BVA has the ears of someone who spends too much time in the back of record stores. These aren't obscurities for obscurity's sake, they're signals the mainstream missed. Music that was always powerful, always meaningful, just never amplified. BVA is the amplifier they've been waiting for.
Transmission 01: Water Over Old Stones
October 26, 2023
The crate-digger sensibility arrives fully formed. Cortex, the French jazz-funk group whose albums were dollar-bin staples until rediscovery. Black Merda!, one of the first all-Black rock bands, whose records barely circulated outside Detroit. Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir, whose gospel-funk "Like a Ship" was recorded in a Chicago church and forgotten for decades.
Transmission 02: High Wind Warning
November 9, 2023
The dig continues. More lost records pulled from the bins, more signals that never got their due.
Transmission 03: The Valley Finds Its Voice
November 23, 2023
WITCH, 1970s Zambian psychedelic rock that most Western listeners had never heard before recent reissues. Erick Cosaque's Gwo Ka drum music from Guadeloupe, independently recorded for 45 years with almost no distribution outside the Caribbean. The African continent and its diaspora yield deeper crates.
Transmission 05: The Longest Night
December 21, 2023
The dig goes global. Mbongwana Star's Congolese street music shot through with distortion on World Circuit. Propherts Of Da City's 90s Cape Town hip-hop on Ghetto Ruff. Abel Lima's cosmic Cabo Verdean funana rescued by Analog Africa. Dijf Sanders' field recordings from Java transformed into electronic compositions. El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe, performing dabke since 1979, preserved on DARNA. Records that traveled long distances to reach the valley floor.
Transmission 06: The First Thaw
January 4, 2024
The dig goes planetary. Waiphot Phetsuphan's luk thung from Thai 78s on Dust-to-Digital. Los Destellos' psychedelic cumbia from Peru. Blackrock's obscure funk 45. Herb Alpert closes with the brass sound of the bachelor pad. Records that traveled long distances to reach the valley floor.
Transmission 07: Sketches of the Valley
January 18, 2024
Francis Bebey's coffee cola jingle, a small machine poem from Cameroon. The Lijadu Sisters. Letta Mbulu. Abdel Aziz El Mubarak. Frank Proffitt's banjo from these very mountains. The bins yield deeper crates.
Transmission 09: Cold Damp Valley
February 15, 2024
Ebo Taylor and Basa Basa from Ghana. L'éclair and Surprise Chef. Les Filles de Illighadad from the Sahel. And a Chinese New Year 78 or two. The crate-digger sensibility, fully formed.
Transmission 10: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong
February 29, 2024
The dig goes to the delta. Dengue Fever's Khmer-rock psychedelia, Ahmed Fakroun's Libyan disco reissued by Habibi Funk, Roger Webb's library-music "Flying Objects," Dorothy Ashby's harp. The crate-digger's first loves, carried down a canal in southern Vietnam.