Alone Together

Featuring Dave's Superstar Line Up Of Friends: Leon Russell, Jim Capaldi (Traffic), Bonnie Bramlett, Rita Coolidge, Carl Radle (Derek & The Dominoes), Chris Ethride (Flying Burrito Brothers), Jim Keltner, Larry Knechtel (Bread), John Barbata (CSNY) & Claudia Lennar (Joe Cocker)

Dave Mason's debut smash LP Alone Together will always be revered as one of the finest rock albums ever released in the classic rock era. By 1970, Dave had already racked up a ton of acclaim as co-founder of Traffic with Stevie Winwood, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood, playing guitar on so many classic albums like Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, this stellar debut solo release would culminate his musical genius from the sixties into the seventies, delivering one the most loved rock albums of of all time.

Alone Together shows this master musician's skills in the studio, his amazing guitar artistry, stellar vocals and songwriting expertise. Featuring some of his legendary songs like the brilliant opener Only You Know And I Know, his masterworks Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave, World In Changes and the prog-rock champion Look At You, Look At Me co-written with Traffic mate Jim Capaldi, Alone Together truly is the gift of music that just keeps on giving!

Over forty years later, this wonderful album continues to resonate with his ever growing fan base as Dave Mason is currently embarking on a very successful 2017 Alone Together Again concert tour, and Friday Music is proud to be a part of the celebration with this 1970 masterpiece.

As a first installment in our exclusive Dave Mason/Friday Music 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl Series, this first time impeccably mastered audiophile Lp is now being revisited for a limited time on the long out of print 1970 marble vinyl.

For a very limited time, we are also enhancing your listening enjoyment with a first time gatefold cover artwork presentation, which features the elements from the original LP sized cover art not seen in years, making this a keepsake for years to come.

Impeccably mastered by Dave Mason's friend and longtime fan Joe Reagoso at Friday Music Studios, Dave Mason's Alone Together will be one of the most anticipated classic rock releases in the audiophile vinyl domain this year.

Dave Mason .Alone Together .Celebrate over 4 Decades of the voice, the songs, the musicianship and the memories .1st Time Audiophile Marble Vinyl .An exclusive .Only from your friends at Friday Music.

You don't have to put yourself in a box...there's so many different ways to go, Riggins says. A student of late jazz bassist Ray Brown, he tours with another Brown protÉgÉ, Grammy Award winner Diana Krall. In 2011, he collaborated with former Beatle Paul McCartney in concert and on Kisses on the Bottom, McCartney's first studio release in five years. Names of some of the jazz artists he's backed reads like the genre's hall of fame - Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson, Milt Jackson, Donald Byrd and Ron Carter.

But on his solo debut Alone Together, set for an October 23 release on Stones Throw Records (Vinyl and digital will be released in two-parts over summer and fall 2012), Riggins plants himself firmly as a hip-hop producer with a 34-track instrumental odyssey through nearly every influence on his career thus far. The project was inspired by much of the music he was creating while living in Los Angeles, and also by the love of his son and family.

Now residing in his native Detroit, Riggins is back where it all began. I feel like I can really breath and stay inspired here, and I have room to set up my lab and be creative, he says. This is the rationale behind the title Alone Together, taken from a jazz standard written by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz that begin with the words, Alone together, above the crowd.

Coming back to the machines, I feel like I can really express myself, Riggins says. This is the way that I express my rhythms.

Machines, however, are just one way he expresses his rhythms. Midway through the album, the track Water is interrupted by a vocal snippet where the speaker places Riggins right at the intersection of hip-hop and jazz. Alone Together is that intersection; it's the jazz music he's played professionally since the age of 19, and it's crafting beats like Africa on an MPC5000 while touring throughout Eastern Europe and Russia.

I need the balance, Riggins says, of working with the likes of Krall and McCartney, and also being able to go back to the studio and create hip-hop. Without that, I couldn't be who I am.

Songs on Alone Together range from 14 seconds to a little over three minutes, and are the essence of man vs. machine. When Riggins channels Elvin Jones on the album's climax and tribute to his longtime friend, J Dilla the Greatest, his tools are a Gretsch drum kit, the Fender Rhodes and an MPC3000. As versed as he is in jazz and pop, the machines will always be at the root - until the next thing.

There's always something new to figure out, he says. That's the blessing in it.

Chrissie Hynde recorded the album in Nashville with Dan Auerbach, from The Black Keys, who stood as captain, producer and multi-instrumentalist on the record, an album which sees Chrissie at her searingly honest, most incisive best.

The full band joining Chrissie and Dan on the album features Johnny Cash's former bass player Dave Roe and country rocker Kenny Vaughan on guitar plus sundry members of Dan Auerbach's side project The Arcs: Richard Swift, drums, Leon Michels, keyboards and Russ Pahl providing sly curlicues of pedal steel. The album was mixed by Tchad Blake (Arctic Monkeys, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello). Duane Eddy also features on the punchy 'Never Be Together'.

Of the new album Chrissie Hynde said the following: "This record is what I love the most - real people playing real music. I sang and recorded every vocal in a 48 hour period - 48 hours to sing them, 40 years of preparation!"

But on his solo debut Alone Together, set for an October 23 release on Stones Throw Records (Vinyl and digital will be released in two-parts over summer and fall 2012), Riggins plants himself firmly as a hip-hop producer with a 34-track instrumental odyssey through nearly every influence on his career thus far. The project was inspired by much of the music he was creating while living in Los Angeles, and also by the love of his son and family.

Now residing in his native Detroit, Riggins is back where it all began. I feel like I can really breath and stay inspired here, and I have room to set up my lab and be creative, he says. This is the rationale behind the title Alone Together, taken from a jazz standard written by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz that begin with the words, Alone together, above the crowd.

Coming back to the machines, I feel like I can really express myself, Riggins says. This is the way that I express my rhythms.

Machines, however, are just one way he expresses his rhythms. Midway through the album, the track Water is interrupted by a vocal snippet where the speaker places Riggins right at the intersection of hip-hop and jazz. Alone Together is that intersection; it's the jazz music he's played professionally since the age of 19, and it's crafting beats like Africa on an MPC5000 while touring throughout Eastern Europe and Russia.

I need the balance, Riggins says, of working with the likes of Krall and McCartney, and also being able to go back to the studio and create hip-hop. Without that, I couldn't be who I am.

Songs on Alone Together range from 14 seconds to a little over three minutes, and are the essence of man vs. machine. When Riggins channels Elvin Jones on the album's climax and tribute to his longtime friend, J Dilla the Greatest, his tools are a Gretsch drum kit, the Fender Rhodes and an MPC3000. As versed as he is in jazz and pop, the machines will always be at the root - until the next thing.

There's always something new to figure out, he says. That's the blessing in it.

Available On Vinyl For The First Time!

First Pressing Of 1500 Numbered Copies On White Vinyl

6-Page Booklet Included

The follow-up album to Together Alone was released in 1999. It featured the singles R U Kiddin' Me, The Dark and Michel and peaked at number #1 in the Dutch Album Top 100 chart.

Whoa! Now we're getting into the big leagues. Ray Charles, cut from the original three-track tapes, pressed on 200-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings. Yowsa! And not just any Ray Charles title, mind you. Ray Charles and Betty Carter! Analogue Productions has reissued a whole lot of classics - a whole lot - but there aren't many of 'em that are a much bigger deal than this.

This is such a romantic album. Such a warm album. Such a rich album. And, ooh, the sound! Turn the lights down. Grab that special someone. Drop the needle. And as our Acoustic Sounds/Analogue Productions owner would say, If nothing happens, don't blame the record!

Originally released in 1961 on ABC-Paramount, Ray Charles and Betty Carter features startling dynamics, with Marty Paich's arrangements showcasing both punchy brass and lush strings. The showstopper, Baby, It's Cold Outside, topped the R&B charts upon its release. And jazz singer Betty Carter's vocal prowess shines on Cocktails For Two and Alone Together. Ray Charles has never sounded more romantic.

This title is not eligible for discount.

Deep groove label pressings, tip-on jackets on thick cardboard stock

Quiet Kenny is yet another reminder of what a trumpet giant Kenny Dorham was. Whether limning ballads such as My Ideal, Alone Together, I Had the Craziest Dream, and Old Folks, or investigating the timelessness and intricacies of the blues (his originals in this set with Blue in their titles), the former Charlie Parker cohort and ex-Jazz Messenger exhibits his subtle swing, personal sound, and finely-honed harmonic sense. Along the way these reflections and connections with Bird, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Harry James, and Louis Armstrong make for a rich legacy. With Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers and Arthur Taylor

This title is not eligible for discount.

No, not Take Five but Take Ten is the title of this LP and its very first number. Certainly this should be taken as a hint that it was not Dave Brubeck but Paul Desmond who was the composer of this 'million seller'. At the recording session, the guitarist Jim Hall was more than a substitute for the piano - he contributed to the quartet a whole new sound colouring which was tinged with the influences of bossa nova.
The numbers are all easy-going and airy, the melodic lines and sound are filled with transparency. All the while one is curious as to the clear part-writing, and the wealth of ideas emanating from the soloists. This does not only apply to the old favourites Alone Together, Nancy and The One I Love, all three of them arrangements made ad hoc in the studio and which demonstrate how familiar the musicians were with one another, how they listened to one another, answered, and kept the dialogue flowing. The atmosphere is relaxed, and this conveys itself to the listener even after almost half a century.

RCA's recording and reproduction technology was ahead of its time. The music of these South-American-sounding gems comes out of the loudspeakers with brilliance, clarity and - at last - without the frustrating crackle of a second-hand LP.

Musicians:

• Paul Desmond (alto saxophone)


• Jim Hall (guitar)


• Gene Cherico, Gene Wright (bass)


• Connie Kay (drums)

Recording: 1963 in Webster Hall, New York, by Ray Hall

Production: George Avakian

About Speakers Corner

At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Speakers Corner all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records.

During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s - or employed existant tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.

A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.

We should like to emphasise that Speakers Corner Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We have one digital recording in our catalogue (Alan Parsons / Eye In The Sky"), but even in this particular case we used the analogue tapes for cutting.

We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production.

To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects - excluding the exception above - and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.

Similar in many ways to Sodom or Massacra, this music features floating highspeed riffs from which pseudopods of dogmatic rhythm emerge to stamp out their defiant message. The last seconds of the title track, Fuck you...fuck you!...fuck you, Jesus Christ exemplify the paradox of this album: raw punkness contrasting with the need for ideology.

Guitar seems haphazard, solos in the afterthought tradition of Bathory and early Burzum, but delivers the rapid trembling hand rhythm of soaring metallic riffs and melodies.

Underneath bangs a primitive and ill-programmed mechanistic beat which might be dubbed Rudiments of Rhythmic Awareness for Context and left to the abyss. How are these riffs? Simple fluid note wraparounds racing toward a tonal note...some center...some context...or maybe simply giving up. They fit in a narrow compositional sense of lucidity in this entity, alone, and work together for the power of its unique countenance.

At their core musicians inspired by punk music, Sarcofago blend with their hardcore the moron-rock destructiveness and theatrical pro-Satan anti-life program of heavy metal black metal bands, creating an over-the-top image imbued in the anti-aesthetic style of resistance and hatred to all which would accept it, protecting virus of dark spiritual nature to recipient human listeners. Variations of few elements project ideas: some profound, some careless, some inspired, some vapid.

- American Nihilist Underground Society

Mastered By Bob Weston At Chicago Mastering Service

Prinzhorn Dance School are still recognizably the same spiky Brighton-based duo whose ultra-rigorous debut cut through the excess of 2008 like a scimitar through bacon fat. But with their trademark stripped-down intensity now winningly off-set by moments of unabashed tenderness, their third album Home Economics continues and even accelerates the move away from austerity and into human warmth begun by its acclaimed 2011 predecessor Clay Class. All the best six-track albums - The Fall's Slates, Orange Juice's Texas Fever - know exactly what they want to say and how they intend to say it. Home Economics shares that infectious sense of urgency. There's not an inch of spare meat on it - from Reign's snatched moment of optimism, through Battlefield's restorative meeting of minds with an urban fox on a drunken walk home in the early hours, to Let Me Go's concluding tribute to "a love that won't rewind and will not be deleted". Spindly yet sensuous, together and alone, exquisitely sad but somehow full of hope, Prinzhorn Dance School knit together disparate and even opposite fragments into an utterly satisfying whole.

"I use my gut, and my gut don't lie to me" is more than just a lyric in Twin Forks' exuberant "Something We Just Know," it is a kind of mission statement for
the quartet. If you've ever been to a musical performance that made you lose all sense of time and place and give in to the cathartic feeling of clapping
and dancing and singing along, you've already visited the sweet spot where Twin Forks have made it their mission to reside. "Whatever makes the
audience stomp their feet and sing at the top of their lungs, that's what I want to be doing," says singer/guitarist Chris Carrabba. "I want to be generating
that spirit from the stage. And there's gotta be a way to do that whether the audience knows the songs yet or not." Carrabba, mandolin player Suzie
Zeldin, bassist Jonathan Clark and drummer Ben Homola are already well on their way, rousing crowds with their electrifying chemistry and anthemic folkrock.

Indeed the combined voices in the arrangements are so closely knit that there is not a millimeter of space between the singer and backing. In Hard Luck And Troubles, a dry cantankerous groove, the vocals cling to a sinewy bass line, crisscrossed by short chords on the organ. Gospel is celebrated spiritually, yet not too much so, in a rocking, rhythmic and dense interplay between the soloist and chorus. And what is more: the great ballad, hovering above a vibrating carpet of sound on the organ (The Love Of My Man) and crisp, firm winds (Alone Together) are included in this exquisite collection of great and even great songs.

This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. All royalties and mechanical rights have been paid.

Musicians:

• Delaney Bramlett (guitar, vocals)


• Bonnie Bramlett (vocals)


• Duane Allman (guitar)


• Little Richard (piano)


• Jim Gordon (keyboard)


• Tommy McClure (bass)


• Sammy Creason (drums)


• Sam Clayton (conga)


• Alan Estes (conga, percussion)


• Jerry Jumonville (alto saxophone)


• King Curtis (tenor saxophone) & The Memphis Horns

Recording: 1970 at Decca Studios, New York, by Don Casale, and Atlantic South-Criteria Studios, Miami Fl., by Ron Albert & Chuck Kirkpatrick

Production: Delaney Bramlett, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd

About Speakers Corner

At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Speakers Corner all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records.

During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s - or employed existant tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.

A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.

We should like to emphasise that Speakers Corner Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We have one digital recording in our catalogue (Alan Parsons / Eye In The Sky"), but even in this particular case we used the analogue tapes for cutting.

We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production.

To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects - excluding the exception above - and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.

The band are all from Los Angeles, mostly South Central, and
its members - who call themselves variously "The Next Step" and the "The West
Coast Get Down" - have been congregating since they were barely teenagers in a backyard
shack in Inglewood. Washington, 32, has known Bruner since he was two. The rest
met, at various stages, by the time they were in high school.

The hours they have put into the music, playing together and practicing alone, total cumulatively
in the tens of thousands."Nothing compares to these guys," says Barbara Sealy,
the former West Coast director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jass, who
has championed Kamasi and his compatriots from the beginning. "I challenge any
group to go out on stage with them and see if they can keep up with it...
Kamasi is at the top of his game, and only getting better." " These young
guys," the rapper Common says, "remind me of why I love music."And the story
The Epic tells, without words but rather through some combination of magic,
mastery, and sheer force of imagination, is the story of Kamasi Washington and the
Next Step and their collective mission: to remove jazz from the shelf of relics
and make it new, unexpected, and dangerous again.

Now, Alex Edkins (guitar, vocals), along with Hayden Menzies (drums), and
Chris Slorach (bass) are set to unleash their highly-anticipated third
full-length album, Strange Peace, an emphatic but artful hammer swing to
the status quo.

The best punk isn't an assault as much as it's a challenge - to what's
normal, to what's comfortable, or simply to what's expected. Teetering on
the edge of perpetual implosion," NPR wrote in their glowing review of
METZ's 2015 second album, II.

Strange Peace was recorded in Chicago, live off the floor to tape with Steve
Albini. The result is a distinct artistic maturation into new and alarming
territory, frantically pushing past where the band has gone before, while
capturing the notorious intensity of their live show. The trio continued to
assemble the album (including home recordings, additional
instrumentation) in their hometown, adding the finishing touches with
longtime collaborator, engineer and mixer, Graham Walsh.

Strange Peace isn't merely a collection of eleven uninhibited and urgent
songs. It's also a kind of sonic venting, a truculent social commentary that
bludgeons and provokes, excites and unsettles. With all the pleasurable
tension and anxiety of a fever dream, Strange Peace is equal parts
challenging and accessible. It is this implausible balancing act, moving
from one end of the musical spectrum to the other, that only a band of
METZ's power and capacity can maintain: discordant and melodic,
powerful and controlled, meticulous and instinctive, subtle and complex,
precise and reckless, wholehearted and merciless, brutal and optimistic,
terrifying and fun.

"Their whiplash of distortion is made with precision, a contained chaos.
But you would never talk about them like that. Because METZ are not
something you study or analyze," wrote Liisa Ladouceur in Exclaim! "They
are something you feel: a transfer of energy, pure and simple." In other
words: to feel something, fiercely and intensely, but together, not alone.

In 2001, with nothing but a drum machine and an 8-track reel-to-reel, Ezra wrote and recorded the songs that would become Morning Glory's first LP, This Is No Time ta Sleep. Though it was self-recorded, home-released and had no touring support, it still managed to create a small but ubiquitous underground buzz. With a virtuosic range of musical elements such as ska, punk, metal, and even some rhyming, its catchy, anthemic sing-alongs showcased Ezra's flourishing writing talents. And while his lyrics stayed true to the caustic political edge of his other bands, the overall message remained more optimistic and leaned towards the humanistic, personal side of life.

In 2002, Ezra finally assembled a live band, handpicking musicians from the local NYC punk scene, including members of Nausea, World/Inferno Friendship Society and Stockyard Stoics. This lineup recorded the EP, The Whole World is Watching, released on Blacknoise Records in 2003. While the years that followed were spent recording and touring with Leftöver Crack, Morning Glory took a back seat.

But after these long years of touring, Ezra finally decided to give Morning Glory the attention it deserved in 2010 and began writing songs for what was to become the epic new album, Poets Were My Heroes. In the summer of 2011, Ezra and the band (with longtime members Early Gates, "Metal" Chris and Lucky Strano alongside new guitarist Adam Schrager) hit the studio with a barrage of new material. Picture the sonic kaleidoscope of punk noise meeting strings, horns, choirs, pianos and organs over a web of distorted guitars and marching, single kick pedal drums.

These are the sounds that make up Poets Were My Heroes, Morning Glory's Fat Wreck Chords debut and first full-length album recorded with a live band. Re-enlisting producer Jesse Cannon (The Menzingers, Saves the Day), a wealth of material was recorded, with only the very strongest songs being chosen to make up the album. It is both grand and elaborate, with each song evoking a different mood and style, challenging the musicianship of even the most dexterous players, while still maintaining its punk-inspired simplicity.

While the band itself has described themselves as "somewhere between Oasis and The Clash," they continue to break rules and write music that is true only to themselves, adhering to no genres, creeds or political factions. The sing-along choruses give the band a broader appeal than the standard politi-kill punk acts, but the key message is more subversive: "Think for yourself, decide for yourself, make up your own mind and love your friends. Only you know what is right for you. Together we are what we can't be alone." It's this unity in diversity that makes the band special and not just another punk outfit. Double vinyl includes digital download of full album.

In 2011, the band started the painstaking forensic task of piecing together a cohesive and magical work from disparate constituent parts. If this sounds unromantic, the results are anything but. Something alchemical occurs when the four members of Sigur Rós are in the room together, and even if Valtari is more a "studio based" album than any of its predecessors (which usually start life as rehearsal room jams), the long hours of experimentation and unsentimental editing have yielded incredibly persuasive results.

In English Valtari translates as "steamroller" and there is something right about the title in terms of the process of its creation. The last three tracks of Valtari are like one long slow gorgeous fade out, as the listener, having been softened up by the slightly more "songy" start to the album, is left with the subtly shifting, deep introspective beauty of the last 24 minutes.

After that, penultimate track, Valtari is like the far heart of the album; eight minutes that feel like being alone in row boat on a chill day, small irregular waves lapping the wooden hull as a dense fog bank rolls in and ice slowly encases every surface. Below the fathomless green, deep endures. Gatefold 2LP with MP3 coupon.

Haitani would write and record instrumentals, upload them, and send to Westcott. As she
listened thousands of miles away, she would pen lyrics to his orchestration, meditations on
feeling alone even when partnered, wanting to control the uncontrollable, and on the power
and promise of reaching for someone's hand. The song titles themselves tell a story:
"Starcrossed," "This Time," "I Hate to Say Goodbye." After writing lyrics, Westcott would
record a vocal track, upload, hit send, and wait for these starcrossed halves to meet and
become complete-a process reminiscent of The Postal Service's Give Up (fitting since
Jimmy Tamborello sings on track "Glossolalia").

Despite the modern magic required to realize Suchness, and its intricacy of its electronic
orchestration and parade of horns, timpani, loops and effects, the record breathes with an
organic ease. The layers of complexity never sound cluttered, melding together in Zen
simplicity. Westcott's airy whisper floats above heartbeat percussion, evoking the emotive
electro of Lali Puna and Notwist.

Original Liner Notes By Ralph Gleason

What was going on in 1968 when Dino Valente recorded this album? Well, he had already written 'Get Together' for the Youngbloods, been in and out of jail a couple of times, and put in time as lead vocalist for San Francisco's Quicksilver Messenger Service. While bouncing around Manhattan's East Village, Valente then teamed up with famed Dylan producer Bob Johnston to record his only solo effort. This album typifies the hippie-folk-troubadour syndrome with strumming, reverb-laden 12-string guitar and romantic odes of passion and heartbreak. Valente's pliant warble practically floats alone on these strange songs. While this music is folkish in nature, Valente's vocals display an offbeat, almost jazzy inflection reminiscent of the late Tim Buckley. - Mitch Myers

From the ashes of a vibrant garage and stage band scene, the Lowland studio and its clientele were formed. Holed up in a rundown strip mall, groups like Mourning Sun, Insight Out, Sage, Sassy, Mother Lion, Hope, Circus, and Boot Hill tracked out hundreds of demos, most of which were put on the shelf and left to bake in the South East Texas heat. Until now.

Over the last two years, Numero has painstakingly gone through every tape in the studios archives, selecting the best of the best (28 for this 2xLP) for this peerless compilation. The songs themselves run the gamut; southern boogie rock, CSNY clones, British blues thunder, garage-psych hangovers, Morricone-esque supper club instrumentals, yacht rock, and what can only be described as Bobby McPherin fronting the Velvet Underground, are threaded together in the way only a tightly-knit scene can be. Forget bringing these treasures back to life, Numeros giving them the life they never had.

The Vinyl Release Will be Issued as a QRP 200 Gram Audiophile Limited Pressing.

While it's true I did endure a terrible break-up at the beginning of writing this record, this is not a break
up record. Dagger Beach is a put-me-the-fuck-back-together record.

The break up came in late 2011, after endless months of White Wilderness touring. I returned home to an
empty house, and, as that's pretty unbearable when you're not quite right in the head, I decided to set out
walking. I hiked the Lost Coast (36 miles of off-the-grid splendor in Southern Humboldt County), I hiked
the entire 150-mile trail system of Pt. Reyes, I hiked for days, deep, deep in the woods, usually alone.
As I walked and walked, listening to records on repeat, I started obsessing about music again. Three
records found their way into my psyche and inspired much of this new record: Joanna Newsom's Have
One On Me, Silver Jews' The Natural Bridge, and Radiohead's King Of Limbs. I don't think you'll find
traces of these records in Dagger Beach, but their spirit and fearlessness deeply affected me. (Hence the
shout-out on the record to one of my lifelong heroes, David Berman.)

The first two reminded me how crucial great lyrics can be, how your experience of a record can evolve
and change as you slowly decode complex and thoughtful writing. King Of Limbsshowed me how
powerful linear songwriting can be, when subtle changes in form and repeating motifs slowly shift into
something else entirely (just try to follow Morning Mr. Magpie on headphones). There are many songs
on Dagger Beach that take this approach: Damage Control and Gaslight were both written to drum
patterns played by Jason Slota, my long-time partner. Jason played drums alone, without music, and I
adapted to his structures and rhythms. Doing this keeps me from relying on my usual tricks and
structures and forces me into brand new territory.

This strange experience, the endless hiking and backcountry camping off the grid, it completely changed
the songwriting process for me. I edited lyrics while walking, I worked out songs in my head. It didn't
come easy: the first time I camped alone (I was deep inside the million-acre Mendocino National Forest) I
freaked out, ended my trip early, and wrote Raw Wood the next day. By the end of 2012, I could stay out
for a week on my own.

As the experience changed me, it changed the record. Dagger Beach is looser, weirder, and more free
because of it