z e S taples J r. S ingers W hen D o W e G et P aid

When Do We Get Paid is now available for the first time since its original release (nearly 50 years ago) with its original gold cover.

Hailed as “powerful” and “Gospel Trailblazers” by The Guardian Pop Matters in America gave it 9/10, while British music magazine Uncut gave it an 8/10, calling it “music you that deserves your attention.”

The three original members of the Staples Jr. Singers are still the core of the band.

They’re going on four generations — and play with their children and grandchildren.

Making a rare appearance, they’re slated to play select shows in Europe in the summer of 2023.

These shows will likely be one of the most emotional performances you will see all year.

Tracklist:

1. GET ON BOARD

2. I KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO MISS ME

3. I’M LOOKING FOR A MAN

4. I’M GOING TO A CITY

5. SOMEBODY SAVE ME

6. TROUBLE OF THE WORLD

When the Staples Jr. Singers, the littleknown family band from Aberdeen, Mississippi originally released their first and only full-length album, 1975’s When Do We Get Paid (Luaka Bop, 2022), they made a handful of copies themselves, which they sold at talent shows and to their neighbors on their front lawn. One of the most striking features of this record was the cover—prayers hands set against a gleaming, divine gold. We never saw a real album in the flesh when we made our version, and when we got the scans of the cover, the gold had washed out to white. So now, for the first time since its original release When Do We Get Paid will once more have a gold cover.

Who are the Staples Jr. Singers, and why do they share a name with that other gospel group you might have heard of, the ones who famously crossed over? The musical family behind the Jr. Singers, the Browns, were a part of a vanguard of gospel soul artists in the 1970s who broke from tradition to testify with the groove. Excited audiences would flock to them after shows, telling them, “Y’all sound like the Staple Singers, y’all should call yourselves the little Staple Jr. Singers!” And so they did. When they wrote these songs — all of them stone cold soul — they were teenagers, and they had one question on their minds: When Do We Get Paid?

You don’t have to take our word for how great this record is. Take the Guardian’s instead, which calls it “powerful.” Or the Times’ (★★★★), which calls it “full of feeling,” or Popmatters’ (9/10) which says it’s “a recording of fragile beauty and turbulent groove.” Amen.

By the way, the original members of the Staples Jr. Singers are touring Europe in 2023. You won’t want to miss that show—it will be one of the most emotional things you’ll see all year. h

7. WAITING FOR THE TRUMPET TO SOUND

8. I FEEL GOOD

9. WHEN DO WE GET PAID

1 1 1 1

0. ON MY JOURNEY HOME

1. TOO CLOSE

2. SEND IT ON DOWN

3. I GOT A NEW HOME

RELEASE DATE : AUGUST 4, 2023

LABEL : LUAKA BOP

FORMAT: Original Gold Cover LP

CATALOG NUMBER : LP-LBOP-0099

Emil Amos was originally commissioned by the legendary KPM music library to make this music for use in television and film. But after the executive overseeing their experimental wing exited the company, Emil brought Zone Black to Drag City and re-mixed it into a proper full-length album. While the record was originally inspired by old school 70’s television music, like the grim, descending riffs that took us to commercial as the running back strained in anguish for the ball in slo-mo, it became a genuine attempt to reach towards a new kind of library music.

Emil (Grails, OM and podcaster supreme) carves out a much more personal interpretation of what we think of as “music for television” with Zone Black. Taking classic, dark pieces that he grew up with as inspiration, like the “Lonely Man Theme” from the original Hulk TV series, he fantasized an alternate environment where composers were allowed to explore more extreme states of mind, while on much witchier drugs. . .fully separating library music from its outmoded commercial constraints. Imagine Brian Eno recording Another Green World equipped with Madlib’s gear and a much darker sense of humor. or Kafka creating The Castle with a Juno keyboard and sampler instead.

In the spirit of classic synth-based soundtracks like Firestarter or Midnight Express, the instruments narrate the experience. Urban landscapes in noirish chiaroscuro, fatal encounters unfurling beneath the persistent glow of riot lights, last-ditch meetings in pre-dawn discotheques. . .all evoked with synths, harpsichords and mellotrons drifting over drum machines and the arachnoid radiation of FX disappearing up into the darkness. Every track illuminates a different corridor of Emil’s brain, but A.E. Paterra and Steve Moore of ZOMBI periodically step in to contribute sax solos and drum beats to amp the coloration up.

Zone Black is a fully inhabitable world, its episodic narrative divided into an improbable balance between morbid, ambient anthems and insouciant hip-hop instrumentals. Emil hadn’t heard it done quite this way before, so he took it upon himself to make the sound real. And if you don’t hear it in the next, big horror feature (or in a new Zone Black game done up for Xbox, yeah!), it’ll make great mood music for tripping in the bathtub while dreaming of a new horizon of music to take drugs to. Listening to Emil Amos’ Zone Black evokes a variety of distorted, paranoid visions cue it up!