2012

BACK IN STOCK !!!

Two great tracks in Mike Huckaby's Baseline series. 88 and 89 are two classy classic Detroit sounding tracks on Mike's own label. These won't lay around too long!

BACK IN STOCK !!!Official re-release of this 'lost' 6-track mini album by New Yorker Ben Cenac (of Newcleus fame). Recorded and released in 1990 and is an absolute gem of a record - very much in the vein of Larry Heard's best recordings. MASSIVE TIP!Electronic soul classic! Now available again for the first time in 22 years, remastered + full artwork. 'A truly, dreamy, beautiful classic deep-house mini-album from the golden-post-Larry Heard era. New-yorker Ben Cenac, who was also member of electro pioneers Newcleus (and part of Sha-lor, who had a cool jazzy garage-house hit in the late 80's), shows a great sensibility and delicacy here in following mr Heard's path.His approach is perhaps slightly more sci-fi in the synths and pad sounds, and perhaps a tad less crafted and mercurial in production than the master (i.e. less timeless), but this adds in realness and charm.So, past the classic deep-garage dream "My Love Turns To Liquid" (in the vein of these sultry garage productions from Peter and Vanessa Daou), the rest of the record shows constant quality, with song titles that could have been (or actually have been) used by Mr. Heard himself, and a content oscillating between warming deep-house, sweet acid, lush garage and relaxed spacejazz piano parts, the whole thing also evoking the Beloved's better 'rave' moments ("The Sun Rising" etc).This record could be studied in university as the synthesis of the deep-house scene of the early 1990s. Classic.' (Review by Restless, taken from Discogs).

Having already reissued the Joubert Singers disco classic "Stand On the Word" in its original form earlier this year, French label Favourite get busy with a remix-heavy accoutrement in twelve inch format. Those new to the art of collecting classic discotheque vinyl will no doubt be tempted by the appearance of the much vaunted Larry Levan mix, which turns out wasn't actually by the legendary DJ but instead the equally brilliant and much missed Walter Gibbons. Regardless, the remix is a classic in the disco canon, and is complemented by three all new renditions. Long term label associate Patchwork comes through with a nicely judged remix that realigns the groove to a slinky Philly disco swagger, while on the flip Austrian duo Panoptikum Arkestra go for a stripped back dubby beatdown angle. Local Parisian production talent Walter Mecca calls on the spirit of p-funk and Dilla for a nicely blunted hip-hop take to round out this 12" nicely.

PERFECT COPY !!!!A limited edition special collection of rare 1970s Dance Music. Includes ultra rare collectors items and exclusive re-edits Part one of two

Gatefold double LP.On February 28, 2012, Robert Glasper Experiment will release Black Radio (Blue Note Records/EMI), a future landmark album that boldly stakes out new musical territory and transcends any notion of genre, drawing from jazz, hip hop, R&B and rock, but refusing to be pinned down by any one tag. The first full-length album from the GRAMMY-nominated keyboardist's electric Experiment band-saxist Casey Benjamin, bassist Derrick Hodge, and drummer Chris Dave-Black Radio also features many of Glasper's famous friends from the spectrum of urban music, seamlessly incorporating appearances from a jaw-dropping roll call of special guests including Erykah Badu, Bilal, Lupe Fiasco, Lalah Hathaway, Shafiq Husayn (Sa-Ra), KING, Ledisi, Chrisette Michele, Mos Def, Musiq Soulchild, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Stokley Williams (Mint Condition).Throughout the Experiment wears its eclecticism on its sleeve, presenting new collaborative originals and surprising cover songs. They transform the Afro-Cuban standard ''Afro Blue'' with Erykah Badu, Sade's ''Cherish The Day'' with Lalah Hathaway, David Bowie's ''Letter to Hermione'' with Bilal, and Nirvana's ''Smells Like Teen Spirit'' with Casey Benjamin's vocoder vocal.Glasper has long kept one foot planted firmly in jazz and the other in hip hop. His gig at the Blue Note Jazz Club earlier this year became a freestyle jam session when Kanye West, Mos Def and Lupe Fiasco crashed the stage. The Los Angeles Times once wrote that ''it's a short list of jazz pianists who have the wherewithal to drop a J Dilla reference into a Thelonious Monk cover, but not many jazz pianists are Robert Glasper,'' adding that ''he's equally comfortable in the worlds of hip-hop and jazz,'' and praising the organic way in which he ''builds a bridge between his two musical touchstones.''Growing up in Houston, Texas, Robert Glasper had a strong musical influence in his mother, who played piano and sang gospel music in church as well as in jazz and blues clubs in Houston. By the age of twelve, he was playing piano in church and often accompanied his mother in clubs. Raised on gospel, Motown, and R&B, by his teens he was listening to jazz, rock, pop and hip hop. He attended the Houston High School for the Performing Arts and moved to New York City to study at New School University. While still in school he was already playing with Christian McBride and Kenny Garrett, and went on to play with Nicholas Payton, Terence Blanchard, and Roy Hargrove.After releasing his debut album Mood on the Fresh Sound label in 2003 followed by two buzzed about Blue Note albums with his acoustic Trio - Canvas (2005) and In My Element (2007)-Glasper perfectly captured his unique duality with Double-Booked (2009), an album that juxtaposed his Trio and Experiment bands, and earned the keyboardist his first GRAMMY nomination.He's worked extensively with Q-Tip, playing keyboards on the rapper's GRAMMY-nominated 2008 album The Renaissance and co-writing the album single ''Life Is Better'' which featured his labelmate Norah Jones. Glasper also serves as the Music Director in rapper Mos Def's touring band, and has toured with the multi-platinum R&B singer Maxwell. New York Magazine has called his music ''direct, forceful, inventive, and accessible without pandering.''

The story remains one of the music world’s most unusual tales of the 1970s: an obscure debut LP by a Detroit singer-songwriter becomes a source of hope and inspiration to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Now, the story of Rodriguez and his cult album Cold Fact is the basis for Searching For Sugar Man, a riveting new documentary by filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul.Light In The Attic Records in partnership with Sony Legacy are releasing the original motion picture soundtrack, comprising tracks from Cold Fact and its 1971 follow-up Coming From Reality – both reissued in 2008 and 2009 by Light In The Attic. The soundtrack begins with the otherworldly “Sugar Man” and acts as a primer to this long-overlooked musician’s fusion of gritty funk, political poetry and blissful psych-folk.Searching For Sugar Man, a Red Box Films & Passion Pictures Production in association with Canfield Pictures & The Documentary Company, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in the U.S., was a big hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where it won the world documentary audience award and a special jury award, and then went on to screen at SXSW, Tribeca, and the Sheffield Doc Fest.
Back in the late ‘60s, Rodriguez was discovered in a Detroit bar by renowned producers Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore. They recorded a 1970 album that they believed was going to secure his reputation as one of the greatest recording artists of his generation. Instead, Cold Fact bombed, and despite the release of a second LP, entitled Coming From Reality and produced by Steve Rowland, Rodriguez drifted into obscurity, even being subject to rumours that he had committed suicide by setting himself on fire onstage.Cold Fact took on a life of its own when a bootleg recording found its way into apartheid-era South Africa. Banned by the government, the album became a country-wide phenomenon over the next two decades, and the soundtrack to a resistance movement of liberal African youth. Back in Detroit, working in construction and renovation (he also ran for mayor), Rodriguez was totally unaware that he was not just a folk hero but a household name thousands of miles away.Decades later, two South African fans, Stephen ‘Sugar’ Segerman and Craig Bartholomew-Strydom set out to find out what really happened to their hero, and their investigation led them to a story more extraordinary than any of the many myths they’d heard. Their story forms the basis of Searching For Sugar Man.Both sides of the story, Rodriguez’s life in Detroit and the subsequent impact of his music in South Africa, proved fascinating to Stockholm-based documentary filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul. His short documentary films for Swedish Television’s international cultural weekly show Kobra became the basis for such films as Men Who Stare At Goats (George Clooney) and The Terminal (Tom Hanks). The evolution of the financing, production, and filming of Searching For Sugar Man is as fascinating and complex as the life of Rodriguez himself.“I describe myself as ‘musico-politico’,” Rodriguez said recently. “I was born and bred in Detroit, four blocks from the city center. Back then, I was influenced by the urban sounds that were going on around me all the time. Music is art and art is a cultural force. As far as my work from Detroit comparing to the South African Apartheid, the similarities echo. The placards of the 1970s in the United States read things like: We Want Jobs and Stop the War – I was looking at the music from a working class perspective that was relevant, as it turns out, to the kids in South Africa.”

Hand-stamped double 7" fold open pyramid sleeve