MUSIC

Considered by many one of the most gifted and outstanding players in the Electone community thanks to his fresh, energetic, rhythmic and sometimes humorous style of playing, from 1975 to 1977 Shigeo Sekitō released a four-LP album set titled Special Sound Series for the iconic Nippon Columbia. On the first chapter of this series, Sekitō revisits, in his own colourful style, compositions such as "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" by Stevie Wonder, "Oh, My Love" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, "Andalucia" by Ernesto Lecuona, alongside some of his own composition such as "My Sweet Girl" and the title track "Catch In Alice", creating a blend of easy-listening jazz with funk and soul influences. Long out of press, we are very proud to bring this "brilliant electone" album back on vinyl under exclusive license from Nippon Columbia. ©℗ 1975, Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd. / Licensed to Holy Basil Records by Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd.

The Chakachas were a Belgian based group of Latin soul studio musicians. Also known as Les Chakachas or Los Chakachas. They started out in the late 50s, recording a playful mixture of Latin music, jazz, and European-style exotica. This same titled album is a much sought after album amongst the connoisseurs.The song "Stories" on this album was featured on the soundtrack of the very popular game Grand Theft Auto V. This song was also covered by the band CAKE.Get your latin groove on.

The Boston Tea Party was that city's leading underground rock club, something of a home for the Velvet Underground. Lou Reed even described it as his favorite place to play in the late '60s. This superb live set was taped there and finds the quartet performing numerous tracks from their recently released third album, as well as epic renditions of 'Run Run Run' and 'Sister Ray.'

The last Henry Cow record made after the group had officially disbanded. I'm biased of course but I believe this was a milestone recording, and perhaps the closest we came to getting the music to sound the way we wanted on disc. Guest appearances by Irene Schweitzer and Anne-Marie Roeloffs.

It's impossible to think about 'dub' without thinking about the late Osbourne Ruddock - the great King Tubby, the singular most creative human being of the great many who've plied their trade behind a mixing desk in the name of reggae since the early 1970s. Dub may well have existed before Tubbs raised its profile to almost unimaginable heights, and it has continued to exist in the 21 years since he was senselessly slain in 1989.

Soulgramma present a reissue of Betty Harris' Soul Perfection, originally released in 1969. Soul singer Betty Harris -- mainly known for her Jubilee and Sansu recordings -- was born in 1939 in Orlando, Florida. As a teenager she worked as a mate for Big Maybelle who encouraged her to start singing. First recording was released in 1962, her major hit was a cover of Solomon Burke's "Cry To Me" in 1963. Taken at a slower pace, Harris' rendition turned the song into a Billboard Hot 100 number 23 hit and soon became a deep soul classic. A total of three further singles including a reissue of "Cry To Me" were released on Jubilee with "His Kiss", which was released on January 4, 1964, another deep soul ballad, reaching the lower part of the Billboard Pop and R&B charts. In 1964, Betty Harris switched record labels to Sansu, a New Orleans label, where she was produced by Allen Toussaint. Her recordings with Sansu produced ten singles and Toussaint raw yet sophisticated Southern soul arrangements behind Harris' rich, distinctive vocal, are considered prime specimens of the classic soul era. Soul Perfection, originally licensed on UK label Action in 1969, was in fact a collection of her previous works on Sansu, a rare groove affair rapidly in demand between a crowd of obsessive fans all over the world. Harris retired from performing in 1970 to raise a family and made an occasional return in 2007 with the album Intuition.

Their shambolic 1994 debut, remastered from the original tapes and presented in lavish, gatefold form. A mix of restrained loud and purposeful quiet, WhatFunLifeWas’s eleven tracks unfold at a marathon runner’s pace, picking up speed when necessary, but its eye on completing a personal race. Singer Matt Kadane’s soft, semi-drawl is buried in the mix, letting brother Bubba and Tench Coxe’s guitars weave cleanly around drummer Trini Martinez’s all-ride-all-the-time timekeeping.

Jacks meets Makoto Kubota & The Sunset Gang! Yokohama Rock guru Daisaku Yoshino's early masterpiece "Lamp Factory" (self-produced in 1974) is being released on LP for the first time in 48 years! Produced by Makoto Otowa, this album is known as a brother album to "Wasagetami".

Daisaku Yoshino has been performing live mainly in Yokohama since the early 70's. His musical style is diverse and elusive, from the folk rock period of the 70's to the post-punk/free form period of the 80's. Although he has never received a solid reputation, his early work "Daisaku Yoshino Lamp Manufacturing Factory" ( Although his music has never been well received, his early work, "Yoshino Daisaku Lamp Factory" (released in 1974), is well known and popular in later years, mainly in Europe, as a masterpiece of acid folk. The band's philosophical and modern poetry was expressed in straight American rock, dynamic and thirsty country rock, and acid folk style, and was regarded as "Jacks meets the Sunset Band". The band was praised by Makoto Kubota for their performance at the Hibiya Nohe rock festival, where they outclassed Tokyo bands. The bluesy, weeping electric guitar sounds are reminiscent of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," a superb world. The hidden masterpiece that will remain in the history of Japanese rock music is now being released in its original format for the first time in 48 years. The strength of the music is so pure that it has not wavered at all, and it is an album that must be listened to now more than ever.

Exemplum Rhythmicus is Bi Nostalgia’s minimal wonder from 1990 (originally released under the artist’s name Luca Rigato on the Veronese cassette label Diagrapho).

Long coveted and hunted by collectors, it falls among the strange and definition resistant artefacts of Italy’s remarkable avant-garde music scene of the 1980s. An emblem of sonic diversity rendered through electronic sound, distilling a daunting number of traditions and ideas, while sculpting its own world of creative singularity, standing apart from the rest.

While a great many of Italy’s avant-garde and experimental music practitioners began within the spectrums of popular music, slowly pushing into more explicitly ambitious and challenging realms as the years wore on, Bi Nostalgia represented a change in the directional tide.

Exemplum Rhythmicus was part of a movement towards the incorporation of popular forms within avant-garde music which swept across the globe during the 1980’s.

As challenging and complex as it is seductive and inviting, Exemplum Rhythmicus weaves a world without boundary, of collision and harmony. A vision of possible futures rendered in its present day. A melodic realm almost entirely constructed through the use of synthesizer, with subtle interventions of electronic rhythm, piano and bells.

Exemplum bridges the metronomic territories explored by American minimalists and the highly cultivated harmonics of Balinese percussion, with the adventurous spirit of the avant-garde.

Available for the first time on vinyl and produced in cooperation with Luca Rigato for chOOn!!, a label specialising in obscure, archival and forgotten releases.

Remastered for vinyl and digital by Josh Bonati with artwork by Luke Bird and liner notes by the artist.

The full digital release is accompanied by two bonus tracks - radio edits, mastered and mixed by Bi Nostalgia (in Verona, Italy, August 2020). 

The latest reissue from chOOn!! is Giedrius Kuprevičius’ Erotidijos, the sixth release from the label that specialises in obscure, archival and forgotten releases. Erotidijos translates from the Lithuanian to “Erotidies” – these were festivals held in honour of Eros, God of Love in Ancient Greece. They were organised every five years and were famous for their celebrations, decorations and luxury. Ritual games were played during the festivals, musicians and poets competed, worshipping Eros. Erotidijos is a haunting yet hypnotic tableaux Kuprevičius originally created for a Stanislovas Rubinovas theatre play staged in 1994 in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Lithuanian composer was one of the founding members of the pioneering electronic pop outfit Argo and has written dozens of scores for stage and film over the past several decades, imbuing his soundwork with a multitude of artful moods and emotive depth. The story of Erotidijos unfolds in both melancholic and serenely lush scenery, in turn mysterious and playful. Memories of places you’ve never been drift into frame, from bedroom womb into a foliage of phantasmal keys and gently psychotropic symphonies. A collection that glissandos between notes, place, and time. Erotidijos is guided by an intuitive, improvisational dream logic that threads the line between waking and sleeping revelations. It offers a hazy, voyeuristic lens into another world with dusty ambience and eccentric keyboard effects, warm synth pads and shimmering vistas serving as soft accents to the angelic murmur of giggling voices. As you listen, you are invited to apply your own interpretation of Erotidijos’ narrative of a new land, its climate, sounds, and geography. A contemplative, celestial electronic work in a gentle, often beautiful ambient style which breezily swings with exquisite analogue synth textures and infinity loops. Jazz spontaneity and organic pop impulses lift the meditative veil, ending with a climactic final scene: a sensuous reverie complete with shedding light and gently opening synapses. Available for the first time on vinyl, including over twenty minutes of music not featured on the original cassette release and produced in cooperation with Giedrius Kuprevičius for chOOn!!

Chicago pastor and activist T.L. Barrett’s rare gospel soul classic Like A Ship… (Without A Sail) is finally receiving a much-needed reissue. Long revered by record collectors, this album remains one of the holy grails of gospel soul. Self-released in 1971, Like A Ship was the result of Barrett channeling his passion for music, a determination to keep children off the streets, and his charismatic preaching (which attracted the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire and Donny Hathaway to his sermons at Mount Zion Baptist Church) into the production of the album, a project bolstered by the saxophonist and arranger Gene Barge of the famed Chess Records, and backed by a cast of players that included Richard Evans, Phil Upchurch and the rapturous vocals of the Youth For Christ Choir. Like A Ship… is filled with sanctified grooves and spiritual praise delivered with a righteous, infectious chorus.

The sequel to Pastor Barrett’s landmark 1971 masterpiece Like A Ship…, Do Not Pass Me By finds the young Chicago preacher and his Youth for Christ Choir continuing their genre-bending spiritual journey. Heavy drums, soaring falsettos, euphoric tambourines, sharp horns, and Barrett’s unwavering devotion dance around a 40-strong choir, working together to form sanctified slab of gospel funk. Pressed in a minuscule quantity in 1973, Do Not Pass Me By was sold primarily from the pulpit of Barrett’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church, disappearing into Chicago’s south side for 45 years before Numero’s excavation. The ten-song album has been remastered, it’s generic album cover updated to match Barrett’s vision. On the back of the jacket, he insisted on the following words: “After listening to this album you will be glad that you did not pass it by!”

Gently Down Your Stream marked a creative zenith within the Columbus, Ohio, soul scene, at the juncture of the 1960s and ’70s. The Four Mints were one of the most influential local group harmony outfits of their era and—with assistance from Columbus doyen and Capsoul purveyor Bill Moss—among the few to release a full length LP. The roster of backing musicians hired to provide aural landscaping reads like a Midwest super-group, with surprising appearances from Indianapolis-based vibraphonist Billy Wooten and drummer Bobby Allen of the Fabulous Originals from Dayton, Ohio. And though most of the material on 1973’s Gently had been previously released as 45s, the collection—five singles and one priceless track saved from the scrap heap—gives witness to a world-class vocal quartet at its professional and intuitive peak. Under the watchful eye of arranger and mega-talent Dean Francis, the Four Mints pour forth from your speakers soulful, faithful and clear, but perhaps more importantly, intrinsically homegrown and utterly honest.

A lounge in the Poconos located just inside a Holiday Inn, 1973. The smoky haze clears to reveal a middle-aged couple on a one-foot high stage, prattling on about the weather or Watergate before launching into a serviceable cover of Burt Bacharach’s “Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” Tens of thousands of such combos littered restaurants, cruise ships, casinos, lobbies, and cocktail bars throughout the ’60s and ’70s, but far fewer cut a record worth buying from the stage, much less listening to on the home hi-fi. Gathered here are 14 lounge originals from across the entire easy listening spectrum. A spent matchbook’s worth of crooners, bossa nobodies, seafood jazzers, and Donca-Matic enthusiasts all in search of their ticket out of a red leather booth hell.

Just as Al Green’s “Back Up Train” was pulling out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a whistle-stop tour to the top of the charts, producer Palmer James began eyeing another Furniture City branch line: Tommy Mcgee. The result was 1976’s Positive-Negative, the creative apex in a career littered with endless bottoms. Gathered for the first time are Mcgee’s timeless album, singles for Golden Voice, Mercury, TMG, and Tosted, as well as the complete output of his nascent mid-‘60s funk combo the T.M.G.’s.

Biff! A violin bow scrapes across the strings of a guitar Bang! The hiss of a an aerosol can releases paint on to canvas Pow! As the violin bow pierces the canvas. “We were supporting The Walker Brothers on a string of dates around the UK,” recalled Creation guitarist Eddie Phillips. “We had just recorded ‘Painter Man’ and were really excited about it, and wanted to make it the central focus of our live performance. We were in the van, traveling to Great Yarmouth for a show and we came up with the idea of Kenny creating some artwork in the instrumental break of the song. It was a Sunday afternoon so when we arrived in Great Yarmouth, nearly everywhere was shut, but we found some wood, and our roadie Bill Fowler started making it into a six foot by six foot frame in the car park. He found an old decorating shop open and got some wall paper to make the canvas. The band, all in their purple and black finery, were bent down and bashing nails into it. No paint shops were open so we went to a garage and they had aerosol touch up spray paints. We started extending the break. I’d be playing away and the violin bow would get wrecked, so I’d chuck it at the screen like an arrow, and it would get stuck in there. The aim was to create a visual madness to illustrate the music. Then we got smoke effect powder from a joke shop and made a smoke screen around it, and eventually Kenny started setting the canvas alight.” The Creation were a go. With producer du jour Shel Talmy at the helm (The Who, Kinks, Easybeats, Cat Stevens, et al) the Creation went on an incredible two year tear of singles, including “Making Time,” “How Does It Feel To Feel,” “Tom Tom,” and “If I Stay Too Long.” By 1968 it was over. Eddie Phillips’ trademark guitar bowing would be nicked by Jimmy Page and Boney M would cheese-up “Painter Man.” Over the nearly five decades since, the Creation has seen a tremendous resurgence in interest. First it was the Jam flossing “Making Time” on the inner sleeve of All Mod Cons. A few years later Alan McGee formed the band Biff Bang Pow and his Creation record label. By the turn of the century a new generation had discovered the band via a strategic placement in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Presented here for the first time are the complete Creation studio recordings. All 42 tracks have been remastered from the original tapes by Shel Talmy, and given fresh stereo mixes where previously unavailable. New essays by Dean Rudland and Alec Palao tell the band’s story and dive into their complete studio sessions. Scores of previously unpublished photographs adorn the accompanying 80 page hard bound book. We’ve rounded the whole package out with four tracks by pre-Creation freakbeat quartet the Mark Four, making Action Painting the definitive collection of this legendary UK band.

Before New Age hit terra firms at the dawn of the 1980s, the classically-trained Bay Area composer Jordan De La Sierra's consciousness soared with cosmic concepts. With cues and lessons from the great minimalists La Monte Young,Terry Riley, Pandit Pran Nath, and help from the venerable public radio program Hearts of Space, De La Sierra embarked on a journey in alternate tunings and resounding reverberations, transporting entranced listeners from the Golden Gates to the intergalactic. Take an interstellar ride on the sensory engulfing space piano with this lovingly recreated double LP set, complete with De La Sierra's India-inspired visual artwork and musings on the tableau of space.

RAW SPACE" is rooted in chaos and chance, sensuality and intensity - it's an album that's able to sound alarmingly freeform and tightly controlled simultaneously. Already established as a genre-disrupting DJ, and even dubbed "demon of the Nile" by Ugandan politicians after an exuberant performance at Nyege Nyege festival in September 2019, Kampala-based sonic hypnotist Authentically Plastic brings a digger's literacy, an activist's intent, and an artist's playfulness to their jagged debut album. As both a DJ and a producer, Authentically Plastic is drawn to the idea of chance as a creative tool - to push against the idea of the all-knowing genius, and approach artistry instead as a facilitator, unraveling parallel mismatched rhythmic events. Their musical process is to start with chaos, then attempt to mold those fleshy structures into polyrhythmic mutations, pulling influence from East Africa's innovative musical landscape and augmenting it with an exploratory sense of surrealism. On opening track 'Aesthetic Terrorism', rough-hewn industrial rhythms chug mechanically against course, dissonant synth blasts and acidic arpeggios. There's a faint sparkle of Detroit's chrome-plated Afro-futurism, but bathed in neon light, reflecting Africa's contemporary electronic revolution. Authentically Plastic's productions have a sense of thematic coherence, but their myriad influences are torched into cinders, leaving inverse impressions and ghost rhythms: the tuned overdriven clatter of 'Anti-Fun' echoes Ugandan kadodi modes, yet simultaneously mirrors the rugged out-zone grit of Container or Speaker Music; standout centerpiece 'Buul Okyelo' meanwhile is as rhythmically cross-eyed as Slikback or Nazar, but juxtaposes kinetic dancefloor thumps with chaotic microtonal ritual cycles. Writing "RAW SPACE", Authentically Plastic found themselves fascinated by sonic flatness. They realized that in Western art, there's an obsession with depth of field that carries into music, robbing it of intensity. The album is an example of the power that can be reclaimed when you let go of depth, letting sounds rub together carnally and spawn something fresh and unexpected

Pecker, a percussionist who created Japan's first salsa band, Orquesta del Sol, created "Pecker Power," Japan's first dub album in 1980, and originally released on a 10-inch disc, "Instant Rasta," and Ryojiro Furusawa's "Moonlight Slumber," also featuring Minako Yoshida, were added to the original "Instant Rasta" and released in 12-inch format!

Side A
A1 BEGGAR SUITE（Part1）
A2 BEGGAR SUITE（Part2）
A3 BEGGAR SUITE（Part3）
A4 DUB JAM ROCK

Side B
B1 KYLYN
B2 MOONLIGHT SLUMBER

Speed, Glue & Shinki's last album is a gorgeous, faithful reproduction of the original, including a full-wrap-around band! Released in 1972. The second and last album of Speed, Glue & Shinki, released in 1972. Famous for its tiger jacket. This album has many songs that seem to be mainly by Joey Smith, but like the previous album, it is full of bluesy rock. Some of the songs are lyrical, but the medley on the D-side makes extensive use of the Mogg synthesizer, which was still very valuable at the time. Guests include Michael Hanopol [ba etc.], Shigeki Watanabe [key], and Hiroshi Oguchi [drums]. The analog version uses a 96khz 24-bit sound source that was mastered in 2017. Jackets include two single jackets, full-length wraparound obi, lyric card, and others. The original has been reproduced as much as possible.

Diving once more into the forgotten corners of the electric Spanish music scene from the 80's and early 90's, Soundway reissue Scan Man's full single "Arabian". Bringing together a Furious Five retro styled bounce and rhyme and a bite of UK street soul, the track is taken from 2021's hugely popular compilation Ritmo Fantasía. Expect soulful American expat rap layered over sitar-like sounds, and a tumbling, rattling, 808 pattern. Along with the original track and instrumental, DJs Trujillo and Ray Mang serve a souped up instrumental primed for modern dancefloors. Recorded at the CEV Studios in Madrid, Arabian was the first composition and production of Marcos Manzanares to get an official release. Using an Ensoniq Mirage Sampler (one of the early, affordable synth samplers), and with Stephen Sutton providing the vocals for the track, he first made his entry into the Spanish music scene. A short while later he would go onto make a career for himself under the name of Tension808, releasing with major labels like Sony Music and EMI Chrysalis.

A+A is Anunaku and Avalon Emerson. Their first EP features four tracks of melodic club music, made together while in London and on tour. Mastered by Matt Colton Cover photograph taken by Suleika Mueller Design by Noah Baker

Big or profound sensations from small gestures which are carefully arranged. Using a mixture of sacred and profane, or classical and prosaic sound sources, knitted into intricate, fleet-footed compositions that virtually spring into the ear. Profondo Rosa is composer Ailin Grad’s first vinyl album following years embedded and loved in the Argentinian experimental music scene, with past treats on labels Krut, Sun Ark, Orange Milk Records and her own label Abyss, devoted to ‘connecting Latin Juke with the world’. There’s a playfulness at the heart of Profondo Rosa that’s immediately charming, with a sense of scale and spatialisation in the sounds being toyed with, exploring the strange pleasures and satisfaction in her approach to delightful and fresh feeling sound design. Aylu is known to be as likely to deploy the sound of a finger click, a fizzy drink being cracked open, or a fly buzzing past the ear, as she is drawn to sampling gorgeous strings or instrumentation. Her debut album for Mana constantly builds territories that tug at your heartstrings and then have you grinning five seconds later. This versatility and acceleration has often resulted in her music being compared to footwork, alongside collaboration with other producers experimenting in that sphere; in 2017 she and Foodman put together a dizzying hour of sounds for NTS. Her miniaturisation of rhythm and ringtone-like sample size could also bring to mind SND circa their warmer softer glitch Tenderlove phase, or perhaps the approach that Teenage Engineering take to designing tools for music making. Each are deriving pleasure from small and satisfying shapes, as well as advocating an object-oriented philosophy and minimalisation in their work that sidesteps a draining of colour. Sound is fun, and in Profondo Rosa it sounds like Aylu has that at the forefront of her mind. Her hyperreal sound and its link to the languages of electroacoustic or computer music are clear, but she outmanoeuvres many of the overly-academic and formless examples of those genres. Profondo Rosa’s skeletal assembly of objects becomes tunes in an elegant, almost understated way; tactile elements quickly combine and roll into deeper and persuasively emotional places. These compositions give off an air of being very free, very experimental, despite being meticulously artful and studied arrangements on precise and nimble coordinates.

Initially released in 2006, ‘Revep’ is the third collaboration album between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto and the third installment of V.I.R.U.S.’s five albums series. Remastered in 2021 in collaboration with Calyx Studio, the album’s recordings are accompanied by three new compositions titled ‘City Radieuse’, ‘Veru 1’, and ‘Veru 2’. ‘City Radieuse’ was composed for the 2012 short cinematic essay titled ‘Cité Radieuse’ and part of Carsten Nicolai’s ‘future past perfect’ series. The video shot at le Corbusier’s Unité D’Habitation in Nantes (called ‘cité radieuse’) takes the viewer through the modular system and design applied to the residential buildings. The film’s narrative unfolds through a sequence of images tracking the apartments’ indoor space and details, and points to the different benchmarks of standardized production as they correlate to their environment and its inhabitants. The album’s original recordings resulted from musical exchanges that began with ‘Vrioon’ and revolved around a collaborative arrangement of Sakamoto’s classic ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,’ the theme music to the 1983 movie starring David Bowie, Takeshi Kitano, and Ryuichi Sakamoto himself. In ‘Revep,’ the piano takes the lead while the padded bass and pitched electronic frequencies mark sudden change. Deeply evocative and effortlessly colliding worlds of analog beauty and digital mastery, this album is considered another indispensable record from the duo’s ongoing collaboration. ALBUM ART DESIGNED BY CARSTEN NICOLAI MASTERING BY BO @ CALYX TRACKLIST: