NEW RELEASES / NEW RE-ISSUES
Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo Magellan
The Sea and Cake: Nassau (20th Anniversary Limited Edition)

NEW ARRIVALS / RE-STOCKS
Alice Coltrane: Eternity
Antonio Carlos Jobim: Stone Flower
The Books: Lost and Safe
Burzum: Hvis Lysett Tar Oss
Cluster: Cluster ‘71
Coke: s/t
Wanda De Sah: Softly!
Dr. John: Gris-Gris
Eric Dolphy: Out to Lunch
Headhunters: Survival of the Fittest
Incredible Bongo Band: Bongo Rock
Eddie Kendricks: People…Hold On
Q-Tip: The Renaissance
Charles Mingus: Blues and Roots
Misfits: Walk Among Us
Moondog: s/t
Minutemen: Project Mersh
Shabazz Palaces: Black Up
Slint: Spiderland
Marlena Shaw: The Spice of Life
Scott Walker: The Drift
V/A: Message from the Tribe - An Anthology of Tribe Records (1972-1976)
*plus many more…

FEATURED VINTAGE ARRIVALS
The Beach Boys: Surfin’ Safari
The Beatles: Rubber Soul
Big Brother & The Holding Company: Cheap Thrills
Brian Eno: Music For Films
The Free Design: Heaven/Earth
The Free Design: You Could Be Born Again
The Herbaliser: Very Mercenary
The Hidden Cameras: Awoo
Thelonious Monk: Misterioso
The Miracle Workers: Moxie’s Revenge
Joe Pass: Virtuoso
Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet
Sonny Sharrock: Black Woman
TV on the Radio: Dear Science
Frank Zappa: Sheik Yerbouti
Frank Zappa: In New York
V/A: Sanguinho Novo…Arnaldo Baptista Revisitado
V/A: Indian Music of the Upper Amazon (Folkways Comp.)
V/A: The In-Kraut Vol. 2 (German Comp. - Sealed)
V/A: Glass Arcade (Sarah Records Comp. - UK)
V/A: Engine Common (Sarah Records Comp. - UK)
*plus many more…

COMING SOON… (RE-STOCKS AND RELEASES)
Lavern Baker: La Vern
Baroness: First and Second
Francis Bebey: African Electronic Music 1975-1982
John Cale: Paris 1919
The Clean: Oddities
Cluster: Cluster II
Serge Chaloff: Blue Serge
Spencer Davis Group: Their First LP (Import LP w/ Bonus tracks)
Spencer Davis Group: The 2nd Album (Import LP w/ Bonus tracks)
Death: Sound of Perseverance
Digitalism: DJ-Kicks (2LP, Germany)
Donnie & Joe Emerson: Dreamin’ Wild
The Funkees: Dancing Time (2LP)
Hollins and Starr: Sidewalks Talking
Justice: New Lands (12”)
Liars: Drums Not Dead
The Millennium: Begin
Moondog: Viking of Sixth Avenue
Mummies: Play Their Own Records
Nazoranai: s/t (France)
Frank Ocean: Channel Orange
Ondatropica: s/t (3LP + 7”)
The Residents: Animal Lover (2LP)
Rhythm Machine: s/t (LP + 12”)
Nina Simone: Little Girl Blue (Re-issue, first Nina Simone LP)
Martial Solal: Breathless (Original soundtrack)
Thin Lizzy: s/t (Re-issue)
V/A BIPPP: French Synth-Wave 1979-85
V/A: Ivory Coast Soul 2: Afro Soul in Abidjan from 1976 to 1981
V/A: The Inner Flame: A Tribute to Rainer Ptacek

STAFF PICKS OF THE WEEK: NEW ARRIVALS

Musique Fragile 01 (Constellation)
This isn’t a new release but it’s still my pick of the week. I’ve played this compilation (of 3 albums) from beginning to end for three mornings now and it hasn’t begun to grow tiresome. The matte packaging is beautiful, with three individually sleeved LPs that include CDs and liner notes.

This is not pop music, I’d say it’s “accessible outside music”.  You can read all about this release at the Constellation Records website.

Godspeed and good hunting,
Ian

***

Wanda De Sah: Softly! (Capitol)
This is the sort of record you’d throw on while recovering from a long, hot summer day. Softly! features the beautifully cool and subdued vocals of Wanda De Sah over top compositions from the likes of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto. For anyone into bossanova or Brazilian pop, Softly! is a mellow retreat that does not disappoint.

Dig it,
Dennis

FEATURED NEW ARRIVALS / RE-STOCKS
Alice Coltrane: Eternity (Warner)
Within the first 30 seconds of ‘Spiritual Eternal,’ the opening track on Alice Coltrane’s final studio album, Eternity, the listener encounters the complete palette of Alice Coltrane’s musical thought. As her organ careens through a series of arpeggiated modal drones, they appear seemingly rootless, hanging out in the cosmic eternal. And they remain there ever so briefly until an entire orchestra chimes in behind her in a straight blues waltz that places her wonderously jagged soloing within the context of a universal everything — at least musically — in that she moves through jazz, Indian music, blues, 12-tone music and the R&B of Ray Charles. This is the historical and spiritual context Alice Coltrane made her own, the ability to open up her own sonic vocabulary and seamlessly enter it into an ensemble context for an untold, unpredictable expression of harmonic convergence.

Antonio Carlos Jobim: Stone Flower (CTI Records)
Nearly a decade after the paint peeled from the shine of bossa nova’s domination of both the pop and jazz charts in the early ’60s, Creed Taylor brought Jobim’s tender hush of the bossa sound back into the limelight. With a band that included both Jobim and Deodato on guitars (Jobim also plays piano and sings in a couple of spots), Ron Carter on bass, João Palma on drums, Airto Moreira and Everaldo Ferreira on percussion, Urbie Green on trombone, Joe Farrell on soprano saxophone, and Harry Lookofsky laying down a soulful violin solo on the title track, Jobim created his own version of Kind of Blue. Stone Flower is simply brilliant, a velvety, late-night snapshot of Jobim at his peak.

Cluster: Cluster ‘71 (4 Men With Beards)
According to The Wire, Cluster 71 is one of the “One Hundred Records That Set The World On Fire.” Very few albums from Germany can lay claim to this honor. This album is a mere three untitled tracks and was quite an ordeal for untrained ears at the time of its release, yet the album pointed the way forward like no other electronic opus. For want of a better category, Cluster 71 was classified rather inappropriately and incorrectly as “cosmic.” Few recognized Cluster for what it was — the synthesis of pop music stripped of embarrassing glamour and so-called serious music without intellectual constraints.

Eric Dolphy: Out to Lunch (Blue Note)
Out to Lunch stands as Eric Dolphy’s magnum opus, an absolute pinnacle of avant-garde jazz in any form or era. Its rhythmic complexity was perhaps unrivaled since Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, and its five Dolphy originals — the jarring Monk tribute “Hat and Beard,” the aptly titled “Something Sweet, Something Tender,” the weirdly jaunty flute showcase “Gazzelloni,” the militaristic title track, the drunken lurch of “Straight Up and Down” — were a perfect balance of structured frameworks, carefully calibrated timbres, and generous individual freedom. Much has been written about Dolphy’s odd time signatures, wide-interval leaps, and flirtations with atonality. And those preoccupations reach their peak on Out to Lunch, which is less rooted in bop tradition than anything Dolphy had ever done. But that sort of analytical description simply doesn’t do justice to the utterly alien effect of the album’s jagged soundscapes.Dolphy uses those pet devices for their evocative power and unnerving hints of dementia, not some abstract intellectual exercise. His solos and themes aren’t just angular and dissonant — they’re hugely so, with a definite playfulness that becomes more apparent with every listen.

*write-ups from June staff and various web sources.