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Crashing at the unlikely intersection of post-hardcore, slowcore, and jazz-rock, Karate spent a dozen years producing peerless recordings in their adopted hometown of Boston. Collected here are their six albums—S/T, In Place of Real Insight, The Bed Is In The Ocean, Unsolved, Some Boots, Pockets, plus the Cancel/Sing and In The Fish Tank EPs, singles, and split 7"s, a whopping 69 tracks spread across eight glorious compact discs. Leor Galil’s career-spanning essay is illustrated with dozens of period-appropriate photos in the accompanying 80-page book.

Karate’s first five years, boxed in classic Numero fashion and annotated by frontman Geoff Farina. Collaging DC posthardcore, De Stijl, and Django Reinhardt, this five LP set includes their self-titled debut, In Place of Real Insight, The Bed Is In The Ocean, period 7”s, and previously unissued 1993 demo. 41 late millennium accounts of 2AM bike rides, punk house floors, skinny dipping, regrettable tattoos, and Interstate 95 commuting, all remastered from the original tapes and housed in sturdy tip-on sleeves for the discerning Karate enthusiast. Don’t drown.

With creative and powerful song structures and excellent vocals, this Massachusetts band is definitely one that should not be overlooked. With indie rock grooves containing flavors of emo and jazz, Karate explores beautiful new territory with a passion and energy that flows like a river. From dark and energetic breakdowns like "It's 98, Stop" to passionate stop/start wailers like "New New," In Place of Real Insight shows quite a bit of maturity from their first, self-titled LP. Karate definitely runs through all sorts of emotions in a way unlike most. ~ Blake Butler Mastering specifications at d Studios.

The first new music from the post-emo trio in two decades. Out of the brain of Geoff Farina spills 10 new tales from their unlikely reunion, tracked with long-time Karate collaborator Andy Hong. Make It Fit crams 35 minutes of Wes Montgomery homage, Fugazi dub plate party rocking, Lynott lyricism, and Clash city crooning into a graceful seventh album.

The first new music from the post-emo trio in two decades. Out of the brain of Geoff Farina spills 10 new tales from their unlikely reunion, tracked with long-time Karate collaborator Andy Hong. Make It Fit crams 35 minutes of Wes Montgomery homage, Fugazi dub plate party rocking, Lynott lyricism, and Clash city crooning into a graceful seventh album.

On 2002's Some Boots, Boston indie rock trio Karate further plumb the depths of their omnidirectional musical explorations. Every chord and beat works to deepen the pensiveness of Geoff Farina's impressionistic lyrics, that explore the emotional complexities of nostalgia. The eight-song LP is housed in a tip-on jacket, and includes a replica lyric sheet for the original kids and spies alike.

A lingering guitar note. A cushion of a bassline nudging along a hushed cadence unspooling impressionistic poeticism one halting line at a time; the sparse snap of a snare providing punctuation. This is how Boston’s Karate opened their third full-length, 1998’s The Bed Is In The Ocean. Perhaps this was a reaction to the aggressive punk tones that marked their previous album, or maybe they hoped to capture the somnambulant dusk on one of those pristine fall days that make living in a town whose population swells when colleges welcome back students all worthwhile. Then again, Karate never made a point of chasing the same idea twice, and “There Are Ghosts” remains in line with the band’s stylistic intrepidness and unpredictability. Even the group’s lineup appeared constantly in flux. After expanding from a trio to a quartet and employing a dual-guitar attack with 1997’s In Place of Real Insight, founding member Eamonn Vitt hung up his axe to attend medical school. Karate soldiered on as a trio, with mid-stream addition Jeff Goddard’s bass work helping establish a sidewinding path forward through the smoky jazz melodicism and sun-beaten blues brushstrokes that hung in the background of the band’s catalog. In their short time together, Karate helped bolster the national punk ecosystem, a scene in which individual artistic vision was prized but rarely achieved. Their exacting precision and emotive interplay helped recombine the DNA of the dignified grace of slowcore, the hot-and-sweaty atmospherics of the blues, and the high-wire tension of post-hardcore to deliver drawling instrumental curveballs and a furtive riptide climax with a controlled grace on “Outside Is The Drama.” Singer-guitarist Geoff Farina frequently teased out the emotional nuances of each song, his worn-in voice shading in the complexities of his enigmatic lyrics; no matter how difficult it may be to parse his snatched-from-daily-life wisdoms, on The Bed Is In The Ocean Farina sounded like a guy who knew exactly the right thing to tell whoever may be listening. And with Karate’s snaking turns through quasi-punk reveries no one else appeared capable of mustering, it’s comforting to hear it accomplished by a band that knew exactly what they were doing.

A lingering guitar note. A cushion of a bassline nudging along a hushed cadence unspooling impressionistic poeticism one halting line at a time; the sparse snap of a snare providing punctuation. This is how Boston’s Karate opened their third full-length, 1998’s The Bed Is In The Ocean. Perhaps this was a reaction to the aggressive punk tones that marked their previous album, or maybe they hoped to capture the somnambulant dusk on one of those pristine fall days that make living in a town whose population swells when colleges welcome back students all worthwhile. Then again, Karate never made a point of chasing the same idea twice, and “There Are Ghosts” remains in line with the band’s stylistic intrepidness and unpredictability. Even the group’s lineup appeared constantly in flux. After expanding from a trio to a quartet and employing a dual-guitar attack with 1997’s In Place of Real Insight, founding member Eamonn Vitt hung up his axe to attend medical school. Karate soldiered on as a trio, with mid-stream addition Jeff Goddard’s bass work helping establish a sidewinding path forward through the smoky jazz melodicism and sun-beaten blues brushstrokes that hung in the background of the band’s catalog. In their short time together, Karate helped bolster the national punk ecosystem, a scene in which individual artistic vision was prized but rarely achieved. Their exacting precision and emotive interplay helped recombine the DNA of the dignified grace of slowcore, the hot-and-sweaty atmospherics of the blues, and the high-wire tension of post-hardcore to deliver drawling instrumental curveballs and a furtive riptide climax with a controlled grace on “Outside Is The Drama.” Singer-guitarist Geoff Farina frequently teased out the emotional nuances of each song, his worn-in voice shading in the complexities of his enigmatic lyrics; no matter how difficult it may be to parse his snatched-from-daily-life wisdoms, on The Bed Is In The Ocean Farina sounded like a guy who knew exactly the right thing to tell whoever may be listening. And with Karate’s snaking turns through quasi-punk reveries no one else appeared capable of mustering, it’s comforting to hear it accomplished by a band that knew exactly what they were doing.

This five LP box includes the Karate's Unsolved, Some Boots, and Pockets albums, a first time vinyl pressing of their Cancel/Sing EP, and recently unearthed rehearsal recordings of two unreleased tracks.

Whatever sense of unity bound a hodgepodge of underground American punk sounds in the 1990s like a Duct-tape wallet began to come unglued by the end of the decade. A couple years into the new millennium and the emo scene that once had enough space for a band as brazen in their fusion of slowcore, jazz, and post-hardcore as Boston’s Karate would barely be reflected in a cookie-cutter style commercialized by major labels and mid-level indies that acted like the majors. The part of punk that overlapped with indie rock would begin a slow ascent from its comfortable home on college radio charts to the soundtrack of American Apparel shops and eventually the Billboard charts. In this strange, stratifying milieu, Karate, a band that seemed to thrive by cleaving to a nether-zone between several sounds that otherwise never touched, delivered an engrossing constantly shifting shot of rock that covered three sides of 12-inch vinyl: Unsolved arrived in 2000. Karate spent much of the ’ 90s wrestling punk aggression and volume into svelte shapes and often condensed what felt like a generation of scuffed-up intensity into whispers. The quiet moments carried much of that unbridled intensity throughout Unsolved —the fuzzy guitar squawk and snatchet of machine-gun drumming on “Sever” aside, things hit a little more sharply the moment the trio pivoted into their subdued jazz melodic interplay on that song. Karate’s transition into indie-rock maturity had become so complete by the time they dropped Unsolved that you could play the coffeehouse soul of “Halo of the Strange” and sultry jazz of “Lived-But-Yet-Named” to an unsuspecting punk and spend an entire evening trying to convince them that, yes, this band had made their bones playing the same DIY circuit made of bands that sounded like they wanted to harm their audience. But few bands other than Karate played like they understood the musical lingua franca of scene godheads such as Fugazi and Unwound, and knew how to make that language evolve, and nearly every song on Unsolved made that clear. If you didn’t get the memo by the end of the elegiac 11-minute closer “This Day Next Year,” which gained an irrepressible power from a plaintive guitar melody cycling through the song’s back half like a yearnsome cry for the divine, you might’ve been better off buying a ticket for Warped Tour and waiting a decade or two to figure it out.

As Warped Tour pop-punk and American Apparel indie rock dominated the strange post-Y2K guitar-band milieu, Boston’s Karate delivered an engrossing shot of rock that constantly shifted between several shades of subterranean sounds. The quiet moments on Karate’s millennium busting fourth album carry much of that old, unbridled intensity, braided into subdued jazz melodies and slowcore restraint. This 25th anniversary edition of Unsolved replicates the original 2000 pressing’s side D, and includes the Death Kit 7” and split with Crown Hate Ruin. God forgive us.

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Whatever sense of unity bound a hodgepodge of underground American punk sounds in the 1990s like a Duct-tape wallet began to come unglued by the end of the decade. A couple years into the new millennium and the emo scene that once had enough space for a band as brazen in their fusion of slowcore, jazz, and post-hardcore as Boston’s Karate would barely be reflected in a cookie-cutter style commercialized by major labels and mid-level indies that acted like the majors. The part of punk that overlapped with indie rock would begin a slow ascent from its comfortable home on college radio charts to the soundtrack of American Apparel shops and eventually the Billboard charts. In this strange, stratifying milieu, Karate, a band that seemed to thrive by cleaving to a nether-zone between several sounds that otherwise never touched, delivered an engrossing constantly shifting shot of rock that covered three sides of 12-inch vinyl: Unsolved arrived in 2000.

Karate spent much of the ’ 90s wrestling punk aggression and volume into svelte shapes and often condensed what felt like a generation of scuffed-up intensity into whispers. The quiet moments carried much of that unbridled intensity throughout Unsolved —the fuzzy guitar squawk and snatchet of machine-gun drumming on “Sever” aside, things hit a little more sharply the moment the trio pivoted into their subdued jazz melodic interplay on that song. Karate’s transition into indie-rock maturity had become so complete by the time they dropped Unsolved that you could play the coffeehouse soul of “Halo of the Strange” and sultry jazz of “Lived-But-Yet-Named” to an unsuspecting punk and spend an entire evening trying to convince them that, yes, this band had made their bones playing the same DIY circuit made of bands that sounded like they wanted to harm their audience. But few bands other than Karate played like they understood the musical lingua franca of scene godheads such as Fugazi and Unwound, and knew how to make that language evolve, and nearly every song on Unsolved made that clear. If you didn’t get the memo by the end of the elegiac 11-minute closer “This Day Next Year,” which gained an irrepressible power from a plaintive guitar melody cycling through the song’s back half like a yearnsome cry for the divine, you might’ve been better off buying a ticket for Warped Tour and waiting a decade or two to figure it out. 

Karate Boogaloo are proud to present Hold Your Horses, a mesmerizing new long-playing disc of original instrumental tunes from Melbourne, Australia’s most dedicated. Sitting at the core of Melbourne’s burgeoning movement of cinematic instrumental soul, Karate Boogaloo’s roots go deep into the fabric of the DIY soul idiom. A mainstay of the Melbourne underground over the last decade, their now sought-after series of LPs delving into hip-hop sample culture and its relationship to funk music, The ‘KB’s Mixtapes’, are evidence of their long-standing contribution to the development of the Melbourne cinematic soul sound. Henry Jenkins, Hudson Whitlock, Callum Riley, and Darvid Thor have been playing music together since their playground days. Meeting as high school preteens, these four friends explored the teachings of the great small combo instrumental bands à la Booker T & The MG’s and The Meters. With these lessons in one hand and their characteristic sense of goofy humor in the other, the ensuing 15+ years saw Karate Boogaloo develop the kind of shared musical language that can only be built through countless hours spent together existing as friends and musical allies. Karate Boogaloo’s singular bond shines brightly on Hold Your Horses, the second album of original Karate Boogaloo compositions. Following on from the cult classic Carn The Boogers (College Of Knowledge Records, 2020), Hold Your Horses is a document of KB’s distinct interpretation of instrumental funk. A bona-fide journey from start to finish, each tune melds seamlessly into the next, deftly creating a world built on moments of cinematic tension, whimsical melodies and eerie discordance and underpinned by undeniable super heavy funk. Hold Your Horses respectfully builds on a legacy of soul music whilst remaining unimpeachably unique and authentic. Recorded and mixed by bassist Henry Jenkins, the mind responsible for the sound of the entire College Of Knowledge catalogue (Surprise Chef, The Pro-Teens, Let Your Hair Down, Karate Boogaloo), Hold Your Horses employs a methodology for writing and recording music that mirrors KB’s long relationship together. “It’s always instrumental, and it’s always recorded live. We have a strict no overdubs policy,” Jenkins explains. All of the songs were written collaboratively in the studio, with no pre-prepared material being brought in by any member. It's a process specifically designed to maximize the strengths of the band and their relationship to one another; KB’s MO is enabled by their innate understanding of one another as people and musicians. Stylistically, links can be drawn to the deep funk of the late 60s and early 70s, certain examples of European film music and new wave of instrumental soul. The restrained instrumental palette is limited to drums, guitar, bass and organ, establishing a distinct and consistent tone throughout, yet the use of dynamics, space and finite execution in the playing carves the experience, keeping the listener glued to their headphones from start to finish. The artwork, created by Melbourne-based visual artist Drez, is a stunning visual representation of the 12-track medley. To add to the experience, the LP cover creates an interactive optical art experience as the inner sleeve is removed from the jacket.

“BLADE N” is the long-awaited new album from Japanese rapper Karavi Roushi, who appeared on the Japanese hip-hop scene with his debut solo album “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”. This, his second solo album, is a collaborative release with Aquadab, the Japanese track maker/sound designer who co-produced “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”. The album showcases the preternatural mind-meld between rapper and track maker.

Karavi Roushi came before the public as a member of Nagoya hip-hop collective Hydro Brain Gang on Nero Imai's album “Return Of Acid King” (2017). He then launched the label Super Lights with Aquadab and released his first solo album “Kiyosumi Kurokawa” in 2019 with graphic design by Takara Ohashi. Although an unknown newcomer, the album reached #15 on the iTunes Hip Hop Japan album chart and received plaudits not only for its music but also for the artwork by Ohashi. After the album, Karavi Roushi dropped his first collaboration tune with Aquadab on “S.D.S =Zero=” (2020), a compilation of Generation Z Japanese underground artists produced during the Covid pandemic. That tune, “Tokyoite”, became a favorite of the participating artists.

"BLADE N” was created by the three-person team of Karavi Roushi, Aquadab & Ohashi. Consciously developing their musical methodology, they intentionally use instrumental tracks to interrupt the rappers' voices and flows, something which has traditionally been avoided, and explore the possibility of creating a style that puts the rapper and track maker on equal footing in complex, woven tracks. On the album, Karavi Roushi's paranormal voice, which sometimes sounds like a mutant synthesizer, adds incisiveness, and in the artwork Ohashi visually extracts the story world hidden in “BLADE N”, giving the cover art the same impact as that of “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”.

“BLADE N” is the long-awaited new album from Japanese rapper Karavi Roushi, who appeared on the Japanese hip-hop scene with his debut solo album “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”. This, his second solo album, is a collaborative release with Aquadab, the Japanese track maker/sound designer who co-produced “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”. The album showcases the preternatural mind-meld between rapper and track maker.Karavi Roushi came before the public as a member of Nagoya hip-hop collective Hydro Brain Gang on Nero Imai's album “Return Of Acid King” (2017). He then launched the label Super Lights with Aquadab and released his first solo album “Kiyosumi Kurokawa” in 2019 with graphic design by Takara Ohashi. Although an unknown newcomer, the album reached #15 on the iTunes Hip Hop Japan album chart and received plaudits not only for its music but also for the artwork by Ohashi. After the album, Karavi Roushi dropped his first collaboration tune with Aquadab on “S.D.S =Zero=” (2020), a compilation of Generation Z Japanese underground artists produced during the Covid pandemic. That tune, “Tokyoite”, became a favorite of the participating artists."BLADE N” was created by the three-person team of Karavi Roushi, Aquadab & Ohashi. Consciously developing their musical methodology, they intentionally use instrumental tracks to interrupt the rappers' voices and flows, something which has traditionally been avoided, and explore the possibility of creating a style that puts the rapper and track maker on equal footing in complex, woven tracks. On the album, Karavi Roushi's paranormal voice, which sometimes sounds like a mutant synthesizer, adds incisiveness, and in the artwork Ohashi visually extracts the story world hidden in “BLADE N”, giving the cover art the same impact as that of “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”.

Karen Dalton was a remote, elusive creature. A hybrid of tough and tender with an unearthly voice that seemed to embody a time long past. As is often the case with such fragile beings, she instinctively understood that the only way to survive the harshness of the world around her, was to keep herself hidden. So it comes as no great surprise that she rarely sang in public or ventured into the unnatural setting of a recording studio. Only twice, for 1969’s It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best and then again for 1971’s In My Own Time, was she coaxed from her habitat into the studio. Other times she made music in casual settings, sitting around a kitchen table or wood burning stove with her friends, singing and playing until daybreak. In 1966, Carl Baron brought his reel to reel over to her remote cabin in Summerville, Colorado and recorded one of those exquisite musical evenings. Karen and Richard Tucker were rehearsing for a gig when Carl hit the “Record” button. The result is a 45-year-old tape, carefully exhumed, documenting Karen at her most raw and unfiltered. On it are Fred Neil and Tim Hardin songs we’ve never heard Karen give voice to before, as well as traditional songs she uncannily makes her own, including a devastating version of ‘Katie Cruel’, that is so powerful, it is as if the ghost of Katie Cruel seeped into her blood. This recording is a window to her Summerville cabin opened, allowing us to eavesdrop on Karen Dalton at her most pure and unaffected.

Karen Dalton’s 1971 album, In My Own Time, stands as a true masterpiece by one of music’s most mysterious, enigmatic, and enduringly influential artists. Celebrating the album’s 50th anniversary, Light in the Attic is honored to present a newly remastered (2021) edition of the album on LP, CD, cassette, and 8-Track.

The LITA Anniversary LP edition features the original 10-track album, pressed on clear wax at Record Technology Inc. (RTI) and housed in an expanded gatefold LP jacket, while the album makes its long-overdue return on the almighty 8-Track format.

Both the CD and cassette editions feature 9 bonus tracks, including 3 alternate takes from the In My Own Time album sessions, along with 6 previously unreleased tracks captured during Karen’s 1971 European tour, including live at The Montreux Golden Rose Pop Festival and Germany’s Beat Club.

All audio has been newly remastered by Dave Cooley, while lacquers were cut by Phil Rodriguez at Elysian Masters.

A newly expanded booklet—featuring rarely seen photos, liner notes from musician and writer Lenny Kaye, and contributions from Nick Cave and Devendra Banhart—rounds out the CD (32-pgs) and LP (20-pgs) packages. 

The Oklahoma-raised Karen Dalton (1937-1993) brought a range of influences to her work. As Lenny Kaye writes in the liner notes, one can hear “the jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, the immersion of Nina Simone, the Appalachian keen of Jean Ritchie, [and] the R&B and country that had to seep in as she made her way to New York."

Armed with a long-necked banjo and a 12-stringed guitar, Dalton set herself apart from her peers with her distinctive, world-weary vocals. In the early ‘60s, she became a fixture in the Greenwich Village folk scene, interpreting traditional material, blues standards, and the songs of her contemporaries, including Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and Richard Tucker, whom she later married. Bob Dylan, meanwhile, was instantly taken with her artistry. “My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton,” he recalled in Chronicles: Volume One (Simon & Schuster, 2004). “Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.”

Those who knew Dalton understood that she was not interested in bowing to the whims of the record industry. On stage, she rarely interacted with audience members. In the studio, she was equally as uncomfortable with the recording process. Her 1969 debut, It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best, reissued by Light in the Attic in 2009, was captured on the sly when Dalton assumed that she was rehearsing songs. When Woodstock co-promoter Michael Lang approached Dalton about recording a follow-up for his new imprint, Just Sunshine, she was dubious, to say the least. The album would have to be made on her own terms, in her own time. That turned out to be a six-month period at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY.

Producing the album was bassist Harvey Brooks, who played alongside Dalton on It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best. Brooks, who prided himself on being “simple, solid and supportive,” understood Dalton’s process, but was also willing to offer gentle encouragement, and challenge the artist to push her creative bounds. “I tried to present her with a flexible situation,” he told Kaye. “I left the decisions to her, to determine the tempo, feel. She was very quiet, and I brought all of it to her; if she needed more, I’d present options. Everyone was sensitive to her. She was the leader.”

Dalton, who rarely performed her own compositions, selected a range of material to interpret—from traditionals like “Katie Cruel” and “Same Old Man” to Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream” and Richard Tucker’s “Are You Leaving For The Country.” She also expanded upon her typical repertoire, peppering in such R&B hits as “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “How Sweet It Is.” In a departure from her previous LP, Dalton’s new recording offered fuller, more pop-forward arrangements, featuring a slew of talented studio musicians.

While ‘70s audiences may not have been ready for Dalton’s music, a new generation was about to discover her work. In the decades following her death, a slew of artists would name Karen Dalton as an influence, including Lucinda Williams, Joanna Newsom, Nick Cave, Angel Olsen, Devendra Banhart, Sharon Van Etten, Courtney Barnett, and Adele. In the recent acclaimed film documentary Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, Cave muses on Dalton’s unique appeal: “There’s a sort of demand made upon the listener,” he explains. “Whether you like it or not, you have to enter her world. And it’s a despairing world.” Peter Walker, who also appears in the film, elaborates on this idea: “If she can feel a certain way in her music and play it in such a way that you feel that way, then that’s really the most magical thing [one] can do.” He adds, “She had a deep and profound and loving soul…you can hear it in her music.”
 

Karen Dalton’s 1971 album, In My Own Time, stands as a true masterpiece by one of music’s most mysterious, enigmatic, and enduringly influential artists. Celebrating the album’s 50th anniversary, Light in the Attic is honored to present a newly remastered (2021) edition of the album on LP, CD, cassette, and 8-Track.

The LITA Anniversary LP edition features the original 10-track album, pressed on clear wax at Record Technology Inc. (RTI) and housed in an expanded gatefold LP jacket, while the album makes its long-overdue return on the almighty 8-Track format.

Both the CD and cassette editions feature 9 bonus tracks, including 3 alternate takes from the In My Own Time album sessions, along with 6 previously unreleased tracks captured during Karen’s 1971 European tour, including live at The Montreux Golden Rose Pop Festival and Germany’s Beat Club.

All audio has been newly remastered by Dave Cooley, while lacquers were cut by Phil Rodriguez at Elysian Masters.

A newly expanded booklet—featuring rarely seen photos, liner notes from musician and writer Lenny Kaye, and contributions from Nick Cave and Devendra Banhart—rounds out the CD (32-pgs) and LP (20-pgs) packages. 

The Oklahoma-raised Karen Dalton (1937-1993) brought a range of influences to her work. As Lenny Kaye writes in the liner notes, one can hear “the jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, the immersion of Nina Simone, the Appalachian keen of Jean Ritchie, [and] the R&B and country that had to seep in as she made her way to New York."

Armed with a long-necked banjo and a 12-stringed guitar, Dalton set herself apart from her peers with her distinctive, world-weary vocals. In the early ‘60s, she became a fixture in the Greenwich Village folk scene, interpreting traditional material, blues standards, and the songs of her contemporaries, including Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and Richard Tucker, whom she later married. Bob Dylan, meanwhile, was instantly taken with her artistry. “My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton,” he recalled in Chronicles: Volume One (Simon & Schuster, 2004). “Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.”

Those who knew Dalton understood that she was not interested in bowing to the whims of the record industry. On stage, she rarely interacted with audience members. In the studio, she was equally as uncomfortable with the recording process. Her 1969 debut, It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best, reissued by Light in the Attic in 2009, was captured on the sly when Dalton assumed that she was rehearsing songs. When Woodstock co-promoter Michael Lang approached Dalton about recording a follow-up for his new imprint, Just Sunshine, she was dubious, to say the least. The album would have to be made on her own terms, in her own time. That turned out to be a six-month period at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY.

Producing the album was bassist Harvey Brooks, who played alongside Dalton on It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best. Brooks, who prided himself on being “simple, solid and supportive,” understood Dalton’s process, but was also willing to offer gentle encouragement, and challenge the artist to push her creative bounds. “I tried to present her with a flexible situation,” he told Kaye. “I left the decisions to her, to determine the tempo, feel. She was very quiet, and I brought all of it to her; if she needed more, I’d present options. Everyone was sensitive to her. She was the leader.”

Dalton, who rarely performed her own compositions, selected a range of material to interpret—from traditionals like “Katie Cruel” and “Same Old Man” to Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream” and Richard Tucker’s “Are You Leaving For The Country.” She also expanded upon her typical repertoire, peppering in such R&B hits as “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “How Sweet It Is.” In a departure from her previous LP, Dalton’s new recording offered fuller, more pop-forward arrangements, featuring a slew of talented studio musicians.

While ‘70s audiences may not have been ready for Dalton’s music, a new generation was about to discover her work. In the decades following her death, a slew of artists would name Karen Dalton as an influence, including Lucinda Williams, Joanna Newsom, Nick Cave, Angel Olsen, Devendra Banhart, Sharon Van Etten, Courtney Barnett, and Adele. In the recent acclaimed film documentary Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, Cave muses on Dalton’s unique appeal: “There’s a sort of demand made upon the listener,” he explains. “Whether you like it or not, you have to enter her world. And it’s a despairing world.” Peter Walker, who also appears in the film, elaborates on this idea: “If she can feel a certain way in her music and play it in such a way that you feel that way, then that’s really the most magical thing [one] can do.” He adds, “She had a deep and profound and loving soul…you can hear it in her music.”
 

Karen Dalton’s 1971 album, In My Own Time, stands as a true masterpiece by one of music’s most mysterious, enigmatic, and enduringly influential artists. Light in the Attic is honored to celebrate the 50th anniversary of In My Own Time with a special edition of this monumental classic.

Featuring Dalton’s interpretations of songs like “Are You Leaving for the Country,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” “Katie Cruel,” and her posthumously recognized signature performance, “Something On Your Mind,” will be available in a 50th anniversary Deluxe Edition, which expands exponentially upon Light in the Attic’s 2006 reissue of the album, co-produced by Nicholas Hill.

This 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition features the newly remastered (2021) In My Own Time album, presented on three sides of 45-RPM, 180-gram vinyl pressed at Record Technology Inc. (RTI), with the fourth side showcasing alternate takes from the album sessions. The set also contains two 7-inch singles, featuring previously-unreleased live recordings captured at Germany’s Beat Club in 1971, both pressed at Third Man Record Pressing and housed in tip-on jackets. All audio has been newly remastered by Dave Cooley, while lacquers were cut by Phil Rodriguez at Elysian Masters. A 20-page booklet—featuring rarely seen photos, liner notes from musician and writer Lenny Kaye, and contributions from Nick Cave and Devendra Banhart—rounds out the package, which comes housed in a special trifold jacket.

The Oklahoma-raised Karen Dalton (1937-1993) brought a range of influences to her work. As Lenny Kaye writes in the liner notes, one can hear “the jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, the immersion of Nina Simone, the Appalachian keen of Jean Ritchie, [and] the R&B and country that had to seep in as she made her way to New York."

Armed with a long-necked banjo and a 12-stringed guitar, Dalton set herself apart from her peers with her distinctive, world-weary vocals. In the early ‘60s, she became a fixture in the Greenwich Village folk scene, interpreting traditional material, blues standards, and the songs of her contemporaries, including Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and Richard Tucker, whom she later married. Bob Dylan, meanwhile, was instantly taken with her artistry. “My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton,” he recalled in Chronicles: Volume One (Simon & Schuster, 2004). “Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.”

Those who knew Dalton understood that she was not interested in bowing to the whims of the record industry. On stage, she rarely interacted with audience members. In the studio, she was equally as uncomfortable with the recording process. Her 1969 debut, It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best, reissued by Light in the Attic in 2009, was captured on the sly when Dalton assumed that she was rehearsing songs. When Woodstock co-promoter Michael Lang approached Dalton about recording a follow-up for his new imprint, Just Sunshine, she was dubious, to say the least. The album would have to be made on her own terms, in her own time. That turned out to be a six-month period at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY.

Producing the album was bassist Harvey Brooks, who played alongside Dalton on It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best. Brooks, who prided himself on being “simple, solid and supportive,” understood Dalton’s process, but was also willing to offer gentle encouragement, and challenge the artist to push her creative bounds. “I tried to present her with a flexible situation,” he told Kaye. “I left the decisions to her, to determine the tempo, feel. She was very quiet, and I brought all of it to her; if she needed more, I’d present options. Everyone was sensitive to her. She was the leader.”

Dalton, who rarely performed her own compositions, selected a range of material to interpret—from traditionals like “Katie Cruel” and “Same Old Man” to Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream” and Richard Tucker’s “Are You Leaving For The Country.” She also expanded upon her typical repertoire, peppering in such R&B hits as “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “How Sweet It Is.” In a departure from her previous LP, Dalton’s new recording offered fuller, more pop-forward arrangements, featuring a slew of talented studio musicians.

While ‘70s audiences may not have been ready for Dalton’s music, a new generation was about to discover her work. In the decades following her death, a slew of artists would name Karen Dalton as an influence, including Lucinda Williams, Joanna Newsom, Nick Cave, Angel Olsen, Devendra Banhart, Sharon Van Etten, Courtney Barnett, and Adele. In the recent acclaimed film documentary Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, Cave muses on Dalton’s unique appeal: “There’s a sort of demand made upon the listener,” he explains. “Whether you like it or not, you have to enter her world. And it’s a despairing world.” Peter Walker, who also appears in the film, elaborates on this idea: “If she can feel a certain way in her music and play it in such a way that you feel that way, then that’s really the most magical thing [one] can do.” He adds, “She had a deep and profound and loving soul…you can hear it in her music.”

1–10: Originally released as Just Sunshine – PAS 6008, 1971
11–13: Alternate Takes from album sessions, 1970/71
14–15: Recorded live at Beat Club, Germany, April 21, 1971

“My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton. She had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.” – Bob Dylan Karen Dalton's 1969 Capitol debut is finally back in print! Light in the Attic is thrilled to present a brand new edition of this heart-wrenching & bluesy introduction to the intoxicating world of Dalton and her deep well of musical secrets. World-weary and filled with the blues, Dalton’s unsurpassed interpretive depth and emotional range were like no other. Recorded for Capitol in 1969, It’s So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best spans generations of classic American songwriting–covering classics by Lead Belly, Fred Neil, and Tim Hardin. While no longer with us in the physical, Karen’s growing musical presence is stronger than ever and worthy of re-examination by both the converted and the uninitiated alike. This new re-release serves as the definitive, all-analog version of Dalton’s stunning debut, featuring remastered audio from the original Capitol masters, the original 1969 artwork in an expanded gatefold jacket, unseen photos by album photographer Joel Brodsky, and an essay interviewing Karen’s friends and music collaborators, from album producer and bassist Harvey Brooks to musician Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders.

Karen y Los Remedios: blending cumbia and existentialism

Behind Karen’s pulsating spectral voice lies vulnerability, contemplation and longing. Chameleon-like foundations explore cumbia in its many forms, crossing the continent with Norteño airs, pitched-down rebajados, psychedelia and even traditional Peruvian music, taking in ballads, Afro-Latin percussion, reggaeton and the more electronic sounds of dream-pop, trip hop and downtempo.

A mystical, motley mixture, the ideal soundscape to fight the voices in your head while you melt on the dancefloor and scare away the ghosts of your past, your body surrendering to the dance.

That’s pretty much Karen y Los Remedios, the project led by Ana Karen G Barajas, an artist and arts and social sciences researcher born in Mexico City and raised in Guanajuato, in the company of Mexico City native Jonathan Muriel (Jiony) and guitarist Guillermo Berbeyer (Z.A.M.P.A.), who after many years on Mexico’s alternative scene decided to get together and bring this existential cumbia project to life.

Tucson, Arizona interdisciplinary artist Karima Walker walks a line between two worlds. Aside from her long resume of collaborative work with artists in the diverse fields of dance, sculpture, film, photography and creative non-fiction, Walker has long nurtured a duality within her work as a musician, developing her own sonic language as a sound designer in tandem with her craft as a singer/songwriter. The polarity within Walker’s music has never been so articulately explored, or graced with as much intention, as on her new album, Waking the Dreaming Body.

Waking the Dreaming Body was written, performed and engineered entirely by Walker, with the exception of some subtle upright bass from C.J. Boyd on the song “Window I.” Producing the album on her own wasn’t Walker’s original intention, though; after flying to New York in November 2019 to develop some home-recorded tracks with The Blow’s Melissa Dyne, a sudden illness forced Walker to cancel the sessions and return home to Tucson to recover, and soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic ruled out the possibility of a return trip to New York. Instead, Walker decided to finish the album herself in her makeshift home studio. She spent the following months recording, processing and arranging her self-described “messy Ableton sessions” into densely harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and her own dulcet singing voice, allowing trial, error and intuition to guide her way. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient compositions (as in the instrumentals “Horizon, Harbor Resonance” and “For Heddi”) and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting (as in the lyrics-focused tracks “Reconstellated” and “Waking the Dreaming Body”), their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

The contact between electronic sound and live instrumental sound, and the contact of the moment 'now'.

Contacte means contact. It is the contact between the electronic sound and the live player (instrumental sound), and also the contact of each moment of what Stockhausen calls the 'instant form'.
Regarding the 'momentary form,' Stockhausen said in a late-night music program on West German Radio in Cologne on January 12, 1961: "In recent years, a lot of music has been composed that is far from a form with a dramatic finale. There are no climaxes, no signs of climaxes, and no stages of development in these works. Rather, they suddenly and violently build up and try to maintain the 'peak' until the end of the work. It is always at a maximum or minimum, and the listener cannot predict how the piece will progress. It is not a moment that is part of a passage, nor is it a part of a constant duration. The concentration on the 'now' creates a vertical line that breaks the horizontal concept of time and leads us to the timeless..."
As the listener listens to the booming sounds coming from various directions, dark noises, percussion instruments, piano sounds, etc., the listener is freed from this world dominated by time flowing inexorably, and has a very dense and mysterious musical experience.
There are two versions of "Contacte": one for electronic sounds only, and the other for electronic instruments, piano, and percussion.

Think about Can as performed by a shaman commune ! Two long LP-side size compositions, focusing on tribal rhythms (without real drummer), heavy-folk and electronic samples and loops. Takahashi Yoshihiro (Brast Burn) was the man behind this cultish project originally released in 1974. Buried deep in time, this obscure artifact is something of a revelation. No group information was ever given, and no production date or location is indicated, however, it would seem that this record and the "Brast Burn" LP (also reissued by Paradigm) are both by the same group of Japanese nutters and that they were both recorded in the mid seventies in Japan. But all you really need to know is that it is stone cold fantastic, a wild and manic trip full to the brim with hypnotic jams constructed from all manner of eclectic instruments.

The tribal blues sound is augmented with fascinating tape experiments, electronics, environmental sounds, moaned (howled) vocals and a host of musical delicacies, as dangerous as they are delicious. The influence of German bands such as Can, Faust and Guru Guru is evident throughout, so too is the influence of the good Captain (Beefheart that is) whose gut wrenching blues dirges find compadres in this unearthed swamp. Deranged psychedelic music for anyone with a passing interest in Kraut rock, the new Japanese psychedelic scene (most of whom owe these pioneers a great debt) or great music from the edge of the solar system. Recommended.<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6kWuJcXCYCM?si=qzWOtQkBPaAemmZ5" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Second outing from Jaeger and O’Rourke following the release Wakes on Cerulean on Editions Mego in 2017. Covering a vast terrain with delicacy and poise this new release unveils a spectral showcase for all manner of deep abstraction. The first side positions itself somewhere between stoned komische synth and more nuanced electroacoustic tactics, all weighted by a melancholic undertow. The second side builds on the tension of the former as an undulating drone teases all variety of matter to rise and fall amongst the foreign space it inhabits. The effect creates an enormous sense of deep space before subsiding into a smaller more anxious flickering world. All manner of machines fold into play; digital machines, industrial and analogue machines. The seemingly random yet ordered nature of events is reminiscent of the behaviour of the natural world providing this machine driven release a convincing organic feel. Whether invoking mirrors, distant galaxies or a pond of frogs it is a delightful challenge to focus and locate what is nature and what is nurture. To play this loud is to immerse oneself in a fascinating journey which carries the listener through an array of dizzying emotional states.