Featured
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Efficient Space / Be With Records
Steve Hiett – Girls In The Grass
$42.00
Visit product page →Three emotional years in the making, Be With and Efficient Space finally present Steve Hiett’s Girls In The Grass. Pressed alongside the long awaited reissue of his one-shot masterpiece Down On The Road By The Beach, these ten balearic soul instrumentals are of equal necessity; unrivalled beauty rescued from the fashion photographer-guitarist’s Paris Tapes (1986-1997).
While recordings unintended for release should often be approached with caution, this is a rare case of unheard material being assembled as an indispensable and coherent piece. Girls In The Grass is something super special. The light and shadow that defines Hiett’s music is arguably more compelling here. It speaks to us in a language that feels profound, yet entirely comforting and familiar.
Girls In The Grass reintroduces Hiett’s languid electric blues boogie, crafted on Saturday afternoons with fellow art director Simon Kentish. Kentish would cook, pour some wine and then utilise his arsenal of technology. He’d dial up a chugging rhythm, together with some ambient pads or keyboard textures, and anchor the weightless gauze of Hiett’s six-stringed touch. - Effecient Space
Label: Efficient Space – ES011, Be With Records – BEWITH062LP
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: UK
Released: 20 Sep 2019
Genre: Electronic, Rock, Blues
Style: AOR
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Efficient Space / Be With Records
Steve Hiett – Down On The Road By The Beach
$45.00
Visit product page →For the first time since its inception 36 years ago, Steve Hiett’s elusive 'Down On The Road By The Beach' is finally made available outside of Japan. Most recognized in the fashion sphere as an English photographer and graphic designer, Hiett's transportive audio portraits amplify his serpentine guitar to the infinite blue, recorded across Paris, Tokyo and New York with no coastline in sight. Now widely celebrated as a desert island disc, very little is actually known of its unfathomable genesis.
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A career devotee of Brian Wilson’s ground breaking harmonies, Hiett shot The Beach Boys for Rolling Stone - as well as The Doors, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix (in one of his final performances at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival) - while establishing himself as a fashion photographer. Decamping to Paris in 1972, he began what would become 20-year collaborations with Vogue Paris and Marie Claire, printing his signature warm, saturated and vibrantly hued snapshots.
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In 1982, representatives from Tokyo's Galerie Watari visited him to propose a solo exhibition. Asking if he could insert a 7” of original music into the back of the exhibition catalogue, Hiett laid down ‘Blue Beach - Welcome To Your Beach’ in a Parisian radio station, playing all of the instruments himself, and two more cuts in New York with Yoko Ono, The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan hired-gun Elliott Randall. Once dispatched, the phone began ringing off the hook with requests for him to fly to Tokyo. Assuming these long-distance callers were wanting him to check proofs for the book, it wasn’t until he arrived that he discovered CBS/Sony had facilitated an entire album. Heitt hastily gripped some petty cash, bought a guitar and retreated to his hotel room to start writing.
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Entering the studio the following day, he was further surprised by a waiting room of session players known as Moonriders - one of Japan's most acclaimed rock bands of the 1980s. Intimidated by their indecipherable sheet music, Hiett suggested Randall join them and with money being no object for major labels at the time, his wingman was on the next plane out of New York to finalise the high production indulgence. Near-ambient arrangements that float in a space between The Durutti Column, Steve Cropper and Ashra, 'Down On The Road By The Beach' also crowns Hiett the master of recontextualization with his zero-gravity blues visions of Roll Over Beethoven, Santo & Johnny's 'Sleep Walk' and the 1967 Eddie Floyd soul hit 'Never Found A Girl'. – Bandcamp
Label: Efficient Space – ES010, Be With Records – BEWITH061LP
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Gatefold
Country: UK
Released: 20 Sep 2019
Genre: Electronic, Jazz, Blues
Style: Smooth Jazz, Fusion, Ambient
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Be With Records
Kimiko Kasai & Herbie Hancock - Butterfly
$48.00
Visit product page →“Recorded in Tokyo and released in 1979, it features a collection of Kasai’s silken reinterpretations, from Herbie Hancock’s own disco monster ‘I Thought It Was You’, and a butter smooth rework of ‘Sunlight’, to the sun-drenched ballad ‘Butterfly’, and a bubbling version of Stevie Wonder’s timeless ‘As’. Backed by an all-star group featuring Alphonse Mouzon on drums and Benny Maupin on sax, original copies of Butterfly have been incerasingly hard to come by, with a 1997 reissue also only available in Japan. Restoring the iconic artwork complete with OBI strip and 4-page folded insert,Kimiko Kasai and Harbie Hancock’s Butterfly is released on 20th April via Be With Records.” – The Vinyl Factory
“It is music with which to soothe a furrowed brow or two. There are elegant contributions from Hancock, Maupin on soprano and tenor saxophones and Webster Lewis on organ and acoustic piano. The trio float over sumptuous grooves laid down by Jackson, Summers, guitarist Ray Obiedo and drummer Alphonse Mouzon. Along with the Hancock originals, some with lyrics written by Hancock's sister Jean, the album includes Stevie Wonder's "As" and Graselli & Malanet's "Head In The Clouds.” – All About Jazz
Item description:
Artist:
Kimiko Kasai with Herbie Hancock
Title:
Butterfly
Label:
Be With Records
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Remastered
Pressing:
UK
Release Date:
20 Apr 2018
Genre:
Jazz, Funk / Soul
Style:
Soul-Jazz
Catalog No:
BEWITH028LP
Condition:
New
