***COPIES NOW AVAILABLE FOR JUNE 12TH PREORDER at phonopolis.ca***
Pleased to finally have gotten copies of Angine De Poitrine’s VOL.1 in store! Make sure to grab one quickly since stock is likely to sell fast!
This week's new arrivals and restocks at Phonopolis!
1. Jeff Parker - Happy Today
2. My New Band Believe - S/T
3. Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
4. The Black Keys - Peaches!
5. Kevin Morby - Little Wide Open
6. Aaliyah - Age Ain't Nothing But A Number
7. Seatbelts/ Yoko Kanno – Songs For The Cosmic Sofa Cowboy Bebop
8. VARIOUS NEW CDs
9. Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
10. Gram Parsons - Grievous Angels
11. Loukeman - SD-3
12. Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come
13. Czarface & MF DOOM - Czarface Meets Metal Face
14. Tom Misch - Full Circle
15. Lou Reed - Transformer
16. Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
All of these and many more, all available here at Phonopolis!
If you’re in the market for some very pleasing, folky chamber pop, we’ve got your needs covered with a pretty decent selection of Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
Blending a super wide array of influences, from minimalism to folk, baroque pop, and even a tiny bit of prog here and there, PCO is quite unique as a collective of musicians. Featuring a fairly large number of personnel over their 25+ years of music, the general tone remains pretty consistent across all iterations.
The two choices we have here, “Broadcasting from Home” and “Signs of Life”, are great introductory points to the orchestra. They showcase PCO’s engaging blend through some wonderful compositions and a flow across the records that, in my opinion, feels pretty seamless, making for a superbly soothing listen.
I highly recommend PCO for fans of more standard minimalist music (Glass, Oliveros, Riley) or people enamored with late 2000s chamber pop outfits such as Fleet Foxes or Grizzly Bear. - Guy
🐝!!!!!!PRESALE TICKET INCOMING!!!!!!🐝
Presale tickets to THE SPELLING BEE OF THE CENTURY will be available at DEPANNEUR LE PICK UP and PHONOPOLIS as of MAY 16th!
Tickets will also be available at our epic fundraiser show THIS SATURDAY, MAY 16th at CASA DEL POPOLO!! You can also get tickets straight from the IWANT2BEONTV Spelling Bee Team (tagged in the post) if you can flag down a member in the wild ;)
See you sooooon!!!
This week's new arrivals and restocks at Phonopolis!
1. Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE & Surf Gang - Pompeii // Utility
2. Ween - White Pepper & Quebec
3. Aldous Harding - Train On The Island
4. American Football - LP4
5. MUNA - Dancing On The Wall
6. Slayyyter – Wor$t Girl In America (clear vinyl)
7. D'Angelo - Live At The Jazz Cafe
8. Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard And Soft: The Tour (Live)
9. Mort Garson - Journey To The Moon And Beyond
10. VARIOUS NEW CDs, K7 & 7"!!!!!
11. The Cure - Boys Don't The Cry (86 Mix) 12"
12. The Last Dinner Party - The Pyre
13. Momoko Kikuchi - Ocean Side
14. Weird Nightmare - Hoopla
15. Turnstile - Time & Space
16. The Lemon Twigs - Look For Your Mind !
17. Alex G - I Saw The TV Glow (OST)
18. Giveon - Beloved
19. Soccer Mommy - Evergreen
All of these and many more, all available here at Phonopolis!
I’ve been on a Don Cherry journey recently, digging through his catalogue and reading a whole lot about him and his many travels. Truly a fascinating figure in jazz, featuring some of the most far-out works of world music–infused avant & free jazz. Eternal Now (1974) has gripped me on a conceptual level, as well as for its musical content, which is truly one of a kind.
Something of a spiritual successor to 1969’s Eternal Rhythm, the latter is a sparse experiment in mixing instruments and modes of play that geographically have nothing to do with one another. Indonesian gamelans meet Chinese suona accompanied by African finger piano in a blend of horizons rarely attempted before.
I quite like the idiosyncratic character that this wild mixing pot brings to the mix. The pieces are sparse and airy, letting every new instrument be heard clearly, their timbre and expression resonating in these compositions. Some might describe them as meandering; I find them meditative.
Fascinating record over here, a superb cross-cultural journey with a great band of players assembled by Don Cherry! - Guy
Bronski Beat’s 1984 “The Age Of Consent” is a powerful electro-pop record in direct response to Tatcher-era criminalization efforts against homosexual relationships in the UK. Though many critics have been cited as saying the album features only two hits (that being opening track “Why?” and the overwhelmingly popular “Smalltown Boy”), I’d argue that “The Age Of Consent” is, in its entirety, a poignantly disarming protest record that highlights the model of synth music as a vehicle for queer dissemination. While songs like “No More War” or “Love And Money” are perhaps lyrically elementary, lead singer Jimmy Sommerville’s signature falsetto (of which Christgau once criticized was of narrow dynamic range even for those “with impeccable reasons for singing like women”) baptizes them with such effortless grace it becomes difficult not to feel bewitched. With a haunting cover of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” drawing tonal parallels to Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, Bronski Beat was a courageously queer voice in Scotland during a decade of violent conservative reactionaryism alongside the AIDS epidemic, championing authenticity and love over the noisy fear-mongering of the 80s. - ozzy
This week's new arrivals and restocks at Phonopolis!
1. Kneecap - Fenian
2. Swell Maps - C21
3. Crystal Castles - S/T
4. The Cramps - Psychedelic Jungle / Bad Music For Bad People / Songs The Lord Taught Us
5. Funkadelic - Free Your Mind...
6. Erykah Badu - But You Caint Use My Phone
7. Glissandro 70 - Bones Of Dundasa
8. Bon Iver - Selections From Music Concerts 2019 - 2023
9. Ziad Rahbani - Bennesbeh Labokra...Chou?
10. VARIOUS NEW CDs
11. Brian Jonestown Massacre - A Retrospective Volume 1 & 2 / Give It Back! / Bringing It All Back - Again
12. V/A - Neon Genesis Evangelion (OST)
13. Kate Bush - Never For Ever / Hounds Of Love / The Sensual World
14. Charles Mingus - The Jazz Experiments Of Charles Mingus
15. Johann Johannsson - Flordlandia
16. Weather Report - Weather Report
17. Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby
18. Dexter Gordon - Dexter Calling...
19. McCoy Tyner - Asante
20. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
All of these and many more, all available here at Phonopolis!
By far my most anticipated release of this year’s RSD is the beautiful reissue and remaster of one of the Canterbury Scene’s most prized and sought-after albums: none other than 1973’s Flying Teapot by prog legend Gong.
The first instalment in the Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy is a phenomenal piece of prog music with a very interesting flair for humorous theatrics and space-age themes, making it one of the most distinctive series of LPs out there. The “plot” of this first instalment revolves around the titular Flying Teapot slowly revealing itself as a spaceship emitting the previously mentioned Radio Gnome Waves, which in turn expand the minds of the inhabitants of the planet below.
Musically, it is such a fun blend of prog, jazz fusion, and psychedelic rock: chock-full of irresistible grooves, awe-inspiring sax solos, and synth tones that send shivers down my spine to this day. I think the highlight here is, by far, the penultimate track, “Zero the Hero and the Witch’s Spell,” which is a psychedelic odyssey that starts misty and gloomy only to emerge as an East African groove fest with wailing saxophones, before going back to this vaguely doomy aesthetic for an awesome climax.
Prog fans will not want to miss this beautiful release, stock is sure to run out! - Guy
This week's new arrivals and restocks at Phonopolis!
1. Sonic Youth - Diamond Seas (RSD 2026)
2. Alex Zhang Hungtai - Dras
3. ASAP Rocky - Don't Be Dumb
4. Philip Glass From The Music Of David Bowie & Brian Eno – "Low" Symphony
5. Roy Ayers / Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad – Jazz Is Dead 2
6. Atsuko Chiba - Atsuko Chiba
7. Ben Jorge - From Brazil
8. Deerhunter - Cryptograms/Fluorescent Grey
9. Vieux Farka Touré & Khruangbin – Ali
10. VARIOUS NEW CDs
11. Ravi Shankar - The Sounds Of India
12. Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Art Blakey!!!!! Jazz Messengers!!!!!
13. Dorothy Ashby - Dorothy Ashby
14. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - West African Beat: Rare 7s and EPs from Benin and Niger
15. Anderson .Paak – Venice (10th Anniversary Edition)
16. Various – Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History of Gary Young & Pavement
17. Fatou Seidi Ghali & Alamnou Akrouni – Les Filles De Illighadad
18. A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Atomos
19. Bikini Kill – Pussy Whipped
20. Roy Brooks – The Free Slave All of these and many more, all available here at Phonopolis! Open 7 days a week!
Coming up on 10 years of what I would call Richard Dawson's magnum opus, Peasant remains such a fresh and impactful listen. Set in an appropriately bleak medieval era, the album focuses on the human lives of those unfortunate souls too often overshadowed by the kings and rulers of their times.
This is an absolutely gripping avant-folk album from front to back, featuring a wide array of instrumentation: bowed strings, woodwinds, various guitars, drums, and the occasional brass. This arsenal leads to some impressive climaxes that go hand in hand with Dawson's uncanny talent for writing earworms that have stuck with me for years.
The medieval-inspired melodies are really well thought out, impressing powerful images by music alone, but the writing here is some of the best I've heard in any folk music. The album really zooms in on the lives of peasants, their worries and anxieties, painting vivid and dreadful portraits of the real and imagined horrors that plagued our ancestors, whether it be the village gearing up to fight the nearby Ogre at dawn, the soldier writing home on the eve of battle, or the local beggar struggling to find his next meal.
I absolutely adore this record, such an imaginative take on folk music that still stands up just as well now as it did when it came out nearly ten years ago. - Guy
Pere Ubu’s landmark 1978 post-punk avant album “Dub Housing” redefined experimental rock. While combining abrasive, atonal measures with their signature dissonant, anxious eccentricity, the band created a record that resists simple categorization. Constantly wavering between accessibility and alienation, obsession and looseness, infinity and the known - David Thomas’ wailing, maniacal voice is the grappling hook across a distinctly engulfing record. Endlessly rocking and hesitantly high brow, “Dub Housing” can perhaps best be rendered in this line from “Thriller!” - “Saw secret scenes in the cracks of the cities/secret scenes in the seams of the world/ I will wait”. - Ozzy
