NEW ARRIVALS

The Weather Channel is the new instrumental album from Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer. It follows his 2010 solo debut, In Search of Black Judas. The record features a venerable lineup of heavy-hitters from the jazz world, including the likes of John Medeski, Ben Perowsky, Jack DeJohnette, and Karl Berger, among others. The tracklist includes nine new compositions, as well as new interpretations of two Bad Brains classics.

The San Diego via Boston alt trio's complete original studio recordings, remastered, restored, and compiled into one lavish box set. Wait A Lifetime gathers the band's peerless albums Junk and This Afternoons Malady, plus a first time vinyl pressing of R.I.P., expanded to include their unfinished 3rd album, singles, splits, and comp tracks. The 28-page accompanying booklet details the entire saga via Nina Corcoran's essay and dozens of period photos, all housed in a stunning case-wrapped and varnished box. Sink into the ground and fly.

The virally Tok'd Everyone Asked About You return with their first new recordings in 25 years. Never Leave follows up on six midwest emo seeds set into the wind of adulthood. What do we become when the guitar is pawned, when we sing only in the shower, when our hair begins to thin, when our parents die, when the dog is on prozac. Can we crash synths and guitars and ADHD polyrhythms into our abandoned teenage call and response dreams. How can we miss our band if we never leave? Catching up a quarter of a century of life in just 13 minutes, Never Leave's four songs are urgently paced—there's no extra time in the couch cushions of middle age. Rehearsed and tracked in their native Little Rock by Jason Weinheimer during April 2024 Total Eclipse, the EP confronts America's own darkening and wryly replies, "Where we goin' next?" Available exclusively from Numero or the Everyone Asked About You merch table, Never Leave is packaged in a sharp picture sleeve with accompanying lyric sheet for easy screaming along.

アルバムについて Kassel Jaeger (aka François J. Bonnet) returns to Shelter Press after Swamps / Things, Shifted in Dreams, and the recent reissue of the classic Zauberberg, co-composed with Akira Rabelais and Stephan Mathieu. With this major new album, entitled Sub Re, Bonnet continues his long exploration of the musical possibilities of sound, extending the concrete approach developed at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the historic and essential Parisian studio that Bonnet has been directing since 2018. Sub re, in Latin, can mean “under the thing, under the substance, under the matter.” It's precisely this direct approach to music, drawing on the extraction of raw sound material, that forms the basis of this album. Under the matter thus signals the concrete aspect of music, but not the concrete that is transfigured, becoming vapor and form, the substrate of an idea. Rather, it signals the concrete beneath the concrete, in the immanence of sounds, in their becoming, as a driving force, like a tide, like a vault of imperious and powerful matter. To achieve this, Bonnet draws on a multitude of sound sources (acoustic, electronic, natural or artificial, created on purpose or found by chance) and a multitude of contexts and occasions to give them form. The movement, a shell, a bell, a spell, for example, was heard for the first time during a concert organized in Venice in connection with Latifa Echakhch's contribution to the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Art Biennale, while the last movement on the record, signalmirror, concluded a piece presented at the first Sound Biennale in Sion (Switzerland) in 2023. These elements, formed and detached from their original context of appearance, of the places and people who made them possible and listened to them, contribute to a complex layering of climates and sonic worlds and help create a contrasting album, where density and tenuity coexist in a succession of moving waves, sometimes laden with memories, sometimes filled with regrets, always set in motion by their own morphology. Sub Re also refers to a chapter in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, a key passage in which the main character, faced with a colossal task, finds himself alone in the middle of the sea, beneath a gigantic shipwreck caught in the jaws of an isolated reef, surrounded by water, currents, and winds, alone to face the impossible. It is indeed beneath the surface that actions arise, decisions are made, and intuition guides us.

Blues in the Mississippi Night documents a remarkable 1947 session recorded by Alan Lomax in New York, shortly after performances at his Midnight Special concert series. Featuring Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson—originally credited under pseudonyms for their safety—the recording pairs intimate performances with candid conversation. Prompted by Lomax, the musicians speak openly about racism, labour and life in the Jim Crow South, tracing the blues back to lived experience. The result is a powerful blend of music and testimony, grounded in the realities that shaped the form. Remastered from the original tapes by Lomax Archive, this edition restores the clarity and presence of the session. It stands as a vital historical document, capturing three defining voices in direct, unguarded form.

Originally released in 2009, Capri is a concept album composed of fragmented vignettes, lost minutes and scenes from an idyllic imagining. A collection of brief moments, suspended shimmers, and frail settings, Capri was never meant to be more than its own thin veneer; a naked and subtle wash of saturated and semi-transparent colors, rolling as gently as ocean waves against rocky beaches, of fading afternoon sunlight, of momentary experience. Peaceful yet isolated, quiet yet collapsing, they are fading moments without definite borders, directions, or conclusion. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu from the original tapes, and expanded to include the complete recordings excluded from the 2009 CD edition, this collection is finally present in its complete form in the deluxe edition as a black vinyl 3xLP, and 2CD. All music by Danielle Baquet and Will Long, 2007-2008.

It's time for the 5th album of the Long Trax series, featuring six new tracks produced in an A/B style, cut onto 3 vinyl records and compiled onto a single CD. Staying all-hardware, with drooping synth pads and Rhodes piano, rhythm machines, space echo and spring reverb, and featuring 3 new narrators here to put us in our place. Stay independent, and anti-AI. All music by Will Long Artwork by Tsuji Aiko Mastered by Stephan Mathieu A Long Trax Productions release

Amid the early 2000s Scottish music scene that birthed Camera Obscura, Arab Strap and Belle and Sebastian, Tacoma Radar were the quiet achievers. Their sole album, No One Waved Goodbye – a mesmerising collection of hushed melancholy, is now hailed as a cult classic. Reissued for the first time, this deluxe double album features No One Waved Goodbye, both seven-inch singles, and the previously unreleased Live From the 13th Note.

Music From Memory presents 'Spacious Heart', the debut solo album from Los Angeles-based musician Anthony Calonico. Known for his work as part of the trio Total Blue, Calonico steps forward here with a collection of songs and instrumentals that invite the listener into his lush, expansive and deeply personal world. Written and recorded gradually between 2020 and 2024, 'Spacious Heart' emerged through a slow and open process, allowing the music to develop without rigid expectations. The album’s sonic landscape sits in a somewhat similar zone to Total Blue, with warm keys, synthesizers and rich production creating spacious environments where melodies and textures open up naturally. ‘Spacious Heart’ effortlessly straddles the transcendental qualities of spiritual jazz, the restraint and space of minimal composers such as Harold Budd, and the quiet intensity and dynamics of songwriters like Mark Hollis and John Martyn, ultimately arriving at something wholly its own. Where ‘Spacious Heart’ diverges mostly clearly from Total Blue is through the presence of Calonico’s voice, the emotional anchor of the record. Smooth, luminous and quietly expressive, his singing carries a sense of earnestness and vulnerability while remaining delicately restrained. The album unfolds as a conversation between song and atmosphere, with vocal pieces drifting in and out of focus, intimate and inward-looking. The surrounding instrumentals open up space for these emotions to breathe, settle and expand, creating a world where feeling, texture and nuance move softly together. ‘Spacious Heart’ will be released digitally, on vinyl and CD through Music From Memory on May 21st. Sleeve art and design by Michael Willis.

Texas-born, Maui-based musician and producer Jesse Peterson aka Turn On The Sunlight's new LP via Music From Memory. "Originally formed in New York in the late 2000s, Turn On The Sunlight has evolved into a fluid, location-spanning practice rooted in collaboration, intuition and process. Now based on Maui, Peterson’s work draws together a wide network of musicians and environments, with recordings taking shape across Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, San Miguel de Allende and Haʻikū. Loosely situated within a framework of organic, ambient-leaning jazz, 'Iseo' unfolds as a series of open, exploratory pieces, with electronics sitting subtly beneath acoustic and environmental elements. Built from layered instrumentation including synthesizers, guitar, zither, flutes, voice and field recordings, Peterson moves between grounded, tactile detail and more expansive, immersive states. A sense of warmth and permeability runs throughout: organic percussion, environmental textures and drifting rhythmic elements lend the record a gently saturated humidity, reflecting Peterson’s base in Hawaii, where the presence of nature is felt as much as it is heard. Underlying the project is a way of working rooted in gathering, listening and tending. Instruments, ensemble sessions, field recordings and everyday environments are approached with attentiveness, shaped through collecting, refining and allowing things to settle. Relationships, landscape and lived experience shape the sound, giving 'Iseo' a tactile, almost hand-made quality. Rather than fixed arrangements, the album feels as if it has been organically and lovingly assembled through a process of listening and response, each element finding its place within a wider, evolving whole. This approach reaches a natural centre point in the 15-minute piece 'Medianoche En La Calle Aurora', which unfolds patiently, bending through shifting environments as motifs and textures emerge and dissolve with quiet continuity. Peterson’s role as both instigator and facilitator is central to the project. Bringing together a diverse group of collaborators including Carlos Niño, Mia Doi Todd, Laraaji, Ko Ishikawa, Luis Pérez Ixoneztli and Miles Spilsbury, he creates space for individual voices to emerge within a shared language. The result is a music defined by openness and generosity. 'Iseo' takes its title from Peterson’s son’s middle name, a word that can be understood to mean ‘one-world life’. The piece itself takes the form of a gentle lullaby, its melody loosely shaped around the syllables of his name and sung to Peterson’s son by Luis Pérez Ixoneztli, a close collaborator whose presence across the record reflects a long-standing relationship that extends beyond the music itself. Sleeve art and design by Michael Willis."

"As expected, the set began with some brain-blasting brutal noise [...] Although Merzbow is known for his extreme electronics, he is much more diverse and creative than most give him credit for. The best part of the set was when both Merzbow and Mats [Gustafsson] worked more carefully with their electronics while Mr. Pándi played some cerebral, shifting currents on his drums [...] which brought this set to a grand climax [...]". » GALLANTER, Bruce. « Downtown Music Gallery », June 2018 "The festival concluded—climactically and cathartically—with a bracing wall of sound, noise and fury from the trio of Gustafsson, the mystical Japanese noise master Merzbow and impressive young Hungarian drummer Balázs Pándi.". » WOODARD, Josef. « DownBeat », May 27, 2018 "If you've seen Merzbow perform live, a question you probably wouldn't ask is, "How can we make that louder?" Well, the answer comes in the form of sax monster Mats Gustafsson and a relative newcomer, Hungarian drummer Balázs Pándi." » HILL, Eric. « Exclaim! », May 20, 2018

Intergalactic Music Is Of the Outer Darkness It is rhythm against rhythm in kind dispersion It is harmony against harmony in endless coordination It is melody against melody in vital enlightenment (Excerpt from The Outer Darkness by Sun Ra) From Detroit’s techno resistance to Berlin’s elastic minimalism, Lusaka’s ancestral futurism to Chicago’s house communion, When There Is No Sun is a global recording project, uniting visionary electronic music producers to reimagine the universe of Sun Ra. One of the most radical musical pioneers of the 20th century, Sun Ra used jazz, electronics, poetry, and performance to expand the possibilities of sound, identity, and imagination. Commissioned by Omni Sound and curated by Ricardo Villalobos, the series brings together Underground Resistance, Chez Damier & Ben Vedren, Calibre, A Guy Called Gerald, She Spells Doom, Barış K, and Ricardo Villalobos himself. Drawing from Omni Sound’s recordings of Living Sky by the Sun Ra Arkestra and My Words Are Music, a spoken-word album of Sun Ra’s poetry, the producers pull fragments of sound and text into their own creative orbits, passing through the portal that Sun Ra opened into a realm where the impossible is possible. Invocations by Saul Williams, Anthony Joseph, Mahogany L. Browne, Abiodun Oyewole, Tunde Adebimpe, and Tara Middleton turn rhyme into rhythm and resistance into revelation. Rooted in deep reverence for Sun Ra’s legacy, yet reaching forward as a living, generative force, When There Is No Sun is not a tribute but a continuum, balancing the pulse of electronic music with the spirit of experimentation, embodying Sun Ra’s promise that ‘there are other worlds’ if you are willing to see them.

Spiritmuse Records and Kahil El’Zabar present Let The Spirit Out, Live at “mu” London, a unique concept of recording new material purposefully in a live audience environment, to capture the feeling of connectedness in the ancient ritual of communion through music. Spiritual jazz master Kahil El’Zabar created new material for this album, in a powerful message to the world today, speaking about release, freedom, revelation and empowerment to Let the Spirit Out. Inspired by the concept of free expression, Chicago legend El’Zabar began writing new material, alongside new arrangements for reimagined classics such as Caravan and Summertime, to be performed by the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble over two nights, in a carefully selected venue, “mu” London, an audiophile space for a healing, immersive experience. Leading the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble with Corey Wilkes (trumpet), Alex Harding (baritone sax) and Ishmael Ali (cello), the spiritual jazz shaman El’Zabar and his close collaborators delivered stunning performances over two unforgettable evenings that became a landmark experience—refined, healing, and transcendent—where improvisation and spirit merged, deepening the profound connection between artists and community. Let the Spirit Out is a journey into the uncontainable force of the human spirit expressed through sound. The title speaks to the flowing of spirit —the act of opening ourselves so that what is within can flow outward into the world. The album is a recorded ritual that sees the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at their most powerful: raw, expansive, transcendent and deeply attuned to the healing energy of rhythm. For music lovers seeking the full immersion of Kahil El’Zabar and his legendary Ensemble in an intimate audiophile setting, Let the Spirit Out delivers the deep-listening experience of being present in the very moment of creation, bridging the gap between artist and audience. The Chicago master’s ritual is both uplifting and transformative, inspiring all who hear it to let the spirit out. The 2xLP and CD are produced to Spiritmuse Records’ high-quality and feature stunning artwork by extraordinary artist Nep Sidhu. The release is further enriched by a dedicated microsite, sharing reflections and testimonials from artists and writers who witnessed these two extraordinary nights. Spiritual jazz, with its improvisational roots, becomes the vessel for this album, where the spirit is not confined but constantly unfolding, transforming and communicating with the audience beyond words. Through Let The Spirit Out, the Chicago legend is asking us to strip away layers of restraint, inviting listeners to experience liberation and healing, and let truth, passion and light emerge without fear. In his own words: “We, the people of spirit, will rise to a higher consciousness beyond these darkest times, forging telepathic kinships of empowered Love. Jump and Shout, Let the Spirit Out!” Sir Kahil El’Zabar.

Ashram Sun is a transcendent journey toward the inner source of Surya Botofasina’s musical being. Returning to the places and spaces of his spiritual and musical upbringing, the keyboardist and vocalist’s second LP for Spiritmuse after 2022’s acclaimed Everyone’s Children delivers an inspiring meditation on the works and message of his mentor, Swamini Turiyasangitananda, better known as Alice Coltrane, and takes us back to his grounding in the Sai Anantam Ashram – a Vedic ashram built and founded by Coltrane in Santa Monica, California, in 1983. By this time, the spiritual jazz colossus had already taken the name Turiyasangitananda, dedicating Her remaining decades living, teaching, and seeking spiritual enlightenment through prayer, meditation and music. Ashram Sun rises in the light of Her spirit. Produced by the prolific Carlos Niño, whose vision has become a pivotal point for contemporary progressive jazz music, Ashram Sun features appearances from musical luminaries, including multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid, Los Angeles saxophonist Randal Fisher, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, as well as collaborations with vocalist MidnightRoba and acclaimed harpist and vocalist Radha Botofasina, among others. The album continues to expand on and conversate with the innovative spiritual-jazz configurations of recent works by Shabaka Hutchings, André 3000 and Carlos Niño —all of which Surya plays on. This evolution follows from his debut album ‘Everyone’s Children’, also produced by Niño, which was one of the earliest offerings of this fresh, spiritual approach. As the keyboardist on André 3000’s New Blue Sun and an integral member of André’s touring group, Surya has already directly brought the legacy of Alice Coltrane/Turiyasangitananda into this rich new current in creative music. The music on Ashram Sun is tuned into these wavelengths, consolidating a new jazz lineage with energies directly from the source. The album blends improvisation in the creative music tradition with washes of cleanly spiritualised keyboard work, atmospheric percussion, and sanctified vocalisation. Key points of reference might be ambient works of maestro Laraaji, the sounds of the Californian New Age movement documented on the seminal I Am The Center collection, and key inspirations of Surya including the music of McCoy Tyner, Jodeci, DJ Quik, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Robert Glasper, and the multitude of new works that have flowed from the milieu around key collaborators Carlos Niño and Nate Mercereau. And due to Surya’s formation at Sai Anantam Ashram, the divine aspects of the work have a powerful first-hand connection to the sacred musical and spiritual messages of both the expansive earlier music of Turiyasangitananda as Alice Coltrane, including Lord of Lords and Universal Consciousness, and her magnificent late ashram recordings, as recently documented on the collection World Spirituality Classic vol.1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. As her mentee from his youth, Surya knew Her music intimately, for he was raised from childhood in Sai Anantam, where his mother Radha Botofasina, who plays harp and sings on ‘Your Soul is Perfect (Supreme Uniter)’, was a spiritual student of Turiyasangitananda. His musical, personal and spiritual growth within the Ashram remains the central reference point in his life. ‘The very core of my being resides and has been cultivated at the sacred grounds of Sai Anantam Ashram,’ he says today. ‘Each value, aspect, place, memory, person, quality, feeling, bhajan, Satsang, energetic representation collectively composes this person.’ As the album’s title indicates, he was and is an ‘Ashram Sun’, and the strong feminine presence of Swamini Turiyasangitananda and his mother Radha infuses the album’s ten tracks. In 2018, just over a decade after Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s passing, wildfires in California tragically burned the Sai Anantam Ashram to the ground. The light of the Ashram set in the flames, but Ashram Sun allows it to rise again in energy and music. The cover of the album features Surya on the steps of the fire-cleansed Ashram, a dedication to the place that he still calls ‘home’ and a statement of his devotion to the enspirited sound-message that Turiyasangitananda instilled in him. ‘The Ashram has taught me how to be a father to my unbelievably beautiful son and daughter; brother to the immediate and soul family; human being to the planet, and more,’ he explains. ‘Swamini and the Ashram has taught me that the only place worth going to, is within… I am always going to be an Ashram Sun.’

NOTE: Celestial Love, first issued digitally by us in 2015, was licensed to the Modern Harmonic label and remastered in 2020. Both versions contain identical titles. The remastered version is available on CD and LP (and digitally) from MH. Our Bandcamp release has been updated with the remastered audio. ======== Celestial Love contains recordings made in September 1982 at New York's Variety Studios, which had hosted countless Sun Ra sessions since the late 1960s. This was one of the last extended sessions at Variety, and these recordings were the last studio works released on Sun Ra's own Saturn label (though the label did continue to press concert recordings, and new studio recordings did appear on other labels). Aside from their inclusion on Celestial Love, tracks from these sessions landed on the albums A Fireside Chat With Lucifer and Nuclear War. Since Nuclear War's contents overlapped with both Fireside Chat and Celestial Love, we have reconstituted the latter two as complete albums, thus covering all titles from these Variety dates. The music on Celestial Love is mostly "inside" Ra, veering towards mainstream jazz (the lengthy and adventurous "Fireside Chat," not on this album, being an exception). Ra's early hero, Duke Ellington, is represented twice with "Sophisticated Lady" and "Drop Me Off in Harlem," and two other standards ("Smile" and "Sometimes I'm Happy," both sung by June Tyson) are given snappy Ra arrangements. The album contains the only known recordings of "Celestial Love" and "Blue Intensity." "Interstellarism" is a reinvention of "Interstellar Low Ways," a composition Ra first recorded in 1959 (with reed stalwarts John Gilmore and Marshall Allen, who are on this version 23 years later). "Nameless One #2," a blues workout, is reprised on "Nameless One #3." ("Nameless One #1" has apparently not been written, but could yet arrive from a distant galaxy.) Though Sun Ra was renowned for outrageous music and performances, Celestial Love is a reminder that he was a man of many moods, with a deep respect for jazz history. His embrace of Futurism never implied a rejection of the past. Even rocket ships were constructed with raw materials discovered eons ago. – I.C.

Originally released in 1989 as Violin Solo. Sept. 3-4, '89. Takehisa Kosugi's improvisations, both with violin and miscellaneous sounding objects, have a sense of emerging from the bottom of a spiritual unconscious. From this place comes a music based more on the feeling of sounds than conscious arrangement. Memory, physical action, tactile perceptions, environmental conditions, and awareness of subconscious microcosmic and macrocosmic extremes inform his work as much as the intention to assemble sounds into music. When listeners connect with his sounds, a direct identification of experience occurs between audience and performer. Personnel: Takehisa Kosugi - electric violin.

Original 2xLP Remastered by Bob Weston pressed on maui blue vinyl

Never-Before-Released Live Studio Album pressed on orchid purple vinyl

all 3 LPs are packaged in a triple LP gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeves

After finishing American Don with (Steve) Albini, we were nearing the peak of interpersonal tensions that would eventually wash us overboard. I (Eric) became convinced we lost the true essence of the songs in the recording process. It was not a unanimous decision to record with Steve. We wrote the album entirely on guitar loops and Team Storm & Stress wanted to go further in the studio with Pro Tools, which felt related to both what we were doing and where we were going. Steve had just finished building the magnificent A room at Electrical and Damon insisted we would record there for the drums. He never budged on it. As soon as we got there we realized all the songs, which were written in stacks of overdubs on our pedals, would only allow for mono guitar recordings. We worked around this by performing the songs to a single loop and overdubbing all the guitars later allowing for a full stereo field to match the glorious bombast of Steve’s drum recordings. This approach

dramatically changed how we played. While it allowed for magic moments of improv (Peter Criss intro), once the album was done, it sounded bloated and the performances sluggish. With increasing certainty I was sure the sound of the Akai Headrush, and the tempos it set for Damon was the heartbeat of these songs. Ian agreed.

In an audacious last ditch hail mary, I had the idea to call Greg Norman (who worked for Steve!) and asked if we could secretly come to his studio in S. Chicago *road hot* after our next shows and re-record the album LIVE. It was an enormous gesture that could’ve never worked, but miraculously everyone agreed to do it and we gave it a try. Greg captured us at our most fiery hot personally and professionally. The tempos are faster and no one is holding back with anything to lose. These true live tapes show the songs exactly as we played them on the road where they were developed between June of 1999 and July of 2000. Now, 25 years later, the Greg Norman tapes have been dusted off, baked, and transferred to digital. With the aid of modern restoration tools, and the expertise of Sir Bob Weston, we were able to re-mix and master these recordings for the first time.

Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts is the definitive recorded collection of living Chicago DIY legend, Dr. Charles Joseph Smith. Born on Chicago's southside in 1970, Smith is a lifelong resident of the Beverly neighborhood who went on to earn 3 degrees in piano (Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate) and perform as a concert pianist in 5 countries (USA, Italy, Germany, France and Hungary). The album also marks the first archival release from Chicago’s Sooper Records.

All of the music here is being made widely available for the first time. This 90-minute collection is compiled from 30 years of Charles’ self-released original music spanning concert piano, electroacoustic experimentation, electronic beats, free improvisation, and two instrumental sketches of his evolving sci-fi opera, War of the Martian Ghosts (a 2023 electronic realization, and a 2018 piano realization). This double Vinyl / Triple CD Collector’s Edition comes with an extensive Insert Booklet containing 9000 words including poetry, interviews, quotes, 30 archival photographs, and extensive liner notes on the life and work of Charles Joseph Smith written by Sooper co-founder Glenn Curran (edited by Sadie Dupuis). This is a piece of Chicago music history.

Dr. Charles Joseph Smith’s remarkable story begins with a mute child’s gift for music, and the purposeful way he nurtured this talent to become both life practice and raison d'être. Charles recounts this artistic journey in his autobiography, The 88 Keys that Opened Doors, a self-published book that chronicles a life in which music was (and still is) the primary key to overcoming immense challenges posed by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

His career as a musician starts in the church, reaches into the international concert piano circuit, and eventually settles to bear strange fruit in Chicago’s experimental underground. Along the way, Charles Joseph Smith’s compositional voice absorbed and metabolized popular music spanning pop to jazz, the gospel of the church, the canon of the classical conservatory, modern dance scores, and the rule-shattering experimentalism of his city’s DIY subculture, where he has been a mainstay for over 30 years. Since the mid-1990s, Charles has been performing, dancing, and selling his self-published musical and written works in person, often at the local shows he frequents. He is known around Chicago as a living symbol of the power of music, and of the beloved spirit of community at the heart of DIY. This is the definitive collection of his original recordings—though it would be impossible to ever encompass the galaxies of music, poetry, and prose penned by the prolific Dr. Charles Joseph Smith.

Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow is the second album from funk innovators Funkadelic, arriving in 1970 mere months after their trailblazing debut. Famously originating from a single LSD-fueled marathon session, the record saw the band honing their songcraft, while still allowing plenty of space for mind-bending exploratory jams. It marked the official introduction of legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and would go on to chart at No. 92 on Billboard's Pop chart. Remastered direct to lathe from original master tapes by Dave Gardner (all analog).

A band that played so loud their entire fan base went deaf and never spoke of them again. Formed in 1993 in the go-nowhere exurb of San Jose, California, Super Static Fever played only a handful of gigs in their brief two year existence, punishing spectators with a tinnitus-inducing wah-wah wall of Marshall-stacked distortion. Their sound was a mix of Melvins-esque sludge, Swervedriver’s melodic crunch, and latter-day Black Flag’s penchant for volume, as heard from the stock stereo of a hot-boxed 1985 Ford Econoline. Unfinished tapes from two ear-bleeding sessions are all that survived the ensuing 25 years since their indifferent break-up, mixed by the exacting Steve Albini as the band’s one condition for reissue. The package reeks of the ’90s computer-crippled D.I.Y. aesthetic, with VHS blur and opaque white screened on chipboard. A record that just barely does, and probably should not, exist.

To be an attentive listener to the world as it stands is to be saturated with language. Speech resounds through nearly every space that features human beings, whether unwanted or desired, mundane or profound. Words sit on the page and in the ear, proliferating endlessly. This superabundance has long been a point of fascination for composer and musician Ben Vida, but over the past several years it has led to a new method of music making that simultaneously exalts and interrogates the primacy of language in our sonic and cultural environments. Gently, playfully, Vida breaks down language’s hierarchy of meaning and sound until they exist in egalitarian harmony. Oblivion Seekers is Vida’s newest album in this mode of composition, following 2023’s collaboration with new music ensemble Yarn/Wire The Beat My Head Hit. Like its predecessor, the music’s focus is on coordinated duets of spoken word in a neutral tone, the variable cadences of the words in motion creating complex internal rhythmic structures. He is joined by the voices of Nina Dante, Christina Vantzou, John Also Bennett, and Félicia Atkinson, creating a singular tone that is neither theirs nor his, fluid in its gender presentation, accent, and diction. The instrumental compositions that form the album’s understory have the casual flow of dialogue, conversational but subdued, rarely the agent of change. Here, Vida likewise called upon an accomplished community of players to accompany him: Dante on harp, Bennett on bass flute, Matt Bauder and Will Epstein on saxophones, Henry Fraser on bass, Cleek Schrey on violin, and Booker Stardrum on percussion. These elements form lattice-like structures that the text darts in and around, often adhering to downbeats but otherwise moving freely within each lilting phrase. A tranquil, focused temperament persists, enhanced by the reserved cadence of the voices that makes it feel as if the music is one long mantra that never quite reaches back to its genesis point. The effect is entrancing, equally soporific and gripping, implying repetition without ever moving exactly the same way twice. The instrumentation on each of the album’s four pieces varies; “Be Yr Own Abyss” is defined by the wave-like counterpoint of saxophones, while the ambiguous chime of vibraphone floats over “Oblivion Seekers” and Fraser’s swelling bass provides the album’s sole dramatic entrance. The music shifts in the ear as the text constantly redefines and recontextualizes the composition’s form and movement, even as it remains consistent in its otherworldly glow. The text is often drawn from snippets of language that Vida encountered throughout his life as he was composing: overheard mumblings from the supermarket line, impactful phrases from a novel he was reading, impressions of the music that wouldn’t leave his turntable. Small details, otherwise insignificant, accumulate not to form a narrative, but an impression of the complex meaning-making process that happens as one lives day to day. Characters and scenes flicker in and out of the frame, and phrases that beg to be unpacked are allowed to glide by. In “Be Yr Own Abyss” something like a thesis appears without fanfare: “Her tongue was out to kill her / all hail this mental space / constructing ambiguity / and the endless stream.” On two separate occasions the listener is told that waves are heading our way. There are many predecessors to these types of novel confluences of music and speech. Vida’s love of Robert Ashley is well documented, but perhaps even more significant are Mark E. Smith and The Fall, Neil Tennant and the Pet Shop Boys’ spoken verses, the entire history of hip hop, Meredith Monk. The way the words are delivered matters just as much as the words themselves, revealing an intentionality and directness that Vida highlights and subverts with the text’s abstract construction patterns. On Oblivion Seekers, the omnidirectional din is the marble Vida chips away at to illuminate the way we process the vast strangeness of the world. Its triumph is that we lose none of the beautiful mystery of how these signs bridge our external and internal worlds.

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.

A reissue set featuring the early signature works of the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra, led by François Tusques—a pivotal figure in French free jazz! This release compiles their legendary live album "Vol.1", recorded at a watermill in Prades-Le-Lez in the South of France in 1971, along with its follow-up second album, "Vol.2", together on CD for the very first time.

アルバムについて Strut Records proudly presents the first definitive expanded reissue of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Sun Ra’s 1977 session recorded at the Bluebird in Bloomington, Indiana, presented across three Vinyl LPs or as a two CD set. The Arkestra were at the peak of their powers in 1977, releasing revered albums like The Soul Vibration Of Man and My Favorite Things with Arkestra regulars Marshall Allen, Danny Ray Thompson, Michael Ray and Luqman Ali among the core musicians. Ra also continued his touring in Europe with historic gigs in Italy. During this period, Arkestra live performances were often loosely structured into thematic blocks that moved from reflections on jazz history to cosmic “space narrative” sections featuring collective chants, extended Africa/Egypt-inspired grooves and selections from the Great American Songbook. This recording brings in all of these features with re imagined versions of standards like ‘Take The “A” Train’, ‘St. Louis Blues’ and title track ‘Over The Rainbow’ alongside rarely recorded Ra compositions like ‘Make Another Mistake’ and ‘Amen Meni Many Amens’. Ra conducted improvisations to guide the listener seamlessly from one musical scene to the next. As Sun Ra himself described it: “It’s like a party—we enjoy ourselves and everybody’s invited to enjoy it with us.” The original version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow assembled a handful of clearly delineated tracks drawn from the flow of two complete concert recordings, re-arranged out of sequence. Strut’s new edition restores previously excised material and preserves more of the natural transitions between pieces, offering a fuller glimpse into the distinctive aesthetic of Sun Ra and his Arkestra. This definitive reissue is pressed across two CDs, or three vinyl LPs housed in a triple gatefold sleeve, newly remastered by Technology Works from the original source tapes and features extensive new liner notes by Chris Cutler alongside video stills from the original concert.