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Turn It Loose, Ain't No Good: Savoy Gospel 1970-1979
The second of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. Sublime crossings of gospel with the soul, funk and jazz of the Black Power era. Twenty rapturous cuts dot dazzlingly between Muscle Shoals soul, screwed breakbeat, Mizells-style fusion, disco and proto-house. Triumphant re-workings of Sly Stone, Donny Hathaway, and Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" will have listeners throwing their pew cushions into the air. Drawn from hard-to-find 45s and LPs, hardly any of the…
Bellyachers, Listen: Songs From East Africa, 1938-46
This is part 1 of a 2LP set of vinyl versions of Honest Jon's Something Is Wrong: Vintage Recordings From East Africa CD compilation -- selections from an HMV run of more than 400 78s -- recordings made in Uganda and Kenya from the mid‐1930s to the mid‐1950s. Part 1 encompasses this material circa 1938-1946, entitled Bellyachers, Listen: Songs From East Africa, 1938-46. Three main types of performance are featured (not forgetting a lovely early Kenyan big‐band calypso, as if straight from the pe…
The Viking Of Sixth Avenue
2021 restock, originally released in 2005. Tremendous gatefold presentation and one of HJR's most impressive documents to date. Poet, composer, street musician and cosmologist Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin, 1916-1999) learned rhythm from American Indians and counterpoint from J.S. Bach. Many of his recordings feature instruments he built himself: trimba, yukh, tuji, oo. Sometimes you can hear in the background the streets of New York, where Moondog often slept. In addition, he was blind, due to …
The Music Improvisation Company / Company bundle
Since 2017, Honest Jon’s, the London based record shop and imprint renowned for its forward thinking, democratic approach to music, has embarked on one of its most remarkable and ambitious projects to date - a close collaboration with Derek Bailey’s seminal record label, Incus, returning some of the most remarkable efforts in free improvisation and avant-gardism to the world. So far we’ve seen a stunning series of Bailey’s many solo and collaborative efforts reemerge, bringing his towering histo…
Fote
Following the short-lived Truth Club with Trefor Goronwy (who later went on to work with This Heat and The Camberwell Now), Fote was formed in 1981 with the trio of Robert Haigh, Deborah Harding, and Trevor Reidy. Releasing two 12" EP's along with one track featured on a split 7" with Truth Club, Fote's entire studio recordings consisted of just 8 tracks. With angular constructs of post-punk, free-form improvisations, and wicked time signatures, these tracks shredded boundaries one can still hea…
Perception & Association
Consisting of two side-long pieces, Perception & Association was composed over a period from 2012-2018. Opening side A is Time and Again, a startling work for tape and electronics which pulses over waves of interlocking spatial relationships. These elements are at once distant, even static, yet Christoph Heemann gradually propels the listener along chapters of an unexpected and further revealing sonic narrative. While the deliberate frames and events offer a specific path, even the most active l…
Scrum
"Hermione Johnson's name is one we first noticed when she popped up playing prepared piano on the newish Pumice LP, Puddle. But a quick check through her stats reveals a more extensive background in the New Zealand improvised music scene She's got a few CDRs with other free jazz types that predates the Puddle session by years. So sue us! Due to the damped quality of prepared keyboards, there's a distinctly percussive element to Hermione's playing. At times the effect is fully gamelanic, bu…
Option
**300 copies** "FTR is proud to present what is only the second solo album by Borbetomagus' sax giant, Don Dietrich. Crazily, Option documents the first solo performance Don ever did. It was recorded in 2019 as part of the Option series in Chicago, where Dietrich appeared at the invitation of Ken Vandermark (who also wrote the liner notes). The cover photo shows one of Don's polycarbonate sculptures, after which the album is partially named. Twisted, compressed, and strangely inviting, it is emb…
Livin' In The Jungle
**Edition of 250** Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records present the napalm blast that is the forthcoming new Banshee record, Livin' In The Jungle. Hailing from Boston and blazing red hot cinders through your eyes Banshee channel widescreen, kick out the jams motherfuckers psyche-rock-a-rama with a singer doing his best to channel both Alice and Iggy. Yes, they rock like crazy and play with the fired-up fury of The Stooges, MC5, and The Alice Cooper Group as they let their freak flag fly. On Li…
Morning Flare Symmetries
**Edition 250** The fourth album that Samara Lubelski and Marcia Bassett have recorded as a duo -- the second for us, following 2017's Live NYC -- is much less about drones than some of their previous work. Morning Flare Symmetries blares like a ram's horn blown as a call to angelic battle. Everyone has been unanimous in agreement that this improvising duo has achieved a new highpoint in the musical histories of both Samara and Marcia. They each have deep roots in the East Coast sub-underground,…
Tretetam
Tip! **250 copies** "We discovered the experimental work of the late Letha Rodman Melchior through her husband Dan. Our first release was the amazing Mare Astrale LP (FTR 432LP, 2019), and we have now reissued 2009's Treteman as an LP. Tretetam was actually the operating handle Letha originally used for her sound collages. And this music was first issued on CDR as Tretetam's eponymous debut for the Finnish Ikuisuus label. A few other releases appeared under this soubriquet before she began using…
Michael
**Edition of 300** Michael is the third LP we have done with Boston-based musician, Joseph Allred. The first, O Meadowlark (FTR 451LP, 2019) was a suite for guitar and banjo. For its follow-up, Traveler (FTR 491LP), Joseph added splendid vocals to the mix. With Michael, Mr. Allred gives airing to his fine harmonium playing, alongside string majesty and vocals. Maybe on the next one he'll teach us how to fly. Michael is an album with a dreamy narrative core. Its loose tale deals with the idea of …
The Light That Never Ceases To Fail
**250 copies** "In my count, this is the 25th album by Amherst's Idea Fire Company. And it a marvel of creative whackery that unfolds its charms like a glamorous stripper doing a matinee show at a well-lit coal mine. Many key auxiliary members have passed through IFCO's ranks (Dr. Steve, Jessi Leigh Swenson, Meira O'Reilly, Franz de Waard, Graham Lambkin, Matt Krefting, etc.), but the core of the unit has always been Karla Borecky (catcher, piano) and Scott Foust (first base, trumpet/synth). On …
The Borametz Tree
**500 copies** "Feeding Tube is pleased to be able to offer the first domestic release, helmed by the superb British guitarist, Chris Joynes. For this album, Joynes has assembled a polyglot ensemble comprised of folks from Dead Rat Orchestra (a splendidly bizarre experimental völk outfit), guitarist Nick Jonah Davids (with whom Joynes recently did a split LP of solo electric guitar improvs) and Cam Deas, who records both as a sound artist and as an acoustic guitarist.The music they have created …
Urban Fossickated Octave
**250 copies** "Beautiful new LP (the seventh, I believe), from this wonderfully abstract outfit, who were birthed in the shadow of Smegma (Portland, OR), but have since relocated to Maine. The foundational members of the band are Grant Corum (keyboards, vocals, tin whistle, vocals) and Suzanne Stone (alto sax, khene, vocals). For this album, recorded by Big Blood's Caleb Mulkerin, they are joined by Caleb himself (tape loops and treatments) and Tom Kovacevic (piano and synth), both of whom play…
Afternoon-Dusk
**300 copies** "Ned Collette's last album, the 2LP set Old Chestnut, was hailed as a masterpiece by almost everyone who heard it. Part of this was due to the darkly delicate lyrics and vocals of Ned himself (akin to the work of Graeme Jefferies, ca. This Kind of Punishment), but much was also due to the elegant lyricism of the music, which had a fantastic prog / folk heft as impossible to peg as it was to ignore. With this new LP, Collette (an Australian ex-pat, now based in Berlin) goes all-ins…
Traveler
"Welcome to the second album we've done with string maestro, Joseph Allred. Unlike O Meadowlark (FTR 451LP), this one features a smattering of Joseph's vocals, although his main thrust is still glistening instrumentals. The title song is a goddamn sad one, sung with reedy elegance, dealing with a kidnapped dog that serves as a stand-in for all earthly beings, full of both frailty and resilience. Another vocal track, 'The Crown' (which inspired the cover art), stems from a long conversation Josep…
The Whole of Each Eye
"Massively ripped sophomore LP by this Portland OR psych sextet. Half of the line-up has shifted in the two years since their great debut album, but the same berserk stack of musical elements remains on the table. A lot of bands who fly the psych banner these days have a minimalist view of the music, and choose a sort of post-shoegaze lassitude to present their 'vision.' This can be astoundingly great, of course, but it also fails to address the central gobble-crazed nature of true psychedelia. …
Water & Rock Music Volumes 3-4
**250 copies** A single LP compiles another two installments in the Water & Rock Music series by Jon Collin, UK ex-pat guitarist currently based in Sweden. Once again, Collin has put together a riveting set of acoustic guitar pieces, these recorded around Stockholm between April and October, 2018. There is a wistful, bluesy quality to the playing and inventions here. John Fahey once told me that blues was 'about anger.' But this work seems suffused with delicately scrambling melancholia, like a …
Dust World
In the 1930s, the Dust Bowl was the most devastating man-made ecological catastrophe in human history. In 2020, Dust World. After pioneering the now thriving form of underground-band-as-character-based-performance-art, and filling 2017-2019 with a staggering number of wigged-up Banny Grove shows in support of a self-released record and a 7" EP, Banny Grove leader Louise Chicoine decided to trade in the costume and the cartoonish-ness that were her signatures in order to break ground on a more pr…