New record pressing – Kelly Finnigan – A Lover Was Born. Available October 18, 2024.

Distance as a measure of time and place informs Kelly Finnigan’s, A Lover Was Born with a grit and grace that turns passion into virtue. The latest solo release from The Monophonics frontman roots itself in the best traditions of midwest soul labels like King, Curtom, Dakar, and the Bodie Recording Company. A Lover Was Born is a testimony that these deep cut grooves are not resigned to nostalgia, instead, they are at the burning heart of longing and hope. 

The journey Finnigan takes listeners on over Lover’s eleven tracks echo the state of motion and growth since his solo debut, The Tales People Tell (2019). These two records bookend a prolific period of output, including a pair of Monophonics albums, a Christmas album, a mixtape, and a full slate of producing  and engineering (The Ironsides, Alanna Royale, the Sextones). “There’s nothing like making records,” says Finnigan. “It feels like that’s my purpose — the reason I was put on this earth.” 

Written in California, Ohio, and Staten Island, Kelly Finnigan collaborated with old friends in and outside the studio. “I enjoy working alone but it’s not how you want to make a record…almost everybody I brought in for this album I’ve worked with, toured with or spent a great deal of time with.” Max and Joe Ramey (The Ironsides), Jimmy James (Parlor Greens), Sergio Rios (Orgone), Joey Crispiano (Dap Kings) and Jay Mumford (aka J-Zone) all contribute to the overall sound of A Lover Was Born.

Dramatic influences like Isaac Hayes (check out the piano on “Be Your Own Shelter”) and Jerry Ragovoy are chopped and folded into Northern Soul uptempo numbers to create stompers like “Get a Hold of Yourself” or “Chosen Few”. Finnigan’s take on Deep Soul is captured brilliantly on “Walk Away from Me” and “Love (Your Pain Goes Deep)”, while Boom Bap pervades on hard hitters “His Love Ain’t Real” & “Cold World”. Slower songs such as “Let Me Count the Reasons”, the emotional “All That’s Left”, and the soul-stirring album closer “Count Me Out” show the honest and tender side that has become Finnigan’s calling card. All the while, the voice is raw and earthy — in the best tradition of R&B shouters like Otis Redding, Lee Moses, and David Ruffin.

The songs on A Lover Was Born reconfigure the spliced and sampled DNA of hip hop (extracted by crate diggers like Dilla and RZA) to create something new, underscoring both the spectrum and depth of soul while making a case to the timelessness of Finnigan’s sound. 

Courtesy of Colemine Records.

New record pressing! Kitty Craft – Beats and Breaks from the Flower Patch deluxe 2LP set.

Limited edition of 700 coke bottle green with yellow swirl vinyl 2xLP with 320 kpbs MP3 download coupon included. Includes Kitty Craft’s first two EPs It’s Stupid and I Got Rulez, the five bonus tracks featured on the new Takotsubo Records edition CD, and the Rock Records (Japan) CD bonus tracks. Original artwork on a gatefold jacket with an obi card.

Courtesy of Darla Records.

Hard to believe….15 years ago today, we were pressing our very first records. A split LP by Deathers and Freedom. The order was for 100 copies, and it probably took us 3 weeks to finish pressing. Late nights spent drilling and punching labels for the next day (burning through thousands to get any good records), chewing through many stampers. When the job was picked up, it felt like a milestone and a big “gulp, what did we get ourselves into?” at the same time.

Thankfully, in the past 15 years, things have progressed quite a lot from those early days. We have grown incredibly — now running 8 presses over two shifts, operating our own plating facility, and employing nearly 60 people at our two locations across Ohio. We would not be where we are today without our dedicated employees – some of whom have been with us 15 years.

Finally, a special thanks to all of our customers — many of whom have been working with us for nearly 15 years as well! We could not be where we are today without you.

New record pressing — Pale Jay – Low End Love Songs, more so than previous releases, is a diary in form of song. I knew I just had to wait for the songs to be ready to be picked, like ripe fruit from a tree. The entire album came together in just four weeks, a process that was both cathartic and joyful. 

Each tune encapsulates a distinct moment in my life, with music serving as my means of processing complex and sometimes conflicting emotions. 

In this album, I depart from loop-based song structures towards more intricate and lush compositions. Latin influences permeate the music, adding new layers of rhythms and textures to my soul-music roots. 

– Pale Jay

Courtesy of Colemine Records (release date Sept 06, 2024)

New record pressing courtesy of Daptone Records! Caracoles ushers (GRAMMY-award nominated) Orquesta Akokán’s unique brand of mambo into the 21st century, imbuing it with the group’s signature sense of akokán–a Cuban Yoruba word meaning “from the heart”.  Back at the helm are producer and multi instrumentalist, Jacob Plasse and virtuosic pianist, composer and arranger Michael Eckroth – a collaboration that continues to lead Orquesta’s exploration of the sublime mambo in all its depth and breadth. On this, their third album, they combine talents with Cuban lyricist, singer and composer Kiko Ruiz, who has toured and recorded with Pancho Amat’s illustrious Estrellas del Buena Vista Social Club as well as having a longstanding history as a singer, composer and arranger with Orquesta Maria Alejandra y Cubanía.

And although Caracoles is of this moment, its raices stretch deep into the past, presenting a glorious return to the iconic grooves of an era indelibly marked by Benny Moré, Perez Prado and Machito in New York bands and Cuba’s orquestas gigantes of the mid-twentieth century.  While some songs are everyday Cuban life story-telling,   Ruiz, a tata —priest— informs his lyrics with a  Palo Mayombe spirituality propelling the mambo back to its original meaning. Despite being popularized world-wide as a festive, light-spirited, danceable genre, mambo is not to be taken lightly in the Palo Mayombe religion. Mambo is both a song and a prayer, beseeching good spirits to  guide one’s journey away from darkness.  Two of the album’s songs —including the title tune— are in this Congo dialect, designed to be impenetrable by the uninitiated. Caracoles’ fierce, effervescent grooves, Ruiz affirms, can “…vibrate your soul, which is precisely what the world needs right now”. The tunes offer an irresistible invitation to heed the title song’s invitation, “Cucha mambo que yo emboa montero…este mambo es pa’ ti.” Listen to this story, I bring it to you as a traveling song…This mambo is for you.”

An extremely limited Wax Mage edition will be available 07.19.24 as well…

New record pressing – Iron & Wine – Archive Series Volume 6!

Available exclusively on the upcoming Light Verse Tour. The limited edition 12″ LP contains 10 cover songs, many of them previously unreleased.

New record pressing – Expected Highs – The Last Song on the Album.

Expected Highs is a recording project led by Victor Thompson, multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, and producer and the former lead singer of The Flavor Channel. Building on a foundation of big guitars and big hooks, Expected Highs combine elements of power pop, post-punk, new wave, garage, surf, and 21st century psych rock into a heady sound that pulls the past into the future. 

New record pressing – Charlie Nothing – The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing.

John Fahey’s Takoma label is best known for pushing the envelope when it comes to acoustic guitar playing, but in 1967 it released a record that has become one of the true cult classics of the ‘60s free jazz movement. Charles Martin Simon was an aspiring writer whose artist wife died in 1965. When he tried to pick up the torch and become an artist using her art supplies, he was, in his words, “reduced to nothing,” and thus created an alter ego or “psyche fragmentation,” Charlie Nothing. Under that moniker he became most famous for creating “dingulators,” working guitar sculptures made from parts of American cars; in 1967, though, he recorded The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing/In Eternity with Brother Frederic, an album consisting of two separate saxophone improvisations accompanied only with gong, tabla, and ukelele. Its cover adorned by Nothing’s own hand-drawn art, this record has since become not only something of a “secret handshake” among free jazz fans, but also a classic of outsider art, fitting right next to your Moondog records if not in sound than in spirit. For its first ever reissue in any format, we’ve gone back to the original tapes to present an all-analog release of The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing/In Eternity with Brother Frederic on black vinyl with the original art intact, offering an unfiltered experience of this man’s cracked genius. A memorable look ‘n’ listen to say the least.

Courtesy of Real Gone Music.