RSDBF Small Business Saturday

Previously Unreleased Blues/Jazz-Tinged Collection Recorded at San Francisco's Defunct Toast Studio in 2001; Newly Mixed by Original Co-Producer John Hanlon

For the past two decades, Toast has been whispered about in collectors' circles in hushed tones, as Neil Young has dropped pieces of information about it here and there, especially as it contains three never-before-released songs. In 2021, in his online daily newspaper, The Times Contrarian, Young wrote about the album in-depth. "The music of Toast is about a relationship," he said. "There is a time in many relationships that go bad, a time long before the breakup, where it dawns on one of the people, maybe both, that it's over. This was that time."

In 2001, Crazy Horse was in San Francisco, south of Market street, at an old studio called Toast. Coltrane had recorded there, among many other jazz greats, known and unknown. The Dot Com boom was happening and buildings were being bought and turned into lofts or torn down completely and rebuilt. New money was everywhere. Toast was a target. The place was a little run down and sort of on its last legs. If you asked Crazy Horse about these sessions, you would learn that it was a depressing atmosphere and things were not going well. The band recorded there for months and came up with very little. Nothing, other than one song, "Goin' Home" was ever finished. But a lot was started. Several of the songs written at Toast showed up on the Are You Passionate album with Booker T. and the MGs. But that album met with mixed reaction.

Now, years later, John Hanlon, the original co-producer with Neil, mixed all of the Toast material. Many songs share a bluesy, jazz-tinged vibe as a common thread. Three solid rockers are interspersed in the mix. Other songs are long with extensive explorations between verses, a Crazy Horse trademark, kind of like a down-played Tonight's the Night, except these songs deal directly with love and loss, not drugs. The ambient atmosphere, foggy, blue and desolate, pervades many of the tracks, if not all, with Tommy Brea's muted trumpet and dusky male and female counter-part BGs occasionally surfacing from Poncho and Ralph on one side, Nancy Hall and Pegi Young on the other. A cool and sleepy lounge piano rises in the fog occasionally.

The result of this is perhaps one of the most under-estimated and deceptive Crazy Horse records of all time, with many songs originally discarded, and then re-recorded with Booker T. and the MGs. The original performances now surface again through a foggy past. Like an abstract painting, lyrical images of a love lost and maybe even destroyed forever just refuse to die, creating a landscape littered with half-broken dreams and promises. Toast is finally here, a dark Crazy Horse classic for the ages!

Aptly, Toast is heavy and distressed, brimming with electrifying tension. Even its sweet-sounding opening track, "Quit," features the refrain, "Don't say you love me." "Standing In The Light of Love" and "Goin' Home" let the Horse off the tether in fields of overdriven guitar; an out-of-work logger grapples with his faith on the breakneck "Timberline;" and on "Gateway of Love," Young dreams of a less painful future over a hypnotizing 10 minutes, leading into the somber, brokedown "How Ya Doin'?" The songwriter sums up the album best during its shadowy finale "Boom Boom Boom": "All I got is a broken heart, and I don't try to hide it when I play my guitar."

1. Quit
2. Standing in the Light of Love
3. Goin' Home
4. Timberline
5. Gateway of Love
6. How Ya Doin'?
7. Boom Boom Boom

Double vinyl LP pressing. Named by Q Magazine as one of the "5 Best Compilations of 2000," Romeo Must Die: The Album is the soundtrack to the Andrzej Bartkowiak 2000 film, Romeo Must Die. With executive produced by Timbaland, Barry Hankerson, Jomo Hankerson and Aaliyah, the film's star. The album features production from Irv Gotti, Rapture Stewart, Ant Banks, Eric Seats, Mannie Fresh and J Dub. Appearances include B.G., Chanté Moore, Dave Hollister, Destiny's Child, Ginuwine, Joe, Lil' Mo, Mack 10, Playa, Stanley Clarke, and Aaliyah, who appears on four songs. The album debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Platinum shortly after it's release.

• 1 Try Again By Aaliyah
• 2 Come Back in One Piece By Aaliyah (Feat. DMX)
• 3 Rose in a Concrete World (J Dub Remix) By Joe
• 4 Rollin' Raw By BG
• 5 We at It Again By Timbaland & Magoo
• 6 Are You Feelin' Me? By Aaliyah
• 7 Perfect Man By Destiny's Child
• 8 Simply Irresistible By Ginuwine
• 9 It Really Don't Matter By Confidential
• 10 Thugz By Mack 10 (Feat. the Comrades)
• 11 I Don't Wanna By Aaliyah
• 12 Somebody's Gonna Die Tonight By Dave Bing (Feat. Lil' Mo)
• 13 Woozy By Playa
• 14 Pump the Brakes By Dave Hollister
• 15 This Is a Test By Chante Moore
• 16 Revival By Non-A-Miss
• 17 Come on By Blade
• 18 Swung on By Stanley Clarke (Feat. Politix)

Quasimoto The Further Adventures Of Lord Quas on 2LP

Madlib resurrected his sticky-green obsessed, helium-huffing alter-ego, Quasimoto in 2005 for the release of The Further Adventures of Lord Quas. While Madlib has always been one of the most experimentally savvy beatmakers in the underground, his creation of the electronically altered narrator Quasimoto, has become one of his biggest selling points for alternatively minded fans. The second full-length under the moniker plays something like a smoked-out comedy/crime Blaxploitation flick, with Madlib and Quas in a more chaotic state then on The Unseen. Further Adventures thrills some, confuses and frustrates others, and in the end, cemented Madlib's reputation as one of the most creative and fearlessly skewed creators in hip-hop. The album includes 26 tracks, with only two guest shots: one from Doom (for the return of Madvillain) and another from Medaphoar.

LP1
1. Bullyshit
2. Greenery
3. Crime
4. Hydrant Game
5. Don't Blink
6. Players of the Game
7. Bus Ride
8. Closer
9. Maingirl
10. Civilization Day
11. Bartender Say
12. 1994
13. Another Demo Tape

LP2
1. Raw Deal
2. Mr. Two-Faced
3. The Exclusive
4. Fatbacks
5. J.A.N. (Jive Ass Niggaz)
6. Shroom Music
7. Rappcats, Part 3
8. Strange Piano
9. Life Is...
10. The Clown (Episode C)
11. Raw Addict, Part 2)
12. Tomorrow Never Knows
13. Privacy

2022 release. After blazing a trail with 2020's critically acclaimed Good Luck Seeker, The Waterboys waste no time in delivering their brand new record All Souls Hill. The album is nine tracks of Waterboys brilliance, all mixed by Scott himself. All Souls Hill is current, on the money social commentary, but with an air of hope. "All Souls Hill is mysterious, otherworldly, tune-banging and emotional." comments Mike. "I made it with Waterboys old and new and my co-producer, brilliant sonic guru Simon Dine. It's nine songs tell stories, explore dreamscapes, and cast a cold but hopeful eye on the human drama."

Tracks

• 1 All Souls Hill
• 2 The Liar
• 3 The Southern Moon
• 4 Blackberry Girl
• 5 Hollywood Blues
• 6 In My Dreams
• 7 Once We Were Brothers
• 8 Here We Go Again
• 9 Passing Through

The Marfa Tapes is a collection of beautifully intimate and raw songs written and recorded by Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, and Jon Randall in the tiny, middle-of-nowhere town of Marfa, TX. Barely a dot on the map, Marfa is an eccentric outpost in the midst of a vast expanse of nothingness, the perfect place to lose – or find – yourself. For Lambert, Randall, and Ingram, it's both. Over the past several years, the desolate location has become a songwriting haven for the trio, yielding both massive hits and profound personal growth. When they returned for five days in November 2020 though, they came not to write, but to record, capturing a captivating new album inspired by the stark beauty of west Texas and the deep, lasting bonds the three have forged there. Recorded raw and loose with just a pair of microphones and an acoustic guitar, The Marfa Tapes is a stunning work of audio verité; an intimate, unadorned snapshot of a moment in time fueled by love, trust, and friendship.

"I'll never forget pulling into Marfa that first night at 4am," said Lambert. "The stars were like nothing I'd ever seen before, just this endless blanket hanging so low you could reach up and touch them. I immediately understood why this place was so special." "There's no TV, no radio, nothing to do out there but pour a cocktail, sit around the campfire, and talk," continued Randall. "Eventually, that just inevitably leads to songs. There's no pressure to write, but most of the time, the three of us can't seem to help ourselves." "There's something singular that happens in that moment of collaboration and creation, something you can never really recreate in the studio," notes Ingram. "Our hope with this album was to share a little bit of that magic with people."

The trio recorded much of the album outdoors, inviting the ambient sounds of the desert to seep into their live, bare bones performances, and the atmosphere is utterly transportive. While a couple of the tracks may already be familiar to listeners – ACM Song of the Year "Tin Man" as well as fan favorite "Tequila Does" – the vast majority of these songs have never been heard outside of Marfa. The result is a rare glimpse inside the creative process of three of the genre's most accomplished writers and performers; a candid, unvarnished look at Lambert, Randall, and Ingram's undeniable chemistry in its purest, most honest form.

LP1

1. In His Arms
2. I Don't Like It
3. The Wind's Just Gonna Blow
4. Am I Right Or Amarillo
5. Waxahachie
6. Homegrown Tomatoes
7. Breaking A Heart
8. Ghost

LP2

1. Geraldene
2. We'll Always Have The Blues
3. Tin Man
4. Two-Step Down To Texas
5. Anchor
6. Tequila Does
7. Amazing Grace (West Texas)

Eddie Vedder - "Long Way" - Limited Edition 7-inch vinyl of Eddie Vedder's new tracks "Long Way" and "The Haves." Both tracks are off of his forthcoming solo album, Earthling, to be released in 2022. Version Title: [7" Single].

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Long Way
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 The Haves

Every decade or so a science fiction film comes along that captures the Zeitgeist and simultaneously casts a searchlight into the murk of what's to come. Such a film was The Matrix. Released in 1999 to a public already grappling with huge technological change and subject to Y2K hysteria whipped up by the media, The Matrix wove such au courant tropes as Japanese animé, Hong Kong martial arts films, cyperpunk sci-fi, and hacker hero worship into a tale of druggy paranoia whose vision of a grim future marked with universal surveillance and pathological interconnectedness actually looks less paranoid by the day.

And its soundtrack was similarly forward-looking. Instead of offering the blues-based, heavy metal rock that might have populated the score had the movie been made a decade before, The Matrix tapped into the new, breakbeat electronic sounds making inroads into popular music. The result was a propulsive audio ride perfectly mated to the film's cinematographic "bullet time" innovations, a doom-laden, neck-snapping blend of stoner metal, hip hop, and electronica.

On the eve of the franchise's fourth installment, Real Gone Music reissues the equally ahead of its time original soundtrack to The Matrix as a colored vinyl 2LP-set with gatefold packaging featuring stills from the original film production.

LP1
1. Marilyn Manson “Rock Is Dead”
2. Propellerheads “Spybreak! (Shortone)”
3. Ministry “Badblood”
4. Robd “Clubbed To Death (Kurayamino mix)”
5. Meatbeat Manifesto “Prime Audio Soup”
6. Lunatic Calm “Leave You Far Behind

LP2
1. Prodigy “Mindfields”
2. Rob Zombie “Dragula (Hot Rod Herman Remix)”
3. Deftones “My Own Summer (Shoveit)”
4. Hive “Ultrasonic Sound”
5. Monster Magnet “Look To Your Orb For The Warning”
6. Rammstein “Duhast”
7. Rage Against The Machine “Wakeup”

Coldplay celebrate the holiday season with the re-release of 'Christmas Lights' as a recycled black vinyl 7-inch single, backed by Coldplay's take on the perennial Christmas classic 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' which was recorded for a Jo Whiley, BBC Radio 1 live session, at the tail end of 2000.

• 1 Christmas Lights
• 2 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

credits

Alice Cooper pioneered a grandly theatrical brand of hard rock that was designed to shock. Drawing equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock, the group was also famous for their captivating stage show which featured electric chairs, guillotines, fake blood and boa constrictors. This 1974 Greatest Hits package compiles the band's hit singles from their 1971-1973 heyday and includes such smashes as "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "School's Out," and "Billion Dollar Babies." Gatefold 180g vinyl LP from Friday Music.

Tracks

Brownswood Recordings are proud to present Indaba Is – a compilation of current South African improvised music and jazz. The project is a collaboration with two luminaries of the South African Music scene, pianist / songwriter Thandi Nthuli and The Brother Moves On's Siyabonga Mthembu who act as curators / musical directors on the project.

Bokani Dyer's "Ke Nako" (now's the time) opens with an irony, because that was a slogan used to get voters to the polls in the first post-apartheid election. Now, Dyer's using it to remind us to think again about who we are and where we're going. That's always been the question for The Brother Moves On (TBMO: a genre-refusing, personnel-revolving performance collective named, with a twist, for The Wire's assassin: Brother Mouzone). Here, it's embodied in a meditation on relationships refracted through the distorting-glass of their context. It's the singing voices on both those tracks that reference roots even as they engage with contemporary spoken flows and instrumental improvisations.

Explicitly, trumpeter Lwanda Gogwana bookends his track with the idioms of the Eastern Cape – galloping rhythms, harmonies from bow music and split-tone singing, a spluttering trumpet reminiscent of Mongezi Feza – and grows from them a chill contemporary meditation: no spatial or temporal barriers here. Chill, though, is the last term you'd use for Wretched, vocalist Gabisile Motuba's Fanon-inspired project with drummer Tumi Mogorosi and sound artist Andrei van Wyk and the voices of Black Panther Kwame Toure and liberation leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: "What is History?.."

That, like "Ke Nako" and The Brother Moves On's bitter allusion to "black yellow and green" (the colours of the ruling ANC) is the thread of another kind of tradition – the reminders and remainders of South Africa's struggle not yet won – weaving through the album. Balm is offered by what guitarist Sibusile Xaba has described as his "modal, groove-oriented roots music". It is, he says, inspired by dreams; he sees himself as a diviner not a performer and his music as functional for healing. That echoes one of his musical masters, the late Dr Philip Nchipi Tabane. "Umdali" is a reference to the Creator, inspirer of such service.

The Ancestors weave Siyabonga Mthembu's voice into a web of musical references forward-looking and historical, including bluesy instrumentals that hark back to what South Africa's jazz bandleaders of the ‘70s and ‘80s conjured up – another aspect of South Africa's musical tradition. Then pianist/composer/vocalist Thandi Ntuli returns to the theme of identity in "Dikeledi" (‘Tears'). "Who are you?' she asks. "What do you call yourself?.. the illusion [of who you are] emerges from you." Ultimately, the song concludes, rootedness in community trumps image.

But community isn't unproblematic. The persistent fractures in South African society were deliberately engineered by apartheid, results of an attempt to impose unitary, racially-constructed identities on all. All the tracks in this collection challenge that: they demonstrate the unifying power of collective hard music work. In that context, iPhupho L'ka Biko's "Abaphezulu" ("They are coming, those who are above" – an invocation to ancestors, including the spirit of Steve Bantu Biko) is a fitting conclusion. Opening with the notes of Kinsmen's Druv Sodha's sitar, it smashes another of the walls apartheid tried to build against Black unity: between South Africans of African and South Asian heritage. The classically-inflected gospel voices of Mthembu's dialogue with Indian and modern jazz rhythms and free horn improvisations in joyous heterophony.

LP1

1. Bokani Dyer - Ke Nako
2. The Brother Moves On - Umthandazo Wamagenge
3. Lwanda Gogwana - All Ok
4. The Wretched - What is History

LP2

1. Sibusile Xaba with Naftali, Fakazile Nkosi, & AshK - Umdali
2. The Ancestors - Prelude to Writing Together
3. Thandi Ntuli - Dikeledi
4. iPhupho L'ka Biko ft Siyabonga Mthembu & Kinsmen - Abaphezulu

New edition of this very rare deep spiritual jazz album first released as a private-press album in 1970 on flautist Lloyd McNeill's own Asha Record label in Washington, DC. McNeill is an African-American flautist, painter, poet, and photographer born in Washington, D.C., in 1935. His multi-disciplinary creative life led to encounters and friendships with Nina Simone, Picasso, Eric Dolphy, Nana Vasconceles and other legendary cultural figures. McNeill's hypnotic Washington Suite was originally commissioned as a piece of music for the Capital Ballet Company, in Washington, DC. 

1. Home Rule
2. Just 71% Moor
3. 2504 Cliffbourne Pl.
4. Fountain In The Circle
5. City Tryptych
6. Fountain In The Circle

Kelela's debut album, Take Me Apart emerges as an epic portrait of an artist spanning the past and future of R&B. In her hands, however, the genre knows no boundaries and so Take Me Apart exists as an absolutely singular and fearless addition to a canon of recent classics. From her very earliest work, honesty and vulnerability have been cornerstones of Kelela's art - even when clad in the armor of the avant-garde electronics she so deftly inhabits - and Take Me Apart sees her double down on both the emotional intensity and resonance of her message as well as the sonic seeking she is renowned for.

The timeless, zero-gravity ballad "Better" sees Kelela at her most unadorned - baring her soul to a nameless other over subtly transforming piano and synth textures while first single "LMK" is all staggering club swagger that manages to span the past 20 years of innovative R&B while still exploring another dimension of possibilities. These songs typify the melding of classic song-craft and inventive production approach at the album's core, but it's here where things take yet another exhilarating turn. "Truth or Dare" has the brittle snap and vocal twists of a Neptunes track while "Blue Light" sees Kelela weld her sweeping pleas to the warped sonic palette of grime, pointing the way forward to a possible future of cybernetic soul.

Now we are swept into the slipstream of a pair of breathtaking Arca collaborations in "On And On" and the otherworldly grandeur of "Turn To Dust," which conjures images of the powerful and iconic diva of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element; and it's a short trip to the unforgettable pneumatic gospel of album closer "Altadena," a perfect uroboros link back to "Frontline" to begin the saga all over again. At this point you're left with the feeling that this trip through Take Me Apart is one you'll be making many more times.

1. Frontline
2. Waitin
3. Take Me Apart
4. Enough
5. Jupiter
6. Better
7. LMK
8. Truth Or Dare
9. S.O.S.
10. Blue Light
11. On and On
12. Turn To Dust
13. Bluff
14. Altadena

This is Bill Evans' first trio date under his own name for Verve, and the deep communication he maintains throughout with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, two brilliant rhythm players, is sublime. All of the songs are standards of one for or another, but Evans and Co. find a depth to them that's astonishing. Bill uses the spaces between phrases in a way that broadens and deepens the emotional content. Two outstanding examples of Bill's interpretive magic here are the novelty numbers "Little Lulu" and "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," which both acquire a warmth, scope of imagery and sardonic touch that enlivens their musical essence like never before. This all-analog 180g vinyl LP reissue was mastered from the original analog tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, pressed at QRP, and comes housed in a Stoughton tip-on gatefold jacket.

Tracks

1. Little Lulu
2. A Sleeping Bee
3. Always
4. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
5. I'll See You Again
6. For Heaven's Sake
7. Dancing In The Dark
8. Everything Happens To Me

Vinyl LP pressing. Eliza Noble and Jennifer Skillman are Eli & Fur: the British live act, singer-songwriter and producer duo whose career together stretches back for nearly a decade. Having formed a close bond in their teens born out of their unwavering passion for music in all it's guises, their careers as DJs, songwriters, vocalists and producers has taken them around the globe as touring musicians and seen them grace the stages of the biggest festivals in the world including Coachella, Tomorrowland and Glastonbury.