Rock & Indie CD 576 Items

"Inri" is the 1987 debut album by Brazilian extreme metal band Sarcofago. Inri would become the unofficial staple of the emerging extreme metal subgenres. Today, it still stands as one of the most iconic and influential releases of the decade, if not all time. It’s been impersonated, emulated, and ripped off countless times, yet there’s something about makes it stand head and shoulders above the countless imposters it spawned. Recorded at J.G. Studio (Sepultura, Sextrash, Holocausto, Uakti), Brazil, in August 1987. Legendary blackened death album finally made available again! "Inri" is the 1987 debut album by Brazilian extreme metal band Sarcofago. "Inri" would become the unofficial staple of the emerging extreme metal subgenres, and today it still stands as one of the most iconic and influential releases of the decade, if not all time. It’s been impersonated, emulated, and ripped off countless times, yet there’s something about makes it stand head and shoulders above the countless imposters it spawned.

When Porridge Radio's Dana Margolin, one of the most vital new voices in rock, began to consider the themes of her new album, three vivid words began to emerge: joy, fear and endlessness. The artwork of the band's third full-length, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, is a surreal image that evokes the ducks and dives, slippery slopes and existential angst of life in recent times. "To me, the feelings of joy, fear and endlesses coexist together," says Dana. "You're never just happy or unhappy." Following Every Bad's release in 2020, Margolin was quickly becoming regarded as one of the most magnetic band leaders around. But if Every Bad established Dana's bravery in laying herself bare, her band's third record takes that to anthemic new heights. While there are moments of guttural release, she also finds soft power on songs. "I used to think I had to be loud to be heard," she admits, "but now I'm definitely less afraid of being gentle." The band's first new single, `Back To The Radio', sets out their stall, a lurching call to arms that contrasts Dana's lyrics of panic and closing herself off. This song is just one of example in Wdbltts that explores something that has long been an important part of Porridge Radio's process: playfulness. "I think the album needed to have that balance," Dana explains. Balance: that's the word the album seems to be eternally striving for - joy, fear and endlessness in harmony but also self-acceptance. Dana is more aware of how she's creating a persona as her star continues to rise, and how she's singing personal songs that now belong to other people which gives her purpose. She says, "I wrote these songs for myself, but I think everyone wants to feel like what they're doing is useful in some way. I'm ready to embrace it all now, whatever happens."

Full album dedicated to Hamid El Shaeri’s work on the Egyptian Slam! label. Hamid El Shaeri is the artist behind Habibi Funk’s most popular song to date, “Ayonha”, originally re-released in 2017 on the first Habibi Funk Compilation (habibi007). If you were to ask for a defining Habibi Funk track, there are a few that come to mind: from Fadoul’s “Sid Redad,” Dalton’s “Soul Brother” to Ahmed Malek’s “Omar Gatlato.” However, none are as widely connected with us at this point as Hamid Al Shaeri’s “Ayonha.” We heard the track for the first time when we were working on selecting tracks for your first compilation and we instantly loved it. We obviously had heard of Hamid El Shaeri’s music before, but only material from his Al Jeel phase when he was already the full-blown superstar he is now. Listening to his releases from the early 1980’s opened a whole new door for us. At the time, Hamid had just left Libya to pursue his career in Egypt via a detour in London, where he recorded his first album. Hamid’s distinct sound of the sound is quintessentially reliant on heavy synths and so it was particularly important to purchase these synths in a timely manner. “Whenever a new one [synthesizer] would come out, we would have to buy it immediately, otherwise someone else would get their hands on that sound.” London also played an important role for Hamid as a musical epicenter. He fondly reminisces about the many live shows he attended there, including some of the biggest international musicians like Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson. After returning to Cairo where he also recorded his following albums, he connected with Slam! for the release of his debut, laying the foundation of a collaboration that lasted for 5 albums. Luckily, we were able to connect with Hamid through our friend Youssra El Hawary, whose extensive network has opened many doors for us within the Egyptian music scene. We met Hamid for the first time probably in 2016 at his office / rehearsal studio in the outskirts Cairo. We were expecting a larger-than-life character in-line with his status as a certified superstar, yet the actual person turned out to be very approachable and super easy to connect with. He liked the idea of an effort to amplify his early works again, which, when originally released, were far from an economic success. While he was down to assist with an interview and his blessing for the project he also told us that for any license we needed to speak with the original label Slam! who released these songs, still held the rights and also remained in business over the decades though they didn’t actively release any new music. Hany Sabet had started Slam! Records in the early 1980s and focused on cassette tape releases, the format that expedited the success of a new generation of record labels in Egypt. By the mid 1980’s, Slam! had become one of the most successful and economically dominant record labels in Egypt, with Hamid El Shaeri being just one of their key artists, alongside Mohamed Mounir, Hanan, Hakim, Mustafa Amar and many more. Luckily, Hany Sabet turned out to be a friend of our colleague Malak Makar’s father, which probably helped to warm him to the idea of licensing “Ayonha” to this - in the scale of his world - tiny label from Germany. Eventually “Ayonha” ended up b ecoming a widely successful release and either Hany or we brought up the idea of a full album dedicated to Hamid El Shaeri’s work on Slam!. "Maktoub Aleina” is the first single and will be released January 14th. Following the massive success of "Ayonha,” “Maktoub Aleina” is another mid-tempo groover with a beautiful, synth-forward melody, that brings together a lovely combination of soul, disco and Arabic pop music of the highest order, giving a taste of full album. The second single, “Yekfini Nesma Sotak” will be released January 28th and combines Hamid’s unique formula of soul and pop, held together by a catchy synth melody. “Yekfini Nesma Sotak” picks up the pace a bit, making the uplifting mood of the track even more powerful. Third single, arriving February 11th, is “Dari Demou’ek,” one of the stand out tracks of Hamid’s early recordings done for Slam! in the early 1980s. Dominated by a disco infused bassline, the track offers a lot of space of the funky production to shine while Hamid inserts his vocals at all the right moments. A masterpiece of disco touched by Arabic pop music. Full album arrives February 25th. This release is dedicated to Hany Sabet, the founder of Slam! and his wife Rosemary Jane Sabet (who took the photos we used for the cover and the booklet), who sadly passed away during the time it took us to prepare the release. As always both vinyl and CD come with an extensive booklet with an interview with Hamid as well as unseen photos.

Pelagic Records commemorates the work of electronic music pioneer Lustmord by releasing The Other, based around his tenth studio album [ O T H E R ] (2008) The Others - Lustmord Deconstructed is a celebration of the fearless attitude of being different and the expression of unique ideas which have never existed before. The new 3LP is an album of Lustmord tracks reinterpreted by some of the spearheads of the contemporary heavy music scene – and beyond: Ulver, Enslaved, Godflesh, Zola Jesus, Bohren & DER Club OF Gore, Steve VON Till, Ihsahn, Jaye Jayle, JO QUAIL,SPOTLIGHTS, KATATONIA's Jonas Renkse , Alexander HACKE's (einstürzende Neubauten) new band Hackedepiciotto, as well as Mono, THE Ocean, Årabrot and Crown. Over 13 years after the release of [ O T H E R ] , 16 bands and solo artists have gathered to record their own unique takes on tracks from the Other-sessions. The result is an album that is more than a compilation, and more than the sum of its parts; covering a wide and diverse range of musical territories, but sharing the same underlying mood and vibe defined by Lustmord's timeless soundscapes: from the ambient solo performances provided by Ihsahn, Enslaved or Jonas Renkse to the subdued voice of Zola Jesus woven into Lustmord's sombre fabric to the industrial carnage that is Godflesh's version of 'Ashen'. What demonstrates the profound influence of Lustmord on this contemporary music underground showcased here is that these very different artists all felt inspired to explore the essence of his idiosyncratic sounds within their own realm: experimental electronica icons Ulver excel on a stunning, hazy rendition of ‘Godeater’, while Japanese post-rock act Mono deliver a crushing version of ‘Er Eb Os’, and THE Ocean take us on a cathartically heavy mindtrip back to our 'Primal [State of Being]'. In the end, each of these 16 artists delivers an interpretation that pays the deepest respect to this pivotal artist, while also standing out as a new track of its own. The Others - Lustmord Deconstructed is not only a tribute and an excellent entry point into the discography of the founding father of dark ambient. It is also a celebration of the most accomplished visionaries in the underground music scene of today, and a manifestation of what binds them together.

‘The Last of the 20th Century Girls’ is the storied second album from London-based artist Findlay - a full-fledged offering born of a personal journey that sees her at her most open, transparent, and introspective yet, drawing upon her own personal experiences since the release of full-length 2017 debut ‘Forgotten Pleasures’. With complex, fully-realised themes ranging from grief and loss to the struggle of losing and re-building one’s confidence, through to the challenges and pitfalls of the past couple of years, all serve to inspire a range of tracks across the album.

Mastered by five-time Grammy award winning engineer Antoine ‘Chab’ Chabert (Daft Punk, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sebastien Tellier) and self-described as a “late coming of age story”, drenched in nostalgia, melancholy and the kind of strange experiences only a misunderstood millennial could have; the album effortlessly blends a diverse melting pot of breezy alt-indie, psychedelic pop, dreamy lo-fi chill, indie-rock and expansive cinematic sounds. It’s Findlay at her genre-melting finest, and a sharp, tasteful insight into her unique artistic psyche; a perfect representation of her impeccable alternative sound.

From the ballad Talk No More to the lightness of Smile, an invitation to smile through a declaration of love, the tracks in the album are wonderful snapshots that strike a chord. The title track talks about the desire of a father for his children to explore the opportunities that life offers with enthusiasm, The Hole crystalizes an inner moment of crisis and in Back To The Sun, written during the worst moment of the Pandemic, the loss of loved ones is the central theme. Coexisting with sounds from the previous decades, the 90’s pop scene strongly influences the album. From the new wave in Telematic Love to Me, Myselfie & I which ironizes on one of our most frequent daily habits, to the punk theme in Syd & Nancy and Drum Machine, which is “an encounter between the traditional British scene and Rancid”

Expedition is a collaboration between sound artist The Dead Mauriacs (aka Olivier Prieur) and collage artist Evan Crankshaw, based on their mutual interest in treating exotica as both a subject and a material. Evan Crankshaw's 2015 collage book, also entitled Expedition, is assembled and collaged by hand from a vast archive of popular exoticist printed materials, and explores recurring motifs in expedition narratives, simultaneously evoking and alienating the exoticist fantasy.

In 2018, the book was interpreted for a live performance at Festival BBMix (Boulognes-Billancourt, France) in collaboration with The Dead Mauriacs, who created a complete exotica-concrète score accompanying projected images of the book & live narration. That collaboration can be heard on this album, an armchair-travel virtual-voyage to the heart of an imagined actual elsewhere, stitched from pieces of narcotizing fabulisms, disturbing actualities, and incomprehensibilities – an interior excursion into the exotic immensity.

"Mulid El-Magnoun” addresses the term ‘moulid’ and its various manifestations it takes on in Egyptian folk music. Here, the word ‘moulid’ does not exclusively refer to Sufi moulids: rather also the intertwined artistic spaces that lie between the moulid in its Sufi sense and what it carries in distinctive rhythmic patterns, musical instruments, and artistic forms, and the moulid as a musical genre originating from folk weddings that enjoy special aesthetics and unique styles.

Through this project, Yunis tries to explore the spaces where those two concepts collide through producing an original musical composition which reflects his own vision and understanding of ‘moulids’ as well as the manifestations the word carries within him.

About Yunis:

Yunis (b. 1994 - Kafr El-Dauwar) is an Egyptian musician and music Producer. He has produced two albums until now; «The Blue Djinn Dance» which was his first solo album, and «Ya Khal» which was a collaborative work with Ibrahim X. He is also a co-founder of Kafr El-Dauwar Records, an independent digital record label interested in contemporary and experimental music, founded by a group of young artists with the aim of creating a musical movement in the city, by supporting a group of artists to start their music from Kafr El-Dauwar with the potential of going with the music to the farthest point it could arrive.

In his music, Yunis seeks inspiration from the popular Egyptian folkloric heritage, which boasts many instruments, tools, and musical styles. He then reads and analyzes the musical legacy and presents it with the forms of his contemporary time.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll love. You’ll die. Billy Cobb’s The S.S. Krill is a pirate love story. Running through just about every type of sea shanty, the album carries you through the waves of Johnny and Joel’s relationship, one yearning for the land and one yearning for the sea.

The Brilliant Adventure E.P. CD has four unheard tracks from the 1.OUTSIDE era; ‘johnny Downloader’, an early version of‘I’M Afraid OF Americans’ recorded during the sessions with Brian Eno for the album and mixed in November 1994 but not released on a Bowie album until 1997’s Earthling, an alternative single mix of ‘I Have NOT Been TO Oxford Town’ and two tracks, 1.OUTSIDE’S ‘A Small Plot OF Land’ and the Jacques Brel cover ‘MY Death’, performed by Bowie and pianist Mike Garson at a fundraiser for the New York Public Theater at the Shakespeare Festival in New York on 18th September, 1995.

The CDTOYE.P. (‘you’ve GOT IT Made With ALL THE TOYS’)features the previously unheard‘SHADOW MAN (vocal AND Piano Mix)’, an alternativestripped backmix of theTOYalbum track, along with the unreleased live versions of‘IDIG EVERYTHING’and‘THE London BOYS’recorded at the final Glastonbury warm-upshow at theRoseland Ballroom, New York on 19thJune,2000. The E.P.also contains three tracks‘YOU’VE GOT A Habit OF Leaving’(radio Edit), ‘silly BOY Blue’(alternative Ending MIX)and‘CAN’T Help Thinking About Me’(live Mark Radcliffe Show BBC Radio 1 SESSION),previously only available as streaming singles andwhich aremaking theirphysicaldebut.

In 2020, in Tokyo, a city that continues to loop between demolition and reconstruction, this is the rebel music that should be also called the 2020 version of Pink Fl oyd’s tribal insanity, all created at 100 BPM, under the theme of people who keep taking dance steps forever.