NEW ARRIVALS

これは今年度でも最重要クラスの一枚かと！要チェック！ロサンゼルスのインディペンデントな音楽シーンの英気を一身に引き受ける屈指の名門〈Leaving Records〉より特大タイトルが登場！Alice Coltraneの愛弟子にして鍵盤奏者/作曲家 のSurya Botofasina、JAY ZやSHAWN MENDESといったビッグネームにも愛される名ギタリストNate Mercereau、そして、このレーベルの看板アクトとしても当店おなじみのパーカッショニスト/プロデューサーCarlos Niñoという、世界各地で演奏を共にしてきた名トリオによる破格のコラボ・アルバム『Subtle Movements』が2LP&カセット・リリース！万華鏡の様に神々しくシンセが息吹き、華を咲かせ、やがては宇宙へ、精神世界の深淵へと。ヤソスにジョン・ハッセル、アリス・コルトレーンが三位一体となった、絶景の第4世界アンビエント・ジャズが満載された恐ろしい内容の一枚！

Delight, Arushi Jain’s follow-up to 2021’s seminal Under the Lilac Sky, out March 29 2024 on Leaving, carries, at its core, the simple proposition that delight is accessible and that the practice of cultivating it is a necessary endeavor. Weaving together emotions, imagery, and a sense of yearning for beauty, Jain aims to instill belief in the ever-present nature of delight, asserting the need to actively seek it when not readily found. The enhanced perception of this elusive emotion, Jain asserts, comes through extended observation of the present - the longer we look, the more we see - an idea that serves as a guide in her quest for delight. The introduction of cello, classical guitar, marimba, flute, and saxophone plus rich Indian classical vocals, all layered with modular synthesis, expands her sonic vocabulary to a lush textural landscape and signals new areas of creative focus. Jain, for the uninitiated, is a multi-hyphenate artist/musician (composer, vocalist, engineer, modular synthesist) . As has been widely noted, Arushi Jain deploys the sounds and aesthetics of contemporary experimental electronic music to channel, celebrate, iterate upon, and interrogate traditional Indian idioms. Under the Lilac Sky, her first LP (also released on Leaving), constituted an offering of sorts: a six-song suite intended to accompany the listener as they watched the sun’s setting. But while Jain’s last record was concerned with time, space, and our outer environment, Delight is reflective, occasionally approaching the autobiographical—simultaneously a record of an artist’s inward journey, and an invitation/roadmap for the listener to embark on their own search for delight. Each of Delight's nine tracks were inspired by Raga Bageshri (a raga being a melodic framework particular to Indian classical music). Bageshri is said to convey the feeling of waiting to reunite with one’s beloved. It possesses an innate longing, colored by potent fantasies of reunion. “Bageshri embodies the realization that you have unknowingly fallen deeply in love. It triggers within me immense devotion, juxtaposed with a poignant acknowledgement of suffering; for love as immense is often challenging to reciprocate”, Jain writes. “We come into this world alone, and we leave alone. Despite this knowledge, the human capacity for love is without reservation, which I find generous.” She sings of connection to a past and future self, and the creative practice (see the meditation on intimacy, “Our Touching Tongues”), but her longing feels more expansive. The beloved Jain invokes throughout Delight is not a lover, as Bageshri calls for, but delight itself. Stirred by Raag Bageshri during a creative fallow, Jain decamped to Long Island, where she composed and recorded the core of her new album. She assembled a makeshift studio in an empty house on the seaside, a house suffused with light and art and surrounded by wildlife. This ambience has clearly seeped into the album, drenched as it is in the warm sun as it is in the cold October rain. In her self imposed isolation, Jain experimented with vocal compositions, building songs out of short sung phrases. Jain ended her solitary writing by entering a previously unexplored territory of collaboration, working with acoustic instrumentalists to incorporate classical guitar, cello, marimba, flute, and saxophone into her sonic vocabulary. The result is a collection of songs that are often slower and sparer than those featured on Under the Lilac Sky, yet audibly richer, embracing the transcendental potential of repetition and the nuance of sampling live instruments on her synthesizer. Phrases, lyrics, and notes recur, but the feelings they evoke are consistently novel; Delight is diverse and fluid. Each song documents, by Jain’s own account, a tussle with the void, a journey into the unknown. She has opened an unmarked door and returned with small things that bring delight, precious and unexpected; we catch their glimmer in each recording. Indeed, Delight serves as an abject reminder that, through attention, openness, and practice, we are all capable of tapping into this necessary human sensation.

Originally compiled & released in 2015 by Leaving Records & Laraaji, we proudly present (again), with humble gratitude, three re-issues of seminal works by new age musician, composer, and laughter meditation workshop leader Laraaji - recorded between 1978 and 1983. Although some excerpts of the material have been featured on various compilations, this was the first time in over 30 years that one can experience the uninterrupted duration of these cosmic etudes in their complete form. The added length creates an immersive environment of fresh, exploratory, experimental and healing sounds in which to dwell– these are the proper, entire experiences as intended by their creator.

1978’s Lotus Collage was recorded live in a Park Slope, Brooklyn living room during Laraaji’s busker years. The sounds consist of freestyle electric open tuned zither/harp, Ecstatic Rhythmic hammer percussion, and free flow open hand ethereal moods. This recording crucially predates Laraaji’s now mythological “discovery” by Brian Eno, and is significant as one of Laraaji’s first electric zither recordings. This early recording captures a youthful Laraaji at the outset of his musical journey, still ripe for discovery, exploration, and transcendence. 1981’s Unicorns in Paradise was performed on electric keyboard Casiotone MT-70, and once again features Laraaji’s iconic zither in a flowing atmospheric improvisation. Laraaji describes its sonic environs as “an ideal habitat in another dimension of timelessness.” Many years later, this description holds true as its vibrant sounds inspire sensual reflections of the excited imagination. The final re-issue consists of two parts. Its first side, “Trance Celestial,” is a glowing, amorphous survey of muted and malleable electric sounds. Its uncharacteristically dark atmospheres nevertheless still paint a surreal atmosphere for self-reflection. Much beauty and inner-wisdom can be found in the depths of its inward trajectory. In contrast, the title track is a guided meditation full of light and optimism. Its spoken word segments and patient arrangements illustrate a constructive framework for enjoying the whole of Laraaji’s extensive catalog.

Originally, these releases were hand-made and dubbed to cassette by Laraaji himself. Of the process, he says “I felt like I was distributing artwork. As a matter of fact, for some of the cassettes I actually did some extra handwork on the label, doing a screen print or magic marker to add some color. So there was a sense of how to be an industry homemade artist direct-to-consumer feeling in the early years. People would ask for cassette tapes of an issue that I had not mass produced. So, now and then I’ll run into somebody who has a cassette tape… I’ll look at it and say, ‘Oh Wow, hand-made label, J-card and HEART.'”

Available on both cassette and digital, these re-issues offer Laraaji’s early music in both its original form and a form that did not exist at the time of its recording. Regarding this parallel, Laraaji reflects, “Having the music move in dimensions I didn’t predict… It feels like an extended blessing.” 

333 reissues a serious all-timer of an LP from the peak of reggae/dancehall's mid-to-late 1980s digital era, in the form of Horace Ferguson's Sensi Addict - recorded for Prince Jazzbo's Ujama label and originally released back in 1987. Produced & arranged by the late great Jazzbo (and issued here under license from the foundation deejay & producer's family) the Sensi Addict LP pulls together a selection of vocals recorded between 1984 & 1987 at Michael Carroll's Creative Sounds studio in Kingston, recorded by engineer (and singer & producer in his own right) Paul Davidson. Horace's infectious falsetto can be found riding a collection of Jazzbo's digital rhythms - from the inspired Replay version on 'Jah Order', to the updated take on the foundational Sleng Teng rhythm track on 'Tranquilizer' - representing some of the most forward-thinking production of the period outside of Jammys and King Tubby's Firehouse stables. The bulk of these rhythm tracks were performed by revered multi-instrumentalist Tyrone Downie (a long-time member of Bob Marley & The Wailers since the mid 70s, who sadly passed last November) alongside Tony "Asher" Brissett - another massively undersung session musician perhaps most notable for laying down the initial Sleng Teng rhythm track for Jammys in 1984. Also on display here are a couple of choice early 80s rhythms, recorded for Jazzbo by Errol "Flabba" Holt's legendary Roots Radics backing band. All of this comes paired with sympathetically reproduced artwork - featuring images of Horace by photographer and reggae documentarian, Beth "Kingston" Lesser.

The definition of the word 'fado' is technically 'fate', though the Portuguese meaning bound up with this term is more complex. The music itself can be fairly closely compared with that of Greek rebetika - also the American blues or the original working-class tango music of Argentina and Uruguay - and similarly takes it's common subject matter from the various cruel realities of the world. Though perhaps what distinguishes fado in character is it's often poised acceptance of the pains of life rather than protestation or resistance - as writer Paul Vernon says "It speaks with a quiet dignity born of the realisation that any mortal desire or plan is at risk of destruction by powers beyond individual control" Death Is Not The End compile here a spine-tingling collection of fado recordings, taken from records issued in the mid 1910s through to the 1930s. The fado's Lisbon and Coimbra variants are presented here by some of the music's earliest recorded stars - spanning a time period leading up to the emergence of the fado's all-conquering star, Amália Rodrigues.

The winding flight path of Torn Hawk lands at “Trustfall”, a hilarious and poignant spoken work of rewarding density. It’s almost 34 minutes of Luke talking— talking over, against, and to himself, with sporadic, slyly deployed SFX and quotes of his own music, using a childhood memory as a generative node for a funny and emotional tale of transformation. Luke Wyatt/Torn Hawk has been pushing more into speech-focused work in the last few years, using his NTS residency as an R&D space. His 2022 album “Toxic Sincerity” featured speech pieces of newly raw intimacy, and a cassette for Cav Empt saw a longer-form exploration of these efforts. Honed from a 2023 performance at NYC’s Issue Project Room, “Trustfall” is where all this talk has been heading. It’s branching allusions— to the ’86 Mets, WIlliam Rehnquist, Boy Scout regalia and behavioral weirdness, etc etc— take us on a wild but strangely cohesive, funny-sad path, which finally points at the deeply neccessary and spiritual utility of self-expression.

"Every day, the skies of New York City fill up with unseen clouds of radio signals spreading over immigrant neighborhoods. These culturally charged clouds of radio energy burst with a flow of content that continually shifts and transforms, following the lifecycle and rhythm of the streets. In Brooklyn, the signals alight on Flatbush Avenue, blasting from radios in dollar vans, bakeries, churches and on street corners and kitchen tables. By accessing an analog technology that (outside of the radio itself) is essentially free for the listener, economically marginalized communities avoid the subscription and data fees built in to the conveniences of the digital life. Listeners, often the elders of the community, extend metal antennas and position the radios just so, trying to catch the elusive vibrations of crucial music, news and information that are seldom felt in New York City’s legal and mostly corporate owned media soundscape. In Flatbush, stations broadcast primarily to Haitians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Grenadians and Orthodox Jews. The Haitian stations are particularly active in East Flatbush with just under a dozen broadcasting daily in Kreyol to the large Haitian community. “I came across it at a very young age. There was this really popular station back in the late 80s, Radio Guinee, and it was based in Brooklyn.” says Joan Martinez, a young Haitian-American born in the US and a former program host on some of the unlicensed Kreyol language stations. “Nobody knows where it was, there are suspicions. But all I know is from Friday night all the way to Sunday night, you would just hear a series of these stations every weekend and it would be the place where you could listen to the latest in Haitian pop music, rap music. It was also the news, my parents and their friends would all sit around the radio and they would just be politicking in the living room getting really loud, you know, dancing, singing along that sort of thing. It was just like a meeting ground and the radio was guiding it.” This phase of New York City pirate radio rose from the ashes of a previous scene dating to the late sixties: a dozen or so stations sporadically run mostly by white teenagers: a mix of hippies, radicals and electronically inclined misfits. By 1987, this loose collective of friends and rivals devolved into infighting after a short-lived attempt to broadcast from international waters off Jones Beach. This created room for new pirate radio voices from diverse communities that were increasingly being pushed off the legal airwaves by high costs, format consolidation, and “the low power desert”, an FCC-led phaseout of small community broadcasters. The local pirates joined a growing national wave of progressive pirate radio activity taking advantage of a new generation of cheap FM transmitters imported from China or home-brewed in makeshift workshops by free radio activists. By the early 90’s, immigrant community-focused broadcasters In New York City flipped the unspoken rules of the earlier pirates who broadcast mainly late at night on a few pre-determined “safe” frequencies, instead filling the FM dial from bottom to top, day and night. In 2000, under pressure from a nationwide increase in pirate radio activity, the FCC introduced a new license class: Low Power FM (LPFM) but opposition from National Public Radio and the National Association of Broadcasters shut down the issuing of new licenses. That severely limited LPFM’s availability in major urban markets due to rules requiring LPFM’s to be “three click aways” from existing stations. Local pirates felt they had no alternative but to continue broadcasting and some stations in Flatbush have been on the air for decades. Despite the passage of the Local Community Radio Act in 2011, opening a new licensing window with relaxed spacing requirements, few new frequencies were available in NYC due to an already crowded dial. The continued pirate presence is enabled by a sort of safety in numbers, an FCC enforcement team hampered by a low budget and a bureaucratic process of enforcement. Interference aside, FCC commissioners and staff publicly fume at the pirates for a range of potential public safety violations, some more theoretical than others and claim they are somehow harming their own communities, and wonder finally, why don’t they just stream on the internet. By viewing radio piracy purely from a legal perspective, critics miss the cultural and historic forces driving the Haitian pirates. During the Duvalier dictatorship (1957-1986) Haitians had access to only two stations broadcasting in Kreyol, rather than French, the language of the elite. One was Radio Lumiere, a religious station and the other Radio Haiti-Inter, a fiercely independent voice whose director Jean Dominque was assassinated in 1999. “The peasant in Haiti, while he’s working on his farm you know he had a transistor.” Says Dr. Jean Eddy St. Paul, Director of the Haitian Studies Institute at the City University of New York. ‘And many peasants, they don’t have money to buy tobacco to smoke, but they will have money to buy the battery to put in the transistor. The first generation of migration, in the US, was during the 1960s and for many of those people the culture of transistor was part of their everyday life, so they’re still maintaining the culture of transistor. For them, having a radio station is very important.’ In July 2019, on a side street in East Flatbush, I met a man calling himself “Joseph” aka “Haitian” (“because I’m a pure Haitian!”), part of a group that keeps Radio Comedy FM on the air. “There’s no owners and committee. It’s a bunch of young guys”. Joseph says, “We have to do something positive for our community. Right now the Marines are in Haiti and we don’t know what’s next! CNN don’t show you this! BBC don’t show you this! So what we do, we have people in Haiti that call us and tell us what’s going on and will send us pictures. This is how we get our information. And bring it to the people…. I have family over there, my mother’s still there. So I have to know what’s going on. At this point in the digital age, it’s an open question how long these analog pirate stations will remain relevant, as their audiences age, neighborhoods gentrify and younger listeners gravitate to social media platforms. The answer seems to lie with their elderly and impoverished listeners. “They don’t have enough money to buy the newspapers understand?.” Joseph says.” For him that makes it worth it to keep Radio Comedy on the air despite a crackdown from the FCC backed by the PIRATE Act signed into law in 2020 that increases fines to $100,000 a day up to $2 million. But the legislation lacks funding to enforce the new regulations. With a federal statute still in place reducing fines down to the ability to pay, it’s unclear whether the PIRATE Act will be anything more than another in an escalating series of scare tactics. Though the FCC has recently suggested the possibility of a new round of LPFM licenses in the future, the already crowded nature of NYC’s FM band makes it unlikely that new frequencies will be made available to the current pirate stations. In addition the FCC doesn’t want to be seen as rewarding illegal activity by granting a license to former pirate broadcasters, which was a prohibition in LPFM’s earlier licensing periods. And for the moment, Joseph, who’s been running unlicensed stations since 1991 (‘it’s an addiction’) is equally unlikely to cede the airwaves. He sees Radio Comedy as not just a radio station, but a community lifeline. “You know many children we save? There was a bunch of guys…Jamaican, Trinidadian, Haitian trying to form a gang. We talked to them, bring them to the station. Most of them have a diploma now. Without the radio, most of them probably get locked up or dead.” Even with the PIRATE act on the books, the number of stations on the air in Brooklyn has remained steady with an average of about 25 per day and the advent of the Coronavirus pandemic has only sharpened their mission. In March 2020 as the spread of Covid-19 lead to NYC’s lockdown, the unlicensed Haitian broadcasters and the other West Indian stations in Brooklyn took a step closer to their listeners, increasing their air time and enhancing their formats to deliver information about the virus both in New York and in their countries of origin amid the heavy toll it took on the community."

Originally made as a contribution to the Blowing Up The Workshop mix series, subsequently given a cassette release in 2019, now finally receiving a limited vinyl LP pressing. "A trip across the frequencies of Bristol's pirate radio stations via cut-ups of broadcasts, taken from the late 1980s to the early 2000s ~ also a love-letter to my childhood, an audio document of the years I spent growing up in the city."

On his full-length drink sum wtr debut, Standing on Giant Shoulders, Sam splits the difference between Snoop Dogg and D' Angelo, Curren$y and David Ruffin. The songs reveal a forward-thinking sensibility rooted in ancestral soul. He creates spiritual hymns for the streets that tap into universal ideals and irrepressible groove. In an era plagued by short-term thinking, his ambitions reveal a crate-digging depth of music history and a meticulous ear for detail.

Following the release of Everything Harmony, which garnered acclaim from Questlove, Iggy Pop, Anthony Fantano, The Guardian, and countless others, The Lemon Twigs—the New York City rock band fronted by brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario—have once again captured the attention of the music listening public. They are in their premature “comeback” stage, and coming back this early has its benefits; the brothers have the energy of 24- and 26- year-olds, plus the experience and songwriting chops of seasoned musicians, having recorded their first album, Do Hollywood, nearly a decade ago at ages 15 and 17. Set for release less than a year after their last album, A Dream Is All We Know is a joyous affair. As the title suggests, it’s less of a sober look at the darker side of life, and more a hopeful sojourn into the realm of dreams. The tone has shifted away from dreary melancholic ballads and moody power pop. Brian and Michael are revisiting their “1968” sound. This album feels closely related to Do Hollywood, but their songwriting and recording techniques have vastly improved over the course of five albums. The brothers combine elements of the Merseybeat sound, the California Beach Boy harmony sound, and Bubblegum to create a unique collection of pop nuggets. (They say it’s part of a new “Merseybeach” movement, sure to catch on, though that fact remains to be seen.) The sense of urgency imbued in lead single “My Golden Years” comes in part from the jangly 12-string guitars and driving drums, but also from the anxiety of a narrator who can feel their “golden years” slipping away from them. Michael’s line, “In time I hope that I can show all the world the love in my mind,” can serve as a statement of intent for the whole collection of songs, as the brothers race against time to create as much quality pop material as possible. “They Don’t Know How To Fall In Place” propels the album forward into bubblegum paradise with its euphoric harmonies and biting clavinet, while the Roy Wood inspired “Church Bells” takes you on a journey in its two-minute and nine-second run time. At every turn you’re introduced to a new instrument, and as Michael sings “ring goes the bell,” the drummer switches to the bell of the ride cymbal and the song reveals itself as a pop tone poem, complete with cellos, mandolin and trumpets, all played by Brian. Not to mention the fun Mersey pun, using famous drummer Ringo’s name in a song that conflates images of the west side of Manhattan with the atmosphere of northern England. Next comes the titular “A Dream Is All I Know,” an existential space age epic, followed by the baroque pocket-prog of “Sweet Vibration.” Equipped with the songwriting chops of a lost era (somewhere between The Brill Building and 10452 Bellagio Road) the new record was carefully arranged and produced entirely analog in the brothers’ Brooklyn recording studio. Most of the tracks were constructed with the two brothers swapping instruments and layering all the parts themselves. One of the exceptions to that rule was “In The Eyes Of The Girl,” co-produced by Sean Ono Lennon in his upstate New York studio, which had the brothers tracking drums and piano while Lennon handled bass duties. On top of that, the brothers add multilayered harmonies that bring to mind The Beach Boys, The Four Freshman, and The Free Design. Side two’s opener “If You And I Are Not Wise,” has the brothers channeling the Everlys’ close harmonies while seeking spiritual illumination with the line, “I wish that someone could tell me what my soul knows that I don’t know.” Brother Brian says, “There’s definitely an escapist bend to this album. Joyous music can take you out of the world when things get too heavy, which everyone needs sometimes. ” “How Can I Love Her More?” is a whirlwind of musical flights of fancy. Blaring horns and strings set the stage before the song settles into a rollicking shuffle, complete with two drum sets, an adventurous bass part, theremin, flutes and harpsichord. It’s a kitchen sink approach, full of left turns, but never bordering on cacophony. It segues directly into the peaceful, sparser “Ember Days,” propelled by a meditative nylon string pattern that’s part bossa nova, part Nick Drake. The peace doesn’t last long though, as “Peppermint Roses” erupts with a menacing Farfisa into a two-part nightmare comedy that doesn’t let up. The album unwinds with the dreamy “I Should’ve Known Right From The Start.” It’s like a forgotten piece of French Pop that just happens to be sung in English, complete with arpeggiated acoustic guitar, melodic bass and catchy drum hooks. While the album is chock full of progressive pop ideas, it closes with an ode to early rock and roll on “Rock On (Over and Over).” “Rock On” contextualizes the band as part of a lineage of rock and roll that’s never really stopped. In every decade there have been bands that have put their own spin on the music and “push(ed) it on down to the line.” But none have done it with the attention to detail and raw talent of these brothers. For The Lemon Twigs, it took almost a decade for critics and audiences alike to present them with the major accolades they’ve earned this past year. While their initial records were appreciated for the musical proficiency they displayed, the brothers’ past few records have communicated their ideas with more clarity and emotional resonance. In other words, “It took too long to say ‘rock on.’”

Big Crown Records is proud to present Brainstory’s sophomore full-length album Sounds Good. Based in L.A. but hailing from the Inland Empire's own Rialto, California, two-thirds of Brainstory, Kevin and Tony Martin are brothers by blood, while Eric Hagstrom is a brother through their music and long term friendship. Since they started the band they have constantly faced situations that forced them to rise to the occasion. They got signed to Big Crown Records, they stepped up their game. COVID happened, they learned to record themselves. They started touring a ton sharing the stage with the likes of Lady Wray and they got their live show super tight. All of this time spent grinding and growing has certainly paid off. The path to take their art to the next level is clearer than ever, and once again, they are here for it. If there is one thing that is abundantly clear on Sounds Good, it’s that Brainstory has leveled up. Part of this evolution is undoubtedly attributed to having access to and working constantly in their own studio in Long Beach. Another major factor is that their brotherhood has expanded. "I've been playing music with my brother all my life and now with Eric for a long time," Tony tells us. "Leon, though, is like another brother I've just met." Leon Michels, Big Crown's co-owner, produced this record and applied his unmistakable golden touch in crucial ways. The other member of the extended Brainstory brotherhood whose contributions were essential to the album, is studio engineer legend Jens Jungkurth who controls the tones and textures of the music. "That's what you're hearing, our connection, the fun moments, the little details," Kevin describes. "This record isn't half what it is without them—and it made us want to match that effort," and match that effort they did. Album opener "Nobody But You" is an uplifting, dance floor burner, that shows off a new side of Brainstory's range. Drummer Eric Hagstrom’s crushing back beat lays the foundation for an inspirational feel good banger that manages to take the uncomfortable truth that “nobody will save you but you” and turn it into pure blissful motivation. "Peach Optimo" is a laid back half time tune that blends the bounce of Down South Hip-Hop with California G funk and Jazz. They once again show off their B said ballad talents with "Gift Of Life" but this time taking the genre to a new place with lyrics about existentialism and a track that is drop dead gorgeous, haunting, and profound all at once. "NyNy" is an homage to Kev and Tony's recently deceased grandfather while "Too Yung" is a show stopping, deeply personal, stripped down number about being introduced to alcohol at a young age. They put another hit on the boards with "Hanging On," a Latin / Psychedelic Soul inspired banger featuring Claire Cottrill on background vocals while "XFaded” addresses the all too common vicious cycle of smoking and drinking too much over a trippy shuffle. "It's been four years since our last full length record, and with everything that's happened since, it's like we've been catching up to ourselves." That's one way to describe change: catching up to oneself. Each member of Brainstory has gone through shifts, both personally and musically, and all of that threads through Sounds Good. It's easy to say that the music industry can be short on lasting, genuine relationships. However, for Brainstory, from day one it's been about standing by each other, for each other. Their friendship started the group, and now, this expanded brotherhood is supporting them to push it further. The stars have aligned for them to take a big and well deserved step with this new album and it couldn't have happened to a better group of guys. Ups and downs of course, but they are acutely aware of how good the big picture has been for them and you can hear it in their music—music that just Sounds Good.

The first vocal album by beloved Ethiopian nun, composer, and pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru - profound and deeply moving home cassette recordings made amidst political upheaval and turmoil. These are songs of wisdom, loss, mourning, and exile, sung directly into a boombox and accompanied by Emahoy’s unmistakable piano. Though written and recorded while still living at her family’s home in Addis Ababa, Emahoy sings of the heartache of leaving her beloved Ethiopia, a reflection on the 1974 revolution and ensuing Red Terror in her homeland, and a presentiment of her future exile in Jerusalem. In the 21st century, Emahoy has become known worldwide for her utterly unique melodic and rhythmic style. Commonly misinterpreted as “jazzy” or “honky tonk,” Emahoy’s music actually comes from a deep engagement with the Western classical tradition, mixed with her background in Ethiopian traditional and Orthodox music. These songs, recorded between 1977-1985, are different from anything previously released by the artist. Rich with the sound of birds outside the window, the creak of the piano bench, the thump of Emahoy’s finger on the record button, they create a sense of place, of being near the artist while she records. Emahoy’s lyrics, sung in Amharic, are poetic and heavy with the weight of exile. “When I looked out / past the clouds / I couldn’t see my country’s sky / Have I really gone so far?” she asks in “Is It Sunny or Cloudy in the Land You Live?” Her vocals are delicate and heartfelt, tracing the melodic contours of her piano on songs like “Where Is the Highway of Thought?” “Tenkou! Why Feel Sorry?,” a career highlight that closes out her self-titled Mississippi album (MRP-099), is revisited here with vocals. Originally composed for her niece, Tenkou, the lyrics clarify the song title we’ve wondered about for so many years. “Don’t cry / Childhood won’t come back / Let it go with love.” Emahoy dreamt of releasing this music to a larger audience before her passing in March of 2023. We are proud to release this music, in collaboration with her family, now, in what would have been her 100th year. LP comes with a 16-page booklet full-color booklet. Gold cover first edition, pressed in both black and gold vinyl editions.

The musical partnership of Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich orbits around a shared center of earnestness, slice-of-life poeticism, and the subtle everyday banality that becomes beautiful, even absurd, under their slight redirection. Where 2020’s Philadelphia placed domestic interiors under a microscope, documenting the indoor minutiae society was forced to examine mid-pandemic, At Scaramouche steps out into the sunlight squinting groggily and happily at the new day ahead-- and particularly the night that follows. One evening after a recording session and some aimless ambling that included a visit to the house where the 1974 movie “Black Christmas” was filmed, Krgovich and fellow vocalist Chris A. Cummings found themselves misplaced at the Toronto restaurant from which At Scaramouche takes its name, gawking with amusement at its concocted air of luxury. “The layout hinted at its MCM glory, and there was a panoramic view of the city,” Krgovich illustrates, “but it was full mid 2000s, dated Sex In The City re-run decor, ‘opulence’ for rich people with bad taste. I loved it! Chris loved it!”. On At Scaramouche, Krgovich and Shabason demonstrate a mutually uncanny ability to transmute this kind of cultural wariness into amused majesty, poking fun and bowing in reverence all at once. Their spotless smooth-jazz tonality, lyrical literalism, and even cover artist Jake Longstreth’s humorously sober depiction of an actual old Taco Bell building all point to the duo’s low-key-gonzo subversion of Adult Contemporary tropes into something unexpectedly transcendent. The first glassy keyboard hits of “Soli” indicate this sentiment before Krgovich even steps forward as the album’s host, and when he does, he immediately gets to work setting the scene of a weary parking lot stroll on a cool, street-lit evening after work-- just one of so many unremarkable moments that become utopic under Krgovich’s poetic care. “Clocking out at five PM, don’t give it another thought, feel the evening coming in,” he sings. “When it’s dark before supper, and the rain on the house… happy for no reason.” Glimmering pianos and brushy percussion calmly converse with fretless bass as a diffuse light spreads across this little world that’s being created. But where the duo’s previous effort Philadelphia would’ve camped permanently in the stillness, At Scaramouche lunges into the upbeat stroller “In the Middle of the Day”. Though no less exemplary of the album’s quiet everyday magic, it sets a brisker pace with its head-nodding drum break and coolly interjecting bassline. Other moments on the album reiterate the spryness, like the nearly-erratic “Soli II”, and the lively pop centerpiece “I Am So Happy With My Little Dog”. On the latter, Krgovich leads a tight-knit ensemble that comes as close to krautrock here as they ever might, where a driving drumbeat politely urges the elements forward; trumpet harmonies, chanting vocals, and bubbling synths, all crowned by a chorus-laden, perfectly askew solo from guitarist Thom Gill . “This record was very much a band effort. Me and Nick were at the helm but we called on the amazing crew of musicians that I play with here in Toronto to really help flesh things out,” Shabason emphasizes. “The last record was a real exercise in minimalism and quietness, and to me this record feels much more robust, and occasionally bombastic by comparison.” Joseph Shabason grew up in small-town Ontario, throwing punk and emo shows in garages and church basements as an alternative to “playing hockey or doing drugs,” as he states it. At the same time Nicholas Krgovich was 4,000 kilometers away in Vancouver, BC living the kind of suburban life that can, by necessity, imbue someone with romanticism toward the things downtown-dwellers might not bat an eye at, like the fluorescent glow of commercial lighting after-hours, or the overlooked poignancy of a rundown strip mall, and all the many thousands of tiny commonplace miracles that At Scaramouche is made of. “Childhood McDonald’s gone, there used to be some woods there,” Krgovich hums prosaically over a bed of soft drum machine and Dorothea Paas’s soft supporting vocals. “The cemetery was small,” he elaborates while noticing just how farz and how fast the past has receded, “now the high rises around the mall that aren’t done yet…” Where much nostalgia can slip down the slopes into something melancholy that puts the past on an impossible pedestal, album-ender “Drinks at Scaramouche” proves that Krgovich is just as in love with the present, allowing history and future to bring out the sacred in one another. “Finding all the little blips, in-betweens, now with deepening meaning,” he sings, “what little light goes slow, heartening to know that nothing really goes away.” Like so much that Shabason & Krgovich put their fingerprints on, At Scaramouche presents a familiar palette with just enough inflected weirdness to prompt double takes, turning folk art into outsider art with an almost imperceptible sleight of hand.

nujabes passed away suddenly in February 2010 due to an accident, and this "metaphorical music" is the first album he put all his energy into after releasing mainly analog singles until then. It is a masterpiece that continues to be loved by many even now, and is the core of nujabes and hydeout productions. It is a historical masterpiece that contains many of the great songs that defined his presence. The first chapter of his miraculous mental landscape music, in which a piece of his soul that burned briefly but fiercely resides, has been released on cassette tape after a lapse of 20 years.

Modern Lovers' self-titled debut album, released in 1976, is a timeless exploration of proto-punk and alternative rock. Led by Jonathan Richman, the album captures a minimalist and lo-fi charm, with tracks like 'Roadrunner' becoming anthems of the emerging punk scene. Richman's witty lyrics and stripped-down sound make 'Modern Lovers' a seminal work, influencing generations of indie and punk musicians. The album stands as a testament to the band's pioneering role in shaping the landscape of alternative music.

A cassette version of ‘Croon Harvest’: a performance-installation for voices, field recordings, and white noise by composer and conductor Jack Sheen.

A slightly revised & edited take of our Jamaican Gospel special for NTS Radio, originally broadcast for the station back in late 2016. A dusty heap of JA gospel from the 60s and early 70s. Split across two sides - all vinyl and all 45s - played through a touch of delay pedal with crackle aplenty. Enjoy.

The second part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s. The music included here can probably all be said to have all stemmed from a style that initially took root in the Fanti region of coastal southern Ghana. Fusing local percussion instruments with the introduction of western (most notably Portuguese) guitars that had made their way to the Fanti region of southern Ghana via the Kru seamen of Liberia, who are said to have pioneered the distinctive two-fingered style of playing while sailing the high seas. Mingling amongst the Kru as well as with other sailors and local working-class people during the 1920s & 30s, the guitars infused with the traditional Akan seprewa harp-playing technique, creating a style known as 'odonson' or 'Akan blues' - a rootsy highlife style also commonly referred to as palm wine music, so named after the palm wine bars where the music was commonly performed. Western record companies such as Zonophone, Columbia, Odeon, HMV, and later Decca/EMI's West Africa imprint, released much of the recordings included here - with the earliest inclusions appearing courtesy of George William Aingo, Nicholas De Heer, Edmund Tagoe & Frank Essien, and Jacob Sam's Kumasi Trio (all recorded in London during the late 1920s). The form would become a key element in the popular development of both Ghanaian & Nigerian highlife, as well as the maringa of Sierra Leone, the juju of western Nigeria, and the Congolese "dry" guitar music of central Africa. With thanks to John Collins and the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation.

The first part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s. The music included here can probably all be said to have all stemmed from a style that initially took root in the Fanti region of coastal southern Ghana. Fusing local percussion instruments with the introduction of western (most notably Portuguese) guitars that had made their way to the Fanti region of southern Ghana via the Kru seamen of Liberia, who are said to have pioneered the distinctive two-fingered style of playing while sailing the high seas. Mingling amongst the Kru as well as with other sailors and local working-class people during the 1920s & 30s, the guitars infused with the traditional Akan seprewa harp-playing technique, creating a style known as 'odonson' or 'Akan blues' - a rootsy highlife style also commonly referred to as palm wine music, so named after the palm wine bars where the music was commonly performed. Western record companies such as Zonophone, Columbia, Odeon, HMV, and later Decca/EMI's West Africa imprint, released much of the recordings included here - with the earliest inclusions appearing courtesy of George William Aingo, Nicholas De Heer, Edmund Tagoe & Frank Essien, and Jacob Sam's Kumasi Trio (all recorded in London during the late 1920s). The form would become a key element in the popular development of both Ghanaian & Nigerian highlife, as well as the maringa of Sierra Leone, the juju of western Nigeria, and the Congolese "dry" guitar music of central Africa. With thanks to John Collins and the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation.

A collection of haunted, brooding flamenco recordings taken from the early 1900s through to the late 1930s. Focussing in on the cante jondo (or “deep song”) style, seen as the original manifestation of flamenco singing - from which other elements emerged, such as dancing and playing - this survey captures and documents tracks from the form’s earliest recorded stars.

Recorded and produced during late night sessions from 2019-2022 while re-watching archive episodes of the German TV show Space Night from the late 90s.

Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a pretty perfect triangle, musically and geographically. Based out of Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, the three convened at Sage’s converted barn studio at the foot of the Rockies to diagram their kindred ability to extract grandeur from the most passable of life’s daily details. On his own, saxophonist Joseph Shabason warps late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into tidepools of fourth-worldly sound design that are infinitely more self-aware and emotionally honest than any of their distant reference points. M. Sage, in a parallel sense, blends his skills as an instrumentalist with synthesis and field recordings to create auditory reflections of the natural world that are as whimsical as they are profound. Sitting cozily between these two heartfelt experimentalists is singer Nicholas Krgovich, whose observational slice-of-life poetics paint a relatable face onto his collaborators’ calm expressionism, both guiding and highlighting its deep sense of affect. The resulting album, prosaically titled Shabason, Krgovich, Sage warmly invites sound artist Matthew Sage into the world of wry and melancholy micro-miracles that Shabason and Krgovich established on 2020’s Philadelphia, and 2022’s At Scaramouche. Album opener “Gloria” is a perfectly balanced representation of the trio’s individual abilities. Sage’s slowed and watery zither bleeds in from the edges of the canvas, laying ground for breathy woodwinds and harmonica that pantomime a distant locomotive. Speaking directly to the sonics at play, Krgovich melodically narrates, “Penny, did you hear that train whistle? Theo, did you hear that owl hoo?”. Even from this first moment, the intimate dynamic is so palpable that the listener falls unwittingly into the backstory of Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. “After connecting with Nick and Jos through DMs since 2020, it felt like a fun experience awaited us as potential collaborators,” Sage recounts. “I had built my barn studio, and I think it looked appealing to them to make an adventure out of coming to the Wild West to make music with me.” After spending the majority of a decade immersed in Chicago’s legacy of jazz and experimental electronic music, Matthew Sage moved back to his home state of Colorado to raise a child in a more casually agrarian atmosphere, and to work in the kind of setting that led to his 2023 album for RVNG, Paradise Crick. It was here at the cusp of the Rocky Mountains that the initial push of Shabason, Sage, Krgovich began, in person. Making sense of the trek, Shabason adds “I have realized that making music with people who live very far away is a real possibility. As long as we can get into one space together for a short amount of time, the collaborative magic that is needed to make a record is totally possible.” The three artists’ fingerprints are equally visible across the album. There is soft textural detritus floating freely in the air, punctuated by glassy electric keys and rubberized basslines. The sparseness in the placement of all the elements leaves them subject to ghostly visitations from a whispery saxophone, and a gentle guitar that peers around the corners of Krgovich’s free-verse musings. The album’s midpoint “Don” passes overhead like pollen on the breeze, constantly drifting out and back across pockets of completely empty space. “Old Man Song” turns a rare B-side by Low into an even gentler end-of-life reflection that is sweetened by Krgovich’s falsetto during the track’s wordless chorus. As nebulous as that may seem on paper, the hidden songcraft slowly surfaces over the course of each piece, exemplified by the closing track “Bridget”. There are plenty of other moments of the album that bear discernible rhythms below the fogline, but it’s here that they rise up into a full-on groove under Krgovich’s lyrical fourth wall breaks in which he details everything from Joseph’s studio habits to seeing “Cats” at the theater with his sister. Despite the song’s relative density and pop sensibility, a careful use of space still reigns supreme. On the eleven-minute “Raul”, Krgovich comes close to unintentionally codifying this approach as he sings “The container shrinks, and shrinks again, with every day, the relief that comes from not wanting more...” Truly, the most abundant virtue on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage is patience. The trio interacts without interrupting one another, contently waiting their turns, all locked onto the same distant point on the horizon yet unconcerned with when they might actually arrive. The groundwork laid by Shabason & Krgovich on their previous joint offerings is omnipresent, but it’s amplified by the joy Sage must have felt shepherding them to his idyllic and intimate new homebase. Prior to meeting up with Sage, the pair’s music often dealt with the beauty of The Great Indoors, but their new host and collaborator has smartly refocused their lenses on the small wonders of wilder localzes. Like magic, Shabason, Sage, and Krgovich have not just musically photographed their surroundings, they’ve managed to reproduce them exactly. The sharp open air, the quiet thrill of an escaped routine, the self-reflective thought-loops during a twilit moment at the edge of a field, all of it’s here on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. Through the trio’s skillful ease, the listener is there, too.

On his crazy solo debut album, EVOL’s Roc hails Eurodance x happy hardcore x acid trance as mutant folk music with a 2 hour collection of live recordings, oddities and installation works directly inspired by the contemporary Catalan dance sound of Mákina - a massive tip if yr into Pastis & Buenri, Nana Makina, The New Monkey, Acid in the Style of Peter Beardsley… Marking 25 years since EVOL’s first record, ‘Principio’ (1999) for Mego, the prolific project’s main man, Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, deploys a distinctly personalised conception of Mákina from his Barcelona IP. After 10 years of adding to its special folder, Roc yields 28 psychoactive cuts marinaded in synthetic bath salts and sweat to wickedly skew the sound’s conventions - virulent 303 arpeggios, see-sawing melodies, and in-your-face beats - with the sort of playfully singular bloody-mindedness that has come to define his EVOL works with Stephen Sharp and others. However, the sound here is distinguished by Roc’s personalised inflections and warped nuance that locates unique vitality in the viscera of Europe’s most maligned, but equally beloved, hard dance style. Although technically rooted in the ‘90s megaclubs of Valencia, Mákina (machine) music also became native to its Catalan neighbours, including Roc, based further up the Spanish coast. And with thanks to a bunch of entrepreneurial Mackems who were bitten by the Makina buzz in the late ‘90s, it more unusually sparked a phenomenon in North East England and Scotland, where it alloyed with happy hardcore and rhythmelodic auction-style MCs to form a whole new offshoot in its own right, heard everywhere from the estates to notorious/legendary clubs such as The Blue Monkey/The New Monkey by Charvers trotting their Rockports off in a sword-dance style hyperfolk step. Roc’s ‘Makina Trax 2013-2023’ follows with a celebration of the sound’s role as regional rave soundtrack and folk signifier, paying no concession to “taste” or normality as he isolates, gurns and exaggerates Mákina’s features to a ludicrous yet immediately functional effect as divisive and energetic as marmite-flavoured wizz. Pinging from gibber-jawed 303 graffiti to durational 14’+ screwball pounders, and even a killer old skool 808 electro variant (‘Makina Trax 22’), Roc really gets under the hood of this sound with results unmistakably comparable to the style and pattern fascinations of his EVOL gear, yet surely tweaked out with a notably more live-wire, hands-on, accentuation. We hear it in the 50 seconds of anthemic fanfare to ‘Makina Trax 16’, the pitching, throaty yowl of ‘Makina Trax 03’, and in the scuttling briskness of ‘Makina Trax 04’, with particular standouts in the screwed, almost bloozy Makina sleaze of ‘Makina Trax 06’, the extreme flange of ‘Makina Trax 19’, and a 180bpm goblin bop ‘Makina Trax 28’. Basically some of the most potent tackle by one of the leading rave experimenters of his generation, whose uncompromising, brilliant work links everyone from the dearly departed Peter Rehberg to Florian Hecker, Mark Fell, to Lorenzo Senni. Aweee the radgies, pasty droppers and pooter hooligans; it’s your time.

Pioneering Parisian weirdo and member of acclaimed, enigmatic collective Ssabæ, Iueke throws down his first “album” for Demdike Stare’s DDS label, following a trio of mixtapes with an hour of warped goo that defies easy categorisation. ​ Photogenic dandy Gwen Jamois, aka Iueke, returns with his queasiest, most lysergic release yet, featuring close to an hour of rubbery, rippling electronics, laconic cinematics and free-falling rhythms frozen somewhere between Autechre, Cluster and Rashad Becker. Gwen has been immersed in all sorts of fringe business for decades at this point, heading up the Antinote label, releasing on Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S, and contributing to those shadowy Ssabæ records we can't stop banging on about. His trio of mixtapes fully took us to the core of his psyche, all off-kilter blends that puzzled out the covalent bonds between tongue dissolving acid, folk music and discarded sonic debris. He follows that same frayed thread on this boundless, off-the-cuff performance, recorded last year at Saint-Étienne's Positive Education festival using a sparse setup of synths and drum machines, fine-tuned to gatecrash the pineal dimension. Plenty of pros have tried making this kind of trippy racket before, but trust that few have ever managed to get anywhere near the level of puckered lunacy you’ll find inside. Brain-combing ASMR oscillations and anxious strings draw us in, clouded by hissing white noise that obscures an unnatural rhythm lurking somewhere down there in the grot. There are palpable links to Cluster's earliest experiments and the muckiest basement club workouts, but Iueke focuses on pure texture, using seesawing rhythms to scrape out new neural pathways rather than lock into the grid. It all feels a bit mechanical too, bolting together elements that are as corporeal as a lead pipe - thick, rusty-edged and aggy in a way that sounds a bit like Einsturzende Neubauten on mushies. On the flip, unbalanced rhythms chase their own tail into a fizzing swamp of viscous bass and shepard tones like some imploding firework, eventually plonging off along impulse vectors only to collapse at half speed into the sort of acrid high-register business Whitehouse would be proud of. Prize yr third eye open for this, it’s a real one.