With Christmas well and truly on the way, we thought we'd share with you some good tidings - Vinyl Hunter is expanding to London town once again! Additionally, we've got some super hot new releases to share with you, as usual. The racks are bulging with ever more excellent music, so come see us!
CRIKE
INTRODUCING VINYL HUNTER AT AVALON CAFE!
Finally back in the capital!
We have been working very hard to open our new shop, contained within the walls of the wonderful new Avalon Cafe, in Bermondsey!
In 1972, the country of Rhodesia – as Zimbabwe was then known – was in the middle of a long-simmering struggle for independence from British colonial rule. In the hotels and nightclubs of the capital, bands could make a living playing a mix of Afro-Rock, Cha-Cha-Cha and Congolese Rumba. But as the desire for independence grew stronger, a number of Zimbabwean musicians began to look to their own culture for inspiration.
James' Judiciary:
Jneiro Jarel - After A Thousand Years
Throughout a career that has spanned over twenty years and seen collaborations with MF DOOM, Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, BadBadNotGood, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, Kimbra and Khujo Goodie (Dungeon Family), Jneiro Jarel’s consistently distinctive, forward thinking productions, as well as his love for the music of Brazil, made his partnership with Far Out a perfect fit. Recorded between New York, New Orleans, Miami and Costa Rica, After A Thousand Years features legendary multi-instrumentalist Bill Summers, famed for his work with Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones and Eddie Henderson. The album also features Malawian-American guitarist Masauko Chipembere who has worked with the likes of RZA from Wu-Tang Clan and Ladybug Mecca from Digable Planets. In 2018 Far Out Recordings signed a record deal with Brooklyn born, nomadic producer Jneiro Jarel. Having just put the finishing touches to the recordings, Jarel suffered an ischemic stroke while living and working in Costa Rica and his wife Indigo was forced to set up a crowd fund to cover special medical transport back to the states to receive treatment. The release was put on hold, but thanks to the generosity of friends and fans around the world, Jarel was able to get the care he needed and is now on the long road to recovery.
Daniel O'Sullivan - Electric Maya: Dream Flotsam And Astral Hinterlands
To name Kuniyuki Takahashi as a staple of the Mule Musiq sound would be a fair call, as he’s had about three dozen releases on the Tokyo-based imprint thus far – and counting. Not one to rest on his laurels, Takahashi continues with his prolific output which spans three decades, and surprises us once again with the contemplative late night jazz of ‘Flying Music’. The A side on this one belongs to the long dub version Chapter 2 mix, while on the flip you can enjoy the sensual Rhythm & Trumpet mix which does exactly what it says on the tin. Finally the tres chic Deep Poetry mix and its French spoken word vocal makes a worthy addition to the EP.
Perhaps best-known for his distinctive vocal style, Australian polymath Nick Cave here steps into the spotlight as librettist rather than performer, for a second operatic project with Belgian composer Nicholas Lens. Having collaborated on Shell Shock in 2014, they joined forces again during the global lockdown to create a new work, L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S.. At Lens’s request, Cave penned 12 litanies – “petitions to a divine maker” – simple, moving texts which the composer then wove into what he calls a “modest chamber opera of sleeping dreams”. Riding his bike around an unusually empty Brussels, Lens had been reminded of the magical stillness of the Rinzai Zen temples he had seen in rural Japan. Memories of these structures and of the inner peace he experienced while visiting them were the initial inspiration for the minimalistic, at times trance-like music of L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S., which features Denzil Delaere, N.L. Noorenbergh, Claron McFadden and Lens’s artist daughter Clara-Lane on vocals. Though the eleven instrumentalists recorded their parts individually in Lens’s home, to respect social distancing guidelines, there is a clear unity of purpose about the finished opera, a work of gentle beauty.
Avalanches - We Will Always Love You
Building on the sample-based approach of their classic albums Since I Left You and Wildflower, but stepping boldly into new terrain, We Will Always Love You is the new full length masterpiece from The Avalanches.
Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder (Blue Note Classics)
Carried by its almost impossibly infectious eponymous opening track, The Sidewinder helped foreshadow the sounds of boogaloo and soul-jazz with its healthy R&B influence and Latin tinge. While the rest of the album retreats to a more conventional hard bop sound, Morgan’s compositions are forward-thinking and universally solid. Only 25 at the time of its release, Morgan was accomplished (and perhaps cocky) enough to speak of mentoring the great Joe Henderson, who at 26 was just beginning to play dates with Blue Note after getting out of the military. Henderson makes a major contribution to the album, especially on Totem Pole, where his solos showed off his singular style, threatening to upstage Morgan, who is also fairly impressive here. Barry Harris, Bob Cranshaw, and Billy Higgins are all in good form throughout the album as well, and the group works together seamlessly to create an album that crackles with energy while maintaining a stylish flow.
“In the swirling and undulant warm mud of jettisoned reels of magnetic tape, blurps up the fog of reinvention. Every night I would parley with my pilots and run and rerun the recordings. Right up until the moment sleep slips its veil over eyes and ears and you drift back without a sound. Protean Threat dream haze becomes Panther Rotate in the other dimension. A companion LP of remixes, field recordings, and sonic experiments using all sounds generated by the him and crackle of the desert farm. “A second version of our Protean Threat if you will, but barely conspicuous in its relation. Forward, never straight! Sunrise, sunset. Two lives connected by a cosmic thread, One for your feet and one for your head. For fans of Thee Oh Sees, Oh Sees, OCS, The Oh Sees, Osees…etc etc etcetcetc…be well.” —John Dwyer.
“I was guzzling wine at my favourite bar in San Francisco, the Rite Spot, and the entertainment that night was some local opera singers singing along with a big video screen showing a collage of various operatic moments with subtitles. One particular subtitle, ‘Ah!-(etc)’ made me laugh, I thought it was a perfect description of life – the joy of existence against the etcetera of it all, the struggle. With a heavy head of rose’ it seemed like ecstatic poetry! I scribbled it on a napkin and thought it might make a good title for something” And so the mystery behind the title of Kelley Stoltz new record is solved. Less of a mystery is the quality contained therein. after 12 self-titled releases and a several more under pseudonyms, Stoltz is the word for “one-man-band-home-recording-pop-songs of idiosyncratic character.” A quick follow up to his more power pop and pub rock LP only Hard Feelings offering in the summer, Ah-(etc) finds Stoltz returning to his sweet spot, writing songs that never were, but should have been in the 60’s and 80’s.
A year after Red Axes’s musical adventures took them through the sounds and scenes of Africa, they return with a second EP in the Trips series that finds them exploring the rich rhythms of Vietnam.
When two planets collide in any solar system, the catastrophic result will most likely reduce both to dust and ash, sending warm debris hurtling through space. Yet from destruction, comes creation. So to the new and sixth record by Pharaoh Overlord – a cataclysmic clash with bewitching results. The band’s current duo of Tomi Leppänen and Jussi Lehtisalo first channelled their love of krautrock-damaged monomania into synth-driven motorik soundscapes on 2019’s 5 yet this new exploration is a step way beyond, into a chilly and captivating electronic panorama. Beholden to the melodies and textures of Kraftwerk yet also the cinematic austerity of EBM and the effervescent pulse of classic Italo-pop, it’s further abetted by fierce and corrosive vocals from longtime collaborator and Sumac / Isis / Old Man Gloom seer Aaron Turner, which stand atop these futuristic serenades not unlike the fevered delivery of a dystopian hellfire preacher. The result, richly coherent yet startling even for the unpredictable world of this band, arrives like a series of otherworldly epiphanies.
Clint Mansell & The Kronos Quartet - Requiem For A dream OST
To coincide with its 20th anniversary, Clint Mansell’s haunting score to Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 film, Requiem for a Dream, performed by Kronos Quartet, returns to vinyl. This was Mansell’s second of several collaborations with Aronofsky, following 1997’s π, and features arrangements by David Lang of Bang on a Can. The film stars Academy Award-winner Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans, and was adapted from the 1978 novel by Hubert Selby, Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn), who also wrote the screenplay with Aronofsky. Set on the rusted mean streets of Coney Island, Brooklyn, Requiem for a Dream tells the parallel stories of four people pursuing their dreams of better lives. The reissue features the original soundtrack, plus two bonus tracks.
An album of duet songs with Weyesblood. Featuring an all-star-band including the Brian and Michael D’Addario (The Lemon Twigs) and Jonathan Rado (Foxygen).
Renewal has always been part of music, long before the invention of such distinctive categories as “Classical” or “Contemporary”. Deutsche Grammophon’s commitment to the process of musical creation took a fresh direction last year with the launch of “XII”. The innovative project is set to continue this year with a second monthly schedule of compelling compositions from some of today’s most exciting musical pioneers. The changing seasons and life’s restless stream of feelings and emotions lie behind the sounds of “XII”, Deutsche Grammophon’s celebration of new works by some of today’s most innovative and creative musicians. The multi-artist project took off in January 2019. It has grown since with the release of a new eSingle every month. Deutsche Grammophon released a vinyl LP of all 12 pieces in the “XII” series last December. Building upon the Yellow Label’s commitment to new repertoire, “XII” presents a series of works with the power to punch through the crowd of monthly releases and establish an online home on influential music-streaming playlists. Their composers, free from rigid genre boundaries, reflect contemporary classical music’s diversity.
Since breaking through in 2014 with his Grammy nominated Metamodern Sounds in Country Music album, Sturgill Simpson has established himself as one of the most daring and most acclaimed artists of our time. His music stretches across genres and styles, from the psychedelic soul of 2016’s A Sailor’s Guide To Earth (Grammy nominated for Album of the Year and winner for Best Country Album) to the fuzzed-out rock attack of Sound and Fury in 2019. Now Simpson returns to the music of his native Kentucky with his first bluegrass project, Cuttin’ Grass – Vol. 1 (The Butcher Shoppe Sessions). The album, which he calls “a mixtape for the fans,” was dreamed up while he was recovering from Coronavirus, and sees him reimagining songs from across his catalogue backed by some of Nashville’s finest acoustic virtuosos.
