50th Anniversary edition of the legendary Eduardo Bort album, the crown jewel of Spanish hard-prog and psychedelic hard-rock from the '70s. Recorded between 1973 and 1974 and released in 1975 as part of Movieplay's legendary Gong series, Eduardo Bort's debut stands as one of the most visionary and legendary works in the birth of Spanish progressive rock. Conceived in Valencia after years of performing across Europe and enduring several failed recording attempts, Bort set out to create, without compromise or commercial restraint, an album that fused fantastic literature, instrumental virtuosity, and sonic experimentation. Inspired by the dreamlike worlds of H. P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, the Valencian musician composed a conceptual suite based on the imaginary river Yann, weaving together passages of pure prog-rock, psychedelia, hard-rock, and cosmic poetry. He surrounded himself with an exceptional band -- José Soriano, Marino Hernández, Vicente Alcañiz, and Fony -- with whom he recorded the complex demos that would eventually shape the album. The sessions at Audiofilm Studios in Madrid, featuring dazzling production and a technical arsenal previously unheard of in Spain (Mellotron, Moog, Hammond organ, Rhodes piano), resulted in a sound so advanced that no local label knew what to do with it. Even EMI UK, deeply impressed by the recording, offered to release it internationally -- but the project was never finalized. Eventually, the album appeared quietly in 1975 through Movieplay, though over time it has come to be recognized worldwide as an absolute masterpiece of progressive and psychedelic rock. Featuring original artwork in gatefold sleeve. Sourced from the original masters. Includes insert with detailed liner notes (Spanish only) and photos.
Hard psychedelic bluesy rock with heavy fuzz-wah guitar by these legends from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, the first band to perform live with a boa constrictor, before Alice Cooper. Privately pressed in 1972, Everlasting Tributes was really a collection of studio tapes recorded in 1968/1969. Born in the summer of 1965 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, The Finchley Boys carved out their place as one of the Midwest's most electrifying and unpredictable rock bands. Starting with British Invasion covers (Yardbirds, Kinks, Animals, Stones), the group quickly moved into originals like "Only Me" and "Hooked," setting them apart from the pack. By 1967, they were on the road full-time -- too young to drink but old enough to blow the doors off every bar from Illinois to Iowa. A fateful merger with local favorites Somebody Groovy led to the definitive Finchley lineup: George Faber (vocals, harp), Garrett Oostdyk (guitar), Larry "Tabe" Tabeling (bass), and J. Michael Powers (drums). Named after a gang mentioned on a Kinks album, the Finchleys became infamous for their wild stage shows, psychedelic blues riffs, and outrageous theatrics -- including a real live boa constrictor on stage. They shared bills with legends like The Byrds, B.B. King, Canned Heat, MC5, Iggy & The Stooges, The Faces, and John Mayall, and were hailed as one of the Midwest's most exciting live acts. Their defining moment came at The Kickapoo Creek Rock Festival (1970) -- a "mini-Woodstock" where their explosive set left tens of thousands of fans in awe and the Chicago Sun-Times proclaiming them festival standouts. Though mainstream fame eluded them, their recordings at Golden Voice Studios and Chess Studios captured their raw power and unique sound. These sessions became the cult-classic 1972 LP Everlasting Tributes -- a roaring mix of heavy blues, hard-psych and proto-punk energy that continues to inspire collectors and fans worldwide. Featuring original artwork in hard cardboard sleeve plus OBI. Ultimate reissue of this classic US hard-psych album including two killer tracks that were left off of the original tracklist. Includes insert with detailed liner notes and photos/memorabilia. Sourced from the original masters.
Pomegranates -- Nicolás Jaar's unofficial/alternative soundtrack to Sergei Parajanov's 1969 film The Color of Pomegranates -- was first released in 2015, and to highlight the 10-year anniversary Other People is reissuing the album on vinyl, with the first edition (a collaboration with the label Mana) having long been out of print. Longer and slower-releasing than his other albums, Pomegranates often parallels the cinematic epic on which it's based, with ideas pursued over long timelines and across dark landscapes, assembling elements and moods from the aesthetic and folkloric landscapes of Armenia. Jaar's identity is perceived within this, folding in his heritage as Palestinian and Chilean as he attempts to build a musical architecture outwards that frames as much of the mess and sprawl of life as possible; using a language that investigates the movement and fluctuation of his own artistic career and character similarly to the film's tracing of the coming of age of the young poet, Sayat-Nova. At times, Pomegranates feels profoundly intimate, as though looking through the archive of a friend's music and discovering the accent and common currency that lives within each of these tracks. Much of Jaar's most elegant and touching melodic work is nestled here, its power residing in its simplicity and willingness to speak to the heart and not the mind of the listener. In the text document included in the first freely distributed version of the album in 2015, Jaar writes that the album was conceived during a moment of change, and that the pomegranate became an icon that heralded that passage of time. The physical publication of Pomegranates closes one door whilst opening another, keeping promises and marking a significant point in the career of an artist who restlessly reinvents himself, with a document that illustrates a common language of lyricism, freedom, and emotional resonance linking his many paths and projects.
Psychedelic rock holy grail. Hailing from Tel Aviv, the Churchills blended Anglo-American psychedelia with Middle Eastern motifs. The band was in fact a cosmopolitan collective: vocalist Stan Solomon was Canadian, guitarist Robb Huxley came from England, while the rest of the group -- Haim Romano on guitar and mandolin, Michael 'Miki' Gavrielov on bass, and Ami Trebich on drums -- were all from Israel. Released in 1969, Churchills can be considered the first truly psychedelic rock album produced and released in Israel during the 1960s. At a time when Israeli music was dominated by folk and pop, the Churchills' English-language, fuzz-drenched, mind-bending sound and studio experimentation was wildly ahead of its time. Impossible to find in its original form, Guerssen presents a new vinyl reissue of such legendary album, sourced from the original master tapes. Includes eight-page insert with detailed liner notes by Mike Stax with input by original member Robb Huxley and rare photos.
VA
Going Back to Sleep... LP
Going back to sleep... is a lovingly gathered suite of windswept, heart-bursting contemporary DIY indie-pop and folk including new songs by Carla dal Forno, The Reds, Pinks and Purples, Lewsberg-related duo The Hobknobs and Rat Columns, next to luminaries and newcomers Daily Toll, Who Cares?, The Lewers, The Sprigs, Drunk Elk, I Can I Can't, The Gabys, and Chateau. A beautiful contemporary companion of I Won't Have To Think About You (2017). Focused on Australian artists predominantly recording and performing in intimate spaces, the compilation's sentiment extends to likeminded artists around the world. A feeling of introspection that seems impossible to achieve when recording for anyone but yourself. A trip through the wonderfully diverse international pop underground, or more simply, a group of music makers performing on A Colourful Storm's imaginary stage.
Acid Worlds Part One marks the beginning of Tin Man's new series exploring the dimensions of collaborative acid. The EP features contributions from Susi Saisa (w/ Jussi-Pekka), John Tejada, Romans (w/ Gunnar Haslam), and Rolling Ones.
LP version. By 1973, Faust had already rewired the circuits of German rock. Their first two albums had exploded traditional song form with a joyous disregard for continuity, coherence, or commercial appeal. The Faust Tapes, released earlier that year for 49p as a surreal sampler of their cut-and-paste genius, had earned them a curious British audience and the indulgence of Virgin Records. For a brief moment, it seemed as though Faust might finally play the game, just a little. What emerged instead was Faust IV, their most paradoxical work: accessible enough to lure listeners in, complex enough to keep them guessing. For the first time, the band left the rustic headquarters in Wümme, a former schoolhouse in rural Lower Saxony, stuffed with cabling, hand-built electronics, and limitless weed, and entered the professional confines of The Manor, Virgin's newly christened studio in Oxfordshire. Gone was the radical freedom of the commune. In its place: deadlines, engineers, and a rapidly dwindling budget. The sessions stretched on and grew increasingly fraught, yielding a mixture of fresh material and fragments drawn in from earlier experiments in Wümme. Faust IV is the result: part studio artefact, part salvage operation, part séance. Faust IV is uneven, restless, and full of contradictions, and that's exactly what makes it compelling. Its rough edges and loose threads sit right alongside moments of real focus, giving the sense of a band following ideas wherever they lead. Rather than polish things smooth, Faust left the seams visible, and the result feels all the more vital for it. Nearly half a century on, its spirit remains intact: mischievous, mysterious, and gloriously unfinished. If Faust had set out to build a new language, Faust IV shows them mid-sentence, trailing off, cracking jokes, then suddenly profound. Don't expect to follow the conversation, just keep listening.
2025 repress. 30 years old and sounding better than ever! The Growing Bin presents a vinyl reissue of Maim That Tune, the timeless downbeat album that many regard as Cobby & McSherry's best joint effort. Back on wax for its 30th birthday -- remastered with finesse by master Sergey Luginin -- it will blow the minds of those who have listened to it for hundreds of times and those who have the pleasure to be "At Home In Space" for the first time.
2025 restock. Continuing their ongoing series of reissues of music by Derek Bailey, Honest Jon's Records present a first vinyl reissue of Aida, originally released on the guitarist's own Incus label in 1980. Expanded for this release, the present version of this masterwork adds two hitherto unreleased gems recorded solo for Charles Fox's Radio 3 program Jazz in Britain, in the same few months of 1980 as the stunning original performances. The phrase "in the moment" is often bandied about with reference to free improvisation, and indeed there's no better way to describe Derek Bailey's playing. The acoustic guitar is notoriously lacking in natural reverberation -- notes barely hang in the air for a couple of seconds before they disappear -- which explains the almost non-stop flow of new material in these stellar performances. Bailey knew from one split-second to the next exactly where to find the same pitch on different strings, either as a stopped tone or a ringing harmonic, and there's never a note out of place. "He who kisses the joy as it flies," in the words of William Blake, "lives in eternity's sunrise" -- and this music is forever in the moment, constantly active but never gabby, kissing the joy. One of the special pleasures of the BBC set is the guitarist's own laconic commentary, a deliciously deadpan description of what he's doing while he's doing it. "I like to think of it -- as a kind of music" -- and the interaction between words and music is a particular delight. "You may have noticed a certain lack of variety," he quips, while unleashing a furiously complex volley. Is it a coincidence that the final seconds recall the famous cycling fifths of the coda to Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight"? Surely not; Bailey, like Monk, was a note man par excellence; they're both still alive and well in eternity's sunrise.
K-LONE
sorry I thought you were someone else 2LP
An intimate, mesmerizing record about loss and change, sorry i thought you were someone else is K-LONE's most personal album to date and his debut release on Incienso. Made after his father's passing, the album became a place of escape and reflection. It's a warm, hypnotic space to drift within.
HAPPY MONDAYS
The Factory Singles (Best Of) (Yellow & Magenta Vinyl) 2LP
Double LP version. Yellow and magenta color vinyl. 2025-2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the Happy Mondays, a milestone celebration of one of Britain's most iconic and era-defining bands. To celebrate, London Records presents a series of special anniversary releases, beginning with a fully remastered brand-new compilation: The Factory Singles. This definitive collection captures the band's ground-breaking output from 1985-1992, celebrating their pivotal role in shaping UK music culture. Classic remixes from Paul Oakenfold, Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley and Jon Carter make up bonus tracks on the 2CD and 2LP. This campaign marks the beginning of an extensive celebration of the Happy Mondays' 40-year legacy, bringing their iconic sound to both devoted fans and new generations. 2LP version comes in 140gr black vinyl (LMS 1725594), and yellow/magenta vinyl (LMS 1725595) with 5mm spine sleeve, 2 white dust inner sleeves, and printed 12" insert.
2025 repress. Unissued recordings by this very loud power trio from San Francisco, modeled after Cream, Blue Cheer, or The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Including their fantastic studio demo from 1968 plus raw and wild live tracks from 1969. Boogie (or The Boogie) was probably the first hard-blues/proto-metal group that emerged from the San Francisco scene. This power-trio was formed by Barry "The Bee" Bastian (Canned Heat, Lee Michaels...) on guitar/vocals; John Barrett (The Rhythm Dukes) on bass, and Fuzzy John Oxendine (Roky Erickson & The Aliens, Jerry Miller Band...) on drums. Comrades of Moby Grape (who even let Boogie use their rehearsal space) and the Sons Of Champlin, they played at all the legendary venues (The Ark, Avalon, Fillmore...) sharing stage with bands like Buffalo Springfield, Quicksilver, Ace Of Cups, Flamin' Groovies, or Country Joe & The Fish. Their explosive show at the Sky River Rock Festival (August, 1968, the first outdoor multi-band Rock Festival held in the United States) to an audience of 150,000 people, is still remembered today. Sadly, their convulsed story, which includes undercover narcs and marijuana busts, left them with no record deal. But a studio demo -- recorded in 1968 at Pacific High Recorders -- including three tracks, "In Freak Town", "To Me" and a terrific, fuzzed out seven-minute-long cover of "Wade In The Water", plus some live recordings from 1969, survived. Previously available only as part of a private CD released by Barry Bastian, here's the first ever vinyl release. Hard cardboard sleeve; insert with rare photos and detailed liner notes by San Fran rock historian Bruno Ceriotti; includes download card with the full album plus three bonus tracks. "Arguably the greatest San Francisco's rock n' roll band of the '60s who never released anything" --Bruno Ceriotti.
2025 restock, reduced price. Reissue, originally released in 1970. Giovanni Tommaso is the greatest Italian jazz bassist and founder and member of the most important ever Italian jazz rock ensembles, the Perigeo band. He composed Indefinitive Atmosphere at the end of 1969, released a few months after in 1970 on Sermi label, and recorded it at RCA studios in Rome. Indefinitive Atmosphere represents a special album for him and for us as well, since it was his first album released as a sole composer/artist. The maestro dug in personal archive for Sonor Music Editions and finally found a copy of the original master tape containing part of the recordings. Besides the misspelled title "Indefinitive" instead of "Indefinite", adding to the legend here, this album was incredibly ahead of his time. The young maestro Tommaso played electric bass and contrabass in a studio ensemble with a strings section. Plenty of stunning jazz-funk, jazz-rock and free jazz tracks. The session is also known for including the legendary American jazz soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy on the track called "Steve", where he plays a sax solo. Full session restored from the original tapes found, and digitally remastered the sound for a greater sound experience.
2025 repress; R.I.P. Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant is a figure in techno history that needs little introduction. As a member of the Sandwell District collective and the label's art director he collaborated on works that were responsible for a global focal shift in the genre as their label adapted and challenged the paradigm of minimal techno, taking influence from other sources such as dub, post-punk, and even classical minimalism. But Mendez's relationship with music goes back much further than these seminal releases. With In Memoriam, Silent Servant's latest release on Tresor Records, Mendez writes a deeply personal memoir of a 30-plus year career spent exploring and absorbing the shadowy side of music; a carefully crafted elegy to people, places, and times past and the lasting effect they have on the present. Across the four tracks, Mendez pays tribute to the earliest Detroit techno and electro, the Belgian EBM movement and the wave music that followed, the monumental dub techno sound from Berlin, and the harder, abrasive sound of the UK at the turn of the last millennium; exploring and referencing the genres that informed his later work. Each track name gives a hint to the timeframe he is revisiting and re-contextualizing as the EP repurposes the styles that exerted an influence on him. This EP represents a pure distillation of Mendez's memories whilst also cementing his place in the current and future sound of 21st century techno.
2025 repress; originally released in 2020. The Sorcerers began working on a new album during the winter of 2018 and it was during the writing sessions for this album that the concept for the LP began to take shape. The name for the album was taken from the title of a National Geographic article read by bassist Neil Innes and was used as the starting point for the entire concept. The library music scene of the '60s and '70s has always been an intrinsic part of the sound of ATA Records and so it made perfect sense to envisage the album as a soundtrack, given the cinematic quality of The Sorcerers music. Each track was written with a particular scene in mind and the music was then shaped in the studio to best reflect the essence of that scene. Drums, bass and percussion provide the solid foundation onto which flutes, bass clarinets, xylophones, and vibraphones add the atmospheric and melodic counterpoint, deftly weaving between one another to conjure up images of the unforgiving environment of the dense jungle, unknown eyes watching the protagonists of the imagined film as they make their way towards their ultimate goal, their pursuit by unseen assailants, the arcane mysticism of undiscovered cargo cultists and the ancient ruins of long passed civilizations.
140gr vinyl. A surefire Salsoul classic and comfortably one of the label's finest moments, the self-titled LP from The Strangers was originally released in that golden year of 1983 and is one of the greatest albums of the post-disco era. It's one of Be With's favorite ever LPs and it's a complete honor to be giving it the reissue treatment. Still strangely overlooked but not for much longer, The Strangers contains flawless tracks with truly top tier production and includes the eternal Paradise Garage favorite "Step Out Of My Dream." The Strangers were a US electronic-funk studio concept group comprising Edward "Tree" Moore, Howard King, and Hubert Eaves III, all key members of Mtume and Gary Bartz NTU Troop and, in the case of Eaves, one half of D-Train. The album kicks off with the dope electro-funk of "Wanna Take Your Body" which features Gary Bartz on sax and becomes more sensational and irresistible the longer it plays. The wonky super-bomb "Let Me Take You Home" has a punk-funk, post-Prince feel, driving and delicate all at the same time while "Show Me How You Like It" is pure FUNK, the groove just pure fire. Side B is perfection. It kicks off with the NTS favorite "Love Rescue," a track so slick it positively SLAPS out the gate and, while it bangs throughout, the vocals and melodies elevate this to the status of EMOTIONAL POP. Next up, "Step Out Of My Dream" swaggers forth, the undisputed masterpiece that was huge with the London DJs and UK Soul fraternity; it's not hard to see why. It's a gliding, smooth, soulful piece of once-in-a-lifetime magic. The breezy "It's Too Late" is a perfect slow jam before this remarkable set is rounded out with the sickest proto-acid synth-drizzled jam, "Stimulation"; a perfect slab of '80s funk and a strutting vocoder-laced funk workout. Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possible quality at Record Industry in Holland.
So Far, so far out. By 1972, Faust had already dismantled the concept of a rock album. With their self-titled debut, they tore through convention with tape edits, abstract structures, and a scathing collage of cultural detritus. Its successor, recorded just six months later, was not a retreat from that radicalism, but its evolution. Instead of challenging form through outright fragmentation, the band now disguised their subversion in structures that almost, almost, resemble songs. But don't be fooled. This is still Faust: unpredictable, subversive, and unbound by convention. The circumstances surrounding the album's creation were no less unconventional than those of their debut. Faust were still ensconced in the converted schoolhouse in Wümme, Lower Saxony, and its improvised studio -- a riddle of cabling, tape and custom electronics. By this point, the band had grown more cohesive as a unit but remained steadfastly anti-commercial, despite the pleas of their label. Taken as a whole, So Far is less a linear progression from Faust's debut than a sideways leap into a parallel sonic dimension. Where the first album exploded rock from the inside out, So Far rearranges the wreckage into strange new shapes. There's a sly-humor here too, buried under the fuzz and tape edits, a knowing wink that these sonic detours aren't acts of nihilism, but of creation. Faust were building something. What, exactly, remains elusive, and still utterly intoxicating. Also available on black vinyl (BB 493LP) and blue vinyl (BB 493LTD-LP).
After two decades in the experimental music scenes of New York and Western Massachusetts, Wednesday Knudsen might be known equally as a sought-after improv collaborator and the vocalist and guitarist for the beloved long-running psych band Pigeons, as a member of the New England folk rock ensemble Stella Kola, or the psych kraut supergroup Weeping Bong Band. Atrium is Knudsen's fifth solo album, marking her rich recording history with a stunning masterwork. Channeling the "atmosphere of presence" alongside the legions of Éliane Radigue, Hiroshi Yoshimura, and Joanna Brouk, on Atrium, Knudsen plays it all -- alto saxophone, flute, guitar, synth, piano, autoharp, bass guitar, and vocals. Atrium's tracks are sculptural rather than ambient, with a release into the gorgeous hold of gravity that insists listeners don't escape or drift away. While conceived and recorded independently and at different moments over a two-year span, each piece on Atrium was shaped as an occasion, a space, a timbral architecture exposing and inviting presence. Each piece is an effort toward a minimalism meeting the pace of nature, without the need for geographic recognition. These hills don't impose on the listener, reverberating instead like an atrium to wherever and however you are. Atrium is the vital and expansive follow-up to Soft Focus: Volumes One (FTR 649LP) and Two (FTR 650LP) released in 2022. Developing her craft as a multi-instrumentalist since her youth, it took Knudsen nearly two decades to arrive at her own distilled beautiful sound that is disentangled from the fuzz guitar-haze of her pillar underground band Pigeons. Atrium opens with "Fair Aegis," a tone-scape that evokes the mystery of the green trees cathedral of the Taconic Mountains as it simultaneously offers a context and threshold to cross into the remarkable richness of the album. "Place of Dream" is the sound-portrait of a wonderful demi-daydream, an extremely brief, pleasant vision Knudsen experienced that would repeat itself, as if a spinning moment or a flickering, the spiral motion of certain plants as they grow, moving toward the places of their thriving. Other anchors include "Dear Life, Green Flame," the tremulous shape of life striving in first gear, the primal pulse seeking its cadence and the yes of breath. The track was recorded live, in one take, unplanned and improvised, unlike most tracks on the album which Knudsen intentionally shaped. As equally as "Atrium" is an experience of presence, it is music that reinforces the power of art as resistance. The songs distill attention in a language that Knudsen calls "the opening of the heart," reminding listeners that subsistence and community results from their own actions and engagement with their exterior.
2025 repress; LP version. "King Jammy breathes new life into a top draw selection of Cool Ruler Classics on this highest upgrade to Gregory Isaacs' Kingston 11 catalog. Making the journey down to Jammy's warehouse HQ to lock down the safest combinations is an A-list selection of Jamaica's finest including Sean Paul, Shaggy, Alborosie, Jesse Royal, Bounty Killer, Jr. Reid, and Ras Shiloh."
"In 1964, Martin Denny looked beyond the Hawaiian and Asian influences of his previous records to find another place to plant his umbrella in the sand, as well as in your drink: the sounds of Latin America. With this new sound to hang his exciting arrangements on, Latin Village has long been considered one of Denny's high-water marks, and Jackpot is thrilled to have this long-cherished LP back in print. Sourced from the master tapes. First time on vinyl since the original release in 1964. Featuring "The Girl From Ipanema" and "Ho-Ba-La-La". Pressed on limited floral swirl color vinyl."
Clear vinyl. FYC40 celebrates 40 years of Fine Young Cannibals, the British trio who stormed the global music scene in the mid-to-late '80s. Their journey began with the soulful, new wave energy of their 1985 debut Fine Young Cannibals, before reaching new heights with 1989's The Raw & The Cooked, a worldwide smash that fused rock, funk, and house, all powered by Roland Gift's unmistakable voice. Across their career, the band scored eight UK Top 40 hits, two U.S. Billboard #1 singles, multiple Grammy nominations, and two BRIT Awards -- cementing their place in pop history. The Raw & The Cooked delivered enduring anthems like "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing," both U.S. chart-toppers whose influence still resonates today, from hit shows like The Bear to Chanel campaign featuring Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK's Jennie. Includes new artwork and new liner notes. Fully remastered.
DURUTTI COLUMN
The Return Of The Durutti Column (45th Anniversary Edition) LP
LP version. Alongside Joy Division, The Durutti Column were amongst the first artists to be released by Factory Records. Their debut album, produced by Martin Hannett, showcased the filigree guitar work of Vini Reilly, awash with reverb and early experiments with synthesizers. It would be a first album of a five-decade career, in which The Durutti Column would quietly emerge as one of the most influential acts from the Manchester scene and beyond. To celebrate the album's 45th anniversary, London Records revisits the album with new editions, with audio sourced and remastered from the original tapes for the first time since 1980, with vinyl cut at half speed. LP version includes restored "second edition" artwork with textured sleeve. Liner notes by The Durutti Column/Factory Records expert James Nice.
Seeking out the inspirational intersection between free improvisation, rave and ancient mysticism, Plants Heal deliver an album of kaleidoscopic, organic beatdowns to Quindi. Plants Heal is a collaborative project between Dan Nicholls on synths, Dave De Rose on drums and Lou Zon (aka Louise Boer) on visuals. The roots of the project are entwined with Dan and Lou's London-based event Free Movements, which began in 2018 to explore how instrumental music could merge with live electronics and DJ sets. From the tentative steps of their first collaborations, Dan and Dave coalesced Plants Heal as a more pronounced project with Lou's live visuals, culminating in a first self-released album in 2021 and since organically fed and watered through continued performances across adventurous festivals and intimate club spaces. The trio opted to pour this energy into two days of studio sessions at Sonic Playground Studios in Athens, maintaining their unplanned approach and letting the music and visuals unfold in the moment. The end result is Forest Dwellers, a sincere document of truly free music that uses the rhythmic structure of dance and trance music as a springboard into heightened consciousness. Throughout the album you can hear hints of the familiar -- dub techno shimmers, trip hop boom-bap, kosmische momentum, snarling bass modulation, new age ambience and even the odd sizzle of disco. But none of these references are explicit, and they weave in and out of less placeable expressions deeply bedded into Dan and Dave's sonic practices. The end result is a swirling tapestry of unspooling groove, wide open and agile enough to shift gears mid-flow -- just as comfortable letting the propulsion melt away as locking into a four-to-the-floor throwdown. Lou's visual practice is an intrinsic part of the project. During performances she improvises with analogue footage from her library run through video mixers and synthesizers, focused on medicinal plants such as yarrow, hawthorn, nettle and thistle. All those plants feature in processed form on the cover of the record, which was designed in collaboration with Lou's brother Arthur Boer. Meanwhile, Lou recorded additional footage in Athens during the recording sessions to feed into the continued cycle of the project's live evolution.
2x Gold CDs (glass-mastered). Includes hardbound libretto book (88 pages). Sean McCann presents The Leopard, an opera. Dialog, music, and elaborate sound design fold into a narrative fantasy about self-cannibalization and transformation. Written and recorded over five years, this is McCann's first album since 2019's Puck (R 069LP) and his first opera. The opera is voiced by composer Martin Bresnick, artist Nour Mobarak, musician Max Eilbacher (Horse Lords), and voice actors David George and Krystel Abimeri. McCann performed and recorded most of the music himself, meticulously editing every sound. The opera opens with an ornate musical overture before plunging into a surreal tableau: characters on a sailboat cooking and consuming themselves over a makeshift stove. Over the course of eight scenes, the plot continually dissolves and recombines, inducing a narcotic dreamstate. The opera is overseen by Copy, a chimerical figure who both guides and distorts the plot. Four wordless interludes feature Copy in a greenhouse, playing old Victrola records while pruning floral incarnations of each persona. One hears screaming silverware, sprays of watering cans, a thunderstorm, and the baking of each character into a loaf of bread. Musical flourishes appear, such as Barbara Strozzi's devastating "Lagrime mie" (1659) which is performed in an empty library alongside a Gertrude Stein-esque spoken incantation read by Nour Mobarak. The opera closes with a grand coda; a haunting, elegiac work for violins and choir. The opera is accompanied by a book that contains the libretto along with unspoken texts and artwork. Each scene in the book contains a "Copy path," a kind of plot betrayal or text smear that beckons the listener to fall inside plot holes and uncover flickers of meaning for themselves. The Leopard navigates a new form that lays somewhere between radio-play, experimental opera, and dioramic film.
LP version. On "Cold Sweat," James Brown famously called to "give the drummer some." In 1974, Philadelphia vibraphonist Khan Jamal called to Give the Vibes Some, with superb results. Pianist and composer Jef Gilson's PALM label gave Jamal the platform he needed to deliver a thorough exploration of contemporary vibraphone. After launching PALM in 1973, Gilson quickly demonstrated that he would only produce records not found anywhere else. Give the Vibes Some, PALM number 10, was another confirmation of this guiding principle. Raised and based in Philadelphia, Khan Jamal took up the vibes in 1968, after two years in the army during which he was stationed in France and Germany. Decisively drawn to the instrument by the work of the Modern Jazz Quartet's Milt Jackson, Jamal studied under Philadelphia vibraphone legend Bill Lewis and soon made his debuts in the local underground. Early in 1972, Jamal made his first recording, with the Sounds of Liberation. The band attempted an original fusion of conga-heavy grooves with avant-garde jazz soloing. Saxophonist Byard Lancaster, an important figure in Jamal's development, contributed much of the solo work. Later in 1972, Jamal made his leader debut with Drum Dance to the Motherland, a reverb-drenched, never-to-be-replicated experiment with live sound processing. Both albums appeared on the tiny musician-run Dogtown label. "We couldn't get no play from nowhere. No gigs or recording sessions or anything. So I took off for Paris," Jamal recalled in a Cadence interview with Ken Weiss. "Within a few weeks, I had a few articles and I did a record date. It didn't make me feel good about America." That was in 1974, while Byard Lancaster was recording the music gathered on Souffle Continu's The Complete PALM Recordings, 1973-1974. Jamal's record date delivered Give the Vibes Some. At its core, it was an exploratory solo vibraphone album, even if two tracks added (through technological resourcefulness?) a très célèbre French drummer very much into Elvin Jones appearing under pseudonym for contractual reasons. Another track, for which Jamal switched to the vibes's wooden ancestor, the marimba, added young Texan trumpeter Clint Jackson III. The most notable article published on Jamal during this stay in France was a Jazz Magazine interview. Jamal's last word there were "The Creator has a master plan/drum dance to the motherland." "Give the vibes some" could be added to this programmatic statement.
PDQB
8 1/2 Bit Replays LP
Synaptic Cliffs presents pdqb together with six black belt gamers (PRZ, Noise&Noise, Galaxian, CEM3340, Dark Vektor, Mesak), each a legend in their own right. They don't just replay pdqb's 8 1/2 Bit album; they become it. Together, they embark on a journey through legendary worlds, creating a place filled with soundscapes and challenges that blur the line between music and game. They move with the rhythm of the music and face the challenges within, weaving their own stories into the fabric of the iconic work.
VA
The World Is Shaking: Cubanismo From The Congo, 1954-55 2LP
2025 restock; deluxe double LP version, in a beautiful gatefold sleeve. This is the fifth release in Honest Jon's series of albums exploring vintage recordings held in the EMI Hayes Archive. This album uncovers the dizzy beginnings of the golden age of African music zinging with the social and political ferment of the independence movement and anti-colonialism, after the Second World War and the daredevil origins of Congolese rumba -- the entire continent's most popular music in the '60s and '70s. The new music grew in concert with a burgeoning night life especially in the twin capitals of Leopoldville (today's Kinshasa) on the Belgian side, and Brazzaville on the French, where humming factories lured increasing numbers of rural Congolese with the offer of a steady, relatively well-paying job. The astonishing inventions of Europe and America also played an important role in the music's development. Traditional Congolese musicians began to master imported guitars and horns by mimicking what they heard. The jazz of Louis Armstrong and the ballads of European torch singers like Tino Rossi captured the imagination of the rapidly-expanding working class as well as the familiar-sounding music of Latin America. Local musicians swapped the Spanish of the originals for Congolese languages. In his version of "Peanut Vendor," included here, A.H. Depala replaces the seller's cry of "mani," or "peanut," with a lovelorn lament for a woman named "Moni." Depala went on to land a spot in the house-band of the prestigious Loningisa studio. Others failed to gain equivalent recognition, but their music was no less impressive. Listen to likembe (thumb-piano) player Boniface Koufidilia as he makes the transition from traditional to modern in the first few seconds of "Bino," which hits you with a vamping violin while he muses about death (including that of the popular Brazzaville musician Paul Kamba). Andre Denis and Albert Bongu both echo the sounds of palm-wine brought to the Belgian Congo by the coastmen. The sweet vocal harmonies of Vincent Kuli's track were learned, perhaps, in a mission church. Rene Mbu's nimble, likembe-like guitar plucking shines on "Boma Limbala," and is Laurent Lomande using a banjo as a backdrop to "Elisa?" Aren't those kazoos, buzzing along on Jean Mpia's "Tika?" It's as if the musicians, fired up by the times in their zeal for experimental self-expression, tossed into a bottle some new elements and some old, some near and some far, and then shook it hard, to see what would happen. With insert featuring rare photographs and notes by Gary Stewart, author of Rumba On The River. Sound restoration done at Abbey Road.
A note from Lawrence English: "Even without visiting a place, we often think we know it. It's a syndrome of the modern age. The world is right before us, on screen, summarized and sensorially curated into a particular vision that casts light across 'just so much' of an impression of a place and a time. In some ways, I realized this phenomenon most strongly when I visited Antarctica in the summer of 2010. In my mind's ear (and eye) certain features of that place were front and center -- imagined, as to be real. The stark color schematic, the full spectrum dynamics of life (and death), the distance from wider humanity and the uniqueness of climate formed a collaged pre-conception of the ice continent... The recordings here speak to the everyday of our incursions into Antarctica. They are not exceptional, or unique, in that they unfold across much of the continent's camps and bases moment to moment, depending on the season and location of course. What they do highlight is the confluence of environments, materials, climate, and life that all clamber together in these shifting plains of ice, rock, and water. While not exactly intentional, the way this work played out is largely in three chapters, the human, the land and the water. Each of these intersect and fall into one another of course, but they also exist with a sense of being discrete. Whilst the characters might be shared across these zones of entanglement, the stories they tell into are often unfolding in parallel, rather than in sequence... To me these recordings capture the duality of a place like Antarctica. They are a seasonal glimpse into the lived experience of the wildlife and humans that persist in this environment. They also reflect upon the objects and things that comprise this place. The recordings catch the uneasy murmurs of eroding ice plates, the trickling conversations of high summer streams, the clicking echolocations of Orcas, the barked disputes of territorial Antarctic Fur Seals, and the chirping of penguin chicks racing to shed their downy coats and find their way to the relative security of the ocean before the winter sets in. They also capture the feverish rush of researchers, military personal, and station workers as they prepare for the long, frigid months ahead during which time they are effectively disconnected from the remainder of the planet. These moments exist in urgency, the summer's sweet caress is fleeting and the winter knows no forgiveness."
2025 repress. Holy grail of US roots reggae released in 1979. Old-style tip-on sleeve replicating the original sleeve. More Relation started in 1977 in New York as a backup band for reggae artists such as Melodians, Larry Marshall, Carlton Coffee, and Ken Booth. They released many now sought-after singles and one self-titled album.
RETAIL SIMPS
Educated Fools Play: Tantric Decapitation - 69 Minutes of Trichotomy & Liquefaction 2LP
"After three albums, two 7"s, a feature length documentary and a smattering of cassettes, the Simps have entered middle age. An unflattering era in the life of a band where the shiny novelty of youth has disintegrated, pressures to expand or leave this mortal coil have mounted and the darling status once indiscriminately slathered onto their oeuvre relegated to the shadows, a blink in the continuum of the next-big-thing economy. Many believe aging gracefully is a myth, and that may be so, but people like Joe, Chris, Obe, Zak and cohort Cole know no other way than to slog onward and upward. With the departure of keyboard magnate Tom Tom, the unequivocal straight man to the chaotic ensemble, the group was due for a proper unravelling or a long hard look in the mirror. Tantric Decapitation was recorded live at Value Sound Studios in two days by Renny Wilson, and after nominal mixing attempts, left bare. It was an exercise in introspection, the gritty product destined to be a looking glass into the rough-hewn nature of the band's sound. Despite the realism and immediacy of this double album, one thing was certain: every record needs a story: a platitude drilled into the heads of banal musicians and record execs alike. Doesn't matter the fortitude of the yarn however, just the way you use it. As such, the Educated Fools were born. A fictional group from the wilds of Nantucket, primed for the newborn sheen the Simps would never touch again. Through devious ploys and high-brow marketing efforts, Total Punk Records concocted a salacious and expansive tale that no groveling blogger or egomaniacal music journalist could ignore, or so we thought. All this context may serve you dear listener, but the meat of this epic remains the same whether you choose to believe myself or the fake news strewn across the internet. This is a steadfast document of unhinged, unedited rock music unlike what you will find anywhere else. It is singular, whether it is total indulgence or just a bad idea."
"46 years after I first heard Stare Kits on a cassette, they finally have an LP. About time! This NYC quartet's name often comes up in discussions of the No Wave era, which make sense. The members -- Angela Jaeger, Amy Rigby, Michael McMahon, and Bob Gurevics -- were all fans of the scene, and involved with various aspects of TR3, one of No Wave's pre-eminent showcases. UT played their first gig opening for Stare Kits. Rick Brown (Blinding Headache, Information, etc.) played guest sax with them. Julia Gorton used Amy as a photo model almost as often as she used Lydia Lunch, and so on. But despite such connections they were not a No Wave band. Stare Kits's music certainly use instrumental elements in line with No Wave's ethos, but these're part of a much larger mix. The band's basic approach is much rockier and punkier. Bob's guitar parts are more in the tradition of Quine and Reed than they are Lydian, the McMahon/Rigby's rhythm section is more primitive than martial, and Angela's vocals are goddamn melodic. Closer musical comparisons might be made to a various aspects of UK bands from Penetration to Wire to Deaf School to X-Ray Spex. There's a soupçon of a '79 UK DIY rattle to some of the tunes as well. But there is an ineffable something lurking in their collective soul that keeps Stare Kits's instrumental sound grounded in the NYC art-punk/street-rock continuum. Angela's vocals may resemble Penelope Houston's at moments but there's not much overt political content in Stare Kits's lyrics. An eclectic mix of elements? Yeah, and it sounds fucking great. The saga of Stare Kits was laid out pretty well in Angela's excellent book, I Feel Famous (Hat & Beard Press 2025) and was also part of Amy McMahon's equally dandy Girl to City (Southern Domestic 2019). Now's your chance to hear what their hubbub was all about." --Byron Coley, 2025
WRWTFWW Records presents the limited-edition vinyl reissue of Natural Sonic, the groundbreaking 1990 environmental percussion album by Japanese composer and performer Yoshiaki Ochi. Long a hidden gem of the kankyō ongaku movement, Natural Sonic finally returns in its full analog glory, housed in a heavyweight sleeve with obi and carefully remastered from the original archives of Wacoal Art Center/Spiral's visionary NEWSIC label. Originally released only in Japan at the dawn of the 1990s, Natural Sonic is a mesmerizing exploration of earthly sound and rhythm -- a sonic tapestry woven from wood, water, and stone, and skin. Ochi, who at the time was the in-house composer and performer for world-renowned designer Issey Miyake, created a series of elemental pieces that blur the line between avant-garde percussion, ritual music, and environmental sound art. The result is both deeply physical and profoundly meditative -- an album that breathes with nature itself. Echoing the organic minimalism of Midori Takada's Through the Looking Glass and the ecological grandeur of Geinoh Yamashirogumi's Ecophony Gaia, Ochi's compositions open portals into primal landscapes, evoking forests, rivers, and stones in flux. Part of NEWSIC's celebrated experimental catalog -- alongside Yoshio Ojima's Une Collection des Chaînons, Motohiko Hamase's #Notes of Forestry, and Satsuki Shibano's Rendez-Vous -- Natural Sonic now finds new life for contemporary listeners seeking sound that feels both timeless and vital. A singular album of resonance and restraint, Natural Sonic is a treasure from the golden age of Japanese environmental music, finally available again over three decades later.
Syncretic marks the debut full-length from Australian duo Bhairavi Raman, a Western and Carnatic violinist, and Nanthesh Sivarajah, a mridangam player and versatile percussionist. Both artists share a Tamil heritage, a current that hums across the album. Raman, from South India, and Sivarajah, from Sri Lanka, draw lines that connect Western practice and Carnatic tradition. This hybrid is central to Raman's approach as a violinist, an instrument itself caught between East and West since the late 18th century. Her playing folds history, lineage and experimentation into music that acknowledges inheritance while gently rewiring its circuitry. Expanding on traditional music can be a precarious practice, but Syncretic never feels heavy-handed. Raman and Sivarajah exercise measured restraint, letting the Carnatic framework breathe even as it is refracted through contemporary tools. Delays, looping, subtle layering and synthesized harmonies tilt tradition into a new light without disguising it. Even within a contemporary framework, Raman's rigorous Carnatic training under gurus Sri S. Varadarajan (India), Sri Murali Kumar (Australia) and Sri Gopinath Iyer (Australia) is unmistakable. She captures the spiritual and emotional essence of each raga: on "Seven," the playful raga Bahudari becomes both centerpiece and conduit, while on the traditional piece "Thunbam Nergayil," drawn from a Tamil poem, listeners hear a deeply personal iteration, a weeping euphony of mixed emotions hitting all at once. Tradition here is absorbed, expanded and reframed. Sivarajah's command of the mridangam, honed by his gurus Sri Jambunathan (Sri Lanka), Sri Balasri Rasiah (Australia) and Sri T. R. Sundaresan (India), is central to his original composition "Guardian." He sustains tradition while extending it through layering and sound-spatialization. The mridangam here functions as both a structural and ornamental force, mapping continuity between inherited form and contemporary sonic architecture. Syncretic resonates as a space where Tamil heritage, diasporic memory and contemporary practice coalesce. Culture, like sound, circulates, transforms and persists. Tradition is not an archive but living material, a soundworld that lingers in the ears and the imagination.
LP version. Uzed is the fourth album by Belgian band Univers Zero. It was released three years after Ceux du Dehors, due to a change in line-up and a new repertoire, although the EP Crawling Wind had been released in the meantime. The album marked a turning point for the band. Univers Zero explored new electric colors, giving it a more rock feel with the addition of new musicians such as Jean-Luc Plouvier, who introduced the synthesizer, guitarist Michel Delory, who played a memorable solo in "Célesta (For Chantal)," and André Mergen on electric cello and alto saxophone, who enriched the orchestral texture. With Dirk Descheemaeker on clarinet and soprano saxophone and the return of Christian Genet on bass, this evolution can also be explained by the arrival of new musicians. Uzed is entirely composed and arranged by Daniel Denis. The recording and mixing were done at Daylight Studio in Brussels in 1984, but to bring out Uzed, the sound had to be improved by giving it more dynamic range, which was done at ICP Studios in 2024. Univers Zero represents one of the longest-living bands in Belgium. It was established in 1974. Drummer Daniel Denis had the brilliant idea to gather together a team of professionals sharing the same taste for music. The band has adopted an instrumental progressive style. Over the last couple of decades, the band has also implemented a series of influences from chamber music -- most commonly, chamber music from the 20th century. Even if the line-up changes a lot over the years, the overall sound of UZ remained fairly consistent.
DVD is NTSC format, region-free. Never released before. In 2009, the Triton venue (near Paris, France) was sold out to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Univers Zéro, an iconic band of the Rock In Opposition movement. These two exceptional concerts highlighted a radical and unique style of music, at the crossroads of new music and chamber rock, skillfully blending acoustic and electric instruments, as heard on the cult album Ceux du Dehors. Around Daniel Denis (drums, composition), Michel Berckmans (oboe, bassoon), and Andy Kirk (keyboards and guitar), three historical figures of the group, complemented by four other talented musicians, offered an intense multimedia show, intertwining a condensed version of key pieces from the repertoire with more recent compositions. These concerts were part of a key phase in which the band offered one of its most-accomplished line-ups, taking the opportunity to establish its sound and image. The line-up had undergone a few changes since its reformation in 2004, with Pierre Chevalier (from the band Présent) and a new bassist joining the ensemble. This highlight has now resulted in the release of a live CD/DVD, a precious testimony to the band's artistic resurgence and stage energy.
|
Rebirth Of The Cool Ruler LP
Indefinitive Atmosphere LP
Cosi Dolce...Così Perversa LP
Going Back to Sleep... LP
Body Language Vol. 27 2LP
sorry I thought you were someone else 2LP
FYC 40 (40th Anniversary Best Of) LP
FYC 40 (40th Anniversary Best Of) (Double LP Version) 2LP
The Return Of The Durutti Column (45th Anniversary Edition) 2CD BOX
The Factory Singles (Best Of) 2CD
The Factory Singles (Best Of) 2LP
The Factory Singles (Best Of) (Yellow & Magenta Vinyl) 2LP
Victual Vittle Bottle Cunt CD
Running Back Mastermix: Deetron Cassette
Blink To Check It's Real LP
Curses Presents Tutto Vetro: Trust The Beat 12"
|