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180g audiophile pressing of guitar great Larry Coryell's 2003 album
'Tricycles', which includes 2 bonus tracks and has been remixed and
remastered from the original tapes
On 'Tricycles', we hear the one-time associate of Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and
Dizzy Gillespie and many other superstars in an intimate jazz setting. For the In
+Out recording he teamed up with two very special companions. The merits of
bass player Mark Egan, a pupil of the late Jaco Pastorius, cannot be overstated.
Paul Wertico, praised as an "impressionist painter" among jazz drummers, not
only participated in many Pat Metheny Group records, but is also a much soughtafter session musician and producer who has worked with avant-garde trios and
popular artists like Terry Callier and Special EFX. The abilities of this exceptional
troika are impressively captured on this album.

It is widely accepted that the recorded musical output of Indian-born British guitarist Amancio D'Silva came to a premature closure with the landmark 1972 albums,Cosmic Eyeand the unreleased masterpieceKonkan Dance.The Roundtable are here to prove otherwise, announcing the discovery of an extraordinary lost recording. Forty years after it was recorded we proudly presentSapana, the forgotten piece of a remarkable musical legacy, the final recording from one the most singular artists to emerge from the British Jazz scene of the 1960s/70s. Recorded in 1983 and released here for the first time,Sapanais thematically akin toCosmic Eye,a further musical impressions of the subconscious (Dream Sequences), vividly imagined with traditional Hindustani and western improvisation. A spellbinding fusion of Indian raga and New-Age jazz.

Celebrated as a pioneer of the 'Indo-Jazz' movement of the 1960s, D'Silva's adventurous synthesis of modal jazz and Indian classical music defined the seminal 1969 Lansdowne jazz recordingsHum DonoandIntegration. Here we find D'Silva fifteen years later, removed from the jazz scene and musically in place of deep introspection and meditative tranquility. The recording features Sitarist Clem Alford, a collaborator from theKonkan Dancesessions plus renowned Tabla player, Jahlib Millar and Saxophonist/Flautist Lyn Dobson, a musician who had previously worked with Soft Machine, Third Ear Band, and Henry Lowther. Together the quartet construct a deeply evocative set transcending the realm of both jazz and Indian music. Pressed on 180g vinyl and packaged in a custom flip-back sleeve.

Spun Out Agency is honoured to present ‘More of that Frightful Oompty Boompty Music’, a compilation dedicated to the Guv’nor himself Mr Andrew Weatherall who should need no introduction on these pages. Released on vinyl in two beautiful parts, the first drops on April 15th with the second following two weeks after.

‘More of that Frightful Oompty Boompty Music’ (yes we are going to write that out every time we talk about it in this communique) showcases a selection of the shining greatness from the agency’s roster. Paranoid London, Fantastic Twins, Mehmet Aslan, Autarkic, Ruf Dug, Sean Johnston, and Manfredas gift exclusive tracks which highlight the sublime acid, techno and house sound that Weatherall would have described as “oopmty-boompty” music.

Spun Out is a London-based artist booking agency which has been run by Caroline Hayes for over 20 splendid years, that looked after the life and times of Andrew Weatherall alongside his partnership with Sean Johnston under their A Love From Outer Space moniker, and the likes of Optimo (Espacio), Ivan Smagghe, Josh Caffe, Man Power, Body Hammer, Kiara Scuro and many more artists, doing it differently.

Kicking off the A-side of the first record is Hardway Bros’ (aka Sean Johnston) previously unreleased remix of We Are The Axis by The Asphodells, the duo consisting of the Andrew Weatherall and former Battant member and Spun Out talent Timothy J. Fairplay. An energetic techno stomper with percussive rhythms, this exclusive remix offers the ideal tantalising dose to tease any dancefloor. The vocals and synth layers give it a punk rock approach, referencing the multi-genre essence of Weatherall’s taste in music.

Tel-Aviv-based Autarkic’s Sleepover closes the A-side with a chuggy lullaby, one that is certainly unsuitable for putting a baby to bed, given its intricate acid lines of total hypnosis. Following on the B-side is Manctalo Banger, a house bop by the Manchester-via-Ibiza computer game nerd and vinyl digger Ruf Dug, and Shizowaves, Turkish-born Basel-based Mehmet Aslan’s soulful touch to the compilation, bringing Middle-Eastern percussive melodies and catchy basslines.

The second record is introduced by Paranoid London, with a Spun Out dedicated acid techno banger appropriately titled Spinning Out and Fantastic Twins’ EBM track Kali’s Tongue Was A Weapon. On the B-side is Lithuanian chug legend Manfredas’ Hfuhruhurr, and Naum Gabo, who closes the compilation with the chaotic analogue-synth frenzy, Cold Sold. The name Naum Gabo may evoke the pioneer of Russian constructivism, who rose to fame thanks to his crazy kinetic sculptures. However, here it manifests as one half of Spun Out’s Optimo duo Jonnie Wilkes (JG Wikes) and James Savage. The duo’s impeccable manipulation of electronic hardware couldn’t give a better homage to him.

Some highlights for Spun Out artists this summer include 9 acts from the roster playing at Houghton Festival, Paranoid London’s show at Sonar Festival, Love International Festival and Ransom Note’s festival with Optimo Watching Trees.

Random orange or black vinyl :).

High Fashion Music enlist an All-Star A Team of world-renowned remixers that includes; Ben Liebrand, Dave Lee, Michael Gray & Luca Moplen. Each step up to the controls and lay down four salacious new grooves on Firefly’s ItaloFunk Disco stomper from the early 80’s – ’Love’ (Is Gonna Be On Your Side).

Each remix brings a new vibe and a fresh wax coating. Ben Liebrand adds his own imitable production values as he brilliantly beefs up the original vibe with sass and verve. Dave Lee brings his encyclopaedic disco know how to proceedings with a classic sounding, Chic like journey, whilst Michael Gray’s version has a stylish new four-to-the-floor drums sound, he keeps the funky instrumentation firing whilst still managing to hark back to the days of hanging out in salubrious NYC nightclubs. Finally, Luca Moplen delivers a dance floor delight, an up to date production with real a get down and boogie retro twist. One can just imagine his mix being played back to back on syndicated radio stations across the USA and Europe!

Benoit B aka Terra Utopia breaks out into another auspicious alias for Step Ball Chain, Blu:sh - metamorphosed; coming in hot and heavy, sexy and sophisticated. Bass down, *ss up! The ambitious 6 tracker “Lovebite” fuses forms of dance; reworking elements from niche corners of the Step stratosphere that can result in freaky combustion. Breathing life and lust into every phrase, we are fortunate to be offered an intimate glimpse into a complex world of sound, filled with bold and brash inspired statements, rhythmically rolling the dice with snap lock precision. The cherry on top is served via a vocal collusion from fellow associate noff, the web expanding as the label delves deeper into futuristic tech territory, the prolific producer pushing their own boundaries and desires for new meticulous audio spectrum and ethereal realms.

The trio of flirtatious tracks laid bare on the A side read as a love letter to 4/4 naughty nocturnal testimonies. Opening auspiciously; Tighten Up dips into nasty grit, a sub centered excursion into the technological domain, sleazy and stripped back with modest tenacity. Candy Land sugarcoats the status quo of pumped up prog, playfully in the driver's seat and revving 100 miles per hour toward Hush highway; narrated by Greek cyber enigma noff.. An atmospheric deep trance kissed club chant. Opposites attract and find points of connection on the flip of Lovebite, the B side boasting a mutually slick sharpness permeating the record; blending sparse bass focused broken beat expeditions with liquid dnb; genially abstract mood boards of sampling mayhem; cut and spliced in addictive fashion. Flushes of gorgeous esoteric harmonic soundscapes fill out the rhythmical chaos, grounding and expanding the mind through a lush & plush tint woven in Recess and Heaven Spot alike.

A perfect prophecy destined for Step Ball Chain, Blu:sh’s first, yet expertly curated EP sets the bar high as hell. Divine dance music that can’t help but push boundaries; confronting and challenging our archival references and perceptions of genres and classifications, arguably the best kind of auditory statement.

It’s been more than a year since our last release on Suction Records, and we’re excited to be back with the introduction of a new artist to the label’s roster. In fact, this split 12” serves as an introduction to both Useless Idea, and Seven Nights Alone, two aliases from the same Italian artist and producer, Cesare Bignotti. The split also serves as a taster for two forthcoming Suction Records full-length LPs, coming soon from both aliases.

Useless Idea, with previous under-the-radar cassette album releases on WéMè Records (2018’s “Acid Hologram”) and EVES Music (2020’s “Xa Peh”), has been quietly recording his own brand of inventive, playful, and melodic IDM/braindance for more than 20 years. We’ve been slowly compiling Useless Idea’s debut vinyl full-length for several years now, and the resulting “Glitch In The Colors” will be released later this year on 2LP vinyl, covering the span of his 20+ years of recording. From “Glitch…” we’ve included standout cut “Mello Tron” alongside two tracks that are exclusive to this split 12”.

Seven Nights Alone is a more recent alias, and outside of 1 track released on a compilation, this marks the new alias’ debut release. There is an undeniable Boards Of Canada influence here, but this is a unique and sophisticated take on BOC’s woozy and melancholy electronica. Both “Soft Where” (a menacing, futuristic instrumental hip hop killer) and “Walkman” (like a BoC “Campfire Headphase” outtake but on an optimistic tip) are taken from Seven Nights Alone’s debut 2LP vinyl full-length “Another Place”, to be released on Suction Records in 2023, alongside a 3rd track that’s exclusive to this split 12”.



Vinyl is limited to 200 copies, and comes with a Bandcamp download card.

Copeland is a Brooklyn- based experimental musician and a core member of Black Dice. Eric is also one-half Terrestrial Tones duo, finding Animal Collective's Avey Tare on the other end of that project.

Copeland continues on his path of deconstruction forming tracks of scrapped samples, damaged loops, and controlled chaos. On the new album Spiral Stairs, Eric Copeland offers seven avant-pop tracks packed with playful sequences, groovy bass lines, and catchy voiceovers. The compositions are full of multiple layers of sample collages, frequently shifting from one variation to another but far from being messy, rather suggesting the tidy logic of DJ and dancer-friendly songs. Somehow Copeland manages to pull through with his demented pop sensibilities crawling up from the muck and spawling out on the beach to catch a tan. Spiral Stairs is as addictive as it is confusing with its screwed vocal hooks and demented twang heard throughout. A brilliant mix of riotous and cheerful makes it effortless to stick with it and dance to it.

The long-awaited reissue of this rare Eastern and psychedelic Jazz LP by the famous Hungarian guitarist, originally
released in 1968. For the first time and as extended Edition with four bonus tracks: radio version from 1968/69 7”
singles 7”. Deluxe 6-sided Digipak CD with 20 page booklet and Gatefold Vinyl comes with long, exclusively written
inner notes by the famous researcher and biographer Douglas Payne.
“The performances on this LP have a restrained, introspective quality. Szabo’s work is lyrical, rather economical, and
somewhat angular, and his tone is warm and glowing.” – Harvey Pekar, DownBeat
“Gabor Szabo is at the musical zenith of his career. This album could rank as his best to date.” - Billboard
“But for sheer lyrical beauty, few players are in Szabo’s class. His startling use of dissonance is a delight, too, and
time and again he will alter a final phrase just slightly, totally reorienting a familiar tune.” – Alan Heineman, DownBeat
“This is definitely one of my ‘go to’ Gabor albums.” Mike Stax, Ugly Things
"Gabor Szabo’s Bacchanal documents one of the earliest and finest examples of what was then known as “jazz rock.”
Years before this new jazz style evolved – or devolved, according to some – into “fusion,” jazz rock was mostly
fashioned by younger jazz players whose ears were open to the emerging sounds coming out of rock and roll,
especially those of the Beatles and, later, Jimi Hendrix. " - Douglas Payne
After recording four albums for Impulse in 1967, the distinctive guitarist Gabor Szabo cut three strongest records for
the Skye label in 1968-1969: "1969", "Dreams" and "Bacchanal" all of them became a legendary classic. This time
EBALUNGA!!! are rediscovers "Bacchanal". Szabo's regular group of the era is heard on record for the last time:
guitarist Jimmy Stewart, bassist Louis Kabok, drummer Jim Keltner and percussionist Hal Gordon. With the exception
of two Szabo originals, the material is comprised of current pop tunes including two songs by Donovan, "Love Is Blue,"
"The Look of Love" and "Theme from the Valley of the Dolls."
Gabor Szabo was one of the most original guitarists to emerge in the 1960s, mixing his Hungarian folk music heritage
with a deep love of jazz and creating a distinctive, largely self-taught sound.
Born in Budapest, on March 8, 1936, Szabo was inspired by a Roy Rogers cowboy movie to begin playing guitar when
he was 14 and often played in dinner clubs and covert jam sessions while still living in his hometown. He escaped
from his country at age 20 on the eve of the Communist uprising and eventually made his way to America, settling
with his family in California.
He attended Berklee College (1958-1960) and in 1961 joined Chico Hamilton's innovative quintet featuring Charles
Lloyd. Urged by Hamilton, Szabo crafted a most distinctive sound; as agile on intricate, nearly-free runs as he was
able to sound inspired during melodic passages. Szabo left the Hamilton group in 1965 to leave his mark on the popjazz of the Gary McFarland quintet and the energy music of Charles Lloyd's fiery and underrated quartet featuring Ron
Carter and Tony Williams.Szabo initiated a solo career in 1966, recording the exceptional album, Spellbinder, which yielded many inspired
moments and "Gypsy Queen," the song Santana turned into a huge hit in 1970. Szabo formed an innovative quintet
(1967-1969) featuring the brilliant, classically trained guitarist Jimmy Stewart and recorded many notable albums
during the late '60s. The emergence of rock music (especially George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix) found
Szabo experimenting with feedback and more commercially oriented forms of jazz.
During the '70s, Szabo regularly performed along the West Coast, hypnotizing audiences with his enchanting,
spellbinding style. From 1970, he locked into a commercial groove, even though records like Mizrab occasionally
revealed his seamless jazz, pop, Gypsy, Indian, and Asian fusions. Szabo had revisited his homeland several times
during the '70s, finding opportunities to perform brilliantly with native talents. He was hospitalized during his final visit
and died in 1982, just short of his 46th birthday.

Spun Out Agency is honoured to present ‘More of that Frightful Oompty Boompty Music’, a compilation dedicated to the Guv’nor himself Mr Andrew Weatherall who should need no introduction on these pages. Released on vinyl in two beautiful parts, the first drops on April 15th with the second following two weeks after.

‘More of that Frightful Oompty Boompty Music’ (yes we are going to write that out every time we talk about it in this communique) showcases a selection of the shining greatness from the agency’s roster. Paranoid London, Fantastic Twins, Mehmet Aslan, Autarkic, Ruf Dug, Sean Johnston, and Manfredas gift exclusive tracks which highlight the sublime acid, techno and house sound that Weatherall would have described as “oopmty-boompty” music.

Spun Out is a London-based artist booking agency which has been run by Caroline Hayes for over 20 splendid years, that looked after the life and times of Andrew Weatherall alongside his partnership with Sean Johnston under their A Love From Outer Space moniker, and the likes of Optimo (Espacio), Ivan Smagghe, Josh Caffe, Man Power, Body Hammer, Kiara Scuro and many more artists, doing it differently.

Kicking off the A-side of the first record is Hardway Bros’ (aka Sean Johnston) previously unreleased remix of We Are The Axis by The Asphodells, the duo consisting of the Andrew Weatherall and former Battant member and Spun Out talent Timothy J. Fairplay. An energetic techno stomper with percussive rhythms, this exclusive remix offers the ideal tantalising dose to tease any dancefloor. The vocals and synth layers give it a punk rock approach, referencing the multi-genre essence of Weatherall’s taste in music.

Tel-Aviv-based Autarkic’s Sleepover closes the A-side with a chuggy lullaby, one that is certainly unsuitable for putting a baby to bed, given its intricate acid lines of total hypnosis. Following on the B-side is Manctalo Banger, a house bop by the Manchester-via-Ibiza computer game nerd and vinyl digger Ruf Dug, and Shizowaves, Turkish-born Basel-based Mehmet Aslan’s soulful touch to the compilation, bringing Middle-Eastern percussive melodies and catchy basslines.

The second record is introduced by Paranoid London, with a Spun Out dedicated acid techno banger appropriately titled Spinning Out and Fantastic Twins’ EBM track Kali’s Tongue Was A Weapon. On the B-side is Lithuanian chug legend Manfredas’ Hfuhruhurr, and Naum Gabo, who closes the compilation with the chaotic analogue-synth frenzy, Cold Sold. The name Naum Gabo may evoke the pioneer of Russian constructivism, who rose to fame thanks to his crazy kinetic sculptures. However, here it manifests as one half of Spun Out’s Optimo duo Jonnie Wilkes (JG Wikes) and James Savage. The duo’s impeccable manipulation of electronic hardware couldn’t give a better homage to him.

Some highlights for Spun Out artists this summer include 9 acts from the roster playing at Houghton Festival, Paranoid London’s show at Sonar Festival, Love International Festival and Ransom Note’s festival with Optimo Watching Trees.

Without the West German-born Väth, techno would look, sound and feel very different. Since falling in love with electronic music and DJing in 1981, his dedication to the art has never faltered. He plays every party as if it were his last. His broad smile has connected with millions of people around the world. His colourful and curious character has imbued techno with a personality it was often lacking. His selections remain hugely unpredictable, despite the fact that he has been playing around the world for more than 40 years. To remain not only relevant but innovative after so long is a testament to Sven's ability to connect through music on a deeper level.

Technically, of course, he is a DJ who can play for thirty hours and not miss a beat. His track selections seem almost divine, and his aura is certainly otherworldly. But more than that, he is a ringleader who is able to mix the artful side of techno with the playful side of partying. Most famously he has done this for more than 20 years at his iconic Cocoon parties in Ibiza. They single-handedly introduced techno to the White Isle and have been its beating heart ever since. Under his charge, strict style guidelines and exaggerated pigeonholing no longer apply. Instead, he has perfected the art of playing far and wide while always remaining true to his own musical identity.

In the studio, Sven has always been just as unique. He has worked under several aliases but always brought a fresh perspective. Whether securing chart hits as part of OFF in the eighties, serving up brutalist techno and trance-tinged sounds in the nineties or crafting major label albums in the 2000s, his music has remained utterly forward-looking. That legacy continues with Catharsis as Sven teams up with highly respected producer Gregor Tresher for his latest long-form offering. Tresher has long been part of the Cocoon family and is a revered artist in his own right, when the two got together in the studio it was clear they had an instant connection and there would only be one person fit to co-author this LP.

It is a record inspired by Sven's interest in the physical and spiritual processes that take place when we dance. "They are realms into which we immerse ourselves to experience our own mysticism and ecstasy," he muses. "Dancing is a conversation between body and soul and it spiritually connects us with each other." Because of the pandemic, that is of course a feeling that we all missed out on for so long. "No dancing, no paradise!" says Sven. "My imagination for this record was fueled by the many cultural experiences and encounters I have had in my life. They gave me the strength to find a way, the way to myself." And that way to himself is through music, through purifying dancing rituals and the exchange of spiritual energies that are generated in the club.

The thirteen-track album explores all facets of Sven's sound. It opens with the stomping drums but sleek synths of 'What I Used To Play' and unfolds through deep and dirty rhythms like 'The Worm', subtly euphoric highs on 'The Inner Voice' and the bubbly tribalism of the title track. There is the impassioned call-to-arms that is 'Feiern', peak-time melodic workout 'Mystic Voices' and soothing electronic lullabies like 'Being In Love'. The second half of the album takes in many more twists and turns such as the exotic strings and driving drums of 'Butoh', the paranoid techno minimalism of 'NYX' and expansive synthscapes of ambient gem 'The Cranes Of Gangtey Valley' before things play out though rugged beats and emotive chords on 'We Are', which is named after the idea that we are what we think. "With our thoughts, we make the world.? says Sven.

Then comes the moody reflection of 'Silvi's Dream', which was written in French for Sven's girlfriend. Last but not least we have the immersive dream that is 'Panta Rhei', which completes a trio of electronica tunes on the album. Ambient music has been an integral part on almost every album Sven has written because it can bring a certain emotional deepness, a quality that Sven always has been looking for.

'Catharsis' is an adventurous album that captures the good times, the sad times and, most importantly, the times of hope.

On their third album »Constant Connection«, West Australian-based Erasers create hypnotic compositions of synth, guitar and voice, evoking the vast expanse of their native landscape and the shrouded emotions behind the senses. Comprising of vocalist, synth player Rebecca Orchard and Rupert Thomas on guitar and synths, Erasers have developed their earthly kosmische music into an open language based on drone, variation in repetition and minimal song structures. Based in Perth, regarded one of the most isolated cities in the world, Orchard and Thomas’s music has brewed in the city’s vibrant DIY/Outsider community and evolved into a meditation on landscape, power, the shadow-world of human emotions and stream of consciousness. »Constant Connection«, with its waves of sound and chant-like vocals evokes a trance that suggests an infinity just beyond the senses.

At the heart of each Erasers composition is the interplay between the instrumentation, played with stoic restraint and recorded directly with minimal effects and the transcendental states induced in the listener. It’s a magic that is performed in plain sight and all the more powerful for it. The recognisable vibrato of Fender Rhodes keyboards and simple drum machine loops, the subtle strands of analog synth melodies that snake in and out of the ear, above all the towering encantations of Rebecca Orchard’s undeniably Australian-accented hymns; all of this is presented with minimal ostentation and yet it instantly engenders a dream state, hints at an infinity beyond the material.

Shades of John Cale’s 70s work with Nico, early 70s German synthesists Kluster and even fellow Australians Fabulous Diamonds can be seen as stylistic touchstones for Constant Connection. Where Nico hinted at the macabre and gothic, Rebecca Orchard’s similarly gliding vocal is more zoned in to a kind of oceanic openness, with words becoming chants and spells that suggested themselves to the singer during recording sessions. It’s this hidden hand of improvisatory, automatic writing that lends a sense of expanse to the music. On opener I Understand, while the lyrics might hint at discontent the emotional spectrum it opens up is far more rich and complex, as layered as the waves of droning chords that are the bedrock of each Erasers track. The title track talks of flow, continuum and balance, the protagonist in the song seemingly weightless, gently pulled through a walking reality that borders on dream. In Erasers’ world, it seems, the borders between reality and dream, consciousness and sub-consciousness are blurred and eroded.

On Constant Connection, Erasers’ music might be deeply evocative of landscape but it’s never clear which one. The vast, open terrain that surrounds Perth is dusty, burned by the sun into desert and Constant Connection feels like the product of the heat and relative isolation, the altered states these elements can create. But it’s these altered states of mind that appear to be the real landscape described by Erasers. It’s a landscape that’s hazy, in-and-out of focus, with emotional undertows pushing and pulling you into a weightlessness. On album closer Easy To See the band dispense with percussion all together, field recordings of the water at the edge of their native city ushering in two duetting synths. Orchard’s vocal undulates with the flow, viewing both the geographical and psychological landscape from the perspective of a consciousness not bound by bodies and from a timescale measured in millennia. The album ends as it begins, with field recordings of the real world that the music seeps out from, temporarily, before regressing back into the other realm it feels like it belongs to.

Between these two recorded hints of reality, Erasers manifest a deeply sensual dreamscape that constantly feels like it’s dissolving at its seams. A desert psychedelia emanating from a real world that might not be that real in the first place.

Mura were a previously little-known group from Japan, formed by friends Kota Inukai (vocals, guitar), Masaki Endo (bass) and Sho Shibata (drums) in the late noughties. Performing mostly in small events in Sapporo, they were outsiders, and felt a kinship with few other groups, though Inukai mentions rock group Green Apple Quick Step, and hardcore band Ababazure as fellow travellers. This isolation surely feeds into the uniqueness of Mura’s music – they sound little like much that we know of the taggable Japanese underground of their times, and the music they recorded for this, their debut album, spanning a decade, is gloriously all over the shop, from delirious punk wig-outs to strange pop miniatures.

The group formed young – Inukai was only fourteen when they started, and Mura were his first ever band. When pressed on what they were listening to while making their music, Inukai recalls that he “used to listen to the works of Haruomi Hosono a lot”, and you can hear traces of this, perhaps, in the breadth of the sound Mura explores, from the lovely, country-esque shuffle of “In The Talk”, through the garage-y plunk of “Rest” and the reflective, melancholy “Younger Brother”. They were also big fans of video game music – “even orchestral covers of video games”, Inukai smiles – and that’s in there, too, in the split-second responsiveness of the playing, the way they flick through ideas and genres almost impatiently, taking minutes to cover terrain that other groups might spend albums and years exploring.

But the songs were also grounded in Japan’s history, with many of the songs inspired by “old Hokkaidō,” Inukai recalls, “from the Meiji, Taishō, Shōwa periods.” With Inukai coming up with the melodies, and Shibata fleshing out arrangements, all three members then contributed lyrics. You can hear that collective effort in the way the music moves, every player listening carefully to each other, the songs moving gracefully, but not without verve and vim. It’s a delightful album, full of pop songs that take unexpected turns, with glinting melodies sung out, here sweetly, there with gruff candour, guitars tangling together like an unholy union of Tom Verlaine and Jad Fair, every song charged with a new, unpredictable spirit.

Swiss musician Delia Meshlir didn’t realize what her voice could do when she started out playing music. Through such groups as the drudge-rock Cheyenne and experimental Primitive Trails, Meshlir let the music lead her singing along. It wasn’t until she began writing the songs for Calling The Unknown that she started allowing her vocals to preside. Unbounded by structure, Delia Meshlir’s first full-length under her name brings layers of beauty, intensity and strength, all coming to a head with her striking vocal delivery.

Having acquired a stocking job at Irascible, a label based in Lausanne, Switzerland, dedicated to promoting local talent, Meshlir had the ideal launching point for her music. Now, in coordination with Irascible, Ba Da Bing will be releasing Calling The Unknown in North America.

Meshlir lost her grandmother while preparing the album, and many of the tracks reflect seeking a path through grief with love. On “A River”, she explores where feelings can exist when they are for someone who has passed. She sings: “I’m calling the unknown / but no one remains.” As the first song on the album, it serves as a perfect introduction, with refined drumming, reverb-wrapped guitars and tasteful saxophone lines. At command of a full band, Meshlir never abuses the opportunity, often having members hold back in restraint and add mere touches of color to her songs. However, when more urgency is required, she adapts beautifully, as on the raw and driven track “Dirty Colors”. Ultimately, the album is an invitation to peace after suffering.

Delia Meshlir is a trained visual artist who is creating her own videos and doing her own artwork for Calling The Unknown. It is a singular artistic work with stunning breadth.

Rare 1966 Brazilian album with a jazz/bossa nova take on songs by the Beatles, all served up with plenty of great keyboard work from the legendary Manfredo Fest who would later become member of the Sergio Mendes band. The songs are all played with imaginative scents that really take them from their roots as pop songs and open them up as groovers filled with keyboard improvisations. First time vinyl reissue. DESCRIPTION Rare 1966 Brazilian LP with a jazz/bossa nova take on songs by the Beatles performed by the very talented Manfredo Fest and his trio. It was originally released right after their classic 1965 RGE album and has a very similar jazz-based sound. Manfredo Fest was part of the gathering of Brazilian musicians of the late-'50s who were developing the bossa nova movement, and he made a number of trio recordings in that vein from 1961 to 1966. After emigrating to Minneapolis in 1967, Fest moved to Los Angeles where he served as keyboardist and arranger for Bossa Rio and toured with Sergio Mendes. This recording is all instrumental, strongly jazz-based, with piano as the main solo instrument, soaring over the top of some tight, crackling rhythms! The songs are all played with imaginative scents that really take them from their roots as pop songs and open them up as groovers filled with keyboard improvisations. A nice slice of how the bossa nova sound was evolving in its homeland as well as the international impact the Beatles were having on countries outside of the U.S., England, Japan, and Germany. First time vinyl reissue.

Highly acclaimed guitarist Philipp van Endert played and produced on
"Moon Balloon" the largest and most complex music project that he has been able to record with in his music career so far

Combined with the renowned Filmorchester Babelsberg he recorded an outstanding and unique album featuring his original tunes that combine Jazz, Classic and Film music. Philipps compositions were arranged by Peter Hinderthür and the live performance at Filmstudios Babelsberg was conducted by Jörg Achim Keller (BBC Concert Orchestra, Metropole Orkest, HR BigBand, WDR BigBand a.o.)

While most ensembles are driven by personalities, the Necks are powered by an idea. A very large and simple idea - which now seems completely obvious…. but only because the Necks thought of it and made it work. Now their pleasure (and ours) is sequentially to re-imagine and explore that idea – the prime directive of which seems to be to be that each unfolding step and every passing detail of any performance be allowed to evolve organically out of the musical conditions established at its moment of departure. In other words, we are in the territory of chaos and catastrophe theory; of hurricanes and butterfly wings… And, since one can never step twice into the same river, each beginning has led to wildly unpredictable and variant outcomes; and imperceptibly: you never hear the changes until somehow they have already happened. “We end up, Lloyd Swanton writes, ‘in a very different place from whatever our initial notion … had been.” In the case of Vertigo, we are dropped straight into an almost Feldmanesque musical universe, in which sounds - seemingly disconnected - are already there; creating space rather than inhabiting it. Then, without trying, they mutate. Not mechanically and not according to any pre-determined process - because it’s always clear that what we hear is being played by human beings; that it’s music. A special kind of music that is not pushy or demanding or demonstrative, but rather co-operative, spatial, ambiguous. A music that leaves room for its listeners.

The Source - nearly 30 years in the tradition of the infinite peculiar. The Source is a quartet with a long history. Actually started in 1993, with the founding members Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass), Per Oddvar Johansen, Trygve Seim og Oyvind Brække, who all by then studied at the Jazz Course at the Trondheim Music Conservatory. The new quartet album; " ... but swinging doesn`t bend them down" will be published in October on the legendary record label Odin. The title is an excerpt from the poem "Birches" by the American poet Robert Frost, a title that encompass a child's dream of climbing the treetops and swinging birch branches. It could be read as a reflection over the conflict between the free play in nature and the boundaries of adult life awaiting on the ground_ But maybe the ground can wait? Just join the sheer joy of climbing the trees and the careful balance that is needed not to fall and be at one with the flexibility of nature. After several season-related albums, like "The Source: of Christmas" and "The Source: of Summer", it is now a pure quartet display out in the tube, only based on original music. The pieces are all signed by the quartet members and covers a vast register; raga, shuffle, swing, lyrical spots, improv and even a rough trombone/drum outing, and more.The Source: Oyvind Brække, trombone Trygve Seim, saksofon Per Oddvar Johansen, trommer Mats Eilertsen, bass.

"Blossoms fourth studio album Ribbon Around The Bomb, is released on the 29th April. The band have also shared the title track from the album and its accompanying video, directed by Edwin Burdis, Arctic Monkeys’ Creative Director, who worked on the band’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and AM albums.

Ribbon Around The Bomb is the first new music from Blossoms since their ‘vibrant single’ (NME) Care For, which was released in 2021. Care For gained great support from radio, with the track being playlisted and made the ‘Hottest Record’ by Radio 1, as well as getting on the B-List with Radio 2. The track was also added to key streaming playlists, including Spotify’s ‘New Music Friday’, ‘All New All Now’ and ‘The Indie List’. Standard CD, Limited Edition Deluxe CD - 2CD including Live From Sefton 2nd CD. Spined outersleeve, 24-page booklet, sticker. 2CD Live At Sefton Park, Limited Edition Standard vinyl"

Bloc Party return with their forthcoming sixth studio album Alpha Games, due 29 April 2022 via Infectious / BMG. Alpha Games is the band’s first studio album since 2016’s Hymns, and the first Bloc Party album written and recorded as this four piece; adding the musicality of Justin Harris (bass) and the unbridled energy and power of Louise Bartle on the drums to capture the spark of their live shows and to deliver the most exciting Bloc Party album yet.
Alpha Games, produced by Nick Launay & Adam Greenspan (Nick Cave, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, IDLES), includes new single Traps, which sees the band returning to the raucous, high-octane sound of their earliest work in an outburst of propulsive post-punk. The album’s 12 tracks veer from the intense and confrontational (Traps, Day Drinker) to melodic and introspective (If We Get Caught, By Any Means Necessary), and marks a new and important chapter in one of music’s most important voices in Kele Okereke and important bands in Bloc Party.
“Alpha Games was conceived on the road, playing in front of amazing crowds on our last tour and then brought to life with the fire and the frustrations of 2020,” says Kele Okereke on Bloc Party’s first new album in seven years.
“We wanted to can what was happening at those massive gigs in 2019, to showcase what Louise can do, what Russell is capable of and most importantly the electricity coming off the audience. We knew that Nick & Adam were the right choice of producers to do that and the result feels like fire in a bottle.”

Prolific London producer Lxury returns to the Lost Palms catalogue, this time with his second-ever solo long play - a honey-dipped journey through the rainbow colours of house music and its adjacent styles.

Living up to his name, no room is spared in Lxury's careful curation of full-bodied soundscapes which make for a truly immersive listening experience. Emotion-laden melodies and glistening pads grant permission for shameless self indulgence, whilst flickers of cooler, harsher tones add dynamism and depth. At times, this sounds like anthemic melodies, reverberating claps and sunshine-doused pads ("Motion" and "YT Storm"); at others, like mournful female vocals which are chopped and looped beneath a shuffling drum pattern ("Get Down On"). Elsewhere, highly-processed flutes and video-game-esque samples transport you to a neon speedway ("Ninja H2R Flyby") before industrial-sounding textures and down-tempo rhythms ease things to a blissful close ("Ride"). No matter where it is that Vivid Night Experience takes you, playfulness and warmth are guaranteed: two descriptors which have become synonyms with the Lxury's musical output.

Vivid Night Experience LP drops 29th April via Lost Palms

The latest entry in An’archives’ ‘Free Wind Mood’ series, Ki is a trio that pits long-time collaborators Tamio Shiraishi (saxophone, voice) and Takahashi Michiko aka Mico (drums, voice, vocoder, melodica, piano, percussion) against drummer, percussionist and vocalist Fritz Welch. They each bring a wealth of experience, from Shiraishi’s early moves in the Japanese underground of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – he was a founding member of Fushitsusha, and played with Taco and Machinegun Tango – to his legendary, late-night solo New York subway performances; he and Mico also spent some time playing with No Neck Blues Band, while Welch, currently based in Glasgow, has a long history taking in stints with Peeesseye, Lambs Gamble and FvRTvR.

Tearful Face Of My Cute Love (Is Begging To Me), named after a yakuza song, is Ki’s first LP, after CD-Rs on Chocolate Monk (Ki No Sei, 2009) and Unverified (Stops Dropping, 2010). Documenting two live performances from 2008, it’s a startling, wild freedom chase, each piece stretching languorously across one side of the vinyl, giving the trio maximum space to thunder their way through space and time. Their West Nile 2008 show, on side one, opens with a battery of drums, fierce and livid, before Shiraishi’s unmistakable and remarkable whinnying, high-zone tone slithers into earshot. The stage is set, the battle moves forward, yet there’s remarkable simpatico between the three players, with Mico and Welch volleying guttural vocal exhortations at each other. When it does offer respite – see the sudden swoop into near- silence at around 12:30– everything’s still tense; who knows what’s around the corner?

For all its fury, though, Tearful Face Of My Cute Love... is full of oddly lyrical moments, too – see the sweet melody that winds out, with gentle melancholy, near the very end of the West Nile performance. This lyricism also haunts the second side of the album, a performance from Glassland, Brooklyn, which seems more focused on the intersection of incidents, from clattering cymbals to ghostly swarms of sax scream, to dive-bombing spirals of vocoder. There’s an appealing sense of audio verité here, as though you’re in the room with the performers, shaken and stirred by every movement, lost in the interlocking maze they’re weaving in real time. It’s a bracing, thrilling document of very immediate, human music – of three bodies moving through the world, sounding their environment.


[a] a1 Tearful face of my cute love [is begging to me] (Side A)
[b] b1 Tearful face of my cute love [is begging to me] (Side B)

Don't let the postcard-generic cover art fool you, Summer Brings The Sunshine stands head and shoulders above nearly any major label country rock album crowding mid-'70s record bins. Next to the hundreds or even thousands of slick productions flowing out of Nashville and Los Angeles, Jimmy Carter scoured his rural Missouri surroundings for farmhands and semi-pros alike to lay down eight farm-isolated originals in 1977. Tasty female backing vocals, languid pedal steel, and feisty guitar licks abound on this exalted and near-peerless slice of Cosmic American Music.

Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald's paths had crossed many times during the Thirties, Forties, and early Fifties, but no recorded trace of the two legendary musicians collaborating existed until 1957, when they would come together to produce a series of sessions which include the music on this LP.

It may seem incredible that not a single previous air shot of Ella with Ellington survives, but Duke had a tight band and didn't frequently play with musicians outside of his orchestra. Ella, on the other hand, after coming to fame with the Chick Webb orchestra in the late Thirties, was taken under the wing of Norman Granz's, from which point on she rarely recorded with anyone other than artists contracted to Granz, which included many of the greatest jazzmen of all time.
Because of Ellington's contractual commitments and incredible busy schedule, the sessions where fraught with problems and intermittent delays. Thankfully though, under Granz's supervision and stoicism, the Ella- Duke project was completed.

After the 2020 album "Lieder Für Geometrische Stunden", Sankt Otten finally make us happy again with a new release at the beginning of 2022. "Symmetrie Und Wahnsinn" (Symmetry and madness) fits here skillfully, both creatively and musically, in an album series with geometric context.

The album starts unusually buoyant with "Hymne Der Melancholischen Programmierer" (Hymn for sentimental programmers). A Kraut-Pop pearl, which could go on forever with its Motorik swing and with its catchy melody the track doesn't come across as melancholic as the song title predicts. You have to listen twice to not succumb to the illusion that it was composed in Düsseldorf at the end of the seventies. Here (and on the track "Sei Symmetrisch Zu Mir"), Sankt Otten were supported in the studio by drummer friend DIRK PELLMANN.

The drum machine in rumbling funky mode. "Die Glücklichen Unglücklichen", the secret hit of the album? They bend the beat into geometric shapes, let the bass play in circles and cover the song with ghostly choirs. The echo of a spinett-like sound overlays the sound, spitting out a deceptively cuddly dream world.

The 10 minute long "Die Ordnung Des Lärms" could be called an Ambient-Kraut symphony without hesitation. An enormous swelling to ecstasy, a guitar sings distantly in the background. Silence. Synthetic strings pave the way and are supported by choirs. A crackle that suggests a rhythm until it is taken over by a drum computer in the main part of the track. Bombastic mountains of synthesizers pile up and yet a catchy melody finds its way through this mishmash of hypnotic electronics. Fourth movement - Kosmische-choirs in suspension over a bass synth and an Ebow guitar. Is this already Prog-Rock? The question doesn't arise, in the end everything merges into reverb. "Luftspiegelung Der Sentimentalitäten" begins cautiously with a gentle sequence and a discreet kick drum. The mini-Moog sounds like a guitar. Anyway. A surface floats by and returns, layers and shapes build up. At last, everything melts into perfect harmony with a plaintive-sounding synth. This track was composed as a stripped back reprise of the first track from the last album "Sentimentale Sequenzen". A hypnotic Motorik-beat of an 808 that encourages head nodding and could almost be danceable. True to style with warm analog 80s electronic sounds and a loose echo guitar. This is "Angekommen In Der letzten Reihe". Man and machine hand in hand as a homogeneous musical unit and the connection of tradition and vision.

Sankt Otten like images of infinity. In the religious sense of meditative mantras, or also in the mathematical sense of an elongated curve that eventually returns to its starting point. "Bis Das Helle Licht Uns Holt" goes exactly in this direction with its classical use of sequencers and a sound carpet of choirs. Sound worlds that, through a clever repetitiveness, barely noticeably guard the constant changes in the compositional mesh like a secret and only reveal what is to be discovered by listening closely and letting it be seen. Such a thing is probably called Berlin School?

The Osnabrück duo Sankt Otten, founded in 1999, has been releasing on Denovali since 2009. With their now 12th album they give us again a gem of timeless instrumental music. The holy trinity of Krautrock, Ambient and contemporary Electronics, but always stylistically confident and unmistakable Sankt Otten. For the mastering New York based RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI could be won. Also with the cover layout again good taste is proven. As part two of a cover series, this extraordinary die-cut cover artwork was again created by designer DANIEL CASTREJÓN.

Fresh Afro-Soul Music - Ghana’s Highlife going by the heartbeat of 70s Soul Music. Jembaa Groove is a multicultural band founded in late 2020 by bass player and composer Yannick Nolting, and singerpercussionist Eric Owusu.

Speaking the same musical language, they quickly realized the fruitful
outcome of their musical encounter and decided to spend a couple of
months composing their original music. Digging deep into both their
backgrounds and musical identities, they came up with an organic result both like to label as Afro-Soul.

After seeking for the right companions for the upcoming journey and
stumbling on a few of Berlin's finest musicians, they finally formed Jembaa Groove, a 7-piece band that combines fresh sounds from Berlin's underground music scene with traditional West-African sounds from Ghana and Mali, such as Highlife, Adowa and Wassoulou. Their aesthetic vision is inspired by soul music from the ‘60s and ‘70s and avoids overly-produced commercial arrangements while merging driving bass grooves and steady drum patterns with fresh horn lines and catchy melodies. Produced by Yannick Nolting. Composed and arranged by Yannick Nolting. Vocal
arrangements and lyrics by Eric Owusu.

The Line Is A Curve is about letting go. The core of the record is that the pressures we face do not always have to be heavy burdens, but can be reframed; the more pressure a person is under, the greater the possibility for release.

The album plays like a chronicle of pressures - the mind-numbing pursuit of a comfortable life, the eternal striving for more, the pressures of the city, the country, the times. The pressures of maintaining relationships, of battling illness, addiction, poor mental health, the vacuous life of our online selves. As we move through these chronicles though, the mood brightens. The musicality becomes more expansive as the lyrical horizon broadens and we glimpse coastlines, high streets, scrap yards, train stations in the rain; the entire album begins to let go. We encounter the contributions of artists who I love and admire, guest vocalists and instrumentalists, and so we defeat the sense of isolation felt in the opening track with a sense of deeply connected community. More Pressure, the penultimate song, is the essence of the whole album and the epiphany that leads to Grace, which is a prayer, a surrendering; ‘Please move me, please move through me, please unscrew me, please loosen me up.’ But once we get to the end of Grace, and the album, we loop back to the start – to ‘Kiss off the day with a mute mouth. Pass the commute like I can die faster than you.’ Because no matter how much a person grapples with, realises, deeply understands, about life and their place in it, we still wake up in the morning back to square one. Life isn’t solved the minute you figure something out about it. It’s a daily operation to increase your resilience, cultivate a deeper acceptance, let go of what’s chasing you and lean in to the pressures. It’s cyclical, as I believe all things are. And instead of trying to fight the cycles, this album asks us to surrender to them. To let go.

These general themes, of acceptance, resilience, surrender are also about where I’m at in my personal life, in my journey towards a greater acceptance of myself as an artist and as a human being. Being more honest with the world and my community about who I am and letting go of some heavy heavy shame, which is a glorious thing.

This album has a beautiful heart, there is so much love running through it and I can’t wait for people to experience it.

- First vinyl reissue, available on LP for the first time in 20 years - Completely remastered audio and restored artwork - Side D lunar vinyl etching art // After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group's heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed "moon music" - post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group's limitless insular synergy. Opener "Something" is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. "Tiny Golden Books" unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. "Ether" is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay ("It's either ether or the other"), while "Where Are You?" and "Batwings - A Liminal Hymn" lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one's death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination "Paranoid Inlay" captures the group's oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. "It seems concussion suits you," he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: "On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster."

- First vinyl reissue, available on LP for the first time in 20 years - Completely remastered audio and restored artwork - Side D lunar vinyl etching art // After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group's heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed "moon music" - post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group's limitless insular synergy. Opener "Something" is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. "Tiny Golden Books" unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. "Ether" is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay ("It's either ether or the other"), while "Where Are You?" and "Batwings - A Liminal Hymn" lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one's death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination "Paranoid Inlay" captures the group's oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. "It seems concussion suits you," he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: "On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster."

- First vinyl reissue, available on LP for the first time in 20 years - Completely remastered audio and restored artwork - Side D lunar vinyl etching art // After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group's heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed "moon music" - post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group's limitless insular synergy. Opener "Something" is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. "Tiny Golden Books" unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. "Ether" is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay ("It's either ether or the other"), while "Where Are You?" and "Batwings - A Liminal Hymn" lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one's death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination "Paranoid Inlay" captures the group's oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. "It seems concussion suits you," he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: "On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster."

SAM Records was one of the labels at the forefront of the Disco Genre when the format was at its creative peak. This was the late 70’s and early 80’s, when the producers and artists involved were all using top notch professional recording studios with live instrumentation and their focus was on songs and rhythms that would make the dance floor move. Sam Weiss the founder of SAM was involved with various aspects of the music industry in addition to his role running the label, but the Sam Records imprint was his greatest passion, and that energy comes through in the songs that make up the catalogue. In this compilation we have engaged some of the world’s premier producers of the current disco inspired sounds that are blowing dance floors worldwide. They have used their talents and appreciation of the genre to mix, edit and master these classic jams into disco inspired productions that are fully equipped to ignite DJ sets and dancefloors worldwide.

Neutrals return with a stunning new 4 track EP on Static Shock, after an album on Emotional Response in 2019 and two 7”s on Slumberland and Domestic Departure in 2020. Each song on this EP is a golden nugget of DIY Indie pop with clean and jagged guitar work, tunes at every corner and a joyous naivety. Go straight to Gary Borthwick Says - a song about a full time bullshitter with lyrics akin to I, Ludicrous’ Preposterous Tales with music which has the charm of prime The Television Personalties and The Times. New Town Dream is another gem and if it had come out in 1979 as an obscure DIY / Post Punk 7", the kids would be paying £200 for it. Honestly, it’s love at first listen and pure infatuation after repeated plays. This EP will not leave you turntable. The 7" is limited to 550 copies on blue vinyl and housed in wraparound sleeve.

“They were so solid. They meant what they said, they did what they did… here’s two guys, a guitar player and a harmonica player, and they could make it sound like a whole orchestra.” – Taj Mahal

“It was perfect. What else can you say?” – Ry Cooder

Nearly sixty years after they first played together, Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, longtime friends and collaborators, reunite with an album of music from two Piedmont blues masters who have inspired them all their lives: GET ON BOARD: THE SONGS OF SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE MCGHEE, on Nonesuch Records.

With Taj Mahal on vocals, harmonica, guitar, and piano and Cooder on vocals, guitar, mandolin, and banjo – joined by Joachim Cooder on drums and bass – the duo recorded eleven songs drawn from recordings and live performances by Terry and McGhee, who they both first heard as teenagers in California.

Explaining where Terry and McGhee took him musically, Cooder says, “Down the road, away from Santa Monica. Where everything was good. ‘I have got to get out of here,’ was all I could think. What do you do, fourteen, eighteen years old? I was trapped. But that first record, Get on Board, the 10” on Folkways, was so wonderful, I could understand the guitar playing.”

Taj Mahal adds, “I started hearing them when I was about nineteen, and I wanted to go to these coffee houses, ‘cause I heard that these old guys were playing. I knew that there was a river out there somewhere that I could get into, and once I got in it, I’d be all right. They brought the whole package for me.”

Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder originally joined forces in 1965, forming The Rising Sons when Cooder was just seventeen. The band was signed to Columbia Records but an album was not released and the group disbanded a year later. The 1960s recording sessions, widely bootlegged, were finally issued officially in 1992. GET ON BOARD is Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder’s first recording together since then.

Harmonica player Sonny Terry and guitarist Brownie McGhee, both originally from the southeastern United States, had active solo careers as well as collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of their time. But they were best known for their forty-five-year partnership, which began in 1939 and included mesmerising live performances around the world and numerous acclaimed recordings.

Their Piedmont blues style became popular during the folk music revival of the 1940s and ’50s, centered in New York City’s flourishing club scene for jazz, boogie-woogie, blues and folk music. Terry and McGhee traveled in the same circles as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, and Josh White, among others in a rich mix of writers, actors and musicians. As a new generation emerging in the 1960’s drew inspiration from folk and blues, Terry and McGhee toured the world as the foremost exponents of the acoustic music of the Piedmont. They were named National Heritage Fellows in 1982 in recognition of their distinctive musical contributions and accomplishments.

“You got the south on steroids, when you got the music of the south, the culture of the south, the beauty of the south, through Brownie and Sonny,” Taj Mahal says. He describes McGhee as a “solid rhythm player. To really play behind the harp like that. He would set stuff up. He wasn’t making many notes. Sonny had all the notes, running around. But Brownie, he laid it down.” Cooder adds: “This thing of squeezing the thumb and first finger and a little bit of the second finger, which I still do. I’d forgotten where it came from. That’s what Brownie did. I saw him do that and said, ‘I think I can do that.’”

Taj Mahal calls Terry “a wizard harmonica player”. Cooder says, “Sonny had incredible rhythm for one thing. Making sounds with his voice and the harmonica so you couldn’t tell quite which was which. He was good at that.”

“We’ve been doing this a while,” Cooder says. “Perhaps we’ve earned the right to bring it back. Taj Mahal concludes. “We’re now the guys that we aspired toward when we were starting out. Here we are now… old timers. What a great opportunity, to really come full circle.”

Legendary privately pressed 1979 LP from Scotland. This illusive, super rare and sublimely wonderful percussion album is like no other. Hypnotic, celestial, even cosmic and ambient in parts and totally unique in all ways, it was played by a group of 11 girls with an average age of 14. The group included Evelyn Glennie, who was destined to become one of the world’s greatest percussionists. This is her first ever record.

The Cults Percussion Ensemble was a group formed by percussion teaching legend Ron Forbes in the mid 1970s. The ensemble must have one of the best group names of all time. To many it will immediately come across as something sinister, a touch spooky and possibly a bit dramatic too. They are certainly two of those but the use of the word “Cults” here is easily misinterpreted. Cults, in this case, is the suburb of Aberdeen.

The average age of the students was just 14. They came from a few of the schools in the area, including the Cults Academy, Ellon Academy, Aboyne Academy, Inverurie Academy and Powis.

My original copy of the album came from Spitalfields market in London. I loved the music the second it started, because it reminded me of Carl Orff and peculiar library. So I started to investigate it further, and eventually, thanks to the highly tuned world of percussion, was given the address of Ron Forbes. I got in touch with him and now we have this, a formal release of something quite lovely that was only previously available very briefly in 1979 at concerts when the young girls performed.

The music here is really quite unique, with a celestial swirling hypnotic quality. The blend of glockenspiels, xylophones, vibraphones, marimba and timpani drums is quite intoxicating and can recall the shimmering warmth of the desert sun one minute (“Baia”) or freezing glacial ice caps the next (“Circles”). The Ensemble perform with an effortless tightness and deftness of touch, building textured layers with recurring percussive motives which appear simultaneously dense and yet sparse, almost sounding like modern sampling. In fact, while struggling to find a musical comparison, during the pulsating introduction to "Percussion Suite" I found myself recalling "Gamma Player", a piece of soulful Detroit techno minimalism from Jeff Mills (Millsart - “Humana” EP 1995) with its rhythmic percussion layered with complex emotion. Weirdly enough, other tracks on that EP also prominently feature xylophone and tuned percussion, although obviously synthesised and programmed, a good 20 years after the CPE first recorded.

Sleevenotes also include a letter from Ron Forbes:
“I decided to form a percussion group to provide an outlet for my percussion pupils to play music specially written for them. The group soon became well known in the region and as a result of winning the outstanding award at the National Festival of Music for youth on three occasions, they were invited to play at other festivals within Europe, one being in Erlangen in Germany - hence the Erlangen Polka - and Autun in France - hence the Autun Carillon. During these visits we were often asked if we had any recordings and so it was decided to make an LP”.

Thanks to Ron Forbes and Trunk Records, more people can now enjoy the simple hypnotic musical charms of the Cults Percussion Ensemble

Philadelphia, PA's finest rock & roll up-and-comers, Big Nothing, have announced their sophomore full-length, Dog Hours, due out February 18th from Lame-O Records. Dog Hours finds the four-piece incorporating new dynamics and textures into their timeless songwriting to make ten songs of warm and welcoming guitar pop that's as comforting as it is catchy.

To mark the album's announcement Big Nothing have shared Dog Hours' lead single "A Lot of Finding Out" a slice of up tempo, alt-country tinged power-pop that's sure to please fans of Evan Dando and Tom Petty alike.

Big Nothing (guitarist/vocalist Matt Quinn, bassist/vocalist Liz Parsons, guitarist/vocalist Pat Graham, and drummer Chris Jordan) have a sound that's rooted in big guitars and big hooks, but unexpected circumstances forced them to try a different approach making Dog Hours. “With the pandemic, we were all writing separately and stuck playing quietly in our apartments,” Quinn explains. “And so it was pretty natural that we started making more stripped-back music.” The result is a more intimate version of Big Nothing that brings the acoustic guitar and layered harmonies to the forefront without sacrificing the palpable camaraderie that makes their music so endearing. It's an album that explores all of the uncertainties and existential dread of adulthood, but counters it with a Westerberg-esque sense of humanity and warmth.

Acclaimed saxophonist, producer and composer Yasuaki Shimizu will release Kiren, his unreleased album from 1984, on the Palto Flats record label on February 25, 2022.

Liner notes by music historian Chee Shimizu, and credits in both Japanese and English.

By the early 1980s Yasuaki Shimizu had established himself on the Japanese new wave scene, producing many important experimental pop records and releasing several albums as the bandleader of
Mariah. Following the release of his widely regarded solo classic Kakashi, from 1982, and the otherworldly Utakata No Hibi, by Mariah in 1983, he went into the studio the following year with frequent
collaborators, producer Aki Ikuta and Morio Watanabe (bassist of Mariah), to record a mystifying collection of experimental dance music. Utilizing cutting-edge technology and studio trickery, Kiren
showcases Shimizu's trademark playfulness, marrying richly layered production techniques to off-kilter, sometimes traditional sounding rhythms and melodies. Portending his work with the Saxophonettes as well as forecasting trends in techno, new wave, and futuristic rhythmic music, this formerly lost album represents an important period of Shimizu's artistic expression, an artist at his peak, while successfully exploring the intersections of fusion, synthpop, new wave, and jazz.

As Chee Shimizu (no relation) writes in the liner notes, Kiren, and his concurrent release Latin were “born out of a free environment of collaboration that existed between Yasuaki and Aki Ikuta ... (exemplifying) his most energetic works.” In listening to Kiren, we might share with Yasuaki Shimizu the joy and excitement of experimentalism and movement that went into the making of this album, now released for the first time many years later.

Micheal “Eyedea” Larsen and Gregory “DJ Abilities” Keltgen first met in the mid-90s and soon began a working relationship that would play a prominent role in the burgeoning Indie-Rap movement of the time. After numerous successes across nearly every notable MC or DJ battle of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, including HBO’s Blaze Battle, the Rocksteady Anniversary, Scribble Jam, the DMC’s and more, they had already cemented their legacies both as individuals in the battle scene and as the dynamic duo, Eyedea & Abilities, for their live performances and showmanship. However, determined not to be dismissed as one-dimensional, they set out to prove they were to be taken just as seriously at writing and recording. Together, they developed a near symbiotic creative union that produced three albums—First Born; E&A; and By The Throat—before Eyedea tragically passed away in 2010, at the age of 28.

The release of their debut album, First Born, had revealed their talents to be much more versatile and expansive than previously expected. The boastful arrogance and punchlines that had become synonymous with battling were notably scarce on the album. Eyedea chose to tackle subjects that were more conceptual and philosophical in nature, focusing on matters of reality and altered states of perception while pushing his urgent, dense delivery into darker, more abstract terrain. Meanwhile, DJ Abilities was able to craft worlds of depth and emotion, pairing hauntingly suspenseful beats with meticulous turntablism. The resulting album was rich in ambition, ideas and humanity. First Born came at the forefront of an exciting new era of underground hip-hop, delivering messages that emphasized questions over answers, ambiguity over certainty, and self-expression over exploitation, to an audience that was eager to expand their horizons beyond the commercial programming and clichés of the time.

Co-produced with Metronomy's Joseph Mount, electro-pop artist TATYANA's debut album is a careful fusion of her classical harp training with her keen sense for pop production and songwriting. Inspired by late-2000s indie pop and Swedish pop auteurs, Treat Me Right is a sparkling, catchy collection of `80s synths and futuristic auto-tuned vocals. TATYANA has lived in Holland, Russia, Singapore, and Boston - where she attended Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship - before settling back in her hometown of London in 2018. The transient nature of her upbringing has certainly informed her music: from underground raves to viral YouTube covers to playing harp on tour with Neneh Cherry, there seems to be no scene that she doesn't thrive in. Last year, she released her thrilling debut EP Shadow On The Wall via Sinderlyn. The self-produced collection was met with praise from tastemaker outlets like NYLON, FADER, Office, Bandcamp, Line of Best Fit, and Crack, as well as an exclusive vinyl pressing with Vinyl Me, Please's Rising program. Treat Me Right is the irresistible product of these impressive first steps, the kind of precisely produced, impossibly catchy pop that takes other artists their entire careers to nail.

Jacob Gorensteyn is an Israeli saxophonist and producer. Born in the USSR in 1980, his family emigrated to Israel when he was a child, with Jacob picking up the saxophone soon after. A long time member and one of the creative forces behind the well-known Israeli brass band Marsh Dondurma, he co-produced all seven of the band's albums, as well as a solo effort that was released locally in 2006. Over the years Jacob became well known in the Israeli music scene both as a potent multi-genre session player and a mixing engineer and music producer, lending his sound to many recordings over the last 20 years. His main focus in his solo work is funky jazz music, being influenced by soul, R&B and funk music, mostly from the 60s and 70s.

Wooden House is one funky record. It began, as many records did at the time, with a recording session arranged to not feel as useless during the early days of the pandemic, at a time when planned gigs and sessions were falling like dominoes, and most, if not all, working musicians across the globe were in a state of mild shock watching their creative outlets, as well as their livelihoods, crumble away. Jacob assembled a group of friends – all powerhouse musicians, and all some of the most favorite people in the world for him to play with – into a recording studio. Just before the pandemic, Jacob moved away from the city into a little wooden house in a village located in the picturesque Yehuda mountains near Jerusalem. The new location prompted some creative juices in the form of a string of funky tunes, written in his new project studio on the 2nd floor of that very Wooden House. Three of those were the tunes he brought into the studio that day. None of the musicians assembled, including Jacob, knew what the music they came out with would end up sounding like. The music was worked out during the session and then swiftly recorded, all of it live, all of it energetic and groovy. Two more similar sessions followed in the following months, often being rescheduled because of lockdowns. What came out became "Wooden House", a funky, brass-heavy instrumental album, a fun, instant mood improver. Put it on and groove with us.The album was recorded in 2020.

If your inspiration is Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunter", or any of The Meters or The Apples albums – This one is for you.

Good things come to those who wait. The album 'The Children of Scorpio' by Project Gemini aka Paul Osborne is a result of his steeped 30-year musical journey that’s seen him dig deep, study his record collection and re-emerge to fine-tune his craft.

A cinematic musical journey that plays out like a long-lost soundtrack (think cult B-movies of the 60s and 70s); 'The Children of Scorpio’ was formed from Paul's love of a myriad of genres; from European library music, acid folk, psych-funk, vintage soundtracks and the contemporary breaks scene. The album draws on iconic classics such as the masterful cinematic funk of Lalo Schifrin's 'Dirty Harry', Ennio Morricone's 'Vergogna Schifosi’ and Luis Bacalov’s 'The Summertime Killer’, to name but a few. You can also hear the folk sounds of Mark Fry's iconic 'Dreaming With Alice', the Britsh folk-jazz of The Pentangle and the David Axelrod-produced 'Release Of An Oath' by The Electric Prunes, woven into the cultural tapestry of this gem. The influence of these vintage productions of the 60s and 70s is evident; however, it could be argued that there’s also echoes of the funkier psychedelic moments of bands such as The Stones Roses and The Charlatans, alongside contemporaries such as The Heliocentrics and Little Barrie, thus giving the album a broader crossover potential beyond the world of crate digging and vintage soundtracks.

A bass player and musician since the age of 16, the arrival of his first child in 2010 saw Paul move away from live performance and retreat to his home studio, recording a wealth of music that was destined to never be heard. One of the first tunes to be made was a demo entitled ‘The Children Of Scorpio’, inspired by his long-time obsession with Lalo Schifrin’s soundtrack to violent Clint Eastwood cop classic 'Dirty Harry'. Recorded for fun, the track was fated to sit in the archives untouched. However, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, connections to a wealth of inspirational musicians and labels would re-ignite Paul's musical fire and give him the impetus to develop his slept-on ideas into something more concrete. Firstly resulting in releasing two limited 7'' records on Delights Records and now the long-player for Mr Bongo.

Assisting in the recording of the record were several close friends that have helped spark Paul's musical creativity along the way, including well-renowned guitarist and Little Barrie frontman Barrie Cadogan (who contributes killer six-string guitar to four tracks), Delights Records head-honcho Markey Funk (who adds spooked out keyboards to ‘Path Through The Forest’), Kid Victrola, the chief songwriter and guitarist with French psych girl group Gloria who added wild 12-string to ‘Scorpio’s Garden’, Haifa-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Shuzin who brings the heat behind the drum kit, and Paul Isherwood, co-founder of Nottingham’s The Soundcarriers, who mixed the album on his wealth of vintage gear.

We are delighted to be releasing this slowly-brewed timeless classic that manages to achieve that rare feat of keeping one foot firmly in the past whilst still sounding totally contemporary.

For his twelfth studio album, Pianissimo, Matthias Vogt (re:jazz, Motorcitysoul) makes a clear political statement in symbiosis with his well-placed notes and the stylishly experimental and pronouncedly eclectic electro-jazz sound. Pianissimo does not only mean playing very softly but also playing very intensively. It is definitely not an album to skip through.

Matthias Vogt combines great music with current socio-political attitudes and issues for this new album. He conducted interviews on topics like “climate change” with people from his circle of friends and acquaintances - creatives, artists, activists and musicians who tick similarly to himself and with whose voices he could give expression and form to his own thoughts. With this material, he created this hybrid piece of music and socio-political reflexion.

His companions are Demian Kappenstein (ÄTNA & Massa) on drums & guitarist Daniel Stelter (Sing mein Song, TV-Total Heavytones). Vinyl incl. the outer packaging will be produced on a completely recycled basis by INFRACom! which starts its 30 years celebration with this release.