The second volume of this highly collectable series, covering the pivotal years of 1969-70.
The Island Book of Records Volume II documents the years 1969-70, during which Island sought to build on its success with the Spencer Davis Group by seeking out new British rock talent. By the end of the period, Island was emerging as a major British label, one that could boast releases from Jethro Tull, Nick Drake, King Crimson, John and Beverley Martyn, Fairport Convention and Cat Stevens.
Featuring material from recent interviews and from media interviews of the time, and including a comprehensive discography of 45s, The Island Book of Records Volume II is lavishly illustrated with gig adverts (very many at venues that no longer exist), concert tickets, flyers, international LP variants, labels, LP and 45 adverts and other ephemera collector’s dream.
‘In a word this is perfection in print’ Grahame Bent, Shindig! magazine
‘I could spend hours poring over Neil Storey’s handsomely designed Island Book of Records Volume II, the continuing story of one of Britain’s greatest independent record labels.’ Neil McCormick, The Telegraph ‘best music books of 2024’
‘Packed with new interviews, artefacts and delicious details’ Jim Wirth, MOJO
‘A rich and lovingly curated look at a particularly prolific year in Island Records history.’ Roisin O’Connor, The Independent
In celebration of this year’s 20th anniversary of the album “Passover”, the legendary debut long player from The Black Angels, we’re honored to present a new limited editions of the album featuring the double LP housed in a beautiful silver and gold foil gatefold jacket.
10-songs deep, “Passover” has come again. Reflecting and questioning the intergenerational psychosis of American social life that surrounds us, The Black Angels put forth their answers in song. It’s a “Call To Arms” for those ready to join the good fight, a rock ‘n’ roll salvation during the times we need it the most. As Maas bellows on “Young Man Dead,” “Fire for the hills, pick up speed, and let’s go…”
2xLP deluxe foil gatefold, on colour vinyl, each with 1 of 4 flexis – each a unique track from their legendary 2006 KEXP live session.
This Edition is limited to just 500 copies – shipping in early May – and yes we’ll have copies at AUSTIN PSYCH FEST, where the band will mark two decades of the album with an anniversary performance – in just two weeks, on May 9th, 2026.
Meet the new Uncut Magazine and this month’s cover stars, The Smiths. 40 years on, band members, collaborators and associates hymn “The Queen Is Dead”: “It just shows you the level of prowess, we were firing on all cylinders.” Comes with a FREE 15-track new music CD! In shops Friday or order now: bit.ly/UncutJune2026
Inside our mag: Ringo Starr on childhood heroes, Nashville jams and Fab times… Springsteen goes to war… the secrets of Talk Talk’s masterpiece “Spirit Of Eden” unearthed… The Lemon Twigs power pop freakout detonates >>>
Laurie Anderson on her pioneering run of albums… Ed O’Brien talks inspiration, innovation and what next for Radiohead… the making of “Being Boiled” by The Human League… Chris Isaak’s favourite records… ’80s Glastonbury revisited >>>
Plus! Jeff Parker, Aldous Harding, Kevin Morby, Angélique Kidjo, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Handsome Family, Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, My Bloody Valentine, Lee “Scratch” Perry, The Del Fuegos… and Frank ‘the Wild Jalopeno’ Rodarte! In shops Friday
Lenny Kaye releases his first solo album, Goin’ Local, after more than fifty years as a key figure alongside Patti Smith, as well as his work compiling Nuggets and producing records for artists including Suzanne Vega and Kristen Hersh.
Here, Kaye takes centre stage, handling guitar and pedal steel, backed by local rhythm sections. The album features a handful of collaborators: Patti Smith appears on ‘Solstice’, pianist Matthew Shipp joins ‘Let’s Make a Memory’, and Tim Carbone contributes violin to ‘Pennsylvania Girls’, with David Mansfield providing strings on ‘Yes I Will’.
I feel like I’m a new artist,” laughs Lenny Kaye, on the eve of the release of his debut solo album, “Goin’ Local”.
“I think this album will surprise those who think they know me from what I’ve done previously. The songs are personal, written over a period of years, and I’ve kept them to myself. I believe a song exists because there is a need for it to be written, to explain the dynamics of the human relationship, to look at yourself as if in a mirror and get in touch with a deeper emotion, one that needs to be sung.”
In a career spanning more than half a century, one thing is certain: Lenny’s ability to be uncategorizable, to move through genres and settings, giving each their individual place in his musical evolution. Though best known for being a founding member of Patti Smith’s band, recently celebrating fifty years of their epochal “Horses” album, as well as curating the landmark Nuggets album of Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era, he has been a successful record producer (Suzanne Vega, Soul Asylum, James, Microdisney, Kristin Hersh, Jessi Colter, Allen Ginsberg), as well as time well spent as a member of Jim Carroll’s band, and playing pedal steel in a New York country-billy combo, the Lonesome Prairie Dogs.
Equally known as a writer, he scribed Waylon Jennings’ Autobiography, took a deep dive into the soundscape of the 1920s and 1930s in You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon, and traversed the changing modes of rock and roll in Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments, making himself a minor character bearing witness to the music’s generational progression. “I believe there is rhythm and melody in a sentence, as well as a narrative arc in a guitar solo, and it is my privilege to combine both of these means of expression. Writing is very solitary, not a performance art like music, and to move between each is a way for me to understand what it is I’m playing, and why it is I’m writing.”
“Goin’ Local” began with sessions co-produced by Lenny’s long time bandmate Tony Shanahan, whom he met at casual jam sessions in their shared home town of New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the 1990s, and who later became the bassist in Patti Smith and Her Band. Six of the tracks they worked on became the starting point of the album, including the title song, “Goin’ Local”; but it wasn’t until two years ago that he determined to complete the record he’d begun, adding songs written in the interval, many of which began acoustically.
“I’m a true Capricorn,” he smiles with a nod, “I waited until I had a sense of who I was comfortable with becoming as a solo artist. I have the ability to be a shape-shifter, seeing how to augment and collaborate in a variety of musical settings, but it was important to be faithful to myself, to be one-on-one with the songs that were materializing out of the speakers.”
The included tracks come from diverse inspirations and influences. “To try and specify where each protagonist in a song emerges takes away from the universal aspect of the togetherness we share when entering into the fortunes/misfortunes of human companionship.” He’d rather leave the bittersweet details within lyrics to conjecture: “We’ve all been there, loves lost, loves found, loves that are ill-fated, loves eternal, loves one never forgets, moments to treasure and relive, if only in memory.”
Some of the songs have more definable roots. “World Book Night” was originally written for a short-lived literary holiday where publishers gave out free volumes for volunteers to hand out randomly on the street. As a writer, Lenny is more than happy to celebrate the written word in all its forms. “Pennsylvania Girls” is about the state he now resides in, and as a native New Yorker, his delight in finding a Pennsylvania Girl of his own. “The Things You Leave Behind” has a resonance that strikes home with everyone who amasses cultural objects and memorabilia, amidst the collecting instinct of what-to-do-with that inevitably results.
“A Friend Like You” is his English language version of a hit song by French-Swiss artist Stephan Eicher, which Kaye first heard on a trip to Paris in the 1990s, and adapted lyrically. “Solstice” was written with Patti Smith, in an ongoing collaboration that has encompassed many of their classics, from “Free Money” to “Ghost Dance” to “Radio Ethiopia” to “Southern Cross.” What more needs to be said?
The most poignant song on the album is “Yes I Will,” whose lyrics were composed by his uncle, LarryKusik. “I owe so much to him,” says Lenny. “In 1966, knowing I was starting out in a band at the time, he asked me to assume the persona of Link Cromwell and sing a folk-protest song he’d written in the wake of ‘Eve of Destruction’ called ‘Crazy Like a Fox.’ It was my first time in a recording studio, and though the resulting 45 on Hollywood Records was a non-hit, thankfully so because my life would have taken a much different path for sure, it did give me encouragement that I could be a part of this music that has become my life. And I’m still crazy!”
There is a postscript to this tale. His uncle was a noted songwriter, nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics to “Speak Softly Love,” the Love Theme from The Godfather, as well as “A Time for Us,” the Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet (“he specialized in Love Themes,” Lenny laughs), and somewhere around the turn of the millennium, on their weekly lunch dates, Kaye asked him for some lyrics. “My uncle was in the hospital for several months, and I kept asking his family when I could see him. They wanted to wait until he was better, but I knew he wasn’t going to be. One day, despairing of his condition, I put the lyrics to ‘Yes I Will’ on the music stand, the chords fell to hand, and I burst out weeping as the title circled in the coda. I insisted I needed to see him, and when I visited, sang him the song. He whispered ‘Thank you’ and the next day he passed from this mortal coil. I was so happy to give him some respect and gratitude at the end.”
“Yes I Will” is dedicated to Andy Paley, who was the lead singer in one of Kaye’s first productions, the Sidewinders, and who went on to work with Brian Wilson and on Spongebob Squarepants. He was originally slated to orchestrate the song, but sadly died before his arrangement ideas could be made manifest; a task ably taken up by multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield. Other guests on the album include Tim Carbone (of Railroad Earth) playing violins on “Pennsylvania Girls,” renowned jazz pianist Matthew Shipp on “Let’s Make a Memory” along with background vocalist Lisa Burns of The Lovin’ Kind, John Jackson of the Jayhawks on mandolin (“Every Now and Then”); Lou Rogai (mellotron) and his son Julian (double bass); drummers Mark Sacco, Jeff Barg, and Patti Smith cohort Jay Dee Daugherty.
“It is a great blessing to be able to make music at this time in my life for the pure enjoyment and enlightenment it gifts me, the freedom of playing without expectation, to take on new challenges knowing that the work itself is its own reward.
“I’ve always loved the local, its intimacy and camaraderie, the you-are-there and then taken somewhere. It’s what Lightning Striking is about, when a new moment in time and space reveals itself, figuring out its next trajectory. I’ve learned how to be myself, to be at one with my instrument, with my creative spirit, and I guess the truest “Goin’ Local” is the privilege to go inside my own head, and hear how I sound to me.”
releases July 17th, 2026
A long-overdue solo statement, “Goin’ Local” draws together a lifetime spent shaping and celebrating underground music.
SRC were fixtures of the Grande Ballroom scene alongside The Stooges, MC5 and Alice Cooper, yet their anglophile streak set them apart. Championed by Peter Gabriel and John Peel, the band blended UK pop finesse in the vein of The Zombies with the inventive garage bite of The Pretty Things, plus a dose of Blue Cheer heft.
On their second album, “Milestones”, SRC widened the palette, threading funk, prog and heavy rock into a taut, theatrical balance. The songs still hit hard with hooks, anchored by Gary Quackenbush’s searing lead guitar and the keystone keyboards of his brother Glenn, but now carried a broader, more ambitious sweep.
SRC’s second album isn’t radically different from their debut, but it certainly captures the group in more comfortable and energized form. Rather than go back into the studio, the members of SRC used their recording advance to build a recording setup in their rehearsal space, and on “Milestones”, the group seems more willing to push the songs in a harder and faster direction without losing touch with their psychedelic and progressive influences. Gary Quackenbush steps farther into the forefront with his lead guitar on “Milestones”, demonstrating why he was one of the most acclaimed soloists on the Detroit scene in the 1960s, and he bounces his lines off keyboard man Glenn Quackenbush and rhythm guitarist Steve Lyman with skill and fire.
Scott Richardson’s vocals are also in excellent form on this album, and he performs with greater passion and increased imagination on SRC’s second effort, though he can’t quite overcome some of the lesser material. And SRC were writing songs with a harder and more physical edge for “Milestones”, most notably “Checkmate” and “No Secret Destination,” though if the album has a flaw, it’s the presence of not one but two adaptations of the works of Edvard Grieg — “In the Hall of the Mountain King” and “The Angel Song,”
Some might argue that SRC was best off leaving this sort of thing to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but while the band can’t quite rise above the material, they do sound far better and more comfortable performing Grieg than anyone would have a right to expect. If in many respects, “Milestones” was an experiment, it was a successful one, though it unfortunately didn’t sell as well as the first album, leading to the first steps toward SRC’s eventual breakup.
LP on Jackpot. Cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. All analogue process (AAA) from the original master tapes. Edition of 1000 copies
“Another Country” is the fifth full-length album by Cindy, the San Francisco-based group built around the songwriting of Karina Gill.
Recorded, like all of its predecessors, in their hometown and with a consistent line-up held over from their previous record (the Swan Lake EP from 2024), it is replete with the poetry of private vistas, eavesdropped dramas and confusing winds. These are classic Cindy concerns, and yet, as always, contain new mystery and charm to somehow feel like quiet revelations each time. Another Country is both opaque in its intentions and specific in its presentation, and as such presents the kind of truth that keeps the listener on the search for answers just out of reach.
“The title of this record, Another Country, refers to the James Baldwin novel of that name. The book has a kind of drama that makes sense to me. When I look around, the obvious explanations are not enough. The miasma of feelings and ideas that is supposed to account for it all, doesn’t. Baldwin washes past that to longings that begin to explain. Cindy songs come out of the x-rays my particular brain makes out of what I see and experience.
What you hear on this record is the result of collaboration with the members of Cindy that transforms that shadowy thing into full colour, fully fleshed. Each of them, in music, is sure-footed and unblinking, and making this record together felt like, yes, yes, you see what I mean.”
RIYL: Galaxie 500, Algebra Suicide, Mazzy Star, early Low, Linda Smith, Velvet Underground
The buzz building around this lot has been incredible to watch, so we’re chuffed to be bringing you a fabulous fan package of their hotly anticipated debut album.
The fast-rising Birmingham four-piece deliver a solid set of heart-on-sleeve, emotional indie rock on the back of the powerful live shows that have already earned them a devoted following.
The restless, vagabond anxiety of their single, ’Union Station’, simmers throughout the record alongside exploring the universal reality of the post-teen life learning curve. The skyscraping ambition that overpass show here carries throughout the record, their exuberant, anthemic indie-rock core, complemented by influences as varied as The War On Drugs, Tom Petty, Slowdive and Jeff Lynne. While many debut records feature songs which have been released during a band’s rise, ‘Elsewhere, Always’ is entirely brand new material.
The Dinked Edition is superb. It’s on a snazzy colourway. It’s signed. It’s got an alternative artwork oversleeve (so you get the original artwork too). But it’s super limited. So don’t pass over this opportunity to pick one up!
For Fans of: Wunderhorse | Inhaler | Catfish & the Bottlemen | Sam Fender | Blossoms | The Strokes | Royel Otis | The Killers
“Cost of Living Adjustment” is the sort-of self-titled album from Cola, the Montreal trio of Tim Darcy (vocals/guitar), Ben Stidworthy (bass), and Evan Cartwright (percussion).
C.O.L.A. — an acronym for “Cost of Living Adjustment” is a fitting conceptual framework for the band’s third record. Why? Because C.O.L.A. considers, among other things, socialism vs. hell. It considers: rolling the dice of life. The erie and sweet pangs that nostalgia can provoke.
Following two studio LPs which earned the trio praise from Rolling Stone (Best Indie Rock Albums of 2024), Pitchfork (Best Rock Albums of 2024), Stereogum (Best Songs of 2022) and more, “Cost of Living Adjustment” is abstract, oblique, sometimes strange, whatever you want to call it.
But it is also beautiful, in the classic sense. Beautiful like a painting can be beautiful. It touches on the sublime. It is Cola, the band, at their very best.
Special 3LP Expanded Edition of Cream’s third album, ‘Wheels of Fire’, features the original 4 tracks released as ‘Wheels of Fire: Live at the Fillmore’, as well as 8 additional tracks performed at the March 1968 concerts.
Seven of the additional tracks were issued on ‘Live Cream’ in 1970 and ‘Live Cream Volume 2’ in 1972. “We’re Going Wrong” has never been officially released before.
The groundbreaking ‘Wheels Of Fire’, heard like never before! Uncover the lost tapes and newly compiled rarities collections. Available on 3LP ‘In The Studio Expanded Edition’ with 26 unreleased recordings & super limited free art card, plus 5CD ‘Super Deluxe Edition’ with 37 unreleased recordings and 24-page hardcover book.
The set includes a special, newly remastered stereo version of the nine-track studio portion of Wheels Of Fire. Originally released in 1968 utilising CSG processed recordings, this remastered, de-CSG’d version now presents the album phase corrected, delivering the recordings with greater detail and a crisp soundstage.
Also included are newly remastered mono and stereo versions of the studio album. Sourced from the late Cream producer Felix Pappalardi’s personal reference reels, these recordings have never been released before and include many alternate mixes.
The collection features remastered versions of the four live tracks recorded in March 1968 and originally released on LP2 of Wheels Of Fire, alongside eight additional tracks performed at the March 1968 concerts, including an unreleased live recording of “We’re Going Wrong”, recorded on 10th March 1968 at Winterland Ballroom.
A newly compiled rarities collection is also included, featuring 15 rare recordings, nine of which are previously unreleased. This collection includes early versions, alternate mixes and single versions. Highlights include WHITE ROOM (EARLY VERSION MONO MIX), DESERTED CITIES OF THE HEART (MONO ROUGH MIX / NO STRINGS) and CROSSROADS (MONO SINGLE VERSION), alongside seven additional alternate stereo and mono mixes, three single versions and two rare live recordings.
The set is completed with a hardcover book featuring sleeve notes by Jim Faber and photographs of Cream from the era. The five CDs are housed in a gatefold sleeve and, together with the book, are enclosed within a rigid slipcase with a silver lamination finish.
WHEELS OF FIRE 5CD SUPER DELUXE EDITION chronicles the full creation, and fruition of Cream’s groundbreaking third album.
The set includes a special, newly remastered stereo version of the nine-track studio portion of Wheels Of Fire. Originally released in 1968 utilising CSG processed recordings, this remastered, de-CSG’d version now presents the album phase corrected, delivering the recordings with greater detail and a crisp soundstage.
Also included are newly remastered mono and stereo versions of the studio album. Sourced from the late Cream producer Felix Pappalardi’s personal reference reels, these recordings have never been released before and include many alternate mixes. The collection features remastered versions of the four live tracks recorded in March 1968 and originally released on LP2 of Wheels Of Fire, alongside eight additional tracks performed at the March 1968 concerts, including an unreleased live recording of “We’re Going Wrong”, recorded on 10th March 1968 at Winterland Ballroom.
A newly compiled rarities collection is also included, featuring 15 rare recordings, nine of which are previously unreleased. This collection includes early versions, alternate mixes and single versions. Highlights include WHITE ROOM (EARLY VERSION MONO MIX), DESERTED CITIES OF THE HEART (MONO ROUGH MIX / NO STRINGS) and CROSSROADS (MONO SINGLE VERSION), alongside seven additional alternate stereo and mono mixes, three single versions and two rare live recordings.
The set is completed with a hardcover book featuring sleeve notes by Jim Faber and photographs of Cream from the era. The five CDs are housed in a gatefold sleeve and, together with the book, are enclosed within a rigid slipcase with a silver lamination finish.
All tracks have been newly remastered. Available on black vinyl as a Record StoreDay 2026 exclusive.
The Fat Angel Sings 