Eugene Blacknell/We Can’t Take Life For Granted
Oakland guitar ace Blacknell released multiple singles that ranged from raw R&B to powerhouse funk from the early 60s to the late 80s where he established himself as an East Bay original, an entrepreneur, an activist and a family man. It’s ironic that he died before releasing an album despite having recorded enough material for several. This comp is made up of his super rare early releases as Eugene Blacknell and the Savonics, the highly sought after raw instrumental funk as Eugene Blacknell and the New Breed, his party-style vocal tracks and a host of unreleased material including radio promo ads for live shows, live recordings and both vocal and instrumental studio cuts. Booklet includes rare photos and a complete history courtesy of interviews with his widow, band members and Bay Area notables.
Emmylou Harris/Red Dirt Girl
Limited double 140gm vinyl LP pressing including digital download. Emmylou Harris’s first Nonesuch recording, Red Dirt Girl, was released in September 2000, and won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album of the year. It was her first solo studio recording since 1995’s Wrecking Ball. The album was produced by Malcolm Burn, who previously worked with Harris engineering and mixing Wrecking Ball, and features Buddy Miller on lead guitar; Daryl Johnson on bass and drums; Malcolm Burn on piano, guitar, and bass; and Ethan Johns on drums, guitar, and other miscellaneous instruments. Harris wrote all but one of Red Dirt Girl’s 12 tracks, marking only the second time in her career that she has been so involved in the composition of an album. Dave Matthews sings a duet with Harris on the album, and Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa, and Patty Griffin also contribute vocals.
Ibrahim Ferrer/Mi Sueno
Limited vinyl LP pressing. The Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer emerged as perhaps the most popular star of the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. World Circuit is proud to announce the release of his final album Mi Sueño (My Dream) the project he dreamed of realizing all his life – an album devoted to the most meltingly romantic of all Cuban styles – the bolero. Mi Sueño is an intimate arranged by Roberto Fonseca, the remarkable young pianist with whom he had developed a deep musical understanding. Recorded in Havana in 2004, the year before he died, with a wonderful small group that included Manuel Galbán on guitar and Cachaíto López on bass, the album is a very personal take on the bolero style – deeply traditional and at the same time startlingly modern. Full of passion and tenderness but still with an inimitable and irrepressible swing, Ibrahim sculpts familiar songs into fresh and atmospheric creations that are uniquely his own. As Ibrahim said, “I have just one thing left to tell you all. We dream together and we will keep doing it. If my days ended tomorrow I would leave very satisfied in having achieved my wish, the wish was that dream: to sing a bolero.” A labor of love and the realization of a dream, Mi Sueño presents Ibrahim Ferrer as one of the world’s great bolero singers – the way he always wanted to be remembered.
Warpaint/Heads Up
Vinyl LP pressing. It’s easy to get the wrong impression about Warpaint. The band’s studio albums (including their most recent full-length, 2014’s Warpaint) have tended to emphasize moody atmospheres: gauzy keyboards, hypnotic harmonies and sinister grooves. In concert, however, the Los Angeles quartet – vocalist/guitarist Emily Kokal, vocalist/guitarist Theresa Wayman, bassist/vocalist Jenny Lee Lindberg and drummer/keyboardist/vocalist Stella Mozgawa – pair this moodiness with bumped-up tempos and sinewy beats. The music’s no less dark – but it has an additional rhythmic urgency and tension that can be surprising. Of course, confounding expectations has been part of Warpaint’s m.o. since the band formed in 2004. And so when the band convened to make their third studio album, Heads Up, they shared a common goal: to make a faster, dance-oriented record. “We’ve always had this really jammy, high-energy live show compared to some of our records,” Kokal says. “We all love to dance. We didn’t want to take away from the emotion or the core feeling of what our band is all about – which I don’t even think we could take out if we wanted, because it is who we are – but we wanted to bump the speed up and have a little bit more fun.” Mission accomplished.
Kool Keith/Feature Magnetic
Limited edition colored vinyl LP pressing. In a world full of cheesecake rappers, one man has assembled a phenomenal team to bring you madness. So stop what you’re doing and get ready for a journey you’ve never taken before. Enter the sinister doctor, the Ultramagnetic visionary, Kool Keith, whose Feature Magnetic, released September 2016 on Mello Music Group, is his latest bizarre transformative odyssey. As always, Keith seems unstuck in time, oblivious to geography, brilliantly mixed unflinchingly grim details with surreal, fantastical tangents. He’s from the Bronx, but belongs to far-reaching astral dimensions. And where many of his contemporaries have become legacy acts or revivalists, Keith continues to originate and perfect his wild style. He’s parked behind Oracle Arena in Oakland with Norah Jones – iding a horse and carriage through Central Park (bystanders shout that he looks like Mike Tyson). He drinks with MF DOOM in dusty London basement and recruits a legendary squadron of fellow travelers including Sadat X (Brand Nubian), Bumpy Knuckles, Boston pioneer Ed O.G., Slug from Atmosphere, and Vallejo legend Mac Mall.
Gipsy Kings/The Best Of
Limited double vinyl LP pressing. The initial success of this 18-track collection, chronicling the first seven years of the group’s Nonesuch career, illustrated just how popular the Gipsy Kings had become: It held the top spot on the World Music charts for a full year. Over the years the Gipsy Kings-whose members hail from the gypsy settlements in Arles and Montpelier in the south of France-have included singers and guitarists from the Reyes (Canut, Nicolas, Pablo, and Patchai) and Baliardo families (Diego, Paco, and Tonino). Lead singer Nicolas Reyes is the son of famed Flamenco singer José Reyes, who, with Manitas de Plata, sold millions of records in the 1960s and ’70s. The band’s vigorous guitar work and passionate vocals are the trademarks of an indigenous musical tradition known as “rumba flamenca.” There are no other examples of a non-English speaking band (the group’s language is the Gypsy dialect of gitane) with such a consistent winning streak in the US, where the group is the biggest-selling French act ever. Since the 1987 release of the international hit single “Bamboleo,” from their platinum-selling eponymous debut album, the Gipsy Kings have dominated the world music charts and sold more than 14 million albums worldwide-more than four million in the United States alone. Their platinum compilation, The Best of the Gipsy Kings, was on the charts for more than a year.
Devendra Banhart/Ape In Pink Marble
Limited vinyl LP pressing. 2016 release, the ninth studio album from the acclaimed singer/songwriter. The album was written, produced, arranged, and recorded in Los Angeles by Banhart with his longtime collaborators Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick, both of whom also worked on Banhart’s most recent album, Mala (2013). Devendra Banhart was born in Houston, TX, and moved with his mother to her native Caracas, Venezuela, when his parents separated. The family relocated to Los Angeles during his teenage years; it was there that he learned to speak English, skateboard, and play music. Banhart first began to perform in public while attending the San Francisco Art Institute. He has since lived in New York City, Paris, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where he currently resides. An accomplished visual artist, Banhart’s distinctive, minutely inked, often enigmatic drawings have appeared in galleries all over the world. He has created the cover art for most of his records, including Mala, and in 2010 his artwork and packaging for What Will We Be was nominated for a Grammy.
Bloodhound Gang/One Fierce Beer Coaster
Limited yellow colored vinyl LP pressing. The monster hit “Fire Water Burn” propelled the second album by punk-pop pranksters Bloodhound Gang from frat-house obscurity into the pop mainstream. A downright party record, the genre-bending band fronted by Jimmy Pop defied all critics by refusing to compromise their sound and it was their first to feature Michael “Spanky G” Guthier on drums, “Evil” Jared Hasselhoff on bass, and DJ Q-Ball on the turntables. With lyrics full of perverted innuendo and toilet-humor served on a bedding of simple punky chords, One Fierce Beer Coaster was just what the kids in 1996 needed. The album even sports a sublime cover version of RUN-DMC’s “It’s Tricky” for good measure.
My Chemical Romance/Black Parade-Living with Ghost 10th Anniversary
2016 triple vinyl LP pressing. LP One and LP Two of this release contain a reissue of My Chemical Romance’s double-platinum, genre-defining album The Black Parade, which was originally released by Reprise in October 2006, and features the band’s multiplatinum hit “Welcome To The Black Parade.” The album is spread over three sides. LP three includes 11 previously unreleased demos and outtakes from the original recording session with producer Rob Cavallo. Among them are “The Five of Us Are Dying,” an early version of “Welcome To The Black Parade,” and demos of the album tracks “Mama,” “Disenchanted,” and two versions of “House of Wolves.” Five tracks, “Party At The End Of The World,” “My Way Home Is Through You,” “Not That Kind of Girl,” “Emily,” and “All The Angels,” have never been released in any form.
Giraffe Tongue Orchestra/Broken Lines
Vinyl LP pressing in gatefold jacket. 2016 release from the hard rock supergroup. With five Grammy nominations and two wins; Golden Gods, Kerrang! And VH1 awards; headlining slots in many major festivals and countless Top 10 albums and singles, the members of Giraffe Tongue Orchestra are ready to re-write the rules of the successful rock supergroup. Comprised of William DuVall of Alice In Chains, Ben Weinman of Dillinger Escape Plan, Brent Hinds of Mastodon, Pete Griffin of Dethklok and Thomas Pridgen of The Mars Volta, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra has created an album akin to classic cinema. The name itself represents strength and ingenuity per guitarist, Brent Hinds, “During the time Mastodon was there for Soundwave, I was at the zoo in Sydney, Australia and was checking out the giraffes. They are amazing animals – one just grabbed a bunch of bananas from my hand with it’s tongue and peeled them with it as well – by the time the bananas got to it’s mouth, they were ready to be eaten. I saw Ben who was at Soundwave too and said ‘Man I think I found the name for our band,’ and told him the story.” Ben adds “That giraffe made it happen… like us, he figured it out.”
The Hollies/Evolution
Limited double vinyl LP pressing package contains both mono and stereo versions of the album. Evolution is the first of two albums released in 1967 by The Hollies. The album peaked at #13 in the UK album chart. Evolution and it’s respective singles were recorded at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in just six days spread over three months in early 1967, at the same time the Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The first session occurred on January 11th but the bulk of album work took place in March on the 3rd, 8th and 17th. The Hollies are known for their pioneering and distinctive three part vocal harmony style. They became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s (231 weeks on the UK singles charts during the 1960s; the ninth highest of any artist of the decade) and into the mid-1970s.
Passenger/young as the morning old as the sea
Limited edition double vinyl LP pressing housed in a gatefold sleeve with 6 bonus acoustic versions, includes digital download. Young As The Morning Old As The Sea is the eighth studio album from Mike Rosenberg, the Brighton-born singer/songwriter better known as Passenger. A prolific achievement for an artist who only just turned 30 last year. Following up 2014’s Whispers which debuted at #12 on the Billboard Top 200, the album was recorded at a combination of Roundhead Studios in Auckland, a studio lovingly built from scratch by Neil Finn and back at Linear studios in Sydney. The album sees Chris Vallejo and Mike teaming up to co-produce with the notable exception that this time the record was created in the room with an incredible band of musicians. Ben Edgar (guitar), Rob Clader (bass), Peter Marin (drums) Jon Solo (keyboards) all gave their exceptional voices to a totally different recording process.
True Widow/VVOLGERE
Vinyl LP pressing. Avvolgere perfects the formula that 2013’s Circumambulation established. The album rocks and rolls with serene, rounded climaxes and steep, jangling choruses that engulf the listener with waves of downbeat, saccharine melodies and mesmerizing distortion. True Widow’s signature alternation between male and female vocals helps further blur the boundaries between the heft of stoner rock, the droning atmosphere of shoegaze, and the twangy catchiness of blues and indie rock. Both concise and circuitous, Avvolgere takes you on a journey that you can’t ever quite predict or expect Avvolgere is True Widow sounding more infectious and consummate than ever before.
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