CD 3397 Items

It seems unlikely that Where To Now Records would want to release something made in a shack on a river conservation property outside Melbourne Victoria. I've attempted to make the music that I hear in the dance clubs I dream about. I've never really been to a dance club.. but I'm trying to be sophisticated.” Club music reimagined in an off grid Australian floodplain, of course this is something we’d want to release. Thankfully the accompanying music to the above sentence submitted by Timothy Brown aka TKB is every bit as intriguing as you might hope. ‘Dream Nightclub’ is a truly downbeat and dubbed journey through murky and swamped fourth world bass ambience, and longing, freeform minimal electronics. TKB’s drum programming throughout is primitive, minimal, and unnervingly off kilter - shuffling its way through a world which waits… There’s a palpable sense of spirituality lurking low level below Timothy’s electronic works, where ambient scapes move from the deeply minimal, to the lush sublime, to the dense and agitated seamlessly, all underpinned with this submerged experimentalism - conversing with the still oddities which lurk the swamps and plains that consume Timothy’s day to day. “The floodplain below my house is full at the moment. It's serene with the mountains behind, but as soon as you step outside the air is throbbing with the sound of frogs…” Seeming to draw influence from the minimal pulse of Jan Jelinek, the fourth world ambience of Jon Hassel, and the open Dub experimentalism of Early On-U-Sound acts like The Missing Brazilians and African Head Charge, TKB has channeled these experimental strands into something truly dreamlike - a submerged trip which is shrouded in a dense fog…

As a musician he plays alto saxophone, guitar, percussion and synthesizer with several bands and an expanding collective of like minded artists. Being a self-taught musician, his sound work is an extension of his visual work and his music is a mixture of joyful noise and simple naive melodies.

Seljuk has performed and recorded with artists such as Otomo Yoshihide, Senyawa, Hada Benedito Mateo, Eiko Ishibashi, Mitsuaki Matsumoto, Pisitakun, Yuen Chee Wai, Dharma, DJ Sniff, Maximilian Glass, Duncan Bruce, Hilary Jeffery and Hayden Chisholm. He has also worked with many theatre practitioners & performance artists in India making music for theatre as well as curating shows & workshops with actors and performers from around India.

The recordings on Cardboard Castles were made at Seljuk's studio in Kochi between 2016 and 2021 and were mostly instant compositions and single take recordings created in collaboration with a number of fellow travellers who've passed through the studio. At the inception of the album's creation Seljuk sought to reflect on what freedom means and what the musical limitations of this are, and how his involvement as a free improviser might project fixed ideas onto a listener. He wanted to use an improvisational approach that focussed on presenting ideas with a beauty inherent in their sound, coalescing these into song form. Cardboard Castles is the resulting album and application of these concepts.

We at Hive Mind feel privileged to have worked with Seljuk to bring you these deeply personal and highly idiosyncratic works which really do defy easy description. Ranging from strange and wonky electronic improvisations, gentle acoustic instrumentals such as the lush opener with the input of the Cochin String Orchestra, through experiments in traditional Indian song, this album will keep you guessing. Everything appears touched with a mischievous sense of playfulness that's maybe reflected in the face of the grinning camel that adorns the sleeve. We're sure you'll agree there's plenty to delight the listener on this strange dream of an album, Seljuk's first to receive a physical release.'

The CD version comes in a gatefold card digisleeve in an edition of 250 copies

Seljuk Rustum: Piano, Synthesizer, Sequencer, Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Saxophone, Voice, Percussion Sekhar Sudhir: Violin on Tracks 5, 7&8, Acoustic Guitar on Track 4, Mandolin & Melodica on Track 3 Akshay Ashokan: Electric Guitar on Track 4 Joffy Chirayath: Drums on Tracks 3 & 10 Cochin String Orchestra: Strings on Track 1 (Thanks to Duncan Roy Bruce)

Produced, Engineered & Mixed by Seljuk Rustum Tracks 9,4 & 8 Edited by Sekhar Sudhir Track 3 voice from the Alan Lomax Archive from recordings made in Kerala in the 1970s to document the Malayam language Track 2 was composed for BUS (a theatre performance Written & Directed by Firoz Khan

Album Art: Unknown Artist (found on the walls near Palayam Market, Kozhikode).

The Exciters began as the Masterettes, a girl group formed by high school friends Brenda Reid, Carol Johnson, Lillian Walker, and Sylvia Wilbur. A single was cut for Brooklyn’s Le Sage label before Wilbur was replaced by Brenda’s husband, Herb Rooney, and after auditioning for Leiber & Stoller, the Exciters recorded the international smash ‘Tell Him’, a song so popular that it spawned foreign language renditions. Our edition of this marvellous debut LP includes the spectacular follow-up hit, ‘Do Wah Diddy,’ another immortal nugget of irresistible pop soul. Bright, light grooves for your dancing feet!

Modal Analysis proudly presents Het Zweet - Archives Volume 1: 1982-1988, a compilation of the Dutch outsider legend painstakingly picked from over 100 hours of unheard tape. An early electronic pioneer who deployed an array of homemade instruments alongside synths and a tape recorder to craft his searching sound, Marien Van Oers occupies a lonely branch on the tree of this music's early efforts, sliding between pounding industrial grooves, ambient fragments, and extended, entrancing compositions bridging this divide. Most closely akin to Muslimgauze, Test Dept. or Fad Gadget, who shared his outsider practice while remaining thoroughly entrenched in contemporary sounds, Het Zweet is striking for his diversity and for its meticulous composition, formed of carefully arranged layers of sonic detritus culled from his collection of homemade devices and electronic distortions. Finally rising to greater exposure since his death in 2013, Modal Analysis passionately continues this mission with our first volume of archives dedicated to the memory of this bold innovator gone before his time.

French electroacoustic veteran Lionel Marchetti returns to Room 40 with a special release composed in Australia and recorded telematically between three separate locations..

For his second Room 40 release following 2018's "The Last Days of Reality", Marchetti again collaborates with Aussie chamber ensemble Decibel. He worked out what he wanted to do in 2019 while visiting Australia, and devised a way of composing the piece that avoided a traditional score, instead working with conversation, listening and experimentation. After rehearsing with different instrumentation and imaginatively placed speakers, he adapted what he calls the 'partition concrète’ using his various studio techniques. But when he was due to record the final version of the piece, he was hit with a problem - Australia was in pandemic lockdown, and Marchetti was in France. So a special recording method was developed; some musicians were based in Melbourne, some in Perth, and Marchetti joined from Europe, everyone was connected via conferencing software that was adjusted to improve sound quality and latency.

Marchetti worked into the final recordings in his studio, adding the finishing touches and making sure it sounded as close to his original vision as possible. The final version clocks in at almost 37 minutes in length, and is as impressive as you'd hope from the story of its construction. Decibel's work from two different sides of Australia is at the center of the recording, but it's Marchetti's smart, restrained processes that have us coming back for more. If you're not completely concentrating you might miss it, but the small glitches and spacial effects that Marchetti provides gives the orchestral elements a distant charm. It's not completely acoustic music, and it's bending the possibilities of the sonic presentation just as Marchetti did with the recording process itself. He finishes off the album with a shorter two-minute composition recorded for Decibel's "2 Minutes from Home" project, a hand-scored piece that he wrote on crumpled paper using ink and white-out. Each member of the orchestra recorded their part separately in their own home, and the result is beguiling - otherworldly and tonally exhilarating without being overwhelming or overstaying its welcome.

Absorbingly paced and inventive electro-acoustic/concrète chicanery by Melbourne’s clarinet improvisor Aviva Endean, giving the ear something to chase with her micro-to-macroscopic proprioceptions.

Dynamically recorded across multiple spaces and hugely variegated in texture and tone, ‘Moths & Stars’ is titled for the artist’s attempt to zoom the ear’s eye between natural intimacy and the sidereal. Fucking with fundamentals of time and space she uses canny microphone placement and feedback systems to poetically mess with the listener’s sense of place and atmospheric pressure in a way crossing lines with the sound arts of Leila Bordreuil and Teresa Winter. In the process Aviva evinces a an underlying narrative by meshing and wrapping perceptions of the abstract with more palpably human vocal tones in a very instinctive and sensually haptic manner where it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the surprising folds and discreet dimensions she delves into.

“The microphones became extensions of my instruments, getting right up close to capture the microscopic, creating tones of feedback which captivated me, or zooming out to capture multiple acoustic spaces. My recording and composing process became more intuitive and explorative, another form of play. I could start creating and see where the piece would take me, and notice how new relationships were formed as I folded multiple time/spaces in and over each other.

Sometimes I would begin by gleaning sounds from my archives, and listening to how they could be reimagined and transformed alongside the discoveries my microphones and instruments were finding. In ‘Nightwork’ I wanted to find a way to revisit some microtonal humming that I had recorded for a sound design project, and then discovered the Leslie speaker as a way to spin my bass clarinet sound around the microphones, creating bass tones emerging as waves out of the densely layered pitches. Sometimes a new instrumental fascination, such as the e-bows and magnets on ‘Mirror Signals’ or the binaural microphone feedback on ‘Moths & Stars’ would call for me to find further layers of clarinets and field recordings to be woven into their story.”

Subtly hallucinatory, Burroughsian field recording collage by CM Von Hauswolff and Eric Pauser’s Phauss, stitching abstract meta-narratives from the ether of mid ‘80s Switzerland, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand, The Philippines and USA, Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Benin and Nigeria, with assistance of engineer Zbigniew Karkowski. Reissued for first time in 35 years.

“Audiodrome collects together two discreet works that sit somewhere between field recording, chance composition and experimental soundscape. Both pieces pre-date the widespread arrival of field recording as a creative practice, and expand outward the work that had been developed by musique concréte and other experimental music approaches concerned with the intersections of found sound and composition. Both works were devised using the same working methodology, whereby an alarm would sound every few days and wherever and whenever it sounded the pair would start recording their surroundings. Those raw material became the basis for the pieces.

The first composition Zürich - Zürich is a piece that traces a line around the world, Phauss travelling on a round the world air ticket stopping only in countries where conflict was present. This unsettling journey became a meditation on the evolving state of the world in those moments. Voices, traffic, cafes, radios, transportation system and other incidental environments float into one another in a kind of stream of (temporally incongruous) consciousness.

The second work Alger - Lagos brings to mind some of Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs tape cut-ups. Street musicians are splice against bursts of radio, roadside conversations and searing blasts of industrial noise captured from aircraft and other unfamiliar sources. It is an unsteadying journey where even the sounds of the everyday feel alien and repositioned. The sounds call to us prompting a sensing that is at its heart utterly fascinated, and fascinating.

The edition includes a book featuring an exhaustive collection of photographs, documents and artworks made by Von Hausswolff and Pauser during their journeys undertaken to complete each of the compositions. Many of these images and artworks have never been published previously.”

Formed in the early 1980s,​ Phauss is Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Erik Pauser.

"Von Hausswolff and Pauser, who both operated across sound and installation, used Phauss as a means for deconstructing ideas of composition, situationalism, site-specific works and extended performance methodologies. Across the second half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, they made connections, through their travels, outward from their homeland into scenes and communities that stretched from the Middle East, through North America and into Asia.

Like their travels, their ways of approaching the work they made was similarly wide-reaching and innately curious. They worked with often quite strict conceptual structures within which they were able to unlock entirely new ways of considering composition and also the material production of sound, through performance, through iteration and through considered experimentation which allowed for failure, just as much as success.

Nya Sverige - Nothing But The Truth is a recording made in the United States whilst the pair were undertaking an exhaustive tour in 1991 alongside Hafler Trio and Zbigniew Karkowski. This, now legendary, tour was both arduous and rewarding. Living in a van for many weeks at a time, travelling between cities with the most modest of means meant Phauss came to know a very particular vision of the United States, one that existed below plain view. Their’s was an experience had at the rawest edges of cities.

Equally the performances they gave, from which this edition is assembled, were raw and quite frankly dangerous. Fire on stage, sparks flying from short circuiting electronics and intense physical rituals guided so much of their work during this tour and looking back at bootleg videos from the time it’s difficult to imagine the work being able to be presented in the modern world.

One of the flyers from their tour reads ‘Extreme Swedish Industrial’, and as familiar as those words might appear now, in 1991 they held a very different resonance. They were unfamiliar terms of reference and the intensity of Phauss’s music maintains that unknowability to this day. This is a profoundly individual work and sets the stage for a generation of musicians who followed them."

The Aleksi Heinola Quartet presents a new take on vintage hard-bop with their latest record, featuring original compositions and reinterpretations of works by iconic jazz greats. Impeccable musicianship, groovy swing, and a distinct sense of style are on display, with Gábor Bolla on tenor sax, Jukkis Uotila on piano, and Daniel Franck on double bass. This quartet date is not to be missed!

Sometimes you light a match and you cant stop the fire. "Hangout Galaxy; ALT DMN EDN," pronounced Alternate Dimension Edition, began with an idea. Work with some live tracks, new songs, and maybe a remix. Seriously. And then I made the mistake of telling Alex Hanner, founder and curator of El Gran E Records, about finding a remix of ONE of my songs. He kind of only contacted and roped in 22 different artists to take some tracks and drive them in their own style and artistic approach.

3 continents, 6 countries, and 22 tracks later, a small idea became a double CD that once again uses physical formats like the vinyl release of Hangout Galaxy to present the dark and the light. The range of sounds, voices, hit every emotional state.

Broken into two parts, StarLight & MoonLight, each CD drifts between dueling vocal performances from friends and completely broken apart tracks, built up into something different for an evolving listening experience. It's a large cross section of the El Gran E Records universe on full display in high fidelity mastering by C Money Burns.

ALT DMN EDN features everything from noise and abstract to beautiful ambience with faint pulsations of the ether. Hip hop artists include Thorts, Nicolas Lafforgue, OlaTunde, Haze Thy Puppet Master, Jack Vaul, and Tommy Jordan, all these unique voices that rejuvenate and reform to create Starlight, the first CD. Amongst individual remixes by cQTK (pronounced cal-que-tec), there are also unique unintended collaborations that come about such as the the song, Deliberate Sorrow, with the prolific Joel Siméus. There are also incredible sprawling reinventions by Hieroglych, storyinsoil, k-the-i???, EJ Fry, who each take the controls and navigate into new spaces.

Sxint Chris delivers his first work of 2021 with this new album, "Roaring 20's". This project serves as a reflection of the chaotic 2020's so far, paying homage to the 1920's Harlem Renaissance Movement. Chris stays true to his lyrical & family roots, giving the audience something to think on - this time over Arkin-produced, jazz-laced beats.



The CD version will be limited to only 120 copies!

Some new heat from frequent HHE collaborator M.W.P. with Hus Kingpin! Check what M.W.P. has to say about this project...



“This Remix Album is an ode to Hus Kingpin and some of the work we have done over the years…



I linked up with Wavo about 8 years ago. SmooVth and him had heard some of my tracks on Soundcloud of all places, and wrote me regarding my music. I was quickly captivated by their style and demeanor, so it was a no brainer for me to start working with the two.



The first record I did with Hus was a Remix track of “Time Is Runnin’ Out” which was the opening track on my “New Horizon” album featuring Guilty Simpson. His verse totally blew me away, and from that day forward he became one of my favorite emcees and still is to this day.



From that point on we’ve done quite a bit of work together. Both for his projects and my own. So it was only right that I gave this album of his the M.W.P. treatment. I will forever feel blessed that he helped me gain some momentum in the game and I feel privileged to have worked with such a talented artist as him.



Hopefully this will not be the last you hear from M.W.P. and Hus Kingpin, but for now enjoy my interpretation of Bolio: Reze Pelo Rio.”



The CD version will be limited to only 150 copies!

We have the BCC in the house! Brand new solo project from Tek (Smif-N-Wessun) produced by Big Head Science & The Architect. Featuring heavy hitters like Raekwon, Estee Nack, Supreme Cerebral, Peedi Crakk and more!



One-time pro press as always of course of only 125 joints and that's it!

"blvck Switzerland" was the third collaborative release of 2020 between A-Plus and The Architect. Souls of Mischief / Hieroglyphics legend A-Plus lays his poetically driven narrative over another barrage of Architect bangers. "blvck Switzerlvnd" shows the evolving nature of the artistry these two master craftsmen create together. Nothing but dope Hip-Hop! Features include Ras Kass, Planet Asia and Tajai!



HHE has teamed up with The Architect to do a one-time limited pro press for the CD headz. Limited to only 125 copies and that's it!

Hip Hop’s golden era constituent, Queens’ native, the godfather of Mafioso rap, legendary and influential emcee, Kool G Rap, broke out in the late 80s and early 90s as one half of the duo with DJ Polo. Together, Kool G Rap and DJ Polo released three undisputed classic albums; beginning with their debut album, Road To The Riches (1989), Wanted: Dead or Alive (1990) and Live and Let Die (1992).

Simultaneously, G Rap and DJ Polo gained notoriety as members of the Juice Crew, whose noteworthy membership includes DJ Marley Marl, Big Daddy Kane, Masta Ace and Roxanne Shante At the height of hip-hop’s golden age, The Juice Crew was the definition of innovative and not only influenced the culture as a whole (style, lyricism, creativity), but also impressed the importance of style, substance and technique upon the next wave of street ambassadors.

After a successful run with DJ Polo and the Juice Crew, G Rap embarked on a solo-career, with his solo debut, 4, 5, 6, (1995), which was preceded by Roots of Evil (1998) and The Giancana Story (2002). Since then, we’ve only been intermittingly blessed by bodies of work from the Kool Genius Of Rap; Half a Klip (2008), Riches, Royalty, Respect (2011), Return Of The Don (2017) and Son Of G Rap with 38 Spesh (2018).

Now, the recent National Hip-Hop Museum inductee returns with his first solo-album in
five-years with Last Of A Dying Breed, entirely produced by Domingo, which features collaborations with AZ, NEMS, Vado, 38 Spesh, Royal Flush and Big Daddy Kane; with production supplied by Domingo. Kool G Rap’s "Last Of A Dying Breed" is now available on limited edition vinyl, digipack CD and cassette.

Fabiano do Nascimento, one of the most popular and talented guitarists/composers in the Brazilian scene today, and Itibere Zwarg, the backbone of the Hermeto Pascoal Group, will be releasing a new album as a collective!! The new album will be released worldwide from rings!! ---- "Fabiano do Nascimento, the guitar virtuoso who shared Brazilian music with Sam Gendel, has completed a beautiful recording with a collective by bassist/composer Itibere Zwarg, who also received praise by Pino Palladino. It is a truly creative and inspiring album that beautifully captures the empathy that exists between Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro." - Masaaki Hara (rings)

Five CD set. The Gorge '98 is a two show audio box set from 7/16/98 and 7/17/98 at The Gorge Amphitheater in George, WA - a natural open-air venue with stunning views of the Columbia River Gorge, and onsite camping under the stars. Capturing the band at a summertime peak at this storied high desert venue, The Gorge '98 celebrates this idyllic two-night stand across 30 songs on the band's first archival CD release since 'St. Louis '93 (2017) and The Baker's Dozen (2018). Recorded live by Paul Languedoc, mixed from multitrack by Jon Altschiller, and mastered by Fred Kevorkian, The Gorge '98 is must-hear Phish.

Jorge Ben is surely one of the world’s greatest all-round musical artists. He is internationally renowned and vastly influential as a vocalist, musician, performer and phenomenal songwriter. Famed for penning ‘Taj Mahal’, which was the source for Rod Stewart’s ‘Do You Think I’m Sexy?’, and also ‘Mas Que Nada’, one of Brazil’s most iconic anthems, Jorge Ben is a powerful musical force. A simple glance at his impressive back catalogue reveals a master of his craft, with a depth and quality that is seldom paralleled.

For 'Tudo Ben' we take a side-step, focusing on Jorge Ben’s songs that have been performed by other artists. Complied by Mr Bongo, Greg Caz and Sean Marquand, this collection features the Brazilian legends Elza Soares, Claudette Soares, and Wilson Simonal, alongside prodigious artists such as Marijô, Os Brazoes, and Doris Monteiro to name but a few. The selection covers a wide range of genres including samba, bossa nova, MPB and batacuda workouts. Many of the songs featured have become staples in Mr Bongo DJ sets over the years and are some of our most loved classics. As with many of history’s great songwriters, Jorge Ben’s songs transcend genres and styles, they can be covered and reinterpreted, yet the quality of the writing holds up to the standard of the original.

In the dark days of the mid to late 2000s when the end of vinyl seemed inevitable, Mr Bongo released 'Tudo Ben' on CD only. Years later, we finally get to put this right and present it for the first time on vinyl with alternative artwork by Mr Krum.

No 226/4000. A couple if scratches in front cover.

This one takes us back! We originally reissued Waltel Branco's 'Meu Balanço' in 1995, it was one of the first releases to come out on Mr Bongo. It is a much-requested title with original copies becoming ever more-scarce and the price tag increasingly rising, so it feels fitting to present this stunning record once again for all to enjoy.

Waltel Branco was born in Paranaguá, Brazil in 1929 and died in Rio de Janeiro in 2018. During his triumphant career he accumulated an impressive musical portfolio. A true maestro who from the 1950s onwards appeared on productions as a guitarist, writer, conductor, composer, and arranger. He worked with some of the greats of Brazilian music including Elis Regina, Dom Um Romao, Bossa Três, Marcos Valle and Tony Bizarro to name just a few.

'Meu Balanço' was originally released on CBS Records Brazil in 1975. It is Brazilian big band, orchestrated jazz-funk at its finest. Echoing the library and film productions created in Europe and the USA at the time, it also displays the hallmarks of Waltel’s heritage with distinct threads of Brazilian flavour running throughout. The musicians on the record include under-the-radar players that were the backbone of the Brazilian music industry in the 1970s including Luizão Maia on bass, Edmundo Maciel on trombone and Paulinho Braga on drums.

The album flirts between jazz-funk, cinematic library excursions, breaks and beats, easy-listening, and 70s cop show instrumentals. It is a breezy ride into Waltel's world, wonderfully nostalgic and of another time and place, yet snippets of the production echo the beats of contemporary hip-hop iconic artists such as Madlib, knxwledge and The Alchemist.

Spanish ska-Oi! band Decibelios were initially around from 1980 to 1990 and they released a handful of albums during that decade. They returned in 2014 with a new album and tour. Recorded live 25.02.2017 in Texcoco, Mexico at the "Festival Comunion Punk & Skin". Limited edition of 300 copies with printed innersleeve and CD of the complete concert.

Heralded by the “Soul Drum” 12” EP (scep507, 2022), Gerardo Frisina’s new double record “Joyful Sound” represents another step forward on his ongoing travel towards new musical paths. Joyful sounds narrate a journey made of wisely distilled notes, bright and sometimes mysterious atmospheres, harmonies that wander through shadows, silences, and lights. A chameleonic Gerardo enchants with every release, mixing jazz, Latin, Afro-Cuban sounds, oriental fragrances, electronic beats, tribal percussions, funky variations and, to summarize, elegant symphonic arrangements with refined mastery. “Joyful Sound” once again sees the participation of the late Enzo Frassi (double bass), Fabrizio Bernasconi (piano, Rhodes), Gendrickson Mena (trumpet, piano), Alfonso Deidda (sax, flute) and Ernesto Lopez (drums, percussion), with the addition of Piero Perelli on drums and Giovanni Guerretti on piano, Hammond and Rhodes. This new record, carefully orchestrated and produced by Gerardo, required over a year of intense work, however it is worth every second of its 75 minutes of music. As the great Charles Mingus once said, “Play it in the key of your soul”. Without a doubt, Gerardo always gives his soul in full!

Marcellus Rayvon Register AKA Babyface Ray, is an American rapper from Detroit, Michigan. In 2010, Babyface Ray joined Team Eastside alongside fellow Detroit rapper, Peezy. Between 2015 and 2017 he released 3 mixtapes followed by an EP, “Unfuckwitable,” which featured EST Gee, Moneybagg Yo, & Kash Doll and charted on the Billboard 200. His debut full-length album, “FACE,” was released in January 2022 and featured appearances by Yung Lean, Icewear Vezzo, G Herbo, 42 Dugg, Pusha T, Wiz Khalifa, and Landstrip Chip. “face” peaked at 21 on the Billboard 200 & #2 on the Independent Albums chart. Later in 2022, he appeared in the 2022 XXL Freshman class.

теплота is the London-based duo of Grundik Kasyansky & Tom Wheatley. Their work interrogates the haptic, social and liberating relationships with technologies old and new; using feedback synthesizer and computer-acoustic bass, they fuse a spontaneous interplay orthogonally over cyclical structures, with techno as perpetual fulcrum.

Following their debut Heat/work on Cafe Oto’s TakuRoku label and the monthly ЭС research series, Skynned will be landing on Accidental Meetings. A match made in heaven with the forward-thinking label a perfect fit, adding to their already esteemed catalogue. Half techno, half free jazz, the music is both hypnotic and open-ended, relentless and ephemeral.

Accidental Meetings return with their yearly compilation, dark, mysterious and full spectrum bangers this time round DJ Support SO FAR from: Ben UFO, Shy One, Surgeon, Danielle, OKO DJ, 96 Back, Laksa, Solid Blake, Yushh, Giant Swan, Ciel, Ziur, Om Unit, Jon K, Lena Willikens, Stenny + more.

Before Mahjun (of which Souffle Continu reissued, in 2016, the two albums released on Saravah), there was… Maajun. Five musicians (Jean-Pierre Arnoux, Cyril and Jean-Louis Lefebvre, Alain Roux and Roger Scaglia) and three times as many instruments at the service of an electric-poetic guerrilla group moulded from folk and blues. The group’s unique album, “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde” evokes an (imaginary) association of Frank Zappa and Jacques Higelin, of Sonny Sharrock and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. Under these conditions, Long Live Death!

“The most French of all the French groups, determined to take Maurice Chevalier’s place in American hearts.” This was how Rock&Folk presented Mahjun in 1977. So be it. But when “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde”, was issued, it was 1971, and the name, though the same group, was still spelled Maajun. So, let’s look back at the story. At the end of the sixties, five blues fans decided to form a French group ready to break down the barriers: Jean-Pierre Arnoux (drums, vibraphone, saxophone), Cyril Lefebvre (guitar, organ), Jean-Louis Lefebvre (bass, violin, guitar, vocals), Alain Roux (saxophone, flute, harmonica, vocals) and Roger Scaglia (guitar, vocals). This was Maajun, and Vivre la mort du vieux monde would be their only album, but which would (nevertheless) be followed by those of Mahjun created later by Lefebvre (Jean-Louis) and Arnoux. Recorded for the Vogue label, “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde” would disturb a number of people. This is mostly due to the lyrics, many of which were written by Gérald Escot-Bocanegra, who, while summoning the spirit of Lautréamont and Rimbaud, turned the Maajun musicians on to rock and free jazz. Add a bit of politics into the mix, and the release of the album was delayed for several months. But then, wasn’t it worth waiting for? Because “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde”, a real concept-album, is an important and iconoclastic statement made directly in the face of (francophone) dreamers of all countries. Over heavy guitar riffs, psychedelic interludes or fantasy-fuelled digressions, Maajun built mazes on the advice of alchemists known only to themselves before heading off on a long march on the “cracking walls”. It was an ambitious project, but Maajun could handle it, going so far as to proclaim: “Tomorrow will be a huge party!” But as we can see “tomorrow”, is now!

Ill Sugi has been DJ’ing in Tokyo since 2006, and has gained in international popularity, particularly throughout Europe and North America. In addition to working with prominent artists in Japan, such as Budamunk on the 2016 Urbnet release of “Spirit of the Golden Era”. Ill Sugi has released beat releases on Cold Busted, Radio Juicy, and Jazzy Sport and collaborated with the likes of Bugseed and San Francisco’s Dregs One. On December 9th, 2022 Ill Sugi will release his new 10 track instrumental album available via Urbnet entitled ‘ZYPressen’. The album features his signature laid back and dreamy rhythmic sounds. "Keep an eye on ILL Sugi, he represents the real from the golden past to the best of now and beyond. Don't sleep!” - NTS Radio

First time officially reissue, sourced from the original master tapes in a new edition, the Milan based imprint Dialogo, returns with this compilation published in Italy by RCA Victor in 1962 - a precious historical document of some important international jazz and pop artists who came to Italy and left their marks, influencing the generations of those golden years. The RCA artists on this LP record have only two things in common: “Inter-continental Airport Rome-Fiumicino” stamped on their passports and a great love for Italy. As a tribute to the country which gave them a friendly welcome and where they spent unforgettable vacations and reaped enthusiastic applause, all of them chose to sing songs in Italian or perform - in the case of Perez Prado - a number of outstanding Italian hits. The dazzling trumpets and electrifying rhythms of Perez Prado, the captivating voice of Helen Merrill, rightly considered the top-notch white jazz singer by critics over the world, the young, all-time best-sellers, Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka, the fantastic trumpet of Chet Baker and his mysterious swinging style of singing, and lastly Antonio Prieto, the Latin-American singer-songwriter who wrote “LA Novia”, are the guest stars of this “passport TO Italy”, which, more than a record, is a full-fledged musical show, with a vast assortment of voices, of musical styles and songs. The Italian pronunciation of these North and South American recording artists is virtually perfect and particularly praiseworthy, if for no other reason than for the effort they have made in getting around, in just a few days, the difficult twists and turns of the Italian language. Their accent is naturally somewhat exotic but it only adds to the charm and the originality of the interpretations. The “show” opens with the already classic “arrivederci Roma”, which, though turned into an overpowering “chunga” by Perez Prado, has kept all its original melody intact. Prado, the wizard of Latin-American dance music, is an extremely refined blender of sounds and rhythms, and without any difficulty can take even a Neapolitan song, change it into a mambo and adapt it to his orchestra. In “guaglione”, for example, the “corruption” comes off perfectly and testifies to the everfresh inventiveness and the unmistakable personality of the Cuban-born pianist arranger. Helen Merrill prefers quality over quantity and so has made very few records but they already occupy a place of their own in the annals of jazz. She consented to record two popular ballads only because Armando Trovajoli, the most qualified exponent of Italian jazz as well as a far-out modernist, was to conduct the orchestra. Furthermore, the two songs, “nessuno AL Mondo” and “estate” are particularly congenial to her musical temperament, for she is most of all concerned with creating subtle and seductive moods, making an intelligent use of her vocal resources in that she tries to “add” her voice to the orchestra as though it were another instrument. Canadian-born Paul Anka, by now a regular member of the exclusive club of top-selling vocal artists of America, presents one of his own songs, “ogni Giorno” originally entitled “love ME Warm AND Tender”, the most requested hit in his present-day repertoire. And the young singing star’s interpretation of “voglio Sapere” (“i’d Like TO Know”) once again makes clear why his name became a permanent fixture as all-time best-seller. Neil Sedaka is another representative of the younger generation of American singers. When he was still in high school in Brooklyn, Neil became a close friend of one of schoolmates: Howard Greenfield. The two of them wrote numerous songs together for school shows: Neil handled the music and Howard the words. Their collaboration proved extremely fruitful, and they were soon to make their debut as professional songwriters with two hits of the calibre of “stupid Cupid” and “falling”. The Sedaka-Greenfield team, which in only a few year time has become one of the best-known, presents, in Italian, two songs which in their original tongue have already climbed to the top: “esagerata” (“little Devil”), translated by Leo Chiosso, and “UN Giorno Inutile” (“I Must BE Dreaming”), translated by Gentile and De Simoni. After Sedaka comes one of the big names of cool jazz: Chet Baker. Trumpet-player and singer, he proves here for the nth time that the names “Golden Trumpet” and “Angel Voice”, given him not only by his fans but by the crites as well, are in no way exaggerated. With an at once restless, desperate and almost possessed musical style, Chet sings and plays two songs which he himself wrote: “IL MIO Domani” and “SO CHE TI Perdero”. His reserved, curiously, precarious and profoundly dramatic way of singing, virtually the mirror-image of his life, is the same in both songs and makes them seem almost unconsciously autobiographical. The “show” then closes with Antonio Prieto. Precisely because of his Latin origins (he was born in Chile, but is Argentine by adoption), it is perhaps easier for him than for the others to express himself in Italian. As is well-known, the name of Prieto soared to the Olympic heights of popular music with “LA Novia” which he wrote in collaboration with his brother, Joaquin. He is a typically Latin singer with a warm, melodious and romantic voice, tinged with melancholy, and on more than one occasion he has shown that he thoroughly understands the tastes of the public. Listen to his two most recent compositions: “papà”, written in collaboration with singer-songwriter Sergio Endrigo, the author of “aria DI Neve”, and “baciami” and... judge for yourselves.

Eka Faune offers a surprising mix of Asian cultures, shamanism and post-punk in the form of a record called Healing of the Nation. The band merges dark mantras, hypnotic rhythms, ethnic samples and the acid sounds of Seika Faune. Delphine Poupard's voice and Robin Plastre's sax are added to produce a haunting music, dark and luminous at the same time, alternating dance and trance, taking the listener far inside... Similarly to the other albums by Eka Faune, Seika first recorded his drums and sounds machines as well as his sampler-sequencer in one take. Then he added the instruments and voices. Sax, bass, sarod, tambourine and vocals accompany loops captured on the streets of Delhi, the mountains of Asia or old acid house vinyls.

Eka Faune is a musical project based in Nantes, France, initiated in 2014 by the artist Guyseika. The project evolves under the influence of guitarists, cellists, singers or dancers who join the band for a concert, a recording, a tour - or more. Over the years, Amélie from Breedz Insane, Steph from Modules Étranges, Budwarrior or Vincent Roy, have taken part in the project. Recorded in 2021, the album Healing of the Nation is a deeply thought-out answer to the crisis we are all going through. It offers a way to heal from it: sounds coming straight out of a feverish cave located between the Himalayas and Detroit bewitch us into quite a trip.

Plastic Carved Out In The Shape Of The Music compiles all the non-album releases of the 1990s by Dunedin free improvisation quartet-cum-trio, Sandoz Lab Technicians. One of many hermetic enclaves of creative endeavour in the nineties NZ underground, Sandoz Lab Technicians are James Kirk (also of King Loser, The Stumps, Black Boned Angel, Renderizors, etc.), Nathan Thompson (Sleep, Renderizors, Eye, Expansion Bay, etc.), Tim Cornelius (Sky Blue Lodge, Three Forks, Ray Off, etc.) and, for their first few years, Mark Curragh.

Like many of their peers, Sandoz Lab Technicians also ran their own label, Blunt Instrumentals, on which they released lathe-cuts of their own music, both with Sandoz, and in other configurations (The Cornelius Brothers, Unspecified, etc.); once word had spread, particularly thanks to the release of their debut album on Siltbreeze, their music also leaked out via an international network of small labels dedicated to underground experimental music. Plastic Carved Out In The Shape Of The Music features all their Sandoz self-released EPs, and a few extra bits and pieces, offering the listener an excellent overview of their music’s development, from their very first sessions, through to the wildly sophisticated free noise sculpting of their later material.

Sandoz Lab Technicians were always a curious proposition, even within the NZ free noise ‘scene’ (such as it was, or was not). Their early material has a particularly loose, suburban cast, not without some humour: the material sounds like it’s been recorded in scungy lounge rooms, dimly lit hallways, kitchens full of bric-à-brac, sharehouses with dusty curtains. Neighbours drop by to ask about their cats; guitars clang, drums tumble, all kinds of incidental instruments clatter and pulse, in a matter not unlike collectives like Smegma or Los Angeles Free Music Society (as mentioned in the excellent liner notes by Mike Trouchon).

As the group’s playing develops, the music becomes more expansive, patient, laminar. The audio verité recording techniques gift the music an unerringly right sense of space, place, and drama; the interaction between the musicians is always spot-on, growing in sensitivity and nuance over the course of these two discs, able to flip on a dime from all-in group-mind levitation to inhabiting parallel, coincident universes. It’s a bravura collection of music that tells us much about free and improvised sound from the South Island, while still holding its cards close to its chest. - Jon Dale

37 tracks presented on 2 CDs, the first one compiling tracks recorded between 1993 and 1996 and the second one 1996 to 1999. 6-panel digipack with a 12-page booklet. Edition of 500 copies.

R.I.P. Trugoy the Dove

Finally back on vinyl. Now also back on CD, officially reissued. Must have! 3 Feet High and Rising is the debut studio album by hip hop trio De La Soul and was released on March 3, 1989 It marked the first of three full- length collaborations with producer Prince Paul, which would become the critical and commercial peak of both parties. Critically, as well as commercially, the album was a success. It contains the singles, "Me Myself and I", "The Magic Number", "Buddy", and "Eye Know". The album title came from the Johnny Cash song "Five Feet High and Rising". It is listed on Rolling Stone's 200 Essential Rock Records and The Source's 100 Best Rap Albums. When Village Voice held its annual Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1989, 3 Feet High and Rising was ranked #1. It was also listed on the Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Released amid the 1989 boom in gangsta rap, which gravitated towards hardcore, confrontational, violent lyrics, De La Soul's uniquely positive style made them an oddity beginning with the first single, "Me, Myself and I". Their positivity meant many observers labeled them a 'hippie' group, based on their declaration of the 'D.A.I.S.Y. Age' (Da. Inner. Soul. Yall). Sampling artists as diverse as Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and The Turtles, 3 Feet High and Rising is often viewed as the stylistic beginning of 1990s alternative hip hop (and especially jazz rap).

Original old stock. "On break from Rough Trade and her band The Moldy Peaches, our friend Kimya finds herself at home on Important Records releasing two full length albums at once. Both albums are full of moving original folk songs about Atari 2600's, love, growing up, growing old, overcoming hardships and Matlock . Kimya is one of the most genuine voices in modern music and the superstar of NYC's Anti-Folk scene. Both solo albums were recorded after her Rough Trade solo debut . Knock Knock Who? and My Cute Fiend Sweet Princess find Kimya stronger and more confident than before, creating more powerful records every time."

Oh shiiiii - we're back in again with more unreleased joints from NJ producer Mixture. Some killers on this one, including a sick unheard 1995 demo from Massive Staff. Plus we also have an unheard banger from the Outsidaz 5 years before they dropped for the first time! Wow!!



There's also a dirty version of a previously radio-only track by obscure NJ act Sunz of K.O.S.S. (Kleptomaniacs Of Savage Society) as well as 4 unheard demos all produced by the man like Mixture. Amazing material for the heads!!!!

What a killer season that last one was and we are starting the new one with a beast. The underground Hip Hop world was left reeling from the passing of People Under The Stairs' Double K in January 2021.



Back in 2008 he was working on a sick project with our man in New Haven, CT, Dooley O. A couple tracks from the sessions had been leaked on the net but the majority haven't been heard before.



What we have hear are 5 joints from the collabo as well as 2 insts and an acapella for the DJs to play with. Production is fantastic and we have been blessed with a modern day anthem, entitled simply "Hip Hop" - a joint which laments the current state of the artform, something which most heads can relate too. Not to say that hip hop isn't alive and well, as we know it is - well, at least alive - but Dooley & Double K are heard laughing at and pointing to the joke that the culture has become, asking us "what happened" to the form. "It must be the music that's turning me off, be sounding so Tinkerbell, extra soft" - yup we hear you fellas!!!

Oh yes - Fly Fishing Vol 7 is here and it could just be the nicest volume to date.



Up in the crow's nest we have Pseudo Intellectuals' trusty DJ, the one and the only, DJ Cutler. I had a ball working with Cut on this project. He is truly a fan of the music so he got fully involved in the project . This mix has it all. There are loads of new releases represented so the content is fresh AF and the skills on display are Second II None. Proud to be droppin Volume 7 of the Fly Fishing mix tape series. Let's keep it goin....

Raised by hippie parents in Ann Arbor, Michigan, smack between the Hash Bash and the car factories - Hawthorne's old man taught him to play bass guitar at age five. He would play records in the house all while Mayer was growing up. He put him up on game. He’d say, “You hear him singing there? That’s David Ruffin.” Or, “You hear that guitar solo? That’s Stephen Stills.” And young Hawthorne would sit there, with his bowl of cereal, soaking it up.

Mayer DJed in Michigan at the height of Detroit hip-hop. He was there. Before Em blew, when Dilla was still alive. He was spinning records and making rap beats. Now he’s making soul records and rappers are sampling him. Circle of life.

Brazilian singer and songwriter releases a new album of exuberant and vintage tropical pop music.

Somewhere, we get back to the carioca João Selva where we left him: sailing on the mythical Black Atlantic to create exhilarating music whose vibrations invite us to Rio, the Brazilian Northeast, the Caribbean, Cape Verde or even Angola. His latest album, “Navegar” (2021), acclaimed by critics, is an invigorating dance and dream machine that updates the tropicalist revolution of the 70s by offering a turbulent mix of samba, soul, jazz and funk.

Continuing to spread wings with “Passarinho” (2023), this time it is flying like a bird that the singer from Ipanema takes us into his musical universe, always as sunny as it is abundant. The 10 tracks of this new album span a generous palette of musical influences: from Angolan semba to Cape Verdean funaná, via Caribbean zouk or Congolese rumba – João Selva's music channels the musical pulse of the Black Atlantic. In the most (im)pure Brazilian tradition, he also digests the contribution of North American music and freely incorporates elements from elsewhere into the irresistible rhythms of Brazil.

Prolonging a fruitful collaboration with french producer Bruno Patchworks, this new LP is full of sound nuggets and offers a wide range of emotions and sensations. The contagious optimism of "Cantar cantar" backed by a radiant groove worthy of the best productions by Marcos Valle or Joao Donato. Psychedelic folk as Devendra Banhart on "Mar de estrelas" or "Cirandinha" often carried by orchestral arrangements which bring an unexpected freshness to this bewitching album. Of course, we do not give up to party on the irresistible “Seu Carnaval” or “Menina me encanta” and we dance with the rain in “Chuva”. In a more deep mood, the song "Por um amor" evokes the romantic relationship with psychedelia and sensuality.

After two years “without Carnival”, the Brazilian songwriter has chosen to celebrate hope and the joy of being alive in these lyrics written largely during successive confinements. In the title song “Passarinho” he wonders: how can a little bird keep singing in a cage? Before answering it on "Cantar cantar" by recalling that "when things are bad, you just have to sing that it already goes a little better". Universal and captivating poetry that drives songs that are both sensual and catchy. Ultimately, an album made to spread wings and fly high, the ideal soundtrack to offset a certain saudade and feel free as a little bird.

Dressed in a powder blue suit with the frilly shirt to match, DJ Yoda invites you to be his +1 for Prom Nite, his new album promising retro Americana full of daydreaming reverie, international megastar guests, trip hop acknowledging the likes of Morcheeba and Nightmares on Wax, and the turntable extraordinaire’s bread and butter of cuts, beats and rhymes.

Certainly no stranger to retro sounds having famously peppered his DJ and AV sets with the unexpected the world over, and his How to Cut n Paste mix series going all the way back to the 30s, Yoda’s harp-laden puppy love vibe spreads from the sweet and mellow sound of 2019’s Home Cooking, an album described as “boundary-breaking” by Mojo upon slotting nicely into the UK’s blooming jazz canon. Think deliciously harmonised doo-wop murmuring “Goodnight Sweetheart” with an eye for dreamboats en route to Makeout Point - on “My Energy”, Eva Lazarus takes the form of an earth angel, with Yoda on jukebox cut-ups, taking it back to starry-eyed, clean cut days of wonder (or more recently, Little Mix’s “Love Me Like You”).

Beginning enigmatically with the assistance of Hollywood A-lister (and former next-door neighbour) Lily James, “Breathe” demonstrate Yoda’s continued evolution as a musician (not to mention shrewd decision maker), with James’ vocal confidence - a little Lana del Rey to her breathiness - returning on the velvet-smooth “Airplane Mode.” It’s a smartly executed soundclash accentuated by LA rapper Choosey, the star of the album’s straightest hip-hop shooter “Harder I Rock”. Homeboy Sandman adds some kick to the prom punch with typical wordplay sent down “Coconut Grove”, and Liam Bailey is perfectly cast for the darkly cinematic sway of “Don’t Even Try It.”

On an album of many talking points, the LP’s crowning glory is opening single “Feel Like Home”: featuring the vocal comforts of the House Gospel Choir, it’s your go-to pick-me-up when the chips are down, targeting the hairs on the backs of necks like a softer focus version of Jamie xx’s “Loud Places.” Extended into an alternative, equally uplifting form by Beardyman’s “Don’t Mean Thing”, summer festival season already has its homecoming anthem. With tongues wagging, the twists and turns step away from Heartbreak Ridge when O Love tucks into the mouthwatering shopping list funk of “Way Home”; and “Lesson 1956”, featuring Jamie Cullum and DJ Woody, jauntily pays homage to classic Cut Chemist alchemy, Yoda’s celebrated turntable tomfoolery back in full effect and extending the flavours found in Home Cooking.

Magpie artwork supplied by London’s Endless, whose signature style has tagged Liberty and Lagerfeld as but two high profile clients, Yoda again maximises the experience and enjoyment gained from recording live instruments and prioritising songs over beats. His continued progress mixes risk-taking, elite musicianship, nostalgia brought bang up to date, and ultimately, good clean fun capable of stirring your soul, making Prom Nite a date to remember.

When you hear of someone in the punk scene putting out solo material, you expect them to pull out the acoustic guitar and channel their softer side. With Tino Valpa it couldn’t be more the opposite. New Hampshire’s one-man powerhouse is here with his first full-length solo album Live Or Be Lived All Over. Tino tackles all duties: guitar, bass, drums and vocals. From the get-go this record is heavier, harder & better structured than its predecessors. Tino’s previous releases in 2010 & 11 were two 7” EPs of blazing old-school hardcore punk with few songs clocking in over the 30 second mark. Since then, Valpa has traveled the world touring in many bands with focuses on other things. In 2022 the solo project will finally to come to light as a live playing, touring band. This self-released album is available on LP, Digipak CD and Cassette).

“This is me at my most imaginative, freakiest, and yet still most grounded and introspective,” says Japanese American rapper/actor Lyrics Born not only about his new album Vision Board, but also his “self” and his existence. “I feel like a new man! I’m healthier physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.” The lead single and video “Diamond Door” is a pop/rap banger that lands you with an infectious barb and keeps you hooked for days, and is a thinly-veiled tribute to a particular style of female appreciation, but it can also be taken as a welcome mat to the new era of Lyrics Born. The accompanying video which shows Lyrics Born in his current physical form - svelte, stylish and with a confident swagger - reinforces this next chapter in his life. 60 pounds lighter, he lost the weight during the pandemic when he knew he needed to make a change. “Touring was becoming harder, and I was having all these weird health problems, but nothing that anybody could put their finger on,” he explains “My anxiety was high. I was not sleeping well. I was on the verge of really bad health.” And this improvement brought more confidence which shows in his new album. Vision Board is a focused affair that found him stretching his creativity farther and challenging himself to write in a way he’s never written before. Recorded primarily in New Orleans and produced by Rob Mercurio of Galactic (who also produced 2015’s Real People and 2018’s Quite a Life), it posited him in a new environment that helped his creative juices flow even more fluidly. “There’s nothing like recording in the Crescent City. It just gets in your blood, and the results are always funky and wild.” “This is about as psychedelic as I’ve ever been,” LB says. “I’m so proud of this album. I’m in a different space. The world is in a different space, and I wanted to celebrate that, loosen up and really create some imagery and share some emotion that I never have. I was listening to a lot of Shuggie Otis; a lot of obscure psychedelic soul and later Temptations,” he explained. “This is like if Alice in Wonderland was Japanese.” Vision Board was also inspired by another Bay Area rap luminary, although one who’s no longer with us - Gift of Gab. The dexterous Blackalicious MC and fellow Quannum Projects alum had a profound effect on Lyrics Born’s life, both creatively and philosophically. “I asked myself on some of these songs: ‘How would Gab approach them?’” he said. “I’d play with certain cadences, certain styles; I tried to stretch stylistically, lyrically and vocally on every single song. None of the patterns are the same.” Lyrics Born’s vulnerability shines through on the nine-track effort, something he’s not ashamed to admit (nor should he be). At one point during the pandemic, he was losing one friend, peer or family member every other week - from Zumbi of Zion I to Gift of Gab to Digital Underground’s Shock G. While many of the songs are deeply introspective, he had to “write some fun shit,” too. Celebratory horns, uptempo rhythms and fiery bars pepper the project from start to finish, and truly encapsulate Lyrics Born’s evolution of not just a groundbreaking Asian-American MC but also a human being. As the only Asian-American MC to release 10 studio albums, the first Asian-American to play major music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza and the first Asian-American to release a greatest hits compilation, Lyrics Born has been breaking barriers his entire life - and he’s not going to stop anytime soon. From the bombastic and tribal “I’m the Best Rapper in the World” with its self-winking boastfulness to the playful scat of “Bang Bang Bang” that slinks like an outtake from West Side Story, to the smooth and seductive “Who's The Best? (Dear Young LB)," to the psychedelic and swoony ”Alligator Boots” with it dreamy “Walk on the Wildside”-esque reverby sway, Vision Board sees Lyrics Born tackling different tones, textures and genres without fear and making them completely his own. It's an eclectic body of work that boasts more synths, more psychedelia and is generally more abstract.

The jewel case has a crack on the front

A Brief History OF THE Drums Jazz Drums as we know them today are a complex group of percussive instruments that reveal the inventive genius of the first jazz-band players of New Orleans, on Mississippi show-boats and later, in Chicago. In their actual form (which is substantially the same as that used in the first New Orleans groups ) they are none other than the como ination into one single instrument of all the percussive units used by the Southern blacks. Let us examine the drums in their single parts: the bass drum is a percussion instrument without definite pitch, normally beaten by a stick that has a large, felt-covered knob on one end, while the other end is attached to a pedal played by the right foot. It is the same instrument used in parades with brass bands, when it is worn around the neck and can also be played with regular drumsticks if a drum roll is required. Also a descendant of the traditional New Orleans brass bands are the Charlestons, two superimposed metal plates which are also played by pedal. Drumsticks or brushes are used to play one or two cymbals, large, slightly cupped disks of brass which when struck together loudly, also produce a crashing, dramatic effect. Drumsticks are also used to play the snare drum, of military origin, and the tom tom, of African descent, which can also be played by beating the drum-head with the fingers and the heel of the hand to accompany dancing. Other supplementary instruments such as the castanets, cow-bells, etc., are also played with drumsticks. In early jazz formations and in all New Orleans jazz, drums were used to rhythmically sustain the group, in other words, to furnish the beat, particularly with the bass drum playing the strong beats; the Charlestons would follow on the weak beats and the other parts would more or less ‘fill in’ depending on the player’s ability, by playing syncopation and off-beats. Rarely were the drums used as a solo instrument in New Orleans or traditional jazz bands; at the most, the drums would perform during a break, that is, a brief solo that filled in a pause left by the other melodic instruments between two stanzas or refrains. In jazz history the most important representatives of this ‘archaic’ jazz style are considered to be Warren ‘Baby’ Dodds (brother of the famous clarinet player Johnny Dodds ) and Zutty Singleton; both can be heard on the historical recordings of the Hot Five and the Hot Seven where they played under Louis Armstrong. During the swing era the drums were somewhat modified and perfected (it was during the ’30s that they assumed their standard and present form), thus requiring players to develop a more refined, sophisticated playing technique. In fact, during the swing era the small groups that had made up the backbone of New Orleans and Chicago jazz moved momentarily into the background and attention was focused on the first big, commercial dance bands, then to small, experimental groups that consisted of trios and quartets. But while the New Orleans drummer had been accustomed to playing with musicians he knew personally and with them performed music with which he was completely familiar and could therefore easily provide rhythmic support to, during the ’30s the drummer found himself in the new situation of having to play with a large number of musicians who played written music that had been selected for commercial reasons and part of complicated, orchestral arrangements. In addition, because of continuous changes in orchestral personnel, he seldom had time to familiarize himself with his fellow musicians; he was forced, by necessity, to adapt himself to the needs of the group at a short time notice and it was not unusual for the band leader to expect an exceptionally long break during which the drummer had to demonstrate his particular virtuosity. Naturally the technical superiority of this generation of musicians found supremacy in small groups in which the drums sustained first place together with the melodic instruments. An example of two such outstanding drummers of the swing era were Chick Webb and Gene Krupa. Around and immediately following World War II there took place, gradually and not as suddenly as one is led to believe, a so-called ‘revolution’ that initiated what was the ‘modern jazz’ trend, to which the preceding jazz style was superimposed and defined as ‘traditional’ jazz. While it would be impossible to analyze here all the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and timbric innovations created by modern jazz musicians, two considerations can be made about the drums. The first is that in modern jazz there is no longer any distinction between ‘melodic’ and ‘accompanying’ instruments, thus leveling all instruments of the group to equal importance, all with solo possibilities (just think of what a classic accompanying instrument like the guitar becomes, in the hands of Charlie Christian!). The second is that while in traditional jazz the beat, i.e., the basic rhythmic scansion of a piece, offered the possibility of rhythmic balance, in swing, rhythm became explicitly an element of sound, while in modern jazz the beat is implicit and despite its prominence throughout an entire piece, whether solo or group playing, no instrument has the specific job of sustaining the others. It is clear therefore, that when the drums have been given equal value to the other instruments, they are freed from the obligation they once had to sustain rhythmically an orchestra or group and in modern jazz find enormous expressive possibilities. The musician most responsible in giving the drums their prominence in this era was Kenny Clarke, and among his many followers two of completely different styles but both with supreme technical skills, were Shelley Manne and Max Roach.

THE Drums AND POP Music The introduction of drums in European pop music occurred at the same time as the transformation of dance bands and was conditioned by the popularity of jazz. In the first dance orchestras that offered American dance music in Europe (the fox trot, one-step, and later the Charleston), the drummer often gave his name to the entire group, which was called a ‘jazz band’. The pop music drummer, in general, was not just a pale image of his jazz colleagues. If he performed any virtuoso passages they were certainly not the result of an expressive need, but rather, well-calculated effects created by an arranger for purely commercial reasons. The drums in pop music were also liberated from their secondary role, however, in another change similar to that brought on by the modern jazz revolution: it was with rock ‘n’ roll and the experiments of the new American groups that followed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that re-evaluated the possibilities of the drums in new forms of instrumental ‘sounds’ and added to the wealth of technical capacity and the actual physical make-up of the instrument, adding other percussive instruments from both Afro-Cuban origin (bongos) and classical music (tympani), as well as oriental instruments like the gong, Chinese bells, Korean blocks, etc. For those who are fascinated by the virtuosity of some jazz or pop musician and have undertaken the study of the drums with the intention of imitating them, it is well to remember that it is no longer possible to do so with just a good sense of rhythm, musical sensitivity and the physical capacity to play. The modern drummer must also have a thorough theoretical background and a good teacher to guide him. Sightreading is of course indispensable particularly for playing the drums and a music school diploma certainly helps. This record, therefore, does not pretend to offer more than a series of modern rhythms that anyone with a good musical background can learn from and have fun with. The rest is up to you!

Originally released on cassette by Blue Bus in 1990 and issued here for the first time on vinyl This was Kina's first live album. An in your face snapshot of the band caught live during their 1900 European tour. Special Edition LP + CD + printed inner sleeve

Originally released on Kina's Blu Bus label in 1996 "Citta invisibili" comes as the band's most mature work. A strong and final statement from one of the seminal hardcore punk bands ever. Special Edition LP + CD + printed inner sleeve

GAUZE's 4th album, originally released in 1997 after their U.S. tour!!

Originally released in 2007. 26 years after its formation, the 5th album that Punk/hardcore fans around the world have been waiting for was finally released.

Originally released in 2021, GAUZE's first album release in 14 years!!