Free Download: hopestreetrecordings.com/dawn

Artist: Emma Donovan & The PutBacks
Album: Dawn
Format: LP/CD/Digital
AU Release Date: Nov 7 2014
UK Release Date: Nov 10 2014
US Release Date: Nov 11 2014

Acclaimed indigenous vocalist Emma Donovan and Melbourne rhythm combo The PutBacks come together to bring you Dawn, an LP of hard hitting and heartfelt soul songs telling stories of grief, struggle and redemption. Dawn is a gritty, uniquely Australian record, simultaneously classic and contemporary. The songwriting is in turns optimistic, angry and melancholic, and on occasions bruisingly honest. The music is fluid, live and raw, recorded in one room on eight channels of analog tape and the electric connection between Emma and the band comes through in every beat.

Emma grew up singing church songs with her maternal grandparents on the North coast of New South Wales. Her first secular gigs were singing in The Donovans, a band comprised of her mother and five uncles. With her mother, Emma sang country for years, and in her youth was a fixture at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, but she always yearned for the bluesier tones of her Father’s record collection, full of American artists like Laverne Baker and Etta James and Indigenous Australian artists like No Fixed Address and Archie Roach.

Years later, after touring and recording with many of the mainstays of Indigenous music and developing as a solo artist in her own right, Emma met members of The PutBacks, and finally she found a band with the gritty blues soaked tones she had been looking for. She also found, in PutBacks bassist Mick Meagher, a co-writer and collaborator on the the soul songs she had been waiting a lifetime to write and sing. The results are well worth the wait and hopefully, only mark the beginning of this oh-so-right collaboration.

Buy Vinyl/CD/Digital

Emma Donovan & The PutBacks - Voodoo

iTunes: http://apple.co/1EY9Nse
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1FjnjH6
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/1RHZj8u

Buy on Bandcamp

Mighty Sceptres: I Found The Letter

Shalom Ale'khem (AMS Lviv Mix)

Collocutor - Gozo (The Expansions Remix)

Release Date: 04/29/2016

Digital Buy Links: radi.al/GoodbyeWorldDigital
Amazon: amzn.to/25NvU4z

"I got a little more work for you to do."

That's what the late Reverend Gean West sings—or rather testifies—on the opening track of Goodbye World, the new and deeply emotional album from the triumphantly unlikely gospel funk band the Relatives. The group started working on the record in the summer of 2014, but Gean was able to lay down his signature gravelly vocals on only two songs before he became ill and fell into a coma. He remained unconscious for twelve days, and it was during that time he heard God's voice telling him to get back to work. "Don't let me down, son," the voice commanded.

This World Is Moving Too Fast

To bookend the Collocutor -'Instead' project Contours offered up this On the Corner Banger. The next chapter for Collocutor begins here and one for the next Vs 12". 

Contours Vs Collocutor - Agama

As Claremont 56 speeds towards its’ ten-year anniversary, label founder Paul Murphy continues to champion little known producers and previously unheard artists.

Over the past 12 months, the label has showcased material from rising talents such as Bella Figura, Simon Peter, Paraiso and Oma &amp; Amberflame. Now, Claremont 56 is adding another new name to the roster: Statues.

Essex-based trio Bradley Lucke (production/bass/percussion/keys), Mark Crooks (keys/production) and Grant Carruthers (vocals/guitar) has been making music on-and-off together since they were teenagers, and last year decided to come together under the Statues alias. They submitted a number of demos to Paul Murphy, who was so impressed by what he heard that he offered to help produce and write an album with them.

As debut singles go, “Alaula” is stunning. Reminiscent of many softly spun moments from the Claremont 56 back catalogue, it builds slowly and breezily via subtle waves of organic and electronic instrumentation. Carruthers’ impassioned vocals pop in and out of the mix at opportune moments, peeping above alluring acoustic guitar, bass, synthesizer and Rhodes parts. Throw in tumbling, life-affirming piano lines and swelling cello parts – both provided by friend-of- the-family Robin Lee of Faze Action – and you’ve got another near-perfect chunk of sunset-friendly, horizontal brilliance.

On the flip, Murphy dons his familiar Mudd alias to provide a superb Piano Dub. Building the action around a sparse, delay-laden percussion track, Murphy teases out the track’s most potent moments, in the process creating something that lingers even longer in the memory. Lee’s superb piano and cello work naturally takes pride of place, as Murphy expertly emphasizes the track’s impeccably atmospheric nature.


Statues - Alaula

HERE TO THERE TO EVERYWHERE

"On paper it's a straightforward declaration of love, but in practice it's an excuse to scream the highest notes I can manage. Some of the fadeout reminds me of the singer in the nightclub altercation scene in the John Boorman film "Point Blank" in which Lee Marvin distinguishes himself as the first man in a Hollywood fight to punch his opponent in the orchestra stalls."
- James Hunter on "I Got Eyes"

Buy/Stream: http://dapt.one/IGotEyes

HERE TO THERE TO EVERYWHERE

On The Corner Records