Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven’s brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo’s Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought after artifacts of the 90’s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead…
Latest Entries »
…a freshly refurbished and expanded treatment of 2005’s ‘Tommyland: The Ride’, Tommy Lee’s second solo album after his short-lived side project Methods of Mayhem. ‘Tommyland Rides Again’ also introduce a brand-new bonus track, “Stupid World (feat. Chad Tepper).
Released in conjunction with his book of the same name, as well as his new reality television series Tommy Lee Goes to College, Tommyland: The Ride is the Mötley Crüe drummer’s second foray — not including Methods of Mayhem — into faux-solo land. Tommy Lee lends his name, drums, and some vocals to 12 rockers, power ballads, summer anthems, and emo-drenched exercises in futility that employ the voices and guitar playing of pretty much anybody available.
There’s a peculiar tension running through Obsidiana, the third studio album under Rocket Recordings for Mexican artist J. Zunz. Lorena Quintanilla has always worked within spaces where dream-pop haze curdles into industrial unease, whether through Lorelle Meets the Obsolete or her solo work, but here the balance feels newly severe. The album moves like a process of extraction, each track scraping away another psychic layer until only pulse and residue remain.
The record’s title proves instructive. Obsidian, being volcanic glass historically used for weapons and scrying mirrors, becomes both thematic anchor and sonic blueprint. Quintanilla builds these tracks from hard edges and reflective surfaces, bass frequencies grind against flickering…
The Pale Fountains make a strong claim for being one of the great “lost” bands of the first half of the 1980s on this career retrospective — The Complete Virgin Years — which gathers up their two albums (1984’s Pacific Street and 1985’s …From Across the Kitchen Table), all the singles and B-sides, plus a healthy number of extended versions, rough mixes, and demos.
The group were equally inspired by the mystical garage rock of Love and the sophisticated craft of Burt Bacharach while sharing the smooth production of contemporaries like the Style Council, the psychedelic shimmer of Teardrop Explodes, and the take-no-prisoners approach of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Their songs — like quite a few bands of the day — were full of fretless…
Braxton Keith writes and sings about drinking, loving, losers, and other familiar classic country themes in a squeaky voice with a twang that sounds made for the juke box. He can convincingly act the fool and/or cry tears in his beer, depending on the song and the mood. The title of his new release, Real Damn Deal, suggests he’s the real deal, but his authenticity is purposely insincere. Keith understands the importance of a good façade. He understands there’s more truth in a good lie than in telling things straight.
The first-person narrators of his story songs claim to be patient, understanding, hurt, and ready for a good time, but their tales generally proclaim the opposite. Life’s funny that way. The man who brags, “I am running a few minutes…
The difficulty most artists have creating a buzz on debut albums, especially in the blues genre, is partially alleviated on guitarist/singer/songwriter Troy Mercy’s initial foray. That’s due to his extensive history working with some of the most recognizable names in the business.
Fans of the Fabulous Thunderbirds might recognize Mercy as that band’s guitarist for a number of years in the early 2000s (replacing Kid Ramos), although under the last name Gonyea (there were some self-released earlier albums under this moniker too). He has also toured and/or recorded with roots music legends like Booker T. Jones, Jerry Portnoy, and Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist/right-hand man Hubert Sumlin.
But now, taking the Mercy name brings…
There is an old-world saying that some folks are just born with an old soul. Pianist and social media conqueror Emmet Cohen — his pandemic- founded livestream, Live from Emmet’s Place, has been viewed by millions across the globe — proves, positively, that the old wisdom still stands and forever will. For within the heart and soul of every jazzman and jazzwoman, the warm essence of the music’s ever-painful, resilient, triumphal past resides.
A compatriot who does not mind growing up alongside the elders, Cohen continues his sprint into the future alongside the ever-present past on Universal Truth. In league with many of his previously insightful journeys on the way-back machine: Masters Legacy Series Volume 1:…
Brian Jackson has always been an enigma. The multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger was Gil Scott-Heron’s songwriting and recording partner on nine albums, and the architect of the Midnight Band’s sound melding poetry, soul, jazz, blues, and funk. Following their split, he kept a low profile. Later he played sessions with everybody from Roy Ayers and Oneness of Juju to Kool & the Gang and Charnett Moffett.
Along the way he cut his own records, including 2021’s instrumental Brian Jackson JID008 and 2022’s This Is Brian Jackson. 2026’s Now More Than Ever, is a 19-track multi-disc set that revisits his material with Scott-Heron (the cover mimics the 1976 album It’s Your World). It was cut in collaboration with New York production…
Fela Kuti has been rediscovered all around the globe in the last 20 years in ever changing inspirational ways. Probably there is no major city in Europe or the US today without an ensemble that heavily references Fela Kuti.
…Fela Kuti in Dub takes us to one of Germanys hubs of Fela Kuti admiration: a small studio in the bluecollar district Untergiesing in Munich. This is the workspace of drummer, producer, dub fanatic, and DJ: Captain Yossarian. The studio complex is home to an illustrious group of musicians: Krautrock pioneers Embryo, Poets of Rhythm mastermind Jan Weissenfeldt, Franz Ferdinands guitar player Nick Mc Carthy or local (also Fela Kuti loving) Express Brassband who all work here. Occasionally bands visiting Munich…
Jolanda Moletta has been described as a “one-woman electronic choir”, creating wordless compositions or “sonic and visual spells”, as described on her Bandcamp, through extended vocal techniques. On her two previous albums, Night Caves (2025) and Nine Spells (2022), she created gorgeous, cavernous worlds with layers of impeccable singing.
On her third release, Oceanine, she expands her vocal universe through collaboration, with each track featuring a different female vocalist. At the same time, the foundational elements are generated entirely by her own voice.
Moletta’s Bandcamp page describes the record as “representing a musical practice that is distinctly feminist”. The album harkens back…
Chicago-based sound artist Kikù Hibino collaborates with Japanese noise pioneer Merzbow (Masami Akita) on Rococo ∞ Echomatter, released by Superpang. Exchanging material between Chicago and Tokyo, the duo cuts spoken voice and instruments into dense noise fields.
The album opens like a thunderstorm. The voice that echoes around you (Alexandra Cupsa’s ASMR-modulated French vocals) becomes the green-gray sky, and suddenly, there are flickering tremors of distorted chaos, coming at you in bursts, like lightning. You hear the sounds of a tape rewinding, appropriately enough, since the album starts with the end (‘dB.XYZ’) and ends with the beginning (‘abcdefg’), as if the whole thing is being played backwards. ‘dB.XYZ’ in particular…
As we pick our way through the scurf and scree of the modern world, outraged and numbed at every turn, we can maybe agree that Russell Haswell’s new record, Let It Go, is a useful corrective and something of an unlikely balm. Here, with Haswell at the controls, we are just living in a world of shit, some of us are in the gutter but looking at the kerb, we’ve just roasted an Alsatian’s leg in our thirtieth-floor apartment, and so on.
Let It Go is a total heap of noise and openly addresses the listener as such. That’s the record’s narrative, and its liberation; our irritating anthropological longings to join the dots or see patterns can do one. Opening track, ‘Exit Downwards’ is a recording of an old, forgotten overheating generator doing its own…
Following the success of 2025’s first Singles Live compilation, Popstock Records present The Fall: Singles Live Vol. Two 1980-83 in association with Bella Union. Commenting on the release Paul Hanley says: “In marked contrast to Singles Vol. One this compilation showcases an altogether more stable line-up – the one that recorded Hex Enduction Hour to be precise, notwithstanding some to-ing and fro-ing on the kit between me and Karl. As with previous releases, there are some revelatory versions here, and the mastering is a wonder to behold, or whatever the aural equivalent of ‘behold’ is. The earliest, ‘Putta Block’, from May 1980 was recorded at the Beach Club, a short-lived Manchester venue that also saw New Order’s debut gig. The latest, ‘Ludd Gang’, comes…
Above all else, Widemouth’s debut LP, No Gasoline, is a record about friendship. Born out of the basement of a Northwestern University dorm where two/fourths of the band would meet to play Paul Simon and Big Thief covers, the band approached this album as a team, writing all of the songs together. And thematically, it sounds like an oral history of a foursome building a chosen community, with the songs brimming with emotions and shared inside stories.
Throughout the dozen tracks that make up this LP, the Chicago band manages to offer hints of everyone from Phoebe Bridgers and Bright Eyes to local band Ratboys. There is a moodiness to the mellow opening track, “I Wish You Passed On a Little Anger,” with Mak Carnahan…
Colin MacIntyre, the man behind Mull Historical Society, is enjoying a productive streak of late – and as his MHS series continues he moves behind the lens for inspiration. The idea of writing a song cycle with contributions from a range of authors dates right back to early classical music, yet MacIntyre is successfully updating it with pop flavourings, modern settings and a refreshingly wide geographical scope. The previous instalment in this series, 2023’s In My Mind There’s a Room, successfully got its authors to picture an important room; this one goes to personal depths by asking 12 authors and poets for their thoughts on a photograph of personal importance.
Settings range from China to Gaza, from Botswana to Glasgow, and yet common ground…
When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was looking to fill the harmonica spot for their tribute to the great Paul Butterfield in 2015, they had their pick of dozens of talented blowers who would have jumped at the chance. They chose Jason Ricci.
He then killed it on “Born in Chicago,” a performance that should have raised his profile to headlining larger venues. That hasn’t been the case due to a variety of health and personal issues, but it doesn’t mean his talents have diminished. It’s clear he’s on a comeback of sorts, releasing two albums with his current Bad Kind band on Mike Zito’s co-owned Gulf Coast label. Those are now followed with a third, 13 Hours.
Ricci – who at one time was so eclectic that he famously covered jazz iconoclast Sun Ra and…
New Jazz Underground are a pianoless jazz trio whose modernist, urban jazz gleefully glides between harp bop, post bop and hip hop. Julliard School grads, the trio includes saxophonist/vocalist Abdias Armenteros, bassist / producer Sebastian Rios, and drummer TJ Reddick.
They began playing together in New York City parks during the COVID-19 pandemic, then followed with dozens of You Tube videos that attracted a savvy, sophisticated young audience of more than 100,000 subscribers. They’ve issued a handful of singles and EPs, among them the MF Doom Suite and Dying of Thirst an EP subtitled “the Kendrick Lamar Suite,” and have appeared at the 2025 Newport Jazz Festival. Hoodies, their debut longplayer offers 13 tracks primarily…
Master drummer/multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey possesses a rare gift for blending composed and improvised material into richly rewarding forms. His new double album — recorded live at The Jazz Gallery — reimagines and reframes Members, Don’t Git Weary, the landmark 1968 work by Max Roach, with the support of a brilliant quintet. Trumpeter Adam O’Farrill and saxophonist Mark Shim ignite the frontline, while the volcanic rhythm section features rising younger-generation talents: pianist Lex Korten and bassist Tyrone Allen. The result is astonishing — a series of expansive, long-form explorations shaped by open modal frameworks and fearless interaction. Like the album that inspired it, Members…Don’t! emphasizes resilience amid social unrest.
On her latest effort, Villain Era, India Ramey digs deep into the past for influences and lands on an inspired mix of Wanda Jackson and Johnny Cash. To be fair, you’d be hard-pressed to find a cooler mix than the Queen of Rockabilly and the Man in Black for inspiration.
The album opener, “We Ride at Dawn,” starts things off strong with a clarion call for women to take action and is a song cloaked in a story about seeking revenge on bandits who came to town. Between the lines, however, it’s a song about women justifiably enraged and seeking revenge against men who strip them of their bodily autonomy. And it segues perfectly into the title track, with Ramey embracing her “villain era,” and opting out of being the perpetual…
Telecaster twang-master Bill Kirchen’s life template was stamped early when as a key member in the original Commander Cody & his Lost Planet Airmen outfit. For nearly a decade starting in 1967, Kirchen, Cody and an expansive, wildly talented lineup brought deep country, rockabilly, Western swing, and trucking songs, along with retro rock and roll to the young masses who might never have experienced this frantic music live. An early titled Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favorites, describes their sound with typically wry humor.
The San Francisco-based group opened for many huge acts of the day including the Allman Brothers Band and the Grateful Dead, exposing their audiences to good time, bar band, retro-spirited rocking. “Hot Rod Lincoln,” their…