Just be easy funk

Whaya

Luna Y Sol

Nowhere To Go But Everywhere

East Middle Dub

Mares Agitados

Trick Bag

The very first remix in the upcoming remix series of Lagartijeando's last album "La Tercera Visión" comes from rising star (and Wonderwheel alumnus) Gitkin, who takes "Onda" featuring Tagua Tagua into live territory with his signature psychedelic guitar riffs, a driving drum break and dubbed out vocal snippits from Tagua for a Khruangbin meets Brazil type of vibe.

Buy EP Here

Lagartijeando - Onda (feat. Tagua Tagua) [Gitkin Remix]

The Last Chuck

Sudden Mystic

Midwest Shimmer

Gitkin makes a long awaited return home to Wonderwheel Recordings with the new single “Go Time”. The instrumental stomper clicks into gear with uptempo & danceable drum breaks, on brand guitar lines with just the right amount of twang and an organ solo straight out of funk heaven. Longtime fans will not be disappointed - look out for much more from the man coming this year!

Gitkin - Go Time

Silver Moon

Gitkin debut album '5 Star Motel' coming soon.

Pre-Order: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIzCNsTRYj8

Gitkin - Canción Del Rey

BEHOLD THE UNCLE GITKIN 4 TRACK RECORDING! 
Here's the full story...

Gitkin sold guitars. To be precise, he re-branded, sold and traded knock-off Gibsons. A lone, travelling salesman, he toted his counterfeit wares to guitar stores and music emporiums. His trade took him to most corners of the USA, passing through big, smoggy cities and small towns. His nights were spent at not-so-salubrious motels. It was at those nocturnal stop-offs that he’d often cross paths with newcomers to the States. His fellow travellers were mostly immigrants, newly-arrived, from places like Ethiopia, Mexico, Indonesia.

His illicit musical wares were his way of making a connection. He’d strike up tentative, half-understood exchanges; part old stories and legends, part musical dialogue, rough-and-ready riffs, enthusiastically plucked out. Other times, late night jam sessions would quickly escalate, repurposing nightstands for drums and mini bar contents – packets of nuts, or bottles of beer – for makeshift percussion. A self-taught, sometimes-musician, those memorable evenings informed amateur recordings to cassette tape: a patchwork of worldly sounds, a document of new friendships and fresh perspectives.

Or at least, that’s the story as Brian J Gitkin has been able to piece it together. This album, ‘5 Star Motel’, is by a different Gitkin, an ode to the one described above. Or to put it another way, this is the younger Gitkin’s homage to his elder relative: the elusive, guitar salesman uncle he never met. A steady drip of anecdotes have construed an image of his relation’s itinerant, huckster lifestyle. Finding a cassette of his recordings, it spoke of the effect of those encounters: lo-fi and scratchy, the music leaped seamlessly, in difficult to discern ways, between different far-flung styles. 

https://wonderwheelrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/5-star-motel

On ‘5 Star Motel’, that younger Gitkin has sought to expand the philosophy reaped from his uncle. The guitar is common thread, the raft to navigate a sun-dappled stream of ideas. It’s an embrace of cultures where folkloric stringed instruments still rule, or where they’ve led to a more recent embrace of the electric guitar. Gitkin traces the loose, meandering paths which join them together.

It’s about America, the world outside its borders, and the inscrutable, inevitable dialogue that exists between them. Take ‘Cancion Del Rey’, where the sound of Peruvian chicha – steady-moving, alluring, and lyrical – winds its way through Gitkin’s fuzz-filtered licks, and the rhythm underpinning it. Or ‘Yama’, where Middle Eastern influences echo out of grooving, cyclical riffs. Touching on the distinctive tones of Tuareg music and the Sahara, too, ‘Grand Street Feast’ charts a sand-dusted, melodic misadventure.

Full album

Gitkin 1978 Original Rare Recording

Buy Here: wonderwheelrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/s…ha-nola

After introducing the world to the elusive named Gitkin last year with the release of his debut album “5 Star Motel”, Wonderwheel Recordings is back with another special 7” of two deeply funky, lo-fi globally influenced cuts from the travellin’ man himself.

“Saint Claude Dash” with it’s 70’s disco influenced drum machine undertone brings in Middle Eastern & North African vibes on the melody, while shifting into an even funkier B section reminiscent of the Meters.

Just a taste of the brand new album to come this year…or when the spirits will it.

Gitkin - Chicha Nola

Buy / Stream: http://hyperurl.co/gitkin_cancion

After two outstanding releases on Wonderwheel Recordings (2018’s “5 Star Motel” LP, and 2019’s “Saint Claude Dash / Chicha Nola” 7”), Gitkin is back with a new EP, along with two remixes from Pimps Of Joytime. “De La” - which features NYC-based singer Carol C - was inspired by the Saharan Tuareg sound, while also embracing Carl C’s Afro-Dominican roots with a beautiful melody and Spanish lyrics. 

The second track, “Canción De Aplauso,” fuses classic joyful cumbia with 70s Afrobeat, Cuban tumbao, and a bit of middle eastern flavour for good measure. The electric Guild twelve-string guitar sound is reminiscent of Turkish Saz, eliciting a festive vibe that gets the crowd grooving in live sets. 

Both songs see remixes by the Pimps of Joytime, with “De La” delving further into the trance sound. “Canción De Aplauso” gets a gogo retouch, inspired by Washington DC’s Chuck Brown, with the addition of some 70’s style funk slap bass. 

“De La Canción” EP will be released on Wonderwheel Recordings March 13th.

De La Canción

Gitkin - De La (feat. Carol C)

Buy / Stream here: 

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2FOFd16
Apple Music: https://apple.co/3iMq1A3
Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/3hMd6N8
Bandcamp: https://bit.ly/35PQxFc
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Gitkin’s music exists somewhere between primal, rootsy memory and distant exotic yearning — A dusty bordertown where the familiar blends imperceptibly into the enchantingly foreign. 

After a long and fruitful run as a bandleader with relentlessly touring party-rockers Pimps Of Joytime and a Grammy-nominated country blues collaboration with Cedric Burnside, multi-instrumentalist Brian J set out to “explore tonalities I’d never messed with,” as he puts it. It was a release from “having to write lyrics or involve my voice,” he notes, and so the (mostly) instrumental sound of Gitkin came into being. 

Reviews of Gitkin’s first LP grappled with descriptors, tagging it vaguely as “cinematic” and comparing it favorably with Khruangbin. True, the music is largely wordless, emotionally evocative, and guitar driven. But it possesses an alluring alchemy all its own. 

Gitkin’s first release, 2018’s well-received Five Star Motel, amply demonstrated his ease with earthy funk and comfortably-cut rhythm. On his new full-length release Safe Passage, the itinerant guitar slinger broadens his already rich palette with melodies informed by Greek and Middle Eastern modalities, Peruvian Chicha and Tuareg Saharan guitar styles. No gimmick, this juxtaposition of gut-bucket blues and funk low-end with unexpectedly twisting lead phrases highlights the intense flavors found in each savory ingredient. 

Recorded at his home studio in New Orleans, Safe Passage showcases a new batch of immediately engaging, repeatedly satisfying cuts, ranging from surf exotica (“Cat Nip”) to raunchy roadhouse stompers (“Fools Gold” and “The Drive”) to dreamy vocal cuts “Foot Steps” and “Hold On” to the floating finale of “Safe Passage.” 

Gitkin’s production radiates character and warmth, leaning on soft-focus vintage mics, dubby spring reverbs and the quirks of an analog tape machine. Further enhancing the intimate vibe are distinguished guests like Carol C (of Si*Sé), who lends her striking voice to three tracks, including the strutting single “De La,” veteran Chauncey Yearwood (congas) and New Orleans local Clifton “Spug” Smith, who provides a sousaphone low-end on the cumbia-not-cumbia “Spug Life.” 

Safe Passage will be released by Wonderwheel on September 18th, 2020 and will be available on vinyl, CD and digitally.