Dear All,


2009 has been another action-packed year for Crammed, and 2010 is already shaping up to be as if not more crazy...

- Band of the year for us (and we're not the only ones...) has to be Congolese kings of street rumba-funk STAFF BENDA BILILI, who had the international media fainting with pleasure over their debut album Très Très Fort upon its release in February... then, just when those journalists thought it was safe to get up off the ground again, the band came to Europe on tour, and the critical swooning commenced once more.

Click here  for a neat round-up of all the TV appearances Staff made during their two-month visit to these shores, including BBC Newsnight, ARD in Germany, the main evening news in Belgium and Norway and much more...

Meanwhile Staff are already plotting their next moves - they will be back as early as New Year's Day to appear on Dutch National TV, with another tour being planned for Spring.

- Our two new American signings  AKRON/FAMILY and MEGAFAUN have done us proud this year: Akron's Set 'Em Wild Set 'em Free and Megafaun's Gather, Form & Fly (each released by Crammed in Europe) both reshaped classic American musical forms in unique and inspired ways. Click here for evidence of both bands' recent European adventures... Megafaun have already confirmed their return in March, while Akron will be back shortly afterwards.

- SHANTEL, together with his trusty Bucovina Orkestar, leapt into the stratosphere with his boundary-breaking brand of European pop, releasing revelatory second album .."Planet Paprika" and playing to bigger rooms and festival crowds than ever before. There will be a new single from the album, "Being Authentic", released soon, before Shantel takes on the 2010 festivals...there can be only one winner.

- MOCKY surprised and delighted with his beautiful pop-jazz suite Saskamodie, his first release for Crammed. Complementing this with one of the best sessions heard on Gilles Peterson's BBC show this year, a collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan rapper GZA and some wonderfully-received live shows with the Saskamodie Orchestra, watch out for the second part of Mocky's hilarious Mockumentary and more news of live shows and exciting new musical adventures in the new year...

- the ZEEP album People & Things gave us sophisticated pop pleasures late in the year, with their daring Brazilian folk take on Ghost Town proving one of the most adventurous cover versions of the year. Watch out for a full tour from Chris Franck, Nina Miranda and friends in the spring!

- So what new joys await in 2010? "Blue Eyed Black Boy", out in late-February, is the finest work yet from the three-headed, dancefloor-conquering powerhouse known as BALKAN BEAT BOX. Also ready to roll with exciting new material are LONELY DRIFTER KAREN, whose second album "Fall Of Spring" finds their pan-European songcraft
moving to the next level. Then there's the long-awaited new CIBELLE record to look forward to - "Las Vênus Resort Hotel" is a wildly exotic masterpiece, and should be with us in April. Finally, all hail the Springtime return of the mighty KONONO NO.1, with their follow-up to the seminal first volume of the "Congotronics" series - speaking of which, there should be some more exciting news to report for Congotronics fans very soon...

Lots to look forward to - keep both eyes on our lovely new website to find out all the news first: http://www.crammed.be

Till next year, happy holidays,

Crammed Discs

Check out our brand-new website, online NOW at the usual address:
http://www.crammed.be

At this year's edition of WOMEX (the main international world music trade fair, which gathers professionals from around the world), Brussels-based independent label Crammed Discs will walk away with 2 of the 3 prizes which will be awarded during the closing ceremony, on Nov. 1st in Copenhague.

The Artist Award 09 has been granted to awesome Congolese band STAFF BENDA BILILI, who are currently starting their first European tour, which promises to be nothing short of triumphal considering the passion generated by the band's mesmerising music and by their extraordinary story (see below).

Staff Benda Bilili were discovered and recorded in Kinshasa by CRAMMED DISCS, whose excellence and boundary-breaking role will be once again distinguished at WOMEX: after receiving the Womex Award in 2004, Crammed Discs will be receiving the Top Label Award 2009, jointly granted by WOMEX and World Music Charts Europe (the organism which compiles airplay charts for the European Broadcasting Union, on the basis of returns from over 50 radio broadcasters from 25 countries). Crammed Discs comes first in the year-round 2009 chart, at the top of a list which includes no less than 540 labels!

The Crammed Man on the train platform says: "although we put out records by artists from the four corners of the planet (from the Balkans to Africa, South America and the Middle East, as well as from Western Europe and the USA), we don't see ourselves as a "world music label": we just happens to enjoy working with artists from around the world, who sometimes sing in various languages…"  

Crammed is by no means a "world music label" (we just happen to work with artists from around the world, who sometimes sing in various languages)…

Yet we will be receiving the 2009 Top Label Award next week at WOMEX (World Music Expo)…

while the awesome STAFF BENDA BILILI will be honoured with the 2009 Artist Award…

All great fun!

Top Label Award

Artist Award

SHANTEL  Planet Paprika

After spending 2008 ceaselessly bringing the party to festivals, concert halls, TV studios and clubs, gathering a host of awards and chart positions along the way, Shantel and his mighty Bucovina Club Orkestar are back, batteries fully recharged and ready to tell the world about a new and exciting discovery in the solar system of pop: Planet Paprika!

The “Disko Partizani” album, with its anthemic title track (a singalong hit across Europe with a video that’s become a YouTube sensation, 3 million views and counting!) as well as follow-up smash “Disko Boy”, saw the foundations laid for a pioneering brand of totally borderless European pop music. Now, with “Planet Paprika”, Shantel's vision is complete, and resistance is futile...


MEGAFAUN Gather, Form & Fly

"Megafaun don't just catalog American musical languages, they breed them", writes  Pitchfork. Megafaun was built by Joe Westerlund and brothers Brad and Phil Cook from the ashes of DeYarmond Edison, the group they had formed in their native Wisconsin with longtime friend Justin "Bon Iver" Vernon.

They're part of that rare crop of young artists driven by an unquenchable thirst for a wide range of sounds and styles. While very much at ease with several strains of American folk music, they're masterfully reinventing tradition by infusing it with radically alien elements, inspired by anything from free jazz to 50s experimental electronics. They've performed over 250 shows in the US since '07, and have done live collaborations with new Crammed labelmates Akron/Family, with minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt & more.

Gather, Form & Fly can be described as an ode to death, love, musical history (from blues to musique concrète), community, tradition, melody and experimentation. Or, more simply, as a magnificent album of melodic folk music, strong and original.


ZEEP People & Things

Zeep, aka the London-based duet of Nina Miranda & Chris Franck bring us a fresh, immediate pop album that dips its elegant toes into many musical pools. Catchy escapades, space-age downtempo rock, reflective atmospheres,  playful spaghetti western disco and cartoon-like narratives, this album is full of fun and surprises, an excursion into which we're irresistibly drawn by Nina's unique, seductive voice, supported by Chris' immaculate musicianship and production skills.

Also worth mentioning is Zeep's daring Brazilian folk rewiring of the Specials’ classic “Ghost Town”, which has already been given the enthusiastic backing of The Specials’ Jerry Dammers.

Nina and Chris were founding members of Smoke City and Da Lata, and have collaborated with artists such as Tony Allen, Baaba Maal, Ernest Ranglin, Sly and Robbie, Vieux Farka Touré, Nitin Sawhney, Jah Wobble, Femi Kuti, Bebel Gilberto and more.



BLACK (Original Soundtrack)

"BLACK" is a neo-Blaxploitation film set in Dakar (Senegal), directed by Pierre Laffargue and starring famous, provocative French rapper MC Jean Gab'1. The film was warmly welcomed on its world premiere at SXSW (From a modern update of Shaft in Africa to a lunatic, witchy, bastard offspring of Cat People and Ssssss. Gloriously lunatic - Cinematical.com).

The exciting original theme song - a driving Afrobeat track written & recorded by Tony Allen and featuring the inimitable vocal stylings of MC Jean Gab'1 - will be coming out in July as a digital single and promo CD, to coincide with the theatrical release of the film in France. As for the soundtrack album, it will also feature a wealth of gems from the '70s as well as great contemporary tracks  (complete track list to be announced soon).

The film will be shown this Summer at various film festivals in the UK, Canada and the Czech Republic.



VARIOUS ARTISTS  It's A Crammed, Crammed World

A 16-track compilation featuring the best of Crammed's updated roster of artists, with tracks by  Lonely Drifter Karen, Mocky, Shantel, Staff Benda Bilili, Akron/Family, Chicha Libre, Flat Earth Society, Zeep, Balkan Beat Box, U-cef (feat. Damon Albarn), Allá, Koçani Orkestar, Hector Zazou & Swara, Megafaun, Cibelle and Kasai Allstars, all neatly sequenced to create an exciting listening experience…

It's worth noting that 10 of these artists have joined our relentlessly morphing & evolving label only since 2008!

This is actually It's A Crammed, Crammed World 3 (the title was used for two now-deleted early compilations, in 1984 and 1987). It contains several original edits, and versions which were only previously available on promo-only singles.

From the WOMEX (World Music Expo) website:

WOMEX is proud to announce the winners of the WOMEX 09 Award for
artists: the incomparable Staff Benda Bilili, from DR Congo.

We are used to honouring great artists at the end of long illustrious
careers. This time, however, it might appear like we're lionising
mere beginners. Therein lies a humbling lesson.

We'll let writer Andy Morgan take over from here. He spent time in
Kinshasa with the artists and is writing the WOMEX Guide essay and
Laudatio for the WOMEX Award presentation. "So often, by the time
many groups play their first note on a European stage, they have
already lived, struggled and suffered a tale of epic proportions,"
he says. "And no group could possibly illustrate this truism more
effectively than Staff Benda Bilili."

"Their story is about polio-ravaged limbs and survival in the toxic
atmosphere of Kinshasa, one of the largest and most dysfunctional
cities in Africa. It's about homelessness, ostracism, community,
courage and music. Most of all, it's about a refusal to pity oneself.
Papa Ricky and Coco Ngambali, the group's founders, decided long ago
that disability only exists in the mind. They've clung tenaciously to
this guiding principle, through years of grinding anonymity and
busking for centimes outside fancy restaurants in Kinshasa's downtown
or hawking chewing gum and cigarettes on exhausted roundabouts.
A fortuitous meeting with two French filmmakers led to a contract
with Crammed Discs and to the release of an acclaimed CD debut
earlier this year. It's taken decades of faith, courage and facing
down insurmountable odds for the band to crank their remarkable
wheelchairs up the final ramp and onto a European stage."

"Our main influences lay in the street," revealed Ricky, the
bandleader. "We sleep there, eat there, rehearse there. The people
around us - street kids, war refugees, prostitutes, orphans - are the
true heroes of this country. They always tell us their stories, their
hopes, their tricks to survive. We feel we must speak in their name,
and in that sense we are the true journalists of Kinshasa."

Then he spoke of the group's influences, the musicians who mean the
most to them. "Musically speaking we worship our Congolese fathers:
Franco & Ok Jazz, Tabu Ley, Docteur Nico. James Brown is another
great inspiration for us, we saw him play in Kinshasa in 1974. It was
a true riot."

In its promotional material, Crammed Discs reveals, "Staff Benda
Bilili consider themselves as the real journalists of Kinshasa, as
their songs document and comment events of everyday life. One of
their key messages is: the only real handicaps are not in the body
but in the mind. Benda Bilili means 'look beyond appearances' -
literally, 'put forward what is hidden.'"

So this year's prize celebrates the victory of reaching the starting
line, or, as Andy Morgan puts it, "the end of a remarkable
beginning." The group spokesman explains, "Why 'Très Très Fort'?
Because, like all the people who live in the streets of Kinshasa,
disabled or not, we have to be strong. We are neglected by the
authorities and have to find ways to survive, no matter how. 'Très
Très Fort' is our manifesto."

"WOMEX seeks to recognise those who set the highest standards in
world culture, who articulate not only in their music, but in their
very lives, the richest values of our community," says WOMEX General
Director Gerald Seligman. "Our yearly Award is neither lifetime
achievement nor, necessarily, recognition of popularity. It is our
chance to try to echo the motivations, the dedication, the principles
and priorities of the artists and professionals who dedicate their
lives to world music. In every way, Staff Benda Bilili sets the
standard for such an objective. And there is an added value to
awarding them for, in many ways, it is also the resilience of the
Congo itself that we honour in recognising Staff Benda Bilili.
The Congo has always been a musical powerhouse of Africa, supplying
us with so many of that vast continent's greatest artists. It's so
good to see the Congo back. And it's so wonderful that it should be
back in the form of Staff Benda Bilili."

"If Akron/Family's Love Is Simple wasn't part of your end-of-year list in 2007, we're ready to forgive you just this once, but make sure it doesn't happen again this year with Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free, as the American folk-rockers are in smashing form.

The overwhelming communal feel is there, but the trio moves across musical borders with extreme  boldness. Whoever wanted to confine Akron/Family to the "freak folk" category will soon realize his mistake: the angelic vocal harmonies are still there to provide goosebumps, but the three Akrons also sound amazingly tight. Influences ranging from '70s rock, blues and African rhythms permeate the album.

Throw Animal Collective's madness, the Fleet Foxes' ensemble vocals, Yeasayer's tribalism and Jimi Hendrix's riffs in a big pile, and Akron/Family will emerge from it, whistling away, and with a handful of world-class songs in their hand. Super band! Super album!" (RifRaf)

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European tour dates:

May 16   Belgium, Brussels, Orangerie 'Nuits Botanique'
May 17    Holland, Amsterdam, Melkweg Old Room
May 18    Holland, Nijmegen, Doornroosje
May 19    France, Paris, Nouveau Casino
May 20    UK, London, ICA
May 22    UK, Glasgow, Captains Rest
May 23    UK, Manchester, Ruby Lounge
May 24    UK, Bristol, Fiddlers
May 25    Spain, Malaga, Teatro Cervantes (with Wilco)
May 26    Spain, Madrid, Teatro Calderon(with Wilco)
May 27    Spain, Granada, Congress Palace(with Wilco)
May 29    Spain, Seville, Territorios Festival (with Wilco)
May 31    Italy, Bologna, Locomotiv    
June 1    Italy, Ravenna, Hana-Bi    
June 2    Italy, Verona, Interzona   
June 3    Italy, Milano, Casa 139    
June 4    Italy, Torino, Spazio 211    
June 5    Italy, Roma, Init

Welcome back, dear dwellers of earth, to planet FES. The finest, wildest, most colourful and least traditional jazz big band in this or any stratosphere are back with their second album for Crammed Discs.

The title, ‘Cheer Me, Perverts!’ – an anagram of the name of the FES main man, Belgian composer and clarinetist Peter Vermeersch – does the job as a soundbite for this fabulous new repetoire from the 14-piece group: sharp yet ambiguous, cheeky, alluding a little to the dark side... but ultimately making a compelling case to the deviant streak in us all. Each of the usual FES elements are in place...that is to say, absolutely nothing usual whatsoever: car-chase funk that careers off the road and into walls of blistering ensemble brass, wonky screwball jazz that wears its trousers proudly round its ankles... a gentle early Miles moment that gets a scary visitation from Bernard ‘Psycho/Taxi Driver’ Hermann in the shower... you know the deal by now – or rather you don’t, which is what makes hitching the FES wagon such a thrilling ride every time.

Since 2006 album “Psychoscout” – “angular and engaging... Vermeersch knows how to make a big noise”, said The Guardian in a 4-star review – the personnel of FES have been as bursting with frantic creativity as their own music: collaborating with fellow jazz explorer Jimi Tenor, playing the London and North Sea Jazz Festivals to huge acclaim, and working on feverishly inventive side projects such as Modernski (FES reinterpretations of 20th Century classical pieces), Zilke (a stunning musical theatre piece in conjunction with production company Walpurgis), and Answer Songs – literally a set of compositional responses to existing songs.

And so, 2009  brings “Cheer Me Perverts!” – a new, full-beam FES record. What, for Peter Vermeersch, has changed since “Psychoscout”? “The songs on “Cheer Me... ” have a more preconceived structure, the range of atmospheres is larger, the writing seems strangely more advanced and at the same time still clear and to the point, and (guitarist) Pierre Vervloesem is part of the band in all songs... but the composer himself is the last person to say anything sensible about his own music”.

Then again, who needs sense when you have Flat Earth Society?

Flat Earth Society – “Cheer Me, Perverts!” – Cram 138

watch them live last summer with Jimi Tenor on vocals

get the new album here

Lonely Drifter Karen recorded a 55 min live session for Bernard Lenoir's legendary "White Sessions" on France Inter radio,

and a 20+ live TV show  for Manchester's Channel M .

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