From the ' Sounds of North American Frogs' to ' Speech After the Removal of the Larynx' , Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy- five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized these recordings on their new album ' Return to Archive' , which was assembled entirely from the so-called non-musical sounds released on Folkways. On just the album's first track, dolphins, beetles, telephones, humans stretching the limits of their vocal cords, a shortwave radio, and metal balers co-mingle in a fantasia of sound both everyday and extraordinary. Each track on Return to Archive morphs its source material into something completely unexpected, honoring and expanding on Folkways' legacy of sonic exploration. Featuring Evicshen and Aaron Dilloway.

TRACK LISTING

1. Good Morning Electronics
2. Injection Basic Sound
3. Mud- Dauber Wasp
4. Music Or Noise?
5. Why?
6. Lend Me Your Ears
7. Return To Archive
8. The Way Japanese Beetles Sound To A Rose
9. Going To Sleep

This album covers the period 1979 to 1987 and features 14 tracks.

When punk rock started to fizzle out and Squat Punks started to appear on the streets, many of the UK's disaffected youths had already moved sideways into Modernism and fell in love with bands like The Jam, Secret Affair, The Purple Hearts, The Lambrettas and The Chords but lets also remember our love for The Beat, Madness and The Specials.

The West Country embraced the scene and produced its own authentic Mod bands like The Reaction, Mayfair and The Newbeats. Alo features The Rimshots, The Review and more

Round two of Leo Zero's edit archive series sees four more favourites given the LZ treatment.

On the A you'll find a killer housed-up version of an NYC New Wave classic, alongside a tight n' tidy beefed up slo-mo disco remaster and chop of a west coast rock beauty. On the flip, a chunky remake of Brit soul bomb as well as a curveball dubby, wonked out version of an alt rock rhythm that's flipped this one into a deep 5am groover.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Leo Zero flips four well-known hits with his own charismatic personality. Tipped if you've been feeling the recent Beatconductor refixes.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Punches
A2. Dreams
B1. Taboo
B2. Feel The Pain

So here we are. The next Trunk / Kirchin assignment. Basically some more unreleased music from the unpredictable and slightly chaotic Kirchin Tape Archive.


These tapes were labelled up as follows:
Assignment K (with lots of pencil scribbles everywhere). The Strange Affair (with lots of pen scribbles everywhere).

As usual with Basil tapes / things there is little else to go on, no tracklist, no list of musicians, no singer names, no dates or anything. I have actually tried to establish the name of the singer on the song from Side One (we have called it “Love Is To Walk Away “ as it is unnamed) but having played it to a handful of knowledgeable collectors and enthusiasts who I would count as experts in this field, no one has a clue who it might be. If you think you know please get in touch. We know who it isn’t.

We can tell you that Assignment K dates from 1968, was a film about a toy maker who has a double life as an international spy. It was directed by Val Guest, who’d just finished trying to rescue the cinematic hotchpotch that was Casino Royale - he had been brought in by the Bond producers after Peter Sellers had walked off the movie. We imagine Assignment K may have been a slightly less stressful few months of shooting. As for the Kirchin score that we have here, we can tell you very little indeed, apart from the fact that the bass player was Ron Prentice (an ex blacksmith turned musician and craftsman) who worked on several Bond scores, but we know little else. And we only know this because it says so in the academic tome “Jazz On The Screen” by David Meeker.

The Strange Affair is also from 1968, and was not only controversial but also a reasonably unsuccessful movie. Directed by David Greene who also directed, amongst other films, I Start Counting and the quite brilliant Sebastian. In this rather grubby flick a policeman called Peter Strange (played by Michael York) falls for an underage girl (played by Susan George), finds himself compromised by a pair of pornographers and gets lured into an errand for a smack gang. We can tell you little else because I have no more information about it all.

But we do know that this music has all the classic Kirchin mid-period sonic hallmarks that have always set him apart.

TRACK LISTING

Side One:
1 AK 1
2 AK 2
3 AK 3
4 AK 4
5 AK 5
6 AK 6
7 Love Is To Walk Away
8 AK 8
9 AK 9
10 AK 10
Side Two:
The Strange Affair
1 SA 1
2 SA 2
3 SA 3
4 SA 4
5 SA 5
6 SA 6
7 SA 7
8 SA 8
9 SA 9

Back from a hiatus and with a new album, Stornoway are today announcing a super limited Dinked Edition of their 2010 debut album, ‘Beachcomber’s Windowsill’.

Out of print on vinyl since release and now highly collectable, ‘Beachcomber’s Windowsill’ is as its title suggests and something of a treasure. Featuring singles ‘Fuel Up’, ‘I Saw You Blink’ and ‘Zorbing’, it showed just why so many were excited by the Oxford indie-folk quartet’s arrival - a DIY guitar band unusually rooted in folk tradition. They stood out further with their deft ability to try their hand at most instruments, never shy to experiment while their pure pop harmonies soared.

Warmly received on release, it quickly attained Silver status in the UK and critical acclaim included The Observer praising it for having a “real emotional depth that transports their music from throwaway sunny songs to something altogether more poignant and enduring,” while the NME called it “beautifully rendered and melodically magnificent; a Constable landscape of a record.” Complemented by a stunning sleeve by designer Chris Bigg who was influenced by the album’s title and their songs about nature, working in illustrations of shells, aquatic life and old maps.

This special Dinked Edition will see the album being pressed on eco-vinyl and will come with an exclusive obi strip, art print and lyric book, all using FSC-approved card and paper. Limited to just 500 copies, it’s available to pre-order now from any of the Dinked network of UK independent stores and will be on the shelves from December 8th.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Zorbing
I Saw You Blink
Fuel Up
The Coldharbour Road
Boats And Trains
We Are The Human Battery
Side B
Here Comes The Blackout…!
Watching Birds
On The Rocks
The End Of The Movie
Long Distance Lullaby

This compilation is designed to give all fans of Punk a snapshot of what Bristol Punk was all about from the period 1977-1979.

We celebrate our heroes of the time, let them be remembered for ever! Feat The Cortinas, The Pigs, Social Security, The X-Certs and more.

From the instrumental cinematic-soul outfit behind 2021's critically acclaimed The Black Stone Affair comes Whatitdo Archive Group's most recent foray into the realms of the esoteric and arcane, and their most adventurous album to date.

After The Black Stone Affair enthralled record collectors by traversing the cinematic landscape of an imagined 1970s Spaghetti Western, Palace Of A Thousand Sounds finds Whatitdo Archive Group entrenched deeper in the worlds of mid-century exotica and library music—from the Tropicalia-steeped Amazon to the minor key tonalities of the far-out Near East.

When the dust finally settled from their debut album, composer and tireless sound scientist Alexander Korostinsky set out to discover the band's new direction, with the ultimate goal to breathe new life into the mid-century era sound with the compass of modernity as his guide.

From its conception in 2021, Palace has sought to carry on a legacy set in motion by the likes of Martin Denny, Les Baxter and Juan García Esquivel. Korostinsky, guitarist Mark Sexton, and drummer Aaron Chiazza recorded the album in marathon sessions from Korostinsky's Studio "A," in Reno, Nevada—a mysterious sonic laboratory where the year 1970 has yet to happen, and vintage analog equipment interfaces with modern musical perspectives and experimental recording techniques to produce era-defining sounds.

Not content to appeal to the sensibilities of armchair anthropologists, Palace Of A Thousand Sounds finds the band interrogating the genre itself while making studious tributes to the real places and times it draws from. It's in this tension between here and there, fantasy and reality, that Whatitdo Archive Group find their groove.

Drawing from a century of pop and folk sounds from around the world the way only 21st-century crate-diggers can, Palace is rooted in an undercurrent of heavy funk that is decidedly here and now. Whatitdo Archive Group showcase the breadth of their influences with disarming confidence, equally at home behind sweeping harp, loungey vibraphone or Turkish bağlama saz. A lush seventeen-piece orchestra commanded by award-winning composer Louis King (Janelle Monáe, Monophonics) completes the instrumental mélange, enticing listeners to imagine a borderless planet unified by melody and rhythm.

The album is unafraid to explore the strange and uncomfortable in pursuit of an authentic musical identity, subverting expectations in pursuit of forwarding the genre while paying homage to its past. Fans will appreciate the architectural complexity of the record accessible only through multiple listens—each visit to the palace yielding new details to marvel at, curiosities to ponder, grand mysteries to explore.

Once the needle drops, W.A.G carefully guides you from room to room, sound to sound within the walls of the album's sonic palace. Listening becomes an aural journey providing glimpses into different worlds both real and imagined; you are everywhere and nowhere all at once—a guest in the grand halls and hanging gardens of time and sound.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Cinematic and engrossing arrangements which drift between stylistic boundaries. This Milanese group should be on the radar of lovers of global grooves and esoteric exotica.

TRACK LISTING

1. Enter The Palace
2. Beyond The Crimson Veil
3. Astral-Desia
4. Delirium
5. Exotique
6. Sun Harp
7. The Cashmere Chamber
8. Iron Tusk
9. Secrets In The Sand
10. Mirage
11. Ritual Of Gods
12. The Second Moon
13. Forbidden Cove

Earl McGrath was the ultimate ’70s jet setter, an art collector and comic bon vivant who stumbled into the record business between legendary parties in New York and LA and discovered Daryl Hall and John Oates and then Jim Carroll. Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun gave Earl his own label, Clean Records, in 1970; Mick Jagger hired him to run Rolling Stones Records in 1977.

Friend to Joan Didion, Andy Warhol, and a galaxy of luminaries, Earl was an inveterate tastemaker. Actor Harrison Ford, who before Star Wars fame was Earl’s handyman and pot dealer, called him “the last of a breed, one of the last great gentlemen and bohemians.”

After Earl died in 2016, journalist Joe Hagan, author of the critically-acclaimed Sticky Fingers, the biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, discovered a trove of rare and unheard tapes in Earl’s apartment in New York—literally inside his closet. “I asked for a step ladder and the first box I pulled off the shelf was a master tape of Some Girls, the Stones album,” says Hagan.

Now Light in the Attic Records proudly presents Earl’s Closet, a double album of the treasures discovered inside, including unheard music by Daryl Hall and John Oates, David Johansen, Terry Allen, Delbert McClinton, Warhol “Superstar” Ultra Violet, Detroit sax legend Norma Jean Bell, Jim Carroll and an eclectic cast of undiscovered artists who once vied for fame and glory—folk, rock, country, funk and R&B gems that virtually no one has heard in decades. Whether it’s the almost-famous power pop of Shadow from Detroit, or the Delfonics-style soul of the Blood Brothers Six, Earl’s Closet retraces the dreams of artists who once sent demos to Earl McGrath. Longtime Light in the Attic-affiliated reissue producer Pat Thomas assisted Hagan in tracking down the artists and finalizing the paperwork.

At once an archival mixtape, a secret history and a journey into the heart of an era, Earl’s Closet features a deep booklet of documents, images and ephemera from Earl’s archive, expansive liner notes by Joe Hagan, who tracked down and interviewed the artists, and astonishing photographs by Earl’s late wife, the Italian countess Camilla Pecci-Blunt McGrath.

TRACK LISTING

Two More Bottles Of Wine – Delbert & Glen
Baby Come Closer – Daryl Hall And John Oates
Gonna California – Terry Allen
Only Yourself To Lose - Kazoo Singers
Christopher – Michael Mccarty
Dixie Darling – Jim Hurt
California – Mark Rodney
Killer - Country (fondiler & Snow)
Dry In The Sun – Daryl Hall And John Oates
Oh La La - Shadow
Cocaine Cowboy – Terry Allen
How Do You Do (children Of The Most High) – Ultra Violet
Invisible Lady – Johnny Angel (johnny Angelino)
I See My Days Go By - Shadow
Where Have All The Flowers Gone? – Blood Brothers Six
Salt Showers – Len And Betsy Greene
Holy Commotion – Paul Potash
Sail Away - Jabor
Funky But Chic – David Johansen
Just Look-ah What You'll Be Missing – Norma Jean Bell
Tension – The Jim Carroll Band
Waiting For Me – Little Whisper And The Rumors

Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow are known for their scores for the Ivor Novello Award winning ‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Devs’, along with their work on ‘Annihilation’, ‘Free Fire’, ‘HANNA’ and more.

Inspired by the popular podcast of the same name, ‘Archive 81’ depicts the life of a man who comes across videotapes full of a mysterious woman’s adventures in an even more mysterious apartment building. What seemed to be an ordinary job turns into a nightmare as the strange creature that took the woman’s life in the past seems to have found a way back to him 25 years in the future.

TRACK LISTING

CD
Archive 81 - Titles
The Visser Ritual
Tape Cleaning
Losing Track Of Time
Jess Opens Up
Journey To The Compound
Seizure
Ghost Story / Cracking The Code
Otherside
Mold
Someone In There
Séance
Cameras
The Greenstone Totem
Dan’s Theme
I’m A Spirit Receiver
Church Seizure / The Compound
The Cult Of Kaelego
A Connection Through Time
Tamara’s Opera
Dan’s First Lucid Dream
I Need To Find Her
Pep Talk
Going Rogue
Fucking Smothering Me
The Ritual Space Recreated
Song Of The Otherworld
What Are You Playing?
Stay Out
Archive 81 - Credits

Archive 81 - Titles
The Visser Ritual
Tape Cleaning
Losing Track Of Time
Jess Opens Up
Journey To The Compound
The Greenstone Totem
Dan’s First Lucid Dream
Otherside
Song Of The Otherworld
Someone In There
Séance
Cameras
Dan’s Theme
Tamara’s Opera
I Need To Find Her
The Ritual Space Recreated
Stay Out
Archive 81 - Credits

In years from now, anyone seeking to make sense of what life was like during a global pandemic should extend their research beyond the newspaper clippings and dive into the art produced during the period. Archive Material - the aptly-titled second album by Dublin-based art-rock quintet Silverbacks - will make for a particularly illuminating listen on the subject. Capturing the absurd mixture of monotony and creeping disquiet experienced by many of us this past 18 months, it’s simultaneously sobering and wickedly droll.

Spend more than five minutes in the company of brothers/band founders Daniel and Kilian O’Kelly and you’ll quickly realise this playfulness is hardwired. Reminiscing about their upbringing in Brussels, they gently rib one another about their early creative abilities. “When Kilian started writing music, around the age of 14/15, it was like, oh shit, that's better than what I've been doing - maybe I should latch on to him a bit,” older brother and lead singer Daniel chuckles. “And that’s still the case,” guitarist/vocalist Kilian bats back, grinning.

They laugh too recalling how - prior to the existence of streaming services - they used their dad’s extensive record collection as a lending library, much to his disapproval. “The rule in the house was [you could borrow] just one CD at a time,” Daniel explains. “It was like borrowing a book: you’d check it out for a night and then the next day he'd be immediately chasing up on the CD asking, ‘Where is it?’ And then he’d fine us.”

It was via these limited loans that the pair first discovered the work of Frank Zappa, the Beatles and Miles Davis, as well as some of the records and bands that would go on to inspire their output in Silverbacks specifically. “Television’s Marquee Moon was a big one,” Daniel recalls. “Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was another. And then Sonic Youth generally.”

The siblings’ songwriting partnership only began in earnest when Daniel moved to Kildare to study music in 2008, with the pair swapping ideas over email under the band name Mighty Good Leaders. Two years later, Kilian joined Daniel at college in Maynooth and - after changing their name to Silverbacks - they expanded the line-up, recruiting course mates Peadar Kearney on guitar and Emma Hanlon on bass, alongside a revolving cast of drummers. This arrangement continued until 2014, when Peadar left Ireland to live in France and the band reverted back to being a bedroom project. The current incarnation of Silverbacks officially began two years later, upon Peadar’s return to Dublin, with drummer Gary Wickham completing the line-up.

The five-piece’s first release together - ‘Just For A Better View’ - arrived in 2017, instantly picking up praise from an array of blogs. 2018-single, the BBC 6 Music playlisted ‘Dunkirk’ extended their audience even further, showcasing Daniel’s sardonic lyrical style as he played a man having a mid-life crisis on the site of the former battleground. As a result of the single’s success, they gigged solidly for the next two years, touring Ireland extensively, and playing shows across the UK and Europe with Girl Band, in-between working on their full-length debut, Fad.

Recorded with Girl Band-bassist Daniel Fox - who the band had initially admired for his production work with Paddy Hanna - its release was initially scheduled for November 2019, before being put back to March 2020 for logistical reasons. When the music industry was derailed by the pandemic, its release was postponed indefinitely. Frustrated, the band took control and opted to put it out in July 2020, against the advice of their label. Daniel explains, “We knew it was a risk, but just for our own sanity, we just needed to get it out there and move on to the next thing.

It was a leap of faith that paid off, with the Irish Times declaring the 13-track collection “seriously exciting”, DIY Magazine calling it “an excellent example of how a debut should be done” and it getting nominated for the RTE Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year. Not that the band hung around to revel in the acclaim: they were already hard at work on the follow-up.

Archive Material only cements Silverbacks’ status as one of Ireland’s most fascinating bands. Recorded at Dublin’s Sonic Studios in November 2020, with Daniel Fox undertaking production duties once more, it finds the band leaning into their early influences, delivering idiosyncratic indie-rock packed with intricate, Tom Verlaine-esque “guitarmony”. Other reference points for the record included Neil Young, Weyes Blood and - on ‘Wear My Medals’ in particular - Bradford Cox and Cate Le Bon’s collaborative record Myths 004.

Where Fad found Silverbacks focused on recapturing the live experience rather than reveling in studio experimentation, Archive Material skillfully traverses the line between the two. As a unit, they replicate that irrepressible live energy via complex arrangements incorporating everything from wistful Rhodes (‘Carshade’) to congas and Gang Of Four-style bass (‘Different Kind Of Holiday’).

Thematically, the record is every bit as rich, displaying an anthropological approach as exemplified by the album’s artwork. The initial premise for ‘They Were Never Our People’ came from a YouTube comment, portraying the decline of a town that has lost its footfall as the result of a bypass. Meanwhile, ‘Central Tones’ is an empathetic character study of someone seemingly content to trade off former glories, but secretly deeply unhappy.

On several songs, the pandemic functions as a particularly effective prism through which to examine ideas of community. ‘A Job Worth Something’ finds Daniel reflecting on his real-life experiences working in insurance while his sister treated patients on a COVID ward, and the feelings of futility and guilt he felt at the time. ‘Different Kind Of Holiday’ was inspired by the ways in which previously uncommunicative neighbours bonded with each other during periods of enforced confinement. Throughout, his observations arrived drenched in the same surreal strain of gallow’s humour that many of us were forced to adopt to lighten the toughest moments of the lockdown.

Daniel explains, “I can't remember who it was, but I saw a musician who said that they'd be keeping away from writing anything about the pandemic, because who wants to hear about that? But I’d much rather hear about an event via someone who actually lived through it, rather than someone writing about it retrospectively.”

Keenly observed and vividly rendered, Archive Material is an eye-witness account of human resilience as much as it is a compelling indie-rock record. Future historians take note.

TRACK LISTING

Archive Material
A Job Worth Something
Wear My Medals
They Were Never Our People
Rolodex City
Different Kind Of Holiday
Carshade
Central Tones
Recycle Culture
Econymo
Nothing To Write Home About
I’m Wild

Archive Series Volume No. 5: Tallahassee is the lost-in-time debut album from Iron & Wine. A collection of songs recorded three years prior to his official Sub Pop debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002). A period before the concept of Iron & Wine existed and principal songwriter Sam Beam was studying at Florida State University with the intent of pursuing a career in film. Tallahassee documents the very first steps on a journey that would lead to a career as one of America’s most original and distinctive singer-songwriters.

Creek arrived like a thief in the night with its lo-fi, hushed vocals and intimate nature, while almost inversely Tallahassee comes with a strange sense of confidence. Perhaps an almost youthful discretion that likely comes from being too young to know better and too naïve to give a shit. The recordings themselves are more polished than Creek and give a peak into what a studio version of that record might have offered up.

Tallahassee was recorded over the course of 1998-1999 when Beam and future bandmate EJ Holowicki moved into a house together. Beam had not been performing publicly, however he was known for playing an original song or two in the early morning glow of a long night. Holowicki also in the film program and who would go onto a career as a sound designer at Skywalker Sound, had a mobile recording device and after some prodding convinced his friend to record these late-night meditations.

Together they would record close to twenty-four songs, ideas and sketches, with EJ on bass and Sam on vocals, guitar, harmonica and drums. The recordings – all captured in the house where they lived – have a “live in the room” feel akin to say Neil Young’s Harvest or Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, rather than the homespun lo-fi 4-track home recording experiment taking place at the time.

These recordings, minus one track, have never been made available and were instead left preserved on a hard drive for the last twenty years. The one track that floated out there, called “In Your Own Time” was shared without a title to childhood friend Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses) at some point. The song became known as the “Fuck Like A Dog” song and Ben shared it with more than a few folks during the golden era of mix cd’s. Two of those folks were Jonathan Poneman from Sub Pop and journalist Mike McGonigal, who included it on his best songs of 2001 mix cd, passed out to friends and acquaintances. And for many that is where the Iron & Wine story begins, until now…

Tallahassee is the foreword to your favorite book that you’ve somehow skipped over time and time again. It’s an alternative history mixed with some revisionist history told over the course of eleven songs. It’s also the debut record by Iron & Wine some twenty years after the fact. 

TRACK LISTING

Why Hate The Winter
This Solemn Day
Loaning Me Secrets
John's Glass Eye
Calm On The Valley
Ex-Lover Lucy Jones
Elizabeth
Show Him The Ground
Straight And Tall
Cold Town
Valentine

Recorded in 1982 but never released "Feel It" is a moving slice of digital reggae. In addition to the vocal there are three dub mixes which are perhaps the earliest available examples of Rob Smith productions. These recordings may be seen as the start of Rob's illustrious career which includes Smith & Mighty, Three Stripe, More Rockers and RSD. The dub mixes in particular with their sparse instrumentation and use of a drum machine's programmed beats foreshadow the UK digi-dub scene pioneered by artists such as Nick Manasseh and The Disciples as well as labels including Conscious Sounds and Riz. Released via the impeccable Reggae Archive, this 10" pressing sound super clean and should be a welcome addition to any reggae collectors box... Recommended!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Feel It
A2. Feel It (Dub Version 1)
B1. Feel It (Dub Version 2)
B2. Feel It (Dub Version 3)

Speaking about the self-produced new album, founding member Darius Keeler said “I think just knowing that we were working on our tenth album made this one feel like a landmark record. Our history as a collective has been a mad journey, we’ve trodden such a strange path to arrive at where we are today, and I think in a way that informed the new record and emboldened us to make what is probably the Archive album that I’m most proud of to date”.

Talking about the genesis of the album title Keeler says; “People are going to read in to who or what The False Foundation is I guess, but they’re going to have to draw their own conclusions. I have my own take on it, let’s just say there are a lot of potential candidates out there in the world today.”

TRACK LISTING

1 Blue Faces
2 Driving In Nails
3 The Pull Out
4 The False Foundation
5 Bright Lights
6 A Thousand Thoughts
7 Splinters
8 Sell Out
9 Stay Tribal
10 The Weight Of The World

"The Midlands Roots Explosion Volume One", saw the culmination of many years work spent tracking down artists and tapes to shine a light on one of England's greatest, yet most overlooked musical scenes; the home grown take on reggae that briefly flourished from the mid-seventies and had almost disappeared little more than a decade later. Mixing themes of struggle, resistance, justice, equality, identity and Rastafari played and sung from the heart with both conviction and skill, our first volume received a rapturous reception from critics and purchasers alike. Now Reggae Archive return with more of the same, but if anything they've surpassed Volume One with an even stronger selection.

Volume Two starts off in exactly the same way as its predecessor with Handsworth's biggest musical exports, the legendary Steel Pulse and "Bun Dem produced by Dennis Bovell. Natural Mystique are next with their 1982 single "Generals". Then there are A and B sides from some of the most popular artists included last time, with Iganda's "Mark Of Slavery", Carnastoan's "Sweet Melody" and yet another "Generals", this one from Musical Youth. "Africans" from Bass Dance featuring a second appearance from former Steel Pulse guitarist / vocalist Basil Gabbidon, is the first of four previously unreleased tracks. The other three that we've managed to track down on long forgotten tapes, are Leicester's Groundation with "Rebel", "Cannot Take It Away"; another lost gem from Handsworth's Mystic Foundation and "Equalisation" another lost slice of early eighties roots from Wolverhampton's Capital Letters. The late Linton Haughton is another new name with his scarce Shield label 12" cut "Hustling Man".

Also making their first appearances, are Afrikan Star with "Run And Hide" originally issued in 1980 on Black Vinyl Records and from the Crucial Music stable, Sledge Hammer with "Ruled By The Stone" released as a 7" single on the Crucial Music Inc. label. The remaining three tracks are provided by label favourites and key players in the Birmingham scene, Black Symbol, Sceptre and Eclipse and showcase songs from the individual albums we've previously released by each band.

Think of the “Bristol Sound” and the same three or four bands tend to spring to mind however, the first widely heard example of the pioneering new sound from the West Country came with a 1989 attack on the Top 10 from South Bristol in the shape of established collective Fresh 4. Co-produced by fellow Bristol pioneers Smith & Mighty, “Wishing on A Star” was the first exposure many people outside of Bristol got to the unique fusion of heavy bass lines, hip hop breaks, soulful vocals and new takes on classic songs.

Formed as a collective in the mid-80s, Fresh 4's roots were firmly south of the river Avon with members Flynn and Krust coming from Knowle West. Suv was from Ashton and joined by fourth member Judge from Totterdown. The band stayed close to their South Bristol roots and based themselves in a warehouse on nearby St. Lukes Road. They represented the south of the City in a scene that was more often orientated somewhere north of the city centre.

Although “Wishing on a Star” cracked the Top 10, the two follow up singles were less successful and due to disagreements with their label, a planned album never materialised and the group members went their separate ways. In the following decade Suv, Krust and Flynn would all go on to find greater success as pioneers and mainstays of Bristol's hugely successful drum & bass scene, writing new chapters that overshadowed their earlier success.

Who can say what might have happened if a Fresh 4 album had been released on a major label at the start of the 1990s, perhaps they would now be discussed alongside Massive Attack and Portishead or maybe Bristol's D&B scene would have felt the loss and not been as successful as it was. We can't give you that lost album, but we have tracked down some long forgotten demo tapes and 25 years later, assembled them into an album. It's not THE Fresh 4 LP, but it is filling in a gap in their story and the story of Bristol music, therefore at Bristol Archive Records we thought the music deserved a wider audience.

The seven tracks plus an alternative edit, lead off in a familiar style with “Take Control”, the closest match to the “Wishing on a Star” blueprint recorded at Fresh 4 and Smith & Mighty’s studio and also featuring that song's vocalist Liz E. The rest of side A sees some early authentic British hip hop with that unique Bristol twist, whilst side B, aims for a then contemporary dance sound.

These tracks are definitely works in progress rather than polished finished tracks, they show the band working on a variety of musical ideas and exploring various directions. The sound is rough, these tracks were never expected to be shared at such an early stage yet they give us an insight into the thought process of the group. They were pioneers, not confined by rigid rules; they could try anything and often did. These are musical sketches, a peak behind the scenes that listeners rarely get and also a reminder, that Fresh 4 have more to their claim of a place in Bristol's musical history than those three singles. 

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Zia Records, a fixture for music fans in Arizona since 1980, is proud to present the first installment of the Audio Recorders Archive, a series of split 45s that explore the history of famed Phoenix studio Audio Archive.
The first installment in the series features country king Waylon Jennings and rockabilly legend Sanford Clark, recordings that have not been available on vinyl since their original release on Ramco Records in 1967. In the 1950s and ‘60s, Audio Recorders was one of the premier studios in the southwest. With roots in owner Floyd Ramsey’s Ramsey’s Radio Repair on 7th and Weldon, the studio became the hub of the nascent Phoenix music scene, and the studio welcomed a who’s who of the Southwestern country, pop, roots, and rock & roll performers: Duane Eddy, Lee Hazlewood, Waylon Jennings, Al Casey, Wayne Netwon, Sanford Clark, and more.
With his own Ramco Records imprint, Ramsey issued records that would go on to regional and national success. Future Audio Recorders releases from Zia Records will explore soul, R&B, and garage rock, but the first volume focuses on Jennings’ dust-caked ode to a tough woman, and Clark’s gun shot-boasting murder ballad. Both make good use of the vaunted Audio Recorders reverb silo.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Waylon Jennings, “My Baby Walks All Over Me”
B1. Sanford Clark, “It’s Nothing To Me”

Gary Numan's solo debut album, "The Pleasure Principle" was the point where the singer became a huge international solo star. The album pioneered electronic pop music on a new scale – it was a much bigger success worldwide than Kraftwerk's releases or anything from the influential but still relatively 'culty' Bowie / Eno 'Berlin' trilogy. And the fact that it was different and had a major impact in America – Numan performed "Cars" and "Praying To The Aliens" in front of 40 million people on the Saturday Night Live Show – means that there's a direct link from "The Pleasure Principle" to the new musical forms that were born in the USA over the next decade – namely hip hop, industrial and techno. His influence on hip-hop, while rarely recognised, is enormous. Numan's influence on electronic music in general is unparalleled. When GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan covered "Films" in 2008, he really was taking hip hop back to its roots as the track features one of the original break beats (in fact, "Films" appeared on the hugely influential "Ultimate Breaks & Beats" compilation series in the early 1980s). In industrial music both Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Marilyn Manson have name checked Numan as a significant source of inspiration. While techno pioneers ranging from Carl Craig to Juan Atkins were grabbed by this strange, futuristic music.