Vinyl

When Nkrumah Jah Thomas hit No.1 on the Jamaican charts in 1976 with his debut single "Midnight Rock" on Alvin Ranglin's GG label, it gave the new DJ a theme song and an entry into the world of music. Within 3 years he had launched his own label,...

When new projects are discussed, I sometimes hear a disclaimer along the lines of, 'this band isn't reinventing the wheel,' to which I want to know what's everyone's so apologetic about. The wheel was a pretty good invention-good luck getting anywhere...

When Mf Ruckus hits the stage, a nexus in the universe forms, creating a place where all is in perfect harmony, war ceases, poverty becomes abundance and all the starving children of the world dance and sing. Mf Ruckus is a turbocharged Rock n Roll...

When Leon Michels and El Michels Affair released their first record, Sounding Out The City, in 2005, it was hard to guess what was next for Michels and his then-introduced, now-patented "cinematic soul" sound. Now, four EMA studio albums and scores of...

When Leon Michels and El Michels Affair released their first record, Sounding Out The City, in 2005, it was hard to guess what was next for Michels and his then-introduced, now-patented "cinematic soul" sound. Now, four EMA studio albums and scores of...

When John Wort Hannam started to write songs for his 8th album, 'Long Haul', he didn't have any particular theme in mind. Locked down in the early days of the pandemic, random ideas began to coalesce into a unified whole and eleven songs later, a solid...

When Jeremy Pinnell released OH/KY in the summer of 2015 to stunned acclaim, it felt like an entire career compressed into one knock-out album. Hailed as "mind-blowingly good" (Greg Vandy, KEXP) and a "tutorial on classic country music" (Popmatters),...

When Jaco Pastorius solo debut appeared in 1976, a new standard in both jazz and the electric bass guitar was born. Many of the the tracks on that eponymous album had their genesis two years earlier when a 22 year-old Pastorius and friends used...

When Italian composer Bruno Bavota and Dutch songwriter Chantal Acda first met several years ago, they knew almost instantly that they wanted to make music together. Bavota was already a fan of Acda's dreamy, orchestral folk, and in Bavota's intimate,...

When it first appeared in 1986, theáDesert Equations: Azax Attraáalbum was greeted with enthusiasm, awe and disbelief: nobody had done anything quite like it before, and this dizzying, inspired blend of Persian tradition, New York avant-garde and...

When it came time to make their new album, "The Death Of Me", Sydney metalcore outfit Polaris knew they had a tall order on their hands. It's predecessor, their 2017 debut "The Mortal Coil", was an ARIA-nominated, Top 10 hit in Australia, introducing the...

When in 1992 death metal flourished into technicality, "Todessehnsucht" emerged as Atrocity's attempt to create an epic album, conjoining both progressive and extreme sounds. The attempt fully succeeded - "Todessehnsucht" became one of the most intense...