VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino announces the first-ever vinyl reissue of Strikes Back, the GRAMMY®-nominated 10th solo album from legendary singer Héctor “El Cantante” Lavoe. The 1987 title, which marked the artist’s final release during his lifetime, includes such poignant tracks as “Ella mintió,” “Escarcha,” and the salsa hit “Loco.”

Pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the LP features all-analog mastering by Dave Polster and Clint Holley at Well Made Music. Returning to vinyl format for the first time since its original release, this reissue arrives on June 20th and is available for pre-order today. A limited-edition “Loco Green” color vinyl variant (limited to 300 copies), with an exclusive bundle option that includes a classic Fania logo T-shirt, is also available for pre-order at Fania.com.

Perhaps the greatest interpreter of salsa music, singer Héctor Lavoe (1946–1993) was instrumental in popularizing the genre during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Known for his impeccably bright vocals, seamless phrasing, and ad-libbed anecdotes, it’s no surprise that Lavoe earned the nickname “El Cantante” after his 1978 hit of the same name (penned for him by the great Rubén Blades).

Born Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the singer relocated to New York City at 17, where he picked up his stage name and began performing in bands led by Roberto García, Kako, and Fania Records owner Johnny Pacheco. It was through Pacheco that Lavoe met 16-year-old Willie Colón, with whom he would form one of Latin music’s most celebrated partnerships. Beginning in 1967, Lavoe appeared as a vocalist on 10 legendary studio albums with the Willie Colón Orchestra, including the boogaloo classic, El Malo (1967), plus bestsellers like Cosa Nuestra (1970), Asalto Navideño (1971), and Lo Mato (1973).

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Remembering Ray Barretto, born on this day in 1929. —Ed.

If you dig rhythm and are unfamiliar with percussionist-bandleader Ray Barretto, jeepers creepers are you in for a substantial series of treats. And in a sweet turn of events, Craft Latino, the Craft Recordings subsidiary that specializes in reissuing prime Latin heat from numerous labels including Fania (the imprint’s logo a reliable sign of quality), has returned Barretto’s 1972 LP Que Viva La Música to print after a long overdue absence. 

Raymundo “Ray” Barretto Pagán was one of the greats of Latin music, though in fact his considerable rep is further distinguished through his extensive jazz background prior to his mastery of the salsa style, and with pachanga and boogaloo along the way; “El Watusi” was a sizable pachanga hit in 1963 and the man’s Acid LP was a boogaloo breakthrough in ’68.

While no single musician is responsible for salsa’s development, Barretto was a major contributor to its growth, and as the opening title track of Que Viva La Música makes obvious, by the early 1970s his band’s artistry was in full blossom, with Barretto responsible for arranging (on this album alongside pianist Luis Cruz) in addition to hitting the congas and leading the group.

The trumpets soar via a three horn line featuring René López, Joseph Roman, and Roberto Rodriguez, as Adalberto Santiago’s vocals are warm and expressive, Luis Cruz’s piano adds dimension to the whole, and the rhythms, courtesy of Barretto, Johnny Rodriguez on bongos and congas, Orestes Vilató on timbales and percussion, and Santiago doubling on guiro, are in full effect. Bassist David Perez strengthens the foundation with panache.

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It took until 1970 for Sun Ra to play his first European shows, and he did so with a glorious, expansive bang, bringing his Inter-Galactic Research Arkestra to the Fondation Maeght art gallery in St Paul de Vence, France for two performances from which portions were issued on two single LP volumes by the Shandar label in 1971. For Record Store Day 2025 the Strut label has released a deluxe edition of Nuits de la Fondation Maeght as a 6LP set in an edition of 800. The contents spotlight one of the Arkestra’s greatest lineups in peak form and frequently jaw-dropping in its stylistic reach. Copies are still available; it is a lavish prize for dedicated fans and a gripping point of entry for the curious.

The performances documented in this set occurred on August 3 and 5, 1970 as part of a festival of music held at the art gallery of this box set’s title, not the first festival held there but the first to welcome the jazz avant-garde of the USA, with Albert Ayler also part of the festival program that year. Ayler would be found dead in New York City in November of 1970, with his own Fondation Maeght performances, issued in 2022 for Record Store Day as Revelations: The Complete ORTF 1970 Fondation Maeght Recordings, serving as the iconoclastic saxophonist’s final works.

Conversely, Sun Ra’s Fondation Maeght recordings kicked off a particularly fertile decade after long stretches of struggle first in Chicago and then in New York City. The pianist and bandleader had cut numerous albums starting in the late 1950s, but his most successful and highest profile were released by ESP Disk in 1965 in two volumes, both titled The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra.

With the exception of his debut Jazz by Sun Ra, released by Tom Wilson’s Transition label in 1957 (reissued by Delmark as Sun Song a decade later) and The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, released by Savoy in 1962, nearly everything else in Sun Ra’s discography up to the turn of the 1970s was available in small pressings through his own Saturn (aka El Saturn) label (and subsequently reissued by Impulse in the 1970s and Evidence in the ’90s).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Snow Borne Sorrow by David Sylvian | Nine Horses will be released on black vinyl for the first time on June 13, 2025.

Initially released on Sylvian’s Samadhisound label in October 2005, it was previously only available digitally and on CD until Record Store Day 2024, when a limited edition white vinyl version was issued and instantly became a collector’s item. An exclusive signed artcard from designer Chris Bigg is included with purchases made though the official David Sylvian store. This new edition is available to preorder now.

Snow Borne Sorrow was David Sylvian’s project with Steve Jansen and German musician/producer Bernd Friedmann, aka Burnt Friedman. It also features contributions from the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, Swedish singer Stina Nordenstam, saxophonists Theo Travis and Hayden Chisholm, and trumpeter Arve Henriksen.

The 2-LP set features the nine tracks from the original album plus one track from the follow-up EP “Money For All (‘Birds Sing For Their Lives’),” the rare B-side of the “Wonderful World” single “When Monday Comes Around,” and a previously unreleased until 2024 Burnt Friedman remix of “Atom and Cell.”

The 2025 edition of Snow Borne Sorrow has been designed by Sylvian collaborator Chris Bigg (23 Envelope/4AD) and is housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed inner bags.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Are you ready to experience the definitive death metal album?

Deicide’s 1990 self-titled debut is not just one of the genre’s top-selling releases (if it’s not #1, it’s top three); it’s also a staggering philosophical and artistic statement. “Uncompromising” is definitely the appropriate if euphemistic term to describe its stance on organized religion, which doesn’t just include Christianity but also Charles Manson (“Lunatic of God’s Creation”) and Jim Jones (“Carnage in the Temple of the Damned”).

But it’s “Sacrificial Suicide” and “Dead by Dawn,” which references the Evil Dead movie for maybe the slightest hint of levity on what is a very black album, that have become stone-cold classics. The ferocity of the lyrics is matched if not surpassed by the musical attack, featuring piercing twin guitar leads from brothers Eric and Brian Hoffman, and bassist/lead singer Glen Benton’s evil exhortations.

The real hero—or antihero—of the band, though, just might be drummer Steve Asheim, whose double kick drum “blastbeat” barrages defy belief. Remastered for vinyl by Mike Milchner of Sonic Vision, Deicide comes in metallic red and white “centurion” vinyl, complete with an insert with lyrics. Metal was never the same after this record.

Remembering Rod McKuen in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

When the ancient Greeks coined the word bathos, I’m pretty sure they had Rod McKuen in mind. America’s most popular–and worst–poet of the 1960s, McKuen produced books of poetry the way Virginia opossums make babies, each and every one of them catering to the tastes of a reading public deeply suspicious of the filthy beatnik likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

But on 1959’s Beatsville Mckuen does a remarkable thing–he goes from schmaltz to shtick. While he serves up plenty of his trademark mawk along the way, McKuen–who’s obviously using Kerouac’s spontaneous bop prosody as a model-comes on like Maynard G. Krebs on a Benzedrine inhaler high, and I’ll be damned if his tongue-in-cheek observations on subterranean pads and co-existence bagel shops aren’t hilarious.

McKuen’s point varies–sometimes he’s your standard real gone Daddy-O who considers business suits and underarm deodorants a total drag; at others he’s the wistful black beret wannabe who moans, “I try to be a good beatnik but it’s hard/I don’t dig turtle neck sweaters/I can’t grow a beard/And I catch cold in sandals.”

Backed by some tastefully tasteless musical accompaniment–including a metronome and some really hep finger snaps–McKuen had me at “Every time I got torn up on sneaky Pete or high on Thunderbird wine/I wind up hitching rides to Sausalito.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | To celebrate the 30th anniversary of “Some Might Say” this week, Oasis have re-released their seminal single on limited-edition, pearl coloured, numbered, 7” vinyl. They’ve also released a brand-new visualiser for the track. Order vinyl here.

The release of “Some Might Say” was monumental in Oasis’ journey. As the first single released from the indomitable (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? and the band’s first ever number one in the UK Singles Chart, it marked a remarkable beginning to their second album. It was met with widespread critical and commercial acclaim at the time of release, also entering the top ten in Finland, Iceland, Ireland, and Sweden.

(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, also celebrating its 30th anniversary this October, went on to become a cultural phenomenon, elevating Oasis to massive heights on the global stage. It spawned countless era-defining moments, with “Some Might Say” the starting gun to it all.

The single arrived only eight months after the band’s prodigious debut album, Definitely Maybe. In the short intervening period, Oasis were able to capitalise on their initial success, and bring it to new places through the development of their sound. The huge, stadium fillers heard across (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? are beloved by fans around the world with the album having sold over 25 million copies worldwide.

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Remembering Pete Ham, born on this day in 1947. —Ed.

Badfinger was one of the most commercially and critically successful acts that were part of the early days of Apple Records in the late ’60s/early ’70s. The group’s Beatle-esque pure pop was a staple of FM radio at a time that saw the release of such classic albums as No Dice (1970) and Straight Up (1971) with the lineup of Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Mike Gibbins, and Joey Molland. Ass, released in 1973, was the last album from the group on Apple Records, the record label started by The Beatles.

The group that was the earliest incarnation of Badfinger was The Iveys, which included Ron Griffiths but not Joey Molland. Badfinger began with its contribution to the soundtrack albums of the film The Magic Christian (1970), starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, with the Paul McCartney-penned “Come and Get It,” which was a big hit.

Unfortunately, bad management, record company squabbles, changing musical tastes, and for some of the members of the band, personal problems, ended the group’s creative and commercial peak shortly after they left Apple. They then made a handful of albums for Warner Bros. Now, by some miracle, a long-lost album has recently been released and adds another welcome musical chapter to the group’s abbreviated musical career, along with an anthology of demos from The Iveys.

The music on this new Badfinger release would have come out in 1974, with a lineup that included Ham, Evans, Gibbins, and Bob Jackson. While it has come out on CD in the past in demo form, the music on this album is taken directly from the final master tapes. After the album was completed, Warner Bros. rejected it. The group’s manager ran off with their advance and the label dropped them.

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Greetings from Laurel Canyon!

My troubles are many, they’re as deep as a well. / I can swear there ain’t no heaven but I pray there ain’t no hell. / Swear there ain’t no heaven and pray there ain’t no hell, / but I’ll never know by living, only my dying will tell, / only my dying will tell, yeah, only my dying will tell. / And when I die and when I’m gone, / there’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

Yep, the fools of April continue to do their thing. Still, all in all, I’m thanking my lucky stars to have a healthy family and cool friends. Last week I was too stressed and exhausted to cut a cool radio show. This week I can’t seem to recall last week.

On Easter, my 89 year old mom came to visit. I’m happy to report that she’s doing really well. They call her “the energizer bunny.” Indeed, she asked a continuous amount of questions. I took her to a hippest restaurant in Silver Lake and a Jewish deli in the valley.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | This 1993 album has only been out on vinyl in South Korea, and that release squeezed this 55-minute-plus record on to a single disc, which is just plain getting away with (ahem) murder!

So fans of this band have been screaming (sorry, can’t resist) blue murder for the release of Nothin’ but Trouble in proper 2-LP fashion, which we have pressed in blue with black cat swirl vinyl in honor of the unfortunate feline in the clutches of the little menace on the front cover.

This is another one of those great, early ‘90s metal albums that got lost in the grunge shuffle, and it’s more melodic than most; band leader and songwriter John Sykes (Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy, Tygers of Pan Tang) knew what he was doing. Also boasts appearances from our old friend Kelly Keeling of Baton Rouge fame, and the venerable Carmen Appice on drums.

“We All Fall Down” was the single, but don’t miss their great cover of the Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park!” Mastered for vinyl by Mike Milchner of Sonic Vision, and housed inside a gatefold jacket with lyrics.

Celebrating Chris Mars in advance of his birthdate tomorrow. —Ed.

Minneapolis indie rock heroes The Replacements went from snot-nosed “let’s get drunk and puke on the ceiling then fall down on stage” punks to power pop legends on the strength of the deceptively effortless songcraft of Paul Westerberg, and Westerberg reached his peak on 1984’s audaciously titled Let It Be. Taking on the Beatles takes cojones, especially from a guy who once sang, “I hate music/It’s got too many notes.”

Let It Be hardly marked the end of their “too shitfaced to play” ethos, but it was, as Westerberg would note, “the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles.” “I Will Dare” is a bona fide slice of pop genius; “Unsatisfied” is “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” with more heart and more soul than the jaded Mick Jagger could summon up if you tossed him into a pile of cocaine and supermodels and let him stew until unhappy. But Westerberg hadn’t lost touch with his inner punk; songs like “Gary’s Got a Boner” and “We’re Comin’ Out” would have been right at home on 1982’s puke punk classic Stink.

Let It Be is the sound of a punk growing up just to learn that growing up isn’t all that much fun. But grow up you must, as John Mellencamp could have told Paul Westerberg if he’d been willing to listen. “Everything drags and drags,” sings Westerberg on the doleful coming of age tune “Sixteen Blue”; “It’s a boring state/A boring wait, I know.” You try to call your girl and all you get is her answering machine and what does that mean? It can’t be good. And what can you really expect from the future? “Everything you dream of/Is right in front of you,” sings Westerberg, “And everything is a lie.”

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I recently spoke with Berlin based artist Annika Henderson about her wonderful new album Abyss, her early years in Bristol, a little bit about Tricky, and her process.

From the press release: British-born, Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson, better known as Anika, has created her new, third album Abyss out of the frustration, anger, and confusion she feels from existing in our contemporary world. Notably heavier than her previous releases, the 10-track Abyss feels raw, urgent, and fuelled by strong emotions.

“There’s so much going on in the world, and you have to sit there and watch it through a screen that you’ve allowed into your home, like a vampire who had been preying at your door, then immediately digest it, have an opinion, and publicly comment on it,” Anika says.

“The state of the world just feels like an abyss right now.” With this new album, she wants to create a place where people can feel safe to be themselves, and to unite in their diversity. “Abyss is like a call to action,” she says. “To come and figure it out together.”

Abyss was recorded live to tape at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin (where the likes of Depeche Mode and David Bowie also recorded) in just a few days. Recording live and with minimal overdubs was an important decision, Anika stresses, in order to capture the raw immediacy of the album.

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