Underground Lines

Amazon Review by David Sheridan
Lots of good new wave era chestnuts on this compilation. I wonder where perhaps Talking Heads, Echo & the Bunnymen or Graham Parker are, why no Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds/Rockpile, why no "Girl of My Dreams" by Bram Tchaikovsky, and they definitely seemed to put this together having drawn a somewhat arbitrary line in the sand somewhere between punk and new wave (no Pistols, no Clash, but the Ramones and Sham 69 are here). And then we get the Tubes (almost more musical theatre than new wave) and Hazel O'Connor (wtf?). And they also include whatever a Jilted John is. There's more than a little overlap with some other compilations and box sets out there (although I still know of no proper full sized new wave box set, Rhino, where are you?), but this will send those of us of a certain age nostalgically back to the days of Jimmy Carter in the White House, lining up for 79 cent gallons of gas and skinny ties with the knot a few inches below your collar…remember the first time you heard My Sharona? Maybe in your Ford Maverick while sitting in one of those gas lines…

ENDE VOM LIED is a genre-spanning collection of punk, post-punk and avant-garde bands from the former East Germany, chronicling the work of free spirits pitted against government restraints and implied genre limitations. The underground scene in the GDR was a hydra, a noisy mix of musicians, poets, pain¬ters, photographers, filmmakers, punks and freaks. In the immediate aftermath of the primal scream that was punk, music often bred with poetry or painting in short-lived liaisons or enduring collaborations to produce a new generation of genre bastards. With the lines blurring between forms, a search for new shapes began. In the German Democratic Republic, this search constituted a tightrope walk, a dance for expression between subculture and a dictatorship.

From deep and dark to jackin’ and driving: SM78 Underground House pulls influence from the across deep, tech, minimal and bass house to deliver over 1GB of loops, MIDI, hits and kits. Packed with pumping mainroom beats, dark and wonky basslines, trippy synths, retro keys and chords, swung percussive layers, twisted vocal cuts, killer Massive patches and more, it’s got all you need to make underground club bombs.

Loaded is the 1970 album by Velvet Underground released by Cotillion Records. This CD is the first digital edition of this, released in 1987 by Warner Special Products and is "unremastered".

Flutist Magnus Lindgren leads a venerable group of musicians on Stockholm Underground, an homage to Herbie Mann's 1969 release Memphis Underground. Featuring leading artists from the Stockholm jazz scene such as guitarist Henrik Janson, bassist Lars Danielsson and drummer Per Lindvall, this is a sweet, funky tribute that puts a Scandinavian spin on a collection of soul and rock classics. The special guests are Eric Bibb, Till Brönner and Ida Sand.

New York Noise covers roughly the same stretch of time as In the Beginning There Was Rhythm, another compilation from the reliable Soul Jazz label. There aren't any gaping stylistic gulfs between the two discs, but the geographic focus here is completely different. In the Beginning features post-punk groups from England, while this disc highlights the genre-bending and cultural cross-breeding that was taking place in New York City, synchronously, during the late '70s and early '80s. The disc takes in most of the movements that took root in the city during the era, from no wave to mutant disco to hip-hop to art funk and a handful of points in between all without overlapping a great deal with other sets that were released just before and just after, like Downtown 81, Rough Trade Post Punk 01, N.Y. No Wave, and a swollen reissue of ZE's Mutant Disco.

550+ MBs of the proper Romanian minimalistic underground vibe. Romanian Underground, the sound which seems to have won the hipster world over, comes packed with massive breathing baselines, small and sparse percussion, morphing & pumping top end, liquid like lead lines, rhythmic texture backgrounds & more.

A re-connection with a musical icon or tradition – it is often the way something new, maybe even game-changing emerges. That was the idea in curator/ producer’s Siggi Loch’s mind when he suggested to Magnus Lindgren that he might look at re-tracing the footsteps of Herbie Mann. “Stockholm Underground” is a homage to the one of the greats of the jazz flute, and to his legendary 1969 album “Memphis Underground”, listed by Rolling Stone in 2013 in the “100 Best Jazz Albums” of all time.

Underground Session is young street Cats taking rap battles to a whole new level. Going from borough to borough – Challenging the hottest mcs in the hood, where it all goes down at the barber shop. Who will remain king? Go head to head in a shut `em down elimination battle. See who gets spanked in their own hood. These guys make you feel like you`re in the front row with all the energy they spitting, literaly!