After twenty years fronting seminal Tokyo psych band Yura Yura Teikoku, Shintaro Sakamoto released his sublime solo debut How to Live with a Phantom last year on his own Zelone Records in Japan, and Other Music Recording Co. in North America. The album is a haunting psych-pop concoction that draws on the diverse sounds of 1970s pop from around the globe, and now Other Music is announcing a new 7-inch single of similarly breezy, percussive pop, “Don’t Know What’s Normal” b/w “From the Dead,” out July 9. Sakamoto directed the dancing skeletons in this great clip for “From the Dead,” premiering here on Wax Poetics.

On June 13, 1972, former lead vocalist of the Drifters, Clyde McPhatter, died in the Bronx from complications of heart (and liver and kidney) disease due to alcohol abuse.

Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun signed McPhatter, a Durham, North Carolina, native, in 1953 after he left his former group, Billy Ward and the Dominoes. Though McPhatter put the Drifters together himself, he did not stay for long, going solo after only a couple years.

Since he pushed Summer Knights back until July 1st, ya boy Joey drops another jewel over a Lee Bannon steamer. We told you this kid was nasty, NY stand up!

Wax Poetics writer Dean Van Nguyen reports via TNT24 that Kanye West has unveiled his new album with a few songs collabed with Daft Punk:

Kanye West debuted new album Yeezus to a crowd of critics, fans and celebrities at a listening session in Manhattan last night, revealing that Daft Punk have worked on “three or four” songs on the album as well as announcing several other collaborators including Chief Keef, Kid Cudi and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.

Continue reading at TNT24.

German photographer Kai Schäfer is using photographs of records on turntables to tap into the same emotions that hearing those same records conjures up. Using only first pressings from the native country of a record’s release and period turntables, Schäfer is appealing to collectors who would call him out otherwise. You can’t quite get the full impact online, but some of the photos are as big as six feet and make for the perfect wall hangings in any vinyl sanctuary.

Peep the full gallery here.

[via Wired]

“As well as digging for records,” says Nostalgia 77’s Ben Lamdin in Issue 15, “I realized you can dig for scores.” As fellow obsessive collectors, we eventually made our way to sheet music as well. Whether it’s to lay open on your Fender Rhodes, or frame on your wall, each piece of music has that special quality that keeps history alive. Check out a few of the sheets we’ve collected over the years.