MUSIC

JACKSON C. FRANK is the highly regarded debut and the only official album he ever released, produced by friend and fellow musician PAUL SIMON in England and released on Columbia Records in 1965. Jackson has been called the most famous folk singer of 1960s that no one has ever heard of and his influence was felt more in England, where his album was a hit, rather than in the U.S., where his record was a commercial failure at the time of its release. His most famous song “Blues Run The Game” has been covered by scores of musicians including Simon and Garfunkel, Counting Crows, Colin Meloy, Bert Jansch, Laura Marling, and Robin Pecknold, while Nick Drake also recorded it privately.

Becoming Peter Ivers tells the story of the late Peter Ivers, a virtuosic songwriter and musician whose antics bridged not just 60s counterculture and New Wave music but also film, theater, and music television. Written and recorded in Los Angeles in the mid-to-late-1970s, Becoming Peter Ivers raises the curtain on this mischievous master of ceremonies, who, harmonica in hand, rarely missed a chance to light up an audience. Since his untimely death in 1983, Ivers¡Ç short but storied life has been the subject of much research and remembrance. Becoming Peter Ivers is the most expansive effort yet to collect his archival recordings. ¡ÈDemos are often better than records,¡É Ivers wrote. ¡ÈMore energy, more soul, more guts.¡É The statement anticipates the appearance of Becoming Peter Ivers, which was assembled from a trove of demo cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes that Ivers recorded variously at his home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, and Hollywood studios for a pair of major label albums in 1974 and 1976. While the two commercially released albums feature the resources of session musicians and state-of-the-art studio detail, Becoming Peter Ivers highlights the private moments of Ivers¡Ç musical energy, frequently pared down to piano, drum machine, harmonica, and Peter¡Çs ageless voice. Though technically not Ivers¡Ç debut album (in 1969 Epic Records released Knight Of The Blue Communion, Peter¡Çs psychedelic jazz odyssey of sorts), Terminal Love was the A&R brainchild of music legend Van Dyke Parks. Already a masterful harmonica player (respectively mentored by blues legend Little Walter and jazz bassist Buell Neidlinger while he was a student at Harvard in the late 60s), Ivers wove his harp melodies through the sensuously colored but unconventionally arranged pop compositions of Terminal Love and its self-titled follow up, which, like the New York Dolls at the same time, explored the libidinous, ironic, and artful possibilities of the rock template. A studious artist, Ivers recorded hundreds of writing and rehearsal sessions onto reel-toreel and cassette tapes, but notes were either scarcely kept or have since been lost. RVNG Intl. collaborated with Ivers¡Ç longtime friend and supporter Steven Martin, as well as his lifelong companion Lucy Fisher, to tell an intimate story of Peter¡Çs creative journey through this untold music. The collection includes tracks that recurred in Ivers¡Ç ouvre over the years; ¡ÈAlpha Centauri,¡É ¡ÈEighteen And Dreaming,¡É ¡ÈMiraculous Weekend.¡É And, of course, ¡ÈIn Heaven¡É – the song co-written with David Lynch and commissioned by the filmmaker to be featured in a now-iconic scene of Eraserhead. An accomplished Yogi by the late 70s, Ivers was as spiritual as he was playful. Accentuated by his cherubic face and compact height, Ivers¡Ç vitality and curiosity became a part of his poetic sensibility, a quality that also characterizes his singing voice. Fisher remembers Ivers calling his days holed up in the studio as ¡Èsnowy days,¡É as if he had been cut from school and let free to roam on his own. ¡ÈNo one knows what Peter Ivers does on a snowy day,¡É he would say. In 1980, Ivers became involved with the Los Angeles-area public access show New Wave Theatre, serving as its host and paternal misfit. Ivers would introduce a new generation of groups like Fear, Dead Kennedys, and Suburban Lawns while playing a kind-of ¡Èstraight¡É man, deliberately baiting the punks with square questions and frocked fashion. His signature question to guests was delivered deadpan: ¡ÈWhat is the meaning of life?¡É Ivers died, tragically, the victim of a violent homicide in 1983 that remains unsolved. A shock to his community, his death all but fazed the LAPD, who treated the investigation with less than minimum care. A labor of love that took RVNG Intl. over five years to complete, Becoming Peter Ivers re-frames Peter¡Çs music as the centerpiece of his captivating story, concentrating on the work he made during his numerous retreats into art, or, as he put it, during his snowy days.

Connecting Wasulu hunter music, griot praises, Senufo pastoral dances, Fula and Mandingo repertoire alongside Western psychedelia, blues and afro-beat, Zani Diabaté’s Super Djata Band was among Mali’s top orchestras of the 1980s. On their 1982 album, Diabaté enshrines himself within the pantheon of mythical West African guitarists, hypnotically picking through eight vivid compositions on his path to godhead status.

Hailing from the seaside communities surrounding Enoshima, a small island located 50 km southwest of Tokyo, maya ongaku is a ragtag collective of local musicians whose brand of earthy psychedelia transcends widely beyond the roots of their inner souls. The name derives not from any kind of ancient civilization, but rather a neologism defined as the imagined view outside one’s field of vision. The band—currently a trio of Tsutomu Sonoda, Ryota Takano, and Shoei Ikeda—finds sanctuary at the Ace General Store, a beachy vintage shop and salon-like space just hidden from sight from the bustling, touristy riverside Subana Street. Between discussions on music and art, curating the vinyl section and manning the register, and chatting up with locals young and old, the members find time to jam and record their spontaneous ideas in the studio tucked away in the back. It’s in this unlikely setting where maya ongaku finds its origins, the culmination of what Sonoda describes as 自然発生 (shizen hassei), meaning spontaneous generation, or the supposed production of living organisms from nonliving matter.


Approach to Anima, the group’s debut album released on Guruguru Brain, finds maya ongaku building a foundational groove while tapping into their innermost psyche. Sonoda’s malleable guitar and vocals, Takano’s sinuous bass lines, Ikeda’s floating woodwinds, and a sprinkling of delicate percussion—all coalesce into an aural experience that’s assertive yet abstract, calm but unsettling. The slow building, sax-laden “Approach” serves as an introduction to maya ongaku’s world, while the appropriately-named “Water Dream” floats its way toward the gentle finale of “Pillow Song.” It’s a concise distillation of their many interests and influences, from Neo-Dada and Fluxus, to where contemporary art intersects with the development of modern recording technology in the ‘60s and ‘70s.


As the title suggests, Approach to Anima is not intended to be a terminus; it’s merely the beginning of an exploration. The three childhood friends that comprise maya ongaku are always looking beyond the confines of the idyllic but rapidly gentrifying enclave of their beloved Enoshima. Feeding off of the energy that still radiates from the triumphant, decade-long journey of their label bosses’ band Kikagaku Moyo, who rose to global prominence from scrappy beginnings busking on the streets of Takadanobaba, they hope to go wherever inspiration takes them, to anywhere around the globe where their music can find a home.


Ultimately, maya ongaku’s uninhibited world-building will make it possible for us to see the unseen, expand the possibilities of the naked eye—all through the unbridled vibrancy of their music. 

David Lewis was hardly eighteen years old when he and two friends, bassist Nigel Smith and drummer Gordon Barton uprooted themselves from Belfast and set their sites on the Big Smoke. With the move came a record deal with CBS and a rebrand from The Method to Andwella’s Dream. Now known as a cult psychedelic classic, their first and only LP under their full title Love & Poetry touched on just about every genre that was hip at the time, cross-pollinating folk, jazz, progressive rock, united by Lewis’s brilliant songwriting in the form of kaleidoscopic instrumentation and imagery.

Insignificance consists of rock plus multiple musical allusions, layers of discreet noises, great playing from all the players and, to top it off, funny pop tunes laced with lyrical arsenic. As the moving finger of O'Rourke points (and clicks...just kidding! Insignificance is an all-analog affair), moments will come and go -- to remind you of other moments. Moments will arrive that have no precedent. And different, conflicting emotions will flash within you. He'll have total control of you, the helpless listener.

LP version, originally released 1997, the first O'Rourke album for Drag City. "Make no mistake, Bad Timing is not a pop album by any standards. But it is a musing on popular standards and uses much of the same instrumentation that many of our country's most popular records have. Yes, Bad Timing is a theme record, Jim O'Rourke's pop opera, just waiting for someone to come along and play with it. Based on Fahey-esque 6-string acoustic guitar foundations, each of the three pieces expand to include other musical elements. Piano, organ, electric guitar, brass, strings -- everything, it seems except vocals! Think of the impressionist Americana of Van Dyke Parks and the soundtracks of Jack Nitzsche."

Out of print. The first vocal album released in 1999 from .

Unfolding is Jessica Moss’s most meditative and plaintive solo album, and perhaps the first in the Montréal violinist/composer’s decade-spanning discography that could properly be called ambient. The ex-Silver Mt Zion member and Black Ox Orkestar co-founder draws from post-classical, drone, minimalism, industrial/metal, power electronics, Klezmer and other folkways: this is not abstract ambient music. Layers of violin melody, electroacoustic processing, intermittent voice, and percussion from The Necks drummer Tony Buck, yield deeply emotive genre-defying compositions, guided by a spirit of searching and summoning that unfolds in a prevailing atmosphere of incantation and mournful restraint. Working closely with producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart), Moss notes "Unfolding was made slowly, over the last 12 months, the second full year of genocide in Palestine, in direct response to our collective witnessing, our collective grief, as a portal to collective mourning, as a searchlight through our internal weather systems, seeking one another out in the dark." The inseparability of the personal and political has wrung ever tighter for Moss these past two years, as for so many. She’s co-organized and played several benefit shows as a core member of the Montréal chapter of Musicians For Palestine, and she released the solo album For UNRWA in spring 2024 (garnering over 800 supporters and raising thousands of dollars). Moss’s music was already moving towards heightened fragility and deep listening, becoming increasingly durational and ceremonial. Despite the plummeting financial viability of touring, her devotion to holding space, conjuring entanglement, and connecting with intimate live audiences has become her creative lodestar, especially following lockdown. With her solo praxis shaped by committing to and communing in these rooms, recent political and personal upheavals have only intensified her ritualistic, reparative musical processes. The two longform tracks on Side One of Unfolding embody this sensibility. "Washing Machine" weaves layers of string drone and filigree, gently noised by distortion pedals and amplification, with indecipherably blown-out spoken voice intermittently enveloping the mix as fragmentary palimpsests of shrouded recitation and ineffable feeling. The piece traces its origins to a phone recording of a European laundry machine, captured by Moss as she sat next to it, heartbroken on the bathroom floor, finding solace by humming a melody along to the mechanical harmonics of the washer working through its cycles. Album centerpiece "One, Now" begins as a delicate invocation, with bass pulse, chimes and bells, plucked strings, and doleful lead violin lines influenced by Jewish and Arabic modes. Ambient noise, field recordings, and wordless vocals are added to the brew, as violin melodies layer and coalesce towards a mesmerizing dronescape: a semi-improvised living composition further vitalized by Tony Buck’s paintbrush drumming throughout, and Moumneh’s "yell into the void" at the end.. Side Two is a work in four parts titled "no one / no where / no one is free / until all are free" that moves through ambient noise, elegiac post-classical strings, and distorted harmonic drones, towards a denouement of liturgical organ, ritual bell, and shimmering electronic tracers that set the stage for the album’s closing song: the devastating choral composition "until all are free", a secular hymn comprised of Jessica’s multi-tracked vocals (but which she looks forward to singing with others in concert). Unfolding is dedicated to "a free Palestine in our lifetime." Thanks for listening.

Bill Fay's 1970 debut album ‘Bill Fay’ exists within the folk-rock and baroque pop traditions, yet casts a distinctly different shadow. Backed by Mike Gibbs' arrangements featuring rich strings and brass, it occasionally evokes the opulent orchestral pop of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and beyond. Yet beneath that splendor lies a poetic sensibility that contemplates societal unease and the transience of human existence, creating a constant tension between light and shadow. Though it received little commercial attention at the time, revisiting it reveals a sound that resonates with Nick Drake and the Scudder Scene, yet possesses a darker, more solitary quality. This is an album woven in the sunless corners of its era, where Bill Fay's quiet prayers and shadows intertwine.

French-Algerian writer and composer LÉO LA NUIT presents a work of psychedelic folk devotion with Le Don Des Larmes, released on vinyl by Amsterdam’s forward-thinking label Knekelhuis. Dedicated to his newborn child, the album retraces memories of Kabyle lullabies and the popular chaâbi songs of his youth, weaving them into a sound where intimacy and folkloric spirituality converge. Minimal guitar and spectral vocals form textures that envelop the listener as if revealing hidden layers of time, resonating like a prayer reborn in the present. A rare and solemn masterpiece, born from the overlap of distant traditions and deeply personal memory.

Olvido Records is proud to present African Steel, a follow-up to 2019’s African country-western compilation Bulwayo Blue Yodel. Here we have a compendium of beautiful songs highlighting the early years of the slide guitar in southern, central and eastern Africa. Featuring traditional and popular regional styles adapting the acoustic lap-steel guitar, African Steel reveals intriguing influences from southern American country and blues, Argentinian and European tango, and back to the Hawaiian origins of the instrument, long before the shimmering electric slide guitar of Docteur Nico, and the pedal steel mastery of Demola Adepoju of King Sunny Ade's African Beats. Ranging from up-tempo dance numbers, to plaintive bottleneck-blues style ballads, to a Ugandan string-band cover of a Jimmie Rodgers classic, each song presented here is a unique glimpse into the early years of the slide guitar’s incorporation into various African musical cultures. These fourteen songs have been carefully restored from rare shellac and lacquer discs to honor and celebrate a previously under-represented chapter in global music history, and includes a booklet with contextual notes and translated lyrics.

〈Honest Jon's〉が60年代に南米エクアドル・キトで活動していた知られざるスイートスポット的レーベル〈Caife〉に残された魅力的なカタログを紐解いたシリーズから新たな発掘音源が登場！アフリカ先住民の伝統と豊かな音楽の伝統が融合した、エクアドル北端エスメラルダス州のユニークなアフリカ系エクアドル文化の素晴らしい記録を収めたアルバム『Juyungo』がアナログ・リリース。マリンバを中心に、コール&レスポンスのチャント、アンデスのギターのフィンガースタイル、パンパイプなどによる深い没入感に溢れる音楽作品を余すところなく収録。ゲートフォールド・スリーヴ仕様。洞察に満ちたメモと貴重写真が満載のブックレット(16ページ)が付属。

Geckøs is the collective spirit of acclaimed songwriter M. Ward, Giant Sand visionary Howe Gelb, and Irish multi-instrumentalist McKowski. Born out of an impromptu recording session that was sparked by an encounter at the wedding of a mutual friend, the project blends the rich flavors of the Southwest with indie folk, Spanish influences, and a touch of Irish mysticism. While initial recordings took place in Tucson, it became a true transatlantic project when the members returned to their hometowns and continued trading ideas. The trio eventually regrouped in studios across Ireland, London, and Bristol, where renowned English producer John Parish mixed multiple tracks. Geckøs’ self-titled debut is steeped in story, spontaneity, and surreal charm, channeling the spirit of three singular voices discovering a new, shared musical language.

Stan Hubbs’ privately recorded psych statement Crystal emerged from a secluded cabin in the California redwoods, where he conjured a woozy, smoked-out haze that sits somewhere between Iron Butterfly’s tranced-out heaviness and a more DIY, hallucinatory strain of outsider folk-rock. Middle-aged and working far from any scene or industry, Hubbs captured a blurred, dream-logic world of guitar leads, burnt tape ambience, spectral keys and narcotised vocals that feel both intimate and otherworldly. This edition from Numero Group restores his original 16-page poetry and doodle booklet, a handmade inner map to the record’s private universe.

“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.

Holiday resort entertainer Tooper Keps takes a break from entertaining the professional leisure class, and reflects their own world back at them with an EP of otherworldly synths and eerie carnivalesque chansons.

Tooper Keps has fired up his trusty Yamaha PSR-11 and PSS-360 to write his first (and probably last) EP, condensing his favourite chord changes from years of distracting the retired and affluent. The result is a collection of floating song structures that revolve like fairground waltzes, punctuated by modulated effects, cowbells and Tooper’s own bitter tenor. Tapping into his inner goblin, he tackles themes such as property (as theft), Drexler’s gray goo problem, and the ‘merits’ of complaining about a system while also benefiting from it - a typical parasite’s paradox.

“1000 Guest Rooms” finds itself on location in luxury homes, cruise ships and holiday resorts, soaked in Tooper’s own self-loathing while casting a critical eye over the state of the world. While we hurtle towards a future that no one wants, “1000 Guest Rooms” is perhaps the best soundtrack we could hope for.

Re-upping and expanding our 2020 sufi-flamenco grail on LP and tape format, adding 4 newly unearthed tracks to those previously thought to be Aziz Balouch's only recordings.

Aziz Balouch moved to the Iberian Peninsula from modern-day Pakistan in 1932 in search of work and music. After a childhood spent studying Islamic mysticism and devotional songs in the Sufi shrines of his native Sindh he soon fell in love with the 'deep song' of flamenco and was taken in as an apprentice to the great heterodox cantaor Pepe Marchena after a chance encounter. He dedicated the rest of his life to flamenco and developed an elaborate theory of the South Asian and Sufi origins of the art which he propagated through live performances and publications in London, Spain and Pakistan.

Decades before the arrival of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology or the invention of 'fusion' Aziz Balouch painstakingly immersed himself into a completely different musical tradition seeking connections and drawing inspiration to create a unique performance style which has tragically remained hidden and ignored. These 8 tracks are taken from Aziz Balouch's only surviving recordings, two 7" EPs released in Spain in 1962. On each track Balouch draws on his polyglottism to seamlessly merge Sufi poetry in Persian, Sindhi, Hindi and Arabic with various forms of Andalusian song in Spanish. Accompanied by a single guitar his voice pushes through into the profound depths of human experience to excavate the shared past of flamenco which had been submerged beneath the surface.

Many thanks to Stefan Williamson Fa.

A collection of outtakes from the First Blues sessions along with other tracks, live recordings & rehearsal cuts including Bob Dylan and/or Arthur Russell and a cameo by Don Cherry on kazoo.

Track 1 taken from rehearsal tapes December 9th 1975: Allen Ginsberg (Vocals) accompanied by the Blues/Sholle Band.

Tracks 2-4 taken from the Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Electric Music Poetry Improvised sessions.

Tracks 5-8 taken from the First Blues Hammond sessions.

Track 9-10: recorded live at Gerdes Folk City, June 16th 1984: Allen Ginsberg (Vocals), Don Cherry (Kazoo), Peter Orlovsky (Banjo + Lead Vocal on "Feed Them the Raspberries to Grow"), Steven Taylor (Guitar) & Mark Kramer (Bass).

Track 11: Session at Bob Dylan's Santa Monica Studio, February 23rd 1982: Allen Ginsberg (Vocals), Bob Dylan (Bass), David Mansfield (Mandolin, Guitar), Steven Taylor (Steel String Acoustic Guitar) & Arthur Rosato (Drums).

Issued under license from the Allen Ginsberg Estate. All songs written by Allen Ginsberg and published by May King Poetry Music administered in North America by Music of Virtual and for the Rest of the World by BMG Rights Mgt.

Out of press in its original form for years, controversial beat poet Allen Ginsberg's East Village love-in 'First Blues' - a vast double-album of collaborations with everyone from Arthur Russell to Bob Dylan and Don Cherry - is newly reissued via Death Is Not The End. It's hard to deny Ginsberg's impact; his poetry alone was enough to shift the course of US counter culture, and you can visualise his contributions to downtown punk and folk. But his music career isn't quite as intimately understood, which makes 'First Blues' a pretty vital artefact for anyone looking to investigate further. Ginsberg wrote and recorded the material between 1971 and 1983, taking the opportunity to leaf through his lengthy phonebook and call up anyone he admired or had collaborated with in the past. So Dylan - who Ginsberg had collaborated with before - shows up on the first few tracks, helping to balance out his friend's wobbly-voiced, country-fried recitations with tangled acoustic twangs. The money shots comes with the majority of the remaining tracks, produced and featuring cello by Arthur Russell, given free rein to rumble through folk, blues, jazz and gospel over Ginsberg’s sexcapades, Buddhist revelations and conspiracy theories with bare-faced joy. 'CIA Dope Calypso' is a bonkers highlight, a chirpy Harry Belafonte reinterpretation that lambasts the Central Intelligence Agency for its under-the-radar drug peddling, while 'Sickness Blues' uses Russell's bendy cello tones as a crash mat for Ginsberg's pained lamentations.

Out of press in its original form for years, controversial beat poet Allen Ginsberg's East Village love-in 'First Blues' - a vast double-album of collaborations with everyone from Arthur Russell to Bob Dylan and Don Cherry - is newly reissued via Death Is Not The End. It's hard to deny Ginsberg's impact; his poetry alone was enough to shift the course of US counter culture, and you can visualise his contributions to downtown punk and folk. But his music career isn't quite as intimately understood, which makes 'First Blues' a pretty vital artefact for anyone looking to investigate further. Ginsberg wrote and recorded the material between 1971 and 1983, taking the opportunity to leaf through his lengthy phonebook and call up anyone he admired or had collaborated with in the past. So Dylan - who Ginsberg had collaborated with before - shows up on the first few tracks, helping to balance out his friend's wobbly-voiced, country-fried recitations with tangled acoustic twangs. The money shots comes with the majority of the remaining tracks, produced and featuring cello by Arthur Russell, given free rein to rumble through folk, blues, jazz and gospel over Ginsberg’s sexcapades, Buddhist revelations and conspiracy theories with bare-faced joy. 'CIA Dope Calypso' is a bonkers highlight, a chirpy Harry Belafonte reinterpretation that lambasts the Central Intelligence Agency for its under-the-radar drug peddling, while 'Sickness Blues' uses Russell's bendy cello tones as a crash mat for Ginsberg's pained lamentations.

“Produced in 1970 by the legendary Joe Boyd, Just Another Diamond Day has long been considered a holy grail for Brit-folk record collectors, with original copies of the album fetching over $1,000 at auction. It shouldn't take many listens to realize why it's so highly regarded; Just Another Diamond Day is, in its own humble way, nearly a thing of perfection.” PITCHFORK 9.0

Vashti Bunyan’s legendary debut album from 1970 finally gets a UK vinyl repressing. Produced by Joe Boyd for Witchseason Productions and originally released on Philips in 1970, the album features contributions from Fairport Convention’s Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick and The Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson. The songs mostly concern the events that took place when Vashti and her lover travelled to the Hebrides in a horse and cart to join up with Donovan’s artistic community but by the tiime they got there that community had all left. This story has been brilliantly told in Kieran Evans’ rarely seen 2008 film Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before.

Neon Castle hones in on a fleeting sub-genre of early to mid-’80s female fronted ambient folk. For a brief moment, glistening slide guitar, ethereal voices, fretless bass, drum machines and satin sounds all intertwined, conjuring a sound at once familiar and otherworldly—pop structures laced with strange visions. Some songs sway with the warmth of open ranch-land—originating from the same myths Stevie Nicks devoted herself to; others are shrouded with candlelit mysticism, crafted with the very staff Kate Bush might have wielded. Together, these pieces reveal a singular tapestry.

Compiled by Charles Bals—now in his third collaboration with Smiling C—Neon Castle affirms his rare gift for storytelling through sound. Each track unfolds like a scene from an imagined film: castles glowing with noble gas, kingdoms awash in purple haze, wild horses roaming free, hair cascading to the waist. The collection sketches a realm both new and 'upon a time', a world where fantasy takes shape through music. With Neon Castle, attentive listening becomes narrative.

Even in these most turbulent of times, dub musician and fatigued onlooker Elijah Minnelli remains an inexplicable stalwart on the lower rungs of the Breadminster County Council.

His latest record ‘Clams As A Main Meal’ continues his astute siphoning of council funds, this time with help from the Breadminster Board of Abstinence. As a further mark of respect, the original head of the Board, Dr. K'houldoux, graces the cover art in his infamous ‘Looming Moon of Desire’ guise.*

As fine a backdrop as any for Minneli’s off-brand dub experiments, and ‘Clams…’ is the truest representation of his varied wheelhouse yet…

We find vocal appearances from dub goliath Dennis Bovell and Welsh-language singer Carwyn Ellis. A pair of tracks which build on 2024’s acclaimed ‘Perpetual Musket’, a collection of folk songs reworked alongside reggae vocalists, released by FatCat Records. It garnered glowing reviews, with nods from The Guardian and The Quietus concluding with prominent appearances on their respective yearly round-up lists.

Elsewhere, the album finds Minnelli in a more experimental mode, all wheezing contraptions and cockeyed bass, creaking with the weight of creation, a satisfying tactility laid seam-side up.

As well as ‘Perpetual Musket’, the new album follows years of sold out 7" singles, handmade and self-released. Online, the tracks have amassed global streams numbering in the millions. His tracks have found play across an eclectic range of radio mixes and dance floors, most notably the likes of Andrew Weatherall, Batu, Optimo and Zakia Sewell (BBC6Music).

It is perhaps worth mentioning that this everbuilding interest in his work is at great odds with the growing suspicions amongst his fellow townsfolk, who see his Breadminster County Council Music Initiative as nothing more than an empty cash-grab.

*For further reading on the Breadminster Board of Abstinence, please see below.

Further Reading on the Breadminster Board of Abstinence

In the late 70s, Breadminster was awash with the last vestiges of the hippy era. Though the flared silhouette of the lower leg remained, the utopian ideals that had once flowed merrily around the youth's shaded ankles had begun to wane. LSD and free love had led to a sharp spike in population and a generation of children raised by air-headed psychonauts unprepared for the bleary-eyed strictures of parenthood.

Aware of the crisis, the County Council entrusted Dr. Paulinque K'houldoux to spearhead a pushback, and it was his pro-abstinence movement - a mixture of education initiatives and radical renutrition campaigns - that came to impact Breadminster's census deep into the new millennium.

Being a pseudo-archipelago Breadminster has fundamentally limited resources, however deep-seated ties to distant coastal villages meant that oysters were a regular part of the local diet. K'houldoux pinpointed this as a factor in the town's overpopulation, and believed that simply replacing these with clams (a “lesser mollusk”) would help lower the erotic urges of the people. It was his “anti-aphrodesia” movement that first championed the idea of “Clams As A Main Meal,” and the slogan “Consider Abstinence” carried the message yet further.

The Breadminster Board of Abstinence soon became involved in all cultural happenings in the area, with K'houldoux MCing at prominent festivals and performances, sometimes dressed as the “Looming Moon of Desire” - an idea of his relating to the tide, seafood, menstrual cycles, and his privately held celestial predilections.

It was in 1981 that it was revealed Dr. K'houldoux had never fully qualified as a doctor and was seeking exile in Breadminster due to a series of botched bracelet heists in which he had previously been involved. K'houldoux was subsequently extradited to Basingstoke, where he served 3 of a 12-year sentence, owing to the lunar-oriented prisoner health campaigns he helped implement.

It has been a strange twist of bureaucratic fate that the Breadminster Board of Abstinence has never stopped receiving public funding, despite its lack of clear utility. And while its roots are tied to a rose-tinted past, the Board continues to sponsor cultural events and projects to this day.

An extract from: Eugeniq Schooner's article in Sydney Parishioner: “Clams, Breadminster and Countercultural Abstinence Trends” (2008)