The American Delia Derbyshire Of The Atari Generation.

With a sonic portfolio that boasts commissions for the Xenon classic pinball machine, the sounds for the Meco Star Wars theme, the Atari TV commercials and the electronic sound effects in the original Stepford Wives film (amongst many others) the mutant electronic music CV of Suzanne Ciani is proof that in a 1970s commercial world of boys toys, monopolised by a male dominated media industry, a woman’s touch was the essential secret ingredient to successful sonic seduction. A classically trained musician with an MA in music composition this American Italian pianist first came across a synthesizer via her connections in the art world when abstract sculptor and collaborator Harold Paris introduced Suzanne to synthesizer designer Don Buchla who created the instrument that would come to define Ciani's synthetic sound (The Buchla Synthesiser).

Cutting her teeth providing self-initiated electronic music projects for art galleries, experimental film directors, pop record producers and proto-video nasties Suzanne soon located to New York where she quickly became the first point of call for electronic music services in both the underground experimental fields and the commercial advertising worlds alike. Counting names like Vangelis and Harald Bode amongst her close friends Suzanne and her Ciani Musica company became the testing ground for virtually any type of new developments in electronic and computerized music amassing an expansive vault of commercially unexposed electronic experiments which have remained untouched for over 30 years... until now.

Finders Keepers Records are happy to announce a new creative archive based relationship with Suzanne Ciani, a very unique and celebrated experimental composer in her own right, who, as one of the very few female composers in the field (save Chicago's Laurie Spiegel, Italy's Doris Norton, and a post-op Walter Wendy Carlos) turned a hugely significant wheel behind-the-screens of many early computerised music modules throughout the 1980s dating back to her formative years studying at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Labs in the early 70s. Suzanne Ciani's detailed and academic approach to music and electronics coupled with an impeccable sense of timing and melody (and a good sense of humour) shines throughout this new collection of previously unreleased recordings. "Lixiviation" complies and recontextualises both secret music and commercial experiments of Suzanne Ciani made for micro-cosmic time slots and never previously documented on vinyl or CD.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lixiviation
2. Atari Video Games Logo
3. ‘Clean Room’ ITT TV Spot
4. Almay ‘Eclipse’ TV Spot
5. Paris 1971
6. Sound Of A Dream Kissing
7. Atari Corporate Tag
8. Princess With Orange Feet
9. ‘Pop & Pour’ Coca-Cola Logo
10. ‘Discover Magazine’ TV Spot
11. Live Buchla Concert 1975
12. ‘Inside Story’ PBS TV Spot
13. ‘Liberator’ Atari TV Spot
14. Eighth Wave
15. Sound Of Wetness
16. Second Breath

Obliques and Atmospheric are very happy to present their new album “Golden Apples of the Sun”. It is the result of a close cooperation between Suzanne Ciani and Jonathan Fitoussi. The American electronic music pioneer (5 time Grammy award-nominated) has joined the French composer to sign a four-hand album around mythical synthesizers like Buchla, Moog and Ems...

Mainly recorded in California, facing the Pacific Ocean, the white sound of synthesizers mixes constantly with the sound of the waves and wind. The music generated is directly blended with the surrounding elements of nature. It is both organic and live, hypnotic and rhythmical, powerful and dreamlike.

Suzanne is a five-time Grammy award-nominated composer, electronic music pioneer, and neo-classical recording artist who has released over 20 solo albums. Her work has been featured in films, games, and countless commercials as well. She was inducted into the first class of Keyboard Magazine's Hall of Fame alongside other synth luminaries. Most recently, she is the recipient of the Independent Icon Award from A2IM. Suzanne has provided the voice and sounds for Bally's groundbreaking "Xenon" pinball machine, created Coca-Cola’s pop-and-pour sound, designed logos for Fortune 500 companies, and carved out a niche as one of the most creatively successful female composers in the world.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Golden Apples Of The Sun
A2. Coral Reef
A3. Time Lapse
A4. Pinwheel

B1. Oceanium
B2. Rainbow Sequence
B3. Sonar
B4. Spirit Rock

Sunergy brings together synthesists Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith for the thirteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational collaboration series. Revisited and expanded for a radiant, radical 2023 edition, the Pacific Coast’s panorama provides the place and head space for a musical appreciation and consideration of the ocean’s life-giving form, vast and volatile with change.

Fortuitously (as is the freaky way), Smith and Ciani were discovered to be neighbors in their small coastal community in Northern California. The two had become close friends, bonding over their experience as women musicians and, more unusually, their shared passion for the Buchla synthesizer. The music of Sunergy embraces this kinship, with Ciani and Smith respectively performing on the Buchla 200 E and the Buchla Music Easel, two modern configurations of the innovative instrument developed in the ‘60s by Don Buchla.

Sunergy was recorded in 2015 in the home where Ciani has now lived for the last three decades. Her living room overlooks the Pacific Ocean from a cliffside perch, creating an idyllic, inspired setting for music making. Setting up their synthesizers side-by- side, Ciani and Smith took turns keeping time and freely improvising for the album sessions. As a complete piece, Sunergy is shaped by slow, pulsing forms and sinuous, melodic sequences that conjure both an oceanic world and the unlimited sound made possible by modular processing. Eight years on from their meeting and recording, these sublime, expansive synergies still retain their potent transportative power.

Since its initial release in 2016, Sunergy has become a touchstone in both artist’s catalogs, marking a return to Buchla form for Ciani (who at the time had not released a new synthesizer recording in forty years), and a transformative moment for Smith, whose breakthrough instrumental album Ears was released the same year. Ciani has since toured globally, dazzling audiences with live Buchla improvisations in the vein of those heard on these recordings, and Smith has solidified her place on the vanguard of electronic pop.

This expanded LP, contains the previously CD and digital only bonus track “Retrograde.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. A New Day
B1. Closed Circuit
B2. Retrograde (Vinyl Edit) 

As faithful custodians of Suzanne’s vault of vintage electronic music, Finders Keepers present the first-ever release of these vital archive recordings. As a genuine vanguard of electronic music composition at the forefront of the modular synthesiser revolution in the late 1960s, Suzanne Ciani’s forward-thinking approach to new music would rarely look to the past for inspiration, which makes this unheard composition from 1969 a rare exception to the collective futurist vision of Ciani and synthesiser designer Don Buchla. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is something distinctly enchanting about Ciani's work, whether she is crafting ambient sketches on beautiful vintage modulars (the Buchla Sessions being a particularly beautiful recently released example), or in full, wistful melodic mode (like on my absolute favourite of her outings, "Seven Waves"). 'Flowers Of Evil' is a perfectly measured mix of the two, with more protracted sections being beautifully accentuated with warm pads and distant warped vocal samples. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

Flowers Of Evil - Based On The Poem Élévation By Charles Baudelaire
Glass Houses
Token Spokes Part One
Token Spokes Part Two

As faithful guardians of the Ciani Musica Inc. studio vault Finders Keepers Records twist the key and return to their collaborative series of previously unreleased music from one of the most important and influential composers in the history of multi-disciplinary electronic music. Open-minded, unpretentious, enigmatic and consistently inspiring, Suzanne Elizabeth Ciani would shatter the mould and invert the stereotype of electronic composers in the early 1970s with a bona fide education in classical music, a clear understanding of technology and a genuine will to communicate and naturalise electronic music.

All of these unique attributes, coupled with her natural charm and generosity, would win her success and notoriety in the colliding worlds of art, film, advertising, theatre, dance and eventually popular recorded music in the latter part of the 21st century - a multifarious achievement which remained unrivalled by any of her contemporaries, regardless of gender, conquering many male-dominated platforms and breaking creative ground in the process. It is exactly these key factors that would form the basis for this multifaceted musical project. This electronic soundtrack for an operatic, ecological, scholastic, science fiction theatre production for children of all ages not only further reveals Suzanne’s vibrant and versatile skills as an experimental musician and narrative sound designer but also highlights her European heritage - working to the script of Milanese librettist Gian Carlo Menotti and a cast of forward-thinking fellow Italian-American creatives (including Giorgio Armani and Fiorucci in the wardrobe department).

Originally written and performed in 1968, and gaining worldwide acclaim throughout the 1970s, Gian Carlo Menotti would update and revise his play for the turn of the 80s which called for a new approach to the music and sound effects - all of which would make their world premiere in New York high school theatres in April of 1980. “I was honoured to have been selected to create a new electronic score for Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera for children,” Suzanne told Finders Keepers. “The original production had been in 1968 and I felt that the electronic music component could be more playful and less abrasive than the original production.” For this task Suzanne would approach the brief with the same zeal and tenacity that she continues to apply to all her work by reinventing the process, challenging convention and supplying the audience with something they have never experienced before. For ‘Help, Help The Globolinks!’ Ciani would give Menotti’s well-travelled aliens a brand new voice and with reinvention she communicated with a young audience keen to hear the genuine sounds of the future while retaining melodicism and personality quite potentially overshadowing the ‘human’ casts exceptional abilities and challenging the director’s and writer’s authority in true Ciani style: “I recall meeting with Maestro Menotti at his home in New York City,” recalls Suzanne. “Later I was told that he was upset by the size of my credit on the poster.”

Unlike many successful electronic composers, Suzanne, as a serious and genuinely revolutionary artist, managed to evade the obvious typecasting of her music through the medium of shlock sci-fi cinema (Swiss composer Bruno Spoerri readily observes that all the best space film scores veered from this pairing) but within the realms of opera and education Suzanne found her perfect channel (scratching her other cosmic cinematic itches with android music in ‘The Stepford Wives’ and as “the first female composer to score a major Hollywood movie” with ‘The Incredible Shrinking Woman’ release one year after ‘The Globolinks’ redux debut). Furnishing a plot of an ecological alien intervention worthy of a Magma youth starter pack and realigning early pioneering electronic operas such as Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s ‘Aniara’ or Remi Gassmann’s ‘Electronics’ for family consumption, this virtually undocumented work by the hardest working woman in VCO business is finally preserved after just a handful of exclusive theatrical airings over 35 years ago. Having honed her craft in the close company of late synthesiser designer Don Buchla (a company of whose development she played a key role) it is plain to see how the young Suzanne Ciani combined roles as an abstract artist and an astute technician in equal measures.

Miami by way of Fayetteville and Little Rock, Steven A Clark’s raw, confessional singing and personal stories pair with pulsing synthesizers and rhythms that hang in the air like a glowing grid of roadside neon. It’s a means for the soft-spoken artist to process all the drama in his head. 

On songs such as ‘Not You’, he flips a brutally honest breakup tale and draws emotions and empathy from being on the ‘right’ side of the conversation. 

The title track uses a slinky, sensual beat to create a perfect backdrop to tell the story of a weekend-long tryst in Vegas. For a man of few words, his unadorned and uncomplicated lyrics hit home. 

“… a heroic underdog of the specific, delivering diarylike lyrics detailed enough to provide a loaded portrait of a young man in transition.” - SPIN

TRACK LISTING

Lonely Roller
Trouble Baby
Not You
Can’t Have
Bounty Time
Machine
Floral Print
Part Two
She’s In Love
Young, Wild, Free

Sonny Clark was the epitome of cool - he has nearly 300 playing credits to his name The partial list is staggering. Donald Byrd, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Sonny Criss, Hank Mobley, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Billie Holiday, Lee Morgan and many more. On Sonny's Crib, Clark used the sextet format consisting of one of the all-time great jazz line ups. John Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Curtis Fuller, Paul Chambers, and Art Taylor. Trane had struggled with addiction earlier in the year but by this session had quit heroin for good and was reclaiming his spot as a major force in Jazz. By any measurement Sonny's Crib is a classic that features remarkable solos. Two weeks later Coltrane would record the epic "Blue Train" with Fuller and Chambers. More than a few critics and fans have compared the two

TRACK LISTING

With A Song In My Heart
Speak Low
Come Rain Or Come Shine
Sonny's Crib
News For Lulu

‘Where Neon Goes To Die’ explores a complex relationship full of highs and lows. From sultry pop to heart aching ballads, the album retells Clark’s travels through the city’s nocturnal fantasyland through hooky, R&B-infused synth pop - file alongside Prince and Frank Ocean - that (maybe ironically) could fill the floors at the same clubs he’s singing about. Of course, when Clark writes about his city he’s really writing about himself.

‘Where Neon Goes To Die’ retells Clark’s travels through the Miami’s nocturnal fantasyland. At its core, it is the story of a musician casting aside the distractions of his youth and discovering not only a new level of maturity but a new level to his talents.

After a string of mixtapes and EPs and his 2015 debut album ‘The Lonely Roller’, Clark is making music more confidently than he ever has before, sliding effortlessly between effervescent future disco on ‘Feel This Way’ to purple-tinged slow-burn soul on ‘Easy Fall’, a duet with Gavin Turek.

TRACK LISTING

Maria, Under The Moon
Feel This Way
Easy Fall
On And On
Found
Did I Hurt U
Evil Woman
Days Like This
War
What Can I Do

Second solo album by La Luz singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland.

RIYL: Robert Wyatt, Opal, Nilsson, Kevin Ayers and his Whole Wide World, Norma Tanega, Jessica Pratt, Julie Driscoll, Michael Nesmith, Sibylle Baier.

Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It’s also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can’t actually tell you how much we love this record because you’d never believe us, so we’ll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019’s Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman “Sun Ra” Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. “This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland’s nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It’s peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in “Mystic Mine,” with its “Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country.” So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: “The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B),” she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you’ve heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland’s successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that’s somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there’s a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana’s solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord—little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records—Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another beautiful folk-leaning record this week from the brilliant Shana Cleveland. The La Luz singer / guitarist brings things down a little for her solo project, still swimming in psychedelic waters but with more of an organic, slow-moving drift. At times, the hefty gothic folk instrumentation overtakes her echoic vocals, but it's never less than perfectly manicured and a great listen throughout.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Ghost
2. Bloom
3. Faces In The Firelight
4. Mystic Mine
5. Light On The Water
6. Quick Winter Sun
7. Bonanza Freeze
8. Gold Tower
9. Babe
10. Ten Hour Drive Through West Coast Disaster
11. Evil Eye
12. Mayonnaise
13. Sheriff Of The Salton Sea
14. Walking Through Morning Dew

Shana Cleveland has been beguiling listeners for years in her role as the superlative frontwoman for elastic surf rockers La Luz. Now Cleveland is evolving her sound on the new solo full-length Night of the Worm Moon, a serene album that flows like a warm current while simultaneously wresting open a portal to another dimension. As much a work of California sci-fi as Octavia Butler’s Parable novels, Night of the Worm Moon incorporates everything from alternate realities to divine celestial bodies. Inspired in part by one of her musical idols, the Afro-futurist visionary Sun Ra (the album’s title is a tip of the hat to his 1970 release Night of the Purple Moon), the record blends pastoral folk with cosmic concerns.

Cleveland dreamt up this premise while living in Los Angeles, a city where--as deftly explored on La Luz’s recent Floating Features--reality and fantasy casually co-exist. Abetting Cleveland during the recording process was a familiar gallery of co-conspirators: multi-instrumentalist Will Sprott of Shannon & the Clams, original La Luz bassist Abbey Blackwell, Goss, pedal steel player Olie Eshelman, and Kristian Garrard, who drummed on Cleveland’s previous solo effort (with then-backing band The Sandcastles), 2011’s Oh Man, Cover the Ground.

But whereas that album was internal and contemplative, Night of the Worm Moon occupies a different, vibrant kind of headspace. UFO sightings, insect carcasses, and twilight dimensions are all grist for Cleveland’s restless creativity, and they and other inspirations collide beautifully on the album’s 10 kaleidoscopic tracks--a spacebound transmission from America’s weirdo frontier.

STAFF COMMENTS

Javi says: ‘Night of the Worm Moon’ is as much an album of acoustic lullabies as it is of shifting ethereal nightmares - and it’s this balance between the beautiful and the unnerving which allows Shana Cleveland’s ruminations on sleep, love, and identity to be so beguiling.
“Don’t Let Me Sleep” pulls us gently into this nocturnal world full of harps, zithers, vibraphones and lutes before second track and album highlight “Face of the Sun” trembles in, lilting between Latin guitar rhythms and wailing slide guitar. There are such nods to spaghetti western soundtracks throughout the album, in both the instrumentation and the slow, trundling tempo of tracks like “Solar Creep” and masterful “Invisible When The Sun Leaves”.
That’s not to say the album is a wholly analogue affair, though - the synth bass and eerie affected whistles of “The Fireball” are just as poignant as the more stripped back moments. At times the bass sounds like it’s going to swallow the song whole, lending a sense of intense anxiety to the proceedings, sucking the listener in.
If La Luz are the sound of bright summer days spent surfing and swimming in the sun, then ‘Night of the Worm Moon’ - the debut solo offering by frontwoman Shana Cleveland - shows us a parallel world that only appears once the sun has set and the stars have taken its place in the sky. From the first tender plucks to the final twilit twinkles, Cleveland has crafted an album as warm as it is melancholy, and as intimate as it is intoxicating.

TRACK LISTING

1. Don’t Let Me Sleep
2. Face Of The Sun
3. In Another Realm
4. Castle Milk
5. Night Of The Worm Moon
6. Invisible When The Sun Leaves
7. The Fireball
8. Solar Creep
9. A New Song
10. I’ll Never Know

Heart’s Ease follows 2016’s Lodestar; which on its arrival, seemed like a musical miracle - an enthralling new LP from a woman who is widely acknowledged as England’s greatest female folk singer, but who had not recorded an album for 38 years.

With Heart’s Ease, Shirley delivers a record even stronger than Lodestar having completely regained her confidence, and singing so well that you can’t believe she was away for so long. As Shirley put it, “Lodestar wasn’t too bad, was it? But when I listen to it, it does sometimes sound rather tentative. I had to record it at home because I was just too nervous to sing in front of somebody I didn’t know. This time I was far more relaxed – even though I went into a studio.” Recorded at Metway in Brighton, Heart’s Ease is as compelling and original as Shirley’s great albums from the Sixties and Seventies. There are traditional songs, of course, from England and the USA, but there are also more new songs than in the past (four non-traditional tracks) and there’s even a burst of experimentation that hints at possible new directions to come.

In the years between For As Many As Will (1978) and the release of Lodestar, Shirley suffered from a form of dysphonia, had lost her singing voice, and was never expected to sing again – certainly not in public. Lodestar was a delightful surprise to all her fans and the folk community, and once Shirley had started to sing again, she was not going to stop. “I’m absolutely consumed by this music,” she said. “I have always loved it so much. I’m still learning songs and just want to keep learning them. I thought ‘somebody has got to sing these songs, so it might as well be me!”

Collins followed Lodestar with a remarkable blitz of activity for a lady in her eighties. There was a film, and soundtrack album, The Ballad of Shirley Collins. There was a new autobiography, All in the Downs, which won the Penderyn Music Book Prize (beating the Beastie Boys). And there were high-profile come-back concerts, including a memorable appearance at London’s Barbican, at which she was backed by an exceptional group of friends and musicians, the Lodestar Band. She may have felt nervous being back on stage, “but I feel so supported by that band. And every song I sing I love anyway – it’s not a hardship to sing the songs!”.

All of which is reflected in her second come-back album, Heart’s Ease. Collins’ intriguing choice of songs on Heart’s Ease includes two with lyrics by her first husband Austin John Marshall, a graphic artist and poet who produced several of her albums and had the inspired idea of getting Shirley to work with blues/jazz/world music guitarist Davy Graham on that extraordinary album Folk Roots, New Routes in 1964. There are more family memories with “Locked In Ice”, written by Dolly’s son the late Buz Collins and the most startling new piece is the finale, “Crowlink”, named after a pathway on the South Downs overlooking the English Channel “where I love to be,” in which Shirley sings against a moody, atmospheric fusion of Ossian Brown’s hurdy-gurdy, and electronica and field recordings of waves and sea birds from Matthew Shaw.

Heart’s Ease is a glorious reminder that Shirley Collins is still in a class of her own, both as a folk singer with a distinctive no-nonsense style that is all her own, and as an innovator. And she certainly doesn’t intend this album to be her last. “I have such a huge memory of songs, so many of which I still want to sing. And I wasted all those years not singing, so now I’ve got to catch up a bit!”

TRACK LISTING

The Merry Golden Tree
Rolling In The Dew
The Christmas Song
Locked In Ice
Wondrous Love
Barbara Allen
Canadee-i-o
Sweet Greens And Blues
Tell Me True
Whitsun Dance
Orange In Bloom
Crowlink

During the 1960s and ‘70s Shirley Collins was regarded by many as the first lady of folk music, the subsequent decades have only served to enhance that reputati on. Between 1955 and 1978 she recorded for the Folkways, Argo, Harvest and Topic labels. After the release of ‘For As Many As Will’ in 1978 she withdrew from performing and the music world aft er developing dysphonia. Shirley recently returned to recording after a very long hiatus and is still widely acknowledged as one of the finest singers and ambassadors to have emerged during the Folksong Revival of the 1960s.

Few singers of the English folk revival have attempted as much on record as Collins – an extraordinary combination of fragility and power. “I like music to be fairly straightforward, simply embellished – the performance without histrionics allowing you to think about the song rather than telling you what to think.” Through an impressive series of experimental recordings Shirley established an extraordinarily sympathetic marriage of traditi onal songs handed down through generati ons of rural labouring people with ground breaking contemporary arrangements – recordings that have scarcely been equalled in subsequent decades. This collection draws together some of her most iconic recordings and will serve as an Introducti on to her very special catalogue of music.

“Shirley Collins is without doubt one of England’s greatest cultural treasures.” Billy Bragg

TRACK LISTING

Tracks (CD):
The Foggy Dew
I Drew My Ship
A Blacksmith Courted Me
The False Bride
All Things Are Quite Silent
Polly Vaughan
False True Love

Spencer The Rover
The Sweet Primeroses
Rambleaway
March The Morning Sun
The Cherry Tree Carol
The Moon Shines Bright
One Night
As I Lay In My Bed
Come All You Litt Le Streamers

Tracks (LP):
The Foggy Dew
A Blacksmith Courted Me
The False Bride
All Things Are Quite Silent
Polly Vaughan
False True Love
The Sweet Primeroses
Rambleaway
March The Sun Morning
The Cherry Tree Carol
The Moon Shines Bright
The Rigs Of Time

One of the most important voices in British folk music Shirley Collins returns with Archangel Hill, her third album for Domino. Due for release on May 26th, it showcases another peerless collection of songs chosen by Collins, some from traditional sources but others from favourite writers of hers.

Produced by Ian Kearey - Shirley Collins’ musical director - the arrangements were shared between Collins, Kearey, Pip Barnes, as well as Dave Arthur and Pete Cooper, players from The Lodestar Band.

All of the songs on Archangel Hill were recorded last year except for “Hand And Heart”, which was taken from a live performance at the Sydney Opera House in 1980 and features an arrangement by Shirley’s beloved and talented sister Dolly Collins.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fare Thee Well My Dearest Dear
2. Lost In A Wood
3. The Captain With The Whiskers
4. June Apple
5. The Golden Glove
6. High And Away
7. Oakham Poachers
8. Hares On The Mountain
9. Hand And Heart
10. The Bonny Labouring Boy
11. Swaggering Boney
12. How Far Is It To Bethlehem?
13. Archangel Hill

The return of Shirley Collins after a 38 year silence. ‘Lodestar’ is a collection of English, American and Cajun songs dating from the 16th Century to the 1950s, recorded at Shirley’s home in Lewes by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown of Cyclobe and produced and musically directed by Ian Kearey.

Though Shirley Collins (MBE) has been absent from the music scene for many years, her impact has not diminished. The likes of Graham Coxon, Jonny Greenwood, Stewart Lee and Angel Olsen laud her and a documentary, ‘The Ballad Of Shirley Collins’, is currently in progress. Additionally, she was given the Good Tradition award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2008, elected President of the English Folk Dance & Song Society in the same year and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Sussex University this year. Shirley released her first memoir, ‘America Over The Water’, in 2004 and is currently working on her second book.

“Shirley is a time traveller, a conduit for essential human aches, one of the greatest artists who ever lived, and yet utterly humble” - Stewart Lee.

TRACK LISTING

Awake Awake / The Split Ash Tree / May Carol / Southover
The Banks Of Green Willow
Cruel Lincoln
Washed Ashore
Death And The Lady
Pretty Polly
Old Johnny Buckle
Sur Le Borde De L’Eau
The Rich Irish Lady / Jeff Sturgeon
The Silver Swan

The return of Shirley Collins after a 38 year silence. ‘Lodestar’ is a collection of English, American and Cajun songs dating from the 16th Century to the 1950s, recorded at Shirley’s home in Lewes by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown of Cyclobe and produced and musically directed by Ian Kearey.

Though Shirley Collins (MBE) has been absent from the music scene for many years, her impact has not diminished. The likes of Graham Coxon, Jonny Greenwood, Stewart Lee and Angel Olsen laud her and a documentary, ‘The Ballad Of Shirley Collins’, is currently in progress. Additionally, she was given the Good Tradition award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2008, elected President of the English Folk Dance & Song Society in the same year and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Sussex University this year. Shirley released her first memoir, ‘America Over The Water’, in 2004 and is currently working on her second book.

“Shirley is a time traveller, a conduit for essential human aches, one of the greatest artists who ever lived, and yet utterly humble” - Stewart Lee.

TRACK LISTING

Awake Awake / The Split Ash Tree / May Carol / Southover
The Banks Of Green Willow
Cruel Lincoln
Washed Ashore
Death And The Lady
Pretty Polly
Old Johnny Buckle
Sur Le Borde De L’Eau
The Rich Irish Lady / Jeff Sturgeon
The Silver Swan

Reissue of previously deleted classic Folk album - Back to Black.

Shirley Collins's sweet, self-effacing singing keeps her closer to the core of traditional song than many a more histrionic singer. Yet her work has been extraordinarily diverse - she has collaborated with the guitarist Davy Graham, the Incredible String Band, the Albion Country Band and her sister Dolly. "The Sweet Primeroses" are simple and resonant versions of Southern English songs which established Shirley Collins as a unique and influential voice on the folk scene.

The new album from grammy award winner Shawn Colvin featuring some of her best work yet including quality songs like "Whole New You" and "A Matter of Minutes".

"Seaside Surprise" is the debut release from Manchester based musician Simon Connor. After gigging as an acoustic solo artist for the past year the arrangements on the EP have been fleshed out with a full band, a string section and electronic beats. The well crafted songs are given a much wider scope and the sound sits somewhere in between Radiohead, Elliott Smith and Scott Matthews.

Songwriter and singer Sam Cooke was one of the most popular and infuential African-American fgures to emerge in the late '50s who successfully synthesized a blend of gospel music and secular themes that provided the early foundation of soul music Cooke's pure, clear vocals were widely imitated and his suave, sophisticated image set the style of soul crooners for the next decade. This collectors' LP release includes one of Cooke's fnest albums, The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke, originally issued by Keen Records in 1960. It contains some of his greatest studio recordings, including well-known hits from the peak of his career, such as "(What a) Wonderful World," "Desire Me," "No One (Can Ever Take Your Place)," "Summertime," and others that come from his spiritual background like "I Thank God" and "That's Heaven to Me."

TRACK LISTING

1. (What A) Wonderful World
2. Desire Me
3. Summertime
4. Almost In Your Arms
5. That's Heaven To Me
6. No One (Can Ever Take Your Place)
7. Win You Love For Me
8. With You
9. Blue Moon
10. Stealing Kisses
11. You Were Made For Me
12. There I've Said It Again
13. I Thank God
14. Steal Away

'Red Kite' is the much-anticipated new solo album by Saint Etienne’s lead singer Sarah Cracknell. Musically, 'Red Kite' has a sophisticated, pastoral feel, drawing on classic 60s pop with less of a dance music influence than Saint Etienne. Sarah has co-written all the songs bar one cover version, ‘The Mutineer’. It’s fanfared by new single ‘Nothing Left To Talk About’, an uplifting indie-pop duet with guest vocalist Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers.

The album was recorded at Big Pink, Oxfordshire and in Cardiff in winter 2014 and early 2015, and is co-produced by Carwyn Ellis of Colorama.

TRACK LISTING

01. On The Swings
02. Nothing Left To Talk About (Feat Nicky Wire)
03. In The Dark
04. Ragdoll
05. Underneath The Stars
06. Hearts Are For Breaking
07. Take The Silver (ft. The Rails)
08. The Mutineer
09. I Close My Eyes
10. It’s Never Too Late
11. I Am Not Your Enemy
12. Favourite Chair

Samantha Crain's critically acclaimed 'A Small Death' is a record that brims with hope and a deft wryness, packed with the sort of melodies and stories that have been warming the hearts of those so familiar with and fond of her work over the years. After a series of accidents that left the artist without the use of her hands, this album was her first release after she worked tirelessly to recover from her injuries.

TRACK LISTING

An Echo
Pastime
Holding To The Edge Of Night
High Horse
Reunion
Joey
Constructive Eviction
Garden Dove
Tough For You
When We Remain
Little Bits

Modern maneuvers in machine music courtesy of the Weapons Of Desire arsenal. Solo outing from S. Crosbie who is based in Brighton and runs both Dark Arts and Novac Music labels. He treats us to a fine selection of stripped back warehouse tools. Utilizing nowt but a drum machine and a few choice bits of tone generation he manages to conjure up a primal yet mechanized collection of tracks for late night gremlin abuse.

It's all acidic squelch, drum box thud and black arts sonic shamanism - right up the strasse of your local rave mutant! Recommended and in limited supply - move quick on these joints! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Tony Aslam gets busy in the barracks once again. Rousing warehouse general S. Crosbie to draw up some heavy weapons. A Brighton native with his own control factions; his guest appearance on WOD packs a serious punch.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Figure 3
A2. Bridge & Tunnel
A3. Seven Dials

B1. Next-door
B2. Shifty

Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2 sees the Nashville-based musician step further from the pedal steel and towards centre stage. Released on the evergreen Full Time Hobby label on 14th April 2023, this new collection of tracks is a kaleidoscopic collection of folk, jazz, and pop, cut though with immaculately-rendered songwriting.

Romford to Nashville is hardly the most well-trodden of paths, but for Spencer Cullum it was a way of getting to the essential heart of pedal steel, what was then and remains to this day his musical raison d'être. Growing up in the large East London town brought him early exposure to classic pub rock by way of his father such as Dr. Feelgood and Thin Lizzy, and farther-flung music by way of his mother, such as Talking Heads and Lou Reed. However, it was learning pedal steel from legendary English player B. J. Cole that set him on the path he still walks today. After touring with Nashville-based groups and hearing tales of “seasoned Nashville steel players”, the young musician upped sticks and found a “nice little crowd of weirdos” in his chosen city.

Cullum has always maintained a somewhat silent presence - even now saying “I still want to hide behind my pedal steel in fear” - but 2020 saw him release his debut solo effort, Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection. Despite his project with Jeremy Fetzer, Steelism, showing off more of his talents, never before had he felt the limelight so firmly on him.

Although …Coin Collection’s modus operandi was "a very quintessential English folk record, but with really good Nashville players”, Cullum says of ...Coin Collection 2 that “I wanted to be different. I wanted to try and pull away from wearing my influences on my sleeve… I was trying to pick out ideas that were new to me. You can never escape your musical influences but I wanted them to be more hidden sub-consciously than upfront.” Though you can pick out the odd similarity to other things here and there - The Beach Boys’ Friends LP, perhaps, or The Incredible String Band, or Joni Mitchell - the thing is decidedly Cullum’s own. What’s also reassuring is that there hasn’t been some giant sonic leap from …Coin Collection, rather that the beautifully sun-kissed, English country garden, bees-buzzing-round-lager atmosphere has remained, but complicated, weirded, deepened.

Much in the same way that the album doesn’t wear its influences (Amon Duul II, Skip Spence, Ennio Morricone, Chu Kosaka, Michael Chapman) lightly but rather is steeped in them and toys with them, Cullum brought in a host of guests to turn…Coin Collection 2 loose from being a purely solo effort. Yuma Abe provides fractured, low-register chorus vocals that accentuate the ever-so-slightly mournful air to ‘Kingdom Weather’, released today as a single, while Dana Gavanski provides beautiful harmony lines in ‘What A Waste Of An Echo’. Despite the number of collaborators and players (also including Rich Ruth, Erin Rae, and Caitlin Rose) things never seem too crowded or brimming with too many ideas. Instead Cullum marshalls each moving party expertly.

Indeed, due to Cullum’s languid Romford burr (pitched somewhere between Robert Wyatt and Ray Davies), it only becomes clear when listening closely that some of the lyrics deal with weighty themes like dementia and violence. Cullum says that “I sat for a long time with the songs and wanted to find my own identity”, and …Coin Collection 2 suggests you do the same.

In the same way that Cullum provides the pedal steel undertow of many huge artists’ music - Kesha, Lambchop, and more recently Angel Olsen - the genius in …Coin Collection 2 is in its subtlety, in what it murmurs rather than shouts.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A perfectly airy, drifting collection of jazzy melodies and shimmering pop choruses, produced with more than a nod to folk-rock of the 70's but with a levity and inventiveness that's very much a modern twist. There's a wonderful space between the instruments here, bringing the focus on Cullum's wonderful voice and the pure songwriting talent. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

1. What A Waste Of An Echo (feat. Dana Gavanski)
2. Kingdom Weather (feat. Yuma Abe)
3. Green Trees
4. Out Of Focus
5. The Three Magnets (feat. Rich Ruth)
6. Betwixt And Between (feat. Erin Rae)
7. Cold Damp Valley
8. That Same Day Departure (feat. Caitlin Rose) 

A new longform commissioned work released on the artist’s own Late Music label. String quartet version available as a 2LP and CD, or four different instrumental variations presented as the Long Gradus: Arrangements 4CD boxset.

TRACK LISTING

1. Long Gradus (strings): Part I
2. Long Gradus (strings): Part 2
3. Long Gradus (strings): Part 3
4. Long Gradus (strings): Part 4

It was once said that listening to Antiphonals was, “like listening to a progressive rock album except it’s just the keyboard parts.” As the second full-length LP on Late Music, Davachi offers here a slow and sedate solo affair composed with the various horns and woodwinds of the mellotron alongside organs, pianos, harpsichord, and more quiet delights. All tracks composed, performed, recorded, mixed, and produced by Sarah Davachi (SOCAN), February - December 2020 Mastered by Sean McCann

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Antiphonals is a wonderful juxtaposition of gothic gloom and slowly morphing drones, somewhere along the lines of a classical, short-form Sunn0))). It's beautifully dense and immediate, experimental but deeply listenable. Impeccable.

TRACK LISTING

A1 - Chorus Scene - 2:47
A2 - Magdalena - 10:19
A3 - First Cadence - 5:57
A4 - Gradual Of Image - 3:09

B1 - Border Of Mind - 5:53
B2 - Abeyant - 7:12
B3 - Rushes Recede - 6:35
B4 - Doubled Flutes - 2:19

A supplement to ‘Two Sisters’, Sarah Davachi offers a series of live chamber ensemble recordings and instrumentals collected while in residence at the National Music Centre.

Featuring commissioned works ‘In The Grand Luxe Hall’ (2016) and ‘Stile Vuoto’ (2018), variations and unreleased live recordings of the ‘Harmonies’ series for organ, and solo performances with electronic instruments such as the Hammond B3 and Hammond Novachord.

TRACK LISTING

CD1
In The Grand Luxe Hall
Stile Vuoto
Harmonies In Grey

CD2
Lower Visions I
Lower Visions II
Lower Visions III
Lower Visions IV
Harmonies In Green

A new longform commissioned work released on the artist’s own Late Music label. String quartet version available as a 2LP and CD, or four different instrumental variations presented as the Long Gradus: Arrangements 4CD boxset.

TRACK LISTING

DISC ONE Tracklist:
Long Gradus Strings
Quatuor Bozzini
1. Long Gradus (strings): Part 1
2. Long Gradus (strings): Part 2
3. Long Gradus (strings): Part 3
4. Long Gradus (strings): Part 4

DISC TWO Tracklist:
Long Gradus Woodwinds
Rebecca Lane & Samara Dunscombe
1. Long Gradus (woodwinds): Part 1
2. Long Gradus (woodwinds): Part 2
3. Long Gradus (woodwinds): Part 3
4. Long Gradus (woodwinds): Part 4

DISC THREE Tracklist:
Long Gradus Brass & Organ
Sarah Davachi & Rage Thormbones
1. Long Gradus (brass & Organ): Part 1
2. Long Gradus (brass & Organ): Part 2
3. Long Gradus (brass & Organ): Part 3
4. Long Gradus (brass & Organ): Part 4

DISC FOUR Tracklist:
Long Gradus Choir & Electronics
Sarah Davachi & Judith Berkson
1. Long Gradus (choir & Electronics): Part 1
2. Long Gradus (choir & Electronics): Part 2
3. Long Gradus (choir & Electronics): Part 3
4. Long Gradus (choir & Electronics): Part 4

Pale Bloom finds Sarah Davachi coming full circle. After abandoning the piano studies of her youth for a series of albums utilizing everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synthesizers, this prolific Los Angeles-based composer returns to her first instrument for a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic rumination. Recorded at Berkeley, California’s famed Fantasy Studios, Pale Bloom is comprised of two delicatelyarranged sides. The first—a three-part suite where Davachi’s piano acts as conjurer, beckoning Hammond organ and stirring countertenor into a patiently unfolding congress—recalls Eduard Artemiev’s majestic soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris.

“Perfumes I-III” employs the harmonically rich music of Bach as a springboard for abstract, solemn pieces that sound as haunted as they are dreamlike. While the first half of Pale Bloom showcases Davachi’s latent Romanticism, the sidelong “If It Pleased Me To Appear To You Wrapped In This Drapery” reveals the Mills College graduate’s affinity for the work of avantgarde composers La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue. Softly vibrating strings rise and fall like complementary exhalations of breath. As the fluctuating pitches create overtones that pitter and pulse, the piece slowly and subtly evolves—suggesting a well-tempered stillness, yet without stasis.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's properly beautiful stuff this, shining with modern classical delicacy but bolstered by a dark undercurrent of neo-gothic organs and infrequent echoic piano stabs. Tentative and minimalistic, but sonically moving, Davachi makes it clear she is here to stay. Thoroughly gorgeous stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Perfumes I
2. Perfumes II
3. Perfumes III
4. If It Pleased Me To Appear To You Wrapped In This Drapery

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first volume in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased on the vinyl format.

Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes and EPs, singles and original film scores, as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

TRACK LISTING

Alms Vert
In The Grand Luxe Hall (Excerpt)
In The Littlefield Choir Loft (Excerpt)
Gathers IV

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first and second volumes in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased on the vinyl format.

Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes and EPs, singles and original film scores, as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
Alms Vert
In The Grand Luxe Hall (Excerpt)
In The Littlefield Choir Loft (Excerpt)
Gathers IV

Disc 2
First Triad
A Woman Escapes Cue 4
Neustadt
Composition Of Flowers (Excerpt)
Olsun
Gathers VI

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the second volume in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased on the vinyl format.

Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes and EPs, singles and original film scores, as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

TRACK LISTING

First Triad
A Woman Escapes Cue 4
Neustadt
Composition Of Flowers (Excerpt)
Olsun
Gathers VI

The new album from Sarah Davachi on her own Late Music imprint is a collection of nine extended compositions for chamber ensemble and solo pipe organ. The expanded instrumentation on this album includes carillon (a keyboard instrument comprised of very large cast-iron bells), choir, string quartet, low woodwinds, and trombone quartet, alongside sine tones and electronic drones. Among the pipe organs featured on the album is an extremely rare Italian tracker organ from 1742, housed now in the Southwest desert region of the United States. Davachi is accompanied in these recordings by a formidable group of musicians and interpreters, including the Apartment House ensemble.

The carillon that sounds on the piece ‘Hall of Mirrors’ is the third largest in the world, with its heaviest bell weighing approximately twelve Imperial tons. Conceptually, there is a loose thread that runs through the compositional methods of Two Sisters, influenced by the allegory of ‘temperance’ in a minimalist aesthetic sense: “one foot on land, one foot in the water”, as it were, caught in the perpetual balance of restraint as delight and necessity. There are mirrored sonic and structural images throughout the album, also reflected in the iconography of the cover: the satyr and the subject, the shared gaze between head and body, the dialogue between cerebral and physical response, as above so below. It’s like there’s two sisters of faith and chance.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hall Of Mirrors
A2. Alas, Departing
A3. Vanity Of Ages
B1. Icon Studies I
B2. Harmonies In Bronze
C1. Harmonies In Green
C2. Icon Studies II
D1. En Bas Tu Vois
D2. O World And The Clear Song

Shirley Davis is centered, feet firmly planted and gazing right on into the future. The powerful soul singer takes no prisoners and holds no regrets on her third album, Keep On Keepin' On. As Shirley Davis & The Silverbacks, Davis harnesses the power of soul mothers past as well as her own history to deliver a record that rollicks from soul serenade to rocking ballad, then brings it on home with hard stepping soul.

Keep On Keepin' On embodies the best of the modern soul tradition, while showcasing a unique voice in its growing canon. Conjuring classic soul and funk sounds of the 1960s and '70s, as well as the mighty Sharon Jones – whose last words to Davis provide the album title -- Shirley Davis & The Silverbacks' latest is a highly personal tale of empowerment and self-realization, served up without losing an ounce of grooviness.

TRACK LISTING

1. Culture Or Vulture
2. Wild Girl
3. Keep On Keepin' On
4. Love Insane
5. It's All Right
6. True People
7. Outdoor
8. Stay Firm
9. So Much To Me
10. Take Out The Trash
11. Still Young

A eurodans / trance-indebted epic on the ever-reliable Public Possession. Simone De Kunovich updated those classic 90s tropes with a modern production sheen and tighter arrangements than the sprawling 10+ minute sagas from back in the day. Never the less, these tracks are uplifting, empowering and transportive - lost-in-the-smoke eyes-wide-hut - havin' it right off mate....

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: This is my jam for the weekend! (Although I might pitch it down a bit). Coalescing the best bits of trance and eurodans before tightening up the arrangements and updating the drum palette. It ain't reinventing the wheel but it should put one hell of a smile on the dancefloor.

TRACK LISTING

A1) Flow My Tears
B1) Super Mana Drain
B2) Warp World

First two songs from next year's LP produced in conjunction with Mo Wax producers Parsley Sound. Stax Dempsey's "Monet Sky" is full of simple, beatific melody and gently plucked guitar BJ Cole adds his unique pedal steel guitar sound to "Endless Summer", but what you really have here are two simple, classic songs that come from a tradition that stretches from Leadbelly to Lambchop, from an American outsider with a guitar and a headful of dreams, and not much else that matters..

More beautiful sadness for you! Sandy's 1973, third solo offering is rich with nostalgia. Not only are two of the songs covers from her father's record collection but Sandy's own tunes are heavy with romance, memory, loss and loneliness. There are five absolute anthems on this album and the singing is beautifully embroidered with subtle inflections and emotional nuances. It wasn't for nothing that Robert Plant named her as his favourite of all the British female singers. And this edition's unaccompanied take of "No End" has to be up there with her greatest ever performances.


Out of print on LP for a number of years, this re- issue faithfully replicates the original 1974 Island Records UK release with its embossed gatefold sleeve and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Solo
Like An Old Fashioned Waltz
Whispering Grass
Friends
Carnival
Dark The Night
At The End Of The Day
Until The Real Thing Comes Along
No End

From the power chords that open it, 1977's Rendezvous aimed squarely at giving Denny her commercial breakthrough. It demonstrates an artist evolving. Gold Dust really underlines how Denny could be viewed as the British Joni Mitchell, and its late- night jazz funk backing (with Steve Winwood on clavinet) offers a beguiling glimpse of where Denny may have travelled next. Rendezvous closes with No More Sad Refrains, which updated her late 60s ballad style. As Denny died tragically young less than a year after the album's release, it became a poignant full stop to such a promising career.

Long out of print on LP, this re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1977 Island Records UK release with lyric inner sleeve and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Wish I I Was A Fool For You (For Shame Of Doing Wrong)
Gold Dust 
Candle In The Wind
Take Me Away
One Way Donkey Ride
I'm A Dreamer
All Our Days
Silver Threads And Golden Needles
No More Sad Refrains

Sandy's second solo LP in 1972 was a bit less folky and more singer-songwriterly than her debut. She'd duetted on "Led Zeppelin Four" with Robert Plant and come up with perhaps her stongest set of songs. The arrangements were more expansive and the sound more ambitious, which was just as well since a number of the songs dealt with the healing powers of music. As she said herself: 'I can't write happy songs'... so here's another lush, melancholic, autumnal record for all you dreamers and true believers.

Out of print on LP for a number of years, this re- issue faithfully replicates the original 1972 Island Records UK release with gatefold sleeve and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

It'll Take A Long Time
Sweet Rosemary
For Nobody To Hear
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood
Listen, Listen
The Lady
Bushes And Briars
It Suits Me Well
The Music Weaver

After leaving Fairport Convention in '69, Sandy Denny made one record with her new group Fotheringay, and then this, in 1971, her first solo LP proper. The amazing Richard Thompson plays guitar and infact this album shares a similar, dense, drone-based tonality with his own debut solo effort. It's also a little idyosyncratic, truth be told, but there's still moments of unbelievable beauty here. 

Out of print on LP for a number of years, this re- issue faithfully replicates the original 1971 Island Records UK release with gatefold sleeve and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Late November
Blackwaterside
The Sea Captain
Down In The Flood
John The Gun
Next Time Around
The Optimist
Let's Jump The Broomstick
Wretched Wilbur
The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
Crazy Lady Blues

Consolidating 2 years of solo work, “Hard To Please” is the debut album by Canadian polymath Sally Dige. First coming to prominence in the synth-wave scene with an elusive, meta-persona in a blur of homemade costumes, Dige’s world has grown to encompass visual art, theatre and design elements. Most surprising on her long-awaited debut however is the occasional removal of the various masks and characters Dige has played to date, revealing something more tangible and fragile underneath.

“Hard To Please” still revels in a darkly thrilling, Euro synth-pop music, awash with dry ice and hidden in shadow, most personified on the instant classic 'Immaculate Deception'. However, on the long, nocturnal walk home Dige begins to sing of loneliness, being lost, the transience of our relationships. Attention to detail is paramount. On the title-track the crisp early-80s, swooning bass line duets with Dige’s desperate plea to a lover fading into the distance, a presence lamented with even more pathos on the towering, early-4AD-esque, slow-burner 'Your Girl'. It’s a new fragility that effortlessly manages to convey a luxurious, inescapable sensuality at the same time.

Indeed, 'Hard To Please' portrays a clear narrative, with electronic body movers like Doppelganger portraying an out-of control, self-obsessed persona at the beginning of the record. Breaking down into the foggy murk, the more hopelessly romantic album closers “A Certain Beauty” and “Dance Of Delusion” burn a ghostly image into the listener’s mind, as Dige, or someone like her, over Cure-like swooning reverberations entreaties the powers that be to let her dance. Dige never fully reveals her hand, but the game is worth playing endlessly.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hard To Please
2. Immaculate Deception
3. So Far Away
4. Doppelganger
5. Losing You
6. Your Girl
7. A Certain Beauty
8. Dance Of Delusion

Stella Donnelly is a proud, self-proclaimed shit-stirrer. On lead single “Old Man,” the biting opener of her electrifying debut album, ‘Beware of the Dogs,’ she targets the song’s titular creep, “Oh are you scared of me old man or are you scared of what I’ll do? You grabbed me with an open hand. The world is grabbing back at you.” When something needs to be said, whether it’s to an abusive man, a terrible boss, or a clueless significant other, the 26-year old Fremantle, Western Australia-based musician is fearless in telling it like it is. Delivered entirely with a sarcastic wink and a full heart, ‘Beware of the Dogs’ proves across 13 lifeaffirming songs the power in sticking up for yourself, your friends, and what’s right.

The album showcases an artist totally in command of her voice, able to wield her inviting charm and razor-sharp wit into authentically raw songs. It’s a resounding statement of purpose in recent memory and most importantly, it’s a portrait of Donnelly taking charge. She says, “this album made me feel like I was back in the driver’s seat. It was really liberating and grounding to realize that no one can fuck with this except me.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There certainly is a coherent thread running between a lot of the music coming from Australia nowadays, not in terms of sound necessarily, but the attitude and pacing of the music. 'Beware Of The Dogs' epitomises that effortless cool without ever feeling like it's too loose. tightly woven melodies and strummed guitars form the perfect backdrop to the wry political meanderings and stunning vocals peppered over the top. This really is a killer LP, and one that is sure to appear in my top-10 come the end of year.

TRACK LISTING

1. Old Man
2. Mosquito
3. Season's Greetings
4. Allergies
5. Tricks
6. Boys Will Be Boys
7. Lunch
8. Bistro
9. Die
10. Beware Of The Dogs
11. U Owe Me
12. Watching Telly
13. Face It

Like the many Banded Stilts that spread across the cover of her newest album Flood, Stella Donnelly is wading into uncharted territory. Here, she finds herself discovering who she is as an artist among the flock, and how abundant one individual can be. Flood is Donnelly’s record of this rediscovery: the product of months of risky experimentation, hard moments of introspection, and a lot of moving around.

Donnelly’s early reflections on the relationship between the individual and the many can be traced back to her time in the rainforests of Bellingen, where she took to birdwatching as both a hobby and an escape in a border-restricted world. By paying closer attention to the natural world around her, Donnelly recalls “I was able to lose that feeling of anyone’s reaction to me. I forgot who I was as a musician, which was a humbling experience of just being; being my small self.”

Reconnecting with this ‘small self’ allowed Donnelly to tap into creative wells she didn’t know existed. Soon songs were coming to her in a way she could not control and over the coming months, Donnelly accumulated 43 tracks as she moved out of Bellingen and around the country, often finding herself displaced due to border restrictions and a tough rental market.

Though the writing of Flood was an intensely personal undertaking, Donnelly still saw the recording process as one of her most collaborative projects yet. Along with her band members, co-producing the record beside Anna Laverty and Methyl Ethyl’s Jake Webb helped to foster an important spontaneity in the studio. With Webb, Donnelly could “dig in” and discover a “forward-leaning sound” she’d been searching for, while Laverty’s ability to “capture the piano” and discern the “perfect take” allowed the songwriter to take risks, many of which have clearly paid off.

Looking back at the Banded Stilt, Donnelly ultimately appreciates how when “seen in a crowd they create an optical illusion, but on its own it’s this singular piece of art.” While each song in Flood is a singular artwork unto itself, the collective shares all of Stella Donnelly in abundance: her inner child, her nurturing self, her nightmare self; all of herself has gone into the making of this record, and although it would take an ocean to fathom everything she feels, it’s well worth diving in.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) Lungs (03:31)
2) How Was Your Day? (02:32)
3) Restricted Account (04:08)
4) Underwater (04:57)
5) Medals (04:05)

Side B
6) Move Me (03:07)
7) Flood (03:43)
8) This Week (02:52)
9) Oh My My My (03:13)
10) Morning Silence (02:10)

11) Cold (04:36)

Stella Donnelly quickly became one of Australia’s buzziest young singer-songwriters earlier this year with the release of her debut EP, Thrush Metal. Now release in the UK, it opens with the defiant, "Mechanical Bull" which is reminiscent of "Dry" era PJ Harvey. Next up is the stunning "Boys Will Be Boys". Atop delicate, singsongy acoustic fingerpicking, Donnelly confronts a man who raped her friend and takes to task the accompanying victim-blaming. “Why was she all alone? Wearing her shirt that low And they said boys will be boys Deaf to the word no,” she coos in the chorus, a slight vibrato flaring up at the corners of her lovely voice.
The stripped back melancholy of the following three tracks: "Mean To Me", "Grey" and "A Poem" show off her vocals in a slightly different light, and closing track "Talking", which is a new addition to the EP for this vinyl release, returns to the weightier content of the EPs start. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Mechanical Bull
2. Boys Will Be Boys
3. Mean To Me
4. Grey
5. A Poem
6. Talking

Steve Earle has been creating intimate and personal music for well over four decades now. His songwriting has wound itself along a path from Texas to Tennessee and his education came in the form of learning from the best. 2009"s Grammy-nominated record, Townes was a tribute to his dear friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt. Ten years later Earle released, Guy. An album concentrated on paying homage to the late Guy Clark and the indelible friendship that they had formed in stories told through song. 2022 welcomes the release of Jerry Jeff. A 10-song collection of songs written by the gypsy songman, Jerry Jeff Walker. Featuring hits like, 'Mr Bojangles' and 'Gettin' By', Earle and The Dukes honor the late Texan by amplifying the concept and sound of each song with a full-band recording.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gettin' By
2. Gypsy Songman
3. Little Bird
4. I Makes Money (Money Don't Make Me)
5. Mr Bojangles
6. Hill Country Rain
7. Charlie Dunn
8. My Old Man
9. Wheel
10. Old Road

Husband and wife team who have both enjoyed previous success in their own right as well as together. Stacey's endearingly evocative style was first heard in 1990 in duet with her older brother, country renegade Steve Earle. "Never Gonna Let You Go" is their second album, built around the couple's obvious chemistry together.

‘Lost in the Sunshine is about a lazy, hazy, hot, romantic, perfectly sunny day with the one you love’ - Sophie Ellis-Bextor

TRACK LISTING

1. A Thousand Orchids
2. Breaking The Circle
3. Until The Wheels Fall Off
4. Everything Is Sweet
5. Lost In The Sunshine
6. Tokyo
7. Beyond The Universe
8. He's A Dreamer
9. Reflections
10. Hearing In Colour
11. Broken Toy
12. We've Been Watching You

What started out in LA with Jon Hill and was finished back in North Carolina at Sylvan Esso’s home studio, "Free Love" asks major questions about self-image, self-righteousness, friendship, romance, and environmental calamity with enough warmth, playfulness, and magnetism to make you consider an alternate reality. These are Sylvan Esso’s most nuanced and undeniable songs—bold enough to say how they feel, big enough to make you join in that feeling.

TRACK LISTING

1. What If
2. Ring
3. Ferris Wheel
4. Train
5. Numb
6. Free
7. Frequency
8. Runaway
9. Rooftop Dancing
10. Make It Easy

In honor of the record’s ten year anniversary, North Carolina-based indie label Psychic Hotline will release a deluxe reissue, complete with previously unreleased material. Featuring essential singles "Coffee", "Hey Mami,” and "H.S.K.T.", the expanded edition also includes remixes from J Rocc, Rick Wade, Helado Negro, Dntel, and more. The deluxe 2LP package sports an all-over foil inversion of the original album’s iconic foil “SE” logo.

Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn’s debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo’s sound – a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath’s voice.

Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim and Grammy nominations, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn’s writing since then: “a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance” arriving as “a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don’t suffer the longstanding complications of that term.” And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there’s still that argument about what pop can be at its core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.

TRACK LISTING

DISC ONE
01 Hey Mami
02 Dreamy Bruises
03 Could I Be
04 Wolf
05 Dress
06 H.S.K.T.
07 Coffee
08 Uncatena
09 Play It Right
10 Come Down

DISC TWO
11 Hey Mami (Rick Wade Remix)
12 H.S.K.T. (Dntel Remix)
13 Coffee (Helado Negro Remix)
14 Hey Mami (Charles Spearin Remix)
15 H.S.K.T. (Hercules And Love Affair Remix)
16 Coffee (J Rocc Remix)

Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn's debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo's sound - a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath's voice.

Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn's writing since then: "a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance" arriving as "a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don't suffer the longstanding complications of that term." And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there's still that argument about what pop can be at its core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.

TRACK LISTING

1.HeyMami
2. DreamyBruises
3. CouldIBe
4 .Wolf
5. Dress
6. H.S.K.T.
7. Coffee
8. Uncatena
9. PlayItRight
10. ComeDown

Premium is the glistening debut album from New York-based Sam Evian. Sam describes the album as; “an analogue dream in a digital world.” Like flowing water, its cool surface entices and refreshes - then reveals hidden emotional depths. The sound of Premium recalls a sunbaked cassette of Pet Sounds or All Things Must Pass, composed with glowing guitar chords, aching pedal steel, Wurlitzers and iconic 20th-century synths. Inspired by the soulful classic sounds of Jackson Browne, Shuggie Otis, Sly and the Family Stone and The Band, as well as contemporary influences such as Cass McCombs, Broadcast, Cate Le Bon, and Chris Cohen, this is music meant for a close-up experience; spacious, dreamy, fun, and disarmingly open and honest.

The music came together quickly when Sam found himself in what he calls, “a premium set of circumstances.” An engineer and producer as well as in-demand guitarist, Sam befriended the founders of Brooklyn’s Figure 8 Studio, Eli Crews and the enigmatic and inspiring Shahzad Ismaily. After helping them to build and wire the studio, Sam explains how he found himself at the centre of a musical community; “I was surrounded by endlessly talented and fun musicians in a beautiful recording environment that I helped build. I felt confident and happy, so the music came together easily.”

That musical community included the group that recorded Premium. The album’s nine songs reflect the casual, relaxed atmosphere Sam created for himself at Figure 8, gathering his friends to record in o¬ff hours, capturing moments of o¬ffhand inspiration and laughter. There was Austin Vaughn on drums (Here We Go Magic, Luke Temple), a long-time friend from North Carolina School of the Arts, and Brian Betancourt on bass (Hospitality, Here We Go Magic, Luke Temple). They were joined by Michael Coleman on keys, a prolific player and producer, as well as being Figure 8’s studio manager. Pedal steel was provided by Dan Iead (Cass McCombs), and recorded at New York’s legendary Magic Shop studios in the days just before it closed. The tracks were some of the very last recordings in the room that had witnessed sessions by David Bowie, the Ramones, Blondie, Real Estate, Kurt Vile and generations of others. Other guest performers include vocalists Cassandra Jenkins and Hannah Cohen, Shahzad Ismaily, Eddie Barbash (the saxophonist on the Colbert show) and Steve Marion (aka Delicate Steve)

TRACK LISTING

1. Sleep Easy 4:19
2. Cactus 3:31
3. Dark Love 4:47
4. Big Car 3:30
5. Carolina 4:03
6. I Need A Man 3:20
7. Summer Running 3:24
8. Golden Skull 2:40
9. Tear 4:49

Plunge is Sam Evian's 4th studio album, and the debut on his new imprint Flying Cloud Recordings/Thirty Tigers set for release on March 22, 2024. Joined by his closest friends and collaborators (including Liam Kazar, Sean Mullins, El Kempner of Palehound and Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief), the album was tracked live to tape in the early winter months of 2023 over a 10-day period at his quaint Flying Cloud Recording studio tucked away in the Catskills Mountains. With a wide-open recording approach, the result is Evian’s best album to date: a cathartic rock record that melds power pop, iridescent guitar, raucous psychedelia, and Sam’s now sought-after grooves. The music is both fresh and familiar, sonically inspired by his penchant for early 70s production and creatively propelled by the free-spirited process depicted in the Beatles documentary Get Back, as well as his urge to let go. “No-one knew the songs or what the plan was. We kept it loose and fun. This was the spirit of the sessions. No headphones, no playback, minimal overdubs, or bleed. Fast and loose” Evian remarks. Lyrically, Plunge is heavier than previous records, touching on themes surrounding his family, from unearthing past traumas, to celebrating his parents’ creative influence on his life. “Relationships stalling, failing, coming back together,” says Evian. It is an album about love. It’s an homage to true love finding its way home, even if it takes a bit of a beating along the way.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wild Days
2. Jacket
3. Rollin' In
4. Why Does It Take So Long
5. Freakz
6. Wind Blows
7. Runaway
8. Another Way
9. Stay

Sam Evian knew he wanted to leave New York City almost as soon as he arrived, more than a decade ago. An upstart songwriter and producer, he, of course, loved its creative wellspring—the ideas, the instrumentalists, the energy. But he’d grown up in the woods of upstate New York and, later, along the coast on the rather empty eastern end of North Carolina. The city was expensive, anxious, and unsettling, however inspiring it could be.

So in the Summer of 2017, he and his band decamped to a rented house upstate to cut his second album, the magnetic You, Forever. He then realized he could no longer resist the urge; two years ago, Sam and his partner, Hannah Cohen, split from the city, building their refuge in the quiet of a Catskills town. That reflective, relaxing environment inexorably shaped Time to Melt, his third LP and debut for Fat Possum. A glowing set of soulfully psychedelic pop gems, Time to Melt is a testimonial to the life and wisdom to be found when you give yourself the mercy of space.

During the last decade, Sam has become a preeminent collaborator, producing and engineering records for the likes of Big Thief, Cass McCombs, and Widowspeak as Sam Owens, his given name. In their new home, he and Hannah hosted bands like house guests as he helmed their sessions. The coronavirus, though, clamped down on those interactions, largely sealing the couple from their longtime scene.

So Sam tried something new: He sorted through more than 60 instrumental demos he’d recorded in the last two years and began shaping the most enticing of them into songs with help from Hannah and a cadre of long-distance friends—Spencer Tweedy, Chris Bear, Jon Natchez, even strangers who sent him voice memos via Instagram. He took the unexpected time at home to dig deeper into his world of sounds and ideas than ever before, calmly considering our moment of prevailing chaos through a lens of newfound distance.

But the last few years have been purely happy for mostly no one, Sam included. Time to Melt reckons with the weight of our time, even when it sounds largely weightless. Inspired by John Coltrane’s mixture of grace and gravitas and Marvin Gaye’s uncanny ability to turn social issues into personal anthems, Sam strove to give these otherwise-beguiling instrumentals the thoughtfulness and depth these days demand.

With its rubbery bassline and sweeping strings, “Freezee Pops” unfurls like a Summer breeze. It reads, though, like poetic testimony on police brutality, an innocent kid’s life plundered for prison-system profits. And “Knock Knock” taps Sam’s memories of race-andclass violence in the small-town South and his subsequent reckoning with our crumbling American façade, where “we tell ourselves almost anything but the truth.” The song is ultimately a tribute to the perseverance of the vulnerable, who find community and joy in spite of the way centuries of miscreants try to deny it.

There are also songs of utter celebration on Time to Melt, paeans to whatever joy it is we find in life or love. Buttressed by bold baritone sax, lifted by exuberant trumpet, and washed in fluorescent guitars, “Easy to Love” is an exultant ode to finding a new paradise outside of the city, an idyllic setting where you can plant love and literally watch it bloom. “Lonely Days” blows in with a muted brooding, but it’s a feint for Sam’s sweet hymn to a blissful partnership of shared solitude, a true blessing for a year when so many have been alone. “Lonely days are gone,” he repeats, his rhythm shifting just enough in the middle of the sentence to tease dejection and surprise with delight. Sam is so content in the Catskills that the lovely but warped “Sunshine” finds him imagining how heartache must feel, as though it were only ever a hypothetical muse. He sublimates a sense of seasick sadness into a compulsively funky oddity.

At home now near the Ashokan Reservoir with their new rescue dog, Jan, Sam and Hannah mostly listen to music while they cook dinner. That’s the kind of record Sam wanted to make —an album of sounds so pleasant and compelling that you put it on and follow the slipstream. He succeeded; Time to Melt is a waking dream, its intoxicating rhythms and timbral webs as settling, even seductive as an evening glass of wine. But making dinner, or whatever your ritual at day’s end may be, isn’t some idle exercise. It’s a place to unpack the pain and wonder, the suffering and promise of the moment, to reflect on where you have been and what might come next. In 40 striking minutes, or the time it may take you to make that meal, Time to Melt sorts through a year of a life spent in rage and hope, lockdown and love.

TRACK LISTING

1. Freezee Pops
2. Dream Free
3. Time To Melt
4. Knock Knock
5. Arnold's Place
6. Sunshine
7. Never Know
8. Lonely Days
9. Easy To Love
10. 9.99 Free
11. Around It Goes

As it has been said: no matter where you go, there you are. With his new album You, Forever, Sam Evian, the project of New York-based musician, songwriter, and producer Sam Owens, is here to add some eternity to that sentiment.

“This is you, forever,” he says. “It’s about accepting that you are responsible for you, that you’re in charge of your actions. Everything you do affects others and yourself, so, no matter what you choose to do, be there and learn from it.”

It’s a mantra that powers self-starter Owens, a producer and sound engineer by trade who entered the scene with his debut Sam Evian full-length, Premium, in the fall of 2016. The notion takes on a dual meaning that is echoed across You,Forever.

“There’s a ton of romance on the record,” he says. “Maybe it’s all romance.”

You, Foreveris Owens’s first foray into a more soul-baring sensibility and places the artist directly in the sightlines and heartlines of his listeners. The album (as well as 2017’s “Need You,” a collaboration with the multi-hyphenate musician Chris Cohen) was written on the heels of his experience touring Premiumwith his band and was recorded across the latter half of last year. The tours—which included opening shows for bands like Whitney, Teenage Fanclub, Luna, Nick Hakim and Lucius—taught him much about feel and interaction. Further fueled by a desire to escape from the glow of screens and to embrace a sense of limitation, he quickly developed a new set of instrumental songs written for a band rather than just himself and recorded them on a Tascam four-track cassette recorder in his parents’ house in North Carolina.

“Just like most people, my recording studio day job had me staring at a computer eight hours a day,” he says. “I just needed to get away from the glowing rectangle. The only way to do that was to work on tape. The four-track is so limiting; you’re forced to get only the bones of the song down. You can’t do any overdubs, so it was fun to work on that with the experience of the live band behind me. And something about playing my family’s instruments in the garage where I grew up spurred a set of songs that became the new record.”

Inspired by these limiting techniques, Owens borrowed an eight-track reel-to-reel tape recorder from a friend, rented a house in upstate New York, and took his band – Brian Betancourt (bass), Austin Vaughn (drums), Adam Brisbin (guitar), and Hannah Cohen (backup vocals) – there to record the new album in July of 2017. Focusing on instrumental grooves and the vibe he had achieved on the original four-track recordings, Owens found the process so enlightening he decided to up the ante yet again by banning tuning pedals from the house.

“Tuning pedals make it so easy to sound good together, so when you eliminate them it takes everything back to the ’60s, which is when all my favorite records were born,” he says. “It makes everything more questionable, weird, and unruly in a really simple way.”

Dreamy album opener “IDGAF” explores the notion of embracing one’s passions and pursuing one’s goals no matter the impositions in their path. On one hand a subtle stand against the current political climate and on another a call to be responsible, Owens calls it a romantic song that embodies his act of self-mixing his record: “I had to put myself aside and let the music happen.”

“Health Machine” is a crunchy, slow-burning but deliberate stomper glowing with warm electric guitar noodling, saxophone wailing, and Owens’s reverb-laden lyrics that he says detail an abstract version of how he relates to his own physical form. “It’s about the unattainable health that I would like to imagine for myself on tour. The line ‘We slither out on a Tuesday feeling tired and hopeless’ is such a hilarious picture: four people in a minivan slithering out of Atlanta, Georgia, stopping at a CVS and getting a bunch of Zicam. Health is your job if you’re touring as a musician, although it’s a job I don’t do so well.”

“Country” is a fleet, nimble driving song written after Owens and his girlfriend (Hannah Cohen, who also sings throughout the album) took a cross-country road trip and encountered what they perceived to be a dust storm in rural Nevada. “For a hundred miles we didn’t see a person or even a tree, then all of a sudden this giant dust cloud appeared which turned out to be ten cowboys on horses lassoing cows. It was the most real thing I’ve ever seen.” In fact, Owens wrote every song on the album with the act of driving-while-listening in mind, and says many of the lyrics came together following that life-changing road trip—the only time he has ever driven across America without anyone waiting on him to show up for a soundcheck. But despite the allure of the transient life, his heart belongs to one place.

“The record is about romance, and about my love for living in New York and trying to separate myself from any idea I had previously of living in New York,” he says. “I’ve kind of designed my own world there.”

Whether behind the wheel in the dust bowls of America, navigating the bustle of his adopted home, playing festival stages with rock legends, or getting back to basics in his parents’ garage, no matter where Sam Evian goes, there he is…forever.

TRACK LISTING

1. IDGAF
2. Where Did You Go?
3. Health Machine
4. Anybody
5. Apple
6. Country
7. Next To You
8. Summer Day
9. Now I Feel It
10. You, Forever
11. Katie’s Rhodes

The long lost 1968 debut album by singer-songwriter, Scott Fagan, once tipped to be bigger than Elvis, is set for release on 9th February 2024 via Earth Recordings. ‘South Atlantic Blues’ will be reissued for the first time in its original artwork, with an iconic portrait of Fagan by famed rock photographer, Joel Brodsky, following a widely celebrated 2015 release.

Revisiting his mystical, mythical, and deeply soulful masterpiece, this psych-folk gem doffs a Tropicalia hat direct from downtown New York. “His songs embrace a broad sonic fantasia, swirling in ’60s New York R&B and ’40s jazz, as well as the Caribbean rhythms of calypso, meringue and Pachanga.” New York Times

Scott Fagan’s story is worthy of a movie in itself. A swinging hipster who landed in 60s Greenwich folk scene, escaping the abject poverty of his U.S. Virgin Islands upbringing, Fagan found himself mentored by the Brill Building’s Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and feted as the next big thing. “Forget Rodriguez, forget Searching for Sugar Man,” says Sharyn Felder, daughter of the late Doc Pomus, the legendary songwriter who signed Fagan to management in 1964. “Scott was so much more. He was cut from a different cloth.”

‘South Atlantic Blues’ is the perfect soundtrack to this tale, an epic song cycle wrapped around an impassioned love story, driven by Fagan’s dense, allusive lyrics, and production by Elmer Jared Gordon (Pearls Before Swine) and rich arrangements by Horace Ott (Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, The Shirelles). The Earth Recordings reissue coincides with a resurgence in activity for Fagan, with a new album in the works – the never-recorded soundtrack to ‘Soon’, the 1971 Broadway rock musical he co-wrote and starred in – and a documentary ‘Soon: the Story of Scott Fagan’ currently filming through Scissor Kick Films, from director Marah Strauch, writer Chris Campion (who rediscovered the singer-songwriter in 2015), and producer Eric Bruggeman.

TRACK LISTING

A1. In My Head
A2. Nickels And Dimes
A3. Crying
A4. The Carnival Is Ended
A5. South Atlantic Blues
B1. Nothing But Love
B2. Tenement Hall
B3. In Your Hands
B4. Crystal Ball
B5. Madam-moiselle

Scott Fagan’s debut album, ‘South Atlantic Blues,’ is a genuine lost classic - a mystical, mythical and deeply soulful masterpiece.

Recorded when Scott was just 21, virtually homeless and with pennies to his name, it was released in 1968 on Atco Records but remained obscure, confounded by a series of frustrating near-misses. From being mentored by Doc Pomus to being discovered by Jasper Johns, Scott’s incredible story and music unfolds on ‘South Atlantic Blues,’ remastered and reissued for the first time ever on CD and vinyl on Saint Cecilia Knows (the label that also released the acclaimed Mickey Newbury box set, ‘An American Trilogy) in association with Scott Fagan’s own lil’fish records.

Steeped in delicate psych, soul and resonant acoustic guitars “that stroke and stone you to the core” (Shindig). It’s an epic song cycle about Fagan’s hard-scrabble life in the Virgin Islands, where he was raised and lived until 19 before returning to his birthplace of New York City. A teenage prodigy, mentored and managed by songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Scott recorded early material for Columbia and Bert Berns’ BANG label before signing with Atco. In 1969, artist Jasper Johns discovered ‘South Atlantic Blues’ in a cut-out bin, fell in love with the record, and used it as the inspiration for three artworks, known as ‘Scott Fagan Record.’

The pieces are now housed in the permanent collections of MOMA, the Met and the Walker Art Center. Born on 52nd Street, Scott was the son of a sax player and singer who fraternized with jazz greats. That familial connection with music would come full circle when Fagan discovered he was the biological father of songwriter Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. They did not meet until the premiere of a documentary about Doc Pomus in 2013. A conversation between the two is included in the liner notes of this CD release. The initial pressing of the vinyl comes as a limited edition, hand-numbered, 180g vinyl with a reproduction of Jasper Johns’ 1970 lithograph, ‘Scott Fagan Record,’ as cover art, and includes a digital download.

The CD comes with extensive liner notes, rare photos, and a download of five bonus tracks—the original 1965 demo for Doc Pomus as well as a recently-discovered acetate, the only copy in existence of a previously-unknown Doc Pomus song, All For The Sake Of Love, that only Scott Fagan recorded. 

TRACK LISTING

1. In Your Head
2. Nickels And Dimes
3. Crying
4. The Carnival Is Ended
5. South Atlantic Blues
6. Nothing But Love
7. Tenement Hall
8. In Your Hands
9. Crystal Ball
10. Madame-Moiselle.

Bonus Tracks (download With CD Only) :
1. They Think She’s Crying Cause She’s Happy
2. When You’re Lonely And You’re Blue
3. Bonua
4. I’ve Been So Lonely For So Long
5. All For The Sake Of Love

Simone Felice is a founding member (lyricist, vocalist, drummer and guitarist) of internationally acclaimed, Catskill Mountain-based artists The Felice Brothers and The Duke & The King. He has toured and worked with the likes of The Band's Levon Helm, Conor Oberst & Bright Eyes, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Rick Rubin, The Avett Brothers, and Old Crow Medicine Show.

In 2010 Simone underwent emergency open-heart surgery to correct the slow, degenerative effects of a childhood fever. It was this close brush with death, coupled with the need to tell his own story, which prompted him to walk the solo artist's path. His new full-length album, Strangers, is a ten song collection recorded in the Catskills with guest artists The Felice Brothers, Leah Siegel, and Wesley Schultz & Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers. Here is an effort that truly captures Simone's rare gift as a poet, song-crafter and unique visionary.

Simone Felice has long dedicated his storied life to the arts, and perhaps his brushes with death during childhood as heard in the song “No Tomorrows” have proved an unlikely but powerful source of inspiration. All The Bright Coins is his latest, arguably greatest devotion to song and the power of the words within it. Yet, like all artists worth their salt, he claims not to have quite grasped what he’s been reaching for.

There had been no grand plans to write this new album. Simone was happy with his lot and becoming increasingly more successful as a frontline record producer and songwriter (The Lumineers, Bat For Lashes, Jade Bird, Matt Maeson f/ Lana Del Rey, and indeed, The Felice Brothers) but, he muses, sometimes the lure and pull of penning his own material becomes too strong to resist, most closely referenced in the track “Puppet” f/ Four Tet. “Year Around The Sun”, written on New Year’s morning in 2021, after a year of endless lockdowns and constant fear and confusion, is a recalibration of what’s real and what’s important.

With help from friends, music, laughter & time, we’ll find a rebirth. I began writing All The Bright Coins in 2019,” says Felice. “It had been several years since I had written anything of my own, as I’d felt called to produce records and write with other artists I love. Then one rainy morning I wrote ‘Puppet,’ a mainly autobiographical tune about the dark, empty, and farcical side of being an underground touring troubadour most of my adult life.

Part of me felt as though perhaps this should, and would, be the last Simone Felice song I’d ever put out, ‘Puppet stand, Puppet bow,’ a final curtain call. But then a few months later I wrote ‘Prisoner,’ and then‘ Bare Trees.’ The ‘Heat’ (that’s what myself and a few close friends call it: that sweet, painful, ungovernable whisper) was with me once again... All The Bright Coins is a richly rewarding and inspired sound, that makes a personal connection with the listener. It’s built squarely on a bedrock of emotion, utilizing an acoustic guitar, and occasionally a piano to back the distinctive voice. It’s a record that requires attention, a headphones record.

TRACK LISTING

1. Year Around The Sun
2. Moonlight Promises
3. The World's Fair Simone Felice Feat. Four Tet
4. Puppet Simone Felice Feat. Four Tet
5. 90s
6. No Tomorrows
7. All The Kings Of The Earth

‘A Bag Of Eyes’ is Fogarty’s third album - a wholly different sonic prospect to 2017’s much-lauded ‘The Curious Hand’. Weary of the guitar, and seeking something darker than its predecessor, he chose to lean more heavily on synths and drum machines and, additionally, to self-produce. “It was about creating and exploring new sound worlds,” Fogarty says. “Experimenting with new ways of incorporating electronics into the songwriting process, and in some cases dispensing with conventional songwriting processes altogether.”

On ‘A Bag OF Eyes’ there is industrial judder, slacker-fuzz guitar, a cacophony of saxophones. On one track, ring-modulated drums kick in with oscillating fury. Another moves from 90s shit-hole grunge venue to sleazy jazz joint in four minutes. Whilst on a third a synth is deployed, with the express purpose of sawing the listener’s ears in half, Fogarty attests. However, beneath them all lie fragments of melody, image, drone; a flicker of banjo, an electronic pulse. “I like to purposely make music that clashes with the more traditional stuff that I do,” he says.

Fogarty’s celebrated storytelling is at home in this new sound world, rambling between the fantastical and the mundane: nuns playing volleyball, horses on clifftops, lives glimpsed through rear windows. There are echoes of his own past, the loss of dear friends. Ireland, London and two views of San Francisco, 15 years apart. It is bus stops, house fires and Jimmy Stewart. ‘A Bag Of Eyes’ was recorded across London, Kent and East Sussex and features Fogarty’s partner Emma Smith, Meilyr Jones, long-time collaborators Leo Abrahams, Aram Zarikian and John Fogarty, as well as someone slightly more unexpected, an audience member recorded live at one of Seamus’ gigs in Dublin. If there is a restlessness to these songs it is there not only in their geographical sweep, their mingling of memory and nostalgia, but also in their sense of invention: audience anecdotes, a trad ballad cover, electronic fury, dirty guitar solos, all pressed fiercely together into something that feels startling and new and explorative. 

TRACK LISTING

Shapes
Old Suit
Jimmy Stewart
Wake Up Felix
Bus Shelter Blues
Nuns
Ghosts
Horse
Interlude
Johnny K
San Francisco
My Boy Willie

"Down The Hillside" is the debut solo album by Nine Black Alps' Sam Forrest. In spring 2008 Sam took time off to write and record a semi-acoustic album in his house in York, England. With the exception of backing vocals courtesy of singer-songwriter Hayley Hutchinson and drums by Alan Leach, all of the instruments were played and recorded by Sam which lend the album a stripped-back lo-fi atmosphere a world away from the hard rock sounds of Nine Black Alps.

After an absence of 13 years Stephen Fretwell has announced news of his long-awaited third album, Busy Guy, released via Speedy Wunderground. Described by Fretwell as “a song cycle of sorts,” the album examines the seasons of a life, exploring fatherhood, grief and rebirth, with Fretwell’s trademark eloquence and wit.

Busy Guy was produced by Fretwell’s close friend and Speedy Wunderground label boss, Dan Carey. They recorded the whole thing one hot July afternoon in just two hours. “I was so fired up, I just rattled off the songs,” Fretwell says. “I assumed it was the run-through, but Dan said he thought we’d got it.” The next day, Carey assembled “a palate of sound” involving keyboards and an electric guitar. “Dan said, ‘I’m just going to react to the songs over the next few hours’, and that’s the finished record, besides some cello.” The album title was also Carey’s idea. Fretwell explains: “Years ago, Dan asked why I always carried a copy of The Guardian, a notebook and a pen when all I did was go to the pub. I said: if you go to the pub at 11am with a newspaper, a notebook and pen, you look like a busy guy rather than a pisshead. It became a joke between us. The joke too is that I didn’t do any music for years.”

The album was recorded at Dean Street Studios in Soho, not far from where Fretwell now lives, and London looms large on the record, in titles like ‘Oval’ and ‘Embankment’: stops on the Tube, and urban images shimmer as Fretwell captures a city full of pride and secrets. He wrote most of the lyrics for Busy Guy sitting in the British Library, “taking the songs to pieces and reassembling them, refining the words, thinking about the stories.”

And what stories. From the album’s opener, ‘The Goshawk and the Gull’, a wintery lament shot through with foreboding, the album moves through characters and scenes, from shorelines to collapsing buildings, looping in its callbacks with panache. Fretwell is a seasoned craftsman, and this is an album that sneaks up on you; that hunts you in the listen. The themes of the record are heavyweight – the breakdown of a relationship, lost love, lost family, guilt, yearning – but there is boldness in the delivery that provides uplift to the emotional heft. Several of the songs have colours for their titles: ‘Orange’, ‘Green’, ‘Pink’, ‘Copper’. They hit like a series of fever dreams.

There are moments of visceral delight, of ripeness and fullness in nature – blood, milk and honey, peaches and almonds – all set against the backdrop of the slow-burn of long-term love. Fretwell is a true poet with his imagery – taking us on a tour of the universe as he tries to conflate the experience of loss and love on a major scale, yet never wanting to assume grandeur, always dancing that fine line between statement and question. He takes us right up into the cosmos, to “moon craters” and “crazed constellations” (‘Green’), to religion’s saints and angels, and right back slap-down down to earth again – in the grotesque detail of horseflies twitching in last night’s wine glasses, and the fridge-cold lagers the narrator of ‘Pink’ has brought for the beach: a peace offering, but also an opt-out.

Summer features heavily on the record, but also not-summer, a desire for summer, and, ultimately, a resignation to time passing, to the approach of spring. ‘Almond’ features Spanish guitar flares – hints of heat, of holidays past. The coast also plays a big part, no doubt due to it being the setting for much of Fretwell’s recent life in Brighton, and seabirds as well as sea animals duck and dive through the lyrics, offering levity in the album’s darker moments. There are wry takes on urban life, on white privilege, on satisfied songbirds, and never quite settling into middle-class family life.

These relaxed tones, combined with the bright energy of ‘Copper’ break into the harder beats of ‘Almond’, where “the sun tries, but it can’t get through” and summer starts to lose all its shine and expression itself seems under threat. “A love song is croaking,” he sings. ‘Almond’ tells the story of a relationship, from meet-cute to heartbreak, packed in a bittersweet little nutshell. “‘Almond’ dips in and out of a relationship I had over 20 years, from fumbling around in a doorway to having a child,” says Fretwell. Words weave and tangle in the album’s latter songs, a mind and life unravelling, a descent to the gut-punch moment, spelled out in the album’s final song, ‘Green’.

But it’s not an ending so much as the beginning of the cycle all over again. While Busy Guy acknowledges tragedy, it is also punctuated with hope. The narrator of ‘Embankment’ might beg for his body to be dragged from the water, but his heart is still beating. Busy Guy is a record that dips into darkness but ultimately shines in its own light. A record that symbolises a waking up. A fresh start. A newness that bears the weight of the past but uses it to great effect.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's a certain indescribable organic feel to the way 'Busy Guy' is produced, it's not that the instrumentation isn't beautifully recorded (it is) or that the sounds don't fit together perfectly (they absolutely do), but the gorgeous intimacy of the pieces and the unhurried stagger to every piece on show gives it the languid, swooning feel of a folk record with the melodic appeal of classic rock. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Goshawk And The Gull
2. Remember
3. Embankment
4. Oval
5. The Long Water
6. Orange
7. Pink
8. Copper
9. Almond
10. Green

After decades in the making Finders Keepers Records proudly present us with the first-ever pressing of Serge Gainsbourg’s most elusive and coveted soundtrack studio recordings - co-written, arranged and orchestrated by the genius Jean-Claude Vannier (‘Histoire De Melody Nelson’) during what many consider to be the dynamic duo’s most definitive creative period.
Believed to have been lost in a studio fire by Gainsbourg enthusiasts for over forty years (a myth that also shrouds Morricone’s lost ‘Danger Diabolik’ soundtrack) the misplaced master-tapes for the drug-fuelled/Mai 68 cash-in/road-movie ‘Les Chemins De Katmandou’ have been widely considered the final audio jigsaw piece in an immaculate discography/filmography thus earning this soundtrack bone-fide Holy Grail status amongst the most avid disc detectives.
Featuring the original crack team of Paris based players now recognised as French library music royalty, this LP epitomises the inimitable musical direction and expert psychedelic pop musicianship that graced classic Gainsbourg/Vannier soundtracks like ‘La Horse’, ‘Cannabis’ and ‘Sex Shop’. Laying the stylistic, futureproof foundations for subsequent decades of forward-thinking Gallic funk mastery.
Comprising Vannier’s signature recipe of thick plucked bass lines, close-mic’d drums, biting Clavinet and Eastern influenced strings and percussion (and a sprinkling of subtle traditional French instrumentation) the soundtrack to ‘Les Chemins De Katmandou’ (aka ‘The Road To Katmandu’ or ‘The Pleasure Pit’) captures Vannier and Gainsbourg in the first year of their creative partnership capturing their unique embryonic energy.
This previously lost full soundtrack score now exists on vinyl for the first time ever as an infinitely important milestone in the early development of the duo who would shape the sound of French pop music for years to come.

TRACK LISTING

Les Chemins De Katmandou (Titles)
The Pleasure Pit
Colin-Maillard
Le Roi Des Phlébotomes
Flower Child
Cache Cache
Opium Den
Overdose
Oliver
Fallen Rainbow
Colin-Maillard (Vox)
Les Chemins De Katmandou

In 1964 and 1966, when Serge Gainsbourg participated in the two public recordings at the “Maison de la Radio”, he was undoubtedly the outstanding protagonist of the evening. It was at this moment that his, according to his own words, “blue period” came to an end. This period was characterized by left-bank songs, tinged with notes of jazz and exotic rhythms.

Gainsbourg remains the master of chiaroscuro, double meaning and a true poet with caustic irony.

In these eight moving songs, Gainsbourg adopts the figure of the disappointed lover as well as the one of the cynical disillusioned man, accompanied by notes of piano or by a guitar and a double-bass. These original recordings perfectly summarize the first decade of his career.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Le Rock De Nerval
A2. La Recette De L’amour Fou
A3. Les Goémons
A4. La Javanaise
B1. Le Talkie Walkie
B2. Elaeudanla Téïtéïa
B3. Intoxicated Man
B4. Ces Petits Riens

On March 2, 1991 Serge Gainsbourg bowed out and left France orphaned by one of the most important singer-songwriters of French song. Thirty years later, his songs are still with us, proof of their quality. Indeed, beyond the many successes that have marked a career spanning more than thirty years, Gainsbourg's repertoire is abundantly rich.

Always at the forefront of innovation, he has been able to adapt his delicate and classical writing with the most modern musical styles: jazz, reggae, funk ... without ever losing his eloquence or his soul.

This 2LP Set sends us back and shows how Serge Gainsbourg was an emblematic and major figure.

TRACK LISTING

LP 1
1.L'eau à La Bouche - BOF "L'eau à La Bouche
2.Baudelaire
3.La Javanaise
4.Elaeudanla Téitéia
5.New York USA
6.Couleur Café
7.Qui Est "In", Qui Est "Out"
8.Docteur Jekyll Et Monsieur Hyde
9.Comic Strip
10.Chatterton
11.Bonnie And Clyde (with Brigitte Bardot)
12.Initials B.B.
13.Ford Mustang
14.Requiem Pour Un C... - BOF "Le Pacha"
 
LP 2
1.Je T'aime Moi Non Plus (with Jane Birkin)
2.L'anamour
3.69 Année érotique (with Jane Birkin)
4.Sous Le Soleil Exactement
5.ElisaBOFL'horizon  
6.Ballade De Melody Nelson (with Jane Birkin)
7.L'hôtel Particulier - BOF "Melody Nelson
8.La Décadance - Bof Sex-Shop (with Jane Birkin)
9.Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais
10.Comme Un Boomerang
11.Ma Lou Marilou
12.Aux Armes Et Caetera
13.Lola Rastaquouère 

Often cited as the masterwork of French icon and national treasure Serge Gainsbourg, Histoire De Melody Nelson features actress, amour, and inspiration Jane Birkin, arranger/conductor and co-conspirator Jean-Claude Vannier (L’Enfant Assassins Des Mouches), and a tight,hand-picked crew of top shelf U.K. session musicians, including Big Jim Sullivan, Vic Flick, Brian Odgers, and Dougie Wright. Originally released in 1971, this is an essential album for the discerning music lover.

Our initial reissue marked the first time that Histoire De Melody Nelson was ever made available domestically in the U.S., now available in two brand new très chic color variants. Dispelling countless myths, hearsay, and rumors surrounding Nelson, New York-based writer Andy Beta contributes a stylish essay for your edification, while the maestro himself chimes in with a period Q&A interview from France’s Rock N Folk Magazine, originally published in June 1971.

TRACK LISTING

Melody
Ballade De Melody Nelson
Valse De Melody
Ah ! Melody
L'hôtel Particulier
En Melody
Cargo Culte

50th anniversary Melody Nelson's story holds a very special place in Serge Gainsbourg's discography. In the aftermath of the global success of Je t'aime moi non plus Serge Gainsbourg, inspired by his new partner, Jane Birkin, decided "to get down to business." With the collaboration of a very young musician, Jean-Claude Vannier, he signs an album hailed as one of the most remarkable successes of orchestral pop around the world. 

TRACK LISTING

Melody
Ballade De Melody Nelson
Valse De Melody
Ah Melody
L'hotel Particulier
En Melody
Cargo Culte

Spread over 3 CDs, this collection of 59 tracks, consists of a selection of Gainsbourg tracks (including many new and exclusive versions), interpretations of songs from other performers and a volume dedicated to the music of films is the audio complement of 450 pages of the Gainsbook.

The result of more than twenty years of investigation and sixty interviews bringing together Serge Gainsbourg's historical arrangers, sound engineers and session musicians, this book sheds new light on his phenomenal repertoire.

Also available as a 10 track LP.

In 2010, the French edition of Rolling Stone magazine named this album the 28th greatest French rock album...considered as "the other" masterpiece of Serge Gainsbourg's discography, alongside “Histoire de Melody Nelson”, “L'Homme à tête de chou” – a concept album about a man in his forties falling in love with a rather free-minded shampoo girl - had not yet revealed all its secrets – until now! Almost 45 years after its release, the rediscovery of the multitrack tapes recorded in London in the summer of 1976 confirms that behind Gainsbourg's virtuoso talk-over was an extraordinary musical edifice. The new mix for this 2023 release rebalances the vocal and instrumental parts while retaining its original intent. 

TRACK LISTING

mix 2023
L’homme à La Tête De Chou
Chez Max Coiffeur Pour Hommes
Marilou Reggae
Transit à Marilou
Flash Forward
Aéroplanes
Ma Lou Marilou
Premiers Symptômes
Variations Sur Marilou
Meurtre à L’extincteur
Marilou Sous La Neige
Lunatic Asylum

instrumental Versions (only On Double Lp Edition)
L’homme à La Tête De Chou
Chez Max Coiffeur Pour Hommes
Marilou Reggae
Transit à Marilou
Flash Forward
Aéroplanes
Ma Lou Marilou
Premiers Symptômes
Variations Sur Marilou
Meurtre à L’extincteur
Marilou Sous La Neige
Lunatic Asylum
Transit à Marilou = Alternative
Ma Lou Marilou Alternative
Meurtre à L’extincteur -alternative
Lunatic Asylum -alternative
Variations Sur Marilou - Alternative

Includes his duet with Charlotte Gainsbourg…

At last, 12 years after his death, a proper retrospective of France's greatest export! His recording career spanned four decades, taking in everything from jazz to rock to reggae, but it's probably for his orchestral easy listening and low-slung cinematic funk that he's best loved round thse Northern Quarter parts. Everyone from Air to David Holmes and Andy Votel are hugely influenced by his sound. If all you know is "Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus", then prepare to have your life enriched with the delights of "Bonnie & Clyde", "Requiem Pour Un C", "Ballade De Melody Nelson" etc. 23 tracks in all, on both vinyl and CD.

Introducing the much anticipated 7'' vinyl featuring two standout tracks from Sami Galbi. Face A is "Dakchi Hani," a poignant post-breakup anthem blending raï influences with contemporary rhythms, offering a humorous take on navigating emotions. Face B showcases "Rruina," a powerful follow-up track that delves deeper into darker, club-oriented sounds, pushing the boundaries of Swiss-Moroccan raï-chaabi fusion. Seamlessly transitioning from the raw synths and bouncing rhythms of "Dakchi Hani" to the tension-filled atmosphere of "Rruina," this vinyl promises a captivating journey through Sami Galbi's musical evolution. With each track tailored for the dancefloors, this vinyl release is poised to explode with energy wherever it goes.

TRACK LISTING

A. Dakchi Hani
B. Rruina

While the 1953 Bud Shank/Laurindo Almeida recordings were the precursors of the bossa nova-jazz fusion, the 1962 Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd LP "Jazz Samba" , produced by Creed Taylor, started an international craze for bossa nova and is, universally, considered a true classic

Producers were quick to exploit the Bossa Nova craze in the first half of the '60s and many famous jazzmen at that time recorded albums that were, wholly or partially, made up of songs from the genre. Though the craze may have waned a little since those early years, bossa nova remains a vehicle of inspiration for many of today's musicians.

TRACK LISTING

Desafinado
Samba Dees Days
O Pato (The Duck)
Samba Triste
O Pato (The Duck) [Charlie Byrd Version]
Samba De Uma Nota So (One Note Samba)
E Luxo So
Baia
Samba De Uma Nota So (One Note Samba) [Big Band Version]

New release on the excellent Johnson Family records. Stef recorded this at Broken Dog's studio, who are also the backing band. Stef is formely Of Howth Castle, the Thurston Moore approved folk/psych outfit and Franti, the Italian 'Crass'. Sounding like Broken Dog (obviously ) /Tram with the Italian Ryan Adam's singing. Ltd. edition clear vinyl, in hand stamped sleeves.

“Home” is a tough thing to pinpoint for someone who’s constantly in motion. Scout Gillett knows this well, but since relocating from Kansas City in 2017, she’s found one in Brooklyn’s DIY scene, playing in multiple live bands and even starting her own booking company to organize local shows. Her intrepid nature results from a childhood spent running barefoot through rural Missouri and coming of age in Kansas City’s punk scene. Her debut solo album no roof no floor is a bold and spirited yet warm, intimate meditation on trust, surrender, and what makes a home.

Following the sudden overdose of a lover in 2018 and the onset of the 2020 quarantine, Scout returned to Missouri in search of reprieve. Instead, she was dismayed to find that her hometown was suffering; friends and family members were caught in the grips of drug and alcohol addiction. Overcome by grief and helplessness, she retreated inward, channeling her fears and frustrations, as she always had, into songwriting. The resulting songs were more vulnerable than any of her prior work, and it was a while before the notion of sharing them even occurred to her. Then Nick Kinsey, the album’s producer, called from his recording studio The Chicken Shack in Stanfordville, New York to tell Scout that his friends Ellen Kempner (Palehound) and David Lizmi (MS MR) had relocated upstate, and were interested in working on an album with her.

Recorded in a big wooden barn with the doors wide open, there’s a sense of spaciousness on no roof no floor befitting its title. On some songs, there are even audible cricket chirps. The arrangements, too—which feature contributions from Kempner, Lizmi, and Kevin Copeland (The Big Net)—reflect Scout’s rural roots and her indie spirit; a fusion of upbeat, guitar-driven melodies and folk/country instrumentation like pedal steel, harmonica, and tenor banjo. All of these elements are underpinned by Scout’s signature soaring, velvet vocals and openhearted lyricism. She arrives at her thesis on the haunting six-minute centerpiece “hush, stay quiet”: “you can only save yourself,” she muses over a resolute guitar. We can’t always know what to expect, even in a place we’ve been before. With a little trust, though, we can find a safe place within. No roof required.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lonesome Dove
2. Slow Dancin’
3. No Roof No Floor
4. 444 Marcy Ave
5. Signal
6. Hush, Stay Quiet
7. Mother Of Myself
8. Strangers In Silence
9. Western Eyes
10. Crooked

Glasgow's Esk follows up their album from Jim Coulter with a new long player from Scott Gordon. Highly recommended for lovers of all things drone n' ambient and the second crushingly epic album to be released this week, alongside the new Gas LP. A composition of treatments for adapted piano harp and electric guitar it sees the source material taken to the very farthest extreme of its original origin, yet still somehow maintains its biotic nature despite the onslaught of DSP.

'In 2016, I managed to salvage a piano that belonged to my brother and had spent four years sitting in a garage. Getting it home nearly killed my van. The first objective was to strip the harp and mount surface transducers to it with the hope of being able to excite the strings and ultimately explore a tuneable sympathetic reverb. After a lot of trial and error, workable results were produced which became the foundations for "Relief Tours". The album was recorded over six months or so with tracks typically centering around one or two objects - some kind of treatment for the piano and improvisations on electric guitar. Experimenting with the objects is never something I’ve been particularly scientific about by any means, nothing more than the basic sequence of continuing to develop the best results that had emerged from the previous experiment. Concepts were typically very simple e.g. getting percussive overtones from the piano strings. My usual approach is to sketch some possible methods then just begin, so in this case it was tugging winds of horse hair and then settling on an angle of about 30°. This produced the deep bell like sound that can be heard on "Benthic Salvage".

'Certain sounds would often dictate the course of things. For example, the juddering of a rubber ball being dragged down a smooth surface would, in turn, result in trying to recreate the same percussive movement on the piano harp with a car spring and some big magnets, which then went on to provoke something else and so on. The results would influence the next decision and eventually a track would begin to take shape. Each track hosts a small group of related ideas like this with the tonal work often being the last stage - improvised reactions to the textural parts.

'The physicality and movement of the sounds, and the instrument-like properties that came from experimenting with objects, both sonically and tangibly, were really the driving force behind the record.' - Scott Gordon

TRACK LISTING

A1. Benthic Salvage
A2. Shake Mountain Chain
A3. Arid Scutter
A4. Wetland Forms
B1. Sea Weather
B2. Into Tropic
B3. Throats
B4. Island Dissolve

The debut release from Sofia Grant delves into the topic of environmentalism, a subject close to her heart and a topic foremost in the minds of many. With smoky vocals and accompanied by spectacular musicianship from the likes of Poppy Daniels, Ernesto Marichales, Lorenz Osengor Okello, Sofia has created a five track EP that introduces a noteworthy talent to the Jazz re:freshed catalogue.

In keeping with her values, Sofia specifically requested that the physical format be pressed on eco-friendly vinyl which produces a uniquely coloured product that utilises recycled materials and offsets carbon emissions created in its manufacture.

TRACK LISTING

1. Walk On Water
2. Extinction
3. Circular Motion
4. Ochre
5. Storm

“How does a questing psychedelic guitarist transform themselves into classic singer-songwriter? By compromising, in many cases. Brooklyn’s Steve Gunn, however, is managing the transition with uncanny elegance.” - Uncut

Steve Gunn’s music has always embraced expanse and movement, springing from the simple and profound relationship between humans and their environment. ‘Eyes On The Lines’, his Matador debut and follow-up to the pastoral and highly acclaimed ‘Way Out Weather’, is Gunn’s most explicit ode to the blissful uncertainty of adventure yet.

Accompanied by a full band - Nathan Bowles (drums, banjo, organ), Hans Chew (wurlitzer), James Elkington (guitar, lap steel, dobro), Mary Lattimore (harp), Jason Meagher (bass, guitar, flute), Paul Sukeena (guitar), Justin Tripp (bass, keyboards), John Truscinski (drums) - ‘Eyes On The Lines’ presents Gunn embracing his urban surroundings through a series of songs that showcase his extraordinary ability to match inventive hooks to deftly constructed melodies full of personality.

Gunn’s songwriting on ‘Eyes On The Lines’ tells vibrant and evocative tales through a series of both imagined and real life characters and moments but throughout he is more narrator than diarist.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Beautiful rocking, interwoven guitar melodies make this Gunn's most direct record yet, even sounding like the more melodic side of Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo on a few numbers.

Barry says: Melodic country-tinged folk might not necessarily be something you would associate with former psych-rock great Steve Gunn, but that is exactly he has managed to write, and with great effect. This is absorbing and interesting, full of catchy melodies and imbued with a plethora of influence, from both sides of the pond. Intricate and comforting. Brilliant.

In a rare break from touring, Steve Gunn and the NPR Music crew ventured to New York’s abandoned Rockaway Branch in Forest Park for a special, solo “Field Recording.” A fitting atmosphere for Gunn’s music and a perfect reminder of the depth of Eyes On The Lines, Gunn played “Full Moon Tide,” and the album’s closing numbers, “Night Wander” and “Ark.”

Steve Gunn & the Outliners just returned from an incredible European run. And to book end that tour, on Black Friday Record Store Day (November 25th), Gunn will release his “Ancient Jules” 12,” which features non-album cuts “The Handshake” and “The Soloist.” 

Acclaimed songwriter and Piccadilly favourite, Steve Gunn returns this summer with the follow up to his wonderful 2019 album  "The Unseen Inbetween".

Recorded in Los Angeles with Grammy Award winning producer and engineer Rob Schnapf, Gunn sought to create an album that would push his melodic and compositional sensibilities to thrilling new heights. The resulting tracks find Gunn pushing his cosmic Americana to exciting new dimensions encompassing elements of prog, jazz, and contemporary classical music.

The album also features contributions from Mary Lattimore, Juliana Barwick, Bridget St. John and Jeff Parker.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: We all loved The Unseen Inbetween in the shop, and 'Other You' i'm sure will go down just as well. It's quintessentially Gunn, with soaring melodies and perfectly poised guitar sitting wonderfully in the mix beneath Steve's unmistakeable husky vocals. A gorgous work once again from one of the greatest in the 'biz.

TRACK LISTING

Other You
Fulton
Morning River
Good Wind
Circuit Rider
On The Way
Protection
The Painter
Reflection
Sugar Kiss
Ever Feel That Way

FOR A LIMITED PERIOD ONLY BOTH ALL FORMATS INCLUDE A FREE CD BONUS DISC, 'ACOUSTIC UNSEEN' (TRACKLISTING BELOW).

For over a decade, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gunn has been one the American music’s most pivotal figures-conjuring immersive and psychedelic sonic landscapes both live and on record, releasing revered solo albums ranking high on in-the-know end of year lists, alongside exploratory collaborations with artists as diverse as Mike Cooper, Kurt Vile, and Michael Chapman (whose most recent studio album he produced). Gunn is known for telling other people's stories, but on his breakthrough fourth album, The Unseen In Between, he explores his own emotional landscapes with his most complex, fully realized songs to date. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Steve Gunn’s talents as a guitarist are well known, whether it be the American primitive finger picking style of his early work, as a member of Kurt Vile’s Violators or from any number of collaborations over the years, but on this album it’s as much about the songs as the guitar. His songwriting conjures vivid images while at the same time leaving space for your imagination to fill the gaps. This is beautifully exemplified on “Vagabond” on which he duets with Espers’ Meg Baird and “Stonehurst Cowboy” a tribute to his father and his generation who grew up in the shadow of Vietnam. And the guitars! Did I mention the guitars? Whether it’s the gentle acoustics of “New Moon” or the hypnotic looping riffs of “New Familiar” and “Morning Is Mended”, they are truly mesmerizing. A wonderfully understated record that’s already worked its way into my all time favourites.

TRACK LISTING

New Moon
Vagabond
Chance
Stonehurst Cowboy
Luciano
New Familiar
Lightning Field
Morning Is Mended
Paranoid

'ACOUSTIC UNSEEN' BONUS DISC:
1. New Moon
2. Vagabond
3. Chance
4. Luciano
5. New Familiar
6. Lightining Field
7. Paranoid

'Way Out Weather' completes Steve Gunn's satisfying transformation into a mature songwriter, singer and bandleader of subtlety and authority. The critically acclaimed Time Off (2013), his first full-band album highlighting his vocals represented the culmination of Steve's steady 15 year migration from the fringes of the guitar avant garde, where he is regarded as a prodigy, and towards his especial style of more traditionally informed songcraft.

"A voice as rich and warm as Tim Buckley or a young Van Morrison" - The Wire.

"His tunes unfurl like bales of wire rolling down country roads" - Uncut.

An enthusiastic and generous collaborator - recently he has partnered with Kurt Vile, Michael Chapman, Mike Cooper, The Black Twig Pickers, Cian Nugent - Gunn's WOW band comprised longtime musical brothers Jason Meagher (bass, drones, engineering), Justin Tripp (bass, guitars, keys, production), and John Truscinski (drums), in addition to newcomers Nathan Bowles (drums, pianos, keys: Black Twig Pickers, Pelt); James Elkiington (guitar, lap steel, dobro: Freakwater, Jeff Tweedy); Mary Lattimore (harp, keys: Thurston Moore, Kurt Vile); and Jimmy Sei Tang (synths, electronics: Psychic Ills, Rhyton).

A radical widescreen evolution, 'Way Out Weather' is Steve's career defining statement to date.

Graceful compositions flow throughout. Steve Hauschildt’s fourth release for kranky following his Where All Is Fled full length from late summer 2015.

The songs fluctuate from the serene calm of album opener Horizon of Appearances, to the pulsing hypnosis of Ketracel, and on to searing grandeur of album closer Die in Fascination, Throughout, Steve remains restrained and in complete control of his sound.

Strands is a song cycle that is about cosmogony and creation/destruction myths. The title alludes to the structural constitution of ropes as I wanted to approach the compositions so that they consisted of strands and fibers which form a unified whole. This was so the songs could have the appearance of being either taut or slack without being fundamentally locked to a grid. So the sounds/tones have a certain malleability to them and sound like they're bending through time. It's also grittier and more distorted than my previous albums.

I wanted to try and capture that moment in nature and society where life slowly reemerges through desolation, so it has a layer of optimism looming underneath. The music represents this by seemingly decaying at times but then reforms and morphs in a fluid way back to its original state. I was also inspired by the movement of rivers, particularly their transformative aspect and how they're in a state of flux and change, in particular the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland where I live, which notoriously caught on fire thirteen times because of industrial pollution in the 1960s and before. I was very interested in the dichotomy of oil and water and the resulting, unnatural symptoms of human industry. It's a very personal record for me as it is a reflection of my hometown where I grew up and where it was mostly recorded.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Where 'Where all Is Fled' was nuanced, but rife with confident and optimistic moments, 'Strands' is much more tilted towards the uneasy. Slightly syncopated melodies and growing pads unsettle but never become jarring, merely lending an equally proficient counterfoil to the majority of his already startling oeuvre.

TRACK LISTING

1. Horizon Of Appearances
2. Same River Twice
3. A False Seeming
4. Ketracel
5. Time We Have
6. Strands
7. Transience Of Earthly Joys
8. Die In Fascination

Shay Hazan radiates with musical diversity on 'Wusul وصول', His second solo album on Batov Records. Acclaimed Tel Aviv bassist, band leader, composer and producer, Shay Hazan emerges into the limelight with his highly anticipated second solo album, 'Wusul وصول'. This groundbreaking musical odyssey artfully melds the enchanting sounds of Gnawa music, spiritual jazz, hip hop grooves, and electronic production, with a rich tapestry of Middle Eastern and African influences.

Hazan's debut solo album for Batov Records, 'Reclusive Ritual,' unveiled a fresh musical realm. It introduced the guimbri, a three-stringed camel-skin-covered bass plucked lute used by the Gnawa people of Morocco, to a landscape of jazzy horns, synths, and laid-back hip-hop beats.

The album garnered support on BBC 6 Radio Music and earned Hazan a mix on the Huey Show. With over two four- 'لوصو star reviews, Songlines magazine dubbed it "groovy," while Mojo magazine described it as "hypnotic." 'Wusul builds on this legacy, offering a broader sonic palette, enhanced organic instrumentation, a lighter atmosphere, and elevated production values.

The album's enigmatic title, 'Wusul' (Arabic for 'arrival'), celebrates the expected birth of Hazan’s first born child, expected to arrive around the same time as this album. Fitting, given that the latter is the result of a transformative phase in Hazan's career, with many of the album’s songs evolving and taking shape during live performances. Most notably, a majority of the musicians featured on 'Wusul لوصو' are integral members of Hazan's live band, bringing a synergy and connection to the music that is palpable.

Standout track, “Sunflowers”, featuring the exceptional Nitai Hershkovits on keys, showcases Hazan's prowess on guimbri, guitar, percussions, and synths. This mesmerising composition, recorded by Hazan himself, seamlessly weaves together a diverse array of musical elements, resulting in an uplifting and danceable masterpiece.

On “A Walk In Dir El-Assad”, Hazan invites listeners with him to the small Arabic village of El-Assad, where at night the air is full of sounds of music emanating from multiple weddings. Over a cacophony of percussion, live drums from Shahar Haziza, and Hazan’s earthy guimbri-led basslines and gritty guitar, Eyal Netzer and tenor sax and Roy Zuzovsky trade solos and harmonise over the melody.

Delivering one of the heaviest grooves on the album, “Vibe jadid” commences with the distinctive percussive sound of krakebs, large iron castanet-like musical instruments, primarily known for supplying the rhythmic aspect of Moroccan Gnawa music, before the earthy guimbri bassline hits, accompanied by a half time hip-hop-like kick drum and clap. Triumphant horns ring out the anthemic melody, offset by otherworldly synths.

Shay Hazan's creative process reveals a cross-cultural narrative influenced by his extensive travels, from Central America to Japan, where he encountered the rich tradition of Gnawa musicians in Tel Aviv. The album includes a fascinating tune named “Shimo Kitazawa”, inspired by a Tokyo neighbourhood, as well as other tracks infused with the global vibes that have touched his musical soul. Dedicated compositions like “Dew” and 'Yooltz” pay homage to the friends and musicians who helped shape this album. Opener “Dew” is a nod to trumpeter Tal Avraham, who contributes a hypnotising solo. “Yooltz” is a loving tribute to tenor saxophonist Eyal Netzer, who contributes a soulful solo to the song, adding a distinctive layer of brilliance to the album. The Afrobeat leaning “Oladipo”, on the other hand, is dedicated to the late great drummer, musical director of Fela Kuti's band legendary Africa '70, and pioneer of the sound, Tony Allen.

Hazan utilises synths to create an eerie atmosphere on “Street Souls”, inspired by the characters who frequently inhabit the streets around Hazan's studio, sharing insightful comments from time-to-time. The slim wall of separation, provided by his machines and studio walls, from the junkies and prostitutes outside is emblematic of the slim divide between his privileged existence and theirs. This urban tension continues on album closer “Riff Raff”, taps into the tumultuous undercurrents of social movements and demonstrations, injecting a sense of urgency into the album's diverse tapestry, with its jolting groove. Shay Hazan's journey continues as he embarks on a series of international performances, including the Jazz Jantar Festival in Dansk, Poland, and the Tel Aviv Jazz

Festival. He has recently captivated audiences at the prestigious Jazz in the Park Festival in Romania and the Jerusalem Jazz Festival. His music transcends borders, uniting listeners worldwide in a vibrant celebration of sound and culture.

'Wusul لوصو' is an introspective journey through the intricate tapestry of musical influences that have shaped Shay Hazan's unique sound. While Western and Mizrahi pop have left their marks on the record, they serve as threads in a larger, more intricate musical fabric. Hazan's profound exploration transcends traditional boundaries, weaving together a rich sonic tapestry that defies easy categorization.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dew
2. Oladipo
3. A Bite Of Sand
4. Sunflowers
5. A Walk In Dir El-Assad
6. Yarabi
7. Shimo Kitazawa
8. Yooltz
9. Vibe Jadid
10. Street Souls
11. Riff Raff

This double CD "Crimson Love On Velvet Black" sees 15 year old Hedges using her great voice and rare songwriting talents to develope a sophisticated and varied style ranging from folk rock, gospel and country. Disc two contains 12 covers from the songs of Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Nick Drake, Townes Van Zandt and The Cowboy Junkies.

Scott Hepple and the Sun Band are a Psychedelic Rock Band from Newcastle, UK. The band favours a 60's/70's sound, with influences including Neil Young, Black Sabbath, The Beatles and Ty Segall.

Debut album 'Ashes to Wildflowers' was recorded analogue with Maximo Park's Duncan Lloyd, and was mastered by the renowned Chicago-based engineer Carl Saff (Sonic Youth, Ty Segall, J Mascis).

"The album's main theme of reincarnation goes hand in hand with the production" Scott says. "I wanted to produce the overdriven raw analogue sound that was rife in the late 60's/early 70s, which is where I take alot of my inspiration from".

The first single 'Letting Go' was released in January, followed by 'Nobody Else (Is Gonna Do It For You)' in April. On the run up to their headline UK and European album tour in Autumn/Winter, the band are supporting acts such as Love, Teke Teke, Nice Biscuit, GIFT and Ghost Woman. In June 2023, they performed at Third Man Records in London.

TRACK LISTING

1. Letting Go
2. Warm Night
3. Nobody Else (Is Gonna Do It For You)
4. Caligula
5. Leisure Cruise
6. Spirit Animal
7. Hair Of The Dog
8. Wildfires
9. Chosen

Talk to any connoisseur of 70s-era double live albums, and many will agree that Steve Hillage’s "Live Herald", recorded and released in 1977-78, rates among the finest jewels that the genre has to offer. So it’s astonishing to discover that someone has spent the last 25 years sitting on tapes that knock that set into the dust, both in terms of on-stage excitement and aural enjoyment. "Live At Deeply Vale Festival 1978" (Ozit, UK) transports the listener back to one of the last truly great festivals staged in the UK that decade, a weekend’s worth of music that fearlessly ranged across both the traditional rock range and the upcoming punk movement, before climaxing with a Hillage set that the guitarist himself reflects, “…(sounds) as exciting now as Live Herald was back then.” Goldmine Magazine USA. The Band : Steve Hillage - guitar, vocals, keyboards. Miquette Giraudy - synthesiser, vocals. Christian Boule (sadly missed) – glissando guitar. John Mackenzie - bass, vocals. Andy Anderson - drums. 

TRACK LISTING

Side One:
Saucer Surfing
Searching For The Spark
Octave Doctors
Side Two:
Salmon Song
Crystal City
Radio
Side Three:
Palm Trees
Light In The Sky
Hurdy Gurdy Man
Lunar Musick Suite
Side Four:
Activation Meditation
Glorious Om Riff
Getting Better
Steve Hillage Talks About The 70's And Deeply Vale
U.F.B

The first in the series of experimental split 12"s focuses on instrumental electronic music.

Goldsmiths student and modular wizard Sam Hostettler evokes a daydream meeting between Vangelis and Burial, skewering impossibly lush synthscapes with dubbed out percussion. Meanwhile, La Leif's blend of crunchy, electroacoustic techno and outernational field recordings should hit the spot for fans of Karen Gwyer or Shelley Prior.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pointalims
2. Kyoto
3. Kimochi
4. Opalescence

A new solo album by the violin/keyboard wizard from High Tide and Hawkwind. A symphonic space album with epic tracks like the 19 minute "Glencoe" and new versions of Hawkwind tracks like "Hall of the Mountain Grill" and "Force of Vulcan".

‘Concordance’ is Susan Howe’s and David Grubbs’s fifth album in the fifteen years of their unexpected and richly satisfying collaboration. Here they’ve pared down their materials to voice and piano, aspiring to the hushed intensity of their live performances. What had previously resulted from Grubbs’s recomposition of recorded materials now arrives as unadorned duo performance.

“Howe is a poet who has spent her career reminding us that our experiences of meaning and sound are synchronous.” - Tess Taylor, The New York Times

‘Concordance’ is Susan Howe’s and David Grubbs’s fifth album in the unexpected and richly satisfying collaboration that began with ‘Thiefth’ and includes ‘Souls of the Labadie Tract’, ‘Frolic Architecture’ and ‘WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER’. Where these works feature the fragmentation and multiplication of Howe’s recorded voice - in a style akin to her celebrated text collages - with ‘Concordance’ they’ve pared down their materials to voice and piano, aspiring to the hushed intensity of their live performances. After fifteen years of working together, the subtleties of inflection and interaction that previously resulted from Howe’s nuanced delivery and Grubbs’s composition using recorded materials now arrives as unadorned duo performance.

One of America's greatest living artists, Bollingen Prize-winning poet Susan Howe’s text for ‘Concordance’ originates in a collage poem of the same name published by Grenfell Press, which then became the title work in her most recent book, published to acclaim by New Directions in 2020. She has continued to rework the text for this performed version, incorporating material from her 2015 book of essays, ‘The Quarry’. Her source material is scissored from print concordances of the poetry of Milton, Herbert, Arnold, Browning, Dickinson and Coleridge, as well as old field guides to birds, rocks, trees, moths and mushrooms; Howe’s fiery commitment to placing these echoes of the past in dialogue with the present speaks to her position as one of America’s essential artists.

David Grubbs is Professor Of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of ‘The Voice in the Headphones’, ‘Now that the audience is assembled’ and ‘Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording’ (all published by Duke University Press) and, with Anthony McCall, Simultaneous Soloists (Pioneer Works Press). Grubbs has played in Gastr del Sol, The Red Krayola and Squirrel Bait and performed with Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros and Will Oldham, among many others.

TRACK LISTING

CONCORDANCE (Part One)
CONCORDANCE (Part Two)

An album of 17 guitar tracks played by two excellent musicians, Yes guitarist Steve Howe and British jazz guitarist Martin Taylor. Let loose on a huge and valuable private collection of hundreds of rare American guitars it's an exhilarating disc played on instruments ranging from the D'Angelico Teardrop to a Dyer Symphony Harp Guitar, which are, collectively, worth over £5,000,000. Howe and Taylor played and recorded many of these guitars for the first time ever; some haven't been heard on a recording for decades - recordings of the D'Angelico Teardrop (valued at over £600,000 alone) or the D'Aquisto Solo simply didn't exist before this CD. One of the oldest guitars featured is a CF Martin which was made during the 1840's - they add up to a guitar fan's dream release.

Berlin-based, Swiss singer, multi-instrumentalist and film composer Sophie Hunger will release her seventh studio album - her first in two years - ‘Halluzinationen’ on August 28, 2020 via Caroline International. The album - recorded at Abbey Road Studios in live continuous takes - is produced by MPG UK Producer Of The Year, Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, Fontaines DC), also at the helm for 2018’s ‘Molecules’ which featured 6Music play-listed single ‘I Opened A Bar’.

‘Halluzinationen’ arrives bearing an emphatic German title, as Hunger - still resident in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighbourhood - picks at the creative dependency between loneliness and the imagination. Electing this time around to decamp from Carey’s Speedy Wunderground studio in South London to the august surrounds of Abbey Road’s Studio 2, ‘Halluzinationen’ is suffused with the nervous energy of its continuous live recording technique, with the album captured in sequence just six times over the course of two days. It’s an approach Hunger succinctly identifies as ‘Full risk’.

Sophie Hunger’s six solo albums to date have accrued over a quarter of a million sales, drawing her comparisons to contemporaries including Sharon Van Etten and PJ Harvey, with fans as wide-ranging as Lauren Laverne (who says of Sophie ‘I love this woman’), Steven Wilson (who tapped Hunger to guest on his UK Top 3 album ‘To The Bone’) and unlikely enough, footballing legend Eric Cantona (a long-standing fan of Sophie’s who guested to intone in French on ‘Supermoon’). Sophie made her debut at Glastonbury in 2010 as the first Swiss artist to ever play the festival (since selling out 1,000 capacity venues with ease on the continent), and 2016 saw Hunger also make her - very successful - first outing in film scoring, with her soundtrack for the Oscar & Golden Globe-nominated Ma Vie de Courgette earning her a Cesar nomination to boot.

TRACK LISTING

1. Liquid Air
2. Finde Mich
3. Halluzinationen
4. Bad Medication
5. Alpha Venom
6. Rote Beeten Aus Arsen
7. Everything Is Good
8. Maria Magdalena
9. Security Check
10. Stranger

Temple, Bassey, MacLaine and now, Hurt; in a world of Shirleys, the name Sophia Ruby Katz has chosen for her music is perhaps prophetic as it captures her stunningly emotive vocal approach. And whilst Shirley Hurt might be the perfect nom de plume for the creative Toronto-based artist, it’s her self-titled debut album which positions her as protagonist of her own universe.

Traversing sonic landscapes, Shirley Hurt’s vocals ebb and flow like lyrical Ley lines tracking the contours of her own well-travelled map. By the age of 18, Hurt had travelled extensively, having lived in upwards of 20 different apartments and houses, as a result never really feeling “at home” anywhere. At this age was when Hurt found herself in New York, dipping her toes into various scenes and musical realms. The first and only place she ever felt at home, and a partial home-base for her, she travelled between Toronto and New York until the age of 26.When the project she was working on in New York reached a dead-end she returned West, moving in with musicians Harrison Forman (Hieronymus Harry, Zones) and Patrick Lefler (Roy, Possum). Being surrounded by their improvising at all hours, a new approach emerged. “Harrison is a virtuosic guitar player, and I hadn't picked up a guitar in any serious way since I was 16,” she says, “by osmosis I started playing again for fun.” Without agenda, the process grew organically from there.

Hurt and Forman decided to travel across the US and Canada in a trailer for half a year, with the entire album written in the final months of their trip. Hurt had been writing loose ideas here and there but felt blocked creatively. When the pair reached Berkley, they wound up house-sitting for a tuned-in friend who recommended she pray, in a very direct way, to remove the block. “I took her advice and to my surprise it worked. The album was conceptualized and finished within a couple of months.” Shapeshifting in tone and phrasing, Hurt’s music alchemizes the furthest corners of experimental indie folk, pop, and country into a singular sound with elegant unpredictability.

Whilst Shirley Hurt’s lyrical and structural ideas may have emerged on the road, the album was self-produced and recorded at Joseph Shabason (The War on Drugs)’s Aytche studio in Toronto’s West End. It was engineered by Nathan Vanderwielen and Chris Shannon (Bart), and Hurt enlisted collaborators Jason Bhattacharya, Nick Dourado, Patrick Lefler, and Harrison Forman to hone her vision. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with the songs until we returned to Toronto,” she recalls. “Joseph and I had been talking about working together after sending across some demos and Jason happened to recommend his studio at the exact same time, so everything came together naturally at that point.”

Whilst her most recent adventures may have seen Shirley Hurt bound for Texas as an official SXSW artist (hand-picked by Gorilla Vs Bear to perform at their own showcase), she currently resides in her native Canada, more specifically rural Ontario, close to friends and family, and is already working on her second album. The ties to lineage are interwoven in the fabric of the music. Hurt’s mother, artist Leala Hewak, instilled a lust for life and innate value of creativity in her from a young age as she explored the role of gallery owner, vintage jewellery show host, mid-century modern furniture expert, real estate agent, painter. Hurt’s father, a civil litigation lawyer and new-wave obsessed music lover with an extensive vinyl collection, introduced Hurt to a wide-range of artists at a young age such as Nina Hagen, Laurie Anderson, Tom Tom Club, and endless others.

In her video for ‘Problem Child’ Hurt’s grandmother walks her through a generationally revered pie-making process. One would be tempted to hear this, and other songs, as autobiographical. Yet, Hurt’s lyrics are rarely pulled from her relationships or personal history––at least not consciously. Rather, they arise from somewhere less tangible or defined. “Lyrics tend to come to me when I am doing non-musical things - washing dishes, brushing my dogs, walking to the grocery store. I have a lot of voice memos on my phone and half-filled notebooks and when I hear something, I have to stop what I'm doing to get the idea down. Usually it’s bits and pieces. It's rare a full song comes to me in one go, but it's great when they do, and those are often my favourites.”

Carving out a space of her own in an all-encompassing universe, Shirley Hurt is the introduction to a long artistic story, and if the journey so far is anything to go by, it will be stippled with evermore unpredictable chapters.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Bells
2. Problem Child
3. Let Me Down Easy
4. All Looks The Same To Me
5. Empty Hands
6. Pendulum
7. Smile
8. Charioteer
9. Pulse

Sam Hutchinson is a singer-songwriter based in Nottingham, England. "Don't Want To Talk EP" is the 19-year-olds' third commercial release as a solo artist. He is influenced by the likes of Nick Drake, Elliot Smith and Ben Christophers and has been compared with artists as diverse as Doves and Leonard Cohen. For his third release, Sam spent two months recording and mixing five songs of pristine guitar and understated vocal harmonies.

Despite having been responsible for some of Belle and Sebastian's best-known songs (Jonathan David, Chickfactor, Seymour Stein and I'm Not Living In the Real World), it has taken Stevie Jackson sixteen years as a member of the band before releasing his first collection of solo recordings.

'(I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson' was recorded over the last three years in Glasgow and Vancouver and features twelve songs. The Glasgow sessions, which were recorded at the band's own studio feature a range of his friends and musical collaborators including members of Belle and Sebastian, The Pastels, Trembling Bells and the songwriting triumvirate, The Company (Jackson, Roy Moller and Gary Thom). The Vancouver tracks were recorded with the New Pornographers' rhythm section of Kurt Dahle and John Collins. Jackson has toured in the UK and Europe with a band supplemented by Bob Kildea (Belle and Sebastian), Marco Rea and Stuart Kidd (The Wellgreen) and as a solo performer in the USA and Canada with more shows planned for later in 2012.

Press on (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson:
"The best solo album by a guitarist since Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" - The Herald
"an LP with a long gestation period but a short attention span that revels in 1960s pop music and is as fun as it is jangling." - No Ripchord
"beautifully realised melodic pop songs" - The Scotsman

Having impressed with single ‘Like I Used To” earlier in the year, Norwegian songwriter Siv Jakobsen is now making waves with her debut album.

Produced by Matt Ingram (Laura Marling, The Staves ++) at Urchin Studios in London, The Nordic Mellow is a brooding and intense work, loaded with the intimacy of her delicate voice, acoustic guitar, strings and unfiltered lyrics, that calls to mind the earlier works of Ane Brun and Laura Marling. It follows her seven-track EP from 2015, ‘The Lingering’.

TRACK LISTING

To Leave You
Change
Shallow Digger
Crazy
Blanket
Like I Used To
Not Alone
Berry & Whythe
We Are Not In Love 
Space

Having impressed with single ‘Like I Used To” earlier in the year, Norwegian songwriter Siv Jakobsen is now making waves with her debut album.

Produced by Matt Ingram (Laura Marling, The Staves ++) at Urchin Studios in London, The Nordic Mellow is a brooding and intense work, loaded with the intimacy of her delicate voice, acoustic guitar, strings and unfiltered lyrics, that calls to mind the earlier works of Ane Brun and Laura Marling. It follows her seven-track EP from 2015, ‘The Lingering’.

TRACK LISTING

To Leave You
Change
Shallow Digger
Crazy
Blanket
Like I Used To
Not Alone
Berry & Whythe
We Are Not In Love 
Space

Skip James was a Delta blues enigma, whose mesmerizing guitar playing and haunting voice produced bluer than blue masterpieces. This beautifully re-mastered collection of his seminal 1931 recordings shows why his otherworldly blues cast its spell on many blues greats from Robert Johnson to Eric Clapton.
Arguably the greatest of the original Delta blues guitarists with his mesmerizing and truly unique style. 'The Rough Guide To Skip James' highlights his diverse repertoire of songs ranging from deep, dark Delta blues to upbeat barrelhouse piano tunes and spirituals.

TRACK LISTING

Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues
I’m So Glad
Drunken Spree
If You Haven’t Any Hay Get On Down The Road
Cherry Ball Blues
Be Ready When He Comes
Little Cow And Calf Is Gonna Die Blues
Devil Got My Woman
How Long “Buck”
Jesus Is A Mighty Good Leader
Cypress Grove Blues
Illinois Blues
22-20 Blues

Released this summer via her new home at Bella Union, Sophie Jamieson’s ‘Choosing’ is a strikingly personal document of a journey from a painful rock bottom of self-destruction to a safer place imbued with the faint light of hope. Focusing on the bare bones of each song and taking inspiration from the direct and melodic work of songwriters such as Elena Tonra, Sharon Van Etten, and Scott Hutchison, it’s an album that sings openly of longing and searching, of trying, failing, and trying again – and always and throughout, the strength of love in so many varying forms.

Following on from the pair of EPs she released in 2020, Choosing finds its own shape by a subtle reforming of Jamieson’s sound. Where those EPs flirted with playful experimentation, here the overriding sound is both organic and simpler – live drums, bass, cello, and piano are used across the album – allowing space for Sophie’s mesmerising voice to take the spotlight, the songs delivered with the most direct and intimate impact.

TRACK LISTING

1 Addition
2 Crystal
3 Downpour
4 Sink
5 Fill
6 Empties
7 Runner
8 Violence
9 Boundary
10 Who Will I Be
11 Long Play

Steve Jansen, the co-founder of new wave legends Japan and bona fide collaboration multi-hyphenate, is reissuing his first two solo studio albums: Slope and Tender Extinction.

But how to accurately parse Steve Jansen’s path through music? It’s a journey that’s taken him from 80s royalty as what The Guardian calls “a key component” of one of the UK’s premier new wave acts, releasing classic records like Tin Drum and Quiet Life, to a renowned collaborator, working with artists as diverse as Ryuchi Sakamoto, Anja Garbarek, Annie Lennox, and, most recently, Maiya Hershey. His is a career of ever-changing styles and genres, from blissed-out electronica made with YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi, to his work with jazz-rock group Nine Horses, to the heavy atmospheres of his transcendent Exit North project, and far, far, beyond.

Based on his consistently excellent creative output, it’s not surprising that he’s also had time to fit in a clutch of excellent solo albums. Although on first listens the music on Slope and Tender Extinction can seem austere and chilly, it certainly bears further listening. Songs that might seem impenetrable can shyly give up their secrets - a moment of tenderness, say, or soaring strings, or a wistful chord change. Slope, his debut, was described by The Observer upon its release in 2007 as “unclassifiable”, a description that goes some way to detailing the album’s crystalline synthetic peaks, dusty analogue depths, and wide experimental sweep. To hear the icy IDM of ‘Grip’ rubbing up against the drone-led modern classical in ‘Sow The Salt’, and the strange sound experiments in ‘Gap of Cloud’ juxtaposed with the fractured emotion of ‘Playground Martyrs’ is to hear an artist capable of ploughing his own unique furrow through music.


Although nine years and another glut of projects (an ambient album called A Secret Life made with John Foxx and Steve D'Agostino, an array of instrumental pieces, Jansen and Japan bandmate Richard Barbieri’s fifth album, Lumen, and the list really does go on and on) came between Slope and second album, Tender Extinction, the same restive spirit remained that first prompted Jansen to go it alone. Tender Extinction is a more meditative affair than its predecessor, one where comet tails of synthesiser stretch across a song and fathomless sonic depths simmer and roll like an ocean. James Ginzburg’s brand new remaster will render the hiemal beauty and sumptuous arrangements of tracks such as ‘And Birds Sing All Night’, ‘Captured’, and ‘Her Distance’ even more perfectly than before.

But why these albums and why now? Both are special pieces of work, and place the talents of an artist that often stays in the shadows front and centre. Jansen is someone whose every action is in service of The Project, shapeshifting and adapting in relation to how he can improve the music. He’s said in that past that “I remove myself from any references to other people or popular culture. I explore sound and composition without any preconceptions about the finished piece or its place in the world.” Though this is a humble approach that clearly pays dividends (as evinced by his mixing, session, and collaborative work) Slope and Tender Extinction allow for the full range of his influences, experimentation, and ideas to come to the fore. These reissues are timely and necessary, bringing particularly gorgeous high points of Steve Jansen’s sparkling oeuvre into new light.

TRACK LISTING

1. Grip 06:42
2. Sleepyard 05:13
3. Cancelled Pieces 03:20
4. December Train 04:14
5. Sow The Salt 05:49
6. Gap Of Cloud 02:45
7. Playground Martyrs 03:02
8. A Way Of Disappearing 01:57
9. Ballad Of A Deadman 06:25
10. Conversation Over 05:07
11. Life Moves On 02:25
12. Playground Martyrs (Reprise) 03:05

Steve Jansen, the co-founder of new wave legends Japan and bona fide collaboration multi-hyphenate, is reissuing his first two solo studio albums: Slope and Tender Extinction.

But how to accurately parse Steve Jansen’s path through music? It’s a journey that’s taken him from 80s royalty as what The Guardian calls “a key component” of one of the UK’s premier new wave acts, releasing classic records like Tin Drum and Quiet Life, to a renowned collaborator, working with artists as diverse as Ryuchi Sakamoto, Anja Garbarek, Annie Lennox, and, most recently, Maiya Hershey. His is a career of ever-changing styles and genres, from blissed-out electronica made with YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi, to his work with jazz-rock group Nine Horses, to the heavy atmospheres of his transcendent Exit North project, and far, far, beyond.

Based on his consistently excellent creative output, it’s not surprising that he’s also had time to fit in a clutch of excellent solo albums. Although on first listens the music on Slope and Tender Extinction can seem austere and chilly, it certainly bears further listening. Songs that might seem impenetrable can shyly give up their secrets - a moment of tenderness, say, or soaring strings, or a wistful chord change. Slope, his debut, was described by The Observer upon its release in 2007 as “unclassifiable”, a description that goes some way to detailing the album’s crystalline synthetic peaks, dusty analogue depths, and wide experimental sweep. To hear the icy IDM of ‘Grip’ rubbing up against the drone-led modern classical in ‘Sow The Salt’, and the strange sound experiments in ‘Gap of Cloud’ juxtaposed with the fractured emotion of ‘Playground Martyrs’ is to hear an artist capable of ploughing his own unique furrow through music.


Although nine years and another glut of projects (an ambient album called A Secret Life made with John Foxx and Steve D'Agostino, an array of instrumental pieces, Jansen and Japan bandmate Richard Barbieri’s fifth album, Lumen, and the list really does go on and on) came between Slope and second album, Tender Extinction, the same restive spirit remained that first prompted Jansen to go it alone. Tender Extinction is a more meditative affair than its predecessor, one where comet tails of synthesiser stretch across a song and fathomless sonic depths simmer and roll like an ocean. James Ginzburg’s brand new remaster will render the hiemal beauty and sumptuous arrangements of tracks such as ‘And Birds Sing All Night’, ‘Captured’, and ‘Her Distance’ even more perfectly than before.

But why these albums and why now? Both are special pieces of work, and place the talents of an artist that often stays in the shadows front and centre. Jansen is someone whose every action is in service of The Project, shapeshifting and adapting in relation to how he can improve the music. He’s said in that past that “I remove myself from any references to other people or popular culture. I explore sound and composition without any preconceptions about the finished piece or its place in the world.” Though this is a humble approach that clearly pays dividends (as evinced by his mixing, session, and collaborative work) Slope and Tender Extinction allow for the full range of his influences, experimentation, and ideas to come to the fore. These reissues are timely and necessary, bringing particularly gorgeous high points of Steve Jansen’s sparkling oeuvre into new light.

TRACK LISTING

1. Captured 06:08
2. Sadness 03:52
3. Her Distance 06:43
4. Memory Of An Imagined Place 03:24
5. Give Yourself A Name 06:50
6. Diaphanous One 05:58
7. Faced With Nothing 05:31
8. Mending A Secret 05:03
9. Simple Day 02:37
10. And Birds Sing All Night 02:28