Numero Group Us レコード& CD

Review: Bailey's Nervous Kats was a teenage dream who combined surf, rock n' roll, exotica, and r&b in their music. They operated in the rural fringes of Northern California in the 1960s and released only one long player, sadly. The Nervous Kats is it and it now gets reissued by the quality Numero Group. It came right at the end of the band's time together and was released by the Emma imprint in 1965. It's a real doozy of the era and will take you to a time and place you didn't live but make you wish you had.

Review: First came the digital exclusive, then the 7" repress. This newly reissued Numero version of The Belles' 'Melvin' is a throwback to the 1966 garage rock riffer by the all-girl group, known for their releases on two released Tiara Records around that time. A monologuing, excitable song, 'Melvin' hears the girls pine after one local stud, Melvin, who visits the narrator at midnight. The track is flanked by 'Come Back' and 'Unchained Melody', an instrumental jumper and a waltzing paean for Melvin's love, respectively.

Review: Not to be confused with the contemporary songwriter Belles, 1960s Canadian soft rockers The Bells, 1980s British pop rockers The Belle Stars, or the seminal Detroit techno anthem by Jeff Mills, Numero Group invite you to step back in time and experience one of the best under-referenced 'response songs' of all time. Taking a lead from Them's 1965 hit 'Gloria', The Belles rework the format to sing about a guy they like. "M-E-L-V-I-I-I... M-E-L-V-I-N, Meeeeelllvviinn" the chorus kind of goes, backing track set to a lackadaisical, classic, jangling, looped rock 'n' roll stomp. Backed with the B-side, 'Come Back', which sets a lighter but brisker mood with its up tempo vocal quartet, delicate snare rolls and catchy six string chords, this is quite the trip to and through another era.

Review: Israeli guitarist Charlie Megira has an eclectic palette, with his music blending every influence from 50s trash rock, garage, surf, and goth. 'The Hefker Girl' is a new album, coinciding with a recent reissue from his back catalogue, 'Da Abtomatic Meisterzinger Mambo Chic' - an LP which ironizes the neoliberal ethos of postwar America. This one, by contrast, charts Megira's collaborative jams with fellow Israeli instrumentalist Michal Kahan, and is a more earnest, heads-down affair. Expect reverb-drenched new wave, 80s tropes and talent on the guitar beyond common comprehension.

Review: Provocative post-punk from Israel’s undercover goth prince. Megira’s lone album with the Modern Dance Club, Love Police, flaunted a grimier, more driving vision of his brand of trashy no wave. Spread across 31 tracks and two LPs, Love Police schizophrenically mixes industrial soundscapes, surf ditties, hardcore, swamp pop, bubble grunge, screaming, ecstasy, and enough fuzz to warrant a needle check. With this new reissue spread across a mammoth four sides of vinyl, you can be damn sure you’ll get your money’s worth from Megira, a modern-day punk polymath.

Review: Resurfacing from obscurity after 58 years in the Louis Wayne Moody Pictures vault, this unearthed soundtrack unveils a treasure trove of melancholic melodies, mournful guitars, and eerie echoes. It is another of the seemingly endless gems to come from the great folks at Number Uno and is laden with themes of abandonment, shattered dreams, and existential ponderings. The album, titled They Move in the Night, weaves a narrative of moral ambiguity and tearful farewells, set against the backdrop of lukewarm diner coffee and the relentless pursuit of society's shadows. Fascinating stuff.

Review: Numero Group embark on a conceptual soundtrack release, allegedly having discovered this (mysteriously uncredited) album on the vaulted shelves of the "Louis Wayne Moody pictures" archive. Building on their eerily confounding Louis Wayne Moody compilation series, which compiles lost 60s soundtrack cuts and one-offs by short-lived band projects (and sowing real confusion as to whether the artists featured actually existed), this is certainly a dubious continuation. However, the artists featured here - which takes its inspiration as an alt-reality, alt-score of the classic film You're Not From Around Here - did really exist, albeit at the sacrifice of much recognition in their days. Cycling through lost ditties from The Dropouts, The Florescents, Branko Mataja and Johnny Blue, to name a few, this one packs a backpack's worth of grieving guitars, somber surf and haunting hiss, zipped tight with the teeth of abandonment, dashed dreams, moral ambiguity, fate, tearful goodbyes, and lukewarm diner coffee.