MUSIC FROM PLANET EARTH: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

Sending out echoes of jazz, electronica, ambient music and minimalism, Mercury Prize nominated Portico Quartet have created their own singular, cinematic sound over the course of five lauded studio albums and one EP.

From the band’s 2007 breakthrough Knee-Deep in the North Sea, and the John Leckie produced Isla in 2010, to the self-titled recording Portico Quartet in 2012, the heralded Art In The Age Of Automation in 2017 and the critically acclaimed Memory Streams in 2019, each album has seen the band expand its palate or explore new trajectories. 

"Portico Quartet continue to plough their own furrow on their gorgeous new album Memory Streams" Bleep

Behold Finders Keepers, a British record label, 40 years in the making, introducing fans of psychedelic, jazz, folk, funk, avant-garde and whacked-out movie musak to a lost world of undiscovered vinyl artifacts from the annals of alternative pop history.

Catering to record collectors and DJ-producers alike with a huge emphasis on sample friendly soundscapes, rocksteady back-beats and primitive electronic experimentalism. Discerning purveyors of the bizarre and abnormal should expect the Japanese choreography records, space-age Turkish protest songs, Czechoslovakian vampire soundtracks, Welsh rare-beats, bubblegum folk, drugsploitation operatics, banned British crime thrillers and celebrity Gallic Martini adverts... presented on CD, 7" and traditional black plastic discs in authentic packaging.

Following in the very same footsteps as the mind boggling "Music To Watch	Girls Cry" and "Songs In The Key Of Death" mix CDs for Fat City Records and the original 5-star rated Finders Keepers compilation LP in 2001, Manc-based vinyl-vulture, recording artist and record producer Andy Votel enlists the skills of fellow B-Music DJ and Rare Disc Detective Doug Shipton to form a team of psychedelic librarians and cosmic-pop-quiz-elitists to run their new Twisted Nerve distant sister-label, leaving no progressive pebble unturned or record collection un-rifled.

Future compilations and re-issues will feature collaborative curators such as David Holmes, Cherrystones and Bob Stanley and further contributions from mystery A- / B+ pop-celebrity fanatics of outsider music and ultra-rare bakelite discs. Finders Keepers is an 'accidental world music label' with a punk aesthetic and DJ friendly ethos which allows the desperate listener to sit back while we deliver schizoid cultural channel-hopping compilations and rocking-horse-shit & hen's-teeth re-releases to the comfort of your psych-starved living room...

This is the SoundCloud home of CNN Radio's Soundwaves blog with original storytelling - made for listening - from the staff of CNN Radio. 

We're based at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta with reporters across the U.S., and CNN's worldwide resources at our fingertips.  

We hope you listen, enjoy, comment and share.

OKeh short history: 

OKeh was founded by Otto K. E. Heinemann when he set up his own recording studio and gramophone record pressing plant in New York City in September 1918. Heinemann formed the name of the record label "OKeh", from his initials.  OKeh began by issuing popular songs, dance numbers, and vaudeville skits similar to the fare of other labels, but Heineman also wished to experiment with music for audiences neglected by the larger record companies. OKeh produced lines of recordings in German, Czech, Polish, Swedish, and Yiddish for the USA's immigrant communities. In 1920, Ralph Peer's recordings by African-American blues singer Mamie Smith were a surprise smash hit for Okeh. The company perceived the significant, little-tapped market for blues and jazz by African American artists. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Bix Beiderbecke are only a few names of jazz greats that have recorded for the label. By 1926 Columbia Records bought the label and kept it running into the 60's with jazz and R&B recordings. 

In 1994, Sony Music reactivated the OKeh label as a new-age Blues label. Okeh's first new signings included Keb' Mo, Popa Chubby, and Little Axe. By 2000, the Okeh label was again retired, but in 2013 it will see its re-launch as a jazz label once again.

Sound & Color – the follow-up to Alabama Shakes’ Gold-certified debut album, Boys & Girls, which earned the group three GRAMMY® nominations, including a nod for Best New Artist – will be released in North America on April 21 by ATO Records. Rough Trade will release the album in the UK/Europe on April 20. 

Sound & Color demonstrates the tremendous strides made by Alabama Shakes since the release of 2012’s Boys & Girls. From the gently swaying, chiming title song to the garage-rock freak-out on “The Greatest” to the psychedelic space jam “Gemini,” Alabama Shakes build on the soulful blues-rock base and map a surprising, innovative new direction. 

“We took our time to write this record, and I’m really glad we did,” says lead singer/guitarist Brittany Howard. “We were able to sit down and think about what’s exciting to us. This record is full of genre-bending songs.”

Sound & Color was recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium studio. The band co-produced the album with Blake Mills—a young guitar wizard who has helmed sessions by Sara Watkins and Sky Ferreira, and played alongside everyone from Norah Jones and the Dixie Chicks to Lana Del Ray and Kid Rock. 

The success of Boys & Girls paved the way for Alabama Shakes – comprising lead singer/guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, drummer Steve Johnson, and touring keyboard players Ben Tanner and Paul Horton – to become one of the most celebrated live acts in the world, as they delivered unforgettable performances everywhere from “Saturday Night Live” to the main stages of festivals like Bonnaroo and Glastonbury. Boys & Girls charted in the Top 10 in both the U.S. and the U.K. and "Hold On," the Gold-certified lead single, was voted the #1 Best Song of 2012 by Rolling Stone.


<b>Gary Clark Jr </b>
Warner Records
Austin TX

arissawrites is following