One of the most lavish, loving books on hip hop that we've ever seen – a huge volume that manages to be a history of rap music, a photo book, a guide to key albums, and also a personal journey as well – all served up with a vivid, non-stop array of images that make the whole thing even more of a visual delight than digging in the crates! The volume is huge – stuffed with over 1000 images, most in color – photos of album covers, street art, hip hop DJs and MCs, and countless other subjects – all presented in loose chronological order, alongside a history and evolution of the music, plus a timeline of key records and moments – all guided by some personal reflections by the author as well. Chuck D gives the book some huge props in the intro – and this updated volume is a heavy 446 pages, in a softcover edition, filled with images throughout. Book

A hugely detailed look at one of the hippest rock labels of the 80s – New Zeland's Flying Nun Records, an imprint that also had a huge impact on the rest of the world at the time! Flying Nun were key in helping guitar-based sounds get past the modes of the punk and post-punk years – not shaking off those influences, but refining them, pushing them forward, and really evolving the sound through key groups like The Clean, Chills, Verlains, Bailter Space, and Straightjacket Fits – all of whom really helped pave the way for big indie moments over here in the decade that followed. The book offers up an insane amount of information on Flying Nun – in year-by-year chapters that detail every single release, always with photos and cover art, plus more images too – in a hefty softcover volume that's almost 400 pages, and full color throughout. Book

You may not know the name of Barney Bubbles, but you're likely to have seen his artwork – important images that graced key records in the post-punk years – vinyl from Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Devo, Hawkwind, and dozens of others – all presented here in very vivid color! Bubbles actually got his start in the prog years – and this book goes way back to feature some of the gems from those years, then traces things up through the 70s, to Barney's big explosion in the latter part of the decade and beyond – a surprisingly rich history, all presented with a very strong focus on the images, including some inner record contents, mock-ups, and more! This heavy softcover edition is 240 pages in all – and full color throughout. Book

An insanely fantastic book on one of our favorite record labels of all time – the All Platinum family of labels from the New Jersey scene of the late 60s/early 70s – a precursor to the later Sugar Hill hip hop empire, and home to The Moments, Whatnauts, and countless other great groups! The book is way more than just the story of the label – as it's super-heavy, weighs as much as a stack of records – and features hundreds of pages with full color images, both of rare records and artists who recorded for All-Platinum too – all in support of chapters that approach the label and its related imprints in a range of different ways. The book not only looks at the big stars, but tackles the lesser-known acts too – and traces all the many sub-labels like Stang, Vibration, A1, Turbo, and Astroscope – then looks at the company's relationship to Chess Records too. The book features an illustrated discography of all the related labels after the main content – with color images of labels and covers – and the whole thing is 532 heavy, glossy pages – well worth the price! Book

A much-needed look at the amazing underground jazz scene in LA – the richly creative spiritual and avant underground that flourished strongly in the 60s, 70s, and 80s! Although the city's best known for its cool jazz of the 50s, there's an even greater amount of left-field jazz that's come from LA – work that rivals eastern scenes like the AACM in Chicago or loft jazz world in 70s New York – but even more righteous and spiritual overall! The book does a great job of laying the groundwork for this scene to emerge – and offers an incredible amount of detail on its evolution – with an especially focused look at Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, as well as some of the artists who recorded for Nimbus Records. Plus, this updated edition does a wonderful job of showing the continuing legacy of the music well into the 21st century – and also includes an appendix by Roberto Miranda, for a larger volume running well over 420 pages! Book

About 30 years back, Joseph Lanza first turned us on to an amazing array of 60s easy listening records that we'd never fully given their due – and here, he continues the journey, but with a key shift into the world of psychedelia too! The book is a wonderful look at the way that easy listening and instrumental pop tried to stay vibrant in the second half of the 60s – and it follows the way that easy artists of the time were picking up the aesthetics of the younger generation in a variety of ways – not just doing cover versions of songs by The Beatles and Stones, but also going for trippier artwork on their album covers, and using more unusual studio techniques in production – all in ways that made for a huge legacy of very groovy records! At times, things would even move backwards – as older songs from the early part of the century were given a mod spin for the 60s generation – and the range of topics covered here is as wonderful as Lanza's presentation. The book is a very cool 7" square format – with lots of album reproductions and great graphics, plus a list of 50 essential records at the back – served up in a softcover volume that's 237 pages in length. Book

One of the most unusual disc guides we've ever seen – a book that coins its own genre of music, Walearic – then finds a whole host of vintage records that fall under that new category! The book is filled with listings of rare records from Japan – music in many styles, and which represent the real flowering of Japanese musical creativity in the 70s and 80s – a time when the pressing plants were going at full steam, and the nation was really crafting its own amazing legacy in music! As with other Japanese books of this nature, most of the text is not in English – but the all-color volume does feature page after page of record covers, titles, dates, artist, and label information – hundreds of listings for records that will definitely expand your crate digging efforts in years to come. The book is divided up into chapters that focus on the original styles of the records – with many entries in chapters that include "Psychedelic/Avant Garde", "Easy Listening/Mood Music", "New Wave", "Disco/Fusion", and "OST/Anime" – almost 200 pages of listings, with 4 records to a page, all in color – which makes for a heck of a lot of new records to discover! Book

An incredible package – one that brings together four rare publications by Sun Ra – printed words that are every bit as groundbreaking as his music – and which together represent the farther-flung corners of his vast cultural enterprise! The set represents each of the texts in the manner in which it was originally presented – save for the yellowing paper of the originals – so that two are small pamphlets, one is a slightly larger booklet, and the last is a huge stapled publication – each with a size, feel, and presentation that's like their originals! First up are the pamphlets that came with two early Ra records – Jazz By Sun Ra and Jazz In Silhouette – the first a booklet of liner notes with some poems, the second much more poetic, and originally done as a mimeograph that quickly deteriorated. Next is the famous Immeasurable Equation – a book of poetry from the mid 60s, which also features some writings by Ra on both his career and politics. Last is the huge Immeasurable Equation Vol 2 – a much larger book of poetry from 1972, presented on full sheets of paper stapled together with a textured cover of artwork. All four are impossibly hard to find – and in the format here, it's as if you had the originals in your hands, but in mint condition! Book

An overstuffed edition of the Goldmine Jazz Price Guide – filled with great information! First off – forget the prices in this one, because we hate price guides, and we don't suggest that they actually have any correspondence to the real world – because people buy records at all different prices, for different reasons. HOWEVER, this is a great little book filled with useful data on jazz releases – and we find it to be an excellent resource when we need to look up details of work by specific artists – maybe more like a discography than an actual guide to pricing records. The book does have some holes and mistakes – but there's a heck of a lot of useful information in here, especially if you have questions like "What year did that come out?", "What label was that on?", "Which record was first in his career?" We're surprised at how many listings we can find for key albums – and the book's especially helpful for figuring out releases that seem to have a sly history of reappearing on the market! There's also a helpful section on different jazz labels and pressings, and the book is 506 pages, softcover, with lots of black and white illustrations – and listings for over 40,000 titles! Book