Fifth album from Nottingham born singer-songwriter Jake Bugg and his debut on RCA Records.

In honour of the 80th birthday of Jamaica's most enigmatic music creator, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Trojan line up a trio of seminal vinyl albums from Perry's most prolific period. Kicking the set off is Junior Byles’ influential roots classic from 1972, "Beat Down Babylon". Comprising the famed singer’s early solo recordings from the previous two years, the LP has since become a widely sought-after collector’s item, often hailed at Lee Perry’s finest work prior to the opening of his Black Ark studio late the following year. Despite its enviable reputation, the LP has been unavailable on vinyl since its original release, with this long overdue reissue sure to delight fans of Perry, early roots and one of Jamaica’s most gifted singer-songwriters. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Out of press since its original 1972 release, this Lee Perry produced roots masterpiece is back on the black stuff for all the real reggae fans out there.

Sometimes it can take years to find your calling. Not so, for wanderer Julie Byrne; whose power of lyrical expression and melodic nous seems inborn. But often, what comes naturally demonstrates against speed. Julie’s second album Not Even Happiness has taken time to evolve, but as it spans recollections of bustling roadside diners, the stars over the high desert, the aching weariness of change, the wildflowers on the coast of California and the irresolvable mysteries of love. Her new album archives a vivid world that would've otherwise been lost to the road and in doing so, Byrne exhibits her extraordinarily innate musicality.

In fact, some of the album’s songs took two years of fine tuning to get where they needed to be. And if you were to ask her why the follow up to 2014's Rooms With Walls And Windows has taken so long, you’d only be greeted with a bemused smile as though it's the strangest question she's ever been asked; “Writing comes from a natural process of change and growth. It took me up to this point to have the capacity to express my experience of the time in my life that these songs came from.”

Having counted Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, New Orleans as her home in recent years. For now, Julie has settled in New York City where she moonlights as a seasonal urban park ranger in Manhattan. Whether witnessing the Pacific Northwest for the first time (‘Melting Grid’), the morning sky in Colorado after staying up through the night at a house party in the mountains of Boulder (‘Natural Blue’), recording the passage of freight trains on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York ('Interlude'), or a journey fragrant with rose water; reading Frank O’Hara aloud from the passengers seat during a drive through the desert of Utah into the rainforest of Washington State (‘All The Land Glimmered Beneath’), Not Even Happiness is Julie’s beguilingly ode to the fringes of life.

Self-taught on the guitar after picking it up when her father became ill and could no longer play the instrument himself, Julie readily admits she can’t read music and doesn't even listen to it all that much - the first vinyl she owned was indeed, her own. Recorded with producer Eric Littmann (Phantom Posse), Julie laid down the new album in her childhood home in western New York state and offers an altogether bigger picture to its predecessor through a wider, yet subtle, exploration of instruments and atmospherics, Not Even Happiness reveals an artist who has grown in confidence over time.

Byrne's debut album was released back in January 2014 on Chicago based DIY label Orindal after initially being as two separate cassettes releases. Rooms With Walls and Windows went onto become a true modern-day word of mouth success story (it would have to be for an artist who shuns all forms of social media) and ended the year being voted number 7 in Mojo magazine's best albums of the year, with the Huffington Post calling it "2014's Great American Album". A collection of hushed intimate front porch psych-folk songs, that unknowingly recalled the greats, but felt very much for our time. It saw her travel to Europe over two summers playing the Green Man festival and End Of The Road, as well as lesser trodden tour paths around Europe.

Julie Byrne will take the songs from Not Even Happiness (the first release on a new record label Basin Rock, based in the Lancashire / Yorkshire border town of Todmorden) on the road throughout 2017.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Lightly strummed and impeccably arranged folk guitars meet with swaying and mournful vocals all purposefully and beautifully delivered as a shining example of minimal affectations with maximum results.

TRACK LISTING

1. Follow My Voice
2. Sleepwalker
3. Melting Grid
4. Natural Blue
5. Interlude
6. Morning Dove
7. All The Land Glimmered Beneath
8. Sea As It Glides
9. I Live Now As A Singer

The first album in over six years from American songwriter Julie Byrne is a testament to patience and determination, the willingness to transform through the desolation of loss, the vitality of renewal, and the courage to rise, forever changed. For nearly a decade, Byrne has moved through the world as a characteristically private artist largely outside the public eye. A self-taught musician that has committed her life to her work, she now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous, and life-affirming music of her career, The Greater Wings. While they hold the plasticity of grief and trauma, the songs are universally resonant, unbridled in their devotion and joy, held up by the love and alliance of a chosen family. Byrne leans further into atmospheres both expansive and intimate; the lush, evocative songcraft flows between her signature fingerpicked guitar, synthesizer, and a newly adopted piano, made wider by flourishes of harp and strings. It is the transcendent sound of resource, of friendship that was never without romance, of loyalty that burns from within like a heart on fire, and the life force summoned in unrepeatable moments — raw, gorgeous, and wild.

The Greater Wings was written across several seasons, pulling imagery from nights on tour, periods of isolation, and the drives cross-country for its various collaborations between Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Recording started with the late Eric Littmann, her longtime creative partner and Not Even Happiness producer, and finished in the Catskills of New York with producer Alex Somers (Sigur Rós, Julianna Barwick).

“My hope for The Greater Wings is that it lives as a love letter to my chosen family and as an expression of the depth of my commitment to our shared future. Being reshaped by grief also has me more aware of what death does not take from me. I commit that to heart, to words, to sound. Music is not bound to any kind of linear time, so in the capacity to record and speak to the future: this is what it felt like to me, when we were simultaneous, alive, occurring all at once. What it has felt like to go up against my edge and push, the love that has made it worth all this fight. These memories are my values, they belong with me.”

Julie Byrne will confess the success of her 2017 LP Not Even Happiness was unexpected; nine gracefully road-worn odes to the fringes of life she assembled without any expectation that they’d travel so far beyond their DIY origins. But its hushed closing track, “I Live Now As A Singer,” did forecast an intention. She knew the open space — occupied by Littmann’s signature palette of synth tones, Jake Falby’s strings, and Byrne’s robust, drifting voice — presented something new and thrilling, something they’d develop as a live band touring the world, and what would later be understood as the catalyst for material to come. From orchestral folk meditations (“The Greater Wings”, “Portrait of a Clear Day”) to windswept piano ballads (“Moonless”, “Death Is The Diamond”) to the luminous, synth-driven euphoria of “Summer Glass,” The Greater Wings builds on this revelatory space at every turn.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Following on from her standout 2017 LP 'Not Even Happiness', 'The Greater Wings' is a sweeping, expansive and meditative record that passes through wistful orchestral folk, heartfelt piano balladry and iridescent synth passages - gorgeous, gorgeous stuff!!

TRACK LISTING

1. The Greater Wings
2. Portrait Of A Clear Day
3. Moonless
4. Summer Glass
5. Summer’s End
6. Lightning Comes Up From The Ground
7. Flare
8. Conversation Is A Flowstate
9. Hope’s Return
10. Death Is The Diamond

'I believe the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.' - John Cage 1937. Although John Cage occasionally worked in large, sophisticated studios - for example, when he composed Fontana Mix in 1958 - his approach to electronic and tape music was often uncomplicated, makeshift, and pragmatic, employing simple tabletop devices: tape machines, phonograph cartridges, contact microphones, record players, portable radios, etc. He developed a soundworld that was utterly new, radical and demanding. It heralded the age of the loudspeaker, mass communication and Marshall McLuhan's 'global village.' The hiss, crackle and hum of electronic circuits, and the disembodied sounds, snatched by radio from the ether, spoke of the 20th century.

Langham Research Centre works within the tradition firmly established by Cage, using resources that would have been available to him. For the realisation of Cartridge Music, moving iron phonograph pickups were sourced and restored. These have a knurled screw designed to hold a steel phonograph needle and, in the piece, other objects are inserted and amplified: pieces of wire, toothpicks, paperclips, etc. The realisation of Fontana Mix includes the individual mono tracks from Cage's original tapes created in 1958. These are played using open-reel tape machines. These practices ensure we work within the limitations that Cage experienced and enable us to get close to the soundworld he inhabited. (Robert Worby, LRC).

TRACK LISTING

CD:
01 Fontana Mix With Aria 1958 / 13'36
02 Imaginary Landscape N°.5 1952 / 3'00
03 WBAI 1960 / 7'00
04 Cartridge Music 1960 / 10'00
05 0'00'' 1962 / 2'36
06 Variations I 1960 / 10'00 Tracklisting LP

VINYL:
SIDE A
01 Fontana Mix With Aria 1958 / 13'36
02 Imaginary Landscape N°.5 1952 / 3'00
03 WBAI 1960 / 7'00

SIDE B
01 Cartridge Music 1960 / 10'00
02 0'00'' 1962 / 2'36
03 Variations I 1960 / 10'00

Domino Records reissue John Cale’s classic live album ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’, featuring his revered interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ amongst many solo versions from his enduring catalogue and previously unreleased outtakes.

‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ was the first live John Cale album to feature him performing solo and ‘unplugged’ - before that term became a mid 1990s buzzword.

In contrast to the jaundiced punk truculence of ‘Sabotage/Live’ (1979) or ‘Even Cowgirls Get The Blues’ (1986), ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ gives us Cale at his most melodic and moving, a mellowed and certainly a soberer man in a Yamamoto jacket and a lopsided haircut running through a selection of his prettiest songs. It’s a Cale many love deeply, a man alone at a concert-hall Steinway revisiting the pop-rock of ‘Paris 1919’ and ‘A Child’s Christmas In Wales’, as wistful and whimsical as any 70s singer songwriter holding court at LA’s Troubadour club. It’s the Cale who disavowed the spiky nihilism and decadence of the Velvets, inspired instead by melodicism of Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson (to whom he’d paid haunting homage on ‘Slow Dazzle’s brilliant Beach Boys pastiche ‘Mr. Wilson’). It’s the Cale who improbably took a staff job at Warner-Reprise in LA and - for an all-too-brief moment - became part of the Burbank producers’ mafia alongside Lenny Waronker and his laidback chums. (Lest we forget, 1973’s ‘Paris 1919’ featured members of Little Feat and The Crusaders among the backing musicians.)

Cale being Cale, ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ isn’t all rueful tenderness. The deceptively jaunty ‘Darling I Need You’ is flippantly introduced as a song about “religious awakening in the southern part of the United States,” while Elvis’ ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is no less gothic in the solo version here than it is in the Grand Guignol horror show of the original on ‘Slow Dazzle’. ‘Guts’ is as close as Cale ever came to Lou Reed at his most withering.

It’s easy to forget that - years before Jeff Buckley and The X-Factor - he was the first artist to recognize the hymnal majesty of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, or that it was his original 1991 reading of the song that popped up on the soundtrack of ‘Shrek’.

TRACK LISTING

On A Wedding Anniversary
Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Cordoba
Buffalo Ballet
A Child’s Christmas In Wales
Darling I Need You
Guts
Ship Of Fools
Leaving It Up To You
The Ballad Of Cable Hogue
Chinese Envoy
Dying On The Vine
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend)
Heartbreak Hotel
Style It Takes
Paris 1919
(I Keep A) Close Watch
Thoughtless Kind
Hallelujah
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend) (Outtake)*
Amsterdam (Outtake) *
Broken Hearts (Outtake) *
I’m Waiting For The Man (Outtake) *
Heartbreak Hotel (Outtake - Strings) *
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend) (Outtake - Strings) *
Paris 1919 (Outtake - Strings) *
Antarctica Starts Here (Outtake - Strings) *

* = Bonus Track (REWIGCD107X & REWIGLP107X [& REWIGLP107 As
Digital Download] Only)

For nearly 60 years, or at least since he was a young Welshman who moved to New York and formed The Velvet Underground, Cale has been reinventing his music with dazzling and inspiring regularity. There was the bewitching chamber folk of Paris 1919 followed instantly by the gnarled rock of Fear, the provocative and spare song cycle Music for a New Society followed more than 30 years later by mighty and unabashed electronic updates. Once again, here is Cale, reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. His engrossing 12-track MERCY moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronics toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future.

On MERCY, Cale enlists some of music’s most curious young minds: Animal Collective, Sylvan Esso, Laurel Halo, Tei Shi, Actress. They’re only some of the astounding cast here, brilliant musicians who climb inside Cale’s consummate vision of the world and help him redecorate there. Cale turned 80 in March, and he’s watched as many peers have passed away, particularly during the last decade. MERCY is the continuation of a long career’s work with wonder. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; MERCY is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.

The writings and recordings that shaped MERCY piled up for years, as Cale watched society totter at the brink of dystopia. Trump and Brexit, Covid and climate change, civil rights and right-wing extremism—Cale let the bad news of the day filter into his lines, whether that meant contemplating the sovereignty and legal status of sea ice melting near the poles or the unhinged arming of Americans. Lessons from a life (still being) richly lived floated to the fore, too, nodded to on the previously released “NIGHT CRAWLING.” If we’re always regretting our past, aren’t we conscripting ourselves to permanent disappointment?

During “STORY OF BLOOD,” after the piano prelude gives way to a frame-rattling beat and synthesizers that feel like sunshine splashed across a snowfield, the voices of Cale and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering slide past one another, two phantoms trying to find a partner amid the modern din. “Swing your soul,” they both sing in aspiration. In the final verse, Cale remembers this existence is not just about himself. “I’m going back to get them, my friends in the morning. Bring them with me into the light.” The accompanying video by Emmy-winning director Jethro Waters is a mix of disturbing and serene featuring both Cale and Weyes Blood. Its deep tones and religious images emphasize the track’s dark, spiritual mood.

Cale elaborates: “I’d been listening to Weyes Blood’s latest record and remembered Natalie’s puritanical vocals. I thought if I could get her to come and sing with me on the ‘Swing your soul’ section, and a few other harmonies, it would be beautiful. What I got from her was something else! Once I understood the versatility in her voice, it was as if I’d written the song with her in mind all along. Her range and fearless approach to tonality was an unexpected surprise. There’s even a little passage in there where she’s a dead-ringer for Nico.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mercy Feat. Laurel Halo
2. Marilyn Monroe’s Leg (Beauty Elsewhere) Feat. Actress
3. Noise Of You
4. Story Of Blood Feat. Weyes Blood
5. Time Stands Still Feat. Sylvan Esso
6. Moonstruck (Nico’s Song)
7. Everlasting Days Feat. Animal Collective
8. Night Crawling
9. Not The End Of The World
10. The Legal Status Of Ice Feat. Fat White Family
11. I Know You’re Happy Feat. Tei Shi
12. Out Your Window

Despite the album’s playful title, Cale’s second album in just over a year still contains the same feelings of fierce and inquisitive rage that were present in 2023 album MERCY. He remains angry, still incensed by the willful destruction that unchecked capitalists and unrepentant conmen have hoisted upon the wonders of this world and the goodness of its people. But this is not at all MERCY II, or some collection of castoffs, as throughout his career of more than six decades, Cale has never been much for repetition. His vanguard-shaping enthusiasms have shifted among ecstatic classicism and unbound rock, classic songcraft and electronic reimagination with proud restlessness.

And so, on POPtical Illusion, he foregoes the illustrious cast to burrow mostly alone into mazes of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that, as far as Cale goes, constitute a sort of swirling hope, a sage insistence that change is yet possible. Produced by Cale and longtime artistic partner Nita Scott, POPtical Illusion is the work of someone trying to turn toward the future – exactly as Cale always has.

TRACK LISTING

1. God Made Me Do It (don’t Ask Me Again)
2. Davies And Wales
3. Calling You Out
4. Edge Of Reason
5. I’m Angry
6. How We See The Light
7. Company Commander
8. Setting Fires
9. Shark-Shark
10. Funkball The Brewster
11. All To The Good
12. Laughing In My Sleep
13. There Will Be No River

First time vinyl repress of this John Cale album, originally released on the Opal label in 1989, produced by Brian Eno.

“‘Words For The Dying’ has at its heart The Falklands Suite, Cale’s baroque if heartfelt response to the Anglo-Argentinian War, which finds him setting the poems of his beloved Dylan Thomas to music. When building songs around another’s words, the results often sound forced, but Cale does a magnificent job of compressing Thomas’s lyricism into neat melodic phrases, themselves just components of a vast harmonic mega-structure scored for the USSR’s Orchestra of Symphonic & Popular Music of Gostelradio. A project that could easily have collapsed under the weight of its own ambition is instead a late masterpiece, thanks to Cale’s deep-seated compositional genius, and unobtrusive but resonant production from Brian Eno.” - Kiran Sande

TRACK LISTING

The Falkland Suite
Introduction
There Was A Saviour
Interlude I
On A Wedding
Anniversary
Interlude II
Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Do Not Go Gentle Into That
Good Night

Songs Without Words. II
The Soul Of Carmen
Miranda

A master of romantic abstraction, Jefre Cantu–Ledesma is not new to the scene. In fact, he's been releasing a steady stream of music for nearly twenty years. With the brilliant album A Year With 13 Moons, however, the ever–prolific Ledesma appears to be hitting a new high. Or low, depending on how you like to see things.

Using a friend's reel to reel tape player, Cantu employed electric guitar, modular synthesizer, drum machine and concrète sounds from his surroundings at the Headlands, recorded while walking to the studio, cooking in the kitchen, talking with friends, the ocean, films he was watching, driving in a car. Everything was record stereo to tape.

The result is gorgeous, haunting and sprawling. A companion to his last full length LP, Love is A Stream, (Type, 2010), 13 Moons, is a dense, swirling mass.

TRACK LISTING

1: The Last Time I Saw Your Face
2: Love After Love
3: Disappear
4: Mirror Of Past & Future
5: Interiors
6: Pale Flower
7: The Twins / Shadows
8: Agate Beach
9: The Spree
10: Early Autumn
11: A Portrait Of You At Nico's Grave, Grunewald, Berlin (For Bill K.)
12: Remembering
13: Görlitzer Park
14: Along The Isar
15: At The End Of Spring
16: Remains

On the Echoing Green is an elegant work of lush, shimmering sound, rendered with a singular touch by eternal electric romantic Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. In contrast to the haze and hermetic process of previous albums, Green was conceived as a deliberate experiment in clarity and collaboration: “I was interested in trying to bring out more overt pop elements, to let them come to the front and be present. I also have more trust now in letting things happen – trusting other people’s musicianship, and being open to people’s ideas. Eventually, things emerge.” What emerged from this bond are eight rapturous and richly melodic slow dives of swirling guitar, bass, synthesizer, piano, and drum machines, dramatically accented in places by heavenly arcs of voice courtesy of Argentinian singer-songwriter Sobrenadar. Cantu-Ledesma encouraged chemistry and intuition in the studio by beginning the album without any demos for reference; he and his collaborators pursued patterns and hypnotic textures across long-form improvisations until gradually songs began to take shape. This is music of growth and grandeur, of ascent and exploration, played with purpose and passion by a craftsman in tune with the beauty of sound and the harmony of light. In his words: “[This album] feels like spring – things coming alive, blooming, emerging from winter.”

TRACK LISTING

1. In A Copse
2. A Song Of Summer
3. Echoing Green
4. The Faun
5. Tenderness
6. Vulgar Latin
7. Autumn
8. Dancers At The Spring
9. Door To Night

On the Echoing Green is an elegant work of lush, shimmering sound, rendered with a singular touch by eternal electric romantic Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. In contrast to the haze and hermetic process of previous albums, Green was conceived as a deliberate experiment in clarity and collaboration: “I was interested in trying to bring out more overt pop elements, to let them come to the front and be present. I also have more trust now in letting things happen – trusting other people’s musicianship, and being open to people’s ideas. Eventually, things emerge.” What emerged from this bond are eight rapturous and richly melodic slow dives of swirling guitar, bass, synthesizer, piano, and drum machines, dramatically accented in places by heavenly arcs of voice courtesy of Argentinian singer-songwriter Sobrenadar. Cantu-Ledesma encouraged chemistry and intuition in the studio by beginning the album without any demos for reference; he and his collaborators pursued patterns and hypnotic textures across long-form improvisations until gradually songs began to take shape. This is music of growth and grandeur, of ascent and exploration, played with purpose and passion by a craftsman in tune with the beauty of sound and the harmony of light. In his words: “[This album] feels like spring – things coming alive, blooming, emerging from winter.”

TRACK LISTING

1. In A Copse
2. A Song Of Summer
3. Echoing Green
4. The Faun
5. Tenderness
6. Vulgar Latin
7. Autumn
8. Dancers At The Spring
9. Door To Night

Some records aren’t as simple as they seem. Most are capsules of beauty and creative vision, or sublime objects of expression which occupy the abstract realms. But the rare few are also discrete philosophies, realised in sound - a truth brought to the forefront by Mexican Summer veteran, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s, latest venture, Tracing Back The Radiance. A radical departure from pop drenched melodies which have defined his recent efforts, its experimental forms offer a dynamic rethinking of the terms and possibilities of discourse and collaboration - a vast ambient landscape of abstraction, texture, and tone, beneath which lingers a veiled vision, addressing the challenges of our increasingly disassociated age. A slow, delicate meditation - open space punctuated by the restrained harmonics of vibraphone, processing, flute, pedal steel, synthesizer, piano, organ, and voice, Tracing Back The Radiance grew from a few simple piano lines, a need for change, and an evolving process which fell somewhere between conversation, singular vision, and a wild game of exquisite corpse - Cantu-Ledesma acting as contributor, servant, and guiding force to the emerging album’s all-star cast of voices - John Also Bennett, Marilu Donavan, Chuck Johnson, Gregg Kowalsky, Mary Lattimore, David Moore, Meara O'Reilly, Jonathan Sielaff, Roger Tellier Craig, and Christopher Tignor, each responding and intervening from various corners of North America. With nods to historic high-water marks in ambient and electroacoustic music, as well Italian minimalist pioneers like Gusto Pio, Lino Capra Vaccina, and Francesco Messina + Raul Lovisoni, Cantu-Ledesma delves forward with one of his most ambitious, elegant, and exciting endeavors of his career, retaining every bit of the ease and openness in musical language which has guided him across the decades. A beautiful, immersive, melancholic, and contemplative balm for the troubled times in which it was made. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Palace Of Time
2. Joy
3. Tracing Back The Radiance

Essex-born, Liverpool-based songwriter James Canty returns with a new five track EP.

EP title track 'Love' is packed with harpsichords, synthesisers and electronic flourishes, coming across like some amazing future-retro psych-folk experiment. The collection of tracks follows two years on the road across Europe for Canty, with the five songs written and recorded in the home studio of producer and Obscenic Records chief Joe Wills.

TRACK LISTING

Love
Deborah
Strangers
Putney Bridge
Burning Alive

"This 6 song symphony of sound juxtaposed with chaos and long stills of almost nothing starts the only way I’d expect it to. The first track “Ballast” comes in with murderous hits, cracks, and drills. It’s hard to put into words exactly what you are listening to. And, that’s what I love about Mr. Cary’s tracks. But, somehow Jeff has forged a signature sound. I have been listening to noise for awhile now. I haven’t hear anything quite like it.

[3:30] as a full body of work is not just a digitally distorted camero with the gas pedal to the floor going through a time warp. It is dynamic and almost peaceful at times. With tracks like “Phosphor” and “Node” where you find yourself lost in an ambient sound scape of breathed gesters and things off in the distance. I admire Jeff’s way of knowing when to hold back or be minimal in his approach while yet still having some sort of rage you can’t quite pinpoint but you know it’s there and you can feel it and it’s about to burst and you like it.

I have seen Jeff live countless times. I got a chance to see him at one of his most recent performances at Club K where he performed a few of these new tracks live. Being a drummer for over 15 years I tend to latch onto the rhythm of any song I hear. Even in noise I somehow subconsciously makeup a beat I bop my head up and down to. I noticed that I didn’t have to magically make an esoteric drum section for Jeff’s performance. It was already there. Tracks like “1001″ make you feel as a drummer or drum machine is being forced through a grinder with a distortion pedal in the chain.

It’s a very purifying experience listening to Jeff Carey‘s works on [3:30]. It’s not for everyone.. But, it sure is hell for noise enthusiasts like me. But, hey.. If you’ve never listened to a “noise” artist before or haven’t gotten down with that scene. Try it out. You might just like this one." - Gutter Magazine.

In celebration of its 35th anniversay, MONDO is pleased to present the original soundtrack to John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. This release features the most comprehensive version of the soundtrack, never before released on vinyl, cut at 45RPM for the best possible sound quality.

The horror master John Carpenter is back with his Halloween franchise collaborators Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter for their infectious new soundtrack to the 2022 adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter. This marks the first official soundtrack that the team has composed together outside of the Halloween franchise and their inspiration and evolution as a creative team is on full display.

The film is a new take on the thriller examining a girl with extraordinary pyrokinetic powers and her fight to protect her family and herself from sinister forces that seek to capture and control her. The film releases theatrically on May 13th, 2022 and stars Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon, Ryan Kiera, is directed by Keith Thomas (The Vigil) and created by the producers of The Invisible Man. The story has become a classic and the intense nature of the film creates a canvas for a dynamic soundtrack.

The Firestarter soundtrack utilizes some of the best elements of Carpenter’s famous musical repertoire and charts exciting new territory. The tracks range from fist pumping sci-fi anthems to slow reverb drenched piano ballads and each utilizes a variety of sonic applications. Skulking beats, skittering synths, crushing guitars and an ever-lurking echo come together to create an album that is atmospheric and also deeply melodic, cohesive and eclectic. These three musicians are all working in the peak of their individual and collaborative creativity and this soundtrack further solidifies them as masters of the craft.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mother’s Love
2. Lot 6 (Main Titles)
3. Are You Scared Of Me?
4. Dodge Ball Heats Up
5. Corporate Menace
6. Burned Hands
7. Rainbird Fights Vicky
8. Bless Mommy
9. Flashback Kills
10. Police Arrive
11. Sniper Attack
12. Charlie Alone
13. Charlie’s Powers
14. I’ll Find You
15. Charlie’s Rampage
16. Rampage Ends
17. Firestarter (End Titles)

By now everyone should know John Carpenter is not only a celebrated filmmaker but also a musical maestro whose soundtracks have become synonymous with the genres of horror, suspense, and science fiction. His innate talent for composition and his deep understanding of how music can elevate storytelling have left an indelible mark on the world of cinema, and a haunting presence in people’s record collections.

Anthology II continues the celebration of his compositional genius via an excellently sequenced collection of some of his most iconic pieces of music from his extensive filmography, all newly recorded with his musical collaborators Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter.

The compilation opens with “Chariots of Pumpkins” from Halloween III that perfectly captures the eerie essence of the cult classic film with its pulsating synths and haunting melodies. The listener is engulfed by a sense of unease and anticipation, before being thrust into “69th St. Bridge” from Escape From New York, a dynamic track that encapsulates the futuristic and gritty nature of the film via the use of throbbing bass lines, driving rhythms, and electronic textures. The record has also an isolating tone as it skulks through ambient leaning tracks such as “Fuchs” and “To Mac’s Shack” from The Thing, and “Walk to the Lighthouse” from The Fog, all of which display a slower tempo, foreboding undertones and an ethereal atmosphere that feels like a distant whisper. All of which has been cautiously laid in preparation to the grand finale. The iconic and instantly recognizable ”Laurie’s Theme” from the original Halloween. Its simple yet menacing piano melody which has become synonymous with the horror genre, concludes the album by striking fear into the hearts of listeners.

These tracks represent just a fraction of John Carpenter’s impressive musical repertoire. With each haunting note and pulsating beat, his soundtracks continue to resonate with audiences, forever etching his name in the annals offilm music history.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chariots Of Pumpkins (Halloween III)
2. 69th St. Bridge (Escape From New York)
3. The Alley (War) (Big Trouble In Little China)
4. Wake Up (They Live)
5. Julie’s Dead (Assault On Precinct 13)
6. The Shape Enters Laurie’s Room (Halloween II)
7. Season Of The Witch (Halloween III)
8. Love At A Distance (Prince Of Darkness)
9. The Shape Stalks Again (Halloween II)
10. Burn It (The Thing)
11. Fuchs (The Thing)
12. To Mac’s Shack (The Thing)
13. Walk To The Lighthouse (The Fog)
14. Laurie’s Theme (Halloween)

It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become 'Lost Themes', his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. With 'Lost Themes IV: Noir', they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

Since the first 'Lost Themes', John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it, as in connected in an emotional way.

The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means 'Lost Themes IV: Noir' runs like a well-oiled machine - the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Name Is Death
2. Machine Fear
3. Last Rites
4. The Burning Door
5. He Walks By Night
6. Beyond The Gallows
7. Kiss The Blood Off My Fingers
8. Guillotine
9. The Demon’s Shadow
10. Shadows Have A Thousand Eyes

Indie's Exclusive 7" Bonus Track:
1. Black Cathedral

In 2018, David Gordon Green’s Halloween, starring icon Jamie Lee Curtis, slaughtered the box office, earning more than $250 million worldwide, becoming the highestgrossing chapter in the four-decade franchise and setting a new record for the biggest opening weekend in history for a horror film starring a woman. The film had the distinction of being the first film in the series with creator John Carpenter’s direct involvement since 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Carpenter served as an executive producer, a creative consultant, and, thrillingly, as a soundtrack composer, alongside his collaborators from his recent solo albums, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: John Carpenter is obviously one of the most legendary figures in the soundtracking biz, and in the newest iteration with Cody &co, we get possibly his strongest late-career work to date. 'Halloween Kills' is a wonderfully evocative, perfectly pitched soundtrack from one of the true masters. Everything you'd expect.

TRACK LISTING

01.Logos Kill
02. Halloween Kills (Main Title
03. The Myer’s House
04. First Attack
05. Stand Off
06. Let It Burn
07. He Appears
08. From The Fire
09. Strodes At The Hospital
10. Cruel Intentions
11. Gather The Mob
12. Rampage
13. Frank And Laurie
14. Hallway Madness
15. It Needs To Die
16. Reflection
17. Unkillable
18. Payback
19. Michael’s Legend
20. Halloween Kills (End Titles) 

This soundtrack pays homage to the classic Halloween score that Carpenter composed and recorded in 1978, when he forever changed the course of horror cinema and synthesizer music with his low-budget masterpiece. Several new versions of the iconic main theme serve as the pulse of Green’s film, its familiar 5/4 refrain stabbing through the soundtrack like the Shape’s knife. The rest of the soundtrack is just as enthralling, incorporating everything from atmospheric synth whooshes to eerie piano-driven pieces to skittering electronic percussion. While the new score was made with a few more resources than Carpenter’s famously shoestring original, its musical spirit was preserved.

2018’s Halloween, directed by David Gordon Green, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, and with music by series creator John Carpenter (along with his son and godson, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies) was a critical and box-office smash. It grossed $159 million against a $10 million budget, becoming the most profitable Halloween movie since the 1978 original. The soundtrack album was a hit, too, debuting at #12 on the Billboard Albums chart and #2 on the vinyl chart, on its way to becoming one of the most successful movie soundtracks of the last decade. One year later, Sacred Bones Records is pleased to present an expanded edition of the soundtrack, including more than 28 additional minutes of music from the film and presenting a more complete, immersive listening experience.

The additional material included on the expanded edition adds at total of 24 cues to the album, spread across two more sides of vinyl on the deluxe double LP version. The LP also has all-new art and lavish packaging, including an optical-illusion lenticular sleeve that makes the flames around Michael Myers’s mask dance when you slide it off the record jacket. For diehard fans of the Halloween series, collectors of John Carpenter’s music, or anyone who wants to hear even more of the incredible score to this movie, this expanded edition is a must-buy.

TRACK LISTING

Intro
1. Aaron Meets Michael
2. Halloween Theme
3. Laurie’s Theme
4. Aaron And Dana Enter Laurie’s Compound
5. Laurie’s Past
6. Prison Montage
7. Laurie Breaks Down
8. Karen’s Flashback
9. Lumpy Explores Crash
10. Michael Kills
11. Hawkins Arrives At Crash Site
12. Dana’s In The Shower
13. The Story Of Judith’s Death
14. The Gas Station
15. Michael Kills Again
16. Gas Station Aftermath
17. The Shape Returns
18. The Boogeyman
19. The Shape Kills
20. Hawkins Called To Babysitter’s House
21. Laurie Sees The Shape
22. Babysitter Aftermath
23. Sartain Meets Laurie
24. Looking For Allyson
25. Wrought Iron Fence
26. The Shape Hunts Allyson
27. Talking To Cops
28. Allyson Discovered
29. Gun Closet
30. Halloween Theme (I’ve Got Eyes)
31. Sartain’s Gone Mad
32. Say Something
33. Through The Woods
34. Ray’s Goodbye
35. The Shape Attacks Laurie
36. The Shape Is Monumental
37. Searching For The Shape
38. Mannequin Panic
39. Death Drum
40. The Shape And Laurie Fight
41. The Grind
42. Trap The Shape
43. The Shape Burns
44. Halloween Triumphant

After 45 years, the most acclaimed, revered horror franchise in film history reaches its epic, terrifying conclusion as Laurie Strode faces off for the last time against the embodiment of evil, Michael Myers, in a final confrontation unlike any captured on-screen before, one where only one of them will survive.

When the franchise relaunched in 2018, Halloweenshattered box office records, becoming the franchise’s highest-grossing chapter and set a new record for the biggest opening weekend for a horror film starring a woman. In 2021, Halloween Killsearned the biggest opening weekend for any horror film in the pandemic era and simultaneously set a new record for a non-live event premiere streaming on Peacock.

As Halloween Endsmarks the last chapter of the David Gordon Green trilogy, so it ushers the essential return of original director and composer John Carpenter to score the iconically hair-raising soundtrack alongside Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. Together they once again bring the celebrated music score to the horror movie series, one of the most distinctive aspects of the franchise to date

Similarly to the last two soundtracks, Halloween Endswas recorded in its entirety at John Carpenter’s home studio and Daniel’s studio. “The three of us compose,perform, and record all the music, and everything is mixed by Daniel together with John Spiker” says John Carpenter.

The unmistakable mix of software synths, vintage analogue equipment, and live instrumentation is utilized once again to provide the signature sound of Halloween. However, rumors have it that Halloween Ends is going to be somewhat different from the previous two films in the trilogy. With that comes an expanded soundtrack, one that matches the tone of a tangible rise in stakes and conveys the climatic feel of the film. The soundtrack of the third installment broadens old themes whilst creating new ones in an effort to bring renewed life to one of the most epic horror scores ever written. Carpenter elaborates, “The main themes have all been passed down from the original Halloween. We have refined them and created new themes for new characters.

”The soundtrack was tracked scene by scene but the album itself plays like a standalone piece of music. The general atmosphereis one of dread yet the record includes some groove laden moments reminiscent of Escape From New York or some of Carpenter’s other more dance-able scores. Exquisite and delicate ambient pieces weave their way between some of the score’s more arresting moments and yet maintain a subtle pop sensibility. The overall achievement showcases three master musicians, one of whom invented the entire horror-synth genre, crafting an evocative, playful and deeply listenable score that honors a legacy and expands on the decades of work that have been leading to this triumphant climax.

Carpenter is known for directing the original 1978 Halloween, as well as other horror classics like The Thing, The Fog, Escape From New York, Christine, Big Trouble in Little China, andThey Live. However John Carpenter is not only a cult movie-maker, he’s also a pioneering electronic composer. Halloween Endsis the soundtrack of the final battle against evil. Watch your back this Halloween, Michael may be near you.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: One of the most legendary soundtrack writers and directors of all time, in his newest guise with both Cody (his son) and Daniel Davies bring us the third and final bout of dystopian synths and tense atmospheric drone. A blistering, and perfectly fitting instrumental tour de force.

TRACK LISTING

1 Where Is Jeremy?
2 Halloween Ends (Main Title)
3 Laurie’s Theme Ends
4 The Cave
5 Cool Kid
6 Drags To The Cave
7 Evil Eyes
8 Transformation
9 Because Of You
10 Requiem For Jeremy
11 Kill The Cop
12 Corey And Michael
13 Corey’s Requiem
14 The Junk Yard
15 Where Are You?
16 Bye Bye Corey
17 The Fight
18 Before Her Eyes
19 The Procession
20 Cherry Blossoms
21 Halloween Ends

When the new Halloween movie hits theaters in October 2018, it will have the distinction of being the first film in the series with creator John Carpenter’s direct involvement since 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Carpenter serves on the new David Gordon Green-directed installment as an executive producer, a creative consultant, and, thrillingly, as a soundtrack composer, alongside his collaborators from his three recent solo albums, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

The new soundtrack pays homage to the classic Halloween score that Carpenter composed and recorded in 1978, when he forever changed the course of horror cinema and synthesizer music with his low-budget masterpiece. Several new versions of the iconic main theme serve as the pulse of Green’s film, its familiar 5/4 refrain stabbing through the soundtrack like the Shape’s knife. The rest of the soundtrack is just as enthralling, incorporating everything from atmospheric synth whooshes to eerie piano-driven pieces to skittering electronic percussion. While the new score was made with a few more resources than Carpenter’s famously shoestring original, its musical spirit was preserved.

“We wanted to honor the original Halloweensoundtrack in terms of the sounds we used,” Davies explained. “We used a lot of the Dave Smith OB-6, bowed guitar, Roland Juno, Korg, Roli, Moog, Roland System 1, Roland System 8, different guitar pedals, mellotron, and piano.”

Unlike the Lost Themes albums, where the composers wrote the soundtracks for imaginary movies, Halloween saw the Carpenters and Davies collaborating on music set to images for the first time. Though it marked a significant change from their previous creative process, the trio thrived under the constraints and tight deadlines that film scoring work demands.

“Being limited by the length of time in scoring the sequence, we focused on the director’s tempo, timing, and vision,” Davies said. “He would tell us what he had in mind, how long the cue should be, what emotion he wanted, and we would take it from there. It’s only the three of us, there is no elaborate system. We wrote, performed, and orchestrated everything.”

For John Carpenter, who reunited on the new film with original Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis, composing the score felt like a homecoming. Not only had he not worked on a Halloween movie in 35 years, he hadn’t composed a soundtrack since his 2001 sci-fi thriller Ghosts of Mars.

“It was great,” Carpenter said of the experience. “It was transforming. It was not a movie I directed, so I had a lot of freedom in creating the score and getting into the director's head. I was proud to serve David Gordon Green’s vision.”

For Cody Carpenter, John’s son, and Davies, his godson, it was surreal to work on something that means so much to generations of fans, and that they grew up around.

“It was an honor for us to be involved, and we are really happy to be a part of something that so many people are anticipating and excited about,” Davies said. “Working together with both the director of the new Halloween and the creator of the original Halloween was really a fantastic experience.”

TRACK LISTING

1. "Halloween Theme" 2:21
2. "Halloween 1963" 3:11
3. "The Evil Is Gone!" 4:08
4. "Halloween 1978" 2:50
5. "The Boogeyman Is Coming" 0:40
6. "The Shape" 1:43
7. "The Hedge" 1:35
8. "He Came Home" 2:40
9. "Trick Or Treat" 0:39
10. "The Haunted House" 1:43
11. "The Devil's Eyes" 1:39
12. "The Boogeyman Is Outside" 1:27
13. "Damn You For Letting Him Go!" 1:34
14. "Empty Street" 0:33
15. "See Anything You Like?" 2:22
16. "Lock The Door" 2:53
17. "He's Here?" 0:55
18. "Light's Out" 2:49
19. "Cut It Out" 1:19
20. "Tombstone" 1:19
21. "The Shape Stalks Laurie" 1:35
22. "Turn Around" 0:33
23. "Unlock The Door" 2:53
24. "The Hanger" 3:04
25. "Call The Police" 0:28
26. "Last Assault" 1:34
27. "Was That The Boogeyman?" 0:32
28. "End Credits/Halloween Theme (Reprise)" 3:36

Much has changed in the musical life of renowned composer and director John Carpenter since 2016’s Lost Themes II. Following the release of that album, he went on his first-ever concert tour, performing material from the Lost Themes albums, as well as music from his classic film scores. He re-recorded many of those classic movie themes for 2017’s Anthology album, working alongside son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies. The following year, he was asked to executive produce and compose the music for the new Halloween movie directed by David Gordon Green, which promptly became the highest-grossing installment in the series. Now, he returns with his first album of non-soundtrack music in nearly five years, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death.

Underpinning Carpenter’s renaissance as a musician has been his collaboration with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. They’ve composed and performed as a trio throughout this entire run, on studio albums, on soundtracks, and onstage. Here, the trio reaches a new level of creative mind meld. Richly rendered worlds are built in the interplay between Davies’s guitar and the dueling synthesizers played by the Carpenters.

“We begin with a theme, a bass line, a pad, something that sounds good and will lead us to the next layer,” John says of the trio’s process. “We then just keep adding on from there. We understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, how to communicate without words, and the process is easier now than it was in the beginning. We’ve matured.”

Whereas the original Lost Themes album came as a pleasant surprise after years of relative silence from Carpenter, the third installment sees him in the midst of a resurgent moment as a cultural force. The 2018 Halloween score gave his music its biggest audience in decades, and the world he releases his new album into is one that has, at long last, given him the credit he deserves as a founding father of modern electronic music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There are very few forces more influential in the world of soundtrackery than John Carpenter, and it's no mean feat that his music outside of soundtracks is every bit as impressive. Featuring once again his son Cody and Daniel. Davies, Lost Themes III is every bit the pulsing, synthy wonder and helps further cement Carpenter's place in the annals of musical history.

TRACK LISTING

Alive After Death (4:05)
Weeping Ghost (3:33)
Dripping Blood (3:54)
Dead Eyes (3:26)
Vampire’s Touch (4:30)
Cemetery (4:11)
Skeleton (3:13)
Turning The Bones (3:33)
The Dead Walk (4:25)
Carpathian Darkness (5:36)

The John Carter and Bobby Bradford Quartet/Quintet were critical to the progressive jazz movement around Los Angeles in the late 60s alongside the likes of Horace Tapscott. Both hailed from the Watts area and trumpeter, Bradford played with a woodshedding Ornette Coleman for two years in the early 60s when the legendary free movement leader decided not to record for a while but wanted to hone his trademark sound on the saxophone. Multi-reed player, Carter also worked with Coleman who brought them together to lead their own band.

Their first outing on Flying Dutchman was “Flight For Four” as the Carter Bradford Quartet that was released in 1969. This is the second album they recorded where Carter and Bradford were supported by Tom Williamson (bass), Buzz Freeman (drums) and another uncredited bass player on four extended improvisations – ‘The Sunday Afternoon Jazz Blues Society’, ‘The Eye Of The Storm’, ‘Loneliness’ and ‘Encounter’.

The album has been out of print on vinyl since 1971 and Ace are delighted to release it with audio taken from hi-res digital transfers from the original masters.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1. The Sunday Afternoon
Jazz Blues Society
2. The Eye Of The Storm
Side Two
1. Loneliness
2. Encounter

A delicate collection of songs for meditation on spiritual struggle, The Leaves Fall is a window into the parallel reality of Justin Carter. Centered on his intimate vocals, pointed with hints of Arthur Russell and John Martyn; the eight tracks are buttressed by warm acoustic guitars, vibraphones, organs and flourished with modern production. They are familiar but distant, like ghosts living in the present. Carter grew up in a country house in rural North Carolina, a place with a pecan tree and abandoned train tracks in the front yard. On long car rides from home to his dadʼs work as a school teacher, his ears were filled with the prog of Yes, the vocals of Al Jarreau and the complexity of Christopher Parkeningʼs take on Bach. It was his father, who himself has moonlighted as a guitar player and songwriter for nearly 50 years, that taught Carter to sing and play in his early teens.

The Leaves Fall was written on and off over the course of about five years, a secret to most. Carter is more familiar, alongside Eamon Harkin, as co-founder of popular New York parties Mister Saturday Night and Mister Sunday, and their label offshoot, Mister Saturday Night Records. As the Mister thrived, his songwriting continued to tick along in the background, days and weeks stolen here and there to write and record in various locations – from remote studios in the Catskills to basements in Venice Beach.

The album features Jason Lindner, pianist on Bowie's final masterpiece, Blackstar; cello from Archie Pelago's Greg Heffernan; and programming by LIES Records and The Trilogy Tapes producer Marcos Cabral. It was mixed by Benjamin Tierney, who also worked his magic on Kamasi Washington's The Epic. It finds its context in the world of Planetarium, a new listening session established by Carter and his Mister Saturday Night DJ partner, Eamon Harkin, where live music is mixed amongst hours of records to create an immersive, communal listening experience focused on quality hi-fi sound in non-traditional spaces; the album will presented in this manner when toured.

“Nothing makes me happier than to see people letting go. My ambition in all my creative work is to make moments where that can happen. As a DJ, I use othersʼ music to create those moments, but itʼs always been in me to make my own music for that purpose. After twenty-five years of writing music for myself, it makes me really happy to have something to share with others.” - Justin Carter

TRACK LISTING

1. Great Destroyer
2. Infinite Pieces
3. Know It All
4. With The Old Breed
5. The Island
6. What Can You Tell Your Children About Hope?
7. Leaves
8. A Presence

Written and recorded over the past year, the album features Casablancas and Voidz band members Jeramy Gritter and Amir Yaghmai (Salt & Pepper) – guitar, Jeff Kite – keyboards, Jake Bercovici – bass, Alex Carapetis – drums and was produced by Shawn Everett.

The album incorporates world underground music from the 70s and 80s, hardcore/punk and modern harmony, using modern and analog recording and sampling techniques.

Of the album's title Casablancas says, "Tyranny has come in many forms throughout history. Now, the good of business is put above anything else, as corporations have become the new ruling body. Most decisions seem to be made like ones of a medieval king: whatever makes profit while ignoring and repressing the truth about whatever suffering it may cause (like pop music, for that matter)."

TRACK LISTING

1. Take Me In Your Army
2. Crunch Punch
3. M.utally A.ssured D.estruction
4. Human Sadness
5. Where No Eagles Fly
6. Father Electricity
7. Johan Von Bronx
8. Business Dog
9. Xerox
10. Dare I Care
11. Nintendo Blood
12. Off To War…

Arguably the best of the American Recordings series.
Once again Cash worked with Tom Petty on a couple of tracks including the Neil Diamond-penned "Solitary Man".
The album also includes stunning covers of Bonnie Prince Billy, Nick Cave and U2.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: The Rick Rubin produced American Recordings totally rejuvenated Cash's career, and they're all great. This one just edges it for me with amazing covers of Bonnie Prince Billy, Nick Cave and (suprisingly) U2.

TRACK LISTING

I Won't Back Down
Solitary Man
That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)
One
Nobody
I See A Darkness
The Mercy Seat
Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone)
Field Of Diamonds
My Time
Country Trash
Mary Of The Wild Moor
I'm Leavin' Now
Wayfaring Stranger

"Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison" fully captures Cash's gritty intensity and hard-headed humanity, capturing a high-energy set performed for an equally spirited audience. With a set list tailored for the occasion, Cash focuses on songs dealing with crime and imprisonment, balancing dark subject matter with wry, playful humor. The album opens, appropriately enough, with the venerable "Folsom Prison Blues," and continues with such outlaw anthems as "Cocaine Blues," "25 Minutes to Go, "The Wall" and "I Got Stripes," alongside such Cash classics as "I Still Miss Someone," "Orange Blossom Special" and "Jackson," with the latter track featuring Cash's wife and frequent duet partner June Carter. The album closes on an inspirational note with "Greystone Chapel," a song written by convict Glen Shirley, which Cash and his band learned especially for this show.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Opening Announcements From Hugh Cherry
2. Blue Suede Shoes - Johnny Cash / Carl Perkins
3. This Ole House - Johnny Cash / The Statler Brothers
4. Announcements And Johnny Cash Intro From Hugh Cherry
5. Folsom Prison Blues
6. Busted
7. Dark As A Dungeon
8. I Still Miss Someone

Side B
1. Cocaine Blues
2. 25 Minutes To Go
3. I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail
4. Orange Blossom Special
5. The Long Black Veil

Side C
1. Send A Picture Of Mother
2. The Wall
3. Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog
4. Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart
5. Joe Bean
6. Jackson - Johnny Cash / June Carter
7. I Got A Woman (with June Carter)

Side D
1. The Legend Of John Henry's Hammer
2. June's Poem
3. Green, Green Grass Of Home
4. Greystone Chapel
5. Closing Theme And Announcements

Johnny Cash's two legendary prison concerts packaged together. If you don't already own these two album, you need this!

Perhaps even more so than its predecessor, "Johnny Cash At San Quentin" captures Cash at his most raw and uninhibited. The artist's raucous rapport with his captive audience is obvious on an inspired mix of Cash classics ("I Walk the Line," "Folsom Prison Blues"), jailhouse ballads ("Starkville City Jail," "San Quentin"), traditional tunes ("Wreck of the Old 97," "There'll Be Peace in the Valley") and well-chosen covers (Bob Dylan's "Wanted Man," the Lovin' Spoonful's "Darling Companion"). The album's most popular track, though, remains the Shel Silverstein-penned novelty number "A Boy Named Sue," which became the biggest hit single of Cash's career.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Wanted Man
2. Wreck Of The Old 97
3. I Walk The Line
4. Darlin' Companion
5. Starkville City Jail

Side B
1. San Quentin
2. San Quentin
3. A Boy Named Sue
4. (There'll Be) Peace In The Valley
5. Folsom Prison Blues

Double LP pressing featuring essential cuts from Johnny Cash''s back catalogue, including: Ring Of Fire, Hey Porter, Folsom Prison Blues, A Boy Named Sue and many more!

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Hey Porter
2. Cry, Cry, Cry
3. I Walk The Line
4. Get Rhythm
5. There You Go
6. Ballad Of A Teenage Queen
7. Big River
8. Guess Things Happen That Way

Side B
1. All Over Again
2. Don't Take Your Guns To Town
3. Five Feet High And Rising
4. The Rebel-Johnny Yuma
5. Tennessee Flat-Top Box
6. I Still Miss Someone
7. Ring Of Fire

Side C
1. The Ballad Of Ira Hayes
2. Orange Blossom Special
3. It Ain't Me, Babe - Johnny Cash With June Carter Cash
4. The One On The Right Is On The Left
5. Jackson - Johnny Cash With June Carter Cash
6. Folsom Prison Blues

Side D
1. Daddy Sang Bass
2. Girl From The North Country - Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash
3. A Boy Named Sue
4. If I Were A Carpenter (Live In Denmark) - June Carter Cash / Johnny Cash
5. Sunday Morning Coming Down
6. Man In Black
7. One Piece At A Time

Man in Black may be the 38th album by Johnny Cash, but it is definitely one of the most memorable album in his discography. Man in Black is perhaps one of Cash's most political albums and the title refers to Cash's tendency to wear only black during his live shows. This was to reflect the turbulent times during the Vietnam War. This message is also reflected in the album's lyrics. The singles “Man in Black” and “Singin' in Viet Nam Talkin' Blues” can be seen as his most important protest songs. Both singles were successful on the Billboard Country charts. All this makes the album a unique milestone in his career and still a must for all Johnny Cash fans

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. The Preacher Said, “Jesus Said” (With Billy Graham)
2. Orphan Of The Road
3. You’ve Got A New Light Shining In Your Eyes
4. If Not For Love
5. Man In Black

Side B
1. Singin’ In Viet Nam Talkin’ Blues
2. Ned Kelly
3. Look For Me (With June Carter Cash)
4. Dear Mrs.
5. I Talk To Jesus Every Day (With June Carter Cash)

Limited Edition 180g orange coloured vinyl pressing of Johnny Cash's iconic LP 'Sings I Walk The Line' Released in 1964, Johnny Cash's own retrospective of his early career on the Sun record label has become, arguably, his most iconic album release. It was a bold move at the time, as he'd already enjoyed a run of chart-topping albums and become one of country music's most prolifc and celebrated recording artists. Yet, 'I Walk The Line' went on to become one of his greatest selling albums.

Originally released in 1958 on Sun Records, Johnny Cash's second album was a smash success, with singles such as "I Walk The Line", "Guess Things Happen That Way", and "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" shooting to the top of the charts and earning Cash a reputation as one of country's greatest songwriters and performers. The Man In Black is accompanied by Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, known at the time as The Tennessee Two. The album was produced by Sun Records founder, Sam Phillips, and Jack Clement.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Ballad Of A Teenage Dream
There You Go
I Walk The Line
Don’t Make Me Go
Guess Things Happen That Way
Train Of Love
SIDE B
The Ways Of A Woman In Love
Next In Line
You’re The Nearest Thing To Heaven
I Can’t Help If If I’m Still In Love With You
Home Of The Blues
Big River

Introducing the new album from Johnny Cash titled 'Songwriter'.

Johnny Cash recorded an album’s worth of unreleased, self-penned songs in 1993 ahead of him signing with American Records and his releases with Rick Rubin that re-established himself as one of world’s best songwriters to a new generation of fans. Songwriter’s 11 songs have been updated by his son John Carter and longtime producer David Ferguson.

In early 1993, the legendary Johnny Cash found himself between contracts in his then nearly 40-year career and recorded an album’s worth of songwriting demos at LSI Studios in Nashville of songs he’d written over many years. LSI at the time was owned by his son-in-law Mike Daniels and daughter Rosey, and he wanted to help the family financially while also record some songs special to him. Not long after the fruitful session, Johnny met producer Rick Rubin, and the recordings were shelved as the two embarked on an important and prolific musical partnership that revitalized the Man in Black’s career that would last the rest of his life.

Some thirty years later, John Carter Cash, the son of Johnny and June Carter Cash, rediscovered the songs and stripped them back to just Johnny’s powerful, pristine vocals and acoustic guitar. Along with co-producer David “Fergie” Ferguson, the two invited a handpicked group of musicians that played with Johnny, including guitarist Marty Stuart and the late bassist Dave Roe, along with drummer Pete Abbott and several others, to the Cash Cabin, a hallowed space in Hendersonville, Tenn. where Johnny would write, record and relax, to breathe new life into the tracks, taking the sound back to the roots and heart of the songs.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl:
Side A
1. Hello Out There
2. Spotlight
3. Drive On
4. I Love You Tonite
5. Have You Ever Been To Little Rock?
Side B
1. Well Alright
2. She Sang Sweet Baby James
3. Poor Valley Girl
4. Soldier Boy
5. Sing It Pretty Sue
6. Like A Soldier

CD:
1. Hello Out There
2. Spotlight
3. Drive On
4. I Love You Tonite
5. Have You Ever Been To Little Rock?
6. Well Alright
7. She Sang Sweet Baby James
8. Poor Valley Girl
9. Soldier Boy
10.Sing It Pretty Sue
11. Like A Soldier

Bonus Disc (2CD):
1. I Walk The Line (1988 Version)
2. The Night Hank Williams Came To Town (with Waylon Jennings)
3. Sixteen Tons
4. Long Black Veil (1988 Version)
5. Cry, Cry, Cry (1988 Version)
6. Guess Things Happen That Way (1988 Version)
7. Get Rhythm (1988 Version)
8. Ring Of Fire (1988 Version)
9. Folsom Prison Blues (1988 Version)
10. Cat's In The Cradle
11. Hey Porter
12. Wanted Man

All legends start somewhere, and With His Hot and Blue Guitar is where the legend of Johnny Cash began.

Newly remastered in honor of Sun Records’ 70th Anniversary, Cash’s debut album was also the first LP issued by Sam Phillips on the legendary label.

TRACK LISTING

Rock Island Line
I Heard That Lonesome Whistle 
Country Boy
If The Good Lord's Willing
Cry, Cry, Cry
Remember Me
So Doggone Lonesome
I Was There When It Happened
I Walk The Line
The Wreck Of The Old '97
Folsom Prison Blues
Doin' My Time

Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash has been an icon in the music world. In his newly discovered poems and song lyrics, we see the world through his eyes. The poetry reveals his depth of understanding, both of the world around him and within - his frailties and his strengths alike.

He pens verses in his hallmark voice, reflecting upon love, pain, freedom, fame and mortality. Illustrated with facsimile reproductions of Cash's own handwritten pages, Forever Words is a remarkable addition to the canon of one of America's heroes. His music is a part of our collective history, and here he demonstrates the depth of his talent as a writer.

Edited and introduced by Paul Muldoon, with a foreword by John Carter Cash, this is a book sure to delight and surprise fans the world over.

Jennifer Castle’s 6th album, the moon-suffused Monarch Season an album as delicate and diaphanous as its namesake butterfly stands, in a literal sense, as her first proper “solo” album, performed alone in her coastal kitchen, windows open to the insects and the wind and the reflection of the moon on Lake Erie, entirely without human accompaniment (though a chorus of crickets provides rich interstitial support throughout.) This record is a reminder to cherish openly that which reflects off and onto me. A reminder that stone orbs only become meaningful moons when they experience the gravity and light of others.” Jennifer Castle. In autumn 2009, for the first time, monarch butterflies, known for their extensive annual North American migrations, emerged from their cocoons in outer space, onboard the International Space Station, part of a NASA experiment on the effects of microgravity on Lepidoptera. Ten years later, in autumn 2019, Jennifer Castle sat at home in her quiet coastal kitchen in Ontario, windows open to the insects and the wind and the reflection of the moon on Lake Erie her host of muses and recorded nine moon-suffused songs. It was monarch season again on Earth, and Jennifer was inspired to “see the wings in everything.” Now, a year later, we have Monarch Season, an album as delicate and diaphanous as its namesake creature.


Although created half a year pre-pandemic, Castle deliberately pursued a minimalist, homebound, and solitary process that represented, for her musical practice, a radical reduction of scale, coupled with a telescopic expansion of scope. The follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 record Angels of Death, Monarch Season is Castle’s private experiment on the effects of microgravity in this context, increased immediacy, intimacy, domesticity, simplicity, brevity, and directness on her music. Monarch Season transports the listener, from the first strains of the heavy-lidded guitar instrumental “Theory Rest,” to that lakeside kitchen at dusk, beneath a bright moon twinned in the water. It also intentionally resembles Castle’s riveting, discursive solo live performances more accurately than any other of her albums. The terrestrial vinyl and CD versions of the album include lengthier ambient segues of onsite environmental recordings between songs; you can hear the lapping of the lake. She recorded quickly, with only her longtime co-producer Jeff McMurrich to capture her guitar, piano, and for the first time on record harmonica.Jennifer dedicates her blowing to friend and mentor Kath Bloom, who played the Pink City harp.


Her airy, lambent voice renders these taut poems as elegant inscriptions within circumscription, fully present and presciently articulate, months before the age of coronavirus quarantines, about the troubles and delights to be found in aloneness, in the patient observation of our immediate surroundings. Subtle nods toward classic songcraft, and traditional ideas about songcraft are abound on Monarch Season. “NYC” features a baseball anecdote and metaphor (“we all pick teams, I guess.”) “Justice” is her take on a big-tent folk-revival protest anthem. “Did you lock my heart up? And throw away the key?” Jennifer asks on “Moonbeam or Ray,” embracing the conventional romanticism of that lyrical trope. But her answer to herself is oddly put, sad and slightly schizoid: “I hope no!” “What becomes of the broken-hearted?” begins the last song, slyly conjuring Jimmy Ruffin.


Castle posits no answer to that riddle. Elsewhere, warm personal details emerge. The gorgeous spiraling melody of “Veins” laments that the world is not changing “as fast as it should” a sentiment more relevant than ever while also insinuating that losing love feels like being stranded on the surface of the moon. Her repeated use of the word “labour” in “I’ll Never Walk Alone” “I birthed from the mouth of a cave” is metaphorical and literal, on two levels. In addition to her songwriting, Castle works as a doula, but herein her creative labour bears the fruit of these new songs, or as she calls them, “my new plays.” Monarch Season offers these songs as lapidary mirrors of solace, radiant with reflected moonlight, to whoever is listening. Look up, look around, look inward, they say, for the light of others. And then look again

TRACK LISTING

A1. Theory Rest
A2. NYC
A3. Justice
A4. I’ll Never Walk Alone
A5. Monarch Season

B1. Moonbeam Or Ray
B2. Purple Highway
B3. Veins
B4. Broken Hearted 

From Bryan Ferry’s side on stage for the past decade to lighting up your night sky with a neon symphony, Jorja Chalmers’ debut album "Human Again"

In 2004 Jorja Chalmers moved to London from Sydney, Australia with zero cash, her saxophone & a massive crush on an English boy she met while he was visiting Australia. Fast forward 3 years later and Bryan Ferry’s assistant caught Jorja performing at a nightclub in London. The next day she received a message inviting her to audition for his band. She met Ferry at his studio, played some Roxy Music tunes & as anyone who has caught one of Ferry’s live shows of the past 10+ years knows, has been a salient addition to his band ever since.

"Human Again" was written & recorded by Jorja in hotel rooms after performing Roxy Music & Bryan Ferry songs drenched in sweat each night. Finishing touches were added & distilled inside Ferry’s London studio & then brushed by Johnny Jewel’s glittering hands with Dean Hurley at the legendary Asymmetrical Studio in the Hollywood Hills. The combination is intoxicating. "Human Again" bottles that stark loneliness the artist faces night after night on the road. Sonically, the album explores the spaciousness alive inside the minimalism of Bowie & Eno’s "Low", her vocal reflects early Laurie Anderson alongside the troubled smoke of Badalamenti’s score for "Lost Highway", & the impeding doom of Goblin. Chalmers embraces the claustrophobia of a John Carpenter film cut with the patience & precision of Amon Duul. The quest to be "Human Again" is to be a stranger in a strange land.

In "Red Light" metal machine magic grinds as a wish is granted. The saxophone wails, humming a new strain of serpentine song. The triggered, vast descent of "Suburban Pastel" unfurls as the landscape expands the mystery. This is visual music that slowly coils its wings around the listener.

Jorja’s pale blue eyes glance across the vivid landscape. Suspended in reverie, bathed in sound, adrift until the tidal brass of "This Is Where The Night Sky Begins" calls the dreamer back down to earth. As the needle drops again, the petal soft synthesizers sprawl toward the event horizon, hypnotized by the distant call of the Siren. Visions of intimacy & sentient contact triggered by endless weeks on tour. The human heart of a Saturday night still beating on Tuesday morning. The album’s closing track "Ship In The Sky" is the heroine’s journey into the unknown, without a compass.

TRACK LISTING

1. Human Again
2. Red Light
3. Black Shadow
4. She Made Him Love Again
5. Copper Bells
6. No Words
7. Our Love In A Glass So Thin
8. Suburban Pastel
9. This Is Where The Sky Begins
10. The Sum Of Our Sins
11. She Made Him Love Again (Reprise)
12. Ship In The Sky

Jorja Chalmers enjoys a quiet life. The Australian born mother of two lives in Margate, the Kent coastal town that is turning into something of a cultural hub. Yet there’s another, shadow version of Jorja Chalmers, one that resides in a liminal realm; a saxophonist & composer, a brooding, vampiric, twilight soul who yearns for some sense of aesthetic transformation.

New album ‘Midnight Train’ comes close to severing the two. Constructed during the long winter lockdown, Jorja would put her kids to bed before closing the door in the spare room, building lengthy, undulating passages of cinematic terror, patching together European art-pop glamour with outsider electronics. It’s composed, intense, & challenging – but it’s also utterly exhilarating.

“I feel incredibly proud of this album,” she says. “It feels like a life’s work squeezed into one space. It feels like I’m saying something.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. Bring Me Down
A2. I'll Be Waiting
A3. Rabbit In The Headlights
A4. Boadicea
A5. Love Me Tonight
A6. Nightingale
A7. Riders On The Storm
B1. Rhapsody
B2. The Poet
B3. The Wolves Of The Orangery
B4. On Such A Clear Day
B5. Midnight Train
B6. Underwater Blood

Fans of Jenn Champion (formerly “S”) have praised her open-hearted lyrics, expertly-deployed melancholia, technical skill, and willingness to forgo conventions, but mostly they’ve praised her for making albums they could cry to. With the release of Cool Choices in 2014, Champion made what many considered the best record of her career, and a lot of people cried to it.
On Single Rider, Champion brings with her all those skills and vulnerabilities, but it is not a record for wallowing: it is a record for intense eye contact on the dancefloor. “Sometimes you are sad and you just want to dance about it,” said Champion. Side B of Cool Choices presaged Champion’s agit-pop transformation. “Let the Light In” and "Tell Me" signalled her move toward a more electronic sound, but it was the digital single “No One” (2016) that marked the clear delineation.

“I feel like a door got opened in my mind with electronic and digital music. There was a room I hadn’t explored before and I stepped in,” said Champion. While she’d initially intended to follow Cool Choices with “a rock record - guitar, a lot of pedals, heavy riffs,” plans changed. “I couldn’t pull myself away from the synthesizers and I realized the record I really wanted to make was more of a cross between Drake and Billy Joel than Blue Oyster Cult.” Soon after the release of No One, Champion’s publishers partnered her with Brian Fennell, aka SYML, and the two co-wrote the song “Leave Like That” (featured on SYML’s Hurt For Me EP). The pair hit it off, and with nearly all of Champion’s Single Rider demos completed, the timing was perfect--she was looking for a producer. “I guess you could say I pursued Brian.” Fortunately, Fennell was open to being pursued and the two spent the next five months working on Single Rider. “In the studio with Brian, I was more open than I had ever been.” With Champion’s vision and Fennell’s expertise, the record evolved from synthy roughs to a hi-fi dance album.

Despite the new direction in her sound, emotion cuts through on Single Rider in the classic Champion style, weaving simultaneously pleading-and-incensed vocals into anthemic pop songs. Champion wants her listeners to see that the rooms are all on fire and she has not given up. Taking a double “fuck you” approach to the world, to the patriarchy, all the things which screw you up and hold you back, she is dancing right on out of the disappointment apocalypse with her middle fingers in the air, and you can follow if you want to.

TRACK LISTING

1. O.M.G. (I'm All Over It)
2. Coming For You
3. You Knew
4. Holding On
5. The Move
6. Never Giving In
7. Mainline
8. Time To Regulate
9. Bleed
10. Hustle
11. Going Nowhere

Fans of Jenn Champion (formerly “S”) have praised her open-hearted lyrics, expertly-deployed melancholia, technical skill, and willingness to forgo conventions, but mostly they’ve praised her for making albums they could cry to. With the release of Cool Choices in 2014, Champion made what many considered the best record of her career, and a lot of people cried to it.
On Single Rider, Champion brings with her all those skills and vulnerabilities, but it is not a record for wallowing: it is a record for intense eye contact on the dancefloor. “Sometimes you are sad and you just want to dance about it,” said Champion. Side B of Cool Choices presaged Champion’s agit-pop transformation. “Let the Light In” and "Tell Me" signalled her move toward a more electronic sound, but it was the digital single “No One” (2016) that marked the clear delineation.

“I feel like a door got opened in my mind with electronic and digital music. There was a room I hadn’t explored before and I stepped in,” said Champion. While she’d initially intended to follow Cool Choices with “a rock record - guitar, a lot of pedals, heavy riffs,” plans changed. “I couldn’t pull myself away from the synthesizers and I realized the record I really wanted to make was more of a cross between Drake and Billy Joel than Blue Oyster Cult.” Soon after the release of No One, Champion’s publishers partnered her with Brian Fennell, aka SYML, and the two co-wrote the song “Leave Like That” (featured on SYML’s Hurt For Me EP). The pair hit it off, and with nearly all of Champion’s Single Rider demos completed, the timing was perfect--she was looking for a producer. “I guess you could say I pursued Brian.” Fortunately, Fennell was open to being pursued and the two spent the next five months working on Single Rider. “In the studio with Brian, I was more open than I had ever been.” With Champion’s vision and Fennell’s expertise, the record evolved from synthy roughs to a hi-fi dance album.

Despite the new direction in her sound, emotion cuts through on Single Rider in the classic Champion style, weaving simultaneously pleading-and-incensed vocals into anthemic pop songs. Champion wants her listeners to see that the rooms are all on fire and she has not given up. Taking a double “fuck you” approach to the world, to the patriarchy, all the things which screw you up and hold you back, she is dancing right on out of the disappointment apocalypse with her middle fingers in the air, and you can follow if you want to.

TRACK LISTING

1. O.M.G. (I'm All Over It)
2. Coming For You
3. You Knew
4. Holding On
5. The Move
6. Never Giving In
7. Mainline
8. Time To Regulate
9. Bleed
10. Hustle
11. Going Nowhere

Julien Chang is a 19-year-old singer, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Baltimore, Maryland. Julien studied classical and jazz throughout high school but decided to start making his own music after exploring other genres and principles. Having taken a job at his local grocery store at 17, he began building a studio in his parents basement, adding new elements with each paycheck.

The result is album ‘Jules’, released via Transgressive Records (Flume, SOPHIE, Let’s Eat Grandma).

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A stunning debut from on of the future's bright lights in whatever this beautiful but impossible-to-categorise maelstrom of woozy pop melodies and warm synthy grooves is. Brilliantly dynamic, varied but cohesive, 'Jules' is an absolute triumph and veers between perfectly realised genres with ease.

TRACK LISTING

Deep Green
Of The Past
Two Voices
Moving Parts
Candy Cane Rainbow
Dogologue
Memory Loss
Somerville (Demo)
Butterflies From Monaco
A Day Or Two

Baltimore’s Julien Chang writes music that tunnels toward a series of deeper truths, investigating everyday existentialism, love and life, art and the artist. Arriving in 2019 with his critically acclaimed album ‘Jules’, Chang set a precedent with his breezy, dreamy debut and is now exacting his focus on 2022 with forthcoming new music.

Chang’s second album ‘The Sale’ testify to his talents as he wrestles with enviable grace across his new 12-track catalogue, the idea of estrangement and the problematics of artistic creation. Chang leans sonically into indie-pop, with guitar-driven instrumentation burbling across punchy drums and his layered, ethereal vocals. Yet the album is still replete with touchstones of the psychedelic popcraft that enamoured listeners on his debut.

Recorded partially in his hometown of Baltimore and partially in his dorm room at Princeton, his new album ‘The Sale’ is a homegrown effort with Chang playing all instruments, bar the odd exception of a few notable cameos from Baltimore locals, classmates and old friends. Following his debut ‘Jules’ - which saw Chang earn praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Fader, The Guardian, NME, Loud & Quiet, DIY, Billboard alongside support from BBC Radio 1 & 6Music via Annie Mac Jack Saunders and Jamz Supernova - his new LP explores the discrepancy between two worlds, a struggle to get comfortable in either one of them, and ultimately an artistic fascination with this very struggle.

TRACK LISTING

1. Heart Holiday
2. Marmalade
3. Sweet Obsolete
4. Snakebit Side
5. Snakebit
6. Time And Place
7. Bellarose
8. Ethical Exceptions
9. Crossed Paths
10. Queen Of Sheba
11. Competition's Friend

John Chantler’s ever-searching sensibilities lead him back to Room40 for a suite of crystalline modular synth intricacies realised at his home studio, now located in Stockholm after stints in Japan and South London, with additional recordings made at his now-local, world renowned EMS facility.

Which Way To Leave? can be read as a response to his new surroundings; a sort of reflexive reaction filtered and felt out thru finely meshed, gaseous layers of melody and timbral thizz with an absorbing, refreshing sense of strolling momentum and lush mindfulness allowing him to imperceptibly fold in guest contributions from Carina Thorén (his partner in For Barry Ray) on electric bass, and Okkyung Lee on cello.

It’s a sound that lies on the border between new age optimism and the abstract traditions of 20th century concrète and electro-acoustic traditions, mixing the home-brewed, psychedelic potency of one discipline with the more studious processing, diaphanous dimensions and abstract textures associated to the other realm, making their putative borders porous and interchangeable via subliminal transitions and angular incision.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Modern musique concrete for the discerning synthesist (or those fond of a synth or two). This is a suite of modular synth excursions and woven ambient textures, based on pinging vactrols and glassine hammered tones. Though there is a certain sparseness to the developmental process, it soon becomes warming and full-bodied, introducing washes of close reverb and top-heavy tines. Reminiscent of some of the more stripped-back collections on spectrum spools (Brett Naucke, Outer Space etc). Magnificently engrossing and imbued with a rich and communicable vision.

TRACK LISTING

1. Falling Forward                03:38
2. Two And Four                   02:18
3. Clearing                            01:04
4. Fixation Pulse                  06:22
5. Lesser Demands             02:27
6. All Visible Signs              06:31
7. First December               10:28
8. Second December         01:55
9. Beginning Again             06.56

On June 29th, 2023, Jeremiah Chiu walked into the Vintage Synthesizer Museum (VSM) in Highland Park, Los Angeles, with no plan more specific than "let's fire this stuff up and see what happens." Exploring the VSMs' vast collection of classic, rare and staple synthesizers, he would sequence, trigger, and layer the machines together with help from VSM founder/curator Lance Hill.

The resulting album - In Electric Time - was recorded in just two days, and edited to completion in the two days following. It was captured fully analog by engineer Ben Lumsdaine, who contributes performances on a few tracks himself. Cooper Crain (of Bitchin Bajas) makes an appearance as well; but ultimately the collection is an intuitive expression of organic electronic music conceptualized and created in-context by Chiu alone, as he calls on a life time of work in sound synthesis to paint a fulgent, refreshingly undercut sequence of cinematic sketches and in-process themes. In some ways, In Electric Time reflects the directness of Raymond Scott's electronic studio recordings - with sharp cuts and room chatter - and, in others, it conjures the in-the-moment magic of Harmonia.

TRACK LISTING

1. ElectroComp 101
2. Seawater Swell
3. For Voices
4. Rococco Rondo
5. A Cloud Song
6. Rhythm Bell
7. Brush With Thin Air
8. Rhythm Serge
9. Static Stone Railway
10. Transparent Spheres
11. Echo Arp Hold
12. In Electric Time

‘I Promised You Light’ follows on from Clarke’s critically acclaimed 2021 LP, A Small Unknowable Thing, an emotionally charged album bubbling with courage and defiance. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Where The Light Comes In
2. Driving At Night
3. You Know Me Better
4. Workhorse
5. I Promised You Light

’Seedlings All' is Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker’s first album to be made up of all original songs, and is songwriter Clarke's most autobiographical work to date. As she explains: “For the first time I’m out there alone with a bunch of songs that expose my insecurities, fears of failure and inflated pride. They deal with my own specific thoughts and feelings about the reality of pursuing this kind of career, the cost to personal relationships, circumstance and lifestyle, and asking the question - "Is this still worth it?” They’re about trying to find an inner balance in an environment that doesn’t provide any balance or certainty. Where one day everything is brilliant and the next day it could all be over. Where one night ends in a standing ovation and the next starts by playing to an empty room."

TRACK LISTING

Chicago
Bells Ring
Seedlings All
Maybe I Won't
Tender Heart
All Is Myth
Ghost Light
Sad Day
Things Of No Use
Bathed In Light
Only Me Only

(Bonus CD)
When To Then
Milk And Honey
For All We Know

John Clarke - not to be confused with Johnny Clark - had been running with the Wackies operation for six years, ever since moving from Jamaica to New York. He'd cut memorable sevens with co-founder Munchie Jackson for the Tafari label, and with Lloyd Barnes for such Bullwackies imprints as Versatile and Wackies. "Visions Of John Clarke" was a little thrown together for its original release in 1979. Still, its sleeve carried a ringing endorsement from Bullwackies himself and the album attracted the interest of no less than Studio 1 boss Coxsone Dodd, whose bid for distribution-rights was thwarted when the Brooklyn label Makossa quickly put in for a full licence. Out soon afterwards, the new version - entitled "Rootsy Reggae" - duplicated five tracks, but with markedly different mixes, fresh edits, and sometimes new instrumentation.

Johnny Clarke is one of the great vocalists that ruled the Jamaican Dancehall scene from the mid - 1970s to the early 1980’s. While Bob Marley was out conquering the world, Dennis Brown, Gregory Issacs and Johnny Clarke were winning the hearts of the Jamaican people. Johnny Clarke’s use of the ‘Flying Cymbal‘ sound took the Island by storm and produced a run of hit singles few could match.

Johnny Clarke (b.1955, Jamaica, West Indies) cut his first record ‘God Made The Sea and Sun’, after winning a local singing contest in the Bull Bay area of Jamaica. Although the single was not a hit, it led to two follow up tracks for producer Rupie Edwards, ’Everyday Wandering’ and ‘Julie’ that fared much better, both on the island and oversees in England and Canada. These tracks also brought the singer to the attention of producer Bunny Lee and a working relationship that would go on to produce a prolific catalogue of music. Johnny Clarke’s Dread Conscious / Love Song style were to grace many hits around this time in 1974. Such tunes as ‘None Shall Escape The Judgement’, ‘Move Out of Babylon’, ‘Rock With Me Baby’, ‘Enter The Gates With Praise’ to name but a few. All new songs added to a host of cover tunes, recommended by Bunny Lee, many taken from the singer John Holt’s catalogue, that suited Clarke’s vocal style. The rhythms were cut at various studios around the Island. Randy’s Studio 17, Channel 1, Treasure Isle, Dynamic Sounds and Harry J’s, by a group of musicians loosely called the Aggrovators and some tunes incorporating the ‘Flying Cymbal’ sound again introduced by Bunny Lee, working the HiHat in fine style. The tracks were then taken to King Tubby’s studio where Johnny Clarke’s vocals would be voiced.

Johhny Clarke ruled the dancehall in the mid 70s, coming up with a number of quality tunes using the fresh 'flyers' rhythm that gave him an edge with the sound systems. But his voice was always more important than any passing riddim fad, and his versatility to sing a wide range of vocal styles, has seen him cut through the decades as one of reggae's best voices. It's from his 1970s work with Bunny Lee that Kingston Sounds bring this collection together from, mixing up rockers, dread and lovers cuts.

British duo Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker have risen to star status lately on the English acoustic scene, earning last year’s Best Duo award from the BBC Folk Awards and across-theboard praise for two self-released albums, most recently ‘Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour’, with its lush single ‘Silverline’.

Clarke and Walker release a new EP, ‘Through The Clouds,’ via Rough Trade, featuring a handful of the best tracks from their small catalogue, rearranged anew. ‘Through The Clouds’ is meant as an introduction to the duo; in addition to ‘Silverline’ it features a new, stripped-down version of ‘Done’ (ballads on opposite sides of love and loneliness), an alternate mix of the spooky Shirley Collins cover ‘Hares On The Mountain’ and the original album version of ‘The Tangled Tree’, a brilliant showcase of Clarke’s vocal range and expression.

While The Guardian anointed them “chamber folk” (they certainly cut their teeth in that thriving part of the UK music scene), Clarke is an unusually compelling singer, sharing more in common with Sandy Denny, Gillian Welch, or even Nina Nastasia and Laura Marling, than your usual staid folk artist. Walker is a prodigiously talented guitarist and arranger and the two of them are engaging and often funny in a live setting where, in addition to their own songs, they choose covers brilliantly, from Denny, to Jackson C Frank, to Nina Simone, to death-obsessed traditional ballads.

Clarke and Walker will be recording their Rough Trade debut album for an Autumn 2016 release, with an eye toward bringing bigger, more modern arrangements and production to their beautifully-wrought songs and Clarke’s tremendous voice.

“Clarke and Walker stand out due to their originality… Impressive.” - The Guardian

“A bold success” - The Telegraph

2018 Reissue – Remastered From Original Tapes, Carefully Reproduced Original Art.

James Clarke’s Mystery Movie was released in 1974 as “modern, small group compositions in various moods. Ideally suited to the new Americanised style of T.V. and cinema film where music is used to create the mood and carry the action”. So this collection covers a lot of bases, but it does so brilliantly and has absolutely no right to be such a fantastic listen from start to finish. Mystery Movie is best known for the slick drum breaks underpinning the top-notch jazz-funk chase theme “Car Patrol”, the fuzz riffing and ARP soloing of “The Heavies” and the slow-mo strut of “Mystery Moll”. “Study In Fear” and “Empty Streets” are horror soundtrack fodder of the finest sort. However, it’s the understated, plaintive pieces that we find the most rewarding. Ambient feels and strung-out fried-folk treats, full of cyclical naïve melodies. Music that evokes the ‘downlifting’ Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood instrumentals from their great Mahoney’s Last Stand LP, as well as the beautiful soundtrack work of Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder. You might also recognise “Waiting Game” from being sampled by melodic downbeat masters Express Rising. Check “Relaxed Theme”, “Quiet Girl”, “Routine Procedure” and “Quietness Sustained” for a melodic, melancholic set, with the last three performed on just acoustic guitar and harp. Gorgeous work. As with all ten re-issues, the audio for Mystery Movie comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. We’ve taken the same care with the sleeves, handing the reproduction duties over to Richard Robinson, the current custodian of KPM’s brand identity.

TRACK LISTING

Mystery Prelude
Car Patrol - Title Sequence
Breathless
Breathless - Short Version
Waiting Game
Mystery Moll
Mystery Movement
The Heavies
Dirty Scene
Study In Fear
Empty Streets
Night Watch
Foot Patrol
Quiet Girl
Relaxed Scene
Routine Procedure
Quietness Sustained

Berlin-based Bretford Records releases Locust, the new solo album from Jeff Clarke (Black Lips member) – a stripped-down, melancholic change of pace from the Canadian singer-songwriter whose boisterous garage rock compositions with the bands Demon’s Claws, Hellshovel, and the Black Lips led to King Khan identifying him as one of the “unsung heroes of rock n’ roll.”

This time out, Clarke’s sincere, poetic texts are accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. The warm, dreamy, minimalist folk sound is enhanced by the recordings themselves – all done in a single session, outdoors in a forest north of Berlin, Clarke’s adopted home since 2016.

The concept for the intimate setting came from Lorenz Szukal, guitarist in legendary Berlin indie rockers Chuckamuck and die Verlierer, who recognized that Clarke’s songwriting, which he had long admired, would be equally powerful when pared down and showcased in a different light. When the two took Szukal’s mobile recording equipment into the woods, the more naturalistic atmosphere revealed a mixture of light and shadow, fragility and resilience, pain and relief in the songs.

And yet Locust is much more than a mere study in contrasts; harmonized by Clarke’s extraordinary writing, the thirteen songs of the album create a coherent ambiance in which Clarke’s voice – like the soft complaint of a lonesome wolf – blends with the vivid lyrical imagery, the subtle dynamics of his guitar playing, and an almost imperceptible echo to leave the listener in a daydream state. In daring to present his unique sensibility in such a raw, elemental setting, Locust marks a striking new direction and reveals Clarke to be a spiritual descendant of Townes van Zandt.

TRACK LISTING

01. Something Happened
02. Feathers Of A Moth
03. Bed Of Glass
04. Whips Of Holly
05. Locust
06. Left Out In The Cold
07. Hypothermia
08. Elizabeth
09. Weird Ways
10. Stolen Valor
11. Strawberry Sun
12. Kind Of Boy
13. Never Going To Run

'Nothing short of dazzling' - Alex Turner

Dr John Cooper Clarke's dazzling, scabrous voice has reverberated through pop culture for decades, his influence on generations of performance poets and musicians plain for all to see. In WHAT, the original 'People's Poet' comes storming out of the gate with an uproarious new collection, reminding us why he is one of Britain's most beloved writers and performers. James Brown, John F.

Kennedy, Jesus Christ: nobody is safe from the punk rocker's acerbic pen - and that's just the first poem. Hot on the heels of The Luckiest Guy Alive and his sprawling, encyclopaediac memoir I Wanna Be Yours, the good Doctor returns with his most trenchant collection of poems yet. Vivid and alive, with a sensitivity only a writer with a life as varied and extraordinary as Cooper Clarke's could summon, WHAT is an exceptional collection from one of our foremost satirists.

Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker release their debut album for Rough Trade. The album which is self-produced, follows their Rough Trade debut, the ‘Through The Clouds' EP, which was released earlier this year.

‘Overnight’ is their most ambitious record to date, focusing on Clarke’s extraordinary voice and lyrics, and Walker’s prodigious guitar-playing and arranging; the album features panoramic orchestration by an eclectic core of acclaimed musicians, including strings, horns, piano, double bass, and drums. The twelve songs – ten originals and two covers - recorded almost entirely live at Rockfield Studios in Wales - serve as a snapshot of the endless cycle of night into day and back again, morning light, into dusk, into black midnight, into greying dawn, and on, and on.

The album’s lilting first single, “The Waning Crescent,” is almost an answer in ballad form to the portrayal of the moon in traditional and popular music as a soothing, confessional, companion (i.e. “Blue Moon”). Coming at the darkest and stillest point in the album, the song – like the moon – brings a reassuring lightness.

Clarke explains, "I started to think about if I was the moon, what I might think and feel, and what the moon might sing back,” adding, “I’ve given it a slightly whiny, self-pitying quality because it’s whimsical and a bit funny.”


One of the poppier songs on the album, the sound of “The Waning Crescent” is meant to fit the song’s subject matter. “We’ve done vignettes before where we've taken on a musical genre because that’s what fits the concept of the song. On this one, we’ve used the ‘50s and ‘60s space-race era pop sound to deliberately compound the moon theme,” says Josienne.

Other ‘Overnight’ highlights include the stunning country/soul ballad “Something Familiar” and their marvelous take on Gillian Welch’s “Dark Turn Of Mind,” the eerie folk of “Dawn Of The Dark” and “The Light Of His Lamp,” and the traditional-leaning “Sweet The Sorrow” and “Weep You No More Sad Fountains,” the latter a traditional English ballad set to song.

Though Clarke & Walker’s previous work is very much steeped in the the folk tradition – the two in fact won the BBC Folk Award for Best Duo in 2015 – ‘Overnight’ draws just as much inspiration from more-straightforward 1970s AM radio rock like Fleetwood Mac or Neil Young as they do from folk-rockers like Fairport Convention or Joni Mitchell.

Now available on vinyl for the first time, Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker’s ‘Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour’ album from 2014.

A year in the making, ‘Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour’ builds on the blend of traditional and contemporary songwriting first explored in 2013’s ‘Fire And Fortune’.

Drawing on sumptuous chamber folk textures and rich instrumentation, this new record has a timeless yet current sound, examining and reflecting upon the theme of time past, present and future.

For the first time since her early beginnings, Clarke is flying solo. No label, no musical partner, no producer. Clarke is in complete control of her songwriting, arranging, producing, release schedule and musical direction. While the themes might feel familiar to her fans, the musical journey will not, with Clarke taking in a wide range of new and diverse influences across the album – from Adrianne Lenker’s ‘Hours Were The Birds’, IDLES’ ‘Colossus’, Radiohead’s ‘Airbag’ to Phoebe Bridgers ‘Garden Song’ and more, the album’s touchstones span a vast musical collage of anger and hope. Lead single, ‘Sit Out’ is frustration and defiance in sonic form. “All you stand for / Makes me want to sit out” she sings over thick, driving guitars and an almost Beastie Boys-esque drum beat.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Josienne Clarke's new album manages to take a diverse range of influences and seamlessly integrate them into a beautifully accomplished whole. The more cavernous percussion and distorted guitars perfectly offset Clarke's haunting vocals in the more meditative pieces here. A wonderful collection.

TRACK LISTING

Super Recogniser
Like This
Never Lie
Chains
If It’s Not
Sit Out
Sting My Heart
The Collector
Tiny Bit Of Life
A Letter On A Page
Deep Cut
Out Loud
Repaid
Unbound 

‘In All Weather’ is a new collection of songs in which Josienne Clarke goes it alone; musically, as this is her first solo record and in her own life, laid bare and played out in the leave-it-all-behind-andstart- anew nature of the lyrics. The songs were written in on the Isle of Bute in 2018, where Josienne relocated for a year, overlooked by a snowy Ben Nevis.

Josienne accompanies herself on pared-back acoustic and electric guitar throughout. She’s joined on the record by experimental piano prodigy Elliott Galvin, innovative jazz drummer Dave Hamblett, celebrated Scottish harpist Mary Ann Kennedy and guitarist/bassist Sonny Johns, who co-produced the record with Josienne.

TRACK LISTING

(Learning To Sail) In All Weather
Seconds
The Drawing Of The Line
Leaving London
My Love Gave Me An Apple
If I Didn't Mind
Host
Slender, Sad & Sentimental
Season & Time
Walls And Hallways
Fair Weather Friends
Dark Cloud
Onliness

In her own words, Josienne Clarke viewed her 2021 album – A Small Unknowable Thing – as a leap into the abyss. Finally free from the industry structure that had been built around her over the preceding decade and more, she released the album via her own label, Corduroy Punk Records, and handled every aspect of the album’s writing, recording, and release herself, on her own terms. Free from her previous role as one-half of a duo and losing the genre constraints she was quickly and lazily placed within, she came out of that chapter emboldened – but still not truly free.

From her home on Scotland’s Isle of Bute, Josienne began thinking about the idea of reclamation. Cutting her teeth in an industry that so often works against the artist it's supposed to support – and with a lingering idea in the wake of Taylor Swift’s ‘Taylor’s Version’ project – Josienne began revisiting the songs in her back catalogue that felt buried somehow; that had never had the spotlight she felt they deserved, for myriad reasons.

Onliness is both a wholesome project and a spellbinding work in its own right. Opening with one of her earliest compositions – ‘The Tangled Tree’ – and closed by a brand-new song, it presents a career retrospective viewed through a new lens. The album is comprised of reworked versions of fan favourites and hidden gems from a back catalogue that always glimmered, but this time they’re entirely hers, carrying everything from booming drums to intimate acoustic guitars, with Josienne's powerful yet, at times, fragile voice whispering and screaming straight into the listeners ear.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Warm, mildly distorted guitar plucks and Clarke's powerful vocals twist around each other in a hypnotic display of melodicism and drive. It's a testament to Clarke's songwriting skill that she can turn the tide of the groove in an instant, shifting into a woozy psychedelic redux. A wonderful rework of some of her classic pieces, and a great introduction for any new listeners.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Tangled Tree
2. Only Me Only
3. It Would Not Be A Rose
4. Ghost Light
5. Silverline
6. Bells Ring
7. Something Familiar
8. The Birds
9. Homemade Heartache
10. Chicago
11. Things I Didn’t Need
12. Bathed In Light
13. Anyone But Me
14. I Never Learned French
15. Done
16. Workhorse
17. Words Were Never The Answer 

On Parenthesis, I, Josienne Clarke has not only embraced her past but has also redefined herself in the present, presenting a body of work that is shimmering, warm, intimate, and at times, profoundly heart-wrenching. Throughout her career, Clarke has been both a Rough Trade-signed artist and a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winner, two opposing poles that neatly sum up her inability to be pigeonholed. Parenthesis, I is a masterful journey through her personal and musical evolution, drawing influence from folk greats Nick Drake and Sandy Denny, as well as more contemporary artists like Julia jacklin, Courtney Marie Andrews, Anaïs Mitchell and Lucy Dacus.

TRACK LISTING

1.  Friendly Teeth
2.  Spherical
3.  Fear Of Falling
4.  Do You Know Now
5.  Looking Glass
6.  Forbearing
7.  Most Of All
8.  Double-Edged Sword
9.  Firecracker
10.  Dead Woman’s Bones
11.  The Calm
12.  Parenthesis, I
13.  Magic Somehow

Jen Cloher is a songwriter and performer living on unceded Wurundjeri land in Naarm (Melbourne). Cloher’s taut, terse brand of rock is charged with the static tension that comes with being an eternal misfit; they have spoken truth to power with the shrewd eye that only an outsider can possess. Admirers have naturally gravitated towards Cloher’s incisive, generous songwriting. Over the course of five albums, they have won a J Award and an AIR Award and been nominated for an ARIA and the Australian Music Prize. This year Milk! Records, which Cloher founded in 2012 with Courtney Barnett, celebrates its tenth year of releasing music by artists such as Tiny Ruins, Hand Habits, Liz Stringer and Hachiku.

On their first album in five years, Cloher finally breathes out. I Am The River, The River Is Me, her fifth album, is verdant and rich; it luxuriates in stillness, and carries itself with cool, unfussy confidence. It suggests that home is not found in a place or a politic, but in the community you keep: Inspired by Cloher’s powerful matrilineal line of wāhine Māori, I Am The River, The River Is Me is not urgent, or hurried, but it is vital, made with the care and ease of someone who knows that their past began before birth, and will continue long after they’re gone.

I Am The River, The River Is Me is an album of remarkable generosity and grace. Recorded between Aotearoa (NZ) and Naarm (Melbourne) with producers Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams), Anika Ostendorf (Hachiku) and Cloher’s longtime drummer Jen Sholakis; the album brings in trailblazing artists including Emma Donovan (Gumbaynggirr, Yamatji), Kylie Auldist, Liz Stringer, Te Kaahu (Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Tīpā), Ruby Solly (Kai Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) and members of the Naarm-based Kapa Haka, Te Hononga o ngā Iwi. The entire record feels communal — a celebration not just of Cloher, but of the rich, life-filled communities that surround them.

These are fiercely political songs that never feel heavy: They are energetic and full-blooded, alive with the knowledge that to simply exist — to scream and laugh and sing and make art — is as much a form of resistance as to fight.

Finding yourself, finding your home, is an unruly, never-ending process; I Am The River, The River Is Me is not a perfect self-portrait, and it possesses no universal truth about what it means to be Māori, or to be wahine toa (a strong woman), or to be takatāpui, or even to be Jen Cloher. Instead, it captures something else — a picture of humanity and community as a gorgeous, unfathomable mess. The joy of life, Cloher seems to say, is in forgiving your moments of weakness with grace, and embracing the parts of you that are unfinished. On “Aroha Mai, Aroha Atu”, they put it simply, and perfectly: “I may have come late, but better late than never.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mana Takatāpui
2. Harakeke
3. My Witch
4. Being Human
5. I Am The River, The River Is Me
6. Protest Song
7. The Wild
8. Aroha Mai, Aroha Atu
9. He Toka-Tu-Moana
10. I Am Coming Home

A letter in triplicate addressed to the themes of love, music and Australia, Jen Cloher's fourth album is the culmination of a period of artistic and personal growth in which the artist took her rightful place as a punk-rock figurehead of Melbourne's famous DIY music scene.

She is an outspoken advocate for artist rights and co-founder of the incredible Milk! Records label, which includes the likes of Courtney Barnett and Fraser A. Gorman among its luminaries. Since 2014, her output has been increasingly biting, witty and poetic, with her last album, the critically lauded "In Blood Memory" representing an artistic apex for the artist and garnering her a prestigious Australian Music Prize nomination.

The self-titled album, "Jen Cloher", represents another quantum leap forward for the artist. Recorded amidst the rolling greenery of South-Eastern Australia and mixed at Jeff Tweedy's famous Loft Studios in Chicago, the songs are split by Courtney Barnett's extraordinary lead guitar and anchored by the rhythm section of Bones Sloane and Jen Sholakis. The end result is bold, assured, and piercingly observed, seeing Cloher face up to painful truths with unwavering honesty and emerge triumphant.

TRACK LISTING

Forgot Myself
Analysis Paralysis
Regional Echo
Sensory Memory
Shoegazers
Strong Woman
Kinda Biblical
Great Australian Bite
Loose Magic
Waiting In The Wings
Dark Art

A letter in triplicate addressed to the themes of love, music and Australia, Jen Cloher's fourth album is the culmination of a period of artistic and personal growth in which the artist took her rightful place as a punk-rock figurehead of Melbourne's famous DIY music scene.

She is an outspoken advocate for artist rights and co-founder of the incredible Milk! Records label, which includes the likes of Courtney Barnett and Fraser A. Gorman among its luminaries. Since 2014, her output has been increasingly biting, witty and poetic, with her last album, the critically lauded "In Blood Memory" representing an artistic apex for the artist and garnering her a prestigious Australian Music Prize nomination.

The self-titled album, "Jen Cloher", represents another quantum leap forward for the artist. Recorded amidst the rolling greenery of South-Eastern Australia and mixed at Jeff Tweedy's famous Loft Studios in Chicago, the songs are split by Courtney Barnett's extraordinary lead guitar and anchored by the rhythm section of Bones Sloane and Jen Sholakis. The end result is bold, assured, and piercingly observed, seeing Cloher face up to painful truths with unwavering honesty and emerge triumphant.

TRACK LISTING

Forgot Myself
Analysis Paralysis
Regional Echo
Sensory Memory
Shoegazers
Strong Woman
Kinda Biblical
Great Australian Bite
Loose Magic
Waiting In The Wings
Dark Art

A new album from Sheffield's finest is always greeted with a great deal of excitement here at Piccadilly, and even more so this time around, as he teams up with the legendary Steve Albini for this new album. "Further Complications" is rockier than his earlier solo work and his work with Pulp, which is maybe explained by Albini's presence, although the record also contains a few soul numbers such as "Leftovers".

It's what we've all been waiting for; Jarvis Cocker is back. Jarvis' first solo album follows on from his controversial online single "Running The World", which was first unleashed on the public via Myspace.com/jarvspace to coincide with the first anniversary of Live-8 – quite purposefully of course, and has since taken on a cult anthemic status all of its own. And you can all relax: it's the hidden track on the CD and the free 7-inch with the vinyl! But the good news is that it's not even the best song on this rich, deep, and a little bit dark, pop record. It's full of massive, is-this-a-cover? tunes with weird treatments and cool sounds. Richard Hawley plays, and you'd think some of these songs were co-writes, cos they're of a similar, melancholy, croonsome vibe, but with Jarvis's brilliant words on top. It's nearly all excellent and it's great to have him back!

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 27TH FROM 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.


Further Complications is the second solo album by Jarvis Cocker, originally released in the UK on 18 May 2009. This album has been remastered for RSD.

Limited run. Pressed on white vinyl – includes etched 12” of ‘You’re In My Eyes (Disco Song)’.

THIS IS A BLACK FRIDAY RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 27TH FROM 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Debut solo album by Pulp vocalist and musician Jarvis Cocker, originally released in the UK on 13 November 2006. This album has been out of print for some time.

Limited run. Pressed on split colour green vinyl, includes etched 7” of ‘C**ts Are Still Running The World’.

Wes Anderson asked Jarvis Cocker to record a new version of “Aline” for his new film The French Dispatch. The French pop hit from 1965, “Aline” was originally performed and made famous by Christophe. The song appears in a critical scene in The French Dispatch, the character Tip Top appears on a poster in the café where the revolutionary youth of Paris congregate, while the song plays on the jukebox.

Anderson and Cocker decided to collaborate on an entire album of French material from the same period, songs originally made notable by the likes of Françoise Hardy, Serge Gainsburg, Jacques Dutroc and others. And with this, the album named after Tip Top is here.

TRACK LISTING

Dans Ma Chambre
Contact
La Tendresse
Looking For You
Dutronc – Le Gent Sont Fous
Il Pluet Sur La Gare
Parole Paroles
Requiem Por En Cos
Mon Amis La Roase
Mao Mao
Elle Et Moi
Aline

Jarvis Cocker’s 2006 self-titled debut ‘Jarvis’ and his second album ‘Further Complications’ are being reissued. Both albums have been out of print for several years. 2009’s ‘Further Complications’ is joined by a 12” featuring ‘You’re In My Eyes (Discosong)’

TRACK LISTING

Angela
Pilchard
Leftovers
I Never Said I Was Deep
Homewrecker!
Hold Still
Fuckingsong
Caucasian Blues
Slush
You’re In My Eyes (Discosong) (one-sided 12”)

What if the things we keep hidden say more about us than those we put on display?

We all have a random collection of the things that made us - photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs, stuffed in a box, packed in a suitcase, crammed into a drawer. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his story and ask him some awkward questions: Who do you think you are? Are clothes important? Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here?

From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process - writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.

This is not a life story. It's a loft story.

Jarvis Cocker’s 2006 self-titled debut ‘Jarvis’ and his second album ‘Further Complications’ are being reissued. Both albums have been out of print for several years. ‘Jarvis’ comes with a 7” featuring his rabblerousing classic single ‘Running The World’, which was the subject of a UK fan campaign to get it into the Christmas charts in the aftermath of the general election.

TRACK LISTING

The Loss Adjuster
Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time
Black Magic
Heavy Weather
I Will Kill Again
Baby’s Coming To Get Me
Fat Children
From Auschwitz To Ipswich
Disney Time
Tonite
The Loss Adjuster
Big Julie
Quantum Theory
Running The World (one-sided 7”)

Kalita are honoured to release the first ever compilation focusing on the musical career of Julie Coker, the queen of Nigerian television. Here they collated seven of Julie’s most sought-after Afro disco and hauntingly-beautiful Itsekiri highlife recordings, accompanied by extensive interview-based liner notes and never-before- seen photos.

After gaining fame as Miss Western Nigeria 1957, Julie began her career in the Nigerian entertainment industry as the country’s first ever (and Africa’s second) female television presenter, as well as a popular national radio host. In 1976, having been surrounded by close musical friends including Fela Kuti and Kris Okotie, Julie entered the Nigerian music scene with the now-invisible psychedelic highlife album ‘Ere Yon (Sweet Songs)’, followed in 1981 by the highly sought-after disco-centric ‘Tomorrow’ to great acclaim. Both now fetch eye-watering prices on the rare occasion that they become available for sale.

Here they selected select four recordings from ‘Ere Yon (Sweet Songs)’ and three from ‘Tomorrow’, all as contemporary-sounding today as they were when first released forty years ago. These include Julie’s ‘Ere Yon’, which was recently re-interpreted by Anderson Paak on his latest album ‘Oxnard’ released on Dr. Dre’s Aftermath imprint, and the lost Afro disco classic ‘Gossiper Scandal Monger’.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ere Yon
2. Re Hese
3. It’s All For You
4. Sogio
5. Gossiper Scandal Monger
6. Iyo-Re
7. Elelemi

Inspired by the frenzied energy of Kendrick's "DAMN" tour, J. Cole set about cooking up a new LP, "KOD" ,while he was out on the road himself. Musically inspired by Soundcloud rap, the beats (mostly produced by Cole himself) combine the bass weight and skipping hats of trap with his favoured jazz samples. Lyrically, the album deals with America's enthusiasm to medicate, Cole's own battles with addiction as a means of escape and the ultimate goal of living free from fear and anxiety. As ever, Cole manages to explore complex themes without losing his voice, the smooth beats and technical flow keeping things accessible despite the subject matter. Alongside K. Dot and Childish Gambino, Cole is one of the most important voices in rap today, and his latest LP is another classic.  

TRACK LISTING

A1. Intro
A2. KOD
A3. Photograph
A4. The Cut Off (feat Kill Edward)
A5. ATM
A6. Motiv8
A7. Kevin's Heart
B1. BRACKETS
B2. Once An Addict (interlude)
B3. FRIENDS (feat Kill Edward)
B4. Window Pain (outro)
B5. 1985 (intro To The Fall Off)

The idea for this album is centred around Cole's childhood. 2014 Forest Hills Drive is the address of his childhood home in Fayetteville, NC - which he bought back this year - coincidentally also in 2014. The record title celebrates this; and the album tracks centre around various times in his life: growing up, chasing his dreams and fame, and coming full circle to realize none of that matters - and rather family / friends and being able to come home is what counts.

TRACK LISTING

"Intro"
"January 28th"
€�"Wet Dreamz"
"03' Adolescence"
"A Tale Of 2 Citiez"
"Fire Squad"
"St. Tropez"
"G.O.M.D."
"No Role Modelz"
"Hello"
"Apparently"
"Love Yourz"
"Note To Self"

The Off-Season is the sixth studio album by American rapper J. Cole. The album was executive produced by Cole, Ibrahim Hamad, and T-Minus. It features guest vocals from Morray, 21 Savage, Lil Baby, Bas, and 6lack. 

This time sees Cole relaxing a little from the incendiary fire of 'KOD', with things getting a little looser in the production front too. It's a fine line between sloppy and laid-back, and though 'Laid-back' was never something Cole could come close to, on 'The Off Season', we get a little more of the unhurried production that could easily veer into the more loose side of the hip-hop spectrum. 
 
There are moments of Cole's trademark drive though, with both 'My Life' and 'Applying Pressure' acting as superb grit ofsetting the more languid offerings. It's yet another wonderful outing from Cole, and one that will surely go down as a turning point in his already considerable skillset.  

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Hydraulic subs, rapid-fire trap beats, that guttural east coast drawl; the busiest (and richest) rapper in the business returns with masterpiece no. 6

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. 95 South (3:17)
2. Amari (2:30)
3. My Life (3:31)
4. Applying Pressure (2:59)
5. Punchin' The Clock (1:54)
6. 100 Mil' (2:45)

Side 2
1. Pride Is The Devil (3:40)
2. Let Go My Hand (4:26)
3. Interlude (2:14)
4. The Climb Back (5:00)
5. Close (2:33)
6. Hunger On Hillside (4:04)

'The Last Donkey Show' is the latest album from everyone's favorite freaky Texas troubadour John Wesley Coleman. While Coleman's particular madman swerve still recalls Doug Sahm and Roky Erickson, this collection covers more territory than his earlier work. Does this mean the half-mad misfit has grown up? Not quite-but the songwriting chops are all there, from carney kookiness to fuzz rockers to barstool tearjerkers to dustbowl pop.

In his own words: "That's right. My new album is called The Last Donkey Show. It is a fucking roller-coaster recorded in Oakland, California, at Greg Ashley's studio The Creamery and also in the country near Lockhardt, Texas, at my good buddy's childhood home. Aaron Blount is his name. He is a bad-ass songwriter friend of mine. We ate BBQ all day and shot BB guns and had a bonfire. There is a cast of characters on this record... It's a floodgate of memories. Every song has a crazy story. I will tell them to you some time. The donkey is a symbol of hard work, humor and death. I love it! See you at town near you. Eat Gus's Fried Chicken!"

Jon Coley is something of an underground figure in Manchester's music scene. Combining soul and folk with intelligent original songwriting, and admired for his unique guitar playing (taking influence from performers such as Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Wizz Jones and especially John Martyn) and for his passionate vocal performances, reminiscent of Van Morrison and Amos Lee.

"If All I Ever Wanted Was All I Ever Needed" is his strikingly pure, heart-wide-open debut album. Opening with the Tracey Chapman-esque, "Higher Ground" it's obvious from the start there's a warm and healing magic to Jon's voice; the mere sounding of the record certain to rekindle forgotten memories of happy times like flames around a campfire.

Jon's guitar and voice seem unseperable throughout; symbiotically elevating each other beyond their instrument's solo limitations. And his vocal range - wow! - I mean, Jon where were you hiding such an angelic falsetto?! Like golden honey flowing over polished leather, the slight gravly inflections like proplis in this sonic royal jelly.

Accompanying Jon, a beautifully intimate team of backing muscians and vocalists (all credited on the record's sleeve) which add finedrawn, unforced dynamics to this otherwise one-man operation which in parts drifts in to Mazzy Star-esque depths of emotion.

If you're looking for a charismatic and heart warming troubadour to keep you company over the coming Autumn months then look no further! Highly recommended by us all here at Piccadilly Records.

Jon has played alongside John Renbourn, Blind Boy Paxton, Michael Chapman, Ralph McTell, Jon Gomm, Wizz Jones, Dylan LeBlanc, Chance McCoy and shared a stage and billing with many more, including Foss Patterson and Danny Thompson of John Martyn's band at venues as varied as New York's Bitter End Club, and Liverpool's Echo Arena. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Whispering sweet nothings like warm treacle across a rich tapestry of English Americana; the only drinking partner you need this Autumn! Manchester's Jon Coley is an absolute joy on the ears. Debut album from this star destined for supernova status.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Higher Ground
Sympathy For Juda
Sweeter State Of Mind
Can't Blame A Boy For Trying
Last Words On A Caged Mocking-Bird
In The Night Time 

Side B
Beat Up Inside
Watch The World Burn
You Can't Make It Rain
The Easy Life
Only Call Me When You're Ready
Bigger Than Both Of Us
Blue Eyes, Whiskey And Wine

Out of all the Elektra 50th Anniversary reissues this disc featuring two Judy Collins albums from 1961 and 1962 are amongst the most suprising. Both albums are accomplished and startlingly pure renditions of folk standards that Collins somehow made her own. I'm not too sure about the Irish rebel songs but "Great Selchie Of Shule Sherry" is a groudbreaking five minute narrative song that has a timeless and majestic strength and "Pretty Saro" is a vocal masterpiece.

Imagine you've made it. You and your friends have hit the big time in music and you're going to be a star. But then, quite suddenly, it's over.

Your best friends don't want you anymore, and you're on the outside. Perhaps they're tired of your bad habits, they think you're not good enough, or they sense you just don't want it as much as they do. Whatever the cause, you're a reject.

So, what do you do next?Featuring a player rejected by both Nirvana and Soundgarden who became a decorated special forces soldier, Britpoppers who spiralled into addiction before becoming novelists and missionaries, the terrifying story of Guns N' Roses' first drummer, super-rejecting band leaders, self-destroying rappers, troubled hard rock bassists and girl-band burnouts, The Rejects takes an intimate, thoughtful look at people who've been kicked out of bands, what they experienced and what came afterwards. Coming from a writer with twenty years' music industry experience, The Rejects is a sympathetic study of some of music's most fascinating characters, and what happens when the dream comes crashing to an end. The result is a compelling alternative history of popular music.

"Blue Train" is John Coltrane's only collection of sides as a principal artist for Blue Note. The album is packed with sonic evidence of Coltrane's innate leadership abilities. He not only addresses the tunes at hand, but also simultaneously reinvents himself as a multifaceted interpreter of both hard bop as well as sensitive balladry - touching upon all forms in between. The personnel on "Blue Train" is arguably as impressive as what they're playing. Joining Coltrane (tenor sax) are Lee Morgan (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Kenny Drew (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). The triple horn arrangements incorporate an additional sonic density that remains a trademark unique to both this band and album. Of particular note is Fuller's even-toned trombone, which bops throughout the title track as well as the frenetic "Moments Notice". Other solos include Paul Chambers' subtly understated riffs on "Blue Train" as well as the high energy and impact from contributions by Lee Morgan and Kenny Drew during "Locomotion". The track likewise features some brief but vital contributions from Philly Joe Jones - whose efforts throughout the record stand among his personal best. Of the five pieces that comprise the original "Blue Train", the Jerome Kern / Johnny Mercer ballad "I'm Old Fashioned" is the only standard; in terms of unadulterated sentiment, this version is arguably untouchable. Fuller's rich tones and Drew's tastefully executed solos cleanly wrap around Jones' steadily languid rhythms. Without reservation, "Blue Train" can easily be considered in and among the most important and influential entries not only of John Coltrane's career, but of the entire genre of jazz music as well.

Blue Note President Don Was says, “Two years ago, we began remastering the jewels of the Blue Note catalogue in hi-def resolutions of 96k and 192k. In order to develop a guiding artistic philosophy for this delicate endeavor, we donned our lab coats, ran dozens of sonic experiments and carefully referenced every generation of our reissues. Ultimately, we decided that our goal would be to protect the original intentions of the artists, producers and engineers who made these records and that, in the case of pre-digital-era albums, these intentions were best represented by the sound and feel of their first-edition vinyl releases. Working with a team of dedicated and groovy engineers, we found a sound that both captured the feel of the original records while maintaining the depth and transparency of the master tapes... the new remasters are really cool!

While these new versions will become available in digital hi-def, CD and Mastered for iTunes formats, the allure of vinyl records is WAY too potent to ignore. This year, Blue Note - along with our friends at Universal Music Enterprises - is launching a major 75th Anniversary vinyl Initiative that is dedicated to the proposition that our catalogue should be readily available, featuring high quality pressings and authentic reproductions of Blue Note's iconic packaging. Although this program begins in celebration of Blue Note's 75th Anniversary, our catalog runs so deep that we will faithfully be reissuing five albums a month for many years to come!”

TRACK LISTING

Blue Train 10:40
Moment's Notice 9:08
Locomotion 7:12
I'm Old Fashioned 7:55
Lazy Bird 7:04

'Live' at the Village Vanguard (Impulse! AS-10), was Coltrane’s first official ‘live’ album. Coltrane is joined here on two tunes by Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, plus McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Reggie Workman and Jimmy Garrison alternating on bass. Garrison’s presence on this album makes this the first recording by what came to be known as Coltrane’s ‘Classic Quartet’. Recorded live at the Village Vanguard, New York, November 2 & 3, 1961.

Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from the original analog tapes mastered by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at QPR. The series is supervised by Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, and releases are presented in deluxe gatefold tip-on packaging.

TRACK LISTING

Spiritual [13:48] (Side A)
Softly As In A Morning Sunrise [6:33] (Side A)
Chasin’ The Trane [16:07] (Side B)

'In the brief, bright arc that is the career of John Coltrane, 1963 marks a point of transition between past jazz masterpieces and future work which would transcend the boundaries of the music itself.  That year's recorded output shows movement in many directions: a look back at the past, continued examination of a familiar repertoire, exploration of more traditional formats and a look forward at compositions and approaches that would further extend the reach of jazz. John Coltrane 1963: New Directions collects all of John Coltrane’s 1963 Impulse recordings in the order in which they were recorded

5-LP, 3-CD sets include artwork featuring original collages.

The box is meant to show the growth in Coltrane’s musical journey in 1963 that ultimately resulted in 1964’s “Crescent” and, especially, “A Love Supreme” // Music comes from the original albums “Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album”, “John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman”, “Dear Old Stockholm” (released after Coltrane’s death), “Newport ‘63” and “Live at Birdland”.

Easily one of the most important records ever made, this was Coltrane's pinnacle studio outing that spoke of his search for spiritual and musical freedom, as expressed through polyrhythms, modalities, and purely vertical forms. Recorded at Van Gelder Studios, it became an instant best-seller and received a Grammy nomination. It remains one of the greatest albums ever recorded, and in 2021 was certified platinum by the RIAA for sales of 1 million albums in the U.S. The achievement garners Coltrane his first-ever platinum record and is the first jazz album of the 1960s to receive platinum status, underscoring its enduring legacy and importance.

Impulse! dig up a never-before-heard live recording from a private collection featuring Coltrane’s Classic Quartet augmented by Pharoah Sanders amongst others. This is one of only three known concert performances of the most iconic suite in jazz.
Recorded in late 1965 on the culminating evening of a historic week-long run at The Penthouse in Seattle, A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is a musical revelation of historic importance, capturing Coltrane as he began to expand his classic quartet—adding Pharoah Sanders on second saxophone and Donald Garrett on second bass—and catapulting him into the intense, spiritually focused final phase of his career.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Love Supreme Pt. I – Acknowledgement
2. Interlude 1
3. A Love Supreme Pt. II – Resolution
4. Interlude 2
5. A Love Supreme Pt. III – Pursuance
6. Interlude 3
7. Interlude 4
8. A Love Supreme Pt. IV – Psalm

This collection showcases some of Coltrane's best recordings as a side artist and features collaborations with such jazz greats as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Tadd Dameron, and Art Taylor. Primarily focusing on Coltrane's recordings as side man from 1956 and 1957 on the Prestige, Riverside, and Jazzland labels, it also includes a guest appearance (and legendary tenor saxophone solo) with Miles Davis on the track "Someday My Prince Will Come" (from the 1961 Miles Davis Columbia album of the same title).

The 2-LP vinyl edition contains two extra tracks that are not available on the CD and digital editions: Nutty (Originally released on the album Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Jazzland JLP 46) and Birks' Works (Originally released on the Red Garland Quintet album Soul Junction featuring John Coltrane and Donald Byrd). The liner notes were written by Doug Ramsey, winner of the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Ramsey is the author of the award-winning biography Take Five, The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. His other awards include two ASCAP Deems Taylors.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. SONNY ROLLINS QUARTET: Tenor Madness (12:08)
2. MILES DAVIS AND THE MODERN JAZZ GIANTS: 'Round Midnight (5:22)
3. THE MILES DAVIS QUINTET: Oleo (6:17)
Side B
1. THE MILES DAVIS QUINTET: Airegin (4:21)
2. TADD DAMERON WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Soultrane (5:22)
3. ART TAYLOR: C.T.A. (4:39)
4. THELONIOUS MONK: Monk's Mood (7:48)
Side C
1. THELONIOUS MONK WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Epistrophy (Alternate Take) (3:07)
2. THELONIOUS MONK WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Trinkle, Tinkle (6:39)
3. *THELONIOUS MONK WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Nutty* (6:36)
4. *RED GARLAND QUINTET FEATURING JOHN COLTRANE AND DONALD BYRD: Birks' Works* (7:32)
Side D
1. THE RED GARLAND QUINTET WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Billie's Bounce (9:21)
2. MILES DAVIS: Someday My Prince Will Come (9:02) 

* Vinyl Bonus Tracks.

“With Ballads Coltrane looks into the warmer side of things, a path he would take with both Johnny Hartman and with Duke Ellington. Here he lays out for McCoy Tyner mostly, and the results positively shimmer at times. He’s not aggressive. Instead, he’s introspective and at times even predictable, but that is precisely Ballads’ draw.” - Sam Samuelson, AllMusic

TRACK LISTING

Say It (Over And Over Again)
You Don’t Know What Love Is
Too Young To Go Steady
All Or Nothing At All
I Wish I Knew
What’s New?
It’s Easy To Remember Nancy (With The Laughing Face)
Greensleeves

Ballads is a special Coltrane masterpiece and consistent best-seller, recorded in December 1961 with Coltrane’s classic quartet—pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones—. When asked why such an undertaking, Coltrane replied, "variety." The recording captures the famed John Coltrane Quartet in a performance of timeless ballads. Coltrane was one of jazz's greatest ballad players, and his lyrical gifts are in sharp relief here.

Presented here in its entirety, the celebrated 1962 LP 'Ballads' album (Impulse AS-32) was the last word in John Coltrane's ballad playing and became an instant hit. One of the most revolutionary saxophonists in jazz history, Coltrane was also a superb ballad player, capable of creating a very personal and intimate sound. This album features the leader backed by the members of his classic quartet: McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones.

TRACK LISTING

1. Say It (Over And Over Again)
2. You Don't Know What Love Is
3. Too Young
4. To Go Steady
5. All Or Nothing At All
6. Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye
7. I Wish I Knew / What's New?
8. It's Easy To Remember
9. Nancy (With The Laughing Face)
10. Greensleeves
11. Naima

To mark the 65th anniversary of the album’s recording, Blue Train will be released in two special editions on September 16 as part of Blue Note’s acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series.

A 1-LP mono pressing of the original album will be presented in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket, while the 2-LP stereo collection Blue Train: The Complete Masters will include a second disc featuring seven alternate and incomplete takes, none of which have been released previously on vinyl, and four of which have never been released before on any format. The Complete Masters comes with a booklet featuring never-before-seen session photos by Francis Wolff and an essay by Coltrane expert Ashley Kahn. Both Tone Poet Vinyl Editions were produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI.

Blue Train: The Complete Masters will also be released as a 2-CD set and digital collection.

“Few studio experiences I’ve had can compare with the thrill of listening to the original master tapes—mono, stereo and alternate takes—of Blue Train,” says Harley. “I consider these two new versions the definitive editions of this masterpiece performance by John Coltrane.”

TRACK LISTING

2CD
Blue Train
Moment’s Notice
Locomotion
I’m Old Fashioned
Lazy Bird
Blue Train (false Start)
Blue Train (take 7)
Moment’s Notice (alternate Take 4)
Lazy Bird (take 1)
Blue Train (alternate Take)
Moment’s Notice (incomplete Alternate Take 5A)
Lazy Bird (alternate Take)

1LP
LP 1 | Blue Train | Original Album | Studio
Side A
Blue Train
Moment’s Notice
Side B
Locomotion
I’m Old Fashioned
Lazy Bird

2LP
LP 1 | Blue Train | Original Album | Studio
Side A
Blue Train
Moment’s Notice
Side B
Locomotion
I’m Old Fashioned
Lazy Bird
LP 2 | Blue Train | Alternate And Incomplete Takes
Side A
Blue Train (false Start)
Blue Train (take 7)
Moment’s Notice (alternate Take 4)
Lazy Bird (take 1)
Side B
Blue Train (alternate Take)
Moment’s Notice (incomplete Alternate Take 5A)
Lazy Bird (alternate Take)

'In 1964, the National Film Board of Canada asked John Coltrane to record the soundtrack for a French-language film titled “Le chat dans le sac” (“The Cat in the Bag”).  Amazingly, no announcement was made that the iconic Coltrane was adding new performances to this film.In June of that year, Coltrane’s ‘Classic Quartet’ entered Rudy Van Gelder’s studio and recorded five previously- recorded Coltrane originals. For many years, viewers of the film who recognized the music thought that they were listening to the original recordings, though in fact they were new and had never been heard. Now, with the release of Blue World, we can hear these newly-discovered recordings for the first time.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Naima (Take 1)
A2. Village Blues (Take 2)
A3. Blue World
A4. Village Blues (Take 1)
B1. Village Blues (Take 3)
B2. Like Sonny
B3. Traneing In
B4. Naima (Take 2)

These 2CD and 2LP formats features a further 7 tracks of different takes giving a further 40 minutes of music.

June 8, 2018 (New York, NY) – On March 6, 1963, John Coltrane and his Classic Quartet— McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones –recorded an entire studio album at the legendary Van Gelder Studios. This music, which features unheard originals, is now finally released 55 years later. This is, in short, the holy grail of jazz.
The first week of March in 1963 was busy for John Coltrane. He was in the midst of a two-week run at Birdland and was gearing up to record the famed John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album, which he did on March 7. But there was a session the day before that was the stuff of legend, until now.
On Wednesday, March 6, Coltrane and the quartet went to Van Gelder Studios in Englewood, NJ and cut a complete album’s worth of material, including several original compositions that were never recorded elsewhere. They spent the day committing these to tape, taking time with some, rehearsing them two, three times, playing them in different ways and in different configurations.
At the end of the day, Coltrane left Van Gelder Studios with a reference tape and brought it to the home in Queens that he shared with his wife, Naima. These tapes remained untouched for the next 54 years until Impulse! approached the family about finally releasing this lost album. Though the master tape was never found—Rudy Van Gelder wasn’t one for clutter—the reference tape was discovered to be in excellent condition.
As the legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins so rightly put it, “This is like finding a new room in the Great Pyramid.” The musical implications of this album, the original compositions, the arrangements, the band, the year it was recorded, all amount to a rediscovery and re-contextualization of one of the most important musicians of our time.
Danny Bennett, President and CEO of the Verve Label Group and home of Impulse! records, says, “Jazz is more relevant today than ever. It’s becoming the alternative music of the 21st century, and no one embodies the boundary-breaking essence of jazz more than John Coltrane. He was a visionary who changed the course of music, and this lost album is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. It gives us insight into his creative process and connects us to his artistry. This album is a cultural moment and coincides perfectly with our relaunch of the iconic Impulse! label.”
On this album, there are two completely unknown and never-before-heard originals. “Untitled Original 11383” and “Untitled Original 11386,” both played on soprano sax. “11383” features an arco bass solo by Jimmy Garrison, a relative rarity, and “11386” marks a significant structural change for the quartet, in that they keep returning to the theme between solos, not typical in the quartet’s repertoire.
In addition to the two unheard originals, “One Up, One Down” – released previously only on a bootleg recording from Birdland – is heard here as a studio recording for the first and only time. It contains a fascinating exchange between Elvin Jones and Coltrane.
“Impressions”, one of Coltrane’s most famous and oft-recorded compositions, is played here in a piano-less trio. In fact, McCoy Tyner lays out a number of times during this recording session. It’s one of the more interesting aspects of this session and reflects the harmonic possibilities that Coltrane was known to be discussing regularly with Ornette Coleman around this time.
This studio session also yielded Coltrane’s first recording of “Nature Boy,” which he would record again in 1965, and the two versions differ greatly. The one we know is exploratory, meandering. This version is tight, solo-less and clocking in at just over three minutes. The other non-original composition on the album is “Vilia,” from Franz Lehár’s operetta “The Merry Widow”. The soprano version on the Deluxe Edition is the only track from this session to have been previously released.
This incredible, once-in-a-lifetime discovery reveals a number of creative balances at work, like developing original melodies while rethinking familiar standards. Like trying out some tunes first on tenor saxophone, then on soprano. Using older techniques like the arpeggio runs of his “sheets of sound” while experimenting with false fingerings and other newer sounds. This session was pivotal, though to call it such overlooks the fact Coltrane was ever on pivot, always pushing the pedal down while still calling on older, tested ideas and devices.
Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album is a major addition to the Coltrane catalogue and the most important jazz discovery in recent memory.

TRACK LISTING

Disc: 1
1. Untitled Original 11383
2. Nature Boy
3. Untitled Original 11386
4. Vilia
5. Impressions
6. Slow Blues
7. One Up, One Down

Disc: 2
1. Villa (Take 5)
2. Impressions (Take 1)
3. Impressions (Take 2)
4. Impressions (Take 4)
5. Untitled Original 11386 (Take 2)
6. Untitled Original 11386 (Take 5)
7. One Up, One Down (Take 6)

Overlooked on its original release, 'Coltrane' has since been regarded by as a major recording in the saxophonist's discography. Featuring the classic quartet and produced by Bob Thiele for Impulse, this special edition has two bonus tracks from the same sessions not included on the original LP: 'Impressions' and 'Up 'Gainst The Wall'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Out Of This World
2. Soul Eyes
3. Impressions
4. The Inch Worm
5. Tunji [toon-Gee]
6. Miles' Mode
7. Up 'gainst The Wall

Initially overlooked in the music press, on its original 1962 release largely due to uninformed musical criticism of Coltrane’s performances with fellow saxophonist Eric Dolphy at the Village Vanguard the previous year, Coltrane’s eponymous album has since come to be known as a piece of art as definitive as he ever produced. Personnel: John Coltrane, tenor sax; Elvin Jones, drums; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass.

Released in 1957 on Prestige Records, this album was recorded by Rudy Van Gelder on May 31, 1957. It documents Coltrane's first session as a leader, and has been reissued at times under the title The First Trane!. The line-up includes Johnnie Splawn (trumpet), Sahib Shihab (baritone saxophone), Red Garland and Mal Waldron (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Albert "Tootie" Heath (drums). 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Bakai
2. Violets For Your Furs
3. Time Was
Side B
1. Straight Street
2. While My Lady Sleeps
3. Chronic Blues 

Crescent is widely regarded as one of John Coltrane's finest albums, featuring the talents of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. During 1964, John Coltrane spent the least amount of time in the recording studio of his entire career as a leader. It wasn't until April 27th that he, along with Tyner, Garrison and Jones went to the familiar surroundings of Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs studio to record all the tracks that appear on Crescent. In a hint of things to come for the Classic Quartet, both Garrison and Jones are featured on extended solos on the album’s second side. Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from the original analog tapes mastered by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at QPR. The series is supervised by Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, and releases are presented in deluxe gatefold tip-on packaging.

TRACK LISTING

Crescent [8:40] (Side A)
Wise One [9:01] (Side A)
Bessie’s Blues [3:30] (Side A)
Lonnie’s Lament [11:42] (Side B)
The Drum Thing [7:20] (Side B)

In August of 1961, the John Coltrane Quintet played an engagement at the legendary Village Gate in Greenwich Village, New York. Coltrane’s Classic Quartet was not as fully established as it would soon become and there was a meteoric fifth member of Coltrane’s group those nights— visionary multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Ninety minutes of never-before-heard music from this group were recently discovered at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, offering a glimpse into a powerful musical partnership that ended much too soon.

In addition to some well-known Coltrane material (“My Favorite Things”, “Impressions”, “Greensleeves”), there is a breathtaking feature for Dolphy’s bass clarinet on “When Lights Are Low” and the only known non-studio recording of Coltrane’s composition “Africa”, from the Africa/Brass album. This recording represents a very special moment in John Coltrane's journey—the summer of 1961—when his signature, ecstatic live sound, commonly associated his Classic Quartet of '62 to '65, was first maturing and when he was drawing inspiration from deep, African sources— and experimenting with the two-bass idea both in the studio (Olé) and on stage. This truly rare recording of "Africa" captures his expansive vision at the time.

TRACK LISTING

My Favorite Things
When Lights Are Low
Impressions
Greensleeves
Africa

"The idea of an LP as a single aesthetic unit, pioneered by Frank Sinatra and a few others, was still relatively new at the time. Not the least of Coltrane's achievements was to harness the long player's potential and to give it near perfect, lastingly satisfying content. This is one of the great modern records." - Penguin Guide To Jazz

"Since its release in 1960, the fascination with Giant Steps has never wavered. This is a true masterpiece that should be in everyone's collection." - DownBeat

TRACK LISTING

1. Giant Steps
2. Cousin Mary
3. Countdown
4. Spiral
5. Syeeda’s Song Flute
6. Naima
7. Mr. P.C.
8. Harmonique

John Coltrane is one of the most renowned jazz artists and influential saxophonists in music history

Within the span of less than three weeks, John Coltrane completed his work with Miles Davis on what would become the bestselling jazz title in history (Kind of Blue) and embarked on his first record with Atlantic that would become the landmark recording Giant Steps.

Saying farewell to bebop, "Giant Steps" was Coltrane's second album to be recorded for the Atlantic label, and marked the first time that all of the pieces on a recording had been composed by him. The recording exemplifies Coltrane's melodic phrasing that came to be known as 'sheets of sound', and features the use of a new harmonic concept later to be known as 'Coltrane changes'. The set features early versionss of "Naima", "Cousin Mary", "Mr PC", "Spiral", and "Syeeda's Song Flute".

A remastered, deluxe 180g 2-LP and 2-CD, each with the original album plus a bonus disc of alternate takes and versions – including rehearsal and incomplete tracks, as well as false starts – only previously included in The Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings of John Coltrane boxed set.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There are few artists more important to the history of jazz than John Coltrane, and ‘Giant Steps’ is one of the reasons why. From bebop to the development of free-jazz, you can hear the influence that Coltrane took in, and in turn his influence on the world of music. Now, we get a deluxe double album reissue with an extra disc of unheard outtakes. It’s a no-brainer for any jazz fan.

TRACK LISTING

2LP / 2 CD

DISC ONE – STANDARD ALBUM (Side A)
1. Giant Steps
2. Cousin Mary
3. Countdown
4. Spiral

DISC ONE – STANDARD ALBUM (Side B)
5. Syeeda’s Song Flute
6. Naima
7. Mr. P.C.

DISC TWO – THE OUTTAKES (Side A)
1. Giant Steps (Alternate, Take 1, Incomplete)
2. Naima (Alternate Take)
3. Like Sonny (Alternate Take)
4. Countdown (Alternate Take)

DISC TWO – THE OUTTAKES (Side B)
5. Syeeda's Song Flute (Alternate Take)
6. Cousin Mary (Alternate Take)
7. Giant Steps, Take 5 (Alternate)
8. Giant Steps, Take 6 (Alternate)