MUSIC

14 short melancholy tape-loops from the early eighties. Remastered and now available on conventional pressed CD in Trim-Pak (previously available as a very limited CDR. "Melancholia is probably the best Basinski's record until now, even if this is hard for me to say given my love for each one of his releases. Contrarily to his 'continuing' projects such as Disintegration Loops and Water Music, this is a sort of a sketch album, made of short pieces all created with tape loops and some synthetic wave here and there. This music is so beautifully delicate and sad in its auto-reflective moods, it stands right there with everything ranging from the usual suspects in the 'ambient' field, to a distorted damp ghost of Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel put into a time machine. Just ravishing as you can imagine, William's almost suffocated loops celebrate the burial of any enthusiastic thought, to make room to the most difficult introspection -- the one growing you in a hurry and leaving you alone, observing from a safe distance. This beauty is for any human being who's not afraid to understand life's happenings -- maybe the hard way, but who cares?" --Massimo Ricci, touchingextremes.org.

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.
The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

-Andy Beta 

Released in 1970, Funkadelic’s self-titled debut was a radical collision of psychedelic rock, gospel, blues, and soul — a chaotic, genre-defying statement that redefined the possibilities of Black music. Where Motown aimed for polish and crossover appeal, Funkadelic dove headfirst into distortion, improvisation, and spiritual ambiguity, offering a sound as gritty and unpredictable as the era itself.Backed by a ferocious young band — including Eddie Hazel, Billy Bass Nelson, Tawl Ross, Tiki Fulwood, and Mickey Atkins — the album rejected convention in favor of raw groove and existential noise. Tracks like “I Got a Thing…” and “What Is Soul” pulse with menace and joy, bookended by surreal monologues that echo both street philosophy and space-age gospel.As part of Org Music’s Westbound Records reissue series, this edition restores the album’s full impact across multiple formats. The deluxe double LP, mastered at 45RPM directly from tape by Dave Gardner at DSG Mastering, offers the highest fidelity to date. Gardner and restoration specialist Catherine Vericolli archived and restored the original master tapes at 54 Sound Studios in Ferndale, Michigan, with assistance from in-house engineer Nick King. A single LP edition, cut from high-resolution tape transfers, is also available, alongside CD, cassette, and digital formats.A sonic revolution in its time and a lasting influence ever since, Funkadelic remains a groundbreaking testament to music without rules and freedom without limits.

Cut in three days in 1975, Doug Firebaugh’s Performance One captures a young songwriter alone in a Roanoke, Virginia motel room, chasing Nashville dreams through cosmic Americana haze. Self‑written and performed, with only a single pedal steel guest, it first appeared on a small grey‑market label. This Numero Group 50th‑anniversary remaster preserves its faded, wandering beauty.

Scoring the lives of small-time players, pimps, junkies, and prostitutes lurking around his simultaneously blessed and cursed existence, Wee mastermind Norman Whiteside lived in an entirely different Columbus than Capsoul’s Bill Moss or Prix’s Clem Price. Alternating between Stevie Wonder’s dreamy soul and Sly Stone’s druggy groove, You Can Fly On My Aeroplane bypasses Whiteside’s everyday gritty street life reality, focusing instead on the airy sounds of fantasy and masquerade. LP version replicates the original nine-song album as originally released on Owl records. Smooth, sexy, and synthy, You Can Fly On My Aeroplane is a peerless and sprawling psychedelic soul concept album and a sure-fire undergarment soaker to boot.

First volume of solo piano compositions by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, finally back in print. Born to an aristocratic family in Addis Ababa in December of 1923, Emahoy spent much of her youth and young adulthood studying classical music in Europe. She returned to Ethiopia in the 40s, where the war interrupted her musical studies. In 1948 during a church service in Ethiopia, she found her faith and began years of religious training. Throughout her physical and spiritual journeys, Emahoy continued to compose for the piano. She first released this album in Germany 1963 as small private press record. The tracks reflect her own travels, seamlessly moving between Western classical and traditional Ethiopian modes, evoking Erik Satie, the orthodox liturgy, and meditative Christian music all at once. Her work is like no one else in the world, lyrical, hypnotic, full of spiritual warmth and a direct connection to the divine. Emahoy is now 98 years old and still lives in Jerusalem. She continues to play, and the funds from her work go to the righteous causes to which she has dedicated her life. We are incredibly proud to present this music on vinyl again, mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk and presented in collaboration with the EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM MUSIC PUBLISHER and Foundation. This black vinyl LP version includes a new reproduction of the original artwork, with the composer’s own notes, translated from the original German.

Minecraft - Volume Alpha is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Using C418 as his moniker, Rosenfeld crafted the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design which helped breathe life into Minecraft's voxel-based universe. Fans and critics were universally enamored with his beatless, nuanced electronic pieces upon release. Popular gaming site Kotaku named it among The Best Game Music of 2011, calling the music "remarkably soothing," and The Guardian has compared Rosenfeld's delicate piano and sparse ambient motifs to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian Eno. In an interview feature with C418, Polygon distilled Volume Alpha to its essence: "It's not bound by the retro aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics. It transcends them. The album is an attempt to uplift the combined game/music experience into the sublime."

LIMITED EDITION OF 5000 180 GRAM OPAQUE DARK BLUE VINYLProduced by Brian Paulson at River North Recorders in Chicago and released by Touch and Go Records in April of 1991, the six songs on Spiderland methodically mapped a shadowy new continent of sound. The music is taut, menacing, and haunting; its structure built largely on absence and restraint, on the echoing space between the notes, but punctuated by sudden thrilling blasts of unfettered fury. It is a sound that no one had heard before and that no one will ever forget. The eerie, now-iconic black and white cover photo of the four-band member’s heads breaking the surface of the water was taken by their friend Will Oldham. Spiderland spawned a whole new genre, frequently called Post-Rock, and came to be regarded as one of the most important and influential records of the past thirty years. SLINT broke up shortly before Spiderland was released. Band members went on to play in Tortoise, the Breeders, Palace, The For Carnation, Papa M, Evergreen, Interpol, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

2025 edition. Kali Malone’s The Sacrificial Code is the 2019 breakthrough album of the acclaimed composer’s pipe organ pieces. Her temporally informed studies of harmonics and intonation breathed life into a suite of compositions which leaves the heart moved and mind still. This 2025 edition was mastered by Rashad Becker and features a new track Sacrificial Code III.

Pitchfork praised the album for its "time-stretching properties" and "clean minimalism". Resident Advisor described the album as an "exercise in concentration, restraint, and focus". Tiny Mix Tapes emphasized the "intensity and intimacy" of the album, pointing out how Malone's close miking technique brings out every textural detail of the organ, creating a highly focused and immersive listening experience.

48k/32bit master by Rashad Becker

When DOOM reemerged on the scene in the 90s, he firmly marked his return, capturing the theory of knowing the rules if only to better break them.

That sentiment was captured not only in his unique writing method, but also in his production style that birthed the moniker Metal Fingers. He seamlessly blended creative ingenuity with the all-too-obvious, and a unique ability to sample things oft-considered off limits, yet still create magic.

The 10 volume Special Herbs instrumental series captures a key moment in time of Metal Fingers DOOM as producer, assembling, and sometimes slightly reworking, select beats from albums such as MM..Food, Operation: Doomsday, & King Geedorah, as well as a collection of exclusive beats.

Org Music releases Sahib’s Jazz Party by legendary saxophonist Sahib Shihab. This classic album showcases his vibrant, innovative jazz, preserving his legacy for fans and collectors.

Org Music is proud to announce the release of Sahib’s Jazz Party, a classic jazz album by the legendary saxophonist Sahib Shihab. Renowned for his influential contributions to bebop and hard bop jazz, Shihab’s vibrant and innovative style is on full display throughout this essential recording.

Sahib’s Jazz Party invites listeners into a world of dynamic interplay and spontaneous creativity. The album captures the spirit of a true jazz gathering, where Shihab’s distinctive tone and inventive arrangements take center stage. From energetic swing to soulful ballads, each track reflects the passion and artistry of one of jazz’s most original voices.

This release underscores Org Music’s commitment to preserving and celebrating the legacy of jazz greats. Sahib’s Jazz Party is a must-have for collectors and fans of classic jazz, offering an engaging listening experience that stands the test of time.

言わずと知れたスロウコアの大名盤！これは是非聞いておくがいい。自国のソウル、ゴスペル、ファンクにとどまらず、ニューエイジ・ミュージック始祖ヤソスや日本からは原マスミまで、世界各地のオブスキュアなサウンドを掘り起こしてきた米国の大名門〈Numero〉からは、1998年に〈Up Records〉からリリースされたDusterのデビュー・スタジオ・アルバム『Stratosphere』が25周年を記念してアニヴァーサリー・リイシュー。スロウコアの第一波の頂点にたつ一枚であり、子宮の中で聞くべき！暗い空間と閉じた瞼のための音楽にして、パンクの鋸歯状のエッジを持つアンビエント・ミュージック。

“I think one of the most exciting things about the reintroduction of Horizon Unlimited is the fact that young folk love our music, and are surprised at the upbeat tempo, and the lyrics, which are not only of today, but also very futuristic as well. Horizon Unlimited was our last album with Decca that came out in 1979. It’s been a long time since then and this really is part of a much longer story, but amongst one of the most significant things I remember was that we, The Lijadu Sisters, paid for all the studio and band session fees. At the time, this was unusual, and not the arrangement we had with that record label. We were originally meant to record at Decca West Africa in Lagos, but when we got to the studio, no one had told us that it was being upgraded – from eight tracks to twenty-four. So, we brought everyone to London and made the album there instead.” –Yeye Taiwo Lijadu

Real people music recorded at a Quaker Boarding school in the mid-'70s. Mixing soft psych, vocal jazz, and sunshine soul, Shira Small and her high school music teacher Lars Clutterham created a peerless artifact of outsider magic. Imagination, wonder, the existential dread of Vietnam and math class and getting caught smoking weed in Nixon's America… it's all here. Is your life alright?

Vision Songs Vol. 1 (1984) is the LARAAJI album like no other, located at the intersection of new age and gospel. It is both his outlier and magnum opus, the feel-good DIY tape of the century.Discovered busking in Washington Square Park by Brian Eno in the late 70s, engagement with the eternal flow has led Laraaji to, seemingly by magic, emerge as the most beloved avatar of the unstoppable new age music revival of recent years.Now Vision Songs rewrites Laraaji's musical history. Vision Songs is literally a revelation -- of a master songwriter whose unbelievably catchy best compositions such as "We Shall Be Lifted", "All Of A Sudden", and "Is This Clear?" belong in any great American songbook.Casio synth jams recorded at spiritual retreat guest rooms and a tiny bedroom on the Upper West Side, lysergically-spectacular anthems for a continually arriving new moment, "channeled," as Laraaji states in the album's eloquent liner notes, "from the sky," previously available in an edition of 100 cassettes sold at yoga retreats and on the streets of New York City, Vision Songs is humbly offered on vinyl, CD, and streaming for the very first time.

In the late '70s, three do-right women from Cleveland forged a brief partnership with Ohio's everything man, Lou Ragland. Unlike the prefabricated singing combos of the day, Lily Pearson, Annette Warren, and Avetta Henry swapped lead duties as situation demanded. When a Ragland-centric publicity stunt preempted a concert appearance, Love Apple disintegrated, abandoning this rehearsal tape within the lo-fi confines of Thomas Boddie's cherished Eastside studio. Devoid of bass, the sparse instrumentation (only Lou on guitar and piano and Hot Chocolate's Tony Roberson on drums) accentuates each vocalist's aptitude, showcasing some of Ragland's finest songwriting in the process. During any given take, Ragland can be heard calling audibles, directing his singers to repeat a passage, or lending his own sweet tenor to the vocal mix. Never intended for release, Love Apple's six-song sketch is the perfect companion to I Travel Alone, bringing Ragland's unique musical vision into sharper focus.

Trapped on Nantucket island over the winter of 1976, a set of original songs poured into Willie Wright's cover-heavy set. Tales of Wright's native roots, straight life, his abandoned four children, and the many women he had known flooded his loose leaf notebook before finally being set to tape in New York the following spring. Tracked with George "Buzzy" Bragg and Herry Jensen (of Skull Snaps and Jimmy Castor Bunch fame, respectively) in one day with minimal overdubs, Telling The Truth was, and would remain, Willie Wright's brightest and most inspired moment. Sold from the trunk of a car and from a handful of resort stages, the humble album disappeared into the collections and garages of Nantucket tourists, taking what was left of a near-30-year career along with it. Available for the first time since 1977, this expanded edition of Telling The Truth gathers Wright's lone 45 and only original composition from his first LP to tell the definitive Willie Wright story. The deluxe LP edition includes a replica 7" of his cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Right On For The Darkness" (with his original "Africa" on the flip), while the CD takes that same single and shrinks it to a portable 4.72" record that actually plays!

Compilation of our favorite Arvo Part pieces. All sparse and beautiful arrangements. Some solo piano pieces, some duets with piano, violin cello and viola and one string quartet. The pieces on this record are all unique to the style of Arvo Part – deceptively simple compositions that force you to live in the moment you are listening to them. A Part quote from the back of the record – “You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big. And you are free—you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary.”

On their debut self-titled album, Women embraced sonic brashness that deeper examination revealed to be tinted with sly pop melody. With their second album "Public Strain", the band has honed a sound truthful to that reverb drenched noise while allowing the pop sensibilities to surface into clearer focus.This exact balance of delicate and dense is a pervasive thread throughout the album, reflecting the contradiction of the band's environment buried in urban sprawl framed by prairie landscape. Whether twisting through the urgent krautrock of "Locust Valley", an exercise of harmony through simplicity, or climaxing with the bittersweet melody of "Eyesore", the album somehow builds luminous contrast out of a palette of grays.

Since debuting his Khotin project in 2014, Edmonton’s Dylan Khotin-Foote has fine-tuned an impressionistic, dream-like style of music that straddles multiple sonic worlds. His output often sways from gentle synthesized atmospherics to hypnotic, dance-minded frameworks. His self-released 2018 LP, Beautiful You, offered a study on melody and memory; the album’s nostalgia-nudging use of passing environments, voices, and abstractions captivated a cult following, a rare 4.5 review in Resident Advisor and the attention of Ghostly International, who pressed the cassette on vinyl for wider circulation in 2019. Now, Khotin reveals his first collection of new material since the signing. The album is a fluid continuation of his blissful and melancholic songcraft, extended humbly and warmly, Finds You Well.

As tongue-in-cheek as the title may appear, the phrase has haunted the producer for some time. Most often seen at the start of correspondence, the words “I hope this email finds you well” can land with varying levels of sincerity, depending on context and mood. Khotin-Foote started to read the line more ominously during the onset of the pandemic. So, this set of music winks at both possibilities, mixing a platitude’s opaque optimism with lurking uncertainty.

Finds You Well can be heard in near-symmetrical halves: its 10 tracks represent the selections from a bounty of demos that, with less modesty, could have filled two records, one active and the other ambient. The resulting set isn’t an even split but it’s close. The A-side centers on the album’s steadiest sequence of beat-centric material. “Ivory Tower” is inextricably tied to benchmarks set by late ‘90s downtempo forerunners, spilling lucious and narcotic synth modulations across a sprinkler’s spray of breakbeats. Khotin’s sprightly melodic noodling brings that touchstone sound into vogue, bubbling up in free-form spurts. The sequence continues through the propulsive “Heavyball,” into “Groove 32,” which begins with a funky bit-clipped drum and bongo boogie. A tight bass-line plugs into place, building a grid for square-wave pads, shimmering melodic textures, and stuttering vocal samples to percolate in.

Khotin’s tone stabilizes on the B-side, balancing decidedly bucolic terrain with suspiciously eerie melancholy. Voices wander in the sprawling frequency sweeps. Organic textures sizzle and sputter in the clouds. “WEM Lagoon Jump” references local West Edmonton folklore, the time a kid jumped from a shopping mall's second-floor balcony into the main pavilion’s fountain. After the splash, we land in the record’s most satisfying stasis, “Your Favorite Building.” A brittle clave and muffled kick hover in a wobbly mist of organ chords; the building is gorgeous, but seen at night, and empty, and from this angle, those shadows seem to crop up more of those subdued tremors, those nostalgic creeps, those droll musings. From behind a wall of melody, a kid peeks their head and softly sings, “you must love the world because it’s wonderful,” the vocal snippet comes courtesy of Khotin-Foote’s sister, Amaris.

For much of Find You Well’s second half, Khotin dabbles in a dusty and slightly detuned piano sound, revealing an artist unafraid to change shapes but maintain course. This set of chimeric visions sidesteps the subdued bombast that fills the A-side; instead, it suggests a counterpoint emphasizing the uncanny overlap between well wishes and empty promises. 

Khotin by Vancouver producer Dylan Khotin-Foote is a reissue of the cassette release that sold out instantly at bandcamp in 2018! The profound ambient sound is a chill-out refinement of the unfathomable depth of the previous work, which is both immersive and sleepy, and has been beautifully incorporated into the lo-fi feel of the artwork while maintaining the vibrancy of the spiritual & naturalistic sound world. This is a masterpiece of beauty that cannot be described in words, with a profound sound world that creates a dreamy fantasy land on a windowsill in broad daylight, only to sink into the border between Hades and reality. A masterpiece of unspeakable beauty. Highly recommended for all music lovers from new age to ambient and Balearic.

In the late-1990s, after a successful career as an MTV-era music video director, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson moved with Jhonn Balance - his partner in life and in Coil - from London to the rural Weston-super-Mare, creating an environment for all things "musick, musick, musick!" with a revolving door of new members, including Thighpaulsandra. This eruption in activity saw Coil's discography nearly double, and during this fruitful period, Thighpaulsandra asked the simple question: why doesn't Coil play live? After a 16-year wait, thanks to the rapid technological advancement in the form of MacBooks, DAWs, VSTs and plugins, Coil were able bring their music to the stage as always envisioned. In live performance, they could embrace the risks and freedoms of real time sonic manipulation, as noted by Sleazy: "Reshape the show minute by minute... the direction is very spontaneous, not so much in the way of like jazz improvisation but in a kind stream of consciousness… Thighpaulsandra brought us his wisdom, and he was able to convince us we could do it." From 1999 to 2003, Coil was "like a snake shedding its skin," transforming every six months into something "completely different." Their evolution was documented in real time through the recent advent of lower-cost CD-R manufacture, on limited edition albums including 'Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil' and 'Queens of the Circulating Library.' In preparing for 2004’s "Even an Evil Fatigue" live series, Coil began work on their next period-defining masterpiece, 'Black Antlers.' 'Black Antlers' showcases late-period Coil at their purest: stripped down, tighter, and leaner. The music became more rhythmic, with a greater emphasis on beats: "the songs we did tend to be more... not rock in any sense of a word, but you know, more conventional in terms of structure, but now what we're doing is sort of within an 'electronic' genre." The sound of 'Black Antlers' is of an intoxicating energy, combining Thighpaulsandra's advanced synthesis, Balance's poetic lyricism and Christopherson's flirtations with jazz and Ableton-aided PowerBook maximalism. Rounding out the trio were renowned hurdy-gurdy player Cliff Stapleton on a "specifically commissioned" electric variant, to merge into the band’s "strange and other-worldly music"; Royal Academy of Music trained percussionist Tom Edwards (who also appeared with Thighpaulsandra in Spiritualized’s live band); and European and Near East winds specialist Mike York on pipes, bombarde, duduk and balalaika. Initially released as an "album-in-progress" in June 2004, a post on the Threshold House website noted, "Please remember that September will see Coil recording the album "Black Antlers (Proper)"." Jhonn Balance passed away that November; Christopherson would reunite with 'Love's Secret Domain' collaborator Danny Hyde to complete 'Black Antlers' by May 2006. Revitalized energy marked 'Black Antlers''s recording, paired with the group's signature wordplay and humor (the name came from a series of imagined adult film titles). At their "Evil Fatigue" tour opener in Paris, Jhonn Balance presented the revised "Teenage Lightning (10th Birthday Version)" as, "an updated version of one of our older-never 'hits.'" The song, about the energy generated by "two teenagers, or old age pensioners" rapidly pulses, with Edwards's marimbas electronically modified and arpeggiated by Christopherson. Album opener "The Gimp (Sometimes)" is hypnotic and hallucinatory, recalling Coil's 90s period, with a potentially uneasy air, filled with repetition, distorted vocals, and Thighpaulsandra's modulated drone. "Sex With Sun Ra (Part One - Saturnalia)" reveals the potentials of the 2004 lineup, as it writhes and glides through an imagined conversation with the legendary composer, building into overdrive. On the complementary piece, Christopherson & Hyde's "Sex With Sun Ra (Part Two - Sigillaricia)", the song evolves into a throbbing ouroboros of glitches and free flowing energy, with York's pipe samples reverberating almost filmically. One highlight is "The Wraiths And Strays Of Paris", an expansion of the song's first release (as "Wraiths And Strays (From Montreal)", available as a downloadable bonus track). "Of Paris" takes Thighpaulsandra synthesized warmth and Christopherson's PowerBook manipulations & stylizations from the original, adding samples taken from multi-track recordings of the full live band - including Balance's vocals from the Paris show - fully realizing Christopherson's desire of "taking the (electronic) genre to a place that people would find unexpected, and more challenging." Adding to the unexpected, and building upon their own uncompromising legacy, Coil delicately cover the traditional African American lullaby (and "friend's song") "All The Pretty Little Horses", with Balance's vocals soothing the listener in an almost hushed whisper. For Christopherson, following Jhonn's death, the relevance and power of Coil's creative output changed. He had one goal in mind: "to maintain the availability of the archive for future generations." In original form, 'Black Antlers' represented the possibilities of a new era for the group, built from the momentum of live performance, new sounds and ideas. For the final version, 'Black Antlers' reunited Coil members from over the decades, collaborating across the boundaries of fixed time. There would be no more new Coil, only the completion of unfinished projects, bringing them to a standard which Balance would "have loved and approved of." Dais Records would like to thank Thighpaulsandra and Danny Hyde for their collaboration on this reissue. The Dais reissue presents Coil's 2006 version 'Black Antlers' with 2004's "Wraiths And Strays (From Montreal)" available as a downloadable bonus track.

The inimitable GYBE returns with another soundtrack for our times. As the heretical anarcho-punk spirit of the title implies, Godspeed harnesses some particularly raw power, spittle and grit across two riveting 20-minute side-length trajectories of noise-drenched widescreen post-rock: inexorable chug blossoms into blown-out twang, as some of the band’s most soaring, searing melodies ricochet and converge amidst violin and bassline counterpoint. Field recordings and roiling semi-improvised passages frame these fervent epics, and two shorter self-contained 6-minute pieces find the band at its most devastatingly beautiful, haunting and elegiac. Poignant atmospherics, noise-drenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE’S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band. Twenty-five years on, this new album is as vital, stirring, timely and implacable as any in Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s storied discography. Recorded and mixed by Jace Lasek, the veteran award-winning indie producer (and co-founder of The Besnard Lakes) who works with Godspeed for the first time on this recording.

Big Crown Records is proud to present the remastered vinyl reissue of the cult classic “Sounding Out The City” by El Michels Affair. Over 10 years ago, Leon Michels released his first full length record, Sounding Out The City. It was Michels’ first full length record under the moniker El Michels Affair. At the time, the budding retro soul scene consisted of mostly organ quartets a la The Meters and of course, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings were in the early days of their ascent to world domination. Leon Michels, who was 18 when recording Sounding Out The City began, had just released Thunder Chicken, the first record by his high school band The Mighty Imperials. At the time of SOTC, Michels was just discovering early rocksteady, afrobeat, and 60’s garage rock, which inevitably crept its way into the songwriting. He purchased a Tascam 388, an 80’s 1/4″ reel to reel 8 track intended for home recordings, and began recording music in a 10×10 box with no windows that also doubled as his childhood bedroom. Along with fellow Mighty Imperials Nick Movshon, Homer Steinweiss, and Sean Solomon, and Michael Leonhart, Thomas Brenneck, and some of the musicians from The Dap Kings, Michels recorded the LP over a two year period. Upon it’s release, it received some rave reviews and the small deep funk community ate it up, but due to the lack luster promotion and distribution the rest of the world was slow to catch on to the instrumental gems featured on SOTC, which Michels appropriately labeled as “cinematic soul”. However, in 2005 it found it’s way into the hands of the people who were organizing a series of concerts for Scion that paired bands with MC’s. El Michels Affair was contacted about playing one show with Raekwon The Chef of Wu Tang Clan fame. The show was such a success it led to a tour, and then to another set of concerts that featured multiple members of the Wu-Tang Clan. This eventually led to the release of El Michels Affair’s second record, “Enter the 37th Chamber” which introduced them to a much larger audience and has been their most successful release to date. Michels has since gone on to produce and co-produce numerous records for powerhouse soul artists like Lee Fields. He shares songwriting credits with Adele, Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Aloe Blacc, and has played on records by Ray LaMontagne, Lana Del Rey, The Black Keys and Dr. John.