Ok, I hadn’t planned on such a whopper of a news letter, but why not go out with a bang! This week brings you our staff top picks of the year AND a pretty massive new arrival list as well. There were just too many great things in this week to skip them since there won’t be another list until the new year. That’s right, this is our final transmission of 2017. Thanks to everyone who came in over the year and bought records from us, it means the world to us. Have a safe and happy holidays, stop in on Boxing Day for our usual sale and see you all in 2018!

Watch the video, get the download or listen to Thelonious Monk – Brilliant Corners for free. Brilliant Corners appears on the album Brilliant Corners. Discover more music, gig and concert tickets, videos, lyrics, free downloads and MP3s, and photos with the largest catalogue online at Last.fm.

Holiday Hours. Sun Dec 24 – 12 – 4 Mon Dec 25 – Closed Tues. Dec 26 – 11 – 5 Sun Dec 31 – 12 – 4 Mon Jan 1 – Closed.staff picks of 2017. Ian’s Picks Love Theme – Love Theme (Alter) Carla Dal Forno – The Garden (Blackest Ever Black) Rakta – Oculto Pelos Seres (La Vida Es En Mus) F Ingers – Awkwardly Blissing Out (Blackest Ever Black) Anthony Linell – Consolidate (Northern Electronics) Dedekind Cut – The Expanding Domain (Hallow Ground) Total Control – Laughing At The System (Alter) Lebenden Toten – Mind Parasites (Self Released) and Static! (Iron Lung) Internazionale – The Pale And The Colourful (Posh Isolation) K. “Alexander is the solo guitar project of New Haven, CT native David Shapiro (Headroom, Nagual). After spending most of 2016 and 2017 touring behind an on-going series of improvised cassette releases that document the various locations Shapiro has lived, he settled down long enough to offer up a full-length LP of fingerpicking tunes.

The nine tracks that make up Alexander are bound together by a melancholy sweetness that evokes a performer’s wandering lifestyle and the characters they meet along the way. Sonically tied to the ‘American Primitive’ school of guitar playing, Shapiro distinguishes himself with an exacting, almost academic focus, manipulating tempo and harmony with a confidence far beyond his young years. Where masters like Fahey and Basho drew from earlier musical lineage, Alexander incorporates a contemporary pool of influence, broadening the fingerstyle palette with patience and self-assuredness. Recorded on a guitar that Shapiro built himself, Alexander is an earnest and substantive debut that gives the listener a window into the player’s intimate devotion to his instrument and the language it speaks.” –Ian McColm Cover text by Cyd Goodwin.

Recorded at Key Club Recording Company by Bill Skibbe. 180 gram vinyl; Pressed at Erika Records. Honest Jon’s Records present Solo Guitar Volume 1, a reissue of Derek Bailey’s Solo Guitar release on Incus in 1971, with additional tracks included on previous reissues and a performance at York University in 1972. Kicking off a series of collaborations between Honest Jon’s Records and Incus: three double-LPs of the legendary free-improvising guitarist Derek Bailey, solo and in duos with Anthony Braxton and Han Bennink, augmenting the original releases with marvelous, previously unissued music. Recorded in 1971, Solo Guitar Volume 1 was Bailey’s first solo album.

Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return. The LP was issued in two versions over the years — Incus 2 and 2R — with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey’s performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars, and Willem Breuker. All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972, a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music.

It’s a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence, and wit. As throughout the series, the recordings are newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, and remastered by Rashad Becker. The records are manufactured by Pallas. Honest Jon’s Records present a reissue of Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton’s Royal, expanded to include both intended volumes. Volume 1 was originally released in 1984; the second volume was never issued.

The second release in a series of collaborations between Honest Jon’s Records and Incus: three double-LPs of the legendary free-improvising guitarist Derek Bailey, solo and in duos with Anthony Braxton and Han Bennink, augmenting the original releases with marvelous, previously unissued music. Recorded in 1974, at the Royal Hotel in Luton, with Braxton playing soprano and alto saxophones, and Bb and contrabass clarinets. Two volumes were planned; only one was issued, till now. This was an early transatlantic meeting between the leading free improvisers. Many of Braxton’s signature techniques and ideas were gestated in such sessions. It still brims with inquisitive musical creativity and knockabout jazzbo allusiveness.

Newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, and remastered by Rashad Becker. The records are manufactured by Pallas.

Honest Jon’s Records present a reissue of Derek Bailey & Han Bennink, originally released in 1972. The third release in a series of collaborations between Honest Jon’s Records and Incus: three double-LPs of the legendary free-improvising guitarist Derek Bailey, solo (HJR 200LP) and in duos with Anthony Braxton (HJR 201LP) and Han Bennink, augmenting the original releases with marvelous, previously unissued music. The tussling vegetables in Mal Dean’s cover-sketch somehow befit perfectly this extraordinary duo of Bailey and the great Dutch drummer Han Bennink. Recorded in London in 1972, Incus 9 was their second record (after an Instant Composers Pool in 1969), becoming a blueprint and inspiration for generations of free-improvisers. It is paired here with a brilliant session from the following year, with the same power and friendly combativeness, and oodles of creativity, technique, and humor. It’s obvious how much they loved playing together.

Newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, and remastered by Rashad Becker. The records are manufactured by Pallas.

Biophon present a reissue of Biosphere’s Shenzhou, originally released by Touch in 2002. This expanded reissue includes a bonus album The Samphire Tower. Paul Cooper, of Pitchfork, on the album: “Shenzhou, aside from being the name of the Chinese manned-spaceflight vehicles, means ‘magic vessel’, and I can’t imagine a more apt description for Geir Jenssen’s latest excursion into ambient deep listening....

Jenssen again relies on found sound as source material for Shenzhou, but this time, the found sound is old vinyl recordings of the orchestral works of French Impressionist composer and ambient precursor, Claude Debussy. Jenssen lifts fragments of these scratched records in a similar manner as he did for Cirque’s ‘Black Lamb Grey Falcon’ and ‘Iberia Eterea’. The ten tracks (out of the dozen on the album) that follow this model all begin as a barely audible hum, like a small electrical transformer, out of which the dust-dappled loops of Debussy’s woodwind, brass, and strings emerge, condense, and fade out into pink noise rustles. Unlike Steve Reich’s phase pieces or Brian Eno’s Discreet Music, though, Jenssen doesn’t set his loops against each other to produce juxtapositions and piquant dissonance; he uses them to describe imagined terrain, at first glance monotonously flat and barren, but on concentration, replete with minute detailing.

The overall effect of these pieces is a sense of immensity. The orchestral loops sound distant, abandoned in a vast wilderness, and strenuously battling against Arctic winds. Jenssen sets the listener down in this wilderness as an aloof observer, a witness to the music’s futile struggles against entropic forces. The two tracks not derived from Debussy share the same hypnotic aesthetic. The brief interlude ‘Bose-Einstein Condension’ is a loop of piano chords lolloping in search of coherence, while ‘Gravity Assist’ is a longer voyage into woofer-quaking low-frequency manipulation, bell-like drones, and contrails of subdued noise.

I can’t help but feel that these tracks fit awkwardly and break up the conceptual flow of the album. This, however, is a minor quibble given the power of this music. Shenzhou is unquestionably a magic vessel, but one that reveals its enchantment only to those who pay close attention.”. Michael Cosmic/Phill Musra Group: Peace in the World (Now Again) LP “Potent mixes of spirituality, expressionist fire and electrified newness, these LPs are presented as the 7th entry in the Now-Again Reserve Edition, mastered from the original tapes. Contains download card for.Wav files of the full release — including bonus tracks by Phill Musra Group and World’s Experience Orchestra — and a booklet with extensive liner notes by jazz historian Clifford Allen, photos, show flyers and many other unpublished gems. In an homage to the original issues, both front and back cover feature hand-printed, pasted-on slicks.” File Under: Jazz, Spiritual.

Crystalized Movements: Mind Disaster (Twisted Village) LP Limited 2017 LP reissue of the first Cystalized Movements LP, Mind Disaster, in paste-on sleeve replicating the original 1983 edition — on the original label, Twisted Village. The Crystalized Movements were formed in 1980 by Wayne Rogers and Ed Boyden, two Tolland High School freshmen brought together by a mutual love of no wave and ’60s psychedelia. After three years of experimenting (and countless versions of “Gloria”), they decided in early 1983 that it was time to make an LP. They recorded loose duo versions of some of Wayne’s songs, and then promptly split up after graduating from high school in June of 1983. Wayne, under the spell of the Plastic Cloud and Randy Holden, then spent the summer piling on mounds of guitar overdubs. The results were issued as Mind Disaster at the end of that year in a bank-breaking edition of 130 (as Twisted Village #1001). After a minor stir in collectors’ circles, it was reissued on the UK Psycho label with a new cover in 1984.

It was received by the “psychedelic revival” community with universal horror and quickly went out of print. Wayne, meanwhile, added new members to the band and it treaded on as a little-known Connecticut institution until 1992 The years have been kind to Mind Disaster, and its wah-wah and fuzz overload have made it a much sought after LP. After uncountable requests from our adoring public, Twisted Village finally reissue Mind Disaster, with its original cover.

It is perhaps the last teenage garage-psych LP to be made in our time. File Under: Psych, Garage. Well, it may not be Thanksgiving here today, but thanks to the fine folks at Record Store Day central, they’ve turned Black Friday into a mini-RSD event to drive shoppers to small mom & pop shops rather than just the big box stores. And of course they are doing that with a nice stack of exclusive releases, and fortunately pretty much all of them are available to us up here in Canada. Below you will find a list of all the exclusives (as well as some brand spankin’ new stuff we’re putting out with the RSD stuff) we’ll have on the shelf tomorrow when we open (10 am!).

While that’s exciting and all though, more exciting is that we are celebrating our 16th anniversary! 16 years of slinging wax. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come, from our humble beginnings with a handful of half full bins to the overflowing bins and boxes of records everywhere we are surrounded with today. Thanks to our fine customers we’ve been able to grow in to what we like to think is a pretty darned fine shop with something for everyone. And so to thank you all for another year of support this weekend not only will we have RSD tomorrow, we’ll be having a big ol’ sale all weekend too!

THANK YOU!.picks of the week. To thank you all for another year of support we are giving you 20% off all new and used records and CDs all weekend long!

Starting at 10am Friday until 5pm Sunday! Rega RP1s are $399 (reg. $449) *Sale excludes Record Store Day exclusives, Brand Fucking New Arrivals, special orders and holds, local releases, and consignment items.

All other gear and accessories are 10%. As usual, we’re giving away a Rega RP1 turntable to one lucky shopper this weekend! Come in buy everyone records for Christmas so you can win a turntable..Record Store Day Releases. Not as much in this week as last, but two HEAVY reissues! Both extremely essential in my opinion. Some killer Pharoah Sanders reissues, the much needed Necessaries (Arthur Russell) reissue and the kosmische sounds of Pauline Anna Strom.

And that new Wolf Parade finally showed up. All in all a pretty great week for new tunes, so come fill your ears..picks of the week. Coil: Time Machines (Dais) LP “4 Tones to facilitate travel through time.” So begins the listeners’ journey into what has become one of the most treasured and revered pieces of Coil history ever released. Each of the four pieces on Time Machines is named after the chemical compound of the hallucinogenic drug that they were composed for, and the album was meticulously crafted to enable what John Balance referred to as “temporal slips” in time and space, allowing both the artist and audience to figuratively “dissolve time”. Inspired by long form ceremonial music of Tibet and other religions, where the intent is to lose oneself in the music—to meditate or achieve a trance state—Time Machines became Drew McDowall, Balance, and Peter Christopherson’s “electronic punk-primitive” answer to this tribal concept. Starting as a rough demo tape recorded solely by Coil member Drew McDowall, Time Machines started to take full form when McDowall enthusiastically delivered these demo recordings to Balance and Christopherson as sketches for a new Coil project with the primary goal of shifting Coil’s sound further into a more conceptually abstract direction.

Largely recorded in 1997 using single takes with minimal post production, these four drones contain every intended fluctuation and tone, along with every glitch of the original – “Artifacts generated by your listening environment are an intrinsic part of the experience.” The reissued double vinyl LP features deluxe double pocket gatefold, printed matte with gloss overlay with printed eurosleeves inserts. File Under: Drone, Ambient, Electronic, Industrial Geinoh Yamashirogumi: Akira (Milan) LP Set in the year 2019 in Neo-Tokyo, the world is still recovering from the ravages of World War III.

One night, teen delinquent Kaneda has his biker gang hurtle through the busy city. Kaneda’s friend, Tetsuo, is seriously injured during an accident and is taken to an army hospital. There the military notice Tetsuo’s potential psychic power, so they transfer Tetsuo to a secret government laboratory to awaken his latent abilities.

When Kaneda gets involved in an anti-government guerrilla movement, he encounters Kei, a member of the revolutionaries, and learns that the goal of the fighters is to infiltrate a secret laboratory – the very one where Tetuso is being held. The experiments to awaken Tetsuo’s powers are a terrifying success as he begins to wield psychic energy he cannot control – reminiscent of the emergence of the legendary esper boy Akira, which triggered World War III.

The stage set, a fierce battle begins between Kaneda, Kei, the army and Tetsuo with the destiny of Earth at stake. The symphonic music to AKIRA was composed by Dr. Shoji Yamashiro, head of the beloved Japanese musical collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi, and performed by the group. Rerecorded and remastered using the most advanced audio techniques available, this release of the unforgettable score of AKIRA is peerless in quality and audio fidelity.

To celebrate the long-awaited release of AKIRA on the vinyl format, Milan has pressed the soundtrack on a pair of 180 gram black vinyl discs for an optimal listening experience. The discs are housed in a pair of high quality eurosleeves displaying artwork from the film which are in turn packaged in a gatefold jacket featuring the beautiful skyline of Neo-Tokyo. A download card including a lengthy commentary by Dr. Yamashiro on topics ranging from AKIRA to Geinoh Yamashirogumi to his work in advanced brain studies is also included. File Under: Electronic, Classical, Soundtrack.new arrivals.

Julien Baker: Turn Out The Lights (Matador) LP Julien Baker’s solo debut, Sprained Ankle, was one of the most widely hailed works of 2015. The album, recorded by an 18-year-old and her friend in only a few days, was a bleak yet hopeful, intimate document of staggering experiences and grace, centered entirely around Baker’s voice, guitar, and unblinking honesty. With Turn Out the Lights, she returns to a much bigger stage, but with the same core of breathtaking vulnerability and resilience. From its opening moments – when her chiming, evocative melody is accompanied by swells of strings – Turn Out the Lights throws open the doors to the world without sacrificing the intimacy that has become a hallmark of her songs.

The album was recorded at the legendary Ardent Studios in her hometown of Memphis, TN, and mixed by Craig Silvey (The National, Arcade Fire). This evolution from Sprained Ankle’s intentionally spare production allows Baker – who is still the album’s sole producer and writer – greater scope and freedom. Strings and woodwinds now shade the corners of her compositions, and Baker takes to piano rather than guitar on several tracks, pushing the now 21-year-old’s work to cinematic heights of intensity. Directed and produced by David Toop, Dirty Songs Play Dirty Songs reacts against our poisonous present, inspired anti-nostalgically by similarly reactive records and live performances from the 20th century: The Soft Machine and Pink Floyd 1967-68, The MC5’s Kick Out the Jams, The Stooges, Sun Ra’s Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy and The Heat Is On by The Isley Brothers. Kllo: Backwater (Ghostly) LP Kllo, an electronic pop collaboration between Melbourne cousins Chloe Kaul and Simon Lam, waded in figurative backwater for much of 2016, amidst an extensive world tour.

These were exciting times; the duo’s Well Worn EP furthered the promise of 2014 EP Cusp, receiving millions of streams and landing Kllo on festival stages as well as Artists-to-Watch lists. Nonetheless, the stretch kept them far from home, isolated and vulnerable, treading through perpetual uncharted territory while yearning for the comforts of the familiar. Kllo have officially come out the other end of the stilted estuary with twelve compositions cultivated to feel timeless and crafted, and equally current. The duo’s debut full length – and their most realized work to date – Backwater celebrates the ephemeral and the enduring changes in emotion, the downfalls and the dissolves. It’s an album that parts course with its flow, and flourishes in a lowland. The LP format finds Kllo with more room to breathe and sync their rhythms with emotions. Kaul’s smoky voice emanates with assurance and leisure.

Lam’s production invents brooding, steely undercurrents hemmed with charming crescendos. They use these warm-cool dynamics to convey strain; see the bubbling arpeggiated synth lines of the closure-seeking “Last Yearn” or the solace afforded by the tender piano ballad, “Nylon” to experience the bewitching confluences. “Virtue” has it all at once. Slow to arc, the lead single hushes, stutters, and syncopates before locking into a club-ready groove in its second minute. The title track is a transitional drift; a wordless translation of looping in place, free from the forward moving constraints of the current. “Making Distractions” addresses the inaction head-on, with Kaul opting not to lay down until satisfied as Lam surrounds a downtempo beat with low-lit atmospherics and a bedside music box of samples. Drag City presents the second volume of Bill MacKay and Riley Walkers’s MacKay and inspired collaboration.

It’s been nearly two years since their much-admired 2015 debut, Land of Plenty (Whistler Records), and SpiderBeetleBee more than makes up for lost time with rich, resonant performances that elevate the sound of the guitar duo as they work with an ever-widening panorama of styles. SpiderBeetleBee radiates forth with equal parts austerity and whimsy, opening with an almost-baroque dance before giving way to a Celtic theme, both featuring MacKay and Walker’s acoustics in rambling conversation, picking through intricate passages as though they were exchanges, thoughts and afterthoughts. Adorned with Bill MacKay’s colorful and wilfully primitive cover-art, SpiderBeetleBee wanders through styles, landmasses and hemispheres, capturing the further adventures of MacKay and Walker with spellbinding snapshots that only bloom larger the longer you take them in. Event Horizon is one of the best Arthur Russell albums you’ve probably never heard. The criminally underrated 1982 debut album by The Necessaries – comprised of Arthur Russell and members of the Modern Lovers and Red Krayola – is finally getting a well-deserved reissue.

The Necessaries were made up of lead singer Ed Tomney, the Modern Lovers’ Ernie Brooks on bass and ex-Red Krayola member Jesse Chamberlain on drums. Produced by Bob Blank, their only album, Event Horizon, also features trombone from Peter Zummo – a key fixture in New York’s DownTown Ensemble and one of Russell’s frequent collaborators. Russell contributed keyboards, guitar, cello and some vocals to the power-pop quartet and wrote half of the album, including its two standout tracks – ‘Driving and Talking at the Same Time’ and ‘More Real.’ A one-off, melody-rich gem, Event Horizon has somehow managed to escape the attention of many Arthur Russell fans for decades – hopefully until now. How do you best describe Angel Olsen? From the lo-fi, sparse folk-melancholy of her 2010 EP, Strange Cacti, to the electrified, polished rock ‘n’ roll bursting from 2016’s beloved and acclaimed My Woman, Olsen has refused to succumb to a single genre, expectation, or vision. Impossible to pin down, Olsen navigates the world with her remarkable, symphonic voice and a propensity for narrative, her music growing into whatever shape best fits to tell the story. Phases is a collection of Olsen’s work culled from the past several years, including a number of never-before-released tracks.

“Fly On Your Wall,” previously contributed to the Bandcamp-only, anti-Trump fundraiser Our First 100 Days, opens Phases, before seamlessly slipping into “Special,” a brand new song from the My Woman recording sessions. Both “How Many Disasters” and “Sans” are first-time listens: home-recorded demos that have never been released, leaning heavily on Olsen’s arresting croon and lonesome guitar. The B-sides compilation is both a testament to Olsen’s enormous musical range and a tidy compilation of tracks that have previously been elusive in one way or another. Balancing tenacity and tenderness, Phases acts as a deep-dive for longtime fans, as well as a fitting introduction to Olsen’s sprawling sonics for the uninitiated. Savage: Thawing Dawn (Dull Tools) LP The debut solo album from A. Savage (aka Andrew Savage of Parquet Courts).

“The songs on Thawing Dawn form a guided tour through the romantic environs of A. Savage’s mirrored mind. While some were written recently, other tunes were penned over the past decade.

For one reason or another, these compositions didn’t land with any of Savage’s other groups, and instead are presented now as a distinct collection These ten songs were recorded by a cast of friends in Jarvis Taveniere’s Thump Studios in Brooklyn. Members of Woods, Ultimate Painting, PC Worship, EZTV, Sunwatchers and Psychic TV all lend their talents.

Savage’s voice, once shouted into mosh pits, now glides confidently above its backing band. Thawing Dawn marks the arrival point for Savage as a sensitive and skilled vocalist. Limited first edition of 500 copies housed in tip-on jackets. Includes a download. File Under: Indie Rock.

Otherworldly and anomalous, hushed and hallucinatory, Pauline Anna Strom’s unique style of inner space music reaches across time to futures and pasts far from our own. Trans-Millenia Music compiles eighty minutes of Strom’s most evocative work, composed and recorded between 1982 and 1988, for the first authorized overview of the enigmatic Bay Area composer. Exemplary passages were selected from the three full-lengths originally issued on vinyl in addition to a group of four full-lengths self-released on cassette. This substantive body of work challenges the canonization of new age and ambient music as one-size-fits-all categories. Strom’s music induces a dynamic range of listening that captivates and intrigues, a cinematic experience rather than a meditation for passive listening.

An open invitation to earlier worlds and a trans-temporal philosophy for living, Trans-Millenia Music is available here on double LP with original artwork by visionary Karma Moffett, printed inner sleeves and a booklet with extensive liner notes scribed by Britt Brown. In tomorrow The soaring choruses, rousing anthems, sprawling guitars and chaotic keys that make up Wolf Parade are on proud display over the course of Cry Cry Cry, the band’s thunderous first album in seven years.

That unique combination of sounds and influences, spearheaded by electric co-frontmen Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner – a complex yet relatable, energetic brew of glam, prog, synth-rock, and satisfying discomfort – helped define 2000s indie rock with three critically celebrated albums, and propelled a growing Wolf Parade fandom even after the band went on a then-indefinite hiatus in 2010. Their return marks the band’s first to be produced by Pacific Northwest legend John Goodmanson (Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Unwound) at Robert Lang Studios outside of Seattle, and is accompanied by a renewed focus and the creativity of a group that took their time getting exactly where they needed to be. It’s also a homecoming to Sub Pop, which released all three of the band’s previous albums. In the time apart, the band scattered geographically and focused on family and other work – Spencer on his solo project Moonface, Dan on his bands Handsome Furs, Operators, and Divine Fits (with Spoon’s Britt Daniel), and Dante De Caro on records with Carey Mercer’s Frog Eyes and Blackout Beach. And that time allowed for an even stronger, tighter band to emerge. Wolf Parade have always tended to make albums that react against their previous work.

Compared to 2010’s relatively sparse rocker Expo 86, Cry Cry Cry is more deliberate in its arrangements and embrace of the studio process, as evidenced by songs like “Valley Boy,” a Bowie-inflected anthem for which Spencer wrote lyrics after Leonard Cohen died the day before the 2016 election. “You’re Dreaming,” also influenced by the election and the spinning shock that followed, is driving, urgent power pop that draws from artists like Tom Petty and what Dan calls one of his “default languages” for writing music.

The swirly, synth-heavy crescendo of “Artificial Life” takes on the struggle of artists and at-risk communities. The album carries a sense of uprising that is not unrelated to Wolf Parade’s renewed determination to drive the band forward in uncertain times. Welcome to Cry Cry Cry. In tomorrow Shattering conventions – musical, social, political – was the life’s work of Frank Zappa, the iconoclastic musical genius, rock legend and intellectual firebrand of the late twentieth century whose work is equally revered by hardcore rockers and serious musical scholars. The more minimalist approach taken on 1976’s Zoot Allures brings old tropes back into the fold: doo-wop and blues-rock in particular. Disco, German culture and sexual stereotypes all crop up in the lyrics, but for dark social commentary lock into “Wind Up Workin’ In A Gas Station,” where the sardonic dismantling of the work ethic manages to be blackly comic. The hits just keep coming—for this fifth lysergic journey, Riding Easy assembles ten heavy slabs of obscure rock the likes of which have never been seen before not in this form, anyhow.

And as usual, the tracks from these impossibly rare records have all been fully cleared through the artists themselves. Great lengths were gone to in order to get the best possible master sources, the worst case scenario being an original 45. The legendary Captain Foam kicks off this trip like an anvil to your skull with a rollicking stomper sounding like The Who with Matt Pike’s thunderous guitar tone.

“No Reason” wasn’t easy to find, but lo and behold, the super sleuths located him and got his blessing to include the A-side of his sole single. Good luck finding an original copy of the record. It’s rarer than raw beef—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Afghan Whigs: Uptown Avondale (Sub Pop) LP Afghan Whigs: Up In It (Sub Pop) LP Afghan Whigs: Congregation (Sub Pop) LP Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion (Domino) LP Beach House: Depression Cherry (Sub Pop) LP Beach House: Bloom (Sub Pop) LP Beach House: Teen Dream (Sub Pop) LP Beach House: Thank Your Lucky Stars (Sub Pop) LP John Bender: I Don’t Remember Now (Superior Viaduct) LP Big Black: Atomizer (Touch & Go) LP Black Keys: The Big Come Up (Alive) LP Colleen: A Flame My Love.

This article is about the album by Thelonious Monk. For the album by James Spaulding, see. For the band, see. Brilliant Corners by Released 1957 ( 1957) Recorded October 9, October 15, and December 7, 1956 Length 42: 47 chronology (1956) 1956 Brilliant Corners (1957) (1957) 1957 Brilliant Corners is a by American musician. It was his third album for, and the first, for this label, to include his own compositions.

The complex title track required over a dozen takes in the studio, and is considered one of his most difficult compositions. Contents • • • • • • • • • Recording [ ] The album was recorded in three sessions in late 1956 with two different quintets. 'Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are' and 'Pannonica', on which Monk played the, were recorded on October 9 with saxophonists and, bassist, and drummer. The former composition was titled as a phonetic rendering of Monk's exaggerated pronunciation of 'Blue Bolivar Blues', which referred to the where resided; Monk had met her during his first trip to Europe in 1954. On October 15, Monk attempted to record the title track with the same band during a four-hour session. The complexity of the title track became a challenge for Monk's sidemen, who attempted twenty-five takes, and led to tension between him and Henry, who nearly broke down mentally, and Pettiford, who exchanged harsh words with Monk during the session.

Monk tried to make it easier on Henry by not playing during his alto solo. During one of the takes, producer and others in the control room could not hear Pettiford's playing and checked his bass microphone for a malfunction, but ultimately realized that he was pantomiming his playing.

Without a completed single take, Keepnews ultimately pieced together the album version from multiple takes. On December 7, 'Bemsha Swing' was recorded with on bass and trumpeter, who replaced Henry, and Monk recorded a solo piano version of 'I Surrender, Dear'.

Composition [ ] The title track has an unconventional that deviates from both standard song form and blues structures, as well as from Monk's roots. Its employs an A section, followed by a seven-bar B section, and a modified seven-bar A section, and features a theme in each second chorus and complex rhythmic. Critical reception [ ] According to magazine, Brilliant Corners was the most critically acclaimed album of 1957., the magazine's editor, gave it five stars in a contemporary review and called it 'Riverside's most important modern jazz LP to date.' Jazz writer later called it a 'classic' session. Music critic said that, along with his 1959 live album, Brilliant Corners represents Monk's artistic peak. In his five-star review of the album, 's Lindsay Planer wrote that it 'may well be considered the alpha and omega of post-World War II American jazz. No serious jazz collection should be without it.'

In 2003, Brilliant Corners was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the to be added to the. It has also been included in the reference book, with reviewer Andrew Gilbert saying it 'marked Monk's return as composer of the first order.' Because of its historical significance the album was inducted into the in 1999. Track listing [ ] All tracks written by except where noted. Title Length 1. 'Brilliant Corners' 7:42 2. 'Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are' 13:24 3.

'Pannonica' 8:50 4. ' () 5:25 5. ' (Thelonious Monk, ) 7:42 Personnel [ ] Musicians • – piano; on 'Pannonica' • – alto saxophone on 'Brilliant Corners', 'Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are' and 'Pannonica' • – tenor saxophone (except 'I Surrender Dear') • – on 'Brilliant Corners', 'Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are' and 'Pannonica' • – drums (except 'I Surrender Dear'); on 'Bemsha Swing' • – trumpet on 'Bemsha Swing' • – double bass on 'Bemsha Swing' Production • – producer • Jack Higgins – engineer • Joe Tarantino – mastering References [ ].

• 'Thelonius Monk: Brilliant Corners – 1957's most praised LP'. 24 (21-26): 27. December 12, 1957. • (December 13, 2009) The Pillows Download Discography Billy Joel there. ... From the original on April 12, 2013.

Retrieved April 12, 2013. • Planer, Lindsay...

Retrieved July 29, 2013. • Dimery, Robert (2009).. Octopus Publishing Group, London. Retrieved 2012-09-23. • Bibliography [ ] • Mathieson, Kenny (2012)....

Scrivener Mac. Retrieved July 29, 2013. • van der Bliek, Rob, ed. 'Brilliant Corners and Riverside'.... Retrieved July 29, 2013. Further reading [ ] • Fordham, John (August 30, 2011)....

External links [ ] • at (list of releases).