“Ultra Violet” by Paul Hayworth was recorded on cheap home 4-track tape machine, left to gather magnetic radiation scars for two decades and then slowly roasted in a walkman, re-mastered on 16 track digital and now turned into an ‘atmospheric supernova’ on Bandcamp. So there you go.
Fifty years after the release of the acclaimed “Live At The Apollo” LP, Universal Music is releasing a James Brown new compilation: “Best of Live at The Apollo: 50th Anniversary”.
James Brown released three live albums recorded at The Apollo during his prime years as a recording artist: the 1963 original and 1968′s “Live At The Apollo Volume II” (both released on King Records) and 1971′s “Revolution of the Mind: Recorded Live At The Apollo Vol. III”, released by Polydor Records. “Best of Live At The Apollo” will feature the highlights of those three original Apollo LPs, and two tracks from another, ultimately shelved fourth LP, recorded in September 1972.
Both of those unissued tracks – the instrumental “Hot Pants Road” and “There It Is” – have been remixed for this new compilation. The live take of “There It Is” previously appeared on the 1988 compilation Motherlode, and the original LP mix of the track appeared on a Record Store Day single last year.
“Best of Live At The Apollo: 50th Anniversary” will be released on June 25.
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In a crisis that has left 70,000 plus dead, countless more injured and over one million refugees fighting to stay alive, it is imperative to find a common ground and to gather all efforts to decrease the level of suffering. The New York Based, Syrian born singer-songwriter Rami, via his project Tristâme, hopes his charity release “Common Ground” will inspire others to take notice of the civil war that still grips his homeland.
The crisis in Syria and the urgent need for help and resources was the motivation to compose a 4-song digital EP based on themes connected to Syria, personal experiences, its past and hope for its people’s future. As the title of the EP implies, the intention of the collection is to find a common ground far away from politics and conflict.
The EP was co-produced, recorded, and mixed by Jonathan Jetter at Right Angle Recording, New York, NY. in February and March 2013. “Common Ground” is a powerful sonic journey from beginning to end. The heaviest and quietest moments of the collection are found in the track “Distant Brothers”, about the turmoil of sectarianism and a plea for unity. The EP closes with the positive pop-rock track “Age of Hope” written about the simpler times during Rami’s childhood in Damascus, Syria. The song includes the last vocal melody Rami ever wrote on Syrian soil.
Common Ground is available through CD Baby and all major online digital music retailers worldwide. All proceeds from the sales of the EP will go to organizations helping Syrian refugees.
We recently reported that the Zappa Family Trust will reissue two classic Frank Zappa titles on vinyl in june. Hot on the heels of this news comes the announcement of yet another Zappa vinyl release: a limited edition 12″ on red vinyl, including the original mono version of “Who Are The Brain Police?”.
The track listing for this 12″ is as follows:
Side 1: HELP I’M A ROCK / IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE – Original Stereo 1966 Mix
Side 2: WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? – Original Mono Release
WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? – Basic Trackings
This item is expected to ship in the week of 4 July 2013 and can pre-ordered here.
Following on from their recent “Acid-Mysterons Invade The Jackin’ Zone” compilation, Soul Jazz Records are re-releasing this long out of print classic album “Acid – Can You Jack? Chicago Acid and Experimental House 1985-95″.
The extensive sleevenotes to this release – avaible on double CD, heavyweight 180gm double vinyl and as download – charting the phenomenal rise of Chicago’s house and acid music are written by Tim Lawrence, author or the the definitive book on dance music ‘Love Saves The Day’. Lawrence also wrote the text for “Voguing and The House Ballroom Scene of New York, 1989-92″, also published by Soul Jazz Records/Books.
The album features all-time classic full-length 12″ tracks such as Phuture’s ‘Acid Trax’ and Sleezy D’s ‘I’ve Lost Control’, Jamie Principle’s ‘Baby Wants to Ride’ alongside many rare and experimental tracks including Marshall Jefferson’s “Go Wild Rhythm Tracks”, Virgo’s ‘Take Me Higher’ and many more.
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British composer Steve Martland has died on May 6th at the age of 53, his publisher Schott Music has announced. Liverpool-born Martland studied composition under leading Dutch composer Louis Andriessen in the Hague.
“We are very sad to announce that Steve Martland, one of the outstanding voices in British music since the mid-80s, died in his sleep on the night of 6 May,” his publisher said in a statement.
The composer’s music, described by Schott as “often amplified, muscular and powerfully rhythmic”, has been extensively choreographed in productions including Drill, for the Sydney Opera House, Crossing the Border, for the Dutch National Ballet, and Danceworks, which was premiered by the London Contemporary Dance Theatre.
His publisher said he rejected “academic dogma in favour of plurality of musical influences, both ancient and modern, serious and vernacular” and had frequently worked with artists “outside classical institutions”.
He collaborated with the band Spiritualized, in 1998, for Edinburgh’s Flux Festival. In 2008, he wrote Starry Night for percussion and strong quartet for the Tromp music festival in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Choral works include Street Songs, written for King’s Singers and percussionist Evelyn Glennie.
The composer, whose own Steve Martland Band tours his music internationally, also wrote Tyger Tyger, for charity Youth Music’s Sing Up campaign. His scores for TV include Granada children’s show Wilderness Edge and he wrote and co-directed A Temporary Arrangement with the Sea, a film about his mentor, Andriessen, which was shown on BBC TV.
[Source: BBC News]
Dutch label Basta Music has long had a fondness for pioneering orchestra leaders, composers and arrangers. The label has released music by such legends as Leroy Shield, Raymond Scott, Les Baxter, Roger Roger, André Popp, Ferde Grofé, Gordon Jenkins, and Russ Garcia. But one name was overlooked. Until now.
Basta proudly announces the release of an album featuring newly recorded versions of music arranged and composed by sophisticated Latin-jazz maestro Juan Garcia Esquivel (1918-2002). Often called the King of Space Age Pop, Esquivel was a visionary perfectionist who controlled every aspect of his wide-screen sound in the studio.
In the late 1950s, Esquivel was renowned for his explosive arrangements and dynamic use of stereo effects. His music featured exotic percussion, wordless vocals (such as ‘pow-pow’ and ‘zu-zu’), shimmering keyboard glissandi, and crystalline piano fingering. On a technical level, his orchestrations made his recordings instantly recognizable. His style reflected his personality: brash, confident, mischievous, sexy.
Unfortunately, Esquivel’s original sheet music arrangements cannot be located. The Metropole Orchestra (a.k.a. Metropole Orkest), based in the Netherlands, commissioned new arrangements based on Esquivel’s RCA Victor recordings. While capturing Esquivel’s idiosyncratic colors and textures, the Metropole arrangements take the maestro’s magic in new directions. The Metropole employs a full string section, which Esquivel rarely used. “Mini Skirt,” one of his most popular tunes, had only been recorded by the composer with a small ensemble. The Metropole recording represents the first time this work has been arranged for full orchestra.
The package, designed by Piet Schreuders, includes liner notes by Irwin Chusid, who helped launch the first Esquivel revival in 1994 by producing the first CD compilations, and who served as Esquivel’s last business manager. The booklet also features a number of rare photos of the maestro from his private collection.
“Perfect Vision: The Esquivel Sound” will be released on June 10, 2013.
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Brighton, UK based production trio Stick Up Boys will release their new single “Getaway” on June 4, 2013. The video for this catchy track is available now for your listening and dancing pleasure.
With the rights to all of groundbreaking composer Frank Zappa’s music back home with the Zappa Family Trust, fans can look forward to more freshly remastered music being released on vinyl. A vinyl version of Zappa’s “Finer Moments“, which was recorded in the early 1970s, but not released until 2012, is already available.
In June, look for new vinyl versions of Frank Zappa’s 1966 debut album “Freak Out!” and “Over-Nite Sensation” on Zappa Records/Barking Pumpkin Records. Joe Travers, vaultmaster for the Frank Zappa archives is working with Chris Bellman of Bernie Grundman mastering on the new vinyl projects. “Freak Out!” will be a 180-gram reissue of the original 1966 stereo mix of the album whose title still says it all. The album marked Zappa’s legendary debut album with the Mothers of Invention and proved to be rock ‘n roll’s first concept/double album.
Back on vinyl 40 years after its original release, Over-Nite Sensation will also be 180-gram vinyl; the album includes the tracks “Camarillo Brillo,” “I’m The Slime” and “Dinah-Moe Humm,” among others.
Last year when the rights to the iconic composer’s music reverted back to Zappa Records and the Zappa Family Trust – headed by Zappa’s widow Gail Zappa – the family made all his music available on iTunes for the first time.
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Klavikon reimagines ‘electronic’ music without the use of conventional processes – no loops, no laptops, no sequencers. Instead, pianist Leon Michener employs a unique system of amplified prepared piano.
Augmenting the 88 keys with his own inventions and found objects – a custom made pick up, a robot dog- he delivers cascading batteries of percussion, sub-basses and abstract soundscapes. This amalgam of virtuosic technique and real-time analogue processing is at once connected with Classical traditions of Stockhausen and Cage and the experimental dancefloor idiom of Amon Tobin and Bochum Welt. The result is a fertile sonic territory, sincere in it’s eccentricity, restlessly inventive, that resists easy categorisation. And that’s the way we like it.
On May 31st Asphalt Tango Records will release “Stand Up, People“ – Gypsy Pop Songs from Tito’s Yugoslavia, 1964-1980″, a collection of rare Pop songs by Roma Gypsy musicians from Tito’s socialist Yugoslavia, 1960-1980. Combining rootsy Gypsy Folk rhythms with the new influences of Bollywood film music, Turkish psychedelia and British and American Pop-Rock, these are the songs of sophisticated artists who were captivated by modernity, but who had not lost sight of the old themes of love, loss, and life on the road.
“Stand Up, People” builds on the success of Asphalt Tango Records’ “Sounds from a Bygone Age” series, which gathered together long-lost gems of Romanian music. Now delving for the first time into the untapped riches of the former Yugoslavia, Stand Up, People presents the diverse and almost forgotten sounds of 60s and 70s Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo, with nineteen tracks that highlight the flowering of Roma Gypsy culture in that period. The songs have resurfaced thanks to the vinyl-hunting efforts of London duo Vlax Records (Philip Knox and Nathaniel Morris), who have rescued the original 45rpms from provincial fleamarkets across the Balkans, or dug them out of the darkest corners of the vaults of the National Library in Belgrade.
“Stand Up, People” features the raw, the beautiful, and often the surprising, showcasing Roma musicians’ early experiments with synthesisers, electric guitars, and their growing sense of identity with their ancestral homeland, India.
We hear incredibly rare early recordings of the King and Queen of Gypsy music, Šaban Bajramovic and Esma Redžepova, displaying the soulfulness that launched their careers. Other singers are less famous: Muharem Serbezovskiand Medo Cun, for example, whose high-octane songs feature driving rhythms and a freewheeling Jazz aesthetic that reaches its peak in spiralling improvised solos. What is perhaps most remarkable about “Stand Up, People” is its inclusion of incredibly rare Kosovan Roma music. This work, exploiting distinctive oriental sounds, has lain unheard for decades. From the Kosovan Roma wedding-singing superstar Nehat Gaši to super-rare artists who only ever released one single.
The lovingly restored audio of Stand Up, People will be released as both a striking double 180g vinyl – the first fifty of which include signed and numbered rizoprint posters by award-winning illustrator Isabel Greenberg – and as a beautifully designed CD. Both formats come with detailed liner notes, packed with photographs, exploring the history of these Roma musicians and of the Yugoslav scene they pioneered. Best of all, “Stand Up, People” presents, for the first time, complete English translations of all the Romani-language songs, laying bare the stories and poetry of these incredible artists, and the full sophistication and beauty of their Balkan blues.
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Netanya plays “a musical salad of Electro, Oriental Pop, Dirty Noise Rock, Doom and Bitter Ballads”. Their debut album “We Are One Two Three” will be out soon. We’re happy to present their first video: “Sick Boys”. For your ears and eyes.
Since July of 2012, and at the beginning of every month, Ian Fellerman releases a volume of songs for free at bashfulhips.com. This will continue until August of 2013. Each volume of songs is at most three weeks old by the time you hear it. The video below is taken from Bashful Hips Vol. X.
The nine-member Youngblood Brass Band hail from all over America (Madison, New Orleans, New York, Nashville, Minneapolis, Chicago) and have been unleashing their crash course in hip-hop/brass band/improv/punk on stages worldwide since 2000. Their new album ‘Pax Volumi’ will be released in the summer of 2013 on Tru Thoughts; it will be preceded by the “20 Questions” single on 3rd June. The video is available for your viewing pleasure now.
In 1985, Czech avant-garde violinist, singer and composer Iva Bittová collaborated with percussionist Pavel Fajt from the Czech rock group Dunaj and recorded “Bittová & Fajt”, a fusion of alternative rock music with Slavic and Romani music, which has been unavailable on CD for many years.
The album was first released on Panton in 1987, then re-released again in 1997. The new reissue of the album was carefully remastered by Jozef Čech at the Slovakian label Pavian Records in 2013. The order of songs is identical to the original LP version and the record contains two bonuses: the songs Ukolébavka and Plavil Janko koně (EP 1987, Panton). The CD is packed in paper digipack and includes liner notes written by Jiří Černý.
More info here.
