** Comes in quality tip-on sleeve.

In a testament to Ireland’s vibrant musical history, Allchival presents an anthology celebrating the disco era’s hidden gems from Stuart Bingham's Sunshine. Culled from the annals of their studio recordings, this collection shines a light on the country’s lesser-known contributions to the global disco phenomenon.

Kicking off the compilation with Sunshine's electrifying "Boogie on Up," a testament to the band's prowess in embracing disco rhythms despite their pop cover origins. Produced by the acclaimed Paul Curtis, the track embodies the infectious spirit of disco, marking a pivotal moment for Irish disco hits. Accompanying it is "Don't Stop Me," radiating with Euro-disco vibes, further exemplifying Sunshine's versatility. Bingham recounts the bittersweet journey of "If This Is Free." Initially slated for success under Curtis's wing, the disco era's abrupt demise altered its trajectory, leading to an independent recording that retains a raw, garagey edge reminiscent of the era's ethos.

"Give It To Me" is another standout, blending Nile Rodgers-inspired arrangements with a Euro-disco flair. Stuart Bingham's production prowess and Rosey's captivating vocals converge to create an irresistible groove that transcends disco conventions.

Venturing into more experimental territory, "The Boogie Bug" showcases some Irish ingenuity in rap-infused grooves. Despite its ahead-of-its-time sound, the track faced resistance in a disco-weary landscape and rounding out the compilation is "Oh Gee, I Got U B.B.," a playful nod to dub-mix traditions.

This Sunshine anthology is a journey through Ireland's disco era, unearthing forgotten gems and shedding light on the country's rich musical tapestry. From Sunshine's infectious rhythms to Stuart Bingham's resilient spirit, each track encapsulates the era's vibrancy and innovation.

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**Features extensive liner notes**

Allchival present their second look at the music of Roger Doyle and Operating Theatre (a little known proto synth-pop act and experimental theatre group that he led.)

In reverse chronological order the second disc contains music from the United Dairies release of 1979 – ‘Rapid Eye Movements’. Experimental tape work heavily influenced by the French school of music concretists and recorded at various points during the 70s in Finland, Holland and Ireland, although it is most certainly a Roger Doyle solo record the label ran by Nurses With Wounds John Fothergill decided to release it under the group name for reasons now lost to the fog of time.

After this a volte-face towards a more accessible sound, coming via his friendship with future Hollywood actress Olwen Fouéré and her connection to the theatre. It also featured the vocals of a young Spanish immigrant Elena López- bucking the 80’s trend by moving to rather than from Dublin. With Fouéré adding the theatrical element to the group (an almost essential part of any early 80s synth act) alongside pulsing synths, brass, a vocoder and the electro acoustic production talents of Doyle himself, it was the first time a Fairlight sampler was used in an Irish studio setting and gives a prescient but alternative take on the new wave sound that came to dominate the charts soon after.
Doyle’s work on the newly released Fairlight sampler had brought him to the attention of U2’s Bono who had seen a feature about his sampling experimentations and reached out to him for piano lessons. This led to a deal on the bands embryonic Mother records for what Doyle calls his first “popular song” - Queen of No Heart - which alongside “Spring is Coming” made up the backbone of the EP which was released some years later (1986) on the Mother Records label. Established by U2 in 1984 and initially intended to launch Irish bands, many of the acts – including this one – were subsequently unhappy about the label’s haphazard approach to releases and lack of promotion. The record was released as a die cut 7 inch with the two main tracks and a 12 inch EP with additional tracks – ‘Part of My Make-Up’ / ‘Atlantean’ / ‘Satanasa’. The Mother experience was for Doyle and the rest of the group a frustrating one with no promotional plan and no tour. After that Operating Theatre as a quasi pop project ‘just kind of fizzled out’ says Doyle.

Doyle, the musical maverick at the heart of the act, continues to produce to this day and has released 30 albums. A frequent collaborator we round out the record with a remix from another Irish outsider - Morgan Buckley of the Wah Wah Wino fame.

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A double 12 inch of rather fine DJ Sotofett remakes of the debut LP by Irish post-punk producer Stano. How this record came about has been lost a bit to the midst of (recent) time, back in 2018 when the label repressed "Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft" the 1983 debut LP of one of Ireland's more enigmatic musical characters - they slid it the way of the versatile Norwegian polymath who suggested a remix, which quickly became two and soon ended up a full six track suite. It was put it aside for a bit, became a bit longer, then the artwork - pieced together by the Sex Tags boss himself cutting up features from Irish fanzine Vox - and the general lag of production in the post covid world and here we are the guts of 5 years later!

A member of the legendary punk / post-punk group The Threat which disbanded after lead singer Maurice Foley disappeared to join the Hare Krishnas, Stano set up his outsider stall early on. The Threat had Stano on synths, one of the first female bassists in Deirdre Creed and their debut single was produced by progressive trad musician Donal Lunny of Planxty. His solo career of improvised electronic music continued in this vein of the unexpected – sitting outside both the country’s mainstream and alternative rock scenes. Eschewing both live performance and the spotlight for studio collaborations for this LP he worked with a number of Irish musicians - Roger Doyle, Daniel Figgis and of course Michael O Shea.

This remix pack kicks off with the drum machine funk of "Room", sounding almost like a visit to Manchester's hayday with that upfront almost pop quality twinkle, still with more than a foot in its original obscurity. Then it runs the gamut of 80's pop experimentation via the new wave dream pop of "Emma Wild" which is merged and overdubbed with "Whale" and retouched with settling strings. With percussion by Helsinki's Stiletti-Ana and surprisingly traditional instrumentation by DJ Sotofett "Seance of Klondalike" is naturally dubbing out haunted house vibes as if meant to be from the beginning. Then the package takes a turn, adding some menace to the gothic feel of "Melting Grey" with a dimensional rebuild, hard to pin point, but easy to sonically fall into. Again with help by Stiletti-Ana, this time on Drums and Percussion, "Out of the Dark, Into the Dawn" is stretched into a skrangled warm baleric dubby house jam before closing it out adding a hypnotic repetitive punch to O'Shea's beautiful timeless playing on "A Dead Rose".

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Having sold his instruments to fund a nomadic 1970s lifestyle, eccentric Irish experimentalist Michael O’Shea was forced to create his own handmade answer to the sitars and zelochords he’d become accustomed to playing on his travels around the globe.

Using an old door, 17 strings, chopsticks and combining them with phasers, echo units and amplification, the new device was to become his signature sound, mixing Irish folk influences with Asian and North African sounds in a mesmerising and soulful new way that brought him to the attention of the leading improvisers of his day - Alice Coltrane, Ravi Shankar, Don Cherry and more.

A logical follow up to AllChival’s recent reissue of Stano's debut LP, Michael O’Shea’s self titled LP was originally released on Wire's Dome Imprint in 1982.

The background to the album is as interesting and inspiring as the artist who created it - born in Northern Ireland but raised in the Republic, O’Shea was keen to travel and escape the troubles of his home.

Wandering throughout Europe and the Middle East, O’Shea found himself living and working as a relief aid in Bangladesh in the mid Seventies where he learned to play sitar while recovering from a bout of hepatitis. A later period spent busking in France accompanied on zelochord by Algerian musician Kris Hosylan Harp led to O’Shea’s idea of combining both instruments as a homebuilt instrument - Mo Chara [Irish for "My Friend"].

He later described the process on the back of the LP himself saying:

"Having sold my sitar in Germany and being desperate for money to travel to Turkey, I conceived of the idea of combining both sitar and zelochord. The first Mo Cara was born, taken from the middle of a door, which was rescued from a skip in Munchen"

A combination of dulcimer, zelochord and sitar, O Shea would play it with a pair of chopsticks, striking the strings softly using Irish folk rhythms mixed with the rich, nostalgic sounds of of the many Asian artists he’d encountered on his travels.

It was a pan cultural sound standing at an unusual crossroads of folk, traditional, rock, progressive, jazz, electronic and post-punk worlds without hesitation.

Perfecting the instrument on the streets, there were further spells spent busking in the underground stations and cafes of London's West End and Covent Garden during the heady days of the 1970s when they were full of eccentric street entertainers, jazz improvisers and musical pioneers.

His work with Rick Wakeman never saw the light of day but O’Shea’s contact with the world of post-punk London ensured his name would live on.

Introduced to Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis via cartoonist Tom Johnston, O’Shea eventually acquiesced to an open invite to record at their studio. Turning up unannounced in the summer of 1981 the LP was recorded in a day in the legendary Blackwing Studios and released on Dome the year after.

The first side features the fifteen minute masterpiece "No Journeys End" with the B side featuring more input from Wire in processing the Mo Chara sound.

Lewis himself said years later of the forgotten masterpiece: “I always said it was the best job we ever did.”

After an aborted LP with The The's Matt Johnson the following year, O’Shea quietly disappeared from the formal recording world and his brief but unique contribution to the music world came to a sad end in 1991 when O’Shea was struck by a post van and died a few days later in hospital in London.

This repress on All City’s AllChival imprint has been remastered and reissued with the approval of both Dome and his surviving siblings.

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‘Hi-Fi, Lo-Fi, No-Fi’ - the sound of Wormhole / The Wormholes. For this release on Allchival we fast forward to the 90s – 1991 to start with, when Metal, Hard Rock, Punk and a love of Fugazi brought the Carroll brother s – Dave & Anto – together with Graham Blackmore as Wormhole. 18 tracks spanning their three LPs, with the full permission of the labels involved – the revered Dead Elvis, the American based Chunkin’ Bronchii’ and Lo Recordings – and remastered by one of their original collaborators and producer of their debut Marc Carolan.

All three were residents of Ringsend to the south of Dublin’s city centre. Graham, the youngest of the three, was already a gifted guitarist/singer, with Dave a natural self taught drummer/singer and Anto locking bass to his brother’s beat. Early gigs had a special chemistry that set them apart from the rest of Dublin’s nascent indie rock scene of the time.

Working class lads in it for the long haul they soon attracted the attention of Eamonn Crudden who became their manager and tireless supporter. He helped set up a label called Dead Elvis which would release their debut album “Chicks Dig Scars” in May ’94 - the labels first release. Selling out its run of 500 copies alongside some low budget grainy videos, also directed by Crudden, which had heavy rotation on Irelands first late night, left of centre music video show Donal Dineen’s “No Disco”.

There was a flurry of attention from UK labels and the group ended up signing with Roadrunner records. Known primarily for metal, the label was trying to branch into other areas but for a host of reasons it never quite worked out – the departure of a supportive A&R, the rise of English centric Britpop - and the mixed bag of reviews and radio play wasn’t enough to generate the sales necessary to keep the labels interest . Although they got to support the Fall on a UK tour and the label funded a demo session for the next album - Parijuana – they were let go in 1995.

Far from splitting up, it gave them a second wind and willing collaborators were still available with Stano taking the boards for their second album “Scorpio: The Album”. Released in 1997 on an imprint set up especially for them Chunkin’ Bronchii’ it showcased a heavier darker sound. It found a small audience leading to a collaborative LP with Welsh producer Richard Thomas via Jon Ty’s Lo Recordings. “Seven Point Plan To Destroy Astrology “ released in 1998 followed by a remix 12 the pick of which, a collaboration with Dublin’s Decal titled “Free The Tones” , is featured here.

Crudden had not given up on the Parijuana demos from 95 which finally saw the light of day on a reactivated Dead Elvis in ’99 with the subtitle “4 Years in Captivity”. Released to little fanfare outside their fanbase by now the group had run its course with real life interfering and Graham departing. Anto and Dave drafted in Fergus Cullen for the free form E+S=B (Electronic (sometimes European) Senoria Band) and continued to gig in Dublin. In 2019 The Wormholes were back in the studio with Stano when Dave suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with Stage Four Cancer. He died three months later.

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Nigel Rolfe’s “Island Stories” is a unique record for 80’s Ireland. An unusually experimental electronic and abstract record for the time, it was originally released to little fanfare on Reekus records in 1986. Based around the DX7 synth and key collaborations with studio engineers and vocalists it was created as a soundtrack to a performance work of the same name.

Born and raised in the Isle of Wight performance artist Nigel Rolfe has made Ireland his home since he arrived at Dublin Port in 1974. An art school graduate who witnessed the British rock explosion of the late 60s in person and as participant, he had been an organ player in a number of British rock bands of the time and a roadie for a number of the early 60’s UK tours by legendary US blues musicians. As the music world freaked out in the later part of the decade he moved with it, and after completing a fine art degree in the West Coast of England in the early 70s he moved to Ireland despite having no connections with the country – “ Drawn by the archeology” – settling straight into the experimental arts scene which was based around the Project Arts Centre where he worked. Organising exhibitions and teaching, his interest in music was rekindled by the explosion of punk.

The key to his music making and this LP here was access to a studio – in this case Windmill Lane. A busy place in the early to mid 80s it had a production and video arm and acted as the centre for U2’s recording operations. Rolfe worked there doing carpentry and building jobs in exchange for off peak studio recording time. Coming in contact with the bands passing through and working closely with the engineers and tape operatives employed by the studio he was also able to take advantage of Brian Eno’s presence (he was there working with U2) and figure out the DX7 which forms the backbone of the LP and which – like most else - on the LP is played by Rolfe. Released by Reekus records in 1986 a year after it was completed, there was little expectation placed on the record and Rolfe had no careerist ambitions. We’ve remastered it and added a bonus track that was featured on the African Flower 12” off the LP “PW Botha’s Funeral March”.

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180g vinyl + Silver Pantone print (Featuring a fragment from 'The Myth' (1896), a painting by Jos Dirks)

"agony, anguish, bitterness, despair, grief, heartache, pain,
remorse, sorrow, suffering, torment, woe. Another heartbreak album that is totally worth all of it."

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Emotional Response is proud to welcome renowned multi-instrumentalist Alan Briand aka Shelter, to the label with a striking new EP that delves deep into the realms of modern Digi-Dub.

Over a myriad of releases Shelter’s dextrous ability to straddle genres, from ambient, Balearic, improvisation and most recently a series of acid ragas, releasing on an impressive roster of today’s electronic labels including Antinote, Growing Bin, International Feel, Séance Centre and his own Protopost imprint.

After making waves on Emotional Response's All Trades compilations with his standout track "The Four Knights Dub," Briand returns to further explore his passion for digital dub and UK roots. Across four tracks, all recorded live, he merges sound design, found sounds, and world music with seismic basslines, creating a truly immersive sonic experience.

The rise of Digital Dub is often traced to the groundbreaking "Under Me Sleng Teng" by Prince Jammy / Wayne Smith, but it was the UK's later reversioning – adding electronic drums to roots and steppers rhythms – that gave birth to the unique sound of Digi-Dub.

Shelter pays homage to this tradition, drawing inspiration from the likes of Alpha & Omega, Bush Chemist, and Jonah Dan. His process is as raw as it is innovative: building an analog setup with a MIDI sequencer, DCO synth, live vocals, and sound effects fed through Boss pedals. Digital drums from the KPR77 and DD10 are layered in, with everything mixed live to tape, no overdubs, capturing the raw, live energy of the performance.

This EP must be experienced as a whole – a continuous live set of steppers 4/4 rhythms, cryptic titles (a nod to chess tactics) that acts as rewinds, paying tribute to dub classics of the past.

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"I imagine that one of the first things I heard in the world was theexplosion of a Russian ammunitions factory on the outskirts of myhometown. It blew up the night I was born a new GDR-citizen. I´m notsure I heard a noise when the Wall came down, but it still echoes in mybody. The echo contains many frequencies. Some of them sound like Gabberplaying in my childhood room over the speakers my grandfather once stolefrom a Leipzig radio station. Some of them sound like me and my friendsrunning through the streets. They sound like my mother laughing andconsoling women in the women´s shelter where she worked in 1992. Theysound like birds: my father swears after the Reunification the greatcrested grebes on the town lakes lost all fear of humans. Some of themsound like these recordings."

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The late ‘70s were such a creatively fertile period for Roy Ayers and his associates that many of his finest recordings never made it onto the official releases. Ayers kept the master tapes in storage until Peter Adarkwah of BBE Records in London got wind of them, at which point they were collected on the aptly named Virgin Ubiquity. The songs feature all the different permutations of Roy Ayers’ band, which maintained a core philosophy through shifting rhythm sections and vocalists. The underappreciated Merry Clayton brings a husky edge to “Oh What A Lonely Feeling,” “I Really Love You” and “What’s the T?” her earthy voice contrasting with the liquid textures of Ayers’ arrangement. Carla Vaughn was another of Ayers’ singing vixens, her sensual presence blending seamlessly into “Boogie Down,” “Mystic Voyage” and “Together Forever.” Although performances here rich with detail, it is a pleasure to hear “I Just Wanna Give It Up,” an uncharacteristically spare arrangement that allows us to study the inner dynamics of the Ayers machine.

“Since his 1963 debut, Ayers has worked with everyone from Herbie Mann and Guru to Fela Kuti and Erykah Badu, and his shimmering sound has foreshadowed acid jazz and fueled hip-hop, as well as gracing contemporary R&B.; Though Virgin Ubiquity is billed as a collection of thirteen never-before-released tracks, it’s far more than a mere scrap heap of outtakes, as each of its “from the vault” cuts luxuriate on the comfortable musical bed that Ayers mastered from ’76 through ’81.” – Pitchfork Review



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