CDs + Vinyl:

Action Bronson – Blue Chips 7000 CD (Atlantic)

Bronsolino is getting back to basics with the style of Queens rap that brought him to the forefront of hip-hop five years ago. Guests include Rick Ross, Meyhem Lauren, Jah Tiger, and Big Body Bes.

Brix & The Extricated – Part 2 CD/LP+MP3 (Blang)

Formed by the visionary Brix Smith Start (vocals/guitar) and legendary bass player Stephen Hanley, Brix & the Extricated also features Paul Hanley on drums, which reignites the Hanley Brother powerhouse rhythm section. The addition of Steve Trafford on guitar has brought together these influential, former members of The Fall. Completing the line-up is hugely talented Irish guitarist Jason Brown. [Limited colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Blutengel – Black CD (Out Of Line)

The dark pop anthem “Black,” off the album Leitbild is the title track and starting point for Blutengel’s brand-new mini-album, which also contains five new and previously unreleased songs from the Berlin-based group.

Danielle Bradbery – I Don’t Believe We’ve Met CD (BMX)

Multi-faceted artist Danielle Bradbery steps out and into her own with an album that infuses her pop, R&B, soul and country influences. The Texas-native got her start as the winner of Season 4 of NBC’s The Voice, where she soon found success with her singles “The Heart Of Dixie” and “Young In America” off her 2013 self-titled album.

Grayson Capps – Scarlett Roses CD/LP (The Royal Potato Family)

Scarlett Roses is the acclaimed Alabama songwriter’s sixth studio album and his first solo release in six years. Throughout the collection, Capps showcases the kind of understated brilliance that can blossom when creativity is detached from expectation, when songs are truly given the space and time to find their writer.

Causa Sui – Vibraciones Doradas CD/LP (El Paraiso)

New album from the Danish instrumental psych-rock/stoner rock band. Vintage Sabbath-isms filtered through a distinctively post-modern ethos. [Limited mint green colored vinyl pressing also available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for December 1, 2017

CDs + Vinyl:

Aetherian – The Untamed Wilderness CD (Lifeforce)

Melodic death metal from Greece.

Eric Alexander – Song Of No Regrets CD (HighNote)

Hearing tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander is one of the great treats in jazz. There are few artists on stage today who combine chops, imagination and technique with a fluidity of ideas as he does. This imposing improviser is reunited here with pianist David Hazeltine and they’re joined by another jazz great , the always daring trumpeter Jon Faddis on a couple of the tracks.

Aosoth – The Inside Scriptures CD (Agonia)

Ferocious yet precise and occult-driven black metal rife with rich layers of atmosphere.

Björk – Utopia CD/2xLP (One Little Indian/The Orchard)

Björk’s ninth studio effort, co-produced by Venezuelan DJ Arca, follows-up her 2015 breakup record Vulnicura and celebrates her reemergence on the other side of heartache. “The last album, we sort of call it ‘hell’ – it was like divorce. So we are doing paradise now. Utopia,” the enigmatic artist explains. “Vulnicura was about a very personal loss, and I think this new album is about a love that’s even greater. It’s about rediscovering love – but in a spiritual way…” Transcendent lead single “The Gate” serves as a fitting introduction to a record about Bjork’s romantic renaissance. The eye-catching cover art was designed by artist Jesse Kanda with creative direction from Björk and her longtime collaborator James Merry.

Blaze Of Perdition – Conscious Darkness CD (Agonia)

Fourth studio album from the Polish black metallers.

Bring Me The Horizon – 2004-2013 CD/LP+MP3 (Epitaph)

The best songs from their early releases on Epitaph Records. [Limited clear vinyl pressing also available.]

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Some Loud Thunder (10^th Anniversary Edition) CD/LP (CYHSY/The Orchard)

“Some Loud Thunder was an album written mostly as a reaction to the not unwelcome but still uncomfortable great interest in the band’s first album, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Depending on who you asked, in 2007 the band was known alternatively as the real thing or a flash in the pan, a band who presented a new paradigm for independent music or whose model was based on sheer luck, a band simply enjoying the process of creation or a (relatively) new band struggling to maintain some sort of illusory artistic foothold. The general desire to discover the secret behind the project (and the irritation that it caused me in interviews, reviews, etc.) was, to a large degree, what drove the creation of the album, Some Loud Thunder. I think that this album, from the abrasive first track (which was not as much of a f**k you as some think but rather that it simply worked) to the final disintegrating ‘give up, give up, give up, give up, give up’ in the song, ‘Five Easy Pieces,’ documents a band that was comfortable taking big chances, somewhat aware of the consequences of taking chances (in an industry that often seems allergic to veering off the beaten path) but ignoring them all the same.” – Alec Ounsworth

Phil Collins – Take A Look At Me Now… The Complete Studio Collection 8xCD (Rhino)

Contains the first CD from each of the newly remastered studio albums, housed in a slipcase similar to the previous Take A Look At Me Now box.

[Read more…] about New Releases for November 24, 2017

CDs + Vinyl:

A.R. & Machines – The Art Of German Psychedelic 1970 – 1974 10xCD (BMG Rights Management)

The complete collection of Achim Reichel’s innovative avant-garde project in the early 1970s. The lavishly designed ten-CD box-set includes all five studio albums and almost five hours of rare and unreleased music, a new remix-album – Virtual Journey – as well as a hardcover book with the artist’s own liner notes.

The Adicts – And It Was So! CD/LP/Cassette (Nuclear Blast)

With their Clockwork Orange Droog attire, infectious high energy, uptempo music and unforgettable performances, The Adicts are no strangers to the scene having formed in the 1975 in Ipswich, England. Over 40 years later the punk legends are still intent on raising sonic hell with their eleventh studio album.

America – Heritage: Home Recordings/Demos 1970-1973 CD (Omnivore)

A collection of rare demo recordings and unreleased songs from the band’s early formative years.

John Balke – Siwan – Nahnou Houm CD (ECM)

New album from the international collective led by Norwegian keyboardist-composer-arranger Jon Balke.

Barenaked Ladies – Fake Nudes CD (Vanguard)

Fake Nudes finds Barenaked Ladies channeling the harmonies fans have come to love, alongside a fresh electronic-driven sound and lyrics filled with wit and empathy. That wit even comes through on the album title, a play on the phrase “fake news,” which rose in popularity when President Donald Trump took office this year. “We were making the record in January at the height of the brouhaha over the term, which kind of in my mind, appeared then,” Robertson said. “It became popularized then. It’s just so absurd in my mind. It provided the opportunity for us to make the joke about our band name that everybody else has been making for 29 years. On every show, ‘They’re not nude and they’re not women. But our new act, blah blah blah.’ It just seemed like the perfect opportunity to call our own bluff there.”

Baths – Romaplasm CD/LP (Anticon)

Less outwardly grim than the darker half of the last Baths LP, Obsidian, but twice as bittersweet,

Romaplasm reimagines approachable electronic pop songs as pieces of scaffolding that can be lived in, expanded and retracted, or torn down entirely. [Limited colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Harry Bertoia – Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture Of Harry Bertoia CD+DVD (Important)

Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia, a film by Jeffrey and Miriam Eger, was shot in 1971 and follows Harry Bertoia in performance and interview throughout his Sonambient barn deep in the Pennsylvania woods. The CD contains historic recordings made in Harry Bertoia’s Sonambient barn.

Black Sabbath – The End 2xCD/3xCD+DVD+Blu-ray/3xLP (Eagle Vision)

Black Sabbath’s final hometown concert at Birmingham’s Genting Arena on February 4th, 2017. [Limited colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Karl Blau – Out Her Space CD/2xLP (Bella Union)

Out Her Space is a gorgeous, languid and hook-infested gumbo of soul, funk, some jazzy blowing and Afro-pop, to arrive somewhere else entirely. The album testifies to Blau’s studio skills, as he captures the glimmering, humid depths of those sweltering southern influences, despite his north-western heritage. Out Her Space plays with humanitarian themes, against a backdrop of self-immolating American politics. For starters, the title was equally inspired by Blau’s, “overwhelming feeling to point out that men, in general, need to listen, to stop being so assertive and to get out of her space, let her balance again.”

The Body & Full Of Hell – Ascending A Mountain Of Heavy Light CD/LP+MP3 (Thrill Jockey)

Latest collaboration between two unique and influential forces in heavy music. Despite their obvious differences in songwriting, The Body & Full of Hell are unified by their shared aesthetic, catharsis through the manipulation of emotions transformed by visceral noise and fueled by an inescapable sense of dread.

Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox – The New Classics CD (Concord)

First ever live album from Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, recorded in Las Vegas and airing later this year on PBS.

Jimmy Buffet – Buried Treasure: Volume One CD+DVD (Mailboat)

A collection of Buffett songs, recorded in 1969 in Mobile and Nashville, discovered hidden in a recording studio closet.

[Read more…] about New Releases for November 17, 2017