First collaboration between DJ-musician-composer, Elisabeth Esselink and the husband and wife team of Jon Spencer (of avant-punksters Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash and head honcho of Blues Explosion) and Cristina Martinez, Boss Hog frontwoman. They met after Esselink DJ’ed at a gig supporting the Blues Explosion.
· The trio immediately recorded at Esselink’s studio beneath her indie record shop in Amsterdam, and also in New York and mailed tracks between the two as they added and edited on the way. The resultant album mixes and matches the best of both their approaches, tough, eclectic, explosive, retro and yet also at the cutting edge of 21st century dance music.

Experience the rebirth Of Jim Spencer’s musical vision through Piya Malik’s captivating rendition in say she she’s limited 45 rpm edition of ‘Wrap Myself Up’. Malik’s artistry infuses fierce elegance into the original tune, honoring spencer’s legacy, with spencer himself featured on the B-side.

TRACK LISTING

1. Say She She - Wrap Myself Up In Your Love
2. Jim Spencer - Wrap Myself Up In Your Love

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) 

Now I Got Worry is the fifth studio album by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

It was originally released via Matador Records on October 15, 1996.

Now I Got Worry begins with a tortured scream (on the opening declaration of ostracization "Skunk") and ends face down in the dub sewage of "Sticky", with hardcore blitzkriegs ("Identify") and profane Dub Narcotic covers ("Fuck Shit Up") in between.

Now I Got Worry sees the trio adapting to the bluesman's brand of hypnotic, in-the-pocket electric blues, but filtering it through the cut-and-paste funk aesthetic favored by contemporaries like Beck, the Beastie Boys, and Cibo Matto.

The fifth Blues Explosion album captures "their taut, blazing, live sound and their eccentric studio approach with a better balance than anything else in their catalog; if you want to get slapped upside the head while you boogie all night long, this is the album for you" - Allmusic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Skunk
2. Identify
3. Wail
4. Fuck Shit Up
5. 2Kindsa Love
6. Love All Of Me
7. Chicken Dog
8. Rocketship
9. Dynamite Lover
10. Hot Shot
11. Can't Stop
12. Firefly Child
13. Eyeballin'
14. R.L. Got Soul
15. Get Over Here
16. Sticky

Written, recorded and produced by Spencer. during the pandemic, ‘Are U Down?’ blends R&B, hip-hop, funk, indie, pop, jazz and soul to create a sound that feels both analogue and digital, honouring the past whilst staying firmly in the present.

Spencer. has integrated neo-soul vocal fireworks, hip-hop flow and pop ambition into an album steeped in all the feels of a New York summer.

The album includes the singles ‘No Direction’ which Spencer. performed for the GRAMMY’s Play At Home series, ‘MyLuv’ and ‘Lonely As I Ever Was’, as well as the standout track ‘U Around?’, which was prominently featured on episode five of the latest season of the HBO hit-show ‘Insecure’.

The record also features 4AD labelmate Becky And The Birds (vocals on ‘After The Show’), Luke Diamond (guitars) and Jake Aron (some additional production).

TRACK LISTING

Byyyte
Lonely As I Ever Was
U Around?
MyLuv
After The Show (Spencer feat Becky And The Birds)
Luvs Me Not
RocStar
Staywmecassette
No Direction
Heart Freestyle
Drop

The indelible Jon Spencer (Blues Explosion, Boss Hog, Pussy Galore, Heavy Trash etc) is back with Jon Spencer & the HITmakers. 

Spencer Gets It Lit delivers friction, excitement, and post-modern depravity in a gonzo retaliation against idiocy that is as good a balm for our collective PTSD as any. Across layers of big beats, fuzz guitar, and fat synths he spits, croons, rhapsodises, and seduces. Spencer Gets It Lit is his most complex, groovy, and fun record in years; a dark and danceable odyssey – both a studied take-down of the early 21st century, and a celebration of the place where electricity meets the mind.

‘The Worst Facts’ has the HITmakers chanting “It's called a fact!” over a uniquely Spencer lesson in humility. ‘Strike 3’ has Spencer exchange anxieties with HITmaker (and one half of Quasi) Sam Coomes (Jon: “This world! Make me feel bad!”, Sam: “I'm grindin' my teeth! Grindin' 'em out!” ) before they jointly erupt into the chorus of “Hot dogs! Baseball!...We're gonna die!!". Forthcoming single ‘Worm Town’ (with its gambit “Twinkle twinkle little star, tried to run but didn't get far”) is country-synth-funk that you didn't know you needed til you needed it. In ‘Get It Right Now’, Spencer mixes hitmaking with troublemaking, calling out Zuckerberg, Bezos, and, er, Jagger (“You got nothin' on me!!”). Spencer Gets It Lit is classic Jon Spencer taken to the extremis – electro-boogie, constructivist art pop, a cocktail of industrial sleaze and futurist elegance.

Says Spencer, "Send out the Hit Signal! This is the most uncompromising album I've ever made!"

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Over his time in the business, the inimitable Jon Spencer has crafted a huge number of killer albums across several different projects, but 'Spencer Gets Lit' might go down as one of his greatest. A joyful and clever extension of his notoriously gifted songwriting and wry lyricism. Fuzzed out grooves and jagged garage-funk of the highest order.

TRACK LISTING

1. Junk Man
2. Get It Right Now
3. Death Ray
4. The Worst Facts
5. Primary Baby
6. Worm Town
7. Bruise
8. Layabout Trap
9. Push Comes To Shove
10. My Hit Parade
11. Rotting Money
12. Strike 3
13. Get Up & Do It

bonus CD Tracks
14. Germ Vs. Jerk
15. The Devil’s Ice Age

Spencer is an upcoming biographical drama film directed by Pablo Larraín (No, Jackie) and written by Steven Knight, based on the later years of the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and starring Kristen Stewart in the titular role. The score is written by Jonny Greenwood, the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Radiohead, who has written a number of acclaimed film scores such as Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood and Norwegian Wood.

TRACK LISTING

Arrival
Ancient And Modern
Calling The Whipper In
Spencer
The Pearls
Invention For Harpsicord And Compression
Frozen Three
The Boys
Delusion / Miracle
Partita In Five For Two Organs
Home / Lacrimosa
Crucifix
Press Call
New Currency

The ideal of the residency was to mix things up with special guests, different band lineups, and varied set lists, keeping things fresh and new week-to-week, and this show was the wild card of the bunch.

That's because although Ryan and I have played together for years, and Dave and Spencer have played together for years, neither half of the band had ever met each other. I was tangentially aware of Dave and his music and was intrigued by what I'd heard, so I thought it was a cool idea when Chris Tart, the residency promoter, suggested a collaboration.

So, about 30 minutes after we'd all heard each others voices for the first time, we got up and played for a little over an hour, uninterrupted. The only thing discussed beforehand was that we shouldn't discuss anything beforehand - not a key or a riff to start with, nothing - so as to preserve maximum spontaneity.

I think this music demonstrates a real connection on stage. In other words, each player was completely present and actively listening on the bandstand. Listening back, there are moments I can hear Ryan saying - musically - "Hey, let's go over here! Check this out!," or Spencer being like "Wouldn't it be cool to go down this path?" And we followed. And it was cool.

In my mind, that listening thing is the number one most important factor in any collaboration or cooperative effort, but especially in improvised music.

And I think it's fair to say that a little more listening, a little more presence, would do the whole world some good right about now, don't you think?

-Chris Forsyth

New York City is a big place. A loud place. Some of that noise is music. And some of the music is noise. Sucking it all in and turning it loose with prejudice, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion takes a ferocious bite out of the Big Apple with their new long-player, Freedom Tower – No Wave Dance Party 2015, the first record of the new era that demands to be stopped and frisked! Like the best sides that percolated up from the Bronx, the Lower East Side, and Greenwich Village across the 1970s and ‘80s – Freedom Tower is more than a high-octane dance party record, it is a document of New York City, a chronicle of grit and terror and love!

It’s all here: The Hustler and The Trust Fund Baby, the Mosh Pit Casualty, the Celebrity Chef, the Crooked Cop, the Struggling Artist, the Sucker MC, the forgotten Sex Workers and Last-Chance Cinderellas. Within these grooves are cold-water tenements, blue-chip galleries, dingy Avenue B studios, and the last real warrior poet whose dark magick brings garage rock ghosts back from the grave! Freedom Tower is a radical portrait of New York City set to the savage funkacide of the Blues Explosion, locked and loaded with the most deadly, predatory guitar riffs that primitive magnetic tape can handle.... From start to finish, Freedom Tower is overmodulated, cooked with dirt, and finished in acid rain! Freedom Tower is packed with the kind of beats and rhymes that will make even the most reserved Walter Mitty jump back and say “damn!”

For nearly a quarter-century the Blues Explosion have been sweating, freezing, eating, drinking, fucking, fighting, winning, and losing in New York City, perpetrating some of the most timeless moments of musical mayhem in the history of Manhattan and beyond. As ever, Jon Spencer tells the tales, Judah Bauer plays the blues, and Russell Simins smashes things to bits... And as always Blues Explosion stomp on the faux underground oasis peddled by bourgeois hipsters and marketing jocks to deliver the real deal —rock’n’roll that is unapologetically nasty. Rehearsed and polished in a string of secret gigs and unannounced opening slots in theaters, hotel bars, and dives (often under assumed names), and then recorded at the legendary Daptone House Of Soul in Bushwick and mixed with hip-hop cult legend Alap Momin at the cutting edge of Harlem, Freedom Tower is the most provocative statement of urban pathos and panache ever recorded. Play this record at all-night rent parties, picnics , discotheques, and protests! There are eight million stories in the Naked City —but there is only one Blues Explosion!

Freedom Tower- dig it now, while you still can!

Wake Up Awesome, by C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Okkyung Lee, and Lasse Marhaug (Jazzkamer), is the second chapter of Software Studio Series - a new venture in the Software Recording Co.'s expanding catalog that invites artists in the field of electronic music to create collaborative works of quality and vision. Inspired by the historical intersections of live performance and studio post-production, Wake Up Awesome is a modern kind of fusion in technique as well as genre. At its core are three artists highly experienced with both instant and labored composition. Together, they found the studio generated improvisations were iteratively developed by each on their own.

Passages of real-time improvisation duck and swerve into electro-concrete tangles of samples, edits and juxtaposition – all you'd want out of a world of mechanical possibility. If it sounds intentional on the record, it was. If Yeh and Marhaug's more electronic affinities in their respective practices place them as the "producers," then Lee's cello often leads the drive as a sort of soloist.

The resulting conversation is genuinely both serious and iconoclastic. All three artists have a history of dialogue, but this is the first time they've hung out for the record -- we're very happy that they did.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wake Up Awesome
2. Hairslide
3. The Mermen Of Poetry
4. Ophelia Gimme Shelter
5. The Mermaids Of Extended Technique
6. Magic Seagull Lamp
7. Mission: Lazy
8. Mission: Nothing
9. Throw Down The Fishcake
10. Neutrons Whatever
11. Serious Cat's Milk
12. Anise Tongue And Durian Wet Dream
13. Mission: Possible
14. RSVP Skunk
15. Tonight We Sleep Like Empty Hard Drives

Meat And Bone is the first studio album by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in eight years. This is straight-up, Grade A Blues Explosion, mixed by Mr. Spencer himself, with no special guests. Meat And Bone is 12 prime cuts of raw rock 'n' roll, recorded on Sly Stone's "Riot" Flickinger console at the legendary Key Club Recording Studio in Benton Harbor, MI, and mixed in the jungles of New York City. Judah Bauer, Russell Simins and Jon Spencer continue to blow minds with their fusillade of energy and rhythm, and have once again proven that the Blues is #1!

Says Jon Spencer: "We still have that psychic glue that allows us to create music together. Over the course of a year touring and writing new songs and recording, we rediscovered our shared history as a band. We circled the wagons, and went back to our roots. In a way this is almost like another first album."

On stage and in the studio, Judah Bauer, Russell Simins and Jon Spencer have destroyed and rebuilt American roots music with such ferocity and wild abandon. Make no mistake: The Blues Explosion was there first. They are the original. It was their sanctified outbursts and blues-bending riffs that began the new-fangled roots rock revolution and spawned countless imitators. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion has blazed a furious trail into the future with incendiary spirit built from courage, audacity, and revolt. Nothing has been the same since.

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Mold
2. Bag Of Bones
3. Boot Cut
4. Get Your Pants Off
5. Ice Cream Killer
6. Strange Baby
7. Bottle Baby
8. Danger
9. Black Thoughts
10. Unclear
11. Bear Trap
12. Zimgar

DJ / producer / nightlife empresario, Spencer Product has been at the forefront of progressive indie and electro music styles over the past decade. His tastemaking parties (combining raw punk attitude with a danceloor sensibility and energetic mix of progressive musical styles) have ignited the flame of New York city nightlife and captivated crowds across the globe. And if you haven't caught him DJing, this CD features a 19 track Spencer mix. The set includes Bloc Party, Aussie favourites Cut Copy and Muscles, New York underground superstars, ARE Weapons and Free Blood to the more indie styles of the Films, Matt & Kim and Pop Levi.