El Michels Affair
Sounding Out In The City
Over 10 years ago, Leon Michels released his first full length record, Sounding Out The City. It was Michels' first full length record under the moniker El Michels Affair. At the time, the budding retro soul scene consisted of mostly organ quartets a la The Meters and of course, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings were in the early days of their ascent to world domination. Leon Michels, who was 18 when recording Sounding Out The City began, had just released Thunder Chicken, the first record by his high school band The Mighty Imperials. At the time of SOTC, Michels was just discovering early rocksteady, afrobeat, and 60's garage rock, which inevitably crept its way into the songwriting. He purchased a Tascam 388, an 80's 1/4" reel to reel 8 track intended for home recordings, and began recording music in a 10x10 box with no windows that also doubled as his childhood bedroom. Along with fellow Mighty Imperials Nick Movshon, Homer Steinweiss, and Sean Solomon, and Michael Leonhart, Thomas Brenneck, and some of the musicians from The Dap Kings, Michels recorded the LP over a two year period. Upon it's release, it received some rave reviews and the small deep funk community ate it up, but due to the lack luster promotion and distribution the rest of the world was slow to catch on to the instrumental gems featured on SOTC, which Michels appropriately labelled as "cinematic soul". However, in 2005 it found it's way into the hands of the people who were organizing a series of concerts for Scion that paired bands with MC's. El Michels Affair was contacted about playing one show with Raekwon The Chef of Wu Tang Clan fame. The show was such a success it led to a tour, and then to another set of concerts that featured multiple members of the Wu-Tang Clan. This eventually led to the release of El Michels Affair's second record, "Enter the 37th Chamber" which introduced them to a much larger audience and has been their most successful release to date. Michels has since gone on to produce and co-produce numerous records for powerhouse soul artists like Lee Fields. He shares songwriting credits with Adele, Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Aloe Blacc, and has played on records by Ray LaMontagne, Lana Del Rey, The Black Keys and Dr. John.
Delivery
We currently only deliver to the UK. Delivery costs are clearly provided at the checkout at the time of purchase. We offer free delivery when spending over £60 in one transaction.
| Royal Mail First Class (order value below £60) | £2.95 |
| Royal Mail First Class (order value above £60) | FREE |
To qualify for free delivery please expect all your items to be delivered in one package i.e if you have ordered a 'pre-order' item please expect to wait until all your items are available before any are delivered.
We send our packages via Royal Mail. While we endeavour to get your purchase to you as quickly as possible, once it has left our depot it is out of our hands and we cannot be held responsible for any packages arriving later than expected.
Packaging
All our items are packaged in good quality cardboard packaging which should prevent any damage during transit. Please kindly note that any clingfilm or shrink wrap around the item is not considered part of the product.
Returns
If you decide that a product is not suitable within 30 days of delivery, you can return it to us at your own cost for a replacement or refund. Returns must be unused and in their original, undamaged packaging. Return address information will be included with your purchase.
If a product is damaged please get in touch so we can resolve it quickly for you.
Refunds
Refunds will be issues to the card that was used to purchase the item.
Refunds for returned items will be issued once the item has been received and checked.
Undelivered Packages
If a package is returned to us due to an incorrect address being supplied or because it was not collected from a local depot, an additional postage fee will be payable in order to resend. We will contact you to arrange this before anything is resent.