New Arrivals / Today
Takla Makan
Sai Yoshiko (佐井好子) - one of Japan's most legendary and enigmatic singers - made her debut in 1975 with Mangekyou, an album of superbly crafted songs and crystal-clear vocals over Yuji Ohno's lush, funky arrangements. Three more masterpieces followed in rapid succession: Mikkou (1976), Taiji no Yume (1977), and Chou no Sumu Heya (1978). Her melancholic, poetic lyrics drew from the gothic imagination of Japanese novelists like Ranpo Edogawa, Mushitaro Oguri, and Yumeno Kyusaku - dark fairy tales s…
Chou no Sumu Heya
The room where butterflies live. A place between worlds. Enter at your own risk - you may not find your way back out. Sai Yoshiko's fourth and final album of the 1970s stands as one of the most singular documents in Japanese music - a jazz-inflected fever dream that marked the end of an era. Originally released in 1978 on Columbia (LX-7058-A), Chou no Sumu Heya represented a dramatic departure from her earlier psychedelic folk explorations. Here was something else entirely: a surreal and dynamic…
Europe 1964
Super tip! Holy ghost music. The real deal. The sound of four men tearing a hole in the fabric of what jazz was supposed to be and letting something else pour through - something ancient and raw and utterly new. In their short time together, Albert Ayler and Don Cherry created a body of music that genuinely exists in the moment. Oblivious to rules and aesthetic boundaries, they played what they felt on their nerve-ends, embracing mistakes and wrong turns as part of the experience of making art i…
Forever
It's been a long ride to Forever - but now that they've arrived, the vibe's lightning and the blink of an eye. Glyders have been dreaming up this sound for over a decade. Joshua Condon and Eliza Weber founded the band in Chicago back in 2014, building a reputation through countless shows, late nights at the tape machine, and a revolving door of drummers that never quite clicked. They self-released EPs (DIM, Lend a Hand) and in 2023 delivered their debut full-length, the acclaimed Maria's Hunt - …
Radio Lusaka
Includes deluxe 12-page booklet with unpublished photos, lyrics, translations, and liner notes written by NTS radio host Jamal Khadar. Before there was a Zambia, there was Alick Nkhata. Born in Kasama in 1922 to a Tonga father and Bemba mother, Nkhata would become the voice of a nation that did not yet exist - and help sing it into being. Vocalist, guitarist, bandleader, broadcaster, archivist, freedom fighter: he moved between these roles as effortlessly as he moved between lonesome country sli…
Four For Trane
August 10, 1964. Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. A young saxophonist from Philadelphia enters the studio to record his first album as a leader for Impulse! Records. At his side, as co-producer, stands the man to whom he owes everything: John Coltrane. Archie Shepp was twenty-seven years old when Four For Trane was recorded - an age that in 1964 jazz still meant being an emerging voice. Born in Fort Lauderdale but raised in Philadelphia - the same Philadelphia as Coltrane, eleven…
Percussion Bitter Sweet
August 1961. Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Max Roach - the man who reinvented jazz drumming alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s, the co-leader with Clifford Brown of the definitive hard bop quintet until tragedy struck in 1956 - enters the studio with something to say. Something that cannot wait. Something that demands a new language.
The year before, Roach had recorded We Insist! Freedom Now Suite for Candid Records, a searing response to the Civil Right…
Maggots On The Cliffside
Two names. Four decades of uncompromising noise. One collision. Genocide Organ - the masked Mannheim collective who have defined the outer limits of power electronics since 1985, founders of the legendary Tesco Organisation, architects of Leichenlinie and Save Our Slaves - meet Prurient, the Wisconsin-born, New York-forged vessel of Dominick Fernow, the man who built Hospital Productions from a teenager's bedroom label into the most influential noise imprint of the 21st century.
This is not thei…
LA Dusseldorf
Gatefold cover, blue vinyl. Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf. The mantra repeats for thirteen minutes, hypnotic as a highway journey, ecstatic as a stadium anthem. It's 1976 and Klaus Dinger - the drummer who invented the motorik beat, the man who alongside Michael Rother created Neu! and redefined the very concept of rhythm in rock - has a new machine to drive. He's christened it with the name of his hometown on the Rhine. And the first record he makes with this new formation is c…
