‘Melodi’ is the second album from Kit Sebastian. Those familiar with the band's cult classic 2019 debut record 'Mantra Moderne' will instantly recognise their unique sound that blurs boundaries of world music, jazz and psychedelia. Not to be content replicating the same album, sonically the feel of ‘Melodi’ is a maturation. It is more diverse and provides glimpses into many different worlds from the Italian Riviera to the mountains of the Caucasus, the beaches of Bahia to the city streets of Istanbul and Paris. This joyous merging of soundscapes evokes a borderless planet with music as an international language, belonging everywhere and nowhere.

Melodi

Kit Sebastian - Elegy For Love

To be released April 1, 2022

“I Just Want To Be a Good Man” is available for pre-order: https://luakabop.lnk.to/PastorChampion

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PASTOR CHAMPION (Nov 23, 1946 - Dec 28, 2021)

This album is a tribute to Pastor Wylie Champion, an outsider gospel artist who died while we were in the process of releasing this, his first record, and his wife, Mother Champion, who died a few months earlier.

Pastor Champion was a badass.

A preacher, a pastor, an outsider gospel singer who was raised in the Jim Crow South. Pastor Champion fled to California and joined a gang before becoming born again, spending the rest of his days traveling with his electric guitar to congregations and people’s homes from San Jose to Shreveport. 

There isn’t much known about Champion, except that the beloved soul singer Bettye Swann happened to be his sister and confidant— a secret that Pastor Champion only shared later on. 

We started working with Pastor Champion a few years ago while we were researching another release, The Time for Peace Is Now: Gospel Music About Us. We found him on the YouTube channel of the 37th Street Baptist Church in Oakland, California, put together by their pastor Bishop Dr. W.C. McClinton. We liked Champion so much that in 2018 we decided to make an album together, and to record it analog like the gospel recordings we love, on a two-track Nagra reel-to-reel. Over the course of just two evenings (when the workday was done), Champion taught his band—musicians who had never played together before—a handful of songs that he regularly performed. 

What followed was several years of trying to figure out how to move forward – Champion refused to be interviewed for the liner notes or to come to New York to keep recording. But there was something special that happened with everyone in that room those days, never to be repeated. It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest.

As time went on, Champion kept refusing to be interviewed, saying that he’d had a hard life and he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to talk about growing up in Louisiana, his mother being accosted by the Klan, or about  his father’s gambling. He didn’t want to talk about being jailed for 90 days for using a “whites-only” bathroom, being in gangs or having a street name. We said that was fine—he could talk about what he wanted to talk about. And he said that he didn’t really want to talk about anything.

Unfortunately those conversations ended as Pastor Champion died in the last month of 2021.  So we have this album as a remembrance of him. It’s quite a different record for us, almost Alan Lomaxian in feel, if Alan Lomax recorded outsider, soul gospel artists who played electric guitar.

Champion knew that this record wasn’t going to be for everyone. He didn’t really care. The important part for him was just getting the message out there in the same way that he always had: traveling alone with his electric guitar. “I want to say what I mean,” he said, “be practical, precise, to the point, and, at the same time, diplomatic.” In other words, he just wanted to be a good man.

God bless Pastor Champion and Mother Champion, peace be with them and their family. Love to all.

Released by:
Luaka Bop
Album release date:
1 April 2022

"I Just Want To Be A Good Man"

I Just Want to Be a Good Man (To Be Used, by You)

OOIOO - UMO

GLORIA TAYLOR - How Can You Say It - 1975

The third album from Duval Timothy. Released on Carrying Colour 27 October 2017.

Recorded by Duval Timothy
London & Bath, UK
Freetown, Sierra Leone
Kyoto, Japan

WhatsApp.WAV

Recorded live with Gerard, Gatillon station 

13/04/2018...

Rock This Town series

Howdah

Order of Nothingness

My Mind Will Travel

Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar album out June 15th on cassette and world wide digital via Leaving Records

Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar

Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes - THEEM AND VARIATIONS

Out 5th April on limited 7" (250 copies) - http://speedywunderground.com/shop/

SW027 - All We Are & Alex Kapranos - Heart Attack

Keith Mansfield - Before Summer Ends (1976)

ALG0

Seven Marmelade

Independent record label, founded by David Byrne in 1988. Follow us for weekly free downloads and remixes. 

I Just Want to Be a Good Man (To Be Used, by You)

Luaka Bop

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