Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 08 November (2024)

Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA releases the soundtrack he composed for A Ballet Through Mud, which made its stage debut at Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver, Colorado in 2023. Featuring lyrics inspired by trawling through notebooks he wrote as a teenager, it tells a poignant coming of age story set to an impeccable orchestral backdrop.

A collection of early, previously unreleased music recorded at Jason Quever's apartment at 924 Fulton in San Francisco while McCombs was living in Berkeley between 1999-2000. The Bay Area in the late 90s housed a special community of artists including Papercuts, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Chris Cohen’s Curtains, and Mt. Egypt. The ethos was for maximum integrity and intimacy, and often music would only be shared with close friends. Graffiti writers, skaters and old timers from the 60s were never far away or far from mind. Always following a mindset of moving forward, ever forward, this was a brief but productive phase in McCombs’ career before he hit the road and traveled the country, eventually landing in New York City, where he would make the music that would come to reach a wider audience. What’s so remarkable about Seed Cake On Leap Year is how vibrant and raw these songs remain, full of insight and wonder, in conversation with everything yet to come.

Award-winning singer/songwriter Jamey Johnson has served as country music’s north star for nearly two decades, inspiring a generation of artists with his unforgettable albums that have built a bridge connecting traditional country with the music of today. His new album, Midnight Gasoline, is his first new solo studio album in 14 years, making it among the most-anticipated releases of the last decade. It’s his sixth album and his first project with the partnership of Warner Music Nashville and his label, Big Gassed Records. It is also the first of his Cash Cabin Series, a collection of albums recorded at the famed studio, which was once owned by Johnny and June Carter Cash and is now owned by their son, musician/producer John Carter Cash. The album’s first half was produced by The Kent Hardly Playboys--Wayd Battle, Jim “Moose” Brown, Tom Bukovac, T.W. Cargile, Kevin “Swine” Grant, Cowboy Eddie Long, Dave McAfee, James Mitchell and Chris Powell. Dave Cobb, who also worked on That Lonesome Sound and The Guitar Song, produced the album’s second half, including “Saturday Night in New Orleans,” “One More Time,” “Sober,” “Tired of It All,” “No Time Like the Past” and “What You Answer To.” Midnight Gasoline, known as Cash One, is a musical continuation of his last two solo studio albums, That Lonesome Song, which was certified platinum for 1 million in sales, and the gold-certified 2010 album, The Guitar Song, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Album Chart. Rolling Stone and Spin named The Guitar Song to their all-genre Top 5 Best Albums of the Year.

MILES IN FRANCE is the eighth installment in the celebrated Miles Davis Bootleg Series and this edition focuses on the birth of the Second Great Quintet in 1963 and 1964. The music heard here represents the sound of an end and a beginning coming through at once. The set contains 5 separate performances of the Miles Davis Quintet spread over 8 LPs and the energy and depth of feeling in the transcendent playing hint at the special relationship Miles and the group had with the French nation that embraced them in a way their homeland would not. It contains over 4 hours of revelatory, unreleased live music featuring Miles backed by George Coleman (on the 1963 recordings), Wayne Shorter (on the 1964 recordings), Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. This set expands on the 1964 live album MILES IN EUROPE which documented the Miles Davis Quintet’s performance at the Festival Mondial du Jazz in Antibes in July 1963. While that album included a single edited set across 2LPs, this will include all three very distinct performances from Antibes along with two never-before-released concerts from October 1964 in Paris, by which time Wayne Shorter had joined the band, so you could hear the Second Great Quintet come together before your ears. The audio has been lovingly mixed and mastered in the highest quality possible and the 8 LPs are packaged in 4 gatefold jackets housed in a luxe slipcase box with a die-cut O-card and a 20 page book that includes dozens of unseen photos, ephemera and extensive liner notes by noted journalist Marcus J. Moore.

The expression of hard-fought optimism encapsulates Our Girl's as-yet-unannounced second LP; dealing with themes of sexuality, relationships, community, and illness. Recorded at Rockfield studios and produced by John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, Dry Cleaning), Fern Ford (The Big Moon, Prima Queen), and Soph Nathan (also of The Big Moon), this album, filled with warmth and honesty, marks a significant artistic step forward since their acclaimed debut album, Stranger Today. Stepping into a production role for the first time, Soph Nathan recalls: "Working on this record taught me to trust my gut. I realised that we needed to make it sound and feel exactly how we wanted, otherwise what's the point?" Lauren Wilson, who completes the line up alongside Josh Tyler, continues: "It feels more confident to me... a lot more considered, we've had time and space to write." This creative clarity permeates the album: both intimate and expansive, tonally nuanced and richly textured, it contains Soph Nathan's most explicitly personal songwriting to date. This speaks to the journey the bandmates have each gone through in the years since their last LP, resolutely and fiercely committed to Our Girl, these three great friends not only know themselves better, but they know what they want to say, and exactly how they want it to sound.

Come Ahead is Primal Scream’s 12th full length record. 11 new songs that find Bobby Gillespie preparing to release some of the most personal songwriting of the band’s career. The songwriting process for Come Ahead began in 2019. At which point Bobby Gillespie had no idea if he would make another Primal Scream album again. For the first time, the lyrics came before the music. The story came first. Bobby wrote alone, using an acoustic guitar. Ideas flowed fast, in long bursts of inspiration. This process, in tandem with encouragement from producer David Holmes, provided a new way in. Working with Holmes and Primal Scream guitarist Andrew Innes, the Come Ahead sessions were completed between Belfast, London and Los Angeles.

State Champs surges with the energy of The Finer Things (2013), Around the World and Back (2015), and Living Proof (2018). It expands on the Kings of the New Age (2022) blueprint. That beloved post-pandemic album proved the band will survive. State Champs now sees them thrive. Songs like “Silver Cloud,” “Clueless,” “Sobering,” “Tight Grip,” “I Still Want To,” and “Golden Years” explode with high-energy, passionate, and smartly constructed precision. While big, bold, and slick, the production nevertheless sounds like a band in a room together or decimating the stage. “We found our way, through the ups and downs within us, personally and as a band, and wanted to express that,” explains frontman Derek DiScanio. “This is the right time to showcase it.” Bassist Ryan Scott Graham agrees. “When we stepped back and looked at the songs, sonically and thematically, it’s a great vision of who we are. Every era of State Champs exists within this record.”

Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy. An album full of staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, odd guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, non-rhyming, non-linear lyrics that come across like odd remarks overheard from a psychiatrist's couch. A voice singing above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries resembling a madman trying desperately to sound normal. The music was undeniably catchy, even at its most ominous, especially on "Psycho Killer", Byrne's supreme statement of demented purpose. This was the first of four consecutive masterpieces for sire. 77 is the work of a truly great American band. 3CD and Blu-Ray and 80 Page Hardcover Book (Super Deluxe edition) / 2LP and 2LP Limited Green Vinyl of the 1977 groundbreaking debut by Talking Heads, including the original album, outtakes, rarities and an 80 page hardcover book with new liner notes written by Tina Weymouth, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison. The book includes photos and images from the band's archive and photographers from the era. 

For nearly 25 years The Bad Plus have reinvented the concept of instrumental music in mainstream culture, receiving praise from rock/indie audiences at Rolling Stone & Pitchfork to classical/jazz critics at The Los Angeles Times & The New York Times. On the coattails of their highly successful 2022 self-titled album – which sold out on vinyl prior to the album release date – founding members Reid Anderson (bass) & Dave King (drums) continue to focus on original composition with newcomers Ben Monder (guitar) & Chris Speed (saxophone) on their 16th studio recording.

Known for the monolithic force of their music and their inventive production techniques, The Body’s albums are benchmarks in the expansion and evolution of heavy music. Tightly packed with deceptively nuanced arrangements and exhilarating, challenging distortion, their compositions are possessed of an unmistakably singular sound. The Crying Out of Things is no exception; a culmination of all that The Body have done before, highlighting their mastery of dynamic and monumental music that pushes toward the unmistakable sound of oblivion. The Body have produced a wealth of groundbreaking collaborations with the likes of Full of Hell, Thou, Uniform, BIG|BRAVE, OAA, and Dis Fig. The duo’s benchmark albums have, over the past 2 decades, changed the perceptions and directions of heavy music. The Crying Out of Things’ embrace of noise is a comprehensive display of the multitude of expressions possible with abrasive sound, a skill that The Body have pioneered and refined. “I think for us the key to the way we use noise is, it’s not the only element,” says Buford. “You’ve gotta really listen if you’re into noise. But it also has to have dynamics. Where, say, BIG|BRAVE (who have a similar ethos) expresses it in this more intellectual, minimalist way, The Body comes from an instinctual, maximalist way. We’re trying to cover it ALL.” The Body stand alone in their ability to connect disparate influences and collaborators into a wholly original, potent and singular work. Alongside producer/engineer Seth Manchester, the duo’s voracious and omnivorous musical appetites have pushed the studio as an instrument into new avenues to conjure profound feelings from the music. The Crying Out of Things cements The Body’s place as a leader of heavy new music, their boundless creativity, their defining ability to convey anguish, created with a visceral clarity to devastating impact.

Most of our stories about cult musicians who make an album or two and then seem to vanish are framed by grief, despair, and frayed ambition. Not so with Margo Guryan, an ardent jazz anomaly who disdained pop music until hearing “God Only Knows” in 1966, opening a window onto the wonders that form could contain. Only two years later, she released her own set of little pop symphonies, Take a Picture, to great praise and expectation. But, having already divorced the hard-gigging valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, she declined to tour or even talk about it all that much, content even if her reticence meant Take a Picture was soon consigned to discount racks and cutout bins. She wrote and recorded for years to come, even collaborating with Neil Diamond’s band, but mostly she seemed satisfied by her relatively private life.