In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home town burnin' down to the ground, Worser than Vietnam, Well, it started on 12th and Clairmont, this mornin'.”

Record Store Day 2025 is tomorrow (Saturday 12th April 2025)! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been sent a selection of exclusive RSD goodies. Check the reviews. Then check your local record shop! See you amongst it.

THEARTSDESK ON VINYL CHOICE CUT FOR RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2025

Marianne Faithfull Burning Moonlight EP (Decca)

Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes may have been steering the good ship Primal Scream for some 40 years but, on the evidence of this week’s visit to Birmingham, they are in no way ready to join the heritage circuit – banging out the hits exactly as they were recorded – just yet.

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Rattle Encircle (Upset! The Rhythm)

Langenu are a black metal band. On stage at Estonia’s Tallinn Music Week, they are fearsome. Blood-vessel-burstingly intense. Tempering their force with twists into progressive, psychedelic-adjacent territory, they are a band any rock fan would dig.

I can’t hear Joan Armatrading without being instantly transported back to Liverpool, and my student digs just around the corner from Penny Lane. I was a first-year music student, writing essays in the late-night glow of an Anglepoise, my radio-cassette player (boomboxes hadn’t yet been invented) tuned to Radio City. “Love and Affection” and “Down to Zero”, from her magnificent self-titled 1976 LP (no CDs either, and certainly no streaming!) were on the playlist of just about every DJ.

The sax-player Kenny Garrett established a reputation as one of Miles Davis’s band in the Amandla (1989) period. He was also a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the launching-pad for scores of talented young musicians.

The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.” Choosing isolation and self-determination are themes running throughout Lighthouse of Glass the album and how Sweden’s Sofia Härdig has approached recording these 10 songs. As well as the songwriter, she is the arranger, engineer, producer and main instrumentalist.

Stereo Instrumental Music was recorded in July 1976 and originally issued only on cassette. The release was organised by what was credited as the “Sun Shine Music Shop,” an enterprise which seems to have left no additional imprint. No further “Sun Shine Music Shop” albums are known.

A pizzicato violin opens Song Over Støv. Gradually, other instruments arrive: bowed violin, a fluttering flute, pattering percussion, an ominous double bass. They merge. The climax is furious, intensely rhythmic. Suddenly, it is over.