Back catalogue: Funk Soul & Jazz

Notes: In celebration of the legendary 100 Club, a venue with as much character as the bands booked to play there, Ditto are publishing a book of anecdotal stories from its 75-year history. From the musicians who have played there through to the bar staff and the customers they served, each unique story adds to the legend and myth.

The 100 Club, launched in 1942 as the Feldman Swing Club, was frequented by GIs during the war, and by the stars of British and global jazz in the 1950s, including BB King and Muddy Waters. But it was in the 1970s that it became an iconic venue for the punk scene, hosting "the 100 Club Punk Special", an event which included the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash, Buzzcocks and The Damned. The event cemented punk as an idea and subculture.

It wasn't just incredible bands that emerged from this independent venue, but tribes of fans devoted to new ways of thinking. "100 Club Stories" will be published in spring, with various digital activations and events throughout the 75th anniversary year which runs until September 2018. The book will feature stories from everyone from club punters to internationally famous musicians, alongside archive imagery, much of it completely unseen prior to now.

Case bound with a screen printed cover, coloured papers and special inks, a truly fitting artefact for one of the UK's most beloved institutions.

162 pages, 29 x 21cm, hard cover.

Notes: Introducing over 600 titles, including Rio's Indie Pop, Novos Compositores and the Sao Paulo Scene, Minas New Generation, MPB, Samba Soul, Hip Hop, Instrumental, Local Music and more!

Notes: This book celebrates over 100 years of photography in the Caribbean. From calypso kings to Vodou priests, revolutionaries to dictators, colonialism to independence, slave trade to tourist paradise - the many uses and abuses of the Caribbean are vividly captured here.

The image of the Caribbean is as much a creation of the outsider as it is the complex identity of its people, a melting pot of races created out of the participants of the 400 year slave trade - enforced Africans, indigenous Caribbeans and their colonisers - French, Spanish, Dutch, English.

From luscious and beautiful backdrop of tourism and hedonist retreat, to colonial outpost and revolutionary threat within North America's backyard, the complex identity of the Caribbean stands at the intersection of tourism, the detritus of the slave trade, the decline of colonialism and the region's tropicality.

The regions politics span an almost constantly changing path of ideas, radicalism and revolutionaries - from Castro's Cuba and Michael Manley's Jamaica, to the violent right-wing dictatorships of Haiti's Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier and the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo.

The hundreds of fascinating and unique photographs featured here illustrate more than one hundred years of Caribbean history, culture and industry as well as the subsequent diaspora of its people to America, England, Canada and elsewhere.

Introduction by Paul Gilroy. Edited by Stuart Baker.

Paul Gilroy is the author of There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (1987), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), Black Britain - A Photographic History (2004) amongst others.

Stuart Baker is the editor of a number of photography and design books all of which deal with culture and identity including Punk 45 (with Jon Savage), Dancehall (with Beth Lesser), Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti (with Leah Gordon), Voguing (with Chantal Regnault), Bossa Nova, Freedom, Rhythm & Sound (both with Gilles Peterson) and more. He is also the founder of Soul Jazz Records.collection.

Notes: A thrilling account of life with Sun Ra's Arkestra and New York's avant-garde jazz scenes of the 1970s-90s. In this memoir, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charts the rise of the New York loft jazz scene, offering a fascinating portrait of advanced music in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan from the 1970s through the 1990s, including thrilling stories about the politically important Bed-Stuy venue The East and the author's tutelage under composer and long-time Archie Shepp collaborator Cal Massey. Along the way, Abdullah covers his spiritual development as a Buddhist, battles with addiction, tribulations as a father, lessons from Sun Ra and working life as an educator and cab driver. Trumpeter and educator Ahmed Abdullah was born in Harlem in 1947. An important figure in the New York loft jazz movement, in 1972 he formed a group called Abdullah, two years before joining the Sun Ra Arkestra, with whom he played for more than 20 years. He is a founding member of the bands Melodic Art-Tet, The Group and NAM, and of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium. Abdullah is the music director at Sistas' Place in Brooklyn, and teaches music at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan and an elementary school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

Notes: These lavish, 28cm x 28cm hard-back books from classic Universal artists feature around 100 pages of essays, beautiful photographs and memorabilia. One of the most influential songwriters and performers of all-time, Stevie Wonder has been making music for getting close to half a century. It is almost impossible to think of him not being there. 'At The Close Of A Century' - originally released in 1999 - offers the greatest overview of his career to date. Packaged lavishly and annotated thoughtfully, this four-CD set takes us from the rambunctious rush that was his debut single 'Fingertips' (Parts 1 and 2) through his remarkable run of 60s smashes, highlights from his 70s classic albums through to his towering ballads from the 80s and 90s. Often as irresistible as it gets, 'At The Close Of A Century' is one of the great documents in popular music.

Notes: This deluxe hard-back book features hundreds of stunning full size record cover designs of Bossa Nova and Brazilian music from the 1960s. The book also comes complete with full accompanying text, essays and interviews on the historical, political and social context of this Brazilian music as well as features on all the important artists and musicians of the era such as Sergio Mendes, Tom Jobim, Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Caetano Veloso and many more.

Bossa Nova, born in Rio de Janeiro, became a worldwide musical phenomenon, quickly spreading to the USA and the rest of the world. Subsequent musical styles such as the rise of MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira) and Tropicalia are also featured in the book. Bossa Nova emerged at the end of the 1950s, the music (and glorious designs) reflecting a new period of great optimism in the country. Brazil had just elected a new president, a new five-year plan for prosperity had been laid down and the architect Oscar Niemeyer had drawn up his plans for the city of Brasilia. By 1964, as Bossa Nova was taking the world by storm, tanks rode through Rio as Brazil came under a violent military dictatorship that would oppress the lives of Brazilians for the next twenty years.

Notes: Rare Groove, Acid Jazz, Trip Hop, Abstract, New Jazz/Future Jazz... This is the world's first "club jazz" disc guide, written by leading experts in the genre, connecting various styles over a 30 year period.

Notes: Since late 2001, Wax Poetics has pioneered a new vision for music journalism, serving as the nexus between music history and record collecting, and the magazine's readership has grown exponentially, making musical anthropologists out of average music listeners.

Cover Story vividly explores an element of music culture that has withered with the advent of MP3s and digital downloading.

Records possess a visual as well as an aural capacity for storytelling, and the record cover "eye candy for the music lover" speaks a language rooted in the environment and era of the music itself. World renowned DJs, writers, and collectors selected the rare, unique, and inspired album covers featured on these pages; illustrated as a visual essay, Cover Story exhibits the diverse art forms and design styles of the record cover, each telling its own story, graphically narrating the vibrant subculture of record collecting through the art of the sleeve.

It's a must have for record connoisseurs and art aficionados alike, and as a music, art, and pop culture book - Cover Story easily spans multiple audiences.

***Book is in Japanese text ***

Notes: 'Cuba: Music and Revolution: Original Album Cover Art of Cuban Music: Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1959-90 ' is a stunning new deluxe 250-page large format hardback book compiled and edited by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that features many 100s of stunning and unique Cuban record sleeve designs made since the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959. These album covers have rarely been seen (nor heard) outside of Cuba and show a rich previously hidden history of both music and design.

'Cuba: Music and Revolution' is the first ever book about Cuban record sleeve design and has been five years in the making, made in full co-operation with the Cuban government. The record sleeve designs reflect both the rich cultural Latin musical legacy of Cuba, as well as the political and aesthetic influence of revolutionary Communism, which manifests itself both in the music created on the island and the artwork of the designs included here.

Cuban music is the source of much Latin music in the 20th century. Salsa, the all-encompassing Latin music that came out of New York in the 1970s, and soon spread across Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, owes all of its success to the Cuban music on which it is fundamentally based.

These record sleeves help document the dramatic change in Cuba's identity from that of 1950s tourist paradise to socialist state. Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United States imposed a trade embargo which exists to this day, and as a consequence the many 100s of Cuban records featured here have rarely been seen outside of Cuba.

The book is edited and compiled by Gilles Peterson, BBC broadcaster, record label owner, DJ, record collector, founder of Worldwide FM and Stuart Baker, founder of Soul Jazz Records. Together they have edited two earlier critically-acclaimed music and design books 'Freedom, Rhythm and Sound - Revolutionary Jazz Cover Art 1965-83' and 'Bossa Nova and The Rise of Brazilian Music in the 1960s'.

In conjunction with the deluxe book, Soul Jazz Records will be releasing an album also compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, charting the rise of Cuban music in the 1970s and featuring many of the artists who appear in this book.

Notes: A definitive guide to the 1000 best collections of Sweet Soul Music, featuring artists such as: Earth, Wind & Fire, Otis Redding, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, The Temptations and hundreds more!

Notes: Disc Collection Soundtrack (Japan Text)

Featuring titles: The Godfather, Titanic, Dances With Wolves, Blade Runner, Singin' In The Rain, Breakfast At Tiffany's, Rain Man, The Deer Hunter, American Beauty, The Terminator, Blue Velvet, etc...

Notes: This is a guidebook to groovy music - put together by one of the grooviest Japanese DJs. Sunaga T really opens up his crate with this one, presenting a wide range of albums from around the globe, all brought together for their appeal to fans of the modern groove. The tome offers up rare jazz, Brazilian, Latin, vocal, soul, and soundtrack sides, all laid out in a format that offers a cover image, artist, label, date, and title information in English, plus some more text in Japanese. Even cooler, though, is that each album is scored along an axis of traits, showing how it scores in terms of BPM, groove, ore record, and rarity!

Notes: A collection of poems by Sun Ra from the Alton Abraham - Sun Ra Collection at the University of Chicago, selected and translated to spanish by Mariana Castillo Deball, Tania Islas Weinstein and Alberto Ortega.

The adventure began in a library that looks like a spaceship, next to a monument in the shape of a burned marshmallow that celebrates the first atomic reaction generated by humans. A plaque in the monument suggests that the powerful energy should be used for beneficial purposes. Inside this lunar library is the Special Collections Centre at the University of Chicago, that keeps the archive of Alton Abraham - Sun Ra Collection, comprising the period 1822-2008. Alton Abraham (1927-1999), entrepreneur and hospital technician, was a friend and partner of Sun Ra, and throughout his life he collected manuscripts, ephemera, artifacts, photographs and audio-visual recordings of the work of Sun Ra and his collaborators. Within the archive, which occupies 48 m of linear shelf space (146 boxes and a large folder) we found Sun Ra's wallet, containing his lawyer's business card, the insurance receipt for his car, a cabalistic amulet, and a million dollar bill perforated in the center. We also discovered Sun Ra's typed poems, with handwritten corrections and in various versions.

His poems generate a parallel geometry, a world that is precise and ambiguous at the same time. A sidereal enthusiasm made us think that the translation of his poems into our mother tongue could bring us close to his cosmos, and simultaneously allow us to share them with the Spanish-speaking firmament.

Selection and translation by Mariana Castillo Deball, Tania Islas Weinstein and Alberto Ortega.

Notes: A photographic mapping of the places in the story of Joy Division and their singer Ian Curtis and the space he left behind. With contributions from people who knew him, worked with him, or were just inspired by him and the music the band created.

Notes: Soul Jazz Records are proud to present this amazing collection of sleeves from the deepest, deepest jazz music ever - compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records).

This is a unique collection of cover artwork of revolutionary jazz music between 1965-83. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the civil rights movement of the 1960s loom large as self-determination, economic power and musical freedom led to jazz artists finding new paths - both musical and economic.

Years before the D-I-Y cultural revolution of punk, Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others 'took control' of their own work by recording, releasing and distributing their own music themselves.

The record sleeves of this era are as iconic and historically unique as the music itself and a striking reflection of the time; pre-desktop publishing, pre-internet these small-run (sometimes as low as 500 copies), self-made sleeves are graphically bold and radical.

'Freedom, Rhythm and Sound' is the first ever collection of this fascinating goldmine of album art, which represents the first wave of inspired independent production within popular music.

'Freedom, Rhythm and Sound' includes a large introduction contextualising the music and artwork as well as features on many of the people involved. Alongside the musicians mentioned above these include Rashied Ali, Steve Reid, Mary Lou Williams, Horace Tapscott, Lloyd McNeil, Tribe, The Last Poets, The Pharoahs, Philip Cohran, Black Artists Group and many others.

Notes: This is a unique collection of cover artwork of revolutionary jazz releases in the USA in the 1970s, a time of great political and social importance for African-American artists.

Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John Coltrane loom large as self-determination, economic power and musical freedom led to artists finding new paths both musical and economic. Away from the mainstream, many of these musicians chose to take control of their economic worth by recording, releasing and distributing their own material. Thirty years later and these artefacts are a striking reflection of the time; pre-desktop publishing, pre-internet these small-run (sometimes as low as 500 copies), self-made sleeves are as iconic and historically important as the revolution of DIY culture that sprang out of punk. Soul Jazz Records have produced many releases relating to this music and this book is the first ever collection of this amazing artwork.

The book comes with a large introduction contextualising the music and artwork and relating how the music came about along with interviews with many of the people involved.

Notes: Snowboy? Author... Conguero... Rockabilly... anything else? To say that the author of the highly anticipated 'From Jazz Funk & Fusion To Acid Jazz: The History Of The UK Jazz Dance Scene' is unique would be an understatement. Mark Cotgrove aka Snowboy, is a son of Southend-On-Sea, a jazz-man, a soulboy who dresses like a rockabilly - quiff - biker boots and all, who maintains a global reputation as an Afro Cuban percussionist, bandleader, DJ, club promoter, music critic and journalist. Snowboy has spent the last 10 years putting together this amazing 300 page book which, through 200+ interviews, documents the UK's unique Jazz Dance scene from the seventies to the mid-nineties. This is a labour of love dedicated to the dancers and the DJs he's grown up alongside on the dancefloors of clubs all over the UK, like The Goldmine, Electric Ballroom, Berlin and The Wag. As a musician, Snowboy was pivotal in the UK Acid Jazz scene. He has released 15 albums and 20 singles in a career that spans over 25 years and has taken him and his authentic Afro-Cuban sound to concert stages all over the world. A World-leader in Afro-related History, Music and Art. Professor Robert Farris Thompson of Yale University states in his 'Foreward' to the book: "Shakespeare himself, who once poked fun at over-elegance in favour of direct Anglo Saxon, would have been proud of this lad. In sum, the cultural significance of the text is immense. It is a classic in the field of dance and music."

Notes: In addition to the story of a professional rebirth in difficult circumstances, this book contains everything you could ask for in a modern on-the-road adventure between present times and distant past. You will read words like Funk, Motown, and Philly, or artist's names Like Lonnie Liston Smith, Gil Scott Heron and The Drifters. You will meet unknown artists, wonderful characters, ordinary and unique at the same time; instruments from another era such as the Revox, magnetic tapes, sound burgers and ribbon microphones. There is music, but there is also art, history, metropolitan ghettos, emotions and even the Italian-American mafia, in a tasty cocktail from which it is impossible to separate.

Notes: Groove Presents 45 Cover Museum book, featuring rare 7" picture sleeve images all in a full color, 7" package that's just the size of a vintage 45

Notes: Indepth and comprehensive Japan only Straight Jazz Guidebook covering Europe, USA and Japan from late 1950's jazz up to present day labels like Ricky Tick and the Deja Vu with full artist index. Full Japanese text with allbum sleeve pictures and full tracklistings of each album reviewed. An excellent jazz information source with additional Japanese text interviews with Gilles Peterson, Ricky Tick & Paolo Scotti.

Notes: Robert Millis's Indian Talking Machine is a 244 page full colour hardcover book with two CDs containing 46 tracks from shellac discs spanning 1903 to 1949, which Millis collected in India and compiled for their first ever CD release; the book contains over 300 photographs of 78rpm record collections, collectors, and ephemera, as well as detailed track notes and an essay.

Limited-edition one-time pressing of 1000 copies!

These photos are true "record porn" (that is, shellac 78rpm record porn) -- photographs of shelves groaning under the weight of unimaginable titles, beautiful label- and sleeve-designs from long-gone eras, wind-up talking machines, crammed antique shops, forgotten artists, and more, all of which somehow survived (often barely) India's archival obstacles -- dust, heat, floods, rebellion, partition, and war.

Indian Talking Machine is the result of nearly a year in India photographing record collections, interviewing collectors, and visiting archives and record markets; a personal take on the vast worlds of Indian music and the intricacies of collecting sound. One of the earliest non-Western outposts of the "recording industry," India's first recordings were made in 1902. The country's music is as beautiful as it is complex, as subtle as it is profound, and as divine as it is simple; these recordings offer virtuoso instrumental performances, jaw-dropping vocal renditions, folk music, comedy recordings, and even animal impressions. The 78rpm records were transferred by Jonathan Ward (Excavated Shellac) and mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Michael Graves (Analog Africa, Dust-to-Digital, Hank Williams: The Garden Spot Programs, 1950 (2014), and more).

Robert Millis is a founding member of Climax Golden Twins and AFCGT, a Fulbright Scholar, a solo artist, and a frequent contributor to the Sublime Frequencies label. He compiled and co-produced Victrola Favorites in 2007 (DTD 011CD), and created both the Burmese Crying Princess (2013) and Korean Scattered Melodies (2013) LPs for Sublime Frequencies, as well as the films This World Is Unreal Like a Snake in a Rope (SF 073DVD, 2012) and Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan (2006). In short, he knows what he is doing. You will not be disappointed.

Includes performances by Professor Abdul Aziz Khan, Gauhar Jan, Mysore Chaudiah, Musiri Subramania Iyer, Bangalore Nagaratnam, the Vyas Brothers, Talim Hossein, Babu Aughor Nath Chuckerbutty, L.C. Bural, Veena Shanmuga Vadivoo, Professor Barkatullah Khan, and many more.

Notes: Rittor brings you Koko Hanagawa's & Yusuke Ogawa's 'Japanese Jazz 1950s to 1980s'; an essential resource for fans of rare jazz albums - an ultra-cool discography that's done in the same style as other Japanese books on American music - but which focuses on rare bits from Japan. Like other volumes of this type, this one specifically selects the coolest of the cool - really standout records from some of the best decades in Japanese jazz. Each title is presented with a full colour cover image, original date, song titles, and personnel, although some of the last two pieces of information is in Japanese, given the origin of the material. The authors are right on the money in their choices as they've picked some of the best hardbop, soul jazz, funky fusion, and other styles from Japan, with some especially wonderful bits from the 60s and 70s. The book features sections on modern jazz, jazz rock, fusion, vocal, bossa nova, and lounge rarities from Japan and features a few hundred records in all. And, if you're not the type that shells out big cash for rare records, the book even indicates if you can find the title on CD. 229 pages, softcover.

Notes: This special edition of the Japanese Jazz Critique journal is a treasure trove of information about the great Blue Note label. The book (which is over 500 pages long!) lists each individual Blue Note album in numerical order, complete with full information on the players, session, titles, and dates - plus a small reproduction of the original cover! The book lists everything, from the early 10" LPs to the 70's ltd series and the rare Japanese-only releases! The book also includes a lot of writing in Japanese, but there's plenty of other visual goodies to make up for what you can't read - like colour photos of the covers, rare photos from sessions, and lots more.

Notes: This new book by Mitsuru Ogawa - author of the Jazz Next Standard series and Club Jazz Definitive - is a comprehensive guide to jazz in Europe, featuring 981 releases.

Notes: In depth Japanese only text Record guide book looking at the Lovers Rock genre from 1970s- 1990's with hundreds of record label images plus detailed info on the bands, labels,singers and vocal groups that celebrated this genre.190 pages

Notes: "Musica Moderna: An Indepth Look At Brazilian Music" is a Japanese text book with hundreds of album sleeve pictures and illustrations on Brazilian associated music from MPB to Samba to Funk Carioca.

Notes: Celebrating their twentieth anniversary in 2010, Ninja Tune have been dedicated to publishing inspiring electronic music for the past 2 decades. The label was established by 2 friends Matt Black and Jonathan More, who wanted a new label for their venture Coldcut. The label's discography encompasses a wide range of contemporary music: The Cinematic Orchestra; Roots Manuva; Mr Scruff; Steinski; Amon; Kid Koala; The Herbaliser and these are just some of the classics.

The book tells the story of the record label, the artists themselves, their art and the ways in which their influence was and is felt in the larger culture. The book displays a visual discography, is lavishly illustrated with historic photography and includes exclusive interviews with the label's artists, and the minds who shaped the roster. It's the story of a tiny label surviving and thriving while the majors run aground, the story of a unique vision and an all-embracing approach, championing the creativity of their artists at all costs. Ninja Tune appeal stretches far beyond Ninja Tune's already-established legion of followers: making this a must-read for any music fan with even a passing interest in adventurous music and the triumph of ideas, passion and guerrilla creativity in the face of a factory-tooled mainstream.

Notes: Stop Press: the film will be released by Universal, nationally, in October 2014. The story of Northern Soul is one of practically total immersion, dedication and devotion, where the plain concept of the 'night out' was elevated to sacramental dimensions. Where devotees pushed their bodies, their finances and sometimes their minds to brutal and unforgiving extremes. For those who went through that involvement every test of faith or endurance was worth bearing. - From Northern Soul: An Illustrated History. "It was a drugs scene, it was a clothes scene. It was about dancing. It came out of this thing. It was about pills that made you go fast. To go fast to make the scene happen". (Chris Brick). In the late 1960s, a form of dance music took a feverish hold on the UK, finding its heart in the north of England. The music of 1960s-70s black American soul singers combined with distinctive dance styles and plenty of amphetamines to create what became known as Northern Soul - a scene based around all night, alcohol-free club nights, arranged by the fans themselves - setting the blueprint for future club culture.

Northern Soul tapped into a yearning for individual expression in northern teenagers, and exploded into a cultural phenomenon that influenced a generation of DJs, songwriters and designers for decades to come. Acclaimed photographer and director Elaine Constantine has brought the movement to life in her film Northern Soul - and that film was the starting point for this book, Northern Soul: An Illustrated History. However, what started out as a project largely comprising of Constantine's stunning on-set photography, featuring her young, talented cast and highly authentic production, has turned into a unique illustrated history of Northern Soul. In its final form, the beautiful new photography holds the book together thematically, but its real depth lies in the material from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that Elaine and Gareth have researched and pulled together. Of course, no book can claim to represent everything about a culture. But Northern Soul: An Illustrated History concentrates on individuals' personal stories from that heady era, as well as being crammed full of truly atmospheric contemporaneous photography - not from press photographers, but from the kids themselves.

Be it snaps of soul fans in car parks, hitching a lift or mucking around in photo booths, the combination of real people plus real (and often very dramatic) stories - not to mention the complete absence of label scans and DJ's top tens - means that the book stands out as a very different proposition from anything yet published on Northern Soul. We would like to think that above all, this book attempts to give you a feel for what it was really like to be there at the time.

Notes: The eleventh issue of We Jazz Magazine, "Oni Puladi" for Carla Bley. 128 pages, 170 x 240 mm in size and printed on 140g Edixion paper with laminated 300g Invercote covers. All articles presented in English. Carla Bley by Stewart Smith, Gondwana Records by Debra Richards, [Ahmed] by Seymour Wright, Amirtha Kidambi by Ayana Contreras, Ruth Goller by Daryl Worthington, Abdul Wadud by Pierre Crepon / David Neil Lee, Francois Jeanneau by Bret Sjerven, Mette Henriette by Debra Richards, Nduduzo Makhathini by Rob Garratt, Discaholic column by Mats Gustafsson, We Jazz Festival 2023 photo essay by Julius Toyryla, album & live reviews, plus more.

Notes: In what can best be described as a well of hip club culture graphics, 'Proud 2Bea Flyer', published by Happy Books, rounds up the most exciting party announcements made for the street. Before the explosion of popular musical forms in the past 40 years, art associated with music had been in corporate hands, with music companies and commercial artists, but the club flyer changed all that. The evolution of the club flyer mirrors the musical movements that have used its simple, direct form to capture the imagination of their audiences. The early techno scene employed flyers to great effect and diverse musical scenes caught on quickly. Proud 2BEA Flyer brilliantly documents the flyer stylings of the electronica scene and also includes special sections featuring jazz, hip-hop and Brazilian music. Other fascinating selections are found in chapters such as Drawing, Series, Unusual Shapes and Regular Nights.

Notes: Japanese record buyers really take their job seriously -- and now here's a book to show the proof. 'Record Buyer's Diary' was put together by two Japanese record buyers as they traveled the world in search of the music they love. It features photos, addresses, plus longer writings about their experiences in Japanese text. If you don't understand the language, you might miss some of the content but it's still a great book in the way it offers up snippets from their trip, including photos of some great stores, maps, restaurants, and even some price tags! These guys aren't shy about sharing their secrets, and the book lists stores in Los Angeles, England, Germany, Seattle, and Vancouver. 215 pages, softcover, in color and black and white.