Composed in the Wrong Decade
Time travel exists in music. These songs either arrived impossibly early — predicting whole genres by decades — or emerged in the modern era sounding so authentically vintage they could pass for lost recordings from another century. Arranged in conversational pairs, the tape becomes a dialogue across time: an early-arrival record answered by a modern one reaching back toward the same sound.
The Temporal Dialogue
Musical innovation isn’t linear. Sister Rosetta Tharpe in 1944 and Thee Sacred Souls in 2022 are both reaching for the same sonic ideal. Los Saicos in Lima and the Monks in West Germany, an ocean apart and within a year of each other, both invented punk before anyone told them it was impossible.
The striking part is how consistently true innovation gets ignored in its own time. The Monks sold three thousand copies. Joe Meek pressed ninety-nine of I Hear a New World. Los Saicos never escaped Peru. These artists were simply too early — their audiences hadn’t arrived yet. Meanwhile JD McPherson, Pokey LaFarge, and Thee Sacred Souls prove displacement runs both ways: commit fully to anachronism — analog tape, forgotten techniques, no modern tricks — and you make music that exists outside time entirely.
Which is, of course, the whole point of this label — so the eleventh pair turns the lens on the house. Sylvaine Éternelle’s “Le Twist” is a brand-new recording that lands in 1962; the Moss Twins’ “Lick the Stamp with Silence” is Brill Building girl-group pop that postdates the Brill Building by sixty years. Every record here is a temporal anomaly by design. The most forward-thinking and the most backward-looking artists share a single impulse: to escape the present and reach toward something timeless.
Play it in pairs. The conversation is the point.
Pairs well with a calendar you don’t trust, a first pressing you can’t afford, and the suspicion that nothing was ever really new.
The Dialogue, in Eleven Pairs
1 · The birth of distortion
Sister Rosetta Tharpe — Strange Things Happening Every Day · recorded 1944, sounds like 1955 rock and roll
Thee Sacred Souls — Weak for Your Love · recorded 2022, sounds like 1965 Chicano sweet soul
2 · Proto-punk across continents
Los Saicos — Demolición · recorded 1965, sounds like 1977 Ramones
The Monks — Complication · recorded 1966, sounds like 1978 UK post-punk
3 · The power chord’s journey
Link Wray — Jack the Ripper · recorded 1961, sounds like 1977 punk, 1991 grunge
The 5.6.7.8’s — I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield · recorded 1996, sounds like 1964 garage / girl group
4 · Before rockabilly had a name
Goree Carter — Rock Awhile · recorded 1949, sounds like 1955 rock and roll
JD McPherson — Scratching Circles · recorded 2012, sounds like 1958 Sun Records R&B
5 · Space-age production
Joe Meek — I Hear a New World · recorded 1960, sounds like 1980s synth-pop, 1990s ambient
Cults — Go Outside · recorded 2010, sounds like 1963 Wall of Sound
6 · The scream before punk
The Sonics — Strychnine · recorded 1965, sounds like 1977 punk
Shannon & The Clams — The Moon Is in the Wrong Place · recorded 2024, sounds like 1964 garage-soul
7 · The boogie that became rock
The Boswell Sisters — Rock and Roll · recorded 1934, sounds like 1955 vocal jazz-rock
Pokey LaFarge — La La Blues · recorded 2010, sounds like 1928 jug band / ragtime
8 · British Invasion before Britain
Johnny Burnette Trio — The Train Kept A-Rollin’ · recorded 1956, sounds like 1968 proto-metal
Durand Jones & The Indications — Is It Any Wonder? · recorded 2016, sounds like 1966 deep soul
9 · Electronic futures
Yellow Magic Orchestra — Computer Game · recorded 1978, sounds like 1988 Detroit techno
Leon Bridges — River · recorded 2015, sounds like 1960 Memphis gospel
10 · The psychedelic outsiders
The Syndicats — Crawdaddy Simone · recorded 1965, sounds like 1977 punk, 1987 noise-rock
La Luz — Watching Cartoons · recorded 2021, sounds like 1966 psychedelic surf-pop
11 · The label, out of time
Sylvaine Éternelle — Le Twist · recorded 2026, sounds like 1962 yéyé
The Moss Twins — Lick the Stamp with Silence · recorded 2026, sounds like 1962 Brill Building