Junior Marvin is widely recognized as an all-time great reggae musician and Musical Director and guitarist of Bob Marley’s iconic band, The Wailers. Junior’s new album, Happy Family, will be released 2/16/24 and will coincide with the theatrical release of One Love, the Bob Marley Paramount biopic feature film on 2/14/24. In the film, the role of Junior is played by his real-life son, Davo, who is also a musical artist. The first single from Happy Family will be Junior’s new recording of “One Love”.

Junior Marvin was born in Jamaica and grew up in London and met the late Tuff Gong icon on Valentine’s Day in 1977 (ironically the same day the film will be released) who touted him as the “young Jimi Hendrix of London”. Marley immediately asked Junior to join his band as lead guitarist and became one of Marley’s closest friends up until his death. Junior’s guitar playing was a huge influence on Marley, and his musicianship can be clearly heard on such seminal Marley tracks as “Could You Be Loved” (which Junior originally wrote and gave to Marley), “Waiting in Vain,” “Buffalo Soldier,” “The Heathen”, “One Love” and “Jamming”.

Junior Marvin is not just limited to reggae however; he has played with Stevie Wonder and Steve Winwood, among many others (he actually turned down an offer by Wonder to join his band Wonderlove to accept Marley’s offer to become a member of The Wailers on the same Valentine’s Day in 1977).

TRACK LISTING

1. Brother
2. Rastafari
3. Message Of Love
4. Midnight Rockers
5. Lord Have Mercy
6. Reggae Rock
7. Your Messages (Are Games)
8. Love Will (Never Let You Down)
9. Let Me Tell You Something
10. Always & Forever
11. Take Control
12. Happy Family
13. One Love
14. Fight Them Back (With Love)

Wicked previously unreleased late '80s combination tune from Icho Candy & his brother Prince Junior, who are sometimes confused for each other. On the same rhythm as King Kong's "Agony and Pain" (also repressed this week). Lyrically about the struggle for freedom of the day, as resonant today as it was nearly 40 years ago.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Icho Candy muses on the struggle for the freedom over King Kong's "Agony And Pain" riddim. Its another winner from the selection of Jah Life Time reissues we've been luckily blessed with this week.

TRACK LISTING

A. Free Up
B. Free Up Dub

'The World in Air Quotes' is a genre-shifting style-melting kaleidoscope of art-rock, jazz, techno, folk & industrial. The God In Hackney sound like very little else from the early 2020's and whilst 'The World In Air Quotes' innovative progenitors are manifold - Eno, Coil, Robert Wyatt, The Durutti Column, 1980s ECM jazz to name a few - it sounds beholden to none of them.

The God In Hackney's first album 'Cave Moderne' was Andrew Weatherall's album of the year for NTS Radio.

The God In Hackney's second LP, 'Small Country Eclipse', was album of 2020 for critic Sukhdev Sandhu of The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture: "Mordant music: stuttering, dread, black humour. A record that felt truly independent, beholden to no genre, out of step with all centres and signposted nodes."

"The most enthralling melange of art-rock & new wave in the last decade" Hi-Fi Choice Magazine May 2023

"Left-field art-pop with leanings to 80's pop experimentalists like Peter Gabriel or Magazine...Peter Gabriel fronting Talking Heads?" Peter Hollo / Utility Fog, April 2023

Getting right to the point, "In This Room" by The God in Hackney is definitely one of the best songs I've heard so far in 2023, and almost certainly in all of the 2020s (the 2010s are being looked into as we speak). (Larry Dolman / Blastitude! April 10 2023)

'The World In Air Quotes' is The God In Hackney's 3rd album and their most musically emotive and lyrically inventive to date. It's an album that resonates with feelings about climate change, isolation, extinction, the social impact of technology, the flattening of history—and illuminates the darkness with imaginative rhythm, melody, noise & poetry. Songs range from widescreen, anthemic rock, to strange intricately arranged jazz-influenced songs, to abstract, textural electronic pieces. There's a strain of dark and surreal comedy too that runs through the lyrics and some of the choices the band makes in their sounds and arrangements.

The core God in Hackney quartet of Andy Cooke, Dan Fox, Ashley Marlowe and Nathaniel Mellors has expanded to include American multi-instrumentalists and composers Eve Essex (Eve Essex & The Fabulous Truth, Das Audit, Peter Gordon & Love of Life Orchestra, Peter Zummo, Liturgy) and Kelly Pratt (Father John Misty, David Byrne/St Vincent, Beirut, and Lonnie Holley among many others), signalling a new and ambitious direction for the band.

The album cover features original artwork by Iranian-American artist Tala Madani, recently the subject of a career survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

TRACK LISTING

1. In The Face Of A New Science
2. Heaven & Black Water
3. Bardo!
4. In This Room
5. Red Star
6. Philip
7. Interstate 5
8. Broken Pets
9. American Email
10. A Frozen Western
11. Non-Zero Number

Cryptically-named duo JOHN - comprised of John Newton (drums, lead vocals) and Johnny Healey (guitar, backing vocals) - return with their first new music since the release of their acclaimed third album Nocturnal Manoeuvres. It comes in the guise of the blistering 'Theme New Bond Junior', the A-side of a new 7" single, b/w 'Hopper on the Dial'.

Set to undulating guitar riffs and a greater sense of dynamics than ever before, 'Theme New Bond Junior' finds JOHN tackling the questioning feelings that arose as the band returned to the live circuit once venues began to open their doors as they embarked on a rapturous 30-date UK tour in autumn 2021, as well as recent festival slots at Green Man, End of the Road, Latitude, a main stage appearance at Bearded Theory’s Spring Gathering and a memorable return to the mainland at Belgium’s historic ROCK HERK.

“The arts function as a mirror of our wider culture, and it’s been interesting to see how the acceleration of the present affects most aspects of our lives - including the production of art and music," says Newton. "The track was a gestation on the speed of consumption: this includes both the constant update/obsolescence of physical products and their resulting affect on the human attention span.”

“Recently, it’s been concerning to see individuals - who have been pillars of creative action - questioning their ability to continue their jobs (and passions). Especially amongst the, quite frankly ridiculous, calls to ‘retrain’. I felt like the track helped us to keep our own momentum, continuing to stay positive and move forward despite the challenging scenery around us. With this in mind, it felt like the perfect track to act as a call-to-arms, introducing a new chapter as the first glimpse of a barrage of new stuff we’ve been focussing on.”

'Theme New Bond Junior' also marks a change in production personnel: beginning a collaboration between South London recording engineer Tom Hill of The Bookhouse Studio and mixing engineer Seth Manchester (Battles, METZ, The Hotelier) of Machines With Magnets, Rhode Island, USA.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: How good is this?! Piccadilly's favourite noise makers return with this superb two tracker. Theme New Bond Junior is a typically JOHN thundering guitar and drum assault while Hopper On The Dial is a more brooding affair that slowly builds to a crescendo of soaring guitars, rumbling drums and half-spoken vocals.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Theme New Bond Junior
B1 Hopper On The Dial

Canadian duo Junior Boys release their sixth album, ‘Waiting Game’, on City Slang. Six years since their last album, 2016’s ‘Big Black Coat’. ‘Waiting Game’ finds producers Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus in a tender and contemplative mood; a switch-up from their punchy, R&B-infused dance melodics for something more soothing. Hushed vox whisper through crystalline electronics, glowing pads like lanterns in the snow; intimate yet technologically focused songs that traverse genre boundaries and touch the soul.

The album’s additional musicians are Canadians, too; Caribou collaborator Colin Fisher performs saxophone throughout and Bonjay frontwoman Alanna Stuart sings alongside Greenspan on the song “Yes 2”. In this, Junior Boys have made an album that reflects the quiet beauty of the world, so long as you’re prepared to truly listen.

Junior Boys will embark on an extensive 20th anniversary headline tour in January and March 2023 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Must Be All The Wrong Things
A2. Night Walk
A3. It Never Occurred To Me
A4. Thinking About You Calms Me Down
A5. Yes II
B1. Dum Audio
B2. Fidget
B3. Samba On Sama
B4. Waiting Game

Corridor are a group from Montreal and their Sub Pop debut, ‘Junior’, was made just yesterday. The rock & roll band had barely inked their record deal when they surfed into studio, racing against time to make the most dazzling, immediate and inventive album of their young career: 39 minutes of darting and dodging guitars, spiralling vocal harmonies and the complicated, goldenrod nostalgia of a Sunday mid-afternoon.

‘Junior’ is the band’s third full-length and their third recorded with their friend, producer (and occasional roommate) Emmanuel Ethier. However 2015’s ‘Le Voyage Éternel’ and 2017’s ‘Supermercado’ were made languorously, their songs taking shape across whole seasons. This time Dominic Berthiaume (vocals/bass), Julian Perreault (guitar), Jonathan Robert (vocals/guitar/synths) and Julien Bakvis (drums) permitted themselves no such indulgence.

Singers, two guitars, bass, drums: the timelessness of the setup underpins the timelessness of the sound, a rock & roll borrowing from each of the past six decades - punk and pop, psych and jangle, daydream and swoon. This is music that’s muscular, exciting and full of love, its riffs a kind of medicine.

Whereas Corridor’s past work could sometimes seem overstuffed, twenty ideas to the same song, the new work is hypnotic, distilled. “Part of the beauty of the thing is that we didn’t have time to think about it,” says Berthiaume. Six of ‘Junior’s 10 tracks were conceived during a single weekend. The words to ‘Bang’ were written on the eve of the sessions, as Robert began to panic: “Je payerai tôt ou tard,” he sings: I’ll pay, sooner or later. Fewer jams, fewer overdubs - no fortnight in the countryside secluding themselves in a chalet. Even the artwork came in the nick of time: in spite of other, meticulous, masterpieces, Robert’s “shitty last-minute collage” (of an egg saying hello) was the one his bandmates went for.

Sub Pop have never before, in their 33-year history, signed a Francophone act. Maybe the band’s magic springs from their ingenious hooks, their topaztinted vision. Maybe it’s the panache of Québec’s insurgent underground scene, or the camaraderie of Robert and Berthiaume, who have played together since they were 14. Maybe it’s their name - a hallway crossed with a toreador. Probably it’s all of these and none of them: ‘Junior’ is a joy, a hasty miracle, because it’s so much damn fun to listen to.

TRACK LISTING

Topographe
Junior
Domino
Goldie
Agent Double
Microscopie
Grand Cheval
Milan
Pow
Bang

In honour of the 80th birthday of Jamaica's most enigmatic music creator, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Trojan line up a trio of seminal vinyl albums from Perry's most prolific period. Kicking the set off is Junior Byles’ influential roots classic from 1972, "Beat Down Babylon". Comprising the famed singer’s early solo recordings from the previous two years, the LP has since become a widely sought-after collector’s item, often hailed at Lee Perry’s finest work prior to the opening of his Black Ark studio late the following year. Despite its enviable reputation, the LP has been unavailable on vinyl since its original release, with this long overdue reissue sure to delight fans of Perry, early roots and one of Jamaica’s most gifted singer-songwriters. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Out of press since its original 1972 release, this Lee Perry produced roots masterpiece is back on the black stuff for all the real reggae fans out there.

This classic slice of Chicago blues should come with a government health warning - this one is more infectious than swine flu. "'Bout The Break Of Day" heads down low for a blues head-nodder.

With a line-up of members from New Brunswick, Canada and Manchester, UK, it should be no surprise that the songs of Faker Junior have the feel of both wide open spaces and urban grit, distilled and blended into brief ringing-guitar symphonies. Strong vocals (singer Ryan Lamey has been compared to both Buckleys, Tim and Jeff), layered guitars and driving rhythms are combined to form cliche-free melodic songs with enough of the sweet and the bitter, the dark and the light, to satisfy in full, but without excess or wasted effort, and with the occasional unexpected turn. Previously a solo singer-songwriter seeking musicians, and a group of musician-writers seeking a frontman, they connected online and first met in Manchester on an appropriately snowy night in December 2008. The chemistry was immediate and within weeks they had pooled resources and their disparate influences to write their first new songs. By February 2009 they were in the studio to record demos of 4 tracks with producer Yves Altana, but the initial results were so good that recording was extended and the finished tracks have become the band's self-funded debut EP, "Need To Know".

This is the debut album from underground post-punk group Skill 7 Stamina 12. It fuses punk, disco, krautrock and jazz influences and will appeal to fans of A Certain Ratio, Can, Gang Of Four, Massacre, Stereolab and Arthur Russell. Skill 7 Stamina 12 have strong ties with the London art scene and feature a Dutch chanteuse who sings in a range of languages, underpinned by fearsomely tight rhythmic arrangements.

Ex Collapsed Lung members, Junior Blanks holed up in North London to record the second of four limited 7" only releases, "Slobs Are Gods". Junior Blanks is comprised of Ant Chapman who has recorded under the name Scissorkicks (Fused & Bruised) Johnny Dawe - one half of experimental duo Oskar (Leaf Records) and Jim Burke aka Sgt Rock (also remixed for Delakota and Simple Kid). There'll be a 'pizza-style-box' produced to house all four 7"s with the final release.

Having given up the quest to find the link between hip-hop, soft drinks & football (yes, Junior Blanks is ex- "Eat My Goal" Collapsed Lung) Junior Blanks holed up in North London to record the first of four limited 7" only releases. "Tramps, Fuzz and Publishers" is a punk-funk fable of crack and knitting. The flip, "Cheated" is a country-hip-hop-folk song of bitterness.

Long overdue 'best of' from one of reggae's most distinctive voices. Features 70s roots tracks produced by Lee Perry, Dennis Brown, Sly & Robbie, Augustus Pablo, Prince Jammy, Niney The Observer etc. This is Sound Boy's debut LP release.

Thomas Hansen (aka St. Thomas) delivers 13 songs of unpretentious and melodic Psycho Cowboy tunes with beautiful heavenly harmonium underscored by acoustic guitar, organ and acid banjo.