News from the darkest corners...

British indie-punkers Redtrack consist of Billy Wright (guitar/vox), Phil Blake (bass/vox), Mitch Silvey (guitar/vox/keys) and Andrew Perry (drums). They come from Southend-On-Sea, their bass player has survived an attack with a meat cleaver and they reckon they sound like a cross between Girls Aloud and The Clash.

‘Whole Town’s Heart’ is their debut album and will be released on Monday 30th August. It is chewy and tuneful and, with its small-town panic attacks and punchy new wave melodic jabs, sees them nodding towards the classic Britpopesque heritage of Weller, Difford and Costello. Small wonder then that punkoid peer Pete Shelley from The Buzzcocks was so enamored with their tunes that he co-produced (alongside Dave M Allen) their last single, ‘Poledancer’, which appears on this here album. That isn’t the only celebrity light shining on ‘Whole Town’s Heart, as it features a feisty guest appearance from ‘Hollyoaks’ starlet Hollie Jay Bowes on ‘Pretty Boy’, a spin-off from the band’s recent performance on the show and they have a celebrity fan in actor Ray Winstone who suggested he could join them on a track in the future.

‘Whole Town’s Heart’ is also the first ever album release on Label Fandango, the Pointy Recordings / Fierce Panda offshoot which has previously concentrated on ace singles by the likes of Broken Records, Fanfarlo, Air Traffic and more.

As for that somewhat daring reference to Girls Aloud and The Clash? Listen to future single ‘The Trier’ and try to keep your blue suede shoe planted firmly to the ground as they perform a number headline dates in the UK this summer before a series of shows supporting legendary punkers THE BUZZCOCKS in September!

Download “Imogen” by Redtrack for free.

Skate punk legends JFA are about to release the band’s first full length studio album, the group’s first since the 1999 release of “Only Live Once.”

“Speed of Sound” is scheduled to be released on DC-Jam Records on July 27th, 2010 through both digital download & CD and will eventually be made available on a 12″ vinyl picture disc as well.

The new record will be supported by two new music videos from the song’s “Wilson” & “Danny Sargent’s Trucks”, both which can be seen on http://www.blanktv.com/ with the latter making it’s world premier on July 13th.

“We’re stoked to finally have this record out,” said JFA frontman Brian Brannon. “Fans of our early material will dig our new tunes that reach back to our hardcore skate punk roots.”

Pre-orders for the CD will begin on July 14th at www.Interpunk.com along with a contest for a drawing that will give away 3 new JFA skateboard decks.

Launched by The Beatles in 1968, as the new outlet for their own recordings as well as the music of an eclectic roster of artists – James Taylor, Badfinger, Billy Preston, Mary Hopkin, Doris Troy, and Jackie Lomax among them – who were all personally brought to the label by The Beatles (individually or collectively), Apple Records made popular music history from the very moment it opened its doors.

Four decades later, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music raise the curtain on remastered CD and digital download releases of 15 key albums from the Apple Records catalog. All 15 titles will be released on October 26th. Most of the physical CDs will include bonus material. Together, the 15 albums represent the first ever Apple Records releases to be available via digital download.

In the revolutionary spirit of 1968, The Beatles’ explosive musical output (characterised by their double-LP White Album) was only exceeded by their fascination with what they saw and heard going on around them. Five years into The Beatles’ reign, Apple Records afforded them the unique opportunity to sign new (and established) artists who appealed to each of them. In turn, the introduction of an artist on The Beatles’ record label was an imprimatur taken very seriously by fans across the universe.

Apple Records’ utopian artist-orientated mission immediately set it apart, as the first operation of its kind in the major-label sphere. Diversity was celebrated, and artists were encouraged to record and release their music in a friendly creative environment. Apple developed a distinctive graphic aesthetic, from its legendary ‘apple-core’ logo to its advertising and merchandising, in the process setting a subtle new benchmark for the industry to follow.

From 1968 to 1973, Apple Records bedazzled the world with a rainbow spectrum of releases – and fans were unusually well-informed about individual involvements of The Beatles with nearly every project. 1968’s self-titled debut album by Boston-based singer-songwriter James Taylor, for example, features Paul McCartney and George Harrison on “Carolina In My Mind”. Paul was instrumental in bringing the Welsh chanteuse Mary Hopkin to Apple, and produced her debut single, “Those Were The Days”. Badfinger, also from Wales, was still known as The Iveys when they recorded “Come And Get It”, written and produced by Paul (for The Magic Christian movie soundtrack).

The Beatles had been fans of Billy Preston ever since seeing him in Little Richard’s band in Hamburg in 1962. George went on to produce and play on Preston’s Apple debut, That’s the Way God Planned It. Harrison was one of the producers and played (along with Ringo Starr) on Doris Troy’s self-titled Apple album. George also produced and played (with Paul and Ringo) on Jackie Lomax’s debut album, Is This What You Want? featuring the Harrison composition, “Sour Milk Sea”.
John was much taken with the music of The Modern Jazz Quartet, who released the only two jazz albums in the Apple catalogue. Ringo was intrigued by the music of contemporary British classical composer John Tavener, and his Apple album, The Whale has become one of the most sought-after Apple collectibles of all time.

Each of the 15 albums in this bumper batch of Apple Records releases has been digitally remastered at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London by the same dedicated team of engineers behind The Beatles’ recent remastered catalogue releases of 2009.

Eight of John Lennon’s classic solo albums and other standout recordings have been digitally remastered from his original mixes for a global catalogue initiative commemorating the music legend’s 70th birthday, which falls on October 9.

Overseen by Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s “Gimme Some Truth” campaign will launch on 4 October with the worldwide release of eight remastered studio albums and several newly-compiled titles.

Double Fantasy, 1980’s GRAMMY Award winner for Album of the Year, will be presented in a newly remixed ‘Stripped Down’ version remixed and produced by Yoko Ono and Jack Douglas, co-producers of the original mix with John Lennon. The new stripped down version of the album comes in an expanded 2CD and digital edition pairing the new version with Lennon’s original mix, remastered.

The campaign’s other new collections include a hits compilation in two editions titled Power To The People, The Hits‚ a 4CD set of themed discs titled Gimme Some Truth‚ a deluxe 11CD collectors box with the remastered albums, rarities, and non-album singles, titled the John Lennon Signature Box. All of the remastered albums and collections will be available on CD and for download purchase from all major digital service providers.

Zang Tuum Tuum and Salvo – Union Square Music’s collector’s label – announce Influence, the definitive Best Of the Art of Noise. It will be released on july 19th.

Disc One compiles all the hit singles plus collaborations, classic album tracks, movie & TV themes, 12″ remixes and B-sides. And Disc Two retells the Art of Noise story via 20 previously-unreleased tracks from all eras of the group’s history, from 1983 to the present day.

Influence covers all eras of Art of Noise’s ground-breaking contribution to sampling, dance and electronic music. From the early 80s with records like Beat Box, Moments in Love, Close (to the Edit), and as the band that put together Malcolm McLaren’s highly influential Duck Rock… To mid-80s hit singles like Peter Gunn (with Duane Eddy), Kiss (with Tom Jones), Paranoimia (with Max Headroom)… Art of Noise’s 90s/00s reincarnation – when founder members Trevor Horn, Anne Dudley and Paul Morley were joined by Lol Creme – is also covered with singles such as Metaforce (featuring Rakim) and the drum & bass riffing, John Hurt sampling The Holy Egoism of Genius.

Zayde Buti (b. 1985) is a musician, performer, and writer from Boston, Massachusetts. His debut album, “i’m lovin’ it”, features subversive and amusing social critiques set to dynamically arranged electronic beats. Zayde has been performing his work throughout the Northeast U.S. since 2007, with appearances at UMass Amherst, New England Conservatory, Brandeis University, Beat Research (Enormous Room) and Mobius Arts Space. In addition to established venues, Zayde activates the public sphere with guerrilla street performances. He has taken his portable act into stores, malls, supermarkets, public parks, private homes, trains, neighborhoods, and campuses in the Boston area.

“i’m lovin’ it” marks Zayde’s first collaboration with musician/producer Universal Tongues, and reflects the meeting of their styles, sounds, and imaginations. With a pop sensibility, Zayde unites musical influences ranging from punk rock to Middle Eastern music into dense and catchy songs. His vocal delivery straddles the worlds of singing, speak-singing, and spoken word. As a lyricist, he often uses words as samples, having done so nearly exclusively in “Hot ‘n Juicy” and “DD”, both of which appropriate and recontextualize advertising language. Zayde also uses humor to deflate rhetoric surrounding issues of addiction, consumption, poverty, and war. Based on a sadistic boy solider, “Supersoaker”, for instance, samples the Yankee Doodle marching tune and features lyrics appropriated from Super Soaker water blaster advertisements and a Soulja Boy YouTube video.

Combining music, theater, and performance art, Zayde’s most recent one-man show, “Hungry”, satirizes consumer culture language and behavior through the use of multiple characters, including a talk show host, Dunkin’ Donuts employee, homeless man, and cross-dressing solider. “Hungry comments on human nature and American culture in a humorous—sometimes bawdy—but always incisive way,” writes choreographer/performer Dawn Kramer.

Visit www.zaydebuti.com for videos, photos, and links to his work on MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and SoundCloud.

Listen to “i’m lovin’ it” here.

There’s hardly any info yet, but according to Shorefire Media we can expect a new archival cd by Frank Zappa on june 11th. The title is “Joe’s Menage a Trois”.

In 1966 Bernard Stollman sent Sun Ra and his Arkestra, along with audio engineer David B. Jones on a tour of five New York Colleges. When they returned, just 39 mintues of music was chosen to be released as the original ESP 1045 “Nothing Is…“.

44 years later, after extensive research, producer and Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson has pieced together the missing parts of the infamous New York College Tour. Recorded on May 18th 1966 at St. Lawrence University in Potsdam, NY, this illuminating document represents the full 70 minute first set, of which ESP 1045 “Nothing Is…” was taken, including an introduction by ESP alum Burton Greene. In addition, producer Michael D. Anderson has uncovered a partial second set from the same evening and some rare rehearsal footage recorded during a sound check before the concert.

With over 90 minutes of additional material, this two disc set allows a close up look at the band’s repertoire and sound over an entire evening, including the rarely performed State Street and alternate versions of Theme Of The Stargazers and The Second Stop Is Jupiter.

Remasted from the original tapes and presented in superb quality, College Tour Volume One is a vivid snapshot of the mid-sixties Ra and his intergalactic band.

Complete track listing and personnel can be found here.

In the spring of 1971 the Rolling Stones reluctantly departed the UK to take up residence in France. Keith Richards settled at a villa called Nellcôte in Villefranche-sur-Mer and this became the venue for the recording of much of the band’s masterpiece “Exile On Main Street”.

The new dvd “Stones In Exile” (coming out june 22nd) tells the story in the band’s own words and through extensive archive footage of their time away from England and the creation of this extraordinary double album, which many regard as the Rolling Stones’ finest achievement.

Extensive additional footage including interviews with all the band members, footage from “Cocksucker Blues” and Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts returning to Olympic Studios and Jagger’s country house Stargroves where a lot of the early work on the album was done.

Wath the trailer for “Stones In Exile” here.

The Frank Zappa Family Trust have made four Frank Zappa releases available as downloads.

The albums “Buffalo”, “Everthing Is Healing Nicely”, “Imaginary Diseases” and “FZ:OZ” can now be purchased in mp3 format (256kbps) or FLAC directly from Zappa.com. As far as we know these releases will not be made available on any other download stores.

Masterful exotica group Waitiki 7 is releasing their new album New Sounds of Exotica on June 7th. With a luscious mix of tropical landscapes, Latin percussion, and popular jazz (oh, and did we mention the bird calls?), Waitiki 7 revisits some old tiki classics and adds their own stamp on exotica. To give you a taste of they’re all about, check out the group performing Martin Denny’s “Firecracker” on YouTube.

Take one part diverse players with intense focus and killer chops, and one part neglected mid-century multi-ethnic hybrid music with origins on America’s harmonious island paradise. Add a dash of Technicolor tropical dreamscape, a twist of wild birdcalls, and stir soulfully.

Waitiki 7 serves up this polychrome cocktail, taking a new serious spin on exotica, the musical genre that leaped from Hawai‛i’s fashionable bars and clubs to mainstream living rooms in post-War America. Keeping true to exotica’s deep roots and intense demands on musicians, with New Sounds of Exotica the group brings heady passion, acoustic musicianship, and a love of old-school mixology to an art form just begging to be revisited and savored.

Waitiki 7 embraces the pulse and ambiance of exotica, while adding their own stamp thanks to the diverse jazz, classical, and folk backgrounds the seven members bring to the group, including the jazz drums of multi-instrumentalist Abe Lagrimas, Jr; the thoughtful and vigorous Latin and jazz piano of Zaccai Curtis; the ever cool vibes of classically trained Jim Benoit.Improvisation and more expansive, expressive solos, something rarely heard in carefully scored classic exotica, play a major role in shaping the band’s sound, as do unexpected instruments from violin (classical virtuoso Helen Liu) to woodwinds of all shapes and sizes (Berklee instructor and Latin jazz master Tim Mayer).

Adding a new dimension to the rhythm sections of the past, lush melodies come to the fore on Waitiki 7’s tour of exotica standards like the beautiful “Bali Ha‛i” of South Pacific fame. Or on the mysterious yet once wildly popular “Similau,” penned by one of dozens of exotica ghostwriters hired to copy Denny and Lyman’s signature sound – without the prohibitive licensing costs.

Read our review of Waitiki 7’s previous album here.

The Zappa Family Trust have announced a new archival Frank Zappa release: Greasy Love Songs, an expanded edition of the Cruising With Ruben & The Jets album from 1968.

The original album is fashioned as a simultaneous parody of and tribute to the doo-wop music Zappa grew up with and worked on. The album has been described as a collision of high and low art, with Stravinsky-style chord changes and unusual tempos applied to purposely trite and banal teenage pop love songs.

The new cd features the original vinyl mix – previously unreleased on cd – plus bonus material. The exact track listing is unknown at this time, but the album should ship on or around april 23rd.

You can pre-order the album here.

Soul Jazz Records are to release a new double CD/four-LP compilation called “Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock & Electronic Music 1972-1983″ in april.

Featuring the likes of Can, Harmonia, Tangerine Dream, Faust, Neu!, Cluster, Amon Düül II and Popol Vuh, this looks like it’s going to be a great introduction for anyone curious about the scene.

From the Soul Jazz website: “The objectives of German experimental rock and electronic music in the 1970s were to create a new music ‘free’ from the past. A music that gave seed out of the cultural ‘nothingness’ that young Germans felt as a consequence of Germany’s role in the Second World War. A generation who grew up stifled by the recent history of Nazi atrocities, the guilt of their parents’ generation and their disillusionment at the reintegration of old Nazis into mainstream society.

From the opening of the first collective/cooperative in 1967, Commune 1, in Berlin, to the formation of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and the bombings, kidnappings and killings of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (RAF), young Germans sought out new values and a lifestyle outside of ‘the system’.

These cooperative and communal experiences led to a number of new radical German bands including Amon Düül, Faust and Can.”

The two-disc or quadruple vinyl collection, available in early April, will feature 24 tracks.

Welcome to the Lagos Disco Inferno, the first compilation of rare, Nigerian Disco to be released outside of Africa. Compiled by Frank Gossner of Voodoofunk.com, this record contains 12 tracks that represent the sound of Lagos in the late 1970s.

Dean Disi (Music Journalist and formerly Director of Lagos based label TYC Records) wrote the liner notes for this album:

“It was the era of sheer ecstasy. The music not only represents the vibrancy of youthful expressionism of the time but is also deeply rooted in African rhythm though not traditional in phraseology…
This collection of songs marks the development of Nigerian urban pop culture… There was diametric difference in the music of the discos and the music play by the groups. Disco music as played by the DJs was essentially western. The fans could connect with this easily. It was hip, urban and stimulating. The young Nigerian groups were hooked on it and tried to play it but with a distinctive African stamp of their own.”

Some of the artists on this record were stars of their times while others remained in obscurity.

And here is what makes Nigerian Disco so special: Lagos by the 1970s was a huge metropolitan city. Due to the oil boom, there was money to be made with music and nightlife and big international record labels like EMI, Decca and Philips had set up their recording studios that for a big part got equipped with vintage hardware handed down from their European franchises. So as the sound of the late 70s and early 80s in Europe and in the US got more and more modern and from todays point of view just plain shitty, overloaded with ugly sounding Roland keyboards, the sound of Lagos was dominated by powerful horn sections, heavy drums and percussion instruments. There’s plenty of early Moog synthesizers but no synth-generated strings or fake horns.

EMI’s house producer Emmanuel Odenusi had worked with Fela for many years, defining the sound of Afrobeat. Kayode Salami who produced another couple of tracks on this album also was responsible for the incredible sound of the famous debut LP by Psych-Rock group Ofege.

Lagos, a uniquely vibrant, gritty, energetic and sometimes quite dangerous tropical metropolis has always been much more than just a city. A state of mind where third world poverty met the oil boom, where African traditions clashed with Western decadence.

Make no mistake, this stuff will have you dance in a feverish rush in no time.

Lagos Disco Inferno will be out on cd and vinyl mid-february.

More Frank Zappa dvd news:

200 Motels, the legendary Frank Zappa film, is due for release in early February. The film which was written by Frank Zappa and Tony Palmer and directed by Tony Palmer features Frank Zappa and the Mothers alongside guest appearances by Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. The film was groundbreaking at the time as it was filmed on videotape. The film has now been restored using the original source material and the work overseen by Tony Palmer who has also recorded a director’s commentary as a bonus feature. More details can be found here:

www.frankzappa200motelsdvd.com