Blair French returns to Rocksteady Disco with an EP of Afro Cosmic dance floor heat. Picking up from where he left off with his The Art Of Us LP and his recent Razor-N-Tape EP, this 3-tracker sounds like being happily lost in a hot jungle after crash landing your spaceship near a secret party. Tons of drums, chants, flutes, and basslines for those extra special slinky sleazy parties. Limited vinyl pressing, don't sleep. More

Detroit native Blair French joins the RNT fam with a 4-tracker of burning summer edit heat! From the Brazilian boogie burner 'Cut The Crust', to the cruisy camp of 'Surrender', the 'welcoming' uptempo instrumental disco vibes of 'All Is Welcome', to the explosive and percussive 'Excuse Me', this record is a peak-time party from beginning to end. More

Michigan's ambient and soundtrack specialist John Beltran introduces a new LP that will be co-released by Delsin and his digital only label Dado Records. Entitled Through the Blinds, it features ten tracks by Blair French (who also appeared on his Music For Machine compilation on Delsin last year) and will be released on January 18th 2016. Blair French aka Dial.81 is an experimental producer and visual artist who won an award for his score of Detropia--a documentary about his home city of Detroit--and now makes his ambient debut. As you would expect of such a project, it boasts suspensory and near spiritual pieces of ambient music with angelic chords and glassy textures. There are also more frosty cuts that sound like a chilly Autumn walk, tracks that feature emotive neo-classical piano pieces and suggestively rhythmic compositions that sooth your mind. The second half of the record touches on church like passages of synth heavy sounds, strikingly sad violins and lo-fi arrangements that sound, one hopes, a little like what you might hear as you pass from this life to the next. More

The Art Of Us (TAOU) begins with the story of Blair French, a cosmic messenger raised in a house of 7 on the outskirts of a historic city. From dancing at mom's disco parties at a young age, to releasing rap tapes in middle school, winning best soundtrack for the multi-award-winning film DETROPIA and hitting the Billboard charts with his Pure Sounds of Michigan compilation; ultimately French found a home in the world of all things Detroit, Pan-African, Balearic, and ambient. TAOU is his first instrumental LP under his own name, (despite a 25 year career), bringing together his closest musical compatriots. Blair's diverse production shines on this immersive 14 track release, transcending organic/electronic, uptempo/downtempo, and light/dark, tapping in heavyweight characters including Pathe Jassi, John Arnold, Craig Huckaby, Todd Modes, Kaylan Waterman, Peter Croce, Eddie Logix, Paul Randolph, 2040, Michael Jurczak and more. Sonically, TAOU holds peak-hour Deep Cosmic Afro House freak outs ("Faded By The Sun", "Celebration Ritual", "F O A", "Chest Drum"), blunted beatdown cuts ("Stay Detroit", "Jeans", "Drop Ceiling Shuffle", "River Crossing"), and soulful R&B and Afrobeat compositions ("Honey Rooftops", "Genes", "Space Time Curvature"). Mastered by Atjazz, the vinyl is cut loud to lacquer by Carl at Trutone, and pressed with love at Archer on the east side of Detroit. It includes a double sided full color art insert with lyrics on the flip side. TRACK LISTING: A1. Faded By The Sun, A2. Celebration Ritual, A3. Stay Detroit, B1. F O A, B2. Deep Tissue feat. Craig Huckaby, B3. Space Time Curvature feat. Fahrenheit 2040, B4. Honey Rooftops feat. Kaylan Waterman, C1. Jeans, C2. Genes, C3. Honey Rooftops (Reprise) feat. Kaylan Waterman & Eddie Logix, D1. The Art Of Us, D2. Chest Drum (A Natural Unification) feat. Pathe Jassi, D3. Drop Ceiling Shuffle, D4. River Crossing
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After 3 months holed up in the studio Blair French has emerged to bring you Genes / Space Conductor 7” in support of his forthcoming album The Art Of Us on Rocksteady Disco. The A-side holds the “Loose Fit” mix of “Genes”, where Blair channels his inner Tony Allen for an expertly executed modern psychedelic Afrobeat cut featuring a heavyweight cast of Detroit characters including Todd Modes, John Arnold, and Paul Randolph. On the flip is “Space Conductor”, a cosmic afro broken beat joint with heavy drums, a huge bassline, kora, and Blair’s vocals, exclusively available on this 7” only. Housed in a full color jacket, cut loud to lacquer, and pressed heavy with pride at Archer on Detroit’s east side. More

Blair French returns to Rocksteady Disco after last year’s brilliant Standing Still Is An Illusion for another 12” of mind, body, and soul music. “Public Park” starts off the release, with flutes, guitars, and African marimbas abound, presenting itself as the song of the summer. “Spirit Guides” follows, taking listeners and dancers on a spiritual afro jazz odyssey. The flip features two versions of “Public Beach”, a communal ecstatic dance meets Detroit Jit footwork cut with a massive bassline, pulsing percussion, and harmonized chanting, constructed for open-minded dance floors and deejays. Limited to 300 vinyl, TIP! More

‘Eighty Three’, a sumptuous slab of slow-motion gorgeousness smothered in sun-splashed synth sounds and warming electric piano motifs, was one of the undoubted highlights of Mudd’s critically acclaimed sophomore solo album, In The Garden of Mindfulness. Now the track has been given a makeover by Conrad McDonnell, a long-time friend of the family and Claremont 56 contributor.
McDonnell is famous for his wild and effects-laden dub mixes, both as a solo remixer and alongside long-time musical partner Dan Tyler as the Idjut Boys. Together, they provided deliciously wayward and mind-altering takes of tracks from the Claremont 56 catalogue as part of the label’s 10th anniversary triple-CD compilation back in 2017. Now McDonnell has gone solo to deliver an album of dubbed-out revisions of In The Garden of Mindfulness, a set that will land next year. To get us all in the mood, he’s laid down a trio if reworks of ‘Eighty Three’ in his distinctive style. McDonnell first offers up the ‘Le Cidre Dub’, a slowly pulsating rendition in which lightly echoing and tape delay-laden guitar, synthesiser and Rhodes riffs drift across a throbbing electronic groove and low-tempo dub disco drums. The veteran DJ/producer has effectively given the track a more cosmic and spaced-out spin whilst retaining much of Mudd’s intricate and densely layered instrumentation.
Those seeking even wilder and more out-there acoustics are catered for by McDonnell’s two alternative dub takes. He successfully strips back the track to its most skeletal form on the ‘Uppity Dub’, bringing the sparsest of beats in and out of the mix whilst focusing on ambient synthesiser sounds, bubbly electronic patterns, echoing electric piano notes and Mudd’s squelchy and addictive bassline. His favoured effects are all audible in the mix but never dominate the sound space. This celebrated side of McDonnell’s audio output comes to the fore on the EP-ending ‘Uppity Again Dub’, in which waves of trippy and picturesque electronics lap against a locked-in, delay-laden dub disco groove and flashes of reverb-heavy bass. It’s effectively a heady, mind-altering ambient dub interpretation of a sun-splashed Balearic treat. Like the other revisions on the EP, it offers a mouth-watering appetiser for the album of dubs still to come. More

Side A
Ode to Perfume (London Live 2009)
My Persian Love (Remix)
Photosong (Roundhouse Mix)
Side B
A Perfect World (Remix)
Music To Be Murdered By
Side C
Let’s Get Cool
Fragrance (Remix 2009)
In Space
Side D
Music Is A Miracle

The magic and majesty of Holger Czukay’s late career works for Claremont 56 is being celebrated on a new compilation. The former Can bassist – a musical maverick renowned for his freewheeling approach to composition, recording and promotion – released a string of inspired tracks on Paul Murphy’s label between 2009 and 2012, typically delivering hard-to-pigeonhole workouts, bona-fide epics and radical reinventions of some of his most beloved tracks.

The collection has been a labour of love – fitting given the sonic details and inventive musicality that marked out the late artist’s solo career – for Claremont 56 founder Paul Murphy AKA Mudd, who first reached out to Czukay after witnessing his now legendary live performance at the Roundhouse in 2009. As Murphy details in his introductory liner notes, it led to a productive working relationship between the pair that included collaborative recording sessions with Ben Smith in Czukay’s legendary Innerspace Studio – a former cinema in Cologne in which much of Can’s music was recorded.The impact of that Roundhouse gig on Murphy is reflected in the fact that two of the tracks on the collection are based on that celebrated performance. There’s ‘Ode To Perfume’, a languid and solo-laden version of one of Czukay’s most celebrated solo records that ratchets up the original’s inherent dreaminess, and a jaunty take on quirky kraut-pop number ‘Photosong’ featuring a spoken introduction recorded at the concert in question.

Murphy’s ability to coax Czukay into delving into his archives is evident across the compilation. Opener ‘A Perfect World (Remix)’ is an eccentric, ever-building masterpiece originally recorded in 1984 – but later re-imagined for Claremont 56 – featuring vocalist Sheldon Ancel and former Can band-mates Jaki Leibezeit and Michael Karoli, while ‘Fragrance’ is a subtly re-wired slab of picturesque Balearic kraut-dub which was initially recorded as a coda for ‘Ode To Perfume’ but lay unreleased for decades.

Then there’s ‘Let’s Get Cool’, a bright and breezy, French horn-sporting 2009 take on 1979 avant-disco classic ‘Cool In The Pool’; ‘My Persian Love (Remix)’, a 2010 re-take of one of his earliest solos recordings; and the near 18-minute brilliance of ‘Music Is A Miracle’. Originally recorded for his fans in the 1980s – but only released three decades later – this widescreen epic not only features drums by Jaki Leibezeit and a fine spoken word vocal by Czukay, but also numerous nods to some of his most revered tracks.

It's fitting, too, that two of the most potent cuts feature Czukay’s much-missed wife and musical muse Ursa Major: the dense, trippy and fittingly out-there ambient soundscape ‘In Space’, and the mesmerising ‘Music To be Murdered By’. Partially inspired by hearing painfully out of tune violin practice through his studio windows, the track was originally recorded for an unreleased album but finally found a home on Claremont 56’s 10th anniversary box set ion 2017. A genuinely spaced-out and mind-mangling slab of organic dub in Czukay’s distinctive style, it delivers a fine curtain call to the iconic artist’s endlessly inventive career. More

Ricky L and Marcoradi have been friends for as long as they can remember.
They first met on the dancefloor of one of Italy’s most iconic clubs, Red Zone in
Perugia, where Ricky has been a resident DJ for the best part of 25 years. Now,
they’ve joined forces in the studio for the first time, uniting under the Hear &
Now alias for Claremont 56.
Those with a keen knowledge of Italian dance music will know their impressive
track records. Both have a history of producing fine deep house records and
remixes for the likes of Ibadan, Uomo, Reincarnation, Top Tracks, Restricted
Tracks and Vega Records. With Hear & Now, they’ve decided to step back
from the dancefloor, instead producing hazy, emotion-rich music for after-hours
listening, and mornings spent blinking into the sunshine.
A-side “Hirundo” is a thing of rare beauty: a gently flowering opus constructed
from shuffling, mind-massaging drum rhythms, spacey pads, stretched-out
organ chords and Marcoradi’s effortless guitar playing. Lilting, alien synthesizer
refrains seemingly tumble from the heavens, intensifying the duo’s blissful
mood.
Flip for an even deeper excursion, the softly spun wizardry of “Sabbia Magica”.
Here, the duo’s house influences gently rise to the surface. This is slow, deep
and dreamy house from the top drawer, with jazz-flecked guitar flourishes and
undulating electronics combining effortlessly with hypnotic, metronomic drums,
cascading string lines and a wonderfully dexterous electronic bassline. You can
dance if you wish, but you may just want a hug instead. More

Ricky L and Marcoradi have been friends for as long as they can remember.
They first met on the dancefloor of one of Italy’s most iconic clubs, Red Zone in
Perugia, where Ricky has been a resident DJ for the best part of 25 years. Now,
they’ve joined forces in the studio for the first time, uniting under the Hear &
Now alias for Claremont 56.
Those with a keen knowledge of Italian dance music will know their impressive
track records. Both have a history of producing fine deep house records and
remixes for the likes of Ibadan, Uomo, Reincarnation, Top Tracks, Restricted
Tracks and Vega Records. With Hear & Now, they’ve decided to step back
from the dancefloor, instead producing hazy, emotion-rich music for after-hours
listening, and mornings spent blinking into the sunshine.
A-side “Hirundo” is a thing of rare beauty: a gently flowering opus constructed
from shuffling, mind-massaging drum rhythms, spacey pads, stretched-out
organ chords and Marcoradi’s effortless guitar playing. Lilting, alien synthesizer
refrains seemingly tumble from the heavens, intensifying the duo’s blissful
mood.
Flip for an even deeper excursion, the softly spun wizardry of “Sabbia Magica”.
Here, the duo’s house influences gently rise to the surface. This is slow, deep
and dreamy house from the top drawer, with jazz-flecked guitar flourishes and
undulating electronics combining effortlessly with hypnotic, metronomic drums,
cascading string lines and a wonderfully dexterous electronic bassline. You can
dance if you wish, but you may just want a hug instead. More

Jack Cutter is a songwriter and guitarist based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. He started with a $5 banjo just after finishing high school. In University, during the late 60's, he performed with bar bands in Buffalo, New York. After completing University and a year as an Aerospace Engineer, he decided that attack helicopters were not really what the world needed and so he headed off to California in pursuit of music and mystic times. Fast forward to Fall 2014: Jack is playing his quintessential tune, 'Gift of Our Fathers' in the SF BART subway to an onslaught of morning commuters when he was spotted by 40 Thieves. Eureka! Love at first sight and in the next few months, two of Jack's original acoustic pieces were given the 40 Thieves treatment.Enter David Sanderson aka David Harks, a singer, songwriter, producer and label curator from the East Sussex region of the UK. 'Having fallen in love with the cosmic boogie (of 40 Thieves classic 'Backward Love') I really felt I would love nothing more than to write a tune with them. Layne got back in touch with a track he was working on entitled Serpent Strut with Jack Cutter and we worked via email over a few months to brew up that misty soul.' Deep, stony, psychedelic, drawing from the well of Hawkwind, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Baffo Banfi and Tolkien-tinged acoustic Led Zep, the proof of
concept is now complete and in the capable and loving hands of Claremont 56. More

Earlier this year, an email dropped into the Claremont 56 inbox. It was from a producer in the early stages of his musical career called Simon Peter, and contained a joyous slice of languid, organic Balearica entitled 'Arc of Lark'. Suitably impressed, Claremont 56 boss Paul Murphy had no hesitation in snapping up the track right away.It marks a new stage in Simon Peter's career. He made his debut in February 2014 with the Double Up EP on Silhouette Music, which contained the shimmering nu-Balearic disco of 'Espacio Temporal'. While that was laden with sun-kissed synthesizers, 'Arc of Lark' is a much more organic affair. Blissful electric piano keys, hazy guitars and fluttering flutes cascade over an undulating live bassline and shuffling, bongo-laden beats. Warm and humid, it's a slice of audible sunshine to brighten up the grim winter months.Long-time friends of the family 40 Thieves handle remix duties, turning Simon Peter's picturesque original into an effects-laden chunk of slo-mo dub disco goodness. 40 Thieves member Layne Fox loved the track so much that he's also contributed an additional remix that focues the action around a loose, languid, dub reggae influenced groove, spiralling electronics and Peter's mesmerizing flute line. It's a fitting conclusion to a magical label debut. More

The last one in the series of 10 compiled by Alex From Tokyo (Innervisions). Hand numbered and limited to 1000 copies !
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2 songs from every compilation, so 20 in all - pressed on 5 gatefold vinyls housed in a thick card box with a hot foil Originals logo on the front. Preorders essential - Check!

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Hot on the heels of the lavishly packaged Holger Czukay series, Claremont 56 bring you versions of an exclusive unreleased Czukay & U-She track, ‘La Premiere’ with awesome remix work from the Mudd man himself ! On side-B ‘Mudd’s Garden Mix’ picks things up from the off with a genius jaunty step and deep swollen bass. Add into the mix glistening keys and U-She’s off kilter vocal line and you have the kind of odd-ball gem that dancefloor’s love. On side-A, ‘Mudd’s Ode To Phreek Mix’ (a tribute to the legendary Idjut boys parties) kicks harder than his usual style and comes up with a quality deep house track. It comes across as the dub version, but once you catch the extra weighty sub bass, you know this will slay a deeper dancefloor at the right time of night. Gloss sleeve with shrinkwrap, Transparent vinyl More

Between 1978 and 1984 Can as a group were utilising the Innerspace Studio in Cologne less frequently in order to search for new ways to develop their sound and creativity. However drummer Jaki Liebezeit and Holger continued to record and experiment at the studio and Czukay considers this time as the most fruitful and creative period they spent together. Born from this time was ‘Secret Life’ and ‘In Space’ and these are presented on a white vinyl disc in a fantastic full colour thick card sleeve. Limited ! More