Josephine Foster has been a friend of My Kung Fu for a few years. We originally booked her as part of the Forecast series of gigs in Cardiff, Wales. Her eerie, vintage, downright spooked out sound went right to where our heads were at (and still are). She lives in Spain now but is originally from Colorado, USA and recorded the tracks that form the album Little Life in several locations in that state.

You might know Josephine Foster via her magnificent albums for Locust Records and, more recently, Bo’ Weavil Records. The tracks on her Little Life collection are earlier and date from around eight years ago. Previously they were only available as a hand-crafted CDR in extremely limited quantities. Since it’s original quiet release, Josephine Foster has received a good amount of attention from The Wire, Pitchfork Media and New York Times.

The Little Life album tracklist is as follows.
Shay Shay
Stones In My Heavy Bag
Charles In The Park
Francie’s Song
Run Maroona
Three Day Days
Tom Peck, Neighbor Friend
Birdo
Warsong
Hell’s Bells Are Ringing
Little Life

Let’s face it, many an album is described as “hard-to-find” these days. But it’s only a problem if you like the music…

Well, we at My Kung Fu adore Josephine Foster and couldn’t bear the thought of you missing out on these songs. The album is available now for digital download at these places:

7digital | eMusic | iTunes

CD and vinyl are on their way later in 2008.

We’re back, from a sunny and fun-filled excursion to Suffolk for Latitude Festival 2008. Hats off to Grinderman, Stewart Lee, Wave Pictures, Blondie, Moshi Moshi DJs, Voluntary Butler Scheme, Scrabble Sunday and other purveyors of quality stuff.

Truckers Of Husk utterly rocked the Lake Stage on Saturday, with the full compliment of ferocious drumming, guitar, cello and samples. At one point they invited audience members to form an impromptu choir onstage, which is what festivals are all about.

You can now hear two tracks from that monumental set online courtesy of BBC Radio 1. The tracks are called Awesome Tapes From Africa and Person For The Person and both are brand new songs.

Listen to Bethan Elfyn’s Radio 1 show, featuring two tracks from Truckers Of Husk at Latitude.

Truckers Of Husk’s next festival appearance is Green Man. There are still some tickets available from Sebon but hurry!

And the debut EP pictured above is also available on My Kung Fu.

Word reaches me that Fire Records are putting out a huge collaborative project Chamber Music which features Mountain Men Anonymous alongside many other different artists (I count 20 artists in total). People like Flying Saucer Attack, Bardo Pond, Lee Ranaldo, … There are mini artist biogs on the Fire Records site.

The whole thing is a musical interpretation of a poem by James Joyce and the idea is a very ambitious one, years in the making. We do like Fire Records very much indeed.

Well, this is the My Kung Fu label website and I should probably highlight that when we launched My Kung Fu in 2004, we released Mountain Men Anonymous’ own full length album Krkonose. It was our first album release and it still smacks gobs today! Beautiful and violent to varying degrees. If you want to get it, try Bleep, eMusic or iTunes. (Mountain Men Anonymous are no longer playing live as a group.)

As for James Joyce, he wrote Ulysses and Finnegans Wake and I think I’m right in saying he invented the word “quark” so beloved of physicists and sci fi writers today.

My Kung Fu is happy to be supporting Independents’ Day 08 which takes place on 4th July.

It’s a giant celebration of independent record labels and the music that they champion.

There’s a staggering list of artists that were originally nurtured by independent labels - check out the site for more info.

Cerys Matthews is playing select shows this summer with her full band, performing new tunes from Awyren=Aeroplane, solo favourites and some well loved hits…

5 Jul 2008 18:00
Bryngarw Country Park Bridgend, Wales

6 Jul 2008 20:00
GuilFest Guildford, Surrey, London and South East

26 Jul 2008 20:00
Perfect Day Festival Calne, Wiltshire, South

28 Jul 2008 20:00
Llangollen Fringe Festival Llangollen, Wales

6 Aug 2008 20:00
Maes B National Eisteddfod, Cardiff and District, Wales

7 Aug 2008 20:00
Pavilion National Eisteddfod, Cardiff and District, Wales

8 Aug 2008 20:00
Brecon Jazz Brecon, Wales

23 Aug 2008 20:00
Tenby Folk Festival Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales

24 Aug 2008 20:00
The Rock ’n’ Roots Festival Much Marcle (near Ledbury), Herefordshire, Midlands

Greetings from the completely independent label that is My Kung Fu!

Anyone who’s visited our our Cardiff Bay offices will know they are rather spacious. We’ve decided they’re a little too big for our needs.

So we’ve decided to uproot and plant our offices elsewhere. Nobody likes having to pay rent and we figured there were much better things to spend that money on, such as the recording and publicity for the next records by Cerys Matthews, Truckers Of Husk and Richard James. To name only three.

On a practical level, because of the brown boxes and carpet dust cloud that have flown up, contact by email is best. We’ll post up the new address details in early June.

Again, if you had visited the old place you might have encountered our other activitives such as Plug Two (music promo), our gig promotions and bookings… and Sleeveface (look it up if you don’t know…). If you regularly deal with any of these alter egos, then it’s a good time to get in touch as we’re relocating these too.

Thursday 19th June 2008

THE VOICES
THE KEYS
plus psychosis disco till late

Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, UK

£4 / 8pm / 18+

This marvellous poster was designed by Safari Art. If you can make it to the show, we’ll see you at the front.

Here’s a recorded stream of Truckers Of Husk performing their live TV debut on the show Bandit.

http://www.bandit247.com/perl/bandit247.pl?rm=av;a=98;vt=324

The track is Panther Party and when I say live I mean LIVE! Meaning that every sound you hear is coming from the band.

The multi-talented Richard James is currently working on his second album as a solo artist. The working title is We Went Riding and it’s scheduled for release in Autumn 2008.

In the meantime check out this repeat of his 3-track session for Freak Zone on BBC 6Music, originally broadcast last year when The Seven Sleepers Den album came out on My Kung Fu.

Tracklist
http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/freakzone/tracklisting_20080427.shtml

Listen again stream (session begins at roughly 2 hours 35 minutes, expires on Sun 4th May 2008)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/networks/6music/aod.shtml?6music/6m_freak

Freak Zone, presented by Stuart Maconie, is among the best radio shows in the world for psych, folk, jazz and eclectic outer limits. And this being the BBC, there are no commercial breaks either.

“a rhythmically thrilling web of twisting motorik grooves” Clash Magazine

“(they) release their debut EP shortly, at which point fans of Battles and Tortoise can get their bone on” Rock Sound

Physical Education EP has the tracks:
This Odd Modern / Cookie Cool And The Candy Mob / Salad Ballad / A Future Animal / Panther Party

Pre-order: Amazon | HMV | Sebon