Monthly Archives: October 2018

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Waxwork Records is proud to present The Haunting Of Hill House Music From The Netflix Horror Series By The Newton Brothers. Originally a 1959 gothic horror novel written by American author Shirley Jackson, The Haunting Of Hill House is a multi-episode Netflix horror series directed by Mike Flanagan (Hush, Gerald’s Game) and starring Carla Gugino (Sin City, Wayward Pines) and Henry Thomas (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial).

The plot centers around The Crain family which consists of a mother, father, and five children who temporarily move into the Hill House mansion in 1992. The intention is to renovate the sprawling home and then sell it for a profit in effort to build their very own dream house. Soon after moving into Hill House, they begin to experience increasing paranormal activity that results in a tragic loss and the family fleeing from the house. 26 years later, the Crain siblings and their estranged father reunite after a new tragedy, and they are all forced to confront how their time in Hill House affected each of them.

The series has received massive critical acclaim and praise. Author Stephen King described the series as “close to a work of genius.” The Telegraph calls it “the most complex and complete horror series of its time.” Forbes stated that “it may actually be Netflix’s best original show, ever.” RogerEbert.com gave unanimous praise calling it “essential viewing” and stated that “the show contains some of the most unforgettable horror imagery in film or television in years.”

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Hello music fans! You’re joining me here live from lovely Pyongyang, North Korea, where I’m about to sit down with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, who is about to make a big musical announcement!

And here comes Kim now, ready to verbally spar in a glittering WWE wrestling jacket and tights, a baby tiger cradled in his arms! What chubby charisma! What a dazzling smile! It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who had a mid-sized city executed for sneezing during one of his 5-1/2-hour speeches!

A palace lackey seats us in two very uncomfortable solid-gold chairs, another palace lackey brings Kim his jade bong and baggy filled with primo Godfather OG, and after we both take a couple of hits and I get very, very paranoid, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty.

You don’t plan to have me killed, do you?

Ha, ha. Never. You are my favorite Western Rock Critic. Your extremely positive review of Christopher Cross echoed many of my own insights on the genius who brought us “Sailing.” We Christopher Cross fans must stick together.

So what’s the big announcement?

For many years I have banned Western Music. It is decadent, serves no propaganda purpose, and makes people dance. North Korea is like the town of Bomont, and I will not put up with any Kevin Bacon-like footlooseness. Such counter-revolutionary hijinks could undermine my very cool Cult of Personality.

That said, I have given my personal okay to certain types of Western Music over the years. My all-female military ensemble The Morenbong Band has been known to play the theme from my favorite movie Rocky, for example. I cannot watch Sylvester Stallone triumph against adversity without crying, and then killing anyone who has witnessed me crying. I’ve tragically lost many beloved family members in this manner.

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If you’re in the market for jazz reissues on wax, ORG Music is a consistent resource, and the pickings are especially ripe right now, as they have a stylistically varied batch of material fresh out spanning the 1940s to the ’80s, specifically After You’ve Gone from Les Paul and His Trio, Time In from Dave Brubeck, Arigato from Hank Jones, and Softly from Shirley Horn. Listeners wanting to stretch out beyond the canonical rudiments will find much to love here, for the sounds are more than satisfactory, but novice ears shouldn’t feel intimidated, as the contents are highly approachable all around. The Jones is available now, the Brubeck is out November 2, and the Paul and Horn arrive the following Friday.

It’s nice that the folks at ORG are fortifying the jazz racks with material beyond the must-haves from the Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse, and Atlantic labels, although a glance at the noteworthy artists included in the roundup could lead to the conclusion that they aren’t digging all that deep. Take Les Paul, for instance; a read of the guy’s biography shapes him up as a recording industry giant, with a dominant early ’50s pop chart run in tandem with his wife, the vocalist Mary Ford, and an enduring rep as a guitar builder, studio innovator and a technical master on his instrument.

He’s also known for diversity of genre. Amongst his early credits, he backed blues singer Georgie White, recorded C&W as Rhubarb Red, and dished out Hawaiian songs, so his aptitude for jazz, while no secret, often doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves. To an extent this scenario is similar to that of Nat King Cole, whose stature as a pop singer continues to overshadow his killer ’40s piano trio; underlining this comparison is Paul’s early career highlight subbing for Oscar Moore with Cole and others as part of the inaugural Jazz at the Philharmonic concert.

That show went down on July 2, 1944 in Los Angeles, and the sessions for After You’ve Gone were made for the World Broadcasting Company across September, October, and December of the same year and into January and February of ’45. Like Cole’s group, Paul’s eschewed a drummer, instead featuring Clinton Nordquist on bass, Cal Goodin on rhythm guitar, and either Milt Raskin or Buddy Cole on piano; unlike Cole’s group, Paul’s was a trio plus one.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Waxwork Records is honored to present the 50th Anniversary Edition release of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to George A. Romero’s horror classic, Night Of The Living Dead.

Written, filmed, and released in 1968 by a rag-tag group of Pittsburgh based misfits, Night Of The Living Dead is an American independent horror film that follows the story of seven people trapped in a rural farmhouse that is besieged by a large and growing group of living dead ghouls. The film is regarded as a cult classic by critics, film scholars, and fans and has garnered critical acclaim. The film has been selected by the Library Of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry and is deemed “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.”

Filmed and released on a shoestring budget, Night Of The Living Dead became a smashing success earning over 250 times its budget. The film is a first of its kind and ushered in a new way of writing, directing, and filming horror films. The overused script of romantic, fantastical tales of otherworldly monsters and creatures was completely flipped and tossed aside by visionary George A. Romero.

As the film’s writer and director, Romero created a new, obvious threat, and one that is universally recognizable—our very own neighbors. Due to an unseen force beyond man’s control, the recently deceased arise from the dead in seek of living human victims. These ghouls kill and feast upon the flesh of their victims, and the only way of stopping them is by destroying their brains.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Every Move You Make: The Studio Recordings (Polydor/UMG) is a six vinyl LP box set which brings together The Police’s entire recorded studio albums, as well as a 12-track sixth disc entitled Flexible Strategies which contains exclusive bonus material of non-album recordings and B-sides.

Re-mastered and cut onto 180-gram heavyweight vinyl at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell, the world’s leading exponent of half-speed mastering, this limited-edition set celebrates the 40th anniversary of the multi-million selling band’s first album, Outlandos d’Amour. It also contains a special 24 page, 12”x12” photo book featuring rare and unseen images from the band’s personal archives housed in deluxe packaging of a hardcover box with lift-off lid. The Police’s studio albums include – Outlandos d’Amour (1978), Reggatta de Blanc (1979), Zenyatta Mondatta (1980), Ghost in the Machine (1981) and Synchronicity (1983).

Formed in 1977, The Police are composed of Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers. During their existence their contribution to the lexicon of rock was immense. The originality of their music fused elements from both punk and reggae to form a brilliant new style that can only be described as Music of the Police. They exist within their own genre. Having sold in excess of 50 million albums worldwide, The Police had phenomenal chart success and earned a multitude of accolades both public and critical, but they never allowed such peripherals to overshadow their commitment to the music itself. This collection features 14 U.K. and 18 U.S. Top 20 singles, including five U.K. and four U.S. single number ones, and four U.K. number one albums and a number one U.S. album.

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“My first vinyl was The Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of Disney’s Haunted House. I was obsessed almost more with the cover art—it was blue and black and creepy and absolutely fascinating.”

“It may explain my early years as a goth devotee—I heard bits of that very first vinyl in Danzig and The Damned and The Church, and even in Morrissey, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Curve, and Concrete Blonde. I got into those bands a bit backwards, as a radio DJ for Jacksonville State University’s WLJS just as Nirvana exploded into the mainstream.

Those sounds still shape everything I do as a songwriter. Though I grew up surrounded by my dad’s folk records (Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Judy Collins were commonly spinning), once I found rock and roll I moved quickly in that direction, playing all kinds of obscure college bands from a tiny Alabama DJ booth.

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KoenjiHyakkei (sometimes Koenji Hyakkei) is one of many bands helmed by Japanese drummer-singer-composer Tatsuya Yoshida, and after a break of 13 years the outfit has returned with Dhorimviskha. The recording’s been out on CD and digital since August (a little earlier in Japan, even) but after a successful Kickstarter the 2LP arrives in a gatefold jacket November 2 through Skin Graft. If the prospect of progressive/ symphonic/ math-rocky complexity, avant-jazzy horns, and operatic vocals delivered with the density and intensity of good hardcore, and all meticulously assembled, gives you a sweet shiver of a thrill, well then step right up to this one.

Here are a few recurring bits of faulty wisdom regarding ‘70s popular music: disco was a fad (that by extension, sucked), jazz fusion was stylistic dead-end that all but killed America’s greatest artform, soft-rock was craven milquetoast commercialism, and a double whammy, that punk rock was essentially a dead-end instigated by a bunch of young cretins who couldn’t play their instruments, and yet was a cul-de-sac that was wholly necessary in order to save the world from all of the above, but most crucially, the pompous and intellectually fraudulent ambitions spewed forth by the prog rock brigade.

Sure, crummy prog can be considerably harder to handle than the lousiness of your standard rudimentary garage band, particularly if you subscribe to the belief that the former is a betrayal of rock’s ethos and the latter just well-intentioned error, but progressive rock is ultimately only worse than the dregs of any other genre if you choose to focus your attention exclusively on the form’s rottenest practitioners (this logic pertains to any genre, actually). I admittedly held a somewhat different viewpoint 30 years ago, but with time and experience comes enlightenment.

Prog rock doth endure however, and a cool twist is how a fair amount of the form’s underground units (old and new) can be appealingly weird. Unsurprisingly, some of the weirdest come from Japan, and that a list of them would include the numerous activities of Tatsuya Yoshida is assured; the only question is how to rank them.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Waxwork Records is proud to present the Original Motion Picture Score to Drag Me To Hell. Directed by Sam Raimi (Evil Dead trilogy, Darkman), Drag Me To Hell tells the story of a banker with a seemingly good life, a supportive boyfriend, and a bright future. She makes a sinful choice for her own betterment, and as a result, is cursed by a gypsy and haunted by an ancient demonic force that will stop at nothing to drag her to the depths of Hell. The film became a box office success and has amassed many accolades and awards due in part to its originality and fantastic screenplay by Sam and Ivan Raimi.

The film score was composed and conducted by famed composer Christopher Young (Hellraiser, A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge). It was Young’s aim to create a sonic landscape of a world that didn’t exist. A supernatural setting featuring overdubbed, layered violins to emulate an evil, devil-like force manipulating the instrument. Horns, organ, child-like ethereal voices, and vintage keyboards round out the score to create a dark and intense experience.

Waxwork Records worked in collaboration with Lakeshore Records on the Drag Me To Hell vinyl album. This special release marks the very first time that the film music has been pressed to vinyl. Features include the complete score by Christopher Young, new art by Midnight Marauder, 180 Gram 2xLP “Hell-Fire” colored vinyl, composer liner notes, and old style tip-on gatefold jackets with satin coating.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | If the saga of the Grateful Dead is a long strange trip, then Real Gone Music has definitely been along for part of the ride. First, Real Gone released the entire Dick’s Picks series of live concerts on CD, all 36 volumes of it, many of them never before available at retail. Then Real Gone began putting out the Road Trips series, none of which has ever been in stores before. Now the time has come for Real Gone to take the next step in their evolution as a key source for rare Grateful Dead recordings. Real Gone has crossed the vinyl frontier with Grateful Dead: Dick’s Picks Vol. 34 – Community War Memorial, Rochester, NY 11/5/77 out November 30 on hand-numbered limited edition 6-LP vinyl.

Grateful Dead: Dick’s Picks Vol. 34 – Community War Memorial, Rochester, NY 11/5/77 was recorded in 1977 with fiery performances of “Big River,” “Jack Straw,” “Deal,” and “Eyes of the World” powered by a particularly lively Phil Lesh. But for many the highlight will be one of the truly great performances of “The Other One” in the Grateful Dead catalog, 12 minutes of surging intensity and building crescendos. This Pick also included highlights from a 11/2/77 Toronto show, including a great medley of “Estimated Prophet”/”St. Stephen”/”Truckin’”/”Around and Around” (the track listing was reconfigured to put all bonus tracks at the end of the set).

For the release, Real Gone enlisted David Glasser at Airshow Mastering to remaster the set from the original tapes for vinyl. David’s had a long association with the Dead; he mastered the soundtrack to last year’s Long Strange Trip documentary. For lacquer cutting, Real Gone turned to John Golden at Golden Mastering. John has worked with artists as far-ranging as Jonathan Wilson, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, and Soundgarden among others. The test pressings were approved by David Glasser, the Grateful Dead’s resident curator David Lemieux, and Gordon Anderson from Real Gone.

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