MUSIC
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Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven’s brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo’s Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought-after artifacts of the 90’s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead guitar on the group’s first two albums. The pairing is revelatory as they weave luminous melodic lines, sometimes in parallel, sometimes opening into sustained intricate counterpoint. Bassist Koji Shimura and drummer Ken Ishihara shuffle and swing in parallel with a fluid, sinuous rhythm, while flourishes of synthesizer, mellotron and the introduction of Go Hirano on keyboards and piano deepens the group’s sound with orchestral colors and a soft cinematic haze. Across the album, clear, shimmering guitar tones and gentle chord progressions are layered with bright arpeggiated figures and darker minor-key passages. The songs develop through gradual changes in tone and dynamics as Ishihara's voice reveals a gentle yearning and wistfulness. An extended version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “The Look of Love” serves as the album’s entrancing focal point; Stretching the song’s familiar lounge-pop swagger, the group renders it as a slow-burning, psychedelic meditation crackling with electricity as it drifts into the night. Available for the first time on vinyl in over 30 years and for the first time ever digitally (a truncated four song CD EP was also released in 1994). Remastered and expanded to include a second LP featuring three previously unreleased song versions cut at 45RPM. Presented in a heavy tip-on gatefold with metallic and ink pigment foil stamping, spot colors as well as a gatefold insert. House in a custom vellum wrap with a mirror metallic sticker seal. Lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Mastering, pressed at Record Technology Inc.
"The third full-length release for Portland, Oregon-based Liz Harris. Harris might have achieved a significant fan base thanks to the whispering, near-ambient vocal crusades of her debut album Way Their Crept and its follow-up Wide, but those with a careful ear would have heard slightly more trapped beneath her fuzzy chain of effects. Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill marks a departure of sorts for Liz, which sees her turn down the fuzz boxes which caged (and to some degree defined) her sound and allows her voice to ring out above everything else. It is an album steeped in the world of dream-pop and far from shying away from the reference, Liz has instead grabbed on with both hands, creating an album's worth of perfect, left-field pop songs. Using delicate song structures which are at once both familiar and somehow alien, her vocals cry out hauntingly over stripped-down guitar lines and looped environmental recordings. These are the future soundtracks to love, despair and ultimately, hope." "This remarkable album is actually what I personally always wanted 4AD records to sound like, only they never quite delivered the hazy pleasures their beautiful sleeve art promised." --Pitchfork (8.2)
Following his 1971 conviction for the murder of seven people, including the actress and model Sharon Tate, the notorious cult leader, Beach Boys associate and failed singer-songwriter Charles Manson was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Recorded with just an acoustic guitar in his jail cell, Live At San Quentin dates from 1983 and is probably the most poppy of Manson’s improvised far-out folk songs ever committed to tape, with flushing toilets and background conversations adding to the gritty low-fi realism. If you like the Lie album, you need this one too – Manson fans will not be disappointed!
Released in 1972 and long out of reach, Belle Gonzalez’s only album is one of those rare records that feels like a secret passed from hand to hand. Her voice is gentle yet full of presence, carrying songs that drift between British folk and the soft sway of Brazilian rhythms. It’s music that feels both of its time and strangely timeless, the kind of record you play once and then can’t forget. After decades in obscurity, Belle finally returns, restored with care and ready to be heard the way it always should have been.
"What Can I Say" is from the CD reissue of Kick Me Hard by one of our favorite bands ever, NRBQ. "Yellow Sarong" is by The Scene Is Now, from their first album, Burn All Your Records, on their label, Lost. A really great album, as are their other two, Total Jive and Tonight We Ride -- you can never say enough about The Scene Is Now. Cat Stevens wrote "Here Comes My Baby" and did a pretty good version of it, too (really), but we didn't hear it until recently. We learned it from the Tremeloes, who had a hit with it somewhere in the '60s. "Emulsified: was the handiwork of Rex Garvin and the Mighty Cravers, and we found it on the incredible swell compilation At The Party, which no record collection should be without, Candy Records. It'd be difficult to wholeheartedly recommend the Escorts' From The Blue Angel reissue on Edsel, but equally hard to come down on an album with "The One To Cry." "Griselda" was sung by Peter Stampfel on the Rounder album, Have Moicy!, a record only Stephan Wichnewski could dislike. "Speeding Motorcycle" is on Daniel Johnston's Yip Jump Music, pressed up by Homestead. "Andalucia" is on John Cale's Paris 1919 (we recorded "Hanky Panky Nohow" from the same LP for a Ruta 66 compilation, with Georgia singing, and maybe that'll be out before too long). "Oklahoma U.S.A." originated with Muswell Hillbillies by Ira's all-time faves, The Kinks. "Tried So Hard" can be found on the Flying Burrito Brothers' 3rd album, the first without Gram Parsons, no classic. Fairport Convention also did it on Heyday; and of course, Gene Clark did it too, but it slips my mind as to where. "You Tore Me Down" is from Shake Some Action by the Flamin' Groovies, and if it's on that CD thing that came out last year, all the more reason to pick one up. And these are our second cracks at "Did I Tell You" and "Barnaby," which can be found on New Wave Hot Dogs and President Yo La Tengo respectively (as well as together on our de-lux CD) -- and we use the word "found" primarily as a figure of speech. Dave's group, the Schramms, with Al on electric bass, just released their Okra LP, Walk to Delphi.
Ulla’s 28912 label returns with a gorgeous bouquet of lowercase wonders that'll cast a gentle spell over anyone on the line from Vincent Gallo to The Humble Bee, Sofie Birch to Tenniscoats. The fourth release on the label following Naemi's 'Breathless, Shorn' and Ulla's own 'Hometown Girl', and its ‘Other Girl’ companion piece, 'Puff' is a new album from Justin Cantrell aka J and the Woolen Stars, a core member of Naarm's underground scene as part of local supergroup Picnic, and the brains behind the excellent Daisart and se Dessaisir Publishing labels - we recommend you check in on both if you haven't already done so. ‘Puff’ is a glistening pool of lush refractions and music-box lullabies, featuring an array of acoustic instruments and fragile foley sounds that are gently peeled away until all we’re left with are the faded outlines of half-remembered songs. A sound that roots itself in the prophetic machinations of artists like Fennesz and the languid Japanese minimalism of Fourcolour or Moskitoo, 'Puff' strikes a delicate balance, sounding as bewitchingly informal as a Tenniscoats set, but also consistently muddling the perception of high and low-brow sound. Cantrell's skill lies in a sort of sonic conjuration, bamboozling the brains of those of us who grew up listening to stepped-on audio via ramshackle RealMedia streams by alchemising the content, turning found sound into gold. Just tell us you don't get chills from hearing the bitrate-impaired acoustic guitar on 'Dirty like an angel', set against a backdrop of windy, harmonic detritus. It's both meticulously contrived and gloriously off-the-cuff, like one of Vincent Gallo's classic 'When'-era demos reduced down to 96kbps. Similarly, 'She knows just what to say' provokes faint memories of folk music, with impromptu fiddle parts gently steamrolled to create a sound that’s nothing short of exquisite, like pressed flowers rediscovered in an old, discarded book. Even the more palpably electronic elements are hand sculpted in a way that belies the era we're living in - it's music for a digital age that sounds oddly unplugged, flawed and human. An unmistakably lovely antidote to the opiating nostalgia of our time.
To mark 50-years since a 22 year old Michael Gregory Jackson recorded his groundbreaking first release, "CLARITY / CIRCLE / TRIANGLE / SQUARE", recorded with the mind blowing group of his contemporaries Oliver Lake, David Murray and Leo Smith. This album is like no other I know, a new world, finding a perfect balance between multiple genres. Moved-By- Sound is very excited and honored to be involved in releasing the first reissue authorized by Michael Gregory Jackson since the original release in 1976. Remastered and restored, it is a perfect album in which to lose and/or find yourself in these complicated times.
To mark 50-years since a 22 year old Michael Gregory Jackson recorded his groundbreaking first release, "CLARITY / CIRCLE / TRIANGLE / SQUARE", recorded with the mind blowing group of his contemporaries Oliver Lake, David Murray and Leo Smith. This album is like no other I know, a new world, finding a perfect balance between multiple genres. Moved-By- Sound is very excited and honored to be involved in releasing the first reissue authorized by Michael Gregory Jackson since the original release in 1976. Remastered and restored, it is a perfect album in which to lose and/or find yourself in these complicated times.
In "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" (1976), Roy Ayers seamlessly blends genres, creating a timeless sound that continues to influence musicians and DJs around the world. He makes the vibraphone the central instrument, a jazz-funk approach that defines his unique style. Over time, the album has remained an essential reference in Roy Ayers' discography and in the history of 70s Black music. Summertime soul classic! 180g vinyl.
in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music Recorded 2019-2024 'the gold metal must be wrung a bore is a well lit mine where everything belongs to me' Dagmar Zuniga makes music that feels both intimate and expansive: songs drift like disrupted signals, carried by harmony, tape hiss, and a strong sense of touch. Her debut solo album in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music — written and recorded in New York, Norway, and Athens, Georgia over a period of five years on her longtime companion, the Tascam 424 — was uploaded to Bandcamp and YouTube in January 2025 through Dagmar’s friends People's Coalition of Tandy. The project quickly garnering over two hundred thousand views and the attention of artists such as Mount Eerie, who invited her to tour with them that summer. This year, what was once a jewel of tapped-in algorithms and message boards will meet the world at large, with in filth arriving digitally on March 4, and physically on April 10, via AD 93.
Ted Lucas’ Images of Life is a retrospective tracing the full scope of the Detroit songwriter’s work, drawing on hundreds of hours of tapes preserved by Lucas himself. Spanning early band recordings through to previously unheard later material, it captures an artist constantly reshaping his sound. Disc one, Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965–1970), documents his time with The Spike Drivers, The Misty Wizards and The Horny Toads, moving from garage rock into psychedelia. Rainy Days (1970–1974) shifts to intimate, acoustic solo recordings in the vein of his OM album. The final disc, Impossible Love (1979), presents a long-lost second album, revealing a more polished, hook-driven approach without losing his distinctive voice. A deep and revealing archive of a singular talent.
On the third day at Betty’s, Chris Rosenau woke up with a hangover. The night before, Nick Sanborn had played an all-electronics duo set with GRRL in the basement of a Durham club called The Fruit, so Rosenau—his friend for two decades, occasional collaborator for half that span—had tagged along. They were, they half-joke, the two oldest people in the club, so they went at least a little bit hard. Flip this record over, and there’s Rosenau that night, vodka and soda (with limes, please) in hand and looking delightfully impish. The next morning, in the middle of making their second record together, they were a little slow to wake, even slower to fully rise. In October 2017, Rosenau had flown from Wisconsin to North Carolina to spend a weekend recording with Sanborn in his little home studio. After years of knowing one another, their collaboration seemed inevitable but also accidental, a music-festival lark that had immediate chemistry. As they were rehearsing with the windows and doors open in those first perfect days of Southern autumn, they realized they were actually already making a record. They kept the working mixes and titles from that weekend, as well as the bird songs and traffic sounds that drifted into the microphones. The result was 2019’s Bluebird, a little five-track wonder that made you feel like you were sitting in the living room between the two, smiling as they found their wordless rapport. Two years later, as soon as Sanborn had set up the basics at Betty’s, his residential studio in the woods near Durham, Rosenau returned. They had fun during round two, but the sessions were neither as carefree as that first attempt nor more focused in a way that felt compelling and new. The pair decided to shelve those pieces for then and try again when the time seemed right. (They have, by the way, returned to those tracks fondly; expect to hear them in the future.) Then there was a pandemic. There were tours. There were other records. There was life at large. By the time Rosenau ventured back to Betty’s to try again, in February 2023, four years had flashed past. Both Sanborn and Rosenau came prepared this time by, well, un-preparing. Rosenau borrowed an unconventional guitar tuning he’d never tried (DAEAC#D) from a friend. And Sanborn dismantled his live Sylvan Esso rig, rearranged it, and added new bits, hoping to eschew any muscle memory for a real-time exchange with Rosenau. They instantly knew it was working, with none of the past’s second-guessing in tow. On that first day, a Thursday, they made “Ghost Sub” and “Harm.” On that second day, they had a false start with a piece called “Kay,” Sanborn’s synths not quite fitting beneath Rosenau’s riff, before moving on to make “Deltas.” (Once again to the cover: That’s the chord structure alongside Sanborn’s setup, superimposed on Rosenau’s face.) Back to that third day. When the pair finally got back to bleary-eyed work, they decided to give “Kay” one more go. Sanborn set the electronics aside and sat down at the piano. There was a false start, preserved here, but what followed was a sublime aubade, like waking up tired only to be stunned and stirred by the light suddenly outside. It is the sound of stirring to life and loving it there, and it is the little jewel at the center of the six songs they recorded that weekend, the six songs presented here in the exact order they made them. They finished “Two” just before Rosenau split for the airport on Sunday afternoon; it is a long goodbye, sweet and sentimental and sad, a last talk from two friends who have enjoyed their time together. At the end of “Gentleguy,” the first track on Bluebird, Rosenau, after a long pause, says, “I think that’s pretty good.” His voice is pitched up by a trace of uncertainty, as if “think” and “pretty” are the most important bits of that sentence. When “Deltas” wobbles to its beautiful end toward the middle of Two, Rosenau comes in again, his voice almost boisterous: “That was…” The tape cuts, but you don’t need to hear what he says to know what he says. That was good, perfect, the thing we were looking for, just right, pal. This is the way Two feels start to finish—two friends, firm on their footing with one another, digging into their beautiful exchange. Grayson Haver Currin Bar-K Ranch, Colorado October 2025
“The Ruins of Things Unfinished” is the new album by Slow Leaves, the project of Canadian singer‑songwriter Grant Davidson. Featuring contributions from respected Canadian musicians such as Kris Ulrich and Roman Clarke, the record blends warm acoustic guitar textures with Davidson’s gentle vocals and carefully layered arrangements.
The acoustic unit MIZ, formed by members of Japan's hugely popular band MONO NO AWARE, released their first album『Ninh Binh Brother's Homestay』in 2020. It contains ten tracks of primitive, beautiful acoustic sound, capturing the breathtaking scenery crafted by nature and the local atmosphere and scents that rise from the time drifting within it.
In the words of Emma Warren:
Alabaster DePlume is not doing things properly, and this makes him very happy.
DePlume is a Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator. He’s a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for the off-grid, Scottish Hebridean island label Lost Map, and now the latest arrival into Chicago-based International Anthem’s growing family of progressive musical explorationists. Whilst much of his music contains vocals – often whispered imperatives – this is a collection of instrumentals, drenched in feeling and recorded over four albums and eight earth years in cities across the UK.
The music of "To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1" contains naturally elegant orchestration wrapped around something visceral and primordial. Swirled inside the 11 pieces are shades of Japanese Min’yo folk, Celtic folk, the Ethio-jazz of saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya and hints of the pan-human ‘ancient music’ that sat underneath Arthur Russell’s melodies on First Thought, Best Thought. The music is filled with space, inspired, he says, by computer games and Japanese animation, particularly Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack for Studio Ghibli’s Castle In The Sky.
The record combines new compositions alongside bygone instrumentals and understated lullabies that feel like they’ve been picked from between the cracks of civilisation. These songs were collected from albums "Copernicus," "The Jester," and "Peach" – under-the-radar records that preceded his critically acclaimed 2019 release The Corner of a Sphere. The new tunes feature Dan ‘Danalogue’ Leavers of The Comet Is Coming and Sarathy Korwar alongside a host of London’s finest musicians.
To Cy & Lee… has a suitably individual genesis. DePlume was working for Ordinary Lifestyles, a charity in North Manchester which supports people with disabilities to live in their own homes and to live fulfilling lives. Specifically, he was working with the titular Cy and Lee. His job was to get the guys socialising and he did this by making up songs with them. They’d make up melodies together, humming tunes in the house when they needed something calm, or when they were haring round the city in a battered car. DePlume would record these impromptu sessions in his phone, then go to the studio and use the material as starting points for songs.
He also ran music sessions for Cy, Lee and their friends. “People would focus on a central point, tuning in to one another. There are things we can’t put into words, which can be expressed with sound and music. These guys have fewer words than us, some of them have none. When we put some feelings into a music expression – that’s liberation.”
It’s a method he uses in live shows wherever possible, placing himself and the musicians in the round. The aim is to maximise the creative benefits that a community of players and listeners can bring to the music. It’s a collectivist and humanist approach to making music that sits underneath everything he does. This is music made for a reason, and those reasons include – to paraphrase some of the catchphrases he uses both on stage and in conversation – mixing people up, asking everyone to be as much themselves as they possibly can and the hardcore encouragement expressed in his most popular line, shouted back at him by audiences wherever he goes: “You’re doing very well!”
Practically, he purposefully brings together players of different skill levels and different backgrounds so they have to interact differently, placing them in unusual situations in which to record. “I wanted to destroy the idea of correct so we were playing it different ways for fun. We had a very magical time playing the tunes”. This is activism expressed through gorgeous music that breaks down barriers by encouraging that most powerful emotion: connectedness.
One source of these gorgeous instrumentals is "Peach," an album that later bestowed a name upon legendary monthly sessions he’d run once he’d moved to London. The music was recorded in the middle of the room at Antwerp Mansion, around a big dinner cooked for 60 people.
“The dinner made the air vibrate in the way it did. We did it a certain way, for fun, getting people to shout out instructions – ‘make it like a hangover!’ ‘Make it like a barrel rolling down the ice!’ And we did it that way. You’ve got people eating and drinking around you and they might shout out anything. You can let go and respond.”
The two new pieces were recorded at London’s now-famous Total Refreshment Centre with Danalogue (on piano) Sarathy Korwar (drums), Chestnutt (of Snapped Ankles, on synth), Donna Thompson (voice) and James Howard (guitar). They had a day to record, and DePlume was in post-gig exhaustion. His saxophone was as battered as he was and was failing to play certain notes. “When something is broken or absent or missing, you go around it and that’s what makes it good,” he says. “Then it belongs to that moment. I want to make things that belong to the moment.”
DePlume’s politics might be more evident in vocal songs from his live repertoire when he’s reshaping advertising slogans into a call to arms or encouraging activism on “I Was Gonna Fight Fascism,” but his commitment to the cause is as palpable through the instrumentals of Cy & Lee... This is music designed to respond to what Russian revolutionary poet Mayakovsky described as a “social command.”
“I like the idea that we’re not just doing frivolous decoration. We’re doing work for society. I like to listen for what needs to be said.”
“Years ago I played a bit of sax in other people’s gigs. I realised I was waiting for someone to give me permission to do my own thing. I noticed that no-one will ever give you permission to do your awesome shit, because they don’t know what it is. It’s impossible for them to give you permission. Who gave me permission to talk to you like this? I gave myself fucking permission.”
Alabaster DePlume is not doing things properly. Hallelujah.
From Tsugaru, the birthplace of Tomokawa Kazuki and Mikami Hiroshi, comes Osorezan, Itako, Nebuta, Kesho Jizo... A super intense work left behind in 1978 by Furukawa Mibu, the Orpheus (mind) of Mutsu, who sings of the magical machinery that connects this world and the next! A shocking analog LP reissue!
Mibu, who is also a poet, pretends to be the dead in order to live on as the skin of his younger brother (Mibu), who died at the age of three. The song becomes a prayer and a cry, dancing wildly through this world and being sucked into the afterlife. Fringe music with such intensity. The soul is revived precisely because it is analog. This incredible masterpiece was selected as one of the "New Masterpieces of Japan 1970-89" in the November 2011 issue of "Recocolle," and is too good to be forgotten! This elusive album, produced in 1978 and only available as an independent release, is finally being reissued!
Comes with a 20-page explanatory booklet, "Mibu: To the Wind and Earth of Tsugaru"
in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music Recorded 2019-2024 'the gold metal must be wrung a bore is a well lit mine where everything belongs to me' Dagmar Zuniga makes music that feels both intimate and expansive: songs drift like disrupted signals, carried by harmony, tape hiss, and a strong sense of touch. Her debut solo album in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music — written and recorded in New York, Norway, and Athens, Georgia over a period of five years on her longtime companion, the Tascam 424 — was uploaded to Bandcamp and YouTube in January 2025 through Dagmar’s friends People's Coalition of Tandy. The project quickly garnering over two hundred thousand views and the attention of artists such as Mount Eerie, who invited her to tour with them that summer. This year, what was once a jewel of tapped-in algorithms and message boards will meet the world at large, with in filth arriving digitally on March 4, and physically on April 10, via AD 93.
Previously released on May 20th 2014. Kikagaku Moyo here sound anything but lost, their child-like wonder manifested in a confident, courageous exploration of sound. Labels – psychedelic, folk, prog-rock, psychedelic-folk-mixed-with-prog-rock – do little to accurately reflect the spectrum of influences on display, let alone the more impactful realization of completeness in Kikagaku Moyo’s songs.
