Sydney Northern Beaches' very own hard-biting rockers C.O.F.F.I.N are proud to announce their fifth full-length studio album entitled 'Australia Stops', the highly-anticipated follow-up to their monumental 'Children In Finland Fighting In Norway' album from 2020. Due for release on September 15th 2023 via Bad Vibrations in Europe, the new album comes off the back of the band’s world tour with Amyl and the Sniffers in 2022, and their recent UK headline dates this May where C.O.F.F.I.N stunned audiences with the high-intensity rock action they are renowned for.

'Australia Stops' was recorded in January 2023 at The Pet Food Factory studio with producer Jason Whalley (Frenzal Rhomb) behind the desk. A record that showcases a collection of diverse and gripping new works that highlight the band's evolution into more melodious, 1970's Australiana and boogie rock and roll. Frenzied, high-voltage guitars, thumping rhythms, flowing melody and clever, captivating lyrics exhibit an undeniable progression in composition and songwriting, while still unmistakably the C.O.F.F.I.N that fans world-wide have come to worship over their 18-year lifespan.

TRACK LISTING

1) Give Me A Bite
2) Cut You Off
3) City Sun
4) Keep It Dark
5) Lover's Leash
6) Beasts
7) Australia Stops
8) Factory Man
9) Night Breaker
10) Through The Sewer
11) Faceless

Chris Cohen was always a quiet kid. In fact, this introversion was one reason he began playing music as a toddler—to communicate without speaking, to identify with others without the direct representation of words. It has worked, too, with Cohen’s terrific stint in the mighty Deerhoof and his own captivating art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen. Somewhere along that long way, Cohen started writing lyrics. He found that, though it didn’t come naturally, the process offered a new sense of self-discovery and reckoning, a way to see himself and the world from unexpected angles. His three twilit albums of casually complicated pop during the last decade radiated these epiphanies: handling family strife, navigating advancing age, and understanding social woes.

But Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on Paint a Room, his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. If Cohen’s meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. There is the endless miasma of state violence on the subversively melodious opener “Damage,” the existential exhaustion of modernity on the horn-traced jangle “Laughing”: this is Cohen communicating with friends not only through his deep understanding of groove, harmony, and hook but also with his listeners through songs that croon of our uneasy little era.

On Paint a Room, Cohen’s music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it’s often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud. Paint a Room both reckons with reality and conjures an alternate one, where nighttime walks and a neighbor’s wind chimes offer endless escapes for the imagination, space for the mind to roam. Sublime and sun-lit, these 10 songs consider dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly stating the problem and dancing and singing their way somewhere new.

Paint a Room features Jeff Parker contributing the fluttering horn arrangement on “Damage,” and Parker collaborator Josh Johnson (who produced Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grammy-Award-winning album The Omnichord Real Book) supplying flute, sax, and clarinet arrangements throughout the record.

TRACK LISTING

1. Damage
2. Paint A Room
3. Sunever
4. Cobb Estate
5. Laughing
6. Wishing Well
7. Dog’s Face
8. Night Or Day
9. Physical Address
10. Randy’s Chimes

Today, 26th April, marks 25 years to the day since Coldplay released the ‘Brothers & Sisters’ EP via Fierce Panda. In celebration, an anniversary edition is now available to pre-order, as a gatefold double colour BioVinyl 7" via Fierce Panda. The original ‘Brothers & Sisters’ release was a two-track 7” (‘Brothers & Sisters’ and ‘Easy To Please’) and a three track CD single, with ‘Only Superstition’ as the third song which, while not included on the original 7" vinyl release, appears on this special 25th anniversary edition. The fourth track on the EP is a new addition, ‘The Story of Brothers & Sisters'. This is a spoken word excerpt lifted from the audiobook of ‘Pandamonium! How Not To Run A Record Label’ by Fierce Panda founder Simon Williams.

TRACK LISTING

Brothers & Sisters
Easy To Please

Only Superstition
The Story Of Brothers & Sisters (by Simon Williams - Fierce Panda Records)

Louis Cole, Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest team up on “nothing” for a raucous musical trip that veers from funk-fuelled mayhem to sombre balladry with the orchestra dialling up the emotional power to 11. Louis Cole is an LA-based singer-songwriter and sickeningly talented multi-instrumentalist with a strong DIY aesthetic. Thundercat describes him as “one of Los Angeles's greatest musicians”. He composed a suite of brand new music for this project – bigger, bolder, and more expansive than ever – plus there are nods to his GRAMMY-nominated 2022 album “Quality Over Opinion”. Based in Netherlands, Metropole Orkest is the world’s leading pop and jazz orchestra, having shared the stage with the likes of Herbie Hancock, Snarky Puppy, Jacob Collier and Robert Glasper. Conductor, arranger, curator and composer, Jules Buckley is a unique and rare breed of artist. The GRAMMY winner has redefined the rulebook of orchestral music and the role of a conductor. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Ludovici Cole Est Frigus
A2. Things Will Fall Apart
A3. Life
A4. It All Passes

B1. Cruisin’ For P
B2. A Pill In The Sea
B3. Nothing
B4. Who Cares 1
B5. Who Cares 2

C1. Wizard Funk
C2. Weird Moments
C3. High Five
C4. These Dreams Are Killing Me
C5. Shallow Laughter : Bitches (orchestral Version)

D1. Let It Happen (orchestral Version)
D2. Doesn’t Matter
D3. You Belonged

British four-piece rock band Collateral are set to release their highly anticipated sophomore album Should’ve Known Better on May 24, 2024. The album is distributed worldwide by Cargo. The album will be released on CD, red vinyl, picture disc, limited edition cassette, and digital. Friday February 9th will see the release of the lead single “Glass Sky.”. The new single “Glass Sky” and the forthcoming album Should’ve Known Better is produced by Dan Weller (Those Damn Crows, Enter Shikari, Monster Truck, Kris Barras, Holding Absence, Bury Tomorrow). "I love massive riffs, massive hooks and feel-good guitar music,” says Weller. “When Collateral sent me their demos, I jumped at chance to produce their new record. I’m proud of what we managed to create. It’s Collateral mk2 - ambitious, daring and refined. I can’t wait for people to hear it." Since the band released their debut album (Top 5 UK Rock Album Chart) at the start of 2020 Collateral have spent no time standing still. Covid came only weeks after the debut album was released and forced the band to cancel their highly successful tour with Phil X (Bon Jovi) halfway through. This made the band hungry to keep the momentum. With innovative ways to produce top quality live streams, the band became special guests supporting the likes of Skid Row, H.E.A.T and Reckless Love.

The exciting and flamboyant Kent-based rock and roll band are comprised of Angelo Tristan (lead vocals, guitar), Louis Malagodi (guitar), Jack Bentley-Smith (bass) and Ben Atkinson (drums). On October 21, 2022, Collateral independently released a re-mixed and re-mastered version of their debut album “Re-Wired” which featured Jeff Scott Soto, Phil X, Kee Marcello, Rudy Sarzo, Danny Vaughn, and Joel Hoekstra. The re-release saw the band in the Official UK Rock Charts at #12. After the gruelling back-to-back tours with Skid Row, H.E.A.T and Reckless Love, the band ignited a spark and strengthened their already loyal fanbase leading them to win the opening slot at 2023s Stonedead Festival, leading the band to perform their biggest show. Collateral’s hotly tipped sophomore album looks like it will take them to the next level. A lot of people don’t know what to expect from the new album, as the band have been tight-lipped about the new songs. Collateral have created a state-of-the-art rock album that will immerse listeners in their rock music universe, enabling fans to feel the blood, sweat and glory that went into the recording of every song. “We felt that our debut album was lacking the production,” reflects Collateral’s frontman, Angelo Tristan. “For the sophomore album, I wanted to make sure that this time we left no room for error and so got one of the hottest producers in the music industry, Dan Weller, to help lift these songs into a new dimension. With Dan’s pioneering studio expertise, this album has massive production quality that enables you to get lost in each character-filled track. Dan really brought out the emotions we were trying to portray and has achieved it with his own unique style.” “We wanted this album to express where we were in our own lives since the release of our first. So much has happened since then, I mean the world shut down for what felt like a lifetime! And it was obvious that people were going to need some sort of optimism. I hope ‘Glass Sky’ is one of those songs that gives people the belief to find themselves again.” “Whereas, the feel-good ‘Just One Of Those Days’ is trying to find the good side of a bad day. Me being me, couldn’t help but to write a big power ballad, ‘The Long Road’, that I wrote from a very hard and deep place, in hope that it could maybe bring some peace and comfort to people who need it. I think there’s all aspects of life running though this album and what it means to us will remain in our hearts forever. ”Should’ve Known Better” is an album that goes beyond specific music genres,” says Angelo. “It’s almost like a soundtrack to a beating heart. It’s an album that will remain timeless in years to come.”

Introducing John Coltrane 'Now Playing' on Translucent Blue Vinyl - Uncover the brilliance of jazz legend John Coltrane through a tracklist uncovering rich gems, such as the iconic "Giant Steps", the soulful "Naima," demonstrating Coltrane's virtuosity and innovation, the enchanting melodies of "My Favorite Things, Pt. 1" and the tender ballad "I'll Wait and Pray" as the perfect start or continuation of your musical journey.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. GIANT STEPS [4:48]
2. COUSIN MARY [5:50]
3. NAIMA [4:25]
4. VILLAGE BLUES [5:23]

Side B
1. I’LL WAIT AND PRAY [3:35]
2. MY FAVORITE THINGS, PT. 1 (Single Version) [2:47]
3. EVERYTIME WE SAY GOODBYE [5:45]
4. CENTRAL PARK WEST [4:15]
5. BODY AND SOUL [5:41]

Darning Woman is an intentional, beautiful, sometimes confrontational album that shreds expectations of DIY, bedroom music, and feminine themes. There’s a lushness and maternal instinct at play, as Coope connects the dots between physicality, ephemera, and the ultrafeminine.

“I don’t really like to deal that much with themes of personal hardships, or heartache and love,” says Anastasia Coope. “Ultimately, I work most honestly with the language of what is happening in a moment and the passage of time around it. That, coupled with my reaction to entering the artistic landscape, and my thoughts about what does and doesn’t get representation, comprises most of this album.”

Darning Woman explores, among other things, the meditative aspect of sewing, patching and embellishment, care and repair, collection not as modern, craven consumption but as a counterpoint to materialism. This sort of collection – the good kind, the gathering of things to make a home – can be, in Coope’s words, “A very baby way to critique capitalism. Birds make nests, right? It can be a new life for a thing that was made. What you surround yourself with matters.”

To that end, Anastasia Coope is also the founder and leader of the Bonzo collective and show series, an exciting new home for the type of expansive, profoundly creative scene that New York has been missing for some time. And while Bonzo may well be the ascent of a new community, Darning Woman is the story of Anastasia Coope, herself. It is the sound of Coope entering the world as an artist, acknowledging the tangle of what changes – the gaze of the world, Coope’s art in reaction and community to art in general – and what does not: her ideas and her own self.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. He Is On His Way Home, We Don't Live Together
2. Women's Role In War
3. What Doesn’t Work What Does
4. Darning Woman
5. Sounds Of A Giddy Woman

SIDE B
1. Woke Up And No Feet
2. Sorghum
3. Newbin Time
4. Return To Room

Erland Cooper’s new album Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence is set for release in June 2024 – 3 years from the day the only master tape was planted deep into the Orkney soil.

The album is a recording of Cooper’s brand new three-movement composition for solo violin and string ensemble. The work marks the centenary of celebrated Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, as 2021 marks 100 years since his birth.

Inspired by natural landscapes and ruminating on time, hope, community and patience, the sole recording of the work – on ¼ inch magnetic tape, with the digital files permanently deleted – has been planted to grow and be nurtured or “recomposed” by the earth, before being exhumed and released in three years’ time. Whilst Cooper will not be unearthing the tape until 2024, he has left a trail for anyone to search and find it if they wish. A map with clues to the location of the planting site will be released via his digital platforms. If the planted tape is found, Erland will invite the discoverer to his studio to embark on a journey together for the treasured first listen. It will then be released exactly as it sounds from the earth.

Erland Cooper says, “Music can so often feel undervalued and for some, being unable to perform live has at times felt like being buried. When an idea forms there is often an urge to share it as quickly as it develops but like spotting a bird, I want to let this fly and land in its own place and time. The work is one part remembrance and one part celebration of a landmark time.” He adds: “The material on the tape may erode naturally, disintegrate and create drops of silence or the peaty soil may preserve it perfectly well. It may or may not get better with age. I may or may not fall out of favour with my composition. Any alterations to the sound and music [when it comes out of the earth] will be reincorporated into the pages of a new score and live performance, as orchestral articulations.”

Julian Cope's second album of 1984 - Never re-pressed in its original format, this re-issue faithfully replicates the original Mercury Records UK release with poster, and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

'Fried' is one of Julian Cope's boldest. It made many think that after a while teetering on the edge, Julian Cope had finally tipped over into an artistic madness, amplified by his wearing a turtle shell and staring at a toy van on a landscaped spoil tip in Warwickshire on the album's sleeve. Opening track 'Reynard The Fox' added to it all, a six-minute psychedelic garage rock tour-de-force, breaking down to a Cope monologue where he gravely intones English folk tales from his vantage point, referring also to an onstage stomach-slashing incident from 1983. 'Sunspots', the sole single taken from the album, is one of his greatest recordings in a career that spans over 40 years.

'Fried' is up there with some of the very best works of the singular British eccentric.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reynard The Fox
2. Bill Drummond Said
3. Laughing Boy
4. Me Singing
5. Sunspots
6. The Bloody Assizes
7. Search Party
8. O King Of Chaos
9. Holy Love
10. Torpedo

Originally issued in 1984, 'World Shut Your Mouth' saw the mercurial leader of The Teardrop Explodes establish himself as a fully-fledged solo artist - Never re-pressed in its original format, this re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1984 Mercury Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

When The Teardrop Explodes finally ground to a halt in late 1982, all eyes were on what leader Julian Cope would do next. After retreating to the village of Drayton Bassett in Staffordshire for an extended period, Cope began writing 'World Shut Your Mouth', his first solo album.

Released in March 1984, it is the closest to his old band of all his solo work ('Metranil Vavin' and 'Pussyface' were both originally intended for the Teardrops), 'World Shut Your Mouth' featured Gary Dwyer on drums, and giving the album its most distinctive sound, Kate St. John on oboe. Beautifully pastoral, it is full of highlights such as 'Strasbourg', 'Kolly Kibber's Birthday' and the wistful, reflective 'Head Hang Low'. The strange, string-led, schizophrenic, 'Sunshine Playroom' was the album's first single, followed up by 'radio hit' 'Greatness And Perfection'.

'World Shut Your Mouth' is a deeply satisfying album, worthy of reappraisal.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bandy's First Jump
2. Metranil Vavin
3. Strasbourg
4. Elegant Chaos
5. Quizmaster
6. Kolly Kibber's Birthday
7. Sunshine Playroom
8. Head Hang Low
9. Pussyface
10. Greatness And Perfection
11. Lunatic And Fire-Pistol

Animated by themes of interconnection and symbiosis, Cosmo's expansive musical imagination is rooted in practices of listening-both to human and morethan- human sound worlds. Eye To The Ear, Cosmo's most accomplished creation to date-as producer, composer, performer and songwriter-makes it clear that the living world is a noisy and musical place with the power to change the way we think, feel, and imagine.

The second studio album from UK Alternative artist Cosmo Sheldrake. Following 2018's Much Much How How And I which has sold over 100,000 units globally and embarked 250m streams on DSPs, Cosmo continues to take the listener onto a journey into his musical world with a brand new 21 song release.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gnort Or Gnortle
2. Stop The Music
3. Marvellous Clouds
4. I Did And I Don't And I Do
5. Old Ocean
6. By Being With You
7. I Stitched My Mind Back To My Body
8. The Feet Are The Link
9. Half Past Three
10. I To The Maybe Go
11. Tea For Seventeen
12. Breathe Round Corners
13. Run
14. But Once A Child
15. Shiny Is The View
16. The Snapping Of Shrimp
17. More Than A Mountain
18. Lichens
19. Flora's Pond
20. Interdimensional
21. Does The Swallow Dream Of Flying

First album in 8 years from Leeds Devo-esque DIY punk trio, full of three minute pop blasts. Have previously toured with Deerhoof and Quasi.

Surviving five years as a band on the UK underground scene is difficult to do, lasting for 20 takes a near miracle. However, Cowtown – Leeds formed and raised trio of Hilary Knott (keys/vocals), Jonathan Nash (guitars/vocals) and David Shields (drums) – arrive blinking into 2024 not only intact and able to celebrate two decades together as bandmates and friends, but armed with Fear Of… their first new record in eight years, and a collection of songs that hand-on-heart, away from the sales speak, may be their best work to-date.

Friendship can keep a band going for so long, but it’s more than that that’s seen this ostensibly DIY band enjoy European tours with heroes Deerhoof and Quasi, play festivals at home and abroad, and during several periods of time in their history become the most requested hometown support in their native Leeds for any touring band worth their salt – not to mention their own ability to continually sell out shows up and down the UK with little to no backing.

Other projects have come and gone – Nash perhaps most notably as drummer in Hookworms which has since evolved into Holodrum; Knott stepping further into the experimental undergrowth as Basic Switches, among other collaborative efforts – yet the band have remained. Their fizzed-up brand of Devo-esque punk full of pop smarts has never stood still, constantly being updated and tweaked to sound timeless and subsequently outlast whichever latest guitar sub-genre has cycled back into fashion once again. Always though, Cowtown have kept at their core a warm sense of humour, positivity and the cartoonishly abstract song writing sense that’s always felt like their own small corner of the musical world

A 20-year habit is hard to kick though and the group came to the same conclusion as everyone else; which was to crack on and try not to fear the outcome – and so Fear Of… is here. Silly as it might be to say for a band whose members are living through middle age, there’s a newer maturity to Cowtown’s sound. That doesn’t mean a monotone faced dumbing down of the frenzied hooks and two-minute blasts that they’ve cornered the market in – heck, the 11 tracks here clock in at a combed 30 minutes or so – but there is the slightest of breathing spaces given here and there.

Wonderboy II is a typically all-guns-blazing intro to the album but then they just as quickly change direction, with the angular march of Can’t Talk Now that purposefully strides into a big chorus rather than rushing breathlessly up to it as they might have done previously. As Close To Town As I Like It meanwhile glides along underneath Knott’s more measured turn on lead vocal; she takes centre stage on Sea Lions too which recollects Dolittle-era Pixies in its ascendant guitar riffs thudding percussion.

There’s still plenty of moments where the trio take the clutch fully off, of course – Thru Being Zuul, Offend Kliph and Total Engagement are two tracks that are the kind of giddy, breathless slices of pop punk (not that kind) fun that the band have made their staple over the past 20 years. Currently Unavailable meanwhile is a suitable rousing finale that touches euphoric heights. Ultimately for Cowtown that search for positivity remains their guiding force; 20 years in and at times it can feel harder than ever for the trio to find it, but Fear Of… is the sound of a band who can still find celebration in the simple importance of being able to make music with your best mates. 

TRACK LISTING

Wonderboy II
Can't Talk Now
Thru Being Zuul
Offend Kliph
Total Engagement
As Close To Town As I Like To Get
Humble Practitioner
No Excursions
Sea Lions
Peace In Our Time
Currently Unavailable

The latest mini LP from Coyote sees them continue to explore the realms of emotionally charged electronic music. From dreamy horizontal soothers to more ecstatic uplifting refrains. 'Both Gone' is an embrace from the sun as it sets gently into the horizon, 'People Take It' is an early afternoon watching the shimmering sea with a mint tea, 'We Got Lost' is a cautioning tale to all, 'Beltane' a celebratory Pagan dub, 'Show Me' is a poolside midday smiler, 'Cirrus' is an ecstatic sunrise anthem. So hurry up, and Live!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Is It Balearic? It is a bit Balearic, yeah but it's not the sort of dreamy barely-there Balearic that sends me into an inattentive dream, it's brave and imaginative electronic music that conjurs the feeling of a beachside bar on a sunny day, in the Balearic islands.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. "Both Gone"
2. "People Take It Too Seriously"
3. "We Got Lost"

Side 2
1. "Beltane"
2. "Show Me"
3. "Cirrus"

Coyote is back with a third volume of its Special Editions series and once again it is one that will transport you to some steamy dance floor by the Med at sundown. The opener 'Ritter' is a glorious mix of downbeat chords and Balearic beats with 80s synths and an exotic vocal. 'Takin It' then slows things down to reevaluate some lush acoustic guitar frets and languid funk grooves, then 'The Woman' gets even more deep, more seductive, and horizontal. It's got a fat, lazy bassline and go-slow grooves that cannot fail to reduce your pulse before 'Dover' picks it up again with some more psyched-out and cosmic disco-funk sounds.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Magic Wand and Coyote once again prove what a dream team they are. The 10th edition of the Magic Wand Special Editions marks the third invitation for Coyote and the four edits on offer are every bit as addictive as the ones on the previous two 12"s - I might even go so far as to say this one's the best. Do yourself a favour and snap up a copy of this dreamy record, you won't regret it.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
Ritter
Takin It

Side 2
The Woman
Dover

Originally released in 1985, this mini-LP featured the "London lineup" of Simon Bonney, former Birthday Party stalwarts Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard, Rowland’s bassist brother Harry Howard, and drummer Epic Soundtracks (formerly of Swell Maps and Jacobites). The record presented a more refined sound compared to their self-produced EP and was recorded between Hansa Tonstudios, Berlin and The Strongroom, London, with sound engineer Flood (a-ha, Depeche Mode, Erasure). In an interview with Uncut, Harry explained, “The first EP, 'The Dangling Man,' was a bit raw. For 'Just South Of Heaven,' we tried to create a more elegant record, and it worked quite well.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Rose Blue
2. The Coal Train
3. Stolen & Stealing
4. Five Stone Walls
5. Trouble Come This Morning
6. The Wailing Wall

Following their 'The Dangling Man' EP and 'Just South of Heaven' mini-LP, 'Room Of Lights' was originally released in 1986 and featured the "London lineup" of Simon Bonney, former Birthday Party stalwarts Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard, Rowland’s bassist brother Harry Howard, and drummer Epic Soundtracks (formerly of Swell Maps and Jacobites). The album includes the remarkable ‘Six Bells Chime,’ which caught the attention of acclaimed German filmmaker Wim Wenders who invited the band to perform the song live in his 1988 masterpiece Wings of Desire. The album showcases great creativity filled with tension and marks the last release featuring Crime’s “London line-up”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Right Man, Wrong Man
2. No Money, No Honey
3. Hey Sinkiller
4. Six Bells Chime
5. Adventure
6. Untouchable
7. The Brother Song
8. Her Room Of Lights (For Lisa)

New Album From The Most Danceable Post-Punk Pop Band In The UK.

It’s like something has exploded!

CRUMBS have been incubating this, their second album, for a few years now. Who knows how they kept all the energy in check. It must have been like sitting on a volcano. The songs burst out with pure pop fire, sending splinters of guitar, sharp lyrics and snatches of the catchiest backing vocals.

The rhythm section (Jamie and Gem): it’s like Delta 5 meeting Le Tigre in a dark alley in Leeds, fusing blindly and completely, and then forcing its way into the back entrance of a venue, sending volts through the limbs of the unwitting punters, forcing them to dance. This is TIGHT.

And as the lights come on and the indie kids throw themselves around, Ruth’s vocals sweetly assault their ears with anger, joy, political intelligence - and all around, Stuart’s guitar, sometimes twangly-melodic like the B52s, sometimes sweet and ringing like a memory of Scars, sometimes furious and feeding back, keeps you alert and thirsty for more.

These songs do NOT outstay their welcome. Starts and ends are cut hard: no pre-echo, no wistful, drawn-out regretful fade-outs. CRUMBS have imbibed the key lessons taught by The Gang Of Four and The Au Pairs: never let the energy dissipate. But there is more than anger here. The band have smuggled a pop sweetness into the disciplined shapes of their angular songs. You’re Just Jealous has sharp edges, but it’s generous too.

TRACK LISTING

1. You’re Just Jealous
2. Stab Alley
3. Dear Deirdre
4. Diy Sos
5. Rest In Pieces
6. Let’s Not
7. 4291
8. Call Now
9. What’s It Means
10. Sad Snoopy
11. Mambo No.6
12. Too Many Creeps 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Cymande’s 'Promised Heights', a record that closed out an historic three album run of seminal early '70s Afro-soul that also included their 1972 self-titled debut and 1973’s Second Time Round. Promised Heights solidified Cymande’s place in music history, and contains some of their most-beloved and often-sampled tracks such as “Brothers On The Slide”. As children of the Windrush Generation, Cymande were part of the first wave of innovators and originators of the fledgling Black British music scene. Taking influences from their Guyanese and Jamaican roots, the band fused reggae bass lines, Afro-tinged Nyabinghi percussion, psychedelic rock touches, and American style funk instrumentation into a unique sound they dubbed as “Nyah-rock.” Promised Heights was recorded following the band’s US tour with Al Green, which had firmly planted Cymande in the ears of an adoring American audience. Cymande were also the first British band to ever play the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Pon De Dungle
A2. Equatorial Forest
A3. Brothers On The Slide
A4. Changes
A5. Breezeman
B1. Promised Heights
B2. Losin' Ground
B3. Leavert
B4. The Recluse
B5. Sheshamani

Arisen to renewed stardom after going contagiously viral on TikTok, with his fascinating aura and apparently braggy attitude, Pino D'Angió marked the history of Italian dance and disco music with this sharp and ironic record that still fills the floor today as it did in the 80's.

TRACK LISTING

1. Un Concerto Da Strapazzo
2. Una Notte Da Impazzire
3. Signorina
4. Okay Okay
5. Perdoni Tenente
6. Me Ne Frego Di Te
7. Notte D'amore
8. Mannaggia Rock & Roll
9. Donna In Costruzione
10. Ma Quale Idea

Reissue of the album from 1998 that started it all for dälek, this time wth six bonus tracks. The physical includes a 12pg booklet with liner notes by John Morrison and new art from Mikel Elam & Paul Romano.

When Dälek’s debut, Negro Necro Nekros arrived in the Fall of 1998, hip-hop’s aesthetic and commercial conventions were in a state of upheaval. While mainstream rap had more or less completed the process of full integration into mainstream pop culture, underground hip-hop had mounted an aggressive opposition movement in response.

Forged in the fires of the East Coast underground music scene in the 90s, Experimental Hip Hop pioneers Dälek has spent decades carving out a unique niche fusing hardcore Hip Hop, noise and a radical approach to sound. From the very beginning, Dälek came out the gate, following in the footsteps of their predecessors Public Enemy while drawing from influences as varied as My Bloody Valentine and German experimentalists Faust, Dälek have succeeded in adding completely new textural and structural dimensions to rap music. Since 1998, they’ve released seven studio albums and countless EPs, singles and collaborations.

TRACK LISTING

1. Swollen Tongue Bums
2. Three Rocks Blessed
3. Images Of .44 Casings
4. The Untraveled Road
5. Praise Be The Man
6. And Hell Is Coming With Us
7. Pelt I’s To End (Demo Instrumental)
8. Gates Of Dawn (Instrumental)
9. Praise Be The Man (Remix)
10. Cement (Demo Instrumental)
11. Sweetwood Sound Session 404

West Germany, 1968. Like everywhere else in the Western world, the young generation is pushing for radical change, still suffering the after-effects of the Second World War. Many stream out of the lecture halls and onto the streets.

Some into the underground. And some into the practice basements, in search of the soundtrack of the movement. The unique and adventurous sounds that German bands like Can, Neu!, Amon Düül, Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Faust, Cluster or Kraftwerk produced back then, now known as Krautrock, are considered a blueprint for modern rock music.

And the stream of their creative admirers and continuators has been constantly widening since the first fans like David Bowie and Iggy Pop: whether Blur, Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, Radiohead or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. In Neu Klang, Christoph Dallach interviewed its pioneers, including Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay of CAN; Neu!'s Michael Rother; Dieter Moebius of Cluster; Klaus Schulze of Tangerine Dream; Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and many others. Their answers combine to form an oral history that points far beyond the individual band histories: on the one hand, into the past, to Nazi teachers, post-war parental homes, free jazz, terrorism, LSD and extremely long hair; but just as much into the future, to global recognition, myth-making, techno or post-rock.

Originally released on Lex Records in 2003 it has been out of print for a number of years and is now being reissued to coincide with the release of Born Again. Featuring guest appearances from tha Liks , J- Zone , Prince Po , and the Pharcyde.

TRACK LISTING

1. Born-A-MC
2. Ghetto Pop Life (Intro)
3. Ghetto Pop Life
4. Omega Supreme (Who?!)
5. What U Sittin On?
6. The Only One
7. Take Care Of Business
8. That Brookyln Shit
9. Yoo-Hoo!
10. Copy Cats
11. Don't Do Drugs
12. Medieval
13. Bush Boys
14. Here We Go Again
15. I'ma Doomee
16. Knuckle Sandwhich

British artist Douglas Dare announces the release of his fourth album Omni. Seen by Douglas himself as a bold rebirth and embrace of the electronic, Omni is all at once a throbbing, avant-garde, queer, dark and cinematic record imbued with a love of rave culture and sense of fearless storytelling that’s deeply evocative. Omni will be released on May 10 via Erased Tapes. To mark the announcement, Douglas today shares the first taster of the record with ‘Mouth To Mouth’, a pulsing, synth-laden track that begs to be played loud. ‘Mouth To Mouth’ sees a collaboration with label mate Daniel Brandt who appears on production duties, with beats supplied by Rival Consoles. Speaking on the track, Douglas says, “life, death, fate and orgies; this is the heartfelt club track I always wanted to write.” Since 2013, Douglas has blurred classical, chamber-pop, folk and avant-garde to dazzling effect, with a startling voice that can stop you in your tracks. It’s why he’s played with luminaries like Nils Frahm, Perfume Genius and Ólafur Arnalds, and was selected by David Lynch and The Cure’s Robert Smith for their respective cultural festivals in Manchester (MIF) and London (Meltdown). But Douglas’s fourth album, Omni, is a fresh awakening. Encouraged by Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths, he decided to step away from acoustic instruments, especially the piano he grew up playing, and swapped them for synths and drum machines. His new music has much in common with Arca and the late SOPHIE, two artists for whom self-expression meant liberation. “I got to hang out in the studio with her,” says Douglas of the latter musician, “the way she made music made a big impression on me.” And yet Omni is steeped in the kind of deft storytelling, sweeping strings, elegant contrasts and fairytale atmosphere that marks Douglas out as a crucial and singular voice. It’s not often you hear a strutting electro banger that could have been straight out of 90s Soho, with vocal loops inspired by US experimentalist Meredith Monk. For Douglas, Omni is about reconciling all those different sides of himself – the songwriter, the raver, the lover, the observer. It’s a hugely queer record: seductive, sexy, lusty, untethered from the genre binary. “It’s even got sailors on it!” laughs Douglas. “You don’t get more queer than that.

In the last decade, Daniel Davies has become a lauded composer of atmospheric, synth-heavy instrumental music—for film and TV scores, alongside John Carpenter on the director’s Lost Themes albums, and on solo releases like Signals and Spies. But in his previous musical life, Davies was a rocker, touring all over the world with heavy bands like Year Long Disaster and Karma to Burn. After setting rock music aside to focus on his soundtrack and instrumental work, the multi-instrumentalist has found himself falling back in love with loud guitars over the past couple of years.

Ghost of the Heart, the first full-length alt-rock album Davies has ever released under his own name, captures the excitement of that rediscovered love. After a decade of making music that either had to match a filmed image or create a mental one, he sounds liberated by the concrete, reliable logic of verse/chorus/ verse. The songs on Ghost of the Heart don’t fit neatly into any one subgenre: they’re moody, heavy, and a little proggy, but with a strong pop sensibility and lots of melody. The album divulges Davies’ affinity for hooky, forward-thinking bands like Radiohead and Blur, but more than anything, Ghost of the Heart feels natural, like he’s tapping back into something fundamental about himself as a musician. “My first love is writing rock songs,” Davies says. “It just felt like the right time to get back to it.”

Ghost of the Heart is a special album for Davies. It sees him returning to his origins in rock music, but it also couldn’t have been made without the lessons of his time in the film world. In the truest sense, it’s a career-defining work, one that showcases everything he’s learned in his decades as a musician. It reveals a door that, now opened, can take Davies anywhere he wants to go.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Know Why
2. Presence On The Hill
3. In To You
4. It Takes A Lot
5. Ghost Of The Heart
6. Still The Servant
7. Big Crush
8. Wait
9. Those Eyes 

The complete 1959 Miles Davis album 'Kind of Blue', one of the most influential Jazz albums of all time, presented here as a 2LP set in its original mono and stereo versions.

TRACK LISTING

1. So What
2. Freddie Freeloader
3. Blue In Green
4. All Blues
5. Flamenco Sketches
6. So What
7. Freddie Freeloader
8. Blue In Green
9. All Blues
10. Flamenco Sketches

‘Black Classical Music’ is a 19-track record taking listeners through a looking glass into the exalted artist’s past and present whilst exploring themes of home and family. The album draws influence from his musical heroes Miles Davis & Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Yussef’s extensive travel around the globe that has deepened his study of rhythm.

Honourable features on “Black Classical Music” - Chronixx, Jamilah Barry, Tom Misch, Shabaka Hutchings, Miles James, Sheila Maurice Grey, Nathaniel Cross, Theon Cross and the Chineke! Orchestra, plus Venna, Rocco Palladino, Charlie Stacey & Elijah Fox

TRACK LISTING

A1. Black Classical Music Ft. Venna & Charlie Stacey
A2. Afro Cubanism
A3. Raisins Under The Sun Ft. Shabaka Hutchings
A4. Rust Ft. Tom Misch
A5. Turquoise Galaxy

B1. The Light Ft. Bahia Dayes
B2. Pon Di Plaza Ft. Chronixx
B3. Magnolia Symphony
B4. Early Dayes
B5. Chasing The Drum

C1. Birds Of Paradise
C2. Gelato

C3. Marching Band Ft. Masego
C4. Crystal Palace Park Ft. Elijah Fox
C5. Presidential Ft. Jahaan Sweet

D1. Jukebox
D2. Woman's Touch Ft. Jamilah Barry
D3. Tioga Pass Ft. Rocco Palladino
D4. Cowrie Charms Ft. Leon Thomas & Barbara Hicks 

Kolony Gorky is back with a third EP in less than a year that once again offers some stylish and artful rhythmic interpretations. DDrhode is behind this one in collaboration with Sohrab and it opens with the airy percussive pattern and suspensory loops of deep and deft jam 'Ghoroob' (Kryptic Rhythm) which becomes dusty downbeat and late-night jaunt when served up as the Buggin Beat. 'Azadi' has the feel of a sixties spy thriller with its mysterious leads and 'Distant Sun' shuts down with some zoned out and loved-up deep house romance. Another hard-to-define but easy-to-love EP from the already vital Kolony Gorky.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Techno releases don't usually float my boat but any record that samples/covers/edits or otherwise incorporates Nese Karaböcek's 'Yali Yali' (or the original, Jesus Christ Superstar's Overture) as heard here on 'Azadi' has a place in my heart!

TRACK LISTING

DDrhode - Ghoroob (Kryptic Rhythm)
DDrhode - Ghoroob (Haleeteh?)
Sohrab - Azadi
Sohrab - Distant Sun

Across the last 15 years, Ryan Gustafson of The Dead Tongues has emerged as one of modern folk’s most distinct voices. As idiosyncratic and spectral as the songs have sometimes been, Gustafson has always tied his visions and verses to the kinds of hooks you tuck away like talismans, pulled out in case of emergency. Dust, Unsung Passage, Desert: The Dead Tongues’ albums remain some of the more compelling and curious works in their field on this side of a century. The latest edition to The Dead Tongues’ catalog, the song-centric and magnetic Body of Light and the discursive and wonderfully elliptical I Am a Cloud, is 16 complete tunes split across interweaving and disparate albums.

The albums feature performances by Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Bon Iver), Mat Davidson (Twain), Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), Joe Westerlund (Califone, Megafaun), Jeff Ratner (Bing and Ruth), and more. Gustafson wanted to dedicate the studio time to not just recording songs but also making something new, with new improvisations.

The two albums, released digitally as distinct standalone releases, join together in the physical format as a beautiful, deluxe, double album. The 2LP package features a meticulously embossed cover, and gorgeous custom inner-sleeves for each album.

TRACK LISTING

Body Of Light:
Body Of Light
Dirt For A Dying Sun
Dreamer
Fading Away
Daylily
Moonshadow
Wolves
Big Nothing
Hard Times, Sore Eyes

I Am A Cloud:
Lightning
I'm A Cloud Now
Formations
A Bridge
Where Love All Happened
Letters Of Returning
Even Here, Even Now

DEADLETTER were one of the most talked about band's of 2023, with their critically acclaimed debut EP 'Heat!' gaining nods from tastemakers including NME, CLASH, DIY, DORK and The Guardian, 2024 brings in the band's debut album, Hysterical Strength.

Having played together in groups prior, DEADLETTER was formed at the start of 2020, days before the pandemic struck. After some lineup experimentation, the addition of Will King (Guitar), Sam Jones (Guitar) and Poppy Richler (Saxophone) completed the group. Bound together by a recognition of frenetic energy and rhythm and leaving any wider ideological goal open to interpretation by the listener, it’s clear the release of their debut album heralds the next level for DEADLETTER.

TRACK LISTING

1. Credit To Treason
2. More Heat!
3. Mother
4. Bygones
5. A Haunting
6. It Flies
7. Hysterical Strength
8. Relieved
9. Deus Ex Machina
10. Practise Whilst You Preach
11. Mere Mortal
12. Auntie Christ 

In 2023, Death Cult returned and reunited for a handful of performances. In 2024, to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of The Cult, Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy have curated the previously released Death Cult collection 'Ghost Dance', and recompiled the tracks for a 2024 release titled 'Paradise Now'. The release will be available on crystal clear vinyl with a white and black splatter.

Southern Death Cult formed in 1981, releasing their sole, self-titled album posthumously in 1983. That same year, Death Cult formed, with Astbury joining forces with Duffy for a musical partnership that has endured for 40-plus years. The band released two 12-inches that same year, one being the 'Death Cult EP', which were subsequently combined and released as a CD. Death Cult is a vital transmission from the generation of Shamanic post-punk gothic futurists. In late 2023, Astbury and Duffy reformed Death Cult for a series of live performances including a sole U.S. date at The Theatre at The Ace Hotel in Los Angeles and a limited run of U.K. dates including back-to-back sold out shows at the Brixton Electric. Death Cult became The Cult in 1984, releasing Dreamtime that same year. The seminal post-punk band has gone on to sell in excess of four million albums with numerous international and U.S. gold and platinum certifications.

Ian Astbury (vocals) and Billy Duffy (guitar) have released 11 studio albums over The Cult’s 40-year career. The band, dubbed “Shamanic goths” by Classic Rock Magazine, found international renown with the 1985 album, 'Love', which featured the enduring rock anthem “She Sells Sanctuary,” as well as the oft-heard follow-up single “Rain.” Electric arrived in 1987, with Rolling Stone saying the collection of songs (particularly “Love Removal Machine,” “Wild Flower” and “Lil’ Devil”) “swaggers, crunches and howls.” Most recently, The Cult released Under the Midnight Sun. Mojo, in a review of the eight-song album, said “rock’s unquenchable melodramatists have the fire in their eyes still”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Horse Nation
2. Ghost Dance
3. Brothers Grimm
4. Christians
5. Gods Zoo (These Times)
6. A Flower In The Desert
7. Butterflies
8. With Love (Sea And Sky)

Dehd kicks off 2024 by announcing their fifth studio album, Poetry, due this May via Fat Possum Records.

Following the whirlwind success of Dehd’s fourth album Blue Skies and hit single “Bad Love”, they first gathered at Kempf’s off-grid Earthship in Taos, New Mexico where they chopped wood to stay warm and wrote songs during the daylight. They then travelled to a cabin on the Puget Sound to set up their second writing camp where surrounded by chilly waters, time was marked only by the movement of the tides. “Eating, Sleeping, Breathing, Living - our only purpose was to write,” Kempf recalled. This was the first time the band travelled to distinctly notable locations to write and inspire themselves. Leaving Chicago proved to be a watershed moment.

They finalized the songs that became Poetry back in Chicago in the warehouse they’ve called home for nearly a decade, where they rehearsed and wrote their entire catalogue. Friend and producer Ziyad Asrar, who co-produced all three Whitney albums, co-produced the album alongside the band’s Jason Balla at Palisade Studio.

Salty Road Dogs Victory Anthem. Alabaster DePlume and his live band of Roxi Plain, Conrad Singh and Momoko Gill caught fresh off tour and recorded to tape at London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre by in-house engineer Kristian “Capitol K” Robinson, mixed by legendary UK producer Dilip Harris.

TRACK LISTING

Side A (Act 1: Getting Honest)
1. The One That Loves You
2. It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023)
3. I’m Going To Get Free
4. Coming Home

Side B (Act 2: Attitude To Women)
1. The Feminine Divine

Side C (Act 3: The Relationship)
1. My Goddess Is
2. Goddess Rules
3. My Submission
4. Dance With Me

Side D (The Concert: Part 1)
1. Soon/Plan B
2. I’ll Show You
3. All In All (This One Last Wild Waltz)

Side E (The Concert: Part 2)
1. Until I Believe In My Soul
2. Free
3. Come On Eileen

Side F (Encore)
1. Geno
2. Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven When You Smile)
3. Tell Me When My Light Turns Green
4. Carrickfergus

Colombian artist DFRA links with some of Argentina's finest musicians for a high-class mix of 90s and 00s deep house and a wide array of proper jazz stylings to this new EP on Deeppa, a well-formed young label that will soon hit release number 10. 'Sal Marina' kicks off with shuffling beats and nu-jazz chords that make you want to move, while both 'Green Line' and 'Manits' showcase some superb melodies over more percussive, busy beats that have a great sense of movement. 'Brown Sugar' then gets a little deeper with its withering cosmic lines and heartfelt vocals and the main man Atjazz works it onto something even more potent before 'Sal Marina (Lay-Far Remix)' closes down with a timeless soulful house vibe.

TRACK LISTING

Sal Marina
Green Line
Manits
Brown Sugar
Brown Sugar (Atjazz Remix)
Sal Marina (Lay-Far Remix)

Emotional Rescue takes another trip into the twisted world of post-punk dubs, electronics and oddities here at the hands of DJ, collector and radio host Gary The Tall. The original comes from German duo and new wave innovators Die Radierer whose pop-reggae jam 'Batman' is irresistibly catchy with its low-slung beats and lazy, sun-kissed melodies. It appeared on 1983's In Hollywood and was recorded at their home studio on a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. Gary The Tall's remix finds him teaming up with Aaron Coyles under his new alias of Exotic Gardens and the results are loopy and dubbed out to perfection.

TRACK LISTING

Batman
Batman (Gary The Tall V Exotic Gardens Reversion)

Produced by Chris Coady and written by DIIV (pronounced Dive), Frog in Boiling Water, the band’s fourth full-length LP is a collection of snapshots that explores the brutal realities of end-stage capitalism and overwhelming technological advance. Across 10 dark and dazzling tracks, DIIV documents the collapse from various angles with unusual sensitivity and depth of purpose while expanding their grand, hypnotic shoegaze, to create a transportive, sensual work of hope, beauty and renewal.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Amber
2. Brown Paper Bag
3. Raining On Your Pillow
4. Frog In Boiling Water
5. Everyone Out
6. Reflected
7. Somber The Drums
8. Little Birds
9. Soul-net
10. Fender On The Freeway

Waterloo To Anywhere was the debut album from the short-lived, briefly adored Dirty Pretty Things - Originally released on Vertigo Records in May 2006, the album reached No 3 in the UK charts and spawned three Top 40 singles - This re-issue is pressed on high-quality 180g black vinyl.

What do you do after being in the Libertines, one of the most notorious British bands of the early 21st Century? For Carl Barât, you form Dirty Pretty Things, something of an indie supergroup of their moment. Joining Barât was Libertines drummer Gary Powell, guitarist Anthony Rossomando, who'd stood in for Doherty, and former Cooper Temple Clause bassist, Didz Hammond.

Leading Waterloo To Anywhere was the infectious UK Top 5 hit Bang Bang You're Dead (better known in recent years as live favourite for The Mighty Olafs), which set the tone for the fabulous collection of rock, punk and ska. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Dave Sardy and then later in Glasgow with Tony Doogan, the album showed the strength of the group's writing. Away from the standard high-octane indie of Gin & Milk and You F*cking Love It, The Gentry Cove was particularly captivating, marrying Barât's fascinating wordplay with robust Clash reggae/sea shanty interludes.

Two years later, it was all over; Barât and Powell rejoined the Libertines (and Rossomando later going on to win an Oscar for co-writing Shallow from the film A Star Is Born).

TRACK LISTING

1. Deadwood
2. Doctors And Dealers
3. Bang Bang You're Dead
4. Blood Thirsty Bastards
5. The Gentry Cove
6. Gin & Milk
7. The Enemy
8. If You Love A Woman
9. You Fucking Love It
10. Wondering
11. Last Of The Small Town Playboys

Emerging once again from the unending waves crashing upon our fragile time-craft (adrift on the eternal ocean, and taking on water), Dirty Three are (a) back, (b) tangled in seaweed, rank with saltwater and possessed of three rather ominous thousand-mile stares (at least!), and (c) not wasting another minute – as nothing is guaranteed.

For their first album in over a decade – yep, it’s been since 2012’s ‘Toward the Low Sun’ – they flew in, got together and started playing. End of story. What else is there to say or do but that? Music’s their language, their true love; they never stop listening to that. And like the label says, ‘Love Changes Everything’.

The Dirty Three – Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White – formed up in Melbourne in 1992, to play with guitar drums and violin or viola, and within a couple years, they’d broken out – out of Australia, out of anything else they might have been inside of, to boot – and got worldwide. Over the next ten years, they toured over and over the planet, ceaseless like, and cut seven albums out along the way. After this, their unique style of play, fitted together like puzzle pieces, was decoupled, more often than not, and pieced together in many other, fruitful collaborations with many other esteemed talents. Over the past 20 years, they’ve gotten together a few times, renewed the vow, revved the engines and played some shows, or made an album. Like now –

These are the sounds of Dirty Three getting up to speed again:
- the original fury of their drums/guitar/violin-or-viola power trio, cutting three unique paths through the wild into sudden convergence –
- piano-plucked melodies ringing sweetly out over an undulating landscape flowing with guitar, drums, violin or viola, and synths! And broken hills, forests, lakes and deserts. And mountains rising in the distance...
- mercurial shifts in mood; sudden descent from tumult of flights and heights into deep canyons of heart-struck adagio.

Equally sudden second-winds, feisty activity in their extremities never really ceasing. Opening depths. Wariness and patience allowing them to get caught up in loops, become ambient, transcend, and then fight their way back in again. Their wild and wandering heart not simply a spry derivative of collective sea legs; a telepathy already old as time evidenced way back in the beginning of their thirty-years-and-some run.
- such mood! Once desolate fields pouring full of emotion, wandered into, come upon as if by happenstance (but actually sourced by the divining rods in their hands).

- all of it – everything changed by love and bubbling up with the clarity of just-struck spring water; translucence giving way to muddy gushes of distortion – dirty guitar, smears of violin, drums at times pounded upon beyond the microphones’ ability to receive...

And when received, and committed to “tape”, or whatever they used – the master could well be carved in plates of amphibole – this music has been untethered from its streams of consciousness and reconsidered as a recording; brought to bear through edits, overdubs and mixes, re-sequenced and made suite-like. Made into this album. These lot were born to be as weathered as they are today. Time doesn’t matter. They make their gathered wisdom of the ages sing like something new every time. It renews. And Love Changes Everything. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Love Changes Everything I
Love Changes Everything II
Love Changes Everything III
Side B
Love Changes Everything IV
Love Changes Everything V
Love Changes Everything VI

It's the one all the massive have been waiting for! Part 2 of the Salford sage - DJ Absolutely Shit's 'Memoirs Of A Crust Monster'. More hyped up tear outs, soundsystem ruffage, and bass 'n breaks love songs from our Hell's Angel-dodging beat freak.

Kicking things off with glowing neons and super-charged subs is 'Higher', a modern jungle monster decorated with classic hip-hop samples and a well known diva vox squealing through the melee.
A serious 'watch your bassbins' track - RL HQ have safety tested this on the most robust car stereo systems and so far have yet to avoid any cabinet damage - proceed with caution!

'Lost In Space' rolls outta the speaker stacks with a b-boy swagger and loose breaks. A tribute to classic breakdance electro galvanized with Ab Shit's intricate trademark production chops. You'll want to crack out your finest red Puma classics and a slick tracksuit for this one.

Onto 'Out On Love' and between you and me, someone needs to call the social service for samples - as it's unlikely you'll ever witness a more blatant case of sample molestation. Squeezing every last drop out of a catchy piano lick, TV snippet and drum break; the track really does highlight the unrivaled programming prowess of our Irlam renegade who's taken SP1000 trickery to its absolute zenith.

'Money Talks' sees our cheeky ragamuffin dictate a life affirming sunrise over Pomona - pre-gentrification of course; a thousand smiles and memories of old Mancunia shimmering in the early morning industrial haze. And an abject slight at those who put profits above people - another poignant ode to our changing cityscape driven by the most addictive boogie-based groove and clattering Linn drums.

Spine-tingles and fanny flutters guaranteed ALL DAY on this one cru!
Look out for the full 16 track album due on C90 cassette and digi download coming very soon...

RL x

TRACK LISTING

A. Higher
A2. Lost In Space
B. Out On Luvvv
B2. Money Talks

DJ Cat comes through on Scruniversal here as the young label continues to go from strength to strength early in its existence. This time he serves up some re-edits and reworks of old and rare records from Scru's friends' collections. Up first is 'Roots & Culture' which is a languid funk workout with Prince style vocals bring some libidinous vibes up top while sci-fi synths and raw claps and perc all flesh out the groove. 'Possibelle' then cuts loose on a much more laid back and steamy summer vibe with the sort of chords that have you laying back in the park and staring up at a cloudless sky.

TRACK LISTING

Roots & Culture
Possibelle

First time reissue of the collaborative studio album by Japanese jazz trumpeter Toshinori Kondo and Japanese hip hop producer DJ Krush. It was originally released in 1996.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Toh-Sui
2. Tobira-1
3. Mu-Getsu
Side B:
1. Ha-Doh
2. Sun Is Shining
Side C:
1. Mu-Chu
2. Tobira-2
3. Fu-Yu
4. Ki-Gen
Side D:
1 .Ko-Ku
2. Shoh-Ka
3. Bu-Seki
4. Tobira-3

Frosted has pulled off a big one here as they snap up the one and only Chicago house gangster, long-time vinyl advocate and BBQ king, DJ Sneak. His debut on the label goes big, as the man often does, with 'Beat Generation' showcasing his mastery of drum loops and smart filters. It's unrelenting and funky in its own low-key way then a Horns mix brings some extra fun. 'Fair & Square' has an old school feel with sweet little guitar riffs stitched into the arrangement next to yelping vocal as the dusty drums roll on. 'Mother Of Funk' has a deeper feel and will lock you into its warming embrace.

TRACK LISTING

Beat Generation
Beat Generation (Horns Mix)
Fair & Square
Mother Of Funk

Veteran electrohead and former artist on the Rephlex Records roster DMX Krew's Ed DMX takes the well-known story by Jorge Luis Borges of The Library of Babel, said to contain all the different languages of the earth. Some deep philosophical thought has gone into the album's concept, but we'll leave that to Ed to explain. Instead, we'll tell you that from beginning to end there's plenty of the kind of trademark 80s synth playfulness in evidence, with a generally more mellow and soundtrack-related rather than frenetic and dancefloor-filling vibe in evidence, even on faster tracks like 'The Combed Thunderclap'. Still, Ed knows what he's doing when it comes to this kind of leftfield electro gear, and it's a rewarding, never boring listen.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Dog
2. O Time Your Pyramids
3. MCV
4. Infinite Staircase Ascending

Side 2
1. Axaxaxas MLO
2. The Combed Thunderclap
3. The Plaster Cramp
4. LXUM, LKWC
5. Infinite Staircase Descending

Both Tymon Dogg and Richard Dudanski had musical roots playing in The 101'ers with future Clash singer/guitarist Joe Strummer. All three shared a deep love for southern Spain, due perhaps to the influence of the Romero sisters, Paloma (later "Palmolive" of The Slits) and the artist Esperanza, who were among the first Spanish punk refugees in London. Tymon's career began with beguiling interactions with Apple Records, The Moody Blues and future Led Zeppelin members John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page before he discovered his true musical self as a punk / folk experimentalist, opening shows for the likes of The Slits, Raincoats and Pop Group and becoming the longest-running musical foil in Strummer's career, continuing into The Clash and Mescaleros. Similarly, Richard played in Basement 5, Public Image Ltd, The Raincoats and others before following Esperanza back to Granada...which subsequently became second home to Tymon and Joe.

Spain is not without its own punk heroes, and chief among them was Granada's Antonio Arias, another pal of Joe's and leader of Spain's musical heroes, Lagartija Nick, which also included Dacoits members Juan Codorniu and JJ Machuca. Antonio sings the albums two Spanish-language songs. while Tymon sings the other nine...and there's an instrumental, "Mongols", which the band considered too epic as a stand-alone instrumental to mess with! Tymon sings three songs from his past: "The Wheel Of Life And Death" has been heard before as a live bonus track on the expanded reissue of "Battle Of Wills", "Conscience Money" was heard in a very different version on the impossible-to-find "Made Of Light" album, and an embryonic take of "Something To Prove" turned up the even rarer 1989 solo album, "Relentless". If you imagine the playful elasticity of "Sandinista!" recast into a more straightforward record, with Tymon taking the lead on something more than that album's "Lose This Skin", you're halfway there. Guests include Killing Joke bassist / famed producer Youth and Dr Robert from The Blow Monkeys. 

TRACK LISTING

01 Wheel Of Life And Death
02 Cruel Mind
03 Casida Del Herido Por El Agua
04 Something To Prove
05 Brother Of Genghis Khan
06 I Don't Wanna Be Poor
07 Nadsat
08 Chimney Sweep
09 Conscience Money
10 Give Us A Jesus
11 Turning Of The World 

Ned Doheny’s Hard Candy, originally released in 1976, is widely considered the finest blue-eyed soul album of all time. It has long been a source of great frustration then, that this perfectly-formed Southern California masterpiece has been unavailable on vinyl for almost 40 years.

Be With Records continues apace by marking its third release with the first officially licensed reissue of Doheny’s nautical classic. Perhaps most famously, this impeccably smooth set features the timeless “Get It Up For Love”, a wonderful example of mid-70s mid-tempo white-(hot)-funk.

Produced by the legendary Steve Cropper, it featured a veritable who’s-who of the Laurel Canyon soft-yacht sound (JD Souther, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the entire horn section for Tower of Power!) yet bombed mysteriously. It’s been a cult record since.

Pressed on audiophile 180g vinyl and featuring the original artwork for both jacket and full colour inner sleeve, this limited reissue is one not to be missed.

TRACK LISTING

A1: Get It Up For Love (4:42)
A2: If You Should Fall (3:36)
A3: Each Time You Pray (3:39)
A4: When Love Hangs In The Balance (5:12)
B1: A Love Of Your Own (3:46)
B2: I’ve Got Your Number (3:15)
B3: On The Swingshift (3:03)
B4: Sing To Me (3:37)
B5: Valentine (I Was Wrong About You) (5:07)

For more than two decades, Dr. Dog have maintained a shared devotion to the unruly alchemy of making music. When it came time to create their eleventh studio album, the Philadelphia-bred band adopted an entirely new way of working together, embracing a multilayered process designed to foster a deeper synergy among its five members (bassist Toby Leaman, lead guitarist Scott McMicken, rhythm guitarist Frank McElroy, keyboardist Zach Miller, and drummer Eric Slick). After beginning that journey with a close-knit session at Leaman’s uncle’s cabin in the Pennsylvania woods, Dr. Dog steadily made their way toward the joyfully unfettered psych-rock of their new self-titled LP.

Mixed by multi-Grammy-winner Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Drive-By Truckers), Dr. Dog finds McMicken taking the helm as producer for the first time in the history of the decidedly egalitarian band. True to the eclectic spirit that’s always animated the band, Dr. Dog’s 11 tracks shift from soul to surf-rock to symphonic pop with an exuberance made all the more powerful by their revitalized creative energy. “There isn’t really a concept or cohesive idea that unifies this collection of tunes,” says McMicken. “In the end it’s about us being together, doing the work, and showing up as our truest selves.” Their first fulllength since 2018’s Critical Equation, Dr. Dog reveals a band – over twenty years into their storied career – growing together and evolving, fully committed to the singular work of dreaming up songs that brighten the mind and expand the soul.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Authority
Lost Ones
Fat Dog
Talk Is Cheap
What A Night’ll Do
SIDE B
Tell Your Friends
Still Can’t Believe
Fine White Lies
White Dove
Handyman
Love Struck

‘Small Time Monsters’, the second full-length album from The Dream Machine, is set to be released this April on Run On Records/ Modern Sky.

If 2022’s critically-acclaimed debut album ‘Thank God! It’s The Dream Machine…’ was their first and most wild child, then ‘Small Time Monsters’ is its refined younger sibling. The psychedelia, euphoric choruses, flashes of surf guitar and B-movie references are all there, amongst the familiar reflections of life in their beloved and faded seaside town of New Brighton, but this time the wilder elements are controlled, the songs packed into three-minute pocket symphonies.

Lead single Frankenstein is an anthem for the sugar-rush generation, an infectious, rattling earworm that recalls everything from haunted rockabilly to the sun-drenched melodies of Blossoms. Elsewhere on the album, the pulsating surf-stomp of ‘Cindy’s Eyes’, a small-town story of unrequited love, has a chorus to fill the most cavernous arena.

Produced by The Coral’s James Skelly, the album was partially recorded at The Dream Machine’s rehearsal space, then stitched together in Skelly’s
Kempston Street Studios. There’s a refined, more literary quality to singer and primary songwriter Zak McDonnell’s lyrics; explorations of everyday life, teenage doom, B-movie monsters, family turmoil, and coming-of-age tales in the familiar backdrop of life in modern Britain. ‘Small Time Monsters’ is the sound of a band breaking free from the small town into the big world.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Frankenstein
2. Cindy’s Eyes
3. My Father’s Son
4. Holding On
5. Cathedral
Side B
6. Tonight, I’ve Got Heaven In My Arms
7. Posters Of You
8. Wind-Up Bird
9. The Horse
10. Wolfman
11. Bring Back The Wonder

On the eve of Drop Nineteens’ first live performances in 30 years, we are excited to announce the reissue of the band’s 1992 shoegaze masterpiece, Delaware. “Reissue” is slightly misleading as Delaware has never actually been issued on vinyl in the United States.

Delaware is the debut studio album by American band Drop Nine­teens released on June 19, 1992. Despite the albums release over 30 years ago, and the band remaining inactive from 1993 onwards this album has remained a favorite of shoegaze fans for decades, and was listed as one of the 50 best shoegaze albums of all time by Pitchfork in 2016. This lasting love of the record has cemented the band as one of the most influential bands of the genre from their time.

Over the last several years the album has found a new audience that has championed Delaware along side of the band’s mostly UK 90’s contemporaries. A new legion of Drop Nineteens fans have like­ly discovered their music through streaming services, rather than on 120 Minutes.

Tracks like the towering “Kick The Tragedy” and pop songs “Winona” & “Delaware” sit next to more experimental moments like “Reberry­memberer.” And while the album is certainly a wild ride, it all flows together as easily as singers’ Greg Ackell and Paula Kelley’s vocals.

TRACK LISTING

1. Delaware
2. Ease It Halen
3. Winona
4. Kick The Tragedy
5. Baby Wonder’s Gone
6. Happen
7. Reberrymemberer
8. Angel
9. My Aquarium
10. (Plus Fish Dream)

December 2012 I showed up totally exhausted in Vancouver BC after touring stupidly and relentlessly for however many straight months and got a job at a call centre raising money for the Red Cross. It was a scent free office but one time this woman cooked a piece of fish in the microwave for 10 minutes on low and hot boxed the whole office - we got sent home early no pay. There was the other woman I named the Call Centre Coltrane because her pitch and routine usually involved improvised flights of fancy that went off in both directions at once somehow landing back down with a credit card number and a donation. I used to sleep under the desk. I was there a few months and at the time I reconnected with John Brennan who I had played with briefly in Montreal at the Mutek Festival. In Montreal John was running an experimental music night at a burrito shop downtown called Garbage Night. While in Vancouver I began connecting with the music scene there and would go hang out with the Shearing Pinx lads who I think lived with Sydney the bass player at the time. I knew Nic and Jer from an AIDS Wolf Tour and was so stoked to get to know them both better. I really fell in love with that era of Vancouver's music scene.

Fast Forward to today. 2024

Actually it was the dying days of 2023 but you get it and John asks if I'll sit in with Earth Ball and I keep thinking about Earth Balance, the vegan butter everyone eats here. I brought my aching bones and my ipads on the beautiful ferry named the Queen of Oak Bay and out to Nanaimo BC, home of the nanaimo bar (a dessert treat - special to this region - that seems to be more popularly found under the weird glass sneeze guards in office building deli's out east in Ontario.... anyhoops ). No one in Nanaimo wants to talk to me about the famous treat. I asked a couple of people. Silence. Nanaimo is like London, Ontario but more fried and by the sea. The town is filled with blown out old sea dawgs with tin coffee pots and loose leaf tobacco, then there's the usual streetfolk you find in this part of the Canadian Pacific Northwest and a bunch of bohemians who I guess have left Vancouver behind - that fine city having become uninhabitable for those not making over 100k a year. And then up the way are all the retirees. Yup Nanaimo is a strange one. They mined the shit out of this region and Nanaimo is surely haunted by those buried in mining shafts or maimed by the heavy machinery or blown up by accident in the explosives store house. And when Earth Ball fire up the amps in Izzy and Jer's basement you can hear the voices of the ghosts hum through electrical lines and out the speakers, Kellen's hued feedback, Izy's sturdy basslines, Jer's paperbag guitar tone and rumble pack zaps, Liam's (aka the Kid) sheets of sound and Brennen's multidirectional drums. You wouldn't guess Earth Ball was auto-composing and from what my rat brain can tell - the lyrics are improvised too...Improvising lyrics and singing them is the hardest thing to do in all of music.. Izzy and Jer are pros. And their attitudes are pro too.

TRACK LISTING

1. Moon FM
2. Antifreeze
3. Through & Through
4. A Need To Cool Down
5. Flash In The Pan
6. Hollowgramma

Earth Tongue, the brainchild of guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons, present their second full-length album Great Haunting. The duo, known for their heavy flavor of fuzz-soaked psychedelic rock, are also pleased to unveil their signing to In The Red Records.

Earth Tongue’s partnership with In The Red stems from a run of shows supporting the legendary Ty Segall throughout New Zealand. Larkin explains: “Ty’s band Fuzz was a significant influence for our sound early on. Ezra and I saw them play live in London about nine years ago, long before Earth Tongue existed. We absorbed a lot of music at that time, and in fact many of the bands we saw released records via In The Red.”

Great Haunting sees the duo draw inspiration from the eerie depths of ’70s and ’80s horror cinema, delivering a sonic concoction of dark and primitive songs with thick layers of fuzz and punchy, compressed drums. The album was engineered by Jonathan Pearce from The Beths at his studio on Karangahape road in Auckland.

TRACK LISTING

1. Out Of This Hell
2. Bodies Dissolve Tonight!
3. Nightmare
4. The Mirror
5. Grave Pressure
6. Miraculous Death
7. Sit Next To Satan
8. Reaper Returns
9. The Reluctant Host

SP-1200 BANGERS ACROSS FIVE 7" RECORDS, FROM ONE OF THE MOST PROLIFIC PRODUCER OF THE 90s - PREVIOUSLY WORKED WITH NOTORIOUS B.I.G., TUPAC SHAKUR, BIG DADDY KANE, LL COOL J, BUSTA RHYMES, AND MANY MORE!

TRACK LISTING

1 - A. Dont Touch Me 
1 - B. Slut 
2 - A. On Down 
2 - B. Beat #1 
3 - A. Piano Joint 
3 - B. Daisy 
4 - A. Comin 
4 - B. Mega Dope 
5 - A. Flippin Todd 
5 - B. Beat #2 

Newly signed to Ninja Tune without having released a single track. This five-track EP marks Ebbb’s first output. Emerging from the vibrant, avant-garde London live scene that spawned black midi and Black Country New Road – and despite being together for barely a year – the band have already landed on something truly singular. Fusing pulsing rhythms, immersive electronic production, sparkling melodies, layered vocal harmonies and beats that veer from ambient to industrial, the result is an idiosyncratic hybrid of sounds. One that the group describes as “Brian Wilson meets Death Grips”. But while the EP might be experimental, loose and unpredictable, it’s also deeply considered, taut, and absolutely flab-free.

TRACK LISTING

1. Himmel
2. Answered
3. Swarm
4. Torn
5. Seamlessly

The release of this album – the group’s 15th studio album – follows a busy 2023 for Eels, where they finally hit the road for their long-awaited Lockdown Hurricane tour of Europe and North America and brought the year to a close by marking over three decades of the group with the release of their second compilation album Eels So Good: Essential Eels, Vol.2.

TRACK LISTING

1 Time
2 We Won’t See Her Like Again
3 Goldy
4 Sweet Smile
5 Haunted Hero
6 If I’m Gonna Go Anywhere
7 And You Run
8 Lay With The Lambs
9 Song For You Know Who
10 I Can’t Believe It’s True
11 On The Bridge
12 Let’s Be Lucky

Billie Eilish’s third studio album, "Hit Me Hard And Soft", released via Darkroom/Interscope Records is her most daring body of work to date, a diverse yet cohesive collection of songs— ideally listened to in its entirety from beginning to end—does exactly as the album title suggests; hits you hard and soft both lyrically and sonically, while bending genres and defying trends along the way. With the help of her brother and sole collaborator, Finneas, the pair wrote, recorded, and produced the album together in their hometown of Los Angeles. This album comes on the heels of her two massively successful albums “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" and "Happier Than Ever" and works to further develop the world of Billie Eilish. 

Bringing her debut album to Ninja Tune, rising DJ and producer Elkka presents Prism of Pleasure, an exploration of sensuality and queerness, and a celebration of pleasure in all its forms- sensual, sexual, aural, deprived, creative, painful, political, the list goes onit is this prism that acts as the lens through which Elkka sees the world.

Prism of Pleasure brings Elkka’s voice to the fore, with collaborations from John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Solange, Harry Styles), Dot Major (London Grammar) and additional writing/production from Tim Bran (Scissor Sisters, Kylie Minogue) and Ash Workman (Metronomy, Christine & The Queens).

Elkka has engaged sex and sensuality expert Oli Lipski as a creative consultant in the project. The pair aim to share their research on the album themes though thinkpieces and features.

Gorgeous visuals for the album and accompanying live show delivered by prominent design studio DR.ME (Mick Jagger, Evian Christ, Ela Minus), whose work has been exhibited at the London V&A Museum and LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Photography for the album was shot by Elkka’s long term creative partner, muse and wife Alexandra Lambert (Metronomy, Loraine James, Charlotte dos Santos).

TRACK LISTING

1. Break All My Walls Down
2. Right Here
3. Make Me
4. Crushhh (feat. John Carroll Kirby)
5. Air Tight (feat. Dot Major)
6. Your Skin
7. Passionfruit (feat. John Carroll Kirby)
8. I Just Want To Love You
9. Surrender2me
10. FCKD It

Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder. At Fargrounds is her third solo album, her first for the Wrong Speed label and the latest in a rich catalogue that repositions the spectral, vulnerable sound of the banjo away from its familiar role as signifier of the past and onto lands brave, new and unexplored. The living wood is imbued with qualities that require engagement and understanding. Working with cherry, oak or walnut involves naming it an equal partner. The parallel, synchronous transformations of wood into instrument, of growing tree into resonating sound, musical tradition into musical flourishing, lie at the heart of Jacken Elswyth’s practices both as an instrument builder and as a creative musician.

One might consider her primarily as a worker in wood, but whose craft and fields of expression are absorbed by those transitional and interim processes that manifest change. The traditional tunes included here have been cultivated and maintained by generations of players and collectors, pruned, grafted, and shaped over time. However, in this setting, their long-established forms seem to morph and shift. They audibly accrue unique qualities, blossoming and swelling into new modes of being, bright-stepping arrangements unfolding with a liveliness hinting at practices of ritual and community. Meanwhile, other pieces, creative cornerstones of this collection, appear fluid, partially formed. They suggest not the cultivation of new growth from established stock, but instead the actions of something on the verge of taking form. Working with raw elements of melodic and tonal abstraction, they illuminate the process of emergence and evolution.

In this context, the title At Fargrounds is telling. It suggests a point set at some distance from any centre of human concerns, a liminal space in which the cultivated world encounters the world of other living things in their living state. Here, the innate strangeness of the maintained environment–vast lawns, sculpted hedges, vacant playing fields–encounters sprawling vistas of driftwood, dense thickets of brambles, stony hillsides. Across a full century-and-a-quarter, long-standing rural and pastoral musical traditions, at some distance from their origins, have been preserved, nurtured and re-shaped under the folk revival. Placed here, these artefacts now sit in alignment with unvarnished documents featuring the raw elements of sound-making. Their working-together is achieved through a universally-applied interest in musical growth and development.

The juxtaposition and combination of these elements gives evidence of new, emerging approaches to community and social music: familiar, known, yet charged with an alien vitality.

TRACK LISTING

1. Singing Birds/Jack Lattin
2. Warm Machinery
3. Private
4. Lost Gander
5. Waken Workshops
6. White Cockade/BigSciota
7. Sussex Waltz
8. Princess Royal
9. Who Remembers
10. A Fisherman's Song For Attracting Seals/Full RiggedShip
11. Falls Of Richmond/Squirrel Hunters
12. Coffin Maker

2024 repress of the 2013 album on limited edition opaque blue vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lux
2. DNA
3. Alive
4. Concert Pitch
5. Ice On The Dune
6. Awakening
7. I'll Be Around
8. Old Flavours
9. Celebrate
10. Surround Sound
11. Disarm
12. Keep A Watch

2024 repress of the 2016 album on limited edition transparent green gatefold vinyl.

Recorded between Hawaii and Los Angeles, the album features the hit ‘High and Low’, as well as a contribution from the legendary Fleetwood Mac singer and guitarist, Lindsay Buckingham.

TRACK LISTING

1. Before
2. High And Low
3. Two Vines
4. Friends
5. There's No Need
6. Way To Go
7. Ride
8. Digital Life
9. First Crush
10. Zzz
11. To Her Door

2024 repress of the 2008 album on limited edition mustard yellow gatefold vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

1. Standing On The Shore
2. Walking On A Dream
3. Half Mast
4. We Are The People
5. Delta Bay
6. Country
7. The World
8. Swordfish Hotkiss Night
9. Tiger By My Side
10. Without You

Limited Edition Gatefold 180gm Double Vinyl edition of 250

All profits from the release are donated to mind.org.uk

The third Emperors New Clothes album recorded and produced in 1996 by Trevor 'Underdog' Jackson, rejected and ridiculed by the bands original label, the album sat unheard for decades and unreleased in its original intended format anywhere till now.

A gloriously twisted mix of jazz, post-rock, dub, no wave, noise & abstract beats played by a live five piece, the album sounds as strangely relevant today as it was wildly ahead of its time in 96.

In founder member Luke Hannam's own words.

"Just two months before the recording took place at the chapel studios in Lincolnshire ENC went through a major line up change with Leo Taylor recruited on drums and David Bateman added on guitar & additional programming, Ian Girdlestone on decks & tape looping and the two founding members Andy Knight- Sax, electronics, flutes, programming, keys & percussion and Luke Hannam on Bass.

The band had come along way from its earliest days as a three piece in the late 80s based in the northeast . ENC were always an unusual band formed around Andy's deep musicality and knowledge of free jazz and experimental music and Luke's love of intense groove and dark post punk. They were an unlikely pairing in someways but they lived closely and supported each other for years.

The 'Surreal Estate' project began as the third album loomed into view. Trevor Jackson who had contributed some fantastic remixes on previous material was hired as producer with Corrine 'The Sea' Pennington as an engineer. The band headed to their Brixton arch and set about making the most adventurous music of their career. The tracks that's you hear on this album were mostly recorded during extensive sessions at The Chapel residential studios in Lincolnshire followed by various additional session in London and also at Trevor's home studio. Recording sessions are funny things, stuff works, stuff fails, bands implode, and sometimes great albums get made, stability never makes the best music and this album probably proves both are true.

My memories of these sessions are pretty vivid, we worked through the night creating our own private universe playing music as freely and intensely as we could. Andy provided, as he always did a sense of otherworldly concentration, I always found him like a man in the centre of a storm building circles and cycles, spinning patterns of sound rhythm and melody. Leo was a relative newcomer at the time but as afar as I was concerned produced beats so intense, so perfect, they pulled my bass into line … visceral and exact. David Bateman listened and carefully spun delicious guitar parts finding space where others thought there was none to be found … it was beautiful to watch and when I listen I can see him in the shadows immersed in the music. Ian's loops and analogue textures found their perfect embrace with Andy's subsonic samples and electronic depth charging …. The whole thing lurched like an obscure On U sound recording colliding with Sun Ra in Trevor's hip hop universe".

TRACK LISTING

1. Trainpiece
2. Cinema Green
3. Twister
4. Strange Charm
5. Tarang
6. Dub Tune
7. Gamelan Melodica
8. Lalit
9. Boogie Electric
10. Guitar Comet
11. More Bodies

Groenland Records are proud to announce that, in May 2024, they will be releasing a document of a unique – if until now little-known – performance given by BRIAN ENO, HOLGER CZUKAY & J.PETER SCHWALM, in which they were accompanied by Raoul Walton and Jern Atai, members of Schwalm’s group, Slop Shop. Billed as a “High-Altitude-Food-Performance with Incidental Music by Slop Shop and Brian Eno”, with Can co-founder Czukay’s appearance kept under wraps in advance, it was recorded on August 27, 1998 outside the Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany – in Bonn, Germany, at the opening party for an exhibition of Eno’s Future Light-Lounge Proposal multimedia installation. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Sushi
2. Roti 
3. Wasser 
4. Reibekuchen
5. Wein 

For the past 50 years, Brian Eno has been at the forefront of musical creativity, technology, and artistic innovation. The hugely influential British musician, producer, activist, visual artist and self-described “sonic landscaper” began his career as an original member of the legendary Roxy Music in the early 1970s. He left the band to release a series of solo records and later pioneered the genre of ambient music with his 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. As a producer, Brian Eno has helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most important artists in music, including David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, Coldplay, and dozens of others. He also composed what may be the most heard piece of music in the world: the startup sound for Microsoft Windows. Undeniably, Eno has changed the way modern music is made.

Rich with access to hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage and unreleased music, Gary Hustwit’s forthcoming documentary Eno employs groundbreaking technology to accomplish something that’s never been done before: a feature film that’s never the same twice. Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes have developed bespoke generative software designed to sequence scenes and create transitions out of Hustwit’s original interviews with Eno, and Eno’s rich archive of hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, and unreleased music. Each screening of Eno is unique, presenting different scenes, order, music, and meant to be experienced live. The generative and infinitely iterative quality of Eno poetically resonates with the artist's own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless deep dive into the mercurial essence of creativity.

Hustwit’s collaboration with Eno first began in 2017, when Eno created an original score for Hustwit’s film Rams, about the German designer Dieter Rams. Says Hustwit, “Much of Brian’s career has been about enabling creativity in himself and others, through his role as a producer but also through his collaborations on projects like the Oblique Strategies cards or the music app Bloom. I think of Eno as an art film about creativity, with the output of Brian’s 50-year career as its raw material. What I’m trying to do is to create a cinematic experience that’s as innovative as Brian’s approach to music and art.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Brian Eno - All I Remember *Previously Unreleased*
2. Brian Eno With Daniel Lanois And Roger Eno - The Secret Place
3. Brian Eno & Fred Again - Cmon
4. Brian Eno & Cluster - Ho Renomo
5. Brian Eno - Sky Saw
6. Brian Eno & John Cale - Spinning Away
7. Brian Eno & Tom Rogerson - Motion In Field
8. Brian Eno - There Were Bells
9. Brian Eno - Third Uncle
10. Brian Eno & David Byrne - Everything That Happens
11. Brian Eno - Stiff
12. Brian Eno With Leo Abrahams And Jon Hopkins - Emerald & Lime
13. Brian Eno - Hardly Me
14. Brian Eno & David Byrne - Regiment
15. Brian Eno - Fractal Zoom
16. Brian Eno - Lighthouse #429 *Previously Unreleased*
17. Brian Eno & Roger Eno - By This River (Live At The Acropolis) *Previously Unreleased.

'Dancing On The Frontline' is the companion record to Enter Shikari's UK #1 album 'A Kiss for the Whole World'. The new record brings together remixes, non-album singles (featuring the likes of Wargasm, Cody Frost, AViVA and Fever 333’s Jason Aalon Butler), plus live recordings from the BBC Radio 1 Rock Show and Future Sounds shows.

'Dancing On The Frontline' also comes with a Blu-ray of the band's headline performances at Slam Dunk Festival 2023 and Germany's Vainstream Festival. Their much-lauded live show has since been all around the world, covering the USA, Australia, Europe, UK, Ireland and more. Audiences in the UK also witnessed the band's biggest ever headline tour to date of the country's arenas, an audio-visual spectacular that The Guardian awarded four stars and heralded as "the beginning of Enter Shikari’s greatest chapter."

TRACK LISTING

1. Goldfish (Shikari Sound System Remix)
2. Bloodshot (Shikari Sound System Remix)
3. The Void Stares Back
4. Bull
5. STRANGERS
6. Losing My Grip
7. It Hurts (BBC Radio One Future Sounds Session Version)
8. Bull Feat. Cody Frost (BBC Radio One Future Sounds Session Version)
9. 2 Be Loved (BBC Radio One Future Sounds Session Version)
10. (pls) Set Me On Fire (BBC Radio One Rock Show Session Version)
11. A Kiss For The Whole World (BBC Radio One Rock Show Session Version)
12. Bloodshot (BBC Radio One Rock Show Session Version)

Following the release of Eric Chenaux’s last album Say Laura (2022), The Guardian wrote “the Canadian songwriter has one of the all-time great singing voices in popular music, an intensely romantic Chet Baker-ish instrument that seems to float with piercing direction, like a paper aeroplane thrown hard through mist.” With Uncut describing his songcraft “as delicate and lovely as a rare orchid” and Record Collector praising the album’s “sublime alien balladry” such are the accolades that have accrued throughout Chenaux’s unique and consummately uncompromising solo music for well over a decade now. Delights Of My Life opens a new chapter for the singer/guitarist and formally introduces the Eric Chenaux Trio, with Toronto-based musicians Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer organ and Phillipe Melanson on electronic percussion. Driver is a longtime collaborator, appearing on several of Chenaux’s solo albums (even embedded into the very title of the 2010 masterpiece Warm Weather With Ryan Driver). Melanson has a long list of involvements that include Bernice, Joseph Shabason, and U.S Girls, and a recent release with his Impossible Burger project on Chenaux’s own experimental label Rat-drifting, but this marks the first fulsome involvement between the two as players on a recording.

In many ways Delights Of My Life also picks up right where Chenaux’s previous album left off, in its subversions of a classic, timeless jazz-inflected balladry, while the interplay of the trio formation indeed unfurls many new delights. Recording together at Chenaux’s spartan home studio in rural France, Driver’s harmonically warped organ and Melanson’s electroacoustic sampling and percussion hold time in newfound ways. Where previously Chenaux relied on a freeze/sustain pedal and minimalist rhythmic triggers to generate both pulse and chordal foundations, Melanson now paints timekeeping with expressive and intricate colourations, through live deployments of fluid sampled percussion (including orchestral timbres like timpani, kettle drums, and woodblock) that blur the boundaries between acoustic and electronic. Driver also ramps up his role in the song arrangements (prefigured in his support playing on Say Laura), teasing out chords and melodic filigree on Wurlitzer that percolate more prominently with Chenaux’s signature fried guitar solos and succulent singing. Both trio members add dulcet backing vocals, most notably on the 10-minute tour-de-force of fuzzed and ring-modulated swing “This Ain’t Life” that opens the record. All seven songs on the album groove and sway, simmer and sparkle, like nothing in the inestimable Chenaux discography to date. Chenaux’s tunes have the uncanny ability to sound like jazz standards; songs you feel you’ve heard before, though certainly never quite like this. Yet these are of course all originals, compositionally and interpretively, bent through an inimitable avant/out-music lens. Delights Of My Life conveys warm familiarity, shot through with the exuberantly experimental subversion and playful, even mischievous, iconoclasm that continues to mark Chenaux as defiantly, virtuosically, and genially one-of-kind.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Ain’t Life
2. I’ve Always Said Love
3. Hello Eyes
4. These Things
5. Simply Fly
6. Light Can Be Low
7. Delights Of My Life

In honor of the record’s ten year anniversary, North Carolina-based indie label Psychic Hotline will release a deluxe reissue, complete with previously unreleased material. Featuring essential singles "Coffee", "Hey Mami,” and "H.S.K.T.", the expanded edition also includes remixes from J Rocc, Rick Wade, Helado Negro, Dntel, and more. The deluxe 2LP package sports an all-over foil inversion of the original album’s iconic foil “SE” logo.

Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn’s debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo’s sound – a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath’s voice.

Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim and Grammy nominations, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn’s writing since then: “a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance” arriving as “a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don’t suffer the longstanding complications of that term.” And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there’s still that argument about what pop can be at its core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.

TRACK LISTING

DISC ONE
01 Hey Mami
02 Dreamy Bruises
03 Could I Be
04 Wolf
05 Dress
06 H.S.K.T.
07 Coffee
08 Uncatena
09 Play It Right
10 Come Down

DISC TWO
11 Hey Mami (Rick Wade Remix)
12 H.S.K.T. (Dntel Remix)
13 Coffee (Helado Negro Remix)
14 Hey Mami (Charles Spearin Remix)
15 H.S.K.T. (Hercules And Love Affair Remix)
16 Coffee (J Rocc Remix)

Deep Nyabinghi drumming and chanting on a version of the Ethiopian national anthem gets things underway on Slave Call, a majestic journey through the spiritual roots of reggae. Later songs add guitars, bass, keyboards, and horns to build a more standard reggae sound on that foundation, but there’s always a dignified restraint and the profundity of the nyabinghi beat. the entire album revolves around Leonard Dillon’s Rastafarian beliefs, with even the cover of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” rewritten to a religious end.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Ethiopian National Anthem
2. Slave Call
3. Guilty Conscience
4. Hurry On
5. Nuh Follow Babylon

Side B
1. Train To Skaville
2. Culture
3. Obeah Book
4. Let It Be Me
5. I Love Jah

The complete iconic Bill Evans LP Sunday at the Village Vanguard, featuring Scott LaFaro on bass, and Paul Motian on drums. Contains perennial versions of Solar, Gloria's Step, and Alice in Wonderland.

This edition also offers an exclusive collector's item consisting of a replica of the exceedingly rare Japanese 7" single (Riverside SR-3033), containing Evans' readings of My Foolish Heart and Polka Dots and Moonbeams.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gloria's Step
2. My Man's Gone Now
3. Solar
4. Alice In Wonderland
5. All Of You
6. Jade Visions
7. Jade Visions (alternative Take)
8. Bill Evans Trio
9. Bill Evans Trio

Acclaimed jazz artist Bill Evans’ Momentum album is the 1972 live album recorded at a concert at Stadsschouwburg in Groningen, the Netherlands. The trio includes, next to Bill Evans on piano, Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums. The ensemble plays compositions by Bill Evans, Miles Davis’ “Nardis” and Michel Legrand’s “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life”. The album received the prestigious German award Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. The 2LP Momentum is available on vinyl for the first time.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Re: Person I Knew
2. Elsa
3. Turn Out The Stars

Side B
1. Gloria's Step
2. Emily
3. Quiet Now

Side C
1. My Romance
2. Sugar Plum
3. The Two Lonely People

Side D
1. Who Can I Turn To
2. What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life
3. Nardis

In meteorology, the word Norther refers to a cold wind that blows down from the north. For Liverpool’s Ex-Easter Island Head, it’s also an apt title for the strange and multi-faceted sound of their new album that now descends upon the world at large: ever shifting, a multiplicity of sounds both acoustic and manipulated, and yet one that still moves as part of a single mighty breeze. At times it might recall the experiments of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, the widescreen beauty of The Necks, the relentless experimentation of Arnold Dreyblatt or the boundary-pushing roster of Kompakt Records, yet ultimately this is music that has no direct compare.

Each of its six pieces demonstrates a different creative process. On blossoming opener ‘Weather’, whirring motors dance fairy-like atop strings and drums; on the dizzying ‘Magnetic Language’ voices are played back through phones and amplified through pickups made of magnets wrapped in copper wire; the title of ‘Golden Bridges’ refers to the brass rods the band shift beneath the strings of their guitar. All, however, tap to one degree or another into that abiding theme of the weather. Norther is Ex-Easter Island Head’s first studio album since 2016, a time spent on collaborations and one-off performances with everyone from classical musicians and fellow experimentalists to schoolchildren.

“All of the projects we were involved in between 2016 and 2024 have expanded the boundaries of what we do by exposing us to a huge variety of instruments, personalities and ways of working. It's really allowed us to see the purity of making music with a four-piece group,” says the band’s Benjamin D. Duvall.That status as a quartet is a new one, with the addition of longstanding friend and collaborator Andrew PM Hunt. Having a member of the band handling recording and mixing helped them push further and further into sonic territory that until Norther remained entirely unexplored – not just by Ex-Easter Island Head, but by any other band on earth. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Weather
2. Norther
3. Easter
4. Magnetic Language
5. Golden Bridges
6. Lodestone

The always hard working Emotional Rescue now unveils the electronic disco project Exo Fender, helmed by esteemed New York producer Eric Calvi and featuring the legendary Steve D'Acquisto. The remastered songs 'Big Mood' and 'Music In My Mind' span two new EPs, with updated edited versions by NYC producer Justin Van Der Volgen. Calvi's journey from Paris to New York's music scene in the 1980s when he engineered hits for artists like Cameo and Africa Bambaataa, and laid the groundwork for Exo Fender. Inspired by clubbing friendships, the project's infectious grooves and tongue-in-cheek nature gained club play and collector's acclaim, with Van Der Volgen's remix enhancing their timeless appeal for today's dancefloors.

TRACK LISTING

Big Mood
Big Mood (Justin Van Der Volgen Edit)

This is the second of two releases from Emotional Rescue that looks to the music of Eric Calvi who headed up the collective Exo Fender, a project that brought together a bunch of friends, producers, and studio amigos. This one is a live boogie jam with Brooklyn DJ and producer Steve D'Aquisto. He was a regal at The Loft and a friend of Arthur Russell so all that bears out in the music - a loose-limbed disco groove with languid percussion and big vocals. A Justin Van Der Volgen edit rounds out the 12".

TRACK LISTING

Music In My Mind
Music In My Mind (Justin Van Der Volgen Edit)

Continuing their quest, the Treasure team has unearthed another enchanting bunch of gems. Introducing a new compilation of revamped classic tracks from F.R, meticulously tailored to meet the refined preferences of today's dance connoisseurs.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Canny Hot (Vocal)
A2. Canny Hot (Dub)
B1. Delicated
B2. Daddy’s Face

Fat Dog are the most exciting breakthrough band of the past few years, conjurers of the sort of frenzied and wild live shows not seen in the capital for years and now the creators of ‘WOOF’., a brilliant and mind-bending debut album. A thrilling blend of electro-punk, rock’n’roll snarling, techno soundscapes, industrial-pop and rave euphoria, ‘WOOF’. is music for letting go to or, in the words of frontman Joe Love, “screaming-into-a-pillow music”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Vigilante
Closer To God
Wither
Clowns

Side B
King Of The Slugs
All The Same
I Am The King
Running
And So It Came To Pass

The Fossils label has been unearthing more musical treasure for its fifth outing, and this one takes you directly to the Middle East for some twisted disco-funk with red hot grooves courtesy of Fava Luva & Dr. Professor. The source of the tunes is obscure and unknown but the pair bring plenty of their own goodness with additional layers of live instrumentation really bring them to life. 'Lahatz' is steamy and full of sensuous vocal magic and cosmic synth work that will get the floor into action, while 'Kerem' is even more topical and exotic with its rich array of strong melodies and downtempo beats making for a woozy and wonderful trip.

TRACK LISTING

Lahatz
Kerem

‘Make It Up’ is the long player follow up to FEET’s debut album ‘What’s Inside Is More Than Just Ham’ which catapulted them into the indie-rock spotlight in 2019. Crowd pleasing thrillers such as ‘Petty Thieving’, ‘the anthemic ‘English Weather’ and more recent crowd favourite ‘Changing My Mind Again’ have solidified the band as one of the most exciting guitar acts on the scene.

‘Make It Up’ distils the FEET of old with a fine-tuned, cohesive, and compelling new output that builds on the sonic DNA of their debut, while effortlessly taking it to the next level.

“There’s no throw away ideas on this album and everything has to have its place. It has to be ironed out and perfected,” explains frontman George Haverson. “I don’t like to say polished, but it is perfected to a point where everything can be done in its fullest form. I feel like we’ve got 12 complete songs on this album and not 12 ideas. We’ve made the FEET machine and now it’s a case of inserting the right idea and the output is a great song. Before, it felt a bit more like we were throwing shit at the wall. This time round, everything feels a bit more refined.”

“Being in a band is a big chunk of time in your life, but this is a choice we all make, and we don’t ever have to even think about coming back to FEET. It’s like our child, really, and we’re all the surrogate fathers of this band! That keeps us together, this desire to create and make something that’s truly great.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Better Than Last
2. The Real Thing
3. I’m Wrong
4. Greasy Boy
5. Why Would I Lie
6. Truly Awful
7. Sit Down
8. No Vision
9. When You’re Feeling Strange
10. Bullseye
11. On The Wire
12. Goodbye (So Long, Farewell)

Ezra Feinberg’s third album Soft Power sees the composer-guitarist enlist an impressive array of fellow musicians including Mary Lattimore, David Moore (Bing & Ruth), Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Robbie Lee and share the life affirming lead single ‘Future Sand’.

Defined by its abundance of melodies, repeating figures and ecstatic improvisations, Soft Power exudes an enlightened and transformative spirit to empower the listener. Feinberg, a practising psychoanalyst and former founding member of the San Francisco psychedelic collective Citay (Dead Oceans / Important Records) resides in the artistic enclave of upstate New York's Hudson River valley. Initial recordings emerged in the late summer of 2020, before added synthesis with collaborator John Thayer (Arp, Sunwatchers) during early 2021. Soft Power follows previous albums ‘Recumbent Speech’ (2020) and ‘Pentimento and Others’ (2018).

The compassionate, tender-hearted opener ‘Future Sand’ deftly interweaves flutes and steady arpeggios. The Reichian pulse beneath the soaring melody is played not on the customary analogue sequencer, but on finger-picked acoustic guitar, one of the lodestars of Feinberg’s compositional approach. ‘Soft Power’, the buoyant and mesmeric title track that follows builds over a rich bed of guitars and a reverb-y Rhodes melody reminiscent of a Strata East LP, its narrative arc bountiful in energy, optimism and future dreaming, a perfect accompaniment to long days of summertide. “The most unexpected, unpredictable, and spontaneous moments in life live in the realm of softness”, quotes Feinberg. ‘Pose Beams’ blends the chamber-jazz approach of Penguin Café Orchestra with a balletic kosmische, climaxing with a galvanising crescendo and “free improv” section performed by fellow New Yorkers - Robbie Lee (piano) and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, whose granular and modular synths sprinkle particle dust over the expressive drumming of John Thayer. ‘Flutter Intensity’ evokes in part the music of Cluster as played on acoustic guitars, which ping-pong across the stereo field, providing the canvas for a plaintive vibraphone line reminiscent of TNT-era Tortoise. Instruments move in tandem, but also drift and glide allowing them the space to hang in the air, the variegated rhythms, textures, and tones all laced into the fabric of the album.

At the centrefold of the albums 7-tracks is ‘The Big Clock’, a tryptic piece that evolves from pairs of stretched varying tones, creating fields of technicolour over an unabashed motorik beat, serving to offset the pastoral and ambient registers heard elsewhere. It features the first of two appearances from David Moore (Bing & Ruth) who plays lilting piano lines on the come-down. ‘There Was Somebody There’ returns to the album’s earlier wistfulness, a hard stereo-panned soundworld with lightly strummed, interlocking acoustic guitars combining to pigment a washy, painterly scene. David Moore and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma provide reviving synths, the underlying pulse that seems to simulate a life cycle; another day on Earth. The album closes with the reflective ‘Get Some Rest’ featuring Mary Lattimore, whose harp pluckings set a dreamlike tone against bare organic acoustics and flourishing flutes to create a sense of realignment and restoration.

Feinberg artfully transcends the listener to an enriched place, his compositions distinguished by the deep humanity that lies at their core, plugging the listener into a state of wide eyed being, open and alive. Soft Power then is Ezra’s own mantra but also one of power giving - a colourful catharsis translated into music.

Feinberg’s music always speaks to the listener, but Soft Power, in whispering, speaks loudest.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Future Sand
A2. Soft Power
A3. Pose Beams
A4. Flutter Intensity
B1. The Big Clock
B2. There Was Somebody There
B3. Get Some Rest

FINK, Long-established alt-folk trio, return with Fin Greenall’s eighth studio album under the genre-hopping moniker. Coalescing around the emergent urgency in each of the album’s ten tracks and intimate, closed-door sessions in picturesque Cornwall, the soul-reaching ‘Beauty In Your Wake’ is released on the band’s R’COUP’D label.

Now resident in Berlin, native Cornishman Greenall, one time collaborator with John Legend, Amy Winehouse, Colin Stetson and more, sought the solitude and back-to-earth atmosphere of the small village of Zennor, on the county’s picturesque Atlantic coast for the agenda-free, organic recording sessions. The band were invited to record at producer Sam Okell’s newly built studio and were the first band to create there. Okell is the Grammy Award-winning engineer and mixer of The Beatles’ Get Back and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 50th Anniversary Release.

Imagining that those conditions could percolate a lo-fi, classic English folk album, the joint creative restlessness of the band and Okell instead pushed ‘Beauty In Your Wake’ into the expansive realms of FINK’s commercially and critically successful albums of the noughties and 2010’s, and is a triumphant return to self. FINK’s music has always been woven into a broader global tapestry, not least because the band’s music has featured on countless film and TV soundtracks such as Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead, and most recently on the latest series of True Detective.

Going ‘overground’ in the music world for the first time in 1997 as a dance-orientated signee to Ninja Tunes’ sister label N-Tone, Greenall’s life in music has travelled diverse roads and lit numerous corners of the international music business. The reformed, classic FINK line-up is the same as that which first recorded the band’s breakthrough album, Biscuits For Breakfast (2006), a release that proved to be a springboard for widespread international touring.

TRACK LISTING

A1. What Would You Call Yourself
A2. The Only Thing That Matters
A3. Be Forever Like A Curse
A4. It's Like You Ain't Mine No More
A5. Follow You Down
B1. I Don't See You As The Others Do
B2. One Last Gift
B3. Don't Forget To Leave
B4. So We Find Ourselves
B5. When I Turn This Corner

Finom's (aka Ohmme) third LP. Not God produced by Jeff Tweedy. Recommended If You Like: The Beths, Soccer Mommy, Palehound, New Pornographers, Melkbelly, Lala Lala, NNAMDÏ, The Breeders, Jeff Tweedy/Wilco, The Roches. Not God is the new album from Chicago’s beloved two-headed monster, Finom (fka Ohmme). You can ask them to go into more detail about the boring reasons why they changed their name, but for now, the answer is going to be polite refusal. No. Co-fronted by Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart, Finom’s influences run vast and varied, and they put a premium on change. Produced by Jeff Tweedy in the Wilco Loft, Not God is a marvel of growth, a progression from the roots of this collaborative band whose history can be traced back to its improvised conception. This is owed in no small part to their hometown of Chicago, the life raft to so many persisters in musical adventurosity. That energy combined with Finom's dramatic vocal and musical gifts puts them in the peripheries of the legacies cemented by The Roches, Roxy Music, the B52s, Kate Bush, Cate Le Bon, and Wilco. Cunningham and Stewart are brilliant harmonizers, but harmony doesn't equate to a utopia. In Finom's maws harmony can also be a fight, holding the line until the volcano erupts. This realistic depiction of a creative relationship jolts throughout the songs of Not God, and brings the whole damn thing to life. Finom are more than one person with more than one dream. But still, they grow together, harnessed by their shared love of pop songwriting, control, chaos, and being generally freaky-deaky. Freaky in that way that is only really fun when you're doing it with a friend. As the globe spins and advancements advance, it can feel essential to return to relationships that make us feel whole, that generate energy of strength and relief. Which puts double the weight on the reality that Sima and Macie continue to pledge allegiance to each other, at the base of the volcano, in the front seat of the car as it pulls off the highway. 

TRACK LISTING

Haircut
Dirt
Naked
Hungry
Not God
A Petunia
Cyclops
Cardinal
As You Are

Although both Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong had met and performed together previously, they wouldn't be heard on record together until January 18, 1946, when they waxed a single 78-rpm disc ("You Won't Be Satisfied) for Decca. They went on to record a few more singles together until in 1956 when producer Norman Granz paired the two together between 1956 and 1957 on three albums that were both critically acclaimed and commercial successes - appealing to audiences in and beyond the confines of jazz per se: Ella & Louis, its sequel Ella & Louis Again, and the selection of songs from George Gershwin's opera Porgy & Bess.

While Porgy & Bess was recorded with a big band, the first two albums (featured in this release) were made in small group formats with the great Oscar Peterson Trio plus drummers Buddy Rich or Louie Bellson, resulting in some of the most fascinating jazz and popular music ever produced.

TRACK LISTING

1. Can't We Be Friends
2. Isn't This A Lovely Day?
3. Moonlight In Vermont 
4. They Can't Take That Away From Me
5. Under A Blanket Of Blue
6. Tenderly
7. A Foggy Day
8. Stars Fell On Alabama
9. Cheek To Cheek
10. The Nearness Of You
11. April In Paris
12. Don't Be That Way
13. They All Laughed
14. Autumn In New York 
15. Stompin' At The Savoy
16. I Won't Dance
17. I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm 
18. Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good To You?
19. Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
20. I'm Puttin' All My Eggs In One Basket
21. A Fine Romance
22. Love Is Here To Stay
23. Learnin' The Blues

This limited edition 12” serves as an accompanying piece to Fixmer’s brand-new album. The vinyl features 6 dark electronic tracks from the record, all infused with his signature energy and thoughtful sound design. This comes with an audio download code of the full-length record, including 6 additional tracks spanning across the landscape of techno music.

Terence Fixmer is celebrated for his innovative and genre-defying approach to music production. With a career spanning over two decades, he has released numerous albums and EPs on some of the most prestigious techno labels. His remixing talents have extended to tracks from industry giants such as Depeche Mode, Yann Tiersen, Sven Väth, Dave Clarke, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Indochine, and more.

This release underscores Fixmer's versatility and dedication to expanding his musical horizons, embodying the modest yet noteworthy influence he has had in the realm of electronic and techno music. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Ephemere
2. In Synthesis
3. Evolve
4. Shore Break
5. Glacier
6. Dark Enough?

Greg Foat is a London-based keyboardist, composer, bandleader and DJ. He claims his life-long love/hate relationship with the piano began at age 3, when he fell off a piano stool at his aunt's house. He started composing around age 11, and at 15 attended a jazz workshop with Jeff Clyne, Olaf Vas, Trevor Tomkins and Nick Weldon, igniting his obsession with jazz music. He furthered to study jazz at Middlesex University, and then studied for 6 months in Sweden on an Erasmus grant. He played his first professional studio session there at 21, and has been working as a professional musician ever since.

Snake Plant Shuffle and Spider Plant Blues are inspired by the the plants on Gregs bedside tables - which periodically move around the house dependent on his mood. The plants provide a good source of oxygen in the room and create a calm soothing atmosphere for Gregs musical projects. Together the tracks feature live drum kits by Ayo Salawu, Fender Rhodes and a plethora of Vintage Synthesisers.

Snake Plant Shuffle has had radio plays in Gemany, Poland and Canada, as well as being heavily featured in Amazon Music's Jazz playlists, including 'Fresh Jazz', 'Coffee Shop Jazz' and 'Café Jazz'. Both tracks are featured in Apple Music' 'Jazz Scene: UK' and 'New Latitudes' playlists.

TRACK LISTING

1. Spider Plant Blues
2. Snake Plant Shuffle

“How the fuck are we going to turn this into a song?” That’s the question Lou Barlow and John Davis have asked themselves since co-founding The Folk Implosion in the early 1990s. Beginning with improvised jams featuring Barlow on bass and Davis on drums, the duo develop their beat-driven pop collages from the ground up. It’s the process they used on their debut cassette, Walk Through This World with the Folk Implosion, and one they’ve returned to 30 years later on their spellbinding, self-referencing reunion, Walk Thru Me.

Separated from their homes in Massachusetts and North Carolina, Barlow and Davis collaborated remotely, flashing back to their early friendship as penpals. A sweaty bass and drums session went down in Barlow’s attic, before they booked studio time with producer Scott Salter (St. Vincent, Spoon, The Mountain Goats).

Contrasts and comparisons are the keys to unlocking Walk Thru Me, and the Folk Implosion as a whole. Beyond the audible differences between Barlow’s soft voice and Davis’s urgent, reedy proclamations,

their approaches to songwriting are strikingly distinct. While Barlow approached his lyrics from a protective paternal perspective (“My Little Lamb”), Davis paid tribute to his late father, shining a light on their complicated relationship (“The Day You Died”). Finally, Davis’s Persian music studies in weekly Zoom lessons inspired him to integrate traditional Middle Eastern instruments such as the setar, oud, saz, and tombak.

“Because we’re so separate, part of this album is me desperately trying to telepathically communicate to John and Scott, who are 700 miles away from me,” Barlow concludes. “A big part of what I consider to be the Folk Implosion is taking disparate things and turning them into pop.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Crepuscular
2. The Day You Died
3. Walk Thru Me
4. My Little Lamb
5. Bobblehead Doll
6. The Fable And The Fact
7. Right Hand Over The Heart
8. Water Torture
9. O.K. To Disconnect
10. Moonlit Kind

Fontaines DC, Massive Attack and Young Fathers have announced the pre-order release of an exclusive, limited edition vinyl record in support of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

*The 12” vinyl only release, features material from Fontaines DC, and Massive Attack/Young Fathers, and a ceasefire sleeve design by 3D of Massive Attack. 

The reverse sleeve of the 12” features words written on a hospital whiteboard in Gaza by Doctors Without Borders medic Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila – words which went viral on global social media - depicting the desperation of medical professionals and civilians in Gaza. Tragically, Dr Nujaila was killed in a strike a few weeks later.

"WHOEVER STAYS
UNTIL THE END
WILL TELL THE STORY,

WE DID WHAT WE COULD.
REMEMBER US"

Despite repeated deadly attacks on its staff, medics, surgeons, and aid conveys, Doctors Without Borders volunteers continue to offer critical support to the civilians of Gaza.

Fontaines DC, Massive Attack and Young Fathers have donated their music in full support of the incredible Doctors Without Borders staff working in Gaza today, as a statement for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank, and in solidarity with the Palestinian people living under a brutal military occupation.

Fontaines DC, Massive Attack & Young Fathers will donate 100% of the profits from this promotional venture to Médecins Sans Frontières (UK - charity number: 1026588) emergency operations in Gaza and the West Bank. The total donation is expected to be in excess of £150,000.

3D (Massive Attack) said: "The hourly scenes of horror in Gaza, with hospitals and schools bombed to dust and innocent civilians, journalists and doctors killed in unspeakable numbers has been made so much worse by more than ten weeks of abject political failure.
We're in awe of the Doctors Without Borders medics who place their lives on the line to help innocent civilians in Gaza. The ceasefire EP is a tribute to them, and their incredible ongoing work in truly indescribable circumstances. We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine”

Fontaines DC said: “Fontaines DC join millions across the world in demanding an immediate ceasefire and a permanent end to Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine. Since October, Doctors Without Borders have been on the ground in Gaza, where every human is an IDF target, risking their lives to give vital care to the thousands injured by Israel's indiscriminate attacks on the starving and defenceless. We feel utterly helpless in what we can do at this point however we do hope our small contribution to this record can raise some desperately needed funds for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. Ceasefire Now. Free Palestine”

Natalie Roberts, MSF Executive Director said: “After more than two months of war, Israel’s unrelenting and indiscriminate strikes on Gaza have caused unprecedented and catastrophic levels of civilian harm. Nowhere is safe. Hospitals that are overflowing with the sick and wounded are coming under fire or being raided by Israeli forces, killing doctors, health workers, colleagues. Our teams continue to do what they can without even the basic guarantees of safety. We desperately want to do more, but for that we need an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
Huge thanks to Massive Attack, Fontaines DC and Young Fathers for all their support.”

*Copies have been packed using different combinations of coloured vinyl and sleeves. All orders are selected at random.

Fontaines D.C. announce details of their highly-anticipated fourth album, Romance. Romance is the band’s first album with producer James Ford and is without doubt their most assured, inventive and sonically adventurous record yet. It’s set to build on the success of the Dublin-made, now London-based band’s acclaimed 2022 album Skinty Fia, which reached number 1 in the UK and Irish album charts and saw the band receiving a host of accolades including “International Group of the Year” at the 2023 BRIT Awards.

Heralding Fontaines D.C.’s latest creative (r)evolution is the explosive lead single “Starburster”. Inspired by a panic attack lead singer Grian Chatten suffered in London’s St Pancras station, the song is punctuated by sharp feral intakes of breath. Its propulsive beat and unrelenting lyrics establish self-destruction as fantasy before a brief moment of sobering clarity when the drums fall away and Chatten moves from spitting, almost-rap into an almost-psalm, his baritone rich and dreamy. It’s accompanied by a cinematic music video from director Aube Perrie (Megan Thee Stallion, Harry Styles, The Hives) that captures the song’s cathartic intensity to brilliant effect.

Romance is Fontaines D.C.s most ambitious, expansive record yet, its 11 tracks constellating ideas that have been percolating among Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass), and Tom Coll (drums) since they released Skinty Fia in 2022. These ideas crystalised while touring the U.S. and Mexico with Arctic Monkeys as the five band members shared music and found a throughline with artists that deftly build out their own sprawling creative worlds: the attitude and aesthetic sheen of artists like Shygirl and Sega Bodega, the bolshy sonic palettes of hip hop and heavy metal, Mos Def, A$AP Ferg, OutKast and Korn. They had time apart to build more singular visions for what future music could be: O’Connell went to Spain’s Castile-La Mancha and later became a new father, while Chatten spent time in LA, and Deegan in Paris. They laid deeper roots in London. Each member spent time pushing their boundaries – experimental riffs, chord progressions, and far-flung lyrical references without intentions for a record. After wrapping up the US arena tour in Autumn 2023, they spent a month writing together again, three weeks of pre-production in a North London studio, and a month in a chateau close to Paris, sleeping among studio equipment, completely immersed.

Of the album’s title, Conor Deegan says, “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as (Mercury Prize-nominated debut) Dogrel. The second album (the GRAMMY-nominated A Hero’s Death) is about that detachment, and the third (Skinty Fia) is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”

Expounding on the theme, Chatten recalls Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s anime Akira, where the embers of love develop despite a maelstrom of technological degradation and political corruption around its characters. “I’m fascinated by that - falling in love at the end of the world,” he says. “The album is about protecting that tiny flame. The bigger armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes,” while O’Connell adds “This record is about deciding what’s fantasy – the tangible world, or where you go in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us.”

The sonic evolution of the band, who bared their teeth in early records with antagonistic punk sensibilities, is an ascent into grungier breaks, dystopian electronica, hip-hop percussion, and dreamy Slowdive-esque textures that may surprise fans. The shoegaze touchpoints first pressed on Skinty Fia unfold on Romance like a purpling bruise. But any “retro aesthetic”, as Chatten describes it, is left behind. Reflecting on the impending release, Chatten says, “We say things on this record we’ve wanted to say for a long time. I never feel like it's over, but it’s nice to feel lighter.” The fantasy is felt for better or worse, and Fontaines D.C. welcome either end of oblivion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Romance
2. Starburster
3. Here's The Thing
4. Desire
5. In The Modern World
6. Bug
7. Motorcycle Boy
8. Sundowner
9. Horseness Is The Whatness
10. Death Kink
11. Favourite

Keeley Forsyth is a singer, composer and actress from Oldham, UK. A frequent presence on primetime TV since the mid-'90s, over the past few years she has forged an unusual parallel career as a unique and uncompromising new presence in contemporary music. Described by Pitchfork as “arid and beautiful”, by Uncut as "astonishing" and The Sunday Times as "one of the most remarkable in years”, Keeley's debut LP 'Debris' (2020) and follow-up 'Limbs' (2022) drew unanimous critical praise, prompting comparisons with Nico, Beth Gibbons, Aldous Harding, Nick Cave, Anohni and even Scott Walker. It's often stated that no one else is making music quite like this.

The bleak and foreboding landscape surrounding Keeley's North Yorkshire home seems to inhabit her third LP, 'The Hollow'. The moors, visible from her studio window, impact upon a music that feels made of these places: windswept, rain-soaked and blinking through the low-lit landscape. The album's title derives from discovering a long-abandoned mining shaft whilst out walking - the past lurking within and haunting the present we now occupy. A connection to time that places us within it, facing what is gone and what may come. But also, perhaps that time has no concern as to whether we're here or not.

Keeley's unique elemental voice again sits centrally within this world-building. Her cathartic reflections are exorcisms in song. We hear an artist making sense of her life, willing to expose vulnerability without ever appearing weak. Working again with producer Ross Downes, the LP features Matthew Bourne and Colin Stetson, Forsyth sought to expand both her voice and music. Taking aspects of sacred music, minimalist post-classical, dark ambient, film and theatre soundtracks, she layers her vocals into chamber choirs, applies pitch shifts and other digital processing, moves from clear articulate intention to mumbled numb utterances.

Composer Mihály Vig's score to Bela Tarr’s film 'The Turin Horse' is reimagined as a pressurised outpouring, recasting the everyday within a mythical light of survival and hope. On ‘A Shift’, Mal Finch's protest song ‘We Are Women, We Are Strong ‘, originally sung by wives and daughters in support of the '80s miner’s strikes, is recontextualised in solidarity for an experience of creative labour.

A sought-after collaborator, Keeley is currently working towards new projects with Ben Frost, Teho Teardo, and Matthew Bourne. She has provided vocals for Louis Carnell; remixed both Gazelle Twin and Quin Quis; has soundtracked Maxine Peake’s directorial debut; and is currently developing a stage and studio project with Ben Frost and writer Robert MacFarlane.

A magnetic live performer able to create an immersive almost ritualistic experience, Keeley recently received a standing ovation at Unsound and supports the LP with shows at Bristol New Music, Rewire festival and London's ICA.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. The Answer
2. The Hollow
3. Come And See
4. Eve
5. Turning
6. A Shift
Side B
1. Slush
2. Drag Me Down
3. Do I Breathe
4. In The Corner
5. Horse
6. Creature

Brand new album from electronic titan Kieran Hebden who continues his futuristic creation of sound across eight elegant and fantastic tracks. Utilizing a now well versed palette which seems to effortlessly merge organic instrumentation and hybridized vocals into digitally processed pastoral soundscapes. All the usual Hebdenian traits are audible on album opener "Loved" - from his well loved live drum breaks to the slightly melancholic piano lines. Quickly ushering in a more liminal experience, "Gliding Through Everything" is a crystalline waterfall that reimagines H2O as a 4D particle cascading through your fingertips. "Storm Crystals" quickly soothes with twangy mallets, downbeat groove and healing tones; the moment you quietly settle into your seat, expectations met and suitably zoned in for the rest of the LP. Hebden concludes side A with the accelerated pace of "Daydream Repeat"; which doesn't drift too far from themes explored throughout the side but ups the bpm and buoyancy.

Side B slows us back down, ready for the second half of the trip; emotive guitar lines picked from the ether as angelic vox are gently smudged and diced before our ears - a sonic trademark the producer has previously used on tracks such as "Love Cry" and "Baby". "31 Bloom" bounces out of the mainframe at another slightly increased tempo, glitched arpeggios and highly sequenced piano fragments beautifully coalesced into a moment of transcendental ascension. Penultimate track, "So Blue" allows us a moment of reflection, stark elements imparting such strong emotions - there's few producers who can squeeze so much human feeling out of their machines. Finally, "Three Drums" concludes in suitable form - a slowly spiraling semi-orchestral fury into a white hot, retina-scorching sun'; almost hallucinatory in its saturation yet carried along at a languid pace; allowing the listener to unwind into a paradisical dream state of Hebden's own creation.

Have to say he's done it again. It's nicely succinct and sequenced to perfection, with the four tracks on each side perfectly 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I've always been a massive fan of the ol' Four Tet, and while I think the more recent outings share characteristics with the glitched melodies and syncopated percussion of Pause or Rounds, it's a far more relaxing affair in all, owing a lot more to ambient music than the dancefloor-focused outings of the past. 'Three' is possibly his most focused and enjoyable work to date, and that's really something for a man with such a stellar discography.

TRACK LISTING

01 Loved 4:03
02 Gliding Through Everything 4:08
03 Storm Crystals 6:40
04 Daydream Repeat 6:09
05 Skater 4:16
06 31 Bloom 5:52
07 So Blue 5:30
08 Three Drums 8:16

A sense of destiny hangs over Sentir Que No Sabes, Mabe Fratti’s fourth solo-credited album released in a five year span. Her work has always possessed a finely tuned sense of drama capable of expressing a range of emotional states, and across this new album, she conveys the struggle to process various relationships or situations–and the actions that come next. Sentir Que No Sabes is urgent and clear, poppy, generous and approachable, while showcasing a considerable emotional hinterland. It is also, as Fratti is quick to mention, “groovy.”

Written and recorded with her partner, multi-instrumentalist, and co-composer Héctor Tosta (I.La Católica, Titanic), Sentir Que No Sabes is the result of an intense, detail-oriented process. Fueled by a new confidence gained in their collaborative project, Titanic, and its critically acclaimed 2023 LP, Vidrio, the two hunkered down in the familiarity of their studio (aka Tinho Studios) to bash out the initial sonic coordinates of her new record. “We talked and talked, and discussed ways of playing and recording, until things became inevitable,” Fratti explains. “We recorded a bunch of demos at our home studio and that meant we had a lot of time to re-edit and experiment. We really dug in. We were super focused on detail.” Tosta also took up the controls as producer and arranger-in-chief for all additional instruments. The album was later completed at Willem Twee Studios in Den Bosch in the Netherlands, and Pedro y el Lobo Studios and Soy Sauce Studios, in Mexico City.

For the final studio recordings, the pair were joined by drummer Gibran Andrade and trumpetist Jacob Wick to fill out and expand on Tosta’s percussion and brass arrangements. This small group of friends were able to work quickly and openly, and without fear: a testament to the exhaustive groundwork put in at Tinho Studios. This can be heard in three short, intermediary tracks that also manage to be the most aggressive on the record: “Kitana” (a scratch-laden instrumental that acts as a strange prelude for the last track, “Angel nuevo”) and a pair of two-minute instrumental interludes, “Elastica” I and II. None are throwaway mood pieces; rather they act as emotional cue cards, and hint at the way Fratti and Tosta created the overall atmosphere of Sentir Que No Sabes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Kravitz
2. Pantalla Azul (Blue Screen Error)
3. Elastica II
4. Oidos (Ears)
5. Quieras-o-no (Whether You Want To Or Not) 
6. Enfrente (In Front)
7. Elastica I
8. Márgen Del Indice (Index Margin)
9. Alarmas Olvidadas (Forgotten Alarms)
10. Descubrimos Un Suspiro (We Discovered A Sigh)
11. Intento Fallido (failed Attempt)
12. Kitana
13. Angel Nuevo

“Into The Blue is the clearest portrait of who I am as an artist. It’s me through and through,” says multi-instrumentalist Aaron Frazer. A daring blend of soul, psychedelia, spaghetti western, disco, gospel and hip-hop, Into the Blue represents the impressive range of Frazer’s sonic talents. Frazer maintains the unmistakable falsetto and classic songwriting he’s known for, but plants Into the Blue firmly in the now with a hip-hop mentality at its core, weaving together genres and production techniques to form something new.

Into The Blue was conceived, like so many classic records, out of actual heartbreak. Frazer moved cross-country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and embarked on a journey that’s reflected in the album’s themes of grief, loneliness, and searching for healing. “Into The Blue really means heading into the unknown. That has been the last year of my life and I’m still in the blue,” Frazer explains. “But there are also songs here that celebrate love and the giddiness of a new relationship and all that. That’s part of a breakup to me, processing the whole thing, remembering the things that were right as much as the things that were wrong.”

Frazer wrote on every track and played several live instruments on the album. The title track, “Into The Blue”, is a haunting, resolute anthem, combining cinematic strings and tough-as-nails breakbeats as Frazer heads west. “Here I go, to a place where the broken heart knows,” he sings. “It’s all I can do. Back into the blue.” “Payback” is an explosive dancefloor heater, featuring shimmering tambourines and driving bass lines. Northern soul drums meet snarling fuzz guitar, hurdling towards its epic conclusion.

The album features moments of towering arrangements, recalling David Axelrod and Ennio Merricone, balanced by rawness, incorporating iPhone recordings and one-take vocals. For Into the Blue, Frazer enlisted Grammy-winner Alex Goose as coproducer, known for his crate-digging samples and collaborations with hip-hop artists like Freddie Gibbs, Madlib and Brockhampton. Frazer also experimented with samples for the first time on a record, drawing from unexpected sources like 90s R&B group Hi-Five. Though Into the Blue is born out of heartbreak, Frazer hopes it leaves listeners with a sense of optimism. “You know, you can still laugh on a day when you’re grieving,” he says, “there’s no peaks without valleys,” he says, but Into The Blue sees Aaron Frazer at new heights.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1) Thinking Of You
2) Into The Blue
3) Fly Away
4) Payback
5) Dime Feat. Cancamusa
6) Perfect Strangers

Side B
7) Time Will Tell
8) I Don’t Wanna Stay
9) Play On
10) Easy To Love
11) The Fool

From P60 is an alias of Zoltan Nagy who this year marks the significant milestone of a quarter of a century in the music game. He celebrates that by launching his new label Midnight Fashion Chill with his own first EP for it. Over the years, Nagy has done it all from deep house to Balearic to lounge and downtempo and here brings that touch of class to six superbly soothing sounds that fuse all that and more. The opener is pure horizontal bliss, 'The Times We Spent Together' is a slow-motion daydream, 'Fallin' (with Jaidene Veda) is pure soul-soothing magic and 'When' is a gently lilting ambient soundscape crafted to perfection.

TRACK LISTING

Surprise Me!
The Times We Spent Together
Alone In The Crowd
Boomerang (with Virag Keszthelyi)
Fallin (with Jaidene Veda)
When

The Return Of Tomorrow is Fu Manchu’s first new album in 6 years, and they made sure that it was worth the wait. Their 14th album is their 1st double LP of new material and it was conceived of as a vinyl listening experience. The first LP features 7 songs in their iconic heavy fuzz sound including the first single, “Hands Of The Zodiac” and the relentlessly catchy “Loch Ness Wrecking Machine.” The second LP sees the band mellowing out with 6 slower tempo jams including the synth inflected “Solar Baptized” and the title track. Both LPs are 45RPM for the thickest possible sound. CD listeners need not worry, as this version of the album was mastered specifically for the format.

Like the band’s most recent album, Clone Of The Universe, and the band’s 3 part Fu30 EP series, The Return Of Tomorrow was recorded at The Racket Room in Santa Ana, California by Jim Monroe (Adolescents, Ignite) and co-produced with Fu Manchu.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dehumanize
2. Loch Ness Wrecking Machine
3. Hands Of The Zodiac
4. Haze The Hides
5. Roads Of The Lowly
6. Time Is) Pulling You Under
7. Destroyin’ Light
8. Lifetime Waiting
9. Solar Baptized
10. What I Need
11. The Return Of Tomorrow
12. Liquify
13. High Tide

Fucked Up are one of the most prolific hardcore punk bands of our generation. Since their 2001 inception, they’ve challenged listeners with thoughtful artful chaos and a seemingly limitless drive for musical experimentation. Because of this, they’ve also become a record collectors worst nightmare; releasing over 80 recordings and collaborations on countless labels that include Arts & Crafts, Matador, Jade Tree, and more. Fucked Up “Year of the Hare” is the latest installment of their Zodiac themed releases. Over a two year period, it was recorded and constructed at Electrical Audio, Key Club Studios, and Candle Studios. Title track “Year of the Hare” is a 21 minute epic that frantically mixes traditional instrumentation, piano/synths, flutes and sax, experimental editing/soundscapes, and guest vocals from great Isla Craig into one dizzying experience. While B-Side “California Cold” slowly builds and deconstructs over an 8 and a half minute stretch. Organically shifting from jangly melodic-punk anthem into a fuzzed out psychedelic jam session. Eclectically blending musical styles and voices in the most, well, Fucked Up way possible.

TRACK LISTING

1. Year Of The Hare
2. California Cold

All Black Everything, the debut EP by UK-based, Parisian bassist, vocalist and composer Amy Gadiaga, is an expansive, boundary-pushing 5-track collection showcasing prodigious bass playing and a voice brimming with power and emotion. It's a profound exploration of self-acceptance that presents both a celebration and acknowledgement of Gadiaga's deep-seated darkness.

Inspired by the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement All Black Everything confronts racial identity complexities and the challenges of being a societal 'black sheep' and sees Gadiaga courageously transform her insecurities into a narrative of self-empowerment.

Born to parents of Senegalese, Gambian, and Malian descent, and hailing from the outskirts of Paris, the multitalented Gadiaga has been making waves in the UK music industry since she moved to London aged 18. With a fresh and unique style that bridges the old school jazz tradition of musicians such as Betty Carter and Wayne Shorter with the raw, rootsy modern sound of artists such as D'Angelo, Stevie Wonder and Twinkie Clark, Gadiaga's breadth of ambition and revitalising approach have brought early critical acclaim and ardent fans.

Signalling the arrival of a significant new voice on the London music scene, All Black Everything communicates the liberating essence of embracing individuality and presents a journey through Gadiaga's personal struggles, standing as a testament to art's transformative power and encouraging listeners to find strength in their uniqueness. "All Black Everything is very much an exploration and embracing of one of my archetypes in life which is the black bird/black sheep" she explains. "That feeling of not thinking you belong anywhere, of being misunderstood and really tending to your own. No helping hand. But it's ok sometimes because you also feel like nobody can compete with you, you're one of a kind."

TRACK LISTING

1. Paloma Negra
2. Soar When I'm Alone
3. Full Sun (해찬)
4. Petite
5. All Black Everything

Introducing the much anticipated 7'' vinyl featuring two standout tracks from Sami Galbi. Face A is "Dakchi Hani," a poignant post-breakup anthem blending raï influences with contemporary rhythms, offering a humorous take on navigating emotions. Face B showcases "Rruina," a powerful follow-up track that delves deeper into darker, club-oriented sounds, pushing the boundaries of Swiss-Moroccan raï-chaabi fusion. Seamlessly transitioning from the raw synths and bouncing rhythms of "Dakchi Hani" to the tension-filled atmosphere of "Rruina," this vinyl promises a captivating journey through Sami Galbi's musical evolution. With each track tailored for the dancefloors, this vinyl release is poised to explode with energy wherever it goes.

TRACK LISTING

A. Dakchi Hani
B. Rruina

‘Gemelo’ is the new album from songwriter and pop auteur Angélica Garcia. Its title is a reference to the twin self – the idea of a second, more intuitive self within. It’s a vibrant, prismatic hybrid-pop record that soundtracks a journey through the different stages and forms of grief. Angélica explores its inherent loneliness, beauty, and tension, eventually finding liberation. ‘Gemelo’ also expertly deconstructs facets of universal themes like religion, spirit, heritage, womanhood, and ancestral veneration.

Born in East LA with Mexican and Salvadoran lineage, Angélica embodies the essence of contemporary America, a cultural landscape continually evolving through its fusion with rich Hispanic influences. In a reflection of modern America itself, ‘Gemelo’ also marks Garcia’s first album sung almost entirely in Spanish, inviting listeners to reconsider what they think an American record can be.

‘Gemelo’ was produced by Carlos Arévalo of LA-based rock band Chicano Batman, his first time working in such a role. Sequenced with extreme intent, the album progresses from a delicate, tender entry on Side A which serves almost like a meditation, to the visceral intensity of Side B, which immerses into the difficult, at times terrifying work of healing. With growth and exploration like wind behind her, Garcia arrives at her clearest and most fully realized vision of self on ‘Gemelo’.

‘Gemelo’ is the anticipated follow-up to her 2020 breakthrough ‘Cha Cha Palace’, which featured on several year-end lists and brought Angélica to NPR’s Tiny Desk

TRACK LISTING

1. Reflexiones
2. Color De Dolor
3. Juanita
4. Ángel [eterna]
5. Mírame
6. Y Grito
7. El Que
8. Intuición
9. Gemini
10. Paloma

Like a bolt echoing back from the blue, We Have Dozens of Titles restrikes the iron of Gastr del Sol, plunging the listener (that’s us!) back into the maelstrom of their all-too-brief (-but-ultimately-long-enough-to-change-everything-incisively) passage of 1993-1998 via an assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live material.

Gastr del Sol’s music was of the transformative variety – or was it transfiguration they were up to? Or transmigration? Flux was key, to be sure. David Grubbs formed Gastr from the final lineup of Bastro; on Gastr’s del Sol’s debut, The Serpentine Similar, Grubbs, Bundy K. Brown and John McEntire downshifted from a thrashing electric outfit into a droning, acoustic-based one. Following this, the lineup shifted again, decisively – Brown and McEntire departed to focus on the project to be known as Tortoise, and Jim O’Rourke arrived, pairing with Grubbs to make a sequence of unpredictable leaps across genre and practical approach alike, over three LPs and a pair of EPs that threatened the passage of musical time as we knew it in the mid-90s.

We Have Dozens of Titles contains nearly an hour of previously unreleased live recordings, alongside another near-hour of studio recordings culled from previously uncollected singles, EPs, and compilations. At long last, vinyl purchasers will hear the full range of “The Harp Factory on Lake Street”, “Dead Cats in a Foghorn”, “Quietly Approaching” and “The Bells of St. Mary’s” for the first time EVER on vinyl – all of it, live and studio alike, lovingly mastered and remastered by Jim O’Rourke, and packaged in a three LP box set with a wicked Roman Signer image on its removable lid, interior printing on the box bottom and inner sleeves for each LP with performance credits for all the songs.

As much as Gastr del Sol’s albums showcase a group eminently at home in the studio, they were inclined to thoroughly reinvent their compositions in performance. While reviewing live tapes for this compilation, the studio versions of most things felt more and more definitive, with the exception of the live takes included here, which essay startling new qualities in pieces that have been in the public ear for several decades.

The majority of these live performances come from a miraculous find in the CBC archive – a broadcast-quality recording of Jim and David from the 1997 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. This was the last time they performed together as Gastr del Sol, during which several still-gestating Camoufleur pieces were presented in radically different forms and Jim played organ on a track from David’s first solo album, the concert-closing, band closing (and now album-closing) version of "Onion Orange”.

The studio recordings included were originally released by the Red Hot Organization, God Mountain, Table of the Elements, Sony Japan, Teenbeat and Drag City. Studios utilized in the making of the material were Idful Music Corporation, Kingsize Soundlab and steamroom. The extended company of players on these numbers includes Jeb Bishop, Bundy K. Brown, Steve Butters, Gene Coleman, Thymme Jones, Terri Kapsalis, John McEntire, Günter Müller, Bob Weston and Sue Wolf – a virtual “what’s who wha'?!?” of Chicago’s hothouse scene in those times.

We Have Dozens of Titles revisits the slow-burning incendiaries of Gastr del Sol, finding, once again and after so much time elapsed, another, further set of reinventions from a group who continues to change the way we hear music.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Seasons Reverse (live)
2. Quietly Approaching
3. Ursus Arctos Wonderfilis (live)
4. At Night And At Night
5. Dead Cats In A Foghorn
6. The Japanese Room At La Pagode
7. The Bells Of St. Mary’s
8. Blues Subtitled No Sense Of Wonder (live)
9. 20 Songs Less
10. Dictionary Of Handwriting (live)
11. The Harp Factory On Lake Street
12. Onion Orange (live)

Wow! So you’re telling me Ron Geesin made this kooky electro groovy score to a really progressive maths educational programme on Central TV in 1980 and it’s musically anarchic and amazing and it’s never been issued before? Until now. Wow again!!!! And there’s 30 tracks!!! Trunk Records we love you...

Basic Maths was the second educational TV Series for the Midlands-based ITV station for which I composed, played and recorded all music and noises. The first series, also for budding mathematicians in the 7-10 age group, was Leapfrog in 1978 produced by ATV (Associated Television): Basic Maths was for the newly-formed Central Television, the work spanning 1980-1981; both series were of twenty-eight parts.

The most worthy idea for both of these series was to project mathematics into life by means mainly of non-verbal sound and vision, with both animated and live action films, linked by two presenters, Fred Harris and Mary Waterhouse. In my role as Media Composer, I had had quite enough of voice overs, therefore music well under, so this fairly radical educational approach at the time encouraged my creative juices to run unhindered. Of course the sound had to do something with the picture and not just use it as a carrier for peacock display. It had to duet, play with and explain the visual content using novel and engaging techniques, so this involved the usual and sometimes intricate mathematical calculations which constantly exercised my already reasonable school maths.

‘Mayday’ is the third LP by Montreal-based artist, Myriam Gendron. It follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, ‘Not So Deep As A Well’ (2014) and ‘Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found’ (2021). Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), with ‘Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found’, which combines traditional and original songs with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano.

‘Mayday’ presents an even more syncretic fusion of the elements Myriam uses to create her sound. Most of the songs are original, sung in both English and French, and they blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. She is often accompanied on this album by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), whose work provides a quietly aggressive sort of free-rock base. Additional players include Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie, Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba.

‘Mayday’ is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. The music here certainly possesses a richly serious tone, but Myriam Gendron (like Leonard Cohen) is able to infuse her darkness with a subtle, powerful light that reminds us that even the most pitchblack night is but a transitional state.

TRACK LISTING

1. There Is No East Or West
2. Long Way Home
3. Terres Brûlées
4. Dorothy’s Blues
5. La Luz
6. La Belle Françoise (pour Sylvie)
7. Lully Lullay
8. Look Down That Lonesome Road
9. Quand J’étais Jeune Et Belle
10. Berceuse