Knitting Factory Records and Partisan Records are proud to release the sixth installment of the much anticipated vinyl reissue box sets from the Fela Kuti catalog.

Vinyl box #6 was curated by actor, producer, DJ, rapper and singer, Idris Elba, aka DJ Big Driis. This edition, out on December 1, features Open & Close, Music of Many Colors, Stalemate, I Go Shout Plenty!!!, Live In Amsterdam, and Opposite People. The artwork for each album has been meticulously recreated from the original vinyl pressings, alongside vintage vinyl label artwork. The box set is a limited edition of 5,000 worldwide. It includes a 24 page booklet featuring lyrics, commentaries by Afrobeat historian Chris May, and never before seen photos; as well as a 16” x 24” poster designed by Lemi Ghariokwu, the creative force behind many of Fela’s album covers. Previous box set curators include Chris Martin, Erykah Badu, Ginger Baker, Brian Eno, and Questlove.

TRACK LISTING

Tracklist:
Open & Close
A1) Open & Close
B1) Swegbe & Pako
B2) Gbagada Gbagada Gbogodo Gbogodo

Music Of Many Colors (Feat. Roy Ayers)
A1) 2000 Blacks Got To Be Free
B1) Africa Centre Of The World

Stalemate
A1) Stalemate
B1) Don't Worry About My Mouth O (African Message)

I Go Shout Plenty!!!
A1) I Go Shout Plenty!!!
B1) Why Black Men Dey Suffer?

Live In Amsterdam
A1) M.O.P. (Movement Of The People) Political Statement Number 1 (Part 1)
B1) M.O.P. (Movement Of The People) Political Statement Number 1 (Part 2)
C1) Custom Check Point
C2) You Gimme Shit I Give You Shit (Part 1)
D1) You Gimme Shit I Give You Shit (Part 2)

Opposite People
A1) O.P. (Opposite People)
B1) Equalisation Of Trouser And Pant

No matter your age or station, Supermodels is the sort of record you can hear yourself in. Claud’s engrossing and poignant second album is a confident diary of the mercury of life and love in one’s early 20s, whether it’s the self-doubt that creeps through its tunes or the place of compromise they try to find. It’s an exacting map of the emotional and logistical vicissitudes they’d encountered in their early 20s. Fissures in romances and friendships, pressures of recording careers, the casualties of growing up: Each of these 13 songs is another articulated diary entry, threaded together with scant regard for genre and with the roller-coaster of feeling that gives each tune such specific gravity. These are familiar topics for Claud, covering some of the same terrain as 2021’s Super Monster. But there is a newfound confidence to the ideas here, rendered in structures and hooks that do not equivocate as they move from frowning folk to boisterous pop to twisted piano curios. Where Supermodels was rendered mostly in their childhood bedroom, this was cut in a place of their own, with a team of confidants and collaborators building them into resplendent productions. Supermodels takes its name from “Screwdriver.” “You caught me looking at photographs of supermodels,” they sing, voice rising slowly over the elegiac line penned on that free and broken piano. “Trying not to cry when I look back at myself.” It’s a staggering moment, a reminder of the ways we’re all working to stop seeing ourselves as less than and not equal to, to beat back a dozen different insecurities that we try to store in the deepest recesses of our facade. But Claud doesn’t hide anything on Supermodels. They are kernels of despair, redemption, and, ultimately, insight, here to remind us we’re neither the first nor the last to face these blues and keep going.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I was a massive fan of Claud's debut LP for Phoebe Bridgers' Saddest Factory label, and their newest LP is if anything an even more evocative and coherent outing. Rich with emotional weight, charting the ups and downs of relationships, loss and redemption. Another brilliant outing from one of my favourite voices in indie-pop.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crumbs
2. Dirt
3. A Good Thing
4. Every Fucking Time
5. Wet
6. Glass Wall
7. It’s Not About You
8. Paul Rudd
9. The Moving On
10. Climbing Trees
11. Spare Tire
12. All Over
13. Screwdriver

Fela Kuti (1938-1997) was a Nigerian musician, producer, arranger, political radical, outlaw and the originator of Afrobeat. A titanic musical and sociopolitical voice, Fela’s legacy spans decades and genres, touching on jazz, pop, funk, hip-hop, rock and beyond.

1973’s Gentleman is the 7th in the series of celebratory Fela 50th Anniversary reissues. Like its predecessors in the series, this version is available on exclusive colored vinyl (Igbo Smoke) and the LP is wrapped in a gold foil obi strip with a brief essay on the album and Fela's global impact on music. Like Fela's other early 70's releases, he used each side of his LPs to create a deep groove that pulls the listener in and follows with metaphoric lyrics that call out and critique the corrupt hangover of colonialism.

Gentleman is the last of Fela's early 1970s albums recorded with the Africa 70. The title track can be interpreted literally or as a metaphor concerning a wider issue. Fela deftly addresses the colonialism-induced, inferiority complex which led many in Africa's new governing elites to reject African style, concepts of beauty, and modes of behavior in favor of European imports. Gentleman's other tracks, ""Fefe Naa Efe"" and ""Igbe,” have more direct, less metaphorical lyrics. On ""Fefe Naa Efe,” an Ashanti motto from Ghana, Fela tells a woman dumped by her boyfriend that she must get over the heartache and move on. On ""Igbe”, Fela declares that anyone who betrays a friend is shit, and that anybody who lacks self-respect is shit - something you want to expel from your body as soon as possible. He sings the word ""shit"" in several Nigerian languages, so there is no misunderstanding.



Gentleman (50th Anniversary Edition) is out on 23rd June 2023 via Partisan Records.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
01. Gentleman

Side B
01. Igbe (Na Shit)
02. Fe Fe Ne Eye Fe

Factory Records has become the stuff of legend. The histories of the label have been told from many perspectives, from visual catalogues and memoirs to exhibitions. Yet no in-depth history has ever been told from the perspectives of the women who were integral to Factory's cultural significance.

The untold history of Factory Records is one of women's work at nearly every turn: recording music, playing live gigs, running the label behind the scenes, managing and promoting bands, designing record sleeves, making films and music videos, pioneering sound technology, DJing, and running one of the most chaotic clubs on the planet, The Hacienda. Told entirely in their voices and featuring contributions from Gillian Gilbert, Gina Birch, Cath Carroll, Penny Henry and over fifty more interviewees, I THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SPEAK is an oral history that reveals the true cultural reach of the label and its staying power in the twenty-first century.

Welcome to Uffie’s new album Sunshine Factory – an alternate reality that is only accessible to those yearning for escape. A nod to the ballroom scene, it is a place where you can be your most authentic self. Inside this trippy wonderland, you’ll meet Uffie, dancing amongst the lights of your hallucinations. Sunshine Factory is a wonderfully restless record. It’s a joyride through the club, hurtling into the forest, and crowd surfing into the arms of a lover… and yet it’s also the sound of waking up to a heap of champagne soaked jeans, the bass of your heart still throbbing along to last night’s melodies.

A decade after her first record, which included–debatably–the internet’s first viral hit, the electro smash “Pop The Glock,” Uffie “the French-American singer/rapper/DJ/fashion designer who took the internet by storm” (Brooklyn Vegan) is most definitely back. Raised between Florida and Hong Kong before moving to Paris with her British father, the now Los Angeles-based Uffie is undeniably a “child of the world;” unsurprisingly, the making of this record clocked up a few air miles as well. Birthing what would become the Sunshine Factory in Fonte da Telha, Portugal collaborating with Norwegian savant Lasse Lokøy, Uffie soon found a home for these songs back in California with Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi–who co-produced several of the tracks–and his Oakland-based label, Company Records. The resulting album is one of intricate production, sonic experimentation, and subtle poetic brilliance amongst a few Fleabag glances to the camera.

Amidst double entendres galore, her record exists in a curious space between punk and pop, which can be heard in the ska-meets-fashion week “dominoes.” Contrarily, “sophia” – which marked the advent of Uffie and Chaz’s creative partnership several years ago – poises Sunshine Factory as an otherworldly dance record one would hear in Berlin’s famous Berghain nightclub. She is the party girl who is at her most vulnerable in the chaotic “where does the party go?” where she reckons with facing who she truly is when she’s all alone. It’s in these dualities and juxtapositions that the joy of Uffie writhes.

The album also has a cameo or three, including the one and only Peaches. And after finding kinship and admiration in the genre-defying NNAMDÏ, she tapped him for the record’s sole feature on “month of mondays.” It is at this point in the record that the beloved je ne sais quoi that Uffie has always possessed really emerges. When the comedown begins and the insatiable few remain on the dancefloor, “a month of mondays” is the knowing nod to a stranger signaling the night’s shift in course. With Sunshine Factory, it’s a pop-up party wherever you can find some speakers. Cool.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mvp
2. Where Does The Party Go?
3. Peaches (interlude)
4. Domines
5. Prickling Skin
6. Queen Ilona (interlude)
7. Anna Jetson
8. Sophia
9. A Month Of Mondays (feat. NNADMÏ)
10. Giants
11. Teddy <3 (interlude)
12. Cool
13. Crowdsurfinginyoursheets

4-track EP pressed on double 7” vinyl.

Bespoke gatefold sleeve. Printed paper inner sleeves.

Limited edition of 500 copies.

The Vinyl Factory launches their Raft Records sublabel in collaboration with The Horrors’ / Cat’s Eyes’ Faris and Loom frontman Tarik Badwan. The first release will be a double 7” single featuring new bands Niqab, Puffer, (the mysterious) Jet Black and Skinny Girl Diet.

Skinny Girl Diet: “A female Pixies with similar almost spoken word vocals but with added thrash. It is full of heartfelt angst, not caring and making light of ordinary observations. It is all about searching for something better and escaping to a fantasy that probably doesn’t exist - that is where the melancholy lies making the screams even more real.” - Benjamin Spiro-Hughes

“This music is wonderful: brash, unafraid, reared and raised on my peers (Babes In Toyland, Heavens To Betsy, old school grunge).” - Everett True

Puffer: “Underground industrial rockers” - Dazed & Confused

“Fearless and noisy with freakish psychedelic tendencies.” - The Fly

“Apocalyptic mesh of barbed riffs and howls” - NME

Niqab: “Maximal psychedelic ensemble” - NME