Dave Lee's "AC Soul Symphony" alias has been releasing delectable and sultry disco since 2005 but reached his magnus opus in 2023 with the release of the "Metamorphosis" LP. Here we find two tracks handpicked from the album and delivered, for the first time, in a 7" format. The single starts much as the album does with the track "Windy City Theme", beautifully scored, recorded, and produced legato strings envelope the track, punctuated with horns and vocals reminiscent of a Love Unlimited Orchestra production. This version of the track has been rearranged, speeding up the pacing of the track and reaching the juicy parts in a really satisfying way. On the flip side we have the title track from the album "Metamorphosis", which is the first time the vocal version has been made available on Vinyl. A bass laden intro gives ways to glistening pianos and those signature strings (have we mentioned how good the strings are?). A more laid back and seductive track than the A side, but no less appealing. Again, due to the limitations of the 7" format, "Metamorphosis" has been expertly rearranged with loving care and attention.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: As disco as disco gets (and therefore not for everyone) - but with a b-side like this who can possibly resist? Metamorphosis with its catchy motif and sultry vocals has me well and truly hooked.

TRACK LISTING

Windy City Theme
Metamorphosis

Influential jazz collective Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids return with an epic new opus, ‘Shaman!’, featuring a fresh line-up including original 1970s Pyramids member Dr. Margaux Simmons on flute Bobby Cobb on guitar, long-term associate Sandra Poindexter on violin, Ruben Ramos on bass, Gioele Pagliaccia on drums and Jack Yglesias on percussion. The band transitions from the political and social commentaries of 2018’s acclaimed ‘An Angel Fell’ into more introspective themes. “I wanted to use this album to touch on some of the issues that we all face as individuals in the inner space of our souls and our conscience,” explains Ackamoor. “The album unfolds over four Acts with personal musical statements about love and loss, mortality, the afterlife, family and salvation.”

Evolving around Ackamoor’s intricate compositions, the album takes us effortlessly across moods and emotions through a series of expansive, extended pieces. Starting with ritual, soul-searching, and masculine vulnerability on the title track, the band explores timeless existence on ‘Eternity’ and mourns the sudden loss of loved ones in the prescient ‘When Will I See You Again?’, a track which gains new relevance amidst the current COVID-19 crisis. Ackamoor pays tribute to his mentor Cecil Taylor on the angular ‘Theme For Cecil’ and renders homage to the ancestors on ‘Salvation’ and ‘The Last Slave Ship’, recalling the last ship to bring slaves to the US from Africa, the Clotilda. The superb ‘Virgin’ is an anthem of forgiveness, new beginnings and self-healing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Shaman!
2. Tango Of Love
3. Eternity
4. When Will I See You Again?
5. Salvation
6. Theme For Cecil
7. Virgin
8. The Last Slave Ship
9. Dogon Mysteries

2024 ushers in a brand new Barry Adamson album entitled, ‘Cut To Black’ The album swaggeringly embraces Adamson’s trademark genre hopping compositions, covering Pop, Soul, Jazz, Hip Hop and Gospel.

A must for fans of all things Cinematic Soul, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Post Punk, Massive Attack, Unloved and much more

TRACK LISTING

1. The Last Words Of Sam Cooke
2. Demon Lover
3. Cut To Black
4. Manhattan Satin
5. These Would Be Blues
6. Please Don’t Call On Me
7. Amen White Jesus
8. One Last Midnight
9. Was It A Dream?
10. Waiting For The End Of Time

From pirate radio to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, journalist and rapper Franklyn Addo pens an extraordinary narrative of the history, present and future of Grime music. The influence of Grime on contemporary British culture is difficult to understate. From fashion trends and evolving language to potent political statements, Grime is a musical juggernaut that has reverberated far throughout British society.

Chronicled for the first time in powerful literary prose, Addo intelligently documents the genre's cultural explosion and investigates how it became the voice of a generation. A phenomenal insight into the captivating and electrifying genre that has taken the British music scene by storm, A Quick Ting On: Grime is an essential and long-awaited read for Stormzy aficionados and grime newcomers alike.

London-based four-piece Adult Jazz announce their first full-length album in a decade, So Sorry So Slow, out 26 April 2024 via Spare Thought. Alongside the announcement comes lovesick new single ‘Suffer One’ featuring Owen Pallett, a cautious excavation of self and sexuality, clambering across a gorgeously shapeshifting, filmic five-minutes.

Containing some of the band’s most abrasive but gentle, beautiful and melismatic work to date, So Sorry So Slow has many defining characteristics: romance, panic, devotion and remorse, threaded together by an intentionally laser-focused love. It’s deeply personal, bruised and candid in its expressions of tenderness, and deeply pained in its concurrent reflections of ecological regret. Across its hour-long runtime, a delicate, frenetic energy and glacial heaviness coexist, the band pitting those paces against one another. In their richly experimental timbre, dancing strings and fluttering falsettos prang against a bed of brass drones like a wounded bird.

“We started writing in 2017 and began recording in 2018,” says vocalist Harry Burgess. “We genuinely thought it might be finished in 2018! But things kept developing and, having resolutely not struck while the iron was hot, there was no real external push to rush things after that, so we just kept letting things shift and unfold until it felt right. Listening back to my voice notes it’s nice to notice that there are fragments of ideas from the whole period 2017-2023 which have shaped the record.”

Recorded in bursts at studios across London and in the band members’ flats, at Konk, on the Isle of Wight and in Sussex, So Sorry is unambiguous in its evolution. Sonically, there are sparks of the arrhythmic brightness that afforded the band’s critically acclaimed debut album Gist Is its cult adoration, for fans of Arthur Russell and Meredith Monk, but with a blossoming, melancholic darkness often overhead. Piano sprees and luscious string sections appear like low-hanging stars on a night-time drive, whilst plunging vocal distortions and humming brass loops resurrect heavy limbs in a bad dream.

“I usually have objects as kind of totems for ideas,” explains Burgess. “The album initially started out to do with performance… [the totem] was a head mic, one of the subtle skin-tone ones, discreet on the forehead of a West End star. A number of the first songs in their original forms were almost musical theatre piano ballads. I think that was really a device to write about my life as the ‘main character’ (pre internet-speak reframing): regrets about romance, relationships - unsustainable relationships with the self and others.”

“However, once we started writing, the ideas about unsustainable personal relationships, loving unevenly and heartbreak conflated with a more expressly ecological regret. Like contending with big feelings of loss, endings, beauty, desolation, and with how much joy the earth contains in it. Feeling so much gratitude bound up in waves of sadness. Maybe witnessing a slow-motion goodbye to all that, or its last gasps. I love the earth and the life it supports so much. I love how ecosystems fit together - even the brutal stuff. It may be basic to say, but now is the time to be laser focused on that love. I was thinking about human centrality on earth, us as the ‘main character’, the way that is served by faith and romanticism, and the subsequent disingenuous understandings of our position in the ecosystem, as only stewards somehow, rather than subjects. The totems at this point: a herald’s horn, lorry inner tubes, archaeological tools. I guess from doom, industry, history respectively.”

“Now I would say the record is about gripping. Totems being: crampons, rope, drips, desalination equipment, accruing various survival tech. I think gripping sums up both of the threads. There’s the emotionally correct clinging to the earth that is the substrate of everything we value, or the delusional clinging to our imagined dominant position. But also the practical, technological aspects of creating a sustainable relationship, of remaining here. Then I think of romance again.”

So Sorry So Slow comes out 26th April 2024 on Spare Thought, mixed by Fabian Prynn at 4AD Studios and mastered by Alex Wharton at Abbey Road.

Adult Jazz is Harry Burgess, Tim Slater, Steven Wells and Tom Howe.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Bleat Melisma
Suffer One
Y-rod

Side B
No Relief
Plenary
Marquee

Side C
Dusk Song
Earth Of Worms
No Sentry

Side D
Bend
I Was Surprised
Windfarm

Grammy®-winning Arooj Aftab is set to release Night Reign, the follow up to her critically-acclaimed album Vulture Prince, on 31 May on Verve Records. Aftab makes the night the focus of this nine-song collection. Entirely in her own voice and through her own story, she delves into the multifaceted, bold and fascinating realm that comes to life after dark. Some nights are for falling in love, some are for solitude and introspection, some are to be annoyed at a forced social gathering–and so go the stories of Night Reign. The album features new friends like Cautious Clay shredding on flute, Moor Mother echoing Aftab’s sentiment of how cruel the world is, and Chocolate Genius aka Marc Anthony Thompson lending his tender sensibilities to a song about being grounded. Longtime collaborators Petros Klampanis and Maeve Gilchrist also continue their musical partnership as core members of Arooj’s musical family. The resulting new music again showcases Aftab’s striking ability to build a thing of beauty from distinct elements. Night Reign is a clear departure from tradition or the reinvention of ancestral music. It’s a reflection of Aftab’s 15 years living in New York City and her unapologetic commitment to stay true to herself. With open-heartedness, candour and wit, Aftab lets us get even closer to her.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Aey Nehin
2. Na Gul
3. Autumn Leaves (ft. James Francies)
4. Whiskey
5. Zameen (ft. Chocolate Genius, Inc.)
Side B
1. Raat Ki Rani (version Exclusive To Vinyl)
2. Saaqi (ft. Vijay Iyer)
3. Bolo Na (ft. Moor Mother & Joel Ross)
4. Last Night (Reprise) (ft. Cautious Clay, Kaki King, Maeve Gilchrist)

Musicians include Aston 'Family Man' Barrett, Carlton Barrett, Robbie Shakespeare, Sly Dunbar, Ansel Collins, Ossie Hibbert, Earl 'Chinna' Smith, Tommy McCook, Cornell Campbell, Jackie Mittoo.

Both The Aggravators and The Revolutionaries were influential in creating the distinctive sound of reggae music during its formative years, contributing their talents as studio bands behind some of the most significant recordings in the history of Jamaican music. 'Guerilla Dub' provides an illustration and insight into the close working relationships between the many producers, musicians and mixing engineers who created so many of Jamaica's marvellous musical masterpieces during its golden age and how interwoven and interconnected they were during this period of intense musical creativity.

TRACK LISTING

Cuddoe Dub
Garvey Dub
Paul Bogle Dub
Malcolm X Dub
Martin Luther Dub
Swapo Dub
Guerilla Dub
Maroon Dub
Ethiopean Dub
P.L.A. Dub

Brighton-based shoegazers Air Formation are set to release their self-titled sixth studio album this spring via Club AC30. Inspired by bands such as Flying Saucer Attack, Spiritual- ized, Explosions In The Sky and The Jesus and Mary Chain, Air Formation's music incorp- orates heavily delayed guitar and feedback, with droning keyboards, and ethereal vocals. Forming in 2000, long before spiritual forbearers Slowdive, Ride and Loop were consid- ered acceptable influences, the five-piece have been a mainstay of the modern shoegaze scene and have gained a devoted following, receiving critical acclaim from tastemakers including Consequence of Sound, Clash, and Louder Than War.

Briefly splitting in April 2011 after the release of their fourth studio album 'Nothing to Wish For (Nothing to Lose)', they reformed in 2014 for a special one-off show to celebrate 10 years of Club AC30. In 2018, the band released the critically acclaimed album 'Near Miss'. "Time goes fast," says guitarist and vocalist Matt Bartram. "We're still figuring it all out. But most importantly, I think Air Formation still feels totally relevant. All the time we enjoy doing it we will keep at it," he adds.

When it came to the writing and recording of the album, the band went back to listening to their favourite artists for influence including Bardo Pond and Mogwai to name a few, but ultimately, the album is influenced by all the Air Formation music that had come before. "How can we do something a bit different, but it still be Air Formation," says Bartram.

From the blissed-out vibes of album opener 'Pressure Drop' to the anthemic guitar crescendos of 'Only So Much Light', Air Formation are masters of noise and effects, constantly exploring the outer limits of guitar texture and volume. On 'Finding Gravity', fuzzed-out guitars explode into beatific distortion, while 'I Don't Want To Talk' and 'Crashing Out' shimmer and swirl. Elsewhere, the deafening waves of noise of 'The Day After Day' and dreamy 'Sparks Dies' reveal a band who find the heart in fuzz, while album closer 'The Final Wave' is a gorgeous, heavily textured expanse.

Air Formation is Matt Bartram (Guitars & Vocals), Ben Pierce (Bass), James Harrison (Drums), Ian Sheridan (Guitar) and Richard Parks (Keyboards).

TRACK LISTING

1. Pressure Drop
2. Only So Much Ligh
3. Finding Gravity
4. I Don't Want To Talk
5. Crashing Out
6. The Day After Day
7. Sparks Die
8. The Final Wave

Tokyo based band and Afrobayashi pioneers Ajate are back with their third album: experience the explosive encounter of Afro groove and Japanese traditional Ohayashi music!

During a stay in West Africa in the late 2000's, Japanese musician Junichiro "John" Imaeda was taken aback by the similarities he felt between the Afrobeat that resonated in the streets of Accra, and the sounds of the "Ohayashi", the music played during ancestral Japanese festivals, in which John had participated since his childhood.

On his return to the archipelago in 2009, Imaeda created Ajate, a collective of ten passionate musicians. Together they started crafting music that moves from one world to another, with intertwined roots. The drums, flutes and bells are joined by curious instruments handmade by John himself with the essential material of the Japanese countryside: bamboo. The "Jaate", an amplified xylophone-balafon equipped with piezoelectric sensors on each of its keys, or the "Piechiku", a bamboo version of the Malian "Ngoni" or the Gnawa "Guembri", equipped with shamisen strings and connected to an arsenal of guitar pedals, give Ajate an absolutely unique sound. Powerful and catchy Japanese female and male vocals bring the final touch to an incredible groove where Afrobeat and Ohayashi music are woven together so seamlessly that Ajate has managed to capture a truly distinct fusion. The band sings about the power of human connections, the force of being and living all together, the joy of sharing, and the beauty of life. Ajate's music is a magnificent example of the way sounds are able to migrate in contemporary music.

The band's explosive live performances have taken Ajate to the most prestigious stages in Japan, such as the Sukiyaki Meets The World and Fuji & Sun festivals. The release on French label 180g of their "Abrada" and "Alo" albums, in 2017 and 2020 respectively, opened the doors to Europe, with memorable shows at the Transmusicales de Rennes festival - followed by a session on KEXP (Seattle, USA) - at Jazz a Vienne, and at WOMAD UK, among many others. With their brand new album "Dala Toni", Ajate prove once again that they are at the forefront of global music "made in Japan".

TRACK LISTING

1. Waya Yawa
2. Iduchihemo
3. Nagi Yoni
4. Kopi Lakanka
5. Roghinaware

Aigul Akhmetshina is the fiery young mezzo taking the opera world by storm. In her debut album Aigul, the illustrious young opera singer Aigul Akhmetshina finds her voice in the role of Carmen and traces a path through her own remarkable journey. Her story is one of determination and perseverance against the odds, starting in a rural village in the mountains of Bashkortostan. She left home aged 14 to pursue her singing career. Despite facing rejection from a conservatory in Moscow, where she was told she lacked the right voice and appearance, at the age of 27 Aigul has already etched her name in history. She has become the youngest artist ever to take on the title role of Bizet’s Carmen at both the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, both of whom have created new productions around her. Performing the role all over the world, Aigul feels an affinity with the character.

A human history told through clay, from the critically acclaimed author of The Foghorn's Lament.

'Clay contains infinite possibilities in its transmutations, evidenced on the shelves of our homes, our galleries and museums. Every time we make something with clay, we engage with the timelines that are in the material itself, whether it was dug from a clifftop, riverbed or pit. In firing what we make, we bestow the material with function, meaning, or feeling, and anchor its form in a human present... Objects made from clay contain marks of our existence that collectively tell the story of human history more completely than any other material. There is a reason there are so many pots in museums: because fired clay is one of the most effective keepers of stories we have.'

This book is a love letter to clay, the material that is at the beginning, middle and end of all of our lives; that contains within it the eternal, the elemental, and the everyday.

People have been taking handfuls of earth and forming them into their own image since human history began. Human forms are found everywhere there was a ceramic tradition, and there is a ceramic tradition everywhere there was human activity. The clay these figures are made from was formed in deep geological time. It is the material that God, cast as the potter, uses to form Adam in Genesis. Tomb paintings in Egypt show the god Khum at a potter's wheel, throwing a human. Humans first recorded our own history on clay tablets, the shape of the characters influenced by the clay itself. The first love poem was inscribed in a clay tablet, from a Sumerian bride to her king more than 4000 years ago.

Born out of a desire to know and understand the mysteries of this material, the spiritual and practical applications of clay in both its micro and macro histories, Clay: A Human History is a book of wonder and insight, a hybrid of archaeology, history and lived experience as an amateur potter.

The third album of powerfully vivid songwriting from Marina Allen. Beautifully orchestrated, highly melodic and delivered with unrivalled lyrical perspective. Across two acclaimed records, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter has ripened a rare harvest, but her third studio album is an arrival home.

Taking fragments and stories from Marina’s past, Eight-Pointed Star deftly weaves together a new future, in what feels for all the world like a glittering, clear-eyed modern classic of alternative folk and Americana. For fans of Aldous Harding, Fiona Apple and Waxahatchee.

Ineffable and timeless, this collection of songs holds a curiosity that’s as open to you as you are to them. Compared to the soaring and swelling compositions of Allen’s second album Centrifics or the innocent tranquillity of Candlepower, the world of Eight Pointed Star is more deeply addressing and open-armed. It favours a type of soul-searching that doesn’t dwell in complications, and is open to answers. Rolling guitars rise and fall with the canyons and dust is kicked-up from the red scarred earth. Allen’s vocals pure and crystalline whilst the instrumentation is rich and bursting with brightness. You can hear contentment radiating from the music, with Chris Cohen’s production offering a full-band affair.

Allen’s affection runs deepest for singers who in her words can really sing, from The Roches to Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsom to Meredith Monk. But these influences vanish like ghosts in the attic when she starts to sing herself. Allen has a voice that stands up to the canon – inimitable – and it’s never sounded more resolute than it does here.

TRACK LISTING

A1 I'm The Same
A2 Deep Fake
A3 Red Cloud
A4 Swinging Doors
A5 Bad Eye Opal
B1 Easy
B2 Love Comes Back
B3 Landlocked
B4 Between Seasons

The relatively short life of San Francisco’s Aluminum has so far yielded a single (Spinning Backwards, 2020) and an EP (Windowpane, 2022), but their debut LP, Fully Beat, overflows with tenured confidence and a singular style that deftly comprises shoegaze, big beat, and jangle pop. With influences ranging from Orbital, to Wipers, to The Avalanches and Sly and the Family Stone, theirs is a multifaceted take on established forms, fed through fuzz and led by honeyed, male-female vocal harmonies from Bay Area post-punk veterans Marc Leyda (of Wild Moth) and Ryann Gonsalves (of Torrey).

“Smile” begins with deceptive sparseness, adding neon swirls of stacked tremolo over a mesmerizing lyrical refrain, and hinting at the dynamism to come with understated grace and grit. “Always Here, Never There” is Fully Beat’s first pure hit of melodic pop: its liquid bass groove winds beneath a melancholy-sweet synth hook and Leyda’s plaintive vocals, while drummer Chris Natividad’s deep, pillowy snare and propulsive style maintain a driving pace. Lead single, “Behind My Mouth”, shifts gears into a big beat shuffle and howl of overdriven guitars, which relent to Gonsalves’ rolling bassline and playful, snarky vocal.

Composed across several weeks of experimentation, it is a prime iteration of Aluminum’s meticulous world of sound, which nevertheless carries an air of wry nonchalance. Asking, “Do you ever see behind my mouth?”, Gonsalves notes that the song “comes from a place of wanting to be understood authentically, and to communicate intentionally.”

This approach speaks to the album’s broader theme of exhaustion amid the demands of the modern grind: working unfulfilling jobs to pay exorbitant rent, feeling society break at the seams, and trying to maintain a meaningful personal life with the remaining scraps of morale. The response, then, must be to find joy. These songs were crafted over a half-dozen months in basements and practice spaces, creating an abundance of authentic passion and catharsis that’s as nostalgic and comforting as a cherished, tattered band t-shirt.

The closer, “Upside Down”, is a full-throttle blare of joyous release – “a straight-up love song,” according to Leyda. The deliberate choice to end it with a gradual fade, rather than a dramatic climax, smartly suggests the ambivalence of acceptance – perhaps fitting, when considering the immensity of the album’s subject matter. It also hints that there is much more to be said, and as such a rich and compelling debut, Fully Beat shows that Aluminum are only getting started.

TRACK LISTING

1. Smile
2. Always Here, Never There
3. Behind My Mouth
4. HaHa
5. Pulp
6. Beat
7. Everything
8. Call An Angel
9. Birds Flew Here
10. Upside Down

Missing out on that super-chill, uber-jittery minimal groove thing? Let’s get real, real Ghosted again.

An utterly unique guitar/bass/drums triad: the guitar sounds like anything but a guitar; bass and drums simultaneously insistent and relaxed. Telepathic group-think opens a window to fresh fields of fusion: funk-jazz heads, polyrhythmic skeletons, ambient pastorals, post-kraut drones and shimmering soundtrack reveries. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere, marked by subtle, shifting dynamics playing out in an open sound field.

Oren Ambarchi has been collaborating with the Fire! trio (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin) for over a decade – and both Johan and Andreas played on Oren’s Live Hubris as well. Oren and Johan began music-making together back in the early aughts – but it wasn’t until 2021 that the three of them got together to record music. That became the first Ghosted album. When they were done, it was clear they had founded a new group. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere marked by subtle, shifting dynamics, Ghosted was released in May of 2022 to psyched response everywhere; the trio embarked upon an ongoing series of concert bookings around Europe, with loads of other people in the world still hoping to have the chance to be in the room at the next show. Two years on, Ghosted has gone through several represses, now it’s time for the “dreaded follow up album”! Rather than go back to the well, the guys decided to tear everything down and start all over again, reimagining themselves from scratch.

Just kidding! As we’ve noted, Oren, Johan and Andreas have been playing together for years and years, developing an essential telepathy within their shared space. They get each other and feed each other’s music processes on an elemental level. Why change that? What made the most sense was to go back to Daneil Bengtsson at Studio Rymden in Stockholm for a couple days, then have Oren and Joe Talia mix and Joe master it at Good Mixture in Melbourne again, then get Pål Dybwik to do some well-distinctive cover art, and once more, call it a record.

That’s just what they did — and it should be no surprise at all that the new Ambarchi/ Berthling/Werliin album looks and sounds as engrossing as their debut, if not more so! Ghosted II has a definitively fresh quality radiating throughout. The mutual feeling among the three players goes deep, allowing for lots more to say every time they get together — a further recombination of elements, a new expedition through alternative angles... there’s always more, and incredibly, it’s all improvised, with next-to-nothing prepared going in and minimal overdubs after they’ve laid things down. References are shared in shorthand, with just a single word, like “Santana,” or “Police” acting as working titles for certain pieces on this record (have a guess!). It’s a disservice to call them jams: above and beyond the innate feel of the songs, there’s a strong sense of structure, informed by the band’s communal aesthetic, and edified immeasurably by their time spent in concert the last couple years.

As noted at the top, these guys balance their music improbably between a relaxed feel and a nervy resolve, as each member holds down their corner in an open sound field. Making Ghosted II, the band found that there’s a different kind of tension making something for an established project rather than the kind one feels making something for the first time — and they used this new variety, as before, as a kind of fuel — driving their terse minimalism fruit-fully through the process of succumbing to and then transcending guilty pleasures. Finding fresh territory in funk sketches, jazzy heads, ambient pastorals and droning soundtrack pieces, Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin compellingly haunt a mad variety of spaces, leaving us wanting to get Ghosted II.

TRACK LISTING

En
Två
Tre
Fyra

Tracked in the decade after Duster went on hiatus, Canaan Amber’s debut solo EP CA demonstrates the California-born guitarist’s affection for San Francisco jangle and Santa Cruz surf. Crawling at a banana slug’s pace, Canaan wraps the loneliest one-string guitar solos around a cluster of hollow rhythms and ghostly mumbles. The original 2012 five-song CD has been expanded to include six other demos plundered from the prolific songwriter’s vault. More Wolf Moon than Black Moon, CA continues to explore and map the hidden galaxies that make up the Duster universe.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Create The Scene
Days Rewinding
Gold Hills
Runaway
No Way

SIDE B
Turn On
Everything Is All In Place
Wander Off
Ghost Girls
Take Off Your Face
Traces

With 'Death Jokes', for the first time since the project's incarnation in 2006, the spiritual reflections and meditations of Amen Dunes are turned away from himself, and out sharply towards the world. The album is also a drastic turn musically and thematically, rooted in the electronic music of raves and of rap music he grew up with but never imagined himself able to make, playing like a scathing electronic essay on America’s culture of violence, dominance, and destructive individualism.

The work on 'Death Jokes' began just weeks before the first word of the pandemic came in the winter of 2019; it was completed three years later as we began to emerge from the worst. The album's meaning morphed as the pandemic went on, first a reflection on our attachment to form, and to ourselves, and then shifting into a solemn indictment of our culture’s blind spots as we misjudge and attack, veiled self-centeredness and self-importance masquerading as morality.

TRACK LISTING

1. Death Jokes
2. Ian
3. Joyrider
4. What I Want
5. Rugby Child
6. Boys
7. Exodus
8. Predator
9. Solo Tape
10. Purple Land
11. I Don’t Mind
12. Mary Anne
13. Round The World
14. Poor Cops 

Amery Sandford began releasing as Alpen Glow in 2020 after years playing in punk groups in Newfoundland and as half of Montreal pop duo Born At Midnite (Arbutus). Recorded in Montreal by David Carriere (TOPS, Marci), Patrick Holland, and Kristian North, Continue As Amery is a blast of melodic joie de vivre. On her debut Sandford brings her punk and DIY credentials into sharp focus on 8 perfect pop odes to city living, making mistakes and figuring it out as you go along. Suffuse with powerful imagery and an almost uncanny talent at spinning out hooks brimming with humour and spirit, Amery’s soundworld is informed by friendship, experience and by her day job as a renowned illustrator and visual artist. Beginning Alpen Glow in a spirit of fun and now shedding the alias, Amery’s ready to hotwire the nite.

Each song is rich with story. Mountain FM, named for the radio station in Sandford’s home town in the mountains of Alberta, launches into a tale of speeding, blasting the radio too loud, the giddy burning of rubber with no care in the world to slow you down. Featuring live band members Sarah Harris, Jack Bielli, and Frank Climenhage, the singer bristles to get out of her stifling hometown while lamenting the wide eyed adventurer who left for the big city. On Hotwire The Nite, Amery is out on the town, with imagery loaded with the night’s promise. Amery sings “Black candle / Dripping intel / Dagger hanging by an emerald handle / Holy roller that I just can’t have without my hand on an old flame,” diving in and out of fantasy and desire over a pulsating banger. Moments like these feel like a thesis on aural pleasure, with the production sleek and silky playfulness persisting throughout.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mountain FM 
2. Hotwire The Nite 
3. Spirit Is Broken 
4. Ennui 
5. Miracles 
6. Rocker Blues 
7. C9 (with Fireball Kid) 
8. Continue As Amery

Horace Andy [a.k.a.Sleepy] must process one of the sweetest and most distinctive voices in reggae music. 1951 in Kingston Jamaica. He cut his first track in 1966 for producer George ‘Phil’ Pratt, a tune called ‘Black Man’s Country’. But it was four years later his star really began to shine when he joined the stable of Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd’s Studio One. It was Coxsone Dodd who renamed him Andy after another of his leading artists Bob Andy, such was his belief in Horace’s writing talent and singing abilities. Still only twenty years of age Horace used his falsetto talent to the fore and cut some impressive tracks at 13 Brentford Road, Studio One’s headquarters. Such reggae standards as ’Skylarking’, ‘Just Say Who’, ‘Love of a Women’ and ‘Something on my Mind’ to name but a few. The early 1970’s saw Horace due to political reasons move on to work with producer Bunny Lee, a move that suited his talents and beliefs, Horace being an early advocate to the Rastafarian faith.The tracks which he cut with Bunny, which we concentrate on here gave his songs a rootsy feel. The rhythms often cut at Channel ONE and Randy’s Studio17 and finalised at King Tubby’s, provided a fine backbone for Horace to recut some of his earlier classics, along side his newer songs also to become reggae standards. Like ‘Money Money’, ‘Zion Gate’ the great ‘You are my Angel’ and a version of The Heptones ‘My Guiding Star’. The power of these recordings were such that the earlier tracks like ‘Skylarking’ became hits a second time around.Proving that the ‘you can’t keep a good tune down’ mantra was alive and kicking… …A golden time for Horace and Reggae music in general… Horace would go on to work with other producers like Everton Da Silva in 1977 creating the ‘In the Light’ album and the New York based Lloyd ‘Wackies’ Barnes in the 1980’s for his ‘Dancehall Style’ recordings. Most recently his work with Massive Attack has brought his majestic voice full circle and back into the arena once more. Those ‘Massive’ recordings and this dub collection here seem to fit side by side. Horace’s distinctive vocal riding over the rhythms adding a magic as only he can .....

RESPECT JAH FLOYD.

TRACK LISTING

1 Why Oh Why Dub
2 Dub Larking
3 Zion Dub
4 Dub Money 
5 A True Dub
6 Dub Guidance
7 Dub Say Who
8 Dub On My Mind
9 Love Of A Dub Band
10 Use This Dub
11 Dub Letter
12 Dub Angel
13 Bless This Dub*
14 Dub Ah Fulfil*
*CD Bonus Track

Animal Collective celebrate the 15-year anniversary of their seminal album Merriweather Post Pavilion with a deluxe vinyl repress via Domino. The album is pressed to colour vinyl for the first time, available as a 2xLP in Translucent Green and Bluish and comes in a reflective foil jacket. 

Merriweather Post Pavilion was universally acclaimed upon its release in 2009 and was named the #1 best album of the year by Pitchfork, MOJO, Clash, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, and Uncut. “Every once in a while, musicians sweep away the existing musical landscape to create something new,” stated NPR at the time. “Animal Collective is such a group, and its new Merriweather Post Pavilion is such an album.”

It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records of the 2000s with Uncut naming it “one of the landmark American albums of the century so far” and MOJO labelling it “astonishing”.

Numero’s second bundle of cover 45s is all things soulful.

The Rotterdam-based Another Taste electrifies Maxx Traxx’s 1984 Chicago boogie grail “Don’t Touch It,” which makes its debut on the 7” format here.

Colemine Records’ Say She She delivers a glamorous rendition of Jim Spencer’s yacht-disco hit “Wrap Myself Up In Your Love.”

Columbia Recording artist Leon Bridges effortlessly transforms Pastor T.L. Barrett’s “Like A Ship,” updating the 50 year old gospel soul classic for the 21st century. All three are housed in a newly imagined Numero custom sleeve, reflecting the many shades of our ongoing Eccentric Soul 45 imprint.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Another Taste - Don’t Touch It
B1. Maxx Traxx - Don’t Touch It

The final part of this ‘A.R. Kane reissue collection is 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental pop sensibilities over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing compositions, the album did exactly what a great double-set should do - indulge the artists sprawling pursuit of their own imaginations but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop both transcends and toys with the listeners expectations. Jason Ankeny has noted that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of ‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a three year period in which the duo had made some of the most prophetic and revelatory music of the entire decade.

After ‘i’ the duo’s output became more sporadic with Tambala and Ayuli moving in different directions both geographically and musically, with only 1994’s ‘New Clear Child’ a crystalline re-fraction of future and past echoes of jazz, folk and soul, before the duo went their separate ways. Since then, A.R. Kane’s music has endured, not thanks to the usual sepia’d false memories that seem to maintain interest in so much of the musical past, but because those who hear A.R. Kane music and are changed irrevocably, have to share that universe which A.R. Kane opened up, with anyone else who will listen. Far more than other lauded documents of the late 80s it still sounds astonishingly fresh, astonishingly livid and vivid and necessary and NOW.

TRACK LISTING

1) Hello
2) A Love From Outer Space
3) Crack Up
4) Timewind
5) What’s All This Then?
6) Snow Joke
7) Off Into Space
8) And I Say
9) Yeti
10) Conundrum
11) Honeysuckleswallow
12) Long Body
13) In A Circle
14) Fast Ka
15) Miles Apart
16) Pop
17) Mars
18) Spook
19) Sugarwings
20) Back Home
21) Down
22) Supervixens
23) Insect Love
24) Sorry
25) Catch My Drift
26) Challenge

‘Sixty Nine’ the group’s debut LP that emerged in 1988 had critics and listeners struggling to fit language around A.R. Kane’s sound. As a title it was telling - the year of ‘Bitches Brew’, the year of ‘In A Silent Way’, the erotic möbius between two lovers - and as originally coined by the band themselves, ‘dream pop’ (before it became a free-floating signifier of vague import) was entirely apposite for the music A.R. Kane were making. Crafted in a dark small basement studio in which Tambala recalls the duo had “complete freedom - We wanted to go as far out as we could, and in doing so we discovered the point where it stops being music”. There was an irresistibly dreamy, somnambulant, sensual and almost surreal flow to ‘sixty nine’s sound, but also real darkness/dankness, the ruptures of the primordial and the reverberations of the subconscious, within the grooves of remarkable songs like ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Crazy Blue’. Alex’s plangent vocals floated and surged amidst exquisite peals of refracted feedback but crucially there was BASS here, lugubrious and funky and full of dread, sonic pleasure and sonic disturbance crushed together to make music with a center so deep it felt subcutaneous, music constructed from both the accidental and the deliberate, generous enough to dance with both serendipity and chaos. ‘sixty nine’ remains - especially in this remastered iteration - ravishing, revolutionary – Neil Kulkarni.

Dream POP, they called it. Given AR Kane’s Alex Ayuli once worked for advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, it’s no surprise that he and collaborator Rudy Tambala invented their own genre before critics could stick their oar in. It was a canny move, but more importantly, it was accurate: the music of AR Kane was made for dreamers, by dreamers, and its languor and longing made it particularly bewitching listening; their music is often smeared and blurry, happily lost in its own indefinable pleasures. “We wanted dream pop,” Tambala says, “that feeling of a dream where the rules are different. Dream logic.” -UNCUT REISSUE OF THE MONTH

"A.R. Kane carved out a unique musical path, welding elements of pop, psych, dub, electronica, funk, noise, jazz, ambient and more in a way that had never been done before. Or since. Their debut in particular is a work of unbridled brilliance." *Electronic Sound*

TRACK LISTING

A1. Crazy Blue
2. Suicide Kiss
3. Baby Milk Snatcher
4. Scab
5. Sulliday
B1. Dizzy
2. Spermwhale Trip Over
3. The Sun Falls Into The Sun
4. The Madonna Is With Child
5. Spanish Quay

A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and
artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that!

The duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in 1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of WHERE to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here – a tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.

The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. SimonReynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby Milk Snatcher
2. W.O.G.S
3. One Way Mirror
4. Up

Following their critically-acclaimed UK Top 20 album “As Days Get Dark”, Arab Strap return with their 2nd long player for Mogwai’s Rock Action Records with the excellent titled “I’m totally fine with it - don’t give a fuck anymore”. Almost 28 years after their debut, Arab Strap have never sounded more essential, and this new record is a fierce testament to their laser focus on wider horizons. Written and performed exclusively by Malcolm Middleton & Aidan Moffat, and finessed with longtime collaborator Paul Savage, the album furthers the band’s transformation from swooning, slow-core romantics to raging, alt-pop chroniclers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Allatonceness
2. Bliss
3. Sociometer Blues
4. Hide YOur Fires
5. Summer Season
6. Molehills
7. Strawberry Moon
8. You’re Not There
9. Haven’t You Heard
10. Safe & Well
11. Dreg Queen
12. Turn Off The Light

A Jazz Dance Favourite that Jazz Room Records Head Honcho Paul Murphy was hepped to by Brownswood and 6Music Jazz Supremo Gilles Peterson at the 20th Birthday Bash of London's most Underground of Clubs: Shiftless Shuffle.

Murphy: "I'd quite forgotten all about it, but when I saw the reaction on the dancefloor it was "Mental Note Time, get on the case for a full investigation and let's see some Vinyl re-issue action!"

The head of the original Danish Label, Pick Up Records, later reminded Paul that he was selling the originals in his original Jazz Record Shop "Fusion Records" when the original was released and that he, Peter Littauer, had actually delivered them personally on a trip to London. Synergy in action!

The music is a mixture of 100mph Latin Jazz (Girl With Three Faces/747 To Rio/From Dusk Towards Dawn) and Funky Rhodes driven workouts (Travelling/Circles In The Air), plus the vocal pyrotechnics of Hawaiian singer Lei Aloha Moe who guested on two of the tracks.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Girl With Three Faces
2. Black Wing
3. Circles In The Air
4. Would You
5. From Dusk Towards Dawn
6. When I Close My Eyes
7. Travelling
8. 747 To Rio

Joe Armon-Jones teams up with Hak Baker and Nubya Garcia on new EP Wrong Side Of Town. The lead single is all about being priced out of London, something Hak Baker has experienced first-hand growing up in East London, and shares “I think it’s time to scream and shout that we’re here to stay, and if you don’t like it, you must be on the wrong side of the town.”

Musicians on the record include Black Midi’s Morgan Simpson on drums, Nubiyan Twist bassist Luke Wynter, Ezra Collective saxophonist James Mollison playing alongside Nubya Garcia, and additional percussion from Horseman. Mixed by Prince Fatty, mastered by Noah Priddle, and released via Armon-Jones own imprint Aquarii Records. This record marks the first of a dubs series on the way, and each release will include a vinyl exclusive track.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wrong Side Of Town (feat. Hak Baker)
2. Dub Side Of Town
3. Nubya’s Side Of Town (feat. Nubya Garcia)
4. Wrong Side Of The Rhodes

Especial is a label always on a mission to unearth left-of-centre perspectives on club music. This new EP, Be Honest, is just that from long-time friends Lipelis and Arsenii, who are based in Belgrade and New York but seek inspiration in the New York sounds of the 80s and hook up with Gayana for some woozy and lovelorn vocal additions. 'Be Honest' is a dubbed out and swaggering deep disco groove that comes as long, dub and cappella versions on the A-side. The 12" dance mix brings some superb house drums into the picture and the Dubplate VIP is a fresh jungle rhythm. This is an EP with something for all.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Be Honest (Extended Mix)
2. Be Honest (Dub)
3. Be Honest (Acappella)

Side 2
1. Be Honest (12" Dance Mix)
2. Be Honest (Dubplate VIP)

Double LP Set of art-rockers Art Brut, with tracks taken from the albums 'Bang Bang Rock and Roll', 'It’s A Bit Complicated', 'Art Brut vs Satan', 'Brilliant! Tragic!', 'We Are Scientists Art Brut International' and rare live and alternate takes, compiled by the band. First comprehensive career retrospective of Art Brut since the 'Top of the Pops' album in 2014, this compilation brings together the best and most well-known tracks from the catalogue.

TRACK LISTING

1. Formed A Band
2. My Little Brother
3. Emily Kane
4). Good Weekend
5. Pump Up The Volume
6. Nag Nag Nag
7. St Pauli
8. Alcoholics Unanimous
9. DC Comics & Chocolate Milkshake
10. Summer Job
11. Unprofessional Wrestling
12. Axl Rose
13. Lost Weekend
14. Hooray!
15. She Kissed Me (And It Felt Like A Hit)
16. I Hope You’re Very Happy Together
17. Modern Art Berlin Live
18. Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out!
19. Arizona Bay
20. Just Deserts
21. We Make Pop Music (Berlin Live)
22. Post Soothing Out (Berlin Live)

First edition of a two-part set: a comprehensive compilation of South London art-rockers Art Brut, spanning their early discography, demo takes, alternative mixes and live recordings between 2003 – 2008.

Features the debut album 'Bang Bang Rock and Roll', their second studio album 'It’s A Bit Complicated'. Also includes unreleased live material Art Brut – Live in Paris 2006 & Art Brut Live Form ULU with Horns.

Comes with a 24 page zine, with a 2,000 word liner note from Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos and exclusive photography of the band. Also includes a signed print of an original Art Brut artwork, painted by Eddie Argos

TRACK LISTING

CD1: Bang Bang Rock And Roll
1. Formed A Band
2. My Little Brother
3. Emily Kane
4. Rusted Guns Of Milan
5. Modern Art
6. Good Weekend
7. Bang Bang Rock & Roll
8. Fight!
9. Moving To L.A.
10. Bad Weekend
11. 18,000 Lira
12. Subliminal Desire For Adventure

CD2: It’s A Bit Complicated
1. Pump Up The Volume
2. Direct Hit
3. St. Pauli
4. People In Love
5. Late Sunday Evening
6. I Will Survive
7. Post Soothing Out
8. Blame It On The Trains
9. Soundtrack Of The Summer
10. Nag Nag Nag Nag
11. Jealous Guy

CD3 – Bang Bang Rock And Roll, Bootlegs And B-Sides + Live From ULU W/ Horns
1. Formed A Band (Brutleg/Single Version) 
2. Bad Weekend (Brutleg/Single Version)
3. Modern Art (Brutleg / Single Version)
4. My Little Brother (Brutleg / Single Version)
5. Good Weekend (Brutleg)
6. 18,000 Lira (Brutleg)
7. Bang Bang Rock And Roll (Brutleg)
8. Moving To LA (Brutleg)
9. Moving To LA Acoustic (Brutleg)
10. These Animal Menswe@r
11. It’s About Time
12. Maternity Ward
13. Really Bad Weekend
14. Every Other Weekend
15. Home Altars Of Mexico
16. Top Of The Pops! Art Brut (and Friends)
17. Don’t Blame It On The Trains
18. Enrique Gatti (Subliminal Desire For Adventure) (Brutleg)
19. Pump Up The Volume – With Horns
20. Moving To LA – With Horns
21. Late Sunday Evening – With Horns
22. Emily Kane – With Horns
23. Post Soothing Out – With Horns
24. Direct Hit – With Horns
25. Good Weekend – With Horns

CD4: It’s A Bit Complicated (Bootlegs And BSides)
1. I Found This Song In The Road
2. Our Parents Record Collection
3. Wasted Week-End
4. I Want To Be Double A-Sided
5. Ignorance Is Bliss
6. Direct Hit (Alternate Vesrion)
7. Direct Hit (Duet With Hank Starrs From Animals That Swim)
8. Late Sunday Evening (Alternate Version)
9. Blame It On The Trains (Russell Senior Version)
10. Post Soothing Out (Russell Senior Version)
11. St Pauli (Russell Senior Version)
12. Bad Weekend (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)
13. Formed A Band (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)
14. Emily Kane (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)
15. These Animal Menswe@r (Live Eurokéennes Festival 06)

CD5: Paris Live 06.02.06
1. Formed A Band
2. My Little Brother
3. These Animal Menswe@r
4. Bang Bang Rock And Roll
5. Blame It On The Trains
6. Moving To LA
7. Rusted Guns Of Milan
8. Modern Art
9. St Pauli
10. Post Soothing Out
11. Emily Kane
12. Bad Weekend
13. Stand Down
14. 18,000 Lira
15. Good Weekend

Richard Ashcroft’s fourth solo album ‘These People’ became a fan-favourite in 2016, receiving great reviews and becoming a #3 album in the Official UK Albums Chart.

His reunion with Wil Malone, who had previously worked on the string arrangements for The Verve's seminal albums 'A Northern Soul' and 'Urban Hymns' added depth and emotional resonance to the album's sound. Ashcroft demonstrated his continued relevance and creative prowess as a solo artist, reaffirming his status as one of Britain's most enduring and influential musicians.

TRACK LISTING

1. Out Of My Body
2. This Is How It Feels
3. They Don’t Own Me
4. Hold On
5. These People
6. Everybody Needs Somebody To Hurt
7. Picture Of You
8. Black Lines
9. Ain’t The Future So Bright
10. Songs Of Experience

The LA-based ASHRR outfit is back with more of their superbly warm and soul-infused sounds here with 'Different Kind of Life'. Their own ASHRR Soundsystem version of the original is a gloriously upbeat and funky bit of space disco with lavish synth lines and chugging drums that lock you in. Berlin electronic mainstay Massimiliano Pagliara, who has landed on the likes of Ostgut Ton, Cocktail d'Amore and more, then brings his own two remixes. The first has some nice indie vocals and dazzling chord work, while the second is a deep dub that pairs things back. All three of these are swaggering and uplifting disco cuts with a difference.

TRACK LISTING

Different Kind Of Life (Massimiliano Pagliara Remix)
Different Kind Of Life (Massimiliano Pagliara Dub)
Different Kind Of Life (ASHRR Soundsystem Version)

LA-based trio ASHRR return with another sunkissed dose of cosmic new wave and indie electronica laced with psychedelic hues in the form of ‘Sway’. This time they’re joined by internationally renowned DJ and ESP Institute imprint manager ‘Lovefingers’ on remix duties, who supplies three genre-bending experimental dance gems perfect for summer terraces, pool-side parties or the dance floors of Pikes Ibiza. Lovefingers’ ESP Institute has dropped releases that have found their way into the bags of dance-floor heavy-hitters from Harvey to Weatherall and Moodymann to the legendary David Mancuso. His take on ASHRR original showcases dubbed-out oddities and psychedelic left turns in signature style. In addition to the Lovefingers remixes, ASHRR returns with their very own ‘ASHRR Soundsystem Version’ offering up a tripped-out feel-good cut for the dance floor.

TRACK LISTING

Sway (Lovefingers Rimini Remix)
Sway (ASHRR Soundsystem Version)
Sway (Lovefingers Lechuza Dub)
Sway (Lovefingers Skeleton Dub)

Los Angeles-based ASHRR are back on 2020 Vision ahead of a new album and this time serve up their own superb version of The Romantics's 1983 hit 'Talking in Your Sleep.' In their hands, it becomes a club-ready sound with a vocal you may recognise as it featured in the Mad Max episode of Stranger Things. Add in some DFA-inspired punk funk vibes and with all the instruments reapplied while new layers of bass and synth are added and you have one fantastic new version. Balearic don Fernando steps up for two remixes, first stripping things back to a deep house sound and then bringing some dub disco vibes to the fore.

TRACK LISTING

Talking In Your Sleep (ASHRR Version)
Talking In Your Sleep (Fernando Deep Mix)
Talking In Your Sleep (Fernando Disco Dub)

In celebration of the label's 25th anniversary, Strut have released a special edition of a landmark album within the realm of African music - Mulatu Astatke's 'Mulatu Of Ethiopia’. Recorded in New York in 1972, this pivotal album marks a juncture in Astatke's musical journey when he adeptly fused various styles to craft the distinctive genre known as Ethio-jazz.

For this special edition, the release features the original stereo mix of the full album, as well as a special ‘mono-mix’ of each track retrieved from the original 2" tapes, pressed on opaque white vinyl 2LP.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mulatu (Stereo Mix)
2. Mascaram Setaba (Stereo Mix)
3. Dewel (Stereo Mix)
4. Kulunmanqueleshi (Stereo Mix)
5. Kasalefkut-Hulu (Stereo Mix)
6. Munaye (Stereo Mix)
7. Chifara (Stereo Mix)
8. Mulatu (Mono Mix)
9. Mascaram Setaba (Mono Mix)
10. Dewel (Mono Mix)
11. Kulunmanqueleshi (Mono Mix)
12. Kasalefkut-Hulu (Mono Mix)
13. Munaye (Mono Mix)
14. Chifara (Mono Mix)

Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs.

With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk—and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences.

There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements—guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past."

Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months—a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts.

Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. — jj skolnik

TRACK LISTING

1. Felt
2. The Iris Dry
3. Remember Me
4. Do This Again
5. Fading
6. Gelatin
7. Showed You
8. At His Hands
9. Under
10. Croak

J Axel and Eva Essa find magical harmony on this new collaboration on the Do It Now Recordings Vinylized label. 'Turned Your Back' is a perfectly heart-melting, life-affirming bit of soul-drenched and intimate deep house with gorgeous vocals and super smooth drums all healing you to your core as the gentle rhythms wash over you time and time again. It's a faultless original but one that is also ripe for remixing and who better than Atjazz who slightly ups the tempo but keeps the deep, wavy rhythmic vibes and adds a little cosmic magic in the synths. A sublime package indeed.

TRACK LISTING

Turned Your Back (Extended)
Turned Your Back
Turned Your Back (Atjazz Extended Remix)
Turned Your Back (Atjazz Extended Remix Instrumental)

Less than a year after her album Through and Through, Baby Rose returns with Slow Burn, a collection of songs that explode her sonic palette from progressive R&B into a rawer, richer and more sprawling lens of American music. Here, Rose asserts herself as not only a once-in-tenlifetimes vocalist, but as a formidable songwriter connecting the dots where Muscle Shoals meets psych, psych meets jazz, jazz meets Americana, and the right players bring it all together. Produced by BADBADNOTGOOD, Rose and the band found an instant but seemingly endless well of inspiration; what started as an introduction became a day, became a song, became a night, became Slow Burn. Baby Rose was already a powerful position player — she can share the stage with Robert Glasper without breaking a sweat, or close an epic film like Creed III, for which she performed the closing credit song, with steely confidence. When Rose first met with BADBADNOTGOOD the idea was to say hello, get acquainted, see what a collaboration could, over time, potentially become. But the connection was instant, and together they put down lead single “One Last Dance” in just that first meeting. It was Rose’s first freestyle vocal, and it snapped crucial pieces of her vision into focus. “I’ve known deep down there were new spaces and sounds that I could rise to,” Rose explains. “I’ve always been into different sounds that bring in those rawer textures.” And so while the speed of their collaboration thrilled and surprised Rose, the potential and the end results did not. “We moved quickly,” she says, “and it really was a faucet. Once we got ‘One Last Dance’, it became clear everything was going to flow.”

The songs on Slow Burn were inspired in part by Rose’s experiences driving between her family’s home bases: the noise and chaos of DC and the quiet, Carolina countryside. Rose would crank music and let her mind drift, making room for the internal monologues and imagined dialogues you might not otherwise dare to hear. There’s a dreaminess in those moments, and they smolder on Slow Burn: memories lose their realities, feelings replace happenings. Slow Burn’s title track, for example, sets soft, ambling drums against Rose’s lyrical repetitions, as she traces those recollections—some lives, some felt— with patient, insistent desire.

The standout “One Last Dance” arrives disguised as a love song, but is actually an ode to a lost friendship, and an imagined dream of one more day like the old days. Reality blurs with feeling again, vocals layer into lullaby, and BADBADNOTGOOD’s bassist Chester Hansen brings that dreamlike quality to a sneaky, cautious but loving undertone. In fact most of the songs on Slow Burn have that stealthy, shadowed feel, like they’re arriving on tiptoe: intimate but a little dangerous, tender but a little mysterious. As complete and compelling a work as this is, Slow Burn points to a bigger, higher ascent in Baby Rose’s future. “I feel boundless,” says Rose. “It’s one thing carrying the weight of the emotion I’m going to bring as a vocalist and lyricist, but now I feel like I’m the head on a body with all these players and artists and other limbs. I’m in love with that process. When you have the right energy and the right synergy,” she says, “all that’s left is to trust yourself.”

TRACK LISTING

1. On My Mind
2. Slow Burn
3. Caroline Feat. Mereba
4. Weekness
5. It’s Alright
6. One Last Dance

Standard-bearers of the early Louisville scene, Babylon Dance Band created (largely out of whole cloth) the magic that later became identifiable as the Louisville sound: abstract yet urgent garagepunk stylings smothered in generous helpings of guitar heroism and surprisingly soul-shouterinfluenced vocals.

In December 1980, the Babylon Dance Band’s massive artistic footprint landed them on the cover of NYC’s Village Voice (even before the band’s first single was released). A year later, they broke up before releasing this: their posthumous second single.

Later generations of Louisville rockers from Squirrel Bait to King Kong to Slint to Will Oldham to Tara Jane O’Neil freely cite Babylon Dance Band as a major influence, as do northern compatriots including Yo La Tengo.

In 1994, Matador Records issued a posthumous Babylon Dance Band LP. Today, Babylon Dance Band guitarist Tara Key and bassist Tim Harris continue to work together in the New York City band, Antietam.

TRACK LISTING

1. Somebody
2. Rubbertown

Following on from 2022s ‘Human Capital’, which mercilessly attacked Conservative meritocracy and the exploitative forces of late capitalism, ‘Contempt’ ups the ante yet again and explores the continued effects that austerity has had on the working public and specifically capital’s destruction of the planet and its inhabitants. It’s released with multiple essays in an accompanying zine, one that follows environmental and humanitarian journalist Aidan Frere-Smith and another that tells the story of a homelessness crisis in a city full of unused housing. Utilizing a mix of propulsive rhythm and furious, explosive guitars to maximum effect, Bad Breeding have weaponised their anger in the fight for survival; “Because these days are ours to take / Seize them with union, love and rage”. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Temple Of Victory
2. Survival
3. Devotion
4. Liberty
5. Discipline
6. Retribution
7. Gilded Cage / Sanctuary
8. Vacant Paradise
9. Idolatry
10. Contempt

As you may already know, BAD WITH PHONES is a one-off. The self-proclaimed ‘extra guy’ is extra in unique ways, and his debut album CRASH holds a high-wire duality of instant recognisability and true individuality. Manny, as he’s known to his friends, is a guitarist and frontman, a future don of weirdo pop, R&B, rap and post-punk in a pink and blue wig and sunglasses. He’s here to transmit songs that are epic and iconic, low key hypnagogic and soaked in bliss and damage like Tyler The Creator, Grace Jones or Basquiat if they’d grown up in 1990s Deptford listening to Sade and David Bowie. This album is packed with intimate anthems and comedown soothers for the day after a mangled night.

The CRASH back sleeve cover features a snap of his hired jeep, destroyed, on a volcanic landscape. The south east Londoner had been due a break after the stresses of releasing Marinade and had just signed to Brixton label Don’t Sleep. He was maybe going to see family in Togo but instead flew to Lanzarote with a girlfriend. Once on the island, there was a massive car crash. Miraculously, they both emerged unharmed. CRASH is both therapy and a kind of sci-fi, with each song an episode that captures and channels the dazed aftermath of intense life experience.

And his name? It came from an experiment where he went phone-free for six months or just because he didn’t pay his bills, depending on what you want to believe. Either way, it suits the sense of blurry disconnection he infuses through this music, the background electricity of sky-high pylons powered through his guitars, the dissociated but super-gentle love-not-love songs – until the energy levels ramp up like they do on the indie disco anthem ‘Don’t Talk To Me’ with its all-comers blah blah blah chorus echoing through the streets and dancefloors of next summer and the summer after that. BAD WITH PHONES is coming for you.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. (call Me) Friday
2. DennisRodman
3. Devils
4. Don't Talk To Me
5. InAWeek (anything Can Happen)

Side B
1. Monica Too
2. Drive.
3. Emmanuelle
4. LVR
5. TICKET

Comprising of Darren Rock, Darren House and Ashley Beadle (of XPress 2), alongside David Hill and Uschi Classen, they combined their talents on a series of mysterious vinyl releases in the heady days of the London club scene. If you were part of a clubbing tribe in the early/mid ‘90s - any clubbing tribe - you will have danced to the Ballistic Brothers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Portobello Café
2. Come On
3. Soho Cab Ride
4. I’ll Fly Away
5. Jah Jah Call You
6. Mark’s Lude
7. I Don’t Know
8. Sister Song
9. A Beautiful Space
10. Steppin’ Into Eden
11. Peckings
12. Uschi’s Lament

‘Beyond This Place’ is Kenny Barron’s second album on Artwork Records.

On the heels of his GRAMMY-nominated solo album, ‘The Source’, Kenny Barron brings together a multi-generational quintet featuring some of the most acclaimed musicians of their time.

Along with Kenny Barron (13-time GRAMMY nominee, American Jazz Hall Of Fame), ‘Beyond This Place’ features saxophone’s rising star Immanuel Wilkins (“Divinely inspired jazz” - The New York Times), Jonathan Blake, one of the most accomplished drummers of his generation, Kiyoshi Kitagawa, Kenny Barron’s longtime double bassist, and Steve Nelson, one of the most highly regarded vibraphonists in the world.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Nearness Of You
2. Scratch
3. Innocence
4. Blues On Stratford Road
5. Tragic Magic
6. Beyond This Place
7. Softly As In A Morning
8. Sunrise
9. Sunset
10. We See
11. You've Changed 
12. Dewdrop 

‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is an ode to motherhood created in LA, Natasha’s second home, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a sonic archive of a time when Natasha birthed her daughter Delphi earth side. The record weaves together ten song poems, documenting the polarity of navigating both an exterior world that was seemingly turning upside down, whilst also experiencing theprofoundly personal and transformational early moments of mothering Delphi, named after the Greek Oracle, the ancient future teller. The music became Natasha’s sanctuary, born out of stolen trips to the studio, where each track was improvised and completed in a few hours and chronologises her diary like offerings over a period of two years; from “TheMidwives Have Left”; to writing a “Letter To My Daughter”; and all the way through to “Waking up”, as well as a cover of her daughter’s favourite song, “Home”.

While the storytelling behind Bat For Lashes’ previous albums have traditionally used otherworldly narratives and female lead characters (e.g. ‘Laura’, ‘Daniel’ and ‘The Bride’), for the first time, ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is about Natasha’s personal experience of themagical and sometimes melancholy intimacy of early motherhood. This record creates a more private form of mythology around the music than her previous work. ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ touches on more of an instrumental “Bat For Lashes” world, and shows Natasha to be both a confident composer and craftswoman of intimate landscapes. While the music creates a more womb-like, ambient space for the listener, it still leaves ample room for her signature dream pop songwriting to vibrate through. Natasha has worked with Brad Oberhofer, Mary Lattimore and Jack Falby on this record.

TRACK LISTING

The Dream Of Delphi
Christmas Day
Letter To My Daughter
At Your Feet
The Midwives Have Left
Home
Breaking Up
Delphi Dancing
Her First Morning
Waking Up
The Dream Of Delphi (Extended Strings Version)

Scream from New York, NY, the first album by Been Stellar captures an image of ‘20s New York that’s unrelenting and harsh, where tenderness is a finite resource burned up by the machinery of the city and human connection is a luxury product. Released via Dirty Hit, their debut album embodies the spirit of a city that makes and breaks its inhabitants on a daily basis.

TRACK LISTING

1. Start Again
2. Passing Judgment
3.Pumpkin
4. Scream From New York, NY
5. Sweet
6. Can’t Look Away
7. Shimmer
8. Takedown
9. All In One
10. I Have The Answer

Whatever and Ever Amen is the sophomore album from alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five. Originally released in 1997, the album features fan favorite songs like "Brick", "Kate", and "Song for the Dumped.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
One Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces
Fair
Brick
Song For The Dumped
Selfless, Cold And Composed

SIDE B
Kate
Smoke
Cigarette
Steven’s Last Night In Town
Battle Of Who Could Care Less
Missing The War
Evaporated 

‘The Clocks' was originally issued in 2007 as a CD-only limited edition of 110 for members of 'The Bevis Frond Online Community'. It comprised 19 previously unissued tracks. Most of these were home demos featuring just Frond frontman Nick Saloman on all instruments and vocals. Since then, it has never been re-issued in any format. It is therefore with great pleasure that Blue Matter are re-issuing it for the first time, and now as a vinyl double album and limited CD. Due to certain circumstances, three of the original tracks could not be used, so these have been replaced these with another three previously unheard tracks from Nick Saloman's extensive archives. These songs include the seven minute 'She's Taken It All', originally intended for 2004's 'Hit Squad' album but dropped at the last minute due to timing constraints. The beautiful 'You Better Make Do' and the edgy 'Devil Doll' have also been added. We are delighted to be able to make this 'long lost' album available once again and think it will be a welcome addition to the Bevis Frond canon.

TRACK LISTING

Side One.
1 Worlde Is Older
2 The Clocks
3 Home Is Where The Head Is
4 Cut To The Quick
Side Two.
5 Bless Him
6 Anything You Say
7 Devil Doll
8 God
9 When I’m Gone
10 I Need The Rush.
Side Three.
11 Watch The Sun
12 You Better Make Do
13 Little Ray
14 She’s Taken It All.
Side Four.
15 Things He Said
16 I’ll Save Myself
17 I Wasn’t There
18 I’m Better Now
19 Shades 

Yaya Bey unveils her latest studio album Ten Fold via Big Dada, available on standard black LP and translucent red indie LP.

New York-bred R&B vocalist Yaya Bey conjures a comprehensive self-portrait on her new studio album, Ten Fold.

Where her previous works were earnest and mindful, Yaya’s new LP is definitive, harkening back to aspects of her past while examining the future of the world that surrounds her with a stream-of-conscious intentionality.

Over rapturous production from Corey Fonville of jazz group Butcher Brown, Karriem Riggins, Jay Daniel, Exaktly and Boston Chery, Yaya delivers a free-spoken masterpiece that speaks to the intricacies of persevering through a year punctuated by grief and loss, life-altering milestones and everything in between.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crying Through My Teeth
2. The Evidence
3. Chrysanthemums
4. Sir Princess Bad Bitch
5. East Coast Mami
6. Chasing The Bus
7. All Around Los Angeles
8. Slow Dancing In The Kitchen
9. So Fantastic (feat. Grand Daddy I.U.)
10. Eric Adams In The Club (feat. Exaktly)
11. Me And All My Niggas
12. Iloveyoufrankiebeverly
13. Career Day
14. Carl Thomas Sliding Down The Wall
15. Yvette's Cooking Show
16. Let Go

Within the first few seconds of the opening song on Australian troubadour Peter Bibby’s latest album, we get an unvarnished look at the man behind the music as he observes the late-night scene of a local watering hole with increasingly bleary eyes:“No one seems to want to talk to me / ‘cuz I’m the arsehole, probably.”

Indeed, that lovable ambivalence is at the heart of Drama King, Bibby’s fourth studio album for Spinning Top Records. The project was produced by first-time collaborator Dan Luscombe (The Drones, Amyl and the Sniffers) and mixed by White Denim’s Josh Block a frequent collaborator with Leon Bridges.

An artist who has been celebrated as inherently working-class and wholeheartedly independent, Bibby comes by this caution honestly, having cut his teeth in the rough-and-tumble underground rock scene centered around Perth’s Hyde Park Hotel in Western Australia.



Bibby’s affable personality has gotten him plenty of mileage as a live act. He’s toured the U.S. with Pond and performed at the infamous open mic night at Pappy and Harriet’s in the California desert. He’s also taken the stage at international festivals such as Laneway, Falls, All Points East, South by Southwest and South Africa’s Rocking the Daisies while notching his fair share of rowdy headlining shows.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. The Arsehole
2. Fun Guy
3. Bin Boy
4. The One
5. The Pricks
6. Baby Squid
SIDE B:
1. Terracotta Brick
2. Turtle In The Sand
3. Feels
4. Bruno
5. Old DC
6. Companion Pony

Words are not to be taken for granted. Especially when they’re being bellowed, full blast, by a broad-shouldered poet with the brimstone fire of a preacher and the honesty and wisdom of a layman, over ground-shaking live beats and between anthemic blasts of melody and rousing riffage.

Words matter. History matters. People matter. And BIG SPECIAL matter.

For BIG SPECIAL - Joe Hicklin (vocals) and Callum Moloney (drums) - their sound is one that comes from vital, frustrated young working-class voices that don’t always get heard on the scale they should do. It’s a frustration that comes to the fore through a voice that is at times coarse and raw, but sensitive, desperate and soulful at others. Hicklin's brimstone-fired voice marches from guttural punk barks and serrated spoken word to soaring soul and back again, arriving siphoned from their forebears, crushed under the weight of history, and retooled for a new generation. It’s wrought, raw and angry at a world lacking options, the thinning of the common understanding between the social classes of England, exasperation at repeating cycles, and the feeling that you’re watching your own life unfold from the outside.

These are songs that channel that voice you hear when you look in the mirror and see your true self – fight songs for a world gone wrong.

TRACK LISTING

01. BLACK COUNTRY GOTHIC
02. I MOCK JOGGERS
03. DESPERATE BREAKFAST
04. SHITHOUSE
05. THIS HERE AIN’T WATER
06. MY SHAPE (BLOCKING THE LIGHT)
07. BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE
08. BROADCAST: TIME AWAY
09. ILL.
10. MONGREL
11. BUTCHER’S BIN
12. DUST OFF / START AGAIN
13. TREES
14. FOR THE BIRDS
15. DiG!

Formed in the first wave of British post-rock alongside the likes of Mogwai in the late 90s, John Peel favourites Billy Mahonie are set to return with the first new music from their original line-up in some twenty-four years. Whilst their debut album ‘The Big Dig’, released in 1999 on Too Pure Records, is considered a classic of the post rock genre, Billy Mahonie always crafted their intricate music with memorable hooks and melodies and performed it with energy and gusto. Theirs was not an aimless, meandering sound, instead the songs and attitude were rooted in punk rock, and still are. Billy Mahonie put the rock into post-rock.

Set for release this coming May 24th via their own label Whistling Sam Projects, ‘Field Of Heads’ sees the band returning with their classic original line-up of Gavin Baker (guitar), Howard Monk (drums), Hywell Dinsdale (bass and guitar) and Kevin Penney (bass and guitar). Whilst this line-up has been semi active for a few years, no new material came to fruition. After their last gig in 2017, however, the band decided it was time to get back into the studio, but with two members living abroad new challenges were faced, but ideas were shared, old ones were resurrected and finally in October of 2019, Billy Mahonie were back in the studio.

Recorded over two long weekends on either side of the Covid 19 lockdowns, the band tracked at The Church studios, owned by their former collaborator and front of house engineer Paul Epworth, with senior engineer Luke Pickering at the controls, allowing ‘Field Of Heads’ to quickly take shape.

New single ‘Kaiju’ gives the music world the first taste of ‘Field Of Heads’ and right from the off, it’s classic Billy Mahonie. Immediately bursting into life with the energy and melody that is so unique to their sound, Howard’s driving drums thrust the music ahead as the guitars and synths weave their way around them. Intricate and shifting, but never at the expense of a tune that sticks in your head.

“This one came from a chord progression myself and Gav first tried out jamming in 2010,” explains drummer Howard. “Needless to say, when Hywell and Kev got their hands on it, it became something no-one ever envisaged. Kev's great title is, of course, the Japanese name for the subgenre of monster-based science fiction. A frenetic riff opens the song and for a counter guitar part only two options remain, play in the minimal gaps or find an overarching theme. We chose both. Kaiju films influence the additional Synths, echoes of those early Japanese movie themes. Some people we have played this to in advance have suggested this track is one we should lead with, as it is kind of where we left off. We agree. It rocks pretty hard. And is a bit funky too. What’s not to like?!”

After nearly quarter of a century, Billy Mahonie are very much back. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Atomic Clock
Kaiju
Hearts Vs Minds
Spy Guy
Side B
The More I Know You
Impossible Sky
Tributer
Dry Season

Founded in the mid 70s, Black Uhuru really burst into the reggae scene in the early 80s when Sly & Robbie took over artistic direction duties and produced crucial albums like Showcase, Sinsemilla, Red, Chill Out and Anthem.

Not only were the albums groundbreaking from an artistic standpoint, but the live shows were terrific. An avalanche of heavy-as-lead drum and bass, augmented by borderline metal rock guitars courtesy of the late Darryl Thompson, provided a bedrock of rhythm and energy for Michael Rose's lead vocals and Duckie Simpson's and Puma Jones' backing vocals.

Black Uhuru's first US tour took place in 1982. Back then, Reggae was in its infancy in the US and there were only 3 Reggae radio shows in California: Doug Wendt in San Francisco, Roger Steffens in LA and Lance Linares in Santa Cruz. In addition to running his radio show at KUSP, Lance also booked artists in Santa Cruz and worked with the Soledad Prison to help inmates acquire professional skills that could be used once they would be out of jail. Lance contacted the Black Uhuru organization and offered to organize a concert in the prison itself. To his surprise his idea was enthusiastically accepted and the group performed in front of a full house at Soledad Prison.

What we hear on this double LP is the entire concert, which was broadcast live on KUSP. Its historical significance is huge and can be compared to the reggae equivalent of the legendary live recording at Folsom by America legend Johnny Cash.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stage Intro
2. Puff She Puff
3. I Love King Selassie
4. Mondays
5. Youth Of Eglington
6. Chill Out
7. Darkness
8. Whole World Is Africa
9. Happiness
10. Sponji Reggae
11. Sensimilla

Released in 1986, BRUTAL has never been reissued on vinyl until now. It features a dream cast: Sly & Robbie as BLACK UHURU's leader, Junior Reid on vocals, Tyrone Downie (Roots Radics) on keyboards, all mixed at Lion & Fox by RAS RECORDS fetish engineer Jim Fox.

In addition to reissuing this album in its original version, we've remastered the original soundtracks for both vinyl and CD to give this legendary album even more sparkle. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A

1. Let Us Pray
2. Dread In The Mountain
3. Brutal
4. City Vibes
5. Fit You Haffe Fit

SIDE B

1.Great Train Robbery
2. Uptown Girl
3. Reggae With You
4. Vision
5. Conviction Or A Fine 

Celebrating 45 years of Blancmange, Everything Is Connected (Best Of) is the first collection to be curated by Neil Arthur, tastefully blending a mixture of hits and personal favourites. Originally from the UK’s post punk DIY scene, Blancmange found success in 1982, long player ‘Happy Families’ selling Gold in the UK, and its 3 singles becoming international hits. They went on to have 7 Top 40 hits and 70 weeks in the UK album charts. Long-standing admirers include Moby, John Grant and Honey Dijon, who states that “British synth pop was hugely influential in the burgeoning house music scene and Blancmange was a big part of that.”

TRACK LISTING

LP:
Side One
1 Living On The Ceiling
2 Waves
3 Blind Vision
4 Don’t Tell Me
5 The Day Before You Came
Side Two
1 What’s The Time?
2 Distant Storm
3 Mindset
4 Reduced Voltage
5 Some Times These

CD:
Disc 1
1 Sad Day (Original Version)
2 I’ve Seen The Word
3 God’s Kitchen
4 Feel Me
5 Living On The Ceiling
6 Waves
7 Game Above My Head (12 Inch Version)
8 Blind Vision
9 That’s Love, That It Is
10 Vishnu
11 Don’t Tell Me
12 The Day Before You Came
13 What’s Your Problem
14 Lose Your Love
15 Why Don’t They Leave Things Alone
16 Drive Me
17 I’m Having A Coffee
18 The Western
19 Just Another Spectre
Disc 2
1 The Fall
2 Last Night (I Dreamt I Had A Job)
3 Jack Knife (Red Shift EP)
4 What’s The Time?
5 We Are The Chemicals
6 Anna Dine
7 Distant Storm
8 I Smashed Your Phone
9 Not A Priority
10 Mindset
11 This Is Bliss
12 Clean Your House
13 Commercial Break
14 Some Times These
15 Reduced Voltage
16 Take Me
17 Again, I Wait For The World
18 Wish
19 Empty Street 

Recommended if you like: Hand Habits, Slow Pulp, Frankie Cosmos, Lomelda, Lucy Dacus, Big Thief.

“Bloomsday’s Iris James Garrison makes achieving sonic bliss look easy.” Consequence of Sound

Produced by Ryan Albert of Babehoven; features vocals from Babehoven, Richard Orofino, h. Pruz. Mixed by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp.

'The way Bloomsday’s Iris James Garrison writes songs feels like somewhere between a mirror and a memory. Spacious, full-bodied folk songs, they are an ode to things that are good no matter how small; they sometimes feel like the ghost of a Mary Oliver poem. Bloomsday’s new record, 'Heart of the Artichoke', is a relic of unfettered creativity and community. They recount the miracles of the mundane, the memories that become sacred, an ode to all that is holy: nightswimming, songs plucked from the ether, the ways friendship can endure.

Like earlier Bloomsday songs, the work here is threaded with warmth; it’s simmering, crisp and deeply human, an encapsulation of the present moment. Recorded across 10 days in June 2023 in upstate New York at duo Babehoven’s studio and co-produced by Babehoven’s Ryan Albert, with mixing by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp. The record was built out with a wide ranging group of collaborators, including inventive drumming from Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Babehoven’s Maya Bon, Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.), and Chris Daley. It was an insulated and collaborative experience: all family dinners on the back porch, bonfires, feeling a full sense of joy, of friendship, of purity in the artistic self.

Collaboration is an integral part of Bloomsday’s musical process. Garrison is malleable in the studio, their songwriting generous and spacious. But in listening to the record, there’s a sense that Garrison leaves room for the players, for the listener; for songs to find the shapes they’re meant to take. Garrison’s role as maestro is crucial, singular – it’s a collaborative, exploratory spirit harnessed by Garrison’s intuition, and by an honest commitment to carve out creative space for play, to delve into what’s known – or pushing past that, into unknown. “The ghosts of the past still come up and haunt me,” Garrison says, “but I sit in what I have and see it. All of these songs are about loved ones, about personal struggles with getting out of my head and being present.” Heart of the Artichoke was written from a healed, matured place – written in a moment of safety from chaos. It’s a prayer for the present, an appreciation of tenderness and what happens once we give ourselves the space to really see, and really feel – becoming free and whole – an ode to the way healing allows us to bloom.

TRACK LISTING

1. Where I End And You Begin
2. Virtual Hug
3. Dollar Slice
4. Artichoke
5. Look After
6. Night Swim
7. Carefully
8. Bumper Sticker
9. Object Permanence
10. Old Friend

Blushing’s unique brand of dreampop-infused indie rock hearkens back to the halcyon days of college radio. With a diverse array of influences including Elastica, Curve, Veruca Salt, Lush, The Breeders, and Smashing Pumpkins, Blushing manages a deftly executed eclecticism that recalls the best elements of alt rock’s past while retaining a vitality and immediacy that tethers them firmly to the present. On their recently completed third LP, Sugarcoat, Blushing’s dynamism is on full display, flitting effortlessly from spacey psychedelia to twee pop jangle with finesse and panache. Sugarcoat is a dense, reverb-laden exploration of altrock’s 40+ year history that conjures up concord from chaos. This album is where the band get to explore their love for expanding genres, from Post-punk (Seafoam), Psych-gaze (Slyce), Grunge pop (Silver Teeth), Indie Pop (Tamagotchi), Slowcore (Sugarcoat) and beyond. A huge highlight when making the album was the ability to collaborate with Jeff Schroeder on the track “Seafoam”. The band had the opportunity to meet with him a few times over the years and asked him to see if he would be interested in lending lead guitar on the track as they were nearing the end of recording. He agreed right away and wrote a perfect accompanying lead while out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins. The contribution elevated the song and the band are so grateful to have his influence captured on the album. Sugarcoat is out May 3rd on Kanine Records.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Intro
A2. Tamagotchi
A3. Seafoam
A4. Slyce
A5. Silver Teeth
A6. Sugarcoat
Side B
B1. Fizz
B2. Say When
B3. Pull You In Two
B4. Charms
B5. Debt

BMX Bandits are back with their twelfth studio album, their most musically ambitious so far – 'Dreamers On The Run'. An album dedicated to all the outsiders out there. BMX Bandits were formed in the Scottish ex industrial town of Bellshill in 1985 by Duglas T Stewart and Sean Dickson. When Sean left to concentrate on his other band The Soup Dragons so began BMX Bandits, not as a conventional band of the same 4 or 5 faces but as an ever growing extended musical family which has included members of The Vaselines, The Pastels, The Pearlfishers and Teenage Fanclub over the years. In 2014 Duglas formulated the idea for a new BMX Bandits album that would be called 'Dreamers on the Run', about living in two worlds; the world of dreams and of music while trying to survive the real world.

Duglas started writing songs for the new album and even booked a couple of shows to perform these new Dreamers songs live. Then Duglas got ill, his mental health spiralled out of control and this led to physical health problems. The project was put on hold, the planned live shows and recording were cancelled. During lockdown Duglas was commissioned to provide the soundtrack for an independent feature film ‘Dreaded Light’. For this project Duglas chose multi instrumentalist Andrew Pattie to be his main collaborator. Andrew had being playing guitar live for the band for a few years. Duglas recalls “After recording an actual soundtrack for an actual movie together it became obvious to me that Andrew was the right collaborator to make this very cinematic album that I’d dreamt of.

He had the musicality and fearlessness that it needed.” So now, ten years later than originally planned 'Dreamers on the Run' is here. “Together we worked on some of the song ideas and themes that I had a decade ago, completing them together and both of us wrote new material that complemented the album’s narrative.” The album was mastered by Duglas’ original partner in crime Sean Dickson, now known as Hifi Sean and features guest appearances by giants of the International Pop Underground Jowe Head and Calvin Johnson.

TRACK LISTING

Tracklist:

A1. Dreamers On The Run
A2. Setting Sun
A3. Time To Get Away
A4. What He Set Out To Be
A5. Cockerel’s Waiting

B1. My Name Is Duglas (Don’t Listen To What They Say)
B2. Home Before Dark – In The Industrial Zone
B3. Hop Skip Jump (For Your Love)
B4. The World Was Round
B5. Things You Threw Away
B6. Digital Dreamers

Tracklist Bonus 7":

A1. Setting Sun (Single Version With Intro)
A2. Your Class (Even More Dreams Version)
B1. Home Before Dark (Even More Dreams Version)
B2. Come Dance With Me

Starchris sees Body Meat (real name: Christopher Taylor) weaving his sugar-coated production wizardry with deeply soulful vocal performances and kaleidoscopic percussion. Across 13 tracks, he explores the roughest edges of r&b, IDM, club music, experimental pop, trap, footwork, and metal, only to soften them into something remarkably warm and welcoming, finding catharsis amongst chaos.

With this record, Body Meat embarks on a multi-dimensional endeavor, partly influenced by the interwoven and complex world-building found in role playing video games. Taylor imagines each song as its own distinct ‘level,’ and himself as the avatar moving through an immersive storyline. In its totality, Starchris evokes both the exhilaration and the emotional challenges that are part of any long, transformative journey.

This record follows a string of acclaimed EP releases, which earned Body Meat early profiles with Pitchfork, Clash, Fact Mag, Bandcamp + more.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Tone In The Dark
2. The Mad Hatter
3. High Beams
4. Electrische
5. Focus
6. Right Here
7. Crystalize
8. North Side
9. Starchris
10. Im In Pieces
11. Demons
12. Ōbu No Seirei (Spirit Of An Orb)
13. Paradise

Bogdan Ra is based in the musical hotbed of Lisbon and his excellent What Is A DJ? EP takes its inspiration from the late 80s acid house and Italo, displaying a real mix of vintage charm and contemporary relevance that will strike all the right notes on the dancefloor. From the snappy title cut to the electro rhythms of 'Arroios' via the funky disco rhythms of 'Tonic Glue' and feel good factor of closer 'That's All', this is quality production that will more than stand the test of time

TRACK LISTING

What Is A DJ?
Arroios
Tonic Glue
That's All

The Bolshoi released three albums during their existence, but they also recorded a fourth album that was never officially released during their tenure. Provisionally titled Country Life, it was released in 2015 as part of a limited 5-CD box set. We are excited to now release it on vinyl for the first time. Country Life consists of demos recorded for the album, and many of these only survived on reference cassettes but were digitally restored. We are especially thrilled that Trevor Tanner has recorded a brand new acoustic reimagining of the song “Dolores Jones” made specifically for this release.

The Bolshoi were different. Their songs were dark and subversive, sufficient evidence for many critics to corral them under the 'Gothic' banner at the time of their debut - but they really only "flirted" with Goth. They oozed dark, pensive lyrics supported with inventive pop-goth guitar making them nearly impossible to categorize.

The suburban surrealism of the lyrics was rooted in the stories from characters on the fringes of society rather than brooding romantics, with an undercurrent of boredom, inadequacy and violence. Not the usual themes for pop success!The Bolshoi released three albums during their existence, but they also recorded a fourth album that was never officially released during their tenure. Provisionally titled Country Life, it was released in 2015 as part of a limited 5-CD box set. We are excited to now release it on vinyl for the first time. Country Life consists of demos recorded for the album, and many of these only survived on reference cassettes but were digitally restored. We are especially thrilled that Trevor Tanner has recorded a brand new acoustic reimagining of the song “Dolores Jones” made specifically for this release.

The Bolshoi were different. Their songs were dark and subversive, sufficient evidence for many critics to corral them under the 'Gothic' banner at the time of their debut - but they really only "flirted" with Goth. They oozed dark, pensive lyrics supported with inventive pop-goth guitar making them nearly impossible to categorize.

The suburban surrealism of the lyrics was rooted in the stories from characters on the fringes of society rather than brooding romantics, with an undercurrent of boredom, inadequacy and violence. Not the usual themes for pop success!

TRACK LISTING

1. World In Action 
2. Under The Shed 
3. What’s Your Favourite Colour 
4. Country Life 
5. We Don’t Want Him Here 
6. Boy From The Nursery World 
7. Long Tall Sally In A Black Dress 
8. Too Late 
9. Out There In The Distance 
10. Castaway 
11. Dolores Jones 
12. Yee Hee 
13. Madame Hecate 
14. Last Chance For The Slow Dance 
15. Everything Is Done For You Today 
16. Dolores Jones 2023

Over the years, Bonny Light Horseman has accumulated many miles on the collective odometer of life. The band’s core trio – Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman – has amassed an incomparable collected resume. Mitchell is a celebrated solo artist as well as the playwright and songwriter behind the hit Broadway musical Hadestown, which notched eight Tony Awards and a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. Johnson is best known as the mind behind beloved indie mainstays Fruit Bats, as a longtime collaborator with The Shins, and as a film score composer. And Kaufman is a multi-hyphenate extraordinaire: songwriter, producer, and position player, having recorded and performed with artists ranging from Bob Weir to The War on Drugs to Taylor Swift, Hiss Golden Messenger and The Hold Steady. As a group, Bonny Light Horseman’s debut album received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album, and the track "Deep in Love" was nominated for Best American Roots Performance.



More important than any of this, though, they’ve also lived a big ol’ messy and tangled up pile of life, and all that living permeates their music with the wisdom, humor, and depth that underlies the accolades. Theirs is the stuff that defines folk music as a genre: love and loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time. The Big Stuff, with the stakes sky high.



At the center of Bonny Light Horseman is, always, the singular combination of three powerful and tender artists, artists who expertly dodge superlatives but are quick to acknowledge that their bond makes each one better, braver and more vulnerable than they’d be on their own. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the force of their voices together, which work with complete trust in one another through the gentlest moments and the most ruthless wails.



Bonny Light Horseman’s new album, Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free, is an ode to the blessed mess of our humanity. Confident and generous, it is an unvarnished offering that puts every feeling and supposed flaw out in the open. The themes are stacked high and staked even higher: love and loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time all permeate Bonny Light Horseman’s most vulnerable and bounteous offering to date. Yet for all of its humanistic touchpoints, Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free was forged from a kind of unexplainable magic.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Keep Me On Your Mind
2. Lover Take It Easy
3. I Know You Know
4. Grinch Funeral
5. Old Dutch
6. When I Was Younger
7. Waiting And Waiting
8. Hare And Hound
9. Rock The Cradle
10. Singing To The Mandolin
11. The Clover
12. Into The O
13. Don’t Know Why Youmove Me
14. Speak To Me Muse
15. Think Of The Royalties Lads
16. Tumblin Down
17. I Wanna Be Where Youare
18. Over The Pass
19. Your Arms (All The Time)
20. See You Free

‘Show & Tell’ is the much anticipated debut album from Bored At My Grandmas House (AKA 22 year old songwriter Amber Strawbridge). With critical acclaim and deserved plaudits lavished on Amber following her debut EP ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’, ‘Show & Tell carries on the emotive and philosophical themes of the EP, pinned around themes of connection; with yourself, with the world, with loved ones. There is soul-searching, introspection and a challenge to the ways of the world, all packed into 12 hook filled, shoegaze-fused-indie-pop slices.

Emerging from the hotbed of exceptional guitar music bubbling up out of Leeds in recent years, Amber has been supported by BBC 6Music, BBC Radio 1, DIY, and played Glastonbury, Radio 1’s Big Weekend and more.

Speaking about the album, Amber explains “I want to understand connections and process the emotions which surround them. The album covers topics of queer love, humanity and it’s ‘delusions of grandeur’, mental health, introspection and purpose. It’s one big project of of self introspection and a guidebook to understanding my brain’

‘Show & Tell’ also marks a brand new release from the exciting new partnership between Clue Records and EMI North, the first physical major label office to open outside London.

If you have a thing for Soccer Mommy, Alvvays, Girl In Red and boygenius, this record is for you. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Intro
Inhibitions
Show & Tell
Friendship Bracelets
How Do You See The World
Side B
I Like What You Bring Out In Me
Don’t Do Anything Stupid
Moving Slow
We See The World In The Same Way
Hide & Seek

Dinked 7” Tracklisting:
Side A
We See The World The Same Way - “4-Track” Version (exclusive For Dinked)
Side B
Show & Tell - “4-Track” Version (exclusive For Dinked)

On 24th May, 2024, the exact day of its Golden Jubilee, Diamond Dogs will be issued as a limited edition 50th anniversary picture disc LP, pressed from the same master as the half speed version. The first single from the album, ‘Rebel Rebel’, reached number 5 in the UK and the album would also reach similar heights on both sides of the Atlantic reaching number 1 in the UK and number 5 in the USA.

This new pressing of Diamond Dogs was cut on a customised late Neumann VMS80 lathe with fully recapped electronics from 192kHz restored masters of the original master tapes, with no additional processing on transfer. The half-speed was cut by John Webber at AIR Studios

The writing of the album was influenced by Bowie not being able to secure the rights for a theatrical production of George Orwell’s 1984 and the work of William S. Burroughs, whom Bowie had interviewed for Rolling Stone in November 1973. The songs on the album created an urban apocalyptic scenario with Bowie appearing on the cover as a controversial half-man, half-dog hybrid painted by the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert from photos by the world-renowned photographer Terry O’Neill. Since its release, tracks from Diamond Dogs have been covered by artists such as Beck, Tina Turner, Duran Duran, Def Leppard, Joan As Police Woman, Dead Or Alive and The Struts. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE ONE
Future Legend
Diamond Dogs
Sweet Thing
Candidate
Sweet Thing (Reprise)
Rebel Rebel

SIDE TWO
Rock ’n’ Roll With Me
We Are The Dead
1984
Big Brother
Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family 

Half-Speed Master Vinyl Edition
David Bowie’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! Charts Bowie’s journey to Ziggy Stardust. Starting with early home demos, through radio sessions and live performances, to session recordings, outtakes and alternate versions from the recording of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust album.

The 1LP half-speed master which accompanies the 5CD+BR version features alternative takes and mixes including an alternative version of ‘Lady Stardust’, an unheard version of the deep-cut classic ‘Shadow Man’ and an up-tempo take of The Who’s ‘I Can’t Explain’, which he would later slow down and cover for the PIN-UPS album. 

5CD + 1 Blue-Ray Edition
David Bowie’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! is a 5CD and 1 Blu-Ray Audio set that explores David Bowie’s journey from February 1971 through the creation of the Ziggy Stardust character, the recording of the iconic The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars album, and captures the international mania that surrounded the Ziggy phenomenon in the form of UK radio sessions and TV performances, as well as live tracks from Ziggy and the Spiders’ 1st October 1972 show at the Boston Music Hall.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! contains 29 unreleased tracks, covers early songwriting demos, recordings from David’s band, The Arnold Corns, rehearsals at Bowie’s then-home, Haddon Hall, BBC sessions, singles, live performances, plus outtakes and alternative versions from the original album recording sessions, which have been newly mixed by original album producer, Ken Scott.

Unreleased highlights include an alternative version of ‘Lady Stardust’, an unheard version of the deep-cut classic ‘Shadow Man’ and an up-tempo take of The Who’s ‘I Can’t Explain’, which he would later slow down and cover for the PIN-UPS album.

The Blu-Ray includes a version of the Ziggy Stardust album called Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) taken from Trident Studio tapes dated 15th December 1971, which features an alternative running order and four songs that didn’t make the final album.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! also contains two books. The first is an extensive 112-page book with detailed liner notes, memorabilia, contemporary reviews and articles, rare photographs from Barrie Wentzel, Michael Putland, Mick Rock, Sukita and Alec Byrne, as well as brand-new notes and interviews with Ken Scott, Mark Carr Pritchett and David’s plugger from the time, Anya Wilson. Accompanying the main book is a 36-page compiled reproduction of David’s personal Ziggy Stardust era notebooks. 

TRACK LISTING

Half-Speed Master Vinyl Edition
Side 1
1. Hang On To Yourself (early Ziggy Session Take)
2. Star (Take 5 Alternative Version)
3. Lady Stardust (Take 1 Alternative Version)
4. Shadow Man (Ziggy Session Version)
5. The Supermen (Ziggy Session Version 2023 Mix)
6. Holy Holy (Ziggy Session Version Alternative Mix)
7. Round And Round (alternative Mix)
Side 2
1. Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix)
2. Looking For A Friend (Ziggy Session Version)
3. It's Gonna Rain Again (Ziggy Sessions Outtake)
4. Sweet Head (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix)
5. Starman (Top Of The Pops Version 2022 Mix)
6. John, I'm Only Dancing (alternative Trident Studios Version)
7. I Can't Explain (Trident Studios Version)

CD/Blu-Ray Edition:
Disc 1
1. So Long 60s (San Francisco Hotel Recording) *
2. Hang On To Yourself (early Demo) *
3. Lady Stardust (demo)
4. Ziggy Stardust (demo)
5. Star (Aka Stars) (demo) *
6. Soul Love (demo And DB Spoken Notes) *
7. Starman (demo 1 Excerpt) *
8. Starman (demo 2) *
9. Moonage Daydream (The Arnold Corns Version)
10. Hang On To Yourself (The Arnold Corns Version)
11. Looking For A Friend (The Arnold Corns Version – Rough Mix) *
12. Haddon Hall Rehearsals Segue: Ziggy Stardust / Holy Holy / Soul Love *
13. Star (Aka Stars) (Haddon Hall Rehearsal) *
14. Sweet Head (Haddon Hall Rehearsal) *

Disc 2
Sounds Of The 70s: John Peel
Session Recorded On 11th January, 1972 And Broadcast On 28th January, 1972
1. Ziggy Stardust *
2. Queen Bitch *
3. Waiting For The Man *
4. Lady Stardust *
Sounds Of The 70s: Bob Harris
Session Recorded On 18th January, 1972 And Broadcast On 7th February, 1972
5. Hang On To Yourself
6. Ziggy Stardust
7. Queen Bitch
8. Waiting For The Man
9. Five Years
Old Grey Whistle Test Performance
Filmed On 7th February, 1972 And Broadcast On 8th February, 1972
Except ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ Which Was Not Broadcast Until 1982.
10. Oh! You Pretty Things (take 1)
11. Queen Bitch
12. Five Years

Disc 3
Sounds Of The 70s: John Peel
Session Recorded On 16th May, 1972 And Broadcast On 23rd May, 1972
1. White Light/White Heat
2. Moonage Daydream
3. Hang On To Yourself
4. Suffragette City
5. Ziggy Stardust
Johnnie Walker Lunchtime Show
Session Recorded On 22nd May, 1972 And Broadcast From 5th – 9th June, 1972
6. Starman
7. Space Oddity
8. Changes
9. Oh! You Pretty Things
Sounds Of The 70s: Bob Harris
Session Recorded On 23rd May, 1972 And Broadcast On 19th June, 1972
10. Andy Warhol
11. Lady Stardust
12. White Light/White Heat
13. Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide
Top Of The Pops Performance
Filmed On 5th July, 1972 And Broadcast On 6th July, 1972
14. Starman

Disc 4
1. Round And Round
2. The Supermen (Ziggy Session Version)
3. Holy Holy (Ziggy Session Version)
4. Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy Session Outtake)
5. Starman (original Single Mix)
6. John, I’m Only Dancing (original Single Version)
Recorded Live At The Music Hall, Boston.
Recorded On 1st October, 1972
7. The Supermen
8. Changes
9. Life On Mars?
10. My Death *
11. John, I’m Only Dancing

Disc 5
1. Looking For A Friend (The Arnold Corns Version 2022 Mix) *
2. Hang On To Yourself (early Ziggy Session Take) *
3. Star (take 5 Alternative Version) *
4. Lady Stardust (take 1 Alternative Version) *
5. Shadow Man (Ziggy Session Version) *
6. The Supermen (Ziggy Session Version 2023 Mix) *
7. Holy Holy (Ziggy Session Version Alternative Mix) *
8. Round And Round (alternative Mix)
9. It’s Gonna Rain Again (Ziggy Session Outtake) *
10. Looking For A Friend (Ziggy Session Version) *
11. Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix) *
12. Sweet Head (Ziggy Sessions Outtake 2022 Mix) *
13. Starman (Top Of The Pops Version 2022 Mix)
14. John, I’m Only Dancing (alternative Trident Studios Version) *
15. I Can’t Explain (Trident Studios Version) * Bonus Mix
16. Moonage Daydream (2003 Instrumental Mix)

Blu Ray Audio
THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS
Original Album Mix (96khz/24bit Stereo)

THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS AND EXTRAS
2003 5.1 Mixes (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 - 96khz/24bit)

WAITING IN THE SKY (BEFORE THE STARMAN CAME TO EARTH)
Early Ziggy Stardust Album Tracklisting – December 1971 (96khz/24bit PCM Stereo)

THE SINGLES
(96khz/24bit PCM Stereo)

OUTTAKES AND ALTERNATIVE VERSIONS
(96khz/24bit PCM Stereo) 

Brainwave Research Center is back once again with another superb album, and once again Chase Smith and Christa Majoras embody a unique DIY sound crafted from analog synthesizer experimentations. This is another entry into the duo's initial four-part series and it encapsulates the essence of summer. The A-side commences with a dreamy narrative that transitions into the gritty urban landscape of Brooklyn in 'Interceptor iii,' and concludes with euphoric sunset vibes. On the B-side, the music delves into the sensation of falling in dreams, reminiscent of their second album Mosaic, again blending electronic and acoustic elements. Feel Free, then, invites listeners into the everyday musings of Brainwave Research Center and is a classic listen for fans of locked-in rhythms.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. "Life Of A Earthworm"
2. "Interceptor III"
3. "Electric Twilight"
4. "Wow!"
5. "Big Moonlight"

Side 2
1. "Falling (Sensation)"
2. "Innerspace"
3. "Wild Air"
4. "(It's) Free To Dream"
5. "Endian Summer"

Along with Bikini Kill, Bratmobile spearheaded the riot grrrl revolution of the early 1990s, battling the long-standing dominance of men within the punk rock community to help empower a new generation of female musicians and fans - Comprised of singer Allison Wolfe, guitarist Erin Smith, and drummer Molly Neuman, Bratmobile made their debut at 1991's International Pop Underground convention; after a handful of singles--with members spread out between California, Washington, and Maryland, recording was a logistical nightmare--the trio finally released Pottymouth in 1993

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Thing
2. Throway
3. Stab
4. P.R.D.C.T.
5. Cherry Bomb
6. Some Special
7. Fuck Yr. Fans
8. Polaroid Baby
9. Panik
10. Bitch Theme
11. Richard
12. Cool Schmool
13. Juswanna
14. Untitled
15. Kiss And Ride
16. No You Don't
17. Queenie

In 1975, the New York City alto saxophonist Alan Braufman released his debut album, Valley of Search, on the India Navigation label. Braufman went on to record and tour with everyone from Carla Bley to The Psychedelic Furs, and didn't release another album under his name until 2020's The Fire Still Burns, which received rave reviews from The WIRE, Downbeat, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and NPR.

2024's Infinite Love Infinite Tears is a surprisingly catchy program of free jazz, richly detailed and forthright, embodying a range of emotions and circumstances that convey individuality, collectivity and hope. There is much history and love in this band, and in Alan Braufman’s art overall. Fifty-odd years after debuting on record, his sound-world is as vital and inviting as ever.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chasing A Melody
2. Infinite Love Infinite Tears
3. Spirits
4. Edge Of Time
5. Brooklyn
6. Liberation 

Live albums are often a ‘hit or miss’ affair but ‘Live Oblivion’ 1 & 2 buck that trend, Recorded across 2 nights in 1974 at the Hollywood venue The Whisky A Go Go. The group were finishing off a huge US tour that had roared down the east coast then across the Midwest and by the time they hit LA, as Brian recalls “we were all absolutely performing at our height. So I decided that I really needed to record the band live at that point”. Utilising the Wally Heider Mobile Truck, the scene was set for one of the greatest jazz-fusion live recordings to be made. The show opens with a hyper fast version of Beginning Again due to drummer Steve Ferrone being almost an hour late and running high on adrenaline, Brian remembers thinking “I don’t even know if I can play it that fast!” Fortunately, he and the Oblivion Express including stellar vocalist Alex Ligertwood rise to the challenge and the result is akin to some frenetic jazzy drum & bass but also pushes the group onto another level altogether for the rest of the show. Across both volumes there are no fillers and the highlights are many - Bumpin’ On Sunset, Freedom Jazz Dance, and Inner City Blues are all stunning, but especially the epic version of Maiden Voyage which Mos Def sampled on his 1997 'If You Can Huh! You Can Hear', and both DJ Mitsu in 2004 and 2017 Crimeapple both dipped into Live Oblivion to sample that fire for their own projects.

Auger, in the original liner notes opines how live recordings can often have drawbacks but "I hope that spirit shines through" Live Oblivion 1 & 2, 50 years on from being committed to tape, certainly achieve that and much more. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Beginning Again
2. Don't Look Away
3. Bumpin' On Sunset
4. Truth 

Live albums are often a ‘hit or miss’ affair but ‘Live Oblivion’ 1 & 2 buck that trend, Recorded across 2 nights in 1974 at the Hollywood venue The Whisky A Go Go. The group were finishing off a huge US tour that had roared down the east coast then across the Midwest and by the time they hit LA, as Brian recalls “we were all absolutely performing at our height. So I decided that I really needed to record the band live at that point”. Utilising the Wally Heider Mobile Truck, the scene was set for one of the greatest jazz-fusion live recordings to be made. The show opens with a hyper fast version of Beginning Again due to drummer Steve Ferrone being almost an hour late and running high on adrenaline, Brian remembers thinking “I don’t even know if I can play it that fast!” Fortunately, he and the Oblivion Express including stellar vocalist Alex Ligertwood rise to the challenge and the result is akin to some frenetic jazzy drum & bass but also pushes the group onto another level altogether for the rest of the show. Across both volumes there are no fillers and the highlights are many - Bumpin’ On Sunset, Freedom Jazz Dance, and Inner City Blues are all stunning, but especially the epic version of Maiden Voyage which Mos Def sampled on his 1997 'If You Can Huh! You Can Hear', and both DJ Mitsu in 2004 and 2017 Crimeapple both dipped into Live Oblivion to sample that fire for their own projects.

Auger, in the original liner notes opines how live recordings can often have drawbacks but "I hope that spirit shines through" Live Oblivion 1 & 2, 50 years on from being committed to tape, certainly achieve that and much more. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Freedom Jazz Dance
2. Happiness Is Just Around The Bend
3. Maiden Voyage
4. Second Wind
5. Whenever You're Ready
6. Inner City Blues
7. Straight Ahead
8. Compared To What 

N u m e r o G r o u p Leon Bridges/Pastor TL Barrett Like A Ship Numero’s second bundle of cover 45s is all things soulful. The Rotterdam-based Another Taste electrifies Maxx Traxx’s 1984 Chicago boogie grail “Don’t Touch It,” which makes its debut on the 7” format here. Colemine Records’ Say She She delivers a glamorous rendition of Jim Spencer’s yacht-disco hit “Wrap Myself Up In Your Love.” Columbia Recording artist Leon Bridges effortlessly transforms Pastor T.L. Barrett’s “Like A Ship,” updating the 50 year old gospel soul classic for the 21st century. All three are housed in a newly imagined Numero custom sleeve, reflecting the many shades of our ongoing Eccentric Soul 45 imprint

TRACK LISTING

A. Leon Bridges W/ Keite Young - Like A Ship

B. Pastor T.L. Barrett & The Youth For Christ Choir - Like A Ship

Since their debut as Brijean, the project of percussionist/singer-songwriter Brijean Murphy (the percussive heartbeat for live bands like Mitski, Poolside, and Toro y Moi) and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart has moved with ingenuity, fusing psych-pop abstraction with dance floor sensibilities. Through the body and mind, rhythm and lyricism, they make sense of the worlds around and within; 2021's 'Feelings' celebrated self-reflection; 2022's 'Angelo' processed loss, coinciding with the duo's first headlining tour, which doubled down on the material's desire to move. Now, across the playful expanse of 'Macro', arriving in 2024 on Ghostly International, Brijean engages different sides of themselves, the paradox of being alive. They've leveled up to meet the complexities and harmonies of the human experience with their most dynamic songwriting yet. Colorful, collaborative, sophisticated, and deeply fun, the album animates a macrocosm with characters, moods, and points of view rooted in the notion that no feeling is final and the only way out is through. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Get Lost
2. Euphoric Avenue
3. Bang Bang Boom
4. After Life
5. Roxy Mountain
6. Breathe
7. Counting
8. Counting Sheep
9. Workin’ On It
10. Scenic Route
11. Roller Coaster
12. Laura 

Tetsu Shibuya, better known as simply Tetsu or Brisa is a Japanese producer and DJ known for works on the iconic Japanese Jazzy Sport imprint, King Street sub-label Nite Grooves and his own Brisa Music. Leading the EP is title-track 'Stir', in collaboration with Turbojazz Brisa delivers a classic slice of deep house built upon layers of bright stab sequences and loose organic percussion. Detroit's beloved Jon Dixon turns his hand to 'Stir' next, encapsulating the soul of his hometown in reshaping fragments of the original composition. The original of 'Reverie' opens the B-side, laying down a broken rhythm, low-pitched vocal hooks and elongated bass grooves for a more bruk tinged feel. Byron The Aquarius then extracts the core of 'Reverie' and spins it into bumpy, subtly nuanced house workout. Lastly the third original 'Flux' rounds out the release, shifting deeper in funkinfused realms with a playful plucked bass groove and heavily swung drums.

TRACK LISTING

Stir (feat Turbojazz)
Stir (feat Turbojazz) (Jon Dixon Remix)
Reverie
Reverie (Byron The Aquarius Remix)
Flux

Distant Call is a collection of early demos of songs by Trish Keenan and James Cargill that would subsequently appear as finished productions on the albums Haha Sound, Tender Buttons and The Future Crayon.

The album also includes two songs discovered by James after Trish’s passing: “Come Back To Me” and “Please Call To Book”. These were her response to Broadcast’s 2006 ‘Let’s Write A Song’ project, where fans were asked to submit lyrics on a postcard which would then be worked into a finished song.

Distant Call is a closing of the door on Broadcast and will be the last release from the band.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tears In The Typing Pool [Demo]
2. Still Feels Like Tears [Demo]
3. Come Back To Me [Demo]
4. The Little Bell [Demo]
5. Distant Call [Demo]
6. Valerie [Demo]
7. Colour Me In [Demo]
8. Ominous Cloud [Demo]
9. Flame Left From The Sun [Demo]
10. Where Youth And Laughter Go [Demo]
11. Poem Of A Dead Song [Demo]
12. O How I Miss You [Demo]
13. Pendulum [Demo]
14. Please Call To Book [Demo]

Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006-2009 comprises songs and sketches drawn from Trish's extensive archive of 4-track tapes and MiniDiscs. The recordings lay the groundwork for what would have been Broadcast’s fifth album, offering a window into Trish and James’ creative process during the post-Tender Buttons period from 2006-2009.

Photography used in its artwork is by Trish and James and the artwork is designed by Broadcast's long-time collaborator Julian House.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Song Before The Song Comes Out
2. March Of The Fleas
3. Greater Than Joy
4. Mother Plays Games
5. My Marble Eye
6. Roses Red
7. Hip Bone To Hip Bone
8. Running Back To Me
9. I Blink You Blink
10. Infant Girl
11. I Run In Dreams
12. Luminous Image
13. A Little Light
14. Hairpin Memories
15. My Body
16. Follow The Light
17. Tunnel View
18. Where Are You?
19. Singing Game
20. I Want To Be Fine
21. The Games You Play
22. Grey Grey Skies
23. Puzzle
24. The Clock Is On Fire
25. Petal Alphabet
26. Tell Table
27. Fatherly Veil
28. Dream Power
29. Heartbeat
30. Call Sign
31. Crone Motion
32. Sleeping Bed
33. Join In Together
34. Colour In The Numbers
35. I Am The Bridge
36. Spirit House 

Falko Brocksieper is a cult German minimalist who was favoured by the likes of Craig Richards and his Tyrant project. This new EP from 20/20 Vision takes a deep dive into his back catalogue to unearth a gem that first arrived via Treibstoff Recordings almost 20 years ago in 2006. 'Frantic Formula' is a nice liquid cut with wispy sci-fi pads and rolling grooves for early evening warm-ups, while 'Outrun' gets more upright with its jumbled drum loops and gurgling bass. 'Covert Action' is another masterfully languid and elastic rhythm that layers up cowbells, wobbly low ends and silky loops that soon lock you into the groove. A welcome remaster and reissue for sure.

TRACK LISTING

Frantic Formula
Outrun
Covert Action

Broken Keys, as you may know, is a multi-talented musician and producer based in Los Angeles. His cut 'Assorted Colors' has become a real underground house classic that now lands on wax for the first time as a special extended 12" remix that really locks you into the languid grooves. The legendary Galcher Lustwerk steps up to add his own distinctive take on the original and infuses it with a techy yet atmospheric groove. Then Broken Keys explores a different facet of his sound with three distinct cuts on the flip that range from blunted beats and sun-kissed Balearic to chilled-out future soul. They make for a diverse package that has something for many different situations.

TRACK LISTING

Assorted Colors (Extended 12" Mix)
Assorted Colors (Galcher Lustwerk Remix)
Say You Do
Caught Out In The Rain
500 Days

This is the soundtrack to Get Carter (1971), the all-time classic British gangster flick starring Michael Caine and directed by Mike Hodges. It became the bridge by which jazz musician Roy Budd successfully expanded his horizons to film music, with a score brimming with moments of his genius.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film's opening, we drew on the original Japanese (1971) and British (1998) OST releases to put together an expanded edition of the OST - including a bonus disc featuring various different outtakes and bits of dialogue.

This is the 3rd installment in Beatball's series of Roy Budd Classic Soundtrack Scores, packed with a jazzy (and groovy) score done in Budd's signature style, as well as key lines of dialogue for you to relive the scenes from the film!

TRACK LISTING

Get Carter Intro
Dialogue “is There A Mr. Carter In The Room?”
Main Theme - Carter Takes The Train
Dialogue “do You Know A Man Called Albert Swift?”
Looking For Someone
Dialogue - The Race Track
Something On My Mind
Dialogue “who Killed Frank?”
Gettin' Nowhere In A Hurry
Dialogue “tell Me About The Girl”
The Girl In The Car
Dialogue “i Fancy You”
Love Is A Four Letter Word
Dialogue “you're Lucky. They Kill As Well”
Living Should Be This Way
Dialogue “all It Takes Is One Call To The Police”
Manhunt
Dialogue “drink Up: Eric”
Goodbye Eric + Dialogue
Dialogue “i Want You To Listen Very Carefully”
Hallucinations
Goodbye Carter!
Get Carter (alternative Mix 1)
Plaything
Dialogue "stay Away From The Car"
Hallucinations (alternative Vocal Mix)
Dialogue "do You Wanna Go To The Toilet, Albert?"
Gettin' Nowhere In A Hurry (instrumental)
Love Is A Four Letter Word (alternative Mix)
Manhunt (alternative Mix)
Dialogue "you're A Big Man"
Get Carter (alternative Mix 2)
Gettin' Nowhere In A Hurry (alternative Vocal Mix)
Hallucinations (instrumental)
How About You
Get Carter (7" Single Version)

Bullion is Nathan Jenkins, an enduring cult figure of electronic music. A producer and songwriter quietly to be found connecting artists, genre and UK subculture. His credits range from Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Howard, NilüferYanya and Avalon Emerson’s breakout album & The Charm to records for Westerman and Joviale. Bullion’s celebrated solo releases, meanwhile, have run parallel on Young, The Trilogy Tapes, Jagjaguwar and his own DEEK Recordings. It’s a creative red-thread Bullion ties together on his surprise new album, Affection - a warm, occasionally off-kilter and beautifully realised pop record that’s bold enough to step from behind-the-scenes and show affection in public.

Affection started life upon Nathan’s move back to London from Lisbon, where he relocated in 2018. Back then, the comfort of the crowd suited him: self-confessedly passive and faltering by nature, the opportunity to exist somewhere without any personal history proved liberating. Returning home, Nathan increasingly found himself reflecting on his place in the world, seeking affection in place of cynicism.

Bullion’s music has always been difficult to pin down, but entirely distinctive - and on Affection, its rich pleasures are in hearing how this uncompromising approach is strengthened, in part, by softening. The album wonders-aloud about the meaning of intimacy, in relationship to others and the self. Masculinity and other contemporary concerns are punctuated by old-world charms, found in the ‘hat stands and watches’ of World_train. Influences stretch from morning swims to adolescent fears and a book of poems his Dad wrote as a young man, in songs that are tender if not always true of Nathan himself. Affection ultimately asks how we understand people, but in being more vulnerable at least attempts to care a little less about what they think, too.

Taking your own advice is integral to Bullion’s latest album, where Nathan applies what he’s encouraged fellow artists to do in the studio for years: be open to adventure. Affection steps into a more emotionally-present, often playful space, with collaborators Carly Rae Jepsen and Charlotte Adigéry gracing songs that prioritise feeling over fixed meaning. Rare, for instance, emerged during sessions for Jepsen’s recent album in Toronto: high energy turning coy to express something ‘deep in the heart’. World_train, meanwhile, is an eccentric and brilliantly odd angle on Bullion’s love of pop, its locomotive power summoning a lost past amidst the uncertainties of the everyday. ‘I can hardly understand what it takes to be a real man’, Bullion sings. ‘…and nobody can’, Adigéry confirms. Still, connections - missed, imagined, or still possible - cocoon much of Affection, with Panda Bear collaboration A City’s Never emerging after Noah and Nathan lived in Lisbon at the same time but never actually met. For Bullion, the willingness to allow others into his songwriting process is as much about opening up the world of the album as it is about bettering the work and the person.

In blurring the observational with the introspective, Affection’s avant-pop touch abandons categorisation. The albums lyrics are as unguarded and devotional as they are inquisitive of alternative ways of being, signing off with ‘being still is hard to do’. Nathan has mastered his sound, but life - in its expectations, contradictions, impulses and desires - remains impossible to control.

TRACK LISTING

1. A City’s Never (ft. Panda Bear)
2. Affection
3. Rare (ft. Carly Rae Jepsen)
4. Your Father
5. The Flooding
6. Cinch
7. World_train (ft. Charlotte Adigéry)
8. Cavalier
9. Once, In A Borrowed Car
10. Open Hands
11. 40 Waves
12. Hard To Do

‘Good Grief’ is the first new solo album in 25 years from songwriter and producer Bernard Butler. Between then and now, Butler had ventured into the world of pop songwriting and producing, including two seminal albums with folk musician Sam Lee, a Mercury nominated project with actor Jessie Buckley as well as working with Bert Jansch and Ben Watt From Everything But The Girl, The Libertines, Tricky and an eight-million selling, Grammy-winning record with Duffy.

Of returning to solo work after two and a half decades, Butler says ‘For a good while I was scarred and I was scared. I was happily distracted and joyously involved with so much music. I realised just being there was more than I had ever hoped for. I gave a lot to other people, but realised that my story was defined but what I was, rather than what I am. I set myself a modest commercial goal, an expectant creative one: perform to 10 people without being bottled, then find 11 the next night. Thus began the undoing of my own embarrassment. I would write as I thought and sing as I wrote until the bottles fly. And so, the songs arrived.’

Bernard booked himself into a rehearsal space in Holloway every Wednesday afternoon for months, just him, a guitar and a microphone. The first fruit of these sessions is the new single ‘Camber Sands’, “For years and years I have drawn straight lines from North London to every coastline I could see. To life-worn Londoners escape is the dream and return most likely. The story I found was not the sea but the journey. Camber Sands, Mersea Island, Dunwich, or a dozen more horizons of possibility, the sea and the seawalls, and the endless return to face the city. Camber Sands is a love song - we flee the past, the present, ourselves, to survive, to defy. The loneliest music of the resolute, the half-light and the saddest tunes.’

Round circle shows with friends Norman Blake and James Grant across Scotland gave Butler the taste for venturing back out on stage, and while writing with Jessie Buckley for the Mercury Prize nominated For All Our Days That Tear the Heart album, Bernard tucked away his own discoveries and continued the journey once Buckley returned to the silver screen. Confronting his own songwriting process, he wrote words down, away from the security of his guitar, before carving music around the lines.

‘Good Grief’ finds Bernard Butler owning three decades of work, free to perform, bookended by wildly contrasting experiences of loss, joy, and bewilderment. The album is a journey from city to coast and back, and between it, an entire spectrum of human emotion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Camber Sands
2. Deep Emotions
3. Living The Dream
4. Preaching To The Choir
5. Pretty D
6. The Forty Foot
7. London Snow
8. Clean
9. The Wind

One of the finest groups of the late 50s, the Jazz Lab was co-led by the inimitable horn players Gigi Gryce and Donald Byrd. Although the group worked extensively from February to September of 1957 it broke up shortly after. However, all their albums together have become jazz classics, among them the group's first LP, presented here.

"Gigi Gryce and Donald Byrd's innovative, but unfortunately short-lived Jazz Lab Quintet recorded several sides during 1957, seven of which were released on this excellent LP. Jazz Lab makes for an excellent introduction to the hard bop catalogue." - 4.5 STARS AllMusic (Stephen Cook)

TRACK LISTING

1. Speculation
2. Over The Rainbow
3. Nica's Tempo
4. Blue Concept
5. Little
6. Niles
7. Sans Souci
8. I Remember Clifford
9. Smoke Signal

Neon Pill is the highly anticipated new album from Cage The Elephant, and group’s first new music since their album, Social Cues, which won Best Rock album at the 2019 GRAMMY Awards. Cage The Elephant consists of brothers Matt Shultz (vocals) and Brad Shultz (rhythm guitar) along with Daniel Tichenor (bass), Jared Champion (drums), Nick Bockrath (lead guitar) and Matthan Minster (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals).

Despite the album’s playful title, Cale’s second album in just over a year still contains the same feelings of fierce and inquisitive rage that were present in 2023 album MERCY. He remains angry, still incensed by the willful destruction that unchecked capitalists and unrepentant conmen have hoisted upon the wonders of this world and the goodness of its people. But this is not at all MERCY II, or some collection of castoffs, as throughout his career of more than six decades, Cale has never been much for repetition. His vanguard-shaping enthusiasms have shifted among ecstatic classicism and unbound rock, classic songcraft and electronic reimagination with proud restlessness.

And so, on POPtical Illusion, he foregoes the illustrious cast to burrow mostly alone into mazes of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that, as far as Cale goes, constitute a sort of swirling hope, a sage insistence that change is yet possible. Produced by Cale and longtime artistic partner Nita Scott, POPtical Illusion is the work of someone trying to turn toward the future – exactly as Cale always has.

TRACK LISTING

1. God Made Me Do It (don’t Ask Me Again)
2. Davies And Wales
3. Calling You Out
4. Edge Of Reason
5. I’m Angry
6. How We See The Light
7. Company Commander
8. Setting Fires
9. Shark-Shark
10. Funkball The Brewster
11. All To The Good
12. Laughing In My Sleep
13. There Will Be No River

Look to the East, Look to the West, the new album by Camera Obscura, is a revelation. The Tracyanne Campbell-led outfit, reuniting with producer Jari Haapalainen (Let’s Get Out of This Country, My Maudlin Career), have crafted an album that simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved them for decades while also being their most sophisticated effort to date.

It is also the most hard-fought album of Camera Obscura’s career. Following the 2015 passing of founding keyboardist and friend Carey Lander (to whom the penultimate track “Sugar Almond” is addressed), the band went into an extended hiatus. They remained in contact, but their status was uncertain until they announced their return, having been invited to perform as part of Belle & Sebastian’s 2019 Boaty Weekender cruise festival, along with a pair of sold-out warm-up shows in Glasgow. Donna Maciocia (keys and vocals) joined founding members Kenny McKeeve (guitar and vocals), Gavin Dunbar (bass), and Lee Thomson (drums and percussion) for those shows and has since become a regular songwriting partner of Campbell’s.

Recorded in the same room where Queen wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Look to the East, Look to the West feels big, a widescreen reframing of Camera Obscura’s sound that, paradoxically, saw the band go back to basics there are no string or brass arrangements, with more emphasis placed on piano, synthesizers, Hammond organ, and drum machines, and, perhaps most strikingly, the group have dropped the veil of reverb that characterized their previous albums. The tinges of country and soul that give Camera Obscura’s baroque take on pop music its bittersweet edge have never been more apparent guitars shimmer into the distance, keys haunt, and Campbell’s voice searches for the heart, reflecting on love, loss, and the passage of time.

Lead single “Big Love” relishes in the space between country rock and prog, a pining break-up anthem featuring the soaring pedal steel of Tim Davidson. It’s a Nashville Sound heartbreaker, tackling the complexity of wanting to rekindle a bad relationship with Campbell’s uncanny ability to render the past: “It was a big love, she said / That’s why it took ten years to get her out of her head,” she begins.

“We’re Going to Make It in a Man’s World” was co-written with Maciocia for filmmaker Margaret Salmon’s 2021 film Icarus (After Amelia). (Salmon, in turn, shot Look to the East, Look to the West’s cover photography featuring Fiona Morrison, who was on the cover of Camera Obscura’s debut, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi.). Ironic and sincere, the two navigate the reality of being women in the music industry, somehow floating over Davidson’s

pedal steel and Maciocia’s keys. “The Light Nights” is a swooning song propelled by a western shuffle and killer guitar, striking a balance between a particularly good honky-tonk joint’s jukebox and a lost gem of California pop music waiting to be discovered in a 7” bin.

Look to the East, Look to the West is the sound of a band that has grown more confident in its sound and purpose than ever. It is Camera Obscura at their best and most evocative, an album that completely rearranges the listener’s emotional core, leaving them sad and exhilarated at the same time. Camera Obscura’s catalog is replete with songs people point to as life-changing, songs that will stick with them all their lives. Look to the East, Look to the West has 11 of them; take your pick. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Liberty Print
2. We’re Going To Make It In A Man’s World
3. Big Love
4. Only A Dream
5. The Light Nights
6. Sleepwalking
7. Baby Huey (Hard Times)
8. Denon
9. Pop Goes Pop
10. Sugar Almond
11. Look To The East, Look To The West.

Isobel Campbell is no stranger to navigating turmoil. On her previous album, There Is No Other (2020), she re-emerged after a decade of label trouble with a gem of subtly questing psychedelic folk. Four years on, Campbell spreads her net wider on Bow to Love, a soft-spun yet sharp-edged set of reflections on modern crises that doesn’t stop at diagnosing the problems: it goes further to ask how we might progress from our tense, conflicted times.

With all the dexterity the Glasgow-born singer-songwriter and cellist is known for, the result is an album of lambent surfaces and choppy riptides, a deeply personal record for today poised between hope and despair. “The album is about what we’re all in right now, and my response to that and my life as a microcosm within that,” says Campbell, before suggesting how exposing modern horrors might prove purgative. “I think there’s a quote from A Course In Miracles which says, ‘Love brings up everything unlike itself for the purpose of healing and release.’ Maybe these horrible things are coming up and out so we can get rid of them and things can be better.”

Her radar keenly attuned to inequities, Campbell spotlights toxic masculinity on the luminous ‘Everything Falls Apart,’ it’s circling lilt and warm, fretless bass framing a call to unmask patriarchal power in readiness for “a brand new start”. “My elegy to the patriarchy” is how Campbell pitches it, noting how “even the words we use to insult a substandard man will often blame the woman – ‘son of a bitch’, ‘bastard’.” The spellbinding psych-folk of ‘Spider to the Fly’ and ‘Second Guessing’ add themes of “narcissistic abuse” and “repetition compulsion”, lending bite to the album’s take on relationships.

Some songs were first conceptualised in 2016, when Brexit and Trump exacerbated what Campbell describes as “real tension” amongst people. Between its gently jazzy shuffle and cushioning arrangement, the Yoda-esque ‘Do Or Die’ foregrounds fortitude in the face of gnawing anxieties. The rainy-day soul-pop of ‘Keep Calm Carry On’ also started in 2016, when Campbell was staying at her aunt’s flat in Yoker and her then-husband and collaborator Chris Szczech texted her from New York about the Brexit vote. “Chris was saying, ‘It looks like it’s going to happen’ but I was like, ‘No way.’ And actually – ‘way’. It did happen.”

Technology is touched on with first single ‘4316’, an almost robo-folk-pop challenge to the idea of the “transhuman”: the idea that technology might sire a new stage in human evolution. Favouring “honest, decent communication” over AI, Campbell takes a dim view of our “friend, unfriend, block, unblock” culture. “I know what I love and it ain’t that,” she says. “I was talking to an Uber driver the other day and I said, ‘I don’t want to be living in a video game.’ And he said, ‘Well, we are.’ I feel like I’m offering a human element in these transhuman days of artificial intelligence.”

The looping sing-song swing of the title track applies that open, complex thinking to myths about love: “It’s not enough to bow to love” is the full lyric, offering a grown-up take on the matter. “I grew up loving The Beatles and ‘All You Need Is Love’,” Isobel says, “but sometimes love’s not enough. Sometimes love can get a bit wonky. Love brings up everything - good, bad, ugly - and it can push your buttons.”

To close the album, a warm cover of Dire Straits’s ‘Why Worry’ disregards any hipster disdain for Mark Knopfler’s band to find a core of consolation at the song’s heart. “I never really bought into all that hipster stuff,” says Campbell. “If something speaks to me, it speaks to me. My dad had all those records and I would always sing it to myself.”

In making the album, Campbell chose an environment that spoke to her. She recorded and co-produced the record with Szczech in his studio in Los Angeles, sticking with what works through the upheaval in their personal lives. “Chris Szczech and I made this record no longer as a couple. There’s been shit tons going on but then as I tell myself, things come up to be addressed and dealt with.”

The result is an inquisitive, complex and fully matured album from an artist who has travelled long and far. Campbell was first noticed as a teenage founder member of Belle & Sebastian, before she released two dream-folk solo albums under the name The Gentle Waves and left B&S in 2002. Two records under her own name followed, leading to a union with late rock-carved growler Mark Lanegan for three albums of gravel’n’honey Americana duets, where Lanegan would stand aside while Campbell called the creative shots.

A move to LA and a near-decade of label troubles followed; the latter ended with There Is No Other in 2020 before – as Campbell puts it – “the world went down the crapper” for the pandemic. And on Bow to Love, suggests Campbell, the world’s ongoing troubles are clear. “Anyone with two eyes, a brain and a heart can see that people are struggling, and I suppose I have a lot of thoughts about that. And it’s this album.”

An album that also, says Campbell, has thoughts about how the future remains unwritten. “I feel like we’re living in some kind of dystopia, but I think it’s up to us what we buy into and what we react to. We do have a choice, even if sometimes we think we don’t. You can still see acts of great kindness. In all the bleakness, that’s what I hang on to. We are co-creators. Where we go next is up to us.” Mounted with clear-sighted artistry and care, Bow to Love is a light in the dark of uncertain times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Everything Falls Apart
2. Do Or Die
3. Spider To The Fly
4. Second Guessing
5. Bow To Love
6. 4316
7. Dopamine
8. Keep Calm Carry On
9. Saturday’s Son
10. Take This Poison
11. Om Shanti Om
12. You
13. Why Worry

The acclaimed Can live series continues with the release of Live In Aston 1977, available via Mute and Future Days (the new EU label created by Spoon Records).

The series was overseen by founding member Irmin Schmidt and producer/engineer René Tinner, who delicately worked on restoring the archival recordings to the best quality for current modern technology. This record captures the band’s 1977 performance in Aston and features Schmidt (keyboard & synths), Jaki Liebezeit (drums), Michael Karoli (guitars), Holger Czukay (wave receiver & spec.sounds), plus Rosko Gee (bass), who appears for the first time in the series.

This release features sleeve notes by former Sex Pistol, Glen Matlock, sharing his first-hand experience of witnessing CAN's live show.

Live In Aston follows the release of Live In Paris 1973, the first in the series to feature Damo Suzuki’s vocals [“…among the greatest documents of their untouchable alchemy…” – Record Collector 5*]; Live In Brighton 1975 [“Pure dynamite… keep them coming” – MOJO]; Live in Stuttgart 1975, [Uncut’s Reissue of the Year, #2 in MOJO’s Reissues of the Year, #7 in The Wire’s Archive Reissues of the Year plus more]; and Live In Cuxhaven 1976, which again featured heavily in the Reissues of the Year.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklist
A1 Aston 77 Eins
A2 Aston 77 Zwei
B1 Aston 77 Drei
B2 Aston 77 Vier

CD Tracklist
1 Aston 77 Eins
2 Aston 77 Zwei
3 Aston 77 Drei
4 Aston 77 Vier

The 111 Series comprises 15 tracks, each created by Louis Carnell alongside a diverse selection of artists from across the globe. Each track is released digitally, and titled in numerical order, with the aim of creating an environment for the listener to explore the series without hierarchy.

The tracks vary between lyric-led and instrumental compositions, travelling through experimental electronic and immersive soundscapes.

The list of collaborators includes prolific new-age artist Laraaji, Mute founder Daniel Miller, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, leading punk-rapper Wu-Lu, Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist KMRU, noise-inspired cellist and composer Okkyung Lee, post-genre multi-instrumentalist Coby Sey, Iranian-born electronica songwriter, producer and DJ Leila, mystical folk and ambient-inspired composer Naliah Hunter, artist and actor Keeley Forsyth, rising experimental sound and visual artist Damsel Elysium, LA-based ambient duo Green-House, experimental saxophonist and composer Ben Vince, Beirut-based multi-instrumentalist Yara Asmar, and Italian musician and sound designer Marta De Pascalis.

TRACK LISTING

1. Four - Louis Carnell & Yara Asmar
2. Seven - Louis Carnell & Okkyung Lee
3. Ten - Louis Carnell & Daniel Miller
4. Thirteen - Louis Carnell & Leila
5. Two - Louis Carnell & Lee Ranaldo
6. Five - Louis Carnell & Coby Sey
7. Eleven - Louis Carnell & Laraaji
8. Fourteen - Louis Carnell & Nailah Hunter
9. Three - Louis Carnell & Ben Vince
10. Six - Louis Carnell & KMRU
11. Nine - Louis Carnell & Green-House
12. Twelve - Louis Carnell & Marta De Pascalis
13. One - Louis Carnell & Keeley Forsyth
14. Eight - Louis Carnell & Wu-Lu
15. Fifteen - Louis Carnell & Damsel Elysium

It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become 'Lost Themes', his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. With 'Lost Themes IV: Noir', they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

Since the first 'Lost Themes', John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it, as in connected in an emotional way.

The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means 'Lost Themes IV: Noir' runs like a well-oiled machine - the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Name Is Death
2. Machine Fear
3. Last Rites
4. The Burning Door
5. He Walks By Night
6. Beyond The Gallows
7. Kiss The Blood Off My Fingers
8. Guillotine
9. The Demon’s Shadow
10. Shadows Have A Thousand Eyes

Indie's Exclusive 7" Bonus Track:
1. Black Cathedral

"Remembering is not the opposite of forgetting," Casey MQ sings at the start of Later that day, the day before, or the day before that, his new LP and Ghostly International debut. It's a phrase fittingly misremembered from something the LA-based, Canadian-born composer came upon as he spiraled into unconscious and subconscious-led writing sessions at the piano. Casey’s known for his 2020 breakthrough release babycasey, which gave voice to songs seen through the lens of childhood, various film score work and collaborations with artists such as Oklou (who returns here), Eartheater, and Vagabon. His gifts as a producer and songwriter are rooted in textural world-building and the excavation of personal truth. With Later that day... he questions what is true entirely, understanding our mind's tendency to bend and project onto pictures of the past. Across vivid, baroque pop balladry, Casey MQ reorients his recording project and point of view under the notion that memories are malleable. All the joy, pain, love, and loss housed within remembrance is open to interpretation and deconstruction, which he does deftly, with curiosity and complete artistic freedom.

"It's a memory album," Casey puts it simply, winding up for the deeper unpacking, "and it might be a breakup album, too...there are more questions than answers." Engaging his dreams and sitting with sheet music at his newly acquired piano, he looked to new and old inspirations including the works of Claude Debussy, Joni Mitchell, and Joe Hisaishi's beloved Studio Ghibli film scores. "Since I was young, I always wanted to write a piano album." babycasey's studied electronic sound isn't wholly abandoned on Later that day... instead, it comes through like an atmosphere, giving Casey's more spacious, minimal arrangements a distinct luster and sheen. The textures and tones shift from song to song as if mirroring the way our minds constantly recontextualize, remember, and forget.

Cathartic opener "Grey Gardens" — its title derived from a dream abstractly related to the Toronto restaurant, but not the 1975 film, which he cites as another coincidental false memory — presents the record's plaintive, haunted feeling. "Even if not reading into lyrics, sonically I wanted it to feel like you're being pulled into a universe. Not fantasy or otherworldly per se, something more tangible, of the body and mind,” Casey says. “Hearing it back, I realized this track was the key to unlocking it." His tender falsetto hovers above ambient washes and echoed keys, each word falling carefully in the crevices. "Asleep At The Wheel" unfolds on arpeggiated synth before a burst of symphonic color; the synth returns inverted to harmonize with the outro, "I love a car crash, I love a story, I love a memory, I swear it's real..."

Casey leans into digital imagination on the warm, introspective "Me I Think I Found It." Subdued, stuttered percussion underscores the singer as he cycles through pixelated imagery — screenshots, smiles, streetlights — searching for higher meaning through love. Built on ascendent chord distortions, "Dying Til I'm Born" gives the record one of its boldest pulses of emotion. The back half stretches out; "Is This Only Water" is sparse and foggy, "Baby Voice" is intimate and desperate for something to remain. "Words For Love" grooves on guitar, and "Tennisman9" aches in heartbreak. French musician Marylou Mayniel, aka Oklou, appears as the collection’s only guest for the closing duet, "The Make Believe," a bright and buoyant send-off that gives Later that day... both a sense of resolve and cyclical-motion. "We are young, under the sun," they sing together, a parting image brimming with lightness.

TRACK LISTING

01. Grey Gardens
02. Asleep At The Wheel
03. Me, I Think I Found It
04. Dying 'Til I'm Born
05. Is This Only Water
06. See You Later
07. Baby Voice
08. Words For Love
09 Tennisman9
10. The Make Believe (feat. Oklou)

Casinoboy makes a triumphant return to Duca Bianco with a sparkling EP that once again shows his studio mastery. Previously featuring alongside luminaries like Rune Lindbaek and Khidja on a well-received compilation, Casinoboy's latest kicks off with 'Honesty' which is a blend of Balearic and breaks that brings a shuffle-and-wiggle experience with uplifting samples and an old-school UK rap edge. 'This Feeling' has a catchy Street Soul feel, while 'Searos' mixes up ambient sounds and Spanish Guitar to evoke the essence of the White Isle. Closing with 'Astral Go Go,' really pumps the party in ways only he knows how.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Friends of the shop Duca Bianco are back with another varied edit compilation, this time curated by Casinoboy. DB12 013 sold out super quick so don't snooze!

TRACK LISTING

Honesty
This Feeling
Searos
Astral Go Go

The Cat’s Miaow return to World Of Echo with Skipping Stones: The Cassette Years ’92-’93, their second compilation for the imprint, and the fourth in a loosely defined series of reissues associated with the group (also including The Shapiros’ Gone By Fall: The Collected Works of The Shapiros and Hydroplane’s Selected Songs 1997-2003). It’s a smart selection of songs by one of Australia’s finest independent pop music groups, whose initial run, across the nineties, was as mysterious as it was bewitching. A generous double album featuring thirty-five songs drawn from The Cat’s Miaow’s history, Skipping Stones lets listeners in on a bunch more secrets.

An even deeper pass through the archives of The Cat’s Miaow, Skipping Stones is a welcome follow-up to 2022’s Songs ’94-’98, which pulled together material from seven-inch singles and compilations. Diving into the four cassettes that the group released over a two-year period, Skipping Stones is full of surprises, rich with unexpected and inspired detours, while reminding everyone just how clear and distinct The Cat’s Miaow’s music was from the very start. Looking in from the outside, they always felt like a group that knew just what they were doing, but intuitive as they are, they weren’t forcing anything: these songs always sound exactly what they need to be, rough edges, playful moments and all.

It's also a fascinating snapshot of one arm of the ‘international pop underground’. While they were clearly listening to music from the US, UK and elsewhere – there are glimpses of Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3, Beat Happening, and The Pastels in some of the songs here – The Cat’s Miaow also feel, consciously or not, part of a continuum of Australian underground pop that takes in The Particles, The Lighthouse Keepers, The Cannanes, The Honeys, Even As We Speak, and The Sugargliders (who they would cover several times). Like those before them, The Cat’s Miaow balanced opposing forces in their music: naivete and knowingness; fragility and strength; worldliness and world-weariness; play and seriousness; heartache and pleasure.

The four cassettes that Skipping Stones draws from – Little Baby Sour Puss, Pet Sounds (both 1992), From My Window, and How Did Everything Get So Fucked Up (both 1993) – were released or assisted by Toytown, a Melbourne cassette label of rare taste, savvy and intelligence, run by Wayne Davidson. Toytown felt like the perfect early home for The Cat’s Miaow, their cassettes rubbing shoulders in the label’s catalogue with brilliant groups like Sukpatch, The Ah Club, Kitty Craft, and Land Of The Loops. The local context is just as important, too, with The Cat’s Miaow sharing their time and creative vision with friends in The Ampersands, Stinky Fire Engine, Girl Of The World, Super Falling Star, Pencil Tin and The Sugargliders. And cassettes were an important form of exchange – cheap, easy to reproduce, not too expensive to send interstate or overseas, they were the most accessible DIY format for any group starting to spread the word about their noise.

All of this is to say, the thirty-five songs here landed in several different contexts, national and international, which goes part-way to explaining the group’s curious cosmopolitanism, the style and spirit in their sound. The Cat’s Miaow may have been bedroom dreamers, but their songs were richly informed, with the sweetest of girl-pop moves sashaying into walls of tremolo-d and distorted guitar, jangling six strings tangling with melodic bass that’s pure Peter Hook/Naomi Yang, while the gentle trickle of a drum machine or the earthy twitch of brushes on drum skins provided the spine for Kerrie’s and Bart’s lovely, unforced singing.

There are a clutch of gorgeous songs here that would reappear in a different form on later releases, classics like “The Phoebe I Know”, “Third Floor Fire Escape View”, “Not Like I Was Doing Anything” and “You Left A Note On The Table”, but plenty of other magic too, all of it finding its way to vinyl for the first time (some tracks appeared on compact disc via the compilations A Kiss and A Cuddle [Bus Stop, 1996] and Songs For Girls to Sing [Drive-In, 1997]). Remarkably, The Cat’s Miaow have also recently released a split single with Rocketship featuring newly recorded material and returned to the stage for their second-ever gig.

But this double LP on World Of Echo feels like the very core of the thing – some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful, effortlessly lush and deeply moving pop music you’re likely to hear.

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1 - Side A
How Did Everything Get So Fucked Up?
Make A Wish
Hollow Inside (original Cassette Version)
Faded (original Cassette Version)
Not Like I Was Doing Anything (original Cassette Version)
Disappointed
I Wanted None Of This
Fire Damage
Halo

Disc 1 - Side B
From My Window
Aurora
It Might Never Happen
Nothing's Ever Quite That Simple
Brighter Star
The Phoebe I Know (original Cassette Version)
Little And Small
Sleepyhead
Dust From A Memory
A 50s Ballad
A Few Words
From My Window

Disc 2 - Side C
Pet Sounds
Third Floor Fire Escape View (original Cassette Version)
You Left A Note On The Table (original Cassette Version)
Short Sighted (original Cassette Version)
I Hate Myself More Than You Do
Talking To Trees
Ice Cream
Saviour For The Hurrying Man
Ferry No. 6

Disc 2 - Side D
Little Baby Sour Puss
Nothing New (original Cassette Version)
Climb My Stairs (original Cassette Version)
Autumn (original Cassette Version)
I Really Don’t Know (original Cassette Version)
Sunday
Memphis ‘54
Walk On By
Georgie

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds return with new album, ‘Wild God’.

“I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me,” Cave says. “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a masterplan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”

Across ten tracks, the band dance between convention and experimentation, taking left-turns and detours that heighten the rich imagery and emotion in Cave’s soul-stirring narratives. It is the sound of a group emboldened by reconnection and taking flight. There are moments that touch fondly upon the Bad Seeds’ past but they are fleeting, and serve only to imbue the relentless and restless forward motion of the band.

Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis, and mixed by David Fridmann, Cave began writing the album on New Year’s Day 2023. With sessions at Miraval in Provence and Soundtree in London, the Bad Seeds added their unique alchemy, with additional performances from Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).

“Wild God…there’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.” Nick Cave

TRACK LISTING

1. Song Of The Lake
2. Wild God
3. Frogs
4. Joy
5. Final Rescue Attempt
6. Conversion
7. Cinnamon Horses
8. Long Dark Night
9. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
10. As The Waters Cover The Sea

Fresh from winning ‘Best Live Act’ at NI Music Prize 2023, Chalk relentless ascent continues to gather thrilling pace, with EP lead single ‘The Gate’ landing on the BBC 6 Music playlist (alongside PJ Harvey, IDLES, Sampha) to kick off 2024, whilst widespread praise throughout the press community (The Independent, NME, DIY, Dork, So Young, The New Cue, Rough Trade, Consequence of Sound) has certainly positioned the trio at the very forefront of the emerging indie elite.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Gate
2. Claw
3. Kevlar
4. Bliss

‘BRAT’ is the eagerly awaited follow up to 2022’s ‘CRASH’, which reached number 1 on the UK’s official album chart, and promises to be an exhilarating club record built around high art references and social commentary.

Avant-pop and electronic superstar Charli XCX has become an iconic figure in the arts, having helped expand the landscape of popular music over the last decade by seamlessly traversing the underground and mainstream with her artistic output. Over the course of a trailblazing career, the multi-hyphenate creative has earned critical acclaim for her innovative style and entrepreneurial spirit and seen her forward-thinking approach reshape pop culture in the process.

Her lasting impact was cemented last year when Charli was honoured with the Visionary Award at the annual Ivor Novellos in London, while she also received the Powerhouse Award at Billboard’s Women In Music ceremony in Los Angeles in March.

TRACK LISTING

1. 360
2. Club Classics
3. Sympathy Is A Knife
4. I Might Say Something Stupid
5. Talk Talk
6. Von Dutch
7. Everything Is Romantic
8. Rewind
9. So I
10. Girl, So Confusing
11. Apple
12. B2b
13. Mean Girls
14. I Think About It All The Time
15. 365

A deeply personal and powerful memoir from beloved music icon Neneh Cherry. *A GUARDIAN MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024**A BBC CULTURE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024*Top of the Pops, December 1988. The world sat up as a young woman made her debut: gold bra, gold bomber jacket, and proudly, gloriously, seven months pregnant.

This was no ordinary artist. This was Neneh Cherry. But navigating fame and family wasn't always simple.

In this beautiful and deeply personal memoir, Cherry remembers the collaborations, the highs and lows, the friendships and loves, and the addictions and traumas that have shaped her as a woman and an artist. At the heart of it, always, is family: the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance and her legacy. Musician.

Following on the theme from last year’s critically acclaimed The Hypnogogue. 15 new songs take the story further.

TRACK LISTING

1. Realm Of Minor Angels
2. Pleasure
3. Amanita
4. 2054
5. Manifesto
6. The Immediate Future
7. Sublimated In Song
8. Song 18
9. The Weather
10. Korea
11. Song From The Machine Age
12. Sleeping For Miles
13. Last Melody
14. A Strange Past
15. Music From The Ghost Hotel

With X’s, Cigarettes After Sex finally takes center stage as not just one of today’s preeminent indie bands, but as one of the most globally accomplished acts across any genre, whose often unconventional path to superstardom has helped reshape the very definition of success for artists in the modern era.

Filled with raw, imagistic, sometimes smutty vignettes set to entrancing, slowburn pop songs, bandleader Greg Gonzalez captures every emotion a romantic arc inspires. But where previous albums have drawn from an amalgam of relationships, for the most part, X’s centralizes on just one relationship that spanned four years. “The record feels brutal,” admits Gonzalez. “I could sit and talk about this loss to someone, but that wouldn’t scratch the surface. I have to really write about it, sing about it, have the music, and then I can start to analyze and learn from it. Or just relive it—in a good way. I don’t have that Eternal Sunshine-thing of wanting to forget.”

While continuing to observe classic pop song structures, Gonzalez has moved away from the prior sonic touchstones of the ’50s and ’60s, finding himself now drawn to a ’70s/’80s slow dance. While (in typical Cigarettes style) these changes may be subtle, the overall resulting energy is akin to disco ball-refracted tears on the dance floor.

TRACK LISTING

1: X's
2: Tejano Blue
3: Silver Sable
4: Hideaway
5: Holding You, Holding Me
6: Dark Vacay
7: Baby Blue Movie
8: Hot
9: Dreams From Bunker Hill
10: Ambien Slide

Before Circus Lupus landed on DC’s venerable Dischord Records, the group’s original Midwest lineup recorded a full album’s worth of songs less than a year after forming. With the demise of DC’s Ignition in the late ’80s, bass player Chris Thomson headed to Madison, WI for college. Before leaving DC, he dove headfirst into being a vocalist fronting the short-lived throwback punk / hardcore project Fury. Thomson served up pointed and profound Tony Cadena-inspired screeds about betrayal, disappointment and poseurs all set to a soundtrack of furiously primitive and chaotic music supplied by members of the DC punk band Swiz. Brief yet influential, this band marked Thomson’s switch to vocals, putting him on course to front Circus Lupus and claim a notable spot in the DC punk timeline of the late 20th century.

Soon after arriving in Madison, Thomson was invited to join a new project started by friends Chris Hamley, Arika Casebolt, and Reg Shrader. Circus Lupus marked a change in direction from the familiar sounds of DC punk that Thomson had been associated with for years. The newly formed group looked to noisier Touch & Go and Homestead bands for inspiration, aligning themselves with bands from Chicago, Louisville and Milwaukee. One early supporter of the band described the new group as “profoundly familiar yet uncategorizable. Like if the Germs had gone to college and never got pulled into hard drugs and suicidal behaviors.”

The original Circus Lupus lineup played a dozen shows and recorded these songs with Eli Janney at Inner Ear studios in August of 1990 while on a brief tour. Within a year, the band would decide to permanently relocate to Washington DC, where they felt they had more opportunities. Shrader opted to move to Chicago and would ultimately join the Touch and Go band Seam. Old friend Seth Lorinczi (Vile Cherubs) would become their new bass player, forming the version of the band that most listeners are familiar with.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mean, Hot & Blessed
2. Tightrope Walker
3. Cat Kicking Jerk
4. Thermo King
5. Chinese Nitro
6. Deviant Gesture Catalog
7. Marbles
8. Kansas City Bomber
9. Pulp

Since launching in 2020, Claremont 56’s Claremont Editions series of compilations has delivered a trio of must-check collections featuring a mixture of unheard gems from the label vaults and brand-new, previously unreleased tracks. Label founder Paul ‘Mudd’ Murphy continues with this blueprint on 2024’s instalment, the fourth in total.

There's naturally some genuinely headline grabbing highlights amongst the nine tracks on display, starting with opener ‘Crossing’ – a fresh cut from C56’s in-house super-group Hillside (AKA Paul Mudd Murphy, Alex Searle and Patrick Dawes), featuring lead vocals from long-time friend of the family Quinn Lamont Luke. The track is prime Hillside: all rolling hand percussion, warming keys, simmering synth-strings, sun-splashed solos and blue-eyed soul vocals from the effervescent Quinn.

It sets a high bar, quality wise, but predictably the rest of the collection hits similarly heady heights. Mudd contributes two other tracks of note: a first collaborative outing with long-time creative partner Ben Smith for five years, Smith & Mudd’s ‘Journey Seven’ – a languid, slow-motion affair that hints at what we can expect from their forthcoming album – and a typically rich, jazz-fusion influenced solo excursion, ‘Massimo’s Steps’. As vivid, emotive and detailed as you’d expect, the track explores similar sonic territory to Mudd’s recent album, In The Garden of Mindfulness.

It's usual for Claremont Editions collections to include tracks from new members of the Claremont family. Editions 4 is no different, with Danish producer Fureby – a close friend of fellow Danes Mike Salta and Peter Visti – joining forces with Guy Moscoco and Brian Faber on ‘Halcyon (Extended Mix)’, a gorgeously kaleidoscopic Balearic groover rich in fluttering flute solos, simmering disco strings and sun-bright electronics.

Elsewhere, a few familiar favourites contribute suitably stellar tracks. Mai Fujinoya dons the Yamp Kolta alias for the first time since appearing on the first editions compilation in 2020, serving up the languid Japanese language Balearic pop brilliance of ‘Saturate’, featuring beautiful lead vocals by Yuzz. Krautrock-influenced duo Neumayer Station – who made their C56 bow on last year’s Editions collection – lay down a typically stretched-out, dubbed-out groove with Spaghetti Western soundtrack flourishes (the lilting and atmospheric ‘Bassrutscher’), while Ferdi Schuster invites us to dive into the immersive depths of ‘Resonance’ – a lightly art rock and progressive rock-influenced soundscape best enjoyed while lying flat on your back.

Slow-motion house specialists Hear & Now continue to join the dots between tactile Balearica and pitched-down Italian ambient house on the stunningly gorgeous ‘Chimaera’, while there’s a surprise return for a Claremont 56 favourite: Mudd’s sought-after extended mix of Bel’s 2018 single ‘Ready To Die’, a sing-along modern Balearic classic. This time round, it has been re-edited by Blank & Jones, who teases out the sun-soaked instrumentation before finally dropping the original’s emotion-rich lead vocals.

It all adds up to another must-check instalment of the indispensable Claremont Editions series. As usual, the vinyl version has been pressed in limited qualities and comes housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, complete with another stunning cover painting by illustrator Mark Warrington.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hillside Feat. Quinn Lamont Luke – Crossing
A2. Mudd – Massimo’s Steps
B1. Bel – Ready To Die (Mudd’s Extended Mix) (Blank & Jones Edit)
B2. Fureby, Moscoso & Faber – Halcyon
C1. Smith & Mudd – Journey Seven
C2. Neumayer Station – Bassrutscher
C3. Yamp Kolt Feat. Yuzz – Saturate
D1. Ferdi Schuster – Resonance
D2. Hear & Now – Chimaera

On Parenthesis, I, Josienne Clarke has not only embraced her past but has also redefined herself in the present, presenting a body of work that is shimmering, warm, intimate, and at times, profoundly heart-wrenching. Throughout her career, Clarke has been both a Rough Trade-signed artist and a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winner, two opposing poles that neatly sum up her inability to be pigeonholed. Parenthesis, I is a masterful journey through her personal and musical evolution, drawing influence from folk greats Nick Drake and Sandy Denny, as well as more contemporary artists like Julia jacklin, Courtney Marie Andrews, Anaïs Mitchell and Lucy Dacus.

TRACK LISTING

1.  Friendly Teeth
2.  Spherical
3.  Fear Of Falling
4.  Do You Know Now
5.  Looking Glass
6.  Forbearing
7.  Most Of All
8.  Double-Edged Sword
9.  Firecracker
10.  Dead Woman’s Bones
11.  The Calm
12.  Parenthesis, I
13.  Magic Somehow

In 1974, Cluster entered the sugar era. This doesn’t mean that they had finally arrived in their promised land, but they had simply moved from Berlin to the country, to a small place called Forst on the river Weser. Many a thing had changed for band members Moebius and Roedelius since Cluster II: They had moved from boisterous Berlin to this calm rural village, they had founded the band Harmonia, had set up their own studio and had bought new equipment. As a result of this and many other things, new impulses were noticeably spurring the evolution of their music. The album Zuckerzeit (“sugar era”) launched a revolution for Cluster.

Strictly speaking, Zuckerzeit is not ­really an album by Cluster. More pre­cisely, the LP contains two mini solo al­bums by Moebius and Roedelius. Those who were familiar with the stylistic pe­culiarities of the two musicians could easily relate the solo pieces to either one of them. As Roedelius and Moebius had not yet released any solo works by the time, it was actually not possible to draw up any comparisons yet. What could be clearly heard, though, was that there were two different musical attitudes to be found on one album. One thing they did have in common was the consistent use of the analogue rhythm machine. This was something new for Cluster inasmuch as on their last album Cluster II, they had still focussed on completely different methods that were to give structure to the pieces. Zuckerzeit, on the contrary, is designed in a clearly rhythmical way: a rhythm machine, triggered synths and harmonic patterns played by hand inspired life and imagination on the melody lines: This was different as well. Once again, Roedelius and Moebius took on work in such a remarkably light-hearted and down-to-earth manner as was typical of Cluster. Zuckerzeit is light and cheerful, freed from the Germanic gravity and the mystic incense fumes that were so fashionable at the time. Cluster man­ aged to keep both feet on the ground without becoming plain or even sterile.

The friendliness of the music is clear­ly due to the two personalities of Roedelius and Moebius; its down-to-earth character possibly comes from Michael Rother, the album’s co-producer. Michael Rother had already performed with Kraftwerk and had founded the band NEU! together with Klaus Dinger before moving to idyllic Forst himself in 1973. The same year, the band Harmonia (Roedelius, Moebius, Rother) was born. The music might also have been influenced by the lovely environment of the hilly countryside surrounding them. We are told that some of the visitors to Forst had believed themselves in Tolkien’s Shire, although nobody had ever seen hobbits in the area. Maybe this impression was an all too romantic one.

Yet, those who have experienced this peaceful atmosphere for themselves may at least be able to understand what we are talking about.

By then, Cluster could finally call themselves lucky owners of their own recording equipment consisting of a multi-track recording machine, a mixer and peripherals. This gave them the possibility to develop and record their Zuckerzeit material without precipitat­ing things or having to depend on other people. So they did everything on their own except for the finishing which took place in the studio of Conny Plank, the sonic magician of their early days, something which vitally accounted for a successful outcome by the way. One has to admit that technical equipment at Forst was not quite up to the standards even of that time. Moebius and Roedelius, however, knew how to make use of the devices they had in such a skilful way that it almost seemed ob­solete to consider working in large and professional studios in the future. So, many years were yet to go by until Cluster set foot in a studio other than their own again, this time not only to do the finishing but also the recordings.

When comparing Zuckerzeit to the works of other electronic combos produced at the same time, it is first of all the shortness of the tracks that seems most striking (2’20” to 6’10”). Listeners who were expecting long and booming pieces were badly advised with this album—what kind of trip is this that lasts for six minutes only? Those who loved listening closely and who were fond of sophisticated, varied and elaborate music could not be more satisfied though, because every single one of the ten pieces is far from being boring. The fact that Cluster worked in such a calm and collected way, that they concentrated on their musical ideas instead of ­losing themselves in long-windedness, that they took their time working on the album and not least that they could rely on the ideas of their co-producer Michael Rother —all this taken together gave way to the creation of electronic miniatures that sounded as extraordinary in the 1970s as they still do today. Nothing reminds us of psychedelic music that was common at the time. Instead, we find transparency, a hint of utopia and above all new sounds and noises, something which was unheard of in popular music until then. Even fifty years after its first release, Zuckerzeit might easily figure as a reverberating chapter in the latest edition of the imaginary handbook “The Golden Rules of Electronic Music”.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Hollywood
A2 Caramel
A3 Rote Riki
A4 Rosa
B1 Caramba
B3 Fotschi Tong
B4 James
B5 Marzipan
B6 Rotor
B7 Heiße Lippe

Flavia Coelho hypnotises us right from the start with her song ‘Mama Santa’, a nod to her mother. The Garota do Rio, who took the French music scene by storm in 2011 to prove to her father that she was a true artist.

Flavia Coelho is continuing her exploration of identity and her quest for authenticity, tackling the themes of reconstruction, courage, and resilience, with her loyal producer and arranger Victor Vagh-Weinmann, whom she met in her early days in France. Together, they initiated and designed all the compositional material, electro pads, organs, keyboards, guitars, and percussion. These ingredients, combined with the catchy melodies and sublime voice of the bewitching Flavia, have given life to the ten nuggets of ‘GINGA’.

The writing of this new opus began two years ago, after a key phrase, heard by the artist: "We live our first twenty years, then the next twenty serve to understand the first twenty.” 43-year-old Flavia Coelho has precisely reached this stage in her life.

To create ‘GINGA’, the singer immersed herself in all the music of her youth, particularly South American songs from kitschy telenovelas.Then Flavia recorded her ideas on her Dictaphone, and began writing and producing her songs in the studio between August and December 2023, in a vital urgency, like a personal challenge to be taken up and a typically "Coelhian" saudade, bursting with emotion.

Funk, house, Latin American, samba, reggae and amapiano, in ‘GINGA’, Flavia Coelho fuses genres and heritages, orchestrated with varying degrees of sensuality and vibrancy, the fruit of over a hundred hours of recording. For the first time, Flavia Coelho has entrusted the mixing of her album to renowned collaborators, as if she needed to entrust her work to them and take a step back to give a whole new dimension to the songs that are so close to her. Tom Fire, Prince Fatty, Paul from Synapson and Guts were given the delicate task of mixing the final version of the album.

Flavia takes flight and takes us on a journey, from Brazil to London via Provence, Paris and everywhere in between. ‘GINGA’ is a sharpened set of legs that takes us through the sound system of Flavia Coelho's life, while continuing to accompany our own.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mama Santa
2. Nordestina
3. Mais Amor
4. Lapa
5. Passageiro
6. Nosso Lar
7. Sistema Solar
8. Tamarindo
9. De Vous À Moi
10. Bira