Randall Roberts

Columbia

Writer, Editor and Curator at In Sheep's Clothing hifi

Write/Edit/Select: In Sheep's Clothing, Qobuz; ex-LA Times. Insta: @liledit. I develop/implement integrated marketing tactics to actualize key strategic goals.

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Articles

Found in California: The Visionary Music of ‘Lost Coast’ | In Sheeps Clothing

1 week ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

In Northern California, the most beguiling tapes aren’t found at record stores. You chase them through yard sales, flea markets, and the fog. Lost Coast: Some Visionary Music From California is a new compilation assembled by Zully Adler, founder of Goaty Tapes and House Rules. Issued on LP, it documents a hidden strain of personal, often homemade spiritual music recorded across the state between the 1970s and 1990s.
DAT Archives Recovered by dublab Capture 1990s LA Electronic History

1 week ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

When dublab moved into its new building in late 2021, they found a bag of Digital Audio Tapes. Unlabeled, low-key, nearly forgotten, inside were demos, live sets, half-finished ideas, and full-blown mindbenders. No context, no metadata, just snippets of sublimely strange electronic and acoustic sound that Shazam can’t crack. The tapes still played. The transfers came out clean. Now they’re airing them.
The Crossfade Between Cities: ‘Chicago Waves’ and the Sonic Thread Linking LA and Chicago | In Sheeps Clothing

2 weeks ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

In the summer of 2018, percussionist Carlos Niño and violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson stepped into Chicago’s Co-Prosperity space just hours after playing with Makaya McCraven at the release show for Universal Beings. What followed was something quieter but no less powerful. An unbroken set of improvisations blended Niño’s percussive atmospheres with Atwood-Ferguson’s processed strings.
The Spirit in the Form: EM Records from Osaka, In Reach, At Last

3 weeks ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

“To make a long story short, I will only say something conclusive: EM Records is researching a hypothesis that ‘the spirit may reside in the musical form itself.’”That’s Kōki Emura, founder and guiding force behind Osaka’s EM Records, offering something like a thesis during a recent conversation with In Sheep’s Clothing’s Phil Cho. Since 1998, Emura has followed that instinct across genres, countries, formats and eras, seeking out music that holds weight.
Watch: The Reggae Film That Should Be Canon

3 weeks ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

In the loose canon of reggae films, Heartland Reggae is often passed over in favor of classics like The Harder They Come, Rockers, and Countryman. Released in 1980 and assembled from concert footage shot in 1978, the film doesn’t follow a narrative per se, but the moment in history seeps into every frame. During the opening sequence, the title appears in flames. What follows never cools off.
Wewantsounds in 2025: Private Press Funk, Cassette Heat, and Jazz That Swings Wide

1 month ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

Wewantsounds is in the middle of a heavy year. The Paris-based label has been moving fast, resurfacing rare and remarkable records from around the world. Already in 2025, they’ve brought back Meiko Kaji’s Yadokari and Roy Haynes’s Hip Ensemble, and announced an upcoming reissue of Warda’s We Malo. They’ve compiled a killer set of electro-Raï cassette cuts with Sweet Rebels, unearthed live heat from Manu Dibango, and spotlighted Japanese funk, boogie, and city pop with Tokyo Bliss.
Time Is the Instrument: John Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP

1 month ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

On September 5, 2001, a performance of John Cage’s Organ²/ASLSP began in a small medieval church in Halberstadt, Germany. Nothing sounded. The opening stretch consisted of a planned pause that lasted 17 months, time measured not in notes but in waiting. For Cage, silence wasn’t an absence. It framed whatever came next. When the first tone finally emerged in February 2003, it didn’t mark the beginning. The piece had already started. Cage wrote ASLSP in 1985 for piano.
5 Vintage European Turntables That Matter

1 month ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

Most of what matters in a turntable lives at the tip of the stylus. The cartridge does the real work by drawing music out of plastic. Bolt a good one to a strip of plywood and you’ll still get something worth listening to. That said, the turntable matters. Not because it’s collectible or cool, but because the thing holding your records steady has a job to do. The motor needs to be quiet and the speed stable. No hum, no static. Turn it on and let it run.
Mati Klarwein’ Psychedelic Record Covers Still Dazzle 50 Years Later | In Sheeps Clothing

1 month ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

Few album cover artists reward gobbling LSD more than Mati Klarwein. His remarkably precise paintings of mystical visions, which were commissioned for two-dimensional LP covers, will transform into heaving, breathing journeys after a few drops of acid. The sleeves reject the notion of branding. They feel like sacred texts. Klarwein painted like someone decoding a message pressed into the grooves: Look long enough and something inside them starts to pulse.
Gal Costa’s Lost 1972 Studio Session Finally Surfaces | In Sheeps Clothing

1 month ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

In 1972, Gal Costa was riding high. Her live album Fa-Tal – Gal a Todo Vapor had just cemented her as one of Brazil’s most electric performers, a fearless presence who could pivot from tropicalia radicalism to torch-song intimacy without breaking stride. She was already a central figure in the countercultural wave that swept through Brazilian music in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but Fa-Tal put her in a different category: a star with range, danger and total command.