Following his role establishing the Motown sound as part of Holland/Dozier/Holland, Lamont went solo and these two tracks come from his 1981 album “Working On You”. Originally released by Columbia in the smooth, lush sounding style of the day, complete with Lamont’s signature vocal, neither of the two tracks here were released as single despite finding huge favour with modern soul audiences. “You Made Me A Believer” is one of his most enduring soul night floorfillers. Expansion also released the full “Working On You” album on remastered CD.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Made Me A Believer
2. Starting Over 

12th Isle quickly follow on from the double LP "Athenian Primitivism" by Christos Chondropoulos with two recordings from performance, voice and sound artist Lucy Duncombe. Cut to 10" vinyl and mastered by Morgan Buckley (Wah Wah Wino), "Brace / Mend" are collaborative works exploring an early musical fascination with theatrical vocal transposition and its duality with machinic interference and technologies. Lucy recently expanded upon this practice with a joint tape release with DJ Crud (Al White) entitled "THE RAPTURE OF CELLULAR ACCRETION". This limited run single continues 12th Isle's on-going relationship with musicians in their city of Glasgow.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says:

TRACK LISTING

A. Brace
B. Mend

Do you remember the last time you were breathing consciously? Either way, you are likely doing it now. On his new album Observation of Breath« for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label, Lawrence English worked exclusively with an organ for four compositions that are exercises in »maximal minimalism,« as their creator himself notes in a nod to Charlemagne Palestine, who coined this term. While it seems somewhat fitting that those four pieces based on a steady flow of air were conceived and recorded in a situation of accelerated standstill caused by a respiratory disease, the Room40 founder is not so much concerned with capturing the zeitgeist than rather incorporating the spirit of time itself. »It is a record about presence and patience,« he explains.

Exploring the unique sonic affordances of a singular instrument,
»Observation of Breath« is not only devoted to the durability of sound but also to its density. That it marks his debut on Hallow Ground after having shaped its sound by mastering most of the label’s releases in recent years is just as fitting then as its release following albums by Kali Malone and FUJI|||||||||||TA, whose innovative work with organ instruments have facilitated a rediscovery of their possibilities.English’s compositions however are neither directly indebted nor responding to these musicians. His exploration of the organ’s many facets started a decade ago when the composer was given access to an instrument built in 1889 that is presently housed at The Old Museum in Brisbane.

After it had already played a crucial role on his seminal albums »Wilderness Of Mirrors« and »Cruel Optimism,« last year’s self-released »Lassitude« was the first record that English entirely composed and recorded with that instrument. »During the soft lockdowns, I spent many days playing to an empty concert hall, recording the pieces that became ›Lassitude‹ and then, this album,« says English in regards to an unfortunate situation that fortunately provided him with time and space—two major themes but also key qualities of the four new compositions. In this sense, he goes on, »Observation of Breath« resolves a number of the questions originally raised by »Lassitude.« 

TRACK LISTING

1) A Torso (10:01)
2) A Binding (06:05)
3) And A Twist (02:42)
4) Observation Of Breath (20:44) 

For Fans Of: J. Tillman, Phosphorescent, Low, Damien Jurado, Bill Callhan.

“It’s going to be hard to talk about this when it’s done.” So begins A Mold For The Bell, the new album from Colorado singer-songwriter and producer Logan Farmer. What follows that enigmatic lyric is a collection of stark and ambient folk songs, tethered solely by Farmer’s unadorned vocals, acoustic guitar, and moving embellishments from contributors, including saxophonist Joseph Shabason (who also mixed the album) and renowned harpist Mary Lattimore. With the help of Grammy-nominated producer Andrew Berlin (Gregory Alan Isakov), Farmer tracked all of the vocal and guitar parts over two days in the early months of 2021. The tracks were recorded quickly, live in the studio to capture the raw intimacy and immediacy of Farmer’s live performances. The rest of the album’s creation occurred remotely, over texts, phone calls, and emails with Shabason and a handful of other musicians, as wildfires, insurrections and the pandemic raged around them.

“I was working at a bookstore that winter,” Farmer explains, “and I’d walk to my shift every day, obsessing over lyrics and early mixes in a cheap pair of earbuds.” These daily walks would take him past a church, where he’d often stop on the sidewalk and listen to the bells at the top of the hour. “I’ve always loved the sound of church bells, but as the situation worsened, what began as a comfort began to feel ominous, almost threatening.” This experience, along[1]side influences as disparate as Tarkovsky’s film Andrei Rublev and the novels of Olga Tokarczuk, led to a collection of songs that are similarly foreboding, expanding upon the stark and spacious universe of Farmer’s last album (2020’s Still No Mother) to reveal an atmosphere that’s even more oppressively still, like an abandoned Victorian home.

TRACK LISTING

01 Silence Or Swell
02 Cue Sunday Bells
03 Horsehair (feat. Mary Lattimore)
04 Crooked Lines
05 William
06 The Moment
07 Renegade
08 South Vienna

British singer / songwriter Lizzy Farrall releases her debut mini album, ‘All I Said Was Never Heard’, which will drop just in time for her scheduled UK tour supporting Seaway.

Lyrically the release is about situations she went through in her teenage years and forms a diary of that time.

For fans of Julien Baker, Now Now, Dashboard Confessional, Neck Deep, This Wild Life.

TRACK LISTING

Broken Toy
Pack Of Wolves
Better With
Better Off
Hollow Friends

Soul legend Lee Fields has re-teamed with The Expressions for new album 'Emma Jean', out on Brooklyn’s Truth & Soul Records. The successful formula seems to be two-fold: sticking to the raucous-yet-tender voiced soul music Lee Fields has always made, yet updating it - pushing the boundaries of what it can be. The result is an unmistakeable sound, something that, as 'Faithful Man' was reviewed in Pitchfork, “isn’t indebted specifically to Atlantic or Stax or Philadelphia International or Chess or Fame or Motown so much as it’s indebted to all of them at once.”

This is why no one can call a Lee Fields record on Truth & Soul a “throwback.” It has hints, sounds, feelings that may be familiar but then there are textures, themes, and approaches that challenge the genre and stretch the sound into something else, something decidedly Lee Fields.

To be sure, a good part of this Lee Fields sound can be chalked up to Truth & Soul producers and co-owners Jeff Silverman and Leon Michels, as well as the team of top-notch musicians involved. The artists you hear behind Lee Fields are some of the same that have backed the likes of Aloe Blacc, Sharon Jones, El Michels Affair, Adele, Liam Bailey, Ghostface Killah, and Jay-Z to name a few.

This distinctive sound and style, a long time in the making, is again on point with 'Emma Jean'. Here, once more, the rules of the soul genre are tested, changed, and updated, showing that Fields and company have a very real command of this sound. To be sure, there are those that may be content with identifying and following the formulas of soul music’s past. But this new record–and the ones before it–show that Lee Fields, The Expressions, and Truth & Soul are more interested in where it can go next.

Unreleased recordings from the Special Night & It Rains Love sessions. Produced by Leon Michels. We are always sitting on a handful of unreleased songs that didn’t make their way to albums. Listening back to these gems we decided to launch a new series entitled Big Crown Vaults and the first volume features the music of Lee Fields & the Expressions. These tunes were cut during the Special Night & It Rains Love sessions. Listening to these tracks you can imagine how difficult some of these decisions were in the first place to leave them off the albums. An absolute standout is “Regenerate,” a song that finds Lee in the country soul realm, a style that Mr Fields, a North Carolina native, flourishes in. A drum break starts the song and then drops into a chorus where El Michels, Paul & Big Bill Schalda belt out the earworm chorus. Lee sings an encouraging tune about finding your way out of a low point in a relationship while The Expressions lay down an airtight groove. “Thinking About You” takes it back to the dance floors with what will surely be a hit at Soul parties around the globe. An uptempo drum break opens the song and Lee launches into a tale about the unbreakable bond with his significant other and how they keep each strong through moments of hardship and pain.

People who have seen Lee perform live in the last decade might have been lucky enough to hear his rendition of Little Carl Carlton’s “Two Timer”. For those of you who haven’t heard it, Big Crown Vaults has got you covered. A faithful version of the song showcases Lee’s gorgeous voice and the Expression's unwavering groove. Another treat on here is the fuzzed out funk banger “Do You Know” where Fields uses his platform to address some of our societal woes in a “Make The World” style. A deeper from the vaults number is “Out To Get You”, an instrumental that Lee never laid down vocals to. Even as just a rhythm track it stands as a testament to The Expressions musical prowess, the band that created 5 studio albums with Lee Fields which will go down in history as stone classics. Oil Painting of Lee Fields on the cover... 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:

1. Two Timer
2. Regenerate
3. Do You Know ?
4. Time
5. Thinking About You
6. Don’t Give Up

SIDE B:

1. Out To Get You
2. Two Timer (Instrumental)
3. Regenerate (Instrumental)
4. Do You Know ? (Instrumental)
5. Thinking About You (Instrumental)
6. Don’t Give Up (Instrumental)

At the corner of Living Legend St. and OG Ave. you will find Lee Fields’ house. A home that was built with blood, sweat, and tears, and stands on the unshakable foundation of his god given talent. Lee has been singing for 50 plus years and is undeniably, yet amazingly, at the top of his game. Those who have paid attention know that Lee is part of the class that is directly responsible for the revival of old school funk and soul. He has inspired many of today’s younger artists who are doing their best to carry the torch. As long as the road has been, and heavy as the crown may be, Fields is proving yet again that he’s “still got it”. His latest offering is sure to be a warmly received instant classic.

It Rains Love is the 2nd album by Lee Fields & The Expressions on Brooklyn’s Big Crown Records and gives us yet another masterclass in soul. Teaming up again with frequent collaborator and producer Leon Michels and his devoted band, The Expressions, they have managed again to take a classic approach and update it. Traditional soul sensibilities are mixed with a hip-hop tinged, sample ready sound that is as much an homage to the old as to the new. Some of the songs sound like they could belong to any of the last 4 decades without it feeling like a throwback, while others are 60’s soul through and through. Lyrically, Lee runs the gamut from gushing admonishments of love to politically charged calls to action, from proclamations of God’s existence to love letters written to his wife. This record marks the fifth studio album from Lee Fields & the Expressions and we are very proud to add it to the already impeccable catalog they have created together. Another strong offering by a man many people consider to be a national treasure, the professor of love himself, Mr Lee Fields. It’s all love baby! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Lee Field’s is on top form and dominating the soul genre with his distinctive and bold vocals. It Rains Love is a monumental album which sets him apart as a pure talent, taking all things soul and putting his own stamp on it.

TRACK LISTING

1. It Rains Love
2. Blessed With The Best
3. Two Faces
4. You’re What’s Needed In My Life
5. Wake Up
6. Will I Get Off Easy
7. Prisoner Of Love
8. A Promise Is A Promise
9. God Is Real
10. Love Is The Answer
11. Don’t Give Up (Cd Bonus Track)

The instrumental version of the instant classic "Special Night" by Lee Fields & The Expressions. There are a few terms that get thrown around loosely, two of which are legend and retro-soul. One of these fits Lee Fields hand and glove, one of these doesn’t fit at all. Very few people in music have both earned the status of legendary and continue to solidify it. 50 years in the game and only getting better, gaining more fans, and evolving his sound on each album, Lee is in fact a Living Legend. This brings us to the misuse of the term "retro-soul" when talking about Mr. Fields. You don’t have to look far to find a younger generation emulating the essence and styles of an era the’ve only experienced through music and movies. It seems unfair to tag Lee with a term that implies imitation when he is part of the generation that actually defined the genre. Plain and simple, this is not that. "Special Night" is a masterclass in soul music past and present. “I feel that every human being’s purpose is to do what their inner voice says to do,” says Lee Fields. “And my inner voice, my driving force, wants me to put out music and keeping making better records.” Special Night is also the first record in the Expressions catalogue in which every song was written jointly by Lee Fields and The Expressions.

“When I record, I make every song like I actually mean it. I mean every word I say. On Special Night I’m talking to my lady — literally, expressing the way I feel.” says Lee Fields. “You can tell if a song is real or not, and every moment I’m recording, those moments are real, this is a record about what people do in real life”. For one example, he cites the song “Work to Do,” which tells the story of “a guy going to counseling, drinking too much, apologizing to the old lady and trying to keep family together, doing the manly thing.” On “Make This World”, Lee makes a nod back to his early funk roots with a cautionary tale about the health of the planet. The world was designed to last indefinitely,” says Fields. “We’re the only living species on Earth who can alter that process. I’m hoping that song has a chain reaction, helps somebody put into action whatever contribution they can to change what the world is going through.” As always, sticking to the formula but pushing the boundaries “Never Be Another You” from the first note doesn’t sound like something you would hear on a Lee record, that is until he starts singing anyhow. A low tempo ballad with a head nodding drum track, sparse piano lines, and all the space Lee needs to lay down what is sure to be one of the flyest love songs of 2017.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Special Night
A2. I’m Coming Home
A3. Work To Do
A4. Never Be Another You
A5. Lover Man
B1. Make The World
B2. Let Him In
B3. How I Like It
B4. Where Is The Love?
B5. Precious Love 

Soul great Lee Fields signs to Daptone and announces a new album.
Lee Fields is arguably the greatest soul singer alive today. In an age when the shelf life of an artist largely depends on posturing and trends, he has proven to be an unassailable force of nature. His prolific, decade-spanning career continues to reign supreme on the modern soul scene.

In early 2022, Lee reunited with Daptone Records and producer Gabriel Roth to record Sentimental Fool, a deep, blues-tinged, wholly-conceived soul album. From his first line to his final plaintive lyric, the beauty, power, and raw humanity of Leeʼs voice is on full display here; the culmination of an astounding career that has seemed to defy gravity, rising to only greater and greater heights.

Soul music pours out of Lee Fields, as free and unstinting as God's love.
It was ever since the 1960's, when he was a teenager in North Carolina sweating it out on juke joint stages, crumpled dollars hailing at his feet. It continues now that the living legend is in his late sixties, ushering in the most successful and fruitful period of his career.

Like any living legend worth their salt, Fields has suffered despair, obscurity, defeat. Although he now tours stages around the world, and although he helped fellow soul legends like Sharon Jones (who was once Fields' backup singer) and Charles Bradley (whom Fields took on his first tour) get their first break, he did not always have this position. There were years—they were known as "the 1980's"—when Fields nearly gave up. His success these days, then has a bittersweet tinge: His dear friends Bradley and Jones have both passed, leaving Fields to outlive them and carry their legacy forth.

With all these years, and all this life, comes a sort of divine wisdom, and Fields has it in spades. "I am a sinner, just like everybody else," he says gravely. He is no "holier—than—thou guy," he adds. He just believes in people's ability to love and be loved, and he understands that music is the divine bridge to these places.

TRACK LISTING

1. Forever
2. I Should Have Let You Be
3. Sentimental Fool
4. Two Jobs
5. Just Give Me Your Time
6. Save Your Tears For Someone New
7. The Door
8. What Did I Do?
9. Without A Heart
10. Ordinary Lives
11. Your Face Before My Eyes
12. Extraordinary Man

Arguably the very best soul singer alive, Lee comes correct with two massive tunes from his critically acclaimed Sentimental Fool LP.

With the deep piano intro, frantic shuffle and pleading vocal Two Jobs has the conviction of James Brown with the swing of Bobby Bland. A sound very few folks could pull off, yet Lee triumphs with command and swagger in equal measure.

Save Your Tears for Someone New is a deep, dark ballad tailored-made for Lee’s ferociously soulful voice. A veritable masterclass in rhythm and soul.

TRACK LISTING

Side A – Two Jobs
Side B – Save Your Tears For Someone New

It has been exactly ten years since Finders Keepers Records first liberated Luboš Fišer’s immaculate soundtrack music for 'Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders' ("Valerie A Týden Divu") from the vaults of the Barrandov Studio in Prague. As the inaugural release of an ongoing discography of previously unreleased scores from the hugely creative ‘Film Miracle’ that occurred during and after the Czech New Wave (CNW), this score will always retain a special place in the heart of the label as well as listeners who consistently request an updated repress of this significant vinyl milestone.

Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign fluff merchants, to finally find its rightful audience as a bona fide surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 film adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval’s 1935 avant-garde novella (a film that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst’s ‘A Week Of Kindness’ and Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’) has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers - all of whom regard this truly individualistic and inimitable surrealist film poem to be an indelible influence - Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric.

Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia fuelled government film cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is the last government approved feature film of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial filmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) film school, ‘Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders’ would also be the first of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastique. Successfully condensing the final drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jireš and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic filmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories.

By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-specific traditional era, the previously censored filmmaker Jaromil Jireš was able to craft what many consider his finest filmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Enlisting the individual talent of some of the CNW’s most formidable stalwarts, in what might have been their most creatively challenging roles, Jireš managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade thus future-proofing his career and providing a woozy gateway drug to an otherwise time-locked lost movement.

Beautifully remastered from the original studio tapes with updated liner notes. Housed in two sleeve designs (Sleeve A / Sleeve B) based on the original theatrical posters.

TRACK LISTING

The Magic Yard
Talk With Grandmother
The Letter
The Sermon
Losing The Way
The Visit
The Work Of Death
Dinner
Dense Smoke
The Contract / The Wedding
The Punishment
Disquiet
Awakening
Brother And Sister
Sacrifice
The Letter 2 / Friends
In Flames
Puppets
Homeless
Questions And Answers
Confession
Forgiveness
And The Last

Sometimes the best course of action is to find your path and stay focused, which is the approach that shaped Lyla Foy’s debut album, ‘Mirrors The Sky’. Everything changed for the 25-year-old London songwriter one day in early 2012, when she cancelled her evening plans to work on music at home. After years of collaborations, she decided to go it alone, and that night produced the gorgeously stripped-down ‘No Secrets’, which she eventually shared with the world under the moniker WALL. “When I first started writing for the project, I wanted everything to be really focused on the melodies, but also really simple and minimal,” says Foy. “Just using a lot of bass, and simple drum patterns. I wanted to try something new, and that one song felt like the beginning of something.”

The reaction to ‘No Secrets’ confirmed Foy’s suspicion that she’d stumbled onto something pretty special. The track led to an appearance on British web-series Black Cab Sessions, and the Black Cab folks formed a label to release WALL’s debut single, ‘Magazine’. The English accolades poured in via glowing reviews and radio spins - BBC Radio’s Steve Lamacq went so far as to call ‘Magazine’ his favourite song of the year - and by the end of 2012 Pitchfork was giving her props for her haunting cover of Karen Dalton’s ‘Something on Your Mind’, and spotlighting the title track from 2013’s ‘Shoestring’ EP.

Foy has now decided to come out from behind her WALL and adorn ‘Mirrors The Sky’ with her given name. She’s still in the same musical mindset that produced ‘No Secrets’ and she still plays with the guys - Oli Deakin (bass, keyboards), Andy Goodall (drums), and Dan Bell (guitar, keyboards) - who helped bring WALL’s songs to the stage.

For a project that began as a single song in a London bedroom, Lyla Foy’s hypnotically hushed songs have come quite a long way over the past two years, figuratively and literally, as her worldwide deal with Sub Pop will find her spending quality time supporting ‘Mirrors The Sky’ around the globe.

TRACK LISTING

Honeymoon
I Only
Impossible
Rumour
Easy
No Secrets
Only Human
Feather Tongue
Someday
Warning

Laurine Frost continues the musical journey of his fictional character Lena, incarnating the life of his imaginary daughter in a series of albums. 'Nimfa' - as the sequel - leaves the eccentric drama of its predecessor behind, and paints naturalistic, slowly blooming landscapes instead. The result is a carefully crafted multi-dimensional fusion of jazz, dub, ethereal abstraction of drums and electronica with a bold poetic approach.

TRACK LISTING

A1. False Spring
A2. Carefully Glowing Fox
A3. Seeing True Shadows
A4. Noble Rust
B1. Layering Nimfa
B2. Imperium
B3. Heloise
B4. The Blizzard

Liam Frost’s triumphant third album The Latchkey Kid presents us with some of Liam’s most compelling work. A poignant and alluring album that lives up to the sky high standards of his first two successful albums.

Originally released in 2019 after a successful crowdfund campaign, this entire album was recorded in three days, melding his distinctive north western delivery with that of Americana folk legends Josh Rouse, Whiskeytown and Josh Ritter .

Lauded as the future Guy Garvey , the album standouts includes the epic Mercy Me ’, ‘Going Steady’ & ‘Pomona ’, all proving that the art of great song writing is still alive and kicking.

Remastered and now available for the very first time on black vinyl, with signed print and printed inner sleeve .

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Going Steady
2. Hall Of Mirrors, Rope Of Sand
3. Mercy Me!
4. Didn’t It Rain

SIDE B
1. Pomona
2. Who’s Gonna Love You?
3. When I’m Around
4. Follow You Around
5. Lover, Trouble Knows My Name

Collaborations don’t get much more biblical than this. Solo star, Oasis legend and force-of-nature Liam Gallagher has teamed up with John Squire, one of the most influential guitarists and songwriters of his generation via his time with The Stone Roses. The duo will set a high watermark for 2024 when they release their first single together, ‘Just Another Rainbow’, on January 5th, on limited 7” vinyl.

There will be much more new music to come - and there could well be shows, too - but for now ‘Just Another Rainbow’ lives up to the highfalutin expectations that come with such a collaboration.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: With it's loping groove, backwards guitars and classic chord changes , this could only be a John Squire song. With his trademark Lennon-inspired delivery and customary vocal swagger this could only be the (sorry!) one and only Liam Gallagher. Imagine The Beatles' Rain mixed with perhaps the Roses' Waterfall and you wouldn't be a million miles away. It's great!

Long-term friends with a mutual admiration for each other’s work, the idea of a collaboration started when John joined Liam on-stage at his biblical knebworth shows.

Song ideas were soon flowing, and the album took shape with an intuitive intensity while in Los Angeles with the revered producer Greg Kurstin. He played bass throughout the record, while drums were performed by Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M., Atoms For Peace).

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I think about when I used to listen to Oasis and The Stone Roses back in 'The Day' and imagine how i'd feel if you told me that this would be a collaboration that could happen in the future. It's Squire's unmistakeable songwriting and playing, with Gallagher's vocals over the top. I bet he's even got his arms behind his back. Danceable, baggy psychedelic rock with vox one of the most legendary vocalists of his generation.

TRACK LISTING

1. Raise Your Hands
2. Mars To Liverpool
3. One Day At A Time
4. I’m A Wheel
5. Just Another Rainbow
6. Love You Forever
7. Make It Up As You Go Along
8. You're Not The Only One
9. I’m So Bored
10. Mother Nature's Song

Charity Partner for Single will be Action For Children.

TRACK LISTING

1. ‘All You’re Dreaming Of’

After the phenomenal reaction to his solo track ‘Wall of Glass’ and the emotional scenes that accompanied his first solo shows, Liam Gallagher brings us his eagerly anticipated debut album ‘As You Were’.

“I didn’t want to be reinventing anything or going off on a space jazz odyssey,” says Liam. “It’s the Lennon ‘Cold Turkey’ vibe, The Stones, the classics. But done my way, now.”

The album’s cover features an iconic new portrait of Liam which was taken by the influential photographer, fashion designer and creative director Hedi Slimane.

‘C'mon You Know’ follows the huge success of Liam’s previous studio albums ‘As You Were’ (2017) and ‘Why Me? Why Not.’ (2019), which established his iconic status for a whole new generation. His ‘MTV Unplugged’ also went straight to #1 on the Official Album Chart. Between his triumphs as a solo artist and his phenomenal success with Oasis, Liam has spent a combined total of almost six months at #1 across eleven chart-topping albums. 

Liam Gallagher is not the kind of artist who was going to be stopped by the sizeable problem of not being able to play to an audience during lockdown. So when the idea of playing a playing and filming a live stream show came up, he looked at the precedent set by the Sex Pistols and The Clash and decided to hit the River Thames, armed with a boatload of attitude, a phenomenal live band (including Bonehead) and an arsenal of classic songs.

The show has been captured in full on the new live album ‘Down By The River Thames’, which will be released ia Warner Records.

Originally streamed on December 5th 2020, the show became one of the most memorable performances of the lockdown era. From iconic Oasis favourites (‘Supersonic’, ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’) to big hitters from his two all-conquering #1 solo albums (‘Wall of Glass’, ‘Once’), Liam’s inimitable snarl boomed across the Thames and dominated London’s gloomy winter skyline. There were plenty of welcome surprises too: debut solo performances of the Oasis songs ‘Hello’, ‘Fade Away’ and ‘Headshrinker’, and the first live version of ‘All You’re Dreaming Of’. Liam’s voice is absolutely on point throughout, with a full-throttle snarl of anger and attitude that doesn’t compromise any of the finesse of the studio recordings.

Liam commented, “So here it is, the gig they said we could never pull off! As we were in lockdown, bored and depressed, rock ‘n’ roll came to save the day once again. It was a top night and a top gig and it’s captured here on record for you to all enjoy.”

TRACK LISTING

1. ‘Hello’
2. ‘Wall Of Glass’
3. ‘Halo’
4. ‘Shockwave’
5. ‘Columbia’
6. ‘Fade Away’
7. ‘Why Me? Why Not.’
8. ‘Greedy Soul’
9. ‘The River’
10. ‘Once’
11. ‘Morning Glory’
12. ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’
13. ‘Headshrinker’
14. ‘Supersonic’
15. ‘Champagne Supernova’
16. ‘All You’re Dreaming Of’

Liam Gallagher will document his triumphant two-night Knebworth Park shows with the release of the live album ‘Knebworth 22’ on August 11th. Returning to the scene of the era-defining Oasis gigs of the ‘90s, the huge audience stretched from fans who had been present some 26 years earlier right through to teenagers relishing the excitement of their first big gig. ‘Knebworth 22’ is a must-have live album for any fan who wants to relive the experience.

‘Knebworth 22’ is released alongside a live video of the weekend’s surprises. ‘Roll It Over’ originally featured on the Oasis album ‘Standing On The Shoulder of Giants’.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: This is a lovely set from R Kid documenting his return to Knebworth last summer. Mixture of solo material and Oasis classics, this will tide us over until Liam and Noel bury the hatchet - yes, me and Andy are convinced it will happen!

TRACK LISTING

‘Hello’
‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’
‘Wall Of Glass’
‘Shockwave’
‘Everything’s Electric’
‘Roll It Over’
‘Slide Away’
‘More Power’
‘C’mon You Know’
‘The River’
‘Once’
‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’
‘Some Might Say’
‘Supersonic’
‘Wonderwall’
‘Champagne Supernova’

Last summer Liam Gallagher joined the list of all-time greats (Paul McCartney, Page and Plant, Nirvana and many more) who have filmed a prestigious MTV Unplugged session. Having missed Oasis’s 1996 session through illness, the show at Hull’s City Hall found Liam fulfilling some unfinished business entirely on his own terms.

Now Liam is set to release the ‘MTV Unplugged’ live album of the show on April 24th.

The show’s electrifying atmosphere is palpable from the very beginning with a phenomenal reaction as Liam takes to the stage with ‘Wall of Glass’. Material from Liam’s solo career such as his personal favourite ‘Once’ and the joyous ‘Now That I’ve Found You’ resonates in this stripped-back format, with his vocal shining alongside a trio of backing singers and string arrangements performed by the 24-piece Urban Soul Orchestra.

Oasis guitarist Bonehead features on performances of ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Stand By Me’, ‘Cast No Shadow’ and Liam’s first ever live vocal performance of the ‘Definitely Maybe’ bonus track ‘Sad Song’. The show concludes on a crowd-pleasing high with an emotive take on the classic ‘Champagne Supernova’.

Liam launches the ‘MTV Unplugged’ album by sharing the new version of ‘Gone’, which was one of the strongest performances of the night. Stripped of the force of the studio recording, ‘Gone’ instead reveals new-found bombastic dynamics and an evocative cinematic atmosphere.

TRACK LISTING

1. ‘Wall Of Glass’
2. ‘Some Might Say’
3. ‘Now That I Found You’
4. ‘One Of Us’
5. ‘Stand By Me’
6. ‘Sad Song’
7. ‘Cast No Shadow’
8. ‘Once’
9. ‘Gone’
10. ‘Champagne Supernova’

An etched 7” vinyl housed in a white card sleeve.

TRACK LISTING

1. Liam Gallagher - One Of Us [Sound Recording]

Liam is back, following his debut solo album "As You Were", which stormed to the top of the charts, selling over 100,000 copies week one, to become one of the best selling albums of that year.

"Shockwave" is the brand new single from Liam's forthcoming album.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Everything you'd want from a Liam Gallagher single. Swash-buckling, glam-stomping, life-affirming fun!

This month has seen Liam Gallagher make a typically full-throttle return. Super intimate sold-out show at Hackney Round Chapel? Biblical. Premiere and release of the long-awaited ‘As It Was’ documentary? Completed. Featured on the cover of Q, who described him as “rock’s finest frontman”? Naturally.

Liam wrote lead single ‘Shockwave’ with two of the key collaborators behind the all-conquering ‘As You Were’ album: Andrew Wyatt, who won the Academy Award for Best Original Song as co-writer of ‘Shallow’ from the film ‘A Star Is Born’, and the multiple Grammy-winner Greg Kurstin who also produced the track. It was recorded in Los Angeles.

Liam Gallagher’s debut solo album ‘As You Were’ was a critical and commercial smash. It debuted at #1, out-selling the rest of the Top 10 in the process, and was soon certified Platinum. Liam was back where he belonged, selling out huge outdoor shows and earning major awards from Q, NME and GQ.

More details regarding ‘Why Me? Why Not.’ will be revealed imminently. “It’s a better record than As You Were,” promises Liam. “Which is saying something, as that was epic, wasn’t it?”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: He's back! Liam's newest album sees him co-writing with a duo of talented musician pals, and retains all the charm and momentum of his previous outing, but with more OOMPH. Why not indeed.

Lee Gamble completes his ‘Flush Real Pharynx 2019-2021’ album cycle with ‘A Million Pieces Of You’, the third EP of a triptych written in a time when the subjective experience of overload came to a halt, giving way to an overbearing sense of loss, burnout and a desperate need for hope. These seven tracks feel more reflective, more human than the two preceeding EPs; the serpentine dopplers and seductive supercar engines of ‘In A Paraventral Scale’, and imploding motion sculptures of ‘Exhaust’. A deepfake of Lee’s voice appears from the chaotic slow-mo crash of ‘Balloon Lossy’, timidly telling of “[garbled]… good news”. The uncanny spectre of deep fakes, AI and deep learning models give way to the melancholic loneliness of the solo piano in ‘Empty Middle Seat’. Then glimmering, golden pads on ‘Hyperpassive’ slowly crawl into the hopeful, bright arpeggiations of ‘Balloon Copy’. ‘A Million Pieces Of You’ is a ride through a part-synthetic, part-modelled, part-imitation, part-taught, part-human, part[1]hopeful, part-reflective and paradoxically affirmative space – an involuntarily fitting finale to an album originally conceived in a world different to the one we now inhabit.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Lee Gamble continues to lead the way in terms of experimental electronics and post-everything nightclub deconstructions. A bit mellower in parts than some of his recent outings, it's nonetheless an arresting and encompassing listen throughout.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Balloon Lossy
A2. Newtown Got Folded
A3. Obsession Model
A4. Empty Middle Seat
B1. You Left A Space
B2. Hyperpassive
B3. Balloon Cop

‘Flush Real Pharynx 2019-2021’ is a three-part album from composer, producer and DJ Lee Gamble. Written over three years, and comprised of three seperate EPs, their individual releases unintentionally frame and timestamp a turbulent period. Across 77 minutes the full collection imparts a seamless tour through its three phases. File under #GullyAutomatedHyperConcrète.

“If the most widely available music is also the most easily digestible, then it is no wonder that artists like Gamble are so keen to grapple with music’s purpose beyond entertainment—to be an art form in fierce dialogue with the present.” (Pitchfork)

“This music gives form to the smart cities and networked realities of the 21st century … a thrilling meditation on the weirdness of now.” (Resident Advisor)

TRACK LISTING

01. Fata Morgana
02. Folding
03. Moscow
04. BMW Shuanghuan X5
05. Chant
06. In The Wreck Room
07. Many Gods, Many Angels
08. CREAM
09. Envenom
10. Glue
11. Naja
12. Tyre
13. Switches
14. Shards
15. Saccades
16. Balloon Lossy
17. Newtown Got Folded
18. Obsession Model
19. Empty Middle Seat
20. You Left A Space
21. Hyperpassive
22. Balloon Copy

On 'Models', Lee Gamble liberates sonic spectres to inform a suite of illusory anthems, subliming vulnerable, half-remembered fragments of dream pop, Soundcloud rap and trance in the process. Sung by cybernetic voices in an almost wordless language, his widescreen memories reverberate across the last few decades of pop history, smudging Elizabeth Frazer's surreal poetry into disembodied diva cries and Lil Uzi Vert's abstract, AutoTuned mumbles. Extracting haunted fragments of synthetic corrupted chatter and indecipherable non-words to sculpt dreamy pop simulacrums, Gamble takes the concept of the pop producer to its logical extreme; examining how intonation and language is engineered to monopolise our attention, his magical inversion of pop playing like a bewitching symphony of earworms.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Purple, Orange
A2. Juice
A3. XIth C. Spray
A4. She’s Not
B1. Phantom Limb
B2. Blurring
B3. Your Weight On My Arms

"The Cloud Making Machine" is Laurent's most personal album to date. It's not a straight up dance album, but by turns cinematic, deep, bluesy, experimental and only sometimes aimed squarely at the dancefloor. Since "Unreasonable Behaviour" Laurent has been hooking up with musicians from different scenes, amongst them, the Norwegian jazz pianist Bugge Wesseltoft and Dhafer Youssef, a Tunisian singer and master oud player, who was invited to come and work in Garnier's Parisien studio, The Kub. This studio has, over the past four years, become a meeting point for musician friends such as Scan X, Sangoma Everett, Marc Chalosse or Philippe Nadaud, all of whom bring their skills to the LP as well.

A gifted lyricist and powerful singer, Germano is also a talented multi-instrumentalist, playing the violin, piano, and guitar with equal aplomb. This new album features some of her best work to date. For fans of PJ Harvey, Marianne Faithful, Cat Power and Bjork, she's had previous albums on 4AD. Other projects over the years included OP8, a collaboration with Giant Sand and Calexico.

As a member of the seminal Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard made nine strikingly original and influential albums over a ten year period. Lisa then released two acclaimed solo albums "The Mirror Pool" and "Duality". In recent years Lisa has become a much sought-after soundtrack composer. Scoring and contributing to scores for Gladiator, Heat, Whalerider, Ali, The Insider, Mission Impossible 2, Black Hawk Down and El Nino De La Luna, amongst many others. Patrick Cassidy is widely recognised as Ireland's most important classical composer. Patrick has released three highly-regarded albums: "Cruit", "The Children Of Lir" and "Deirdre Of The Sorrows", the latter two recorded with The London Symphony Orchestra. In "Immortal Memory", they have crafted a timeless album of transcendental beauty.

Dead Can Dance members Lisa Gerrard and Jules Maxwell have teamed up under a new guise with James Chapman (MAPS) to create a studio album, titled ‘Burn’. The record began its journey more than seven years ago, when Lisa met Irish theatre composer Jules Maxwell before working together for the first time. ‘Burn’ is set for release on 7th May 2021 via Atlantic Curve. Speaking about the origins of the album, Lisa Gerrard explains, “It is with great pleasure that I share this collaboration with Jules Maxwell. Jules and I began our creative journey with Dead Can Dance. We realised that we could connect through improvisation and that musical exploration continues to evolve with this present work.”

Although this record is a new release, its beginnings go all the way back to 2012 during that year’s Dead Can Dance world tour. Originally brought in as a live keyboard player, Jules Maxwell helped create a new song with Lisa Gerrard called ‘Rising Of The Moon’, which was performed as the final encore of each show. By the time the tour finished in Chile in 2013, a strong affinity had begun to develop between the two of them and further opportunities to collaborate with each other resulted over subsequent years. In 2015, when Maxwell was asked to submit songs for the Bulgarian choir The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices (Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares), he approached Gerrard to co-write material and travelled to Australia to work with her in her home studio. The pair came away with four new songs for that release, as well as the building blocks for this new venture together. Jules describes the introduction to James Chapman. "About a year later, over dinner in Sofia after a concert by the Bulgarian women, my publisher suggested to me that I work with James Chapman on completing the BURN songs. James had established a sound with his band MAPS, which also had big horizons at its core, and it seemed like an intriguing proposition to me."

With Chapman joining the duo as producer, ideas began to be generated freely and over time a distinct sound for their work began to emerge. Their focus was to create a sound that was both euphoric and compelling, more inventive than what they had worked on separately in the past. From gentle beginnings, each track builds and intensifies, creating a hypnotic experience to listen to from start to finish.

With Lisa remaining in Australia, Jules adding his keys and percussion from France, and James bringing new light to the sound from England, the three were literally worlds apart, but those worlds fused in the music. Recently, Jules Maxwell also released his debut solo album ‘Songs From The Cultural Backwater’, Lisa Gerrard received a Grammy nomination and returned to Dead Can Dance to release the group’s critically praised ninth studio full-length ‘Dionysus’, and James Chapman released MAPS 4th full-length album ‘Colours. Reflect. Time. Loss’. Stylistically, the new album ‘Burn’ is a diverse mix of electronica, alternative, cinematic soundscape and world music with hints of early Vangelis. Accumulatively, this is a stunning departure for all three of them.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Heleali (The Sea Will Rise)
2. Noyalain (Burn)
3. Deshta (Forever)
4. Aldavyeem (A Time To Dance)

SIDE B
1. Orion (The Weary Huntsman)
2. Keson (Until My Strength Returns)
3. Do So Yol (Gather The Wind)

Following on from the release of her collaborative album ‘Burn’ last year, alongside Dead Can Dance’s Jules Maxwell and James Chapman from MAPS, Lisa Gerrard has now joined forces with producer and composer Marcello De Francisci for the stunning new LP ‘Exaudia’. Working alongside a team of other musicians including Bahar Shah, Astrid Williamson, Daniela Arbizzi, and Farhad Behroozi, ‘Exaudia’ looks to combine the broad and euphoric textures of De Francisci’s production with the warm and haunting vocals of Gerrard. Described as “a feminine embodiment of poetic expression”, the record plays majestically with this narrative, inviting a rich and vivid texture within each offering. Short Info: The new collaboration between Lisa Gerrard and Marcello De Francisci - "Exaudia" “Exaudia” – Definition: A king concedes audience and fulfills a wish that is petitioned.

“Exaudia” is an album inspired by the history of Spain in the 1500’s and its expulsion of Sephardic tribes throughout all of Europe and North Africa. The musical tracks for “Exaudia” were composed, performed, recorded, produced, mixed and mastered in Los Angeles and all of Lisa Gerrard’s vocals were recorded out of her personal studio in Melbourne. Longer Info: The new collaboration between Lisa Gerrard and Marcello De Francisci - "Exaudia" “Exaudia” – Definition: A king concedes audience and fulfills a wish that is petitioned. “Exaudia” is an album inspired by the history of Spain in the 1500’s and its expulsion of Sephardic tribes throughout all of Europe and North Africa. The musical tracks for “Exaudia” were composed, performed, recorded, produced, mixed and mastered in Los Angeles and all of Lisa Gerrard’s vocals were recorded out of her personal studio in Melbourne. Marcello De Francisci is a composer based in Los Angeles, California. His studies furthermore career began as a visual artist while attending fine arts at an institution founded by the famed Baroque painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo in Seville, Spain. He later furthered his education at the “Universidad Complutense” in Madrid in addition taught himself music to discover his true passion was to score soundtracks for the motion picture industry.

TRACK LISTING

1. When The Light Of Morning Comes
2. Until We Meet Again
3. Fallen
4. Exaudia
5. Stories Of Love, Triumph & Misfortunes
6. Stay With Me
7. Exaudia Reprise

An exploration of repression, longing and ‘otherness’ amidst illusory landscapes, ‘Rain’s Break’ EP is inspired by the early technicolour films of Powell and Pressburger. Lucy Gooch uses synthesisers and vocal layering to concentrate elements of each film’s score and narrative into songs which move through different moods of yearning and renewal:
“I first experienced their strange cinematic worlds in childhood, and they stayed with me, like waking dreams – their vibrancy seemed to capture the hidden emotional lives of everyday people. The films’ fantastical sets were often met with the complexities of the inner female experience, as portrayed by each heroine. People wrestling with post-war isolation, changing attitudes to women and sexual repression alongside their struggle to establish equality and autonomy of their own lives.”

So, it is amidst 1940’s austerity that these films were an escape, an over-rich backdrop of possibilities. A snatched piece of dialogue, the film’s score, the crackle of uncertainty all succumbs to the layered ambience of Lucy’s music as she traces moods of yearning and renewal on ‘Rain’s Break’ EP.

Originally from Norfolk, Lucy studied Fine Art and later moved to Bristol to join the emerging ambient scene there - gradually developing her writing and finally releasing her debut ‘Rushing’ EP in early 2020. Over the past year, she’s dipped into a wealth of long gone celluloid as the basis for a filmic journey, a five song EP that relives formative movies in her unique take on ecclesiastical pop.

‘Ash and Orange’ emerged after listening to old recordings of women’s choirs from the 1930’s, their stoic sopranos circling churches and halls. In two parts, it touches on an everyday person’s hidden life that leads to an emotional breaking-down. A change from Lucy’s trademarked looping style it takes its inspiration from choral composition.

‘Chained To A Woman’ by contrast, is more playful, nodding to ‘80s synth pop, a homage to some degree to Blue Nile, pop music tinged with melancholy.

“I sought to stick to that tradition of talk-singing the verses, and it seemed to fit in with the feeling of the song, which is more ambiguous. I wanted the words to be about being devoted to something, like family, a person or religion and all the things that come with that kind of devotion.”

Inspired by the monsoon scene at the end of Black Narcissus (1947), the title track ‘Rain’s Break’ takes its lead from the weather to reflect an emotional journey.

“That amazing tradition in early film of using weather to reflect the character’s emotional journey - it seems cliched now but at the time it was revolutionary. This is my attempt at trying to recreate the feeling of total surrender to drama, of something totally sensual.”

This is music that takes you places, shifts focus, paints large canvases.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There are all sorts of musical touchstones flying out of the player for this one. It's essentially widescreen ambient music but with a focus on the walls of echo and reverb-effected synths more akin to shoegaze. Slowly building into crescentic waves of layered tones, brilliantly warm but undeniably massive.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1 Rain's Break
2 It Brings Me Back To You
3 Chained To A Woman

Side B
4 6AM
5 Ash And Orange

Following Lucy Gooch’s acclaimed ‘Rain’s Break’, her first release on Fire Records earlier this year, the artist’s acclaimed debut EP ‘Rushing’ is revisited with new artwork and a brand new track, ‘Orthione’.

“Lucy’s sound marries the etheral qualities of ambient music with buoyant, effortless pop” Crack

‘Rushing’ in its original shorter five-track incarnation was heralded as a touchstone beneath the cascading torrent of modern times and an oasis for turbulent times. An intimate collection of songs built around Lucy’s emotive vocals and unique ambient dream pop, the newly added stand-out track ‘Orthione’ trips into the esoteric world of Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass; here her voice is the grounding force that travels to a space that heals and grows.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. My Lights Kiss Your Thoughts Every Moment
2. Rushing
3. Stalagmites & Helicitites

Side B
4. Sun
5. There Is A Space In Between
6. Orthione

14 tracks spanning Laura Jane Grace's fractured relationship with her adopted hometown of Chicago, true friendship, complicated romance, and reconciling everything in the end, Bought to Rot stands as the most musically diverse collection of songs Grace has written to date.

Inspired in large part by Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever, the first album Grace ever owned, Bought to Rot finds her at the same age Petty was when he created his solo debut masterpiece. In light of his recent passing, Grace was motivated to pay homage to one of her lifelong heroes.

Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers are Laura Jane Grace, Atom Willard, and Marc Jacob Hudson. Grace is a musician, author, and activist best known as the founder, lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the punk rock band Against Me!. Willard, also of Against Me!, is a drummer who has played in iconic punk bands such as Rocket from the Crypt, Social Distortion, and The Offspring. Devouring Mothers bassist Hudson is a recordist and mixer at Rancho Recordo, a recording studio and creative space in the woods of Michigan, and the sound engineer for Against Me

TRACK LISTING

1.China Beach
2.Born In Black
3.The Airplane Song
4.Apocalypse Now (& Later)
5.Reality Bites
6.Amsterdam Hotel Room
7.The Friendship Song
8.I Hate Chicago
9.Screamy Dreamy
10.Manic Depression
11.The Acid Test Song
12.The Hotel Song
13.Valeria Golino
14.The Apology Song

Following the release of her debut album, Stay Alive (2020) and the At War With The Silverfish EP (2021), Emmy-nominated artist, author, musician, activist and Against Me! founder/songwriter, Laura Jane Grace, returns with Hole In My Head - her beautiful new album featuring eleven tracks that showcase her undeniable power as a songwriter & storyteller. The album features her most personal and emotionally gripping songs of her career - stripped down masterpieces like Dysphoria Hoodie paired with blistering distorted anthems like Hole In My Head and Birds Talk Too, tracks that demand the listener’s attention with an immediacy and urgency unlike anything Grace has written before.

Recorded at Native Sound in St. Louis, Missouri by David Beeman and mastered by Matt Allison (Lawrence Arms, Rise Against), the album is a sonic curio cabinet containing multitudes. Featuring warm 50s-rock-influenced guitar riffs and rock style melody a la Jonathan Richman and Eddie Cochran, saved-for-later lyrics, love letters to St. Louis, dysphoria apparel, and thoughtful reflections on a punk life lived, Grace's forward vocals are backed predominately by her performances on guitar and drums but are bolstered by Drive By Trucker's bassist Matt Patton.

The record's title track Hole in My Head takes off with a driving guitar-heavy approach that will be welcome to long-time fans of Against Me! electric machinations, while first single Dysphoria Hoodie has been a staple in Grace’s setlist, and one which is as personal as it is pertinent in today’s climate.

Choice cuts I’m Not A Cop and Punk Rock In Basements are written through a post-pandemic rose-colored lens, the latter looking back on the formative underground spaces of Grace’s youth. Basement shows for decades were hallmark experiences for anyone involved in their local punk scenes, shaping movements, connections, and culture through the forced, sweaty proximity necessary to pour over raucous punk music.

Hole in My Head is a record which captures the nuances of humanity and experience in a strangely optimistic manner. The lightness of its influence and the journalistic recollection of experience set against a battered and warm folk-punk delivery from beginning to end makes Hole in My Head a fun comfort. It is a welcome embrace of life and just the start of a new chapter in Laura Jane Grace’s raucous journey.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Laura Jane Grace's journey has been a storied one, starting her career in one of the most beloved new wave punk rock bands in the late 90's, and ending up as a prolific and gifted composer, multimedia artist and writer. 'Hole In My Head' is once again a brilliantly balanced, fiery and dynamic solo outing from Grace.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Hole In My Head
2. I'm Not A Cop
3. Dysphoria Hoodie
4. Birds Talk Too
5. Punk Rock In Basements
Side B
1. Cuffing Season
2. Tacos & Toast
3. Mercenary
4. Keep Your Wheels Straight
5. Hard Feelings
6. Give Up The Ghost

Leonard Grandsons 'The Sands of Zanziibar' is a classy, extremely rare floater which has remained extremely elusive despite having a sound which could make it an extremely popular spin for soulies, disco and rare groove heads.

Steve Trebbin believes it was recorded in 1977, the studio was in Hollywood not far from the Capitol Records building, Tal Armstrong's office was next to it. Steve recalls a story, "I went into the Capital records offices one time to pitch Leonard to them. I mentioned how much he sounded like Stevie Wonder. After listening, they agreed he sounded very much like Stevie - with a smile they told me they already had one.". Big thanks to Daniel Mathis and DJ Mr Big Happy for helping track down Steve.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Sands Of Zanzibar, Pt. 1
2. The Sands Of Zanzibar, Pt. 2

The follow up to Manchester songbird Liz Green’s rapturously received debut ‘O, Devotion!’ (2011).

Recorded at London’s legendary Toe Rag Studio with producer Liam Watson, Liz’s sophomore album displays a wonderful array of sounds and styles, from the ‘drone-blues’ of ‘Battle’ to the sea shantyinfluenced title track.

In a departure from its predecessor, ‘Haul Away!’ sees Liz bringing the piano to the forefront, influenced by such artists as Thelonius Monk and Nina Simone.

Artwork designed and conceived by Liz herself, including the iconic cover image.

Includes self-styled single and ‘wonky circus tune’ ‘Where The River Don’t Flow’, a jaunty dance of life and death.

TRACK LISTING

Battle
Haul Away!
Rybka
River Runs Deep
Where The River Don’t Flow
Empty Handed Blues
Into My Arms
Island Song
Little I
Penelope
Bikya

Double A-side single pressed on white 7” vinyl and limited to 385 copies for the UK.

First single to be taken from ‘Haul Away!’, the follow up to Liz Green’s rapturously received debut ‘O, Devotion!’ (2011).

Recorded at London’s legendary Toe Rag Studio with producer Liam Watson.

Artwork designed by Liz herself.

‘Rybka’ translates as ‘little fish’ in Polish, and that’s precisely what the song is about, says Liz: “the little fish getting lost in the big pond. A boy who tries to do right but always seems to end up on the wrong side of the glass.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Two wonderful tracks from Liz Green, ahead of her new album. Title track Rybka's swaying, clarinet led rhythm provides the perfect accompaniment to her distinctive, dramatic voice. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Rybka
Where The River Don’t Flow

Outer Highway Realms is the debut solo instrumental album from Lauren Helene Green, a multi-instrumentalist musician, artist, and woodworker from Texas, now based in Northern New Mexico. Currently half of dream-pop duo Tan Cologne, Green is a shaper of music, wood, and various creative projects inspired by both Earthly and otherworldly landscapes. In the frosted Winter to early Spring cross-fade of 2022, Green recorded 8 songs over the course of a week in Ranchos de Taos, NM.

The album “Outer Highway Realms" is a collection of observations on New Mexico's slow desert, echoes of time and space, morning reflections, sunset drives, guitar meanderings through hot springs, canyon loop walks, and visions floating between woodworking and gardening. Nature sounds and ambient snippets were woven into songs, creating a blend of all seasons and overlapping time. Highly anticipated debut solo album from Lauren Helene Green.

 “…a kind of 21st century, synthesized version of Bruce Langhorne’s The Hired Hand soundtrack, fragments, vignettes, contemplative moments of desert solitude captured in all their shimmering beauty…” Caught By the River.

“The record continues her exploration of desert living through a rich blend of folk, ambient and drone. A sound capable of evoking the nuanced and often contradictory moods of the environment, managing to be expansive and detailed all at once.” - Various Small Flames.

TRACK LISTING

1. Canyon Loop
2. Cactus Bloom
3. Peak Morning Reflections
4. Horses At Fire Water Lodge
5. Slow Spring
6. Wind Full Of Spring
7. Walk At Dusk
8. Dim Sunset Drive

Of the 6-track EP Groves says: “This record, made mostly on my own, became both a channel for the expression of an inner world and an imagined soundtrack to my physical journeys through the city. It is rooted in the stories, atmospheres, mistakes and wrong turns, desires and layers of meaning that run through and play out in the landscapes we inhabit. The songs are snapshots of late night journeys across the river, the sparks of love that transform us and keep us going, the dead ends that the mind can lead us down, the erotic; the visible and invisible places we pass through as they merge and are erased and overwritten. The ability and opportunity to create and connect through music is a gift and I’m so happy to be able to share these new explorations with you.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Infinite Wisdom
2. Foolish Game
3. Faking It
4. Red
5. Sunset
6. Searching For The Stars

Much of Radio Red, the first full length album Laura Groves has released under her own name, was written, produced and recorded by Groves in her studio, watched over by two radio transmitting towers. “I became very drawn to them and they became like symbols to me; they were always awake, sending their messages, the red lights always came on at night and watched over whatever was going on in my life.” The album deals with themes of communication - missed and intercepted signals, chance meetings, synchronicities, the channels through which we try to express our true feelings, the outside interference that can get in the way and the joy of letting go and allowing the messages to flow freely.

Self-recording and production is a core part of Laura’s songwriting process. “I remember years ago getting hold of some basic recording software and being instantly drawn in. The idea of being able to layer up my voice was a dream, like building an orchestra out of what I had at home.” The passion for home-recording, using the resources available at the time, working through limitations and capturing textures through layering, forms the foundation of Groves’ experimental and off-centre pop music and electrified folk music. The sound world of Radio Red is made up of echoes and snapshots of half-remembered pop songs, piano ballads, chopped up TV theme tunes, ambient synthesised sounds and electronic music; tuning in between channels without fully belonging to any one of them, with the comfort, familiarity and strangeness that can come with hearing voices on the radio.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sky At Night
2. Good Intention
3. Synchronicity
4. D 4 N
5. I'm Not Crying
6. Any Day Now
7. Time
8. Sarah
9. Make A Start
10. Silver Lining

This is a compilation of sweet soul and R&B from Plut Records. 11 tracks (7 unreleased) mostly by Lenus Guess. A couple of moody instrumentals are featured, but vocal harmony groups are heard for the most part. And for the most part this music has been silent since it was recorded and put back on the shelf. Each cut is transferred from master tapes. And for those who want to know about the people, the time and the place; it’s Norfolk, Virginia - early to mid seventies. Extensive liner notes with 8 page insert and full color sleeve. For fans of Tramp, Numero, AOTN, and the first Plut record by Raw Soul. Recommended!

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Lenis Guess/The Royal Robins - No Steps Away
2. Little Wink/Eddie's 25th Century Band - Sentimental Love (instrumental) 
3. Jack & The Mods - Don’t Wake Me Up
4. The Symbolics - Find Yourself Another Baby
5. Deltones Ltd - Keep My Company With You
6. Deltones Ltd - You Don’t Believe I Love You

Side 2
1. The 35th Street Gang - Your Love Gave Me Peace Of Mind
2. Jato Vondel - You Don’t Miss Your Water (Til Your Well Runs Dry)
3. Jato Vondel - How Long Have I Been A Fool
4. Deltoned Ltd - You Don’t Believe I Love You (instrumental) 
5. The Symbolics - Home Ain’t Home

Panagiotis Melidis started writing music as Larry Gus (λάρυγγας [larigas], Greek for larynx) in 2006, after his previous band, the bass and drums duo Ginger, parted ways. Initially his music combined sample-based constructions and psychedelic pop melodies, merged into an infinitely dense amount of layers and polyrhythms. He soon became known for his energetic and chaotic improvised live performances that involve intricate layering of vocals, drums, and electronics… along with lively stage banter.

On his new DFA album, "I Need New Eyes" (a title inspired by a Marcel Proust misquotation), moving slowly out of his sample-based roots and using clearer songwriting structures as his starting point, he stares intensively into his obsessions, anxieties and inadequacies, namely failure, humiliation, subservience, submission, and comparisons with other musicians’ careers, always through the prism of a provincial outsider.

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Veil Of Fail
2. NP Complete
3. A Set Of Replies
4. Taking The Personal Away
5. Belong To Love
6. All Graphs Explored
7. The Sun Describes
8. Nazgonya (Paper Spike)

Larry Gus releases a single alongside his ‘Subservient’ album. The single features ‘Kerkis (Judas-Tree)’ and ‘Foreign Steps’ from the same recording sessions as Subservient. The 7” precedes an upcoming audio play, written by Efthimis and scored by Larry, to be produced with the Onassis Stegi (AKA Cultural Center). The audio play will be released on DFA in 2020.

The record graciously explores the nuance that can be found within delineated lines: pop and folk music, rooted in Greek tradition; internal anxieties and empathy expressed outward; the tightrope struggle of living in the present and wallowing in the past.

TRACK LISTING

Kerkis (Judas-Tree)
Foreign Steps

Larry Gus (real name Panagiotis Melidis) returns to DFA with ‘Subservient’, his fourth release for the label. ‘Subservient’ sees more pop-oriented than his previous albums, a lush combination of “crisis funk pop and trad Mediterranean grooves.” Lyrics sung in Greek and English address Larry’s overwhelming struggles with being a father, husband, artist, and human in 2019. In the artist’s own words, this album is about “trying to understand empathy and act with it on everyday life,” as well as “the imperative of empathy above everything else.”

‘Subservient’ is sample-free, a first for Larry, who plays every instrument himself: a drum kit, an SM57 microphone, a guitar, a bass, a TE OP-1 synthesizer and a Roland JV-1010 synth module. This is fourth-world power pop, as if Alex Chilton was produced by Eno and Hassell. The thoughtful, upbeat arrangements and gentle vocals are spacious and warm, and tend to offset whatever darker tone the lyrics might imply. Larry confronts more acute tensions, such as being a father in Greece during the crisis, and the parallels of a child’s sicknesses and adult ailments, as well as larger, more existential pressures - the grasp of nostalgia, the weight and meaning of making decisions, and the desire to move from hermeticism towards sociability.

The record graciously explores the nuance that can be found within delineated lines: pop and folk music, rooted in Greek tradition; internal anxieties and empathy expressed outward; the tightrope struggle of living in the present and wallowing in the past. Larry will also be releasing a 7” single alongside the album, which features ‘Kerkis (Judas-Tree)’ and ‘Foreign Steps’ from the same recording sessions as Subservient. The single precedes an upcoming audio play, written by Efthimis and scored by Larry, to be produced with the Onassis Stegi (AKA Cultural Center). The audio play will be released on DFA in 2020.

STAFF COMMENTS

Sil says: Another cracker from DFA. A perfect amalgamation of electronics and pop sensibilities. Deserves your attention.

TRACK LISTING

Total Diseases (Subservience)
A Likely Projection
Text Of Intent
Taped Hands Here
In This Position
Ayler The Pilot
The Sun Sections
Readers And Authors
Classifying A Disease
Bare Concreate (Itea 97- 09)

What happens when a Mark E. Smith impersonator has his holiday ruined by Skrewdriver? Let Luke Haines and Scott King reveal all…

Auteurs and Baader Meinhof icon Luke Haines has announced a typically singular new project entitled Adventures In Dementia, a “micro opera” which features a Mark E. Smith impersonator’s caravan holiday getting ruined by “Ian Stuart”.

Originally performed as a live stage show in Berlin during the summer of 2014, Adventures In Dementia includes six brand new tracks from Luke Haines

Luke Haines goes electronic, with an album was recorded using entirely analogue synthesizers.

A concept album set in the future where Great Britain has retreated to a vast and secret network of abandoned nuclear bunkers and prays to a piece of silverware, referred to as the 'New Pagan Sun'.

TRACK LISTING

1: This Is The BBC
2: British Nuclear Bunkers
3: Camden Borough Council
4: Test Card Forever
5: Cold Field Morning Under Bliss
6: Bunker Funker
7: Pussywillow (Kids Song)
8: Mama Check The Radar At The Dada Station
9: New Pagan Sun
10: Deep Level Shelters Under London 

“Rock And Roll Animals” is a psychedelic story for grown-ups (and children). Jimmy Pursey is a frisky fox; Nick Lowe – a solid badger and Gene Vincent – a cat who's seen a bit more of life than most of us. Three furry freaks. Three Rock n Roll animals. The fable of our four-pawed shamen is narrated by the good folk of Magic Town.

This is a story of righteous rock n roll and how our three rock n roll animal friends, when not frolicking in the undergrowth, do battle with their most unrighteous nemesis – a fuck ugly bird (from Tyneside) made of steel and wire called The Angel Of The North.

TRACK LISTING

1. MAGIC TOWN
2. MAGIC INTERLUDE 1
3. ROCK N ROLL ANIMALS
4. A BADGER CALLED NICK LOWE
5. THREE FRENDZ
6. GENE VINCENT
7. MAGIC INTERLUDE 2
8. THE BIRDS... THE BIRDS
9. ANGEL OF THE NORTH
10. WE DO...
11. FROM HERSHAM TO HEAVEN
12. ROCK N ROLL ANIMALS IN SPACE

“Smash The System” is the first non-concept solo album by Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder) in six years.

Smash The System follows on from such critically acclaimed works as “Nine and a half psychedelic meditations on British wrestling from the late 1970s and early '80s” (2010), “New York In The '70s” (2014) and last year’s electronic “British Nuclear Bunkers”.

Think “Hunky 'Dory” or Sabbath's eponymous debut played on pixiephones and Moog, Graham Bond Organisation and Haines' own 1996 classic “Baader Meinhof”, Or Sunn 0))) at the school disco with tunes.

“Smash The System” pays homage to Marc Bolan, Vince Taylor, The Incredible String Band and Morris Dancing to name just a few as Haines makes a melodious return to his rock ‘n’ roll roots… 'Do you like the Monkees?' 

Beat Poetry For Survivalists is the new collaboration between Peter Buck & Luke Haines.

Peter Buck was the guitarist for the biggest band in the world – REM.

Luke Haines was the guitarist for the Auteurs. The Auteurs were not the biggest band in the world. They were pretty good though.

Luke Haines also does paintings of Lou Reed.

One day, Peter Buck bought one of Luke Haines' Lou Reed paintings. They had never met before but decided that the fates had brought them together and they should write some songs together and make an album.

'Beat Poetry For The Survivalist' is that album. With songs about legendary rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons, The Enfield Hauntings (of 1978), a post-apocalyptic radio station that only plays Donovan records, Bigfoot, and Pol Pot.

TRACK LISTING

1. Jack Parsons
2. Apocalypse Beach
3. Last Of The Legendary Bigfoot Hunters
4. Beat Poetry For The Survivalist
5. Witch Tariff
6. Andy Warhol Was Not Kind
7. French Man Glam Gang
8. Ugly Dude Blues
9. Bobby’s Wild Years
10.rock ‘n’ Roll Ambulance

The followers - this book is not for you. The salt of the earth - this book is not for you. The worthy - this book is not for you.

The ideologists - this book is not for you. Hedonists and bohemians - this book is not for you. The middlebrow - this book is not for you.

The highbrow - this book is not for you. Dilettantes - this book is not for you. 1970s middle school RE teachers - this book is not for you.

The England football team (women's and men's) - this book is not for you. The litanists - this book is not for you. Gatekeepers - this book is not for you.

Gamekeepers - this book is not for you. (Not even for the poachers...)The curators - this book is not for you. The left, the right - this book is not for you.

The list-makers - lists are for shoppers not rockers, and this book is not for you. This is not a list - this is a manifesto, and this book is for ... the Freaks.

Musician and author Luke Haines embarks on an odyssey through the ages, exploring how the 'freaks' infiltrated modern culture - and almost won the rock 'n' roll wars - only to lose to the rise of Cool Britannia and TV 'talent' shows that turned the strange and the outsiders into fodder for laughter. In this ultimate celebration of freakdom, Haines tells the story of pivotal freaks - including Johnnie Ray, Gene Vincent, Hank Marvin, Syd Barrett, the Incredible String Band and Big Youth - through the prism of rock 'n' roll and explains how freaks infiltrated wider culture through history in the form of the Cathars, the Ranters, Hells Angels and the Yippies. Part memoir, part manifesto, Freaks Out! is a righteous alternate history of rock 'n' roll.

It started sometime after World War II – in the late 1940's. A convoy of British Special Services trucks had been dispatched to RAF Middlewych, their cargo - 10 tonnes of experimental solvent liquid. Sticky and deadly. The mission – to drop the toxic liquid over Germany and finish the job of carving up Europe for good. The trucks never made it to their airfield destination, coming off the road – most probably helped by saboteurs – some five miles out of London… 'I Sometimes Dream Of Glue' is the next solo concept album by Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder). Just off the Westway, in the motorway sidings, you can see a small sign. Actually you probably can't see the sign as it is the size of a child's fingernail clipping. The sign says 'Glue Town.' The name of a village. There is little or no documentation of Glue Town. You will not find any information about it on the 21st Century internet. Gluetown is a rural settlement born out of mutation. Of the estimated 500 or so dwellers, no one is thought to be over 2 ½ inches tall. The citizens of Glue Town exist on a diet of solvent abuse and perpetual horniness. The residents only leave to carry out daring night-time 'glue raids' on Shepherds Bush newsagent shops. On a tiny screen in the town centre, an old Betamax cassette of 'Michael Bentine's Pottytime' plays on a loop all day and all night...

TRACK LISTING

1. Angry Man On Small Train
2. I Fell In Love With An Oo Scale Wife
3. I Sometimes Dream Of Glue
4. She Was As Ripe As A Meadow
5. The Subbuteo Lads
6. Solvents Cures The Ego
7. At It With The Tree Surgeon’s Wife
8. The Garden Gate
9. Everybody’s Coming Together For The Summer
10. Oh Michael
11. Only The Stones Will Know
12. Everybody’s Coming Together (Part 2)
13. Fat Bird From The Woodcraft Folk
14. We Could Do It

Having played with The Servants in the late 1980s, Luke Haines carved a unique niche for himself in the 1990s with witty lyrics, wry humour and some stellar tunes with The Auteurs and other acts (Black Box Recorder, Baader Meinhof).

By 1999, feeling aghast at the state of the Brit Rock scene in the UK, Luke decided to “start a righteous solo trip”, having been commissioned to write the soundtrack for the film Christie Malry's Own Double Entry (2001). Sticking with Virgin Records, Luke then unveiled his first solo album proper, The Oliver Twist Manifesto, before fronting a new-look Auteurs for Das Capital.

In due course, Luke switched labels to indie Fantastic Plastic for Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop (2006), followed in 2009 by 21st Century Man. Since then, he’s curated a string of imaginative, amusing and always worthwhile albums for Cherry Red Records.

Alive And Well… is the first-ever anthology of Luke’s solo work, cherry-picking musical highlights from each of his long players as well as a smattering of B-sides, radio sessions, rarities and – on Disc 4 – a raft of previously unissued material.

With sleeve-notes by Luke himself, Alive And Well… is a very personal statement spanning the last two decades of the musical life of Luke Haines.

Currently based in Los Angeles, Laurel Halo has spent over a decade stepping into different towns and cities for a moment or more, to the point where everywhere almost became nowhere. Atlas, the debut release on her new imprint Awe, is an attempt to put that feeling to music. Using both electronic and acoustic instrumentation, Halo has created a potent set of sensual ambient jazz collages, comprised of orchestral clouds, shades of modal harmony, hidden sonic details, and detuned, hallucinatory textures. The music functions as a series of maps, for places real and imaginary, and for expressing the unsaid.

The process of writing Atlas began back in 2020 when she reacquainted herself with the piano. She relished the piano's physical feedback, as well as its capacity to express emotion and lightness. And when the legendary Ina-CRM Studios in Paris invited her to take up a residency the following year in 2021, she spared no time to dub, stretch and manipulate some of the simple piano sketches she'd recorded over the prior months; these subtle piano recordings and electronic manipulations would go on to become the heart of Atlas. In the remainder of 2021 and 2022, with time spent between Berlin and London, Halo recorded additional guitar, violin and vibraphone, as well as acoustic instrumentation from friends and collaborators including saxophonist Bendik Giske, violinist James Underwood, cellist Lucy Railton and vocalist Coby Sey. All of these sounds were shaped, melted, and re-composed into the arrangements, their acoustic origins rendered uncanny.

In short, Atlas is road trip music for the subconscious. With repeated listens, it is a record that can leave a deep sensorial impression on the listener, akin to walking at dusk in a dark forest. Its humor and sharp focus would dispel any notions of sentimentality. Completely distinct from the rest of Halo's catalog, Atlas is an album that thrives in the quietest places, rejecting bombast and embracing awe. Fitting that it's the debut release on her new recording label, whose slogan parallels the mood and atmosphere of the album: Awe is something you feel when confronted with forces beyond your control: nature, the cosmos, chaos, human error, hallucinations.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Abandon
A2 Naked To The Light
A3 Late Night Drive
A4 Sick Eros
A5 Belleville

B1 Sweat, Tears Or The Sea
B2 Atlas
B3 Reading The Air
B4 You Burn Me
B5 Earthbound

Gleefully jumping between late 80s synth-pop, the new boogie sounds purveyed by Gulf Point and People’s Potential Unlimited, with touches of insouciant Francophone pop and modern indie-dance, “Private Sunshine” bursts into our headspace this Autumn.

The London native first made her mark professionally as keyboardist for New Young Pony Club, one of THE bands at the epicentre of the white hot day-glo nu rave scene alongside the likes of the Klaxons and Test Icicles in 20060. This particular offering is much more indebted to Hayter's adolescent diet of Bowie, Prince, Human League and Madonna whilst hanging loose with a plethora of modern day contemporaries (listed below).

Full to bursting with evocative electro-soul love letters to her home town of London, alongside addictive bubblegum flavoured bursts of indie-disco. It’s like Kylie meeting Mr Fingers or Tom Nobel producing Peggy Gou – something beautiful and melancholic yet sharply modern and new.

From the warm, woozy, lysergic harmonies of opener “Cherry on Top”, which sound like a beloved old cassette unravelling, to the fizzy, infectious “Cold Feet”, which calls to mind Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam at their most heartworn, taken in toto the album perfectly nails the essence of gorgeously nostalgic synth-pop with a twist; crisp, stylish and sophisticated music which heralds the next chapter of Lou Hayter quite nicely, actually. Her retro-futuristic results will give 2021 the pop fix it so desperately needs and if you're looking for stuff that'll coexist happily alongside Silver Linings, The Orielles, Lonelady & Crazy P on your next mixtape, then this is the surely the ticket. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Lou Hayter's "Private Sunshine" thankfully arrives just in the nick of time, preventing Crazy P from getting a restraining order out on me for over-obsession and repeat listening. If you like pop-flecked & electronic indie-boogie-disco laced with sweeteners and dressed to impress – this is for you!

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Cherry On Top (3:19)
2. Telephone (4:22)
3. My Baby Just Cares For Me (4:56)
4. Time Out Of Mind (3:37)
5. Private Sunshine (4:04)
Side 2
1. Cold Feet (3:35)
2. What's A Girl To Do? (4:10)
3. Still Dreaming (4:27)
4. This City (3:54)
5. Pinball (3:35)

Phoenix, Arizona 1955…a twenty-five year old disc jockey and fledgling songwriter, Lee Hazlewood, is trying to break into the music industry. He takes Greyhound bus trips to Los Angeles to pitch songs, only to be rejected each time. Undeterred, Lee starts a record label called Viv Records. Running the label out of his house, Lee finds the artists, writes the songs, produces the sessions, arranges the pressings of the records and handles distribution. Recently discovered tapes in the Viv Records archive yielded an unbelievable find, the earliest known recordings of Hazlewood singing his songs…Lee’s first demo! The mysterious and bountiful tapes featured Lee singing early unheard compositions and a complete first draft of his Trouble Is A Lonesome Town song cycle that would become his first official solo album in 1963.

Light in the Attic Records is proud to continue it’s Lee Hazlewood archival series with 400 Miles From L.A. 1955-56, a collection of previously unknown intimate recordings, never intended for release. Lee sings, plays guitar and even presses the record button on the tape machine. These are rural sketches and small town dreams, captured in an innocent time before the path ahead was clear.

These songs rewrite Lee’s recorded history, adding a new first chapter to his saga. For Hazlewood addicts, hearing these early tracks and the embryonic version of Trouble Is A Lonesome Town is akin to finding an early draft of the Old Testament.

“That’s beauty of Lee’s songwriting. It lives on. People will hear it for the first time, even though it’s fifty years old or whatever, if it’s good enough and strong enough, they’ll accept and like it as much as if it was just created. That’s the wonderful legacy that Lee has. It’s wonderful to look back and make all this early work available. To put “Boots” and all those other LHI songs into perspective. That it all started somewhere and this is where.” – Arizona Music Historian and record producer, John Dixon.

TRACK LISTING

Cross Country Bus
The Woman I Love
Five Thousand And One
Lonesome Day
A Lady Called Blues
Five More Miles To Folsom
Fort Worth
The Old Man And His Guitar
Peculiar Guy
Long Black Train
I Guess It’s Love
It’s An Actuality
Buying On Time
The Country Bus Tune
Long Black Train
Run Boy Run
Big Joe Slade
Son Of A Gun
Georgia Chain Gang
Look At That Woman
Peculiar Guy
The Railroad Song
Six Feet Of Chain
Trouble Is A Lonesome Town

By the end of the 1960s Lee Hazlewood’s LHI Records had burned piles of cash, gone through a half dozen distributors and failed to achieve the kind of chart success “Boots” had promised. Fortunately for Lee there was a land where he was still on the top of the charts, a place where women flowed like Brännvin...Sweden was calling.

Released as the last LHI LP, Cowboy in Sweden was a soundtrack to the 1970 cult classic film of the same name starring Lee Hazlewood. The film was a surreal psychedelic account of Lee’s journey to his new homeland, while the soundtrack was a perfect compilation of Hazlewood’s orchestral melancholy country pop songs. Recorded over a prolific globe trotting three year period, Lee’s peak on LHI records was ironically the label’s swan song.

TRACK LISTING

Pray Them Bars Away (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Leather And Lace (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood _ Nina Lizell
Forget Marie (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Cold Hard Times (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
The Night Before (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Hey Cowboy (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood _ Nina Lizell
No Train To Stockholm (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
For A Day Like Today (24 Bit)-suzi Jane Hokom
Easy And Me (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
What's More I Don't Need Her (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Vem Kan Segla (i Can Sail Without The Wind) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood _ Nina Lizell
Me And The Wine And The City Lights (session Outtake) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
First Street Blues (session Outtake) (24 Bit)-suzi Jane Hokom
Pray Them Bars Away (alternate Version) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Easy And Me (alternate Version) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
For A Day Like Today (take 1) (24 Bit)-suzi Jane Hokom
First Street Blues (take 1) (24 Bit)-suzi Jane Hokom
Leather And Lace (alternate Vocal Mix) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood _ Nina Lizell
The Night Before (mono Single Mix) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
What's More I Don't Need Her (instrumental) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Pray Them Bars Away (take 7 Instrumental) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Easy And Me (take 5 Instrumental) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Cold Hard Times (take 4 Instrumental) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
No Train To Stockholm (instrumental) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Me And The Wine And The City Lights (instrumental) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood
Hey Cowboy (instrumental) (24 Bit)-lee Hazlewood

With his handlebar mustache and booming baritone, Lee Hazlewood was one of the defining stars of the late ‘60s. Though he’s perhaps best known for his work with Nancy Sinatra (including writing mega-hit “These Boots Are Made For Walking”), Hazlewood did stunning work away from that particular glamour queen and found latter-day champions in Beck, Sonic Youth, and Jarvis Cocker. Now, for Record Store Day 2012, we are kicking off our excavation of the Lee Hazlewood archives with this anthology, Singles, Nudes & Backsides, collecting the best of Lee’s solo songs and duets from his LHI (Lee Hazlewood Industries) imprint.

As a true legend of the great American songbook and a rebellious pioneer who left behind a lengthy trail of echo-laden pop masterpieces, Lee’s influence continues to reverberate today. Between 1968-71, Hazlewood not only released his finest solo work but produced numerous artists on LHI. From acid-folk and country-rock to pop-psych and soul, LHI issued dozens of long-forgotten 45s and LPs. This series will include material from LHI (re-mastered for the first time from the original analog tapes), along with Lee’s output for other labels, rarities, and unreleased gems.

See the sleeve: surrounded by nude girls, each wearing a fake mustache, Hazlewood wears a suit, ever-so-slightly awkwardly playing the role of the ‘60s playboy. Just like the picture, the songs present a man conflicted; he’s the tender-hearted romantic, the broken-hearted loser and the rugged cowboy, all in one. It’s there in the western swing of “Califia (Stone Rider)”, the loneliness of ”The Bed” and the bleak beauty of ”If It’s Monday Morning.” Hazlewood’s tremulous voice was made for duets (indeed, he wrote ”Some Velvet Morning”, one of the greatest of all time); here, Suzi Jane Hokom, Ann-Margret and Nina Lizell play counterpart to his manly tones.

In the wonderful liner notes, written by British journalist Wyndham Wallace, the writer describes his friend Hazlewood as “a curmudgeonly, unpredictable sort at the best of times, as impatient with his own talent as he is with other people.” The Hazlewood Wallace knew was puzzled by the growing interest in him in the last two decades of his life, which was ended by cancer at age 78. That late flurry of interest saw him perform at the Royal Festival Hall in 1999, his first-ever solo performance in the UK.

A natural wanderer, Lee lived a big life, fighting in the Korean War, working as a radio DJ in Phoenix, Arizona, setting up Viv Records in the ‘50s, working as a big-shot LA producer in the ‘60s, signing Phil Spector to his Trey Records label and prematurely announcing retirement in the wake of the mid-‘60s British invasion. He didn’t: Nancy Sinatra came along, the hits started flowing and he continued producing characterful solo albums into the ‘70s, which saw his move to Sweden. By 2007, Hazlewood was living in Vegas, and begrudgingly enjoying that flurry of latter-day interest in his work. This landmark compilation promises to create many more converts.

TRACK LISTING

1. Califia (Stone Rider) - Featuring Suzi Jane Hokom
2. The Bed
3. Sleep In The Grass - Featuring Ann-Margret
4. Leather And Lace - Featuring Nina Lizell
5. If It's Monday Morning
6. The Night Before
7. Bye Babe
8. Victims Of The Night - Featuring Ann-Margret
9. Chico - Featuring Ann-Margret
10. Hey Cowboy - Featuring Nina Lizell
11. No Train To Stockholm
12. Won't You Tell Your Dreams
13. Nobody Like You - Featuring Suzi Jane Hokom
14. Trouble Maker
15. What's More I Don't Need Her
16. Come On Home To Me
17. I Just Learned To Run

The mid-to-late '60s were strange days for Lee Hazlewood. Having struck gold as songwriter and vocal foil for Nancy Sinatra, he signed up to MGM as an artist in his own right, and between 1966 and 1968, produced three ambitious solo albums that were eclectic, idiosyncratic, and most of all, unpredictable.

It was a happy time for Lee; his music was hot on the charts, he was fully immersed in his collaboration with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom.

The second of his MGM trilogy - 1967's peculiarly named Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure - took on countrified French ye-ye (“The Girls In Paris”), a tale of a young bullfighter built on Spanish guitar and choral cowboys (“Jose”), a string-drenched song about the passing of time (“The Old Man And His Guitar”), and a western epic about a Native American tribe (“The Nights”). And that was just the first four tracks. Elsewhere, the honky tonk madness of “Suzi Jane Is Back In Town,” the Byrds-like jangle of “In Our Time” and–in the bonus tracks–an instrumental named “Batman” confirm this to be one of Hazlewood's most far-ranging, far-out LPs ever.

It’s the result of two main factors: ambition–to top Phil Spector, primarily–and cash, which paid for orchestras, plush studios, and the inestimable talents of arranger Billy Strange. “I think the big sound of those records came out of the Spector thing,” says Hokom, in the new liner notes. “If you can have a big sound and you have money to burn… it was a flamboyancy.”

Released before the Nancy & Lee LP–a bona fide hit for Reprise Records–Hazlewoodism was a tougher nut to crack, a record that confused by combining po-faced delivery with unabashed comical touches. By 1967, Hazlewood had founded the LHI imprint, and was busy building his own empire–one we've been lovingly archiving for the past few years. We now present this missing link in the story, plus predecessor, The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood and follow-up, Something Special. Welcome to Hazlewood's magnificent–and mad–MGM years.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Girls In Paris
2. Jose
3. The Old Man And His Guitar
4. The Nights
5. I Am A Part
6. Home (I'm Home)
7. After Six
8. Suzi Jane Is Back In Town
9. In Our Time
10. Dark In My Heart
11. Lee Hazlewood's Woodchucks Frenesi*
12. Lee Hazlewood's Woodchucks Muchacho*
13. Lee Hazlewood's Woodchucks Batman*
* Bonus Track

Re-issue of two limited release tracks from Larry Heard's "Love Arrival" album sessions. Great edit by J.A.N. (aka Moodymann / KDJ) and the last missing piece from the sessions: "Time Machine", a bass driven soulfull stomper that'll transport you to an early 90's dancefloor...

Originally released as a one-sided 12" on Track Mode. These have been out of press since around 2001, and are excellent examples of the dizzy heights achived by both producers. An stunning and essential record for any deep house heads. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Been a while since we've had this in the shop (so long infact that some of our younger customers might not be aware of it). The golden pairing of Larry Heard and Moodymann... say no more!

TRACK LISTING

1. Another Night - KDJ Edit
2. Time Machine

Re-issue of this essential Larry Heard album from the early 2000's. Presented in a DJ friendly, triple vinyl package and adding some of the favorites from CD release like "Deja Vu" and "Missing you (Jazz Cafe Mix)" to the vinyl package. There's a bonus track too - "Luminous Energy" from the same sessions but previously unreleased. 

For newcomers: prepare to be swept away on a bliss cloud of deep house pleasure. A dazzling array of instrumentation (and Larry's own vocals), creating a rich and luxureous sound thats fathoms apart from the souless, dial-a-preset version of bastardized EDM-house that, ironically, became the go-to for much of the American public. We were always a bit more discerning over here, which is why this album became such a cult-collected classic - often fetching up to £100 2nd hand. Every house lover needs a copy of this in their collection - don't miss out this time round! 

TRACK LISTING

01 Praise
02 Riverside Drive
03 Deja Vu
04 Dew Drops
05 Another Night
06 When I Think Of You
07 To Try
08 Loves Arrival Dub
09 Missing You (jazz Cafe Mix)
10 Havana
11 Until The Last Goodbye
12 Direct Drive
13 Luminous Energy

Super exciting to get some unreleased, archive Larry Heard tracks via his long running imprint Alleviated. His name is synonymous with quality deep house productions, possessing a musicality and elegance that's miles ahead of many modern producers. 

Cushion soft deepness, with warm basses, weaving melodies, fluttering conga lines and crisp top end characterize much of the producer's catalogue. These four tracks are no exception, effortlessly rolling off the studio desk rich in texture and human touch. There's two remixes which are pulled off with charm and sympathy to Larry's original vibe. All in all a killer package for deep house heads around the world!  

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Never before heard magic from the deep house demigod, making you wonder what else he's got locked away in the closet.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Time Is Now (Old School Mix)
2. Premonition Of Lost Love (Jordan Kevin's Zanzibar Dub)
3. Andromeda One
4. Mystery Of Love (DJ Mel's Regentryfication)

Monday 20th September 1976 saw one of the most unexpected moments in music history when what was to become one of the most iconic, important and mimicked bands of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s took to the stage at The 100 Club in Oxford Street, London. A last-minute addition to the '100 Club Punk Special' that included The Clash, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and The Damned, an unknown Siouxsie and The Banshees, comprising Sid Vicious, Steve Severin, Marco Pirroni and Siouxsie Sioux, unleashed twenty minutes of 'performance art' improvisation, featuring fragments of 'Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles', 'Twist And Shout' and 'Satisfaction'. 'The Lord's Prayer', which was to become a staple of Siouxsie and The Banshees' early live repertoire, was a white-noise assault on the senses and a barometer of the alienation many teenagers felt from the bloated nature of mid-1970s 'arena rock'.

Several line-up changes later, in 1978, Siouxise and The Banshees were propelled into the pop stratosphere. Signed to a major record label, the band released 'Hong Kong Garden' and wrote one of the most influential post-punk albums of all time, The Scream, a savage critique of curtain-twitching suburbia, the cheap titillation of the tabloids, and the dangers of believing and following any one doctrine. 1979's Join Hands, influenced by the political landscape in Britain and further afield, and the catastrophic loss of life in World War One, was a milestone of the band's increasing maturity, from the adrenaline-fuelled stomp of 'Icon' to the phased guitar, saxophone and bells of 'Playground Twist'.

After a tour fraught with fractiousness, a new line up with Slits' drummer Budgie and Magazine guitarist John McGeogh, together with Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin, released the band's most experimental album, Kaleidoscope, which was a heady mix of psychedelia and sonorous adventures including the singles 'Happy House' and 'Christine'. Siouxsie and The Banshees The Early Years explores the adventures, trials and tribulations of a band defying categorisation. Their uncompromising brilliance is exemplified by three unique albums, which are chronicled in the pages of this authoritative survey.

Recorded in the past 25 years in different parts of the world, "Encyclopedia Sónica Vol. 1" compiles the music and sounds of Leo Heiblum. Comes with insert.

Since Leo Heiblum was a little boy, he always found music everywhere. Listening to the engine of his mother's car and hearing incredible rhythms. He always thought every sound we hear can be made into music, every sound that we hear can be heard as music and it can be felt and understood as music. Every sound has an attack, a decay; some have a pitch. What is more beautiful, the sound of a flute, a bird, a trumpet, a car horn, a violin or a mosquito buzzing? They can all be used to make music.

Leo Heiblum believes that If we learn to hear all sounds as musical or at least to have the potential to be used to make music, we might look at the world and listen to the world more lovingly. That car passing by had a beautiful crescendo. That dog barking in the distance created a fantastic melody with an impossible-to- transcribe rhythm. Is there no creative intention behind those sounds? Can the listener give them an intention, can the listener transform them into art? Leo Heiblum is trying to organise them and use them in a way that will be musical for us. He hopes that the next time we hear an ocean wave breaking a bond, fire crackling, or a fly flying, we can enjoy the notes and the rhythms they are making. They are being created by something; who knows what the intention is, but some of the most unique beats he's heard come from rocks falling in cenotes or ice breaking down in a glacier. And the melodies he's heard from bats, dogs fighting, or a newborn dog are both haunting and beautiful. The timber from sounds such as the thorn of a cactus, the voice of a homeless person in the street or a mosquito buzzing can be used to create instruments as beautiful as any instrument. And they have a new sound or a familiar old sound used differently. A way that invites us to hear the music created by this planet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Childlike, naïve, beguiling, but above all BATSHIT CRAZY. Completely singular found-sound madness from Heiblum which despite it's eccentricity, maintains a degree of mellifluousness and intrigue that should keep any modest sonic explorer hooked till the end.

TRACK LISTING

The Monk And The Elephant
Chis Chis
Las Pelotas De Riesman
Kasol
Tanganazo
Shamani En El Metro De Mazunte
1
Velorio
Bebe Y Monos
Oakland C
Church And Branch
Chacarera

Lande Hekt’s natural state of being is in the writing of a song. Having crafted politically aware, heart-on-sleeve, punchy yet tender, punk-flecked songs with her band Muncie Girls, Lande turned her hand to an even more personal songwriting approach as she embarked on writing a solo record - 2021’s ‘Going to Hell’. The debut full-length documented her experience coming out as gay. It set out her stall as a solo artist with supreme storytelling abilities and a knack for understatedly luminous melodies. Lande’s music sits beautifully alongside such essential artists as The Wedding Present, The Sundays, The Replacements, Sleeper and Sharon Van Etten

With her debut album barely a year old, 2022 sees Lande armed with a whole new collection of song-form vignettes and musings on her life and experiences. Kicking off where the last record left off, the opening track of new album ‘House Without a View’ is ‘Half With You’ which “is about growing into yourself as a queer person, and enjoying who you are after not enjoying it for so long,” says Lande. ‘Cut My Hair’ is about how her relationship with her gender has changed over the last few years, becoming more comfortable in herself and understanding more about what makes her happy. “It’s also about how easy it is to not talk to people when you’re struggling, which is something I did for a long time,” admits Lande.

The title track of ‘House Without a View’ deals with childhood trauma and how events of our formative years “affect us so much into our adult lives and are intrinsic to our personalities and the way we cope (or don’t) with life and relationships,” says Lande. Although there’s darkness and sadness within the record, there’s also some shining beacons of positivity and a light-hearted side, albeit with a side of frustration. ‘Lola’ was written about Lande’s cat shortly after she came to live with her and her girlfriend. “She’s the first pet I’ve ever had and I wasn’t quite ready for how hard it would be to not be able to verbally communicate with her. I worried constantly that she was depressed because all she did was sleep, but my girlfriend assured me that that was regular cat behaviour.”

TRACK LISTING

Half With You
Backstreet Snow
Cut My Hair
Gay Space Cadets
Always Hurt
House Without A View
Ground Shaking
What Could I Sell
Lola
Take A Break
First Girlfriend

Isle Of Wight’s resident slacker pop queen. Lauran Hibberd’s rise towards the forefront of the emerging indie elite shows no signs of slowing, with her charismatic, tongue-in-cheek songwriting already attracting widespread press attention (The Guardian, NME, The Line Of Best Fit, Dork, DIY, Billboard, NYLON, Clash, Gigwise, Upset), and significant praise across BBC Radio 1 airwaves (Clara Amfo, Jack Saunders, Jordan North). With her eagerly anticipated debut album on the way later this year, and tour dates galore lined up, the indie sensation is primed for a thrilling twelve months.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rollercoaster
2. Still Running (5K)
3. Step Mum
4. Average Joe
5. Hot Boys
6. That Was A Joke
7. Get Some
8. Garageband Superstar
9. Hole In The Head
10. I'm Insecure
11. Slimming Down
12. Last Song Ever

The expansive American experience Lonnie Holley quilts together across his astounding new album, "MITH", is both multitudinous and finely detailed. Holley’s self-taught piano improvisations and stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach have only gained purpose and power since he introduced the musical side of his art in 2012 with "Just Before Music", followed by 2013’s "Keeping a Record of It". But whereas his previous material seemed to dwell in the Eternal-Internal, "MITH" lives very much in our world - the one of concrete and tears; of dirt and blood; of injustice and hope.

Across these songs, in an impressionistic poetry all his own, Holley touches on Black Lives Matter (“I’m a Suspect”), Standing Rock (“Copying the Rock”) and contemporary American politics (“I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America”). A storyteller of the highest order, he commands a personal and universal mythology in his songs of which few songwriters are capable — names like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joanna Newsom and Gil Scott-Heron come to mind.

Mith was recorded over five years in locations such as Porto, Portugal; Cottage Grove, Oregon; New York City and Holley’s adopted hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. These 10 songs feature contributions from fellow cosmic musician Laraaji, jazz duo Nelson Patton, visionary producer Richard Swift, saxophonist Sam Gendel and producer/musician Shahzad Ismaily.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Sonic outlier and soul outsider Lonnie Holley returns with a third LP, this time turning his attention from internal struggles to the chaos and discord of American politics and society. As his expressive vocals touch on 'The Wall', Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter and that wotsit-looking chap in the hair piece, the twisted electronic soul instrumentation twists and turns through distortion, fx abuse and feedback, emphasising the sense of disorientation most of us feel right now.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. I’m A Suspect
2. Back For Me
3. How Far Is Spaced-Out?

SIDE B:
4. I Snuck Off The Slave Ship

SIDE C:
5. I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America
6. Copying The Rock
7. Coming Back (From The Distance

SIDE D:
8. There Was Always Water
9. Down In The Ghostness Of Darkness
10. Sometimes I Wanna Dance

This 5-song collaboration between artist Lonnie Holley and the late visionary producer Richard Swift is a tribute to urgent, raw, American art - from Howlin’ Wolf to Captain Beefheart, from Cecil Taylor to Bo Diddley. The songs pulse with anger, hope, energy and a bit of swagger. You can hear sweat and tears through the speaker. Swift left us two years ago today but his spirit buzzes through these songs. During a West Coast tour with Deerhunter in late summer 2013, Holley was put in touch with Swift by a friend who suggested using a day off on tour to record at Swift’s National Freedom Studio in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Now rather legendary, Swift was in a breakout moment as a producer having recently worked with artists like The Shins, Foxygen and Damien Jurado. Holley’s essential debut album, Just Before Music, had come out the year prior.

The cosmic connection between Holley and Swift was immediate. They put down five songs in their day together: all conjured in the studio and one-of-a-kind. At the end of that day in 2013, Swift - always up until the wee hours - made a late-night call to the friend who had set up the session. He was effusive about the experience - thrilled to have found a kindred spirit in Lonnie Holley and thankful to spend a day crafting unclassifiable, extemporaneous and soulful music.

TRACK LISTING

Crystal Doorknob
In It Too Deep
Like Hell Broke Away
Do T Rocker
So Many Rivers (The First Time)

‘Oh Me Oh My’ is both elegant and ferocious. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. Lonnie Holley’s harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point — his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But Holley’s music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope. Intricately and lovingly produced by LA’s Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), there is both kinetic, shortwave funk that call to mind Brian Eno’s ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ and the deep space satellite sounds of Eno’s ambient works. But it’s a tremendous achievement in sonics all its own.

It’s also an achievement in the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. On the title track which deals with mutual human understanding”, Holley is able to make a profound point as ever in far fewer phrases: “The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me’s and understand the oh-my’s.” Illustrious collaborators like Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Etten, Moor Mother and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver serve as not only as choirs of angels and co-pilots to give Lonnie’s message flight but as proof of Lonnie Holley as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force across the music community

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Testing
2. I Am A Part Of The Wonder
3. Oh Me Oh My
4. Earth Will Be There
5. Mount Meigs
SIDE B:
6. Better Get That Crop In Soon
7. Kindness Will Follow Your Tears
8. None Of Us Have But A Little While
9. If We Get Lost They Will Find Us
10. I Can’t Hush
11. Future Children

Next up on the new Dolly TS series is German producer Lars Huismann, know for his strikingly atmospheric, percussive, groove driven techno sound. "Fractured Realities" is an ultra melodic, highly frenetic, 4 track slammer that hits the nail on the head. Straight up dancefloor heaters for the techno heads!

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: High octane shirt-lifters that sound like your strapped into one of the plasma powered hovercars off F Zero X. Avoid if prone to heart palpitations or sonically induced panic attacks.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dystopia
2. Split
3. Cope
4. See You Soon

Luke Hirst is a 17 year old songwriter hailing from his hometown of Bradford. Influenced by the likes of Elliot Smith , Alfie & Muse, Lukes aim is simple, write great songs and take them onto the live circuit. "Rock'n'Roll Begins At Home" is Luke's first release after his debut single "Changing Lanes" was released on Heliotone Records in December 2004. US Indie Magazine 'Losing Today' reviewed the single and had this to say 'I couldn't honestly recommend a better way to spend quarter of an hour of my life other than in the company of this EP... A star in the making, don't rule against it.' And this EP is equally as good. Three beautifully crafted, dramatic pop songs.

Acid Jazz pull a blinder here, delivering the definitive Leroy Hutson compilation – ‘Anthology 1972-1984’. A legend to soul fans, his catalogue has been increasingly sought after by collectors and producers since the last time it was widely available nearly 20 years ago. College friends and early collaborator with Donny Hathaway then hand-picked as Curtis Mayfield’s replacement in The Impressions, his solo career resulted in 7 albums for Mayfield’s Curtom label. They are considered some of the greatest of the era and the very best music from them is collected here. Licensed from Mr Hutson himself, this represents his first approved Anthology, and comes in a beautiful package with an essay by soul expert and Mojo award-winning writer Tony Rounce and memorabilia and photos from Mr. Hutson’s own personal archive. The first single lifted to preview the album – the previously unreleased ‘Positive Forces’ has been championed at 6Music by Gilles Peterson who described it as one of the most important discoveries of the past ten years.

TRACK LISTING

Cool Out
All Because Of You
Don’t It Make You Feel Good
Love The Feeling
Positive Forces
Lucky Fellow
Never Know What You Can Do (Give It A Try)
Love Oh Love
Ella Weez
Could This Be Love
So In Love With You
I Think I’m Falling In Love
Closer To The Source
Give This Love A Try
Right Or Wrong
Now That I Found You
Get To This (You’ll Get To Me)
Lover’s Holiday
Time Brings On A Change

Deluxe reissue of Leroy Hutson’s 1976 album ‘Feel The Spirit’ featuring for the only time the Free Spirit Symphony. Released in the same year as the famous ‘Hutson II’, ‘Feel The Spirit’ includes popular tracks such as ‘Never Know What You Can Do (Give It A Try)’ and ‘Lover’s Holiday’. Feel The Spirit is filled with energetic funky sounds, Hutson is the funk king and this reissue delivers all those amazing tracks we know and love.

TRACK LISTING

It’s The Music
Let’s Be Lonely Together
Never Know What You Can Do (Give It A Try)
A Lover’s Holiday
Feel The Spirit (‘76)
Don’t Let It Get Next To You
Butterfat
Feel The Spirit (‘76) Single Edit *

* = CD Only Track

Hutson, long revered on the soul scene for his production, songwriting and performace skills, was Curtis Mayfield’s heir apparent. First chosen by the great man to replace him in the Impressions, and then groomed for an extensive solo career on Curtis' own label, Curtom, Hutson was the real deal. The Hutson catalogue has not been available on any format for nearly two decades, so it's excellent news that Acid Jazz have begun a full scale reissue series in partnership with Leroy himself.
Here we have a deluxe reissue of ‘Hutson II’. Often seen as a partner to the early ‘Hutson’, this is a highly sort after album and a high point of 1970s Chicago soul. Recorded at Curtom Studios, it features the all time classics ‘I Think I’m Falling In Love’, ‘Love The Feeling’ and ‘Don’t It Make You Feel Good’.

TRACK LISTING

Love The Feeling
Situations (Instrumentals)
I Do I Do (Want To Make Love To You
I Think I’m Falling In Love
Love To Hold You Close
Flying High
Blackberry Jam
Sofunkstication
Don’t It Make You Feel Good
Positive Forces
Blackberry Jam (Single Edit)

"Ices" is a celebration of flight, levity, and the conviction that you can leave earth. You take wing in an airplane, you go to real places when you dream, you have out-of-body experiences, you get high, you lose yourself in someone else.

When we started work on these songs, I was beginning a gradual move to California, constantly traveling back and forth from New York. I was experimenting. I was falling in love. Our studio in the Hudson Valley was full of electronics and computers and the sounds of future ships sailing through the vastness of space, and I sometimes forgot where I was. The first songs we wrote were called "flying 1", then "flying 2", and so on, which eventually evolved into songs on the album. Flight became a metaphor for the ignition of the imagination. The process created a lightness in me, a freedom and positive energy that I¹d never before felt or explored.

This recording session became a two year music and spiritual retreat with my psychic twin brother, Eliot. A private journey during which we abandoned old habits and familiar sounds. We got really geeky and experimented in our studio. We obsessed over sympathetic magic, "Ancient Aliens", and the NBA. We allowed everything we loved to find its way in: Persian percussion, hip-hop beats, lo-fi, hi-fi, Pakistani pop, Link Wray, Jason Pierce, gospel, dub. We developed new systems; we worked with synthesis, software, and samples; we became producers. The Hudson Valley was home base, but I wanted to keep flying. I wrote songs in California, recorded vocals in Atlanta, and worked with Clams Casino in Brooklyn.

For the first time, Lia Ices felt like an inclusive project with its own identity, not just a name.

"Ices" as a whole is devoted to these certainties. While we have evolved, we are still animals. We respond to planets, patterns, and cycles. We require the sounds of our origins. We live in the future but stay bound to the primitive and primordial. We will always want tribe, we will always want rhythm, we will always need music to guide us into our deepest sense of what it means to be human. So we hear sounds from all over the planet in this album. We devour so much music, and with this album we allowed ourselves to claim bits from all of it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tell Me
2. Thousand Eyes
3. Higher
4. Love Ices Over
5. Magick
6. Electric Arc
7. Sweet As Ice
8. Creature
9. How We Are
10. Waves

J & M Music Co US welcomes LeBaron James for another standout four-tracker that brings raw house and smooth disco together on one EP. Up first is 'Always Be True', a deceptively simple sound that brings straight-up dancefloor beats with hooky pads. 'House Party' then has more heavy kicks and wild percussive patterns to liven up any party and 'One' then brings a more cool and laid-back disco groove that has a slick modern twist. Last but not least is 'Sugar And Spice' which brings a touch of sophisticated and chic instrumental vibes. It's a fourth different sound on a versatile EP.

TRACK LISTING

Always Be True
One
House Party
Sugar & Spice

"A Louder Silence" is the London-based producer and multi-instrumentalist’s first proper release; his two earlier singles feature on the record, after gaining support from Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM with a live airing and interview in 2017, plus continued backing from XLR8R, Stamp the Wax, and BBC Radio 6 Music DJ’s.

The album is both spacious and thought-provoking, energetic yet restrained, brimming with nuanced electronic instrumentals, dubby synths, and jazz breaks - creating an array of rich textures, complemented occasionally by James’ own soulful vocals.

While James’ early unreleased work was singularly electronic, "A Louder Silence" focuses on analog synths and warm acoustic instruments, all played by his own hand. It’s the product of a two-year spell in James’ home studio, with additional live drums recorded with Jim Macrae at London’s Old Paradise Audio.

James’ rich musical influences are laced through the release. Encouraged by his mother, a classically trained pianist, he learned to play the cello and developed a deep understanding of rhythm and melody that informs his approach to writing electronic music. James plays the piano he grew up listening to in “Mumma Don’t Tell” and samples an indefinable percussive element to drive forward “Suns Of Gold.” “Night and Day” sees cello plucks and long melodic strokes interlink with a grooving synth line. He also field records the atmospheric Moroccan sea in “Red Sea.” Inspiration stems from the experimentation of modern day electronic producers, fused with the Jazz, Classical, Blues, and Soul music that soundtracked his youth.

Central to the album is the idea of space. James recalls the early advice of his uncle, a jazz guitarist, who features on “Uncle Blue”:'I remember him saying to me: 'What goes in comes out' James says. 'Every detail should be a worthy detail; sometimes nothing is better than something.' Moments of blissful, structured intensity are juxtaposed with stillness and near silence -dark and light; loud and quiet. This also forms the foundation for the album title: "A Louder Silence" reflects the dichotomy of finding pockets of stillness in a noisy world.

TRACK LISTING

1. Alpine
2. Time
3. Suns Of Gold
4. Argonaut
5. Mumma Don’t Tell
6. Uncle Blue
7. Night And Day
8. Salaninam
9. Red Sea
10. Osho

Driving, melancholic electronica, ‘Wise Old Man’ is a nod to what can be expected of James’ second album, Angel In Disguise, showcasing a more experimental side to his production. Traversing through musicality, progressive synths and introspection, this first single unveils the producer’s distinct sound with disorientated vocals; speaking of the interplay between reason and emotion, the lyrics repeat “Wise old man in my brain, soul bursting through my veins”, opening the gates to this captivating electronically steered opus.

This news comes after an incredible few years for the artist. 2018 saw James release his esteemed debut album A Louder Silence on Night Time Stories and follow up remix EP that championed upcoming electronic talent including Bruce, FaltyDL and Whities producer, Coby Sey, on rework duties; projects which captured the attention of key tastemakers including Resident Advisor, Pitchfork, Mixmag, Electronic Sound and Future Music UK.

An aesthetically driven artist dedicated to marrying powerful visual backdrops with sonic explorations, James teamed up with Hungarian director, Balázs Simon; producing the critically acclaimed, ‘Wurlitzer’ project which saw widespread support from the likes of Boiler Room, CLASH, Directors’ Notes, Motionographer, the UK and Berlin Music Video Awards, the London Short Film Festival, Dublin International Film Festival and more.

Angel In Disguise promises to explore the themes of love and loss through a masterful blend of harmonic vocals from James himself, nuanced electronic soundscapes and vibrant percussion - punctuated by bespoke visuals, directed by Balázs Simon. This exciting project is expected to make waves and see James step up, exhibiting his discerning ear and painstakingly honed production craft on a seminal label.

TRACK LISTING

1. Circles
2. Black Lens
3. I Ran With You
4. Wise Old Man
5. Angel In Disguise
6. Ritual
7. Alien (feat. Coby Sey)
8. Strange With You
9. Rebel

Celebrated UK producer Loraine James joins Phantom Limb for breathtaking homage to vital NYC composer Julius Eastman, reinterpreting, reimagining and responding to key works for a brand new album.

In 1990, the composer Julius Eastman quietly passed away, out of the spotlight, a young man. By his death substance-addicted, homeless and broke, he was unforgivably overlooked in his lifetime. Still, the legacy of creative work he leaves is far more befitting to celebration than destitution. Only a portion of his music remains - a deeply regrettable sidenote to an already heartbreaking story - but this work represents a glorious and beautifully hued depiction of a composer totally in step with any modern great we could name.

Phantom Limb are long-term fans of both Eastman and Loraine James. Using their rare, fortuitous connection with Julius’ surviving brother Gerry, the label began this new project in summer 2021, hoping to continue the current tide of efforts to reinstate Eastman’s rightful place in 20th-century composition. Loraine was offered a zip drive of Eastman originals (courtesy of Gerry Eastman), Renee Levine-Packer & Mary Jane Leach’s illuminating biography Gay Guerilla (University of Rochester Press, 2015), and transcribed MIDI stems (courtesy of Phantom Limb A&R James Vella), and the resulting album Building Something Beautiful For Me carries the Eastman torch with finesse and sensitivity. Loraine employs samples, melodic motifs, themes and imagery, and inspiration from Eastman’s canon, slicing, editing, pulling apart and playing samples like instruments to craft a stunning album that venerates Eastman’s genius while adhering to her own.

Speaking in similar tongues as young, gay, Black, independent creatives in a challenging environment, the two musicians are bound closely together, despite a six-year gap between their lives ever intersecting. James includes the original Eastman title in many of her tracks, appending the source material in parentheses to mark the lineage of the work - a clear, traceable thread from the heavenly to the sublime.

Album opener “Maybe If I” riffs on Eastman staple Stay On It. Its arrestingly pretty central melody is reshaped into a living, undulating canvas on which James’ IDM-inspired beat production flickers and swirls. A repeated vocal line pulls Eastman’s towering work of modern minimalism towards reclassification as a “song”. Next follows “The Perception of Me (Crazy N–)”, channelling Eastman’s righteous anger and knowing reclamation of the brutally charged N-word into a quasi-ambient exploration of Eastman piano samples set to skittering beats. Elsewhere, opening side B, “Enfield, Always” acts as a creative response to our past master. While Eastman purposefully, slyly intermingled Uptown NY’s stuffy professionalism with Downtown’s loose fervour, Loraine is a London artist, bound into her locale with the same honour and justified sentimentality as Eastman was with his. And like Eastman, the track’s heady percussion and ecstatic arpeggios contrast intentionally with its austere backdrop.

In keeping with key Eastman codes, Phantom Limb engaged Black creatives to complete the record, including acclaimed designer Dennis McInnes for the album packaging, which is inspired by Eastman’s marginalia on his own (surviving) manuscript pages: “we sought to visually convey the complexity of what we may see as beautiful, how beauty is misunderstood and often lies beneath the surface.”

TRACK LISTING

A1 Maybe If I (Stay On It)
A2 The Perception Of Me (Crazy Nigger)
A3 Choose To Be Gay (Femenine)
A4 Building Something Beautiful For Me (Holy Presence Of Joan D'Arc)
B1 Enfield, Always
B2 My Take
B3 Black Excellence (Stay On It)
B4 What Now? (Prelude To The Holy Presence Of Joan D’Arc) 

Raised in the multicultural and mind-broadening London borough of Enfield, Loraine James grew up hearing everything from steel pan music to Metallica, from jazz and electronica to drill and grime, and the results of this exposure can be heard on ‘For You And I’. In part the album explores the complexities of being in a queer relationship in London - “I’m in love and wanted to share that in some way … to make songs that reflect layers of my relationship.” – and as a whole ‘For You and I’ is rhythmically free flowing and sprawling, with melodies that evolve into rippling keys, feeling like a live jam session with a jazz mentality, contrasting the delicate and abrasive. Opener ‘Glitch Bitch’ is a warm ear-worm, brandishing swirling textures with undulating keys and compressed percussion, with an introspective theme revisited soon after on third track ‘So Scared’, whose glitched percussion and syncopated dub bassline build to a frantic meltdown melody.

On ‘London Ting // Dark As Fuck’, inspired by Dizzee Rascals's ‘Boy In Da Corner', James explores the darker side of her production with her frequent collaborator Le3 BLACK laying verses over the skeletal track. ‘Hand Drops’ is an instrumental, about public displays of affection in a queer relationship. ‘Sensual’ reflects on intimacy with vocals by UK singer Theo, whose lyrics capture love and gentleness over a soft, minimal production of ethereal keys and scattered glitches. The albums’ title track is also the most colourful, it’s ecstatic and effusive chaos driven by fervent synths expressing elation and the joyful side of her relationship, while ‘My Future’ is a more reflective moment, where warping synths wash in and out with compressed kicks, as the artist considers the dangers that may come with her relationship : “I wanna tie the knot / But the rope is dangerous”. ‘For You And I’ is a deeply intimate and personal offering, expressing happiness, anxiety, joy, sensuality and fear through a vivid sound palette and an experimental sense of rhythm.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Glitch Bitch
A2. London Ting // Dark As Fuck
A3. So Scared
A4. Hand Drops
A5. Sensual
B1. For You And I
B2. My Future
B3. Scraping My Feet
B4. Sick 9
B5. Vowel // Consonant 

‘Gentle Confrontation’, Loraine James's third Hyperdub album, opens a new chapter of her real and sonic life in which she examines her past and present. It's a positively languid, enjoyably disjointed set made while listening to her teenage favourites; math rock and emo-electronic such as DNTEL, Lusine and Telefon Tel Aviv. The album also features an ever more diverse set of peers, placing them in her unusual musical settings and drawing out sensitive and reflexive performances. At other times the album stretches out into a drifting ambience as if seeking a sense of bliss in the everyday. ‘Gentle Confrontation’ is about relationships (especially familial), understanding, and giving back a little grace and care, while the tone of the record criss-crosses watery ambience with denatured rhythm and asmr beats. These 16 tracks are Loraine's best work yet, and a personal and musical leap forward, delivering a totally unique vision of electronic pop music.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The inimitable Loraine James effortlessly mixes languid lounge jazz, scattered electronics and woozy downbeat on her third album for veteran electronic superlabel, Hyperdub. It's full of melodic hooks, submerged under a wash of beautifully produced electronic soup, and it's my favourite thing she's done by far. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Gentle Confrontation
A2. 2003
A3. Let U Go Ft. KeiyaA
A4. Déjà Vu Ft. RiTchie
B1. Prelude Of Tired Of Me
B2. Glitch The System (Glitch Bitch 2)
B3. I DM U
B4. One Way Ticket To The Midwest (Emo) Ft. Corey Mastrangelo
C1. Cards With The Grandparents
C2. While They Were Singing Ft. Marina Herlop
C3. Try For Me Ft. Eden Samara
C4. Tired Of Me
D1. Speechless Ft. George Riley
D2. Disjointed (Feeling Like A Kid Again)
D3. I’m Trying To Love Myself
D4. Saying Goodbye Ft. Contour

(CD BONUS TRACK : Scepticism With Joy Ft. Mouse On The Keys)

Made during summer 2020, Loraine James’ second Hyperdub album, ‘Reflection’, is a turbulent expression of inner-space, laid out in unflinching honesty, offering gentle empathy and bitter-sweet hope. ‘Reflection’ further develops a unique pop sensibility realised on last year’s ‘Nothing EP’, while tones of Drill and R&B seep through into this collection too. In contrast to the brash splashes of 2019’s ‘For You And I’ LP and the grimey anger of ‘Nothing’, ‘Reflection’ is pared-down and confident, taking the listener through how last year felt as a young black queer woman in a world that has suddenly stopped moving, the arc of the album peppered with Loraine's diaristic confessions.

Starting positively with the gentle pop-trap of ‘Built To Last’ ft Xzavier Stone, into the bumpy instrumental of ‘Let's Go’, the album switches tone with ‘Simple Stuff’, followed by regular collaborator Le3 bLACK amplifying Loraine's vulnerability on the downcast drill of ‘Black Ting’, then ‘Insecure Behaviour And Fuckery’ is a techno glide which pairs Nova's confrontational plea for respect, delivered in monotone autotune, against deep Drexciyan chords. With Baths on vocals, the weightlessness of ‘On The Lake Outside’ soothes numb feelings, and Eden Samara explores the shadow world of anxious dreams on the airy R&B of ‘Running Like That’. Closing track ‘We're Building Something New’ with Manchester rapper Iceboy Violet brings the album together, confidently suggesting a new world is in reach. ‘Reflection’ is a brave step forward for a unique and creative 21st century musician

TRACK LISTING

A1. Built To Last (ft Xzavier Stone)
A2. Let's Go
A3. Simple Stuff
A4. Black Ting (ft Le3 BLack)
A5. Insecure Behaviour And Fuckery (ft Nova)
A6. Self Doubt (Leaving The Club Early)

B1. On The Lake Outside (ft Baths)
B2. Reflection B3. Change
B4. Running Like That (ft Eden Samara)
B5. We're Building Something New (ft Iceboy Violet)

It's hard to speak about unspeakable things - violence, abuse, addiction and abandonment; especially when these things rupture the innocence of childhood.

But one of the merits of Luke Jenner's new solo project is that he not only speaks of these things but he does so in a way that wrests them from the dark, small cubicle of shame, placing them firmly in the light so that we, as listeners and fellow survivors, can start to maybe walk with our head high. In this moment of empty pop music séance, the scope and ends of this project - to try and help people - feels almost revelatory.

Revelatory is the right word here in that it carries with it, of course, the sense of religious or spiritual insight. As front man for the legendary post-punk NYC band, The Rapture (a band name that already attests to Jenner's abiding faith and interest in the force of spiritual reckoning), Jenner has never shied away from his belief in God, community, family - all as a means of recovering the fractured x of y. "How Deep is Your Love", "Grace"… But while those The Rapture records flirted with these themes, Jenner's album “1” fully embraces them. “1” is commanding yet generous in its vision. It follows Jenner's personal history - from the trauma of child abuse in his family to the happiness he seeks in his own family now and in the community of survivors that sustain him - within the context of rock history and the music that sustained him there as well.

"All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison (also invested in spiritual belonging) comes to mind, as does Daniel Johnston, who literally heard voices which he put to music. Jenner's project too insists on polyvocality, from his own voice that splits between utter pain and despair to almost spiraling, nectarean harmonies, to the community of family, friends and sponsors that Jenner samples and adds to the record like a church choir.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Wonderful Experience
2. All My Love
3. If There Is A God
4. Asshole
5. I’m Still Alive
6. What Do I Dream About
7. You’re Not Alone
8. You Know You’re In Love When You’re In Love
9. Die One Day
10. About To Explode

the remarkable account of Paul McCartney's time in Wings and ascent into solo stardom, by renowned music biographer Lesley-Ann JonesNo comprehensive biography of the time Paul McCartney spent with Wings has ever been published, until now. A period often dismissed as McCartney's 'missing' years, in fact the band lasted for a decade: two years longer than the Beatles, and wielded such impact and influence that they at one point achieved the status as the biggest live band in the world. Band on the Run sold over 6 million copies worldwide and became EMI's biggest selling album of the 1970s in the UK.

Music biographer Lesley-Ann Jones has met McCartney many times and knew his late wife Linda. Here she shows how crucial Linda was to the evolution of Wings - at great cost to herself given the ridicule she was to encounter. But Linda saw that McCartney needed the band in the wake of the break up of the Beatles.

Drawing on extensive interviews and her trademark meticulous research, the author shows how this period in Paul McCartney's career was to become crucial not only to his development as an artist, but to his very survival.

Lucy Kaplansky has developed into a songwriter of great humanity and vision and this is, without doubt, her best album yet. Revealing and intimate and a real joy to return to again and again.

An insider's take on the evolution and enduring legacy of the music that rocked the twentieth century.

Memphis, 1954. New Orleans 1957. Philadelphia 1959. Liverpool, 1962. San Francisco 1967. Detroit 1969. New York, 1975. London 1977. Los Angeles 1984 / Norway 1993. Seattle 1991.

Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten crossroads of time and place that define rock and roll, its unforgettable flashpoints, characters and visionaries, how each generation came to be, how it was discovered by the world. Whether Elvis Presley's Memphis, the Beatles' Liverpool, Patti Smith's New York or Kurt Cobain's Seattle, LIGHTNING STRIKING reveals the communal energy that creates a scene, a guided tour inside style and performance, to see who's on stage, along with the movers and shakers, the hustlers and hangers-on, and why everybody is listening. Grandly sweeping and minutely detailed, informed by Kaye's acclaimed knowledge and experience as a working musician, LIGHTNING STRIKING is an ear-opening insight into our shared musical and cultural history, a carpet ride of rock and roll's most influential movements and moments.

Lola Kirke stands out like a flash of neon magenta in this nostalgic landscape of Americana tin-types. While many of her singing, songwriting peers look further back for inspiration, Kirke’s sweet spot is decidedly in the excess of the 80’s. Anyone only familiar with Kirke through her on-screen performances (Mistress America, Gone Girl, or Mozart in the Jungle) may be surprised by just how dazzling Lola-playing-Lola can be. Just a few lines into “Better than Any Drug,“ it’s clear no written role could reveal more of Kirke’s wit, lust for life, and sense of humor than this record captures with the help of producer Austin Jenkins (White Denim, Leon Bridges).

Scheduled for release in April 2022, the 10-song sophomore full-length album showcases Kirke’s unselfconscious, country-twinged vocals alongside a brightly colored candy shop of glam-twang guitar riffs, department store tv commercial synth stylings, and swooping, lilting, unabashedly feminine background vocals. Lady For Sale channels a high-spirited insouciance that feels invigorating and familiar, decidedly more easy-going and fun-loving than what we’ve come to expect from its genre (and the world in general) in recent years. This is a party you’ll want to attend.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE 1
1. Broken Families
2. If I Win
3. Better Than Any Drug
4. Lady For Sale
5. Pink Sky

SIDE 2
1. Stay Drunk
2. The Crime
3. Fall In Love Again
4. No Secrets
5. By Your Side

Athens Of The North reach release number 8 in fine form, continuing to deliver nothing but dancefloor brilliance for all the rare groove, jazz-funk, soul, disco and boogie heads out there in vinyl land. This latest 7" features two essential cuts from early 80s love machine Lew Kirton previously only available on unwieldy and thinly pressed LP. Remastered for the occasion, Lew is bigger and bolder than ever, prepare for some serious seduction. On the A-side, "Something Special" gifts us a private screening of Lew Kirton's 'the amorous adventures of an early 80s club soul lothario', as the soul man hurls his big vocals over a smooth and buoyant post disco groove. There's a touch of Love Unlimited Orchestra in there, but Lew's emotion adds a raw touch which veers away from the polish of the Barry White vehicle. On the flip is Lew's straight up jack of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", a pure shameless anthemic dancefloor disco smasher that's certain to demolish dancefloors all over the globe with that catchy guitar line and Lew's massive vocals. 

Lily We Need To Talk Now is a record Konigsberg has been slowly chipping away at since 2016, revising and re-recording the songs over the years. The eleven-track collection is her first proper full length, following her anthology of EPs and unreleased tracks, The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now, released in 2021 by Wharf Cat Records. The new record is catchy the whole way through, like much of her poppy and plainspoken indie rock output that’s made her a fixture of the NYC underground in recent years. Her voice twists and turns and dashes around her clever wordplay in new ways; there are hints of power-pop, pop-punk, and downtempo introspection, all dotted with easter eggs of winking humor.

True to its title, this collection of songs is like a check in with herself. “On “That’s The Way I Like It,” with backing vocals from longtime collaborator Paco Cathcart, she reflects on the feeling of “struggling with someone you love, and how you can get all evil about it, like a brat, like a baby.” On “Proud Home”, she sings one of the records boldest earworm hooks (“You’ve got a lot of fucking things to be proud of!”) and tries to comfort a friend who has a crush on her mom. “I really cracked myself up with the lyrics,” she says. “It’s kind of a Stacey’s Mom riff. I decided it’s a dedication to Adam Schlesinger [of Fountains of Wayne].” “Roses, Again” is a new take on a familiar Lily tune (originally on Good Time Now) re-recorded at the request of her current live band, who have evolved the song on the road.

TRACK LISTING

1 - Beauty
2 - Sweat Forever
3 - That’s The Way I Like It
4 - Alone
5 - Don’t Be Lazy With Me
6 - Proud Home
7 - Hark
8 - Bad Boy
9 - Roses, Again
10 - Goodbye
11 - True

A musical omnibus, ‘The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now’ is the first widely distributed Lily Konigsberg physical release, as well as the first vinyl treatment for EPs ‘Good Time Now’ and ‘4 Picture Tear’.

The collection loosely parallels the melancholic narrative behind the latter, where a mental break triggered Konigsberg’s depersonalized sense of her past self. Of the ‘4 Picture Tear’ EP Konigsberg says, “I would look at this photo booth picture I took with Matt [Norman] and cry because I thought I was looking at the person I used to be in that picture and that that person was gone.” In retrospect, these EPs feel like distinctive vignettes of Konigsberg’s progression as a songwriter, each version of her past self-tethered by an invisible thread to the present through musical alliances and fervent introspection.

‘Owe Me’, a song Konigsberg never felt fit on any of her previous releases, now serves as an opening curtain call. “Thank you all for coming to my show,” Konigsberg says to an invisible audience’s applause, “If you didn’t know, now you certainly know.” It’s a transportive moment that combines Konigsberg’s patient steps into the underground pop limelight with her exceptional ability to connect with a diverse and talented cohort of creatives.

One third of egalitarian art-punk outfit Palberta, the Brooklyn-born and-based Lily Konigsberg has occupied her time with music since her early childhood. “Basically I was born and immediately started wanting to be a rock star,” she says.

“Even before she became a fixture of the New York underground, Lily Konigsberg was staking out her place in local music.” - Pitchfork (Rising Artist, 2020)

“A crisp, catchy, and concise bit of 90s-indebted indie rock” - Stereogum

“The freewheeling, flitting melodies underline the precision of Konigsberg’s songwriting: She knows what she wants to say and she is methodical about how much to reveal.” - Pitchfork

“Warm and direct but tough to grasp, untraceable” - Tiny Mix Tapes

TRACK LISTING

Owe Me
To Hold It
Rock And Sin
7 Smile
At Best A #3
It’s Just Like All The Clouds
I Said
Summer In The City
Good Time (demo)
Lily’s National Anthem
Waterfall Snake Juice
Talk To Me W. Birds
Roses
North Porsche
I Don’t Like The Name
Big Tall Grass (demo)
Opening The Day

If the Chateau Marmont could sing. This would be it. Loren Kramar’s voice vibrates with the shameless hum of a room after a celebrity exits. Ecstatic aspiration. Doubt. Proximity. Desire. The album Glovemaker is about the skins we craft to be seen by the world, and Loren reminds us that we are all in drag. All exposed. No matter what gloves we slip on.

I’m a slut for all my dreams, Loren Kramar sings with Patti Smith brashness, I’m a whore for them, I’ve got more of them. Loren’s lyrics move like tinsel, shimmering bravely, then just as quickly, curling, fragile under the spotlight. Loren has always been obsessed with fame. Not with famous people, but with the electricity that perverts attention – the crushing desire to be truly seen. And all of Loren, and this obsession, is in this album. He grew up in the Valley, forced to hide his Barbies from his father, so the closet was a gorgeous Spanish ranch house on a gilded cul-de-sac crawling with celebrities. Naturally this gay boy wanted to be a child star so his mother secretly shuttled him to tap and jazz and figure skating lessons. I’ve got hands and feet to put in the concrete, Loren croons, in “Hollywood Blvd,” a song which clangs with brawny bravado. But “Gay Angels” reminds us that Loren’s infatuation with stardom is inextricably linked with his queerness and his own desire to live outside of fear. To be famous is to be out. To be known.To be himself.

“Glovemaker has become a kind of code for art making itself. A glove as a covering or mask that follows the contours of the life beneath it. As a song and a symbol, this is an album about studying and tracing a life - and then sharing what’s there,” Loren says. And his desire to share truth feels urgent. To listen to Loren is to understand there is no choice; the songs must tear through the air right now. This very second. I see myself tearing and splitting and becoming a trampoline, he belts in “NoMan,” breaking our hearts right alongside his. Part poet, part theatrical diva, Loren loops together the tragedy of breathing on this planet, because like Eartha Kitt or Cat Stevens, Loren is at his core – an incredible story teller. This whole album is a shrine, a mantle atop a blazing fire of life, spread with the memorabilia of Loren; all of the pain and lust dazzling on unabashed view.

This is a songwriter’s album. Loren’s lyrics are all his, and you feel itwith every bright, Maraschino-cherry-like word that falls from his lips.Like a lover, You scream and I shatter, I hit like a hammer, Loren sings.And we get to feel what Loren feels. We live in his brain, riding hisgenre bending emotions, on a wave of modern pop. And the songs lift,they are anthems of belief, “Hollywood Blvd,” “I’m a Slut,” “Euphemism,”“Gay Angels,” are all odes to triumphing over the corroding powers offear and doubt. And on this ride, Loren’s voice is the guard rail, evereager to stretch and transform, belting, talk-singing, multiplying, keepingus safe.

Glovemaker slaps and soars. The album is an ecstatic overture to loveand loneliness, to dreams and promises, to everything Los Angelesdangles. Buckle up. Loren knows how to craft space, how to move usthrough darkened bars, strobing arenas, beige carpeted bungalows andyellow lit highways. How do you like LA? Loren asks. I hope you love it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hollywood Blvd
2. Euphemism
3. I'm A Slut
4. Like A Lover
5. Gay Angels
6. Glovemaker
7. Birthday Thursday
8. Whatever Happens
9. 15 Years
10. Oh To Be
11. No Man

This is a compilation of the foundational Detroit post-punk group from 1980-83, featuring unheard studio and live tracks, unseen photos, and miscellaneous archival material. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Mental Game
2. Flowers Of Romance
3. Mr. Hell
4. Maniac
5. Rapping Tune
6. Human Truths
7. Don't Be Lame
8. Brixton Shuffle
9. Sixty Six Days
10. Lost In Paradise
11. London Dungeon
12. Klickety Klack
13. Over Under Sideways Down

On their new album ‘II’, L.A. Takedown align the moody grandeur of a film score with the pure melodicism of pop. Led by Los Angeles-based composer / multi-instrumentalist Aaron M. Olson, the seven-piece band deliver a guitar-driven take on synth-pop that’s inspired its own genre.

‘II’ ultimately leaves it to the listener to dream up their own imaginary movie for each beautifully sprawling track to live in. At turns ethereal and frenzied, groove-heavy and narcotic, ‘II’ is lush with harmonized guitar leads and inspiration from the likes of King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, Japanese composer Tori Kudo and Nigerian musician King Sunny Adé, giving way to an intricately textured sound laced with jagged beats and serene washes of synth.

Where L.A. Witch's self-titled album oozed with vibe and atmosphere, with the whole mix draped in reverb, sonically placing the band in some distant realm, broadcast across some unknown chasm of time, Play With Fire comes crashing out of the gate with a bold, brash, in-your-face rocker “Fire Starter.” The authoritative opener is a deliberate mission statement.

“Play With Fire is a suggestion to make things happen,” says Sanchez. “Don’t fear mistakes or the future. Take a chance. Say and do what you really feel, even if nobody agrees with your ideas. These are feelings that have stopped me in the past. I want to inspire others to be freethinkers even if it causes a little burn.” And by that line of reasoning, “Fire Starter” becomes a call to action, an anthem against apathy. From there, the album segues into the similarly bodacious rocker “Motorcycle Boy” a feisty love song inspired by classic cinema outlaws like Mickey Rourke, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen. At track three, we hear L.A. Witch expand into new territories as “Dark Horse” unfurls a mixture of dustbowl folk, psychedelic breakdowns, and fire-and-brimstone organ lines. And from there, the band only gets more adventurous.

Play With Fire is a bold new journey that retains L.A. Witch’s siren-song mystique, nostalgic spirit, and contemporary cool. Despite the stylistic breadth of the record, there is a unifying timbre across the album’s nine tracks, as if the trio of young musicians is bound together as a collective of old souls tapping into the sounds of their previous youth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fire Starter
2. Motorcycle Boy
3. Dark Horse
4. I Wanna Lose
5. Gen-Z
6. Sexorexia
7. Maybe The Weather
8. True Believers
9. Starred

Luminaries from rock's thriving post-punk, and hardcore scenes, guitarist Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance), guitarist Travis Stever (Coheed and Cambria), vocalist Anthony Green (Circa Survive), bassist Tim Payne (Thursday), and drummer Tucker Rule (Thursday/Yellowcard) have joined forces to create L.S. DUNES.

Unshackled from the expectations and aesthetics of their already successful careers, L.S. DUNES super-charge their heavy anthems with punk energy into a sound unlike anything that has come before it. From the gripping, theatrical opener "2022," and the crunchy, frenetic earworm "Like Forever," to the pummeling, expansive "Permanent Rebellion,” and the disarming album closer, "Sleep Cult," Past Lives is an electrifying and emotional ride.

Past Lives was produced by Will Yip (Turnstile, Circa Survive, Quicksand) and recorded at his Studio 4 Recording in Philadelphia, PA. Going deep on issues of fearlessness, dependency, nonconformity, and impermanence, writing for the album was a collaborative effort

TRACK LISTING

1. 2022 (4:30)
2. Antibodies (3:29)
3. Grey Veins (4:26)
4. Like Forever (3:20)
5. Blender (4:29)
6. Past Lives (4:10)
7. It Takes Time (3:26)
8. Bombsquad (3:51)
9. Permanant Rebellion (3:13)
10. Grifter (4:42)
11. Sleep Cult (3:45)

Lush pop, with strong orchestration and entrancing vocals. Includes contributions form members of Joan Of Arc and Pinetop 7.

A stellar combination of the talents of The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe, cinematic femme fatale Emmanuelle Seigner and ice-cool pop provocateurs The Limiñanas (Lionel and Marie Liminana), L’Epee transcend artistic and traditional borders.

“We are living in very culturally insular times, so it feels really good to be swimming against the tide,” says Anton of the band’s bi-lingual, cross-continental approach.“There’s something really positive about branching out, collaborating and taking risks.”

Far from being defeated by a world seemingly regressing into turmoil, L’ Epee’s strength comes from a long history of challenging the status quo. From Anton’s legendary battles with ‘The Man’ with The Brian Jonestown Massacre to Emmanuelle’s eclectic screen career to The Liminana’s community-minded ethos- setting up their own record shop, L.G.D.C, and promoting gigs by the cream of the world’s garage rock scene ( New Bomb Turks, Oblivians, Fleshtones, Revelators) - they share a fierce intelligence and an outsider aesthetic which, over the decades, has been sharpened to a razor’s edge. Fitting, then, that their name translates as The Sword.
“It came to me in a dream,” explains Anton. “I woke up and there it was, ‘The Sword’. Someone told me there had already been a band with that name so I flipped it into French. It suits the band because we’re united in a common cause.”

This pent-up creative energy has been channelled into their extraordinary debut album, Diabolique. Named in tribute to Mario Bava’s 1968 cult classic ‘Danger: Diabolik’, it’s a musical masterclass where elements of garage, ye-ye, sleaze rock, cult soundtracks, sci-fi, spaghetti westerns and girl-group pop noir are combined with the cut-and-thrust zeal of a band bursting with ideas and energy. All delivered by Emmanuelle in a sultry Gallic drawl which will send a frisson of recognition through anyone familiar with her iconic roles in, among many others, Frantic, Venus In Fur and Bitter Moon (all directed by her husband, Roman Polanski). “I’ve loved rock music since I was a kid,” she says, namechecking Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground and The Stooges as key influences. “I always wanted to be a musician, but it wasn’t so easy in France as I couldn’t meet the right people. Then I became a model and then very quickly after that I did Frantic and became an actress. It worked for me, but in my heart I always wanted to do music.”

Having asked close friend Bertrand Belin to provide lyrics for three further tracks (‘Grande', ‘On Dansait Avec Elle’ and ‘Lou’), the trio set to work at The Limiñanas’ studio in Cabestany, Southern France, in November 2017 -with Emmanuelle, ever the perfectionist, fine-tuning them the following February. Satisfied with the results, the trio flew to Berlin to hook up with Anton and (Liverpudlian engineer) Andrea Wright at his Cobra Studio in Berlin Utilising a treasure trove of vintage equipment (“I’ve got way more ‘60’s gear than The Beatles and The Stones had, I’m mad for that stuff”, explains the BJM man), Anton set to work, re-recording the drums with Marie and adding -and deleting- tracks so that the shifting layers of sound suited the mood of each individual track. “I’ve got plenty of other ways to express myself, so I really enjoyed taking a backseat, creatively,” he explains. “Lionel is such a great composer. There’s a very visual sense to his songs and I was very conscious of not stepping on his intentions too much. There were some really interesting sonic things I would add, like a track of the craziest feedback, to give a song a weird ambient quality. It’s the role that Brian Jones had in the Stones, or Warren (Ellis) has in Nick Cave’s band. Musically, they’re all over the map, but they make things happen.” “It was so inspiring to see Anton work,” says Emmanuelle of seeing him in action. “When we sent the songs to him they were good, but they were nothing like how it ended up. He’s so talented, like a genius. He made the whole thing darker, more interesting and more psychedelic.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: With some of the greatest and most unique voices in modern psychedelia coming together to record, the results were never going to be anything short of brilliant, and this heady lsyergic collection has exceeded that already. Hazy, all-encompassing and beautifully balanced, with drones and jams being brilliantly balanced with undeniable grooves and feel. A brilliant outing.

TRACK LISTING

1) Une Lune étrange
2) Lou
3) Dreams
4) La Brigade Des Maléfices
5) On Dansait Avec Elle
6) Ghost Rider
7) Grande
8) Springfield 61
9) Un Rituel Inhabituel
10) Last Picture Show