Radio Raheem US Vinyl & CDs

Notes: Ancient Artifax showcases unearthed punk rock artifacts from the 1970s and 1980s through hundreds of images and supporting commentary from those who witnessed the birth of a counter-culture first-hand in the New York City, Washington DC, and Midwest scenes.

Book specs:

8.5"x11"
242 pages, full colour
Foil stamped hardcover

Notes: "How Much Art Can You Take?" compiles over 170 images, many of which have never been seen before, plus first-hand commentary from the band and their crew, spread across 190 pages in a beautiful, 10" x 10" hardcover book.

Notes: "Matinee: All Ages On The Bowery" was created during the early 1980s when New York City was embroiled in debt and crime, and as the middle class continued to evaporate, the city confronted one of the most trying periods in its history.

Paradoxically, its underground music scene was teeming with vitality like never before. Still staggering from the violent outset and eventual deterioration of punk rock, hundreds of disenfranchised kids living in the city and outlying boroughs began forming their own groups to rail against the everyday trials and prejudices of urban existence. As a result, New York City became a hub for a flourishing hardcore scene; a cultural phenomenon that used punk rock as a platform for a politically charged, inherently regional catharsis.

Between 1983 and 1985, local photographer Drew Carola began photographing the patrons of the now infamous hardcore matinees that were going on at the seminal underground music club, CBGB. During the week, Carolan was working as an assistant to legendary portrait photographer Richard Avedon, and on weekends he set up a makeshift studio across the street from CBGB and intercepted kids on their way to the all-ages afternoon shows. The result is a collection of photographs capturing the beauty, vulnerability, and the unbridled energy of youth during the height of the Reagan years.

Now more than thirty years later, all of that has disappeared and a copacetic, prosperous, and gentrified element has taken its place. While the hardcore punk scene still thrives today, these photographs capture a time and place in history that no longer exists.

Notes: In the early 1980s, Karen O'Sullivan made her way from where she grew up on Manhattan, NY's Upper West Side to the then-desolate Lower East Side to photograph the burgeoning scenes of hardcore punk and hip hop. "Somewhere Below 14th & East" is the first collection of Karen's photos, compiling over 150 images of artists as diverse as The Clash, Run DMC, Iggy Pop, Beastie Boys, Minor Threat, UTFO, Misfits, and Whodini, as well as the various characters and ne'er-do-wells brave enough to witness history in the making. With its combination of O'Sullivan's striking imagery and first-hand accounts by those who were there, "Somewhere Below 14th & East" chronicles an extraordinary time where boundless possibility and stifling desperation intersected to create one of the most vital and creative times in New York's history.

Notes: Glenn "Spot" Lockett landed in Hermosa Beach, CA in the mid-1970s. A serious musician, he helped build Media Art Recording Studio and stumbled into photojournalism via Easy Reader, the local news weekly. Hermosa proved to be a crossroads abounding with oddball roller skaters who were mostly overshadowed by Venice disco rollers and the Dogtown-inspired leaps into professional skateboarding (never mind that the first skateboard competition ever was in Hermosa in 1963). Then, in the late 70s, a cultural shift hit, fueled largely by music. This time the South Bay was in the vanguard. Spot became the in-house producer and engineer at SST Records - the label founded in 1978 by Greg Ginn as a vehicle for Black Flag, the band that defined LA hardcore. Between 1979 and 1985, he recorded, mixed, produced or co-produced most of SST's pivotal acts, working on all of Black Flag's greatest releases, and on classic albums by the Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Saint Vitus, Descendents, Big Boys, Husker Du, The Dicks, Subhumans and Misfits. Throughout this period, Spot remained a master photographer who documented various Los Angeles subcultures in intelligently composed black-and-white photographs. As this volume reveals, there was no distinction between the musical and the visual - he heard what he saw; saw what he heard - hence, the title of this collection. Spanning the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Sounds of Two Eyes Opening offers an amazing portrait of Southern California beach life, set against the dark clubs and rehearsal spaces of the burgeoning punk scene.

Hardbound, 272 pages

Notes: If the name Brooke Smith is known to the general public, it is from her acting on television shows such as Grey's Anatomy and Ray Donovan, or her role as Catherine Martin in Silence Of The Lambs. But prior to all that, Brooke was a participant in the New York hardcore scene of the 1980s, photographing bands at CBGBs notorious Sunday afternoon gigs and hanging out on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. "Sunday Matinee" contains over 140 images, both colour and black & white, spread across 160 pages in a clothbound, 11" x 11" book.