Barbados born British trumpeter-flugelhornist Harry Beckett had a long and distinguished career that was capped with a delightfully unexpected collaboration with producer Adrian Sherwood, The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett. Released in 2008 by Sherwood’s On-U Sound label, it has just received a worthy reissue, the set now available on vinyl for the first time.

The arrival of The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett shouldn’t have been a surprise given the number of times the horn-man recorded with Jah Wobble (more than a dozen releases across a two-decade span). Indeed, it was the extended relationship with Wobble that hipped Sherwood to the prospect of working with Beckett and sowed the seeds for this album.

Beckett, who passed in 2010 after a stroke, had a deep rep as an ace guest who added value to records spanning from the Small Faces (Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake) and the regular sized Faces (Long Player) to Jack Bruce (Songs for a Tailor) to Alexis Korner (Both Sides) to Manfred Mann Chapter Three (S/T and Volume Two) to Robert Wyatt (Nothing Can Stop Us) to Weekend (La Varieté) to Working Week (Working Nights) to David Sylvian (Gone to Earth).

The above excludes Beckett’s extensive work in the jazz field, which in addition to his own records (debuting with Flare Up in 1970) found him in bands ranging from big (aggregations organized by Graham Collier, Neil Ardley, John Dankworth, Mike Westbrook, Michael Gibbs, and Oliver Nelson) to mid-size (outfits led by Collier, Elton Dean, and Stan Tracey) to small (groups with John Surman, Mike Osborne, and Ray Russell). Of special note is his connection to South African musicians through his membership in Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | High Moon Records is proud to announce a new vinyl collection of rare tracks from cult singer-songwriter Laurie Styvers. Let Me Comfort You: The Hush Rarities arrives Friday, October 25, 2024 exclusively on vinyl LP, joined by a 4-page lyric insert with liner notes from 5x GRAMMY® Award-nominated compilation producer Alec Palao. Pre-orders are available now.

Let Me Comfort You: The Hush Rarities follows High Moon’s 2023 release of Gemini Girl: The Complete Hush Recordings, the first-ever comprehensive anthology of Styvers’ remarkable body of work, including her two deeply moving solo albums, Spilt Milk (1971) and The Colorado Kid (1973). Akin to a lost third album, the new collection now gathers 11 alternate takes, demos, and previously unissued songs from the original album sessions, further showcasing the enigmatic Texas singer-songwriter’s honey-voiced intimacy and intangible magic, its lovelorn gems like “Let Me Comfort You” and “Crazy Rainy Spring” equal of anything on either now-rightfully acclaimed albums.

Laurie Styvers may be amongst the lesser-known names within the milieu of 1970s cult singer-songwriters, but anyone who experiences the bewitching innocence on display within her two deeply moving solo albums, Spilt Milk (1971) and The Colorado Kid (1973), will surely fall in love with this enigmatic figure.

Born in Texas, Styvers was a student at the American School in London when she joined the legendary 1960s psych-folk outfit Justine, guesting on their eponymous 1970 debut LP before heading back to the US to attend college in Colorado. She soon returned to the UK, embarking upon a solo career after signing with Hush Productions, founded by legendary producers Shel Talmy (The Kinks, The Who, Small Faces) and Hugh Murphy.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “The story of people finding their own voice and doing something because they believe in it.” —Fear and Loathing

The Fire Still Burns is a story of post-punk adventure, packed full of anecdotes, inspiration and tales from the road with an insightful narrative on what keeps these bands plugging away with such heart; gigging, touring, recording and playing in a rough and ready scene.

With a brief history of the independent, alternative label, Engineer Records, and input from eighty of its bands. You’ll read about Canaan and Crosstide, Fat Heaven and Flyswatter, Kid You Not, Kover, and Kyoto Drive, as well as many more. A follow-up to 2023’s A Hardcore Heart and a must-read for all tuned-in punk-rockers and hardcore kids, especially if they’re forming a new band.

David is a musician and author. He’s played in bands since his teens, including Couch Potatoes, Joeyfat, Rydell, Come The Spring, and The Atlantic Union Project, and is an active part of the alternative music scene, having promoted gigs, edited a fanzine and run a record label. He established his current label, Engineer Records, back in 1999 and continues releasing great records to this day, with well over 400 releases and counting.

His first two books were, Punk Faction, a collection of BHP fanzine excerpts that cover a range of subjects important to the youth of the ‘90s and still relevant to the alternative scene of today, and A Hardcore Heart, a semi-autobiographical account of the UKHC scene in the ‘90s focusing on the artists, promoters, venues, and labels involved. David lives with his wife and two sons in East Sussex, and when he’s not playing with his family and their four cats, or writing, he enjoys traveling, strangling his guitar, and introducing others to obscure rock bands.

Stylistically complementary yet with contrasts in execution, the bands Dancer, hailing from Glasgow, Scotland, and Whisper Hiss, based in Portland, OR, each get a side on Split, a new LP that’s available October 18 (after a brief delay) via the reliable Athens, GA label Happy Happy Birthday To Me. It comes with hand-stamped labels in a handmade three-color screen-printed matchbook fold-over sleeve plus insert and a download card. Those with an unscratchable itch to hear these dozen tunes right now can snag a digital copy over at Bandcamp.

Split LPs span back nearly as far as the format itself, but the impulse to share sides really flourished as part of underground rock’s regional scenes in the years after punk’s big reset. Although not all split LPs featured contributors from the same or neighboring cities or towns, geography as a unifier was essentially the norm. But in these post internet days, long distance relationships are far more common and make far more sense as pairings, particularly when aligned by a record label majordomo who comprehends the value of close proximity over the release of two separate 6-song EPs.

Dancer’s side begins with “Priority Girl,” a bouncy, sassy, slightly new wavy dose of pop-rock that could’ve raised the eyebrows of an IRS Records scout circa ’82 or thereabouts, at least until the band lets loose with a little racket in the mid-section. “Didn’t Mean To” follows, delivering a more charged up strain of melodic clang with a solid undercurrent of post-punk.

The title “Paging Planet Earth” positively screams new wave, a scenario that’s aided by Gemma Fleet’s vocal timbre, a little bubbly but smart (shades of Debbie Harry and more so Claire Grogan). However, the cut has an arty edge (while still steadfastly pop) that deepens the appeal. So far so very old school, but “You Saint” brings a twist with prickly guitar lines giving the song a more contemporary spin.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | On November 8th, Beggars Arkive will release a 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition of The Charlatans third album Up To Our Hips. The edition features the original album in addition to 10 bonus tracks, all lovingly curated by Tim Burgess.

One of the truly special bonus tracks is “Don’t Let It Stand AKA Can’t Get Out of Bed (demo version)” released digitally. This version was recorded by Tim Burgess and Rob Collins when the rest of the band had the weekend off from the studio. They transformed what began as an instrumental into the classic which is known and loved today. Originally called “Don’t Let It Stand”, this was the version they presented to Jon, Mark and Martin whilst telling them it was the best thing they had ever done. They then recorded the song again with the full band for the album version. “Can’t Get Out Of Bed,” ended up being the first single from Up To Our Hips and remains a Charlatans’ classic to this day.

The Charlatans—easily recognized by their hallmark sound of driving Hammond organs, northern UK soul and house-influenced rhythms, swaggering guitars, and Tim Burgess’ sunny yet yearning vocals—are one of the most consistent Britpop bands of the past three decades. They’ve released an album every few years since 1989, each of which landed in the top half of the UK music charts, three of them hitting #1 and spawning 22 top 40 singles. The band have overcome obstacles from nervous breakdowns to addiction to victims of accountancy fraud to the heartbreaking deaths of two founding members, all the while adapting, transforming and producing new music in spite of it all.

Read More »

It says something about the Generation Gap or lack thereof in Our Year of the Lord 1960 that when the larval version of The Sonics, who would go down in history as the founders of punk rock, came up short at practice, guitarist Larry Parypa’s mom would fill in on bass. We’ll never know if she helped influence their primal, pounding sound. I like to think she did.

Some five years and mucho line-up changes later The Sonics, a Tacoma, Washington quintet who look like nice wholesome boys on their album covers and most likely were just that, were in a recording studio in Seattle tearing the soundproofing off the walls and complaining to the sound engineers when the needle WASN’T in the red. Years later, The Stooges would go red too.

But here’s the thing. I can easily imagine—although I could be dead wrong—these guys retreating to the nearest pharmacy lunch counter after sessions to drink malted milks. With straws. The Sonics may be credited by many as punk’s originators, but they weren’t punks. They were just kids making an unholy din in a musical backwater, playing mostly well-known covers in place’s like Olympia’s Skateland and St. Mary’s Parish Hall, and their story is no different from the stories of so many other bands doing the same thing in rock ’n’ roll nowheres across the United States.

The Sonics had one regional hit and dreams of making the big time, but when they finally drove South in (I’m fantasizing here) a battered Beach Boys woodie station wagon with Bob Bennett’s drum kit roped to the roof to Hollywood the town ruined them, or rather they ruined themselves, because they had nothing to sell that anybody wanted (cover of “Money,” anybody?) and no choice really but to slicken up their sound and record the more restrained material that appeared on 1967’s Introducing the Sonics, which they hoped would get them radio play but didn’t. Later they’d dismiss it as “the worst garbage.”

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Björk has announced Cornucopia: The Book, a 480-page, high-quality picture book that chronicles her celebrated Cornucopia Tour—an ambitious live experience featuring imagery and projections by director Tobias Gremmler, performed with The Hamrahlíð Choir, alongside other musical and visual artists.

The book is 22x30x4cm approx. and features 313 colour images. Softcover with flaps, sewn sections, printed in HUV-offset and fluorescent colours on hi-gloss paper with gloss varnish. It includes a 16-page booklet. Björk says; “I’m proud to announce the release of Cornucopia: The Book. This book documents my five-year tour, Cornucopia, designed by M/M Paris, with images shot by photographer Santiago Felipe.

Before this tour, I spent a decade working with 360-degree sound and visual software in virtual reality and animation, creating Biophilia, the first app album, and later Vulnicura as a VR album. I was deeply inspired by the idea of a fully-immersive experience, spending a spring in an Icelandic lighthouse, spreading Utopia into fully surround speakers. My intention was to bring what we had created for 21st-century VR into a 19th-century theatre—taking it from the headset to the stage.

Read More »

Celebrating Daryl Hall on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

While by no means an unknown work, it also seems fair to say that Daryl Hall’s first solo LP Sacred Songs gets nowhere near enough retrospective attention. This is mainly due to the inclusion of what many might consider to be an odd associate (at best) or an irreconcilable collaborator (at worst) in art-rock maestro Robert Fripp. Blue-eyed soul meets Frippertronics? Yes, indeed.

If the team-up of Daryl Hall and Robert Fripp remains an unlikely pairing from seemingly disparate areas of the ‘70s rock landscape, after some consideration their creative union shouldn’t really be designated as a case of strange bedfellows. The key to understanding how these two ended up in the same studio lies in getting beyond the surface perception of Fripp as a prog-rock outlier and Hall & Oates as simply a hit machine.

But folks who know Fripp’s contributions to Blondie’s Parallel Lines and especially Bowie’s “Heroes” have surely already comprehended that there’s more to the guy’s output than just King Crimson and (No Pussyfooting). And any fan of Hall & Oates that’s travelled back in their discography to their Atlantic Records period has been greeted with the unusual doozy that is Abandoned Luncheonette.

That 1973 album, their second after the pleasant but far from earth shattering debut Whole Oats, can be aptly described as a particularly ripe example of the commercial ambition of its decade. Not only does it include what’s maybe their best single, the sleeper 1976 hit “She’s Gone,” but the record’s second side heads into all kinds of unexpected areas, including the well-integrated use of electric violin on “Lady Rain” and even some fiddle and banjo on the seven minute album closer “Everytime I Look At You.”

Read More »

Imagine hearing a style of music that has become very popular; a genre you might hear on a TV commercial, or maybe on your favorite streaming program, or perhaps coming from a car window as it passes you by the street. Now, try to pretend that the style of music you’re hearing was popularized by your dad.

Seun Kuti goes through this process often and—along with his siblings—have become the next wave of afrobeat music makers who have followed in the footsteps of their famous father, Fela Kuti. Fela was the architect of the afrobeat sound. Its infectious rhythms lifted African sounds to another level, but also redirected those influences as heard in American music back to the homeland. Seun, with Egypt 80, have released a brand new album titled, Heavier Yet. The project finds Lenny Kravitz acting as executive producer and also features Fela’s original engineer Sodi Marciszewer; he is behind the board on this album in the role of artistic producer.

But, wait, there’s more: the son of an Afrobeat pioneer joins together with the son of a reggae pioneer. Damian Marley and Seun collaborate on one of the album’s penultimate tracks, “Dey.”

Seun and I were both a little excited to be having our international chat between New Jersey and Lagos, Nigeria. We both hope you’ll find the technology as enthralling as we did. We discussed his new album, of course, but as you’ll find, Seun is up for talking about anything. Settle in to hear about some history, a few surprises, and some really exciting music.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.