Numero

Far from the twin epicenters of New York and Miami, Carlos Ruiz and his Ebirac label were both feeling and generating the aftershocks of the mid-'70s salsa boom. Holed up in their own bustling Puerto Rican community center on Chicago's west side, these th

Their shambolic 1994 debut, remastered from the original tapes and presented in lavish, gatefold form. A mix of restrained loud and purposeful quiet, WhatFunLifeWas's eleven tracks unfold at a marathon runner's pace, picking up speed when necessary, but i

Sophomore effort from the Wichita, Texas, slowcore masters. Originally issued in 1996 on King Coffey's Trance Syndicate label, Beheaded is a dark and brooding affair. The braided, triple guitar attack of brothers Matt and Bubba Kadane and Tench Coxe is mo

In the late '70s, three do-right women from Cleveland forged a brief partnership with Ohio's everything man, Lou Ragland. Unlike the prefabricated singing combos of the day, Lily Pearson, Annette Warren, and Avetta Henry swapped lead duties as situation d

Previously issued on three rare cassette-only editions, Joanna Brouk's 1980 sophomore album The Space Between has finally been given spacious LP quarters. The side-long title track, performed by Brouk's Mills College instructor and sometime-lover Bill Mar

Home to Cuca Records and hundreds of Nashville-fantasizing pluckers and singers, Wisconsin’s Driftless region was a hotbed of country music in the 1960s. Influenced by old-timey ethnic songs, Bakersfield outlaws, countrypolitan rainbows, and the lonesome

Numero Group and Rush Hour present: the V4 Visions label sampler, 1990-1994. A five-song overview of the pioneering UK street soul label that lived at the confluence of lovers rock, deep house, swing beat and jungle. In anticipation of the the forthcoming

Cream vinyl! A truly underground document of the national obsession with heavy, mind-bent psychedelia. Originating in the unassuming suburb of Prairie Village, Kansas, Bulbous Creation seem to have warped directly from the wrong side of the looking glass

2K prepper-rock for the underemployed. Tracked at home in 1999, the 1975 EP expands on Stratosphere's slacker-positive dreamscape, with layers of guitars both clean and fuzzy, humming organ, and – gasp! – a drum machine. Needle down, candles on.

As a robust rock underground got swallowed alive by the Major Label Industrial Complex, the very autonomous Unwound – Olympia, Washington's Great Noise Hope – toed the troublesome line between pay check and Check Engine light. Captured in the gaps of a ru

Chicago’s tangled web of micro labels and small time players is no better illustrated than by the career of Otis Brown. In his ten years on the scene, Brown ran four imprints, warmed stages for Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, and Alvin Cash, greased the palms o

The third installment of Numero's ode to lowrider souldies, Rust Side Story compiles highly sought after sweet soul singles from the Buck Eye State. Prepare for a low and slow ride from Youngstown to Dayton, Cleveland to Columbus, Toledo to Cincinnati, al

From his studio in central Bobo-Dioulasso, West African photographer Sory Sanlé documented a nation's transformation from colonial foothold to cosmopolitan oasis. Captured on on 6x6 medium format Rolleiflex SL66, Sanlé’s keen eye provides an intimate look

Synth chutes, synth ladders, popcorn 808 beats, dirge-y chants and busted sub-woofer hums from inner-galactic soul pioneers Nathaniel Woolridge and Anthony Freeman intertwine to create this hypnotic, mythical 1984 LP from Newark, New Jersey. The most dama

A lounge in the Poconos located just inside a Holiday Inn, 1973. The smoky haze clears to reveal a middle-aged couple on a one-foot high stage, prattling on about the weather or Watergate before launching into a serviceable cover of Burt Bacharach's "Do Y

Switched-On Eugene documents the Eugene Electronic Music Collective and some of the many synthed-out figures in and around Oregon’s iconic hippie stronghold during the 1980s. Whether connected by membership, geography, or the tape trading scene, the artis