Two iconic albums from 2015, one of the best soundtracks ever and our most-favourite jazz key men!
Originally released in March 2015, Kendrick Lamar’s extraordinary third album - To Pimp A Butterfly - receives a grand 10th anniversary edition this week with a particularly handsome double dark marble (180g) vinyl pressing and reimagined sleeve art. It’s an album we have managed to keep in stock pretty much constantly for the last decade and play regularly, but really cranking it up these last few days in the shop has given that rich production a new mini renaissance for us. Absolutely essential and - in no small part thanks to Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper and Thundercat - man alive does it ever groove!
If you want to have a longer read (from someone a lot more eloquent than us), Siobhán Kane has written about the album for The Quietus and that is really engaging.
We have two essentials (ain't they always?!) from Bill Evans this week, both released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series. 1962’s Moon Beams was the first album recorded after the death of bassist Scott LaFaro (with Chuck Israels on bass and Paul Motian on drums) and has a couple of scorching originals alongside standards from the 1930s and 1940s. Released the following year, Interplay extended his band out to a quintet, with Percy Heath on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums and a real dynamic shift with guitarist Jim Hall and iconic trumpeter Freddie Hubbard getting involved in lead lines. On both albums, Bill Evans’ dexterity is just dazzling. Really amazing.
+ The albums are pressed on 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI with all-analogue mastering from the original tapes at Cohearent Audio. Stoughton Tip-On Jackets.
We also have our other favourite piano man this week with Vince Guaraldi’s Oh, Good Grief! The 1968 LP - his first for Warner Bros. - featured new renditions of eight of his most popular scores from the Peanuts TV specials; Charlie Brown's All Stars!, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, You're in Love, Charlie Brown and He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown. The songs see Guaraldi experimenting with electric keyboard and electric harpsichord alongside his piano work to really get the vibe toasting. Eddie Duran’s guitar gives it some super smooth energy too.
+ It is pressed on a very Woodstock shade of Yellow vinyl.
A sun-blasted stunner, Ry Cooder’s original soundtrack to Paris, Texas is just so evocative. Wim Wenders 1984 movie is a real masterclass in subtlety and intensity, and Cooder’s sliding guitar minimalism is hugely important to the vibe. Twangs and rumbles, it all sounds hot and mysterious.
We started today with a tenth anniversary and we end on one too with another astonishing record released in 2015. Sufjan Stevens’ beautiful and heartbreaking Carrie & Lowell turns ten and his Asthmatic Kitty label have done a rather brilliant job of revisiting it. Housed in a bespoke box, the album is pressed across two LPs - including exclusive Violet colour vinyl - to include seven never-before-released demos from Carrie & Lowell or its era on the second disc. It has a reimagined album cover and gatefold artwork, a 40-page booklet and a new essay reflecting on the album by Sufjan, and the vinyl format also includes an exclusive folded A3 poster of Sufjan’s "Blessed Be The Mystery Of Love" painting. It is lovely!
The album was our Drift Record of the Year, and as part of that year’s Deluxe newspaper, our good friend Laura Snapes wrote about the album for us. You can re-read that in full here.