The 1960s were exhilarating times for the music business. Independent labels across the United States were creating overnight sensations almost daily. Creative hubs like Detroit, Memphis, Chicago, and Los Angeles were shaping and defining the sounds of tomorrow—today.
Among these vibrant scenes was Baltimore, Maryland—home to Chariot Records, a label that delivered a deeply soulful strain of R&B unlike anything else in the country.
Omnivore Recordings, the award-winning reissue label, is proud to announce the acquisition of Chariot Records. Founded in the mid-1960s by four friends from Baltimore who were all working in the record business locally, the label enjoyed a brief but impactful run from 1966 to 1972…
Category: *editions*
Released in 1986, Seventh Star was the twelfth studio album recorded by Black Sabbath for Warner. The first of three collaborations between guitarist and Black Sabbath founder member, Tony Iommi and former Deep Purple and Trapeze vocalist Glenn Hughes, the album featured the MTV and radio hit “No Stranger To Love.” Pressed on black vinyl, and also available on CD, this newly remastered edition now includes the single remix version of “No Stranger To Love.”
An often misunderstood and underrated album, 1986’s Seventh Star was never intended to be a Black Sabbath release, as the band had effectively broken up following its disastrous 1984 tour in support of career low point Born Again. Instead, Seventh Star was conceived…
Scritti Politti’s modern masterpiece Cupid & Psyche 85 is to be celebrated with a new edition that brings a much-prized version of the record together & a host of handpicked cuts from the group’s archive.
Released on July, the Deluxe Edition feature a remastered version the original album, plus a series of extra tracks and remixes. For the first time ever, the 13-track version of the album which was created for the then brand new CD format on the record’s release in June 1985, will pressed on vinyl. Overseen by Green Gartside, this running order has been remastered by Chris Athens, who has also worked with the likes of Drake and Beastie Boys. In addition, three extra tracks have been selected from the Scritti Politti archive…
Inventor of the “infinite guitar,” Canadian musician Michael Brook’s 1992 4AD record Cobalt Blue is a timeless and quietly stunning collection of instrumental pieces and shimmering dreamscapes, featuring contributions from ambient music pioneer Brian Eno, composer & multi-instrumentalist Roger Eno, and Grammy-winning producer Daniel Lanois.
Recorded later that year, Live at the Aquarium captures Brook’s rare solo performance in London, highlighting the hypnotic sustain and atmosphere that define his work. Beyond his albums, Brook has scored acclaimed films including Into the Wild, Brooklyn, and An Inconvenient Truth.
Newly remastered by Rashad Becker and presented as a 2XCD and crystal clear 2LP with artwork by Alison Fielding based…
Thin Lizzy’s debut album is their latest to be remixed and expanded – featuring remixes, single-only and EP material, rare and unissued radio sessions and 11 unreleased outtakes.
…Coming for the 55th anniversary of the Irish band’s first album, the Thin Lizzy box follows similarly expansive sets featuring remixed and rarities-packed versions of the albums Nightlife and Fighting (released last year in the 7CD collection 74-75) as well as Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox (chronicled in the 5CD/Blu-ray anthology 1976 back in 2024). As with those sets, engineer Richard Whittaker has remixed the full album as well as subsequent EP New Day from the original tapes; the new album mix will be available in stereo alongside the original mix. Two BBC…
By 1963 Miles Davis was on the cusp of being left behind. Creatively exhausted, touring with a repeatedly imploding sextet, he was also trading in a form of modal jazz that was rapidly becoming old hat compared to the frenetic, discursive innovations of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. However, there were signs of promise. For three tracks on the inconsistent studio LP, Seven Steps to Heaven Davis recruited 17-year-old Chicago drummer Tony Williams, 23-year-old pianist Herbie Hancock and Michigan-born bassist Ron Carter (an ancient 26). Allied to the relentless skitter of Williams’ drums, Carter’s regal, mellifluous bass, and Hancock’s background melodic conversations, Davis was able to expand and contract his sound, allowing for more…
At first glance the sleeve’s photo shows an overhead shot of a manhole cover, with a pair of lace-up boots next to it. Closer inspection shows the pattern on the sewer grate could come from a Vasarely painting: a grid of raised metal circles of carefully ordered sizes form a globe-like image in its centre, seeming to pulsate or spin. This manhole cover was photographed by EarthBall in Geneva. Maybe they felt the primeval force that its image suggested was coming up to meet them at the gig. Do EarthBall make music that mirrors Vasarely’s idea of the “plastic alphabet” where geometrics make a visual language that “communicates, across cultures”, a language that can be assembled in any form, anywhere?
Their new album, Actual Earth Music Vol. 3 & 4,…
With ‘Sowas von Egal 3’, the Hamburg-based Damaged Goods DJ team continues its compilation series on Bureau B, once again turning its attention to the underground scenes of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the early 1980s.
The spiky drive and romantic melodies of early-mid ’80s Mittel European dancefloors is fully embraced on Sowas von Egal 3 (German Synth Wave Underground 1981-86) with some 16 nuggets sifted from tape compilations and hard-to-find pressings. Prevailing streams of US & UK new wave, disco and punk are puckered with a Teutonic efficiency and wizzed-up sexiness on all counts from the bubbling hook of ‘He Sabine’ by Guyer’s Connection’ thru the DAF-esque swag of an EBM pioneer Tommi Stumpf in…
Folk music in the United States underwent a rebirth of sorts in the 1960s when young people began using the direct messaging and emotionally bold sound of the genre as a component of protest, making songs that expressed their political views and reflected the sweeping social change their generation was experiencing. With 100 songs and well over four hours of music, When Will They Ever Learn? A Story of U.S. Folk Music 1963-1969 explores every phase of the folk revolution of the ’60s, tracking the evolution as it quickly grew away from traditional trappings into forms that were more experimental but no less righteous. The earliest waves of collegiate folk-rock are represented by the spartan production and vocal harmony-centric songs of groups like…
…featuring newly unearthed bonus tracks and unheard demos.
The overused shorthand, “retro,” can mean that a group short on their own ideas has repackaged the past. Although Israel Nash Gripka’s country-rock/Americana infused music raises immediate comparisons to a host of classic folk-rock acts, Israel Nash’s Rain Plans is hardly a slavish (or lazy) re-creation of history. Instead, he’s applied a master craftsman’s aesthetic to expanding what might have started as simple singer-songwriter tunes. The resulting album features richly layered instrumentation that draws on acoustic and electric sounds, soft-diffusion reverb to cosset the mix and, above all, a worshipful appreciation for warm analog tone. Casual listeners may…
Preparing for the final song of his Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour on Friday (May 22) night in Cleveland, Bruce Springsteen reminded the Rocket Arena crowd that “the E Street Band was built for hard times.”
Those times have inarguably become harder during the seven-and-a-half weeks since the 20-date trek began in Minneapolis, and it was evident on Friday that it’s only made the group, 20 strong on this outing, harder and Springsteen even more focused and resolute in his mission.
Cleveland marked the 17th date of the tour — and the start of its final week — which is likely to culminate in an even more pointed and poignant reckoning on May 27 at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. The tour wraps May 30 in…
Aussie hard rock combo Rose Tattoo have persisted on and off with many personnel changes for many decades, despite the deaths of most of the early band’s lineup. Emerging in the late 1970’s with a bluesy blend of strident hard rock and melodic, no-frills heavy metal, the band’s first four albums yielded the hits “Bad Boy for Love,” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw,” “Nice Boys,” and “Scarred for Life.” One of Australia’s premier hard rock acts, Rose Tattoo found less success overseas, though they did influence American acts like Guns N’ Roses, Keel, L.A. Guns, and Nashville Pussy, all of whom have covered the band’s songs.
Rose Tattoo was formed in Sydney in 1976 by ex-Buffalo guitarist Peter Wells and — with the additions of former Buster Brown…
…Remastered from the original tapes, this album includes four outtakes rescued from damaged session tapes.
By 1977, Bluegrass was arriving at a crossroads. Questions about whether to stay in a strict acoustic framework or to push the boundaries and include non-traditional instruments like drums, pedal steel, and electric instruments. This is where the short-lived group Boone Creek took up the mantle of experimentation and laid the foundation for what would become “Newgrass.”
Featuring future giants Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas, Wes Golding, and Terry Baucom, Boone Creek was willing to push further than many of their contemporaries. Listening to it today, it is easy to hear the seeds of ideas that would…
Like Tony Allen’s drumming in Fela Kuti’s band, or Clyde Stubblefield’s beats for James Brown, there’s something essentially timeless about krautrock rhythms. Can’s Jaki Leibezeit and Neu!’s Klaus Dinger created a rhythmic language that is “motorik” in every sense – a way of delineating forward-momentum, a propulsive groove that links rock music’s physicality with the repetition of electronica. Perhaps this is why a genre of music that emerged in a West German counterculture of the early ’70s continues to represent futurism and progress, even for bands who have absolutely no contact with Germany – from Tokyo’s Minami Deutsch to Chicago’s Lifeguard; from Sao Paulo’s Bike to Bristol’s Beak; from London’s Snapped Ankles to Venice’s Squadra Omega.
1925 was a landmark year for US recording studios, marking the introduction of electronic microphones to replace the huge gramophone horns previously used to harvest the sound of singers and musicians. This brought about a dramatic leap in sound quality and established 1925 as an effective year zero for modern compilations.
The 32 tracks selected here by the author and musicologist Dick Spottswood draw on 1925 releases from Paramount, Columbia and Vocalion – then the industry’s three giants – but also from smaller and more adventurous labels, such as OKEH and Gennet.
Spottswood’s choices provide us with a rich and thoroughly enjoyable mixed bag of light-hearted trad jazz (including one of…
…The album was recorded in situ by Grammy Award winning producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, The Good Ones).
In Oman, descendants of the “other” African slave trade continue to live in the Ash-Sharqiyah region that hosted the main port.
Centuries on, Al-Mudema (“sailor songs”) musicians continue to sing mostly in Swahili and feature music mixing African rhythms and bagpipes. These descendants are referred to as the Zanzabari (or sometimes locally as Khal people). And they sing the songs of those who were brought forcibly by ship centuries before.
Rather than bagpipes (qurbah) being appropriated from Scotland or introduced by the British colonizers as is commonly claimed,…
