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Recent Best Sellers
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2LP
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TW Q-LP
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75 Dollar Bill is one of the essential groups at the heart of NYC's underground. Driven by the telepathic union of Che Chen's microtonal electric guitar and Rick Brown's odd metered percussion their long-form sound is unmistakable and compelling. On their third album I Was Real, the group expands in bold new directions, embracing brilliant fuller orchestrations, joyous rockers and entrancing new textures. Having emerged as a vibrant musical force with their previous effort -- with Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock (GB 047CD, TW J CS/LP, 2016) -- 75 Dollar Bill have spent the last few years bringing their music to new places and people, delivering what NYC locals have known for years, with their dedication to performance in venues of all shapes and sizes. The fruits of this work can be heard here on their expansive new double-LP I Was Real. The album, its title's origin a jumbled misremembering of the lesser-known Motown song "He Was Really Saying Something", is 75 Dollar Bill's third, featuring new directions accompanying the band's previously established interest in sprawling, unusual grooves and microtonal melodies. The record is enhanced by the presence of eight additional players in various combinations over its nine tracks -- but also shows off the duo's strength when stripped down to the core. Requiring a variety of approaches, the album was recorded over a four-year period, in four different studios, with the band's closest associates and collaborators in a range of different ensemble configurations. The album also features several "studio as instrument" constructions that harken back to the collage-experiments of the band's early cassette tapes, while at the same time pointing to territories altogether new. The players involved highlight the "social" aspect of the band and the eight guests that appear on the record are some of the band's closest friends and collaborators. Some pieces were conceived in the band's very early days and others are much newer, but the music is unmistakably 75 Dollar Bill. As Steve Gunn said about the previous record: "Strings come in underneath Che Chen's supreme guitar tone. Rick Brown's trance percussion offers a guiding support with bass, strings, and horns supporting the melody. They have gathered all the moving parts perfectly." Double-LP version presented in a heavy tip-on gatefold jacket with textured clothe wrap and matte foil stamping.
Personnel: Rick Brown - plywood crate, hand and foot percussion, crude horns; Che Chen - 6 and 12-string and quarter-tone guitars, percussion; with: Sue Garner - guitar and bass guitar; Cheryl Kingan - alto and baritone saxophones; Andrew Lafkas - contrabass; Karen Waltuch - viola; Jim Pugliese - percussion; Barry Weisblat - signal processing, Casio SK-1; Steven Maing - quarter-tone guitar; Carey Balch - hi-hat.
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TO 115LP
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Sold out, repress forthcoming... Agora is Christian Fennesz's first solo album since Mahler Remix (TONE 052LP, 2014) and Bécs (EMEGO 165CD/LP, 2014). Fennesz writes: "It's a simple story. I had temporarily lost a proper studio workspace and had to move all my gear back to a small bedroom in my flat where I recorded this album. It was all done on headphones, which was rather a frustrating situation at first but later on it felt like back in the day when I produced my first records in the 1990s. In the end it was inspiring. I used very minimal equipment; I didn't even have the courage to plug in all the gear and instruments which were at my disposal. I just used what was at hand." Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. His lush and luminous compositions are anything but sterile computer experiments. They resemble sensitive, telescopic recordings of rainforest insect life or natural atmospheric occurrences, an inherent naturalism permeating each piece. He lives and works in Vienna. Recorded at Kaiserstudios, Vienna, August, September 2018. "Rainfall": vocals by Katharina Caecilia Fennesz; "Agora": field recordings Manfred Neuwirth, vocals Mira Waldmann. Photography and design by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye. Full color inner and outer sleeve. "Imagine the electric guitar severed from cliché and all of its physical limitations, shaping a bold new musical language." --City Newspaper
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ASH 3002LP
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2019 repress. Deluxe LP format; 180 gram pressing. Reissue of the second Flower Travellin' Band album, originally issued by Atlantic Records in Japan in 1971. Satori is a conceptual hard rock/psych album driven by Hideki Ishima's furious guitar licks which erupt and explode over the harmonic heart beat of the drums and bass. Yamanaka's banshee-like vocal style turned him into an occidental Iggy Pop or Robert Plant while the band itself was rapidly becoming Japan's answer to Led Zeppelin. Satori is a huge album in every way. From power chords to Eastern-tinged North African six-string freak-outs and crashing tom-toms, the band flexes its collective muscle from start to finish. In short, this is a real rock classic of the type they simply don't make any more.
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AKU 1016LP
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LP version. Includes 24-page portfolio and download card. Seitō: In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun gathers Japanese female artists from various electronic and experimental music fields. Like the Tokyo Flashback series issued by P.S.F. in the early 1990s, this collection recorded between 2017 and 2019 exposes the richness of the contemporary Japanese underground music scene. The title refers to a cult feminist magazine printed in Japan in the 1910s. Featuring: Fuji-Yuki's glommy folk song, Kiki Hitomi's haunted dub tune, Mikado Koko's deep house hit, Miki Yui's electoacoustic performance, Kakushin Nishihara's noisy folk track, Kuunatic's oriental psych blend, and Keiko Higuchi's memorable nine-minute cover of the classic Japanese folk song, "Okesa Bushi". All tracks issued for the first time.
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WRWTFWW 030LP
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LP version. 350gsm sleeve with selected UV high gloss varnish. Liner notes by Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa, and Gareth Quinn Redmond. WRWTFWW Records announce the reissue of Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way (Wave Notation 2). Initially released in 1982 as part of the Wave Notation series (which includes Hiroshi Yoshimura's Music For Nine Postcards), Still Way is, without a doubt, a seminal Japanese environmental/ambient/minimalism album, often mentioned alongside Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass (1983) (WRWTFWW 018LP, WRWTFWW 019CD/LP) and Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green (1986) as one of the genre's most important pieces. "Like the moment of stillness, after the wind passes through the garden, when the rain stops for a brief second..." Notably inspired by Erik Satie's Furniture Music and Brian Eno's ambient work, Satoshi Ashikawa aimed to compose music "intended to be listened to in a casual manner, as a musical landscape or a sound object -- not something that would stimulate listeners but music that should drift like smoke and become part of the environment." The result is simply phenomenal, subtle minimalism and emotional elegance exquisitely orchestrated by Satoshi Ishikawa and his team consisting of his wife Masami Ashikawa (on flute), Midori Takada (on vibraphone), Yuko Utsumi (on harp), Tomoko Sono (on piano), and Junko Arase (on vibraphone). In conjunction with Still Way, WRWTFWW Records is releasing Laistigh den Ghleo (WRWTFWW 039CD/LP), a companion album by Irish ambient/minimalist composer Gareth Quinn Redmond, inspired by Ashikawa's approach. Liner notes by Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa, and Gareth Quinn Redmond.
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FOX 006LP
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New York-born experimental composer and abstract keyboardist Steve Reich was an important pioneer of minimalism. After studying with jazz pianist Hall Overton, Reich learned composition at the Julliard School of Music and later at Mills College, a hotbed of experimental music situated at the foot of the Oakland Hills, east of San Francisco. He later began experimenting with audio tape as a music medium at the San Francisco Tape Music Center with important figures involved in early electronic music experimentation, including Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, and Phil Lesh (bassist of the Grateful Dead) and more importantly with Terry Riley. Reich subsequently composed a number of film soundtracks and in 1967 collaborated with Oliveros and Richard Maxfield for the release New Sounds In Electronic Music. Phased patterns, sonic loops and electronic percussion were focal points from the mid-60s onwards. Information, Transmission, Modulation and Noise is an astounding release, though many reviews repeat inaccurate information about the recordings featured on it. The music was first broadcast to the world in the early hours of November 6, 1970 on KPFA in Berkeley, California, when Reich and woodwind wizard/percussionist Jon Gibson made an unscheduled appearance at the studio, armed with a number of recent recordings. The first to air was a masterful version of Reich's "Four Organs", taken from a performance given at the Guggenheim in New York in May 1970, featuring regular collaborators Philip Glass, Art Murphy, and Steve Chambers on combative organs, along with Reich, plus Gibson on non-stop maracas; it is strongly contrasted by the raw, mesmerizing power of a percussive piece recorded in Ghana in the summer of 1970, made with members of the Ghana Dance Ensemble playing traditional Ewe instruments; according to Reich's introduction during the broadcast, the piece is called "Gahu", featuring master drummer Gideon Alewoye on the large agboba drum, dancer Freeman Dongo on the smaller kidi, dancer Thomas Annan on the even smaller kagan, and Reich and Steve Scott on axatse rattles, along with an unidentified player on a gonkogwe or gungong bell. On the B-side of the disc, Reich presents an equally mesmerizing rendition of Glass' "Music In Similar Motion", recorded at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis in May 1970, featuring Glass, Steve Chambers and Art Murphy on organ, Gibson and Richard Landry on soprano saxophones, Beverly Lauridsen on amplified cello, and Reich on an electric harpsichord.
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FOX 012LP
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New York Contemporary Five: Live at Koncertsal, Copenhagen, 17.10.1963. The short-lived quintet known as the New York Contemporary Five had a lasting impact on the free jazz movement. It was formed in 1962 with trumpeter Don Cherry, who had been working with free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman; tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, who'd been working with Cecil Taylor, Gil Evans, and more recently, Bill Dixon; Danish alto saxophonist John Tchicai (whose father was Congolese), a former member of the quintet assembled by the poet and filmmaker Jorgen Leth, who moved to New York shortly before the Contemporary Five's formation; acoustic bassist Don Moore, who had played with Shepp and Dixon; and drummer JC Moses, who had played with Clifford Jordan and trumpeter Kenny Dorham. This rare performance, given at Copenhagen's Koncertsal on October 17, 1963, has epically-extended cuts of Don Cherry's "Consequences" and Ornette Coleman's "Emotions", plus a peppy take of Thelonious Monk's "Monk's Mood".
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2LP
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TPR 241LP
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Trumpeter Bill Dixon and pianist Cecil Taylor, friends going back to their Truman-era school days, associated copiously in nearly every artistic fashion -- except making music together. Duets is their only meeting in studio apart from both artists appearing on Taylor's 1966 landmark Blue Note LP, Conquistador. In 1992 they made the briefest summer festival tour to Italy and France, budgeting in two additional days for this recording session. That musical output was prepared for a release that was shelved for more than a quarter century and now comes out as a posthumous release in tribute to both giants. The initiative to release this music began with the Bill Dixon Trust and was approved by Taylor in his final years. Now, a wider public will hear music that they both prized, documenting the extraordinary relationship between their musicalities. Duets is a remarkable and unique item in the extensive catalogs of both men's recordings. Fans familiar with Dixon and Taylor's distinctive styles will approach with curious uncertainty: How could it possibly work to blend styles of Joyce and Hemingway? Pollock and Kline? Nevelson and Brancusi? Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor share a fundamental fiber of taste and reaction as the basis for their interaction. The complementary nature of Duets makes the case thoroughly that the project stands apart not just from the numerous duet projects of both instrumentalists, but from the wide field of improvised duets in this sector of the music. This double-LP set has been scrupulously mastered from the original tape, preserving both the high gloss and the brutal physicality of the recording. Plates cut by Sterling Sound's Grammy®-winning mastering master Steve Fallone have been pressed into virgin vinyl at QRP, and wrapped in a hand-numbered Old-Style Tip-On® gatefold jacket that Stoughton has perfected. The package also includes a new contextualizing essay by historian Ben Young, hitherto-unpublished photographs from the collaboration, and artifacts reproduced from the original release plans. Bill Dixon conceived this as a deluxe digital release; Triple Point is honored to bring Duets to vinyl reality in the 21st century. Strictly limited edition of 665 (hand-numbered).
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FOX 011LP
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Alternative Fox present a reissue of Joyce, originally released in 1968. The Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist Joyce Silveira Moreno was born and raised in the middle of Copacabana, a short beach stroll from the epicentre of the bossa nova universe. Her father was a Dane that had settled in Brazil, but she was raised by her mother and step- father in a typical Portuguese-Brazilian household. Since her older brother was friendly with leading lights of the bossa nova movement such as Roberto Menescal and Eumir Deodato, she was steeped in the form at an early age and witnessed its key evolution first-hand. At the age of 16 in 1964, she was taken to the studio by Menescal to contribute to the coveted debut album by the mythical group Sambacana, assembled to record the work of composer Pacífico Mascarenhas when the meagre budget would not allow the vocalists he preferred. Knowing that a full-time career in music was certainly not guaranteed, she began studying journalism in 1967, shortly before her controversial song "Me Disseram" reached the finals of Rio's second International Song Competition. The following year, her self-titled debut album was released by Philips, produced by Armando Pittigliani, with orchestration by Dorival Caymmi and arrangements by Gaya; along with her own compositions, the album also featured songs by her rising-star friends, including Caetano Veloso and Marcos Valle.
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2LP
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HOS 640LP
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Vatican Shadow's impossible to find early tapes finally arrive on vinyl, kicking off a completist series of new Dubplate & Mastering remasters with a first volume featuring: Byzantine Private CIA (2010), Mural of Saddam (2011), and Yemeni Commandos (2011). Arriving under a shroud of anonymity in 2010 with the four tracks of Byzantine Private CIA, Vatican Shadow has since become one of the most vital projects manned by Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement). Daring to grasp the nettle of US geopolitics at a time when nobody else would (and that hasn't really changed), Vatican Shadow hijacked imagery and text from a plethora of news articles, books and government publications, and used them to adorn and title his all-instrumental compositions, re-contextualising U.S. foreign policy in a way that recalls how original industrial, noise, and post-punk mutants used their art and music to express feelings towards the cold war and western socio-economics during the late '70s and thru the '80s -- with a particular, explicit thread of inspiration coming from Bryn Jones' prolific Muslimgauze catalog. The first LP contains all four cuts from Vatican Shadow's first release, Byzantine Private CIA, taking in the cold thuds and clamoring background noise of "Deny Military Involvement" alongside highlights in the militant trample of "Cairo Sword Unsheathed" and the sludgy industrial dirge of "Gunman With Silencer". The second LP follows with three tracks off Mural of Saddam, including the brittle, Muslimgauze-like stepper "Schwarzkopf Arc of Triumph", and the furtive trip hop of "U.S. M1A1 Abrams Exhaust Rises Between The Hands Of Victory", before concluding with some the project's most sublime work in the opiated lushness of "Shadow War In Yemen" and "Asymetric Warfare Studies Group Double Game" from the Yemeni Commandos tape. Sounding more compelling than ever, thanks to the remastering at Dubplates & Mastering, and with original tapes now impossible to find for love nor money, these vinyl pressings of early VS gear are practically worth their weight in gold.
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ACOLOUR 013LP
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If Wishes Were Horses, Blueboy's first and now legendary album is finally reissued by Australian label A Colourful Storm. Presented for the first time on vinyl since its release in 1992, the recording by Keith Girdler, Gemma Townley, Paul Stewart, Lloyd Armstrong, and Mark Andes is immortalized in Sarah Records' history as an evergreen of indie-pop and modern DIY. "...the sort of feelings that rarely escape from the Sarah daydream factory" wrote NME at the time. This long-overdue reissue is presented with the original artwork faithfully restored by Sarah Records' own Matt Haynes. Full-color reverse-card sleeve with printed insert and lyrics sheet.
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FOX 009LP
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Alternative Fox present a reissue of Otis Redding's Pain In My Heart, originally released in 1964. Soul icon Otis Redding made immeasurable contributions to the form. As a singer-songwriter, producer, arranger, and talent scout, Redding was responsible for some of the music's biggest and most lasting hits during the 1960s, though his death in an airplane crash in 1967 brought his life and career to a tragically premature end. After singing in the high school band, he performed weekly gospel songs on radio station WIBB, winning local talent contests after being inspired by Little Richard and Sam Cooke. Since his father became ill with tuberculosis, Redding began supporting the family at the age of 15, working as a gas station attendant, a digger of water wells, and occasionally by playing piano with pianist Gladys Williams at the Hillview Springs Social Club. Then, in 1958, Redding had a repeat prize run at a talent contest held by broadcaster Hamp Swain, bringing him first into a group called Pat T Cake and the Mighty Panthers, and later into Little Richard's band (during a time when Richard switched rock and roll for gospel). Moving to Los Angeles in late 1960, debut single "She's All Right" was issued on the Trans World label (a subsidiary of Al Kavelin's Lute Records), credited to The Shooters featuring Otis; following the birth of their first child and his subsequent marriage to Zelma Atwood, Redding recorded the popular "Shout Bamalam" for Macon's Confederate Records. Redding cut the movingly emotive "These Arms Of Mine" at Stax studios in Memphis in 1962, backed by Booker T and the MGs, which surfaced on the subsidiary Volt label in October, reaching the charts some six months later. Subsequent singles "What My Heart Needs" and "Pain In My Heart/Something Is Worrying Me", recorded in September 1963, formed the bulk of debut album, Pain In My Heart, which was padded out by standard cover tunes of songs such as "I Need Your Lovin'", Ben E King's "Stand By Me" and Little Richard's "Lucille". The album, which surfaced at the start of 1964, reached the top 20 of the US R&B chart and also hit the Billboard Hot 100; this edition has an alternate track listing that includes the Trans World debut single tracks "She's All Right" and "Getting' Hip", as well as "Mary Had A Little Lamb", the B-side to "That's What My Heart Needs". Remastered; 45rpm.
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2LP
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FOX 008LP
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Saxophonist Albert Ayler's work straddled various streams of the jazz idiom. Nearly 50 years after his tragically early death (his drowning in the East River most likely the result of suicide), critics, fans, and detractors are still arguing over whether Ayler can be considered a true "free jazz" player or whether his unorthodox style transcended or complimented the moniker. In any case, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1936, the son a semi-professional saxophonist who tutored him early on alto sax and exposed him to swing and bebop, along with the church music that was a big part of his upbringing. After studying at the Cleveland Academy of Music with jazz saxophonist Benny Miller, Ayler became known as "Little Bird" after Charlie Parker, for his mastery of bebop. As a teenager, he was already playing tenor saxophone in Little Walter's blues band during school holidays, and when he joined the US Army in 1958, Ayler began playing with fellow GIs such as tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and the experimental composer, poet and keyboardist Harold Budd; he permanently switched from alto to tenor in this phase. Upon leaving the Army, Ayler sought work in Los Angeles and Cleveland, but found resistance from the purists for his continual pushing of boundaries. Relocating to Sweden in 1962 was the bridge to a successful recording and performing career as he led various Swedish and Danish groups on radio sessions, playing in an informal and uncredited capacity in Cecil Taylor's band in late 1962. The Albert Ayler Trio then consisted of Ayler, bassist Torbjörn Hultcrantz, and drummer Sune Spångberg; four dissonant songs from their live performance on October 24, 1962 would be issued on the Bird Notes label in Sweden as Something Different!!!!!! and reissued overseas as the first edition of The First Recordings; it included a barely-recognizable rendition of showtune "I'll Remember April", an off-kilter take of Sonny Rollins's "The Stopper" retitled "Rollins' Tune", and a wobbly cut of Miles Davis's "Tune Up", along with the original "Free". The exceedingly rare The First Recordings, Vol. 2 was also issued on Bird Notes -- at least in test pressings with photos of Ayler glued to the cover -- comprised of three extended meditations of discord, namely blown mutations of showtunes "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" and "I Didn't Know What Time It Was", along with a growling cut of Count Basie's "Good Bait".
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LP
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FORDIS 005LP
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Far Out Recordings presents a reissue of the first and only album from the mysterious Brazilian vocal sensation Dila (pronounced "Jee-la"). Having reportedly died in a car crash shortly after the album's release in 1971, there is very little known about the woman behind the voice. But the joyous music Dila left behind gives us a picture as good as any, of a powerful feminine soul at the top of her game. The liner notes on the elusive original LP, written by composer Arnoldo Medeiros attest: "Friend, look out! Because when this girl starts to sing, you're in trouble. Hold the railing so you don't fall down the stairs, because she's coming this way and shaking up everything." Arranged and produced by Durval Ferreira, alongside his studio band affectionately known as Os Grillos (The Crickets), Dila is a rare glimpse into the authentic soulful samba sound of Rio's favelas in the late sixties and early seventies. A blast of funky, percussive Brazilian breaks, scorching hot brass, and swing-laden piano, the music is as iconic as the album's stark cover, as is clear on opener "Inez," composed by The Crickets bassist Romildo. There's a fantastic interpretation of the Ivan Lins classic "Madalena" (made famous by Elis Regina), a moving version of the Tom Jobim and Vinicius De Moraes classic "O Morro Não Tem Vez," and a number of sunny original compositions by Madeiros, whose other writing credits include music for Marcos Valle, Wanderlea, Evinha, and Dom Salvador. With original LPs extremely hard to come by, this rare treasure of Brazilian soul, which fans of Gal Costa, Celia, Evinha and Elis Regina will love, gets a much-deserved official reissue. Personnel: Durval Ferreira - guitar; Sidney Marzullo - piano; Romildo - bass; Fernando - drums; Horacio - percussion; Christ - brass. 180 gram vinyl.
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STUDIOMUL 022LP
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Studio Mule presents Missing Link, a collection by Japanese living legend electronic producer Takayuki Shiraishi. Missing Link is a collection of unreleased material recorded in the late '80s. Shiraishi started his career in working with BGM, who released material on the Japanese experimental label Vanity Records. Their one and only album Back Ground Music (1980) has been one of the most in-demand Japanese new wave albums. The present album is unique mixture of dark new wave, post punk, kraut rock, and experimental electronic music.
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LP
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SNDW 040LP
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2019 repress. Soundway present a reissue of Rob's second album for the first-time outside Ghana, originally released in 1978. Rob was an enigmatic recording artist from Ghana who cut two albums for the legendary Essiebons label in 1977. Neither of these were big domestic hits at the time and have since become prized amongst collectors in recent years. The title track from this LP was always one of the most popular on the first Soundway release Ghana Soundz (SNDW 001LP, 2008) and over the years the label has been asked many times to reissue the LP in its entirety. A stranger, slower offering than his more dancefloor funk-laden and Spartan first LP, this record sees Rob in similar territory but with the tempo switched down and the introspection turned up. Rob's trademark horns dominate and are supplied by the Mag-2, an army band founded by leader Amponsah Rockson, who named it after the army unit the band played for the "magnificent" second battalion. In 1977, Rob traveled to the coastal town of Takoradi in search of Mag-2, which had an entire section of its line-up dedicated to horns, with the intension of laying out his proposal to them. Luckily for Rob, the band took him up on it. With religious overtones and a broody, slightly off-key atmosphere at points it's certainly one of the stranger Afro-funk records to come out of West Africa but with tracks like "Loose Up Yourself" and "Make it Fast, Make it Slow" -- it's a unique gem that warrants repeat listening.
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LP
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FARO 210-1LP
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LP version, Volume 1. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Since their debut in 1975 (FARO 117X-LP), Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world's greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock 'n' roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature "Samba Doido" (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid. Before they became Azymuth, José Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan 'Mamão' Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil. Azymuth's name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti, and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music -- from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward; these previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami's home studio. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world, that sounded anything like them, so it's unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, told in effect that the music was 'wrong'. When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, "Prefacio" would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996). Only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form. On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros, and Conti were realizing at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth's earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.
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2LP
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BEWITH 056LP
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Be With Records present a reissue of Sweet And Nice, the vital debut album from Jamaica's undisputed first lady of song Marica Griffiths, originally released in 1974. It's reggae at its most soulful. Slinking through a tight ten tracks of R&B and pop-sourced material, it became an instant best seller. Sweet And Nice has appeared over the years with a revised running order and under different titles. But the original's opening sequence of loping soul is legendary, even beyond reggae circles. These songs are now returned to how they were presented on that first Jamaican release, and under their intended album title. Be With doesn't mess with magic. Marcia's version of "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" has long been lusted after, played by genre-hopping selectors to snapping necks for decades now. It's followed by the sophisticated, rollicking wah-wah funk of "Everything I Own" and the slice of smooth lovers soul par excellence that is "Green Grasshopper" and her ace, lilting Neil Diamond cover "Play Me". The thundering, humid funk of "Children At Play" "sounds uncannily like a precursor of Massive Attack", as FACT Mag astutely noted when they put Sweet And Nice at number 16 in their list of the 100 best albums of the 1970s. Otherworldly, moody, and essential. Side two keeps the fire burning. "Sweet, Bitter Love" should leave you swooning, and is also one of the album's alternate titles. Curtis Mayfield's already-eternal "Gypsy Man" follows, recast as proto-lovers rock. "There's No Me Without You" is elevated to canonical status by the majestic, forlorn horns of the Federal Soul Givers and Marcia's heartbreaking delivery. And if this doesn't get you then surely the next track will: arguably the definitive version of Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". "I Just Don't Want To Be Lonely" re-takes its rightful place at the end of the LP's second side... but Be With Records added an entire second record of rare material recorded around the same time as Sweet And Nice, much of it unavailable since it was originally released. Amongst these 14 extra tracks you'll find the exquisite late-60s singles "Melody Life" and "Mark My Word" which, along with the sumptuous reading of "Band Of Gold". All material is remastered. 140 gram vinyl.
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LP
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CF 019LP
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Cien Fuegos present a reissue of Schlippenbach Quartet's Three Nails Left, originally released on FMP in 1975. Side A was recorded live at 3rd Jazz Festival Moers June 2nd, 1974 by Michael Krause. Side B was recorded live at the Quartier Latin Berlin, February 2nd, 1975 by Jost Gebers with the FMP Mobile Recording Unit. Personnel: Evan Parker - soprano and tenor saxophone; Alexander von Schlippenbach - piano; Peter Kowald - double bass; Paul Lovens - percussion. Produced by Jost Gebers. Remastered by Martin Siewert in 2019. Design by Paul Lovens; photo by Nick Leidner and Dagmar Gebers. 180 gram vinyl.
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LP
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FARO 210-2LP
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LP version, Volume 2. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Since their debut in 1975 (FARO 117X-LP), Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world's greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock 'n' roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature "Samba Doido" (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid. Before they became Azymuth, José Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan 'Mamão' Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil. Azymuth's name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti, and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music -- from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward; these previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami's home studio. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world, that sounded anything like them, so it's unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, told in effect that the music was 'wrong'. When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, "Prefacio" would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996). Only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form. On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros, and Conti were realizing at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth's earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.
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LP
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ELP 043LP
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Following Not Waving's stellar recent recordings with Jim O'Rourke, Colin Potter, and Jay Glass Dubs, Downwelling finds him in a striking Pas de deux with alt. rock god Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, QOTSA). It's one of those rare link-ups that truly transcends the sum of its parts, with Not Waving's rolling range of nuanced electronics acting as backdrops for Lanegan's smoky baritone storytelling. Delivered in a husky but pliable voice that has come to define the American alternative rock scene since the early '90s, Lanegan inhabits the songs with a reserved presence that has served him well for decades, but which has never been heard in quite this context. Pairing music recorded by Alessio Natalizia between London, Italy, and Paris over the past five years, with vocals recorded by Lanegan in LA, the duo arrives at dreamy non-place that's not defined by geography or time. Instead the album offers a timeless insight into human behavior, as reflected in the sleeve art details from the "Lights Of Canopus", a Persian version of the ancient Indian book of animal fables, the "Panchatantra". Thanks to Lanegan's classically dusty tone -- famously described as being "scratchy as a three-day beard yet as supple as moccasin leather" -- and the breadth of Not Waving's production, the results draw listeners deep into the artists' shared plane of world-weary but quietly hopeful conception, emphasizing the power of closeness and empathy. Their songs come on like waves lapping a shore that's ever-shifting, ever the same. This cycle is epitomized on the opener, "Signifying The End" with Lanegan's raspy tone met by honeyed synths, before scaling the nocturnal heights of "City Of Sin" and coolly channeling Suicide in "Burn Out Babylon". The waters calm again for "Persimmon Tree" suitably set to harp-like arps, while the deathly croon and impending throb of "Murder In Fugue" comes to rest in the serene resolution of "The Broken Man" in a manner that's entirely modernist but speaks to eons of human emotion. Echoing everything from latter-days Scott Walker to David Sylvian at his most strung out, and even the odd energy of Moebius, Conny Plank & Mayo Thompson's Ludwig's Law album (1998), or the arcane creak of John Duncan's Bitter Earth (2016), Natalizia and Lanegan's efforts will realign listeners presumptions of both artists and place them in a category all of their own. Mastered and cut by Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Edition of 500.
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LP
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CT 085LP
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Reissue of the 1976 historic collaboration between producer instrumentalist Augustus Pablo and dub engineer King Tubby.
"If you had to pick one album that best represents the pinnacle of the art of dub, you'd cull the candidates down pretty quickly to ten or 12, and it would get very difficult after that. Few would fault you for ending up with this one, though, which stands as perhaps the finest collaboration between two of instrumental reggae's leading lights: producer and melodica player Augustus Pablo and legendary dub pioneer King Tubby. Among other gems, this album offers its title track -- a dub version of Jacob Miller's 'Baby I Love You So'-- which is widely regarded as the finest example of dub ever recorded. But the rest of the album is hardly less impressive. 'Each One Dub', another cut on a Jacob Miller rhythm, possesses the same dark and mystical ambience, if not quite the same emotional energy, as 'King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown,' and the version of the epochal 'Satta Massaganna' that closes the album is another solid winner. Pablo's trademark 'Far East' sound (characterized by minor keys and prominent melodica lines) is predominant throughout, and is treated with care and grace by King Tubby, who has rarely sounded more inspired in his studio manipulations than he does here. Absolutely essential." --Rick Anderson, All Music
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LP
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FOX 014LP
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Alternative Fox present a reissue of Mary Lou Williams's Black Christ Of The Andes, originally released in 1965. Pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams played with nearly every major jazz performer during her long, illustrious, and varied career, in addition to recording many solo works. Born Mary Winn in Atlanta in 1910 and raised in a "shotgun shack", where local musicians gathered to jam, she played by ear from a tender age and learned the boogie-woogie style upon moving to Pittsburgh with her older sister Mamie. While still in high school, Williams toured with the Theatre Owners' Booking Association, bringing her into the orbit of Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, and blues singer, Irene Scruggs, among others; later, based in Kansas City during the 1930s, she began composing and recording solo work. After a stint at the Cotton Club, she formed a combo in Pittsburgh that featured Art Blakey, but was soon recruited by Duke Ellington and once back in New York, began jamming with Thelonious Monk and Charlie Christian at bop hotbed, Minton's Playhouse. Art Tatum, Count Basie -- you name it, she played with them! Black Christ Of The Andes is easily one of the most individual albums created by Williams, or anyone else in jazz, for that matter; recorded in New York in late 1963 and first issued on Williams's own Mary Records, the album has jazz explorations of divine concepts, delivered with suitably complex arrangements; "Anima Christi" and "Praise The Lord" both feature soaring assembly by Melba Liston, "The Devil" and the title track have elaborate choral voices from the Howard Roberts Singers, and instrumentals such as "Miss D. D." and "A Fungus Amungus" use her expert piano skills to shock, titillate and provide light relief.
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12"
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PRESH 008EP
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The Bug and Burial return as Flame 2, on The Bug's Pressure imprint. Following Flame 1's Fog/Shrine 12" on Pressure (2018).
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LP
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RRS 110LP
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Black vinyl. Controversial East Coast punk band Agnostic Front were lynchpins of the New York hardcore scene. Formed in 1982 by former Eliminators guitarist Vinnie Stigma along with vocalist John Watson, drummer Rob CribCrash, and bassist Diego, the band went through several other early members to settle on Vinnie Stigma, bassist Adam Mucci, drummer Raybeez, and Cuban-born singer Roger Miret for these recordings. Often misunderstood in their early days due largely to their majority skinhead following and the shock imagery of their record covers, the group carved out its reputation in the dilapidated Lower East Side of Manhattan, then blighty by poverty, drugs, violence, and high levels of urban decay. The recordings featured on this incendiary compilation date from the very start of their recording career, beginning with the demos that led to their debut seven-inch release, the self-issued United Blood EP (1983), bolstered by other recordings from the period that were left unissued at the time; some of the material included here later appeared on the Raw And Unleased CD (1995), but several songs are appearing on vinyl here for the very first time. Agnostic Front went on to reign supreme on the New York hardcore scene throughout the 1980s and although later recordings once again saw membership changes that brought a shift in style to include thrash-metal crossover elements, their longevity and high standing is such that they were featured on Showtime's The Godfathers of Hardcore documentary (2017), ultimately leading to Roger Miret's recently released autobiography, My Riot (2017).
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LP
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DKR 253LP
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"Thirteen track LP collecting 1970's versions and dubs from the labels of producer & singer Milton 'Billy Hutch' Hutchinson, including three previously unreleased tracks. With several tracks mixed by King Tubby himself and several backed by the Wailers Band, plus many other JA musical luminaries, this is a prime collection of real raw '70s roots reggae in dubwise style. The ten previously released tracks are all culled from rare 45's on Bill's Rocking Time, Judah Music and Gemini labels. Housed in two-sided hand silk screened jacket."
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LP
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IMPREC 472LP
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Pauline Oliveros's Tara's Room has long been a favorite at Important Records and here they release it on LP for the very first time. Tara's Room was cut by John Golden and pressed at RTI in order to achieve a quiet, dynamic pressing. Originally released on cassette in 1987 following the 1986 release of Sounding / Way with Guy Klucevsek, also reissued by Important Records (IMPREC 471LP). This LP features two long sides of infinite depth and sensitivity. Oliveros performs these pieces using a just intonation accordion and her Expanded Instrument System in order to bend both time and pitch. "Both pieces are intended to aid the listener in times of spiritual change, but are just fine for 'everyday' use as well. Highly recommended." --Charles S. Russell, Ear Magazine
Pauline Oliveros, composer, performer, and humanitarian, was an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, for four decades she explored sound -- forging new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation she created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly effects those who experience it, and eludes many who try to write about it. Oliveros has been honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros's commitment to interaction with the moment was unchanged. She could make the sound of a sweeping siren into another instrument of the ensemble. "On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level." --John Rockwell "Through Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening, I now know what harmony is. It's about the pleasure of making music." --John Cage
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2LP
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SOMM 042LP
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Double LP version; includes download. Ear-splitting hard-rock/proto-doom-metal from the early '70s, Electric Funeral were a pioneering Swiss hard-rock band who sadly never registered any studio recordings at the time. Formed in the late '60s by Edi Hirt (drums), Pierrot Wermeille (bass), Alain Christinaz (guitar), and Dominique Bourquin (vocals), they were influenced by bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. Famous for their loud (they played behind giant stacks of Marshall amps) and powerful shows, their sound was too heavy-sounding for a regular label to offer them a contract. The Wild Performance is made of private live and rehearsal tapes recorded in 1970 -- very raw and lo-fi -- but it's the only testimony of their brutal sound. First released in 1991 as a limited LP, this is an expanded edition with newly remastered sound and four killer bonus tracks, taken from reels and tapes recently found in the band's archives. These tracks were also recorded in 1970 except for "My Destiny", which dates to 1973. The sound is still lo-fi but slightly better than the original tracks, especially on the killer "You Can Help" (proto-punk á la Electric Eels), "My Destiny" and the alternate version of "You Can Help". RIYL: Black Sabbath, Iron Claw, Edgar Broughton Band, Moses, Sainte Anthony's Fyre. Includes insert with rare photos and liner and notes by Klemen Breznikar (It's Psychedelic Baby).
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2LP
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MFM 041LP
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Outro Tempo II: Electronic and Contemporary Music from Brazil, 1984-1996 is the second instalment of Music From Memory's Brazilian series. This volume picks up where the first Outro Tempo (MFM 016CD/LP, 2017) left off, shedding light on a new wave of experimentalism that emerged in Brazil in the late 1980s and 1990s. The twenty tracks collected uncover another area of Brazilian music that looked to the future for inspiration. This time it drifts beyond the rainforest and into the pulsating heart of Brazil's great cities, where it meets a generation of young artists eager to radically change the face of contemporary Brazilian music. In Outro Tempo II, the avant-garde and pop worlds meld in a haze of percussion and electronics. It presents another uncompromising and magnetic reinterpretation of the limits of Brazilian music. Outro Tempo II is compiled again by John Gómez and features original artwork by Alice Quaresma. Features May East, Dequinha E Zaba, Oharaska, Fausto Fawcett, R. H. Jackson, Edson Natale, Akira S, Low Key Hackers, Chance, Jorge Degas & Marcelo Salazar, Priscilla Ermel, Voluntários Da Pátria, Angel's Breath, Tetê Espíndola, Nelson Angelo, Jorge Mello, Júlio Pimentel, and Tião Neto.
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LP
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IDEAL 184LP
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On their riveting debut collaboration, Merzbow (Masami Akita) and Posh Isolation's Vanity Productions (Christian Stadsgaard) transmute worries about ecological disaster into a torrent of spirit-gnawing, experimental noise that surpasses the sum of its parts. Both hailing from places with a lot of coastline vulnerable to sea level rises, Masami Akita from Japan, and Stadsgaard in Denmark, Coastal Erosion sees them grasp the nettle of impending doom with typically gauntleted grip and an unswerving intensity that speaks to clear and present concerns. While perhaps not the most obvious bedfellows for collaboration, the artists patently share an emphatic empathy for the situation that resonates through their music, where human forces of emotion intersect elemental chaos in a pair of poetically tempestuous, even harrowing works. Merzbow's visceral, primal roar sustains a perpetual force of attrition that constantly threatens to overwhelm VP's widescreen, panoramic pads on both of the LP's monolithic tracts. But it's due to their democracy of vision that they speak as one, rather than over each other. In the A side's 18 minutes of "Erosion Japan", they connote the frothing might of the Pacific tide encroaching and destroying towering walls of steel and glass with an arrestingly Ballardian quality to their instrumental description of violence and anguish. The B side's 17 minute "Erosion Denmark" follows with a more pensive arrangement of low-lying, unyielding drone frequencies smeared to stereo extremes and overlapped with spirit-penetrating shards of distortion, limning the prospective submergence of the Danish peninsula and its archipelagoes with a Thunbergian seriousness and intractable logic. Taken as a profound warning or as an elegy for Anthropocene extinction, Coastal Erosion is a frighteningly powerful statement that leaves its message like the murky stain of flood waters inside the mind. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. Edition of 300.
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2LP
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OUEST 094LP
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11 Items is the textured first album by Pontiac Streator and Ulla Straus for Huerco S and his pals at West Mineral Ltd. The album sees the American duo expand upon the hazy mindset of their Chat EP (OUEST 097LP, 2018) across a flux of ambient interzones where they transmute fleeting, everyday feels into a bouquet of ephemeral and organically unresolved scenes The expanded double-LP palette of Streator & Straus' second release reveals a greater variegation of their overgrown, verdant electronics and free rhythms in a gently perplexing style of ambient inception. Each of the 11 Items feels like an exploration of dreams within dreams in a way that beautifully parses the poetic from the prosaic and cannily reflects a certain hyperaware yet hypnagogic state of modern ambient music. Recorded at 50 Wingz in Philadelphia, 11 Items convects a cool, communal sort of psychedelia from nose to tail, evoking the feel of friends in a room or a cabin communicating non-verbally. In the process it conjures the type of moments that lead to comfortable silences between familiar souls, and likewise has the capacity to stimulate and dissolve conversation with the babbling, forgot-what-I-was-talking-about flow and quality of MDMA chat between relaxed but frayed and buzzing minds. In an ambiguous style that has become key to West Mineral Ltd.'s aesthetic, the music is neither gloomy nor ecstatic but full of transitory sensations somewhere in between those poles. Each part feels pulled in multiple directions at once, resulting in a sublime schism between jazzy hustle and heavy-lidded electronics in "Item 1", and a subtle underlying tension between layered dimensions of humid, dusky acoustics and congealed electronics on "Item 3", while "Item 5" dices with urges to dance/lean back, and "Item 10" crystallizes this idea of alchemic multi-valency with an unmissable mix of fine grained mentasms firing like synaptic surges in iridescent grey matter. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Edition of 500.
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CD/BOOK
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RM 4108CD
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Noise Mass matches previously unavailable Merzbow works from 1994 with pieces from the limited-edition Hole album of the same year. This new edition charts the through line between records such as Venereology (1994) and Pulse Demon (1996), and includes a 28-page book, with exclusive photographs, and a long-form interview with Masami Akita charting the continuum of Merzbow from 1979 to the present day. On Noise Mass in the late 1980s, Masami Akita's Merzbow began to shift from being a studio project into a fully-fledged performative undertaking. It was a decisive period that began opening up new possibilities for his very particular approach to sound. Across the first half of the 1990s, Merzbow began touring extensively across Europe, the United States, and also in his homeland. It was during this period that the dynamism of Merzbow exploded and the physicality of volume became a primary driver for the experiential capacity of the work. Simultaneously, Merzbow began developing a range of self-made instruments and techniques for exploiting found objects as sound sources, which he used in combination with amplifiers to create a unique spectrum of noise and feedback both in the studio and live. Noise Mass catalogs a critical period within the continuum of Merzbow. It typifies the radical approaches he developed not just through his music, but also through mastering, pushing the very medium of digital audio to its limit through extreme post-production approaches. Of Noise, Masami Akita remarks, "This was around the time Venereology was released from Relapse and the work of Merzbow became more well known to the world. Far greater quantities of that Relapse release were pressed, and much more promotion along with it. In other words, the image of Merzbow's music as it is best known in the world today came from this time. The music of Merzbow has always been a continuum, the piece added this time to Noise Mass, the revised version of Hole, is a work utilizing a voice similar in style to Venereology. Listening to both Hole and Venereology, one can appreciate how these works constitute a thread of continuity through this period." Noise Mass is just that, a ritual of intensity and ferocity that denotes the force that is Merzbow's approach to noise in the absolute.
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LP
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JBH 081LP
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Extraordinary unreleased homemade electronics from the late 1960s made by a pioneering ballet dancer and musician. There are very few Ernest Berk recordings. As a pioneering ballet dancer, instructor and electronic music artist he was surprisingly prolific. He made music for all sorts of uses -- he even made library music -- and of course this very album of his music for two of his ballets. Towards the end of his life Ernest Berk gifted his entire collection of works, tapes, documents, and all to the Historical Archive Of The City Of Cologne. Tragically, in 2009, a large part of the archive collapsed (due to the construction of an underground railway) destroying 90% of everything. Berk's tapes have tragically never been recovered. They are assumed lost forever. So these two recordings -- issued privately circa 1970 -- remain precious, to say the least. There were no masters, this new pressing was simply transferred from the original copy held by his family. Trunk have done their best to restore the sound. The original notes have also been reproduced, and from what Trunk can gather, this album may well have been pressed and given away as promotion for the Dance Theatre Commune. The original album came with a small piece of paper with a geometrical squiggle stuck on the front.
Ernest Berk was born in Cologne, Germany and came to England just before the war. He started a dance company in London and wanted a sound especially suited to his experimental dance style. This he found in electronic music. Berk felt that electronic music was able to express the feelings of contemporary society in a more potent and communicative way than conventional forms of music. This is not to say he disregarded traditional forms of music, rather, he blended the best elements of both, creating a new and exciting sound. Over the years he gained an international reputation as a composer of electronic music. His works have been heard in Berlin, Cologne, Florence, Edinburgh, United States, to name a few.
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LP
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V 25AH426
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Victory present a reissue of Pacific, originally released in 1978. Reuniting the best session musicians Japan had to offer to make an album that would evoke the atmospheres of the South Pacific islands, the kind of places Japanese people spend their vacations. Pacific is a treat to the ears; its theme of the southern Pacific ocean and its warm cerulean waters relax its listeners with a fusion of city pop, soft jazz, and that good old 1970s funk while remaining surprisingly fully instrumental throughout all contributions from artists Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki, and Tatsuro Yamashita. A true cult LP and an inspiration for a lot of so called "vaporware" music. LP includes insert.
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3LP
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WM 008LP
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2015 has been a year of anniversaries and honors for Wim Wenders, a year full of photography exhibitions and film retrospectives, a year with a big round birthday milestone right at its center, and Wim's 70th birthday. A group of admiring co-conspirators threw in together to make him a very special birthday gift, a triple-LP record album on time-honored vinyl, full of songs that harbor a deep connection to Wim Wenders, to his life and his work. The album bears the title Wim's - Driven By Music and is a compilation featuring many of Wim's musical companions and friends. The idea arose out of Wim Wenders's circle of friends and immediate family to give the filmmaker, notorious for his passion for music, a very special gift for his birthday, by presenting him with a record on vinyl produced especially for him. To make this idea a reality, various bands, musicians, and artists, friends of Wim's, were asked whether they would like to contribute one of their songs to this birthday album. Among these pieces there are some that have already appeared on soundtracks to several Wenders films, though there are also new mixes of songs or entirely new ones here, which can only be heard on the album Wim's - Driven By Music. Over the entire time, his friends had to go to great lengths to make sure our little project remained top secret. Wisely avoiding the project name "Operation Birthday Album", they opted instead to fly under the radar with the purposely snore-inducing tag "Music Rights Clarification III" -- the only thing that may not have escaped his notice entirely, though a phrase that was meant to communicate as much ennui as possible, in order not to arouse any curiosity in case someone left a file lying around somewhere. Inner sleeves in gold embossed triple gatefold; Liner notes from Nick Cave, Calexico, Bonnie Prince Billy, Bono (U2), Irmin Schmidt (Can), Mark Oliver Everett (The Eels), Jun Miyake, Laurent Petitgand, amongst others.
Features Portishead, Calexico, Jürgen Knieper, Crime & The City Solution, Bryan Ferry, Bonnie Prince Billy, Ry Cooder, Texas, Irmin Schmidt, New World Renaissance Band, BAP, Axel Linstädt, Get Well Soon, Lou Reed, Sibylle Baier, Mick Harvey, Die Toten Hosen, U2, Travis, Patti Smith, Thom, Monta, The Eels, Lovegrove, Pal Flata, Sqürl, Radiohead, Laurent Petitgand, Roxy Music, Can, Laurie Anderson, Nick Cave, And The Golden Choir, Pieta Brown, Lovegrove, Gemma Ray, Jun Miyake, and Wim (the band). Includes exclusive new songs (from Bonnie Prince Billy, Get Well Soon, Laurent Petitgand, WIM The Band), and remix (Die Toten Hosen). Also includes exclusive re-recording especially for this album (Axel Linstädt, Patti Smith).
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LP
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KH 9089LP
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Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, live at BBC Studios, London on October 23rd, 1968. Performed on BBC TV's Late Night Line-Up on October 23rd, 1968 (towards the close of the Mothers' rapturously received second European tour), this superb set finds the band -- Frank Zappa, Roy Estrada, Jimmy Carl Black, Art Tripp, Ian Underwood, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, and Ian Sherwood -- on typically adventurous, iconoclastic form. The entire BBC-TV broadcast is presented here, digitally remastered, together with background notes and images.
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LP
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DKR 252LP
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"Fifteen track compilation collecting rare 1970s singles and previously unreleased tracks. With this LP we continue to mine the output of producer Carl 'Stereo' Fletcher and his Uprising and STEREO BEAT labels. A nice collection of mellow roots reggae, this album features singers, deejays and instrumentals. With classics like Little Roy's 'Christopher Columbus' alongside five previously unreleased tracks, all roots fans should find something to love here. Housed in two-sided hand silkscreened jacket." Features Carl Fletcher, Jah Mojo, Junior Folkes, Little Roy & Ian Rock, Carl & The Seers, Junior & Joanette, Pablove Black, Fulk Livingston Reid, Ewan Gardner, SSVW, Anthony Godwin.
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LP
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BT 049LP
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Black Truffle announce the release of this genuine head-scratcher, the first collaboration between DJ/mixtape-compiler Kayo Makino and underground legend Tori Kudo. Originally created to be played between acts at the launch of Eiko Ishibashi's acclaimed The Dreams My Bones Dream (2018) and then reworked and refined for LP release, the two side-long pieces are sonic environments constructed by Makino for Kudo's piano to inhabit, or, as the LP's credits suggest, a "cinéma pour l'oreille" in which Kudo's piano plays the starring role. Beginning with a soothing field recording of crickets dramatically punctuated by smashing glass, the first side finds Kudo playing his way repeatedly through one of Satie's 1897 Pièces froides. Best known to many listeners for his role as leader of the ecstatically shambolic rock unit Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Kudo's performance of Satie's whimsical yet haunting melody is alternately halting and fluid, delighting in the hesitations of unstudied technique and the subtle variations between repeated attempts. While the combination of Kudo's piano and the background of crickets initially suggests a documentary approach to recording -- as if the you are simply hearing incidental sounds creeping through an open window -- things take an unexpected turn a few minutes in when Kudo's piano is suddenly doubled. Layering two separate attempts at the same piece of top of each other, Makino's unorthodox mixing blurs Satie's original into a fog of stumbling echoes that becomes increasingly dreamlike as the chirping crickets are overtaken by pattering rain, German dialogue and traffic sounds. The second side begins in a similarly inscrutable vein, with snatches of birds and film music providing a gentle backdrop for Kudo's improvisational variations on a chord progression that, as his performance builds over its twenty-minute duration, somehow begins to suggest the sadly swaggering grandeur of Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones. Makino accompanies and eventually overwhelms Kudo's piano with a bizarre layer of digitally processed voice and drums, stretched out into a disorienting haze before suddenly retreating to leave Kudo's piano accompanied only by a barking dog. Seemingly unrelated to anything else being produced in the world of contemporary music, this is a striking collaboration between two unique musical personalities that bridges the mundane and the surreal, opening up a dream-space both haunted and hospitable. Cover design by Lasse Marhaug. Mastered by Jim O'Rourke at Steamroom, Japan. Vinyl cut by Rashed Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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2LP
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BF 007LP
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Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku is the second in an ongoing series of archival records of the unheard music of Swedish composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist Catherine Christer Hennix, co-released by Blank Forms Editions and Empty Editions. It follows 2018's Selected Early Keyboard Works and coincides with Blank Forms' publication of Poësy Matters and Other Matters, a two-volume collection of Hennix's writing. Upon her return to Sweden from New York in 1971, Hennix sought to form a large ensemble inspired by her encounters with La Monte Young and recordings by the Theatre of Eternal Music. She enlisted her brother Peter Hennix, Hans Isgren, and a dozen Swedish jazz musicians she had previously worked with, naming the group and its pieces of music after the time and days of the week according to the Angus Maclise calendar (e.g. "The Pointed Time Bus"). Frustrated with the jazz musicians' inability to comprehend and play the intervals of just intonation, she pared the group down to the trio of herself, her brother, and Isgren and christened the live-electronic ensemble The Deontic Miracle. In 1976, The Deontic Miracle performed Hennix's original compositions, alongside works by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Terry Jennings, as part of Brouwer's Lattice at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. With Hennix on amplified Renaissance oboe, live electronics, and sine wave generators, her brother on amplified Renaissance oboe, and Isgren on amplified sarangi, the recordings presented here of the group's first and only public concert see them channeling late period John Coltrane and the sopranino and soprano saxophone playing of La Monte Young and Terry Jennings in the Theatre of Eternal Music. With titles taken from Japanese Gagaku, "Music of Auspicious Clouds" and "Waves of the Blue Sea" are expansive drone improvisations, breathing with the pulsating lull of cicadas' organic sonic latticework. Now accessible for the first time, these recordings by what Hennix has called "the most rejected band ever formed in Sweden" continue to fill gaps of silence from a figure whose work has until recently remained flickering at the margins of some of the most enduring cultural developments of the 20th century.
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2LP
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TTTT 003LP
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Trailblazing Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is joined by revered electronic musician Taylor Deupree on this live recording, documenting their collaboration at St John-at-Hackney Church in 2014, part of ThirtyThree ThirtyThree's flagship concert series St John Sessions. The two musicians develop a kinetic understanding over the recording, entering a sparse musical dialogue -- flourishes of prepared piano give way to bursts of noise and sculpted synths. Totally improvised, the performance follows their collaborations on record -- as a duo on 2013's Disappearance, and in a trio with Illuha on 2014's Perpetual. Ryuichi Sakamoto has had an extraordinary career, from his founding of revolutionary electronic trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, to his remarkable film scores, notably Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) and the soundtrack for Oscar-winning film, The Revenant (2015). Taylor Deupree, meanwhile, spent his career devoted to his label, 12k, and an intricate form of ambient minimalism. Originally released in 2015, ThirtyThree ThirtyThree's inaugural record, the album has been remastered by Deupree. Features new artwork; Comes in a gatefold sleeve; 180-gram, transparent blue vinyl; Includes 24" photographic print.
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LP
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NK 201801LP
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Performing on four different dates in 1967, the year they released their first album, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967), this is Pink Floyd at their early, psychedelic, and raw best. Their showing in May of that year, for the program "The Look Of The Week", was probably the earliest live video recording of the group and includes amazing versions of "Pow R. Toc H." and "Astronomy Domine". Two more recordings for the program Top Gear, which showcased the underground hipster scene of London, and one for "Tomorrow's World" round out this amazing collection of early Floyd, including great versions of "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", "Flaming", and "Vegetable Man". Essential live recordings of Pink Floyd during their greatest era! Limited edition splatter vinyl LP.
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LP
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OMSD 006LP
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Selva Discos present a reissue sought-after Memória das Águas album by Fernando Falcão. Originally recorded in 1979 in Paris but only released independently in Brazil in 1981, the album comes complete with genre-hopping explorations that swirl around ambient soundscapes, lively jazz, experimental-leanings, Afro-rhythms, and a unique blend of Latin grooves and French pop with a Brazilian accent, but it also comes with a story as deeply unique as the music. To make a long story short, after participating in the political movements against the military regime in 1968 in Brazil, Fernando Falcão left the country and moved to France, where he lived in exile for 15 years. There, after working in music, acting, and sculpting, he involved himself in Jérôme Savary's legendary Grand Magic Circus, where he met his first wife, Valérie Kling. It was from this relationship that a partnership began between the musician and his father-in-law, the artist François-Xavier Lalanne, who guided Falcão in the process of inventing sound sculptures such as the balauê -- a horizontal version of the berimbau string instrument whose sound was influenced by a water stream (since there was a hose soaking parts of the balauê wet during the performances). Much of this exploration and experimentation resulted in the album Memória das Águas. The album still sounds like little else from the time. As audacious and experimental as it is seamlessly listenable, it takes in immersive textures one moment before breaking out into Fela Kuti-esque brass-soaked grooves the next. It's ultimately a record that captures the spirit and rhythm of Falcão's homeland combined with the lush production and art-pop approach associated with his exiled home; It's a polished, well executed and glistening record. It's a fusion of African, Brazilian, jazz, pop, classical and avant-garde collides to create a record that spans as many continents as it does genres. Remastered from the original master tapes, completely and faithfully restored. Includes unprecedented liner notes featuring rare photos of the musician and his sound sculptures plus articles, including one from DJ and selector John Gómez who helped to connect Selva Discos' Augusto Olivani with Diana Lion, Fernando Falcão's daughter (since the musician died in 2002), for this project.
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LP
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OMSD 007LP
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Selva Discos present a reissue of Fernando Falcão's album Barracas Barrocas, originally released through Egberto Gismonti's cult record label Carmo in 1987. Somehow, an original copy of this album is even more elusive than its predecessor Memória das Águas (OMSD 006LP) and it is a pity that such a stunning piece of music was kept apart from listeners worldwide for so long. The follow-up to Memória das Águas was recorded in São Paulo after Fernando Falcão returned from his exile in France in 1984. In order to conceive Barracas Barrocas, the musician had the help of illustrious friends, such as singer-songwriter Alceu Valença and singer Tetê Espíndola, alongside brothers Myriam and Daniel Taubkin. At the time, Falcão was still using the sound sculptures he created for Memória das Águas, as he is credited in the liner notes for playing a "water orchestra" and his berimbau variant called balauê. Barracas Barrocas is an album that works as a more condensed and coherent artistic statement of Falcão's oeuvre. Lush strings, swelling brass, glowing production, and humming atmospheres fill the record, adding a beautiful yet subtly linked counterpoint to his previously explosive debut. It is very cinematic, sounding like the soundtrack of a play that only existed in the musician's mind. For this release, not only the sound was remastered but the artwork of Barracas Barrocas was completely and faithfully restored. Also, the reissue comes with unprecedented liner notes featuring rare photos of the musician and his sound sculptures plus an article that tells the story of Fernando Falcão after returning to Brazil following his exile -- a story that has never been told, until now.
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LP
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IMPREC 452LP
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Important Records announces Vibe, the new LP from Extended Organ, the Los Angeles-based quintet associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). Vibe, Extended Organ's first full-length studio LP since 2000's XOXO was recorded in April 2016 by members Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Paul McCarthy, Tom Recchion, and Alex Stevens. The album consists of two side-long tracks, "Hate" and "Vibe", recorded live at LACM Studio in Pasadena, California by acclaimed engineer André Knecht. On Vibe, the band employs prepared piano, junk percussion, Joe Potts' Chopped Optigan, electric guitar, voice, Rheem organ, various electronics, and homemade instruments. Each track is improvised, then assembled and edited without overdubbing in studio. The music moves with velocity and direction revealing surprises at every turn. The resulting sound is ominous, humorous, harmonious, chaotic, and at times quietly erotic. This is abstractly powerful music. The highly provocative cover image, created collaboratively by Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, and Tom Recchion, is shrouded inside a unique laser-cut outer sleeve. Like the music contained within, the cover reveal is a beguiling experience in and of itself. This intriguing package was art directed and designed by Tom Recchion.
Formed in 1994, Extended Organ produces a dynamic otherworldly ambience which can be simultaneously hilarious and frightening. Joe Potts lays down a carpet of sound using and his self-engineered drone instrument, the "Chopped Optigan", over which Paul McCarthy performs vocal and guitar improvisations channeled and processed by Alex Stevens. Alex also adds his own keyboard triggered synthesized sounds. Tom Recchion, renowned as an inventor of homemade instruments, a free improviser, and an accomplished composer of acoustic, electronic and tape music, performs an array of sounds folding lush beauty and horror sensibility into the matrix. Fredrik Nilsen plays an antique Rheem Mark 7 organ along with electronic sound and recordings created by Mike Kelley. Kelley was a member of the group from 2000 until his death in 2012 and continues to be a contributing member by virtue of sound recordings he provided before his death; "In case I can't make a gig, I can still play." The LAFMS formed in the early 1970s around a loosely knit group of like-minded musical improvising sound experimenters in eastern Los Angeles who discovered their mutual interest and banded together to design modes of self-production and distribution of recordings and publications, helping to develop and propel the DIY movement.
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LP
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FOX 013LP
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Keith Jarrett: Live at Sendai Jazz Festival, Den-Ryoku Hall, Japan, 20.10.1986. The gifted American pianist Keith Jarrett is one of the jazz world's greatest musicians. Born in suburban Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1948 with a mixed European cultural heritage, Jarrett was a child prodigy that played piano at the age of two, appeared on television, aged five, and gave his first classical recital, aged seven. After studying at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, he moved to New York in 1964 to perform at the Village Vanguard and then joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Drummer Jack DeJohnette subsequently brought him into the Charles Lloyd Quartet, resulting in European tours, and when that group disbanded in 1968, Jarrett began fronting his own trio with bassist Charlie Hayden and drummer Paul Motian, and also began longstanding collaboration with Miles Davis, helping to shape noteworthy releases such as Live/Evil. From 1983, Jarrett's trio featured DeJohnette and former Albert Ayler collaborator Gary Peacock on bass, that version of the trio being the musicians featured on this beautiful concert staged at the Sendai Jazz Festival in 1986. Along with a sensitive rendition of showtune and Miles anthem "Stella By Starlite", highlights include a driving cut of Paul Desmond's "Late Lament" and a moving take of "I Remember Clifford", Art Blakey's memorial to trumpeter Clifford Brown.
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LP
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FOX 010LP
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Alternative Fox present a reissue of Piero Umiliani and Chet Baker's original soundtrack for Smog, originally released in 1962. As noted for the label's Il Paradiso Dell'uomo (FOX 001LP) soundtrack release, Italian film composer Piero Umiliani was responsible for over 200 original motion picture soundtracks during his long and varied career, creating 35 television theme songs and 40 music library albums. Born in Florence in 1926, he began to receive international recognition in 1958 for his work on the soundtrack of the comedic crime film I Soliti Ignoti (also known as Persons Unknown, Le Pigeon or Big Deal on Madonna Street, depending on the territory), which featured the contribution of jazz trumpeter and actor Chet Baker, an alumnus of Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, and Gerry Mulligan's bands that enjoyed a successful solo career, both in the US and in Europe, despite longstanding issues with heroin addiction. In 1961, Umiliani and Baker joined forces again for the soundtrack of the film Smog, a complicated courtroom drama about an Italian lawyer's travels to Los Angeles, which resulted in all manner of unexpected escapades. Baker features prominently on the moody theme song, the unexpected swing of "Thinkin' Blues", the terse melody of the aptly-titled "Tension", the lingering moodiness of "Alone In A Crowd" and the intense edginess of "Twilight At Los Angeles"; Helen Merrill contributes an alternate reading of the theme song in vocal form and a sultry number called "Dawn". The remainder is pure Umiliani, mostly in the form of heavily-orchestrated big-band jazz, fitting music for a silver-screen venture.
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LP
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FOX 007LP
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Alternative Fox presents a reissue of Bill Evans's Conversations With Myself, originally released in 1963. The inventive and expressive pianist Bill Evans made significant and lasting impact in the jazz realm during a career that stretched from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1929, his father's alcoholism caused a disrupted childhood, though his musical talent was spotted early, leading to a scholarship at the Southeastern Louisiana University and the Mannes School of Music, where he majored in composition. Moving to New York in the mid-50s to work with George Russell, Evans's breakthrough came via his membership of Miles Davis's sextet, where his intense and melodic playing helped make Kind of Blue (1959) an outstanding landmark, during a time when he was also contributing to Chet Baker's self-titled LP. Evans formed a popular trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, which was cut short after LaFaro tragically died in a car crash, leading to the creation of a new trio with Chuck Israels. Then, following collaborative albums with Cannonball Adderley, Eric Dolphy, Shelly Mann, Jim Hall, and others, Evans recorded the concept album Conversations With Myself for Verve Records. Produced in a permissive atmosphere with Creed Taylor and engineer Ray Hall in February 1963 and subtitled A Searching Look into the Genius of Bill Evans, the album features a multi-tracked Evans playing only with himself on piano, with each track featuring an improvised second and third piano line, overdubbed atop what Evans laid down first. Reconstructed renditions of Thelonious Monk's "'Round About Midnight" and "Blue Monk" give way to "Theme From Spartacus" and Evans' own "NYC's No Lark"; this edition features two bonus tracks, the first a re-organized take of Monk's "Bemsha Swing", the second a rendition of the Broadway show tune, "A Sleepin' Bee".
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LP
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WRWTFWW 039LP
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LP version. 350gsm sleeve with selected UV high gloss varnish; WRWTFWW Records announce the release of Irish ambient/minimalist producer Gareth Quinn Redmond's Laistigh den Ghleo, a companion album to Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way (Wave Notation 2) (WRWTFWW 030CD/LP). "Conceptually derived from the work of Japanese minimalist composer Satoshi Ashikawa, I have composed an album which hopes to engage, enrich and reflect the listener's surroundings, an Environmental Music" --Gareth Quinn Redmond. Working with Still Way as a base for inspiration, Gareth Quinn Redmond takes Ashikawa's meditative sound designs to more dramatic and lyrical landscapes, gracefully instilling his personal touch into the master's melodic patterns and presenting six pieces which blend and reflect the modern listener's ever-changing environment. As Midori Takada explains in the liner notes, "Even though Gareth is deeply influenced by Still Way, he looks above, toward the air and the sky. He pays respect to Ashikawa's approach, but adds bold elements from another dimension -- Satoshi Ashikawa aspired to crystallize the sound structure of nature that exists in the environment. Gareth tries to capture what flourishes out of it." Laistigh den Ghleo is released in conjunction with Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way (Wave Notation 2) reissue on WRWTFWW Records. Liner Notes by Midori Takada and Gareth Quinn Redmond. LP version comes in 350gsm sleeve with selected UV high gloss varnish.
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2LP
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FOX 003LP
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One of the strangest and most enigmatic groups in the history of rock n' roll, Les Rallizes Denudes, also known as Hadaka no Rallizes or Hadaka no Rarizu, were a Japanese experimental rock band that is often cited as a pioneering force of the noise rock movement. The story of the band is as strange and difficult as the music they made and although much of the tale is shrouded in mystery, everything apparently begins around Kyoto's radical anti-establishment communes of the late 1960s, where androgynous frontman Takashi Mizutani formed the group in November 1967 while attending Kyoto University. Hard facts are in thin supply and the band's name employs complex punning that essentially equates to "Fucked Up and Naked" in Japanese, a slang reference to being high on drugs. Inspired by the Velvet Underground and other groups employing prominent, overamplified guitar, the band's music was typically based on repetitive rhythmic patterns bolstered by Mizutani's heavily distorted lead guitar, though the poor sound quality of early demos apparently turned Mizutani away from studio recordings, rendering much of their output in the form of live bootlegs, supplanted by the occasional leaked studio demo. Early performances were given as accompaniment to avant-garde theater groups, though the group was soon deemed too loud to be a mere accompaniment, and membership fluctuated frequently, with Mizutani being the only constant, though he retreated from public view following the 1970 Red Army hijacking of Japan Airlines flight 351, with the assistance of original Rallizes bass player, Moriaki Wakabayashi, who subsequently fled to North Korea; the band continued to sporadically record and perform under various guises until 1997. The two versions of There's No Heaven Like Hell, presented here, was recorded on April 1, 1975 at Rallizes House in Fussa, a small town to the west of Tokyo, joining Mizutani with keyboardist/guitarist Taisuke Morishita's experimental group Be, originally known as Yellow. The first version takes the form of an epic slow drone, featuring Mizutani on acid guitar, backed only by Morishita's pulsating synthesizer lines; the second version is in full marathon mode, an hour-long dirge that sees the spacey duo joined by drummer Shunichiro Shoda and a plodding bassist in the latter portion.
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LP
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EPR 053LP
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LP version. In recent years, Southern California has proved to be fertile ground for heavy psych, prog, and free rock. The amount of excellent bands growing out of the San Diego soil is simply unparalleled. Among the youngest generation of these bands are the five-piece Monarch, a band rooted in psychedelia and experimental prog, with a view towards broader horizons. There's something refreshing about Monarch's take on psychedelic rock: they aren't afraid to weave Allman Brothers-esque dual guitar lines with synthesizers and saxophone. They can be heavy, but there's an unmistakable panoramic quality to their compositions too, reflecting the rich and diverse environment they've grown up in, with dazzling pacific coastlines, mountains and desert highways. Compared to their debut album, Two Isles from 2016 (EPR 035CD/LP), Beyond The Blue Sky is a more complex record. The three-year journey has led the band through several separate recording sessions and ended up going all-analogue at Audio Design studios. It's an album that's meticulously crafted and with sights set on new musical territory. Their songwriting has matured and each track feels like a mini-epic, traveling unexpected routes before reaching their sonic destination. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the album's centerpiece, the three-part "Beyond The Blue Sky/Phenomena/Counterpart", where Monarch manages to fuse all their influences into one mammoth composition. It's an album to drive off into a careless summer sunset and beyond.
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