a Sea of Faces

Memories — places, vacancies, allusions — are fundamental characters in Mary Lattimore's evocative craft. Inside her music, wordless narratives, indefinite travelogues, and braided events skew into something enchantingly new. The Los Angeles-based harpist recorded her breakout 2016 album, At The Dam, during stops along a road trip across America, letting the serene landscapes of Joshua Tree and Marfa, Texas color her compositions. In 2017, she presented Collected Pieces, a tape compiling sounds from her past life in Philadelphia: odes to the east coast, burning motels, and beach town convenience stores. In 2018, from a restorative station — a redwood barn, nestled in the hills above San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge — emanates Hundreds of Days, her second full-length LP with Ghostly International. The record sojourns between silences and speech, between microcosmic daily scenes and macrocosmic universal understandings, between being alien in promising new places and feeling torn from old native havens. It's an expansive new chapter in Lattimore's story, and an expression of mystified gratitude. A study in how ordinary components helix together to create an extraordinary world.

The score to Little Shop was written by Fred Katz. Katz, born in 1919, was a child prodigy on both piano and cello, but would become a well-known cellist in the Los Angeles music scene of the 1950s—the first really to take the cello into the jazz arena. He became part of the very unique Chico Hamilton Quintet and was both heard and seen in the film Sweet Smell Of Success. At some point in the late 1950s, Corman found Katz or Katz found Corman and the two collaborated on several films, including A Bucket Of Blood, The Wasp Woman, Ski Troop Attack, Little Shop, and Creature From The Haunted Sea. Katz’s score perfectly accompanies a film that is occasionally worthy of Ionesco in its surreal weirdness. In fact, Katz’s music is as much fun as the film—it’s funky, jazzy, beat, hipster music, with occasional horror touches, that will keep a smile on your face or conjure up wonderful memories of Seymour Krelboin, Gravis Mushnick, Audrey Fulquard, Burson Fouch, Wilbur Force, and, of course, the great Audrey Junior.

Simply a grand and eloquent performance put together by Verve records highlighting the best years of Ella Fitzgerald – that sassy, charming legendary singer in jazz. The Best of the Songbooks features a captivating lineup of some of jazz's greatest composers and arrangers. It is here that Fitzgerald records and sings songs of Cole Porter, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer.

Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs Of Paradise is the much-anticipated follow-up to composer, trumpeter, and (now) singer jaimie branch's debut Fly or Die, which was dubbed one of the “Best Albums of 2017” by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NPR Music, WIRE, Stereogum, Aquarium Drunkard, and more. Written (mostly) while on her first European tour with Fly or Die in November 2018; and recorded (mostly) in studio at Total Refreshment Centre and live at Café OTO in London UK at the end of that tour, bird dogs of paradise is the result of a never-satisfied branch pushing her distinct style of progressive composition to new heights - while also stepping forward as a vocalist for the first time. “So much beauty lies in the abstract of instrumental music,” says branch in the album’s liner notes, “but being this ain’t a particularly beautiful time, I’ve chosen a more literal path. The voice is good for that”…

2CD+DVD pressing. Radiohead's fourth album, and their first to debut at number one in America, also marks the start of their move into electronic experimentation. Kid A's sound is vastly different from the albums that preceded it, being heavily influenced by electronic music, jazz and Krautrock. At the time Kid A polarised critical opinion but is now considered one of the best and most important albums of its time and of Radiohead's career. The DVD features 3 videos from Later…With Jools Holland: 06/9/01. The CDs include the original album and a CD with footage from BBC Radio One Evening Session from 2000.

Aptly titled, 'The Great Vocalists Of Jazz & Entertainment', culls 748 of the absolute finest recordings by top singers of the pre-rock era of the '30s, '40s & '50s.

Many of you are familiar with guitarist Shawn Starski from the series of memorable shows at Big Cities Lounge that he was involved with as a member of Jason Ricci's band, New Blood. Now Shawn gets the opportunity to step into the spotlight and he quickly shows that he is ready for the attention. Starski wrote all of the songs and handles most of the lead vocals, with his wife Elle taking over on two cuts. This is a very impressive first effort for Starski. He has delivered a strong batch of tunes and, no surprise, his guitar work is a consistent delight. A very well-done project that merits your attention.

As soul music moved into the early '70s, it became dominated by smoother sounds and polished productions, picking up its cues from Motown, Chicago soul, and uptown soul. By the beginning of the decade, soul was fracturing in a manner similar to pop/rock, as pop-soul, funk, vocal groups, string-laden Philly soul, and sexy Memphis soul became just a few of the many different subgenres to surface. Often, the productions on these records were much more polished than '60s productions, boasting sound effects, synthesizers, electric keyboards, echoes, horn sections, acoustic guitars, and strings.

Aptly titled, 'The Great Vocalists Of Jazz & Entertainment', culls 748 of the absolute finest recordings by top singers of the pre-rock era of the '30s, '40s & '50s. All recordings are digitally remastered and over 20 top names are featured, including Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne and Perry Como. Each artist has at least one disc devoted to solely to their repertoire; most have two (Billie & Frank deservedly have three apiece). Hou sed in a sealed, full color 5' x 6' x 8' box, it contains 20 double slimline jewelcases.