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LP
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RANDB 170LP
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Thirteen tracks recorded for the BBC, ranging from a funky "Get Out My Life Woman" (as the Jaybirds) to an early version of the Woodstock-featured classic "I'm Going Home." Five of these tracks were not included on any of the band's studio albums. The LP highlights jazz, blues and acoustic influences, which would diminish as the band's driving blues-rock became internationally successful. Sound quality ranges from sound-board to very good and the release includes full recording details and extensive sleeve notes.
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RANDB 173LP
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Appearances on the BBC played a crucial part in the extraordinary UK success enjoyed by Focus in 1972-73. Their live performances on TV's The Old Grey Whistle Test and radio's Sounds Of The '70s were much discussed at the time, and laid the foundation for a trio of hit singles in "Sylvia," "Hocus Pocus," and "House Of The King," all included here. Seven tracks showcase their distinctive mix of flute, keyboards and guitar with occasional yodeling. Sound is excellent throughout and the release comes with full recording details and extensive sleeve notes.
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WHYT 083GREY-CD
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Grey CD version. New York-based artist James K returns with Friend. This album is full of electric pop anthems that blends ear-worming melodies with peak-time breaks, buzzing powerpunk guitars and a classic rave pulse, with K's signature enchanting vocals playfully spitting emotion. It's a hallucinatory pleasure, tearing through your body and mind. "Play" rushes with a rebellion of friends -- an electro fever daydream waking up everywhere you go. Hot off extensive tours worldwide, playing the likes of Pitchfork Festival, Dekmantel, iii Points, and Mutek, following in the footsteps of her last two critically acclaimed singles Friend comes on AD 93. RIYL: Cocteau Twins, Yves Tumor, Prodigy, Oklou, Grimes. Also available on black (WHYT 083LP) and transparent vinyl (WHYT 083TR-LP).
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WHYT 097LP
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Prolific South East London guitarist and songwriter Alpha Maid presents her album Is this a queue. Beginning from a sense of frustration at the predictable and boring narratives and systems of the world, and the feeling that such rules were the rules of the universe, Alpha Maid formed an interest in particle physics. "We only know 4% of the universe, there is hope in that and the unknown 96%. I found excitement and wonder in that. The theories I was reading about relied more on the conditions of the present moment, and it made the idea of living in the moment feel more accessible. It started to be possible to see present time from all these different angles, and to have infinite more options to choose where to be next." Written across many years and different places, the LP documents a journey and the people Alpha Maid met while moving around, collating moments of the present. Her guitar remains a constant amongst an array of sonic influences throughout: from dub which honors her Jamaican heritage and the Windrush Generation, to the twinges of an emo love song in "On Smoke." Is this a queue revels in the magic of that which people cannot see and coherently understand, and the narratives that have been shrunk down to fit. Remembering, continuing, forgetting, paying attention, building, navigating, contributing, time. Alpha Maid (aka Leisha Thomas) is a guitarist, vocalist, and producer from South London. Her debut EP Spy (2019) was released by the collective/label CURL. She continues to collaborate in various forms with fellow members such as Coby Sey and Mica Levi. Alpha Maid's debut vinyl release Chuckle EP (2021) was released on the C.A.N.V.A.S. collective/label, and garnered significant critical attention. In spring 2023 Alpha Maid teamed up with Mica Levi to self-release their joint EP spresso. Featuring Leo Hermitt, Valentina Magaletti, Ben Vince, and Coby Sey.
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WHYT 101LP
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London-based experimental artist and new AD 93 signing feeo announces the project's debut album Goodness. Illuminated with breathtaking vocals and uncanny poetics, Goodness is an open, impressionistic assemblage of drone, ambient, experimental electronics, improvisational music and minimalist dance music. Across protean forms and voices, feeo explores an ever-evolving counterpoint between connection and isolation, the city and the natural world, the external and the internal. Contrasting beauty with volatility, communion with disintegration, feeo creates an album of absorbing tension between distinct contrasts. With eleven interconnected pieces of music, each engaged in symbiotic dialogue, Goodness represents a sinuous yet uniform work. Each track is like a link in a chain, with each piece revealing its luster when held up to the light. feeo describes the album as "an exploration of simultaneous yet opposing states of being; darkness and lightness, obscurity and visibility and most fundamentally, solitude and togetherness. Each song is an adumbration; a partial sketch of one aspect of the LP -- each finding its complete meaning when read in the context of the whole." Mirroring the push and pull of perception and contemporary experience, Goodness oscillates between disparate moods and intensities, reflecting moments of interiority, intimacy, seclusion, collective experience and exterior turbulence. With gentle lyricism and mercurial musicality, the album carries listeners through multitudes, from the ruptured spoken word noise of "Days pt.1," to the elemental close-mic ambient of "The Mountain," through the arhythmic electronic soulfulness of "Win!" and the aching piano loops of "Sandpit," to the languid lap steel abstraction of "There Is No I" and the luminous improv cycles of "The Hammer Strikes The Bell." Together, these tracks form an album of profoundly emotive, radical resonances; music both tender and fearless. Goodness marks an evolution in feeo's artistic practice, both as her first full-length release, and as a product of wider collaboration after several years working independently. Welcoming close collaborators and select affiliates into the fold, the process of making Goodness was very much like the record itself; a deeply personal, special convergence of expression and artistry. Hailed by The Wire as "part of an exciting new wave of London experimental artists and improvisors," Goodness signifies a culmination in feeo's output, which spans an acclaimed run of solo releases as well as collaborations with Loraine James and bassist Caius Williams.
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2LP
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ZORN 074LP
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Aguirre edition: Mastered by Helge Sten, Audio Virus, Oslo. Lacquers by Dubplates & Mastering. Liner Notes by Theaster Gates. LPs pressed on premium audiophile-quality vinyl at Pallas Records. Rich in musical associations yet utterly singular in its voice, joyous with an inner tranquility, the music of Natural Information Society is unlike any other being made today. Their sixth album in eleven years for eremite records, descension (Out of Our Constrictions) is the first to be recorded live, featuring a set from London's Cafe OTO with veteran English free-improv great Evan Parker, & the first to feature just one extended composition. The 75-minute performance, inspired by the galvanizing presence of Parker, is a sustained bacchanalia of collective ecstasy. You could call it their party album.
This was the second time Parker played with NIS. Joshua Abrams: "Both times we played compositions with Evan in mind. I don't tell Evan anything. He's a free agent."
The music is focused & malleable, energized & even-keeled, drawing on concepts of ensemble playing common to musics from many locations & eras without any one specific aesthetic realization completely defining it.
"The rhythms that Mikel plays are not an exact reference to Chicago house, but that's in there," Abrams says. "I like to take a cyclic view of music history, can we take that four-on-the-floor, & consider how it connects to swing-era music? Can we articulate a through line? I dee-jayed for years in Chicago & lessons I learned from playing records for dancing inform how I think about the group's music. The listener can make connections to aspects of soul music, electronic music, minimalism, traditional folk musics, & other musics of the diaspora as well. It's about these aspects coming together. I don't need to mimic something, I need to embody it to get to the spirit, to get to the living thing."
For jazz fans, the sound of Parker's soprano & Jason Stein's bass clarinet might evoke Coltrane & Dolphy, even though they didn't necessarily set out to do that & they play with complete individuality. Abrams sees a bridge to the historical precedent, too. "Since we first met in the 1990s, one of the things that Evan and I connected on was Coltrane's music," he says. "I hoped that we would tap into that sound world intuitively. In this case, I think that level of evocation adds another layer of depth, versus a layer of reference."
Indeed, this is a performance in which the connections among the ensemble & the creative tension between improvisation and composition build into a complex mesh of associations & interactions. While the band confines itself to the territory mapped out by Abrams' composition, they are remarkably attentive & responsive, making adjustments to Parker's improvisations. When Parker's intricate patterns of notes interweave with the band, the parts reinforce one another & the music rockets upward. Sometimes, Parker's lines are cradled by the group's gentle pulse & an unearthly lyrical balance is struck.
Drummer Mikel Patrick Avery is locked-in, playing with hellacious long-form discipline, feel & responsiveness. Jason Stein's animated, vocalized bass clarinet weaves in & out with Lisa Alvarado's harmonium to state the piece's thematic material; the pulsing tremolo on the harmonium brings a Spacemen 3 vibe to the party. Abrams ties together melody & rhythm on guimbri, a presence that leads without seeming to. Like his bandmates, he shifts modes of playing frequently, improvising & then returning to the composed structure.
"As specific as the composition is, the goal is to internalize it & mix it up," Abrams says. "The idea is to get so comfortable that we can make spontaneous changes, find new routes of activity, stasis & byways every gig. It's like a web we're spinning. If someone makes a move, we all aim to be aware of it, make room for it. Experiencing & listening is what it's about, & Evan supercharges that."
& "supercharged" is the word for this album. With Parker further opening up their music, descension (Out of Our Constrictions) is the sound of Natural Information Society growing both more disciplined and freer, one of the great bands of its time on a deep run.
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ATA 042LP
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LP version. ATA Records presents the fourth volume of their regular soundtrack series, the Library Archives. An honest and forthright homage to the golden age of library recording, this new release is no exception -- with nods to David Shire, Roger Webb, '60s/'70s Hollywood, early anime and golden era video games. Hammond & Farfisa organ, soul flute and vibraphone are joined by the Baldwin electric harpsichord, alto flute and trumpet, all coloring the usual high-end rhythm section of drums and bongos, electric bass, piano and guitars. Moods range from the dynamic "The Galata Extraction" to the whimsical "Travers" and the romantic "Redford in Sheepskin," from the brooding "Tatsuya," the "Sword" to the sensual "Dunaway's Eyes." Walter in Gabardine and Sutherland fly the ATA library flag of '70s-era NYC soundtracks -- and both "A Dilemma for Holbrook" and "Roundtree" are drenched in soul flute so funky, it should be on the cheese counter. Now four volumes (and a couple of singles) in, The Library Archive will eventually stand as a testament to the love the ATA producers and artists have for the original composers and performers of the great music libraries of the past.
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LP+CD
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BEC 5543433
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2025 repress; LP version. First vinyl edition; 180 gram vinyl; printed inner-sleeve; Includes CD. Because Music present a reissue of JJ Cale's Closer To You, originally released in 1994. The album was published under the independent French label Delabel and distributed by Virgin Records. Personnel: JJ Cale - vocals, guitar, synthesizer; James Cruce - drums; Tim Drummond - bass; Jim Karstein - drums, percussion; Christine Lakeland - guitar, vocals (background); Bill Payne - keyboards; Don Preston - guitar.
"On the two albums that preceded Closer To You, Travel-Log (1989) and Number 10 (1992), JJ Cale adopted a more basic musical approach. This album continues the trend. Cale plays a few songs alone (though the overdubbed parts sound remarkably spare), including the title track. Closer To You finds him electronically treating his vocals, a technique that surprisingly makes him sound as down-to-earth as ever." --All Music
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2LP+CD
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BEC 5543437
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2025 repress; double LP version. First vinyl edition; 180 gram vinyl; printed inner sleeves; includes CD. Because Music present a reissue of JJ Cale's Live, originally released in 1996. This live album features 14 classics, including "After Midnight", "Cocaine", and "Old Man". All tracks were recorded across several different shows: Carnegie Hall (New York, 1996), The Philharmonic (Munich, 1994), Flynn Theater (Burlington, 1993), The Great American Music Hall (San Francisco, 1994), The Hammersmith Apollo (London, 1994), The Sommerville Theater (Sommerville, 1993), and Park West (Chicago, 1990).
"Cale's live performance style does nothing to quell his reputation for laid-back but pristine guitar playing and reserved Mississippi John Hurt-style delivery. A man who truly appreciates the value of restraint, Cale leaves plenty of room for his immaculate guitar lines, even to the point of irony on an ambling version of the previously insistent 'Mama Don't.' This collection, which was gleaned from an assortment of live shows dating from 1990-1996, finds Cale allowing his songs to unfold organically." --All Music
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CD
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BB 500CD
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In 2025, Finnish musician and composer Jimi Tenor celebrated his 60th birthday. He couldn't have imagined a better place to do so than on stage, and so Tenor came to Hamburg with his band in March, not only to celebrate his personal anniversary, but also to record new music. Partly with Hamburg producer Tobias Levin at his Electric Avenue Studio, and partly at Lauri Kallio's Kiikala Center of the Universe Studio Complex, Selenites, Selenites! -- the first album by the Jimi Tenor Band -- was recorded in spring 2025. Tenor can now look back on numerous collaborations, including with Tony Allen, UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra, Kabukabu and Freestyle Man. The band, consisting of Eeti Nieminen, Heikki Tuhkanen, Ekow Alabi Savage, Lauri Kallio and Jimi Tenor, has played numerous club and festival gigs together, but had not yet released an album up till now. Recording for the band's debut began at Lauri Kallio's studio in Kiikala, Finland -- an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere that has been converted into a recording studio aptly named Kiikala Center of the Universe Studio Complex. While the band was recording, Lauri's parents cooked for them using ingredients from the Finnish forest: chanterelle mushrooms and moose meat. After two initial sessions, the recordings were sent to Bureau B in Hamburg, who invited the band to join Tobias Levin at his Electric Avenue Studio for another session lasting several days. As the band had already tried out and internalized most of the songs through live performances, the recordings went smoothly and often required only a single take. This quickly resulted in the eight songs that now make up Selenites, Selenites! As so often in the world of Jimi Tenor, it's about space, dimensions and -- of course -- love, conveyed in that energetic and captivating way that makes it impossible to resist this music. Also featured on the track "Shine All Night" is Tenor's second collaboration with Florence Adooni, the queen of Ghanaian frafra gospel. Selenites, Selenites! is an impressive debut that showcases a group of virtuoso musicians in absolute joy of playing and exploring new sonic connections. This is not just any Afro-jazz album, but an extraordinary journey into a raw and unadulterated sound, as if you were standing right in front of the stage while listening to the record.
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LP
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DC 965LP
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"On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the '70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony's avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to lower the listener through cobwebs and murk, unveiling new life beneath Anthony's mad old lines. AKA are Anthony Moore, Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson. A pagan family of sound worshipers hailing from that unholiest of all places: Hastings UK, home of Crowley and Turing. Like their sinister forbears in that infamous tradition, this latest trinity shares a passion for subverting pattern and number, factoring unlikely permutations arising from sea and horizon, greensward, the southerly aspect, and the planisphere as half-world. Their equatorial shore speaks of a planet of water and earth, fire and air. AKA's humble tools of choice for this endeavor are guitar, piano, organ, synthesizer and vocals. The Friends of AKA are Tullis Rennie, trombone and electronics; Olie Brice, double bass; Richard Moore, violin; and Haydn Ackerley, guitar. They too navigate the shoreline of the south coast, haunt the same taverns and regularly play together in whatever combinations fit the bill. Leaving the drums (and their drummer) at home to realize anew these dream-laden songs, AKA & Friends ensure that the notes fall around the beat and not on it, so as to define the pulse with absence. Anthony Moore with AKA & Friends manifest a sensuous post-devastation lounge act, seeking to re-invoke natural orders by naming -- rather than cursing -- the darkness in its many guises. Like final-phase Johnny Cash on a lost episode of Twin Peaks, Anthony's innate gravitas is a light through the surreal landscape, as the players combine themselves again and again, their efforts rising and falling in shared space. Their gothic jazz orchestra carves delicately through Anthony's songs, releasing the melodies and the melancholy to drift upward, like smoke against a sooty and scorched backdrop. Fantastic, prophetic journeys, dry eyed but deeply affected, through the shadow depths of Anthony Moore's mirror."
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Cassette
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DC 966CS
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Cassette version. "Glyders been dreaming up this sound for ages -- over years, with different players, countless shows and many late nights at the tape machine. It's been a long ride to Forever -- but now that they've arrived, the vibe's lightning and the blink of an eye. Guitarist/vocalist Joshua Condon and bassist Eliza Weber started up in 2014, but even when they put together their 2023 album debut, Maria's Hunt, they still had a revolving door on the drums. Then they met Joe Seger, who fit on the kit like a glove and in their sound like a brother. Since then, the three have ridden together, building up Forever while playing shows all around the US and Europe. This makes Forever's spirit high and tight, its sinews rumbling with communal joy. The song nugs of Forever sprouted branches and spokes on the road, the increased physicality driving their mellow licks and riffs with a great depth of rolling bottom, its groove taking them further into their own thing. After all this time, the streamlined new chassis feels mighty fine, making this the first real band album for Glyders. These sweet tunes punctuate and emphasize the wind and rain in the hair of Forever's driving jams. Glyders like to keep shuffling the deck. Taped at their own Studio 'G' in Chicago's Humboldt Park, with Josh getting the sounds they like, then mixed by Cooper Crain at Sweat Loge Studios down in Pilsen, Forever is super rich, crackling with the raw details of real life. The title comes from a battle cry within the band, something they hear at shows too. Eliza's amazing art emphasizes this for life credo, mixing classic roots with punk collage style drawn from years of flyers. It's like a family/club vibe, the kind of thing you get tattooed into your skin. Forever lands smooth, its lightning-quick 37 minutes leaving you plenty of time to live. Flip it over and let it go again, then!"
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DC 966LP
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"Glyders been dreaming up this sound for ages -- over years, with different players, countless shows and many late nights at the tape machine. It's been a long ride to Forever -- but now that they've arrived, the vibe's lightning and the blink of an eye. Guitarist/vocalist Joshua Condon and bassist Eliza Weber started up in 2014, but even when they put together their 2023 album debut, Maria's Hunt, they still had a revolving door on the drums. Then they met Joe Seger, who fit on the kit like a glove and in their sound like a brother. Since then, the three have ridden together, building up Forever while playing shows all around the US and Europe. This makes Forever's spirit high and tight, its sinews rumbling with communal joy. The song nugs of Forever sprouted branches and spokes on the road, the increased physicality driving their mellow licks and riffs with a great depth of rolling bottom, its groove taking them further into their own thing. After all this time, the streamlined new chassis feels mighty fine, making this the first real band album for Glyders. These sweet tunes punctuate and emphasize the wind and rain in the hair of Forever's driving jams. Glyders like to keep shuffling the deck. Taped at their own Studio 'G' in Chicago's Humboldt Park, with Josh getting the sounds they like, then mixed by Cooper Crain at Sweat Loge Studios down in Pilsen, Forever is super rich, crackling with the raw details of real life. The title comes from a battle cry within the band, something they hear at shows too. Eliza's amazing art emphasizes this for life credo, mixing classic roots with punk collage style drawn from years of flyers. It's like a family/club vibe, the kind of thing you get tattooed into your skin. Forever lands smooth, its lightning-quick 37 minutes leaving you plenty of time to live. Flip it over and let it go again, then!"
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EFFICIENT 033LP
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Syncretic marks the debut full-length from Australian duo Bhairavi Raman, a Western and Carnatic violinist, and Nanthesh Sivarajah, a mridangam player and versatile percussionist. Both artists share a Tamil heritage, a current that hums across the album. Raman, from South India, and Sivarajah, from Sri Lanka, draw lines that connect Western practice and Carnatic tradition. This hybrid is central to Raman's approach as a violinist, an instrument itself caught between East and West since the late 18th century. Her playing folds history, lineage and experimentation into music that acknowledges inheritance while gently rewiring its circuitry. Expanding on traditional music can be a precarious practice, but Syncretic never feels heavy-handed. Raman and Sivarajah exercise measured restraint, letting the Carnatic framework breathe even as it is refracted through contemporary tools. Delays, looping, subtle layering and synthesized harmonies tilt tradition into a new light without disguising it. Even within a contemporary framework, Raman's rigorous Carnatic training under gurus Sri S. Varadarajan (India), Sri Murali Kumar (Australia) and Sri Gopinath Iyer (Australia) is unmistakable. She captures the spiritual and emotional essence of each raga: on "Seven," the playful raga Bahudari becomes both centerpiece and conduit, while on the traditional piece "Thunbam Nergayil," drawn from a Tamil poem, listeners hear a deeply personal iteration, a weeping euphony of mixed emotions hitting all at once. Tradition here is absorbed, expanded and reframed. Sivarajah's command of the mridangam, honed by his gurus Sri Jambunathan (Sri Lanka), Sri Balasri Rasiah (Australia) and Sri T. R. Sundaresan (India), is central to his original composition "Guardian." He sustains tradition while extending it through layering and sound-spatialization. The mridangam here functions as both a structural and ornamental force, mapping continuity between inherited form and contemporary sonic architecture. Syncretic resonates as a space where Tamil heritage, diasporic memory and contemporary practice coalesce. Culture, like sound, circulates, transforms and persists. Tradition is not an archive but living material, a soundworld that lingers in the ears and the imagination.
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EPR 082CD
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Something is brewing in the state of Norway! Kronstad 23 are the latest trailblazers from northern Scandinavia: a creative force exploring the boundaries of musical genres, including but not limited to: psych rock, jazz, post-rock and Scandinavian folk music. The group of young players follows the footsteps of Motorpsycho, Elephant9 and El Paraiso's own Lotus, Fra Det Onde and Kanaan, carving out their path through the musical landscape in seemingly effortless ways! One minute you're floating on cosmic Pharoah Sanders waters, the next you're ascending on electrified if-Tortoise-played-Allman Brothers-style jamming. The band describes their approach as: "Sommermørket is an escape from inhumane technology and politics in search of something that feels authentic. The music breathes in the little that is left of old air and rises slowly into the hazy summer twilight like brittle thoughts that try to connect and fade away." Kronstad 23 was formed in Kronstad, Bergen, Norway in the Autumn of 2023. As old friends and musical collaborators, they rekindled a creative spark that had been dormant for over 10 years. Rarely rehearsed and often caught on first take, Sommermørket was recorded live on tape in the studio of Keyboardist Øyvind Vie Berg in Bergen, Norway. The record captures three sessions across one year, from spring and late summer in 2024 to winter of 2025.
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FTR 812LP
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"46 years after I first heard Stare Kits on a cassette, they finally have an LP. About time! This NYC quartet's name often comes up in discussions of the No Wave era, which make sense. The members -- Angela Jaeger, Amy Rigby, Michael McMahon, and Bob Gurevics -- were all fans of the scene, and involved with various aspects of TR3, one of No Wave's pre-eminent showcases. UT played their first gig opening for Stare Kits. Rick Brown (Blinding Headache, Information, etc.) played guest sax with them. Julia Gorton used Amy as a photo model almost as often as she used Lydia Lunch, and so on. But despite such connections they were not a No Wave band. Stare Kits's music certainly use instrumental elements in line with No Wave's ethos, but these're part of a much larger mix. The band's basic approach is much rockier and punkier. Bob's guitar parts are more in the tradition of Quine and Reed than they are Lydian, the McMahon/Rigby's rhythm section is more primitive than martial, and Angela's vocals are goddamn melodic. Closer musical comparisons might be made to a various aspects of UK bands from Penetration to Wire to Deaf School to X-Ray Spex. There's a soupçon of a '79 UK DIY rattle to some of the tunes as well. But there is an ineffable something lurking in their collective soul that keeps Stare Kits's instrumental sound grounded in the NYC art-punk/street-rock continuum. Angela's vocals may resemble Penelope Houston's at moments but there's not much overt political content in Stare Kits's lyrics. An eclectic mix of elements? Yeah, and it sounds fucking great. The saga of Stare Kits was laid out pretty well in Angela's excellent book, I Feel Famous (Hat & Beard Press 2025) and was also part of Amy McMahon's equally dandy Girl to City (Southern Domestic 2019). Now's your chance to hear what their hubbub was all about." --Byron Coley, 2025
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FTR 831LP
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"Shutaro Noguchi didn't set out to make a farewell album, but On the Run captures a moment of profound change. Recorded just weeks before moving back to Japan after 20 formative years in America (spent primarily Louisville, Kentucky), the album reflects a life in motion -- rooted in memories, yet reaching toward the unknown. In Louisville, Noguchi had built a creative home with a tight-knit crew, crafting beloved records that ranged from the country-rock swagger of Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band to the mutant grooves of Equipment Pointed Ankh. Meanwhile, he released compelling solo work, including the full-band psych rock gem Love Super Terranean on Feeding Tube Records. With On the Run, Noguchi joins The Roadhouse Band once more for a searching, expressive collaboration -- an album made at a threshold between past and future. The opening track "Olympic 3.5" begins with Noguchi in solitary introspection: "Now the wind is blowing / It's passing me by -- I'm getting a little too used to watching this sunset." He's soon joined by the syncopated rhythms and lilting synths of The Roadhouse camp, constructing a warped odyssey that intertwines the cosmic spirit of Gong with the melodic, pop-driven abstraction of Ryuichi Sakamoto. Noguchi returns with Wyatt-esque wordless vocalizations before the song spirals into a dark, abstract descent. Jazz-tinged numbers like "Apocalypse/Calendar" and "River Dagger" highlight Noguchi's singular compositional voice. His relaxed vocals float over otherworldly arrangements, while "Drive My Cape Cod" -- a voice memo captured during a long car ride and completed in the studio -- offers a candid glimpse into his melodic daydreaming, in a move reminiscent of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, where casual, unpolished moments reveal deeper emotion. Some tracks lean into groovier, more danceable territory, with production touches that echo Japanese contemporaries like Shintaro Sakamoto, Fishmans, Cornelius, etc. "Melody" pairs a nostalgic City Pop feel with the band's forward-thinking sound. The bubbly rhythm of "Time With You" feels almost weightless beneath the album's perhaps only guitar solo, played, oddly enough, not by guitar wiz Noguchi himself but by bandmate Ryan Davis. Amid the breezy lightness, he accepts the chaos of an uncertain future: "It's beginning to change / The time of the world / Eventually we'll see it." Noguchi's reflections on uncertainty are deeply relatable and bittersweet -- especially in this moment. With On the Run, Shutaro Noguchi and The Roadhouse Band show us how they face the unknown -- together, embracing uncertainty with both resilience and camaraderie." -- Kryssi Battalene, 2025
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FTR 818LP
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Leeds is burning again, and the match is called Self Immolation Music. Their new LP, Strange Worship, isn't a record so much as a rite -- forty minutes of distortion, drone, and devotion from a band who don't so much play songs as build temples out of amplifier hum. Recorded inside an old converted police station, the walls still humming with ghosts of interrogation and authority, a low frequency vibration has been rattling the cells -- that's Self Immolation Music, summoning their new LP Strange Worship into existence like a feedback séance. Guitars roar like collapsing stars, basslines pulse like a migraine heartbeat, and drums hammer out the sort of trance you can't fake. This is not a record you listen to -- it's a record you enter. Forty minutes of holy distortion and electric devotion, channeled straight from the lineage of Spacemen 3, Loop, and the endless cosmic engines of Hawkwind. Where their last transmission (Infinity Trip) was a relentless surge into the void, Strange Worship is a ritual circle drawn in fuzz. The riffs don't just play -- they throb, they loop, they dissolve you. Imagine repetition as religion, feedback as incense, a mantra made of distortion. That's the sound of Strange Worship: heavy, hypnotic, and strangely beautiful in its ruin. Self Immolation Music don't deal in nostalgia or polite psych revival. They deal in immersion and Strange Worship is music for surrender. This is the deep end, the psychic throb, the sonic flame you can't look away from, a devotional noise meant to be felt in the gut and the teeth. Put it on loud and you'll understand: the worship is strange, but the faith is absolute. Strange Worship is not a product -- it's a possession. Approach with open ears, a steady pulse, and the willingness to lose yourself in the noise. Strange times call for strange worship.
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2LP
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FEP 031LP
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A decade after its original release, Flako's seminal debut album Natureboy returns for its first-ever reissue on vinyl in a special 10th anniversary edition. In 2015, Natureboy emerged as a rare bloom in the electronic underground -- a record that defied genre and expectation. Hailed by Bleep as "one of the most startlingly unique and original releases" and crowned their album of the year, it still stands as one of the most singular, emotive, and genre-defying releases of its era. The debut full-length from Natureboy Flako (aka Dario Rojo Guerra, also known as soul singer Dirg Gerner on Floating Points and Alexander Nut's Eglo label) pushed beyond beat music into something panoramic. Merging classical structures, sampledelic textures, and electronic experimentation with threads of his South American upbringing, Flako created a richly cinematic sound world, with echoes of folk, cumbia, and soul woven through dense synth-driven futurism. Featuring stunning contributions from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Dirg Gerner's own evocative vocals, Natureboy balances orchestral beauty with deep electronic textures and intricate beat science, creating an immersive sound universe like no other. Its scope remains astonishing: from the meditative glow of "Gelis," with its sunrise-like chords and delicate percussion, to the energetic drive of "Kuku," where shimmering synths and rolling grooves open into one of the album's most expansive surges. This 10th anniversary edition includes vinyl-only B-sides and other rarities, offering a window into the wider creative universe surrounding the album. After selling out quickly in 2015, Natureboy returns as a limited reissue -- reintroducing a modern classic to new ears while celebrating its enduring influence.
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10"
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FRT 110EP
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"The Adolescents' Welcome To Reality on coke bottle colored vinyl."
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LP
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HJR 088LP
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Gospel melts into soul in this dazzling collection of sides originally released by the Chess subsidiary label Checker. Devised by the same team supporting the likes of Muddy Waters and Etta James at Chess, the vintage of Checker Gospel celebrated here is distinguished by its expertly raw, rugged, live feel -- thumping bass and pounding drums, bluesy guitar and horns -- and its keen engagement with contemporary realities and politics, with an underlying, unwavering commitment to the Civil Rights movement. Key architects of the Chicago Sound and Motown are amongst the scores of contributors: Charles Stepney, Gene Barge, Eddie Kendricks, and Leonard Caston Jr. are in the house; Morris Jennings, drummer on Curtis' "Superfly" and Terry Callier's "What Color Is Love." Louis Satterfield from The Pharaohs and Earth Wind & Fire. Ramsey Lewis' guitarist Byron Gregory; Phil Upchurch; Laura Lee; a protege of Willie Dixon; engineer Malcolm Chisholm set up the Ter Mar studio as if preparing for a live gig, carefully teasing measures of bleed into the microphones. With Ralph Bass from King Records running A&R, they knew exactly what they were after. Focused on the late sixties and early seventies, the twenty-five recordings here are all killer no filler, but try these four, random entry points: the heavy funk ostinato of the Violinaires' "Groovin' With Jesus," working itself up into a post-James-Brown brass frenzy, sure to knock your socks off; Cleo Jackson Randle's title track, for those who like their Gospel straight-up and hard-core; Eddie Kendricks' achingly timely choral call-to-arms, "Stand Up America, Don't Be Afraid"; the East St Louis Gospelettes' heart-stopping, fathoms-deep rendition of Bobby Bland's "I'll Take Care Of You." A beautiful gatefold sleeve; a full-color booklet with excellent notes by Robert Marovich; top-notch sound. Another knockout selection by Greg Belson and David Hill. Also featuring The Meditation Singers, Charlie Brown, Martha Bass, The Williams Singers, The Faithful Wonders, The Salem Travelers, Power And Light Choral Ensemble, The Masonic Wonders, The Majestic Choir & The Soul Stirrers, The Jordan Singers, Lucy Rodgers, The Kindly Shepherds, The Inspirational Singers, The Bells Of Joy, and Stevie Hawkins.
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2LP
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HJR 089LP
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Gatefold sleeve, superior pressing. Includes full-size, sixteen-page booklet, in color throughout, with detailed, bi-lingual notes and stunning photographs. "Since the 16th century, the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas has been home to a unique Afro-Indigenous culture originating in the integration of the Indigenous Chachi and Nigua peoples with African Maroon communities. Juyungo documents significant Esmeraldan artists and bands playing the Afro-Ecuadorian folklore of the province, as well as including some older field recordings. Based mostly on the marimba, whose origins lie partly in the African balafon, partly in Indigenous percussion instruments, the music is laced with call and response chants, ambient insect and bird noise, the filigree finger-styles of the Andean guitar tradition and the panpipes of the mountains. This is resonant insider roots music at its headiest -- the mystic revelation of Esmeraldas, gully deep and lustral." --Francis Gooding, The Wire
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LP
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HJR 090LP
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Scintillating, alchemical kosmische; visionary, deep, and luminous; and beautifully sleeved, with gold foiling and silver ink. Works In Metal fans out a set of acid treatments and finely sharpened blades -- cutting, shaping, suspending form. Sounds are melted down and forged as if liquid metal. The works are paired. "Arc's Blue Flame" previews the smoking volatility at the album's core. Echoes and resonance soften the dissonant, bright textures; all overlaid with Fofana's signature, percussive kick drums. "Welding" drills into the discordant thrills and spills of metamorphosis. Sparks fly and the bittersweet arc of change unfolds. Lamin Fofana discreetly folds in text, poetry, and field recordings, spooring their decomposition and recomposition with a prismatic point of view. The coupling "Obscure Light (Decomposition)" and "Obscure Light (Recomposition)" marks something new in his music. The pulse is brightly honed, cascading beyond the dancefloor, exultingly eluding musical genre. Works in Metal is perhaps Fofana's most narrative album. At its heart is the killer, extended "Lure of the Fragment/So Another Sound Suggests Itself." Melodies circle in call-and-response patterns, balancing proximity and distance, signaling the inward gravity required to work with metal. A nested story-line, with birds flying in; an album within an album. Dredging up memories and associations, Fofana filters in selections from his sound-archives. Layered with synths, field recordings become instruments in their own right. The last three minutes proffer precious clarity -- a memory, in miniature, flashed onto molten metal. In 1943 Suzanne Césaire declared that "our surrealism will then supply them the leaven from their very depths. It will be time finally to transcend the sordid contemporary antinomies: Whites-Blacks, Europeans-Africans, civilized-savage: the powerful magic of the mahoulis will be recovered, drawn from the very wellsprings of life. Colonial idiocies will be purified by the welding arc's blue flame. The mettle of our metal, our cutting edge of steel, our unique communions -- all will be recovered." Works in Metal is a tribute to her prophecy; its enactment, sculpted in sound.
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LP
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INT 083LP
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"In 2019, a brutal epileptic seizure changed my life -- the first of more to come. I was forced into solitude, and in that quiet, music became my lifeline. In the following years, I poured everything I had into creating between you and me: a raw, DIY album that is a distillation of my lived experience during this time. The album explores emotional authenticity, freedom of expression, and acceptance: not as abstract concepts, but through visceral experiences that have fundamentally reshaped my art and my sense of self. As a listener, I invite you to explore your vulnerability by joining me in mine. This album is truly between you and me." --Ozzy Jones
Ozzy Jones is a Dutch-Australian interdisciplinary artist whose music blends electronica with indie. Drawing from personal struggles and raw emotion after his seizures started, his debut album between you and me explores vulnerability, male identity, and authentic self-expression. Rooted in Amsterdam's vibrant creative scene, Ozzy's work fuses sound, visuals, and storytelling to create a deeply immersive and honest artistic experience.
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7"
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JRALLSTAR 001EP
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The Jamaican Recordings Allstars have gone back to the Reggae heydays of 1968/1969 as a strong influence on their snappy instrumental track. The flash points of Harry J Allstars "The Liquidator" and Dave and Ansell Collins "Double Barrel" come to mind. No reggae 7" single would be the same without its version B-side, so please flip the single over for part two where the beat is pulled up to the fore. Hope you enjoy rocking to this future classic.
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