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viewing 1 To 7 of 7 items
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12"
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WHITE 21796EP
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"What Larry Levan is to NY and Ron Hardy is to Chicago, Ken Collier is to the prodigious city of Detroit. Before Mojo electrified the airwaves with his eclectic funk and 'The Wizard' Jeff Mills vied for radio supremacy, Ken Collier was busy laying down the visionary groundwork that would eventually birth techno, defining the sound of generations to come and enriching an economically stagnant city with the invaluable cultural capital of dance music. Playing in predominantly gay and black clubs scattered across the Detroit metro area, Collier pushed the boundaries of genre definition and segregation as all the great programmers of our age have, infusing the landscape of American uptempo soul with the cold analog repetition of Europe's growing synth musics, the recognizable formula that occurred at that specific moment in American culture that lead down the inevitable road to house, techno and garage. But Collier was more than a historical agent that helped to create the predestined formula for electronic dance music to grow; he was, without a doubt, a brilliant and absolutely visionary disco DJ who epitomized the grassroots music community of 1970s & 1980s Detroit, a man of impeccable aural genius that introduced, championed and eternalized many of the indisputable classics that typify this very special city of the middle North. Focusing on the life source of all dance music, the club, and maintaining this as his immovable base of operations, Collier was the first DJ in Detroit to play the first techno records proper, combining these otherworldly discoveries with the solid foundations of soulful dance that he had been laboring to concretize for years previous at such legendary clubs as Todd's and Heaven, where he held residencies. Indeed, Collier was always ahead of the curb in this way, a knack that earned him city-wide supremacy among those heads really 'in-the-know.' To him, this new style was a definite break with the past -- but still rooted firmly in the same common roots as archetypal disco, having the creative intuitiveness to integrate this music seamlessly with the classics he had already eternalized through his tireless years of work. Unfettered by the constrictions of radio play and loyal to the deeply discerning gay underground that ruled the U.S.'s underground at that time, Collier was the most inventive and forward-looking DJ in Detroit, period. His death in 1996 was an absolute tragedy and an undeniable loss for the dance music community at large, occurring just as his due recognition was coming about. But fame was never his aim, as with any sincere artist devoted entirely to his work; the creative spirit of his breathtaking DJ sets and ingenious though underappreciated production and remixing work speaks for itself. Despite all obstacles, the re-writing of histories and the lost memories of a generation dissipated in time, his legacy has lived on to this day, passed down through faint whispers and guarded secrets of the true underground, a quiet but ceaseless wind that has finally come around once more with this deserved 12" compilation tribute to some of the legend's greatest work." Tracklist: A1. Tell Me That I'm Dreaming; B1. Ride The Rhythm; B2. Happy Days
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TRS 016EP
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"The latest song to join the Slow To Speak remix repertoire hails from the glory years of quality dance records, a track which for the most part has faded away into the dark corners of house music's subconscious. 'Pennies From Heaven' is one of those records that epitomizes 'party jam' whilst doubling as an intelligent, honest piece of cathartic escapism in its most sincere and innocent form, and for that, this record had to be honored and brought back into this world with care -- protected with vigilance against the hordes of mediocre, lazy and pointless vocal house records of the modern era. The latter of these do not speak to us, they fail to stay with us and shape our essence... and so they must be rejected. Fear not, though, for here it is, 'Pennies From Heaven,' reborn and in its most fit shape ever, having re-strengthened 10 fold its former powers of party rockage and ready to once again shine its light in these new days of darkness." One-sided release.
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12"
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DIMENSION 001EP
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Warehouse finds of more installments in the consistently intriguing/puzzling "what the fuck" series of releases channeling Alice B. Toklas, presented by the "1979 foundation for The Black Arts." This one-sided release features "Endless" from Keith Jarrett Trio's 1992 album Changeless.
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12"
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GEF 1222EP
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"A master at maneuvering between the vastly rewarding world of pop & the creative demands of experimental music, Peter Gabriel stands as one of the chief inheritors of uncompromising popular music of the 1960s, not so much in his aesthetic inheritances as much as his fortitude to uphold & maintain artistic integrity in the face of mass popularity and major label demand. As the founding member of the ever-popular Genesis, by 1980 Gabriel had already accumulated the experience and technique that would later inform his superior solo work with a sort of uncanny ability to translate the esoteric oddities of experimental, ambient and synth music with a formidable aptitude at pop writing and production that allowed him to live his notorious double life: part modern pop icon, part ambient & international music curator, founding the Real World label & creating one of the most influential soundscape full-length's of the 20th century in The Last Temptation of Christ. Even some his most well know work exudes the same imaginative, haunted & dream-like melancholy of his most abstruse music, alternating from cheerful lyrical insightfulness & unsettling melodic darkness, comprising one of the most powerful and intelligent musical legacies of the 1980s and beyond. 'Games Without Frontiers' has taken the step beyond super-hit into the cult reverence it now enjoys today, a classic example of eternal pop-rock brilliance: the supreme parody of the dangerous absurdities of European nationalism and a direct response to the dawning of a massive conservative backlash in his homeland of the United Kingdom. Ironically 'Games Without Frontiers' was most successful in the two leading nations of imperial might at the time, the United States and the U.K., a shining example of the powers wielded by an artist balancing the paradoxical status of massively famous and critically unbendable. Indeed, it is this uncompromising creative militancy, one that Gabriel has steadfastly honored and harbored with adamant resolve, that has elevated him from the typical ineffectuality of most top-40 artists to the reputable champion of the creative edge that operates as the vanguard of good pop music, without which the genre and the concept itself withers away in irrelevance and artificiality."
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12"
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FEED 11042008EP
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"A breathtaking self-conscious free-jazz masterwork, 'Rise Vision Comin'' summarizes pre-facto 30 plus years of musical and theoretical/political expression from renowned activist/scholar/free-jazz pioneer Haki R. Madhubuti. Situated squarely in the uncomfortable strata between rigid return-to-Africa nationalism & integrationist reformism, Madhubuti chose to spread his complex & dynamic philosophical systems through the disarming & indelibly impressive poetic musicality of the new burgeoning spiritual jazz aesthetic, and his music, despite being absolutely impossible to acquire, remains timeless & unforgettable over 30 years after it's creation---the dawning of his musical and literary career. The disarming quality of Haki R. Madhubuti & Nation's music lends it's social proclamations a disarming, harmonic beauty without watering-down it's intended message---a bizarre fusion that, at once comfortable, never quite resolves itself in the dichotomy of it's choosing. Here 'Rise Vision Comin',' Madhubuti's magnum opus, finally receives the respect it deserves with this single-sided 12" pressing with Japanese Obi from NYC's Slow To Speak---a perhaps overdue but nevertheless imperative recognition of this perfectly crafted private jazz landmark."
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12"
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SP 1222EP
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"Gypsy Man (Live)" taken from the album Live At The Watts Jazz Festival Volume One. "House Of The Rising Sun" taken from the album The Animals.
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12"
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STS 003EP
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Yes, this is the same Icelandic dub-techo artist who previously released a bunch of late 90s classics on Force Inc. and Thule. One-sided record (sort of, there is a side 2 -- it has something to do with how marihuana might be a drug), 180 gram RTI pressing, absolutely gigantic sounds. "'Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly colored by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply.' --Walter Benjamin. Self-determination, greatness, eternity. Make your reality and it becomes you. Put your heart and soul into what you love and others will recognize your sincerity, seek you out and reward your brilliance: from this comes greatness and glory, infinite and undeniable -- a fraternity of the eternal. And yet with each successive epoch, the present greatness of our moment, our time, disintegrates and disperse -- becomes the mere stepping stone, the quintessential prerequisite to a future heralded anew as 'the great epoch of our time.' We fight an impossible war for historical cultural supremacy, and we do so blindly and selfishly, determined to achieve that greatness that we know has not yet settled down with one generation immovable throughout time. Secretly we pity these past fetes of culture, assured that ours is the time, the moment of greatness, importance and ultimate historical worth. So our art morphs from what was once practiced at first as a matter of self-fulfillment, personal necessity and fraternal interchange & enjoyment to one of vein self-service & epic self-deceit. When we continue to ignore the fact that art is no longer a social endeavor---that it no longer participates in and affects the real social changes occurring around us, it's vitality inextricably tied to our historical standing -- and allow it to remain autonomous from the very real material conditions that, in no small measure, make up the entirety of our current existence, we willingly clear the path to our own irrelevance, soon to be remembered, at very best, as a shimmering piece of antiquity typical of the old world, one that once held a vital and vivacious beauty in its moment, but nay, no longer, sentenced to the dungeon of the specialists of the past. But, it is too late... for we will soon become they. Slow To Speak returns with their latest label release, pressed on limited 180 gram vinyl w/ Japanese obi."
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