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SHADE
Top tier tackle from Heels & Souls Recordings for their fourth reissue as they let loose a much anticipated double header, Gold In The Shade’s 'Over You' backed with 'Shining Through'. Rough, tough, straight-from-the-heart ‘90s street soul, coming courtesy of TSR bossman Robert Roper and the Gold In The Shade ladies Arletta Davis and Sonia Johnson. One of the most sought-after cuts of this scene, it encompasses much of what made street soul special - heavy bass, gritty breaks, emotive chords and off-kilter vocals, marrying together to form a snapshot of a raw DIY scene with optimism at its heart.
The trio’s first single from 1990, ‘Shining Through’ is a no nonsense, bassbin-rattling love song from the underground, seeing long-term friends Sonia and Arletta pulling on the heartstrings from the mic as Robert works his magic behind the studio controls.
Lovingly remastered from the DAT by Cicely Balston, if only ‘Over You’ had been so easy. Two years of endless searching for the tape and subsequently a clean copy of the record, Heels & Souls even went to the lengths of having the multitracks restored so that Robert could attempt to recreate the original mixdown in the studio – but the magic of ‘91, unfortunately, can’t simply be conjured at the drop of a hi-hat.
After all but losing hope, Sean P (by way of Backatcha’s Aiden Leacy), came to the rescue with a mint condition copy of the record that he had from running in the same circles as Robert and Duval back in the day, ripping and restoring it with a precision he’s rightly famed for. And so (finally!) here it is: distorted samples, low-fi hits, speaker rumbling bassweight and all. Raw to the core, but that’s the point – pure, unbridled emotion from the depths of North West London.
Fully licensed from Robert Roper, 20% of profits from Heels & Souls Recordings and Prime Direct Distribution will be donated to Lives Not Knives, a youth-led London-based charity, working to prevent knife crime, serious youth violence and school exclusions.
The trio’s first single from 1990, ‘Shining Through’ is a no nonsense, bassbin-rattling love song from the underground, seeing long-term friends Sonia and Arletta pulling on the heartstrings from the mic as Robert works his magic behind the studio controls.
Lovingly remastered from the DAT by Cicely Balston, if only ‘Over You’ had been so easy. Two years of endless searching for the tape and subsequently a clean copy of the record, Heels & Souls even went to the lengths of having the multitracks restored so that Robert could attempt to recreate the original mixdown in the studio – but the magic of ‘91, unfortunately, can’t simply be conjured at the drop of a hi-hat.
After all but losing hope, Sean P (by way of Backatcha’s Aiden Leacy), came to the rescue with a mint condition copy of the record that he had from running in the same circles as Robert and Duval back in the day, ripping and restoring it with a precision he’s rightly famed for. And so (finally!) here it is: distorted samples, low-fi hits, speaker rumbling bassweight and all. Raw to the core, but that’s the point – pure, unbridled emotion from the depths of North West London.
Fully licensed from Robert Roper, 20% of profits from Heels & Souls Recordings and Prime Direct Distribution will be donated to Lives Not Knives, a youth-led London-based charity, working to prevent knife crime, serious youth violence and school exclusions.
TRACK LISTING
A1. Over You
A2. Over You (Mix 2)
B1. Shining Through
B2. Shining Through (Dance Mix)
As told by Patrick Watson.
This album is about negotiating a world where you don’t know what’s real anymore.
I really spent a lot of time reading to improve my lyrics for this record. I was very inspired by Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, The Waves by Virginia Woolf and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. The lyrics are a collection of little thoughts that were pacing in my head. We worked hard on rebuilding the tones of our arrangements and we brought a bigger electronic component to the music. With the addition of modular synths, we were able to find a warmer and more touching approach to the electronics, that feel as acoustic as the rest of the instruments and move like liquid. Basically, I went back to school for the last two years to be able to bring something new ha-ha. Andrew Barr from the Barr Brothers joined us on drums for this record, it’s a pleasure to play music with such a great musician.
This album is about negotiating a world where you don’t know what’s real anymore.
I really spent a lot of time reading to improve my lyrics for this record. I was very inspired by Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, The Waves by Virginia Woolf and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. The lyrics are a collection of little thoughts that were pacing in my head. We worked hard on rebuilding the tones of our arrangements and we brought a bigger electronic component to the music. With the addition of modular synths, we were able to find a warmer and more touching approach to the electronics, that feel as acoustic as the rest of the instruments and move like liquid. Basically, I went back to school for the last two years to be able to bring something new ha-ha. Andrew Barr from the Barr Brothers joined us on drums for this record, it’s a pleasure to play music with such a great musician.
TRACK LISTING
1.Better In The Shade
2.Height Of The Feeling
3.Ode To Vivian
4.Little Moments
5.Blue
6.La La La La La
7.Stay
The 12th full-length by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris aka Grouper is a collection of songs spanning 15 years. She characterizes Shade as an album about respite, and the coast, poetically and literally. How we frame ourselves in a landscape, how in turn it frames ourselves; memories and experiences carried forward mapping our connection to place.
— An ode to blue / What lives in shade —
Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation—a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of river-mouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria.
Throughout, Harris threads a hidden radiant language of voice, disquiet, and guitar, framed by open space and the sense of being far away.
Echoing a lighthouse, burying the faults of being human / Into things that we project upon the sky at night.
— An ode to blue / What lives in shade —
Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation—a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of river-mouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria.
Throughout, Harris threads a hidden radiant language of voice, disquiet, and guitar, framed by open space and the sense of being far away.
Echoing a lighthouse, burying the faults of being human / Into things that we project upon the sky at night.
TRACK LISTING
1. Followed The Ocean
2. Unclean Mind
3. Ode To The Blue
4. Pale Interior
5. Disordered Minds
6. The Way Her Hair Falls
7. Promise
8. Basement Mix
9. Kelso (Blue Sky)
“76 In The Shade” follows in the footsteps of Bob Stanley’s hugely successful comps for Ace, including “English Weather” and “The Tears Of Technology”. It suggests bright yellow sunshine, hot plastic car seats, cats lolloping on the lawn. A few tracks (Smokey Robinson, Cliff Richard, David Ruffin, Carmen McRae) act as necessary splashes of cooling water; most of them sound like it’s just too hot to move. Luckily, you don’t need to.
The months without rain and airless days and nights might not have been something out of the ordinary in the Algarve or the south of France, but it was without precedent in Britain. The Summer of 1976 has remained a benchmark for long, hot summers – there may have been scorchers since, but none have seemed quite as relentless or enervating. The country melted into a collective puddle. “76 In The Shade” probably wasn’t anyone’s real life soundtrack of the year – that could have included Bowie’s “Station To Station” and Abba’s “Greatest Hits”. Instead, Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley has put a compilation together that sonically evokes the summer of 1976 itself, its sweet heat and almost narcotic lethargy.
Getting out of the sun, you might have sat inside with the radio on, and heard the dreamy wooziness of Liverpool Express’s ‘You Are My Love’, 10cc’s ‘I’m Mandy Fly Me’, or the Emotions’ ‘Flowers’. Or maybe you flopped out in front of the telly, where you heard an alternative summer soundtrack – the music libraries that provided the bulk of the testcard’s music gave us Simon Park’s minimal ‘Stoned Out’ and John Cameron’s deeply immersive ‘Liquid Sunshine’; the Californian jazzer Spike Janson provided the wordless vocal harmonies of ‘Walking So Free’.
“76 In The Shade” follows in the footsteps of Bob Stanley’s hugely successful comps for Ace, including “English Weather” and “The Tears Of Technology”. It suggests bright yellow sunshine, hot plastic car seats, cats lolloping on the lawn. A few tracks (Smokey Robinson, Cliff Richard, David Ruffin, Carmen McRae) act as necessary splashes of cooling water; most of them sound like it’s just too hot to move. Luckily, you don’t need to.
The months without rain and airless days and nights might not have been something out of the ordinary in the Algarve or the south of France, but it was without precedent in Britain. The Summer of 1976 has remained a benchmark for long, hot summers – there may have been scorchers since, but none have seemed quite as relentless or enervating. The country melted into a collective puddle. “76 In The Shade” probably wasn’t anyone’s real life soundtrack of the year – that could have included Bowie’s “Station To Station” and Abba’s “Greatest Hits”. Instead, Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley has put a compilation together that sonically evokes the summer of 1976 itself, its sweet heat and almost narcotic lethargy.
Getting out of the sun, you might have sat inside with the radio on, and heard the dreamy wooziness of Liverpool Express’s ‘You Are My Love’, 10cc’s ‘I’m Mandy Fly Me’, or the Emotions’ ‘Flowers’. Or maybe you flopped out in front of the telly, where you heard an alternative summer soundtrack – the music libraries that provided the bulk of the testcard’s music gave us Simon Park’s minimal ‘Stoned Out’ and John Cameron’s deeply immersive ‘Liquid Sunshine’; the Californian jazzer Spike Janson provided the wordless vocal harmonies of ‘Walking So Free’.
“76 In The Shade” follows in the footsteps of Bob Stanley’s hugely successful comps for Ace, including “English Weather” and “The Tears Of Technology”. It suggests bright yellow sunshine, hot plastic car seats, cats lolloping on the lawn. A few tracks (Smokey Robinson, Cliff Richard, David Ruffin, Carmen McRae) act as necessary splashes of cooling water; most of them sound like it’s just too hot to move. Luckily, you don’t need to.
TRACK LISTING
1. WALKING SO FREE - Spike Janson
2. SUGAR SHUFFLE - Lynsey De Paul
3. MIRACLES (SINGLE VERSION) - Jefferson Starship
4. GET OUT OF TOWN - Smokey Robinson
5. I’M MANDY FLY ME (ALBUM VERSION) - 10CC
6. STONED OUT - Simon Park
7. NOTHING TO REMIND ME - Cliff Richard
8. DISCOVER ME - David Ruffin
9. YOU’RE THE SONG (THAT I CAN’T STOP SINGING) - Hollywood Freeway
10. YOU ARE MY LOVE - Liverpool Express
11. LIQUID SUNSHINE - John Cameron
12. NOT ON THE OUTSIDE - Sylvia
13. STAY WITH ME - Blue Mink
14. WILD MOUNTAIN HONEY - Steve Miller Band
15. FALLIN’ IN LOVE - Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
16. FLOWERS - The Emotions
17. MONTREAL CITY - Azimuth
18. ROCK’N’ROLL STAR - Barclay James Harvest
19. MISS MY LOVE TODAY - Gilbert O’Sullivan
20. MUSIC - Carmen McRae
Josienne Clarke and Samantha Whates met on the London acoustic music scene several years ago and immediately shared a love of singing and writing songs. They have been unofficially collaborating for years, more often than not singing backing vocals for each other’s projects or just singing harmonies together for the pure enjoyment of it.
PicaPica represents a long held ambition to write, record and perform new material and to join together with like-minded musicians and explore what it’s like to be in a band. Along with multiinstrumentalist, singer and songwriter Adam Beattie and multiple Grammy, Mercury and MOBO nominated producer, guitarist and bass player Sonny Johns, PicaPica make a sound that provides the perfect platform for two of the UK’s brightest vocal and songwriting talents. It’s instantly recognisable and completely unique.
PicaPica represents a long held ambition to write, record and perform new material and to join together with like-minded musicians and explore what it’s like to be in a band. Along with multiinstrumentalist, singer and songwriter Adam Beattie and multiple Grammy, Mercury and MOBO nominated producer, guitarist and bass player Sonny Johns, PicaPica make a sound that provides the perfect platform for two of the UK’s brightest vocal and songwriting talents. It’s instantly recognisable and completely unique.
TRACK LISTING
Spring & Shade/Light Of The Day
Dawing/Morning
Last Leaves/Way Back Up
Small Time/Secret
Little April Shower/April
Come She Will
‘Shade Themes From Kairos’ is a new iteration of the dream for all the guitar freaks out there, bringing together a couple of singular players together, just to see what happens. In this case, the players were old friends and collaborators Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley, playing in a space engineered and co-populated by Randall Dunn.
The album began in 2009, when Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop asked Ambarchi and O’Malley to score his short feature, ‘Kairos’. Randall Dunn was their first and best choice to record and co-produce the music and, as the session progressed, all three men found themselves acting as a trio to bring the music. In the end, this album was made by a trio of players. Decamped in an old radio station in Kortrijk, Belgium, they filled a bare, stripped live broadcast room with the needed equipment as well as other amazing old pieces made available by the gearheads of the European lowlands. With guitars, drums, analogue synthesizers, vibes, crotales, Sruti box and a mellotron, deep emanations were evoked, while other spirits emerged from the old wooden sound panels in the room - the ghosts of music makers past? It will suffice to say that all who were there contributed something. The soundtrack was completed but the vast space they’d discovered together required deeper investigation. Ambarchi, O’Malley and Dunn determined to go further with the music, reconvening back at Randall’s Aleph Studio in Seattle, where further recording and mixing was done.
From the top, ‘Shade Themes From Kairos’ is resonant as a collective inquest in sound, with all the players deeply immersed within the panorama they are creating. ‘That Space Between’ blows in from a distance, rolling rhythmically, with synthetic percussion chattering, before it settles into a stately pace, as the guitars wind ethereal around the procession. Under the beat lies always space, and as the cadential clusters drift off, metal chimes and keys sputter and dig deep and clean through the abyss.
‘Temporal, Eponymous’ shines with guitar distortions and drum explosions, combining to create a tonal fugue state that swells as it loops around, climaxing with the thrill of guitars and drums crashing forward as waves of mellotron suddenly burst from their belly.
‘Circumstances Of Faith’ dawns dark and damp, with electric waves and flashes of analogue synth, stark yet sinuous, an environment growing into our ears. More frantic drums from Ambarchi swing into the picture, joined by Tor Deitrichson’s tabla, in best Badal Roy fashion, while the guitars ascend the path to self-destruction and plunge everthing over the edge into pure nothingness.
From the mist comes the ruminative piece ‘Sometimes’, featuring Ai Aso on vocals amidst brushed drums, cutting through a web of acoustic and electric guitars.
For the finale, the cleansing call of electricity is summoned, as the guitars of Ambarchi and O’Malley arc and drone, slowly passing through a profusion of moods and moments, leaving the listener purified at the foot of the ‘Ebony Pagoda’.
To synthesize the mood of the music, artwork was commissioned from the Russian symbolist Denis Kostromitin, who provided astonishing visuals that matched the mutations of the album.
The album began in 2009, when Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop asked Ambarchi and O’Malley to score his short feature, ‘Kairos’. Randall Dunn was their first and best choice to record and co-produce the music and, as the session progressed, all three men found themselves acting as a trio to bring the music. In the end, this album was made by a trio of players. Decamped in an old radio station in Kortrijk, Belgium, they filled a bare, stripped live broadcast room with the needed equipment as well as other amazing old pieces made available by the gearheads of the European lowlands. With guitars, drums, analogue synthesizers, vibes, crotales, Sruti box and a mellotron, deep emanations were evoked, while other spirits emerged from the old wooden sound panels in the room - the ghosts of music makers past? It will suffice to say that all who were there contributed something. The soundtrack was completed but the vast space they’d discovered together required deeper investigation. Ambarchi, O’Malley and Dunn determined to go further with the music, reconvening back at Randall’s Aleph Studio in Seattle, where further recording and mixing was done.
From the top, ‘Shade Themes From Kairos’ is resonant as a collective inquest in sound, with all the players deeply immersed within the panorama they are creating. ‘That Space Between’ blows in from a distance, rolling rhythmically, with synthetic percussion chattering, before it settles into a stately pace, as the guitars wind ethereal around the procession. Under the beat lies always space, and as the cadential clusters drift off, metal chimes and keys sputter and dig deep and clean through the abyss.
‘Temporal, Eponymous’ shines with guitar distortions and drum explosions, combining to create a tonal fugue state that swells as it loops around, climaxing with the thrill of guitars and drums crashing forward as waves of mellotron suddenly burst from their belly.
‘Circumstances Of Faith’ dawns dark and damp, with electric waves and flashes of analogue synth, stark yet sinuous, an environment growing into our ears. More frantic drums from Ambarchi swing into the picture, joined by Tor Deitrichson’s tabla, in best Badal Roy fashion, while the guitars ascend the path to self-destruction and plunge everthing over the edge into pure nothingness.
From the mist comes the ruminative piece ‘Sometimes’, featuring Ai Aso on vocals amidst brushed drums, cutting through a web of acoustic and electric guitars.
For the finale, the cleansing call of electricity is summoned, as the guitars of Ambarchi and O’Malley arc and drone, slowly passing through a profusion of moods and moments, leaving the listener purified at the foot of the ‘Ebony Pagoda’.
To synthesize the mood of the music, artwork was commissioned from the Russian symbolist Denis Kostromitin, who provided astonishing visuals that matched the mutations of the album.
Shade Grown is the new studio LP from Vermont psych folk rulers, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder. Their first studio jam for Blackest Rainbow, something we've been keen to do for a while now after our previous live release for the duo. Shade Grown drops just in time for their November/December EU/UK tour, which judging by this LP, you won't want to miss out on.
The record features MV & EE channelling some spaced out tones with various incarnations of The Bummer Road, the more free cosmic jamming back up unit they venture out with from time to time. This personnel this time round reads as a who's who of talent in the current psych/folk underworld... Jeremy Earl (Woods/Woodsist), Herbcraft, Rongoose, Carson 'Smokehound' Arnold, Doc Dunn, Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower Corsano Duo) and Muskox. You're in for a treat of lunar blues, psych folk, and free form outer limit jammin'.
We're keeping this release strictly analogue. No download, no streaming. Vinyl only, like the good old days. Pressed in an edition of 600 copies package in a full colour sleeve with insert.
The record features MV & EE channelling some spaced out tones with various incarnations of The Bummer Road, the more free cosmic jamming back up unit they venture out with from time to time. This personnel this time round reads as a who's who of talent in the current psych/folk underworld... Jeremy Earl (Woods/Woodsist), Herbcraft, Rongoose, Carson 'Smokehound' Arnold, Doc Dunn, Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower Corsano Duo) and Muskox. You're in for a treat of lunar blues, psych folk, and free form outer limit jammin'.
We're keeping this release strictly analogue. No download, no streaming. Vinyl only, like the good old days. Pressed in an edition of 600 copies package in a full colour sleeve with insert.
Fol Chen sound like Prince with Amon Duul II and a children's religious revival, not to mention Hot Chip, Pink Floyd, Gwen Stefani, Pere Ubu, Danielson Famile, Scritti Politti, Boards of Canada, The Blow and Pulp. Fol Chen features Samuel Bing, guitarist for The Liars, and appearances from Karin Tatoyan, Rafter, members of Castanets and Liars. Two of their songs have been featured in the major motion picture 'Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom'. Fol Chen will also soon be heard via their remixes of High Places, Frightened Rabbit and No Kids. Cryptic and Joyful and Asking you to Dance.
Following 2006's massively acclaimed "Movements" album, Booka Shade, aka Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier, return with their third album, "The Sun & The Neon Light". It's a mature work that tackles the contradictions between our day-life and our night-life, between the organic and the artificial, the individual and the crowd, the inner and the outer. This eternal tension is reflected not just in the range and complexity of the album's moods, but also its mingling of acoustic and electronic textures – of course Booka Shade's roots lie in club music, but for "The Sun & The Neon Light" they adopt a song-based approach, and expertly weave real instruments and voices with superbly detailed electronics to create a futuristic but very human kind of music. It's an album from a band at the top of their game, whose songwriting and arranging is now in perfect accord with their production panache and instinctive dancefloor know-how.