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The complete score to 2021’s first-person shooter ‘Far Cry 6’, an immersive Latin-inspired tapestry composed by
Pedro Bromfman and a wide range of guest artists including Gabylonia, Brooklyn Nitty Scott and Diana
Fuentes.

The Imperial Wonders are one of the finest vocal groups to come out of Cleveland Ohio. "Work of Art" has been remixed by Opolopo, Daft Funk, Pagger and Leo Zero from the original 80s multitrack tapes. Opolopo produces one of his trade marked boogie sensations that is exactly how the band had wanted it to sound in the first place, some proper 80s boogie vibe. New boys Pagger swaggers the groove with ease and panache. Daft Funk house it up some with deepness personified grooves. Leo Zero with some help from Des Morgan flips the song with a spaced out dub that rocks. One not to be missed.

Like a rediscovered Viking burial ship, Electro Nova compiles near-mythical drone recordings produced in 1998 and described by Helge Sten aka Deathprod as some of the most important music to ever come out of Norway. It's the work of Kåre Dehlie Thorstad and compiles two of the earliest releases on Smalltown Supersound, back when it was basically no more than a bedroom operation. It’s taken over two decades, but finally the label have given the material a first ever proper release on vinyl, complete with mixing and mastering by Deathprod. If you’re into the ice cold swells of anyone from Thomas Köner to Harley Gaber, Biosphere, Kali Malone or, of course, Deathprod - this one's as essential as they come.

Kaare Dehlie Thorstad's Elektro Nova produced just two releases during the late ‘90s that have since slipped into drone lore - Trans-Inter-Ference and Elektro Nova/Electro Nova. Admired not only by Deathprod and Joakim Haugland of Smalltown, but also by his contemporaries Lasse Marhaug and Biosphere, his work has evaded pretty much any attention outside of Norway these last two decades. Following a chance meeting with Thorstad at Oslo airport a few years back, Smalltown were prompted to give the recordings a second wind, presenting what is essentially a captivating new release, and crucial addition to the Norsk drone canon.

As the story goes, Thorstad was studying photography in the late 90’s in Scotland, but instead of delivering a photo for his final exam he made a record - a double album (2CDs) and a 10” to be precise. That should provide some idea of the textural synaesthetic and landscaping qualities evoked by his music, which he ended up sending to a then-young Smalltown label, who were mostly issuing tapes at the time. With no proper distribution the records largely bypassed wider attention, and become a personal favourite of Smalltown’s Joakim Haugland, as well as avowed fan Helge Sten (Deathprod), who helped render its diaphanous scale in mix down, and Lasse Marhaug who describes them as "two perfect records that deserved much bigger attention”.

Between its jaw-dropping opener; the post-apocalyptic vision of its untitled part; and the cinematic white-out of the 10” tracks; Thorstad comes as close as we’ve ever heard to evoking the inhospitable nature and stark beauty of the wild far north. We can hear those landscapes palpably internalised and alchemically transmuted into its coarse grained textural swells and a reverberating multi-dimensionality, variously sustained to extents that evoke an abandonment of the senses, or likewise squashed and isolated to imply the relative anxiety relief of atmospheric flux, where a few degrees temperature rise or a drop in the wind speed can make the difference between life and death.

Impressively, Thorstad realised after the release of Elektro Nova and just two live shows that he couldn’t really follow up the work and instead pursued a career as professional cyclist, eventually combining his visual skills to become a pro cycling photographer. In that sense, he’s a bit like composer-turned-tennis coach Harley Gaber, whose almighty ‘The Winds Rise In The North’ (1976) is in some ways richly prescient of this work. Like Gaber, Thorstad can remain safe in the knowledge that his contribution to the drone sphere will endure for the ages, especially with this important, impressive new edition.

Martin Khanja (aka Lord Spike Heart) and Sam Karugu emerge from Nairobi's flourishing underground metal scene as former members of the bands Lust of a Dying Breed and Seeds of Datura. Together in 2019 they formed Duma (Darkness in Kikuyu) with Sam abandoning bass for production and guitars and Lord Spike Heart providing extreme vocals to the project. Recorded at Nyege Nyege Studios in Kampala over three months in mid 2019 their self-titled debut album fuses the frenetic euphoria, unrelenting physicality and rebellious attitude of hardcore punk and trash metal with bone-crunching breakcore and raw, nihilist industrial noise through a claustrophobic vortex of visceral screams. The savant mix of brutally adrenalized drums, caustic industrial trap, shredding grindcore inspired guitars and abrupt speed changes create a darkly atmospheric menace and is lethal on tracks like the opener "Angels and Abysses" , "Omni" or "Uganda with Sam". The gruelling slow techno dirges and monolithic vocals on "Pembe 666" or "Sin Nature" add a pinch of dramatic inevitability bringing a new sense of theatricality and terrifying fate awaiting into the record's progression. A sinister sonic aggression of feral intensity with disregard for styles, Duma promises to impact the burgeoning African metal scene moving it into totally new, boundary-challenging experimental territories.

After "La Légende d'Eer" in 2016, the PERIHEL series presents one of the milestones of electroacoustic music: IANNIS XENAKIS' mindblowing 54-minutes oeuvre "Persepolis", mixed from the original 8 track tapes by MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered / cut by RASHAD BECKER.

"Persepolis" is the longest electroacoustic composition by IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001) who ranks among the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. Commissioned by the Persian Shah, the piece was part of a multimedia performance - XENAKIS' so-called "polytopes" - which premiered in 1971 in Shiraz-Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation. XENAKIS had realized "Persepolis" on 8-track analogue tape in the Studio Acusti in Paris and released a stereo reduction on vinyl in the famous Philips series "Prospective 21e Siècle" in 1972, adding the new subtitle "We bear the light of the earth", his most hymnal title ever.
Out of print for decades now, the LP became - especially the Japanese edition from 1974 - one of the most expensive collector's item of electroacoustic music. There were some later CD versions with different durations - too long due to a wrong sample rate, others shortened by 3 minutes due to other reasons. The PERIHEL series now presents a new version: mixed from the original (!) master 8 track tapes by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER at D&M, Berlin - the same experts who had already taken care of the 2016 KARLRECORDS release of "La Légende d'Eer", another milestone composition among the works of the Greek-French avant-garde composer.

The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was, which follows Thomas’ brilliant 2020 HBO special The Golden One and his Can't Believe You're Happy Here EP released earlier this year, surveys a range of emotion and offers a broad sonic palette, moving between pop punk, electro, and the obvious influence of the singer-songwriters he grew up listening to in early childhood. It conjures the ennui of Bright Eyes alongside the barefaced storytelling of John Prine, the overstuffed lists of Fred Thomas with the lackadaisical humor of Colleen Green, among many others.

Thomas attributes the dexterity of the record to Duterte, who recorded and engineered most of it in addition to serving up plenty of encouragement when Thomas got down on the process. “As a comic, I used to test out new songs during sets to see if the funny bits were hitting, but since I wrote this in isolation I ended up writing lyrics and worrying less about making jokes,” Thomas says. That said, the album’s plenty funny. Stand-out and lead single “Rigamarole” opens with a Thomas-voiced infomercial that recalls his oft-cited lookalike Jim Carrey as the Grinch, before launching into a buoyant pop song about being depressed.

Whitmer Thomas will admit that when he traveled home to small town Gulf Shores, Alabama to record his HBO stand-up special, The Golden One, he expected to be greeted as a returning hero, a conquering king, or at minimum, a guy with a moderately successful career as an entertainer in Los Angeles. “I expected a big welcome home, open arms, but when I went back I realized: nobody fucking knows me. Nobody remembers me,” Thomas says. “In the years I’d been performing that show, I’d been romanticizing my childhood in this mythologized place, but the visit made me see that I’m not really from there anymore.”

The sense of alienation compounded when Thomas recognized how few people in town remembered his mom, to whom The Golden One is dedicated and largely about. Thomas grew up watching her perform with her twin sister at the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge, where he set the special, and still counts her as one of his musical influences. His new album, The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was, isn’t overtly about his mom, her presence is deeply felt throughout. While in Gulf Shores, Thomas discovered dozens of her old recordings, all of which had been wrecked by Katrina, but upon returning to LA, Thomas paid “a fancy place in Hollywood” to fix the tapes and hired Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Bachelor, Routine) to mix them. The two struck up a collaborative friendship, and Thomas had the sound of his mom’s voice back. “I was listening to songs she recorded when she was about my age, just these heartfelt, sweet Americana songs,” he says. “I decided then that I wanted to lose the Ian Curtis voice I always sing with; I wanted to do what came naturally, because my mom always sounded like herself, even when she was singing some cheesy reggae song about, like, Jamaica.”

Thus he went into The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was knowing it was time to retire his darkwave persona, and leaning into his natural, chirpier voice, which he says sounds “like a 12-year-old’s.” It makes sense: much of the album chronicles what Thomas calls “being a kid and feeling like you have no control and overcompensating by being annoying.” “So much of the album is about witnessing drug and alcohol addiction as a kid and seeing what it does to people, but also realizing that there's nothing you can do about it,” Thomas says. It’s familiar territory (see: “Partied to Death”) but the methodology is different this time around; true to its title, The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was isn’t always looking for laughs. Thomas might’ve left his hometown behind, but his kid self is still tagging along, a Peter Pan shadow he can’t untether himself from. The first line he sings on The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was is: “There should be a room at every party where you can just sit and watch a movie.” Find a 12-year-old who wouldn’t say the same.

Kalita presents the first ever official reissue of Sweet Clover's highly sought-after 1979 disco single "You're What I Need', backed by an unreleased extended mix and the equally impressive 'Sweet Talk', sourced from the original master tapes.

With original copies released in a run of just 300 copies and now hitting top three-figure sums on the rare occasion that they come up for sale, Kalita finally serve up a chance to obtain this lo-fi disco masterpiece once again.

Accompanied by a never-before-seen photo of the band and liner notes based on interviews with writer and producer Willie McClain, this is another no-brainer from the Kalita camp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pure Wicked Tune is a mixtape-style collection of extracts & cut-ups, taken from DIY cassette recordings featuring rare groove and "soul blues" soundsystems playing at early morning house parties and blues dances - mostly in South & East London - between the mid 1980s & early 90s.

Sounds like Funkadelic, Touch of Class, Latest Edition, JB Crew, Manhattan, 5th Avenue (and the many more featured on this tape) originally began to form in the mid-1980s. With lovers rock dwindling, and the reggae scene becoming dominated by harder digital-style dancehall, these sounds provided a tight but loyal crowd with a potent alternative - playing a mixture of killer rare soul, funk and boogie records in an inimitably reggae soundsystem style, complete with toasting, sirens and effects aplenty.

They were most well-known for playing at house parties and blues dances, typically in small flats or warehouses, with timing of such events generally running from the early morning hours until late the next afternoon. Though the popularity of the sounds faded following the dance music explosion of the early 1990s, there has been continued demand for revival sessions ever since. Whilst the influence of key British reggae & dancehall soundsystems on subsequent UK sounds like hardcore & jungle is relatively well documented, a similar line can just as easily be drawn from these sounds and the aforementioned styles' tendency toward sampling popular rare groove cuts, particularly well evidenced in the work of Tom & Jerry, 4hero, Reinforced & LTJ Bukem among others.

This represents the first outing in a series of collections exploring the sounds of UK soundsystem culture, via extracts from archival DIY cassette recordings of blues parties, dances & clashes made between the late 70s and early 90s. Often duplicated and shared widely, these ruff and ready "sound tapes" provided keen ears with music that wasn't otherwise readily available on the airwaves or in the record shops, and would go on to leave a deeply-rooted but too often overlooked influence on the UK's musical landscape.

Rance Allen, from Monroe Michigan, with older brother Tom on drums and younger brother Steve on bass recorded their first record and won a talent contest in Detroit and were subsequently signed to Stax's Gospel Truth label in 1971. After four albums Rance signed to Capitol and made his most highly acclaimed album 'Say My Friend'. It was produced by the Mizell Brothers (responsible for iconic albums on Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphrey, Gary Bartz and Johnny Hammond). 'Reason To Survive' and 'Peace Of Mind' were the two singles, and both these 7' versions have been impossible to find. Original copies are expensive and extremely sought after. Expansion can now deliver both A sides back to back remastered from the original tapes in all their glory. The full album is available on CD from Soul Brother Records.

A deluxe, remastered, 20 year anniversary edition of the Heads’ third album proper, the under-rated gem in their canon that is “Under Sided”.

Originally released in 2002 on the Sweet Nothing label (SNLP/CD 11), Under Sided was recorded in 2001 at WhiteHouse Studios in Weston Super Mare, with Martin Nichols engineering. The band had previously recorded tracks for Mans Ruin 10” at these studios (also famous for Ripcord, Heresy, Slowdive, Hardskin, Decadence Within, Icehouse.. amongst many others!).

For the reissue, the original recordings were remastered for vinyl and CD by long time Heads Masterer (!) Shawn Joseph. The resultant 8 tracks, spread over 4 sides of vinyl are some of the best music the Heads have recorded, after a bit of a hiatus following their 2000 US tour / Peel session (included in the boxset / on the 2CD version here), the band regrouped and worked out the tracks for the album, relentless rehearsing for the recording. Very few shows happened in that 2001-2002 timeframe.. band members were busy, earning a living, getting on with life, but they still had some riffs/songs there.

Upon release in 2002 the album got great reviews in the press, from Kerrang and MOJO to the Sunday Times, all helping the Bristol fourpiece confirm their cult status, which has continued to current times..

The remastered album is being reissued as a 4LP + 2CD boxset. The extra 2LP features their Peel session from 2000, as well as a couple of compilation tracks (For Mad Men Only / Born To Go), and some unreleased demo versions, as well as 2 exclusive to this set CDS that feature nearly 150 minutes of Live recordings (mastered, but RAW!) from their gigs on the Thekla in Bristol and rehearsal room tapes in 2001 and 2002.
The boxset will also have a special slip-mat, stickers, and a 24 page booklet of photos /writings, including recollections by each band member, and others including Stewart Lee.

Under Sided is a pounding sike-nightmare that shows the Heads at the peak of their powers, there’s a flow throughout the album of melding psychedelic noise rock to unrelentin rhythms and creating a bad trip for all listening.. open battering-ram “Dissonaut” is a staple in their live shows to this day… even the gentle sooth of “Energy” is enveloped by a white noise fury.. the intensity of some of the tracks: the terror inducing “Bedminster” or “False Heavy” (a tour worn riffmonger from 2000) or the Magnet-esque “Heavy Sea”, showed the band as ferocious as any of the insurgent “stoner” genre of that time.

They were never going to make their living out of touring, record sales… as Hugo mentions in his notes for the booklet, “.. we had less boundaries and felt we could experiment more and not worry about commerciality…” but they were able to make this album.

A deluxe, remastered, 20 year anniversary edition of the Heads’ third album proper, the under-rated gem in their canon that is “Under Sided”.

Originally released in 2002 on the Sweet Nothing label (SNLP/CD 11), Under Sided was recorded in 2001 at WhiteHouse Studios in Weston Super Mare, with Martin Nichols engineering. The band had previously recorded tracks for Mans Ruin 10” at these studios (also famous for Ripcord, Heresy, Slowdive, Hardskin, Decadence Within, Icehouse.. amongst many others!).

For the reissue, the original recordings were remastered for vinyl and CD by long time Heads Masterer (!) Shawn Joseph. The resultant 8 tracks, spread over 4 sides of vinyl are some of the best music the Heads have recorded, after a bit of a hiatus following their 2000 US tour / Peel session (included in the boxset / on the 2CD version here), the band regrouped and worked out the tracks for the album, relentless rehearsing for the recording. Very few shows happened in that 2001-2002 timeframe.. band members were busy, earning a living, getting on with life, but they still had some riffs/songs there.

Upon release in 2002 the album got great reviews in the press, from Kerrang and MOJO to the Sunday Times, all helping the Bristol fourpiece confirm their cult status, which has continued to current times..

The remastered album is being reissued as a 4LP + 2CD boxset. The extra 2LP features their Peel session from 2000, as well as a couple of compilation tracks (For Mad Men Only / Born To Go), and some unreleased demo versions, as well as 2 exclusive to this set CDS that feature nearly 150 minutes of Live recordings (mastered, but RAW!) from their gigs on the Thekla in Bristol and rehearsal room tapes in 2001 and 2002.
The boxset will also have a special slip-mat, stickers, and a 24 page booklet of photos /writings, including recollections by each band member, and others including Stewart Lee.

Under Sided is a pounding sike-nightmare that shows the Heads at the peak of their powers, there’s a flow throughout the album of melding psychedelic noise rock to unrelentin rhythms and creating a bad trip for all listening.. open battering-ram “Dissonaut” is a staple in their live shows to this day… even the gentle sooth of “Energy” is enveloped by a white noise fury.. the intensity of some of the tracks: the terror inducing “Bedminster” or “False Heavy” (a tour worn riffmonger from 2000) or the Magnet-esque “Heavy Sea”, showed the band as ferocious as any of the insurgent “stoner” genre of that time.

They were never going to make their living out of touring, record sales… as Hugo mentions in his notes for the booklet, “.. we had less boundaries and felt we could experiment more and not worry about commerciality…” but they were able to make this album.

A deluxe, remastered, 20 year anniversary edition of the Heads’ third album proper, the under-rated gem in their canon that is “Under Sided”.

Originally released in 2002 on the Sweet Nothing label (SNLP/CD 11), Under Sided was recorded in 2001 at WhiteHouse Studios in Weston Super Mare, with Martin Nichols engineering. The band had previously recorded tracks for Mans Ruin 10” at these studios (also famous for Ripcord, Heresy, Slowdive, Hardskin, Decadence Within, Icehouse.. amongst many others!).

For the reissue, the original recordings were remastered for vinyl and CD by long time Heads Masterer (!) Shawn Joseph. The resultant 8 tracks, spread over 4 sides of vinyl are some of the best music the Heads have recorded, after a bit of a hiatus following their 2000 US tour / Peel session (included in the boxset / on the 2CD version here), the band regrouped and worked out the tracks for the album, relentless rehearsing for the recording. Very few shows happened in that 2001-2002 timeframe.. band members were busy, earning a living, getting on with life, but they still had some riffs/songs there.

Upon release in 2002 the album got great reviews in the press, from Kerrang and MOJO to the Sunday Times, all helping the Bristol fourpiece confirm their cult status, which has continued to current times..

The remastered album is being reissued as a 4LP + 2CD boxset. The extra 2LP features their Peel session from 2000, as well as a couple of compilation tracks (For Mad Men Only / Born To Go), and some unreleased demo versions, as well as 2 exclusive to this set CDS that feature nearly 150 minutes of Live recordings (mastered, but RAW!) from their gigs on the Thekla in Bristol and rehearsal room tapes in 2001 and 2002.
The boxset will also have a special slip-mat, stickers, and a 24 page booklet of photos /writings, including recollections by each band member, and others including Stewart Lee.

Under Sided is a pounding sike-nightmare that shows the Heads at the peak of their powers, there’s a flow throughout the album of melding psychedelic noise rock to unrelentin rhythms and creating a bad trip for all listening.. open battering-ram “Dissonaut” is a staple in their live shows to this day… even the gentle sooth of “Energy” is enveloped by a white noise fury.. the intensity of some of the tracks: the terror inducing “Bedminster” or “False Heavy” (a tour worn riffmonger from 2000) or the Magnet-esque “Heavy Sea”, showed the band as ferocious as any of the insurgent “stoner” genre of that time.

They were never going to make their living out of touring, record sales… as Hugo mentions in his notes for the booklet, “.. we had less boundaries and felt we could experiment more and not worry about commerciality…” but they were able to make this album.

On the 19th of October 2021 Random Numbers invited Bear Bones, Lay Low and Polonius to play at the Circolo Dev. The show was recorded now here it is in a beautiful cassette edition (Limited copies available).

Side A is a shamanic potion cooked by improvisation artist Bear Bones, Lay Low. 45 minutes of slow brewing of hypnotic sounds originated from tapes, synths and various effects. A meditating process that slowly morphs into a tribal dance that ends with estatic liberation.

On side B 37 minutes of the magical improvisation of Polonius, that after a slow spelling brings you in to his world of samples and repetition, in a schizophrenic representation of modern world. A live composition on a laptop and a keyboard where every sample is played live.

We are proud to present the official 40-year anniversary issue of Imagination's debut album Shake It. Remastered from original tapes, this deluxe edition is a double vinyl LP with gatefold sleeve, featuring a newly available lyric insert.

Shake It covers a diverse spectrum of styles and sounds, all combining to a unique soulful amalgam that ranges from sunshine AOR funk ("Mornin' Lights") and leftfield disco ("Strawberry Wine") to psychy, epic, downtempo, vocoder grooves ("Can't Stand Without You") and more. Originally released in 1980, it fast became one of Germany's most collectible privately-pressed LPs.

Shake It was the creation of young thoroughbreds working hard on becoming professional musicians, trying to take their next big step in the music business. Starting out as a pure jazz-rock combo in the mid '70s (as we hear on the recently released lost studio tapes, I'm Always Right (The WDR Tapes 1977)) Imagination left behind their instrumental roots, incorporating new musical trends and styles.

Uwe Ziss, their saxophonist and flutist, became one of two lead singers in Imagination. He would be joined by the younger Roger Mork, a student of original guitarist Willi Hövelmann, around 1979. Roger's voice would best be heard on the aforementioned "Mornin' Lights", one of the various standout tracks on Shake It. However, there is much more that this album offers.

There are brilliant soulful soft rock ballads like "Clouds Flee Before The Wind" and "Waitin for your Call" or the catchy "California" song that switches from a dreamy Westcoast sound (as the title implies) to danceable rhythm & blues with equal ease. Last but not least, we have unearthed three unissued bonus cuts. On one, the demo take of "Clouds Flee Before The Wind", we hear, for the first time ever, the original refrain of this song, which, for some strange reason, was taken out from the final mix on Shake It.

When all eight original songs were recorded and mastered in June, at the well-equipped West Aix-La-Chapelle studio, the stage was set for Imagination's long-desired career push. They'd initially press about 2500 copies of Shake It selling it mainly, locally, directly to their hometown fanbase in Düsseldorf. Meanwhile, their manager would attempt to arrange a record deal with a music label. Unfortunately, this became more difficult than expected. Negotiations with a smaller publishing company were made by Imagination, and Shake It was repressed on Nash Records in 1981 without their consent, under the false promises of a nationwide promotional tour which would never come to fruition. At the same time, the group would face a UK band under the same name achieving mainstream success, making it difficult (not to say entirely impossible) to perform as "Imagination". Though the band would remain active after Shake It, they'd split shortly after Nash's duplicitous reissue hit store shelves.

Luckily, through time, Shake It itself has remained worthwhile, creatively, for those who stumbled upon it and financially, too, becoming quite the sought after gem in record collecting circles. This deluxe anniversary double vinyl issue makes the LP available once again at a far more reasonable price, featuring the original, illustrious, eye-catching, Roy Lichtenstein-influenced banana art, as well as previously unavailable press pictures and more.

Finnish Disco and Electronic Music from Private Pressings and Unreleased Tapes 1980–1991

Hot on the sold-out heels of the three previous Svart-issued early 80’s synth pop and underground electronic music compilations (Satan in Love, Dance For Your Life, Cold War On The Rocks comes the last part of the quadrilogy: Black Hole, that reaches the final frontier of collectable cult synth disco music: privately released and completely unreleased music from 40 years ago. Black Hole has been again compiled by Mikko Mattlar, whose encyclopedic knowledge in the field of Finnish electronic music produces 20 cuts of electro-cult has helped him dig up 20 cuts of rare groove from obscure regional compilation records, seven inches of which only a test pressing exists, demo tapes and privately financed singles. Stylistically the compilation moves from 1979 disco funk as performed by Peak Funktion on their unreleased record to homebrewed synth visions by late 80’s bedroom wizards. Interesting curiosities among the 20 tracks include the riveting dance number by Jarkko Väljä, who received some fame back in the day as a Michael Jackson impersonator, and released one 7” single, that has become an expensive rarity. Another thing you wouldn’t believe existed at all if it wasn’t included here is “Israel Is Real” by We, a short-lived gospel vocal quartet, accompanied here by a drum machine and a synthesizer, which makes for an unforgettable and surprisingly catchy four minute piece of underground gospel disco from 1983. The compilation Black Hole – Finnish Disco and Electronic Music From Private Pressings and Unreleased Tapes 1979-1991 will be released by Svart Records on double vinyl and CD on October 14th.

Grey Marbled Vinyl

First release from an independent label born in the Swiss Alps. Presenting a single dub techno track accompanied with a remix from the electronic music pioneer Anton Zap. Each track provides the right element for different times and emotions.

Limited 300 marbled grey vinyl, no repress, vinyl-only.

Balamii resident and Sticky Tapes-founder Theo Everyday arrives with a huge debut on Cheeky Sneakers, seamlessly blending the worlds of jungle, electro and trance with his signature sauce of nostalgic and futuristic hyper-funk.

Having curated the Sticky Tapes mix series and label - supporting music from artists such as Stones Taro, Om Unit, Jossy Mitsu and Lobster Theremin label head Asquith - the DJ and producer knows a thing or two about merging differing styles and energies. The Holsten FM EP plays out like a three hour club set; placing classic UK sounds at its foundation and throwing multi-coloured paint all over them.

'The Way You Feel' makes use of the pitched-vocal, SoundCloud hyper-pop aesthetic with hardcore-piano stabs and heartstring-tugging cheese wrapped within a huge low-end swinging bassline. A great lights-up tool to leave them with a smile on their face. The classic rave energy is maintained on the EP title track - a stripped-back cut of ragga jungle-step that's as meditative as it is devastating.

From golden-era rave and jungle future-mutations to heads-down club sounds, 'Every Body's Talking (Well Let's Talk)' is a strobe-light power sequence for when things are in full swing, before 90s breakbeat and trance join forces on a 'Six and Two Threes' hands-in-the-air moments.

Breaks-littered dream sequences that feel like a warm hug follow on 'Summer Lie In' - its chopped melodies and stirring atmospherics causing ripples within the pond of paradise - before 'Mod Cons' closes with a squelching cut of acid-electro on a killer digi-only exclusive.

Ranging from sanguine emotional clarity to distortion and unrest, Wow Sailor voyages through sunlight and storms in this mindful and explorative album. Happy Fear is an intricate tapestry of emotional experience, where fear and joy clash heads in the pursuit of self-understanding. Scattered field recordings of literature, ambiance and chance encounters provide atmospheric depth to enrich a resonant and meditative soundscape.

This tale begins with fond yet powerful nostalgia, before segueing into a range of hybrid instrumental explorations in which guitar, voice, violin, and trumpet blossom alongside refined electronic foundations. The album closes off with indulgent melancholia reminiscent of the opening, providing lifelike circularity to the album.

All songs remain connected; one leading into another without pause or silence. This urges the listener to digest the work in a single sitting as elements of the story seem intrinsically connected.

The first half is studded with gems of atmospheric conversation and recordings, providing a living and textured environment for the crafted synthetic sounds of Wow Sailor to evolve. Most songs are free from percussive structures, but In Her Gaze breaks the mold with clear percussive dictate. The middle and latter titles are connected by ominous frequencies that err on the darker side of curiosity - encouraging exploration into the transformative power of fear.

All in all, the work glimmers with spontaneity and diversity that resembles real-life experience. Carefully crafted sonic interplays bare semblance to the fluctuating emotional life of the ever sensitive and sentient human being.

Dugnad Rec sits at the helm of yet another wonderfully creative and philosophical work. This release gives verity to the artistic integrity, sound design, and mental exploration of the label. Wow Sailor’s work radiates an enticing, authentic, and indelible mark of individuality.

CELEBRATING SUN RECORDS - THE LABEL WHERE ROCK 'N' ROLL WAS BORN! The Rock 'n' Roll Collection features 40-songs from the most important record label in the history of music, with everyone newly remastered from the original Sun Records master tapes. A comprehensive introduction to some of the most iconic and influential music ever recorded. These are the list remaining copies of the strictly limited edition pressed on orange vinyl exclusive to UK retailer Sainsbury’s. Elvis Presley introduced the rockabilly sound to the world in 1954 with the recordings he made at Sun Records. These epitomised the famous “Sun sound” and set the scene for the rock ‘n’ roll explosion to follow. This raw and exciting new sound was a remarkable fusion of white country music and black R&B and quickly found an eager audience with the youth of the day. Presley’s extraordinary success at Sun Records led to the tiny Memphis-based label becoming a magnet for aspiring rockabilly singers from all over America’s South. Despite a relatively short heyday, that “Sun sound” has endured the test of time and remains as popular as ever with listeners of all age groups. As well as featuring Elvis and such other household names as Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich and Roy Orbison, the gatefold-sleeved double-album also includes significant contributions from the label’s other important artists such as: Billy Lee Riley, Sonny Burgess, The Miller Sisters, Warren Smith, Malcolm Yelvington, Jimmy Wages, and Earl Hooker. Includes such all-time rock ‘n’ roll classics as: Mystery Train, That’s All Right, Blue Suede Shoes, Great Balls Of Fire, I Walk The Line, Yakety Yak, Rock Island Line, Good Rockin’ Tonight, Red Hot, Ooby Dooby, Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On …and many more!

CELEBRATING SUN RECORDS - THE LABEL WHERE ROCK 'N' ROLL WAS BORN! The Rock 'n' Roll Collection features 40-songs from the most important record label in the history of music, with everyone newly remastered from the original Sun Records master tapes. A comprehensive introduction to some of the most iconic and influential music ever recorded. These are the list remaining copies of the strictly limited edition pressed on orange vinyl exclusive to UK retailer Sainsbury’s. Elvis Presley introduced the rockabilly sound to the world in 1954 with the recordings he made at Sun Records. These epitomised the famous “Sun sound” and set the scene for the rock ‘n’ roll explosion to follow. This raw and exciting new sound was a remarkable fusion of white country music and black R&B and quickly found an eager audience with the youth of the day. Presley’s extraordinary success at Sun Records led to the tiny Memphis-based label becoming a magnet for aspiring rockabilly singers from all over America’s South. Despite a relatively short heyday, that “Sun sound” has endured the test of time and remains as popular as ever with listeners of all age groups. As well as featuring Elvis and such other household names as Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich and Roy Orbison, the gatefold-sleeved double-album also includes significant contributions from the label’s other important artists such as: Billy Lee Riley, Sonny Burgess, The Miller Sisters, Warren Smith, Malcolm Yelvington, Jimmy Wages, and Earl Hooker. Includes such all-time rock ‘n’ roll classics as: Mystery Train, That’s All Right, Blue Suede Shoes, Great Balls Of Fire, I Walk The Line, Yakety Yak, Rock Island Line, Good Rockin’ Tonight, Red Hot, Ooby Dooby, Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On …and many more!

TOWNES VAN ZANDT STUDIO SESSIONS FROM 1974 AVAILABLE ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER In 1974, Townes Van Zandt recorded what would have been his seventh album, ‘Seven Come Eleven’. Business issues prevented its release until the recordings surfaced two decades later as ‘The Nashville Sessions’. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Van Zandt’s turbulent musical career and launch of a major catalogue reissue programme, Charly has restored and re-mastered ‘The Nashville Sessions’ to present a stunning document of the folk-blues master at his absolute peak. “These are songs that tap into the timeless myth of the American troubadour, a place where wandering souls tramp the byways of their homeland...” Restored and mastered to vinyl from the original tapes provided by producer and manager Kevin Eggers. Full colour LP sleeve with original Milton Glaser portrait cover. Fully illustrated inner with detailed sleeve notes by Uncut magazine journalist Rob Hughes. Part of Charly’s 50th anniversary programme celebrating the start of Van Zandt’s career. All original Poppy and Tomato albums which Townes Van Zandt recorded at the peak of his career will be newly re- mastered, restored and lavishly repackaged and available on CD & limited edition 180g heavyweight vinyl. The death of Townes Van Zandt in 1997 at age 52 robbed the world of a troubled genius as well as one of America’s finest songwriters. His reputation and popularity has grown greater by the year inspiring books, a documentary and renewed interest from the media, passionately loyal fans and contemporaries such as Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Emmylou Harris who have covered his songs to the upper-reaches of the American charts. “From Neil Young and Willie Nelson, Bono and Bob Dylan (who reportedly once said that Townes was “in some ways the better writer”) to Tindersticks and Mudhoney, songwriters and musicians speak of Townes with reverence.” MOJO MAGAZINE “He was the best songwriter and most riveting solo performer I’ve ever seen.” STEVE EARLE “An effortless masterclass in emotionally effecting Americana”.

Progressive rock bent with a considerable amount of rock 'n' roll gospel
soul!
.Sanctuary's virtuosity is undeniable, and every song displays each
member's considerable talents
The album is abundant with soaring and passionate vocal arrangements that are
carried on high by the lively interplay of Norm Weinberg's percussive flurries as
they weave their way through a tapestry of flutes, strings, and guitars. Deeply
resonant keyboards set the foundation for the band's sound, and in fitting, albeit
unsuspecting, fashion, it is Eric Bikales' flute playing that shepherds the listener
through the album.
Beginning with "All In My Dreams," the flute's light and colorful timbre captures the
ear, serving as a clarion call for all to follow and creating moments of majesty, as
music and message seamlessly transform into one. Sanctuary's interpretations
of Yes's "Time And A Word" and Edgar Winter's "Winter's Dream" are not mere
covers. They are bright and bold musical statements, refusals to submit to the
negativity of the times. Their unique take on these compositions, as well as their
own, provides the kind of bright eyed anthems their generation's voice needed to
compete against the backdrop of war and social upheaval dominating the
headlines.

Strut and Art Yard present the culmination of a 5-year project researching the archives of author, DJ and activist John Sinclair with the first ever retrospective of the influential Detroit Artists Workshop spanning 1965 to 1978. This first compilation of Detroit Artists Workshop is a revelation for any fan of jazz, featuring previously unreleased recordings by Byrd, Moore, English, Woodard, Bennie Maupin and Teddy Harris accompanied by extensive sleeve notes from John Sinclair, Robin Eichele and Herb Boyd. All tracks are remastered from the original tapes by Technology Works.

Originally released between 1995 and 1999 on his green imprint, 'green trax' is steve o'sullivan's signature take on minimal techno. The album on trip is a compilation of best works with several previously unreleased tracks that steve found on data tapes in his archive.

Emeralds _ musicians John Elliott, Steve Hauschildt, and Mark McGuire _ emerged from the rust-pocked, post-millennial Midwest drone/noise scene seemingly unable or uninterested in keeping up with themselves. Their proliferation of material was intimidating; mountains of improvised, home-recorded music were released on limited-edition tapes, CD-Rs, and split LPs. There is and was a sense that the Ohio trio was after something beyond physical mediums. By 2008, their sprawling live sets were a known can't-miss at any underground experimental event. Tiny Mix Tapes reviewed that year's appearance at No Fun Fest: "No one's sawtooths, sines, and other various waveforms were so beautifully sculpted and beamed out into the Plejades as Emeralds'." These basement dwellers were shaping meditative, psychedelic, arpeggiated electronic music in the veins of German kosmische forebears like Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine Dream. Made primarily with synthesizers and guitar, Emeralds' music possessed the same astral psyche with a home-crafted punk edge, a distant descendant of that pioneering era, and a bridge to someplace new, someplace scorched. Released on Aaron Dilloway's (Wolf Eyes, etc.) Hanson imprint, Solar Bridge was the first Emeralds album to receive any kind of proper distribution and represents the first attempt to archivally preserve their fluid craft. The first of an inimitable five-LP run before the band dissolved in 2013, Solar Bridge is a moment of glistening primacy that boots up a catalog and legacy that the heads still grapple with. Emeralds begin to make sense of it in the fall of 2022 with a remas- tered Solar Bridge LP release on Ghostly International. Emeralds materialized as a fully formed entity radiating cosmic potential. Their discography evolved and incorporated different qualities and vocabularies, but hearing where it started will always feel different. The density, the patience, and the sheer refinement presented on Solar Bridge legibly demonstrates how and why Emeralds has become a legendary part of the contemporary electronic music canon.

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

2022 Repress

LP+MP3 - Carefully ReEdited, 100% Original

Lady of Mine is the 1989 debut LP by self-made Italian-American Joe Tossini. An astoundingly honest, passionate record of cosmopolitan lounge music, he willed this charming suburban oddity into existence without any formal musical training.
Special remarks : LP with digital download card

Lady of Mine is the 1989 debut LP by self-made Italian-American Joe Tossini. An astoundingly honest, passionate record of cosmopolitan lounge music, he willed this charming suburban oddity into existence without any formal musical training.

Sicilian by birth, Tossini drifted around the world between Italy, Germany and Canada, before finally settling in New Jersey. After the passing of his mother and the breakdown of a second marriage, an anxious and depressed Tossini took to songwriting as a form of therapy, crafting disarmingly candid lyrics from his extraordinary life and loves. Whatever industry savvy or musical virtuosity he lacked was made up for by unflinching resourcefulness and infectious charisma. Befriending bandleader Peppino Lattanzi at local club The Rickshaw Inn, he was encouraged to animate his singular songs with an ambitious cast of 9 players and 5 backing vocalists, sincerely credited as his Friends.

The Atlantic City basement sessions are a low budget, high romance testament to Tossini's character and the power of positive thinking. From the defiant, Casiotone samba of If I Should Fall In Love, to Wild Dream's dizzying escapism and the native tongue croons of Sulla Luna and Sincerita, Lady Of Mine hums with the inimitable magic of a true original. Piercing the heart with an effectively sparse combination of humming keys, CompuRhythm drums, horn flourishes and backing divas, ample room was left for Tossini to frankly deliver his much-needed life lessons.

Underperforming commercially at the hands of short lived label IEA Records, Lady Of Mine has since earned a place in the outsider music canon. Recently peaking interest as a cornerstone of the Sky Girl compilation, the private press trades for inordinate sums, typically with no financial benefit to its creator. Lady Of Mine is now finally reissued on the artist's own terms via Joe Tossini Music, in partnership with Efficient Space, restored from original master tapes with unseen photos, extensive liner notes and Tossini's trademark wisdom.

Devoutly independent, Tossini has previously self-released the 2015 instrumental album When You Love Someone as well as two books - a new fiction novel The Devil In White and his autobiography The Account of My Life.

Clear Vinyl

Laila Sakini and Lucy Van’s sought after 2017 EP Figures resurfaces on a newly expanded and remastered edition, deploying taut poetry and creeping electro-pulses for an alchemical suite of slowly encroaching trip hop x dub-pop.

Long before releasing her slow-burn classic ‘Vivienne’ and last year’s compelling Princess Diana of Wales album, Laila Sakini was at work with acclaimed poet Lucy Van for an impromptu session for a local noise and spoken word night in Naarm, Australia. Those initial ideas marinated and eventually resulted in ‘Figures’ - an EP that was originally released on tape via Purely Physical Teeny Tapes, offseting Sakini’s minimal production against Van’s text, spoken in a carefully enunciated dialect lifted and wrapped around Sakini’s nocturnes. It’s the sort of thing that reminds us of Tin Man & Rashad Becker’s ‘Wasteland’ sessions, fused with the spirit of the contemporary Naarm/Melbourne scene.

For all those references, Sakini and Van’s songs are displaced from the contemporary wellspring too. The dusky blue waltz of opener ‘Those Who See’ comes off like a lighter Leslie Winer or melodic, early AFX, as Van dryly intones “...all my enemies in an orgy, of IQ to body ratio,” while ‘Deep End’ sees them nudge into more claustrophobic introspection, before shoring up a dank sort of trip hop sleaze with the title song, slithering with a similar energy to early 90’s Autechre as the narration echoes to a blur.

The three previously unreleased songs flesh out the release into the full album it always should have been, cut of equally rare, hand-spun fabric. With its post-Sleng Teng B-line and noctilucent chords, ‘What You Need’ feels like an Eski rhythmic bump accompanied by sub-aquatic synth bass, and the opalescent, gumtree-shaking shimmer ‘Rough Desires’ secretes its intimations with an absorbingly hypnagogic slow-burn that pools into the perfect curtain closer; ‘Trees Make Me High’.

“I think it’s a mistake to equate ‘perfection’ with flawlessness. To be human is to be perfectly flawed,” Johanna Warren observes while describing the joys of analog recording. Her new LP Lessons for Mutants was tracked live with a band to two inch tape—a revelatory new way of working for Warren. “Tape forces you to commit to a performance, eccentricities and all. The little glitches and anomalies that we’re tempted to ‘correct’ are often what make a thing magical.”

Lessons for Mutants is the prolific songwriter’s sixth solo LP and her second for Wax Nine/Carpark Records. The album’s running theme of metamorphosis (the title of the closing track, “Involvulus,” is Latin for “caterpillar”) reflects major changes in Warren’s personal life: after a decade of relentless touring, as the world was closing its borders, the American multi-instrumentalist unexpectedly found herself quarantining in rural Wales, where she’s now permanently homesteading.

Though tracking for the new album began in New York in 2018 in tandem with the sessions for 2020’s Chaotic Good, the majority of Lessons for Mutants was recorded in the UK surrounded by sheep, cows and a forager’s paradise of wild edible plants—a far cry from the urban jungle of LA that Warren had most recently called home. The body of work that emerged from this dramatic about-face is Warren’s most dynamic to date, shapeshifting seamlessly from searing punk screams to sparkly psych-folk soundscapes, from the bootleg ambivalence of Dylan’s Basement Tapes to cosmic stoner grooves reminiscent of Black Sabbath’s acoustic moments.

“Sometimes I can relate to myself/ I disassociate more than I’d like to, but what can you do?” Warren croons in “Tooth for a Tooth,” a wistful piano ballad that conjures the grainy romance of some smoke-filled 1940s jazz club. This kind of to-the-bone lyrical honesty has always been one of Warren’s strong suits, but these latest reflections are especially unflinching. Being forced to stop touring brought no shortage of self-examination for Warren, who quickly came to view her history on the road as an addiction from which she’s been detoxing. This sentiment dances through opening track “I’d Be Orange,” a drum-driven indie rock number replete with Beatles-esque male backing vocals: “Thirst for power, hunger for fame/ Always was a junkie for pain,” Warren confesses. This exploration of masochistic ambition and artistic martyrdom overflows into grunge anthem “Piscean Lover”: “It’s alright, we’re not ok/ We burn out not to fade away.”

“There’s this unspoken rule in modern music—modern life, really—that everything needs to be Auto-Tuned and ‘on the grid,’” Warren concludes. “This record is an act of resistance against that. There’s beauty and power in our aberrations, if we can embrace them.”

First released in the summer of 1966, ‘Yardbirds’ (or ‘Roger The Engineer’ as it became known’) showcases the
Yardbirds at the peak of their powers. Featuring the classic line-up of Jeff Beck, Keith Relf, Jim McCarty, Chris Dreja,
and Paul Samwell-Smith, the group explored explosive new sonic territories, pushing their blues-rock sound into the
realms of the avant-garde, psychedelia and Indian music.
• This new edition has been expertly cut from the original stereo tapes using precision half-speed mastering by
Cicely Balston at AIR Mastering.
• Half-speed mastering is a vinyl cutting technique that improves groove accuracy and transient information creating
an incredibly detailed stereo image with a natural high frequency response.
• Pressed on 180g heavyweight vinyl, featuring an obi strip and housed in a poly-lined inner sleeve. Also includes a
4-page booklet with extensive liner notes by David French based on interviews with Jimmy Page, Paul SamwellSmith, Jim McCarty and Simon Napier-Bell.

(Extended Reissue)

Double vinyl LP | Extended reissue
All tracks remastered from the original master tapes.

And here it is! For the first time ever, Zoo Folle in its full, extended glory.
This double LP contains both the soundtrack as released in 1974 (sides A and B) and previously unreleased gems (sides C and D).

Back in 2016 we put out the first official reissue of Zoo Folle. It sold out in a matter of months, leaving many vinyl collectors hungry for more. Quite serendipitously, the following year we found ourselves digging through Giuliano Sorgini's personal archives to prepare what would become Africa Oscura and stumbled upon a few mysterious reels that could be traced back to Zoo Folle. Imagine our joy when we realized that they contained the complete recording sessions of the original soundtrack, including unreleased material and never-before heard alternate versions! It was a no-brainer to start planning this extended reissue.

Already a phenomenon among collectors and experts, not only does Zoo Folle it keep winning more and more recognition, but, together with The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue and Under Pompelmo, it has established Sorgini as one of the great Italian composers of his generation.

And this is no coincidence. Zoo Folle is Sorgini's most committed and personal work. It reflects at once his beliefs as an animal rightist and his deep friendship with TV director and long-time collaborator Riccardo Fellini (brother of La Dolce Vita director Federico). It was Fellini himself who asked Sorgini to score his documentary on the living conditions of animals in zoos in Western metropolises (Rome, London and Paris in particular).

Originally broadcast by RAI in three primetime episodes, Fellini's exposé sharply contrasts the lives of caged animals with the freedom they experience in nature and wildlife reserves such as the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, Africa.

For his part, Sorgini offers perhaps his grandest score ever – a magnificent, multifaceted soundtrack that brings together a variety of instruments and the best musicians available at the time, from the lavish string orchestra recorded at the Fono Roma studios (a dream come true for someone who had not penetrated the inner circle of A-list composers like Morricone), to the angelic voice of Edda Dell'Orso, who conveys the sweetness and melancholy of the African sunset in Red, Old Skies.

Also performing on the soundtrack are exquisite soloists – all long-time friends of the composer. Nino Rapicavoli, for instance, whose flute adds a magical touch to the psycho-funk of Mad Town and the groove of Slaves, as well as Enzo Restuccia, whose afro-tribal percussions have made Ultima caccia a legendary track especially among lovers of Balearic grooves, and Enrico Ciacci, whose classical guitar soars beautifully over the nostalgic and poignant Chains. Not to mention the fact that Sorgini himself laid down the foundation tracks for the album in the small studio he had in the Prati neighbourhood in Rome, playing the piano, drums and several synthesizers.

So, what are you waiting for? Get your turntables ready for the full version of Amboseli (14 minutes of sheer bliss versus less than 6 in the original record) and for stunning, previously unreleased alternate versions of many other themes composed by Sorgini to celebrate the beauty of the savannah.

Mike Maurro is back at it. Taking the keys to the Philadelphia International Records vault and plucking out two certified classics The O'Jays - I Love Music and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes feat. Teddy Pendergrass - Wake Up Everybody to give them a little Maurro re-edit magic.

Officially licensed and taken from the master tapes, Maurro extends each track in all the right places, looping sections up, echoing elements and keeping everyone calling out for more. Uplifting music for the soul, given a new lease of life.

They say: "Contemporary synthesizer sounds illustrating wide open space activities, environment and research."

We say: Panoramic proto-techno underwater-electro library dynamite.

One of the hardest pulls on the seminal Coloursound, Open Space Motion (Underscores) isn't just regarded as one of the best releases from library-funk overlord Klaus Weiss. It's one of the very best library records ever.

As cult as it gets when it comes to library music, the Klaus Weiss sound was built on top of sometimes funky, sometimes frenetic, but always hard-hitting drums. AND YET! Open Space Motion departs from his drum-heavy approach by being completely...BEATLESS! That's right, the virtuoso beat smith, Mr "drumcrazy of Deutschland", a man known for snapping necks at will, crafted one of the most horizontally sumptuous, elegantly sweeping electronic masterpieces, sans-drums, a good decade before chill-out rooms became a thing. It features organic instruments married to pulsing synth bass atop brilliantly subdued yet irresistibly funky percussion. Possessing a very special vibe, that's at once futuristic yet cinematic, it overflows with atmosphere.

The highlights - unsurprisingly - are many. The very first track - the unstoppable "Wide Open Space Motion" - is a sinister, string-fried electro bomb that rides an unrelenting bass loop. "Incessant Efforts" is more reflective, with pastoral yet probing flutes atop strutting synth chords and head-nod percussion that really swings. The heavenly, uber-kosmiche "Pink Sails" hovers over swirling neon-synthy-strings and yet more unobtrusive percussion. The beautiful "Transiency" is a dramatic piano-led underscore, its creeping unease created by patient strings, unhurried percussion and some wonderfully strident keys. "Driving Sequences" is perhaps the key tune here, and if the Detroit crew weren't listening to this staggering piece then, well, imagine if they *were*.

The bubbling rhythms of "Southern Mentality", at first ominous, give way to a more optimistic vibe as the movement progresses. The lush, gorgeous "Bows" is deep-sea slow-motion magic whilst the bright-eyed "Outset" feels as fresh as the dawn, and no less beautiful. How these tracks haven't been gobbled up by sample-driven producers is beyond us. Equally calming is the sweeping majesty of "Constellation", again conjuring images of being at one with and fully beguiled by the wonders of nature, of space, of underwater worlds. "Changing Directions" is another fidgety, propulsive non-Detroit beatless bomb.

As with all our library music re-issues, the audio for Open Space Motion comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. Richard Robinson has brought the original Coloursound sleeve back to life in all its metallic silver glory.

Diamond Head are of seminal importance to heavy metal music, and their debut album Lightning To The Nations is a key influence on the genre. Silver Lining Music is therefore proud to present Lightning To The Nations (The White Album) Remastered 2021, the ultimate version of this ultimate album, featuring not only the original album from ¼ inch master tapes discovered in founder Brian Tatler’s archives, but also alternative mixes of classic cuts “Lightning To The Nations”, “The Prince”, “Sucking My Love” , “Am I Evil?” and “Sweet And Innocent” never publicly released (or heard) before. There is also brand-new cover artwork based on an idea Brian Tatler had to show a character referred to as ‘The Lightning God’.

The original tapes were first quite literally baked (a process which allows degraded tape to be returned to playable quality), then restored and digitized before Diamond Head frontman Rasmus ‘Ras’ Bom Andersen remastered the tracks, ending up with a pristine edition of the original recordings. The alternative mixes, pure treasure for all fans of both Diamond Head and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, are supplemented by a set of bonus tracks originally recorded in 1980s, and rounding-out this ultimate edition are a set of deep and detailed notes on both the era and each song by Brian Tatler.

Lightning To The Nations (The White Album) Remastered 2021, will be released as a double CD, a deluxe 180 gms gatefold triple-vinyl edition containing the original album remastered, the lost mixes and the bonus tracks. There will also be a single vinyl edition of just the remastered album, also on 180 gms.

“We wrote instinctively,” says Brian Tatler in his notes, “we had an undeniably unique sound. Four young lads, each with an element that, when combined, produced an alloy that was our own heavy metal sound.” Lighting To The Nations (The White Album) remains an indispensable alloy for any set of self-respecting

Diamond Head are of seminal importance to heavy metal music, and their debut album Lightning To The Nations is a key influence on the genre. Silver Lining Music is therefore proud to present Lightning To The Nations (The White Album) Remastered 2021, the ultimate version of this ultimate album, featuring not only the original album from ¼ inch master tapes discovered in founder Brian Tatler’s archives, but also alternative mixes of classic cuts “Lightning To The Nations”, “The Prince”, “Sucking My Love” , “Am I Evil?” and “Sweet And Innocent” never publicly released (or heard) before. There is also brand-new cover artwork based on an idea Brian Tatler had to show a character referred to as ‘The Lightning God’.

The original tapes were first quite literally baked (a process which allows degraded tape to be returned to playable quality), then restored and digitized before Diamond Head frontman Rasmus ‘Ras’ Bom Andersen remastered the tracks, ending up with a pristine edition of the original recordings. The alternative mixes, pure treasure for all fans of both Diamond Head and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, are supplemented by a set of bonus tracks originally recorded in 1980s, and rounding-out this ultimate edition are a set of deep and detailed notes on both the era and each song by Brian Tatler.

Lightning To The Nations (The White Album) [Remastered 2021], will be released as a double CD, a deluxe 180 gms gatefold triple-vinyl edition containing the original album remastered, the lost mixes and the bonus tracks. There will also be a single vinyl edition of just the remastered album, also on 180 gms.

“We wrote instinctively,” says Brian Tatler in his notes, “we had an undeniably unique sound. Four young lads, each with an element that, when combined, produced an alloy that was our own heavy metal sound.” Lighting To The Nations (The White Album) remains an indispensable alloy for any set of self-respecting

Emeralds _ musicians John Elliott, Steve Hauschildt, and Mark McGuire _ emerged from the rust-pocked, post-millennial Midwest drone/noise scene seemingly unable or uninterested in keeping up with themselves. Their proliferation of material was intimidating; mountains of improvised, home-recorded music were released on limited-edition tapes, CD-Rs, and split LPs. There is and was a sense that the Ohio trio was after something beyond physical mediums. By 2008, their sprawling live sets were a known can't-miss at any underground experimental event. Tiny Mix Tapes reviewed that year's appearance at No Fun Fest: "No one's sawtooths, sines, and other various waveforms were so beautifully sculpted and beamed out into the Plejades as Emeralds'." These basement dwellers were shaping meditative, psychedelic, arpeggiated electronic music in the veins of German kosmische forebears like Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine Dream. Made primarily with synthesizers and guitar, Emeralds' music possessed the same astral psyche with a home-crafted punk edge, a distant descendant of that pioneering era, and a bridge to someplace new, someplace scorched. Released on Aaron Dilloway's (Wolf Eyes, etc.) Hanson imprint, Solar Bridge was the first Emeralds album to receive any kind of proper distribution and represents the first attempt to archivally preserve their fluid craft. The first of an inimitable five-LP run before the band dissolved in 2013, Solar Bridge is a moment of glistening primacy that boots up a catalog and legacy that the heads still grapple with. Emeralds begin to make sense of it in the fall of 2022 with a remas- tered Solar Bridge LP release on Ghostly International. Emeralds materialized as a fully formed entity radiating cosmic potential. Their discography evolved and incorporated different qualities and vocabularies, but hearing where it started will always feel different. The density, the patience, and the sheer refinement presented on Solar Bridge legibly demonstrates how and why Emeralds has become a legendary part of the contemporary electronic music canon.

For nearly 10 years, there's been one address in Tel Aviv where people
know they can find pure, fiery musical energy: TIGRIS - And with UTRY,
we've collected all the band's tightest grooves and most exciting
melodies on one career-spanning compilation
It's a Raw Tapes celebration; consider it our gift to you - nine party- starting
polyrhythmic tunes that melt down Senegalese percussion, East African tezeta
jazz, swirling psychedelic keys and surf guitar into a potent brew. Keyboardist
Roei Hermon, percussionist Oded Aloni, bassist Amir Sadot, guitarist Ilan Smilan
and drummer Itamar Katzir first assembled their musical vision in an Ethiopian
restaurant in Tel Aviv, and they've been diving head-first into electrifying grooves
ever since. On "UTRY," you'll vibe with their finest cuts, pulled from TIGRIS's three
LPs. It's your own tailor-made house party playlist. Just don't be surprised when
the party spins out of control.

Soma proudly presents Functional Designs, the latest collection of nocturnal environments from Deepchord, marking his first full length album release on Soma in 5 years. The enigmatic Detroit based producer once again transports us into his sonic realm via night-walks through numerous cities before being transmuted into aural excellence through field recordings, holographic synth tones, cosmic sounds and the hiss of electric wires. All swimming around in filtered 4/4 beats and subterranean basslines. The album is a perfect example of electroacoustic techno transmitted from undisclosed locations, the amalgamation of swirling tapestries of sound, deeper than night and lifeforms moving around underneath the grid.

The album glistens into existence with the beatless Amber breathing life into the project before the eventide of Darkness Falls offers a beautifully subtle and contemplative atmosphere. The guiding light of Transit Systems continues to offer up melancholy with echoing percussion and drifting soundscapes. The highly processed acoustics of Strangers brings a sense of intrigue to the album's journey as Modell works in the most percussive track so far. Panacast is exotic dub techno at it's finest, with warping and perfectly crafted synth work building gently over the top of sub heavy beats, glued perfectly together by the hiss of the collected found-sounds. In a slight rise in tempo, Cloudsat, makes a journey skyward, collecting mood and feelings from high altitude with its emotive synth work. The reverberating halls of Pressure again work as a testament to Modell's sonic crafting - honing in on specific artefacts from his field recordings, imbuing them with deeper purpose. The perfectly titled Ebb and Flow drifts effortlessly on a tide of evolving, blissful sound waves crashing to shore as each one overlaps the other. Beginning the descent into the final part of the album, you begin your ride across a cosmic plain, lit by the glistening and ethereal Sun. The meditative Memories opens a conduit to other realms as the album closes out with the elysian melodies of Drassanes.

Deepchord once again proves he is a producer like no other. A true sonic sculptor who uses his real world experience to create vast, unparalleled soundscapes that captivate and enthral the listener.

Deluxe Edition

We’re proud to present an extravagant 51st anniversary edition of Wigwam’s game-changing prog rock classic Fairyport. What began as a projected 50th anniversary release turned into a 51st due to the current manufacturing queues for vinyl. To create the anniversary package we teamed up with Jukka Gustavson and went through a plethora of material. Gustavson hand-picked the best possible bonus materials. The legendary jam Rave-up For The Roadies, featuring Jukka Tolonen, was located in its original 36 minute form. The truncated 17-minute version is the closing number of Fairyport, but here the full version received an entire LP. Most original reels to Fairyport are lost, but we salvaged a few demo session tapes plus some eight track reels of the album’s work-in-progress stage. Four tracks were chosen by Gustavson to be added here. It should be noted that the two album session tracks feature the original violin parts, which were left off the final product. All material was mixed from the original reels by Risto Hemmi at Finnvox. The box set also features a live LP. For this Gustavson picked material from a show the band played in Stockholm while working on the album’s demo sessions. There’s an earliest existing version of Losing Hold plus a 15-minute medley of several tracks. Also included is a 20-minute live set from the first ever Ruisrock in 1970, a couple of months before the band entered the studio. Here Wigwam perform three classics by The Band. The vinyl box set is limited to 1000 copies. All material has been remastered at Finnvox by Pauli Saastamoinen in 2022.