Music Distribution
Following some hiccups, our physical CD distribution is gradually getting back to normal: click on the album links on our Albums page and hit the Amazon buying links to check. Download sales continue to be available via the usual services and you can also still stream our music as usual.
Albums
We offer international CD and download sales fulfilment through Amazon and Apple Music. You can also access our tracks at around 150 sites worldwide, including iTunes.
We have lovingly- and professionally-produced efforts on offer, and want to get them seen and heard: ‘Independent’ doesn’t mean ‘cheap-sounding’. When choosing whether to purchase a CD or a download, remember that if you buy a CD you can rip it to an iPod at your choice of quality, including real CD fidelity. And it remains in your hand with all the lavish packaging we offer.
Free downloads and streaming:
See our albums below to download free bundles of long extracts from all our music in mp3 or m4a, scroll to the individual track sections to stream mp3 instantly. Typically, you get more than 20 minutes of music for a single click, and you’ll also find a selection of free tracks.
And now, please check out our music, below. Clicking on any cover image below takes you to the full presentation of the album, with free sample streaming, long audio excerpts and download options to help you check it out… You’ll find some free complete tracks, And don’t forget you can buy a complete download usually for just 99 cents.
(If you’re confused by the variety of music here, please go and read our mission statement. We are trying to deliver music free of category and free of prejudice.)
Download bundle of ten two-minute samples, one from each CD track (19Mb):
mp3 | AAC/m4a. All excerpts are around two minutes long
Total running time: 45 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, includes full-color 16-page booklet with complete lyrics. With glossy cardboard jewel-case slip cover.
Lene Lovich’s impact on pop music can hardly be understated. The influence of her arty, flamboyant new wave persona, assertive, banshee-howl-inflected vocals, and idiosyncratic songwriting style can be seen clearly in countless female artists, from peers like Siouxsie Sioux and Grace Jones, to those who have followed in her footsteps: Björk, PJ Harvey, Gwen Stefani, and Karen O. In her absence, would be hard to conceive of the modern landscape of alternative female pop artists. Lene has carved out a unique niche in the world, always while doggedly pursuing her own muse, her own passions. And only an artist as inventive as Lene can take such ephemeral materials as Shadows and Dust, and fashion them into a record as gripping as this, her fifth full-length offering.
Download bundle of four CD excerpts (18 Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a. All excerpts are around five minutes long.
Total running time: one hour and five minutes. Full CD jewel box container, includes full-color 32-page booklet with extensive notes by Johnny Reinhard. With glossy cardboard jewel-case slip cover.
Charles Ives’ last and possibly greatest work has been completed in a new realization by Johnny Reinhard, after over ten years of extensive research through libraries and the composer’s papers. He premiered the first performance, with the approval of the Ives Society, at Lincoln Center, June 6 1996. This recording was five years in the making, a labor of love reflecting the greatest care in conveying the great composer’s (the father of US ‘classical’ music) musical ambitions: 64 minutes of virtuoso playing from 72 instruments. See our Ives page for more background to an extraordinary man and an extraordinary, singular piece of radical music.
Download a bundle of thirteen excerpts from every track on the album.
Total running time: 44 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, with full color sixteen-page insert.
Has it been that long? Seems like yesterday that BETTY started developing their extraordinary sound of big close vocal harmonies stacked on top of tough rhythm sections and exotic sounds. On The Rocks goes further again, years on. The songs were developed taking more development time than usually possible, and it shows, but they still build on the energy of previous efforts. No-one’s quieting down around here. From the frivolity of Sticky Rice to the haunting, passionate lines of Jerusalem, these new songs take BETTY’s power and impact to a new level. Similarly, wistful songs like Remarkable (For Anne) and Best Kind Of Perfect contrast with Penelope. A song about a centipede with tired, sore feet doesn’t have much in common with most. There’s more creative craziness going on here (again).
Download/preview a bundle of three excerpts from the eleven-minute
Filthy Lucre: Original mp3 | m4a
Total running time: 27 minutes.
A request by the artist, Darren Waterston, that the band make acoustic fragments for his installation running from May 2015 to December 2016 at the Smithsonian institution in Washington DC, provoked much music. Through a couple of twists and turns, we came up with something unanticipated and unlike anything BETTY had done before…. Read Thorne’s notes on the production of Filthy Lucre.
Download bundle of 13 CD song excerpts (23Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a. All excerpts are around two minutes long.
Total running time: 47 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, with full color cardboard outer sleeve, 16-page booklet.
The Shirts were one of the original CBGB’s bands in the mid-seventies, and achieved success with their first two albums in 1978 and 1979. They drifted apart after their third, only to reform and regroup in 2003 purely for the musical fun of it. With two new, strong female singers added, they’re back with their fourth album and reunited with original producer Mike Thorne. 13 new songs resurrect their immediately recognizable sound, but with a new century sensibility.
Download bundle of eight CD song excerpts (22Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a. All excerpts are around three minutes long.
Free complete tracks:
Grandma’s Goodbye club Original short version mp3 | m4a
Grandma’s Goodbye club Megamix radio-length version mp3 | m4a
Grandma’s Goodbye club Cotto radio-length version mp3 | m4a
Total running time: one hour and 14 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, includes full-color 16-page booklet with complete lyrics. With glossy cardboard jewel-case slip cover.
The Contessa’s Party, the second full-length CD from Thorne, marks the fullest fruition yet of a distinctive approach to making music – and records – nurtured by artist-producer Mike Thorne over the course of nearly 35 years. It is also, as the title implies, the soundtrack for one lively dance soirée, complete with a colorful cast of guests: Sarah Jane Morris, BETTY, Lene Lovich, Kit Hain, and the Uptown Horns. Back then a few years, it was time to reinvent the extended club mix, to make music which moved you physically yet was substantial enough to listen to closely.
Download bundle of CD song excerpts (25Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a. Includes three complete single-length tracks. All excerpts are around three minutes long.
Total running time: 53 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, with full color four-page insert.
The Contessa’s Party and its dense dancing arrangements continues attracting new guests. Grandma’s Goodbye is the most recent track to receive the Thorne/Norty Cotto extended remix treatment. Here, they go further: Thorne contributes a huge megamix of 16’28” with new material and fresh grooves. It’s been a while since we heard one of these, and there’s a reason: they take days and days to build.
Download a bundle of 13 long excerpts from Sprawl songs (26Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a
Free complete track: Natural Beauty mp3 | m4a
Total running time: 57 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, full color 16-page booklet with complete lyrics.
Mike Thorne retired from commercial record production in 1994, having delivered many innovative and successful recordings, such as Tainted Love and Voices Carry. Sprawl, his own first album, features huge vocal arrangements contributed by Kit Hain, Sarah Jane Morris, Lene Lovich and BETTY. The instrumental sound centers on tough techno, intense and unusual horn arrangements powered by the Uptown Horns, and raucous drums. Songs include two unrecorded from Marianne Faithfull, Pretty Vacant (the Sex Pistols, 1976) and an exclusive translation of Le Ballet (originally a seductive French language song from Céline Dion).
Download a bundle of nine long excerpts (11Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a
Total running time: 28 minutes . Full CD jewel box container, full color eight-page insert with complete lyrics.
BETTY always celebrate birthdays, holidays and sometimes just getting up in the morning. Come the end of the year, it can be quite a job doing just that. Things often go seriously wrong and not according to plan. During this 28-minute CD EP, enjoy a very different take on the holidays with personal problems like Holiday Office Party (blues) and Happy Holidays (from me to me). The threat of total depression is deftly alleviated by Georgia (calls me) and Miracles Can Happen (they do every day). BETTY also offer several trademark a cappella vocal tracks, including Itchy Fingers (I want my pressie) and the warm Lullabye (for Ruby). And a few other unexpected surprises, avalanches, meltdowns etc.
Download a bundle of long excerpts (8.3Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a
Free complete track: Millennium Man mp3 | m4a
Total running time: 28 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, full color eight-page booklet with complete lyrics.
Step right up! Hurry, hurry! Welcome to the rocking roller coaster ride of Carnival, BETTY’s debut album on the Stereo Society label. Sneak into the freak show as our heroines take you on a musical journey through the lighter and darker side of innocence lost. BETTY is internationally known for their wild live shows, mixing passionate rock songs with clever spoken word pieces to spin concerts as breathtaking as a turn on a Tilt-a-Whirl. Savor this 30-minute masterpiece in one sitting with the Millennium Man and Jungle Jane. Whatever your heart desires, You’ll be sticky with cotton candy.
Download a bundle of six long excerpts (12Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a
Free complete track: Birds And The Bees mp3 | m4a
Total running time: 34 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, full color 16-page booklet with complete lyrics.
Hilly Kristal, who died August 28 2007, is best known as the owner of CBGB‘s, New York’s downtown rock & roll club which, after 33 years in business before it was shut down, was perhaps the most famous in the world. Most people have not heard his sonorous bass voice and quirky songs, and don’t realize that he used to earn his living this way. Songs include an eight-minute party version of Mud, the story of the little wiggly pig, ‘S No Joke, a paranoia-disco rap by the guy you didn’t want to find sitting next to you at the bar, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Jackson, one of the lesser-known Knights of the Round Table. Also, a previously unrecorded song from Otis Blackwell, writer of many Elvis Presley hits, Everybody’s Buddy.
Quagmire Corner: Hilly Kristal’s CBGB’s Holiday Single
Mud first appeared as the B side of the 1976 CBGB Christmas single.
Stream mp3 extract | download m4a extract
Download a free mp3 and a piece of history: Hilly’s 1976 CBGB holiday single, A and B sides:
I Wish You A Merry Christmas (1976 CBGB’s Christmas single), mp3 | m4a
Download a bundle of six long excerpts (18Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a
Free complete track: Trio on the Cuff 6 mp3 | m4a
Total running time: 55 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, with full color 16-page booklet which includes extensive notes by the composer.
Johnny Reinhard has pursued a distinctive course in microtonal performance and composition. He is a virtuoso bassoonist. This album of his own compositions features many of New York’s progressive musicians playing an extraordinary collection of instruments and arrangements from conch shells to tuba to upright bass to gong. The single vocal piece is a gothic setting of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. Many of his pieces follow a programmatic idea, such as Dune, for solo bassoon, Atlantis, for five shell players, tuba and chimes, and Chaco Canyon for solo flutes.
Download a bundle of six long excerpts (23Mb): mp3 | AAC/m4a
Free complete track: Cry Tomorrow mp3 | m4a
Total running time: 43 minutes. Full CD jewel box container, full color 16-page booklet with complete lyrics.
The Reds began as one of the most powerful guitar- and keyboard-based bands of the later New Wave, formed in Philadelphia in the late seventies. Several albums later, they became a duo, backed by Mike Thorne’s rhythm and synthesizers, and made further recordings for Sire. Their music was central to some of the early episodes of Miami Vice, and they continued scoring for movies such as Michael Mann’s Manhunter. Delivered by one of the most forceful combinations ever of rock & roll attitude, Cry Tomorrow is a reworked version of their outstandingly powerful original 1992 indie release, and includes a radical version of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter.
