Originally relelased on the Moondog label in 1955.

Originally released by Epic in 1953.

From the 1950s, when Moondog was homeless and busking in NYC. ‘His later records may be better known, but this is the real shit’ (Byron Coley, The Wire).
Startlingly remastered at Abbey Road.

‘Three years ago Honest Jon’s put out her late ‘60s and early 70s recordings and it’s the most unimpeachable collection of heartbreak you’ll ever hear. This new album is just as good’, NME

‘Early contender for 2009’s album of the year. Yes, already’ (Mojo). ‘The sheer soul in her voice is revolutionary’ (NME).**** The Independent, The Times. ‘**** a masterclass in gritty southern soul’ (Daily Mail).

‘10/10… fucks your brain so hard you’ll feel like a vegetable afterwards’ (Vice).
With guests including Mark E. Smith, Dalek, Steve Beresford and Sensational.

Thirteen and twenty-two minute slices of carnival thunder and lightning from the hill above Port Of Spain in Trinidad. Lengths of steel, assorted bits of metal, African drums. An Honest Jon’s recording.

Originally released in 1980: the final work to emerge from the Black Ark studio, before its permanent destruction, crossing the soundworld of Roast Fish Collie Weed And Cornbread into new hybrids.

‘... deliciously haunting… rekindles the spirit of DIY that their British counterparts have so patently forgotten’, The Times; ‘startlingly poignant’, Metro.

‘one of the most charming idiosyncrasies I have heard all year… where truth is seized accidentally and musical shambles are sweet, virtuous and silly… like watching early Bunuel without subtitles’ (Plan B).

‘The bad influences’, from Bogota, with their third album for us: twenty-eight gorgeous variations of saudade, in a warmly acoustic, post-punk take on Tropicalismo — impromptu, snapshot and sublime.

‘Lovely… another gem from Nashville’s underground’, Word; ‘one of the finest pop records ever made by a Nashville band’, Nashville Scene.

‘*****’, The Independent; ‘captivating… Q Recommends’; ‘there is no end of exhilarating music on this beguiling album’, The Sunday Times; ‘full of heartstopping musical twists and turns’, The Beat.

‘*****’, The Independent; ‘a vibrancy and energy that make it impossible to sit still’, Metro; ‘shines from Shina to Shina’, The Beat; ‘CD Of The Week… astonishing’, Daily Telegraph; ‘incendiary’, The Observer.

‘an exquisitely poignant, evocative record’, Daily Telegraph; ‘wonderful… album of the year’, Sunday Times; ‘simply a classic album. Music by the people, for the people,’ The Voice.

‘superlative’, Mojo; ‘sensational’, The Observer; ‘hugely evocative and poignant’, Daily Telegraph; ‘*****’ The Times, Metro; ‘sheer joy from start to finish’, Sunday Telegraph.

Modern Nigerian music starts here.
‘*****’, Mojo; ‘these songs leap out of the past like madeleines soaked in palm wine’, The Observer; ‘impeccably curated and packaged’, The Wire.

‘*****’, The Times, Independent On Sunday, Daily Telegraph, What’s On, Evening Standard, The Independent. ‘Marvellous pop — catchy, fun, young, effortless’, The Times; ‘one of the delights of the age’, Songlines.

More open-hearted, bitter-sweet, mash-up postcards to the here and now, from young black London. 
Proper Brit Pop.

Still deeper forays into the musical landscape of the Windrush generation.

A dazzling range of calypso, mento, joropo, steelband, palm-wine and r’n'b. Expert revivals of stringband music, from way back, alongside proto-Afro-funk.
An uproarious selection of songs about the H-Bomb and modern phones, prostitution and Haile Selassie, mid-life crisis and the London Underground, racism and solidarity, the Highway Code and a 100% West Indian Royal Wedding.

For example some frantic British-Guianan joropo music-hall about Eatwell Brown from Clapham, who starts out biting off a piece of his mother-in-law’s face at a party, then devours everything in his path… a chunk of Brixton Prison, a Union Jack, a policeman’s uniform. Or Marie Bryant — collaborator of Lester Young and Duke Ellington — taking time off from skewering the South African PM Daniel Malan at her West End revue, to contribute some arch, swinging filth about uber-genitalia.

Superior sound, courtesy of Abbey Road, D&M and Pallas; lovely gatefold sleeve; full-size booklet, with full notes, and fabulous previously-unseen photographs, including a set from the family archive of Russ Henderson (who led the first, impromptu Notting Hill Carnival march, in 1966).