Charles Bals, the curator behind the America Dream Reserve compilation, continues his journey into a wasteland of obscure recordings sourced from previously unknown tapes and vinyl of the 70s and 80s. This collection is made for an overcast, rainy night. Where the nocturnal ramblings of wandering silent types can be heard over an endless stretch of asphalt.

This time, Bals has put together a compilation that contains a darker, more solitary narrative—a collection of reclusive, ‘sigh-chedelic’ folk. The anthology sources rare moments that feel like they were pulling-the-paisley-thread of a dying psychedelic folk movement. Although it passed from the mainstream, the genre continued to percolate in bedrooms, kept alive through unsigned bands and mysterious individuals. Despite recording in different countries, these artists found there way to a kindred feeling. When heard together, the feeling of an era’s aftermath comes into focus. Charles’ compilation brings out the potency of these disparate selections. More

**Limited edition single-sided LP 300 copies**

David Horridge's unreleased bedroom studio tape material (1982).

Shortly after releasing the inimitable Light Patterns, David Horridge recorded a handful of demos. These sole artifacts from Dave capture the same Mancunian melancholy presented on
Light Patterns, and offer an insight into David’s contributing piece of the puzzle. It comes as no surprise that every track laid to tape from that era is an absolute gem.
David’s playing comes in the form of well-timed melodies and carefully placed basslines.

Nothing forced or rushed, and each movement really sits with a mood. Journey Within is an even more sedated, mellow effort than Light Patterns. The songs were perhaps even sketches for a
follow up that never manifested. The album’s greatest strength is in setting a peaceful, pastoral mood that allows for a relaxed listen all the way through. Hypnotic stuff.
The only deviation is the final song, One Note Bossa, which came as a surprise with its use of a drum machine. A feature that demonstrates what might have been were David have continued to
experiment and release albums...

RIYL: Durutti Column, Woo, Pat Metheny, and Steve Hiett. More

** Repress in grey sleeve **

New label Smiling C starts off with a compilation LP of released and unreleased works by the Arabic rapper, Shams Dinn.

For their first ever reissue, Smiling C connects with the Arabic rapper Shams Dinn to release a compilation his best songs, including the hit "Hedi Bled Noum". The compilation covers his entire career of with songs made between 1985-1990, most of which went unreleased at the time. One of the few Moroccan rappers to ever be recorded on vinyl back in the 80s, Shams Dinn was a pioneer of Arabic flow. Starting his career because he wanted to be a positive light for the Arabic immigrants living in France. He earned his status participating in freestyle competitions, and performing in small clubs around Europe. His career came to a turning point when he was asked by a major label to record a full LP. Unfortunately, the label decided they didn't want to promote Arabic music (largely because of the Gulf War) - and asked Shams to translate the Arabic to French. Shams Dinn wouldn't stand for that, and he was dropped from the label. The following years he worked at a school, teaching kids how to rap and express themselves through words.

The reissue comes with newly imagined art, and an inner sleeve with interview and photos. More

Kevin McCormick's unreleased bedroom studio tape material (1982-1984). Moods similar to Durutti Column, Woo, Crosby’s spacey moments, and Boards Of Canada’s nostalgia.

Following the release of Light Patterns in 1982, Kevin recorded a series of songs onto tape that explored the sonic possibilities of a solitary guitarist. Shedding the acoustic sound of his previous effort, he adopted a swelling electric palette to apply his moods to. These recordings are a shift in direction to a sparse and ambient style, and their hazy, repetitive movements create room for evocative melodies.

Kevin fills a deficiency of guitar-forward music with his minimalistic approach that is somewhere in the space between ambient, rock, jazz, and avant-garde. On Sticklebacks, he casts away the morning elegance of Light Patterns and leans further into the introverted feelings of the small hours. It is a nascent springtime journey that shows just what Kevin is capable of with six strings. More

2023 edition with new artwork and sleeve. Come with insert/liner notes.

"Welcome to the America Dream Reserve, home to husband & wife duos, pub legends, one-man-bands, preachers’ sons, and country-lounge entertainers..."

About: America Dream Reserve is a home for kindred souls. An hour-long journey into the world of lo-fi drumcomputer folk, disco-pop-lounge, haunting ballads, obscure vanity pressings, and synthesized string ensembles. A collaborative compilation between Charles Bals, creator of the inimitable Club Meduse, and Smiling C.

Compiled by: Charles Bals & Henry Jones. More

Inimate British pop for fans of Spike, The Cleaners From Venus, Felt, Durutti Column, Black Ark Studios and Aladdin. Charming lost tapes from the early ‘80s, treasured only by family members until now.

"Jim and I met at university in Liverpool in nineteen seventy-five and immediately began making music together. We both had rooms in the same big Victorian house in the centre of town and our evenings were spent hanging out in the nightclubs of Toxteth, like Dutch Eddie's where the DJ played Trinidadian music all night long.

Liverpool has always been somewhere with its own distinctive culture, poetry, and music. In the nineteen seventies it was absolutely magical. The city was still bathed in the afterglow of the Beatles and there was a kind of creative anarchy about the place. There was this band called Death Kit who used to put on multi-media events with people in fancy dress and random bits of theatre. We'd turn up completely out of our heads and it felt like we were deconstructing ourselves as individuals.

After we left college, Jim began living in Cambridge and I returned to London where I'd grown up, but our musical relationship continued. We knew people who were making commercial sounds and having success with them but that wasn't what we wanted to do. We performed occasionally, albeit very erratically, mostly as a duo but sometimes with other musicians.

What we were really interested in was musical exploration. Jim built a studio in his back garden, bought some multi-track recording equipment, and began experimenting. We wanted to produce something that was just for ourselves. We were undoubtedly very naïve but naivety and innocence were hallmarks of that time.

In my childhood, I'd been fascinated with the story of Aladdin. Now that fascination began to be reflected in the music we were making. Here was a story about a boy who transforms his world and enters the magical realm. That seemed to be exactly what was happening to me. For all sorts of reasons, I hadn't particularly enjoyed my childhood but now I had managed to step out of the everyday reality, to find a place where I belonged and where I had a kind of power.

The name we used for the band came from a song recorded in 1949 by a singer called Mel Torme. There's a line in that song that goes, "Careless Hands don't care when dreams slip through." That seemed appropriate since dreams were part of the territory we were exploring.

I had got married immediately after leaving college and by now I had a daughter who was afraid to go to sleep at night. She wanted me to be present in her dreams with her. That became the inspiration for a period during which Jim and I tried to recreate the shifting landscape of the night-time imagination.

Unfortunately, the choice of name turned out to be horribly prophetic when in a freak accident Jim fell into a lake and was drowned. It seemed to me that for some time, he had not been paying enough attention to his own life. So I wasn't exactly surprised when I heard the news but I was completely devastated. After Jim's death, I put away his guitar and never played again. I went on to make a career as a novelist.

Most of the recordings we produced were lost over the years. A bunch of master tapes was accidentally thrown into a dumpster and others were left in the attic of a house I lived in at some time during the nineteen nineties. This album has been pieced together from fragments that somehow survived the cull."

- Brian Keaney November 2020 More

In 1970, Kevin and David met whilst they were working in the Labour Exchange Office on Aytoun St, Manchester. Both played guitar and had been searching for other musicians who played atmospheric music. Kevin had been playing in small clubs in Manchester and David performed in a few local bands. One evening, they jammed together at Kevin’s family home, and quickly realized that their playing blended together to form the basis of the sound they had been looking for. In the late ‘70s, the music scene in Manchester was bursting with new bands and music.

However, Kevin and David had little in common with the local acts, being disciples of a more meditative approach. They followed a path of their own, reaching for an otherworldly sound that they heard from artists like John Martyn, David Crosby, Erik Satie, Terry Riley, Eberhard Weber, Alice Coltrane, and Ralph Towner. They experimented combining their acoustic guitars and David’s bass with various effects pedals and techniques to try and achieve a warm and expansive sound that rides the line between ambient, jazz, and psychedelic folk Music.

Towards 1981, they had written eleven songs and accompanied a few with Moog synthesizer laid down by Rob Baxter. All were recorded on cassette decks in their simple home studios. They named this collection of music “Light Patterns”, after a poem Kevin had written. With Light Patterns complete, they set out to find a label to represent their music. They started playing a few gigs in Manchester; Band On The Wall, the Gallery, and other venues, such as Rotters which local promoter Alan Wise had organized. They set up with small amps along with their effects and played as though they were back at home. As Kevin remarks, “It was unusual, to say the least, to play such venues in a low volume chilled out way. However, people listened, often in shocked curiosity, and some even asked for tapes.”

Peter Jenner, of Blackhill Enterprises, eventually picked up the album for his new label, “Sheet”. Peter had managed lots of experimental bands and solo artists, including Pink Floyd in their early Syd Barrett days. He always favored outsiders! The tapes were taken to Strawberry Recording Studios in Manchester, who were surprised when Kevin and David walked in with just a couple of home-produced cassette tapes. Fortunately, they liked them and agreed to master the album. It was then sent to Portland Recording Studios in London for final mastering to vinyl. George Peckham, aka “Porky”, did the pressing with a personal message in the deadwax; “Kaftans, Candles and be Cool Man”. The artwork for the album cover was done by the late Barney Bubbles, a truly visionary artist.

After the album’s release, the pair continued to play together regularly until David moved away from the city. Kevin still resides near Manchester in the rolling hills outside of the city. He continues to experiment with dreamy music in his loft, and we are set to share a selection of his ethereal archival and current compositions in the coming months. David lives a quiet life in a small coastal town in the South, he likes to sail and is an avid cricket fan. We’re excited to make Light Patterns accessible again for the first time in nearly 40 years, remastered from the original tapes. As the original press release said, “Put the album on, lie back and enter the land of no floors”. More

Sixteen unheard works from Mexican jazz synesthete, Germán Bringas. Bringas plays with a delicate balance between experiment & pastoral spaciousness, sounding like Coltrane scoring a Tarkovsky film. To Accompany this release, we’ve made a documentary about Germán’s life.

Tunel Hacia Tí (Tunnel Toward You) is a collection of early compositions by Germán Bringas of Portales, Mexico City. This album features songs from his lost cassette ambient jazz opus, "Caminatas" (Hikes), it’s spiritual successor, "Exposción Al Vacio" (Vacuum Exposure), and unreleased works created between '91-'00. Every instrument heard on this release was played by Bringas, and recorded in a studio in the back of his home.

Germán’s pieces are informed by his synesthetic experience. As he plays, he witnesses color coordinating with each note. His earliest experience of this cross-sensory ability came from playing his parents piano when he was young. Exploring the keys, a spectrum of color presented itself, and he began searching for colors he preferred. He discovered an enticing shade of blue, which unbeknownst to him at the time, was a jazz chord. In the following years, he attended school at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música and was classically trained in piano and composition. The Conservatorio was extremely demanding, and didn’t appreciate his innate talents to play by ear. He was fed up with the indoctrinating way they taught, which coincided with a lecture he attended by Carlos Casteñeda. Inspired by the teachings, he left school behind to start a group with his friends to practice meditative exercises loosely based off Casteñeda’s Tensegrity movements to expand the body and mind. His friends and he spent years going into the woods and training as quasi-disciples of the Castañedian path. In those times, Germán developed a new approach to music, letting go of the formality of his classical training, and rediscovering his childhood experience to play from feeling. Learning trumpet, saxophone, and native Mexican instruments all to his own design, he followed his synesthetic experience to guide his compositions. He was compelled to record the discoveries he was making, so he produced a string of cassettes, only enough to pass around to friends & local collectors.

In his earliest works, you can hear the influence of his time spent in the tranquility of the woods colliding with the frenzy of the city he grew up in. Combining inspiration he obtained from ECM Records virtuosos, Mexican Rock-in-opposition, visionary jazz artists, and otherworldly sci-fi films like Blade Runner and Stalker, his songs ebb and flow between serene synths and chaotic bursts of emotive horns. In addition to these compositions, he started an experimental music club in his house in Portales called Jazzorca. At Jazzorca, which is still running to this day, he would share his pensive movements with a small group of dedicated music lovers. Germán truly created a world of his own through these works, and his sound is singular when held up to Mexican music from the same era.

Currently, Germán makes drums out of propane tanks in his backyard, he produces experimental CDs under his own label, and plays live regularly at Jazzorca. You might catch him strolling through his neighborhood in Portales at sunset, soaking in the influence of the city sounds and their associated colors he witnesses. More

Celebrating 30 years of legendary Henry Street Music with this special double vinyl released for the Record Store Day 2024. A piece of 90s House history, influenced by the magical classy vibes of those unique retro-house alchemy moments. Deep hip-hop, electro and funky influences into the unstoppable timeless flavor of these magical bangers.
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Essential Item Limited Edition No Re-Press...

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Cybernetic disco maestro Patrick Cowley returns to Dark Entries with From Behind, a collection of grooving and ecstatic covers of 60s garage and soul cuts. Best known for his chart-topping disco anthems, Cowley left us with an incredible body of work before his tragic death in 1982 due to AIDS-related illness. Since 2009, Dark Entries has been working with Cowley’s friends and family to uncover the singular artist’s lesser-known sides, including his soundtracks for films on compilation albums School Daze, Muscle Up, and Afternooners. From Behind reveals yet another facet of Cowley’s myriad influences; garage and soul. As a tripped-out teenage music freak who arrived in 60’s San Francisco, it should come as no surprise that these psychedelic sounds, both heady and visceral, infuse Cowley’s oeuvre. Recorded during Cowley’s most productive period, ‘80-’82, these tracks show the master flexing his virtuosity while paying loving tribute to the songs that shaped him. A rough draft of Loverde’s “Iko Iko” contorts the jaunty Dixie Cups classic into a slithering, monstrous bathhouse groover, the song’s signature claps draped in cavernous reverb. An unexpected hi-NRG cover of The Doors’ “20th Century Fox” has Paul Parker on vocals, ironically twisting the original’s overt heterosexuality. Via Cowley’s vocoder, The Who’s “Shakin’ All Over” is transformed into a haunting meditation on the loss of bodily autonomy that AIDS inflicts, while the Moody Blues’ “Ride My See Saw” appears in instrumental, amped up and synthesized for dancefloor impact. We’re also graced with instrumental demo versions of The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” and The Electric Prunes’ “Too Much To Dream (Last Night),” which later appeared on Paul Parker releases. Things close out with a swinging version of the Four Tops’ Motown classic “Baby I Need Your Loving”, Cowley later reimagined for R&B artist Carl Carlton. The record comes housed in a sleeve designed by Gwenaël Rattke and includes an insert with photos and liner notes written by Louis Niebur. Arriving on October 19th in celebration of what would have been Cowley’s 74th birthday, From Behind gives us yet another glimpse into Cowley’s world: iconic, erotic, and more than a little cheeky. More

Essential Item Limited Edition No Re-Press...

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The Space Grapes are back, this time presenting a 12" EP coming from Italian trio Collettivo Immaginario. Formed by LA-based drummer Tommaso Cappellato in conjunction with pianist Alberto Lincetto and bassist Nicolò Masetto, the group is known for their experimental blend of eclectic jazz, funk, downtempo beats, and vintage Italian library music. On this release, they are showcasing their foray into Italian vocals. The A-side "Luce" is a vibrant track that combines 80s jazz funk elements with a touch of boogie in an extended multi-rhythmic version that keeps the energy grooving. Flipping to the B-side, "Luna Gioia" offers a modern interpretation of downtempo Brazilian-funk and slow disco, accompanied by an instrumental version that allows the music to shine on its own. More

One of London’s most loved underground parties, Tangent, celebrates its 10th birthday this year with a new compilation on Mr Bongo. Its residents, John Gómez and Nick the Record, have curated a selection of prized, rare and dancefloor-ready tracks that have soundtracked the past decade of their parties. Alongside remastered reissues of these original cuts, the CD version of the compilation also houses three incredible edits from Nick, John and Dan Tyler of the Idjut Boys. These were too good not to press onto vinyl, so we’ve given them the standalone 12" they deserve.

Contextualising their edits Nick states, “Tangent was not only the place for us to play the music we love the most, it also became the testing ground for our edits. It was really helpful being able to see the effect each of these had on a dancefloor before the records were released and many of them also became firm Tangent classics.”

Up first, Nick is joined by Dan Tyler (Idjut Boys), who he runs the edit label Record Mission with, for a furiously feel-good re-edit of Leo Basel’s ‘Quelle Drôle De Vie’. Basing their edit on the 1987 ‘Special Remix’, it does what any great re-work does, dropping the sections from the original that don’t quite hit the mark, whilst focussing on the gold in amongst it all. The result is a slice of peak-time, French boogie joy, that will warm even the coldest hearts.

John then joins Dan at the dials for a cosmic revamp of Love Isaacs 'Surprise Surprise'. A serving of ‘80s electro-funk, dripping in swagger with a highlife tinge. John and Dan extended the grooves for maximum dancefloor power, space echoing it into the stratosphere at all the juiciest points.

Lastly, Nick takes on Rick Asikpo and Afro Fusion 'Let's Get High' from the super sought-after 1980 album, Got To Be Me. Celestial, gospel-infused soul from Nigeria, Nick homes in on the energetic last 2 minutes of the original as the building block of his 12-minute edit. A completely reworked, feverishly paced creation, Nick switches the sections around, saving the slow, soulful segment for a brilliant cosmic breakdown before the track erupts back into its full flow. Synthesised, jazz-funk elation from start to finish!

Housed in a die-cut sleeve. More

After a short hiatus LNTG is back with Vol 4 of his Soul Cut series, adding his magic touch to 3 classic cuts. A must have! More

Two iconic 80s Disco/Boogie anthems of the era are set for a re-release on 12-inch vinyl via RCA, with a fresh mix from Brooklyn-based producer, Mike Maurro.

Keni Burke - Risin' to the Top (A Mike Maurro Mix)

'’Risin’ to the Top’, originally released in 1982 on Burke’s third solo album, ‘Changes’, has become Burke’s most successful hit as a solo artist since departing from his former band, Five Stairsteppers. Countless producers have utilised the song as a choice sample for their own tracks with artists such as Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, Madlib and more.

Maurro’s mix works the stems and gives the record some fresh guitar licks alongside new percussive elements, whilst maintaining a heavy lean into the sensual, laid-back swing of the original.'

Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King - I'm In Love (A Mike Maurro Mix)

'The flip side sees the release of Evelyn 'Champagne' King’s hit single ‘I’m In Love’, originally released in 1981 and taken from King’s fourth studio album of the same name. A feel-good, sing-a-long anthem, once again given a fresh feel thanks to Maurro’s new take on the record.

Both tracks serve as trump cards to whip up any dancefloor at the right time' More

G&D back with their 6th Volume of edit series. Limited press to 300 handwritten numbered copies. Three killer tracks are always seriously edited by the unknown Italian duo. No Repress. More