Lots of exciting routes in new, not-new releases for your stereo. Ends up getting cosmic!

Hot Chip are Coming On Strongerer! To celebrate the 20th anniversary of their splendid debut LP - Coming on Strong - we’re really delighted to have worked with the band on a limited Dinked Archive Edition. Pressed on triple ‘Royal Badness’ Purple vinyl, it includes seven bonus tracks, a photo booklet and is back in the original artwork which really looks great. A lovely thing and a joy to revisit. We don’t have all that many, so don’t snooze on this one.

Esteemed avant-garde composer William Basinski releases the first in his new Arcadia Archive series this week with September 23rd. His recollections of composing and recording it are splendid, but we’ll leave you to enjoy those (from “a young, wacked-out queen in NYC”) in your own time. Piano meditations decayed through Frippertronics loop and tape delay. Such inspiring music and accidentally landmarking my birthday. We loved the guy already!

+ Available on limited Dark Blue colour vinyl.
Following on from his lush new LP with Big Thief, we got hold of a handful of Tucker Zimmerman’s I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True, a previously unheard collection that was recorded between 1973-76. Such a distinct voice, we are really loving this one. Includes an exclusive interview with Ian A. Anderson and Maggie Holland.

We also have his 1974 Over Here In Europe LP too.

Partisan Records reissue an essential from the Fela Kuti vaults with the 1974 Alagbon Close. Recorded at the Ginger Baker-funded A.R.C. Studios, it’s a sort of concept record about police brutality, getting bust and the proverbial Expensive Sh*t. The grooves are just so good, floating organs, Tony Allen in supreme form and Fela truly incendiary on the mic. They alway are, but this is a real good one!

+ A 50th Anniversary Edition pressed on "Jollof" Translucent Orange colour vinyl.

On-U Sound release a couple of proper belters this week. The Modern Sound Of Harry Beckett is a vinyl debut of the 2008 session from the titular, Barbados-born trumpet player Harry Beckett. Really searching and spacious stuff, with thuds of On-U dub loveliness.

+ Edited for vinyl release by Adrian Sherwood and cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery. Includes a printed inner sleeve with full liner notes.

35 Years From Alpha is the long-awaited reissue of the 1982 solo LP from the late, great “Deadly” Headley Bennett, a key sideman from the golden age of Jamaican music who played on hundreds of records throughout his long and storied career. Great liner notes that shed light on the way the session came together.

+ Vinyl re-cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, featuring a printed inner sleeve with liner notes and rare photos.

Blue Note press two more stonkers onto limited Blue vinyl this week with Hank Mobley’s Soul Station and Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue. Soul Station has a gorgeous breeze to it, even when it gets up to an up-tempo swing. Midnight Blue is pure guitar fire. Late night soulful runs that are so dexterous, but also super smooth.

Both are really essential albums to be honest.

Eyes are starting to turn to the end of the year (...mate, don’t even right?!) with expanded reissues of a couple of the year’s big hitters. We have a repress (on both vinyl colourways) of Charli xcx’s brat, plus the new, new brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not on white vinyl. The Last Dinner Party present a new edition of their Prelude To Ecstasy album with selected acoustic versions and covers.

Island have pressed a 10th anniversary edition of Ben Howard’s I Forget Where We Were. Includes the previously unheard How Are You Feeling EP which is also available as a standalone release on 12”.
As far as we are concerned, Numero’s 2016 private country rock compilation ‘Cosmic American Music’ is an absolute stone cold classic, so a new edition in the series - Cosmic American Music: Motel California - got us pretty desert-heat-hot. It is, as you’d naturally expect, another proper belter. A snapshot of the very weirder edges of the west coast folk rock scene of the late-’60s. Long forgotten sides that fill in gaps in the valley scene story. Two records, four sides and we just kept spinning and spinning them, falling in love with the cosmic.

Honestly, it’s such a vibe.

+ Available on exclusive Neon Sky Blue colour vinyl.