LEE MOSES - Time and Place (2016 reissue)

"Lee Moses was a huge talent and if he’d had the big hit album he richly deserved, Time And Place would’ve been it. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, Moses cut his teeth in the clubs of Atlanta, the ‘Motown of the South’, where he frequently performed alongside his contemporary Gladys Knight (who reportedly wanted him for the Pips, but couldn’t pin him down).

It was, however, in New York in the ‘60s that Moses made his greatest bid to find the solo fame he desired. Moses began working there as a session player, even playing frequently with a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix, but his close relationship with producer and Atlanta native Johnny Brantley eventually saw him getting his own break via a series of 45s in 1967 – most notably with covers of Joe Simon’s “My Adorable One”, The Four Tops’ “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and The Beatles’ “Day Tripper”.

It was 1971 before Moses’ dream of being at stage front was realized, when he released his Brantley-produced LP Time And Place for Maple Records. Recorded with a band including members of The Ohio Players and Moses’ own backing group The Deciples, it was, nonetheless, Moses himself whose star quality shone through, via his scratchy guitar riffs, his throat-ripping vocals and the stirring mood that permeates the LP’s heady mix of funk, soul and R&B." - Light In The Attic

VA - Christians Catch Hell: Gospel Roots 1976-79

"Producer and label owner Henry Stone, who passed away last August at the age of 93, was the kind of mythic record label executive who turns up midway through music biopics, or as the 'other guy' in countless photos of famous artists, singlehandedly putting Miami on the map with his early '70s label TK Records. Though TK was Stone's primary concern, he also oversaw a fleet of smaller independent labels, each of which had a different stylistic focus, but were all loosely linked to R&B. One of those labels was Gospel Roots, which Stone founded in 1976 with Timmy Thomas. 

Like all of Stone's ventures, Gospel Roots quickly amassed a sprawling discography, releasing 50 LPs in just three years. Part of this was owed to the label's canny structure—rather than shelling out for recording and production, Stone snapped up pre-existing gospel masters from regional artists and simply pressed and distributed them through Gospel Roots.

According to the extensive notes included with Christians Catch Hell, Thomas rarely met—or even spoke to—the artists whose work he was commissioned to promote. The label expired just three years after it was founded, without scoring a single notable hit. That backstory makes Christians Catch Hell—a collection of 18 tracks from the Gospel Roots label—seem like yet another in a long line of barrel-scraping reissues of 'lost classics,' but the music it contains transcends record collector arcana, providing instead a snapshot of the underexplored intersection between disco, funk, and gospel." - Pitchfork

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - The Complete Matrix Tapes (4CD)

"The first song on the Matrix Tapes is a languid, 13-plus-minute-long version of 'Waiting for the Man,' complete with a whistling break and two previously unreleased verses, seemingly made up on the spot. But what makes this collection essential is the cohesion of the band and the setlists: the shows find the Velvets at their absolute peak as a live unit, with Reed and Sterling Morrison's guitars—the former raucous and unhinged, the latter pristine and precise—meshing with an almost subconscious cohesion. The 42-track set finds the band cruising through some 22 different songs sprawling across their entire career: 'Sweet Jane' is rendered in versions much calmer than the familiar recording on Loaded, forceful on the first round (and with yet another unreleased verse), gentle on the second. Doug Yule introduces a loping melodic bassline into 'Heroin' (first night, second set) before moving over to organ. But most of all, the clarity of the sound—which is drastically improved from the Live 1969 album, where several of these songs were first released, and The Quine Tapes collection, which is rough-quality audience recordings of songs from the same set of shows—makes it feel as if the band is performing right in front of you." - Billboard

THE STAPLE SINGERS - Faith & Grace: A Family Journey 1953-1976 (4CD)

"Faith & Grace: A Family Journey 1953-1976 isn't career-spanning, as stated by the Concord label. The proof is right there, in the title. Throughout the latter part of the '70s and during the mid-'80s, the Staple Singers recorded strong material for the Warner Bros. and Private I labels. Nonetheless, as of 2015, this box set was easily the most comprehensive Staples anthology. Physical copies consist of four discs, as well as a re-pressing of an early-'50s single, 'Faith and Grace' b/w 'These Are They' which alone is enough to stir the interest of longtime fans. Even without those two songs, Faith & Grace would be almost as close to essential as it gets for a box set, covering the group's stints with Vee-Jay, United, Riverside, Epic, and Stax, a rich period during which they evolved from an acoustic gospel-folk group that performed in small churches into a genre-crossing main attraction for 110,000 people at the Los Angeles Coliseum (as documented on Wattstax)." - Allmusic

VA - Coxsone's Music

"Coxsone's Music is a stunning new 3-CD/two separate double LP (+ free download) collection featuring over two and half hours of early Jamaican proto-ska, rhythm and blues, jazz, rastafari and gospel music, charting the earliest recordings produced by Clement Dodd, in the years before he launched the mighty Studio One Records, brought together here for the first time ever. Featuring Don Drummond, Roland Alphonso, Derrick Harriott, Owen Gray, Clancy Eccles, Count Ossie, Monty Alexander, The Blues Busters, Ernest Ranglin, Rico Rodriguez and many, many more all captured here in their formative early years." - Soul Jazz Records

SCOTT FAGAN - South Atlantic Blues

"Brill Building songwriter Scott Fagan was 20 or 21 when this 1968 debut album was released in the same week as Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, then disappearing without trace. At 48 years' distance, it's hard to fathom why—it's a marvellous record, full of slightly psychedelic folk, Donovan-ish pop and stripped-down, brass-powered, redemptive soul. There are songs about dying love, failure, the emptiness of hedonism and the lure of isolation and Fagan—the biological father of The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt—delivers them with humbling passion. The tremor in his voice recalls a young David Bowie, and the phrasing of Dusty Springfield, but he’' at his best when the tempo drops and he bares his emotions, such as in highlight 'The Carnival Is Over.' 'Crying' is another killer tune: when Fagan yells 'Lover, look at me,' the pain is audible. Fagan continued to record, and still occasionally performs, but his youthful opus is ripe for (re)discovery." - The Guardian

MAKI ASAKAWA - S/T

"A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon. Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone.  A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongside Shuji Terayama; a sitar-led psychedelic wig-out runs into a killer excursion in modal, spiritual jazz. Existentialism and noir, mystery and allure, hurt and hauteur." - Honest Jon's

BEAT HAPPENING - Look Around

"Domino is proud to announce Look Around, a compiled retrospective from the legendary Beat Happening. Formed in the early '80s at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington by Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis and Bret Lunsford, Beat Happening combined a modern primitive pop sound with the D.I.Y. ethos of 'anyone can do it', inspiring countless bands and labels along the way. The music community that arose around the band and their label, K, was in many ways, the sonic antithesis of their Seattle neighbors (and friends) but was no less influential. Look Around is a remastered, career-spanning double album anthology, handpicked by the band and a great starting point for the uninitiated as well as a refreshing reminder to those who caught the wave the first time around." - Domino Recording Company

FRANCOISE HARDY - L'Amitié

"By 1965, Françoise Hardy was truly international. She'd hung out with The Beatles and The Stones, played high-profile shows in London, established a working relationship with British producer Charles Blackwell, and appeared in the film What's New Pussycat? She was also a fashion icon seen in the pages of Marie Claire and Vogue and on the cover of Elle, and her first US album was issued that year.

In France, Hardy was to release album number four, the second album to be recorded in London, where her celebrity was rapidly growing at odds with her natural shyness. 'In London, it was the first time I'd been made to think I had a certain charm or charisma,' she says now. 'Thanks to the time in England, I became aware I could be seductive.' L’Amitié, with its evocative, close-up album cover and late-night sound, is the result." - Light In The Attic

VA - Georgie Fame Heard Them Here First

"Ace's popular Heard Them Here First series continues to grow with each new volume eagerly anticipated by those with an interest in the inspirations of their musical heroes.

In their pomp, Georgie Fame and his group the Blue Flames regularly played four or five sets a night at London's Flamingo and Roaring 20s clubs, so were always on the lookout for new songs to play. Material came to Georgie from all directions: the GIs and West Indians who frequented the clubs and brought him new soul imports, friends such as clued-up Mick O'Neill (Nero of early-'60s instrumental specialists Nero and the Gladiators), the record collections of members of the Blue Flames, specialist soul/jazz/R&B record shop Transat Imports, and the copious record box of sound system operator Count Suckle. Musical sponge that he was, Georgie absorbed it all in order for the group to put their own spin on things.

This is an altogether terrific 25-track cross-section of material Georgie covered or revived across his early singles, his four Columbia albums and first CBS EP. Many of these originals will be familiar to lovers of vintage soul and jazz but we have included several major obscurities, a few of which, including Shorty Billups' original of Georgie’s rare single ‘Bend A Little,' are receiving their first ever reissue here." - Ace Records

SUN RA AND HIS ARKESTRA - To Those Of Earth...And Other Worlds

"Following up on last year's collection In The Orbit Of Ra, we're diving headfirst back into the vast universe of Sun Ra with a a newly curated set from Ra's immense 125 LP back catalogue, compiled by Gilles Peterson. The BBC 6Music/Worldwide DJ is a long-time champion of Ra's music and the UK's leading tastemaker for jazz-based sounds. It serves as perhaps the best introduction yet to the music of Sun Ra for a whole new generation of converts.

For the CD version, Peterson picks personal favourites, classics and unreleased tracks and weaves them into a flowing piece across 2CDs, showcasing the incredible variety of Ra's work. The 2LP version features full-length versions of selected tracks from the mix (and also includes the full CD mixed version)." - Strut Records

WILLIE THRASHER - Spirit Child

"Last year's Native North America compilation of First Nations folk and rock stood as one of 2014's best reissues. Put together by veteran crate-digger Kevin 'Sipreano' Howes, NNA brought many singers and bands from the '60s and '70s to a new audience—native and non—and left many of us wanting more. That's exactly what we get with Spirit Child, a Light in the Attic reissue of Willie Thrasher's 1981 LP.
 
Thrasher, born in the Northwest Territories in 1948, still makes a living busking in Nanaimo, BC, and plays regularly in Vancouver (including at last summer's Levitation festival), so it's a real bonus to be able to hear what he was doing over 30 years ago.
 
Recorded at a commercial studio in Ottawa (and reissued with the original CBC album design), Spirit Child bridges country-folk styles—slack string and steel guitar, vocals reminiscent of Neil Young, outlaw country tinges that recall the likes of Waylon and Willie—and traditional Inuvialuit concerns. So, we have songs about whaling ('Shingle Point Whale Camp'), Inuit arts and crafts ('Old Man Carver') and a couple of tunes in Inuvialuktun and English ('Old Man Inuit' and 'Silent Inuit').
 
These last two—a sort of talking blues call-and-response—are, like many of Thrasher's songs, no doubt a response to his years in residential schools in the 1950s, where native children were forbidden to speak their own language and, in Thrasher's case, had their long hair cut." - Exclaim!

2016 CALENDAR - Classic Blues Artwork From The 1920's Vol. 13

"One of every October's delights for me is the arrival of Blues Images' annual 12×24-inch wall calendar for the next year. As ever, each month's illustration is a reproduction of the original ad for a vintage blues 78 RPM platter. An accompanying 20-track CD presents these songs plus eight bonus tracks – some the flip sides of songs on the calendar, while others are back-to-back sides of a rare vintage disc that isn't on the calendar.

Since the obscurities generally come from collectors' 78s, the audio can be scratchy. This year's good news is that Blues Images has teamed up with the creators of American Epic, a three-part documentary on 1920s-'30s music that will air early next year on PBS and the BBC. The American Epic's crew's work cleaning up some (not all) of the 2016 CD's songs is superb.

The 2016 calendar and CD extend from 1927 to 1933. We hear the famous (Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Barbecue Bob) as well as lesser-known artists such as Hattie Hyde (recording with Memphis Jug Band) and Charlie Kyle. The two sides from a 1930 Jaydee Short 78 come from the only copy of the disc known to exist." - Goldmine

ELYSE WEINBERG - Greasepaint Smile

"The unreleased second album by an original lady from the canyon. Recorded and recanted in 1969, Greasepaint Smile is more assured than its self-titled, Tetragrammaton-issued predecessor. Weinberg's finger-picked acoustic is layered over distant drumming, while her gravel-pit voice evokes life, love, and mortality. Fellow Torontonian Neil Young sears 'Houses' with his signature fuzz-tone, casting chaos over the beautiful ballad, while J.D. Souther, Kenny Edwards, and Nils Lofgren, pick up the slack." - Numero Group

VA - Joe Bussard Presents: The Year Of Jubilo - 78 RPM Recordings Of Songs From The Civil War

"Legendary collector Joe Bussard is putting records out once again! After running the last 78rpm label in the US (RIP Fonotone Records 1956-1974), Joe had relegated his efforts to promoting old-time music by making cassette tapes for people hungry to hear his rare treasures and producing his radio show Country Classics for stations in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. But last year, Joe and his daughter Susannah Anderson had the idea to produce a compilation of Civil War tunes and they rang the office of Dust-to-Digital to gauge interest in distributing such a compilation. It was an easy decision for DTD, mainly because Joe’s always been there for us so it was time to partner together once again." - Dust-to-Digital

DOUG HREAM BLUNT - My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt: Featuring The Hit "Gentle Persuasion"

"Doug Hream Blunt is now in his 60s. In the past few years he has recovered from a stroke and, judging by the promo materials made available by Luaka Bop, which has compiled his slim works for re-release, seems pleased to be appreciated. In the late '80s he self-released (and self-distributed to local San Francisco record stores) one album and a subsequent EP of nagging, synthetic jams, inflected with '60s rhythms, wheezing vibes, a little funk and the kind of frazzled, insalubrious charm that now plays very well. [...] Genre was never a concern of the idiosyncratic funkateer. On this earwormy compilation you can hear that he has a voice naturally suited to soul, but his rhythms are insistent and regular, while his solos are free and wild. He's a Fly Guy; he wants to 'fall into a groove/And then move,' an accurate description of the modus operandi of these catchy, bleary tunes." - The Guardian

ARVO PÄRT - Musica Selecta

"Composer Arvo Pärt and producer Manfred Eicher have maintained their creative partnership for more than thirty years. Eicher launched the ECM New Series in 1984 as a platform for Pärt's music, bringing the Estonian composer to the world's attention with Tabula Rasa.

Since that epochal release, all first recordings of Pärt's major works have been made for ECM, with the composer's committed participation. In this special double album, issued on Pärt's birthday, Eicher revisits episodes from their shared musical quest, evoking fresh associations from juxtapositions of pieces in his dramaturgical sequence, as we are invited to hear the music anew." - ECM

SPOONER OLDHAM - Pot Luck

"Muscle Shoals keyboard stalwart Spooner Oldham (who has possibly the greatest name of all time) has had his fingers on myriad classic tracks. Co-writing hits like the Box Tops' 'Cry Like A Baby,' Percy Sledge's 'Out Of Left Field,' and James and Bobby Purify's 'I'm Your Puppet' with collaborator Dan Penn might be enough to secure a spot in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which he was inducted into in 2009), but he also lent his keyboards to music from Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, the Stones, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. He's frequently toured with Neil Young and in 2007, toured with the Drive-By Truckers. His pedigree is incredible.

It's curious, then, that his solo album appeared and vanished without a trace. Until now, of course. Light In The Attic Records have reissued Oldham's 1972 collection, Pot Luck, on vinyl and for the first time on CD, complete with extensive liner notes. The songs chosen present an interesting mix: side A is compositions that Oldham wrote (both by himself and with Dan Penn and/or Freddy Weller), and the B-side is an opus of songs that Oldham played on for other artists, each track blending into the next, ending with a gorgeous 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken,' soulful and a bit funky, with some incredible backing vocals." - Popshifter

THE CITY - Now That Everything's Been Said

"We all know the Carole King who wrote some of the biggest hits of the '60s, from 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow' to 'Pleasant Valley Sunday,' via 'The Locomotion' and '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.' We also know the singer-songwriter behind Tapestry, the album that launched King as a solo singer in her own right. But in between–and not nearly as well known–is King’s band, The City, and their album, Now That Everything’s Been Said.

By the mid-'60s, King's marriage to Gerry Goffin, with whom she'd written many of those wonderful hits, had hit the rocks. A divorce loomed, and King all but retired to raise their two daughters. She headed west to Laurel Canyon in '67, taking the children with her, and made the previously unlikely move of joining a progressive folk-rock band. King formed The City with future husband Charles Larkey on bass and Danny Kortchmar on guitar and vocals. With King on piano and vocals, they created a folk rock sound that pre-empted the singer-songwriter boom of the '70s.

Produced by Lou Adler and featuring Jimmy Gordon on drums, The City's sound is deep and soulful, imperfect but passionate. And the songs, with King writing or co-writing all but one, are as exceptional as you’d expect and as widely covered as her factory work." - Light In The Attic

JOHN HULBERT - Opus III

"The Tompkins Square label is well-known for reissuing lost records and reactivating careers (Mark Fossom, Max Ochs, Don Bikoff) as well as kickstarting the careers of younger musicians (Frank Fairfield, William Tyler, Daniel Bachman, Ryley Walker).

In this case, Tompkins Square alumnus Walker found the long-forgotten Opus III LP in a Chicago record store, dug it and shared it with Tompkins Square owner Josh Rosenthal. I guess it was a no brainer for Rosenthal to reissue this.

There were not much traces of Hulburt on the internet before this reissue. There are recordings of The Knaves, a '60s garage rock band he founded, and an early '80s video of Hulburt playing some folk tunes in a bar in Chicago. With this release and its nicely informative booklet, though, he's got the international attention that this record deserves, even if it is post-mortem.

This album counts 20 titles, so it's approximately two minutes per song: mostly solo guitar, some with lyrics, and even a flute shows up. The overall vibe is like the guitar guys on Numero Group's Wayfaring Strangers series, with a kind of jazzy, bluesy virtuosity." - Dying For Bad Music