A double CD retrospective compilation, Check The Water is a celebration of The Leaf Label, and is released to coincide with a series of anniversary shows in London (October 25-29, 2005), featuring many of the musicians who have moulded the label’s sound over the years. Sequenced broadly chronologically, the album includes a stack of unabashed classics from the recent catalogue, including A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s emotional cover of the anti-war folk standard ‘Portlandtown’, Murcof’s deadly ‘Mir’, Colleen’s found-sound lullaby ‘Babies’, the upbeat electronic pop of Psapp’s ‘Curuncula’, Efterklang’s uplifting ‘Step Aside’, Hanne Hukkelberg’s honeyed ‘Ease’, and ‘Apple or a Gun’, a taste of what’s to come from the label’s latest signing, Chicago trio volcano!. They’ve also taken the chance to dip a little further back, pulling a few long-deleted gems from the vaults, including Boymerang’s still sensational ‘The Don’ (Graham Sutton’s first post-Bark Psychosis outing, and the reason the label’s here in the first place), Caribou’s party-rockin’ ‘Tits & Ass’ (originally a B-side), Four Tet’s ‘Field’ (Kieran Hebden’s first ever release under the Four Tet name), a hard-to-find piece by the more experimental Icarus (from their self-released Misfits album), and an unreleased mix of ‘A Grain Of Sand’ by the wonderfully peculiar Sons Of Silence, as well as our favourites from Susumu Yokota, Faultline, Boom Bip & Doseone, PJ Harvey sideman Rob Ellis and, as they say, many, many more. Twenty-nine tracks in two and a half hours.

Double CD – BAY 50CD

BAY 50EX