Pop & Rock News

Bob Theil's self proclaimed opus, "Songs from the Margin" was supposed to be the follow-up album to "So Far" which debuted in 1982. It was never put out untill now, pick..

Bob Theil's self proclaimed opus, 'Songs from the Margin' was supposed to be the follow-up album to 'So Far' which debuted in 1982. It was never put out untill now, picked up by Strawberry Rain for a 500 copy release !
The project spanned seven years with 'Fading Ways, Fadings Faces' being written as far back as 1977, and the remainder of the album being written between 1982 and 1984. Sadly this project was finished but never went as far as being released until now. The material on 'So Far' didn't translate well to the climate of the folk club scene of that time, so the Margin songs that Bob was writing at the time (along with other material) were an effort on his part to create music that reflected his admiration for the Sandy Denny/Richard Thompson area of modernized folk and rock. It was also an attempt to have material that would be more suited to performing at folk clubs. With 'So Far' being considered one of, if not the best folk records from the 80's, this is a sure buy for many collectors. Top shelf material.

Françoise Hardy in English is a studio album of the French popular singer Françoise Hardy. English covers of rock, folk, and pop tunes are the backbone of this rather heavily orchestrated album, which may be Hardy's most overlooked '60s recording. The songs are catchy and the produc­tion, arrangements, and near-ope­ratic backup harmonies excellent, at times almost Spector-esque. Fans of Marianne Faithfull's mid-'60s work can find something of a French equivalent here, though Hardy's ma­terial was stronger and her delivery more confident.



Limited edition of 500 copies.

Aoife (pronounced EEE-fah) O'Donovan's debut solo album, Fossils, was released to
critical acclaim and ended up on many "Best of 2013" lists from outlets like NPR Music,
American Songwriter, New York Magazine and No Depression, among others.

Aoife O'Donovan's second album, "In the Magic Hour" - produced by Tucker Martine (The
Decemberists, Neko Case) via Yep Roc Records - is a 10-song album full of the singer's
honeyed vocals mixed with gauzy, frictionless sounds: splashing cymbals, airy harmonies,
the leisurely baritone musings of an electric guitar. Written in the wake of O'Donovan's
grandfather's death, "In the Magic Hour" is her most introspective effort yet, an aching
exploration of memory and mortality.



For a decade, O'Donovan wielded her instrument with tensile strength as the captivating
lead singer of the Boston-based progressive string band Crooked Still. She was a featured
vocalist on "The Goat Rodeo Sessions," the Grammy-winning album by Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart
Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile, has made regular appearances on A Prairie Home
Companion and collaborated with some of the most eminent names in music across a
wide variety of genres from Alison Krauss to Dave Douglas. She has also appeared as part
of the Transatlantic Sessions.

In 2013 O'Donovan released her debut solo album, "Fossils," a moody collection of original
songs with a country lilt. The album garnered praise from The New York Times and Rolling
Stone, while The Guardian deemed O'Donovan the "next Americana celebrity."

While "In The Magic Hour" rekindles the creative partnership with Grammy-nominated
producer Martine, the album also highlights the fruits of Aoife's various career
collaborations. Composer Gabriel Kahane, New York's string quartet Brooklyn Rider and
musician Chris Thile all lend musical and vocal support, as well as I'm With Her band
members Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz, plus many more.

Ashley Beedle returns to the Kat Records stable, this time on their 45 offshoot....

First up we have Flora Purim getting Ashley Beedle's extended edit treatment with the sublime Latin Jazz Funker Angels. Great vocal hooks, guitar licks and a jazz funk groove with added disco overtones to boot !...If the Mizell Brothers had been born in Rio then this is what it probably would've sounded like.

On the flip we have Brian Protheroe's Pinball. A lost psychedelic pop classic which got to no.22 in the charts in 1974. A staunch Ashley Beedle fave with his tripped reworking doing exactly what i says on the tin... Dubbed, stretched, spaced out and arranged to perfection......

Lee Hazlewood was a late bloomer. Following a meandering career as a disc jockey, producer, songwriter, label executive and solo artist, Hazlewood hit the jackpot at the ripe age of 37 with These Boots Are Made For Walkin',' the song Nancy Sinatra took to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Its success convinced MGM Records that Hazlewood was a bankable star, and they signed him as an artist in his own right the same year. But as a self-described "non-singer" whose cult 1963 debut, Trouble Is A Lonesome Town, was little more than a happy accident, they'd perhaps gotten the wrong end of the stick where Lee was concerned.

In three years on the label, Hazlewood delivered three albums and sundry odds and ends, beginning with 1966 album The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood. The LP found Hazlewood gunning-in as much as he ever did-for commercial success, blending country, pop, novelty, mariachi, and lounge music into something unusually of-the-moment.

Lushly orchestrated and-like the album that preceded it-half-sung, half-spoken in a way that Hazlewood made all his own, the album collected solo versions of songs made famous by Sinatra and others ( Sand,' Boots,' So Long Babe,' Summer Wine'-included as a bonus duet with Suzi Jane Hokom) alongside some of his career-best solo compositions, among them the Morricone-like opener, For One Moment.' It's a record of extremes: When A Fool Loves A Fool' is as light and throwaway as anything he ever laid down, while the wistful My Autumn's Done Come' (sample lyric: "Let those I-don't-care days come in, I'm tired of holding my stomach in") is as raw and honest.

Despite MGM's best efforts, Hazlewood proved difficult to market without a Sinatra to temper his baritone drawl, and you'd suspect Hazlewood wasn't taking it quite as seriously as they might have hoped anyway. By 1967, Hazlewood had founded the LHI imprint and was busy building his own empire-one we've been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, plus follow-ups Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure (1967) and Something Special (1968). Welcome, then, to Hazlewood's magnificent MGM years.

The three years spent on MGM Records between 1966 and 1968 were golden ones for Lee Hazlewood.
He spent them working with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom, writing a still-unreleased book, The Quiet Revenge of Elmo Furback, competing with Phil Spector from their respective studios, and coming up with the formula for the "boy/girl' songs for which he'd become famous. In fact, the unflattering portrait on the cover of Something Special did little to hint at how hip this late-flowering talent (he was in his late 30s when These Boots Are Made For Walkin'' made him a star songwriter) had become.

The common strand on the MGM trilogy is one of the unexpected happening. They were an ill fit for a major label-experimental, difficult to pigeonhole, and unpredictable. Those descriptors apply nowhere more aptly than Something Special. Where 1966's The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood and 1967's Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure had employed an arranger, Billy Strange, and a full orchestra, Something Special stripped things back and brought in a flavor of jazz and blues, complete with gravelly-voiced scatting courtesy of collaborator Don Randi. This sat alongside tracks like Little War' and Hands,' the kind of late night, acoustic balladeering Hazlewood would later seize for his career-highlight LP, Requiem For An Almost Lady. The sound was that of a stripped-down nightclub jazz/blues/folk combo, fully rejecting the psychedelic music going on all over the world.

The album made clear that forging a career as a serious star was not at the top of Hazlewood's agenda, and at the third opportunity, he'd let the listener in on the joke. Tellingly, Hokom recalls Hazlewood saying the MGM albums were his expensive demos. I'm sure that MGM thought that they would be successful.' Little chance of that with Something Special-it was originally released only in Germany. The same year, Hazlewood founded the LHI imprint, and began building his own empire, one we've been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, three albums that generated some of Hazlewood's best-and most varied-work.

* Remastered from the original tapes
* Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players
* CD includes full album plus 6 bonus tracks



By the time bohemian singer/poet/artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded her fifth album, 1988's Suspense, she'd enjoyed a recording career that was as far from the clichés of music lore as is possible, flitting between genres, continents and collaborators, enjoying great success and equally great failure and even stealing the final breaths of master trumpeter Chet Baker for 1986's One For The Soul. When she came to make Suspense - reissued here as the final album in our series - she was, for the first time, working without her longtime muse, partner and manager Michel Esteban, with whom she'd first moved from their native France to New York, where it all began.



The pressure was on to repeat the success of 'Mais Où Sont Passées Les Gazelles', a smash hit in France, and Descloux's label were keen to make a conventional artist of her, pairing her with John Brand, an in-vogue producer with a style geared to a big, shiny 1980s chart sound—an approach Lizzy had never experienced before, nor intended to. Recorded in Oxfordshire and Wales, it features songs recorded in both French and English, with lyrics by Mark Cunningham, the trumpet player of the avant-garde band MARS, and James Reyne, the Australian artist who co-wrote much of One For The Soul.



In Vivien Goldman's new liner notes, Esteban notes that Suspense sounds "less Lizzy than the other records, less open," but in splitting herself into two - English and Francophone - the album has two personalities too; oddly, it shines a light on the real Descloux that her cultural experiments never did.



Though the initial aim was to make a folky, acoustic album, the pop sound suited the singer, and 'A Room In New York' is as fine and sparky as AOR gets. But when early single 'Gueule D'Amour/Cry of Love' stiffed, EMI lost confidence and buried the LP. Bound by her contract to the label, Descloux moved away from music and focused on painting. She eventually settled in Corsica, the French island, where she died, aged 48, of cancer. Descloux's musical career ended, therefore, with the aptly titled Suspense. It was only a matter of time before this furiously creative artist's work was re-evaluated, and with these deluxe reissues, that time is now.

* Remastered from the original tapes
* Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players
* CD includes full album plus 2 bonus tracks

By the time poet, singer-songwriter, and artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded 1984's Zulu Rock, she'd marked herself out as both a globe trotter with more passport stamps than Tintin and a musical innovator whose loose, arty spirit could be applied to styles as varied as no wave, Bavarian oompa and Soweto jive. She'd also established a tight-knit threesome with muse/former lover Michel Esteban and producer/on-off lover Adam Kidron, who all reunited to follow Zulu Rock - a surprise hit in her native France - with something that, once again, represented a complete about-turn.



The location, this time, was Rio De Janeiro, a suitably exotic location to follow their sojourn in Soweto given that Brazil had recently emerged from twenty years of dictatorship. But unlike Zulu Rock's broad appropriation of the local sound, One For The Soul borrows very liberally from Brazilian culture. The aim, says Kidron, was to "reimagine the blues", but Lizzy's musical essence was in flux. 'A Word Is A Wah" meshes reggae with her beloved accordion, 'Women Don't Like Me' is wild, new wave pop, and she even wanders into soul territory, with whispery lounge versions of Al Green's 'Simply Beautiful'. Most notable is the album's foray into jazz, and the fact that Chet Baker, the master jazz trumpeter, blew his last on 'Fog Horn Blues' and the sensuous 'Off Off Pleasure'.



Rio was to be the last great hurrah of Lizzy and Michel's global recording adventures, and although work proceeded apace, the experience was often quite tense. "The sessions were tough work,' says Kidron, in the new liner notes by Vivien Goldman accompanying this deluxe reissue. 'Lizzy never quite got singing, no matter how much she drank, and no matter how hard she tried. Chet was very much at the drug-ravaged end of his life and had very little stamina or dexterity left... but there is a deep, sad, lyrical tone to his performances on the album.'



So fraught were the sessions, it's a miracle that such a cohesive, sparky record emerged. The record-buying public did not agree, and as the album crashed and burned, so did the relationship between its three heroes. Lizzy was, for the first time, about to take on the world alone - and there was but one album left in her.

* Remastered from the original tapes
* Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players
* LP Includes download card for full album + 5 bonus tracks

In the course of three albums, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, the rogue poet, artist, and singer-songwriter, travelled on a musical voyage from Manhattan (1979 debut Press Color) to The Bahamas (1981 follow-up Mambo Nassau) and apartheid South Africa (1984's Zulu Rock) - a controversial cultural boycott in protest of the nation's racially divided society.

One place Descloux had never visited was the pop charts, but that changed when 'Mais Où Sont Passées Les Gazelles (Where Have The Gazelles Gone)' - a reworking of a South African Shangaan disco hit - went all the way to the top spot in her native France, giving her a platform and a profile in the land she'd fled many years before. Recorded at Satbel Studios in Johannesburg, the album followed what her mentor Michel Esteban describes as "an extraordinary adventure" through eastern Africa following the footsteps of 19th century poet Rimbaud through Sudan, Ethiopia, the East Coast.

A socially conscious person, Descloux wanted to use her music to draw some attention to the situation in South Africa, even obliquely, but there were musical motivations too - she was tapping into a hot and little-heard dance music in the aforementioned Shangaan disco, Soweto jive and mbaqanga, the style Malcolm McLaren had mined for his mash-up hit "Duck Rock" a year before.

The music of South Africa seduced, subsumed, and molded Lizzy, who sounds surer and more swinging than ever before throughout Zulu Rock, but credit must also go to British producer Adam Kidron, then best known for his work with Scritti Politti, who joined Esteban and Descloux for the entire African journey. Lizzy and Adam's was a battle of wills from the start, but his insistence on getting Lizzy to sing in a more conventional, tuneful way resulted in an emotional, ambitious, creative power struggle that delivered arguably her best vocals yet.

In Vivien Goldman's new liner notes for this reissue, Kidron says: 'My first impression of Lizzy was that she couldn't sing but that she had that crazy Madonna, Neneh Cherry, Nina Hagen attitude thing going on and a magical way with words — a marketer's gift for getting to the essence of a feeling or idea.' And for once, on this album, the marketing did itself.

* Remastered from the original tapes
* Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players
* CD includes full album plus 5 bonus tracks
In the course of three albums, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, the rogue poet, artist, and singer-songwriter, travelled on a musical voyage from Manhattan (1979 debut Press Color) to The Bahamas (1981 follow-up Mambo Nassau) and apartheid South Africa (1984's Zulu Rock) - a controversial cultural boycott in protest of the nation's racially divided society.



One place Descloux had never visited was the pop charts, but that changed when 'Mais Où Sont Passées Les Gazelles (Where Have The Gazelles Gone)' - a reworking of a South African Shangaan disco hit - went all the way to the top spot in her native France, giving her a platform and a profile in the land she'd fled many years before. Recorded at Satbel Studios in Johannesburg, the album followed what her mentor Michel Esteban describes as "an extraordinary adventure" through eastern Africa following the footsteps of 19th century poet Rimbaud through Sudan, Ethiopia, the East Coast.



A socially conscious person, Descloux wanted to use her music to draw some attention to the situation in South Africa, even obliquely, but there were musical motivations too - she was tapping into a hot and little-heard dance music in the aforementioned Shangaan disco, Soweto jive and mbaqanga, the style Malcolm McLaren had mined for his mash-up hit "Duck Rock" a year before.



The music of South Africa seduced, subsumed, and molded Lizzy, who sounds surer and more swinging than ever before throughout Zulu Rock, but credit must also go to British producer Adam Kidron, then best known for his work with Scritti Politti, who joined Esteban and Descloux for the entire African journey. Lizzy and Adam's was a battle of wills from the start, but his insistence on getting Lizzy to sing in a more conventional, tuneful way resulted in an emotional, ambitious, creative power struggle that delivered arguably her best vocals yet.



In Vivien Goldman's new liner notes for this reissue, Kidron says: 'My first impression of Lizzy was that she couldn't sing but that she had that crazy Madonna, Neneh Cherry, Nina Hagen attitude thing going on and a magical way with words — a marketer's gift for getting to the essence of a feeling or idea.' And for once, on this album, the marketing did itself.

* Remastered from the original tapes
* Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players
* CD includes full album plus 6 bonus tracks

After 1979's Press Color - reissued by Light In The Attic - Lizzy Mercier Descloux went tropical. Mambo Nassau, released in 1981 on Philips Records, saw the vagabond Parisian poet, artist and musician decamp from New York to the Bahamas with her manager and sometime lover, Michel Esteban.



The effect on her music was not as expected. Press Color had been an album of dissonant, distorted disco influenced by the New York no wave scene, but Chris Blackwell's Compass Point Studios provided a hermetically sealed environment into which the island's relaxed atmosphere did not seep. Instead, music from within those four walls - made by Tom Tom Club and Grace Jones - had the effect of a feedback loop. The album, meanwhile, reflected the growing confidence of Descloux as a musician, an increasing interest in African music and the input of two new collaborators: synthesizer innovator Wally Badarou and Jamaican engineer Steve Stanley, the album's de facto producer.



'Since 1975, we had spent seven years in New York and it felt like the end of a cycle,' says Esteban, who co-founded ZE Records, on which label Descloux's first album was released. 'We wanted to get out of Manhattan and move towards Africa. We needed new adventures and change. Mambo Nassau was our next stage.'



Mambo Nassau's skip through styles is like a tour of Lizzy's musical DNA, embracing not just mutant funk, disco and punk but a pastiche of Bavarian oompa music ('Milk Sheik') and even cocktail jazz chanson ('Les Baisers D'Amants"), a duet with DJ Philippe Krootchey.



Mambo Nassau did speak to the mavericks enamored of Lizzy's free spirit but it did not sell well. "We never were commercial," notes Esteban. The album is presented now with bonus tracks including "Mister Soweto", "Corpo Molli Pau Duro" and a cover of Bob Marley's 'Sun Is Shining', all of which were intended to help score a record deal that would allow her to record in Soweto, South Africa. It worked. With the follow-up, Zulu Rock, on the horizon, Descloux's African adventure was only just beginning...

The first official LP-reissue (on 180-GRAM VINYL!) of the second Krokodil album 'Swamp', presented in a gatefold sleeve with an embossed crocodile leather front cover. The printed inner sleeve offers many previously unpublished photographs. The album, originally issued by Liberty in 1970, features a great mixture of bluesy rock, psych/prog and kraut vibes. Recorded at Bavaria-Tonstudios, München, 1970.

From music blog to online records store to label - here's growing bin records first release.... an Ambi-learic-jazz trip...decent!
On the quest for copies of Merge's tremendously rare first album from the late 80s growing bin's Basso found Jo Lienen, the head of Merge, who gave him a CDR of of an unreleased second Merge LP. Having never heard a combination of balearic Jazz and Ambient like this before, Basso decided to launch a label to release it.

The album has been recorded in studio offtime in 1994 by Jo Lienen and Harald Karla within a few weeks using guitars, various synthesizers, drum machines and samplers.

Merge's deep and rich sound seems to be made for the indian summer days. Back to the beach, folks!

Momus has been slyly combining folk, fable and electronics on his witty and highly playable LPs since the mid-1980s. On Glyptothek, recorded in his adopted city of Osaka during the rainy season, he's ransacked his colourful pile of Japanese folk 45s for samples and wrapped a series of cautionary tales for the internet age around the thunder of Shinto festival drums, the keening wail of rural flutes, the tinny riffing of massed shamisens, the clacking of summery claves, and the wild backing vocals of kimono-clad village maidens. The results sound like a UNESCO World Heritage site incongruously taken over by the ghosts of Hilaire Belloc, Cocteau, Kafka, Jarry, Kantor, Petronius, DH Lawrence, Bolan and Bowie. Or an ethnomusicology department overrun by iPhone-wielding Etruscans. Or the muscular Greek statues at the Munich Glyptothek come back to life, snapping righteous nude selfies. It's fair to say you've never heard anything quite like this, and will probably come to love it.

Rhodes grew up in Hitchin where his father introduced him to the blues when he was small most notably Robert Johnson. Soon after he began to play guitar and his best friend's sister later turned him onto Nirvana, Blur and Oasis at which point he took up piano. While at a local college, Rhodes regularly met other musicians at Club 85. After moving to London, he joined a band as their bassist, which quickly became a catalyst for songwriting.
It taught me a lot about putting songs together,' says Rhodes. About rhythm and what gives a song its backbone.' However, singing came late to him. I've been playing guitar since I can remember but singing was something I was just too afraid to do.'
He's spent the last 18 months quickly making up for lost time because it's his voice that really defines Rhodes, setting him apart from everyone else. This was never more apparent than on a recent Huw Stephens Radio 1 session when Rhodes performed an incredible cover of Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space'. It was so good that Taylor Swift re-tweeted the session.
A brooding and melancholic collection of self-written songs, debut album, 'Wishes' is refreshing in its stripped back beauty, with Rhodes' haunting and unique vocals taking centre stage. The album confirms the arrival of a major talent who has already been compared to artists as diverse as Jeff Buckley and Adele, with a flair for writing songs that build from something incredibly fragile to a hugely powerful climax. Nowhere is this more evident than on new single 'Close Your Eyes'.
Rhodes has travelled a long way in a short time building on what has been a phenomenal beginning to a career that promises longevity. He's supported Ben Howard, London Grammar, George Ezra and Sam Smith while selling out his own shows including his biggest show to date at London's Village Underground in March.With his eagerly anticipated debut album 'Wishes' on the way in September, Rhodes will be taking the stunning record on the road this autumn, including his biggest show to date at Koko October 9th.

Bianca Casady once more steps out of the familiar CocoRosie context to embark on a new musical-performance project, Bianca Casady & The C.i.A.

Her first solo album Oscar Hocks will be released on January 22nd.
Bianca Casady once more steps out of the familiar CocoRosie context to embark on a new musical-performance project, Bianca Casady & The C.i.A.

Her first solo album Oscar Hocks will be released on January 22nd.

First ever vinyl reissue of the self-titled Collusion LP originally pressed in tiny quantity on the custom SRT label back in 1971. Limited to 500 numbered units on 180 gram vinyl housed in a beautiful gatefold sleeve.

Collusion was a Dagenham based six piece progressive group active during the early 70s that featured twin guitars and interwoven male/female vocals to great effect combining hard-edged prog-rock with folk and jazz elements.

Highlights of the LP include the stunning 'Bluebirds' and epic 'Sweetbread Line' composed by lead guitarist Mick West which reveal the band's natural ability to shift effortlessly from a slow tempo to jagged and complex time changes with intricate arrangements.

Copious pictures and memorabilia plus extensive band history penned by vocalist Tony Davison and guitarist Mick West (sadly, very recently deceased) with extra comment from their manager & notable promoter Darrol Edwards who was very much part of the underground scene and who ran the famous Growling Budgie Club and, later, Manchester's famous Stoneground.

Factory Benelux presents Clouds Disco b/w The Sun Is a Star, the brand new single by The Wake, issued in a limited
edition of just 500 copies to mark Record Store Day in April 2015
Taken from recent 'best of' album Testament, Clouds Disco was produced by the group with Ian Catt (St Etienne, Field
Mice). 'These recordings were made during sessions for the A Light Far Out album,' says singer/guitarist Caesar.
'Clouds Disco is about the burgeoning Glasgow music scene of the early 1980s and our perceived place within it. The
idea was to capture a little bit of the atmosphere of the time for the present day, rather than be nostalgic. Clouds Disco
was an actual venue, later renamed Satellite City, which in turn became the title of an early Orange Juice song.'
Flipside The Sun Is a Star is exclusive to this 7' single, and will not be made available elsewhere. The cover art for FBN
94 is based on an original design by Peter Saville for a cassette edition of 1985 Factory album Here Comes Everybody.
Praise for Testament: 'Stretches from 1981, when frontman Gerard 'Caesar' McInulty left Altered Images, right up to the
present day, with Clouds Disco an unexpected treat' (Uncut); 'The Wake recorded for Factory, of course, but also for the almost-as-cult Sarah Records. Clouds Disco is almost delicious' (Classic Pop); 'Clouds Disco is a late-period gem'
(AllMusic Guide)

First impressions matter. Time and attention-strapped listeners size up an artist within a song or two, then move on or delve in further. Fortunately, it only takes Margo Price about twenty-eight seconds to convince you that you're hearing the arrival of a singular new talent. Margo Price's debut Third Man Records single 'Hurtin' (On the Bottle)' gives a fresh twist on classic Nashville honky tonk tunes and classic tales of drink and misfortune. Her voice has that alluring mix of vulnerability and resilience that was once the province of Loretta and Dolly. It is a tour-de-force performance that is vivid, deeply moving and all true. The exclusive non album B-side 'Desperate and Depressed' was recorded live in Third Man Records' infamous Blue Room, and features classic country staples such as slide guitar and whiskey driven sadness. With a full-length release, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, in the works for 2016 from Third Man Records, this is just the start of good things to come from Margo Price.
- 'Hurtin' (On the Bottle)' recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis.
- Full-length Debut Solo LP Midwest Farmer's Daughter arriving March 2016

Ein weiterer Schub Frank Sinatra Vinyle. Diesmal "Come Dance With Me" und "Come Swing With Me".
Remastered und auf 180g Vinyl inkl. Download-Voucher.

Beautiful Cover Versions Vol.II is a charmingly positive album, an antidote to weariness with tasteful samples. Will definitely be one of your favourites all day through everywhere; at home, at a café, in the car, while lounging, eating, partying... Just get the good vibes!

CD: 1
01. Youn Sun Nah - Avec Le Temps
02. Lisa Dillan & Asbjørn Lerheim - Love Me Tender (Ulf Holand & Quite Quiet Project)
03. Natalia Mateo - Take A Walk On The Wild Side
04. Heiko - Let's Stay Together
05. Pimpi Arroyo - I Can't Get No Satisfaction
06. The Bamboos - The Wilhelm Scream feat. Megan Washington
07. Pink Turtle - Breath You Take
08. Alaa Wardi - Aicha
09. Ahmad A. El Haggar - Rude
10. Nicolas Menheim - Commandante Ché Guevara
11. Blondie - The Tide Is High
12. Quantic & Anita Tijoux - Doo Wop (That Thing)
13. Busy Signal - Sweet Love (Night Shift)
14. Bosla - Somebody That I Used To Know (Bosla Arabic Cover)
15. Laurel Aitken - Perfidia
16. Antwerp Gipsyska Orkestra - Misirlou
17. Polkaholix - I Was Made For Lovin' You
CD: 2
01. Olivia Ruiz - My Baby Just Cares For Me
02. Dhany - Smooth Operator
03. Melania - Tu Vo' Fa' L'Americano
04. Ximena Herrera - La Vie En Rose
05. Imelda May - I'm Lookin' For Someone To Love (Album Version)
06. Marquess - El Porompompero
07. Skeewiff - Nitty Gritty
08. Smoove & Turrell - It's The Falling In Love
09. Zed Bias - Fairplay feat. Jenna G.
10. Dufunk feat. F.O.N. - Papa Was A Rolling Stone (Radio Edit
11. Fingathing - I Feel Love feat. Jesca Hoop
12. Santi & Tugçe Kurtis - Üsküdar (Original Mix)
13. Violina - Hava Nagila
14. Moon's Chameleon - Running Up That Hill
15. Raffunk feat. Gushi - Riders On The Storm
16. Belleruche - Mirror In The Bathroom
17. Nacho Sotomayor - Streets of Philadelphia (In love Mix/Francisco Sotomayor)
18. Gushi & Raffunk - Yellow (Original Mix)

Brannten Schnüre is an experimental dark folk group out of Würzburg, Germany. Christian Schoppik composed and played all the music, Katie Rich whispers, recites and sings. Together they make astoundingly beautiful folk with a rich instrumentation leaning towards the atonal spectrum. Instrumental wanderings stand alongside Nico-esque poetry tales. Christian plays the accordeon and in some songs guitar and flute. Inspired by hierophants like Nový Svet and David Jackman, solemn song fragments (a lot of old greek rembetiko-recordings) are modified and looped, with additional instruments and voices being integrated later on. Their music has been described as 'surreal folkcollage' and 'german hauntology'.

With the emergence of Schoppik's second project, a dada cabaret called Agnes Beil in 2010, Brannten Schnüre moved closer to the song structures of its frivolous sibling. The songs of Schoppik's latest creation Sommer im Pfirsichhain are further accompanied by a female singing voice, lending the pieces the voluptuous quality of a stickily tense midsummer. Sommer Im Pfirsichhain (Summer In The Peachgrove) is the second part of a quartet of releases. The first being Aprilnacht which got released on Sic Sic Tapes last year. Part three Geträumt hab' ich vom Martinszug and part four will follow later.

Reference points are bands like Winter Family and Twinsistermoon. Music etched on folkloric, ritual elements transferred into the 21th century. Also worth mentioning is the hand-drawn artwork which is made by artist Gwénola Carrère.

"The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures." Eric Chaisson

Random occurrences. Sunlight bursting through treetops. Accidental beauty. These things are not just confined to nature and landscape.

Le Berger is Montreal native Samuel Landry. Deeply moved and inspired by Ithaca Trio's Music for Piano & Patience, he sought out to make new material, choosing to work with methods that he felt were similar. Unused guitar samples from fifteen years ago became the sole source material, providing the album with a wistful, folky kind of ambience. While ambient textures provide a blissfully drowsy background, the guitars evokes and mirrors the calm feeling of leaves rustling in the breeze, or light on the ocean exploding into millions of individual flecks as the waves come in to shore. As random as they may be, it never startles the listener. It is music mirroring life.

A work born from a marriage of chance, randomness and composed elements, it results in Le Berger's most evocative and poetic work to date.

The mid-to-late '60s were strange days for Lee Hazlewood. Having struck gold as songwriter and vocal foil for Nancy Sinatra, he signed up to MGM as an artist in his own right, and between 1966 and 1968, produced three ambitious solo albums that were eclectic, idiosyncratic, and most of all, unpredictable.
It was a happy time for Lee; his music was hot on the charts, he was fully immersed in his collaboration with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom.

The second of his MGM trilogy-1967's peculiarly named Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure-took on countrified French ye-ye ('The Girls In Paris'), a tale of a young bullfighter built on Spanish guitar and choral cowboys ('Jose'), a string-drenched song about the passing of time ('The Old Man And His Guitar'), and a western epic about a Native American tribe ('The Nights'). And that was just the first four tracks. Elsewhere, the honky tonk madness of 'Suzi Jane Is Back In Town,' the Byrds-like jangle of 'In Our Time' and-in the bonus tracks-an instrumental named 'Batman' confirm this to be one of Hazlewood's most far-ranging, far-out LPs ever.

It's the result of two main factors: ambition-to top Phil Spector, primarily-and cash, which paid for orchestras, plush studios, and the inestimable talents of arranger Billy Strange. 'I think the big sound of those records came out of the Spector thing,' says Hokom, in the new liner notes. 'If you can have a big sound and you have money to burn... it was a flamboyancy.'

Released before the Nancy & Lee LP-a bona fide hit for Reprise Records-Hazlewoodism was a tougher nut to crack, a record that confused by combining po-faced delivery with unabashed comical touches. By 1967, Hazlewood had founded the LHI imprint, and was busy building his own empire-one we've been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, plus predecessor, The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood and follow-up, Something Special. Welcome to Hazlewood's magnificent-and mad-MGM years.

The three years spent on MGM Records between 1966 and 1968 were golden ones for Lee Hazlewood.
He spent them working with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom, writing a still-unreleased book, The Quiet Revenge of Elmo Furback, competing with Phil Spector from their respective studios, and coming up with the formula for the "boy/girl' songs for which he'd become famous. In fact, the unflattering portrait on the cover of Something Special did little to hint at how hip this late-flowering talent (he was in his late 30s when 'These Boots Are Made For Walkin'' made him a star songwriter) had become.

The common strand on the MGM trilogy is one of the unexpected happening. They were an ill fit for a major label-experimental, difficult to pigeonhole, and unpredictable. Those descriptors apply nowhere more aptly than Something Special. Where 1966's The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood and 1967's Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure had employed an arranger, Billy Strange, and a full orchestra, Something Special stripped things back and brought in a flavor of jazz and blues, complete with gravelly-voiced scatting courtesy of collaborator Don Randi. This sat alongside tracks like 'Little War' and 'Hands,' the kind of late night, acoustic balladeering Hazlewood would later seize for his career-highlight LP, Requiem For An Almost Lady. The sound was that of a stripped-down nightclub jazz/blues/folk combo, fully rejecting the psychedelic music going on all over the world.

The album made clear that forging a career as a serious star was not at the top of Hazlewood's agenda, and at the third opportunity, he'd let the listener in on the joke. Tellingly, Hokom recalls Hazlewood saying the MGM albums were his 'expensive demos. I'm sure that MGM thought that they would be successful.' Little chance of that with Something Special-it was originally released only in Germany. The same year, Hazlewood founded the LHI imprint, and began building his own empire, one we've been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, three albums that generated some of Hazlewood's best-and most varied-work.

Empire Burlesque is the 23rd studio album by Bob Dylan, released in 1985. Dylan produced the album himself, and eventually the album peaked at number thirty-three in the US and at number eleven in the UK.

Accompanied by multiple session musicians—including Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers members Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench and Howie Epstein—the album features a distinct '80s style' aesthetic. Fans and critics continue to debate the album's merits, especially when compared to his
1960s and 1970s output.

This may very well be the most consistent record Bob Dylan has made since Blood on the Tracks, filled to the brim with subtle gems. Highlights of the album include 'Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)', 'Emotionally Yours' and 'Dark Eyes'.

A moment comes when you stop dreaming, start living and discover your destiny.

Based on author James Thurber's fantastical 1939 short story of the same name, the 2013 big screen rendering of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty features Ben Stiller directing and starring in the role of a day-dreamer who escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a world of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action. When his job along with that of his co-worker (Kristen Wiig) are threatened, Walter takes action in the real world embarking on a global journey that turns into an adventure more extraordinary than anything he could have ever imagined.

The music that accompanies those reveries reflects the actor's innate quirkiness. Film score composer Theodore Shapiro has been the go-to guy for movie comedies starring the major comic actors of the early 21st century, including Ben Stiller, Will Farrell, and Owen Wilson. Shapiro has scored numerous films, including Old School, Starsky & Hutch; The Devil Wears Prada and Blades Of Glory.

- 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
- GATEFOLD SLEEVE / INSERT
- PVC PROTECTIVE SLEEVE
- FEATURING JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ
- FIRST PRESSING OF 750 NUMBERED COPIES ON
WHITE & BLUE MIXED VINYL

Love, Lunatics & Spacehips" - a title like a road movie by Jim Jarmusch.
Stony desert landscapes, surreal rock formations and right in the centre some diner with a hand full of strange figures looking for something. It's not quite clear what exactly they are looking for - maybe for freedom, maybe love, maybe UFOs, maybe just for some human company.
In the background there is a band playing the matching soundtrack to this setting.
Such or similar images might come to someone's mind when looking at the artwork which decorates the debut album of Palace Fever.
The artwork's atmosphere is continued by the tracks on "Palace Fever Sing About Love, Lunatics & Spaceships".
Starting with songs that let you scent the rebellious smell of freedom ("You Can't Have It All", "Mexico By UFO", "Wheels" ) to tracks, that make you think of a former love affair ("When The Winter Comes", "There Ain't No Right Way") and memories full of past adventures ("Flying Saucer", "A Bag Full Of Memories") - the album keeps what is promised by the artwork.
That all is pulled together by Palace Fever's fine sense for great melodies and subtle weirdness.
Band Info:
Well - Solingen is not really the mekka of contemporary pop music. However to underestimate this city which is hidden between Duesseldorf and Cologne would be a mistake. A reason for that is definitely Palace Fever.
The story behind that band can be described as something like: Actually I didn't want to form a new band, but suddenly I had one.
This is pretty much how Julian Müller (The Blackberries) experienced the whole thing.
During the last years lots of songs have been written by him and he just wanted to record some of them as a solo project. But it became clear very soon that there was much more potential - the songs were (still are) great and obviously needed a full band to be performed live. Thanks to guitarist & co-vocalist Mutz (Purple Sex Heads), bass player Jonas Wirtz (The Blackberries) and drummer Jens Vetter (Ex-Sewer Rats) the solo project very soon became a serious band project!
And here we go!
Palace Fever mostly perform songs created by the mind of Julian Müller - quirky-catchy tunes that balance between Folk, Beat and Country. Served with lots of Twang, cliche-less Rock'n'Roll and pure Pop!

Love, Lunatics & Spacehips" - a title like a road movie by Jim Jarmusch.
Stony desert landscapes, surreal rock formations and right in the centre some diner with a hand full of strange figures looking for something. It's not quite clear what exactly they are looking for - maybe for freedom, maybe love, maybe UFOs, maybe just for some human company.
In the background there is a band playing the matching soundtrack to this setting.
Such or similar images might come to someone's mind when looking at the artwork which decorates the debut album of Palace Fever.
The artwork's atmosphere is continued by the tracks on "Palace Fever Sing About Love, Lunatics & Spaceships".
Starting with songs that let you scent the rebellious smell of freedom ("You Can't Have It All", "Mexico By UFO", "Wheels" ) to tracks, that make you think of a former love affair ("When The Winter Comes", "There Ain't No Right Way") and memories full of past adventures ("Flying Saucer", "A Bag Full Of Memories") - the album keeps what is promised by the artwork.
That all is pulled together by Palace Fever's fine sense for great melodies and subtle weirdness.
Band Info:
Well - Solingen is not really the mekka of contemporary pop music. However to underestimate this city which is hidden between Duesseldorf and Cologne would be a mistake. A reason for that is definitely Palace Fever.
The story behind that band can be described as something like: Actually I didn't want to form a new band, but suddenly I had one.
This is pretty much how Julian Müller (The Blackberries) experienced the whole thing.
During the last years lots of songs have been written by him and he just wanted to record some of them as a solo project. But it became clear very soon that there was much more potential - the songs were (still are) great and obviously needed a full band to be performed live. Thanks to guitarist & co-vocalist Mutz (Purple Sex Heads), bass player Jonas Wirtz (The Blackberries) and drummer Jens Vetter (Ex-Sewer Rats) the solo project very soon became a

Ace Records marks its 40th anniversary with a release that celebrates the way we started: the seven-inch single. It also pays tribute to the original concept of an album - which was a book of singles.

We've chosen a cross-section of the musical styles we've been releasing for the past forty years. Each single is housed in an authentic replica sleeve accompanied with illustrations and sleeve notes, bound into a book-type hard cover box.

A limited edition of 1000 copies worldwide - you'll probably only get one chance to order this highly desirable and collectable artefact.

DISC ONE
1A) CONFESSIN' THE BLUES (ALT) - B.B. King
1B) TOUGH LOVER (ALT) - Etta James

DISC TWO
2A) ONE CUP OF COFFEE AND A CIGARETTE - Glen Glenn
2B) YOU'RE UNDER ARREST - The Shirelles

DISC THREE
3A) NOT MY GIRL - The Platters
3B) NO OTHER GUY - Lou Johnson

DISC FOUR
4A) TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS (ALT) - Otis Redding
4B) YOU GOTTA HAVE SOUL - James Carr

DISC FIVE
5A) PSYCHEDELIC SALLY - Eddie Jefferson
5B) KEEP ON BROTHER KEEP ON - Johnny King and Fatback Band

DISC SIX
6A) I GOT MINE - The Charlatans
6B) GET THE PICTURE (ALT) - The Scot Richard Case

DISC SEVEN
7A) DON'T CRY FOR ME - The Zombies
7B) KEYS TO YOUR HEART - The 101'ers

The Concert In Central Park is the first live album by Simon & Garfunkel, released in February 1982. The album was recorded in September 1981 at a free benefit concert in Central Park, New York City, where the pair performed in front of more than 500,000 people. Proceeds went toward the redevelopment and maintenance of the run-down green space in the middle of Manhattan. This concert and album marked the start of a short-lived reunion for Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

Besides hit songs from their years as a duo, their set-list included material from their solo and duo careers, and covers. The show consisted of 21 songs, though two were not used in the live album. Among the songs performed were the classics 'The Sound of Silence', 'Mrs. Robinson', and 'The Boxer'.

The album and a film were released in the year after the concert. Simon and Garfunkel's performance was praised by music critics and the album was commercially successful; it peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 album charts and was certified double Platinum.

In 1965 The Knight Riders from Belmont on the San Francisco Peninsula recorded nine tracks for the legendary Autumn Records, also home of the Beau Brummels and responsible for the first studio recordings by The Grateful Dead and Grace Slick & The Great Society. It took three long years until one track from that session, the self-written garage punker 'I', was released on Vault Records' San Francisco Roots compilation album. It was this particular track that kept the band on the musical map over the years as a snotty '60s punk group from the Autumn Records roster. But it takes the complete session to prove the group's brilliance. Endowed with a great melodic feel, the enthusiasm of youth and the ability to sing astounding harmony vocals, the Knight Riders blended British Invasion and sixties garage-folk into amazíngly professional and impressive masterpieces. Over the years, one or two other tracks from the session found their way into the public domain, but the Knight Riders meanwhile grew famous amongst collectors for their rare late '60s psychedelic acetate LP recorded under the "Jungle" moniker. Represented here are the group's early roots as a young '60s garage band from the local San Francisco music scene, gifted with a musical legacy that would have made a great mid '60s album. Eight unbelievable catchy and infectious group originals and an unheard killer folk-rock harmony version of Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right' that has the same class as the Byrd's 'Mr. Tambourine Man'. Finally in its completeness and for the first time ever on vinyl - here are the Knight Riders.