Happy Halloween from Finders Keepers!

You'll find a wealth of unusually creepy tunes for Halloween from Andy Votel and his Finders K(r)eepers crew right here. 

Merry Christmas from Andy Votel!

Check out Santa's Sangria, Andy Votel's 'Festive Fuzz Cocktail' of yultetide oddities for your Christmas celebrations right here. 

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Sit & Bun Mix

Check out Andy Votel's swingin' hour-long Sit & Bun mix for Manchester's Finest below. 

Here's the scoop...

Andy Votel, is a musician, DJ, record producer, graphic designer and co-founder of Twisted Nerve Records and the reissue label Finders Keepers Records.

Votel, an acronym for Violators of the English Language, Votel began mixing psychedelic music with jazz and hip-hop records at clubs like The Hacienda and Home And South from the early 1990s.

As a graphic designer, he’s created over 150 record sleeves on top of designing campaigns for Adidas, Stüssy, Levi, and Adam Et Rope.

The record collection he brought with is filled to the brim with deep cuts of rare and experimental music. This one is a bit ‘out there’ but the execution is flawless. 

Check out Andy's "Sit & Bun" mix right here. As for the tracklisting? Well, they don't call him Andy "No Tell" Votel for nuthin'. 

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel salutes The Wicker Man

Andy Votel spins an set of haunting folk music from the British Isles in honour of the creepy cinematic classic. Listen here. 

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Randomonium

Andy Votel spins some rare vinyl gems including the private press classic "Gynt On The Rocks." Check the link below. 

Check out the latest edition of Andy Votel's Randomonium from June 17th right here.

Midweek Mixdown: Finders Keepers salutes Eurovision

Check out the B-Music parallel universe version of Eurovision imagined by Andy Votel and pals below. 

Eurovision according to Finders Keepers

The Finders Keepers radio renegades gather once again to bring you a special edition satellite show, custom orchestrated to celebrate the return to our screens of the longest-running annual international TV song competition aka Eurovision. Yes, that's right, the outer national psychedelic librarians behind one of the most alternative outer national record labels on the pear-shaped planet are here to prove that the genre that we've loosely termed as B-Music exists in all corners of the vinyl vault and even the most hell-bent ambitious entrants for the kitschiest competition show in Europe have bones in the closet, irons in the fire and bats in the belfry - all of which crop up on Eurovison single B-Sides, previous precocious pressings or post mic-battle bounce backs.

If we're not making ourselves clear here, lets just clarify. Outside of the competition these Eurovisionaries also made some pretty good synthy, fuzzy, drum heavy records when left to their own devices and Finders Keepers Radio is here to prove it. So sit back in your favourite chair, pour yourself a Babycham, light up that dangerous fondue oil and marvel as we bring you resilient rock follies from the likes of Greece, Turkey, Belgium, Luxembourg etc. while trying not to count the amount of times we use the phrases "You Were Robbed" and "Repeat Offender" safe in the knowledge that we're already panning next years follow up show every time we hit foreign thrift stores. This one's for you, Terry.

Listen to the Finders Keepers salute to Eurovision right here. 

Check out Nilüfer & Grup Nazar's performance at Eurovision '78 below. 

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Şimdi Şimdi Turkish psych selection

Finders Keepers boss Andy Votel recently did a Syrian/Turkish relief fundraiser then replayed his vintage Anatolian psych set here. 

Jane Weaver gets down roller boogie style for "Solarised"

Check out Nick Farrimond's fab 1979 throwback clip for "Solarised" (and remix) off Jane Weaver's Flock album available here.   

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Songs Of Insolence

 

Listen to Andy Votel play his favourite stone-circle psych, prog, synth interspersed with a little witchy spoken word right here. 

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Raising Helelyos

Here's a wicked mix of pre-revolution Persian psych, prog rock and bent pop courtesy of Finders Keepers mainman Andy "No Tell" Votel. 

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel salutes Jean-Pierre Massiera

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Hindi Horrorcore

Andy Votel mixes his fave twisted and tormented Bollywood horror soundtrack gems.  

Midweek Mixdown: Santa's Sangria by Andy Votel

'Tis the season for yuletide mixtapes and Andy Votel usually has a killer-diller of a Christmas chiller. Check out Santa's Sangria below.

Andy Votel unleashes second volume of synth curios on Plastic Dance 2

Plastic Dance 2 features tracks from Stabat Stable, Beach Surgeons, Ti-Tho, Cosmic Overdose and pragVEC

Here's the scoop from Andrew Weatherall...

Greetings sisters and brothers. Let’s talk about reductionist revolution and the kicking in of doors. Let’s talk of iconoclasts and culture bombs. Let’s talk about moral panic and censorship. Let’s talk about punk rock.

On second thought, let’s not bother. The white noise is already deafening and actually, thinking about it, the Sex Pistols were really a heavy metal band with a funny singer and the whole shebang eventually, as all revolutions do, succumbed to conservative dogma and self parody. And anyway, as Dr Cooper Clarke said, “punks were just hippies with zips”.

Instead, sisters and brothers, let’s talk about the dangerous counterrevolutionaries who went out and bought a cheap synth and a rudimentary drum machine. The ones that got what ‘punk’ was really about. The democratization of art. A democratization unhindered by rules concerning the means of production. A democratization forged in the blazing fire of unrestricted influence. A democratization free of perceived notions of “talent”. Sniffing Glue said learn three chords and form a band, Throbbing Gristle said why learn any chords at all… I am an artist because I say I am. More Marcel Duchamp than Malcolm McLaren.

So, sisters and brothers, who do you think led the counter-revolution? Well I’ll tell you. It was the man who stormed the Bastille and kicked the door down in the first place and he did it on the 16th July 1977. With the help of Tommy Vance. John Lydon’s playlist that night on Vance’s show included Tim Buckley, The Creation, Augustus Pablo, Bobby Byrd, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Peter Hammill and Can and put paid to any punk rock “year zero” claims. Meanwhile, locked out of the studio, Malcolm had to listen to the counterrevolutionary manifesto being broadcast across the metropolis. Mark that date in your diaries, sisters and brothers: 16th July, the anniversary of the birth of “post punk”. Just over a year later in October, Lydon rammed the point home with the release of Public Image, a personal and musical manifesto in 7” form.

The music on Plastic Dance 2 is the strangely coloured, distorted and frighteningly beautiful fruit of the seeds planted on that fateful day. Lessons learned and inspiration taken from the sonic aesthetics of dub, knowing that not all disco sucked and that even jazz was allowed. Music shaped by wonky approximation and appropriation. The artists on Plastic Dance 2 were artists because they said they were. Listen to their work and you’ll know they were. Listen in transcendent wonderment as George Attwell creates alchemical space funk in his home studio… as a future Mock Turtle and members of The Manchester Music Collective channel Robert Calvert and Bill Nelson… as Korzynski comes on like a Jeff Mills remix of Terry Riley. Listen in the wide-eyed joy of being as Stabat Stable’s drum machine runs amok to the accompaniment of discordant organ stabs… as a future founder of 808 State channels Albert Ayler alongside a galloping synth arpeggio.

I’ll stop right there, brothers and sisters, as crass comparison does this art no justice.

Andrew Weatherall

Plastic Dance 2: Domestic Synth Pop & Patchbay Punk Compiled by Andy Votel & Doug Shipton
01. George Atwell - Meat Grinder
02. Vibrant Thigh - Walking Away
03. Stabat Stable - IIO
04. Cos - Einstein
05. Beach Surgeons - Chicken Skin Planet (Edit)
06. Cosmic Overdose - Råttan
07. Andrzej Korzynski - Zombie House
08. Ti-Tho - Die Liebe Ist Ein Abenteuer
09. Gerry And The Holograms - Jeep (Version)
10. pragVEC - Welcome Home

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel & Jane Weaver's Halloween special

Andy & Jane play creepy tracks by Jean-Michel Jarre, Vampires Of Dartmoore and others below. 

Modern Kosmology: In the studio with Jane Weaver

Jane Weaver's forthcoming Modern Kosmology album is out May 19 on Fire Records. Check the clip below. 

Alone in a home-spun cocoon with a metronomic heartbeat and the phasing voice of her former and future selves, Jane Weaver is preparing for the launch of her new album Modern Kosmology (out May 19th) and sees her on an extensive tour across the UK and Ireland through October and November.

Self taught, self penned, self played, self produced, and all-autonomous Jane Weaver's Modern Kosmology is by no means a reclusive mission. Heavily influenced by a cast of lesser-known spiritual muse (such as automatic abstract painter Hilma Af Klint and her fabled pre-surrealist secret society) Jane also enlists the physical skills of CAN's Malcolm Mooney amongst a skeleton crew of Mancunian drum-lords and well versed psychedelic axe-men to punctuate Jane's synth-loaded sonic architecture. Jane's unwaning yearning for psychoactive pop energy has just reached a new level of magnetism. As snowclones go, Modern Kosmology is the new Silver. Another Spectrum to add to the tension.

Watch the video of Jane in Eve Studios with her trusty Roland string synth and Korg Poly Ensemble P as she discusses her evolution since the 2014 release of The Silver Globe.  Modern Kosmology is available for pre-order via Fire Records right here, with first single Slow Motion available to hear and download instantly at www.janeweavermusic.com



Jane Weaver Live Dates 2017
18th May: UK, Birmingham, Hare & Hounds 2
19th May: UK, Manchester, Band On The Wall
20th May: UK, Brighton, The Great Escape
22nd May: UK, London, The Lexington – sold out
23rd May: UK, London, Rough Trade East
2nd June: France, Paris, La Maroquinerie
7th July: UK, Cheshire, Bluedot Festival
20-23rd July: UK, Liverpool, Liverpool International Music Festival
29th July: UK, London, O2 Academy Brixton w/ Goat & The Moonlandingz
20th October: UK, Ramsgate, Ramsgate Music Hall
22nd October: UK, Brighton, The Haunt
23rd October: UK, Norwich, Arts Centre
25th October: UK, Folkestone, Quarterhouse
26th October: UK, London, Islington Assembly Hall
28th October: UK, Nottingham, The Bodega
29th October: UK, Oxford, The Bullingdon
31st October:  UK, Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
1st November: UK, Stoke, The Sugar Mill
2nd November: UK, Newcastle, The Cluny
3rd November: UK, Hebden Bridge, Trades Club
4th November: UK, Glasgow, Stereo
10th November: IRE, Dublin, Workman’s Club
11th November: IRE, Belfast, Maple Tour Leaf

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel

Here's the "To The Davul A Daughter" mix put together by Finders Keepers mainman Andy Votel. 

Belladonna Of Sadness screens at Royal Cinema tonight – Masahiko Sato's soundtrack out now!

Finders Keepers' has just reissued Masahiko Sato's wickedly witchy score for 1973's Belladonna Of Sadness. 

An unholy grail of near mythical status finally joins the Finders Keepers discography in the form of this first-ever reissue of Masahiko Sato’s elusive 1973 psychedelic jazz score to Eiichi Yamamoto's stunning Japanese witchcraft animation Belladonna Of Sadness – screening at Toronto's Royal Cinema tonight at 7 pm. Get tickets and check out the trailer right here.

An early feature-length example of a micro-genre in which Japanese anime producers collaborated with the “pink” film genre, Belladonna’s challenging occult, sexual and political subject matter was the cause of the film’s notoriety for many years, earning Yamamoto’s work a critical platform amongst some of the best counterculture animation films of the era such as La Planète Sauvage ( René Laloux/Roland T poor, France 1973), Marie Mathématique (Jean-Claude Forest, France 1967), Wizards (Ralph Bakshi, US 1977), Heavy Metal (Gerald Potterton, Canada 1980) and Time Masters (René Laloux/Moebius, France 1982).

Drawing further stylistic similarities with Shuji Terayama/Tenjo Sajiki associated poster artist Aquirax Uno and the Hara-Kiri magazine cartoon strips Pravda/Jodelle by French artist Guy Peellaert, as well as the early flamboyant Klimtesque imagery of Jean Rollin collaborators Philippe Druillet and Nicolas Devil, Belladonna Of Sadness brought a strong European flavour to its sophisticated and stylish Japanese application which accentuated the French origins of the plot loosely based on accounts taken from the 1862 book La Sorcière (The Witch) by French historian Jules Michelet.

Over the last decade Belladonna Of Sadness has risen from the ashes and now shines brighter than ever. Now on the eve of its third or fourth global DVD release, fans no longer have to wait four months for third generation VHS telecine rubs from “that guy” in the States, or stuff their ambitious wish lists into the hands of any lucky friends visiting Tokyo in the summer. Belladonna has been used as nightclub projections by clued-up VJs and been restored by discerning feminist folk singers and improv bands while influencing illustrators, fashion designers and other creative types along the way.

Original copies of the soundtrack, however, are much less likely to rear their heads on a weekly basis, with prices literally doubling each time the original stock copies swap hands amongst the same Italian dealers at central European record fairs. Italian soundtracks are expensive anyway, but this one, as I’m sure you’ll agree, has got extra credentials. Finders Keepers, in direct collaboration with Sato himself, agree that this record should finally be liberated amongst those who know the magic words.

In keeping with the decision to make the reissue “strictly Sato,” the main orchestral love theme by Asei Kobayashi and Mayumi Tachibana – which in all honesty is very much detached from Sato’s psychedelic soundtrack – was not included. Kept intact, however, are the songs sung and penned by Sato’s then wife Chinatsu Nakayama, including the track entitled TBFS (answers on a postcard?) that only appears on the master tapes and never actually made it to the theatrical cut of the film (although the theme is briefly alluded to, in different instrumentation, in a cut-scene available on the German DVD).

This reissue project also marks the beginning of what will hopefully be a continuing relationship between Finders Keepers and Masahiko Sato, exploring his recorded work in both film music, jazz and avant garde composition. Check out the tracks "Take It Easy" and "Little Flower" below.

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel

You can download Andy Votel's Suxo Plexo Muxo mix right here.  Check the track selection below.

Tracklist: 
from Pan Kleks - Andrzej Korzynski - (Polton Poland)
from Anna - Gainsbourg/Columbier (INA France)
from Belladonna Of Sadness - Masahiko (Finders Keepers)
from Chi - Goblin (Cinevox IT)
from Phantasm - Myrow Seagrave (Verese Sarabande)
from Sitting Target - Stanley Myers (FK)
from Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders - Lubos Fiser (FK)
from La Salamander - Patrick Moraz (Evasion Ch)
from Morgiana - Lubos Fiser (FK)
from Nightmares Come At Night (The B-Music Of Soledad Miranda) - Bruno Nicolai (FK)

A Cacophonic mix from Andy Votel

Recently Andy Votel launched a new subsidiary of his ever-expanding Finders Keepers empire called Cacophonic which will of course focus on the strangely thrilling sounds you've never heard created by artists you don't know for records you've never seen. So pretty much business as usual for our man Votel and his deep digging associates.

“Virtually all the records scheduled for Cacophonic," Votel told FACT, "are by artists that genuinely wanted to change how music was heard and made which is why a lot of them are specific to unique or homemade instruments which coincide with the introduction of electronic music before it went microscopic and less tangible. Many of these records are from a jazz background but veer in to other disciplines like ballet and fine art which were some of the most vibrant outlets for experimental music before the rise of rock and pop culture… Finders Keepers celebrates how pop failures become critical triumphs which is something very close to our hearts and translates well to DJing and cinematic applications. Cacophonic comes from a place before pop exists by artists who wanted to change the world and genuinely believed they could.”

Here's an enjoyable little sampler mix assembled by Votel for a limited run (50 copies!) cassette-only release in conjunction with self-titled called Electro Who Cardio Fluxus: 14 Musical Re-Inventors Who Made/Played and Disobeyed Their Own UNstruments, featuring the work of Mr. Ondioline, Michel Magne, Tape Recorder and Synthesizer Ensemble, Remi Gassmann, Kat Epple & Bob Stohl, Rolf Liebermann, Bruce Ditmas, X-Ray Pop and others...