken vocals in both Japanese and English, Haino makes a dramatic entrance on guitar. Against O’Rourke and Ambarchi’s increasingly intense electronic backdrop, Haino unleashes a stunning passage of slowly moving chromatic melodies and sudden shrieking explosions bathed in distortion and reverb. By the time we reach the third side, the guitar/bass/drums power trio is established and lurches into a passage of massive, lumbering rock that threatens to fall apart at every beat, O’Rourke’s strummed chordal work on six string bass creating a harmonic density equivalent to a second guitar. An abrupt edit throws the listener in media res into a frantic locked groove grounded by fuzzed out bass patterns and caveman drums. As Haino moves through a variety of approaches, from massive edifices of stuttering fuzz to ominous swarms of feedback, the trio eventually stumble into a kind of Harmolodic military tattoo, Haino’s guitar weaving and slashing across the rhythm section’s irregular accents. Moving through an epic opening duet for O’Rourke on Hammond and Haino’s wailing guitar, the fourth side eventually ramps up into a frenetic finale of mad bass riffing, crackling snare hits and guitar squall.“Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose” This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: “Ready or not?” is a testament to the continuing power and invention of this trio, who continue to seek out new terrain after over a decade working together. 2LP set presented in a lavish gatefold sleeve on heavy stock along with inner sleeves containing live pics by Tsuyoshi Kamaike. Photography by Jim O’Rourke, design by Lasse Marhaug and translation by Alan Cummings.

Ekkehard Ehlers' seminal plays series was originally released on three 12inches (Staubgold) and two 7inches (Bottrop-Boy) in very limited runs. The entire series was previously only available as a CD compilation or digitally. Keplar finally presents it on double vinyl for the first time, featuring a new cover artwork.

Domestic ethnology: Ekkehard Ehlers plays.

‘Play’ is a word in English with many meanings attached. Each one sends you down a different cognitive pathway. When I think of ‘playing’, in the sense of a game, I think of an activity involving more than one person. When Ekkehard Ehlers plays, he is very much on his own. Or, at least, alone but at the same time keeping intimate company with the artistic innovators named in his titles. Robert Johnson. John Cassavetes. Albert Ayler. Cornelius Cardew. Hubert Fichte. Is he playing with them, against them, about them, for them, to them? This can never be known.

It is certainly a mistake to try to hear the ‘work’ of these originals in the sounds played by Ekkehard. They’re not cover versions. They’re hardly tributes in the conventional sense. Cassavetes and Fichte are not even musicians, although music played an important part in both their careers. Sure, there are little nods and flashes of recognition – tiny guitar licks among the minimal beats of ‘Robert Johnson 2’; rich bowed instruments in ‘Albert Ayler’, recalling the violin, cello and double bass arrangements on Ayler’s 1967 Live in Greenwich Village LP; the elongated organ lines of ‘Cornelius Cardew 1’ gesturing towards passages in Paragraph 1 of the British composer’s 1971 Marxist monolith, The Great Learning. Ekkehard is not so much playing these figures as allowing himself to be played by them.

Playing as an activity also suggests freedom. Maybe the only thing all five named persons have in common is that they were all quiet radicals. In music, literature and cinema, they all stepped, without self-promotion or fanfare, into unmapped territories. Once there they found it necessary to invent new languages in order to survive. Necessity was the mother of their inventiveness. They were also uncomfortable avant gardists. Lonely types, fighting their corners out on the margins, with little reward, often misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored.

All died unfairly young. Fichte a victim of HIV/AIDS, Cassavetes of cirrhosis of the liver. (‘Cassavetes 2’ sounds like a tender farewell played across the 59 year old alcoholic director’s death bed.) The deaths of Johnson, Ayler and Cardew have never been satisfactorily explained, and remain shrouded in myths and conspiracy theories. The pioneering expeditions of all five began in that spirit of playful freedom, but inexorably drew them towards the heart of darkness.

So these ‘plays’ are micro-dramas, sonic soliloquies, monolog-ins to the private accounts of various geniuses in Ekkehard’s ‘follow’ list. Hacked sensibilities. Artistic manifestos boiled down and distilled, skinned and dried in the digital smokehouse. (Ekkehard Ehlers Flays.) Each of these plays was originally floated out into the world alone on its own disc. The collected works play well as a team – a tranquil, introspective experience where each artist has his own identifiably unique sound character. As an album, Plays is a ‘Plattenragout’ – a ‘record stew’ – which was the title of Hubert Fichte’s LP review column in the leftist culture magazine konkret in the 1960s. The novelist’s work investigating the cultures of South America and the Caribbean islands has been called ‘domestic ethnology’. The writer himself referred to his ‘ethnopoesie’. Ekkehard Ehlers’s intuitive electronic portraits are a form of domestic ethnology in themselves. Invoking another of Ekkehard’s musical aliases, they are portraits of cultural ‘autopoiesies’ – creators whose works were strong enough to have their own self-regenerating life force. (by Rob Young)

All tracks written and produced by Ekkehard Ehlers.
Featuring Stephan Mathieu, Joseph Suchy, Anka Hirsch.
Tracks A1 to C2 originally released on three 12inches via Staubgold.
Tracks D1 to D4 originally released on two 7inches via Bottrop-Boy.
Plays originally released as CD compilation in 2002 by Staubgold.
Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Cut to vinyl by Lupo, Berlin, 2022.
Redesigned by Sandra Kastl, 2022.
Photos by Ludger Blanke

Following their recent addition to the Prosthetic Records roster, multinational cybergrind quartet THOTCRIME are set to release their sophomore full length, titled D1G1T4L_DR1FT. With members hailing from Champaign-Urbana, IL, Philadelphia, PA and Nottingham, UK THOTCRIME’s prolific output to date has seen the band generate a buzz in online music communities and garner praise from Bandcamp Daily in the publication’s profile on the burgeoning cybergrind movement at large. D1G1T14L_DR1FT, the follow up to 2020s ønyøurcømputer, sees THOTCRIME continue to gleefully abandon genre convention in favour of boundless individuality and invention. Prosthetic debut LP from cybergrind curators/digital girls on your computer, THOTCRIME. D1G1T4L_DR1FT features collaborations with Pupil Slicer, Callous Daoboys, Dreamwell & Diana Gruber.

Following their recent addition to the Prosthetic Records roster, multinational cybergrind quartet THOTCRIME are set to release their sophomore full length, titled D1G1T4L_DR1FT. With members hailing from Champaign-Urbana, IL, Philadelphia, PA and Nottingham, UK THOTCRIME’s prolific output to date has seen the band generate a buzz in online music communities and garner praise from Bandcamp Daily in the publication’s profile on the burgeoning cybergrind movement at large. D1G1T14L_DR1FT, the follow up to 2020s ønyøurcømputer, sees THOTCRIME continue to gleefully abandon genre convention in favour of boundless individuality and invention. Prosthetic debut LP from cybergrind curators/digital girls on your computer, THOTCRIME. D1G1T4L_DR1FT features collaborations with Pupil Slicer, Callous Daoboys, Dreamwell & Diana Gruber.

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne’s Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss.

Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer’s native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne – the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora – Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience.

Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon’s signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works inVolume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic “Fleuve” series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the “Navigation” works (“III” and “IV”) wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet.

From the dawn of doo-wop to the death of disco, the Notations saw_and sang_it all. Persisting through changing trends and technologies, on major labels and minor ones, produced by both Syl Johnson and Curtis Mayfield, nothing could stop the Notations from representing Chicago's Southside for decades. The first overview of their indie label golden age, Still Here 1967-1973 finds the Notations at a musical crossroads, turning from simmering R&B ballads to socially-conscious soul. Offering up a platter of golden-dipped harmonies, inventive arrangements, and super-powered soul, the Notations survived as unheralded legends in their own time.

As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

=

Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

=

Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

=

Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

=

"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

=

Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne's Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss. Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer's native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne - the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora - Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience. Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon's signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works in Volume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic "Fleuve" series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the "Navigation" works ("III" and "IV") wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet. In the world of Flore Laurentienne, complexity emerges from simplicity as the composer roams familiar environments in constant flux. Gagnon extracts beauty through repetition and constraint, utilizing the writing style of counterpoint for which one of his greatest musical inspirations, Johann Sebastian Bach, is renowned. The lilting waves of "Canon" possess the eponymous formation of melodic 'leader and follower' motif, and magnify the softness of the album's eighteen string musicians into a force of full euphoric resonance. In Volume II, Gagnon continues his expansion of classical composition archetypes to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism. Thematic conventions of wandering the pastoral sublime become altered into glimmering refractions, relaying the emotional and kinetic power of natural energies. Volume II forms an estuary where streams of auditory microcosm reach a horizon of dynamic contrast, and reflect the parallel tenors of nature and humankind.

We are proud to present "I'm Always Right" by Imagination, an unreleased jazz rock LP from 1977. Comprised of five tracks with a playtime of roughly 30 minutes, you will hear one of the finest German late-70s rock-tinged electric jazz albums of the era. The recording is a delightful stand-out with unique compositions, aspiring solo work, and a soulful spirit throughout. Additionally, the album veritably glows with exceptional sound quality, as it has been remastered from original tapes that were cut more than four decades ago at the WDR Funkhaus, Cologne.

Here is the story of how label founder John Raincoatman became aware of these lost tapes:
"I first got in touch with members of Imagination from Düsseldorf (not to be confused with the UK disco band under the same name) in 2017 for licensing the track "Strawberry Wine" from their collectible "Shake It" album from 1980. A couple of months later, when I was speaking with Willi Hövelmann, the guitarist for Imagination, he told me about some recordings the band had made a couple of years before, when they had been invited to to the studio of the WDR, a major German broadcaster. A couple of weeks later, when Hövelmann finally sent me the files that he had requested from the WDR, I could not believe what I heard - not only that the songs were totally different from what I expected, but that they were also very very good! The music wasn't comparable to any other kind of fusion release that I knew of. These five songs were straight forward, tight and soulful electric jazz rock, a combination rarely heard from Germany from that time period."

How come Imagination - at that time a young newcomer band consisting of musicians between 19 and 22 years of age - was able to record at the well-equipped Funkhaus studio of German radio and television? Hövelmann explains: "The WDR got to know us from a newcomer band competition called "Pop am Rhein" (Pop at the Rhine) which was set up to support local bands and was promoted by several bigger newspapers. Imagination was one of the 5 contestants which were picked from 59 bands by a jury of music journalists and our band was invited to play a concert at the Philipshalle in front of about 3500 guests. Although a band called "Accept" won the contest (yes, the heavy metal band that gained international success in the following years!) and Imagination only made 3rd place, we were invited by music host and journalist Wolfgang Neumann to record in a professional studio."

Neumann's broadcasting show at the WDR was called "Rock Studio", and one of his special goals was to help push newcomer bands by giving them airplay. As a side note, Neumann actually compiled a series of three LPs on the Harvest label from 1979-1982, each of them featuring four bands. However, the earlier recordings of Imagination had only been used for broadcasting reasons, they were aired a couple of times but never made it to a vinyl or CD release.
So, on October 10th, 1977, it was time for the band to show up and prove themselves in the studio. The tracks were all recorded in one afternoon, mainly as one takes. In some cases flute, saxophone were overdubbed, as well as the vocals on "Love is Genesis", as Hövelmann remembers.

The first song, "Jazzgang" can probably be seen as Imagination's most characteristic composition out of their early period: heavy bass, saxophone leads and speedy solos by the band members. A genuine, rough, yet funky uptempo jazz rock tune. But it's "I'm Always Right", the second track on the album, that raises the bar as the key track of the release with its 10-minute length. The song starts with a great piano solo by Mario F. Demonte. In fact, "Demonte" was a pseudonym of Ratko Delorko, a classically trained piano virtuoso who is still active today as conductor, composer and performer. At that time, it was simply impossible for him to officially be part in a band like Imagination and hence the alias was invented. Anyway, the speedy intro leads to a very soulful mid-tempo jazz funk groove that offers space and time for the band members to perform a solo. First off is Uwe Ziss with sax and flute combined. The second solo belongs to Willi "Sultan" Hövelmann on electric guitar. For the furious ending the pace is set back to high speed. Delorko serves us with one of the most brilliant uptempo piano solos you may have heard in a while on a jazz record.

The next song stylistically stands out from the rest. "Biting My Time" incorporates a rhythm and blues feel with a 60s soul jazz attitude. The track was composed by Uwe Ziss who leads through the track with aspiring flute solos which feel like an easy summer breeze after the first two rock tinged tunes.

"Himalaya" sees Imagination move away from jazz quite a bit, rather approaching the psychedelic rock genre with a vibe reminiscent of the sound of the early 70s. Again starting with a piano solo by Ratko Delorko the pace is quickly at 150 bpm with the full band laying down an energetic jazz rock sound. Just after a little over one-and-a-half minutes there is a breakdown to a slower tempo with overdubbed mysterious vocals and psyche-y screams which may remind more of the legendary krautrock band Can than what is typically known as "jazz". The mood continues with tense saxophone and guitar solos, just to speed up again towards the end with furious drumming by Andreas Oelschläger.

"Love Is Genesis" concludes the release. It was composed and sung by former bassist Robert Schlickmann. Though most of the band members didn't really like the song at that time it still is a one-of-a-kind soft rock pop ballad which partly reminds of some of the vocal song tracks later to be found on the "Shake It" LP from 1980. The track manifested that Imagination were never really supposed to be solely an instrumental band.

We are now happy to have cleared the exclusive rights for this recording from the WDR and are proud to re-present this amazing collection of songs. It should appeal to fusion, jazz rock and jazz funk aficionados but also to late krautrock collectors. We are also certain that it will also please fans of the "Shake It" album, simply in terms of being such a bright and soulful debut with great music overall.

Unavailable on vinyl for over 20 years, ‘Sings Reign
Rebuilder’ was the stunning 2001 debut LP from Set Fire To
Flames - a sprawling, adventurous 13-piece Montreal
collective, including seven members of Godspeed you black
emperor! plus others from bands like A Silver Mt Zion, Fly
Pan Am, etc.
The sole reason FatCat’s 130701 imprint was founded, the
LP remains an incredible and unique document. Recorded
over a five-day period in a rickety old house in a communal
atmosphere of long-duration improvised creative activity,
operating on no sleep / confinement / intoxication, it was
brilliantly edited to mix post-rock guitar-scapes; extended
passages of scratchy, freeform improv and concrete
clatterings; atmospheric location recordings; stirring,
chamber string arrangements; deep/sparse drones; and
Kraut-like, heavily rhythmic workouts.
Described on its release by TimeOut as “one of the most
broodingly beautiful, dramatically emotional, hauntingly
evocative albums likely to ever scrape at your soul… This
record will kill you”; and by Pitchfork as “a gripping testament
to the power of emotional expression in music... a
marvelously inventive and powerful album.”
Perhaps the most dynamic and adventurous record to come
out of the early 2000s Montreal scene around Godspeed you
black emperor!.
Long-awaited first ever reissue of a classic album, which sold
out of its original (only) pressing within weeks of its release
on 15th October 2001 and has been unavailable since.
Remastered at Dubplates & Mastering and issued in a
heavyweight black vinyl double LP edition, including lavish
gatefold packaging, 20th Anniversary-branded OBI strip and
original 24-page 7” x 7” booklet with full colour print and eight
tracing-paper pages plus full digital download coupon.

High quality, 2 x 180g pink marbled vinyl, gatefold sleeve and download
code containing the digital album in multiple formats. Singer Nishla
Smith creates vivid, enigmatic stories through sound, her voice stretching
from melancholic sweetness through to dark intimacy
Her debut album 'Friends with Monsters' confirms Smith as a major new vocal
talent and sees the vocalist's affinity for inventive narratives extended over the
span of a full album. The Australian performer travelled via Berlin to eventually
settle in Manchester and is joined here by some of the city's most talented
improvisers. Richard Jones and Johnny Hunter cover piano and drums
respectively, whilst bassist Joshua Cavanagh-Brierley and trumpeter Aaron Wood
add graceful touches to complete the quintet's intimate feel. Smith's depictions of
night-time have an enigmatic quality, inviting listeners on an atmospheric journey
but all the while pointing to something greater.
Smith's work moves swiftly through genres, driven by her unique artistry. A City
Music Foundation artist, she has received commissions from Manchester
Collective and Opera North, as well as Manchester Jazz Festival and Jazz North.
As co-creator of theatre company Ulita, she also creates collaborative pieces that
blend theatre, music and visual arts. 'Friends with Monsters' continues that
theatrical drive - "I'm a very natural storyteller, I just love to tell stories. I find
myself weaving everyday events into tales that are very narratively pleasing."
Set over the course of a single evening, 'Friends with Monsters' explores changing
states of insomnia, informed by Smith's own sleepless nights. It's realised in four
distinct sections; each is introduced by a scene-setting interlude. Delving deeper
into the dreamy world of Smith's storyland rewards greatly.

Walter Smith III and Matthew Stevens are two musicians at the forefront
of developments in jazz and improvised music, listing the likes of
Terence Blanchard, Ambrose Akinmusire, Esperanza Spalding and
Christian Scott as collaborators
The pair started working together in 2017, and four years later, they're back for
the third iteration of their highly commended In Common project. Previous guests
include Nate Smith, Linda May Han Oh and Marcus Gilmore; on 'In Common 3',
Kris Davis takes the piano chair vacated by Micah Thomas, and completing the
lineup are two legends of the game - Dave Holland and Terri Lyne
Carrington.What's new, third time around? "It's longer, freer, and yet more
spontaneous," says Smith. The successful In Common formula - inventive 'onepage songs' written with specific musicians in mind - disguises the through-line
that uniquely shapes this record: "The spotlight is on the community of musicians
as a whole," Smith comments. "The general vibe is sculpted by the musicians'
interpretations of what we bring in." Davis' influential presence means the project
leans into the aesthetics of free improvisation for the first time; the resulting
soundworld lends itself to electronic manipulation, another first for the series.
The span of fifteen tracks showcases the duo's knack for reinvention, slipping
into unfamiliar contexts without losing sight of the album's focused essence.
Smith is keen to emphasise the standalone nature of the divergent In Common
recordings. Some aspects carry through though, like their commitment to
remembering lost influences - opener 'Shine' serves as both a thank you and an
acknowledgement to McCoy Tyner, Wallace Roney, Chick Corea, Jimmy Health
and Ellis Marsalis. That introduces the remaining fourteen tracks, that divide
nearly exactly into spontaneously constructed ideas that introduce fully
composed tracks.

The Generation Of Danger is a concept album about a genius scientist
who gets fed up with being swept under the rug
After the multi- billion- dollar corporation that employs him takes credit for his
latest, award-winning invention, he snaps and retaliates against them by forcing
them to take part in the greatest experiment the world of science has ever seen.

Corrie Dick, a musician and composer specialising in euphoric, sonically-inventive drumming, is at the rhythmic epicentre of a new era of innovative British jazz. He is lauded for his dynamism, his melodic slant and for his playfully subversive take on style and genre. An artist of prolific and varied output, Corrie has long been an essential component of Laura Jurd’s music including Mercury Prize shortlisted Dinosaur; is a crucial co-pilot in Elliot Galvin Trio and Rob Luft Group; and co-writes music with an abundance of artists including alternative Indie band Ink Line. His 2015 release Impossible Things which skilfully fused Celtic folk and contemporary jazz with new takes on African rhythms culminated in sold out touring and concerts across the UK. Now Corrie resets for an album which further embraces the eclectic whims of a child of the iPod shuffle generation - finding cohesion among disparate elements. Concerning the idea behind Sun Swells, his latest project, Corrie explains: “I wanted to write a jazz album that had rock instrumentation at its core: guitar-bass-drums. Rob Luft (guitar), Tom McCredie (bass) and I have been improvising and writing together for years and years and we’ve forged a sound that is uniquely crunchy yet summery, so I wanted that sound at the centre but decorated with all sorts of elements. I basically wanted to make folk-rock-jazz but treat it how electronic music producer Mura Masa treats his tracks--chucking the whole damn fruit bowl at the thing but somehow keeping space and air in the arrangement and the mix.” The music on Sun Swells is highly unique in a way that is becoming a trademark for the highly gifted artist.

By the late 1980's Ton Lebbink was a well respected figure in Amsterdam's alternative scene: he was the drummer for the Amsterdam post punk group Mecano, a true punk poet and worked as a bouncer at Amsterdam's main music venue Paradiso. He released two solo albums, both in his unique narcotic style: laying absurd Dutch wordplay over stripped down frigid instrumentals. As the decade came to an end, Ton - already well in his forties - moved away from the often destructive and dangerous nightlife. After a series of odd jobs Ton started as a fitness instructor at an Amsterdam gym called Splash. Meanwhile, the 90's brought the latest musical craze to Amsterdam: House music began to flourish through clubs like RoXy, iT and Mazzo. With House being the ideal score for his fitness classes, the once well known cult figure faded into anonymity at a 120 beats per minute. His musical endeavours were focusing more on finding the right beats for aerobics exercises with self-devised exercise - eventually leading Ton to bootleg some of them on cassette tapes himself. In parallel to this radical shift, Ton did not stop making music. On the contrary, piles of demos showed high activity but in a direction no one was looking. Inspired by music to move to, Ton recorded hours of music that activated the body while staying true to his playful mindset. Discarding his voice as an instrument, the Roland W-30 sampler became his tool to communicate. Gathering vocal snippets from close friends, barflies and pets, a repertoire developed where witty repetitiveness could exist. Going through a vast collection of demos, pictures and many anecdotes, Rubber has been able to create an EP that gives insight into Ton's overlooked 90's era. Three playful dance tracks by Ton Lebbink taking his complete own take on the Amsterdam House revolution of the 90's. Full of inventiveness: hip-shaking grooves, hypnotic beats and rousing vocals. Tracks to move to and tracks to groove to. Essential dancefloor workout tunes for you and me. Ah yeah!

On his fourth solo album, much as in Oh! (2020), the French composer, pianist and vocalist follows his ongoing exploration of the crossroads between poetry and songs, piano and synth, old-time verses and contemporary sounds. Inspired by the rhythms, effects and speech patterns of urban music, he also delivers, with a warm and moving voice, the texts of three poetesses from the past.
Since 2013, Ezéchiel Pailhès has been crafting a unique French synth pop. On his first three albums, he switched between songs inspired by poetry, instrumental ballads and electronica with hummed
choruses. This latest record is a collection of eleven new songs, two of which he wrote: "Opaline" and "Ni toi, ni moi" (neither you nor me). The others are adaptations of poems written in the 16th, 18th and
19th centuries by French poetesses Louise Labé (1524-1566), Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786- 1859) and Renée Vivien (1877-1909).
Poetesses from the past...
From classical music to songs, poetry adaptation is an old French tradition. "My universe has always embraced the musicality of this literary genre," the artist recalls. He actually started this project in 2017 with poems and sonnets by William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, Victor Hugo and above all Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, who can be heard again on songs such as "Dors-tu?" (Are you sleeping?),
"Élégie" or "L'attente" (The wait). A figure of romanticism, the author left her mark on the early 19th century through the quality of her texts and her formal inventions, particularly praised by Balzac, and
apparently a decisive influence on Verlaine and Baudelaire. "Marceline's poetry is very musical," says Ezéchiel admiringly. "Her use of rhythm and repetition sounds great and takes on a new perspective when set to music. In fact, she wrote some of her texts with singing in mind.”
“Ces longs secrets dont l'amour nous accuse, Viens-tu les rompre en songe à mes genoux ? Dors-tu, ma vie ! ou rêves-tu de moi ?”
“These long secrets for which love accuses us, Do you come to my knees to break them in a dream?
Are you sleeping, my life! or do you dream of me” (“Dors-tu ?”, after “Les pleurs” (the tears), 1833)
Besides her, we find the more famous, and rebellious, Renée Vivien, whose texts inspired three songs, "Regard en arrière" (Looking backwards), "Mélopée" (Melopoeia) and "La fille de la nuit" (The
night girl). Sometimes nicknamed "Sapho 1900", this figure of lesbian culture and, more broadly, of female genius, combined in her work the themes of desire, dreams, melancholy and the relationship with nature.
“Ta forme est un éclair
Ton sourire est l’instant Tu fuis, lorsque l’appel
T’implore, ô mon Désir !”
"Your shape is a spark of lightning
Your smile, the very moment
You flee, when the calling
Begs you, O my Desire!"
(After “Parle-moi, de ta voix pareille à l’eau courante” (Speak to me, with a voice like flowing waters) and “Ta forme est un éclair” (Your shape is a spark of lightning), Renée Vivien, 1901)
Lastly, with "Tant que mes yeux" (As long as my eyes), Ezéchiel was inspired by a 1555 poem by Renaissance poet Louise Labé, whose main topic explored female love, physical and spiritual desire,
and the torments and pains they generate.
" At the start of the project ", Ezéchiel continues, " I was interested in many poets, men and women, past and present, before my selection was narrowed down to these three female authors. Their works,
often written in difficult or secret conditions, express a raging romanticism, a passionate soul, fuelled by desperate and tormented love. I found it interesting, as a man coming from another world and time, to face this otherness, to trade viewpoints. Obviously, I could loudly claim that the album was the result of a concept, that it reflects today's world, and that it allows me to explore the notion of gender,
giving visibility to the work of a few women, while at the same time pairing these ancient texts with a more modern and rhythmic music, and obviously, there is some truth in that. But more than anything, I
wanted to serve the text itself, to express the emotion and connection I felt with these works.”
Today's rhythms and prosody...
Ezéchiel Pailhès combines texts from French literature with electronic music, its effects and rhythms, as well as a form of scansion that echoes rap, R&B or the current fusion between hip hop and pop,
which is part of our musical background and that of younger generations. "I wanted to cross-reference texts from the beginning of the century with this type of music. I wanted to use today’s techniques to tell the tale of different daily lives and experiences.
The album is thus marked by contemporary electronic orchestrations, in which he drops his favourite instrument, the piano, and his digital collage technique to use more extensive synth melodies, enhanced by drum machines, bringing a gentle and bright vibe to the romantic texts. Lastly, we can hear slight digital tones of Auto-Tune, which Ezéchiel uses sparingly and inventively.

Beyond its sophistication, the term "melopoeia" means a "sung declamation", a "recitative song", sometimes interpreted in a monotonous way. On this album, it could also refer to a sense of phrasing, which does not come from rap, but rather from jazz, Ezéchiel's first love. " In the past, I tried to hide my jazz culture, but it naturally came back on this new album, as can be heard, for instance, in Regard en arrière.” With its verses anchored in our literary memory, the following track "Mélopée", perfectly illustrates the album's vision. It manages to transcend eras, mixing past romanticism with a modern
prosody, fuelled by the nonchalance of hip hop and the warm chords of jazz.
“Qu’un hasard guide enfin mon désespoir tranquille
Vers l’eau d’une oasis ou les berges d’une île,
Où je puisse dormir, mon voyage accompli,
Dans la sécurité profonde de l’oubli”
"May chance guide my quiet sorrow, at last
To the water of an oasis, the shores of an island,
Where I may sleep, having traveled my way,
In the safe depths of oblivion".
(After “Sillages” (Trails), René Vivien, 1908)

Bay Area Thrash Metal legend Blind Illusion returns after 34 years with a follow-up to “The Sane Asylum”, featuring Doug Piercy (ex-Heathen) and Andy Gallon (ex-Death Angel)! Thrash as a primitive, earthy genre has given us many greats: Metallica, Slayer, Exodus, Death Angel, Heathen and the like. But the more calculated, technical, and ultimately colorful inventors of progressive Thrash, a genre that blossomed handsomely after Watchtower’s debut in 1985, are what truly push the limits of Thrash and test its creative bandwidth. Blind Illusion on their new album “Wrath of the Gods”, achieve this to a degree that has seldom been approached, let alone passed, in the rest of Thrash history, just as they did 34 years ago on “The Sane Asylum”. What is most impressive and revealing about this album, however, is not the technical ability of the musicians involved (although there is nothing wrong with their ability). It’s the pure brilliance that shapes every song, and the demonstration of how focusing on the art of songwriting will work wonders for a band. “Straight as the Crowbar Flies” introduces us first to the astral energy this album exudes, with catchy riffing and Marc Biedermann’s raspy, growling vocals. The screeching guitar solos and the abrupt rhythm changes keep the song fresh, but the band’s incorporation of technical Thrash elements crossed with extremely catchy riffing and drum arrangements proves to be the strong attributes of this album. There are numerous instances where the band finds its virtue in slowing down, letting a power chord ring out, and then letting the drums restart and propel the song once again. When the band decides to let their guard down and get cagey or manic with the rhythm, it’s done so with precision and doesn’t come at the expense of the song structure. When they get technical, the notes still vibrate with emotion, and the song doesn’t just become a vacuum for skills to be shown off. This message is most evident in every song, which all feature catchy guitar licks and great guitar riffs. What Blind Illusion does best on this new masterpiece is deliver cleverly-written and fun songs with catchy riffs. At the heart of Thrash, that’s really all you can ask for. The effects of how masterfully composed this album is has lend the production a unique ethos that makes it feel human. This is a group of guys who know what die-hard Thrash fans want to hear, and they know how to put it on their 2022 album “Wrath of the Gods”.

Following the release of their critically acclaimed self-titled debut EP in 2021, Antwerp's Lucid Lucia are set to release their debut album 'Ever-changing Light' on the 7th October via the groove-obsessed Belgian tastemaker label, Sdban Ultra.

Searching to unwrap the mystery that is a human life, across nine tracks of jazz and space funk-infused grooves, Lucid Lucia look to the sound of Herbie's 'Head Hunters' and Miles' acid funk of the mid-70s for inspiration.

'Ever-changing Light' is a mind-expanding celebration centered on freedom and rhythm. Free-spirited saxes, futuristic-sounding keys, monstrous bass lines and shifting drum beats unite, resulting in an uplifting and joyous celebration of jazz, funk and groove. From the loose, laidback stylings of 'Mumpsimus' and the jazz-funk odyssey that is 'Pigeons' to the sonic wonders of 'Reminiscence' and urgent flow of 'Quanked', Lucid Lucia is a marvelous journey of luminous sounds and vibrant rhythms. Elsewhere, the warped aesthetics of 'Oneironauts' and improv 'Pukti part 1' showcase a tight rhythm section, inventive horns, funky keys and guitar while the spiritual magnum opus 'Voor Pieter A.' is a magical example of the virtuosity of Lucid Lucia.

Born from the ashes of fusion outfit BRZZVLL, Lucid Lucia were founded by saxophonist Vincent Brijs, a household name in Antwerp and the Belgian jazz scene. Former winners of the Jong Jazztalent Gent, BRZZVLL released their debut album 'Days of Thunder, Days of Grace' in 2008 and would go on to release five more albums including teaming up with Trinidad-born poet, novelist and musician Anthony Joseph on the 2014 critically acclaimed album 'Engines' and with hip-hop MC, writer and producer Amir Sulaiman on the 2016 album 'First Let's Dance'. The 2017 album 'Waiho', the band's first instumental album and final album received glowing praise from numerous tastemakers including UNCUT magazine, The Line of Best Fit, XLR8R and Record Collector magazine.

To the present day and Lucid Lucia marks a brighter, clearer sound for the sextet. Consisting of Vincent Brijs: saxophones and EWI, Bart Borremans: saxophones, Stijn Cools: drums, Dries Laheye: bass, Dries Verhulst: guitar, Jan Willems: keys and James Williams: drums and percussion, they have honed their skills performing with numerous artists from home and around the world including Ursula Rucker, Joseph Bowie (Defunkt), Amir Sulaiman, Anthony Joseph, Zena Edwards, Ayanna Witter Johnson, Baloji, Mo & Grazz, Kain the Poet (The Last Poets), Marie Daulne, Dizzy Madjeku, Ida Nielsen and many others.

One of the UK’s most consistently inventive production minds of recent times, Lil Silva has perhaps one of the most varied resumes in the world. Causing a seismic effect on the world of club music with smashes such as ‘Seasons’ and releases with the likes of Night Slugs, production credits for a diverse range of artists such as Adele, BANKS, Mark Ronson and serpentwithfeet, and a collaborative project with George FitzGerald as OTHERLiiNE even before factoring stellar solo releases under the Lil Silva moniker using his own vocal, he has continuously combined a broad range of influences to create a transformative, varied discography. After the release of ‘Backwards’ last month alongside Sampha, today Lil Silva announces his long awaited debut album, Yesterday Is Heavy.

Over 10 years in the making, ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’ is a cumulative product of an already remarkable career filled with highlights. An album about stepping out: outside of a comfort zone, and, for Lil Silva, outside of himself. It’s a debut album of heft and heart, but most of all hope – and trusting the process. Buoyed on by the encouragement of long-time collaborators like Jamie Woon and Sampha early in his career (they both implored him to commit his own voice to record), and bolstered by incomparable session experience working with Mark Ronson, Adele and more, the Lil Silva story that started aged 10 in Bedford is beginning full circle. Created primarily in the town he grew up in (and continues to live now), the pervading solace of home courses through the project, while providing the thrilling moments of sleight of hand that Silva has always been capable of.

As he so often does, Lil Silva shares the spotlight with an astonishing international cast of guests. He fuses well-versed modern legends in the shape of Sampha, Ghetts, and Little Dragon with rising stars serpentwithfeet, Charlotte Day Wilson and Skiifall to thrilling effect, the whole time never allowing his deftly dynamic yet considered touch to be outshone throughout. The album has also been created with musical direction from Louis Vuitton musical director and BBC Radio 1 tastemaker Benji B, as well as creative direction from award winning visual artist BAFIC. It’s with the opening track ‘Another Sketch’ however, where his singular talent introduces itself.

With a visual directed by UKMVA Award winner Fenn O’Meally, ‘Another Sketch’ is a prime example of the vast array of talents that Lil Silva possesses. A video that transcends generations of Black Britons (featuring Lil Silva’s own family as well as Sampha), ‘Another Sketch’ focuses on the subject of time. Looking at generations of black britons as monuments, the visual centres on the idea that despite time being able to wear down your appearance, what’s inside of you can never depreciate. The main centrepiece of this is heritage, with archive and newly recorded footage showing Silva’s family and friends enjoying the same activities they did generations ago, spliced with footage and voice notes from one of the lands of his dual heritage, Jamaica. The track itself focuses on a central theme of actions, their consequences and changing our inevitable future, with Lil Silva’s stunning falsetto shining alongside background vocals from serpentwithfeet and an instrumental that initially opens minimalistically before gradually unfurling to unveil elements of his electronic beginnings; a thumping hip hop infused beat and swelling melodic embellishments.

With ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’, Lil Silva reaps the rewards of over a decade of influence to create the debut album he’s always imagined. Simultaneously riding the line between pertinent storytelling and virtuosic production, ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’ charts the story of one of UK music’s unsung heroes taking his time to build something that is truly timeless. Yesterday Is Heavy, but tomorrow is forever.

Following on from the stunning recording of her 1992 performance at the Berlin Parampara Festival (BT079), Black Truffle is pleased to continue its documentation of the work of Berlin-based Italian singer Amelia Cuni, one of the great contemporary exponents of dhrupad, the oldest surviving style of North Indian classical vocal music. Beautifully recorded in concert at Vishweshwarayya Hall, Mumbai. 04.02.1996 presents expansive performances of three ragas stretching across four sides and almost one and a half hours of music. Beginning with the serene Raga Lalit, Cuni dwells for over twenty-five minutes on its opening alap movement, accompanied only by tanpura, her limpid yet full-bodied voice moving from graceful exposition in free tempo to increasingly rhythmically active variations, gradually spiralling upward in register. She is then joined by master pakwahaj player Manik Munde for the raga’s dhrupad and dhamar sections, the resonant tone of the drum and his constant invention with the complex 14-beat cycle serving as the perfect accompaniment for Cuni’s ecstatic melodic developments. On the more solemn Raga Bhairav, Cuni’s alap, again stretching out over a whole side, is particularly notable for its powerful held notes and mastery of microtonal movement of pitch. After Munde returns for another rhythmically intricate dhamar movement, the record ends with the buoyancy of the Raga Alhaiya Bilaval, whose mode has, for the Western listener, an unmistakably ‘major’ quality. The rapturous applause that greets the performance is reflected in a remarkable selection of press clippings contemporary with the recording, which demonstrate Cuni’s success with Indian critics. Arriving in a gorgeous gatefold featuring stunning colour photographs of Cuni taken by legendary Australian fashion photographer Robyn Beeche (who resided in India from the early 90s), Mumbai. 04.02.1996 is a document of indescribable beauty and a moving testament to music’s ability to cross national and cultural borders.

Explosive, unpredictable, and persistently candid throughout, I Owe You
Nothing is a lesson in introspection and identity -The Denton, Texasbased Record Setter are unflinchingly inventive with every new release,
creating intricate compositions which balance their fierce spirit and
delicate emotions
Frenzied and impassioned vocals soar over thunderous guitars, ferocious
percussion, and bone-shaking basslines, comprising fervent songs that oscillate
between raw powerful screamo and affective post- rock melodies. Through
introspective lyricism and turbulent sonic soundscapes, Record Setter chronicle
the lifelong journey of coming to terms with yourself, your anxieties, and your
mistakes, ultimately rewarded by a sense of empowered independence.

Last album recorded by Colombian rock pioneers Los Speakers in 1968 after leaving behind its affinity with yéyé and go-go music. One of the most brilliantly whacked-out psych LPs to emerge from South America. Originally self-released on their own Producciones Kris label, this is an almost impossible to find cult record. Officially reissued for the first time. By 1968, Colombian rock had left behind its affinity with yéyé and go-go music. In Medellín, Discos Fuentes had terminated its contract with Los Yetis, whose farewell record "Olvídate" set a strong anti-establishment tone. While the fire of protest that had spread rapidly among students in Paris was dying out, young people in Bogotá voiced their discontent. Aware of the effervescent political climate across the world, Los Speakers wrote their last record between June and September of the convulsive year of 1968. In order to give shape to these new songs they needed a space where they could experiment freely with sound. The music historian and critic and sound engineer, Manuel Drezner, made a providential appearance and offered the innovative Ingeson studios to the trio under one condition: that his company's name was included in the title of the record. For four months, Rodrigo, Manuel and Roberto created a record that was completely different to anything on the Colombian rock scene at that time. Los Speakers used cutting-edge equipment to record and mix "El maravilloso mundo de Ingeson", It was the first time local musicians had access to a multichannel mixing desk where they could experiment with all kinds of bold sound effects. The silences between songs were replaced with brief intervals of sound including the noise of a train running over a passer-by, a bomb exploding_ Although it's often labelled a conceptual record, the four compositions that each of the band members contribute reveal different aesthetic personalities. From the strong influence of Renaissance and Baroque poetry and music to the virulent social critique and pacifist statements, suffused with religiosity and mysticism. Armed with the demo tape, Los Speakers presented the project to CBS, Philips, Sonolux and Bambuco. The labels' verdict was unanimous: not very commercial and very costly. The group reacted to this negative response by pooling their personal savings, inventing a fictious record label called Kris and released the record just as they had imagined it. This led to the creation of a graphic concept unheard of in Colombia: the record included a booklet containing photos, texts and illustrations. Although there was a big media roll out, which included TV appearances and features in newspapers and magazines, as predicted the album was a commercial failure_ "El maravilloso mundo de Ingesón" is one of the most brilliantly whacked-out psych LPs to emerge from South America.

Sublime unreleased soundtrack by Ron Geesin, to one of the most important and controversial films in British cinema history.
Standard black vinyl (750 Copies) with sleeve art taken from the 1971 film poster. Cool as fuck.
Side One is the score for Sunday Bloody Sunday, the controversial 1971 drama directed by John Schlesinger. Starring Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson and Murray Head, it tells the story of an open love triangle between a gay Jewish doctor, a divorced woman and a bisexual young male artist who makes glass fountains. Daniel Day Lewis also makes his uncredited screen debut as a yobbo scratching up posh cars. The films significance at the time of release lay in the depiction of a mature gay man who was both successful, well adjusted and at peace with his sexuality.

The music on Side Two comes from two different sources: tracks one to four are from the 1985 Channel Four documentary about Viv Richards. Simply called “Viv” it was directed by Greg Lanning, with words and narration by Darcus Howe. It was (and still is) a fascinating film recounting Richards’ rise from young talented Antiguan to global cricket superstar. It also explored the long history of West Indian players through the English game. Howe later recalled how seeing Viv Richards walking out to bat at the Oval (just down the road from where Howe lived in Brixton) without a helmet on no matter how fast the bowler was - and wearing his Rasta sweatbands of gold, green and red, was inspirational. The documentary was later re-titled ‘Viv Richards - King Of Cricket’ for the video market, and let’s face it, that’s a more commercial title. I’d strongly recommend trying to track it down to spend an hour or so in the company of Viv and Darcus. As I write this it’s still up on a popular online streaming site for free.

The last six cues of Side Two are from a 1970 BBC Omnibus film ‘Shapes In A Wilderness’. Directed by Tristram Powell this was a documentary about the importance and influence of art therapy in mental hospitals, tracing its origins from a painting hut in a wartime military hospital to its successful and widespread incorporation in institutions. It featured fascinating medical insights, disturbing imagery and Ron’s finely tuned accompaniment. On its original transmission John Schlesinger saw it and was heard to say “I must have that composer for my new film!”. And he got his way.

I could spend another paragraph analysing the music and stuff like that but you can listen and work all that out for yourself. But I will say that all the music just confirms the fact that Ron Geesin is one of the most underrated, inventive and versatile composers (and musicians) we have.

Limited Blue Sky Colour Vinyl LP Pressing. This release is strictly for Indie Stores Only. First reissue of Love Battery’s 1992 Debut Sub Pop Album. Remastered by Jack Endino from the Original Masters. Includes Liner Notes with photos, lyrics and more. Jackpot Records is proud to announce the upcoming vinyl reissue of the classic 1992 Sub Pop album: LOVE BATTERY “Dayglo”. In the middle of the wonderful sludge that was coming out of Seattle in the late 80s/early 90’s, Love Battery pierced through with something different to offer. They were more psychedelic, more tuneful, and even more...dare we say...British sounding than what Sub Pop was releasing at the time. We were listening. The results are crystal clear on the record Jackpot Records is reissuing, ‘Dayglo’. And like many of the Sub Pop records of the day, this has not been available on vinyl in the U.S. Until now. On 'Dayglo', inventive and underrated guitar wizard Kevin Whitworth and vocalist/guitarist Ron Nine slash and burn through 10 songs that would give bands like Blur, Swervedriver, and yes, Nirvana, a run for their money. It doesn't hurt that the focused driven energy of drummer Jason Finn (soon to be of The Presidents Of The United States) and ex-U-Men bass monster Jim Tillman add more than their weight to the sonic mystery of these songs. From the melodic battle cry of opener 'Out Of Focus' with its slippery, infectious chorus, it's obvious that Love Battery had an incredible knack for hypnotic hooks, cryptic lyrics, and propulsive grooves, ones that record obsessives still drool over when the needle hits the turntable. The record is as mysterious as early R.E.M., with equal hints of 13th Floor Elevators and Screaming Trees sprinkled throughout.

Reviews: “4 ½ stars out of 5 - Dayglo is imbued with a highly energetic style and creative force”. All Music Guide // “Two years later, Oasis made the same record and were called geniuses” SPIN Magazine // Track listing: 1 Out Of Focus 2 Foot 3 Damaged 4 See Your Mind 5 Side (With You) 6 Cool School (Trane Of Thought) 7 Sometimes 8 Blonde 9 Dayglo 10 23 Modern Stories

As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

=

Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

=

Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

=

Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

=

"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

=

Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

Micah is a special one. His playing has a restlessly inventive and futuristic tilt while simultaneously remaining deeply rooted in the history of the music – all delivered with curiosity, patience, humor and care. I make a point to hear him as often as I can, as he always inspires and is constantly evolving. Micah is one of the most exciting musicians of his generation. One who has a unique style as well as all the tools needed to make a major contribution to the world of jazz piano.

"When we decided to produce Micah Thomas, the project involved a recording of five titles only. In the first part of an approximately one hour session, Micah beautifully played first takes of up to ten titles, with fantastic artistic fervor and great freshness. Taken by surprise, joy and admiration, we decided on the spur of the moment to change our initial plans, so we could capture the magic of that


session for a little longer. Here is the result, a 12 titles double vinyl that takes you back to October 31st, 2020 at Big Orange Sheep studio in Brooklyn, NY. Twelve songs when we encountered the art of Micah Thomas as a solo pianist for the first time."

Oslo's Ultima Festival for contemporary music in 2014. The idea was to give revered Norwegian experimental electronic musician Helge Sten, aka Deathprod, access to seminal avant-garde composer Harry Partch's self-designed, custom-made, specialized, invented instruments - an orchestra tuned to just intonation, using up to 43 intervals instead of the standard 12 for the most commonly used Western equal temperament. An artist with a 30+ year career and an uncompromising reputation that reflects the emotional specificity of his uneasy, yet compelling sound, maintained throughout his expansive discography, Sten was an intriguing choice for such a project. Although he attended art school, training in electronic music and sound art, he had little experience with acoustic instruments and can neither read nor write music notation. Yet he's been engaged with Partch's music, and outsider art more generally, since he was a teenager. His resulting piece/composition for the project was originally intended only for performance by Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, for a series of concerts in five European cities between 2015 and 2018. It's Musikfabrik that undertook the painstaking, expensive process of building an entire set of the composer's creations - the second only to the originals built by Partch himself. They are the professional musicians and virtuosic instrumentalists that had to re-train and re-educate on these unknown and experimental sound sculptures in non-standard tunings. And they house this large, gorgeous physical instrumentarium and deal with the enormous logistics of working with it, sometimes shipping the fragile pieces to other locales via semi-trucks or ships. Because of such monumental efforts, Musikfabrik are notoriously guarded with recordings of the instruments. And rightly so. They're the only ones allowed to perform on them, too. But Sow Your Gold isn't Musikfabrik playing. Instead, Sten spent days and nights alone with the instrumentarium in Cologne. He played the instruments himself while recording, layering the recordings and editing without effects to compose an `audio score' for Musikfabrik to work from in order for the ensemble to perform the piece. (Partch also regularly worked this way, although he would transcribe afterwards. Likewise, Sten worked with a professional arranger to create a detailed score, too.) So, that makes Sow Your Gold an even less likely rarity - partly why its release comes seven years after its creation. If you ask Sten about the album's title, he'll point you to the text he borrowed it from - Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens by H.M.E. De Jong, a 1969 study of a 1617 book of alchemical emblems - and notable passages dealing with alchemy, chemistry, and agriculture, all transformative processes. And while that may sound complicated, his takeaway is simple: "You have to break something down to create something new," - a lesson he felt related strongly to his own musical process, especially in this project. So, while Sow Your Gold in the White Foliated Earth is a piece written for specific, oddly tuned, extremely rare and unusual instruments, and for a certain ensemble - namely, some of the finest contemporary musicians in Europe - Sten grew fond of the audio score, recognizing it as coming directly from the creative process in its purest, most natural form. And so from a foliated earth, where obscure tradition, treasured scarcity, immense effort, and patient certainty layer and criss-cross, comes rugged gold, polished to shining by one outsider for another.

"Here’s a star in the making, a brilliant instrumentalist, an inventive singer and an assured performer who can draw the audience into the palm of his hand"
Tim Cumming, The Arts Desk, January 2022

“…can’t think of one who radiates so much heart and joy as Abel Selaocoe... winningly combines his cello with throat singing, improvising, exhorting the audience to shout or clap, and treating his body as a percussion instrument."
Geoff Brown, The Times, August 2021

Universally credited as the band that invented grindcore, it's no
exaggeration to say that Napalm Death are one of the most important
acts in metal history
Earache Records' third ever release (MOSH003), classic debut album 'Scum' had
an immediate, seismic impact in 1987 and its influence can still be felt far and
wide today. To celebrate its 35th anniversary, this essential album is repressed
with a limited-edition Blue colour sleeve. An absolute 'must have' for any heavy
metal collector. Pressed from the original master tapes, the album has been
specially recreated using 'fdr' – full dynamic range mastering - allowing the
music's nuances to shine through and giving the classic album a more ferocious
and dynamic sound, enabling the listener to immerse in the full audio heaviness
like never before.
LP Tracks: Multinational Corporations / Instinct of Survival / The Kill / Scum /
Caught in a Dream / Polluted Minds / Sacrificed / Siege of Power / Control / Born
On Your Knees / Human Garbage / You Suffer / Life? / Prison Without Walls /
Point of No Return / Negative Approach / Success? / Deceiver / C.S. / Parasites /
Pseudo Youth / Divine Death / As the Machine Rolls On / Common Enemy / Moral
Crusade / Stigmatized / M.A.D / Dragnet

Universally credited as the band that invented grindcore, it's no
exaggeration to say that Napalm Death are one of the most important
acts in metal history
Earache Records' third ever release (MOSH003), classic debut album 'Scum' had
an immediate, seismic impact in 1987 and its influence can still be felt far and
wide today. To celebrate its 35th anniversary, this essential album is repressed
with a limited-edition Blue colour sleeve. An absolute 'must have' for any heavy
metal collector. Pressed from the original master tapes, the album has been
specially recreated using 'fdr' – full dynamic range mastering - allowing the
music's nuances to shine through and giving the classic album a more ferocious
and dynamic sound, enabling the listener to immerse in the full audio heaviness
like never before.
LP Tracks: Multinational Corporations / Instinct of Survival / The Kill / Scum /
Caught in a Dream / Polluted Minds / Sacrificed / Siege of Power / Control / Born
On Your Knees / Human Garbage / You Suffer / Life? / Prison Without Walls /
Point of No Return / Negative Approach / Success? / Deceiver / C.S. / Parasites /
Pseudo Youth / Divine Death / As the Machine Rolls On / Common Enemy / Moral
Crusade / Stigmatized / M.A.D / Dragnet

Universally credited as the band that invented grindcore, it's no
exaggeration to say that Napalm Death are one of the most important
acts in metal history
Earache Records' third ever release (MOSH003), classic debut album 'Scum' had
an immediate, seismic impact in 1987 and its influence can still be felt far and
wide today. To celebrate its 35th anniversary, this essential album is repressed
with a limited-edition Blue colour sleeve. An absolute 'must have' for any heavy
metal collector. Pressed from the original master tapes, the album has been
specially recreated using 'fdr' – full dynamic range mastering - allowing the
music's nuances to shine through and giving the classic album a more ferocious
and dynamic sound, enabling the listener to immerse in the full audio heaviness
like never before.
LP Tracks: Multinational Corporations / Instinct of Survival / The Kill / Scum /
Caught in a Dream / Polluted Minds / Sacrificed / Siege of Power / Control / Born
On Your Knees / Human Garbage / You Suffer / Life? / Prison Without Walls /
Point of No Return / Negative Approach / Success? / Deceiver / C.S. / Parasites /
Pseudo Youth / Divine Death / As the Machine Rolls On / Common Enemy / Moral
Crusade / Stigmatized / M.A.D / Dragnet

DJ Swamp brings you Wearing My Mask EP!

Alongside Decadent Records and Ruined Vibes - with a hologram sleeve cover!

Limited edition BLACK 7inch vinyl.

4 tracks
Skip proof scratch tool section
5 lock-groove beats
Lock-groove tone
Lenticular hologram cover

Decadent Records recording artist, USA DMC Champion 1996, also known for his work with Beck, Death Grips, Ministry and The Crystal Method, DJ Swamp is the inventor of the highly imitated skip-proof scratch tool.

He was also in the DJ documentary “Scratch” ,The movie “CLOCK STOPPERS”, and 2017 movie “Banger.” Swamp began mastering his DJ skills more than 25 years ago. In 1996, his rookie year, he took the title of USA DMC Champion. Being true to his nature in an arena that was predominantly influenced by a very hip hop-esque culture, Swamp stepped up to the decks looking like some kind of junky punk. He was well received by the audience despite his counter-culture appearance because he exhibited skills that defied perception and already possessed a stage presence that many of his contemporaries still lacked. The finale came when he closed his set by freakin’ Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’ and then smashing his records.
Notorious for mischief, while he’s on the turntables his shows are highly anticipated by those who know that they can expect to see something spectacular.

Albert van Abbe & Jochem Paap join forces for General Audio.

Recorded at Willem Twee studios in Den Bosch, General Audio explores a unique and esoteric approach to sound creation. Using test and measure equipment from the 1950’s, originally designed for the maintenance of various audio and radio transmitters, van Abbe and Paap create otherworldly walls of sound and dense rhythmic abstractions with an early form of synthesis. Rudimentary signals are combined and processed before being committed to tape via mic’s set up to capture the Willem Twee studio’s unique acoustics. The equipment itself predates the invention of the analog, modular synthesizers developed in the 70’s that are now commonplace in many studios.

The record opens with 220Lock-in, a gently undulating drone composition. Effervescent at the top end and fathoms deep at the bottom, it shifts ominously with ring modulated tones that build and then give way to thick washes of white noise. A single synth flourish provides a surprising final moment. The record continues with WZ-1Wobbel Zusatz, a low-sunk percussive piece with an off-kilter rhythm and wet spring reverb doing the bulk of the sonic heavy lifting. Deep in the mix, delicate shifts in pitch and tone deliver a kind of arcane musicality, and as the recording approaches its final moments the piece descends into an exhilarating chaos, with sonic components falling slowly by the wayside. Pegelmesser riffs on a similar reverb characteristic, but this time a driven, arp-like lead propels the work forward. Crisp shifts in colour and distortion arrive unexpectedly, providing a curious musical sensation once more – and harsher moments of feedback break up the recording in its later stages. On Rel 3L 212c LC-pi the pair strip things back, with more present percussive components and subtle distortion lines, before Wandel ups the ante with a corrosive dirge broken up by sporadic submerged synth hits. The penultimate recording SR 250 Boxcar Averager shows off impressive pitch modulation, resulting in a variety of intriguing sensations. Cinematic and remarkably visual, it charts a strange and affecting course, the synth lead underpinned by a repetitive percussive motif and all manner of sends delivering fascinating details. Nim Bin closes the record and once more van Abbe and Paap invite that subtle musicality into the recording. A tight VCO modulation drives the piece while various percussive synth strikes provide a kind of rhythmic component, though they remain untethered to any time signature – a neat conclusion to an intriguing and exploratory record.

Written and Produced by Albert Van Abbe & Jochem Paap

AM006 is by Berlin's ML, titled 'Life always breaks your heart'. Two 30-minute pieces were written, constructed, collaged and fixed together by himself. It's an important story, so there's a copy from ML below and also ours was written by Bokeh Version Industrial to do it justice.

Hallucinated Brazilian poetry read by text to voice engines, supernatural thrillers ripped from Youtube, the clang of cutlery and distant canteen conversation, that noise wire fencing makes when you rake it with a stick, crickets chirping over odd dance emotions, a sample you think your recognise but can’t name…..

The trivial is cosmically important, the cosmically important is trivial. ‘It’s about the product’ - all of life’s a sample. You contain universes.

Alice in Wonderland, late night sessions with kosmische guitar legends, ethnographic chants from an unknown land, “There’s no monopoly of knowledge / there’s no monopoly of power”: forecasts from global political trends, China will be important they say, someone’s whistling a tune that doesn’t exist, I’m thinking of times long before I was born . . .

Growing naturally like a beautiful montage from his field recordings (a rich library of personal psychoacoustic details) and his 150 Session on NTS, ML's Life Always Breaks Your Heart is mixtape-concrète:

Gamelan of the soul, Bio-Curry-Wurst in Kreuzberg, zither overlays the booms of the squatter’s homegrade grenades…

Mark Leckey vs. Alvin Curran, Gustav Flaubert vs Cabaret Voltaire, free association flashbacks with the timestamps mixed up, with added bass guitar, OP-1, Ableton, distinguishing the ‘real’ instruments becomes unimportant….they’re absorbed by memory foam….

No country, no flag – outernational without a cause!

There is no purpose, there is only reverie.

ML -

"A useless ruin, things are falling apart, even in our deepest, we long for harmony. A hypothetical path, for obscure reasons, fades into transparency. The mediocrity of Western culture, sicken by P.R., life offers a chance, a place for enthusiasm. The texture of the world, them can read it in your eyes. In the heart of schizo-culture, distance, suddenly shortened, forms characters as symbols. Deafen by mass media, embittered by unsettled chemistry, the willing body, forever in transition. The pre-invented existence, owned by language, creates a passage towards chaos. Paragraphs of currents, amplify the feelings, while silence leaks into the new luxury of time. Gentrification of sentiments, beneath our palms, all these memoirs. A modern consciousness, stretching over years in narcissistic differentiation. In touch with another human spirit, blowing backwards, beneath dark waters. We put our hands on your body, onto a new landscape, employed by metaphysical mutations. At the edge of the cosmos, prairies and mountains hide the truth in tactical silence. Apparently so, a number of months ago, above our head, a landscape of journals. Mystical content, statistically insignificant. A new patio, them crawled through the walls."

At the centre of the project 'Iboja's Songs' sings 99-year-old Iboja Wandall-Holm.who unfolds her unrivalled inventory of childhood memories and unique treasures of songs. Iboja has collected these and brought them from her childhood in Eastern Europe. She later translated them into Danish.

The album appears as a musical encounter. An encounter where Iboja's memories and songs are put in a new light by Danish musician Mikkel Hess and other members of the band Hess Is More, in collaboration with co-producer Kenneth Bager.

Even at her advanced age, Iboja sings with a beautiful timbre that miraculously encapsulates intimacy and the sense of travelling through history. Iboja has had a career as a journalist and writer. One therefore immediately senses her storytelling abilities both as a singer, but especially also as a writer. Iboja is in more than one sense the voice of the century. The singles 'Jeg Er Blevet Gammel' and 'Solen Går Ned Over Land' were the first two releases from this project's musical journey. They laid the groundwork for the release of 'Iboja's Songs' to flourish.

“Good evening Black Buddha” is Black Jesus eXperience’s seventh studio album. Inspired by the land we live on and the connection to all that have gone before and will follow, inspired by the multicultural power of our community, inspired by the paradox of the story of the Black Buddha. From the perversity of the pandemic and its imposition of separation comes "Good Evening Black Buddha", celebrating togetherness. Darkness is light.

At the heart of Black Jesus eXperience’s inspiration is Ethiopian/Australian singer Enushu Taye. Enushu’s openness and poetic insight, delivered with unique beauty in her own Amharic tongue, lie at the core of "Good Evening Black Buddha" and all that Black Jesus eXperience (BJX) do. MC Mista Monk (Liam Monkhouse) compliments and contrasts with rhymes and flow born of Africa and outback Australia. BJX are joined by their great friends powerhouse singer Vida-Sunshyne, and crystalline new voice Gracie Sinclair.

The songs on “Good Evening Black Buddha” rove from the lightness of touch of a trio to BJX’s full fourteen piece polyrhythmic, polymetric, polytonal Ethiofunk juggernaut with six-piece horn arrangements. Soloists include living national treasure Bob Sedergreen on keyboards, Peter Harper on saxophone, Ian Dixon on trumpet, Zac Lister guitar, Larry Crestani guitar and his own invention ‘kraartar’, over the deep grooves of Richard Rose bass, James Davies kit, and Kahan Harper percussion. Black Jesus eXperience is also proud to be joined by our friends conga player Louis Poblete, kraar and masinko virtuoso Endalkachew Yenehun, proud Kuku Nyunkal man and master yiki yiki (dijeridu) player Sean Ryan.

Micah is a special one. His playing has a restlessly inventive and futuristic tilt while simultaneously remaining deeply rooted in the history of the music – all delivered with curiosity, patience, humor and care. I make a point to hear him as often as I can, as he always inspires and is constantly evolving. Micah is one of the most exciting musicians of his generation. One who has a unique style as well as all the tools needed to make a major contribution to the world of jazz piano.

"When we decided to produce Micah Thomas, the project involved a recording of five titles only. In the first part of an approximately one hour session, Micah beautifully played first takes of up to ten titles, with fantastic artistic fervor and great freshness. Taken by surprise, joy and admiration, we decided on the spur of the moment to change our initial plans, so we could capture the magic of that

session for a little longer. Here is the result, a 12 titles double vinyl that takes you back to October 31st, 2020 at Big Orange Sheep studio in Brooklyn, NY. Twelve songs when we encountered the art of Micah Thomas as a solo pianist for the first time."