antarctica starts here

Released in 1976, Eternity was Alice Coltrane's first album for Warner Bros. after eight wondrous records on Impulse! Combining the drones and textures of India, the gospel and R&B of her Detroit youth and the dissonance of modern classical composition, Coltrane's music in the '70s would become increasingly difficult to categorize. Having moved a few years earlier to California (where she founded the Vedantic Center, an Ashram for spiritual studies), Coltrane stretches out on Eternity – incorporating various musical styles, including a stirring adaptation of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring – and the results are dazzling, both in sonic scope and emotional range Opener "Spiritual Eternal" sways between Alice's exploratory organ and the dramatic swell of lush strings. A meditative solo piece for harp, "Wisdom Eye," precedes the rollicking rhythms of "Los Caballos," which showcases some of her finest soloing. "Om Supreme" is the album's first track to be built around bhajans (Hindu devotional songs). Featuring graceful keyboards backed by an angelic choir, this piece hints at the ecstatic devotional music that she would later make with members of her Ashram. While Coltrane would delve deeper into her spiritual journeys and continue to expand her musical interests on subsequent LPs, Eternity remains a vivid and compelling display of her unique vision, myriad talents and passions.

Singer-songwriter Bob Lind will forever be remembered for the 1965 hit "Elusive Butterfly," but his career is so much more interesting than the fading wonder of that one song. Once a hard-partying buddy of Charles Bukowski, Lind was the inspiration for the character "Dinky Summers," a down-on-his-luck folk singer in Bukowski's 1978 novel Women. Lind also doubled as a writer, penning a number of novels and plays as well as serving as a longtime staff writer at the lowbrow tabloid Weekly World News. If that wasn't enough, Lind is also responsible for one of the greatest major-label "loner" albums of all time, 1971's Since There Were Circles. After several years languishing without a second hit for the World Pacific label, Lind signed to Capitol and went into the studio with some of the biggest names in the LA country-rock scene including Doug Dillard, Gene Clark, Bernie Leadon and legendary session bassist Carol Kaye. While the record was well-received critically, it sold poorly and marked Lind's bitter departure from the music business for several decades. The intervening half-century has been incredibly kind to Since There Were Circles, and it is now regarded as a cult masterpiece that pairs perfectly with Gene Clark's No Other, Bobby Charles' self-titled Bearsville album and Lee Hazlewood's Cowboy In Sweden. Lind's songwriting here is vastly darker and more self-reflective than anything from his folk-pop period, and the production is simultaneously loose and rootsy, yet lushly orchestrated and occasionally bombastic. Lind somehow manages to bring it all together with wry delivery and literate detail. Comes with lyric booklet.

Recorded in early 1971, Curtis/Live! finds Curtis Mayfield in top form at the intimate Greenwich Village club The Bitter End. With veterans from Chicago's soul and jazz scene, Mayfield runs through a superb setlist of Impressions classics ("Gypsy Woman," "People Get Ready"), gems from his first solo LP ("We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue," "The Makings of You") and fierce originals that would make their recording debut here ("I Plan To Stay A Believer," "Stare And Stare" and "Stone Junkie").

As author Lloyd Sachs writes in the liner notes for this vinyl reissue, "All of the songs are lovingly reworked – in some cases stretched out and in others, brightened with humor. The band redefines groove via the West African polyrhythms of conga and bongo great Henry Gibson and the intertwined guitars of Mayfield – whose dulcet, vocal-like tone was a revolution in and of itself – and Craig McMullen. The group creates excitement through tension and release, through building up and letting go."

Curtis/Live! was originally issued on Mayfield's own Curtom label just before his second studio album, 1971's Roots, and his influential Super Fly soundtrack. While the singer would continue to establish himself as one of the key voices of his generation, the powerful anthems and in-the-pocket perfection on this double-LP live set demonstrate how brilliant Curtis truly was – a master class in restraint and fearless expression.

Dark, hypnotic, tripping nyabinghi from 1974. Led by Ras Michael over four extended excursions, the music is organic, sublime and expansive, grounation-drums and bass heavy (with no rhythm guitar, rather Willie Lindo brilliantly improvising a kind of dazed, harmolodic blues). Lloyd Charmers and Federal engineer George Raymond stayed up all night after the session, to mix the recording, opening out the enraptured mood into echoing space, adding sparse, startling effects to the keyboards. At no cost to its deep spirituality, this is the closest reggae comes to psychedelia. Lovingly returned to its original, singular glory, restored at Abbey Road, with superfly vinyl in old-school, hand-assembled sleeves.

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

"Over the years, they would come to say that the Africans just appeared one day in Jamaica. That two Congo men somehow materialized on the streets of Kingston sometime in 1977, almost as if by magic, speaking not a word of English or patwa. The duo, they say, were musicians brought in by a Jamaican promoter – a woman who ditched them, leaving them to fend for themselves, stranded in a strange land.

"What really happened is harder to fully divine. The two young Africans – Molenga Mosukola (aka Seke) and Kawongolo Kimwanga (aka Kalo) – were musicians from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then known as the Republic of Zaire, and had indeed been brought to Jamaica by a woman. But she was not a Jamaican promoter; she was a Frenchwoman named Nadette Duget, an executive at CBS France.

"Seke and Kalo were both vocalists and guitarists who also played percussion; one of them also handled the saxophone. Initially, Duget had intended for the recording to take place at Byron Lee's Dynamic Sounds studio. Somehow, though, the project instead ended up at Lee 'Scratch' Perry's Black Ark.

"When Seke Molenga and Kalo Kawongolo arrived at the Black Ark, Perry was wrapping up the sessions for the Heart of the Congos. He was immediately enamored with the two Congolese visitors and did regard their presence as a fortuitous sign. As he later said in 1992, 'I know they were sent from Africa, because Africa wanted to make that heart connection in the Ark Studio. So African have to appear in the Ark Of The Covenant to manifest the African drum.'

"Perry eventually completed the work with Seke and Kalo: a deeply rootsy and rugged album under the working title Monama (which in Lingala means 'Rainbo'). He submitted it to Island, but as they had done with Heart of the Congos, they passed on releasing it.

"While it has remained relatively obscure, even as Perry's Black Ark oeuvre has been rehabilitated and lionized over the past two decades, the album has nevertheless been quietly influential. Its groundbreaking amalgamation of African music and dub anticipated similar experiments by producers like Adrian Sherwood, Bill Laswell and Jah Wobble who would ride to critical acclaim in the '80s and '90s."

– Uchenna Ikonne (excerpt from the liner notes)

The Silvertones were steeped in the grand tradition of Jamaican vocal trios along with other greats such as The Heptones, The Abyssinians and The Kingstonians. Formed in 1964 by Delroy Denton, Keith Coley and Gilmore Grant, the group recorded under a variety of names in the ska and rocksteady era for Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle and Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One, before hooking up with producer Lee “Scratch” Perry. Originally released in 1973, The Silvertones’ debut Silver Bullets was recorded at Perry’s Black Ark studio with vocal tracks captured at King Tubby’s Dromilly Avenue studio in a marathon, all-night session. While firmly planted in roots reggae, Silver Bullets’ dense harmonies and relaxed vibe harken back to rocksteady. The album marks an interesting point in Jamaican music where the past and the future are visible in the grooves of a single LP—from classic rocksteady-tinged love songs like “That’s When It Hurts” and “Rock Me In Your Soul” to the Rasta anthem “Rejoice Jah Jah Children.” Antarctica Starts Here presents the first widely available domestic release of Silver Bullets. This reissue is part of an archival series that focuses on Trojan’s essential ’60s and ’70s catalogue. Liner notes by JR Gonne.

Long before the fusion of dancehall and reggae, there was a time when vocal trios dominated Jamaica's music scene. From the early '60s, three-part harmony ensembles peppered the charts with driving ska hits. By the time the lilting rhythms of rocksteady emerged in late 1966, an outfit made some of the most popular and enduring music ever issued on the island. They were, of course, The Uniques.

The Uniques' classic line-up of Slim Smith, Lloyd Charmers and Jimmy Riley would record a series of superior sides with legendary producer Bunny Lee, most notably The Impressions' "Gypsy Woman," the soulful original "Speak No Evil" and the haunting "My Conversation" (which may be one of the most "versioned" tracks of all time). Charmers produced the cover of Buffalo Springfield's 1967 hit "For What It's Worth" (aka "Watch This Sound"), which was originally released on the group's own Tramp label.

As 1968 drew to a close, these recordings (along with the remainder of their best-known songs to date) were compiled for The Uniques' debut album, Absolutely The Uniques, which unusual for the time was released as a full-price collection by Trojan in the UK.

Antarctica Starts Here presents the long out-of-print domestic release of Absolutely The Uniques. Reproducing the original sleeve design, this reissue is part of an archival series that focuses on Trojan's essential '60s and '70s catalogue. Liner notes by Laurence Cane-Honeysett.

This 1973 album by Lee Perry's The Upsetters, released on the eve of the birth of Black Ark and their last album for Trojan, has been reissued on vinyl by Superior Viaduct's Antarctica Starts Here. This is a classic album that already combines elements of funk, reggae, and dub, as well as the reggae remake of Al Green-Love & Happiness.

The Upsetters, a studio band that rehearsed at Lee Perry's Kingston record store at the end of the 60's, released their first album in 1970 and it has been reissued on vinyl by Antarctica Starts Here, a subsidiary of Superior Viaduct. The Upsetters were a studio band that rehearsed in record shops. The album is mainly Ska and Rocksteady, with dreamy reverbed keyboards and studio work that could be considered a prototype for dub.