Music From Memory

BACK IN STOCK !!!For their first multi-artist compilation, Music From Memory take us on a trip to the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Outro Tempo: Electronic and Contemporary Music From Brazil, 1978-1992 is a double LP that explores the outer reaches of Brazilian music, where indigenous rhythms mix with synthesizers and where MPB mingles with drum computers. As Brazil faced the last years of its military dictatorship and transition to democracy, a generation of forward-thinking musicians developed an alternative vision of Brazilian music and culture. They embraced traditionally shunned electronic production methods and infused their music with elements of ambient, jazz-fusion, and minimalism. At the same time they referenced the musical forms and spirituality of indigenous tribes from the Amazon. The music they produced was a complex and mesmerising tapestry that vividly evoked Brazilian landscapes and simultaneously reached out to the world beyond its borders.The product of extensive research, this compilation is a unique introduction to this visionary music and features many fresh discoveries in a country well trodden by record diggers. It gathers tracks from obscure albums that have for too long been neglected by even the most avid collectors of Brazilian music. It includes now highly sought after music by Andréa Daltro, Maria Rita, and Fernando Falcão, as well as unknown gems like those of Cinema, Carlinhos Santos, and Anno Luz. This is an essential release that reveals a broader spectrum of Brazilian music, striking a unique sonic signature that is full of innovation, experimentation, and beauty.Compiled by John Gómez and featuring extensive liner notes, Outro Tempo showcases this overlooked corner in Brazil’s rich music history for the first time.

The Japanese producer and DJ Kuniyuki Takahashi is the subject of Music From Memory’s latest retrospective compilation with ‘Early Tape Works - 1986-1993’. Composed of two volumes, the compilations gather together a selection of tracks from a tiny run of privately released tape only albums, highlighting a fascinating early period in Kuniyuki’s musical output, one of which little is known.After discovering the world of nightclubs in Japan around 1986, and the seemingly boundless freedom expressed there through music as well as art, Kuniyuki became inspired to experiment with electronic music. Excited by the possibilities of new music technology, he would begin to gather together a number of, at that time, reasonably accessible and inexpensive local keyboards, drum computers and recording equipment. This became for Kuniyuki a way in which to explore music not as such made for nightclubs, but certainly inspired by them. Setting up a home studio in his hometown of Saporro, Kuniyuki would record extensively during this period with the equipment he had gathered together, equipment such as Roland’s Juno60, TR-606, TB-303, Casio FZ-1, Korg 770, Boss DE-200, Foster A8 and a Yamaha MT44 track cassette recorder.Driven to develop a musical language derived as much by an exploration of music technology and a desire to create new sounds, Kuniyuki was also looking to evolve the possibilities of what he refers to as a ‘new Oriental sound’. Early Tape Works - 1986-1993’ then brings together two albums of material which not only highlights the evolution of Kuniyuki’s own work but also of Japanese electronic music as a whole."

Music From Memory's final compilation of 2017 sees the release of the double album “1 by 1”, which brings together the works of American experimental musician Geoffrey Landers. During a period spanning from 1979 to 1987, this Denver, Colorado based multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer and engineer, conceived several solo albums. Only two of these, “The Ever Decimal Pulse” and “Habitual Features” along with the single “Breedlove” were ever released on vinyl.Being heavily involved in the local industrial/punk/new wave scene and wanting to create a recording studio “available to record artists regardless of their financial circumstances” Landers set up “The Packing House Studio” in 1981. This analog 8-track recording facility was located in a former slaughterhouse in the stockyards of Denver and was a place of significant activity for the next three years with the studio releasing recordings from numerous artists most notably Allen Ginsberg.It was here that Geoffrey Landers also started his own aptly named “Cauhaus” label. Indicative of the underground/DIYculture, “Cauhaus” was a subsiduary of a label called Local Anaesthetics which was started as an in-store label by independent Denver record store Wax Trax. Typically Cauhaus releases were only pressed up in small quantities and independently distributed, making Lander's music essentially elusive to a wide audience. After relocating in 1984 to an art district of Denver Landers opened the “Cauhaus Institute of Recording” studio where he continued to produce music for soundtracks, art and multi media projects for the next three years, after which Landers stepped out of the music industry entirely. He currently creates and exhibits mixed-media glass art.Throughout the twenty tracks of "1 by 1", of which six previously appeared on CD only, we are submerged into a wide diversity of musical approaches from Geoffrey Landers. From the proto-house track “Logarhythms” and the heart breaking New-Wave Boogie/Funk of “Say You’ll Say So” to the more contemplative pieces such as the oriental insprired “Nisei” and the drenched in sunshine dub/reggae track “Mack” Landers shies away from musical expectations again and again; searching continually for innovative and new forms of expression.

Music From Memory return with their penultimate EP of 2017, this time with four tracks drawn from Virgil ‘Vincent’ Work Jnr’s little-known cassette only debut from 1987, ‘Fast Forward’. Following on from a previous compilation of works taken from one of Virgil’s collaborative projects as the duo ‘Workdub’, this album under simply ‘Vincent’, reflects a more stripped back and raw musical approach from the St. Louis musician.Experimenting with rhythm programming, midi, layering, sequencing, digital effects and sound synthesis the ‘Fast Forward’ sessions grew out of a series of late night jams with Vincent’s brother Scott who was then living in Kansas. With nothing planned in advance and no written music involved in the final recording sessions, the songs that would form ‘Fast Forward’ very much evolved out of improvisation lending a unique often spatial and searching quality to the tracks.Virgil’s equipment at the time very much lead the experimentation with the album being produced on a Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer, Korg DW-8000 Synthesizer, Yamaha RX-15 Drum Machine, Korg SQD-1 Sequencer and a sequential TOM Drum machine. As Virgil himself explains the title of the album in fact came about because it felt “as if I had fast forwarded to a different sound”.Bedroom produced, the Fast Forward album had an initial run of only 100 copies, of which none were commercially available and were simply sent to friends and family along with a handful mailed out to local radio stations in his hometown of St Louis. Although the album received a good response from local radio DJs and music magazines, the album sadly never gained enough momentum or demand for a further run of copies.Fast forward to 2017, exactly thirty years are their production, and Music From Memory are delighted to be able to finally make Vincent’s music commercially available again."

Garrett came from the inside of his own mind, from within a home recording studio somewhere on planet Earth. The Private Life of creative awareness and the music captured here is the visceral offering to all outside. Every one of us has a Private Life. This is Garrett’s...

Outstanding three track EP from the archives of Caliban (A side project of London musician Milton Myrie; a session guitar player who worked with cult UK buddhist afro and reggae band Ozo as well as on the much sought after Steel and Skin ‘Afro Punk Reggae’ 12”). Talk about bang for ye buck.. 1 side crucial oddball digital cuts, b side sounds like a UK jazz funk classic... Gold Print Sleeve. Caliban produced only one self-released 7” ‘Open Mind / Digital Reggae’ in 1984.Following the re-discovery of this very little known 7” by Caliban a few years back, UK producer Jackson Bailey aka Tapes managed to track Milton down, who as well as being in possession of most of the stock of the original record, was also sat on a number of amazing unreleased recordings from the Caliban sessions. With an album of unreleased Caliban material compiled by Tapes to follow later on Music From Memory, this EP introduces one of the unreleased tracks; the incredible feel good disco anthem “Supernatural”. Taking us on a glittering, rhythm charged rocket tour of the Funk Cosmos, this until-now-unheard future classic will surely set the summer nights alight.The three track 12” also includes “Digital Reggae” which featured on the original Caliban 7”. This computerised dancehall/funk hybrid was partially penned to address the lack of black culture included in the payload of the United States’ first space station; “Digital Reggae will be included in the Payload of Skylab!”. As well as the original mix, the EP also includes a new dub put together by Milton himself and assisted by riddim specialist Tapes!