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viewing 1 To 7 of 7 items
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CD
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MCR 923CD
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"Following the reissue of the entire recorded output of South London-based experimental act This Heat and its successor, Camberwell Now, Modern Classics Recordings holds the lens up to a special split album created by one of the driving forces behind those groups - drummer Charles Hayward - in collaboration with Italian musician Gigi Masin, whose looping, rhythmic, electronic compositions have seen his cult following grow in his four decades as a recording artist. Originally released on Belgium's Sub Rosa label in 1989, Les Nouvelles Musiques De Chambre Volume 2 is a split LP on which Masin's eight tracks occupy side A and Charles Hayward's long-form piece (at 21 minutes long), 'Thames Water Authority', occupies side B. Geography may have separated the two artists, who each recorded their pieces in isolation from the other, but there's a commonality to their approach. Previously, Masin had released the inspired 1986 album Wind (BAR 003-015LP), while Hayward's music had long been influenced by the landscape and society of London and the UK. For this album, the label challenged the two musicians to write about the waterways of their respective cities, Venice and London. For Masin, that meant describing the human interactions related to the Italian city's famous landmarks. 'Places, faces, memories... that's what most of the people love to find when they travel to Venice - some kind of magic that's deep in the city,' he writes in the new liner notes accompanying this new re-release. For Hayward, it meant describing the physicality of water, the 'densities and energies' as he puts it, and the politics of it too. Writes Hayward: 'Water was being privatized at the time, the profit margin had been factored in, cost-cutting was implicit, people were being poisoned. Water was a political thing; it still is." Dive in. First time on CD (outside of Japan); Track notes by Gigi Masin and Charles Hayward; Restored and remastered audio; Features the Masin track 'Clouds' as sampled by To Rococo Rot and Björk."
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LP
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MCR 921LP
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"Camberwell, in South London, pops up infrequently in pop culture. Perhaps you know it from the Camberwell Carrot, the heroically sized joint smoked in cult movie Withnail & I, or perhaps -- if you're attuned to experimental music -- you know of Camberwell Now. The group formed from the ashes of This Heat, the art-noise group whose catalog was reissued on Modern Classics Recordings in early 2016. Not so much a supersession as a continuation of that group, Camberwell Now featured This Heat's vocalist / drummer Charles Hayward, who assembled an unusual line-up comprising Stephen Rickard, a former BBC sound engineer, on field recordings and tape manipulation and Trefor Goronwy on bass, vocals and ukulele. 'We had a very specific set of skills,' says Hayward, in new liner notes compiled for this long overdue reissue, 'and it wasn't immediately clear to us how best to bring them together so that we could play live.' Arriving in 1986, The Ghost Trade, the group's sole full-length LP, was what existed at the confluence of live performance and studio experimentation. Similar to This Heat's process, the group spent two years in Cold Storage experimenting with the studio and assembling finished songs from vast quantities of tapes. Their two EPs, re-issued as The EP Collection, were borne of a similar process but each with unique yields. The tracks that eventually formed The Ghost Trade were songs forged in the bleak beauty of Thatcher's London. 'To me, the sounds invoked humanity trapped behind and inside a world constructed of glass, steel, and concrete, frozen inside the textures like prisoners of the twilight zone, humanity haunting a landscape it had made for itself,' says Hayward. First vinyl re-issue, includes bonus track 'Daddy Needs A Throne'. Official re-issue in collaboration with original members. 24 bit/96 kHz re-master from original analog tapes. Restored art, expanded to a gatefold tip-on jacket. Includes download card, 8 page booklet with track notes by the artists, lyrics and archival photos."
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2LP
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MCR 915LP
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"Second pressing on black vinyl. Remastered from the original tapes. You can tell a lot about a band by the songs they leave off their albums. Manchester's Stone Roses released just two albums -- the self-titled 1989 debut and, five years later, the follow-up, Second Coming. But those albums tell only part of the story. The missing bits can be found on Turns Into Stone, originally released in 1992 and scooping up early singles and B-sides that didn't appear on the debut album. The album's provenance speaks nothing of its quality: here can be found some of the greatest songs the four-piece ever recorded, from their poppets single, 'Elephant Stone,' to the towering 'One Love' and the anthemic 'Fools Gold,' the track on which their hybrid of atmospheric indie and acid house found its most perfect balance. It's the track that allowed the group's rhythm section of Gary 'Mani' Mounfied (bass) and Alan 'Reni' Wren (drums) to shine and the one that gave them cred beyond the indie scene -- Run DMC sampled it on 1990's 'What's It All About?' Quite why The Stone Roses chose not to put these songs on an album is a mystery, but Turns Into Stone itself was controversial at the time. In a protracted battle with record label Silvertone, the band were unable to release any new material for several years due to an injunction against them, and Turns Into Stone was released without input from the band -- unlike the majority of their releases, it boasts no cover art from the guitarist, painter and sculptor John Squire. The title is taken from the closing line in 'One Love' -- 'What goes up must come down/Turns into dust or turns into stone.' The lyric proved prescient for The Stone Roses who split acrimoniously following the divisive Second Coming and a poorly received performance at the UK's influential Reading Festival. It took eighteen years for the group to reunite, and when they did, they played to 220,000 people in three nights at Manchester's Heaton Park. For a time, relations between the band did indeed turn to dust. The band's legacy, which lives on in those three albums, is rock solid."
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2LP
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MCR 913LP
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Double LP version in deluxe Stoughton gatefold "tip-on" jacket; includes download code. "First ever vinyl reissue. 30th anniversary edition expanded to a double LP housed in a deluxe Stoughton gatefold 'tip-on' jacket. 24bit/96kHz remaster from the original tapes. Essay by Sam Sweet interviewing both David and Eric, including unseen archive photos. Includes download card for full album. You'll find a Suicide Bridge in almost any big city you care to visit, but few are more impressive than the Colorado Street Bridge connecting Pasadena to Los Angeles, which earned its nickname by being the scene of suicides in triple figures. It's also the scene of a photo shoot in which singer-songwriters Eric Caboor and David Kauffman posed on the deserted structure, capturing an image that would eventually inform the spare, detached mood -- and title -- of their majestic debut album, 1984's Songs From Suicide Bridge. Indeed, there's a fatalistic quality to this LP that has much to do with its origins. Home-recorded on a four-track, Songs From Suicide Bridge was released on the pair's own Donkey Soul Music in 1984. If this were a movie, the album would have been a huge success. Instead, the 500 copies pressed found their way to few willing ears. Though real life encroached, Caboor and Kaufmann continued to work together, releasing albums as The Drovers in 1989 and 1992. Now, their debut is to be released by Light In The Attic Records with brand new liner notes by Sam Sweet. Hopefully, it will finally find its audience -- a listener who can see hope in the darkness. 'People would tell us those songs were depressing,' Caboor says in his interview with Sweet, 'but it wasn't depressing to us. In a lot of cases, playing those songs in that little room was one of the only things that made us feel better.'"
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CD
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MCR 913CD
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"First ever vinyl reissue. 30th anniversary edition expanded to a double LP housed in a deluxe Stoughton gatefold 'tip-on' jacket. 24bit/96kHz remaster from the original tapes. Essay by Sam Sweet interviewing both David and Eric, including unseen archive photos. Includes download card for full album. You'll find a Suicide Bridge in almost any big city you care to visit, but few are more impressive than the Colorado Street Bridge connecting Pasadena to Los Angeles, which earned its nickname by being the scene of suicides in triple figures. It's also the scene of a photo shoot in which singer-songwriters Eric Caboor and David Kauffman posed on the deserted structure, capturing an image that would eventually inform the spare, detached mood -- and title -- of their majestic debut album, 1984's Songs From Suicide Bridge. Indeed, there's a fatalistic quality to this LP that has much to do with its origins. Home-recorded on a four-track, Songs From Suicide Bridge was released on the pair's own Donkey Soul Music in 1984. If this were a movie, the album would have been a huge success. Instead, the 500 copies pressed found their way to few willing ears. Though real life encroached, Caboor and Kaufmann continued to work together, releasing albums as The Drovers in 1989 and 1992. Now, their debut is to be released by Light In The Attic Records with brand new liner notes by Sam Sweet. Hopefully, it will finally find its audience -- a listener who can see hope in the darkness. 'People would tell us those songs were depressing,' Caboor says in his interview with Sweet, 'but it wasn't depressing to us. In a lot of cases, playing those songs in that little room was one of the only things that made us feel better.'"
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LP
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MCR 908LP
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"Originally released on the Wasted Talent label and reissued last year by Modern Classics Recordings, 1981's debut album Where's My Towel was inspired by the group's growing dissatisfaction with their part in the release of Live at Raul's. Returning with Lullabies Help the Brain Grow two years later, they were still striking out at situations around them. The opening track, 'We Got Your Money' is a sort of rally cry to the misunderstandings of their scene , and to the fraternity boys and girls that came to gawk or cause trouble: 'And to all you frat boys/We got your money in our hands!' they shouted, gleefully. Song titles include 'We're Not in It to Lose,' 'Fight Back,' and 'Assault' proved that the gloves were off. Produced by Spot, legendary in-house producer at SST Records, Lullabies is an album that caught the band in ever-turbulent mode, switching drummers through the recording from Fred Schultz to Rey Washam -- the fourth person to occupy the stool for vocalist Randy 'Biscuit' Turner, guitarist Tim Kerr and bassist Chris Gates. The album found the band testing the boundaries of their wide-ranging sound, with double-quick thrashers like 'Lesson' and double-funky jams like 'Funk Off' (helped along by the brass of the Fun Fun Fun 12" horn section). Kerr took lead vocals on two tracks, and on 'Sound On Sound' they combine his languid delivery and pendulum bass in a way that must have pricked the ears of a young Steven Malkmus. Original album art expanded to a gatefold tip-on jacket. Interior gatefold jacket features an unpublished 1984 photo of the band by photographer Pat Blashill. Includes a download card."
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LP
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MCR 909LP
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"Released at the time of their split in 1985 and now reissued by Modern Classics Recordings, the group's final album, No Matter How Long the Line Is At the Cafeteria, There's Always a Seat finds Big Boys continuing to innovate, even including the sound of turntable scratching on 'Common Beat,' a sound rarely heard outside of hip-hop at the time. Songs like 'Which Way to Go' and 'Narrow View' echo their boredom and anger with the changing hardcore scene, while 'I Do Care' and 'What's the Word' illustrate the band's positive outlook for things to come. Just as the album flirts between expressions of boredom and anger and funk jams that declare 'Life is just a party' ('What's the Word'), Big Boys were a mess of contradictions. On stage, openness was key and they became famous for encouraging the audience to get involved: 'We're the band, you're the band,' they would say. But as a four-piece, their relationships began to fray as is not uncommon with many bands on long tours. After five short years and many recordings, the Big Boys went separate ways. Original album art expanded to a gatefold tip-on jacket. Interior gatefold jacket features an unpublished 1984 photo of the band's last concert by photographer Pat Blashill. Includes download card."
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