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On The Turntable

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    The Clean

    The Clean :: Compilation

    Tally Ho! Originally released in 1986 by Flying Nun Records on cassette, now in the digital age Compilation consists of early recordings, the group’s first couple of eps, along with six live jams. Clean, indeed.

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    Sleeper And Snake

    Sleeper And Snake :: Fresco Shed

    Post-punk in approach, aesthetically moody and mid-fi, the project’s two releases seemingly exist outside of current trendscapes, instead recalling various shades of 80s UK underground.

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    Dwight Sykes

    Dwight Sykes :: Songs – Volume 1

    Songs Volume 1 — a 2013 compilation wrangling 7 tracks from the unreleased cassette archives of Detroit musician Dwight Sykes. Originally recorded in his home studio, L.U.S.T. Productions between 1980-1990. Step into the life zone…

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    White Fence

    White Fence :: White Fence

    Now 7 albums into it, this is the 2010 s/t debut of Tim Presley’s White Fence. Its 38 minute runtime set the blueprint for the lysergic pop, folk and garage that Presley continues to mine to this day–either solo, or via myriad collaborations.

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    Art Museums

    Art Museums :: Rough Frame

    Art Museums tell ‘sordid tales of artists, lovers & poseurs with cult new wave jangle‘, says the duo’s label, Woodsist. Spot on! Lovers of ’80s Anglophile rock with a penchant for lo-fi will surely dig this. One of our favorite albums of 2010.

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    Rob Jo Star Band

    Rob Jo Star Band :: Rob Jo Star Band

    Mid-70s Parisian proto-punk, spit out in churlish English amidst acres of fuzz and indiscriminate pulsars.

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    Simply Saucer

    Simply Saucer :: Cyborgs Revisited

    1970’s proto-punk with a Velvets chug straight out of Hamilton, Ontario. Dance the mutation!

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    The Vaselines

    The Vaselines :: The Way of The Vaselines

    Still the best. Released 29 years ago, this Sub Pop compilation provides a total overview of the the Scottish duo’s output from 1986-1990.

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Marthe Zambo :: Ebele Minga / Bidan

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A highlife and proto-disco delight from Cameroonian singer Marthe Zambo, “Ebele Minga” radiates in marrying more traditional West African roots music with early leanings into electronic and synth-based rhythms. It’s difficult to put a particular date on this 7”, but it seems to perhaps just precede Zambo’s 1980 debut lp, Bikola, a record which also finds her just dipping her sonic toes into a more modern style of dance music …

The Cure :: Carnage Visors (Film, 1981)

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Released in 1981, the 28 minute instrumental piece “Carnage Visors” was originally conceived as the score to filmmaker Ric Gallup’s (brother of the Cure’s Simon Gallup) animated short of the same name. The piece was used in lieu of an opening band during the Cure’s 1981 tour in support of the group’s Faith lp. The film has since disappeared, the only known copies belonging to Robert Smith, Gallup, and Cure’s Lol Tolhurst.

Okay Temiz :: East Breeze

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Fusing its eastern base with latin rhythms, de rigueur flourishes of psych and a second helping of sinuous funk, Temiz’s polyrhythmic stew effortlessly bends/blends myriad modalities. For a taste, tuck into “East Breeze”, a tune that immediately sets the table with a sinister bağlama riff (courtesy of Arif Sag) that floats above all manner of percussion… in addition to berimbaus, talking drums, zithers, finger bells, woodwinds, and a rather nasty synth line. Bon appétit.

Phil Cook :: Finding The Purity In Music

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We catch up with Phil Cook on the eve of the release of his beautiful new instrumental record, All These Years. Through an unwavering smile, he talked about the importance of a fertile cultural landscape, how the label he just started is anything but, and why he decided to release a solo piano album now.

Happy Thanksgiving :: Doug Sahm And Friends – Austin, TX 1972

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Tradition runs rampant around Thanksgiving: generations of old recipes, football, Alice’s Restaurant, The Last Waltz, and, of course, a parade of balloons shutting down NYC. What else do you need? If you thought you were covered in the Thanksgiving tradition department, we did too…until a few years ago, when someone blew the dust off a long lost tape — Doug Sahm’s Thanksgiving Jam.

Percy Mayfield :: My Error

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A curiously eccentric slice of downbeat soul, Percy Mayfield’s “My Error” circuitously revels in a knowing misery—a uniquely dark songwriting and vision of despair that earned him the nickname of Poet Laureate of the Blues. The track, a downtempo and mysterious waltz, comes from Mayfield’s 1970 lp Sings Percy Mayfield …

CJQ :: The Black Hole

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Molten astral jazz from the Motor City. By the time they recorded The Black Hole at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1973, CJQ (Contemporary Jazz Quintet) were Detroit’s answer to the electric clarion call resounding throughout the jazz world. With one foot in the stratosphere and the other in the streets, CJQ propel themselves with the same thrust of Miles’ Cellar Door band and Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi unit, while syphoning fumes of the raw energy given off by Detroit underground comrades like the MC5, Funkadelic, and the Tribe collective.

Sally Anne Morgan :: Cups

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When Sally Anne Morgan released the warm and welcoming Thread in autumn of last year, it felt like its own kind of Thanksgiving album—earthy, folksy, full of friends and radiating with joy. AD’s Tyler Wilcox called it a “natural, healing space, where everything is free and nothing is a weed.” What a striking and cerebral turn it is, then, for her to return this month with Cups—a solitary affair with a longer, more sustained compositional approach, allowing each note to bend of its own accord in search of melody and harmony.

Pavement :: Slow Century (Documentary)

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With a Pavement reunion tour going all over the place in 2022, it’s a good time to revisit Lance Bangs’ excellent Slow Century doc. Originally released in 2002, it tracks the band from the scruffy early days as a “special new band” through their, er, slightly less scruffy time as indie rock darlings.

Chris Spedding :: Songs Without Words

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“Video Life” this is not. Prior to being reborn in the late 70s while riding the crest of British new wave, guitar guru Chris Spedding kicked off the decade with his solo debut, 1970’s Songs Without Words. Originally a Japan-only release, the instrumental jazz album found itself reissued and augmented in 2015 with a number of the tracks shortened, along with the inclusion of bonus track “Sub-Continental Drift”.