New Vinyl Pressing: Merging the sounds of nature along with his resounding vibraphone, Arthur Lyman and producer Gordon Broad created Island Vibes, an ambient/jazz/field recording album that exhibits the pure weightlessness of Lyman’s music.

A lost gem from the exotica pioneer’s catalog — and his last recorded album — Island Vibes paints a meditative tropical canvas of the Hawaiian Islands’ natural beauty. A welcomed sonic transport to paradise, much needed in a (post-)pandemic world.

Originally recorded with Broad Records, who’s responsible for Phase 7’s Playtime and other important 1970s and 80s-era local records.

At eight years old, Arthur Lyman’s music was already being played in public spaces via a toy marimba performance on the radio. While Lyman laughed about the experience, he would continue performing and ultimately debuted professionally at 14 with a jazz group. His skills earned him a place as a vibraphonist alongside exotica pioneer Martin Denny, although Lyman would leave the Denny’s group soon after to pursue a solo career.

Island Vibes would become Lyman’s final recorded album, an embodiment of the term of “relaxation”, relying solely on Lyman’s instrumentation and the quaint lull of ocean waves to produce a picturesque atmosphere.

Available from Aloha Got Soul.

Recorded at the the famous Cleveland venue that once was right down the street from GGR! Live album from classic hard rockers Starz. Features “(She’s Just A) Fallen Angel”, “Cherry Baby”, “Hold On To The Night”. 180 gram deluxe gatefold vinyl. Package features trading cards, poster and lyric sheets. Available from Renaissance Records.

New Audiophile Vinyl Pressing: At a time in music where history and originality rarely go hand in hand, trumpeter Gabriel Mervine brings both together as never before.

From one of the best jazz quartets in town comes a spectacular Audiophile Master, Say Somethin’ from trumpeter Gabriel Mervine. Without question, one of the best jazz recordings yet made, this wonderful Octave Records release will help set the standard for how an intimate musical session can sound.

Gabriel Mervine’s Say Somethin’ is a musical conversation in the language of jazz. Octave Records and Gabe Mervine put together an extraordinary hour of music, beautifully captured as if the quartet were playing in the intimacy of your living room. Order direct from PS Audio.

In 1986, it seemed only fitting that Frank Yankovic won the first ever polka Grammy Award on Cleveland International Records(produced by Joey Miskulin and the mysterious Dragutin Razum)for it was he who had for so long bridged the ethnic gap between polka and the popular music forms which the Grammys represent.

It is Frank Yankovic who perfectly blends the ethnic roots of polka music with popular influences, presenting a package that all of America can enjoy. Songs Of the Polka King collects songs and artists fitting for the King. Weird Al Yankovic duets with Frank on Who Stole the Kishka while Drew Carey duets with Frank on the Too Fat Polka and Joey Miskulin, Yankovic’s protégé, does the moving, award-winning “For Old Time’s Sake Waltz”. Even now, as polka in America has evolved into many different regional, ethnic, and generational variants, it is Yankovic who remains the undisputed champion. And he did it all still with the same warm, regal smile which benefits the people’s king that he is and forever will be. This is an album all ages will enjoy singing and dancing to.

Order now from Cleveland International Records.

New Vinyl Pressing – Guided By Voices – It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!

It’s been just a few months since Guided By Voice’s faux rock opera Earth Man Blues garnered four-star and five-star reviews, with Rolling Stone proclaiming that it “squarely hits all the marks that make Guided By Voices great—again and again and again.”

“Again and again and again”, is perhaps GBV’s credo, with Robert Pollard’s never-ending supply of fascinating and supremely catchy rock. Just when one thinks one’s got them pinned down, album number thirty-four opens with bizarre percussion, mariachi trumpets, strings and acoustic guitar. The adventurous spirit pervades yet another killer album from the greatest and most versatile GBV line-up. The golden boys (Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr, Mark Shue, Kevin March) can do no wrong.

Hooky singles “My (Limited) Engagement”, “High In The Rain” and “Dance of Gurus” intermingle with occasionally dark lyrics and the oddest of GBV oddballs, the ridiculous “Razor Bug”, “Psycho House”, and the “Maintenance Man Of The Haunted House”. The horns and strings return intermittently, with “The Bells Get Out Of The Way” going full Burt Bacharach. It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them! is a creative tour-de-force full of surprises from the most prolific and captivating band on the planet.

Preorder the Oct 22, 2021 release from Rockathon Records now!

New Vinyl Pressing: Dean & Britta’s 2020 album of covers, recorded in Echo Park during the pandemic, now re-mastered. SIDE 1 1. Neon Lights 2. Massachusetts 3. Sadness 4. He Dines Out On Death 5. Neon Licht (Holy Shit Remix) 6. I’m So Bored With the USA SIDE 2 7. The Carnival Is Over 8. Drive 9. Most of the Time 10. Indian Summer 11. 23 Minutes In Brussels. Grab it from the Dean Wareham website now!

New Vinyl Pressing: Take Over And Destroy – Fade Out. “TOAD” are described as an American rock & roll band from the 1970’s trapped inside of a Scandinavian metal band from the early 1990’s, scoring a John Carpenter film.

Their latest album is up for preorder now on wax – grab one of the variants today!

New vinyl pressing available from Winspear! “It really was super natural”, laughs Duncan Troast, explaining how he and Nick Corson came to form The Convenience, and though he means it was as organic as breathing, the music these two conjure is from an alternate reality. Pulling from a pastiche of 80’s sounds and their own rolodex of future pop flourishes, their new album Accelerator sounds like a late-night disco party on a distant outpost, a sea of dancing bodies illuminated by an alien moon.

The two met at New Orleans’ Loyola University, where they eventually joined the rising pop group Video Age, and before long, were spending the downtime between tours exploring what their own music could sound like. Their early efforts showed promise, but when held next to the iridescent glow of their new material, it’s clear there was a fundamental shift. 

“There was a disconnect from the music that we were making, and the breadth of the music that we loved”, explains Corson, “I was relearning how to write songs.” The two went back to the music that made them truly feel alive, pouring over records by Stevie Wonder, Prince, NSYNC, “trying to figure out why it felt so good”.

The result of those efforts is a singular album packed with visceral, immediate pleasure; body music for a plastic pop future. “I had a hard time learning how to do things the right way, and just wanted to make a mess”, says Corson, thinking back on his earliest experiments with songwriting and production. You can hear that spirit in the brief snippets of noise that dot the record, but the immaculate pop songs here make it clear – whatever they’re doing is working.

At its core, Accelerator is a celebration of friendship, and the transportative power of music. It’s an ode to the joy of dancing, of loving just to have loved, and becoming who you are.

New VInyl Pressing by Alex Smalley – Vanaprastha (The Man Who Went Into The Woods To Find Himself). Alex states, ‘This is my first solo album, the music serves as a release from an old way of life where for many years I was lost and found in the woods of rural Hampshire, England.’

The music on Vanaprastha is deeply layered and mediative. Written, recorded and mixed throughout the summer of 2020, you will hear Guitars, flutes, voice, organ and Marimbas that were set against field recordings from the river Ilm, Weimar.

Alex’s music is a collage of therapeutic dream-states aimed to promote mindful interactions with nature and the cosmos. 

Available now from PITP.

New Vinyl Pressing by Kashena Sampson!

The Nashville-based singer-songwriter had already finished her forthcoming album — an 11-song journey through her struggles with co-dependency and finding herself, illuminated by a voice that harkens back to a time when Linda Rondstadt and Fleetwood Mac reigned supreme — and then her path shifted, as did that of so many other musicians over the past year. A singular part of her story, though, is that Kashena also funds her music through a bartending job at The Basement East, which was destroyed by the March 2020 tornado that hit Nashville just a few weeks before the pandemic did. 

“I had the record ready to go, and then the tornado took away the funding for it,” she says, in a matter-of-fact manner that speaks a lot about who Kashena is: she’s easygoing by nature, but also quietly assured in her ability to consistently figure things out. “Here in times of stillness, I know I’ll be okay / If I listen to it closely, I always find my way,” she sings on the album’s title track. 

“It’s about your past, where you came from, what made you who you are today,” she says of the song. “Nobody really knows what they are doing. We are all just trying to figure out this life thing, and the answers can always be found within.” 

When having a conversation with Kashena, there’s a sneaking suspicion she’s always been just as introspective as she is now. She offers the kind of comments and observations that make it clear she’s always had a knack for tapping into what’s happening around her and identifying the universal feelings that both trouble and fuel us all.  

“Time Machine tells the story of my struggles with codependency, personal growth and self worth,” she says. “My internal struggle with relationships, the music business, and trying to find joy in the little things in life. In the past, I’ve always looked for things outside myself to fix me and I’ve always come up short. It’s the journey of me discovering that happiness and contentment is an inside job and nothing outside of myself is going to fix that.”