Search Results for:

ARA-U

Ara Tokatlian, Enrique Villegas & Guillermo Bordarampe

Inspiracion - 2023 Reissue

This top-notch spiritual jazz album from Argentina will leave fans of Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane astonished. Recorded in 1975 and still surprisingly off the radar, this is one of the deepest jazz albums from South America.

Inspiración is the meeting of two generations united by music: Ara Tokatlian and Guillermo Bordarampé, members of the influential 70s rock band Arco Iris (which Tokatlian cofounded with the now Oscar award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla), join forces with Enrique "Mono" Villegas, an admired jazz pianist who had been active since the 1930s.

Meditative, soothing and serene, Inspiración is music your soul yearns for.

Official reissue with sound off the master tapes, including a reproduction of the original 16-page booklet. With the blessing and support from Ara Tokatlian and Guillermo Bordarampe.

TRACK LISTING

1. Camino A Samarkanda
2. A La Sombra De Los Dorados Budas
3. En La Ola De Tus Ojos
4. Maritimaria
5. Danara
6. Logré Mi Ser

Next up on Co-Accused Records - No Static / Automatic label boss Ara-U is piloting the craft with his "No Future EP". The Venezuelan electro producer provides four analogue cuts accompanied by a Radioactive Man remix.

It's a cosmic liftoff with the mind warping sonic sounds of "Planet Destroy". Radioactive Man's funk-fueled remix has an infectious 303 bassline that takes the listener on a jackin' journey. On the flip side "Exit Now" moves into driving hypnotic synths with sizzling percussion throughout. "No Future" dips the dancefloor into a twisting wormhole of intergalactic grooves. The EP closes with the dark dystopian synths and extraterrestrial layers of "It’s Only Lies Around Me".


STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: As usual, mainframe destruction from Ara-U and Radioactive Man who deploy their own brand of funk-laced electro and growling analogue synthesis.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Planent Destroy
A2. Planent Destroy (Radioactive Man Remix)
B1. Exit Now
B2. No Future
B3. It’s Only Lies Around Me

Ffa Coffi Pawb

Hei Vidal! - 2023 Reissue

    Originally released in 1992, Hei Vidal! is the third album by revolutionary DIY Cymraeg pop band Ffa Coffi Pawb. Formed in Bethesda in 1986 by sixteen year old friends Gruff Rhys and Rhodri Puw (later joined by Gruff’s Super Furry Animals’ bandmate Dafydd Ieuan and Dewi Emlyn).

    Made by a bunch of 21 and 22 year olds, Hei Vidal! is an album that distills the band’s obsessions with early ’70s power-pop (all the B’s from Bowie, Bolan and Big Star) as well as Neu! and My Bloody Valentine into a sound that predates the fuzzed out return to glam heralded by Oasis a few years later. It merges motorik grooves over saturated shoe gazing fuzz with impressionistic studio manipulation, orchestral synthesiser arrangements and brutal yet surreal imagery and word play in the Welsh language.

    Having signed their songs over to a local publisher who eventually disappeared off the face of the Earth, Ffa Coffi Pawb’s music has been out of print for decades (with the exception of the 2004 compilation album Am Byth, released on the SFA associated Placid Casual label). After untangling a complicated web of time, Hei Vidal! is available on vinyl for the first time having only been on cassette and very few CD copies on its original release on Ankst in 1992. The reissue marks the 30th anniversary of the band’s final show at Builth Wells Memorial Hall in August 1993 (supported by a young Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci).

    Gruff Rhys on Hei Vidal! “We made the record in our early 20s and it was a dream-pop distillation of our early 1970’s Glam, power-pop & Motorik obsessions - combined no doubt by our devotion to shoe gazing contemporaries from the Creation label, American college rock and our heroes of the Welsh language underground like Datblygu, John Cale and Y Cyrff. The nonsensical album title is a quote from the song Colli’r Goriad and the Vidal in question perhaps a hallucinated amalgamation of Gore Vidal and Vidal Sassoon; both of which were omnipresent personalities on early 90’s TV, one as a pundit the other a seemingly rolling TV shampoo advert.”

    TRACK LISTING

    1. Clymhalio
    2. Ffarout
    3. Profion Moddion
    4. Wyneb I Waered
    5. Dilyn Fy Nhrwyn
    6. Colli'r Goriad
    7. Arwynebol Melyn
    8. Sega Segur
    9. Helo Traeth
    10. Pelydr Secs
    11. Ofn:Cwn
    12. Lluchia Dy Fflachlwch Drosda I

    Loud pressed vinyl single featuring the best track from the group's 1979 album plus an unreleased take of the track ''My Fate'' on the flip.. Very smooth German AOR with definite appeal for the Balearic fraternity. 

    Ara Pacis, a group from the island Föhr in the North Sea, was originally founded in 1971. Initially influenced by blues and classic rock by The Rolling Stones, The Who, and the like, they were also inspired by bands such as Steely Dan as well as the German/British group Lake. However, Ara Pacis created a style of their own when their privately pressed an self-distributed “To the Westcoast” LP was released in 1979. The songs were mainly characterized by two-part guitar riffs by Töns Brautlecht-Deppe and Wolfgang Schiffner, who also were the core songwriters of the band.

    The freshly remastered single starts with the title track “To the Westcoast”. Due to its sunny, yacht-friendly vibe it is easily amongst the best and most authentic tunes out of the “Westcoast rock” genre recorded in Germany. With family connections in California, lead singer Töns Brautlecht-Deppe was able to create and capture the feeling of the Pacific sea shore just perfectly.

    The single is backed with a revised studio version of “My Fate”. The track is also featured on the album but the version presented here on the 7" vinyl is an unreleased, even quite funky and more powerful take. It was recorded in 1981 at the Rüssl studio in Hamburg where Brautlecht had just started to work as an engineer.

    As the "To the Westcoast" LP was released during a time when styles like New Wave, Synth Pop and Punk became popular in Germany and the interest in organic and soulful rock declined, Ara Pacis’ debut remained relatively unnoticed until today and even the Krautrock collector’s scene does not seem to be fully aware of this hard to find gem yet of which only 1000 copies were originally pressed. 

    STAFF COMMENTS

    Patrick says: Perfectly categorised as "Kraut-yacht" by shop favourite and MCR DJ Forbes, this blue-eyed, open hearted AOR groover skips across the waves on a Steely Dan rhythm, enjoys some Doobie Brothers guitar chords and lifts off with CSN harmonies. Bliss!

    TRACK LISTING

    To The Westcoast
    My Fate (Revisited)

    Ebo Taylor

    Yen Ara

      Ghanaian music legend Ebo Taylor returns with perhaps his finest album to date. But don’t take our word for it. That’s coming straight from the man himself, and he should know after more than 60 years in the business!
      The 81-year-old composer, arranger, guitarist and vocalist has been a key figure in the evolving afro-funk sound since the Seventies, working with the likes of Apagya Show Band, CK Mann and Pat Thomas. Famously, he rubbed shoulders with Fela Kuti while studying in London in the Sixties, before going on to lead the Ghana Black Star Band (featuring Osei and Sol Amarfio from Osibisa) and later the Uhuru Dance Band back in Ghana.
      Like Fela, he is always pushing forward, constantly reconceptualising his sound and attuning it for a new generation. Part teacher, part messenger, listen to "Yen Ara" and you will not only hear the high-energy afrobeat, sweet highlife, jazz and konkoma influences that he’s famous for, but also a disco pulse and hard-hitting percussive edge to the tracks, which were produced by Justin Adams (Tinariwen, Rachid Taha, Robert Plant) and recorded in the live room at Electric Monkey Studio in Amsterdam.
      His group, the Saltpond City Band, are all handpicked local musicians featuring two of his sons. An appropriate line-up on an album whose titles means “we”. And they are on fine form, ripping through tracks such as ‘Krumandey’ (a surefire party starter) and ‘Mind Your Own Business’ (a simple message delivered over a frenetic drum rhythm).
      Elsewhere, ‘Aboa Kyirbin’ will please fans of tough afrobeat grooves, while Taylor could well be inciting a riot at his next gig with ‘Mumudey Mumudey’, We hear him calling for ‘preshaaah’ and leading us into a call and response as the trumpet takes us higher. And the lift of those horns on ‘Ankoma’m’ evokes some of his finest work such as ‘Love & Death’ and ‘Come Along’, the latter recorded with the Pelikans and featured on a recent Mr Bongo reissue.

      TRACK LISTING

      Poverty No Good
      Mumudey Mumudey
      Krumandey
      Aboa Kyirbin 
      Mind Your Own Business
      Ankoma’m
      Abenkwan Puchaa
      Yen Ara 
      Aba Yaa


      Latest Pre-Sales

      167 NEW ITEMS

      E-newsletter —
      Sign up
      Back to top