On The Turntable

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    Creation Rebel

    Creation Rebel :: Starship Africa

    Recently reissued via Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound, this 1980 platter is trippiest selection of the Creation Rebel catalog, expanding the lysergic limits of dub with whooshing backmasked tape effects. It’s also rumored to be the planned soundtrack of a Don Letts-directed film about ‘alien dreads from beyond the stars’…

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    Bonnie

    Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Nathan Salsburg & Tyler Trotter :: Hear The Children Sing The Evidence

    Will Oldham has known Daniel Higgs for decades, first in Baltimore in the late 1990s, later putting up the Lungfish auteur whenever he passed through Louisville. So when his friend, musical collaborator and Louisville neighbor Nathan Salsburg suggested covering a Lungfish song that he’d been singing to his infant daughter, it made perfect sense to Oldham.

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    Winged Wheel

    Winged Wheel :: Big Hotel

    Winged Wheel was already a supergroup of sorts. With the band’s second LP they’ve gotten even super-er. Big Hotel brings the whole gang back together: Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray) and Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo). But it also adds two serious ringers to the mix — Sonic Youth’s mighty sticksman Steve Shelley and Water Damage’s similarly mighty Lonnie Slack.

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    Jessica Pratt

    Jessica Pratt :: Here in the Pitch

    Here in the Pitch is a gorgeous slice of baroque pop, but also something gnarlier and more complicated. Recording for the second time at Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn and employing a full band, Pratt’’s realized a lush, baroque 1960s pop sound akin to Vashti Bunyan’s work with Joe Meek, Dusty Springfield, even Petula Clark.

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    Greg Foat

    Greg Foat :: Live at Villa Maximus, Mykonos

    On his second live release this year, Villa Maximus sends jazz pianist and synthesizer maven Greg Foat to Mykonos with his frequent collaborators guitarist Warren Hampshire of the Bees and drummer Ayo Salawu of Kokoroko. But the real wild card here is stellar Greek reedman Sokratis Votskos, who adds flute and bass clarinet to this already formidable unit. The thrilling results range from deep space ambient jazz exploration to funky krautrock blowouts.

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    Gerry Mulligan

    Gerry Mulligan :: Night Lights

    Recorded over two sessions in the fall of 1962 at Nola Penthouse Studios in New York City, Night Lights finds Gerry Mulligan exploring the somber side of cool jazz, playing originals and standards with a no-frills approach.

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    V/A

    V/A :: Funk Tide :: Tokyo Jazz​-​Funk from Electric Bird 1978​-​87

    The Parisian label Wewantsounds delivers yet again with Funk Tide – Tokyo Jazz-Funk from Electric Bird 1978-87, a compilation surveying the Japanese jazz label’s ferocious first decade, culled by the Tokyo-based DJ Notoya. The eight tracks within, many of which are seeing their first release outside of Japan, comprise a bonanza of fusion, city pop, smooth soul sounds, and beyond.

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    Broadcast

    Broadcast :: Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006-2009

    Long-rumored since the death of the inimitable Trish Keenan in 2011, the “final” Broadcast album has materialized as Spell Blanket, a megalithic collection of songs and sketches culled from Trish’s extensive archive of 4-track tapes and MiniDiscs recorded during the group’s post-Tender Buttons period (2006-2009).

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Hölderlin :: Hölderlins Traum

Hölderlin remains a footnote in the greater Kosmische tome. Like many of the Kraut canon’s lesser-knowns, Hölderlin’s legacy and overall impact would be marked by sporadic line-up changes, discrepancies in sound and direction, and even lawsuits. Their reputation is further shrouded in the fact that the group, along with big-timers Klaus Schulze and Manual Gottsching, were key parties to the eventual falling out and demise of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and his Pilz and Cosmic Couriers label. Sensationalism be damned, prior to the drama and tumult that would follow, Hölderlin managed to lock- in on their first LP for the legendary and ill-fated Pilz.

Someone Like Me :: A Compilation

Efficient Space, the label that heroically issued this compilation, defines the songs it gathered as “confessional loner folk, devotional song, civil rights activism.” I would suggest it is much more. Like Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk before it, Someone Like Me offers a glimpse into the transcendental sprouts in the salt of the earth, this time by way of alien americana and abstract, out-of-time lo-fi.

Funk Tide :: Tokyo Jazz​-​Funk from Electric Bird 1978​-​87

The Parisian label Wewantsounds delivers yet again with Funk Tide – Tokyo Jazz-Funk from Electric Bird 1978-87, a compilation surveying the Japanese jazz label’s ferocious first decade, culled by the Tokyo-based DJ Notoya. The eight tracks within, many of which are seeing their first release outside of Japan, comprise a bonanza of fusion, city pop, smooth soul sounds, and beyond.

Transmissions :: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco

2024 marks 20 years of Wilco’s current lineup, and the band is celebrating with another installment of their Solid Sound Festival and a new EP, Hot Sun Cool Shroud. Band leader Jeff Tweedy joins host Jason P. Woodbury this week to discuss the fest and the absurdities of life in a band.

Marina Allen :: Eight Pointed Star

Marina Allen’s Eight Pointed Star brings back her light fusion of indie rock and Americana, evoking the folk revival of late ’60s icons like Joni Mitchell and Karen Dalton as much as it does present-day peers Dana Gavanski and Andy Schauf.

Waltel Branco :: Meu Balanço

One of the unrecognized masters of Brazilian music, Waltel Branco seemed to have been everywhere from the 1940s to the 1970s, Zelig-like. As the director of the Som Livre studios of Rede Globo, he produced most major records of Brazilian music history, with more than three thousand official credits and a few thousand more in dispute, for wildly different works, from the afro-folk of J.B. de Carvalho to the samba of Elizeth Cardoso to the bossa nova of João Gilberto to the tropicália of Gal Costa to the soul funk of Tim Maia.

Someone I Know :: Margo Guryan

Who was Margo Guryan? Words and Music is a definitive attempt at answering that question: a 3-LP box set collecting Guryan’s recorded work–early, jazz-leaning songs, Take a Picture, and the demos released in the early aughts. It traces Guryan’s musical career from precocious jazz composer to successful songwriter, from her conversion into a pop artist in the late ’60s to her unlikely career revival beginning in the 1990s and continuing into the TikTok age. 

Bonnie “Prince” Billy :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Will Oldham has known Daniel Higgs for decades, first in Baltimore in the late 1990s, later putting up the Lungfish auteur whenever he passed through Louisville. So when his friend, musical collaborator and Louisville neighbor Nathan Salsburg suggested covering a Lungfish song that he’d been singing to his infant daughter, it made perfect sense to Oldham.

The Curtains :: Calamity

Though it was released six years prior to Overgrown Path, Chris Cohen has retrospectively called Calamity “essentially his first solo record”, featuring minor contributions from consummate collaborator Nedelle Torrisi. Both a mid-aughts indie relic and another of Cohen’s signature timeless touch, it shouldn’t be difficult for fans of his excellent solo albums to dive into the pool headfirst.